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ofravensandgenesis · 4 years

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World Building Through Character Creation and Background NPCs

Entry 03. I was thinking over how to build out more plot points for both the underlying bones of original fiction, and also fleshing out ideas for some of the arcs in my ACABH fic. Honestly, adding more characters within reasonable limits seems to really help with that. Even if they’re just characters with a name and a few lines of description, or even just one line of description, it makes for a great springboard point to start tacking on more details. From those details, it’s a lot easier to build out the world around them in various layers. Like for the original fiction world I’m building out right now, creating the character Corwin Blackwood with the helpful input from my friends on how the name sounded, resulted in spinning up a huge chunk of the underlying world order. Originally I was going with just a two-sided state of tension and conflict, but Corwin’s family brings with it a third side that’s caught in the middle—people minding their own business that aren’t actively affiliated with either side. In terms of mechanics, the Blackwoods’ existence brought in some specific broad categories of magical beings, a rudimentary idea of various magical systems with an as of yet undefined overarching universal magic system, and social conflict regarding differing points of view relating to said beings and affiliations with them.

His name is all about his role in the story, with the meaning of his first name being “heart’s friend,” and having had a close if tempestuous friendship with the main character. The last name of Blackwood automatically brings to mind a haunted forest, and as inspired by a Netflix Castlevania fic called Baba by Crownofpins on Ao3 as recommended to me by a friend, and the Blackwoods’ home-locale and name makes me think of the Belmonts. So it was easy enough to consider the Blackwoods tentatively as a family of exorcists/monster-hunters/etc in this rough draft. (The Baba fic is pretty awesome btw, it’s got great elements of old Slavic folklore, obviously Baba Yaga for example, among other things. I shan’t spoil it ofc, but I thought it was a lovely read. Adult content warning for the fic ofc, read the tags, etc.) There’s other external factors that helped bring him about, including other recent media consumption on my part also again in thanks to my friends for recommending them, including Mo Dao Zu Shi and The Legend of The White Snake. (Content warning: Both of those works contain adult content, etc.) They’re both stories of Chinese origin that focus on romances that contain supernatural elements, with The Legend of The White Snake being an old classic tale of folklore. But what’s really fascinating to me is the mythology system that’s at play in the stories—I’m so used to “medieval” fantasy settings being European-influenced landscapes and civilizations, it was really cool to see a more involved Asiatic-inspired one. I’ve certainly seen Asian-mythos-based supernatural movies and series before, but not in this specific niche that’s more fantasy-adventure-ish. Usually the ones I’ve come across are much more heavily leaning into the martial arts category of movies as I’d classify them, or set in more modern-based times. That’s probably just a sign I need to go out and find more content of this sort to consume, honestly. But how the above two works treat the whole spirituality/magic/supernatural aspect is admittedly a huge inspiration point for me for how I’m hoping this original fic’s world will be built, and provides a great starting point to go and try to research more into stories and myths relating to those elements. It also happens to fit in neatly with me being interested in trying to learn a bit more about some of my heritage and culture, being partly of Chinese descent. That’s another thing I know I want Corwin to explore as an additional main character: what does it mean when you’re a part of multiple cultures as a person? What’s that experience like? How does that fact shape how he interacts with his world? I know it has a huge impact on how he’s perceived socially and allows him greater access to magical training via one side of his family having the history for it, and it interests me to think of exploring that in writing. What I’m not certain of is what name to label this general cluster of magical beings as—are they demons? Yaoguai? Spirits? There are associations with each word and name, and giving them a newly made up name would mean severing those ties for better or worse. There are definitely classical monstrous elements in that group, but also a lot of diversity, holding up yet another mirror to the run of the mill humans of that world. What is this group of magical beings specifically in this world’s build? Are they humans that have cultivated themselves spiritually enough to transcend, or is it a reincarnation gig, or something else? I’ll probably have to make another OC or import ideas from mythology to explain where they’re from. With regards to the FC 5 fic though, I’m currently listening to more of the in-game dialogue and