Saruh
Well, let's start by remembering that even in a functioning society with the same values, no one thinks the same. There will always be different POVs and ways of processing the shit we've all been through. Even if you were to go through the same shit that another person went through, that would result in a totally different outcome.
Maaan, I mean, I think we can agree, functioning society is a bit of an oxymoron. But I do get what you mean man. We're all different, We all experience things & see the world around us differently. & I agree with that. I guess what I was getting at wasn't "this is how I perceive these things, conform to my ideology", more to just be mindful of more universal axioms. What I mean by that is the areas that are part of our mental hardwiring & / or where we, as a collective species universally or almost universally agree "There's no gray area here or room for context, it's straight up black & white". These axioms need to be accounted for, otherwise it leaves loose threads & gaps that can detract from the story because it pushes the characters more into cliches & less human. I'll elaborate in a moment.
Although every story needs to have a way to connect with the reader/player, let's not forget that this is a work of fiction from a very inexperienced writer, so I thank you for trying to give me some constructive criticism which I'll take into account not only with the continuation of this project but to improve the character development on my future projects, so they don't look so hyperbolic, OK? (See? You even taught me a new word ;D)
Well that's my goal here. As a more seasoned writer myself, I want to pass on what I learned because I see a lot of potential in your abilities & want to help you improve your craft. You're welcome for the feedback, I'm glad it was well received & I genuinely hope it comes in handy with your future projects.
So I talked a lot about how love & hatred interplay with characters, So let me clarify what I meant by all that. So, Empathy, compassion, loyalty, the desire to make someone happy & to provide comfort, support, protection from harm, etc... these are all the natural by-products of love & the stronger that love is, the stronger these by products are too. The same goes with the relationship hate has with wrath, malice & a desire to cause someone harm. It's all literally hardwired into our brains. It's part of our natural state. These are universal & unavoidable axioms.
So looking at Alice, she loved & cared about Henry before the shitshow started right? If... Let's say for example, things played out exactly as you wrote them, but throughout the whole campaign of "operation destroy my own son's psyche", & especially after Mark moved away & the heat of the affair died down, if there was a visible, (to us readers), struggle where she was wracked with guilt, self loathing & remorse for how she's destroying her son & she's failing him as his mother, but just is too addicted to the twisted desires she's fulfilling with Mark to stop doing them, then later on in Henry's college years & adulthood, she see's & understands how his issues could be product of that trauma that she, Mark & Melinda subjected him to, amplifying those feelings of guilt & self hatred, but also causing her feelings towards Mark to become a mixture of resentment for what he did & got her to do to her own son mixed in with the feelings of love & desire created during their affair, that would make her a more human & fully fleshed out character because it is more human.
Likewise, if she lacked all those traits that come with love, not just after taking an interest in Mark, but also for Henry's whole life, basically making her a cold WASPy bitch to him the whole time, Then when Henry is an adult, she either sees how the trauma effects him but doesn't care, or doesn't see it because she can't be bothered to consider it because she never really loved her son to begin with. that also would also make her more human, (albeit an abysmal one). The only intrinsic change to correct that with how she's written currently would be she would have been like that from the start for Henry's whole life.
It's the lack of consistency, the lack & / or mismatch of these engrained in our DNA byproducts of affinity, & the stark, abrupt flipping that is at the core of the character issue. She loves & care's about Henry his whole life, until She & Mark express interest in each other, Then she still somehow loves her son, while her conduct displays the byproducts of hate & the absence of the by-products of love, then she still loves him as an adult, but inexplicably never questions if there's a connection between the trauma they caused & his current issues. These gaps & mismatches are what renders her less human & more half baked & cliche. & note, in all 3 scenarios, the story & the events therein still play out the same, but those relatively minor changes in character temperament shore up those gaps & deficits , making them less glaring & less disruptive to the reader's experience. Does that make a bit more sense?
& to be clear, I'm not suggesting you go back & rewrite all this, & I'm not saying "My way of writing them is the only acceptable way to write them", I'm using the examples in this game & my hypothetical alterantives to illustrate general principals in character creation, temperament & interaction that I think would enhance your stories & make them better.
As for the cultural values that diverge, like you not understanding why Henry fucking Mark's sister is wrong for MARK, it is understandable, like you said, to YOU that would be OK, but I know some Americans that would not agree with you on that. However, even I agree that is a shallow and petty excuse for all Mark did in the past, who can blame the young for being reckless, right? Especially if the life of such a young man is a work of fiction? Since fictional stories are not always there to make sense but to be entertaining.
Yeah but even then, there's some context to consider. I mean if Mark's sister was younger, maybe more naive, & if Mark's & Henry's temperaments were swapped, (meaning Henry was the big dick womanizer), then yeah it would make sense because Mark is protecting his sister from a man that he knows could hurt her, (at least emotionally). But she was older, was already kind of a slut & Henry was more meek & mild mannered & posed no threat to her, Which Mark knew. So I gotta stand by what I said, it don't make sense.
