Help on a story?

I am writing a story for a video game (a Visual novel,to be exact) that I'm making, and recently I've hit a roadblock. Since the general audience of YU+ME is pretty similar to the general audience I'd like for my game, I thought I'd ask for advice here.

The plot is that the main character is very idealistic about relationships and wants to find a "prince", but at the same time, she finds herself attracted to a girl. The player chooses whether this character continues to search for a prince, whether she abandons her goal and pursues the object of her affections, or whether she tries to reconcile these goals. There's a theme of idealistic relationships versus real relationships throughout the entire thing. Hopefully it'll be pretty awesome, and when the game is done it'll be posted here for the Yumeboard users to enjoy.

Here is my problem: Originally, the main character (for now named Jane) was going to be an ordinary high school student who had an obsession with fairy tales, and wanted to live her life like one. I felt like this made her unrelatable, and, as the viewpoint character, she should be able to be someone the player can understand, at least most of the time.

Here is my potential solution: make the entire world follow fairy tale tropes! Put the story in a place where princes can and do come to save unhappy girls, and Jane will still come off as an idealist, but won't be an idealist who refuses to be in touch with reality.

So, here is my question for all of you lovely Yumeboard denizens: Would you personally be interested more in this story in a high school setting with a protagonist who loved fairy tales and was completely unrealistic, or would you be more interested in this story in a fairy tale like world, with a protagonist who wanted a life that was achievable?

This would be better for the writer to choose, but I understand where you are coming at.

I, too, am writing... but it's a webcomic. Mine's stuck between 3 friends, all share their own secrets, and run a store in a mall. One's secretly gay, one's an assassin by night, and the other's secret is... I'm not telling. When all secrets are buried, it just revolves around them dealing with life and managing their shop.

I like fantasy, but I'm more at realism and tend to write life & drama more so. But I tend to like fantasy stuff to read. I'm going with the fantasy thing.

Maybe, one day... we can swap each other's finished work and critique & applaud each other?

Thank you for the advice. I have more experience writing realistic stories as well, so I'm a little uncertain about writing a fantasy story. I figure that if I focus on the characters more than the setting, it'll be mostly the same, though.

Your webcomic sounds really interesting? Do you have a site for it yet? I'd love to see it.

I would start by calling this story "Shojo Kakumei Utena!" (I kinda watched it before it was licensed in the U.S. There was talk of it being translated under the tiles "Ursula's Kiss" and "Revolutionary Girl Utena" last I heard. It's original run was back in like '96-'97.)

Yeah, tried to find a comical way to say it, but I'm sorry to say that the description you've given sounds very similar. Not to say that you can't write another one, but yeah. I'd call it recommended viewing, to avoid inadvertently stealing ideas and/or for inspiration. The story is, specifically with two women in a relationship that was restrained from romance despite visible attraction, overtones of romance/sexuality, and acceptance of opposite gender roles by the two women, (one seeking a prince and one adopting the role - obviously, the gender roles aren't actually needed, but the characters are presented as understanding romance/sexuality as gendered that way, so it's significant). Of course, a male character also adopts a princely role later on - though I can't say much about how that's resolved without filling the thread with spoilers. I think it's fairly well-told. Would warn that the target audience is probably teenage girls, though; expect unfair exaggerations and generalizations to appeal to the age group, and a very "girly" esthetic.

It frequently uses tropes from fantasy literature, feeds intensely off of the archetype of the prince that seems to have sprung out of a combination of idealized stories of Charlemagne's paladins and St. George, and ends in an obtuse metaphor that relies almost exclusively on fantasy-inspired symbolism (the movie has a more obtuse but easier-to-decipher metaphor for an ending, though the objects in the metaphor are much more modern.) There's a series (I want to say 35 episodes? Maybe 40.) a manga series (five issues) and a movie. Depending on the time you'd want to invest.

Haha, don't worry. I'm actually quite familiar with that series, and wanted to write something with similar themes. One of the reasons I reconsidered the high school was because I thought it would look too similar. I get inspired by the things I love, but I don't want to write exactly the same story as them!

