1-5 Thoughts
This is a blog post talking about 1-5, if you haven’t read it yet, do so here. If you want to give criticisms for this section of the story, you will be able to post in the comments here!
First thing you may have noticed is that I included the difference in attack speeds depending on Psynesis specialty thing. The reason why I ultimately made that decision is that otherwise a character picking between using a universal physical attack and a universal mental one almost completely arbitrary. It’s obvious that the universal mental attacks functionally almost the exact same as physical attacks do, so if a character prefers one over the other, it doesn’t say anything about their character.
But with this feature, then what types of attacks they’re better at not only says something about their character, but what it says is valuable information in a fight. So now that character has an interesting decision to make. Do they use the more reliable side of universal attacks and immediately give away if they’re special ability is mental or physical, or do they try and conceal it? If they choose concealing it, then how would they go about it? Would they alternate between attacks in a way where it’s hard to tell which kind of attack is slower? Do they entirely use the slower universal attacks to try and make the enemy believe that they not only think they know what type of special ability they have, but to also think that they’re much faster than the enemy? If they use that method, how would they pull the cover out from under the enemy? By using their fast type of universal attack to immediately catch them off guard and likely punish the enemy’s overconfidence? Or would they unveil their ability, which could be potentially even more dangerous, depending on how the ability works.
Next is how I handled Isaac this chapter. Which I know may seem strange to talk about because this chapter is mostly about Messa but there’s quite a bit here that I do want to talk about. First thing I want to mention is that if you thought Isaac was kinda an asshole, that’s intentional! I wanted to get across the idea that Isaac was a wimpy 15 year old who is too nervous to get himself into issues about race, he doesn’t want to get caught up in what he thinks is violence, even if he’s going to be saving many people’s lives in the process. He simply can’t relate to all the people suffering due to the malicious management of Dirpending, and because of that, he has a hard time mustering up motivation to help them. Now, since he does have the mentality of a 15 year old, it’s not as simple as him being too lazy to do the clearly right thing, but this is still an issue that many white people tend to have, and I wanted it to be a part of the story because it’s something that people should know about. People should be kinda mad at Isaac for not doing the right thing, even if it’s reasonable why he doesn’t do it, because there are a lot of real people who are in the exact same position that people should be kinda mad at for not helping, at least a little. I’m obviously not saying to bully 15 year olds, I’m talking more about the grown ups who are just to tired from a long week or other more mundane issues to prevent them from being a part of something much more important.
Next is… still Isaac, actually. This is more about his role as the commentator for this battle. It’s not something I’m going to be planning on doing too often, since I think getting into the head of the character as they’re fighting is a much more interesting that hearing someone unimportant say the obvious throughout the entire fight. Sure, it works for more visual mediums, because what’s happening on-screen sometimes has to be described or else the viewer may be left confused. But this isn’t a visual medium, I’m going to have to describe everything that happens anyway. Thus, a commentate character really isn’t necessary, unless they have some other use, like noticing something that the people fighting don’t, or something along those lines.
Okay, now we’re gonna talk about Messa, finally. Messa has always been a difficult character for me write about, since all the interesting stuff I have planned for him doesn’t happen until way later, but he’s still necessary for the story even this early on. So I sort of have to constantly stuff interesting stuff into him where I didn’t exactly have plans for. The thing you may find most surprising though, is that I had no idea what his ability was going to be for the longest time. The ring ability was actually going to go to Lina, with her being a much more important character. But I looked at the later sections of the story and realized I had like, wayy too many side characters. I’ve read Naruto, I know what’s gonna happen if I put in too many. So I ended up combining her with another important character who will be prominently featured next arc (if everything goes as planned.) So, I gave Lina’s previous ability to Messa, because it helped give him more of a backstory (something that I didn’t have much of for him at the time), and thought of something entirely different for Lina on the spot, while reducing her to an unimportant role in the story, which is why she doesn’t have a special font for her dialogue. Hopefully in the future I can make Messa a beloved character in the future, or at least, make him not just a writing tool with the label “Mentor Figure” slapped on top of him.
When it comes to Lina, I have a small handful of things to talk about. Her ability was meant to highlight different important aspects of Psynesis as a battle system, thus, her abilities are designed to have a huge impact on the fundamental abilities of Psynesis users, because then, I can talk about how Psynesis battling typically goes without everyone’s special abilities mixing everything up.
I hope you guys liked this chapter, because I’m pretty proud of it! If not, feel free to post any criticisms in the comments!
