“Again.
Again.
Again.”
Ria’s hand glows with a growing light. Mana gathers towards her brighter and brighter palm. A subdued bang, like a pistol smothered by pillows, sounds from her hand as it jolts up from the recoil. The magic bolt whizzes through the trees of the woods, seeking out a target 100 yards away. A crash as it makes contact with a thick tree.
In about two weeks is the first birthday of Songs of Araiah. Despite almost having not thought about it at all this month so far, I am suddenly swept up by these feelings of nostalgia and looking back. Probably because I just finished my article for BTW about Araiah, but anyway… I actually decided to write an article for it for once, because I felt like I could actually say something about the theme, even if my article is more narrative than informative. In a beautiful coincidence, the month I wrote the article about Araiah for just so happens to be the month of Araiah’s release… I revisited a lot of different moments and feelings tonight, and I have to say it was a fun trip.
Time for an uncharacteristically short post, hopefully. Just did a little playing around with the links on my blog. Editing, adding, that kinda thing. The addition of Mugen’s blog was pretty much a must, but I also threw MaiMai’s up there too, a little surprisingly… The more and more I look at the art, the more and more enamored with it I become… What else is there to say except I think it’s cute? Anyway, maybe I’ll find a few more blogs to add in the near future, even if Planet EVN does most of the work for me.
October was a rather unproductive month for me overall, like most of my months if we’re being honest, so I thought to try and make it all up this month. But November means NaNoWriMo, as many already know and are still sweating over. I thought this would be a great chance to get back on track with my writing, dedicating a whole month to it. I’d spent the tail end of October trying to think up new vns ideas, but the concept of just pure novel writing sure sounded enticing…
I thought and thought till I could thunk no more over the first two/three days of November for just what story I should write or to even do it at all. And it then dawned on me that this was just another form of procrastination, in the guise of being productive. It was only keeping me away from the stories I’ve already started and were avoiding for a whole month. So with new fervor, I decided to either finish or quit what I left hanging, and knock off all the pushing-aside hiatus business that’s plagued me for about forever. For the most part, I feel like I’m back on top of things like I should be, the “slightly more common than occasional” slack-off day excepting… It’s all certainly more work than I put in during October anyway…
But lately, I’ve put aside the pen to tackle a different beast: Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo. Having just finished it last night (though there are still some endings and maybe a loose end or two), I can easily say it was brilliant. In fact, I can’t remember the last vn I enjoyed as much as this one that wasn’t Umineko [ for the record, Rance does not count, because I didn't play it for the story... ]. It was just resoundingly well done, I think I can proclaim Looseboy as my 2nd favorite scenarist and writer now.
Yes, though, I did end up wasting a lot of time on it. And yes, it was poorly timed after my personal vow to get more shit done and cut out the crap, but this wasn’t a complete waste either. I actually felt like I learned quite a bit about the writing craft just from reading this piece, and it has given me a lot to think about regarding scenario writing and especially character creation and development. Everyone of these characters has this weak and dark side to them that comes out during the roughest moments, so much so they are almost revolting or pathetic in a way, but they always come back in the climax and are astoundingly beautiful people, real people. This is the kind of thing I have to think on every time I sit down to write now, instead of just creating some cute archetypal girl with a sad twist hidden in her that manages to cheat tears out of the readers a la a Key work. I can only hope I can accomplish it to any sort of degree as presented in Sharin. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, so hopefully I can lay off all the distractions, productive or not.
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