Story Update: New Sapling Preview

Happy holidays from Vouiv-review! I’m happy to announce that Cinq du Soleil: Nouveau has progressed up to Chapter 1 in 2022, just as I had hoped!

For one thing, it has an 11-page Prologue instead of going straight into Chapter 1, a vital part of my plan to make the story more explanation-based than its come-up-with-everything-as-I-go predecessor. This might beg the question, “Why not publicize the Prologue sooner so that the public wouldn’t have to wait 20-ish months for a follow-up to the March 2021 Monthly Musing?” Well, for starters, I didn’t expect for Chapter 1 to take so much effort, let alone wind up a whopping 162 pages long. (That’s about half my current progress on the original Cinq du Soleil.*) Second of all, when I got to Interlude 1-7, I noticed that I had at first failed to realize that Roissy Airport was not outside of Paris, so I’m glad in retrospect that I didn’t embarrass myself by putting it out too hastily. (Admittedly, the cultural aspect of French class is the only thing I ever really struggled with. Long live Wikipedia, eh?)
*henceforth CdS:A, with the ‘A’ standing for “Ancien” (antonym of “Nouveau”)

Moving on, based on the light novels that I’ve read, I felt inclined to start splitting my Chapters into Parts, starting with one to give a feel for the curriculum, one for each member of Cinq du Soleil, and one dedicated to the advent of the troupe. I mean, CdS:A Chapter 13 is split into parts (one for each heroine), but I’m talking about normalizing the structure rather than making it occasional. Besides, Chapters in CdS:A typically range from 10-20 pages and peak at about 35 (in LibreOffice Writer), and considering Parts 1-3 of CdS:N Chapter 1 all fell within the typical range, I figured that the subsequent parts would too. This did not come to pass in the end; instead, Parts 4-7 all fall within the 20-30 page range, with a zenith of 30 and a nadir of 24, hence my earlier remark about the grand total Chapter length. Just goes to show that I’m not fond of constraining Chapters or Parts to particular lengths, primarily because all the wordsmithing I dedicate to minimizing the repetitiveness of my writing is already enough of a challenge as it is. (To give an idea, Part 7 felt like a breeze to write compared to Parts 3-6, perhaps also partly because it was easier to plan ahead for Part 7.) But, in reality, all this rambling about Chapter/Part length stems from my questioning the page length discrepancies, which perhaps in this case can be addressed with a bit of analysis. (Not yet, though, because I don’t want to spoil too much before I link the document.)

Another notable development since March ’21 is that I changed the name of the Métal, originally Magnus, because I wanted to avoid any resemblance to the Kid Icarus character. It first changed to Mark when I started Part 6, but I promptly found it too generic and figured it would be more fun to name him Tobias so that he could be nicknamed Toby on a case-by-case basis, namely close friends (including his sister) and immutably stubborn acquaintances. Part of the reasoning behind this nomenclature, both previous and current, is that I wanted the protagonists’ names to sound mostly different from each other; this took my mind in a Latin direction at first, but then I shifted to biblical for no particular reason. Also in part, the protagonists’ first initials originally spelled out GAMES (Guy, Aka, Magnus/Mark, Ella, Sumire) or MAGES, but now they spell out GATES or STAGE. (Just a bit of trivia that sometimes surfaces in my mind.)

I think that about covers it for the information I can give while keeping spoilers to a minimum. So, without further ado, here is what I would like to call my Christmas present to the public!
(I typically don’t post to this blog until the end of the month, but the document has been finished for about four days, so I figured, “Why not make this a special occasion for the holidays?”)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CBa8EmsxV6zyRSvpqMiJPcGEI5IanQLy/view?usp=sharing

Now, it’s best to not read beyond this point of the blog post until after reading the Prologue and Chapter 1, linked above. Let no one say I didn’t warn them.

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On the subject of analyzing CdS:N Part lengths, it stands to reason that Guy Dupont has the most pages dedicated to him (33 = 18 + 15, the collective total of Parts 1 and 2, the latter having fewer pages because of the reduced worldbuilding and other lore), because of all the details in the single-element curriculum that were omitted in Parts 3-6 for the sake of brevity. Second to that obvious factor is the clique size of each protagonist. Aka Mitsurugi, the protagonist corresponding to the merely 19-page Part 3, was one of only three. Tobias Armstrong, one of four like Guy, wound up with a 24-page Part 6. Sumire Ohzora and five other Eaux starred in a 29-page Part 5, placing third among the protagonists. Ella Armstrong, the runner-up of the 30-page Part 4, technically started out in a clique of only three, but a rivalry between her and a particular other Terre (upon whom I will elaborate later) escalated to involve the entire class of inaugural Terres (but, obviously, only a handful are mentioned in particular) and become what I see as the most eventful sub-story in Chapter 1. As for Part 7, it came between Tobias and Sumire with 25 pages, because even though it lasted less than a day, it involved a vast multitude of characters and has the second-longest interlude so far. (Yes, interludes are included in the page lengths.)
(I won’t bother giving CdS:A Chapters the same treatment, at least not for this post.)

