[Commentary Thread] Dear Sweet Kami-sama, Why Do You Hate Me So?

[Black Aeronaut]

EDIT: Retitling thread to reflect changes to the setup - this thread will be for commentary alone from this point on.
EDIT2: Going through the thread and removing actual story prose from the posts - just seems to redundant to leave it there.  Please forgive me for the spurious New Post alerts.

So, I'm kinda-sorta taking a bit of time between story arcs of my Being You Is...  It's gonna take me some time to hash out all the details for the plot there, and a lot of it is gonna involve simply sitting down, watching every single freaking episode of MLP:FiM, and thinking, "What would I do here if I was Garrick Grimm?"
That said, I've been messing around with the idea of rebooting Dear Sweet Kami-sama, and I think that the time is about right.
That said, I know that some of you guys are thinking, "Why a reboot?"
Well, for one thing I feel that the quality of my writing has come a very long way since when I started writing DSKS.  (In fact, I think I have that in particular to thank in large regard... that, and Fenspace.)  Also, it will give me a chance to shift some things around and maybe even add in a few new things I've come across.  For example, with what I've learned about Tenchi Muyo lately, Earth is firmly in the control of the Juraians, which would make the Oni staking a claim there look utterly suicidal.
Finally, this will let me give this the much gentler touch that I've given Being You Is... in regards to the main character's powering up.
One thing I would like to add to DSKS is a little gem called Umi Monogatari.  Zeke helping to resolve the issue they have in that story would go a good ways towards furthering his development... and net him a few more entanglements.    And I'm also tempted to throw in Bakemonogatari if, for nothing else, the sheer amount of snarkage involved.  Oh, and Zeke would be able to see and hear Mayoi.  Mayoi, being classified as a Wandering Spirit, would have a pretty hilarious reaction upon meeting Zeke, I think.  (This because Zeke is the Avatar of a God of Life and Death.)  The only trouble is going to be topping all those ridiculous puns!  They'd give the Punday Night Crew at Callahan's a run for their money!
So anyhow, anybody else got any thoughts and/or ideas?

[classicdrogn]

You've finished the TM arc of Being You, then? I apologise for falling behind (becasue I like to give commentary to encourage fics I like) but I was occupied with some home repairs and now got Distracted (with a capital Disgaea) coming out of that, due to having started Disgaea 2 fresh while waiting for the guy at the parts outlet to poke through the warehouse and come back to the sales desk. Curse those addictive video game designers, curse them with 300 Felonies, a lv300 Mentor and a lv300 Broker!

If it was a 3d Action RPG like Kingdom Hearts, had mecha (beyond the Super Robo Suit), and maybe a little more variation in the random terrain generation, it would be the Perfect Game.

Anyway, that's off the topic of your writing. To be honest, DSKS didn't really grab me the first time arund, so I don't have much to say about it, just that I think you'd be better off sticking with the current story to avoid losing momentum. I don't know what you're using for a timeline of events - the only one I recall had things mixed around like it was broadcast in Suzemiya Order - but if you take them one at a time, make some notes as you watch and then expand them into some rough segments/a rough draft in the rest of that day's writing time it might be a while before you had another release-worthy (or might not, once you get going, who knows?) but you'll be in good shape to kick the whole thing into shape once you've gone through them in a couple of weeks, and won't have let your ideas about Garrick and his travels stagnate.

I know I'm hardly in a position to talk about how to write quickly, but during the only times that I was churning out a thousand words or so a day on Bubblegum Disaster, this was my process, though I was taking it by scenes rather than full episodes.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Black Aeronaut]

ClassicDrogn wrote:

---

You've finished the TM arc of Being You, then? I apologise for falling behind (becasue I like to give commentary to encourage fics I like) but I was occupied with some home repairs and now got Distracted (with a capital Disgaea) coming out of that, due to having started Disgaea 2 fresh while waiting for the guy at the parts outlet to poke through the warehouse and come back to the sales desk. Curse those addictive video game designers, curse them with 300 Felonies, a lv300 Mentor and a lv300 Broker!

If it was a 3d Action RPG like Kingdom Hearts, had mecha (beyond the Super Robo Suit), and maybe a little more variation in the random terrain generation, it would be the Perfect Game.

