Random Ramblings on Writing and Video Games
On Writing
It's a bit crazy, but I still get reviews rolling in occasionally for The Fifth Act. (By crazy I do of course mean 'awesome'). Since the fic has been complete for a long while though, I've been noticing an amusing trend where I get a review complaining about all the angst somewhere in the mid-thirties... and then half an hour or so later I get another review on the last chapter basically saying 'okay yeah I actually liked the ending, all is forgiven'. Which has led me to wonder both:
A. How much crap I can get away with in the body of the story so long as the ending is decent.
and
B. What the reaction would have been if the ending had been properly tragic.
It's interesting to think about, even though I'm long done with post-mortem on that particular fic.
It's also interesting to relate that to tragedy fic in general. An overwhelming number of people say how much they hate sad endings... and yet, in terms of response, Dear Kunsel is far and away my most successful one-shot ever - in fact, in terms of feedback per chapter, it's the runaway winner of everything.
*In case you can't tell I logged onto FF.net and had a look at the stats page for the first time in a while.*
Is it just the visceral response of the unexpected? Since the happy ending is the expected one, anything that doesn't follow that, even if unwelcome, prompts a reaction.
(Don't worry this doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to go on another tragic fic bender.)
Still on the subject of fic, I've been writing a lot of Cid recently, because while writing Beloved I discovered how much I enjoy writing some of the less popular characters in FF7 (e.g. Nanaki, Barret, Reeve.) Subsequently had this amusing exchange with agentlerain online:
Me: I'm concerned about how much Cid is swearing. It's technically canon, but how much swearing is too much swearing?
Her: When there are no words in-between.
...I felt like we were very Australian right then.
My boss was swearing at the build at work last week and kept apologising to me for it but I'm like 'if you didn't apologise I wouldn't even notice'. Lately I've started to wonder how terribly my social calibration may be off because of things like this.
On Games
Ni No Kuni is amazing and so perfect that I've actually been playing through it quite slowly because I need to savor it. That's all I'm going to say on that one for now less I start gushing verbal rainbows.
Persona 4 Arena, on the other hand, is kind of shit.
I'm not terrible at fighting games - while they are not my first genre I have played the hell out of at least couple per generation, perhaps not enough to be world-class arcade shark but more than enough to easily pwn my social circle and the hardest AIs. Yet I simply cannot do half the combos, not even in training mode where there is nothing going on. This is basically the same reason why I haven't been able to get properly into Guilty Gear or BlazBlue despite best efforts. Quarter circle analog stick combos do not translate well to a home console controller. And timing for some of those combos is damn near surgical.
I don't know where the voice director has gone, either. It's the same cast of actors, but they're somehow worse than both P4 and P4Anime. Or has my tolerance for cringe-worthy voice acting simply disappeared? Labrys's voice in particular makes me recoil.
Also, is it just me, or does the story read like Mary Sue fanfiction? It started out okay, but it feels incredibly trite compared to P4. It was always going to be a tough ask for a fighting game to live up to P4's kind of storytelling, admittedly, but something about it rubs me horribly the wrong way. Which is weird, because the basic premise feels reasonably solid. Maybe part of the issue is that they're starting to shove thoughts into Narukami's head and put words into his mouth that feel incongruous with whatever your mental image of the protagonist in P4 was - part of the problem with the P4 anime, actually, where the anime staff apparently decided to chose all jerk!bro responses. Plus reading headspace narrative in P4-universe is really jarring - that story was driven almost entirely by dialogue and little emotiocons/facial expressions showing character satisfaction. It feels kind of like a break in style, an exposure of the fourth wall - you're suddenly acutely aware that this is something someone has made, and that the characters are puppets dancing to another author's whims.
And the music doesn't loop. What the hell ArcSystems. You get to work with Shoji Meguro's music and can't even do that?
TL;DR - Persona 4 Arena is a lot more ArcSystems than it is Atlus.
Still on the topic of Atlus, though, Devil Survivor 2 has been somewhat marvellous! It was basically exactly like Devil Survivor with a couple of small improvements and a different cast, which is great, because sometimes 'more of the same' is all you want. It had a pretty decent difficulty curve too, where most battles were challenging enough to make me think hard about strategy but not so much that I struggled - at least, until the final boss where I did die a couple of times. Also found out there is an anime of it! Have only watched the first episode so far but it's looking pretty excellent.
On a side note...
Iron Man 3 was awesome. Star Dark: Into The Darkness was even more awesome and gave me an incredible appetite for BAMF!Bones-centric canon-verse genfic, which is apparently an incredibly rare and specific taste (and have subsequently expanded my acceptance to Reaper!Bones fics). I would also totally be on board for any Sulu or Chekov canon-verse genfic. For such an old and massive fandom, the pickings are surprisingly slim in terms of decent canon-verse genfic in general, actually. If anyone has recs, pretty please sling them my way.
