The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

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OokamiKasumi
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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#346 Post by OokamiKasumi »

junna wrote:
OokamiKasumi wrote:(I intend to 'cackle madly'.)
I knew right off the bat at the start which one was yours... so, *helps to cackle madly*
You did? Oops...
-- There's no disguising my style, I guess...
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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#347 Post by LieselSolo »

Daggio wrote:yeah, winning would be awesome, but completing VN for this competition is already an achievement, and it felt great.

one thing that disheartened me was, when I read reviews about my entry (not my entry, but my entry) was that the grammar was terrible, and I was like... what??
yeah, I'm not a native english speaking guy, but I A'ed each and every english exam back at college, so when I read the reviews about my grammar, I was like WHAT DID I DO WRONG?? I didn't make bad grammar on purpose .___.)
You wrote Is She A Spirit of Disaster? Well from what I remember that one DID have a lot of grammatical errors, but that's not something to get hurt over - just recheck your grammar and punctuation rules more. Maybe find someone to proofread also?

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#348 Post by Daggio »

I plan to look for a proofreader the next time I write a VN, I think that's the better choice

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#349 Post by rasburn »

Oh giddy, results are out! Congratulations to the winners! :D

Anyone who felt they scored lower than they should, shouldn't feel discouraged. There were so many entries, so we all didn't have time to read them all (guilty as charged). And we also only had 3 votes each, I know at least one entry I would have liked to vote for other than my 3 votes.

I haven't read either "Outlook Of Spirit Commission" or "Anniversaries, Adversity, and Pepper" yet. I should really do though since they scored so high.
Daggio wrote: yeah, winning would be awesome, but completing VN for this competition is already an achievement, and it felt great.
I totally agree! This was fun and I would love to do it again, especially if the prompt/resources weren't as restrictive. Part of the reason I didn't read all entries was that they started to feel a bit the same after a while :?

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#350 Post by Anarchy »

Sapphi wrote:
Funnyguts wrote:The professor seems to go crazy really fast. He was annoyed before, but wow, did he suddenly go murderous out of nowhere. Stellie was kinda cute, but I'm not quite sure what her motivation was. She seemed to suddenly want to help the professor by screwing with him. The professor learned to deal with the situation a bit too quickly, as well. The professor seems to just change moods depending on when it's needed, not when it makes sense.
I'll have to read through it again to be sure, but you're probably right... I knew the pacing was wonky while I was writing it, but since I was racing to meet the deadline, I didn't really have a lot of time to sit back and analyze it. Somebody else pointed out a typo, as well... I was rushed, but I'm still embarrassed by the typo :oops:
Funnyguts wrote:Competently written, but kind of weird. Whatever college that professor teaches at sounds absolutely insane. I've had papers with coffee on them before and it didn't ruin the lives of the professors and teachers that handed them back to me. Motivations all seemed underdevloped to me. Not bad, but definitely not my favorite.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I couldn't decide while writing if it was really an over-the-top college, or if the professor himself was just a ridiculous man who obsessed about ridiculous things. I wanted to give him a sort of over-dramatic, pompous, Dostoevskian voice. I'm not sure how well it worked for the theme and prompt of the story, but it was so fun to write... :mrgreen:
I thought the voice worked brilliantly. Through the over-dramatic tone, you establish that the world of For Stellie is a ridiculous, over-the-top world, and I feel like people who think there are realism issues are just missing the heart and soul of the story. It's not meant to be a realistic portrayal of our world, it's a charming exaggeration, and I absolutely adored that.
rasburn wrote:The cynicism of the professor when thinking about teaching and grading was fun, though the character wasn't likable at first. He seemed petty, but
as the story went on I felt more comfortable with him.
He was supposed to be petty, so that's good. Hopefully his dislikeable traits are neutralized in the beginning by the fun of watching him suffer... :mrgreen:
I loved him! He's a pompous git, but it's so fun to watch him being all pompous and petty and overblown!
Daggio wrote:Another negative point was that I don't feel like this story conforms with the prompt. Sure, she fell from the sky and probably the destruction she caused to the classroom and office fit the definition of "disaster", but she is NOT a spirit. She is a shooting star, she addressed herself as a star, and talks as if she's a shooting star, NOT a spirit. (I differentiate between spirits and stars)
Fair point. While writing I thought of her as a "shooting star spirit", but the way she refers to herself doesn't make that so clear. Although:

"We sleep for ages until the proper time, collecting knowledge without direct experience. At the proper time, dust surrounds us and we are born into your physical world, in which we have but one short moment to live."

was my way of saying, more subtly, that in the world of Shooting Star Spirits, spirits are "stored up" in a spirit queue somewhere, and throughout time it dispenses them, and then they take their respective turns being cloaked in bodies of "physical" matter for the sole purpose of throwing them into our atmosphere and burning them up. I didn't really feel like it was necessary for Stellie to give us a detailed explanation of the spirit world, though...
Agree completely. In our PM conversations, Carassaurat mentioned the trend for a lot of the entries to get bogged down in explaining spirit bureaucracy rules, which are, really, mostly unnecessary. I love the light touch you used in explaining the origins of the spirit, and I felt that the way you hinted at the conditions of the prompt was more than enough. Any more exposition would have been awkward and ruined the pacing.
Daggio wrote: No music. Bummer. Even though using the reasoning of "feels like reading a book" justifies the silent atmosphere, I still expect it coming from a game.
Yeah... I planned to use a couple tracks, but I ran out of time and just managed to finish coding the thing before the deadline. :lol: Although, I wasn't entirely sure that was a bad thing. I wasn't sure how much "dissonance" the mostly eerie music would create when I set the professor's over-the-top voice to it.
I'm so glad that you didn't use music. The voice is so strong and has a music and rhythm of its own that would've been completely ruined by extraneous tracks, IMHO.
OokamiKasumi wrote: What I wasn't so keen on was that despite the fact that the sprite character; Stellie, was almost immediately established as being not-so-bright, she had difficulty with the word 'streaked,' and seemed to be a little simplistic in her views,) this was Not carried over.
Blane Doyle wrote:I did notice others mentioning that Stellie's character development was broken from someone with a poor grasp on the English language, as she has difficulty with the word streak, but that was not the impression I had gotten. I got the impression that she was just confused about the past tense of the word and not simple minded or not-bright. This is something many people have problems with. Even writers who study English and have large vocabularies have the problem sometimes, especially with commonly misunderstood words. I felt this scene was used to show off how the two character bounce off each other and how unusual Stellie is. She is a shooting start after all, she's certainly got quirks. (She did mention that they gather knowledge but do not get to properly use it, I felt that was a decent explanation as well.)

But, I could be utterly incorrect. We wouldn't know unless the author told us.
True story: I threw that in because I couldn't remember what the proper past tense for that word was! :lol: I figured that if I was dumb enough to get confused, and I'm not actually dumb about grammar, that it was a realistic, conversational touch. I do agree that having it right in the beginning like that set Stellie up in a way I didn't really intend, so thanks for the feedback on that. :)
I personally thought it was fine precisely for the reasons you mentioned. Even native speakers get hung up on the finer points of grammar sometimes, and that is exactly the impression I got.
Carassaurat wrote: If I have to criticise it, I think the coffee scene drags on too long, and while I understand that it serves a purpose to show the character and why his environment is so hellish, it demands a lot of attention to the irrelevant theme of coffee.
Gotcha... I think this is tied to my pacing issue. I spent more time on the beginning than I did on the end, so it's a little lopsided...
***
I thought it was a lovely character-establishing moment and I wouldn't want to lose a single moment of it. Sure, taking it out would make the core story tighter, but I think the professor's personality would lose quite a bit of the richness it has now. It's like cheesecake. Sure, having whipped cream on top just distracts from the taste of the cheesecake itself, but on the other hand, why the hell would you NOT WANT WHIPPED CREAM ON YOUR CHEESECAKE.