Now to clarify the “other Terre.” Aka, Ao, and Midori are part of a series of color-based characters influenced by the clan Cinqueleur from Final Fantasy Tactics A2. (In the French translation, its members are named after Japanese colors: Aka, Ao, Midori, Shiro, and Kuro.) Beyond the inspired five are the Chroma Rangers, among whom only Ki Kotegawa (formerly Kagayama) has been featured in any of Chapters 1-13 of CdS:A. The other four—Murasaki Sakimori, Daidai Shinryuu, Kasshoku Takai, and Tankoshoku Shiba (formerly Aragi)—I planned to introduce in Chapter 15, but that chapter is the biggest uphill climb in CdS:A history, not to mention one of the main reasons for my transition to CdS:N. (Shiro and Kuro also have different last names, Kuzehashi and Shibushi (as opposed to Konoe and Shoga), which are notable in each starting with the same syllable as their partner’s first name.) However, when I came up with the plot for CdS:N, I figured that the ten color-based characters would make the perfect foundation for the new Solluna, hence their way earlier introduction in the Prologue. (Side note: I made sure to clarify their sizes early on, and Aka is a gremlin instead of an average-sized woman.) Since Taiyoh is where Chapter 1 takes place, the five unfortunately left in the dark (so to speak) were Tankoshoku, Midori, Daidai, Ao, and Kuro. As for the other five, with Aka obviously being a protagonist, Murasaki turned out to be a tertiary ally, Ki a deuteragonist, Kasshoku (the “other Terre”) an archrival, and Shiro the same as Murasaki.

I also figured that the Asahina sisters and mother from CdS:A could use a CdS:N counterpart with a Tsuki counterpart, hence the Tailors Taylor and the Jordan Army. The parents, Taylor Taylor and Jordan Jordan, have names that I’ve seen as first and last alike (e.g., Taylor Swift, Chuck Taylor, Jordan Feliz, Michael Jordan), but with both positions filled by the same name. This gimmick stems from my vague memory of a Fairly Oddparents character named Britney Britney, and I originally had a Jordan Jordan as one of the thirty-two filler names in the 64-entrant tournament planned for CdS:A (the basis of Chapters 15-20), but I intend for the Tailors Taylor and the Jordan Army to be much more prominent. (It’s a shame that the latter group name does not work as well as the former.) As for the children, they are like the Chief Elementals in being named for some aspect of their affinity: Bert sounds like “burn,” James sounds like “Thames,” Laura sounds like “laurel” (a bit of a stretch), Pete is derived Peter meaning “rock,” Julia is from “jewel,” Edith sounds like “eat it” (as made evident by a certain chapter of Captain Underpants), Rudy has a sound like “root” in it, (I’m not sure about the next three) Lyra sounds like “wire,” Chelsea sounds like “shall see,” and Lester has a “less” sound in it. Just as in the case of the color-based characters, Taylor Taylor and the Jordan children have yet to be introduced, but they have been mentioned particularly in Part 3 and Interlude 1-5 respectively.
(Aside: My personal favorite name in the story so far is Lucas Rakan, a pair of names that both sound vaguely like the French word “requin” meaning “shark.”)

As another consequence of the focus of Chapter 1 on Taiyoh, the Lunar Brigade has not yet been introduced. I expect Chapter 2 to wind up the same way (but potentially be shorter) and for Chapter 3 to be when the protagonists advance to the Great Wall of Solluna (formerly Solluna Valley), so instead of transitioning directly from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3, I intend to branch out to another side series that will give Tsuki the same treatment given to Taiyoh in Chapters 1 and 2. Lest I reveal too much too soon, all I have left to say regarding future follow-ups is that the plot that I have in mind for Chapter 2 is influenced by Tales of Zestiria.

Speaking of influences, I like talking about them, so how about a few more?

