Meta: In Which There Is Navel Gazing About Writing The Warden
So it turns out that the hard thing about writing Dragon Age fanfic is writing stuff involving The Warden (the generic term for the PC) such that it doesn't feel weird!
(This post contains no appreciable spoilers for Dragon Age, have no fear; it just discusses game mechanics a little. Please don't spoil me in the comments, as I am not yet even halfway through the game!)
Backstory: Like many Western RPGs, and unlike most of the JRPGs I've played, Dragon Age is a game where you get to determine pretty much everything about your main character-race and class and certain things about their background, skills and talents and so on, but also personality things. Do they speak softly and carry a big stick, or speak loudly and... carry a big stick? If another of the characters is having a bad day, do they go easy on them, or go hard on them to make them stronger, or go hard on them because they feel like being mean? If given a chance to betray someone, would them? And so on and so on and so on. In a game like, oh, I dunno, Final Fantasy 7, you can customize Cloud by giving him different materia and so on, but you can't suddenly decide to play him as a gregarious and cheerful young man with a firm grasp on sanity. And you also can't decide that you'd rather play the game with a female rogue as the main character, either.
This is the first time I've written fic for a game like Dragon Age rather than a game like Final Fantasy 7. That's probably a broad oversimplification, but we'll go with it for the purposes of this post.
I shouldn't have to say this, but this is not an invitation to bash one of those broad type of game; I like both types, and anyway I don't want to host that debate right now. Cool? Cool.
I've played RPGs with mutable characters, like Dragon Age, before-you had at least some flexibility in what type of person you were in Baldur's Gate, and quite a lot in Knights of the Old Republic. (I loved KOTOR. I may need to replay it, actually, now that it's easily gettable via Steam.) But the thing is, I haven't played one and gotten fannish about it since I've started writing fanfic. All the other games I've played that I wanted to write fic about have been of the type where the main character (actually, usually all the characters) have pretty set personalities. I'd like to think that I put my own stamp on Celes, but the core of the character was already there before I started. Same with Sora, with Locke, with Edge, with Tifa, with Xigbar, with Argilla, with Ashe and Vossler and Kairi and Serph and Vincent and Demyx.
(The exception, to digress for a moment, is Elena. In retrospect I think I reinvented her in the way I wished a female Turk would wind up, and though I'm pretty sure I adopted the scant handful of traits that actually existed in canon-the flailing, the rabid-weasel approach to problem solving, the inferiority complex covered up by irrational anger-in the end I think there's more in my Elena that I put in her than that I got from canon. But that's sort of a separate issue-and anyway, Elena isn't even close to being the main character of FF7; she's not even a party member.)
The problem, to make a long story slightly shorter, is that I don't usually write original characters prominently in fanfiction-and yet, any story that features The Warden in any serious capacity is, effectively, featuring an original character.
Of course, there are some commonalities. The Warden is, well, a Warden; as far as I know there's no way to start the game without becoming one. The Warden completes a certain string of quests, although the outcomes can be very different depending on what you choose to do at various stages. But so much is mutable, including personality, character type, and relationships with other characters, that we're talking for all intents and purposes about writing an original character.
And I find myself terrified that I won't be able to write a good original character.
You know, I didn't know until I wrote that sentence that that was the fear, but it is. I'm afraid that my version (or versions; I know I am going to replay at least twice) of The Warden will come across as flat, or dumb, or improbable; that they will pale compared to the 'real' characters; that I won't be able to write a convincing character when I have so much leeway. There is a small part of me that is terrified that I will commit Mary Sue (dun DUN).
One obvious solution is to ignore The Warden, to write about Alistair and Morrigan and Zevran and Sten and Leliana and Wynne and the Dog and whoever else will eventually join my party, and keep The Warden as a background character. And I can do that. I probably will do that. I already have some ideas for fic that focus mostly on one or another of the party characters, and not on The Warden.
But the truth of the matter is that I don't want to just stick to the other party characters. Certainly I don't want to feel forced to just stick to them. There are a few things-again, vagueness, to avoid spoilers-that are so cool about the situation that The Warden is put in that I just plain want to write about her. (I'll use the feminine pronoun because my Warden is a woman.) And, to be perfectly honest, a few things that are going on in her romantic relationships are making me want to commit fic. I don't want to have to not write those just because I'm afraid, um, that everyone will laugh at my PC?
I don't think I have a conclusion here. Except perhaps that this is yet another opportunity to be brave, go a bit outside my comfort zone, and do something different. Hmm. Yes. Perhaps if I think about it that way, it will terrify me less.