(This is an exaggeration: I actually don't like whipped cream all that much.)
Well, I think that's just about everything I wanted to mention...
I did notice some people raising questions if it broke the prompt... Admittedly I got a little creative with it, but I hope it didn't diverge too far. It's true that Stellie did the professor more good than harm, but I did try to make her pretty disastrous as far as destroying his classroom, and stealing his papers...
That's exactly what I thought! That was disastrous enough for me, thank you very much! Having the "disaster" component be something relatively mundane like that was actually refreshing after all those entries of death and destruction and doom.
Overall, I'm decently happy with what I wrote, although it's not my best work by far... I'm conflicted about the theme and tone. Originally I had it in my mind to make it a sob story (what else!), but I didn't have any really heart-wrenching emotional music, so I abstained in favor of giving the narrator an over-the-top style and toning down the sentiment a bit. I'm not sure if it was a success, but I think it's decent enough for me to revisit sometime and maybe expand a bit. I could see myself releasing it as a short KN with my own illustrations and music. In the event of that, does anyone have any suggestions for how I might tweak the story to make it better?
I think you struck a lovely balance between the melodrama and the sentiment. I don't think it needs any heart-wrenching emotional music either. As for suggestions, I think I remember there was a part towards the end where the spirit is trying to convince the professor of the importance of wishes, and there was a point where her speech got a bit too much. I think what I'm trying to say is "more funny melodrama, less earnest sentimental talk about wishes", but then again, that's probably my personal taste talking so you should probably ignore me. But yeah, other than that, I got nuthin'. What can I say, it was just THAT well-crafted. Like Funnyguts said, just make sure the "Professor of the English Language" doesn't make any grammar mistakes, and you should be golden. :3
rasburn wrote: I totally agree! This was fun and I would love to do it again, especially if the prompt/resources weren't as restrictive. Part of the reason I didn't read all entries was that they started to feel a bit the same after a while :?
I think that's not the prompt's fault. There were lots of directions you could've taken it in. Of course, the prompt and the sprite itself suggested a certain direction, but people didn't HAVE to do it that way. Wasn't the whole point of this contest to make something that's "not so samey", as papillon said in her opening post?

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#351 Post by rasburn »

Anarchy wrote:
rasburn wrote: I totally agree! This was fun and I would love to do it again, especially if the prompt/resources weren't as restrictive. Part of the reason I didn't read all entries was that they started to feel a bit the same after a while :?
I think that's not the prompt's fault. There were lots of directions you could've taken it in. Of course, the prompt and the sprite itself suggested a certain direction, but people didn't HAVE to do it that way. Wasn't the whole point of this contest to make something that's "not so samey", as papillon said in her opening post?
To clarify: I did not think the prompt or resources were bad (though I did wince at first because catgirl). I actually think it was all really well done, especially since the competition was up and running so shortly after discussion started. What I meant with my "criticism" was that I got to see the same backgrounds and hear the same music a lot (and those were still familiar from the actual competition part). This would work well if there were 5-15 entries, but so many people participated! :D So basically what I'm doing here is trying to excuse why I didn't read all entries :? (while at the same time trying to hint that it would be interesting with a new competition, though with more diversity).

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#352 Post by Anarchy »

rasburn wrote: To clarify: I did not think the prompt or resources were bad (though I did wince at first because catgirl). I actually think it was all really well done, especially since the competition was up and running so shortly after discussion started. What I meant with my "criticism" was that I got to see the same backgrounds and hear the same music a lot (and those were still familiar from the actual competition part). This would work well if there were 5-15 entries, but so many people participated! :D So basically what I'm doing here is trying to excuse why I didn't read all entries :? (while at the same time trying to hint that it would be interesting with a new competition, though with more diversity).
Ahhh, that makes sense. Hmm, that wasn't a problem for me, really, partly because the focus of this contest is on the writing. Even if the basic assets we had were the same, I was still hooked by those entries that did interesting and different things with them. What really bothered me was how I kept seeing the same plots and tropes coming up in entry after entry, and they eventually all started blending together at some point. That, for me, was more of a problem than the limited assets.

It would be interesting to have a competition that's all about the whole package, though. Like NaNoReNo but with prizes. That'd be super fun too. :3

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#353 Post by OokamiKasumi »

Anarchy wrote:... What really bothered me was how I kept seeing the same plots and tropes coming up in entry after entry, and they eventually all started blending together at some point. That, for me, was more of a problem than the limited assets.
The prompt was the hold up here, not the assets.
You lived an unexceptional life, until one night you saw what appeared to be a falling star. Tracking it to its landing spot, you found a young woman lying on the ground. This girl is not human, but a spirit... the spirit of disaster!
Without this prompt, you would have seen a much wider variety in the stories. In other words, because we all used the same theme, similarities in stories were simply unavoidable.
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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#354 Post by Daggio »

oh yeah, before this thread got abandoned and no one read it again, I want to thank Anarchy and Auro-cyanide for have reviewed Is she a spirit of disaster? and gave positive feedback about it.
It means a lot, thanks *bows*

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#355 Post by akizakura »

Congratulations to the winners! I am still reading through some of the entries and apologize for not getting to finish out the reviews here. I've been really impressed and blown away by some of these.