& to be clear, I'm not saying "It doesn't make sense to me, therefore there is no justification, shame on bad guy Mark". What I'm saying is there is no clear logical reason why Mark's sister is off limits, which creates a flawed plot point with unresolved gaps in pathology & cohesiveness. This detracts from the story. It has nothing to do with my subjective approval or lack thereof of Mark's conduct, it's about how that break in logic affects the flow of the story & creates gaps in the logic & pathology of the characters. That's why I said if it was Mark's GF Henry slept with instead of his sister, it easily changes from "huh?" to "Ooooohh damn" & rectifies that plot wrinkle.
& I agree, the purpose of stories is to entertain, not to reflect objective reality. That said though, it's a delicate balance. Think of it like cooking a meal. The seasonings you use, how & when you use them & the ratios you use them in can make the difference between a decent meal, a great meal or inedible crap. Right now, with how this is written, it's decent with some inedible parts, But I see the potential for greatness. I have a lot of passion for writing & good story building. That's why I've taken such an impassioned interest in this.
So with that in mind, one trick I want to pass along is this. Suspension of disbelief is important in stories & making them too realistic makes them dull. Here's the trick though, If you make the characters & their interactions with each other & their environment / circumstances as realistic & genuine as possible, you can get away with throwing a lot more of reality out the window when it comes to plot components & settings. Stephen King is a fantastic example of this. His whole anthology of stories are interconnected with the Dark Tower series being at the center of his entire universe. His settings are fantastical, worlds filled with magic, old restaurants & houses with backroom doors leading to completely different worlds & dimensions, time travel, all kind's of over the top stuff, but look at the characters he creates, especially the protagonists. Ralph Roberts in Insomnia, Ted Brautigan in Hearts in Atlantis, Johnny Marinville in Desperation, etc... Google them real quick & you'll get an idea what I mean. The more human, real & believable you make the characters, the more believable the rest of the story becomes which makes it all the more entertaining.
Besides, although the story involves the four characters, the game is not about Mark and Henry; it's about Angelica and the way she deals with all of that shit, the player can choose her path, and the back story is there to give the player some ground as to where that would lead her fate, that's why I'll ignore not only yours but every suggestion to make choices for Herny or any other character since that's not what this game is about.
Valid, but you can't deny, it would have been interesting to see.
And different from your friend, Henry is not as defenseless as you may think, because if one of your friends told you that X person is off the limits, even if you don't understand why you got to respect it, right? After all, friendship is based on mutual respect. Even if your friend's motives go beyond your compression, at least that's how it is from where I am, but even here some think differently, but that's the beauty of being a human being, individuality.
Well it would really depend on the reasons. I mean In general, yes I'd respect it, but I'd have questions, especially if it was someone I was into. & if he couldn't articulate a legitimate reason, I'd tell him that I won't make any moves on her, but if she shows interest in me, he's gonna need to either come up with a compelling reason why we can't be together or come to terms with me being with her. The fact is, ALL 3 of their feelings & desires are valid, not just Mark's. So he can't ask them to deny themselves for his sake without some valid reason. I do agree, that is the beauty of individuality, but I think most would agree that my take on it is more in line with the principals of mutual respect & friendship. Yes if your friend says person x is off limits, but likewise, if there's mutual interest between you & person x, then that friend, in the spirit of friendship & mutual respect owes you a valid reason for the prohibition, & if that reason cannot be provided, they should get out of the way of your's & person x's happiness. This leads to another plot inconsistency because he DID do that with Angelica in college, demonstrating those principals of friendship, but did not with his sister, whom he had less observable incentive to keep, (in any romantic capacity), thereby abandoning those principals & stripping Henry of the only 2 meaningful women in his life, (his mother & GF). The mismatch in internal pathology sticks out like a sore thumb.
By the way, who said that everything that Henry told Tamara was the whole truth? who said that he was not playing the victim when he might very well be a closet masochist who got off hearing his best friend fucking his mom and girlfriend, and by Mark giving Henry exactly what he needed to come out of the closet, Mark can be considered a great friend. (I know, too much, right? LOL)
You actually might want to do some re-writing on that then because that's not really how it read. What I was reading from him was this: Even though he's kinda into it, He already lost the only 2 significant women in his life, his mother & Melinda, to Mark. Now he's seeing his wife being taken by him too. So after moving on from all that & investing over 10 years into this woman, whom is his everything, he's seeing that stripped away by the same guy & he's trying to go along with it because he's terrified of losing Angelica completely & being cast back into that void of despair he found himself in after Melinda, but it's fucking him up. I mean the way I read his parts in that path looked like a man on the verge of putting a bullet through his own skull. So if the point was to get him to "come out of the cuck closet", you might want to tone down his PTSD response to the whole thing some because the "I'm fallin apart" vibes are comin off real strong.