commentary as provided by DanaDuchy on their account/channel (also: thanks to DanaDuchy for providing the rest of us such wonderful resources on this and other games/works) and boy the dev team did a wonderful job of just adding more of those little details to help make the setting feel alive. Like it’s honestly really cool to hear the NPCs talk about how haunted the King’s Hot Springs Hotel or the Catamount mines are, how Casey at the Spread Eagle makes the best loose meat/steamer/etc sandwiches and burgers in the entire county, the stories behind the Whistling Beaver Brewery, etc. It’s also pretty grim to hear the tales of all the people the cult’s taken and some of the things other people have seen the cult do, namely killing civilians in gruesomely inventive fashion. Which raises as an interesting problem for me as a fanfic writer is trying to figure out A) how much did the Seeds know about these particular clusters of mass murder, B) did they permit it if they knew about it ahead of time, and C) what purpose does it serve? Currently the answer to A is more than enough because the Seeds not knowing wouldn’t fit this AU nor their character builds in it to go well with the level of importance that the themes of responsibility and consequences carry both in the meta of the fic and in-world for Joshua personally. So that means for B, the Seeds are definitely permitting the additional senseless acts of cruelty noted in the dialogue and conflicted-conversations among the Peggies. Certainly they’re aware at least to some extent if not fully aware of the entirety of it, but I would assume based on the Heralds’ personalities that they all do like to know what their people get up to. They all seem like they would want to know the details of what’s going on for various reasons. I’m leaning towards having the particularly senseless murders be a mix of some acts the Seeds ordered, some acts they left open to interpretation to their followers who then took it to a dark extreme, and some acts were instigated by the followers alone. Basically: humans being humans during chaotic dark times and doing terrible, bad shit. Which leads to the conclusion for Joshua that the Seeds should be more disciplined about keeping their followers in line and not sinking down to this level of pointless evil. He’s not wild about their more purposeful evil acts either and is intent on trying to get them to stop the worst of that, but there are darker gradients of black and grey morality for him there to be more outraged by. So that pretty much wraps up C with the answer of “not much” other than humans being terrible to each other. Perhaps from the villainous perspective it helps terrorize the people of Hope County and whittle down the number of people the cult has to fight now or later, but overall that is still straight up mass murder. ...hm, that reminds me, I need to go tweak a line in a past chapter regarding the population of Hope County. I had it too low for there to be a reasonably-sized if small county aside from the cult’s numbers. Hm. I have the cult at around 1,800ish souls, with their goal being 3,000 total based on in-game commentary from nameless background NPCs, and the line from the Book of Joseph “A few thousand pure souls, whose mission would be to start over and repopulate the earth.” Doing a little quick search, there are some counties even in Montana that according to past censuses had 3,000 or less people in them. For it to feel a bit less likely that the Resistance and civilian population would be easily overwhelmed, it probably should be somewhat higher than the cult, since the county’s numbers will include those who cannot or do not want to fight—that being the old, the young, the ill, etc. Plus if the cult’s being quite so gruesomely wanton in the murdering sprees, that means they aren’t out to absorb the entire county, just most of it. But the cult must also be expecting losses on their side as well since this is a violent conquest they’re undertaking and all of Hope County’s armed to the teeth, if not as necessarily heavily as the cult itself seems to be. We’ll stick the vague number at around 2,400 civilians who are not in the cult for now then and add that to the notes—plus some of the cult’s population is certainly from the county itself pre-Reaping, not including increases that happen during the Reaping with all the active brainwashing, kidnapping, etc. Hm, given some of the generic-NPC-dialogue of how people were forcibly turned to being obedient members of the cult who actually did turn on and shoot their once-allies (and in that dialogue, the brainwashed were also long-time pre-Reaping neighbors of the speaker,) that makes Pratt’s situation in-game all the more interesting. He definitely recognizes the Deputy, whereas it sounded like the aforementioned brainwashed-individuals did not recognize their once-neighbors and friends at all. Pratt’s capable of thinking independent thoughts and he’s remained lucid enough to observe his surroundings and plan an escape, despite going on what sounds like a very dark “hunting trip” Jacob may have taken him on to hunt “deer” which sounds definitely like he was hallucinating in a bad way per his own lines. Jacob apparently