I really enjoyed this contest. I found out about it Saturday afternoon before the deadline and decided to go through with it. I've been trying to finish a VN for years and get hung up on something every time (almost always the art! I know I could hire an artist, but I love doing the art. I'm just terrible at it!) When I submitted my entry on Sunday night, I had neglected to read the part where we all review each others' entries...gulp.

THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who reviewed Disaster Reborn! Seriously, I cannot thank you guys enough. Yes, many of the typos, grammatical errors, and plot holes slipped past me in the rushed editing I did. However, your reviews gave me a lot of things to think about in my own writing and valuable criticism I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Moreover, I feel encouraged by your reviews to take my time and try again at making a VN.
Daggio wrote:I'm not exactly sure why the spirit of disaster is shown with her head chopped off-
That was unintentional. I couldn't figure out how to fix it either (I think it was the way I was calling the image in the script...)
Daggio wrote:It's a good concept that this story states that the world needs a spirit of destruction, and if done properly, spirit of destruction can do something good to the world. Although I don't see that concept applied in the game, because Regina wreaks havoc everytime she use that power
You and Sapphi both mention developing Regina's powers, characters, and history more. Thank you for the great insight!
Sapphi wrote: However... it seems as though it was written in such a way as to make use of nearly every single background in the folder, which makes it seem like some elements of the story were thrown in simply to justify the use of resources.
THEY WERE SO APPEALING TO MY EYES! I just had to love all over them! :D
Sapphi wrote:For example, a point is made to narrate about the origins of the burned-up Women's College

What! Who would want to go to bed rather than going to investigate a fallen UFO?!
lordshadowisle wrote:Story-wise, the appearance of the robber just near the old college building is too much of a coincidence.
Carassaurat wrote:He or she seems to be more at ease writing mundane things realistically; both the locations and Cassandra's personality aren't particularly exciting, but they're written with a feeling for detail that makes them feel naturalistic, at least in my opinion.
This is something I struggle with and wanted to ask about.

I often get critique of my work where someone asks "why?" or wants more detail about something unrelated to the plot. In retrospect, the whole fire got too developed and sounds like a red herring). Is there a way to make the setting seem more developed - like it has a history and a reason - without crowding out the story?

As for the choice of main character, I believe this was also an issue of how I developed her. I'm so used to seeing anime and visual novels with characters who would WANT to answer the call to action. It's how I suspect I would be, so those characters are easy for me to write. I wanted to try something different and write a character who was different, modeled after people I've met who seem like they'd build a concrete wall to keep the call to adventure away. :D What would you suggest for developing a character like Cassandra? More backstory to justify this behavior?
Sapphi wrote:(BTW, it's spelled "mace" :))
Even on re-reading your mention of this typo, I couldn't figure out why in the world "mase" still looked right. Then my roommate pointed me to this character from my childhood... :lol:
Carassaurat wrote:One thing I don't get: in all endings, Cassandra is shown to be a burnt corpse, so I suppose that everything past the forest fire is actually an illusion or a spiritual journey or whatever and her body is dead all along? If that's so, the examples of Regina's power failing are all... fake?
The person who becomes the new spirit can no longer be attached to the mortal world. It has to be someone already fated to die. I debated putting that information in, but I thought I was being clever by cutting that bit out to protect the ending.

Thanks again to papillon for doing this, I really enjoyed it.

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#356 Post by Anarchy »

akizakura wrote:
Carassaurat wrote:He or she seems to be more at ease writing mundane things realistically; both the locations and Cassandra's personality aren't particularly exciting, but they're written with a feeling for detail that makes them feel naturalistic, at least in my opinion.
This is something I struggle with and wanted to ask about.

I often get critique of my work where someone asks "why?" or wants more detail about something unrelated to the plot. In retrospect, the whole fire got too developed and sounds like a red herring). Is there a way to make the setting seem more developed - like it has a history and a reason - without crowding out the story?
Personally, I think that exposition and scene-setting details (which you're great at, by the way) are best done in conjunction with something else. You want your writing to serve multiple functions at the same time. For example, you could get across details about your setting through an argument between two characters, or a joke, and so on. The opening scene you had, I think, was a good example of this. It opens with conflict between the headmaster and Cassandra, but it's through that conflict that we get important details about Cassandra's background and about the school.