For your offer to work together, sorry, but I'll politely decline; I have other projects in mind, so I don't plan on stay stuck on Angelica's Temptation for more time than what I've already planned.
Let me clarify what I mean by that, because I understand, you're kinda reaching the end of this project & likely are looking to put a bow on it & move on to what's next. As far as future projects go, I'm not saying "let's work together" in that you have to turn any level of creative control or what not over to me, what I mean is let's have these conversations, but at the beginning instead of the back end. When you get a script or a loose story board for your next game figured out, send it to me so I can correct the typos & maybe give some feedback on how to hit the plot points you're aiming for. So more like a free editor & volunteer mentor on the craft type of thing if that makes sense.
As for this specific project, let me clarify that a bit better as well. I know that with a lot of games on here, there's a lot of fan remakes & "mods" with extra content & what not so What I personally would like to do, if that's ok, is write an alternate version, maybe with a few new routes & endings & fine tuning some of the things I was talking about. I can even figure out RenPy & do the extra renders myself. I wouldn't take any Patreon donations or sell it or take any monetary gain of any kind, would give full credit to you as the original storywriter & would go to every effort to make sure that whatever I create isn't taking away from or blemishing your original work, but rather just a non canonical "fan remix" of it. But I want to get your permission because I know that some people are real protective over their IP & even if there's no monetary gain or harm done, they still don't want anyone but them putting out anything related to their creation & I get that & I don't want to offend or disrespect you if you're put off by the notion of someone else's version of your story out there, (let alone deal with the DMCA stuff that comes with that). That said, if you're cool with it, I could re-write it & do everything else myself so you don't have to spend any time or focus on it, I'd keep the whole game private until it was completed & only release it here, clearly notated as a non author remake & a link back to this thread for those looking for your game. Additionally once the game would be completed, you'd get first look at it to make sure that it meets with your approval, so that if I made any changes that you found would damage or reflect poorly on the original version, you'd get final say on it. Now technically since this is a piracy site, I wouldn't be making any monetary gain or causing any monetary loss to you & I can easily get around any plagiarism issues by citing it as parody with minimal alterations being needed, I technically don't need your permission. But personally it's just not worth it it me to make it at that cost because A, hassle & B, it would be a major dick move on my part & I'm not that guy. so I'd rather only do it if you're cool with it. So If that's ok, I would sincerely appreciate it.
As for the rest, I'll not comment, especially on the things that you used from your personal life to compare with a fictional character, especially one that came out of my, not very sane, mind.
Dude, I don't blame ya. Though to be fair, when we look at characters in a story, part of that immersion is being drawn in enough to perceive them as real fleshed out beings. toying with the line between fantasy & reality. So there is some degree of interplay with us as real people & the fictional character & the character is also shaped largely by the perception we piece together of them through the lens of our own mind. That's why we need to be mindful of "How would other minds perceive this character & how can I paint them so that my desired perception is the most visible one they see?"
As for Angelica, man I shit you not, it's not just similarities, make her a brunette, cut her hair a bit shorter & make her just a little curvier, & that is my ex's fictional twin, both in mentality, demeanor, they even look the same, (well at least when she & I were together. She's let herself go & gotten pretty fat since then). It's actually kinda surreal.
Though I guess that means that I can legitimately claim I fucked the RL Angelica in a roundabout way huh? lol. Matter of fact, I'd like to add that to my case for permission to do an alternate re-write. You may have created her in your imagination but I had to live with her for 3 years. XD, (obviously joking).
But I thank you again for caring so much about my senseless imagination and twisted sexual fantasies that I've been sharing with you all through a porn game;
Course. It's a good story & it, as well as you as a writer show a lot of potential, so I think that's worth taking note of.
I'm kind of old school; porn didn't have to make sense back then; it just had to make you hard (LOL),
Well yeah, but if it's goal was to just be fap material, I imagine you would have stuck with the original game right? The reason you ditched it in favor of making this game was you wanted something grander than that right?
Anyway, for all effects, let us agree to disagree on some points, although I personally agree with you in some, yeah, Alice is a terrible mother.
Happy to, though to be clear, I wasn't really arguing good Alice mom vs bad Alice mom, (my disgust with her really was more of an aside), It's more the mismatch cocktail of affinity characteristics that clashed with her stated affinity & nature, which led to a broken cliched trope of a character. She's either a loving & caring mother that is carrying a lot of baggage & guilt for the things she did, or she's a remorseless, uncaring cold WASPy bitch. it's one or the other. She can't be a warm, loving, caring, cold, remorseless, uncaring mother WASPy bitch, that's just illogical & kinda drifts into Mary Sue territory.
Anyway, just wanted to respond & clarify. I appreciate the back & forth & let me know on that thing either way please.
Saruh Games