I got the idea for this story partly because of the sexuality in Utena-- Utena and Anthy did have this great chemistry and partnership, but it never veered into romantic territory, because both of them viewed love as something that could only come from a man, specifically a prince-- even Utena, who wanted to be a prince herself, was tempted to give up and take on the role of the princess sometime in the last couple episodes. At the end of the series, the princes were gone, but the two still never crossed the line, and while I wanted to interpret it as a love story, it seemed more like they still at the end were just friends with an attraction. I see girls with guys in most media, and hey, that's alright if the girls like guys. But why do the girls need to be with men, specifically very idealized men, even when their closest attractions are with other girls? What about the real life version of this where girls like girls, but feel they have to date men because that's how they define romantic love? How is this fair to anyone involved?

At the same time as I was watching Utena and thinking about the sexuality therein, I was involved in a relationship that crumbled because of the pressure to live up to idealized roles. Even when the girls are dating each other, the role of the prince still can do harm-- unless that's how both people naturally are, taking on these identities in a relationship isn't healthy for either partner or for the relationship itself. So even if people like Utena and Anthy did act on their attraction to each other, if their concept of love involved following these roles, they still wouldn't have a real relationship with each other.

Which made me decide to write a story, specifically in the form of a visual novel, about the problems and consequences of the idea of the "prince", as he exists in Utena and the ideal people have of love in general, even if we don't call it that. I wanted to write a fun, cute little story, but at the same time, show exactly why the prince needed to go. I don't plan on making the tone or characters or setting or storyline very similar to Utena, so I think that even if the idea of the prince and the need for him to go away is the same thing, I can tell a story that's different enough.

Sorry if I sounded rude or unappreciative. D:

One thought you could do - and movies do this ALL the time - is to take the actual fairy tale and re-write it for the modern setting. Perhaps instead of a white knight in shining armor, there's the HS football linebacker...

Take the old Spaghetti Western, "A Fistful of Dollars," for example. That plotline has been lifted directly (twist for twist) countless times - by Bruce Willis in one case as a Prohibition-Era movie, and by Sonja Blue's author as a vampire novel.

I promise I have stuff to say about your actual work, but quick bit first!
I would recommend the Utena movie before getting too stout in the "nothing comes of it" angle. There's definitely some nekkid* lesbian smooches at the end of that one, quite specifically after defeating Akio via obtuse metaphor.
* - when I say "nekkid," it's worth noting that it's nekkid in the "anime targeted toward minors" sense, and both characters have about as much detail as a barbie doll drawn. No porn.



Now, on to your game/story/interactive fiction!

To the original problem: one of an unrelatable character due to an obsession with fantasy.
I'm not sure if you have that much of a problem there. I'm getting the impression that you mean to aim for mid-to-late teens and young adult in what you're writing. If that's the case, feelings of isolation and the desire to withdraw further are pretty normal. It's a bit of a metaphorical extension to move that to a young woman who would rather live in fairy tales (and chase fairy tail. Har!), but I don't think it's too far for people to follow.

That said, I think you could make the character more relatable by using your prince as a foil. Clearly, there will be some aversion to the notion of using fantasy as a solution to something, and I think that the character who you plan to destroy would work best if he fell apart like a Miltonic Satan. That way you can present him as heroic early on and draw parallels between him and your protagonist, and thus his decomposition serves to demonstrate the validity of your main character and increase reader sympathy for her.

Yeah, I've heard the Utena movie had more yuri in it, and the manga had less. The "nothing comes of it" angle is not just Utena related. It happens in a lot of media, though-- I keep getting into series because I've heard there's this great lesbian relationship only to find that the characters are only permitted to love each other through subtext, and then get into relationships with men. Nothing against bisexuals-- if these women were honestly depicted as bisexual, I wouldn't have a problem with it-- but more that it seems like a relationship that doesn't fit the ideal is not an option.

That's a good idea about using the prince as a foil, but I'm not sure if I want to make him an actual character, and I'm especially not sure I want him to be a very very flawed actual character. There are princes, and I think I want them to be human, but just... unable to be 100% perfect all the time. The way the story looks in my mind, it's mostly about a girl that loves another girl, but won't let herself be with her because of her ideals about her prince. I want to spend time mostly on the relationship between the two leads, just so you can see that the one who's rejecting the relationship on principle is being an idiot. An absent prince rather than a present prince might make the statement better, too-- if the girls are silly for choosing idealized men over each other when the men are actually around, then how much sillier are they for doing that when the men aren't even there?

