Tbh I hate most prophecies/legends in stories. Just feels like an asspull most of the time for the MC to be a special little chosen one.
I like the way Dragon Ball did it with Super Saiyan though, because Goku, a merciful, pure of heart Saiyan was the one to become the first one in however long, instead of someone as malicious as Vegeta was. Also helps that it was vague, and could have happened to somebody else first. Also, Frieza’s fear of it (as well as other Saiyan-related shit) caught up to him in the end, and that’s just beautiful.
I’m not a literary prof so this is just me talking out my ass, but how much of the MC=protagonist is a modern story telling style? Moby Dick, Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, really anything by Jules Verne, all are told from the perspective of someone witnessing someone/something amazing rather than Ahab or Nemos perspective. Seems a lot of classic literature is centered on protagonists other than the narrator.
The idea of a narrative framing device, one expression of which is to tell the story from the POV of somebody who the story is not actually about, has also been around a long time.
It’s a literary technique that can be useful for thematic, characterisation and even practical reasons. Having the POV character be someone who isn’t the main character is especially useful when that main character is supposed to be some sort of larger-than-life person who by design doesn’t have that much in common with an average person. The narrator can very easily be audience surrogate, author surrogate and their own character whose viewpoints and biases very directly affect the reader’s perception of the story being told.
It’s not really been much of a thing in IF cause reader agency is the main thing about IFs; if you’re reading a story where your choices are taken into account and has an effect on how the story goes then of course it’s very natural for the PC to be the person the story is about.
Now that it’s been brought up I honestly think it’s a great device to use for a prospective game that allows for the PC to be a relatively blank slate and thus more easily accomodate self-insertion from the reader, while also having a relatively set main character of the story, who would themselves be a different character entirely.
They’re around. For example in 80 Days you play as the loyal valet trying to support your employer’s wager that they can make it around the world in no more than 80 days.
Thanks for this, Abby! What you describe is what I’ve seen, from knowing a few CoG authors. Day 1 DLC that I’ve seen isn’t a “rip out a chunk of the game and make em pay more for it.” It’s often more like:
Author: Hey, CoG! I have an idea for a great story that’ll involve apples, oranges, and pears.
CoG: Awesome, we love it! But wouldn’t it be cool if you had bananas, grapes, and peaches, too?
A: I mean, yeah, that’d be cool, but that’s at least twice the complexity and size for an already kind of huge, complex game. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.
C: What if we paid you more and made it DLC so those who want the extra content can have it without inflating the cost for those who don’t?
A: Deal.
It’s an attempt to provide ever-more-spectacular games with staggering levels of content while compensating writers for the extra work and not pushing the base price (for a complete, satisfying and worthy story) into unaffordable territory.
When my character has short hair and someone “tucks his hair behind his ear”. As in, he has a masculine haircut. Bruh his hair isn’t long enough. Immersion g o n e. :catcry:
I’m gonna try to keep my message only talking about stories and the ideas as tropes (because there’s underlying politics to this and I figure naming any of it would be not good or welcome here, leading to arguments/getting shunted to the Politics thread, and technically it’s off-topic)
Not gonna name the story I stopped following because it fell into this, but I was catching up on one and, now that I got to the actual conflict, I realize it is a trope I hate. It’s the sort of thing where a minority (who is typically powered in some fashion to make it “justifiable”) gets genocided or otherwise heavily oppressed and the villains are people, part of aforementioned minority, that try to not be oppressed, typically by going “too far”. I really hate the politics behind that trope (again, not gonna get into it any further than that), and it’s really not helped by how overplayed it is. For an example, Magneto in X-Men is this trope, and his case is so much more egregious because he was literally fucked over by actual Nazis.
Vaguely related (if it’s good to put two here) since it kinda falls into the same ideas and was also in the story: the idea of the cop who gets away with doing whatever (killing people, violating privacy, ignoring warrants [the one thing keeping a cop from busting into your home], etc), and like the only justification is “but he’s cool”. I’d be fine with covering that subject in theory but it’s so rarely done with any criticism beyond maybe a slight acknowledgement that he’s an asshole. Just very frustrating. Also the lack of any criticism towards cops in all the many stories with detective (read, cop) MCs and ROs in COG stuff and okay I’ll shut up we’ve veered into politics
In regards to detective or police member point, I think it depends on the country writer is in and their personal viewpoints. Not everyone is from US and not everyone from there unanimously supports the movement I won’t name. Cultural sensibilities can vary wildly.
