You did? Oops...junna wrote:I knew right off the bat at the start which one was yours... so, *helps to cackle madly*OokamiKasumi wrote:(I intend to 'cackle madly'.)
-- There's no disguising my style, I guess...
You did? Oops...junna wrote:I knew right off the bat at the start which one was yours... so, *helps to cackle madly*OokamiKasumi wrote:(I intend to 'cackle madly'.)
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?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 .___.)
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 whileDaggio wrote: yeah, winning would be awesome, but completing VN for this competition is already an achievement, and it felt great.
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.Sapphi wrote: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 typoFunnyguts 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.
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.
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...
I loved him! He's a pompous git, but it's so fun to watch him being all pompous and petty and overblown!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...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.
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.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: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)
"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...
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.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. 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.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.
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.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.True story: I threw that in because I couldn't remember what the proper past tense for that word was! 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.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.
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.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...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.***
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.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...
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. :3Overall, 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 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?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
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! 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).Anarchy wrote: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?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
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.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! 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).
The prompt was the hold up here, not the assets.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.
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.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!
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:I'm not exactly sure why the spirit of disaster is shown with her head chopped off-
You and Sapphi both mention developing Regina's powers, characters, and history more. Thank you for the great insight!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
THEY WERE SO APPEALING TO MY EYES! I just had to love all over them!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.
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.
This is something I struggle with and wanted to ask about.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.
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...Sapphi wrote:(BTW, it's spelled "mace" )
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.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?
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.akizakura wrote:This is something I struggle with and wanted to ask about.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.
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?
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.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. What would you suggest for developing a character like Cassandra? More backstory to justify this behavior?
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.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?
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'
Does anybody have any idea what I might be doing wrong?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.
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.
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?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.
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*jw2pfd wrote: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.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?"
That's my inner horror writer coming out, 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. :<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.
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 , 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.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.
Is six a believable age for her, do you think?Blane Doyle wrote:I felt the characterization of the little girl made her seem very very young, perhaps 4 or 5 years old.
That's exactly the feeling I wanted to convey! YAAAAAAAY!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 one part in the beginning was supposed to be kind of funny, but yeah. I'll fix that in the standalone release.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
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.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.
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