I am very tired and this probably doesn't make much sense, and I'm sorry for it. I guess what I am saying is that I want the prince to be more of a concept that gets in the way, because that's how I see it.

Rightright, and I'm with you on that. I think I'm doing a crappy job of explaining what I'm suggesting, 'cuz it sounds like you're rejecting an idea that's similar to what I was suggesting (one that I would also reject). If that makes sense?

Having a man who is the ideal that your protagonist dreams of would be a wrench in the cogs. Or, at least, it would substantially lengthen the story - adding an arc/chapter/installment/whatevs (because then we'd need to write out the typical "Hay, it's just like in my imagination" quasi-enamorment followed by the distinct sense that it's not right/ not working/ not <whatever it should be> ... or she ends up in a straight relationship, and that's totally not the point). I suppose it could have its merits. It would be subverting a trope, to be sure (the male in the previous relationship wasn't abusive!) but it'd likely vilify your protagonist (because people would likely sympathize with a genuinely nice guy and scorn the protagonist for any assumed injury.)

My thought would be to have a character who presents himself as princely and appears to be so, but is in fact a horrid misuse of escapism supported by ego or delusion or whatnot. That's why I bring up Milton; he makes the reader see Satan as the hero through multiple books -- a valiant soldier against the forces of tyranny, throwing off the shackles of an oppressive deity to build Pandemonium from the rubble he was cast into, staging a rebellion from the worst dredges of adversity. But it's all a trick, so that the reader eventually gets stuck saying "Oh snap, he's the bad guy! He's petty, vindictive, and bases all of his decisions on a flawed concept of reality!" at some point, and comes to understand the allure and the danger of the fantasy.

In theory, at least. Milton is so dense of reading that most people read it and say "Satan! Fuck yeah!" (a la Team America theme.) So, I dunno. Take with salt, I suppose.



... of course, it occurs to me that I'm assuming a happy ending where the two girls finally shrug off their attachments to the fantasy and get together, and that there thus must be a revealing of the fantasy as flawed at some point. So holler at me if I've got the basic assumptions wrong. I've got the mindset of "create the deception, set up the reveal, stage a happy ending" when I write my suggestions.

Zelknolf wrote:
... of course, it occurs to me that I'm assuming a happy ending where the two girls finally shrug off their attachments to the fantasy and get together, and that there thus must be a revealing of the fantasy as flawed at some point. So holler at me if I've got the basic assumptions wrong. I've got the mindset of "create the deception, set up the reveal, stage a happy ending" when I write my suggestions.

There will be multiple endings, since it's a visual novel. See wikipedia. In the best ending, though, they do decide to pursue a relationship with each other. In the worst ending, the protagonist's insistence on finding a prince costs her her friendship with the other one (who does not have the same ideals about relationships). In the in-between endings, they get together but still have the baggage of the relationship roles, and it makes them both... not as happy as they could be.

I do like your idea about the princely character, but I cannot see how I could do that without copying Akio. I don't have a lot of experience with original fiction (I've been a fanfic author for a long time) and have been trying really hard not to make Jane (who now might become either Jeanne or Justine) and Maria be too much like any specific already-existing characters that I know. I'll probably see if I can make the story work without him. If once the first draft is done, it's obvious that something more is necessary, Akio will be deployed. :3

Curse Wikipedia and its obscene quantities of questionable information! *shakes a fist at it*

Good luck writin' it, then.

Thank you very much for the help, and I'm sorry I didn't take all of it. :3

Pshaw. I teach writing at the college level for a living. My life is full of people not taking my writing advice; it's refreshing for someone to have a reason!

They were good ideas, though. If I wasn't deliberately trying to make this less like Utena, and if I was trying to write a longer story, then I probably would have added the character you suggested. I'm trying to keep it under 20,000 words for now (including the branching paths), so it still feels doable, since this is my first visual novel. It does need a little more than it has now, because 20,000 words of "I love her! But she's not a prince! So I need to go get one!" would be really annoying.

