I get the anime thing. My point was that even in anime, there are lots of characters with normal-looking hair and eyes (and frankly they probably outnumber the weird ones), so it wouldn’t hurt the anime-ness of it to include more common colours as well. In fact I think it would make it better, as it would seem less like you are trying to imitate the stereotypical trappings of anime and more letting readers get the anime feel from the writing.
In the end, it’s not a big issue, but really, ‘anime’ doesn’t have to equal ‘totally outrageous’. Moreover, for a sportsperson I imagine there might be practical reasons to keep one’s hair sensible.
As for the sideburns, I think it is not the best strategy to make readers refer to TV Tropes in order to understand something in your story. Not to mention that the trope is only describing the sideburns themselves, which makes it confusing when you describe the hair as ‘hot-blooded, with sideburns’. Why not just use the description in the trope itself - ‘spiky and noticeable’? It might be best to have a few hairstyles to pair with it too, since the character presumably has hair other than sideburns, which might be done in a variety of ways.
@FabricSeat Thank you, I understand now. I will look into the matter and make some updates.
@Entracte Concerning the name Shiva: I know it’s a distinctly masculine name in the Hindu culture. Alas, Shiva is also one of the most famous Final Fantasy summonable entities. And it’s always feminine in the series. That’s why I saw no real problem in calling a girl that way (by the way, I have plans for that Shiva character, and it’s probably useful that she’s feminine )
Long story short, I hope it’s not a real issue if I called a female character Shiva. I plan to create a powerful opposition Shiva vs. Brahma (SPOILER ALERT!). It’s handy for me to have a character with that name, gender, and role in the story
BTW, I hope my take on Hindu mythology doesn’t anger anyone. It’s just my fantasy, it does not represent other people’s beliefs (which I respect), and it’s meant only to entertain people.
On one hand, I was almost i sulted by the near plagiarism of FFX, which happens to be my all time favorite game, but on the other it filled me with nostalgia and affection for that world. I think as long as you continue to customize the story and make it your own it will be exceptional.
The one grammatical critique I have is the continued use of female/male parent? I’ve never heard of anyone identifying as a male or female and not accepting the moniker of “mother” or “father.” Just seems out of place and jarring. Unless you have a unique plot point where that is necessary, I’d simplify it to mother or father and maybe leave a simple “parent” for the non-binary. But specifying “female parent” or “male parent” takes one out of the story when there are one word nouns for those titles.
I really like the worldbuilding, it’s refreshing. So far I have a few suggestions
Summary
Is the MC personality suppose to be set or semi set? So far no matter the response propose I get the feeling that they are meant to be bubbly,confident (kind of a show of),and careless? kind of
Which isn’t a problem at all if this what you are going for but you should probably say it in the intro post as people will surely ask about having more personality choices for the MC. For my part I wishes I could play a humble,quiet and calm MC.
Can we be asexual and/or aromantic ? Or do we need to get into a relationship ? I ask this because the MC is shown to be attracted to Akira multiple time. And this really took me out of the game to not be able to decide my MC feeling about him but the game deciding that my MC had a crush on him.
Is it necessary that we enter the trial chamber in the temple? Because I know that my MC (and others that want to roleplay that way) wouldn’t have enter because by the info she gathered so far, religion is really important in this world and she doesn’t know what could be the consequences for disrespecting it. Like for all she know so far the villagers could have thrown her out or worse kill her or smth. So she wouldn’t even have insisted to enter the minute the priest told her it was forbidden. Plus it seemed that the purpose was only to meet the other characters since Akira would have been fine no matter what. So maybe there is a way to work something out for MC that wish to roleplay as careful ?
This is all I got for now. I’m excited to see where your project will go (I already know I will check MC’s Mom fighting manual everytime there’s a fight cuz Boy I am bad at this, like real bad imao )
@Salvador_Domingo Nice to e-meet you! I am a great fan of FFX too (I have FFX, FFX-2, and the remastered edition). That video game is very important for me (for many personal reasons) and I always wanted to write a “tribute” to that story. Now I finally gathered the courage to do it.
Thank you for bringing up the “female parent” topic. I am not a native English speaker and I’ve been looking for a somewhat derogatory term for “mother” cause the MC doesn’t want to call Shiva that way. Calling her their “female parent” looked like the best compromise I could come up with. I am open to suggestions
@Asterya1 Hi! Thank you for your feedback I will answer every bullet point separately.
I wish to create an “evolving” MC. They start “egocentric” and “daring” and could evolve in a different way based on your choices. I should probably state this in the “games features”.
Asexual/aromantic. At the moment, the story is focused on a single RO with the theurge. If I have the chance in the future I would gladly add more RO and an aromantic/asexual path.
-Entering the Gallery. I agree with you. That passage needs more “motivation” or a workaround. I’ll get to it, thank you.
@Veraynea Here I am, sorry if I kept you waiting. First of all, thank you very much for the time, the passion, and the dedication you are showing to this little project. I am really humbled by it!
