POV / Valentine's Day / (not really)

I was going to try and finish "Fireflies and Snow" in time for Valentine's Day (and because the story mostly takes place at that time, in 2012), but it looks like "1 More Chance!" will need the time before the regular Wednesday update (now working on Chapter 51! As Strong Bad would say, "Ah, holy crap!").

I'm starting to think more and more that the sequel to "1 More Chance!" should be told from Yousuke's point of view, since it's been a long time since I've done a male character's perspective. I was also fooling around with an idea that I was calling "1 More Chance! Reprise" that would have been some of the scenes from the main story - and some scenes to which Chie is not privy - told from his point of view...but then I thought that maybe that would just be rehashing old territory. (Some examples: Yukiko's party at the inn; the Wing Chun event; the first kiss; the first sexual overture; the duel acceptance; and so on.) The interesting part of that idea is that the reader would get to see what was going through Yousuke's head during those scenes...but the reader already knows the outcome, so I wonder if it would be nothing more than an exercise for my own ego. The more I consider the issues - and how many scenes I'd want to do - I think I'd much rather move forward with the timeline as originally proposed, after the conclusion of "1 More Chance!"

...And I can't believe that I'm already plotting the sequel to a story that's currently running upwards of 450,000 words...!




I really need to get back to work and just stop thinking about this stuff.

The Failure of Chapter 50

I was never pleased with the original Chapter 50 of this story.

I wrote it in something of a rush, over the course of about two days, after being sick and having some deadlines at work. So, I should not have been surprised when I felt that it just wasn't ready. But it got across the points that I "needed" to have made in the story so far. And, after getting a prod about how long the story had left to go and doing some calculations, I was feeling some pressure to get the story completed in an acceptable time frame. (Although, really, what is "acceptable" in fan fiction? These are stories written for ourselves, after all.)

After less than 48 hours, and losing a little bit of sanity over fears about how much the chapter, well, sucked, I decided to take it down. (I had something of the same issue with Chapter 32, "Listening Skills," though I didn't feel bad about that one...just the readers didn't like it.)

This is the first time that I've "missed" a weekly update since I first started posting the story back in March of 2009, and while I feel like I've failed in that part of my mission, I want the story to be able to stand on its own merits. I don't want to have a chapter up that I just plain don't like...and that is causing me problems.

I did want to thank the three folks who bothered to read and review Chapter 50 early, and I let them know the reasons for why I was doing what I did. I also took into account their feedback and a couple of questions that they posed when I started the rewrites (it pays to give thoughtful reviews!).

Hopefully, I'll have Chapter 50 (and maybe even 51) ready to go by this coming Wednesday. Definitely 50, though. The faithful deserve that much.

So, there was a failure this week. But I think there was also something learned. And that's really what this process is about.

How it all started....

No question again this week, but I thought it might interest readers to know what first prompted me to start plotting this story. So, here's the image and blog post that started this whole story running in my head....

Readers of the story will semi-recognize a variation of this moment from Chapter 6 ("Kung Fu Queen"); it was what originally got me thinking of what a relationship story between Chie and Yousuke might look like. And that surprised and speechless expression on Chie's face - much like the artist's comments - summed up pretty much perfectly the way that I thought (even an older) Chie might react to Yousuke being so compassionate.

Chapter 48 just went up this week, and I'm fixing up Chapter 49 right now, for posting on January 27, 2010. Not many more chapters left, and the characters have come a long way...but this moment still sticks with me as being at the heart of the story.

Giving up the fight

Okay, I get it. I'm a wordy writer; that's just my style. Unfortunately, it makes writing battles tedious or, as one kind reviewer put it, "dull."

Chapter 46, "Bushi no Kokoro" (The Warrior's Heart), has a crapload of fights in it. To add to the confusion, Personas are in this fight. Since I wanted to stay close to the essence of gameplay, I kept the whole you-gotta-smash-your-card-and-say-something-witty technique used in the game. I wonder if that's what's so tedious about them....

Anyway, after the initial reviews, I took out some of the brief fight descriptions, and after the latest review I got, I took out a chunk (about 300 words' worth) of one fight scene in particular. Unfortunately, there need to be enough fight scenes for it to be relatively realistic that the team would feel the brunt of having a mediocre healer, and for the healer in question to feel wasted by the time they got to the eighth floor of the dungeon...and all of the fight scenes need to sort of build off of each other. For example, there's a very brief fight where Kanji uses a new trick and once he has an easy win, he's got this over-confident grin on his face...and then he gets ambushed from behind, and suddenly everybody's hurting. It's meant to be dramatic (well, that's what I was going for, anyway), and I couldn't really leave the first little Kanji fight out before having the Killing Hands come in to fuck everybody up in HP and SP.

It's always a little bit disheartening to see portions of the story that I enjoy get clipped out (or saved for another day), when I really enjoyed writing those sequences in the first place. On the other hand, it's also good to take the criticism and try to figure out where the story can work better for people who read it. (I mean, I lose readers like crazy already...I don't want them to drop the entire story because my fight scenes are mediocre.)

I already knew that fight scenes aren't my forte, and I guess this just sort of proves it. :/

On a high note, though, there's only one (big) fight in the coming chapter (47, which should be up next week on January 13,2010), and then I'm back into a whole crapload of dialogue/emoting, which is something that I do think I do well. "Maturity" (as they call it) also comes back into play shortly, which I'll be glad for...it's been a while since my protagonist had a little bit of downtime.

Q: Is Souji a stranger?

Q: Is Souji a stranger?

Reviewer co426e asks: "You seem to write Souji as some kind of stranger to everyone. He seems the most distant and when they contacted Naoto first instead of their old leader, it made me think. Was this on purpose or not?"

A: Yes.