What do you feel about three days in the middle where Maria tries three different ways of helping the protagonist find a prince? Like the first day, they try to find something that looks like it's been enchanted and hope that it's really a prince, and the second day, they do something else, and the third day, they go off and start an adventure because girls who go off on adventures have a very high rate of getting princes. I love fairy tale tropes, and I want to write about them and make fun of them a bit.

You're setting yourself up for a frame story with that sort of approach, which has its merits, but they tend to demand a pretty large volume of writing. If you're trying to keep the game below 20,000 words, I'm not sure how much time you'd get to spend on the three segments of the frame.

That said, it's pretty easy to gloss over parts of the days. An eventless walk to the enchanted tree frees up time and energy to write about... I dunno. Finding out that it's really a grumpy treant, and isn't happy about being kissed by strange giggling girls who think it'll turn into a handsome man for it.

Maybe day number 2 they find decide that magic is no good and find a genuine prince. Fairy tale lands tend to have queens; would make their husbands have the title of prince consort. Quite the letdown to find out that it's possible for princes to already be married, I imagine. Especially if he wouldn't mind being unfaithful to the queen. Bit cliche to have obnoxious womanizing men in the lesbian romance story, I'll admit, but I'm sure it can be played as disconcerting without sounding like an attack on a gender.

I'm thinking that, if you're keen on giving an opportunity to develop the romance, they could go looking for trouble instead of adventure on day 3. The fairy tales, after all, follow a distinct pattern in getting pretty young women together with princes (woman is in trouble -> prince hears of it -> prince saves the day -> happily ever after [marriage and kingdom implied]). Of course, the chances of a noble and valiant person (gender, title, and attractiveness notwithstanding) happening across any given person (again gender and attractiveness notwithstanding) whose life is in peril is pretty remote. Would be a mighty slap of reality to have to be saved by the friend and to have no prince arrive. Maybe the chances of her actually saving the day depend on how you've treated her until that point. (treat her right and it's save the day + tender moment; treat her okay it's save the day and stern scolding; treat her badly and she stalls too long and both die horribly - or one does - or one gets maimed and they can't look at each other anymore) Makes for a believable jump into a realistic view of things and a rejection of the idea of the prince while, itself, following the storytelling pattern of a fairy tale.

Mrs. Abject wrote:Thank you for the advice. I have more experience writing realistic stories as well, so I'm a little uncertain about writing a fantasy story. I figure that if I focus on the characters more than the setting, it'll be mostly the same, though.

Your webcomic sounds really interesting? Do you have a site for it yet? I'd love to see it.

No, not yet. I will put it on drunk duck, as Ms. Megan Rose does for her Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space.

I have to draw anything... I've written 100 pages... Maybe more, I wrote them in a 2x3 style (6 panels total) and some or most might split in two, when I start drawing.

I'm shatty artist... I'd rather find someone to draw for me instead, but I can manage to make it readable.

I use the same username here on this board, as well as the one on drunkduck forums. I just love this name. That way its easy for all to remember. I don't know when I'll start, I want to have it finished (written wise) before anything goes up for all to see.

Hey, I do the same. I make the characters tell the story. A person's past or different beliefs work to build drama... Goddamnit... It happened... Years of my mother forcing me into watch Soaps with her turned me into a shatty Soaps writer... or any current writer working for the WWE or TNA. HA!

Wrestling references... Yeah, the store they run is a wrestling, boxing, mma store. So, yes... There is some jokes/potshots at certain wrestlers, who I think suck.

I hope that doesn't change your mind and turn you off from it. My story's more so about characters than just 3 dudes running a shop and chatting all the time, it's not Clerks(Good movie though).

As for your visual novel... I hope you can decide what you want to do things. And as I said before, When you figure things out and decided whats the best way to do things to have finish your work of art. Don't forget, if you ever get stuck on something, (and you probably know this) putting yourself in their shoes for responses or asking questions or asking a friend or two what they'd do/how'd they react if this event or question came up might help you add a golden brick to your yellow brick road.

I'm always around... At least a few times a week on this board, If you ever want to discuss this or related things such to this, I'll reply back. Hell, I'd bet you could roll off ideas to help me remove obstacles in my way to the end of my comic. HA!