More foundation to the MC in the first scenes. Good point. Let’s brainstorm this more thoroughly (if you have time). Personally, I kept things “vague” so people could “fill in themselves” what they like and eventually discover details as the story unfolds (via dreams, for example).
Different “personalities” together in the MC. What do you exactly mean by this? I probably am missing your point. Please, explain to me what the issue is and how you suggest we solve it.
“I am the new guy here, so I ask questions.” That’s a sort of “masked tutorial” for the reader to get acquainted with the setting. I am open to suggestions to let it sink in without being too dull.
MC needs more physical description? If I understood correctly, you would like to have more physical details about the MC. Well, that’s something I would carefully consider. Since everyone wants the MC to be “just as they imagine it,” I left as many voids as possible so anyone can imagine the MC the way they want. Do you like it tall? Here you are! Do you prefer it to have a tattoo? I never stated it doesn’t have it. And so on… IMHO, in CoG, the less you physically describe the MC, the better. That’s why you would probably hate a detail I love and vice versa.
Too many details in the world. I see your point. Many details will be thoroughly explained, while others will be just hinted at. This is (hopefully!) going to be a huge story, so most of the “apparently useless” details now will probably be important later.
*Wu Xing: You are right. The name should be different if we want it to be “grammatically consistent.” Alas, I like to use “relatively famous terms” in this story so people can google them and see they actually exist (and possibly are consistent). If I google Liu Xing, I don’t get a “philosophical/magic” result, so probably I’d stay with Wu Xing.
Thank you again for your dedication and efforts. Looking forward to further brainstorming with you
If you want people to Google ‘Wu Xing’, though, it might work against you because then they will see that it is not the same thing as in your story - it may seem as though you mindlessly pasted the name of the concept without really understanding why it is called that.
Of course, if Chinese doesn’t exist in the story, you can always say it’s just a coincidence that it’s called that and has no relation to the Chinese numbers in our world, but either way, I’m not sure that Googling it will necessarily make people enjoy it more if they happen to notice the discrepancy, and any people familiar with the real concept will probably find it jarring right away.
Potentially darkness and light could be a single element - the same as Yin and Yang in Chinese philosophy. That would help explain why it’s considered five elements when there are six. They are mutually dependent, so perhaps that might work in this context.
Thanks again to you all! Both to those who write me here and to those who write me MPs. Just a little survey: would you prefer to have frequent but short updates or longer, but less frequent updates?
Frequent (1 every 15+ days) short playable updates
Longer, less frequent (1 every 30+days) playable updates.
I am a hardcore FFX fan too, so no wonder the story feels like a FFX rewrite so far. This is, of course, the first draft and I’m planning to improve it in the future.
Nevertheless, the story is supposed to start very similarly but evolve in a very different way. The more the story goes on, the more different it gets from FFX (especially for the meaning, the endings, and the philosophy behind it all).
Thanks to everyone who’s giving feedback, the story is improving day by day. I hope you will like it in the end.
OMG! Being a Hindu, I am so happy that someone’s writing a story on this! Looking forward to it😃
And seeing that according to the story, MC wasn’t able to understand what the soldiers were talking amongst themselves, I feel proud that my MC understands every bit of it😂 The dialogs were in Hindi but there were some Urdu words mixed with it. It is really great to see Hindi dialogs and that someone is making a game based on our history!
Hi, @Venusian_Scorpio Thank you very much for playing my little game!
I am sorry if I didn’t write correctly in Hindi. Since I’m unfamiliar with your language, I resorted to Google Translator.
Would you please help me write correct dialogues in Hindi? I would really appreciate your help, and, of course, I would gladly put your names in the credits.
I will have to echo what @MyBonesAreFine said, that it’s perhaps a little TOO similar to the start of FFX. I have a really hard time, despite characters having different names/genders, including my mc, to not see them as the characters in FFX. Personally it really ruins any kind of immersion that might otherwise be there. Like the way the MC talks/acts is way too much like Tidus(cringe), for me to feel even remotely like it’s not him, despite you letting me choose to be female, look completely different and have a different name.
Obviously for people who haven’t played/experienced FFX this probably isn’t an issue, it’s not poorly written in general… It just feels like it wants to be FFX perhaps a little too much, especially on the characters side of things.
Yup. That’d be me. Problem is, the human penchant for memery means I still know a lot about the game, and a couple key points/scenes/character interactions–all without watching so much as a YT let’s play. Much of it sits too close to the inspiration, but that doesn’t make it uninteresting to read. The similarities are a tad high, though; even the fight with Sun parallels an event that happened in FFX, and that one isn’t nearly as meme’d to the point that it should be common gamer knowledge.
As for things with Akira, whatever level of intrinsic attraction there may be for acceptable plot reasons, readers don’t like to be told what they’re feeling when it sincerely might not be so. The recommendation there is to just dial back on that one a smidge, is all.
Anyway, you work fast putting out 4 chapters in a snap like that. I can respect a hard worker, and do appreciate this is only a first draft before the real edits kick in.
)
(I already know I will check MC’s Mom fighting manual everytime there’s a fight cuz Boy I am bad at this, like real bad imao )
Let’s do this together!
