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Post by Harkovast on Jun 26, 2015 23:43:08 GMT
Finished chapter 3! I got rid of a big section of Alex being unpleasant and moralising at everyone. I never liked when she started acting self rightious and superior.
I took out reference to her being crazy tall. I thought that was unnecessary to the character. She is already really weird, she doesn't need massive height stacked on as well.
I also removed some of her injuries and one instance of knife throwing. Tech got way too into that stupid knife throwing schtick. Why would she throw knives? I just had her stab someone instead.
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Post by Horsie on Jun 26, 2015 23:46:13 GMT
Knife throwing is for decadent Tolpish, more concerned with how they look than how effective they are in combat.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 27, 2015 0:08:05 GMT
THe knife throwing and the hieght just felt like bolting more unncessary stuff onto a character that didn't need it. Sometimes less is more.
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Post by Horsie on Jun 27, 2015 0:19:37 GMT
I always thought Alex was average height, or at most slightly tall for a woman.
And before you accuse me of having tall characters (Konrad, Veth, the Gotetra I've written), Eudocia is kind of short, she probably has to look up at most people we've dealt with, and all of the Gotetras.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 27, 2015 5:39:57 GMT
Is there still any reference to Alex and Marcus' disagreement over slavery?
I've got to know for what I bring in in the following chapters.
Or is it all done on the forum and I can ready it?
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 28, 2015 13:58:39 GMT
I think I took it out. I don't think Alex comments on it.
I didn't like her being all self rightious about it. She shouldn't be the character lecturing everyone.
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Post by Horsie on Jun 28, 2015 21:26:30 GMT
But that does kind of remove some important development for both of them. I think that should stay in, but perhaps you should tone down Alex's self-righteousness.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 28, 2015 23:38:59 GMT
I'm concerned it would also make it difficult to know what to bring in from Chapter 4, 5, and the Interlude. Though I suppose one option might be to move it to the Interlude, but that was supposed to help resolve some things not introduce things.
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Post by Horsie on Jun 28, 2015 23:46:09 GMT
I'm sure there's a way to rewrite some of this so there's still some conflict, without having the characters seem like knobs. I really think we had some significant character development with that stuff, and we might be better off toning it down rather than removing it completely.
If it doesn't work when it's toned down then we could see what could go and what could stay, but I just think we'd lose too much good stuff if we did away with most of the conflict between our characters.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 29, 2015 0:55:24 GMT
Well a lot of the conflict stuff no longer made sense because Alex wasn't trying to murder unarmed bakers anymore (I'm trying to make her less of a complete monster) so without that Konrad has more of a "shes alwasy crazy and getting us into trouble" kind of problem with her, rather than "She literally murderers unarmed people and feels no remorse." so he doens't have the specific complaints of her being totally evil. He does still complain about her.
The conversations with her about slavery would need to be rewritten to the point of basically being redone from scratch. The way she sneers at hte other characters all the time (scoffing at Konrad for wanting to be refered to as a Golta and then at Marcus for owning slaves) just adds more to the sense of "why do they keep this freak around?" That was one of her main problems in the original version, the other characters having to jump through hoops for why they don't get rid of her.
Re read some of it and see if you miss a lot of that stuff.
I didn't remove all the conversations. There is a load of stuff with Konrad talking to Marcus about what to do wiht Hoof that is still there.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 29, 2015 1:03:11 GMT
I'll read through it again.
But I always thought that someone needed to call Marcus on the whole slavery thing. And it wouldn't really make sense coming from Konrad.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 29, 2015 1:39:01 GMT
Actually there is a bit in there where Konrad does that. Konrad tells him straight out that he doesn't like the slavery and he thinks it brings nothing but trouble. So it does get talked about.
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Post by Canuovea on Jun 29, 2015 2:00:38 GMT
I don't remember Konrad holding Marcus personally responsible. I'll read through it.
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Post by Horsie on Jun 29, 2015 2:04:53 GMT
I think that might have been when he said Marcus should have expected one of his Junlocks to turn on him.
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Post by Harkovast on Jun 29, 2015 12:59:18 GMT
Yeah that's it. So they do talk about it.
The thing is, Alex going from whacky talking to her gun crazy one to moralising and self rightious was always really uncomfortable to me. I think it was Tech's personality bleeding through but her talking down to the other characters and acting as if she was better than them was really weird. I mean she lives in a shack and talks to her gun! Her whole thing with Konrad where she called him a tolpish then acted like it was his problem for getting upset about it made her seem horrible. She's using a term any golta would be very offended by (including herself)...and then acting like its the goltas fault if they get upset. And then she gave this weird, semi out of character speach about how Konrad was obsessed with his racial identity and needed to be above that kind of thing... when she was the one throwing around the racial insults! It made her seem like she had no empathy at all or was trying to be hurtful. Whenever she got into these sort of moral discussions she always went into this lecture mode, where she sneers at how unlightened everyone else is. This is a woman who Tech had murdering people on a whim, executing defeated enemies and going into a killing frenzy if someone called her ugly...but then talks down to everyone else when they call her on it like they are the ones who need to learn from her wonderful example.
With hinde sight, I should have dropped a fucking safe on the character ages ago.
So Alex's philosophy talks will generally get cut as they are out of character and make her look bad and damn it I am going to make her a good guy if it kills me!
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