One is my name....

I always feel like a jerk when I comment on another person's story, and they use the English version "Yosuke" while I use the Japanese "Yousuke." I'm sorry, but I can't un-train myself to spell it that way. Right now, I had to go back three times and write it without the first "u".

As it states in the first chapter, and on every author's page/story intro page I've created for sharing "1 More Chance!", my story is taken from the Japanese version of the game. In that version, his name is spelled Hanamura Yousuke: 花村陽介. Even Kuma (Teddie) calls him Yo-suke ヨースケ, with a long "o" sound. If you play the Japanese version of the game, whenever Kuma calls him by name (which is a lot, especially when he's complaining about something), you will see "ヨースケ！" Or, sometimes, "ヨースケエエエエエエ！" when Kuma is being whiny. (I tried to hearken back to those moments a little bit in Chapter 54 ("In the Shadow of Destiny"), when Kuma calls to Yousuke for help.)

I know that Atlus USA translated his name as Yosuke. That's fine. To the average person's ear (and to the English-speaking person's ear especially), you don't really hear a difference. But Yosuke is not the same as Yousuke:
Write them out one at a time, and you get this:
Yosuke - よすけ　becomes 世介。
Yousuke - ようすけ　becomes 陽介。

On the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, the character of Data pronounced his name as "DAY-tuh". Doctor Pulaski attempts to call him "Deh-tuh", the other pronunciation of the word, data. When Data corrects her on the pronunciation, she asks him what difference it makes. Data the android replies, "One is my name, the other is not."

Okay, I know I'm starting to sound like a pompous ass about this, so let me be clear: I don't care that most people write his name as Yosuke; Atlus USA chose to translate his name that way, for whatever reason. That doesn't bother me. But I am not wrong when I write it as Yousuke.

So. Can't we just both be right in this case?

Reasonable delays

I know there's been a significant delay between Chapters 59 and 60 (the coming chapter), but for those of you following on Twitter, deviantArt, LiveJournal, or Fanfiction.Net, you'll notice that I have not been completely slacking off with my writing.

I recently took part in the deviantArt Persona-pairings week, to which I submitted two short vignettes: "Firebrand" focusing on Yukiko and Souji, and "I Can't" focusing on Kanji and Rise. Both of these stories - like "1000 Words" - have links to the main "1 More Chance!" story. For those readers with particularly sharp eyes, you'll notice a very significant link between the events in "Firebrand" and Chapter 21 ("Just Like Magic"). And while "I Can't" does not have any direct correlation to events presented in "1 More Chance!", it does paint a pretty close picture of how I imagine Kanji and Rise to have come together as more than just friends.

That said, I had to take a bit of a breather with Chapter 60 (tentatively titled "Futures Imperfect"), to do some more in-depth research into Shinto than I had anticipated. Luckily, I have personal experience on which to draw, but it's still taken me some time to get a few of the (admittedly minor) details incorporated into the story for realistic flow of events. This chapter in particular I feel should read relatively true to life, and it's taking me time to push through that. (Yes, I've taken some gross liberties already, notably with Chie's and Yousuke's roles, but I also wanted to open up the traditional ceremony so that the A Team - and the reader - can see and experience the wedding for themselves. Naoto gets a bit of an upgrade, too, but I figured her situation was warranted by her precise personality and love of order.)

I did already cut quite a bit from the chapter (the gleeful drunk scene; the Rise/Kuma explanation; a minor sex scene recap), but I want to present this day as faithfully as I can, given the circumstances of it being these particular characters getting married. There's already a lot of talking and a lot of set-up, but I feel like it's worth it to present the story that I want to tell. If you're not a fan of that slow-moving denouement, I apologize that you'll be bored (potentially), but I don't apologize for writing the story the way that I want to do it.

I still hope to have Chapter 60 ready for reading before the full 2-month mark since Chapter 59 went up (8/18/2010), but I do hope you understand the issues involved with the delay.

Thanks!

Moving day?

For those of you following my Twitter, my last 2 Tweets were:
"[bonusparts_fic] is thinking that maybe FF.net is not really the place for me anymore. Perhaps not for the sequel story, at any rate."
and
"I like to write about human relationships, family, all that stuff. Doesn't seem to be much interest in those topics over there."

The reason? Of late, I've been seeing a lot of "novelizations" (not really; they're more like adaptations) of either Persona 3, Persona 4, or Persona 3 PSP. The other popular story ideas seem to deal with the more adventurous and fantastic (darker?) themes of the games: Shadows, Midnight Channel/Dark Hour, death/murders, and kicking ass in "epic" tales.