It's a bit crazy, but I still get reviews rolling in occasionally for The Fifth Act. (By crazy I do of course mean 'awesome'). Since the fic has been complete for a long while though, I've been noticing an amusing trend where I get a review complaining about all the angst somewhere in the mid-thirties... and then half an hour or so later I get another review on the last chapter basically saying 'okay yeah I actually liked the ending, all is forgiven'. Which has led me to wonder both:
A. How much crap I can get away with in the body of the story so long as the ending is decent.
and
B. What the reaction would have been if the ending had been properly tragic.
It's interesting to think about, even though I'm long done with post-mortem on that particular fic.
It's also interesting to relate that to tragedy fic in general. An overwhelming number of people say how much they hate sad endings... and yet, in terms of response, Dear Kunsel is far and away my most successful one-shot ever - in fact, in terms of feedback per chapter, it's the runaway winner of everything.
*In case you can't tell I logged onto FF.net and had a look at the stats page for the first time in a while.*
Is it just the visceral response of the unexpected? Since the happy ending is the expected one, anything that doesn't follow that, even if unwelcome, prompts a reaction.
(Don't worry this doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to go on another tragic fic bender.)
Still on the subject of fic, I've been writing a lot of Cid recently, because while writing Beloved I discovered how much I enjoy writing some of the less popular characters in FF7 (e.g. Nanaki, Barret, Reeve.) Subsequently had this amusing exchange with agentlerain online:
Me: I'm concerned about how much Cid is swearing. It's technically canon, but how much swearing is too much swearing?
Her: When there are no words in-between.
...I felt like we were very Australian right then.
My boss was swearing at the build at work last week and kept apologising to me for it but I'm like 'if you didn't apologise I wouldn't even notice'. Lately I've started to wonder how terribly my social calibration may be off because of things like this.
On Games
Ni No Kuni is amazing and so perfect that I've actually been playing through it quite slowly because I need to savor it. That's all I'm going to say on that one for now less I start gushing verbal rainbows.
Persona 4 Arena, on the other hand, is kind of shit.
I'm not terrible at fighting games - while they are not my first genre I have played the hell out of at least couple per generation, perhaps not enough to be world-class arcade shark but more than enough to easily pwn my social circle and the hardest AIs. Yet I simply cannot do half the combos, not even in training mode where there is nothing going on. This is basically the same reason why I haven't been able to get properly into Guilty Gear or BlazBlue despite best efforts. Quarter circle analog stick combos do not translate well to a home console controller. And timing for some of those combos is damn near surgical.
I don't know where the voice director has gone, either. It's the same cast of actors, but they're somehow worse than both P4 and P4Anime. Or has my tolerance for cringe-worthy voice acting simply disappeared? Labrys's voice in particular makes me recoil.
Also, is it just me, or does the story read like Mary Sue fanfiction? It started out okay, but it feels incredibly trite compared to P4. It was always going to be a tough ask for a fighting game to live up to P4's kind of storytelling, admittedly, but something about it rubs me horribly the wrong way. Which is weird, because the basic premise feels reasonably solid. Maybe part of the issue is that they're starting to shove thoughts into Narukami's head and put words into his mouth that feel incongruous with whatever your mental image of the protagonist in P4 was - part of the problem with the P4 anime, actually, where the anime staff apparently decided to chose all jerk!bro responses. Plus reading headspace narrative in P4-universe is really jarring - that story was driven almost entirely by dialogue and little emotiocons/facial expressions showing character satisfaction. It feels kind of like a break in style, an exposure of the fourth wall - you're suddenly acutely aware that this is something someone has made, and that the characters are puppets dancing to another author's whims.
And the music doesn't loop. What the hell ArcSystems. You get to work with Shoji Meguro's music and can't even do that?
TL;DR - Persona 4 Arena is a lot more ArcSystems than it is Atlus.
Still on the topic of Atlus, though, Devil Survivor 2 has been somewhat marvellous! It was basically exactly like Devil Survivor with a couple of small improvements and a different cast, which is great, because sometimes 'more of the same' is all you want. It had a pretty decent difficulty curve too, where most battles were challenging enough to make me think hard about strategy but not so much that I struggled - at least, until the final boss where I did die a couple of times. Also found out there is an anime of it! Have only watched the first episode so far but it's looking pretty excellent.
On a side note...
Iron Man 3 was awesome. Star Dark: Into The Darkness was even more awesome and gave me an incredible appetite for BAMF!Bones-centric canon-verse genfic, which is apparently an incredibly rare and specific taste (and have subsequently expanded my acceptance to Reaper!Bones fics). I would also totally be on board for any Sulu or Chekov canon-verse genfic. For such an old and massive fandom, the pickings are surprisingly slim in terms of decent canon-verse genfic in general, actually. If anyone has recs, pretty please sling them my way.