Ultimately, I think, the purpose of writing fiction is to entertain - if the way in which you're developing your setting isn't interesting, then why should we read it? As Sapphi's signature says, it's best to cut out the parts that your readers skip. That doesn't mean that you don't develop anything that's not relevant to the plot - as Carassaurat says, certain details help to make the setting seem more real - but everything you write should be interesting (if not always enjoyable) to read. Maybe a certain scene doesn't have anything to do with the plot, but perhaps it's funny, or helps to create a certain atmosphere, or serves to hook the reader, and so on.

It all comes back down to balance. Sometimes it helps to take a step back from your story, look at a particular section, and ask yourself, "What is this detail doing for my story? What function does it serve?" The best stories don't have a single extraneous word; everything that goes into the story goes into it for a very specific reason. As creators, we sometimes fall a little bit too much in love with our own creations; unfortunately, even the coolest setting details or the prettiest backgrounds need to be cut if they don't add much to the story.

Basically, kill your babies.
As for the choice of main character, I believe this was also an issue of how I developed her. I'm so used to seeing anime and visual novels with characters who would WANT to answer the call to action. It's how I suspect I would be, so those characters are easy for me to write. I wanted to try something different and write a character who was different, modeled after people I've met who seem like they'd build a concrete wall to keep the call to adventure away. :D What would you suggest for developing a character like Cassandra? More backstory to justify this behavior?
I respect that creative choice, and I don't think that's the problem, actually. The problem is that Cassandra's characterization in general is not all that compelling. This is just a hypothesis, but it seems that because of your personality, you find people like Cassandra to be boring, and so you set out to write a "boring character". And I think that's where you started to run into problems. Just because a character would be boring in real life, does NOT mean that it should be boring to read about them. In fact, it's perfectly possible to write a boring character in a way that makes them interesting to the reader! Heck, there's even a perfect example of what I'm talking about in this very competition! Genevieve from Living Through Disaster describes herself as the most uninteresting, average, boring person ever, and every detail we're given about her background confirms that - she even "rejects the call" by walking away when a spirit accosts her - but because her inner voice is so fun and sarcastic and vivid, she becomes interesting to us, the readers, even if she might be the most boring person to the people around her.

My point is, even people that we would generally categorize as "boring" will always have things about them or moments that are just fascinating to watch. Humans are incredibly complex, after all. That's why sometimes I think that the most important quality for a writer to have is compassion. You need to be able to love people - not fall in love with them, but love them. You need to be able to see their flaws AND their virtues, and accept them completely for what they are, no matter how repulsive you might find them. As Umineko would say: "Without love, it cannot be seen." If you'd truly loved Cassandra and tried to see past her dullness to the things that were fascinating about her, it might have resulted in a more interesting protagonist. D-does that make sense? :oops:

Err, well, for some more concrete advice: I think in order to justify Cassie running away, you CAN play up her weariness, but I think it makes more sense in context for her to be running away from something dangerous, instead of running away because she wants to go to bed. Think about it: If you're in a forest late at night, and you see a huge flaming ball of fire coming towards you and then there are crashing noises and holy shit THE FOREST IS LIGHTING UP IS IT ON FIRE OR SOMETHING OMG - I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to run AWAY from that shit, not towards it. If you take out the phrase where she speculates that it's a UFO, and instead put in something along the lines of "WHAT WAS THAT?! AN ASTEROID OR SOMETHING?! AM I GOING TO DIE A HORRIBLE PAINFUL DEATH?! OMGGGGGGG~", it would make more sense and the readers wouldn't wonder about why the hell is she running away from a potential UFO because OMFG UFOS ARE EPICCC or some shit.
Carassaurat wrote:One thing I don't get: in all endings, Cassandra is shown to be a burnt corpse, so I suppose that everything past the forest fire is actually an illusion or a spiritual journey or whatever and her body is dead all along? If that's so, the examples of Regina's power failing are all... fake?
The person who becomes the new spirit can no longer be attached to the mortal world. It has to be someone already fated to die. I debated putting that information in, but I thought I was being clever by cutting that bit out to protect the ending.


Oh, that's a really cool reveal! I didn't get that from playing the game though - maybe you could make it clearer in the endings? Maybe at the very last moment the spirit can apologize and say "Oh, and by the way, you're dead, that's why I'm offering this job to you in the first place", or something. I don't know.