• In the vein of Tobias’s name changes, I also considered changing Ella’s name, specifically because a part of my mind misconstrued it as a fusion of the names Ellis and Edna, which notably belong to characters from Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance and Tales of Zestiria respectively. (best Tales character, by the way) However, as part of the rivalry between Ella and Kasshoku, I had the latter call the former “Devil,” and I can’t think of a more fitting base name for a nickname like that. Just some context for the actual “influence” in this bullet point: This rivalry, while I had originally intended for it to resemble the one between Yozora and Sena from Haganai, turned out closer to the dynamic between Velvet and Eleanor from Tales of Berseria, the more I wrote it out. (best Tales game, by the way) Not to call it a lesser outcome; just putting it out there.
• More of a “reverse influence” if that makes sense, but the number one Eau was originally named Anya Tran, that is until the animated adaptation of SPY x FAMILY popularized the name Anya in a way that I could never have imagined. (Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the anime in question.) From there, she became part of a gimmick that I had come up with, namely female names besides Aka that start and end with ‘a’ (in a similar vein to the CdS:A Asahina family members, whose names all end with “-ri” and are not Kaori*); thus, I changed her first name to Alma.
  *This nomenclature stemmed from Mari, whom I named on a whim. Kaori is one of the CdS:A heroines.
• The tendency of Aka to dress frugally and wear red-striped panties (ever since CdS:A) is inspired by Mea Kurosaki from To LOVE-ru Darkness. (Her dialect, not so much; just a random quirk.) I’ve been reading through the manga on a whim, so I wonder if some other aspects of the influence could rub off; for instance, the playfulness came naturally, but the unusual obsession with being licked has not.

Phew, that’s all I have to babble about for now. I look forward to seeing this story through until I fall into a slump, which hopefully won’t happen in the foreseeable future.

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Story Update: Planting Another Seed (Monthly Musing, March 2021)

When I’m reminded of the manga series Gabriel Dropout, as I was early in the month, it makes me wonder: Why is Satania the fan favorite? Where’s the love for Raphiel? I mean, each character in the main quartet has her fair share of charms, but I personally find Raphiel the most appealing because she’s a big girl, yet not the flaunty type of big, and she is proficient at smiling to conceal her negative emotions (e.g. indignation, emotional pain) and uphold her reputation as one of the top angels in her class. (Also, I identify as a Christian, so I’m a bit biased towards the angels.) Piecing together her lesser popularity with how much the Haganai fanbase hates Yozora (another favorite character of mine), I suspect that such characters are viewed as naught more than bullies. Me, I consider each a necessary evil at worst, if only out of sympathy for the character in question and/or out of spite towards the characters they normally mess with. (In the case of Haganai, my character rankings lie on a spectrum with “cool” on one end and “whiny” on the other. Starting from the “whiny” end, my order of heroines is Maria, Sena, Kobato, Yukimura, Rika, and Yozora. Specific aspects of Yozora that I like are her black hair, no-nonsense attitude, and inner modesty.)

Where did all this come from? Well, on this train of thought, I felt the urge to use creative writing as a means to express my appreciation for the character type in question. I did mention having come up with a new story idea at some point (and heck, I came up with another one since then), but I ultimately discarded both in favor of sticking to the premise of Cinq du Soleil. That said, the current Cinq du Soleil has no room for such a character until too late in the story for my liking, and considering how long it’s been since I started out and how much more media I’ve consumed since then (Remember when Trinity Seven aired?), I sometimes look back and can’t help but regard it the way I regard the 3D series of Pokémon games: as an experimental work. Not that I intend to discard it any time soon, but I want something less along the lines of Trinity Seven: with as even a gender ratio as possible, less plot armor, fewer Deus ex Machina moments, and less blatant inspiration from Japanese media (namely in character nomenclature and arbitrary use of katakana, but not so much on the front of perverted elements). More importantly, I suspect that the story has too many happenings to explain logically except after the fact (if at all) and that most of the characters therein are self-insert and/or lacking in personality.

Based on the above, and to finally disambiguate the title of this blog post, I hereby publicly announce that whenever I resume writing stories as a pastime, I will prioritize an upcoming side story named Cinq du Soleil: Nouveau. (I was tempted at first to discard the “experimental work” (but not the D&D spinoff thereof) and reveal all my planning ahead as a sort of grand finale, but I decided based on the existence of Cells at Work: Black that such measures would not be necessary.) I intend to make this side story a “filtered” version of the original, maintaining most of the lore with a few bits and pieces while addressing the concerns I mentioned earlier. For example:

• The titular troupe (replacement term for “party”) still has a Sumire and an Aka, but their surnames are Ohzora and Mitsurugi respectively. The other members are named Guy Dupont, Ella Armstrong, and Magnus Armstrong. Ella is Magnus’s sister and will be the character to embody the Yozora/Raphiel archetype (leaning more towards Yozora). And hey, now they’re actually “Cinq” without any exceptions.
• As for the Lunar Brigade, Midori Hanamura is unchanged, Ao’s last name is now Yukihiro, Dealer has a new secret name, and the other two members are Lyman Thorpe and Eugène Dupont. The latter is Guy’s brother and similar to Oda Koroi.
• Lastly on the character front, the Chief Elementals of Water, Earth, Flora, and Spirit have new names (and the former two have different genders): Sho, Theresa, Allison, and Spencer.
• As inspired by So I’m a Spider, So What?, I’m considering making educational environments integral to the world of Solluna (and, by consequence, the protagonists), that way I can be more upfront about the mechanics that I previously tended to formulate as I went. This, I feel, will be a key step towards making the story as logical as it can be: putting more “why” and “how” into all the “what.”
• Speaking of doing things as I go, I suspect that my writing style differs from chapter to chapter, considering that my pace has been logarithmic, so I’m hoping that I’ve lived and learned enough by now to show improved consistency.

