Zoe

I'm still on my postin'

So yeah in terms of having "that RPG party feel" you need a certain amount for it to feel full enough, but too many is hard to write. 4-6 feels like a good window. Especially when it was still gonna be a game, I don't wanna try to balance more characters than that. I'm also the type that, if you give me 6 characters and can only level 3 at a time, I'm gonna level three and then go back and level the other three and just be very insufferable about the whole thing

Speaking of insufferable:

FF games love their baddie scientist trope, as well as the trope where anyone about my age is the geezer of the party. So, let's muck about! A proper older guy, who's less Cid of FF12 and more Cid of FF6 (down to the questionable fashion sense, but at least he's not dressed like a banana). A scientist involved in causing the problems but has big regrets about it all.

And welcome to the reason it was a little tricky to find someone to illustrate the cast. Toby is a vian, a bird guy, a "well obviously a fantasy world is gonna have non-human sapient species and are you just gonna do orcs and elves and such again?". Look I'm a furry I can't help myself. (The setting has two other not-normal human species: sahagins, i.e. fishy kind of people, and gnolls, i.e. wolfy kind of people.) The illustration for him was actually a good insight for me, realizing he looks too much like Falco Lombardi so I've had to rewrite his appearance a little.

So what are the problems? Well, after getting to Tobias's office, the group gets to meet Sylvester, his summon (a green tiger-y thing). This is a fantasy setting, it's got familiars and summons, and Tobias will "um actually" you about those being different things. Familiars are all out and about, doing little things for people and what have you. They're like robots made of magic. Summons... aren't, and the differences and their implications fuel a fair bit of the later plot. Making a summon is dangerous for the summoner, to say the least, if not done well. But hey, he's a professional.

He's also a bit of a twerp. A goofball. Every other character was getting too serious, I had to do something to balance the group out, and I had a couple professors across undergrad and grad school who were perfectly competent but a bit playful personality-wise. So hey it works! I hope. I'm not exactly a goofy person so writing that kind of personality is tricky for me. Plus there's concerns about tonal whiplash and whatnot. This is where you get to "ah, are you a good writer or not?" and eep

And I certainly do not want to be too lighthearted with someone whose context in the story is basically to critique the kinds of techies which just make shit and don't think about the impact of what they do until it's far too late and that's not really funny kinda stuff innit

(Hey, good fantasy/sci-fi has plenty of social commentary about it, and write what you know and all that)

Anyway that's the cast I dunno what I'll keep postin' about from here but I'll figure it out

Keep on postin', baby

Even with it shifting from a game idea to a novel (because I know how to make a novel, but I am vastly not qualified to make a video game), I've retained the perspective that the protagonist group is an RPG party, with several of the things that should mean: namely, a variety in skillsets, personalities, and perspectives. The fun of a party-based RPG comes from the characters contrasting and bouncing off each other. But as I've said, I don't want to stretch the audience's suspension of disbelief too much, with characters that don't make sense individually or as a group meeting each other. And so we get folks like Alejandro.

Basically I tried to write Gay James Bond (who... kinda hates his job). Because... why not? They're cowards, they won't do it. I'mma do it. But, like, fantasy so rogue's tools and not guns or Aston Martins but y'know besides that

And it's an easy angle for two kinds of distinction from the others in the cast: one, someone who's not a trained soldier (even if he is a Trained Violent Man), and two, someone who knows more of what's going on and can wear the confidence and arrogance to match. He also lets me do the classic trope of "ah yes, we once were enemies, but that was due to deception, and now we can be allies!", which you have surely heard of under a far shorter name, that there was padding

Big one, though, is that he's posh. Guy's a Bond character, he's a government spook, of course he is. And that's... tricky for me. This wasn't how I initially did it, but with the rewrite I'm now writing the story as third-person limited, with the perspective character shifting from time to time. It's great for sustaining mysteries and getting in people's heads, but I'm also trying to write exposition kind of in the character's voice. Kell's parts are my standard writing style, Sheila's are more terse and concrete, and so Alejandro's would be more florid and eloquent, and did you know that's heckin' hard to do? (Aside: his outfit's prevalent purple color is a "purple prose" gag that I do not expect anyone would get)

But hey, I can do it. I play games with flowery, eloquent scripts that I can riff off of. Sure they can also be described as "comically melodramatic," but hell, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe Alejandro should be melodramatic. My habits for characterization lean towards the everyday realistic; even in a fantasy setting, there's a modern casualness to my tone that I like and would rather keep. Imagine if you're just hanging with your friends and freakin' Balthier pops in, talking and acting how he does. Or like... any Dark Souls character. It's good contrast! Even if it's a little harder to write him.

And of course, the three function as a "fighter, mage, thief" power trio. (Tropes Are Tools, baby) There are angles where each of the three is the odd one out, and so you can keep bouncing between those to develop their relationships. I honestly considered stopping the party size right there, and if this was going to just be a story about the journey then it probably would end there. But I can't do things at a reasonable scope, and so things just kept going and going and oh boy did I need a fourth character. Besides, there are some big RPG tropes that I haven't mucked about with yet!

It's Monday and I'm postin'

As I indicated/warned, I'm going one at a time through the main cast because I have no clue how to promote the thing I'm working on or get people interested in it at all so we're just gonna stumble aggressively

Speaking of aggressive: Sheila!