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#357 Post by Anarchy »

So, I'm going to do what all the cool kids are doing and respond to my reviews! Again, I want to thank everyone who reviewed Fairy Tales of Innocent Children and I will definitely take all the criticisms into consideration when revising this piece.

First of all, though, I have a technical question that maybe y'all can help me with? It seems that quite a few people had problems with the sprite or dialogue box disappearing whenever I used vpunch and hpunch. I think I had that problem too, but that went away when I switched graphic renderers. And some people didn't seem to have that problem at all.
KimiYoriBaka wrote:about Fairytale for Innocent Children, were those sprites supposed to be blinking? Cause that broke any and all immersion the story could have had.
jw2pfd wrote: I personally don't recall having any issues with sprites or graphics at all. I think I would remember if there was something on the level of 'immersion-breaking'
Blane Doyle wrote: The pauses between dialogue where the text box would disappear were also mildly annoying. I didn't know what happened the first time and was worried it was a bug.
Does anybody have any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Other than that, several of you seemed to think that the story might be better if it was expanded on a little more.
Kirroha wrote: All in all, I liked the story. Though it did leave a gaping hole in my heart due to the many questions I still have regarding everything, especially the spirit's past, and everything that happened to drove her to suicide. If the author wants to make an expansion, I'd love to play it.
rasburn wrote: I actually feel that this story should be longer (maybe longer than the scope of the contest). Why longer? Because though
the character exploration was great and really defined the spirit and Dani, it might have been a little too much too fast. Having a longer game where this happened more gradually would be welcome
[...]
I'd like to see an extended version of this, but at the same time I feel the story is complete as it is.
Mink wrote: I think the spirit ("spirit") was kind of inconsistent. Like, she's being a total jerk, but then really nice to the kid. I think if it had been longer, it would have benefited from more characterization and interactions between the two characters.
I'll definitely be expanding the endings slightly, since they're quite abrupt, as PyTom said, and what I have in mind should somewhat ameliorate the inconsistency that Mink mentioned and the rushed feeling that Rasburn got from the story, but is there anything more specific you want to see? Anything you want elaborated on? Specific questions that you want answered?

And, of course, I'll also address the problem with Dani's voice being way too mature for her age.

To all of those who hated the music, I agree that the transitions were jarring. Like I said earlier, I was planning to strip them out completely before I submitted, but then I fell asleep after working on it all night and by the time I woke up I thought I'd already missed the deadline so I just threw it into papillon's letterbox without even checking it one last time OTLlll

The new version won't have music, just ambient noises, so that should make everything better. :)

@junna: I'm delighted that you cried! :twisted: It really means a lot to me that somebody who actually works with children thinks that Dani's characterization is believable. Also, you give me way too much credit; I positioned the sprite the way I did just so I could cut off the cat ears since they didn't fit with my story. But thank you for bringing it to my attention; I'll definitely take the height of the sprite into account when revising this piece!

@jw2pfd:
jw2pfd wrote:
KimiYoriBaka wrote:Lastly, it felt like the consequences of the choice at the end were really arbitrary. I couldn't help but think "Now why would that have mattered at all?"
There was only one choice near the end and I played both of them out to see the difference. The idea is that the girl was already in the forest with the intention to hang herself. She talked about some very traumatic experiences. She and her girlfriend were the victim of some attack where she luckily got away with her life, but her girlfriend was not so lucky. The "epilogue" was that more tragedy struck that resulted in death of her mother and grandmother. That is why she was out in the forest feeling like she had nothing left and about to hang herself. The choice for Dani boils down to 'believe the lie' or 'accept reality'. The choice of accepting reality sends the main character Dani into an emotional state that I am sure the nameless "spirit" girl is familiar with having lost her own mom. Maybe seeing Dani like that helps change the girl's mind as she chooses to console Dani and walk her out of the forest. The believe the lie option results in a stubborn Dani insisting that her mom will come back and she leaves the forest with the "spirit" still at the tree. This doesn't give the "spirit" any reason to change her mind as she already had her mind made up before Dani even came into the forest.
That is EXACTLY what I hoped the readers would get! It made me really, really happy to see somebody who understood the story exactly as it was meant to be taken! *squishes you*

@Kirroha:
Kirroha wrote:The caterpillar example she used was surprising too, seeing as how an innocent child like her can use such a gory example, as well as to throw the word "die" so easily when demanding that someone else die.
That's my inner horror writer coming out, oops. :oops: Is it really that jarring and OOC for Dani? I might consider softening it if that's the case... I thought that I'd made it sufficiently childlike though. :<
I chose to believe in Dani's mom, because I played too much Umineko once and thought that maybe escapism may lead to a more magical and less bloody ending.