For the time being, this is all I have to report. Look forward to the follow-up.

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Spinning off of my own dang work (Monthly Musing, July 2020)

From two months ago:

I want to write something related to Dungeons and Dragons, to which I was introduced circa 2019 and took a liking in no time. Whether in the form of a [Cinq du Soleil] spinoff or a from-scratch scenario, it seems like a fun idea that I want to put into practice someday.

After a fair bit of time easing into the former, I found myself having so much fun writing it that I thought I’d make it the topic of this month. Who would’ve thought that a campaign consisting entirely of fictional characters could bring about such passion? The premise is this: Hardy, the Chief Elemental of Metal, introduces Toru to D&D and has him become the DM with Créé and Ariana assisting. The girls of Cinq du Soleil take part as adventurers: Sumire the human cleric, Yaze (Yue’s character) the male stout halfling wizard, Aka the male red dragonborn barbarian, Kaori the wood elf ranger, and Mona (who decides to be married with Yaze) the half-orc fighter.

I present to this blog: Cinq des Donjons et des Dragons. (CdDedD for short, which I pronounce “CD dead.”) As it stands, the adventurers have progressed to level 3 in 73 pages, and to think that’s only scratching the surface… Boy am I excited to take it further. I have shareable copies of Level 1 character sheets (Aka | Kaori | Mona | Sumire | Yaze), but for later levels, I merely mention upgrades once and take notes for my own reference.

Because I couldn’t dedicate much time to this blog post among the writing of CdDedD, my hectic workload, Neptunia, and Xenoblade, I don’t have much else to say. I guess, for one, I like promoting interactivity among the female characters instead of constantly writing out harem-related scenarios.

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Behind the Scenes (Monthly Musing, May 2020)

A week or so after Poké Monday, my elder brother discovered this blog. (Honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier, considering I had already told him my online alias way back when.) I thought at first that I would rue the day that anyone associated my real-life self with a blogger who’s far more open than I could ever be to anyone’s face, yet I quelled whatever regrets I had by reminding myself of real-life moments when I shared occasionally questionable writing with others (more on that later). I once mentioned on the sly that I’m hard on myself, and there’s no denying this fact (The saying, “You’re your own worst critic,” rings true here), yet somehow, every time I’ve shared my writing with people I know, they seem to like it despite everything. With that in mind, I figured I’d provide more detail than ever before about my path as an ordinary guy who writes for fun, starting by reminiscing about the past.

The first time I remember writing anything of significance was in second grade, when I wrote an outlandish fantasy story inspired by electronic media (just the sort that I have the most fun writing—I recall that this one in particular involved Ganondorf and some purple dinosaur that I’m pretty sure wasn’t Barney) that I believe was my lifeline for all the times I played hooky. (I’ve been quite the slacker since then, not gonna lie, although I had renewed my motivation to attend classes by third grade.) In third and fourth grade, thanks to comic strips like Garfield and novelty books like Captain Underpants, I became inspired to write comics of my own. (I was also partly inspired by Flash animations such as Stick Wars, which led me to come up with Stick Trek, even though I knew nothing about Star Trek at the time. The fun in that particular experiment was drawing stick figures that could pose to spell out the letters of the title.) In fifth grade, as part of learning how to use computers, I was given a freeform writing assignment, whereupon I unleashed my fantasies once again (this time with the concept of Luigi’s Mansion in mind). While it would be interesting to see such works alive to this day, I care not to search for them, i.e. wouldn’t mind if they were all lost in time.

In my middle and high school years, I happened to have a hand-me-down laptop with Windows 98 and the corresponding version of Microsoft Word, which ended up becoming my recreational documenting machine of the time. At school, I would sometimes draw for fun, although I gave up the hobby because my drawing was never anything to write home about (or to draw home about, if you will) and I found myself caring more about video game mechanics than appearances. That aside, whatever I wrote on the craptop was simply a series of writing experiments; in other words, now that maggots have lived in it and it even broke down at some point, whatever I wrote on there is now lost…except for one particular story.