Huuuuuge disagree there. Shepard always felt like the main character to me. I found those more like being there for a friend and really built the characters up. Also I liked the story well enough
Personally, I don’t like redundant or underused mechanics. Eg, Character stats which don’t do anything or which seem to double up.
I also don’t like when character creation happens straight away. I prefer it when something fun happens to hook me before I have to pick hair colour, eye colour, etc.
One thing that has always irked me is when a ChoiceScript game has those sliding-bar stats, but the game doesn’t recognize the middle bit as representing the middle ground of that stat - it just forces one extreme or the other.
For example, if you had a Lawful-Chaotic sliding stat, but as soon as you get 51% Chaotic you’re an anarchist, and you’ll fail any Lawful stat-checks. Or maybe you can be “neutral”, but you have to be 50/50 exactly.
That was one thing I appreciated about Fernweh Saga: if it checked one of those stats, you got five options for different weights.
Definitely agree with the first point, not necessarily with your political reasons(cause you didn’t name them) but mostly cause I feel it’s so overdone? Extremist operators from an underclass who “take things too far” are present in basically any story set in a world that has an explicitly definied underclass. Like, I get why it’s used so often, but the messaging and the purpose of the trope rarely ever feels that different no matter how many times it’s iterated upon. The point of such a faction in a story feels so diluted now to me, the impact and “moral questions” they’re supposed to raise are almost non-existent.
I mean yeah, i don’t think every story with cops in it needs to be inherently critical. That seems a bit silly.
I do agree with the first bit though. Especially when no one gives any alternatives. Like, whelp, we stopped the BBEG, guess we don’t need to do anything about the racism now. There HAVE been good stories where the good guys also address the issue. Rwby for example has ex members of the extremist group decide to start a NEW group focused more on the original cause.
I also dislike when you get the option of which NPC to bring with you for a scene, but the only difference it makes is the pronouns/name of the NPC. I’m gonna write a short example to show what I mean. Like if you go on a date scene or something.
Adam sits at the end of the table, enjoying his Crab Rangoon. He looks breathtaking with his formal attire on.
vs
Eve sits at the end of the table, enjoying her Crab Rangoon. She looks breathtaking with her formal attire on.
And then they also proceed to say almost the exact same lines of dialogue, the only one being different is if you get an option to ask about their backstories. But every “automatic” dialogue, like if the waiter asks them about something, they say the exact same lines of dialogue.
And then, obviously, if some fight breaks out, you’ll get the same end result no matter if you brought Adam or Eve. Or if you went alone, if you didn’t have the needed approval to invite either of them. Despite the odds being better with an ally there.
Annoys me when authors try to make ROs attractive and interesting to the reader (for example, they are some rare species, have unique skills, mysterious past) but at the same time the most boring character in a game is MC.
Im always annoyed when everyone else is a cool race, backstory, superpower, and I’m stuck as the average joe. I get it, its kind of a wish fulfillment to have powerful, interesting people who fall for an ordinary person since most of us are rather banal, but I’d prefer to be able to play something with more… well… character. Individuality. A character as compelling as the rest of the cast.
I mean, sub RO’s are kinda cute too, But you know what’s better then a sub RO? A sub RO who actually tries to Dom a sub MC (I know it’s been 14 days, but still lol)
On serious notes though, I do agree with the thing where “If you have a dominant personality, You can’t show a submissive side to others” At this point, that would mean switch (People who have both sides depending on their mood) don’t really exist
Just goes with the standard where everything is a clear and simple binary in interactive fiction (you’re an emotionless asshole or you’re a jubilant child, you’re a pathological liar or you’ve never lied in your entire life, etc), which I acknowledged is likely mostly for ease of coding but it still can get very frustrating. At least it means I can always appreciate when something has greater depth and nuance, like Conspiracy in Emerson where how you present yourself doesn’t have to line up with how you are internally, for example.
(I know it’s been 14 days, but still lol)