And @Zelknolf/Probably @Mrs. Abject: I've seen/played visual novels seem to be longer than 20,000 words on newgrounds. Long "cut scenes" but hey, they were fun. I think you could pull it off more or less 20,000 words...

Who here thinks this visual novel thing is just bringing back the 90s? Because now I have "Two Princes" by Spin Doctors trapped in my head... Nothing wrong with that, I like Spin Doctors.

@lasteffect: I'm still open to reading your webcomic. I like slice of life stories quite a bit. Will it still be readable for people who are not into professional wrestling? I've watched it a couple of times, but just wasn't that into it.

@Zelknolf: That is a really good idea and I'm probably going to use it. Day 1 could be the silly frog thing, Day 2 could be going out and looking for adventure, and Day 3 could be trying to get in trouble. I'm not sure Maria would want to put Justine (the new name for Jane) in danger, though. I like the idea of having a minor prince character who is willing to cheat on his wife, but maybe to balance it out, there could be a prince on the first day, too, who is in a relationship but acts honorably. Maybe he gets kissed back from being an enchanted animal, but then wants to go home and be with his wife, instead of going with the girl who kissed him (which would be Maria, but I'm not telling how it happened that way.)

So.
Day 1, there's a prince that's married and doesn't want to cheat. Justine and Maria are disappointed that he was married.
Day 2, there's a prince that's married but willing to cheat, and Justine is tempted to go along with it because she doesn't think she'll get another prince. Maria gets upset and tells him off.
Day 3, Justine pressures Maria to help her get in trouble, and there's no prince there to save them at all.

AND NOW WE HAVE CHARACTER DESIGNS:

THIS IS MARIA

THIS IS JUSTINE

Yeah... I imagine that most any audience is going to be sensitive to how you treat men in a story that focuses on a female-female romance (just look at the crap Megan takes for YU+ME! And it looks like a lot of effort is going into giving everyone a fair shake.) Prolly save some drama by having a good guy before a bad guy. Frog prince who's already married even has the bonus of being a playful rewriting of a fairy tale.

To character designs: I like the look, though I had the impression that Justine was supposed to be a lower-classed girl who was dreaming of a perfect life in a castle; the clothes in good condition with the tailored blouse and the spectacles kinda comes with an upper-middle (merchant or merchant's daughter) or upper (i.e. 1 - 2 generations removed from aristocracy) look. So, if I misunderstood and she is supposed to have money, I say it's good stuff.

Thumbs up to patchwork on Maria, too. I might put something on the shoulders; frayed cloth on a stressed point will rip open without a lot of provocation, and I get the feeling this isn't an H-game.

Zelknolf wrote:...and I get the feeling this isn't an H-game.

Oh god no it isn't. DDDDD: I am way too easily embarrassed to make porn.

Justine is middle-class. The dress was peasant-outfit brown before, but didn't look good. Her clothes are better than Maria's, but about the same as everybody else's-- several of her friends will show up at one point, and they'll be dressed about the same. The dress is a little princessy, but that's the look I wanted to go for. This isn't a realistic setting, it's one where all girls have the potential to become princesses, and that makes it even worse for the ones that don't. Nobody can feel that bad over not having a prince in real life, but if your neighbor found one and you didn't, it sucks. I didn't want Justine to be poor and dreaming of life in a castle, because that makes her wish more rational and begs the question of what she's going to do if she doesn't get a prince. It's a little harder to say that looking for an idealized relationship isn't the answer when the girl has other reasons to need a prince besides wanting to be in love.

Maria's dress is based on this one I found on the internet. The raggedy parts are lace that has some rips in it, but as you can see in this picture, the lace is separate from the rest of the dress. The sprites in the actual game are going to be bigger than the pictures I've posted (I just wanted to make them message board sized) so you'll probably be able to see better then that Maria's dress is structurally sound enough to prevent hentai.

Depending on how many sprites I have time to make, they might wear different stuff on different days.

I didn't think about people assuming I had something against men, but I'm glad you warned me about it. I'll make sure to stick a few good ones in to make up for the bad one. (There is a young man in the village that seems to have feelings for Justine, too, and he never behaves unpleasantly as far as the viewer can tell.) I have nothing against men. I believe that some of them are jerks, but some women are jerks, too. Oh, and the prince Maria kisses isn't a frog.