Yes, I have been hiding a story from this blog. Dun dun dun, big shocker, and all that. It is the first story I’ve ever written entirely in French (and, to be honest, probably the last; je préfère écrire en ma langue natale : anglais), so—on a whim—I shared it with my high school French teacher and the one (female) classmate I had in AP. Even though I boldly—in my nature as a young man—chose to make the protagonist female and have her streaking in freaking Chapter 1, somehow it was well received by the audience, and I learned through my whimsy that my classmate also happened to like fantasy stories. I was only able to share five chapters (whereas it was intended to last at least seven chapters) in the time I had, and…to be honest, I have made no effort to continue in any of the eight years thereafter. That said, on another whim, I present through this blog: Chasseur de Démons (translation: Demon Hunter). Its chapters are shorter than those of Cinq du Soleil (which, despite being titled in the same language, is primarily English), with the five chapters occupying a mere 46 pages. (CdS, by comparison, has 14 complete chapters boasting 333 pages total. There’s a bit of difference in formatting and such, but still.) My main inspirations in writing CdD are French translations of games I’ve played, especially Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and including but not limited to The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Super Mario Galaxy, and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock.

And now we arrive at the present. I consider Cinq du Soleil to be my primary project and LUMP (Lana’s Unprecedented Mashup Pilgrimage) to be secondary. I’ve had a few other ideas, but not so much motivation to publicize them (let alone to write a full chapter thereof).

• In the Mondaiji series, the golem Deen only says its name, leading me to associate it with Pokémon. (I wouldn’t be surprised if anyone else made this association, hence part of the lack of motivation.) This made me think, “What if the two were to cross paths?” And I came up with…not much, but something. (Got writer’s block midway through Chapter 1, before I started writing LUMP.)
• A more recent idea I had is crossing Neptunia and Bofuri. Sally from the latter resembles IF from the former, the beginning of Neptunia Re;Birth 3 featured the gang playing a VR game, and I figured it’d be interesting to translate the stats of the Neptunia cast into New World Online (I mean, every stat in the latter exists in the former), hence the idea. Due to the recency thereof, I only have brainstorming to show for it.
• Crossover rubbish aside, I want to write something related to Dungeons and Dragons, to which I was introduced circa 2019 and took a liking in no time. Whether in the form of a CdS spinoff or a from-scratch scenario, it seems like a fun idea that I want to put into practice someday. (I had a little something at some point, but I made a critical mistake with the mechanics and didn’t like how it turned out, so I discarded it.)

To finish my rambling, I would like to not only extend a reminder that the next segment of Cinq du Soleil is—in fact—in the works, but prove it in the form of a Chapter 14 preview. It’s just that I intend for the next segment to encompass the entirety of the arc at hand, and said arc is turning out more ambitious than I expected. Between what I’ve written so far of Chapter 15/20 and the extent to which I’ve been planning ahead, I’d say I’m only halfway through that chapter alone. The most stymieing part of it is giving appearances to the many new characters I have in mind.

While I’m at it, I might as well add my progress on LUMP part 2 to the mix. (Unsurprisingly got writer’s block here too.)

Long story short, having my blog discovered by someone I know (closely, in fact) has caused me to dig into my past and unearth some of the talents that I’ve been burying. (Burying talents is a natural tendency of mine, yet it goes against a parable of the New Testament, so…yeah.) Still, despite everything I’ve written so far (both story-wise and blog-wise), don’t expect much progress from here on, especially since I’ll be occupied with Neptunia and Xenoblade starting tomorrow.

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

The story continues (Monthly Musing, Feb 2019)

Previously on Vouiv-review:

• Spontaneous Saturday 11/7/15: My own fantasy story
• Fantasy story follow-up (Whimsical “Weekend” #13)

And now…it’s been more than a year and a half. You could say my pace has slowed threefold and not be wrong. This and that have been happening: writer’s block, adult responsibilities, other entertainment, etc. etc. But I have now succeeded in finding inspiration enough to complete the third part, i.e. up to Chapter 13.

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12/31/19 EDIT: As mentioned in the Monthly Musing, one link fits all.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iDkskAeOkOf58vw5R4XIq7vuFCy8HOpi

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Between the new chapter set and the previous, I am becoming increasingly aware of how much harder the story is to construct the more it develops. The notable difficulty is keeping things fresh while staying consistent with prior elements, or possibly tying up loose ends without being repetitive. And if you recall when I mentioned in my second post how difficult it was to write Chapter 8, the same sort of thing happened with Chapter 13 (and, to a lesser extent, Chapter 12) due to the abundance of casual events and setting the stage for the obligatory [tournament] arc coming up in the next chapter set. (It’s hinted at in Chapter 9, but I’ll hide it just in case.)