Ah, so that's what happened to you!  I saw the clues on other parts of the board, but I never really put it together in my head.
And yes, the Tenchi Muyo arc is pretty much done.  All there's left, really is the tweaking.  Granted, there's also going to be the myriad of side stories to come, as well as the bits where we look back and see what everyone 'back home' is up to while Garrick is away.  There's going to be quite a few stories to tell, but they're not going to come all at once.  I'll take my time with it.

ClassicDrogn wrote:

---

Anyway, that's off the topic of your writing. To be honest, DSKS didn't
really grab me the first time arund, so I don't have much to say about
it, just that I think you'd be better off sticking with the current
story to avoid losing momentum.

Hmmmmm....

ClassicDrogn wrote:

---

I don't know what you're using for a
timeline of events - the only one I recall had things mixed around like
it was broadcast in Suzemiya Order - but if you take them one at a time,
make some notes as you watch and then expand them into some rough
segments/a rough draft in the rest of that day's writing time it might
be a while before you had another release-worthy (or might not, once you
get going, who knows?) but you'll be in good shape to kick the whole
thing into shape once you've gone through them in a couple of weeks, and
won't have let your ideas about Garrick and his travels stagnate.

I have no real intention of permitting Garrick's story to stagnate.  But the problem is that DSKS is still something that is very near and dear to my heart.  I just never really had... well, the skills needed to produce something of that magnitude.  While I'll try not to, I know for certain that I'll get bogged down at points.  This is where it'll be good to have another project to turn to.  Besides, I said before that I had no intention of abandoning DSKS, and I still don't.
As for the presentation of DSKS coming off as being Suzumiya-esque...
I apologize for that.  What I should have done then (and, I realize now, I should have done with BYiS) is to have a dedicated story-thread to keep it all in one place and help prevent it from hitting that 300-post limit like the BYiS thread did, and keep all the conversation concerning the story in another thread.
It's too late for me to do this now with BYiS, but I'll talk with Bob and see if he can permit that for BYiC and the DSKS Reboot.

ClassicDrogn wrote:

---

I know I'm hardly in a position to talk about how to write quickly, but
during the only times that I was churning out a thousand words or so a
day on Bubblegum Disaster, this was my process, though I was taking it
by scenes rather than full episodes.

This is pretty much what I had been doing in Being You is Suffering.  I had a general idea of where I wanted to go with things, and I simply took it one story arc at a time, going scene by scene.  Sure, there were times I skipped ahead a bit, but that was mainly because I was stuck at a particularly tough spot.  But eventually, I would get it sorted out and fill in all the intervening segments.  I have to admit, this has worked out very well for me, and I think it will work out just as well in DSKS.

[classicdrogn]

I wasn't talking about your fic as being Suzumiya-ish, but rather the episode airing order of MLP;FIM - the timeline I saw that went off season and story cues was a real scattershot, like watching MoHS in the order Haruhi says during the "next episode" blurbs.

Found it:


So, that would be 1, 2, 8, 6, 5, 9, 3, 7, 21, 4, 15, 12, 14, 10, 13, 19, 22, 17, 16, 24, 11, 23, 25, 26, 18

... and there's assertions that parts of s2 and s3 should go in there as well!

text version
http://radiantvoid.deviantart.com/art/F ... -294350743

brief discussion
http://reddit.com//r/mylittlepony/comments/1ro4qq/

in detail
http://mlpfanart.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_chronologies
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Black Aeronaut]

..... oookayyy... Not that I'm not unhappy about this (Really, it does save me a bit of work!) but why not drop it in the BYiC thread? I mean, I honestly do understand your concern about BYiC stagnating - it's one of mine as well.

Anyhow, I'll go ahead and quote that into the appropriate thread. and then get started on re-watching season one tonight.