Posted on LJ and DW, reply here or there. Currently there are
comments at DW.
(This post contains no appreciable spoilers for Dragon Age, have no fear; it just discusses game mechanics a little. Please don't spoil me in the comments, as I am not yet even halfway through the game!)
Backstory: Like many Western RPGs, and unlike most of the JRPGs I've played, Dragon Age is a game where you get to determine pretty much everything about your main character-race and class and certain things about their background, skills and talents and so on, but also personality things. Do they speak softly and carry a big stick, or speak loudly and... carry a big stick? If another of the characters is having a bad day, do they go easy on them, or go hard on them to make them stronger, or go hard on them because they feel like being mean? If given a chance to betray someone, would them? And so on and so on and so on. In a game like, oh, I dunno, Final Fantasy 7, you can customize Cloud by giving him different materia and so on, but you can't suddenly decide to play him as a gregarious and cheerful young man with a firm grasp on sanity. And you also can't decide that you'd rather play the game with a female rogue as the main character, either.
This is the first time I've written fic for a game like Dragon Age rather than a game like Final Fantasy 7. That's probably a broad oversimplification, but we'll go with it for the purposes of this post.
I shouldn't have to say this, but this is not an invitation to bash one of those broad type of game; I like both types, and anyway I don't want to host that debate right now. Cool? Cool.
I've played RPGs with mutable characters, like Dragon Age, before-you had at least some flexibility in what type of person you were in Baldur's Gate, and quite a lot in Knights of the Old Republic. (I loved KOTOR. I may need to replay it, actually, now that it's easily gettable via Steam.) But the thing is, I haven't played one and gotten fannish about it since I've started writing fanfic. All the other games I've played that I wanted to write fic about have been of the type where the main character (actually, usually all the characters) have pretty set personalities. I'd like to think that I put my own stamp on Celes, but the core of the character was already there before I started. Same with Sora, with Locke, with Edge, with Tifa, with Xigbar, with Argilla, with Ashe and Vossler and Kairi and Serph and Vincent and Demyx.
(The exception, to digress for a moment, is Elena. In retrospect I think I reinvented her in the way I wished a female Turk would wind up, and though I'm pretty sure I adopted the scant handful of traits that actually existed in canon-the flailing, the rabid-weasel approach to problem solving, the inferiority complex covered up by irrational anger-in the end I think there's more in my Elena that I put in her than that I got from canon. But that's sort of a separate issue-and anyway, Elena isn't even close to being the main character of FF7; she's not even a party member.)
The problem, to make a long story slightly shorter, is that I don't usually write original characters prominently in fanfiction-and yet, any story that features The Warden in any serious capacity is, effectively, featuring an original character.
Of course, there are some commonalities. The Warden is, well, a Warden; as far as I know there's no way to start the game without becoming one. The Warden completes a certain string of quests, although the outcomes can be very different depending on what you choose to do at various stages. But so much is mutable, including personality, character type, and relationships with other characters, that we're talking for all intents and purposes about writing an original character.
And I find myself terrified that I won't be able to write a good original character.
You know, I didn't know until I wrote that sentence that that was the fear, but it is. I'm afraid that my version (or versions; I know I am going to replay at least twice) of The Warden will come across as flat, or dumb, or improbable; that they will pale compared to the 'real' characters; that I won't be able to write a convincing character when I have so much leeway. There is a small part of me that is terrified that I will commit Mary Sue (dun DUN).
One obvious solution is to ignore The Warden, to write about Alistair and Morrigan and Zevran and Sten and Leliana and Wynne and the Dog and whoever else will eventually join my party, and keep The Warden as a background character. And I can do that. I probably will do that. I already have some ideas for fic that focus mostly on one or another of the party characters, and not on The Warden.
But the truth of the matter is that I don't want to just stick to the other party characters. Certainly I don't want to feel forced to just stick to them. There are a few things-again, vagueness, to avoid spoilers-that are so cool about the situation that The Warden is put in that I just plain want to write about her. (I'll use the feminine pronoun because my Warden is a woman.) And, to be perfectly honest, a few things that are going on in her romantic relationships are making me want to commit fic. I don't want to have to not write those just because I'm afraid, um, that everyone will laugh at my PC?
I don't think I have a conclusion here. Except perhaps that this is yet another opportunity to be brave, go a bit outside my comfort zone, and do something different. Hmm. Yes. Perhaps if I think about it that way, it will terrify me less.
Posted on LJ and DW, reply here or there. Currently there are
comments at DW.