By the way, if Chapter 13 seems rushed, that’s because it kinda is. Among the characters, concepts, and tying up loose ends, there was so much to fit in that I suddenly had less room for fully planning and explaining the five days compressed into the one chapter, by which the part lengths turned out rather inconsistent. It was all for the sake of not making the part document too long, using the previous part as a maximum.

I don’t feel inclined to go into too much further detail here, so I’ll just list the number of pages per chapter. There are bits of white text in here, so use caution when highlighting.

• Introductory content: 7
• Chapter 1: 11
• Chapter 2: 15
• Chapter 3: 15
• Chapter 4: 24 including 4.5
• Chapter 5: 13
• Chapter 6: 14
• Chapter 7: 20
• Chapter 8: 35 including 8.5 and alchemy combinations
• Chapter 9: 26
• Chapter 10: 20
• Chapter 11: 15
• Chapter 12: 16 including Hibari’s “information sheet”
• Chapter 13: 40 (11-page part 1, 8-page part 2, 10-page part 3, 6-page part 4, and 5-page part 5)

Chapter sets in respective order have 87, 101, and 101 pages (including the table of contents).

 

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Brain Food #2 (Whimsical Weekend #31)

 The space between this Brain Food and the first should give an idea of how spaced out the series entries are going to be.

To reiterate, the premise of Brain Food is that I will ask myself a silly question on my mind and, of course, answer it.

The question of the weekend is…

What is the most ambitious crossover in the expanse of my imagination?

(I did say the questions were silly.)

Regarding that. From my experience, I must hypothesize that Pokémon is the video game series most rich in crossover-worthy content, so the core of the crossover should be no surprise whatsoever.

The crossover in question shall take the form of a fanfiction that I call LUMP: Lana’s Unprecedented Mashup Pilgrimage. The plot is based on the events of Pokémon (Ultra) Sun and Moon, except Lana is the protagonist (on account of being best girl) and must face a slew of characters from other series that have caught my fancy. Series involved primarily include Unlimited Fafnir, Mondaiji, Puyo Puyo Tetris, Phoenotopia, and Hyperdimension Neptunia.

For the time being, only Part 0 (prologue) and Part 0.5 (outline) are available for public viewing. It’s not much, but I trust that it serves as a sufficient teaser of this WIP.

(Disclaimer: Depending on the whimsy of the future, progress may be impeded and/or outright stopped.)

June 2019 edit: Part 1 (Melemele) is now available.

 

 À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Fantasy story follow-up (Whimsical “Weekend” #13)

 Yo.

It’s been more than half a year since I first talked about that one fantasy harem series (Cinq du Soleil) that I’ve been working on in my spare time. And somehow, over the past week or so, it’s been on my mind more than anything else I’ve been doing lately.

I mean, I said at one point that I wasn’t going to do a follow-up until I finished the story, but that was before I realized a vital limitation of Google Docs: As the number of pages in a document increases beyond 100, the document also becomes increasingly laggy. I went up to Chapter 7 (if I recall correctly) on a single document, but it was when I finally got fed up with the lag that I decided to start splitting the chapters into groups to be placed in separate documents.

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12/31/19 EDIT: At the time of writing, I had just finished up to Chapter 9. However, as mentioned in my Monthly Musing, I now have one link for all chapters.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iDkskAeOkOf58vw5R4XIq7vuFCy8HOpi

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I don’t have as much to say at this point as I did in the introductory post, but…