[...]

So I reloaded my game and went the "Truth" route (I'm calling it that because I played too much Umineko). It was just as short as the first one, but I'm glad to have been able to save that girl from her otherwise eventual suicide by accepting the truth, but living with it. Contrary to what Umineko may say, escapism isn't the answer.
I laughed when I read those comments because I am a HUUUUGE Umineko fan myself and my experiences when playing Episode 8 was probably a huge influence on me when creating that choice. Part of the reason why I wrote this story was to explore the idea of escapism, and whether or not it helps or hurts. I get the feeling from Ryukishi07's interviews the death of his best friend in the middle of creating Episode 5 really impacted the direction he eventually took. The magic ending that Umineko has really fits the mindset of somebody who trying to cope with the death of a loved one. The series as a whole stresses the importance of fantasy and love and escapism in our lives, especially when dealing with traumatic events, and I was trying to explore this issue, like, is escapism the answer and how much escapism is too much and is cynicism really that hurtful? I think it's pretty obvious which side I stand on (even though I was convinced by Umineko and went for the "Magic" route on my first playthrough of Episode 8), and that coloured the way the endings were set up. It was never my intention to just diss escapism like that, even though that's the message that seems to be coming through.

@Blane Doyle:
Blane Doyle wrote:I felt the characterization of the little girl made her seem very very young, perhaps 4 or 5 years old.
Is six a believable age for her, do you think?
The spirit was written in... a rather unusual way. Almost as if before she -redacted for spoilers-, her depression drove her to the point of "I don't care anymore, I'm gunna say whatever the hell I want", which was interesting. And a bit entertaining to me, in a morbid curiosity sort of way.
That's exactly the feeling I wanted to convey! YAAAAAAAY!
the text box changing size was a bit... annoying to me. Unless it is part of a gag about the character talking so much, I suppose this is a pet peeve of mine
That one part in the beginning was supposed to be kind of funny, but yeah. I'll fix that in the standalone release.

Aaaand that's all I have for now. Again, thank you very much to everyone who took the time to review my piece, I really appreciate all the comments. If anybody has more suggestions on how I could improve, please don't hesitate to tell me!

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#358 Post by Funnyguts »

Papillon: Would it be okay if I made a separate game file for Anniversaries, Adversity, and Pepper? I'd just use the same script I gave you along with all the files you gave for the prompt. I'll make sure to credit you and the artist properly for it.

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#359 Post by papillon »

As long as it still mentions it was made for the contest, is free, and credits all the bits and pieces appropriately, that should be fine. (I think I have a credits page in there with details on the background photos, don't I?)

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Re: The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

#360 Post by Carassaurat »

Something I noticed while playing was that nearly every entry mentioned the cat ears of the sprite. Except the two best entries. Don't mention cat ears = secret to success???
Anarchy wrote:Heck, there's even a perfect example of what I'm talking about in this very competition! Genevieve from Living Through Disaster describes herself as the most uninteresting, average, boring person ever, and every detail we're given about her background confirms that - she even "rejects the call" by walking away when a spirit accosts her - but because her inner voice is so fun and sarcastic and vivid, she becomes interesting to us, the readers, even if she might be the most boring person to the people around her.
Eh, we talked about this over PM, but I still don't think Living Through Disaster is really all that good; there's a difference between a character being liked for being a joke dispenser and being liked for being a good character. Geneviève mentions being a thoroughly boring character, but it's never really that apparant from the way she acts — unless someone who doesn't take a Spirit of Disaster home is immediately boring. Yeah, the life she built is uninteresting, but the character is uncommonly sarcastic. You could argue that she's not actually boring and that that's only her self image, but that requires a lot of goodwill towards Living and that isn't what akizakura is after anyway. I think that snarky characters are easy to like, but that'll only get you so far, they're not immediately good characters. Living Through Disaster's attempt at character development fell flat on its face, as you've been keenest to point out, so that doesn't seem to me to be a worthwhile tradeoff.

BTW, the è is written by Alt + 0232. It's funny how the entry clearly states that Geneviève is supposed to be written and pronounced the French way, multiple times, but nobody in this thread has so far bothered to actually spell it as such :lol: .

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