---

More on topic...
I had something of an epiphany the other day and I'd like to share with you the train of the that led to it.
First off...  I got to thinking, "Should I just drop all the pretenses and just say that Zeke is an SI?"  Really, Being You is Suffering has worked out remarkably well for me, so why not?  As for how, I'll just use the same method used in Dreaming of Sunshine where the SI gets reincarnated into their role.  The only difference is that Zeke won't have any memories of his past life.
As for why?  Well... I think it would be a little cliched to say this was an act of ROB.  Instead, I'd like for there to be a well defined reason for all this to come out at some point in time.
So I thought about it, and then it hit me.
This universe I've been working on is Raven's Playground, where he has taken all his favorite bits and pieces from other universes, along with their accompanying bad pieces, and mashed them all together into a magnificent whole.  This... is his masterpiece.
And I figure that fits, right?  Except that to have Raven throwing Zeke in there like throwing a kaiju robot into your city in SimCity is still a tad too much.  While Raven appreciates chaos, he also likes the order to balance it out.
So, I then thought about that corrupted god we talked about here.  And then I got to thinking that it would be a little more interesting if we had another God that simply hates Raven's gus on general principal, and somehow got into Raven's Universe and began fucking things up in general.  He's been worried sick that this one God is going to overwhelm all the wonderful heroic souls he's 'copied' over since they'll have their own Big Bads to handle as it is.  And he can't get involved directly because that might escalate too quickly... and this is exactly what the pother god wants.
So, he brings in someone from the outside.  Someone that could use another chance.  Someone that has potential.  And someone without his own godly battles to fight.
Thoughts?

[classicdrogn]

Well, this is where it came up, mainly. WRT the more on topic part - it sounds a bit like the backstory scene of Twoflower's Slayers Trilogy fics. To paraphrase:

A golden-haired little girl sang happily, looking down into the project She'd just finished. One of the boys wandered over, and She held it out proudly for him to see. "Look at my butterflies!" She said. Indeed, the terrarium was populated by tiny, short-lived creatures, flitting around and doing their own thing.

"Laaaame..." He complained, poking at it to make them react. He dropped in an altogether different sort of bug, and watched it catch and pull the wings off of one of the colorful little ones with much more interest. "See, now it's much cooler!"

"Meanie! Get away from my butterflies!" She yelled, kicking the boy in the shin. "Now how am I supposed to get that out without breaking everything?"

Note, it's now fifteen years since I read these, so this is apt to be a very loose rendition.

http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/Slayers_Trilogy

I'm not saying this is any kind of bad thing, just that it's an example to either intentionally reference or to intentionally avoid making a reference to. I think that as a framing device it works fairly well, in fact.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Black Aeronaut]

Heh. Cool. Glad to know I'm on to something good here.

*Reads ATT article* Original flavor, huh? With so many different elements at play here I can only take that so far. At the very least I can try to make sure I'm doing justice to the characters.

That said... Rei's gonna be just a bit more tsundere this time around... or at least in total denial for a bit longer. It'll be all the funnier when Lum comes along, Rei gets angry about it, and Zeke points out, "But you said you didn't like me like that. Why are you not being honest with yourself?" At which point she goes thermonuclear.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, taking a stab at writing this. Personally, I feel it's a much better introduction. I'm trying to keep the bits of backstory relevant to what's happening and this is making it run much more smoothly. However, there is one thing that is anything but smooth...

[Black Aeronaut]

Seriously, I don't know if it was the timing or what, but when I post something someone eventually comments on it, even if it takes a week to do so.
Anyhow, this next bit is where we will see some of the different direction I'm trying to go with this.  Rei is a little more like herself from the manga, but I don't think that characterization is gonna hold up too well when confronted with a personality like this one.  She is going to be forced into a situation where she'll have little choice but to have a good long look in the mirror and decide if she likes what she sees.
Note that I'm borrowing a bit from the alternate version I tried out here.  I apologize if it seems a bit angsty, but don't worry.  We won't be going down that path much.

[robkelk]

I always had the sense that I was being watched, but whenever I turned to look there was no one to be found.

All he could see was himself in the mirror?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

It won't become clear immediately, but Rei was surreptitiously watching him. When she gets outed she will immediately claim that she was making sure that Zeke was doing as he was supposed to and not causing trouble.

[robkelk]

Not Belldandy, then...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

Sorry, no Belldandy yet.  She'll show up eventually, though, once we start getting past 'super-powered aliens' and closer to 'gods and monsters' territory.
What I'm really curious about is what people think of what I've been doing with Zeke here.  Technically, he's going to be an SI, but a lot of his memories are repressed.  The dream on the airliner is not the source of his scars (the fact that he was the one driving would be a clue)... and it's only the tip of the iceberg.
In the meantime, have a little more to chew on.

[Bob Schroeck]

Heh. So far so good, BA. I loved the first incarnation of this story, and I'm liking how round 2 is shaping up.

A few small things I spotted in this post, though:

two wings in and L-shaped configuration

That should be "an L-shaped".

soto voiced.

Two "t"s in "sotto".

bigotted people

One "t" in "bigoted". This is probably where the "t" from "sotto" got to.