• Since completing Chapter 1, I’ve had the tendency to end chapters only when the main characters sleep. I’ve also desired to add more concepts and characters to the story, which basically led to the later chapters getting longer. To put that into perspective, the first document is 87 pages long, while the second document is 101 pages long.
  • Heck, when I first wrote Chapter 9, I went all out on it. I recall Chapters 6-9 collectively being over 110 pages excluding interludes, and Chapter 9 alone accounted for a whopping 42 of those pages. It didn’t take long for me to split the chapter into two pieces: the first one (Chapter 9) being 25 pages, and the second (Chapter 10) being 17 pages.
• I decided to add an “Interlude” section to the end of every chapter. This idea came about when I realized, before the information updates of Chapter 2, that there was a short aside conversation between Yue and Toru (which was, at the time, the first three lines of the current interlude of that chapter), and I hadn’t really considered making a similar thing for other chapters. Only sometimes (like the case of the interlude before I implemented interludes) do the interludes clarify otherwise unknown or incomprehensible aspects of the plot, but others of times they’re just purely for the heck of it.
• In a similar vein to the “Information updates” sections, I recently decided that I would initiate later chapter documents with earlier chapter summaries (for instance, the 6-9 document has a summary for Chapters 1-5).
  12/31/19 EDIT: This practice is obsolete now that every chapter is in a single document.
• The next point is not only a spoiler of Cinq du Soleil Chapter 5, but also of Volume 12 of the Mondaiji light novel, so I shall hide it with white text in brackets. Highlight at your own risk. [In Cinq du Soleil, I included a plot twist that Dealer is Yue’s thought-to-be-dead sister (Diana Panishi). In the Mondaiji light novel, it is revealed that the character Faceless is Asuka’s thought-to-be-dead sister (Ayato Kudō). (I mean, Faceless isn’t portrayed as masculine, but that’s beside the point.) The thing is, though, I wrote that Dealer was Yue’s sister before I read that Faceless was Asuka’s sister, even though Mondaiji Volume 12 was published before I even started Cinq du Soleil. Coincidence? I think so.]
• Dealer’s Treasure name was changed from “Trump” to “Lucky Draw”, to avoid confusion with the current President of the United States. I came up with the initial name more than two years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I decided to change the name.
• I had to make another shoutout to good ol’ Kili Surtr Muspelheim. In Chapter 7, Will, the Chief Elemental of Spirit, performs magic attacks by snapping his fingers, like how Kili does in the Fafnir anime.
• I might have to say that Chapter 8 has been the hardest to write so far, particularly the beach visit and the aftermath thereof. It might be because I’m the type to care more about game-like concepts and plot points than how the characters interact from a casual standpoint.
• It’s never like I’m totally finished with the chapters I’ve already done. Sometimes I can’t help scrutinizing my metaphorical footprints and, if something seems even a bit off, correct it accordingly.

I think that’s all I have to say for now. I’ve definitely been having fun with this story as I intended to, even if I struggle to find inspiration from time to time. As for the next set of chapters, I’ve gone up to 12 and done a tiny bit of 13 (currently on page 63 of the next document), although I’m thinking there are a few revisions to be made there, and I can’t make any promises regarding how close exactly I am to declaring that set as completed.

Speaking of not making promises, I wonder how long I’ll continue the story as a whole…

 À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

Spontaneous Saturday 11/7/15: My own fantasy story

Even though I have no desire to take up writing as a profession, I have a secret hobby of writing fantasy stories. It’s been a thing since…well, as long as I can remember, honestly. These stories, much like this blog, are a great outlet for me to dump my thoughts, so they mostly draw inspiration from video games, anime, or other media that I consume.

Right now, I am working on one in particular, titled Cinq du Soleil, which is a sort of pervy fantasy harem story with magical elements. I can’t guarantee it’s good, though, because I’m hard on myself because, again, I’m not a professional writer, and I’ve been single my whole life (which I feel says something about my perception of women). That said, if you wish to see my progress on this story, click the link below:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iDkskAeOkOf58vw5R4XIq7vuFCy8HOpi

The rest of this post will explain in detail any background information surrounding the creation of this story; i.e., the untitled precursor concept (for lack of a better term) and any other inspirations and/or explanations behind my ideas.

Precursor

The precursor to this story used to be kept on a text document titled “Brainstorming lewd crud” that is no longer in my possession today, so chances are I may not remember everything about it.

Chiefly inspired by the anime Trinity Seven, the original idea involved two male protagonists and five female (making seven total). The male protagonists were Toru Koroi and Ao Mirakane (the latter of whom is now an antagonist), and the five females were about the same as they are, except Sumire’s last name was Dajira before I changed it to Miyazaki, and Yue Panishi used to be named Panishi Yuu.

Another similarity between the precursor and the original is that it involved five antagonists, granted there are some slight inconsistencies—in Ao’s place was a glasses girl (like Panishi) named Nao some-last-name-I-can’t-remember, Midori’s last name used to be Bolt, and in Dealer’s place was a similar character named Xenon (who was supposed to be female with an alter ego named Sena). Also, I was considering making the L’Ouverture character’s first name Toussaint (with a different last name, of course), but I had no idea how to write that in katakana at the time, and it didn’t occur to me back then to just check the Japanese version of the Wikipedia article of Toussaint L’Ouverture. (I like to provide Japanese writings of most of the names just because.)

Their weapons, however, were somewhat different from how they are now. The glasses worn by the likes of Toru and Panishi used to fire artillery (bullets, missiles, etc.) as opposed to their current purpose of facilitating the use of magic. In addition:

• Aka’s sword, Picante, used to be named Taki, a random name that also serves as an inversion of Ao’s old sword name, Kita.
• Sumire used to have a toy hammer (sort of like that of Amy Rose) named DajiPiko, which was a questionable idea in my mind.
• Kaori’s dual arm blades, Aigu and Grave, used to be Wind and Earth, respectively, before they were converted to pure Wind in light of a radical change in lore explained later.
• Midori’s swords had a different name, but I don’t remember what.
• Xenon… I don’t even know if she even had a weapon.