At least, the answer to the question asked is yes - it was on purpose that Souji is written the way that he is, and that the characters make the decisions that they do.

Seta Souji, the last player in the story, has always been something of an enigma to Chie and the others. He's pretty much unreadable, and he's full of so many mysteries - some small, others not - that no one can ever really tell what's going on in his head at any given moment. With the revelations that start to come in Chapter 46, this should become a little more clear to the reader.

Some of the reason why Souji is so enigmatic as both character and leader is that he's a tabula rasa: in the game, the player can make Souji anything s/he wants: sentimental wuss, womanizing bastard, and anything and all in between. But since no one is ever privy to another's true thoughts, no matter how much is said or expressed between them, I chose to make Souji the pinnacle of that kind of person mystery.

There are all kinds of minor and major conflicts going on with Souji. Some of them he's created for himself, and others are placed upon him by others. Some of these signify that the characters have grown beyond depending him, and others signify that there are still hidden jealousies and mistrusts involved. No one is ever one hundred percent good or one hundred percent malicious; even Shadows have echoes of the truth to them.

Readers who have been paying attention know that Chie is not completely convinced by anything Souji does or says, because she's still more concerned with how he relates to Yukiko and Yousuke (and now Kuma) to give her an unadulterated or unbiased view of what he's actually saying and trying to tell them. Even Naoto - who's usually the first to grasp the answers to these kinds of questions - still doesn't have enough information. But take comfort that the writing of Souji and those around him is no accident. He's meant to be portrayed as an outsider. At least for now.

Holiday hiatus

No questions from readers this week (it is the holiday, after all, so I actually am not expecting any reviews after those that came in the first day of posting the new chapter), but I didn't want to lose the opportunity to wish my readers a very merry Christmas, in Japanese!

メリクリスマス！　＾＿＾

Hopefully, some thoughtful reader will post a good non-spoiler question for next time.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

...I wonder how Shoutarou-kun and Yui-chan are reacting on Christmas morning....

Q: What's with the honorifics?

Q: A few reviewers commented (in the same week, oddly enough) about my use of honorifics, specifically the "-chan" honorific as regards to using it with men. So, this week I'll address the question, "Why do the characters use '-chan' when referring to a man?"

A: Because they do.

Okay, before you blow back at me, let me explain:

I write these characters by my own ear.

A lot of people are used to the "-kun" honorific when addressing boys informally/affectionately, because a lot of games, manga, and anime use this honorific for the male characters. This is, essentially, correct. However, "-kun" as an honorific for a man is not as widespread. In fact, when I was growing up, I was very specifically told by my (Japanese) mother that I should not be using "-kun" to refer to any male over the age of about 16, even if he is my contemporary. It's very baby-ish to refer to a man that way, and in a society such as Japan's, which is built so strongly around respect for one's neighbor, and social standing, and propriety, it's just not kosher to go around using the "-kun" honorific for a man.

The honorific "-chan" is regularly used by men and by women for women and children - and this is commonly addressed in games, manga, and anime, as well. But "-chan" is also used by women for men of contemporary age with whom they have a certain level of intimacy. A woman will very commonly use the "-chan" honorific for her boyfriend, or her lover, or even her husband (though usually only in private for the latter, again, because of the societal idea that men are supposed to be the providers and the dominants).

Chie has pretty much always called Yukiko (as an example) "Yukiko-chan" or even "Yuki-chan" because they are so close; they're practically sisters (or more intimate, though not in my story). And she does the same with the other women, because she's a woman talking to and referring to other women. No problem, right?

Okay, now, let's move on to the point of contention that some readers have.

At the beginning of the story, Chie calls Yousuke simply "Hanamura," the common way to address a peer being by their last name. Even in the game (the Japanese version, anyway, from which this story takes its cues), Chie calls him "Hanamura"...and Yousuke calls her "Satonaka." I kept them at that same level of intimacy (friendship only) for the first Arc of the story.

In the second Arc, Chie and Yousuke get closer as intimates, to the point where they're calling each other by their given names. (The moment in illustration occurs in Chapter 13, "Old Habits," for anyone wondering.) As noted in the Author's Notes for that chapter, this jump is fairly significant, for the reasons stated therein. He immediately starts using the "-chan" honorific because he's a man referring to a woman with whom he shares a deeper level of intimacy. She also starts to refer to him with the same honorific, for the same reason (just switch the respective genders).

By the third and fourth Arcs, Chie and Yousuke are both so far up into each other that I can't see them using any other terms. They do call each other by their given names only with regularity, but the "-chan" honorific adds a sweetness to the exchanges that just wouldn't exist otherwise. It's akin to an English speaker calling someone "sweetie" or "honey" or "baby" ... because those terms just don't really exist in Japanese language. It's pretty much some version of a name or title, or it's the equivalent of "hey, you" (which is quite ill-mannered in Japanese society).

There are some exceptions, of course:

Rise uses "-kun" for all of the guys, regardless of their age, because she's a perpetual girl.

Yukiko uses "-kun" for Kanji because she still kind of thinks of him as a little brother in a lot of ways (it's the same reason why Kanji slips and calls Yukiko "ne-chan [big sis]" in Chapter 33, "Juxtaposition"); she uses the name "Hana-chan" for Yousuke because she thinks of him as an inferior, much like Konishi Saki did (and I just liked to have someone keep that short form of his name alive). What Yukiko calls Souji will be revealed in more detail in the coming chapters....

But what my choice really comes down to is that I write the way that my mind thinks, and I'm a product of my Japanese upbringing. Having Chie call Yousuke "Yousuke-chan" - and vice versa - just makes sense to my inner ear. When I translate the way that I speak with my own significant other, that's how Chie speaks.

So, I hope that clarifies why I made the honorific choices that I did.