At first they seemed so deriding

"Derisive" would probably the better choice, grammatically, but is that really the word you want, either way? "Deriding" and "derisive" both require active communication -- speech or writing. Maybe what you mean is "contemptuous"?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

As usual, I'm glad to know you like where this is going, Bob.
I am curious, though... if there is one aspect of the original version you'd like me to keep, what would that be?

As for my choice in words... Well, I never really knew about that, but regardless I've always thought of body language as a form of communication anyhow. Perhaps this instead?

I blinked at the sudden transformation the class went through. At first they seemed so derisive in how they stared at me. 'Contemptuous' might be a better word for it, but by Raven's feathered nutsack I swear you can communicate unbridled derision with just a glance if you try hard enough. As for the students sudden change in behavior... Needless to say, I was caught by surprise.

How's that?  As a bonus, it adds a bit of color, too.

[Bob Schroeck]

Works for me -- and yeah, it definitely adds color and flavor.

As for what from the original I'd like to see you keep... huh. Let me go back and reread it, and I'll let you know.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

BA -- I'm still rereading, in between other tasks, and I am surprised at what I forgot. Among what I now recall liking -- Kubiac, and potentially a Kubiac/Makoto match. That's something I'd like to see preserved in this version -- unless you are planning on stripping out extraneous crossover elements.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh, not at all Bob! I am extremely fond of the Meat Miracle that is Kubiak and how cute a pairing between him and Makoto would be.

The Kube is going to be in another class - Since he would naturally be in the Academic Track he'll actually be sharing a class with Mizuno Ami... and Kaname Chidori. Yes, Sosuke is already there. Yes, things are going to get explodey very quickly.

Now, it just makes sense to me that Kaname would be in Juban, because that particular part of Tokyo is where a lot of foreign nationals that work in their respective embassies hang their hats. Since her father works in the UN, she would naturally be provided an apartment in that area where there would undoubtedly be overlapping layers of security. Unfortunately, MITHRIL being there is gonna complicate things a tad... especially when the Cardians start showing up.

[Black Aeronaut]

In the middle of moving - things have been utterly crazy here!

Here, have some fun with this. I gotta go do more packing!  Proper formatting thanks to Google Docs. 

[Bob Schroeck]

Ha!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Black Aeronaut]

Heh-heh. Glad you like. Gonna try to include some foodie fodder here and there. Thank the foodie culture here in San Antonio - it's getting ridiculous here, especially with the mobile kitchens. We got one going around town that is a converted ambulance - Taco Emergency I think they're called. Another one is a trailer with huge smoker hanging out the back end. To make it funny, the smoker's firebox has the following legend on it: "THIS MACHINE KILLS FAST FOOD." Honestly, you guys have to visit some time. Cannot make some of this shit up.

Anyhow, if the rambling isn't enough of a hint, I am tired as all hell from keeping really odd hours and doing so much lifting, moving, and driving. I am BUSHED.

But nonetheless, I did have a bit more material written. Just don't expect much more anytime real soon.

Just a heads up, though, there is a whole bunch of exposition on Zeke's part here. It's the obligatory life-story scene, but don't think that's gonna be all there is to it. There's still quite a bit Zeke is leaving out, and with good reason, too. After all, the whole past-life thing is just so unbelievable, right? Right? 

[Black Aeronaut]

So, nothing to say about the previous part?  I guess it is the Holidays, after all.
In that case I won't expect any commentary for this anytime soon.

[robkelk]

If Rei's gone bye-bye, you're not supposed to go along! Are you?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Black Aeronaut]

It's more like she just had a sudden slip down into the rabbit hole and now he's gotta fish her out before certain deities take notice. Not that Raven is all that bad of a fellow... once you get to know him... but he can still be a first-class ass-hole, as are most chaotic-aligned gods.

There's also the off-hand chance something else out there might notice and think that her soul would make for a nice morsel... or an interesting plaything. Granted, these beings are relatively few and far between in this time-frame, but they had a sort of 'golden age' in the wake of the collapse of the Silver Millennium Empire. Of course, this is not to say that you won't find one or two around if you know which rocks to turn over.

Anyhow, Tsjoat feels I'm moving too fast here. What do you think?

[robkelk]

My opinion is coloured by the knowing what I've read of the first try, but I think you're going at a decent pace. You're referencing the various tropes that you're using without dwelling on them - this is something I like.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012