The characters’ specials were different as well. Sumire’s was some sort of threefold attack (of which I can’t remember the name), Panishi’s was a mass firing of weapons (named Heavy Artillery in the precursor, even adapted to Open Fire in the current rendition before it was replaced with Metal Bind), and Mona’s was a love-based attack (of which I can’t remember the name) that dealt heavy damage to non-allies.

Besides that, the whole thing about elements and spells and Chief Elementals and whatnot was not in the precursor. Instead, the precursor was centered around a bunch of monsters (summoned by Neguro L’Ouverture) that were named using corrupted spellings of French animal/monster names from A to Z, and those whose names were closer to Z were more powerful.

I guess that’s all I have to say about the precursor, except that it wasn’t really a fleshed-out story, just a bunch of “Bits and Pieces,” as I like to call them.

Inspirations/Explanations

• Again, the anime Trinity Seven is the chief inspiration of this story. During the season it was airing, I thought for some reason, “Hey, this inspires me to create my own harem story! I’ll even put seven main characters in it!” Thus, the precursor was conceptualized. (That said, if you are reading this section before or while reading Cinq du Soleil, do not expect the male lead to be much like Arata.)
• The male protagonist duo, as it was in the precursor, was modeled after Tiz and Ringabel in the game Bravely Default.
• Sumire’s first name and appearance (and, to some degree, her personality) are inspired by Sumire Saitou, one of my favorite characters of all time, from the manga K-On! Highschool.
• The name Panishi is a romanization of how a Japanese person would say the English word “punish,” hence her punitive behavior at times. Her precursor name (Panishi Yuu) is supposed to sound like “punish you,” but her current name (Yue Panishi) is a bit more subtle.
• The names Aka, Ao, and Midori are based on Japanese color names: red, blue, and green, respectively.
• Aka’s last name (Fujiyama) meaning “Mt. Fuji” is pure coincidence, I promise. I didn’t intend anything by it; it just came off the top of my head.
• Aka’s sword name, Picante, is Spanish for “spicy,” as a contrast to Ao’s sword name, Gelato, which is Italian for “frozen.”
• Kaori’s last name (Delacroix) comes from that of Eugène Delacroix, which was to me (at the time) just some random name I learned about in 10th grade history. Also, my intention with her was to make her a French speaker, so I had to come up with something French.
• Kaori herself is modeled after Claire Rouge from the anime Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance, and the male lead encounters her in a similar situation (especially so in the precursor, but Kaori’s response to the situation is slightly altered in the current rendition).
• Kaori’s dual arm blades are supposed to resemble those seen in RWBY Volume 2 Episode 12. Their names, Aigu and Grave, are based on the French names of upward and downward accents, respectively. Moreover, Kaori’s special, Circonflex, is based on the accent that is effectively a combination of the two.
• Mona Koroi is modeled after the titular character of the manga Cyclops Shoujo Saipuu in terms of her brocon nature and relatively large size.
• Oda Koroi is named after Oda Nobunaga.
• Nao, who was in the precursor but not in the current rendition, was based on the character Nao Okuda from K-On! Highschool. Thus, she was intended to be associated with Sumire.
• Midori’s weapons, Sativa and Sativus, are named after the feminine and masculine forms (respectively) of a Latin botanical adjective meaning cultivated.
• Neguro’s last name, L’Ouverture, comes from that of Toussaint L’Ouverture. (His dark skin is also part of this connection.) In a similar vein to Delacroix, this name is used as a random French name to signify that he is a French speaker.
• The whole thing in the precursor about one of the antagonists (Xenon) having an alter ego (Sena) was chiefly inspired by Kili Surtr Muspelheim from the anime Juuou Mujin no Fafnir, who became a wolf in sheep’s clothing by the second half of the anime, when she was disguised as Honoka Tachikawa.
• The name Tudi (given to the chief elemental of Water) is honestly a name for lack of a better name: a random name that vaguely sounds like “too deep.”
• Créé is French for “created,” which is based on how the character Créé is artificial.
• As for the title…I’ll describe it using the words of Kaori Delacroix in the story:
  “‘Cinq’ means ‘five,’ which is meant to symbolize that there are five of us girls who each use one element of the Soleil spectrum, of which there are five total. It is also a play on the term ‘Cirque du Soleil,’ which delivers the message that we can put on quite a show. … The ‘five’ part of the name only refers to me, Sumire, Yue, Aka, and Mona.”

I guess that’s it, maybe even too much. Perhaps I may have forgotten something. I will update the post if so.

 

 À la prochaine! (Until next time!)