So last night I was talking a little with
@Twei about both the chapter content and the story overall.
And I came to the conclusion I wasn't happy with it.
Which raises the question: If I'm not happy with it, if the audience isn't satisfied (not happy, because god knows that shit can hit you hard but still feel
right), and most importantly,
if the characters are not consistent in their actions and voice and such inconsistencies are not intended, then why does it exist?
One person brought up a very good point: characterization is based on
precedent, that is, the fact that the characters have acted the same -or at least similarly if there is continuing progressive development- over a number of instances. A character is
established, and any deviation from that establishment should have a cause that, while some may not agree with the direction, is still
understandable.
I won't deny that my thoughts were at least in part influenced by the response. It was. But there were problems with the second half of the chapter long before that. It wasn't easy or fun for me to write, and that's generally a sign there's something wrong.
I'll be honest: I'm tired of fights. They're hard. They're complex. They require a lot of narration and justification, and those things can change whether it's a well-written fight or a poor one. And they're really easy to fuck up.
I do not like having to force myself to write fights. It's been proven to me three times now, for AFHB 1.3, Deathwing, and now Bakuda here, that when I force myself to write a confrontations and fights,
they suck.
So I've learned my lesson, and I'm not going to do it anymore. I know vaguely where this story is going. I've got plans for things happening in the long-run. I know what's going to happen with the Arpeggioverse. I have things planned for that.
But I'm not
forcing myself to write any more fights.
Edit: I'm not saying I won't write fights at all, but rather I won't write fights where it doesn't feel natural, and I'm not excited or emotionally invested in writing it.
The funny thing is that I really should have learned this from Diatonic 1.3. Twice, I tried starting that chapter with a fight (just like I said there was going to be at the end of 1.2), to the point that I had almost three thousand words written, and it still didn't feel right.
So I didn't have a fight, and I instead had Taylor disappointed that she couldn't find one.
And that worked.
So yeah. I might pull some weird shit. Twei and I talked about what might have happened had Taylor not known Bakuda looked for her at the Graveyard, and the Protectorate got to her before Taylor did. Like, wouldn't that have been different? Wouldn't it have been
interesting? Instead of Taylor doing things on her own, she might start to realized that, hey, maybe unlike her experiences in high school, the authorities
aren't alway
s incompetent
.
I understand that fights are a part of Worm. However, Taylor doesn't have the intense drive for conflict that excuses so many other fights, even if she
does have a drive to prove herself. She shouldn't necessarily be diving head-first into fight that she's already considered she might need help with. She had the capacity for thinking things through (or at least a degree of it, because
teenagers) and taking a breath before charging forwards. Perhaps due to this, Taylor introduces an odd element into the generally predictable cape fights?
The Fog are very single-minded. Until
very recently (as in, less than a year), they approached everything with overwhelming brute force. Outside of Blue Steel and the Scarlet Fleet, this is still how things are done: just look at Kongou's fight in the manga. She doesn't have enough firepower to deal with them, so what does she do?
She brings in more ships. And the I-401
still manages to outmaneuver them.
Now, there's also the fact that Taylor is inexperienced (and a teenager). She has, through a twist of fate, ended up with an overwhelmingly powerful tool in the shape of a nanomaterial-composed hammer. And as we know, when you've got a hammer that works, everything looks like a nail.
Skitter was pushed to improvise, even before she went out. Her power itself didn't protect her, so she had to figure out how she would protect herself in creative ways (beetle-shell chitin armor plates?). She was forced to adapt and create in order to survive, whereas Relentless has not been.
Relentless' strategy for every fight thus far has been "let me hit it enough times, eventually it'll stop moving". Even with Deathwing, where in the rewrite she
is being forced to strategize, the entire premise of the encounter was that with enough direct-ish damage, she would win. She's never been forced to out-think her opponent the way Skitter had to. Skitter may have become a paragon of situational adaptation and strategy, but Relentless is not. At least not yet.
She needs to learn that brute force does not solve everything, and that, yes, she
does have limits. She may be smart, but she's not The Best Thinker Ever (
cough Contessa cough). She may know a lot and have access to a great deal, but she's no Einstein or Hawking or Sun Tzu or Alexander of Macedon. She may be inhuman, but paradoxically, she
is very human, by nature of being a Mental Model, which is all
about having limitations.
Taylor is still a fifteen year-old teenage girl, and I don't know about you, but when
I was a fifteen year-old teenage girl, I would have floundered and failed
all over the place were I in Taylor's position. It's part of the reason (and I'm going to speak heresy here) Worm pushes my suspension of disbelief
really hard. If there's one thing I've learned going through puberty and then watching my five-years-younger-than-me sister go through it, it's that teenagers who grow up in a developed society, are -by the exceedingly vast majority- illogical, make absolutely zero flippin' sense, and the exact
opposite of mature. When I write Taylor, I tend to write her as twenty-ish mentally, simply because that's the level of voice she has in canon.
Yes, being Fog helps mitigate all that somewhat, but it doesn't give her a free pass to automatically succeed at everything. Being Fog does not preclude her from being an idiot(ic teenager).
Now, back to the Bakuda fight.
I'm removing it. Cut.
Completely. Unlike Deathwing, it's not going to get rewritten. There will be a 2.2.2 that acts as the second half of the latest chapter. The arc has gotten re-outlined (to a degree), as plans that I had for the end of the arc have changed completely. Will Taylor still have to deal with Bakuda in a chapter-ish? Maybe. Maybe not. More than likely 'yes', but very differently. Taylor will still need to experience and learn from the lessons I've talked about, and that definitely happens best under pressure, when failure fucks you up
hard.
I appreciate feedback. I like to think I'm generally very receptive and take criticism well, not as a personal attack, but something to learn from and get better with. This is a forum, and that's all about discussion and opinions, both positive and negative.