As I mentioned last time, I tried to be a little more plausible in setting up the story's characters and scenario. I don't wanna say I'm "anti-trope", tropes are tools and all that, but I'm always interested in saying "what else can we do with this?" So, no, no "damsel in distress" character, no "romantic interest deuteragonist" (hell, she's ace/aro, there's no romantic interest anywhere with her), just someone who could plausibly go along with Kell and who bounces off them well. Their initial meeting and antagonistic interactions make sense, and their slow evolution from fighting to standoffish to trusting each other can become a consistent backbone of the whole story.

So, opposites! Well, not entirely--total opposites don't jive--but contrasts. Sheila's tough, confident (even over-confident), daring, proud. Which all sound like what the protagonist should be. My beta reader has called me out on that. It was awkward. My counterargument was that her actions and presence almost never drive the plot, though they do steer it. I think that makes for a decent dynamic: with Kell around, stuff's gonna happen, and Sheila's able and willing to direct the happening stuff away from anything deadly or disastrous. (When the team is confronted about their motives later in the story, Sheila's only answer is "I'm here to make sure those idiots don't get themselves killed." And she ain't wrong.)

Another amusing moment with my beta reader was when he mentioned, off-hand, something about Kell's PTSD. Which, I didn't write Kell to have that sort of trauma. Sheila, though, would. She's an experienced fighter, there was a war, and I think there's potential for both realistic and interesting moments in the story if she isn't always eager about fighting but actually has difficulties and hesitations about it. It's a difficult thing for me to write because, blessedly, I don't deal with it personally. There's the wisdom of "write what you know," with the corollary of "don't write perspectives that ain't yours to write," but if I hew too closely to that I'd be left with a really flat and samey cast. That's the finesse of quality, respectful writing, and man do I hope I'm not shit at it.

So, I've come to find, I need to emphasize the word "moments." In another attempt to ruin your day by linking TVTropes, I'll mention flanderization, which is something I extremely do not want to do with a topic like PTSD. Sheila is a lot more than her scars. She's the tank; the stalwart, stubborn vanguard, the experienced agent who's "getting too old for this shit" (which, Sheila, quiet, you're not that old). She's the team mom. She's grumpy, she's indignant, she's perpetually tired, and like everyone I know who's terminally online and meets those descriptions, it's because she cares so goddamn much. Though it would take an act of god for her to ever admit it.

Foreshadowing is a literary device

I think Monday's gonna be my Postin' Day and since the main thing I'mma be Postin' here is shameless self-promo I'm gonna start talking about the Vapormage cast.

Which, honestly, has felt a little weird to do. Even with being in the furry community for more than half my life (which... dang) I still have this sort of anxiety or shame or whatever in talking about characters I've created, as though my default assumption is that nobody gives a damn. It always feels rather self-indulgent, arrogant... dare I say, cringe. But calling things cringe is the tool of the oppressor so here's my scrawny queer trash-fire wizard protagonist

When I started building what would become Vapormage, I was thinking a bunch about RPG tropes and cliches. And what's the stereotype of the RPG protagonist, especially in the 8/16 bit eras? The spiky-haired, young, optimistic, sword-wielding, pretty white boy. Crono, Ryu, Bartz, etc. So Kell is none of those things. (Okay 29 is still kinda young, but not super young.) They're a mess, aimless and full of self-doubt. They're a theater nerd at heart. (They quote movies when they can't think of anything to say!) They can't swing a sword. To hear Kell tell it, they're the worst of the vapormages skill-wise. Their main mission during the early part of the story is just to get home in one piece, that's all they want. (You can guess how that'll go...)

So what the hell is a vapormage? They're just, y'know, battle wizards. Vapor is the handwaving justification for magic being a thing. Anyone can use it, but the vapormages are specially trained. They're like Cydonia's marines. (Another RPG trope I never quite liked: ordinary folks with incredible battle skill. Trying to make it realistic. The story with magic and eldritch creatures, realistic, yes, I'm very sensible) Kell has spent their entire adult life training in destructive and combat-ready magic, and then learning some healing stuff on the side which is a bit of a no-no but it helps them feel a little better about the whole thing.

Something that comes up super early in the story: they are never seen out of their uniform. And that uniform is full-body, head to toe. (Like the classic FF Black Mage, you can't actually see them. COOL BUG FACT) It's a part of what makes the vapormages kinda cool to Cydonian folks, they're mysterious and powerful and stuff. There's a bit of hero worship going on, really; there's lots of folks that like, if they see a vapormage in public they'd be like "YO LEMME GET AN AUTOGRAPH". But that's also like... a Stormtrooper aesthetic, y'know? It's easy for them to be impersonal, and seem alien, and that makes it easy for folks to hate them. Folks like, y'know, the countries Cydonia goes to war with. Yeah Kell ain't necessarily working for the good guys at the start of all this

And yeah, their rod is supposed to be inspired by the Rod of Asclepius, but everyone mixes that up with the Caduceus staff, and I think there's a certain irony in them using a weapon where the influences and symbolism are muddied by people just not knowing stuff. There's not much in the way of symbolic weaponry in the story, this is about as far as it gets.

(Oh btw: this is the first time I'm showing folks the art from Viel, which I commissioned months ago, and I've tweaked some story details since then, so it's very much "artist's interpretation" but they did good work for the info I gave)