That's all well and good (and if you like those kinds of stories, you should feel lucky that there are so many writers who are examining those aspects of the story right now)...but it's just not where I'm at in my stories. As I mentioned in my Tweets, I really like to write about people. Maybe that makes me a prosaic, semi-glorified artist of the mundane; I don't know. But I enjoy thinking about and writing about the issues that affect me and the people I know, and I try to reflect that in the conflicts of my characters.

I'd really like to be able to share the sequel story to "1 More Chance!" with readers, but I just don't know if Fanfiction.Net is the right place to do so. The main reason to post at FF.Net is for the valuable(?) feedback from readers. But if a story doesn't have the potential to get feedback (because it's veering off in another direction from the mainstream; I'd like to think it's not because the story sucks), then there isn't a lot of point to putting it on FF.Net; I could just as easily post it somewhere else, like on my personal site, or deviantArt, or LiveJournal. Of course, those sites don't have great feedback options, either, but at least I wouldn't look at the hit statistics and wonder if people are liking the story or not, and if not, why not.

Or maybe I need to rethink writing the sequel as a Persona 4 story at all, despite all of the planning and plotting I've done. (That would certainly make "1 More Chance!" feel more complete in my head, even with the epilogue.)

Or maybe I need to just write the story on my computer, and keep it only for myself there, where I won't stress about stupid stuff like feedback and hit statistics and who's updating more frequently than I am. (Yeah, I find myself doing that, and then I kick myself for taking so long to post updates, even when I know that's stupid because everyone works at his or her own pace.)

...Except that I like sharing stories. I don't post everything I've written to places like FF.Net or dA because I think some of my earlier writing is not up to snuff, and I don't feel like going back and editing it to a point of personal acceptance. But when I did share even those lesser stories, I liked that feeling of sharing. I liked making readers think, or smile, or just relive a little bit of what it felt like to read that comic, or watch that movie, or play that game. I want to share my vision of these characters with the fandom at large.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe there is a place for great big, convoluted stories like the one I want to tell.

Maybe readers do appreciate a more mundane approach to a universe ordinarily populated with the anomalous and profane.

Maybe I should just stick with FF.Net because it's what I know best, and at least it gives me something of an outlet for my writing.

And maybe I'm just thinking too much about this on a Tuesday night.

We'll see.

All the Little People

One of the things that I love about writing is being able to look at and listen to family and friends, and incorporate some of their personalities into the characters that I create. Working in an established universe (such as fan fiction does) limits this to some degree, since the writer usually tries to adhere pretty closely to a character's original personality. There is some leeway here, of course, because every writer wants to make characters his or her own...and because many times the characters aren't quite as fleshed-out as writers would like them to be, which is the main spurring reason for many a fan fiction story. (This is relatively arguable depending on the fandom, but even some exhaustively-written universes, such as the Tolkien Lord of the Rings universe, can be open to some interpretation. I personally don't believe in radical changes to an established universe or character personalities - and I hope that shows through in my stories - but the very nature of fan fiction is to take the parts you like and leave off the parts you don't like and create your own story from there.)

Since writing original fiction for the last several years, I've taken to populating the edges of even my fan fiction environments with original characters. For the most part these are pretty minor characters, but I always find it fun and interesting to look at the people who surround me and build a new character from that. Usually, I take basic inspirations from names of family or friends, then build off of a very broad personality trait (demure, sassy, spoiled, reserved), and then branch off with that character's personality and motivations something that is - hopefully - believable.

There are so many minor characters in "1 More Chance!" that draw inspiration from the people I know in real life. Many of them really did start out as just names on a piece of paper, but over the course of the story have become their own individual entities. Here's a list of some of them:

Satonaka Kazunori and Ryoko (Chie's grandfather and deceased grandmother): Married couple and friends in Japan, who were very hospitable and welcoming the last time I was there.
Satonaka Hitoshi and Hiroko (Chie's father and mother): Named for my uncle and aunt, who still live in Japan. Not at all like Chie's parents, really, but I liked the alliteration of their names.
Satonaka Shoji (Chie's uncle): Named for my own uncle.
Hanamura Misato (Yousuke's next-eldest sister): A transfer student from Japan who lived with us when I was a teenager. I remember her as quiet and polite, much like Misato in the story.
The Taniguchis (flower stall owners): Friends of the family, who live in Kobe (which is one of the reasons why I chose that city for Kou's placement).
The Shimazawas (kissa-ten/coffee shoppe owners): Friends of the family, who live and run a music store(!) in Kyoto, my second hometown.
Ogiso Primary School and Izutsu Middle School (where Nanako and Kimiyo go to school; Chie works at both Izutsu and Yasogami High School): Two of our family names.
Minamiguchi-no-Futago (kids' line of clothes): The name means "The Minamiguchi Twins", and is so named in honor of my cousin, who just had twins this past summer!
Isa-san (Hanamuras' driver): Friend of the family, who for some reason always seems to get stuck driving us to the airport for our return flights to the States!
Ito Tomohiro (Chie's old sparring buddy): Named for another friend of the family, a contemporary of mine, with whom I sometimes got the feeling my parents were trying to set me up. :D

Still more names are derived from fictional sources, or from real people whom I don't necessarily know, but whose work I respect and enjoy:
Hanamura Hitomi (Yousuke's middle sister): One of the many online alter-egos, this one for the rhythm games Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Cowboy-hat-wearing guitarist, which is her main reason for being the way she is.
Hanamura Ryuhei (Yousuke's father): Named for director Kitamura Ryuhei, whose stylish action flicks have been a great source of inspiration for some of my crazier Mayonaka fight scenes.
Officer Kibuishi (Chie's coworker): Named for Kazu Kibuishi, comics artist and creator, whose books line many a shelf in my library.

The main characters draw inspiration from friends and family, too, though it tends to be more subtle, as they are largely amalgamations of many different people as well as facets of myself (which is why, I suppose, I take such joy in writing them).

A writer is not just writing words on a piece of paper, sentences that come out of a character's mouth. My characters feel like real people to me, because I see in them parts of people I know, and parts of myself. Hopefully, you see them as real people, too.

Rewrites

For those of you who've seen my Fanfiction.Net Author Profile page, you may notice how I mentioned that I've been rewriting/editing many of the "1 More Chance!" chapters. Some of these edits are pretty minor, such as fixing particular honorifics, reassigning dialogue, and making a few adjustments to the flow of the story. Others - such as the rewrite of Chapter 37 ("Agonies and Thrills") - have significant changes to the layout of the text itself.

My goal with these rewrites is to create a more complete and worthwhile story. Many of the chapters after Chapter 39 ("Let Go, Hold On") or so, I was writing pretty much on-the-fly, week-to-week. I'd write all day Thursday through Sunday or Monday (sometimes Tuesday), and then give a quick read-through/edit on Tuesday and early Wednesday, before posting the chapter. (Now you know why I suffered from burn-out.)

I think that a lot of chapters are okay and still stand up pretty well: they present the right issues and get the main points across well enough. But as a continuous work in progress, I also get the urge to go back, re-read, and (of course) re-write parts of it. That's one of the great things about this electronic medium, and about the nature of fan fiction. It never gets published, so it never sits on a shelf; it can change as its writer sees fit.

Some authors post rewrites as completely different stories, but it's my belief that that's what the editing function is for. You won't see a separate rewrite of "1 More Chance!" either at Fanfiction.Net or at BonusParts KINK, unless I ever decide to do a T-rated version. Aside from that, edits are just that: edits. I'm not deleting and uploading new chapters as replacements, so (perhaps unfortunately) old readers likely won't notice the changes, unless they have a great memory for a scene's text and happen to stumble upon the rewritten chapter on their own. New readers, of course, will come to the chapters fresh and - hopefully - find them an enjoyable (more enjoyable?) read for the changes made.

All of the myriad changes are too many to list, but if readers are interested, I can post some notes for those chapters where I've made more-than-incidental edits, to either prose, plot, or flow.

Souji, Kuma, and the Lament of Het-Supporters

Here's a comment that came in from regular reviewer Kisdota-The Freak Gamer, regarding Chapter 59 ("A Little Night Music"); I thought I'd share part of my reply. Some spoilers through Chapter 59, so if you want to read, you'll have to highlight below.

Q:...It's nice to read a chapter that doesn't have Souji being a total douche.

Pairing up everyone like that was good, I know that there's some people who like the idea of Rise with Teddie, I know she's a chick and that's not what you implied but I know you'll do good with alot [sic] of the straight couple fans, which is possibly a small portion of your readers....

