Games are difficult (and writing is hard)
Wednesday, 13 December 2017 12:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lea_hazelSo there I was, reading a (really excellent) article analyzing Hanako Games' Magical Diary. This game is a blatant and unapologetic piece of interactive Harry Potter fiction, where the player character goes to a school of magic despite coming from a totally human family. I played it a number of times a few years ago and haven't really touched it since.
Anyway, there I was. It got me thinking about game ideas that I had and discarded, whether at the idea phase or after starting work on them. It also got me thinking about ~problematic romances (a word which has itself, somewhat ironically, become problematic). On the whole I prefer romances that are structured from the get-go to be egalitarian, eye-level and on equal footing. Sometimes, though, something sneaks into my writing that I suspect lurks in the back of my mind, wallowing in the residue of every book, movie and game I've ever consumed.
The game I was thinking of had the tentative title The Witch Market and its basic premise was a weird hybrid, which came about from my obsession with Seven Kingdoms, and my long-standing desire for more fantasy with more and weirder fantasy creatures. The player character would have been a human (one demerit in my book, if I were looking at it as a game I was interested in playing and not as a writer/game-maker). They would have been an apprentice magic-user looking for a patron or teacher, in a world in which non-humans have longer lives and access to a lot more innate magic than humans.
In most cases, the potential mentors they could choose from would have been love interests as well. This would put the player character in a situation where their love interest held a massive power differential, on almost every level. Not just magically but institutionally, if they were planning on leaving home and relocating to a foreign country, as a human among non-humans. Age-wise, also, and in terms of life experience. And the teacher/student aspect, which is less troubling outside of a formal schooling environment but still undoubtedly a disparity.
I abandoned this idea for about fifty thousand different reasons, of which the ~problematicness (problematicity?) of the romances was... pretty low on the list. I still wonder, though, how it was that I so easily came up with this idea and stuck with it for so long, developing it so deeply... when it's ostensibly the exact opposite of what I want to see. Is it just because my own wants, when it comes to representative fiction, are so complex and self-contradictory? Especially in comparison to the well-trod path of established tropes. Or because I consumed and absorbed (and continue to absorb) so much more of the latter kind, despite my misgivings?
Not gonna lie, I read a lot of crap that is full loaded with all the tropes I hate. Sometimes because it's amazingly well-written, sometimes just because it's widely available and seemingly inexhaustible. Tropey long-form femslash fanfic, for example, is not a deep well (Book of Love notwithstanding).
Ugh, I dunno. I don't have a good way to end this post. I just have a lot on my mind and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything productive. Whatever.
Anyway, there I was. It got me thinking about game ideas that I had and discarded, whether at the idea phase or after starting work on them. It also got me thinking about ~problematic romances (a word which has itself, somewhat ironically, become problematic). On the whole I prefer romances that are structured from the get-go to be egalitarian, eye-level and on equal footing. Sometimes, though, something sneaks into my writing that I suspect lurks in the back of my mind, wallowing in the residue of every book, movie and game I've ever consumed.
The game I was thinking of had the tentative title The Witch Market and its basic premise was a weird hybrid, which came about from my obsession with Seven Kingdoms, and my long-standing desire for more fantasy with more and weirder fantasy creatures. The player character would have been a human (one demerit in my book, if I were looking at it as a game I was interested in playing and not as a writer/game-maker). They would have been an apprentice magic-user looking for a patron or teacher, in a world in which non-humans have longer lives and access to a lot more innate magic than humans.
In most cases, the potential mentors they could choose from would have been love interests as well. This would put the player character in a situation where their love interest held a massive power differential, on almost every level. Not just magically but institutionally, if they were planning on leaving home and relocating to a foreign country, as a human among non-humans. Age-wise, also, and in terms of life experience. And the teacher/student aspect, which is less troubling outside of a formal schooling environment but still undoubtedly a disparity.
I abandoned this idea for about fifty thousand different reasons, of which the ~problematicness (problematicity?) of the romances was... pretty low on the list. I still wonder, though, how it was that I so easily came up with this idea and stuck with it for so long, developing it so deeply... when it's ostensibly the exact opposite of what I want to see. Is it just because my own wants, when it comes to representative fiction, are so complex and self-contradictory? Especially in comparison to the well-trod path of established tropes. Or because I consumed and absorbed (and continue to absorb) so much more of the latter kind, despite my misgivings?
Not gonna lie, I read a lot of crap that is full loaded with all the tropes I hate. Sometimes because it's amazingly well-written, sometimes just because it's widely available and seemingly inexhaustible. Tropey long-form femslash fanfic, for example, is not a deep well (Book of Love notwithstanding).
Ugh, I dunno. I don't have a good way to end this post. I just have a lot on my mind and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything productive. Whatever.