Mrs. Abject wrote:Oh god no it isn't. DDDDD: I am way too easily embarrassed to make porn.

Funny wording there. I'll totally drop it if it gets left here - cuz I don't want this to come off as pushing - but if "too easily embarrassed" = "I want to, but am too skittish," there're totally people who'd be supportive and whatnot. If "easily embarrassed" = "joke, now that the commercial additions to the genre's habit of being porn has been brought up," then I giggle merrily and move along. ^^;



To Maria's dress - yeah, prolly a size/resolution thing if it's lace. Looks like a prickly black mush in that one, which I interpreted as cloth that's threadbare all along the neckline, hence my comment about potentially exploding tops.

To Justine's - Ah, I did kinda see the princess look to it. Figured the perceived social status might be useful, depending on what you were trying to portray.

I meant both, sort of. I wouldn't mind working on an H-game in the future, but right now I'm not confident enough in my drawing abilities to try and depict that. Plus, I don't really want to use this story and this set of characters for porn, since the story just doesn't make sense to me if they're already having sex... I mean, it does, but it's very different, and it becomes not the story I want to tell about these characters.

So, maybe I'll make a game someday where the H is a part of the story and doesn't feel too tacked on, but I don't think I could add it seamlessly enough into this one.

Thank you for your support.

Wow, Mrs. Abject, I love the character mods (or w/e you call that). I really love the beat up and poor look a lot, looks to me you've spent a great deal of time on how you want the to look. She kinda reminds me of one of the tAtU girls.

I kinda like her idea for the 1st 3 days, actually. I wonder what happens when they get into trouble with no one else to help them.

As for my comic, as for the first 100 page, I hardly make references to anything wrestling. This comic is more focused about the 3 friends. After the first 100 page, I've started to add hidden wrestling joke or just knowledge of stuff that happened in the wrestling a normal fan wouldn't know. I'm already up past 100, but I just don't want to start drawing it, until I most likely finish writing the story out. I feel I might grow tried of juggling both at one time and stop, it's happened before and I really don't want to risk it, again.

@ lasteffect: I did spend a lot of time on them, but I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I wasn't really thinking of the tATU girls when I designed them, but I used to like them when they were on TV, and sort of see the resemblance myself.

I'd offer to draw for your comic myself, but I've got tons on my plate right now. I'm making my visual novel, helping several other people edit their visual novels, and organizing a community project on LJ. plus I can't draw men very well.

Yeah, I wouldn't dare to pull you away from your greatness. LoL.

I wouldn't know when this writing process would be done, either. I could write 100 more pages or even up to 1,000, but I'm not worried about how long it is. I'm worried about the quality of it. I want to tell the story the right way, so then... I can work on the sequels. Yes, sequels. I plan on doing them, after finishing writing, drawing, and posting the first for all to see.

Maybe I can make do with what shatty work I can do or find an artist interested in helping me draw it.

I think we all have our weaknesses, Mrs. Abject, but I think after working on it... We get better at it. All I worry about is... When it's done, that I am happy with the finished piece. I know not everyone will love it (I mean, I take shots at certain wrestlers that I believe suck and I know their fans won't like it. I know anyone anti-gay/super religious won't like. I know people who don't like the vulgar use of language won't like), but it's not about pleasing everyone. It's about me and it finding it's own group of fans to appreciate it.

And I bet that exactly what and why you're doing yours, as well as any other artist would do.

So lately I've been reading a lot of fic, mostly in fandoms where the characters have serious, serious issues and have more in common with Mara than with Part 1 Lia. (Yes, I am still one of the people who was upset about Mara. Don't ask.) And these past couple of days, I've found it difficult to sit myself down and write the visual novel, probably because my characters are pretty much normal people for their setting.

After a conversation with one of my friends, I've come up with this plot twist that would make it all so much less superficial and so much more interesting for me... but I'm in the position of either twisting the plot and risking ruining the story, or keeping it as it is and being bored with it. I'm worried about adding things in just for the sake of author appeal, and making it suck.

Do you think the story would be ruined if the fantasy LITERALLY wasn't real? Like if Justine was delusional, and Maria was just as bad for playing along with it?