A: Well, Souji kind of had to be a douche for a while there - hubris is his sin - in order for him to grow into the person that you're starting to see in this chapter. He still plays a large mentor/leader role for the characters coming up, but it's a position that he moves into more organically after facing his Shadow, rather than the others just falling into place behind him for sake of ease. I like writing this Souji, who's become a product of the people around him, equally influenced by their perspectives and experiences as they are by him. Hopefully, that comes out clearly in this chapter.

I didn't intentionally put the characters into pairs, actually. It just sort of happened. Rise and Kuma's bond of friendship becomes important to Kuma's development later on, as the story moves forward (though not for a while yet; I still have to get through the first sequel). There's no intended implication that Rise and Kuma are acting as a couple, here; I tried to convey that with the farewells at the train station. Rise's really more a mentor to her, than anything else. And Yousuke's reluctance to let Kuma grow up should be taken as just how childlike she still is.

You're right that I do often feel in the minority supporting a heterosexual couple(s) in my timeline. I don't have a problem with the slash stories, I just don't see most of the friendships and relationships working out that way. Even Kanji, Naoto, and Rise - none of whom have a problem with homosexuality - fall into a category of their own rather than being one way or the other.
- - -

There's really not a question here, but I find it interesting when readers decide to focus on an aspect of a character (like Souji), who I've tried to move into a growth position based on what has occurred to him over the course of the story. I realize that what I did through the chapters of the final arc/Part IV ("I'll Face Myself") rubbed some readers the wrong way, but in all honesty it was in many ways it was just as much about how Chie and her friends reacted to the situation as it was about what was going on with Souji.

Then there's the subject of Kuma.

I'm plotting the sequel story now (both of them, as I've considered my timeline to work best as a trilogy in order to touch on the three important characters whose voices I know best), and I cannot for the life of me see my Kuma/Kumada-chan as anything other than a girl. My original plan for Kuma oh-so long ago was for her/him to be something completely different at the outset. Kuma will still get to step into that role (as things are currently plotted, of course - we all know how that can change!), but I don't think that my alternate universe of Persona 4 will ever be quite the same for changing Kuma's gender to a female. I love her so much that way, though, that I just can't stomach changing her back to a boy, as much as others might want me to stay true to what the canon story is about.

And then there's the issue of the sexuality. The sequel story investigates the characters' sexuality a bit more, since the characters by that time will be around 25, more established in their lives, and less - shall we say - purely experimental. I'm looking forward to tackling those kinds of issues, especially as they relate to young adults and what they think is "proper", "right", "acceptable", and even just plain "me."

I'm still collecting feedback on the latest chapter, and I'm always interested to hear what readers think. Not as much for Chapter 59 yet, but it's got to be more about my feelings, right?

Christmas has come early!

I just finished the (hopefully) final read-through and edit of Chapter 59 ("A Little Night Music"), to be posted tomorrow. This one took me almost as long to work through as Chapter 57 ("Nightmare"), with everything that needed to be written, moved, edited, cut, and reworked, from first draft to final. But I'm pretty pleased with it, regardless of what reviewers might come back and say.

First of all, the chronological setting of the story is no haphazard choice. Christmas in Japan is all about romance (unlike the Western traditions), so I've used that setting to broach the last big subject in the story. There's not much that I haven't planned in this monster, right down to what needs to happen on what day. I hope that readers don't gloss over those details...but if they do but still enjoy the story regardless, that's what matters, I suppose.

There's an awful lot of talking in Chapter 59, but as I mention in the Author's Notes (and in the previous blog entry), the conversations are necessary to the progression of the relationships and the story as a whole. It helps that a couple of those conversations are almost verbatim actual experience, but I've used a lot of my own personal life as fodder for this story already, and I feel like I've put so much of myself into Chie as a character, that I couldn't quite resist shuffling some of my life into this latest chapter.

There's also quite a bit of sex in 59, but that, too, is necessary to the plot, at least in its function. I really wanted to address the changes that have occurred between the characters at a sexual level, based on the events of the preceding chapters. These are two people - specifically lovers - who are growing as a couple just as much as they're growing as individuals, and that's important to their intimacy and the way that they relate, both emotionally and sexually.

The talking and the sex in this chapter also leads up to the next logical progression of the relationship, and not just because it's instigated by a circle of friends. Into this, too, I've tried to inject some realism, and some honest feelings. It's crazy and confusing and nerve-wracking for Chie just like it is for a lot of adults. But hopefully I've managed to create some personal humor about it all, too.

You may agree or disagree. I'd like to hear your answers, though, when you get around to reading the latest chapter. :)