isn’t a guy to miss out on using easy symbolism for his enemies, specifically the Whitetail Militia. That was probably not the only “hunting trip” Pratt and the other converts have been on, and that would potentially suggest that the converts are still possibly hallucinating much like how the Deputy is during the first portion of Jacob’s boss fight with the destroy-the-music-beacons visual effects, after exiting the Wolf’s Den. Is Pratt seeing something like that scene though? He doesn’t seem to be triggered by the music box or in the scenes where the music starts playing certainly. He’s surely been exposed to Jacob’s conditioning or at least the trials, and the list his name’s on would strongly suggest he passed his trial, dark as that is. Who did he kill as his sacrifice? Is he perhaps more immune to the Bliss effects? It seems to vary in intensity of how effective it is and how it effects people, based on their susceptibility to it—some factors may include addictive tendencies, personalities, etc, looking at generic-NPC-dialogue in Faith’s region. The sparkles that show up on the screen in addition to the red edges do lend themselves to interpreting that Jacob uses Bliss as part of the brainwashing regime, in addition to the hallucinations Pratt, the Deputy, and others seem to experience. (Also the Judges disappearing in Bliss clouds during the first half of Jacob’s boss fight, etc.) Either way, with the mention of no one expecting Jacob to go easy on Pratt, it seems like Pratt was more resistant to the brainwashing and breaking than Jacob expected, even in light of there being potentially more torment lined up for Pratt than the average captured civilian. (I suspect aside from Pratt’s involvement with the officers who tried to arrest Joseph, Jacob in particular is more likely to not think kindly of police men, given his time in Juvie and the events leading to him being sentenced to doing time, setting him on the path to joining the Army and the ensuing tragedy, and separated from his brothers when they were younger. Also possibly the lack of perceived protection from policemen in the times prior to their father Old Mad Seed’s arrest.) However, it could also be that Jacob deliberately set Pratt up to test his loyalty to Jacob and the Project by giving Pratt the opportunity to help the Deputy escape, instead (or a little from column A, a little from column B.) That music did come on awfully fast after the breakout after all, and perhaps Pratt hadn’t made his sacrifice yet. Maybe the Deputy was meant to be his sacrifice, in a less murderous way of just leaving the Deputy in Jacob’s hands. Seems like Jacob would have mentioned it if the Deputy was meant to be Pratt’s sacrifice by leaving them in the cage to their fate, but on the other hand it would fit the game’s plot and Jacob’s theme real well. Plus Jacob’s a cunning bastard and able to plot this kind of scheme out quite readily, I would say. This all probably means I need to flesh out more of the fic’s world with background NPCs here and there a bit more for the plot. That being said, I’m all excited to be borrowing with permission AU versions of some of my friend’s OCs for this. It’s definitely a new addition to the plotting that I hadn’t started out with, but feels like they’d fit in well with the plot overall. Two of the OCs will have a significant impact on Jacob as a character across his entire timeline in the past, present, and future. It’ll be an interesting challenge to deal with that, since while I do want to try to interpret the characters as close to their original canon lines and outlooks as possible, I feel this addition does open up more preexisting lines for Jacob that do fit the hints we get of his internal workings from in-game. It’ll mean he’s got more development in certain areas of his psyche and mental state, but a little bit of twisting here and there still keeps it all in line with the initial interpretation this AU’s got for him. I do feel the addition of the OCs will help bring Jacob to be more emotionally involved than he potentially was to begin with before the real-world-now with the intended future events of the fic, and this creates much more potential for up-close-and-personal levels of emotional exploration for the entire lot of them, both positive and negative emotions. ...oo, we might get to see Jacob actually losing his cool on-screen externally as a result of possible plot happenings. That could lead to an entire mess of the entire Seed family being angry and yelling at each other, creating emotional development. It’s really quite fascinating to try to work out how to get a group to actually get along well with characters like Faith, John, Joseph, and Jacob who are often at odds with each other. All while dealing with their rampant personal issues. Still something to study and test out for other original writings—haven’t quite learned how to take that kind of group dynamic apart and construct something from that inspiration yet. But definitely learning as we go. Back to listening to more NPC dialogue recordings though.

#writing about writing #writing about fanfiction #so many dialogue lines to listen to #Danaduchy is an amazing person to have recorded all of this #you all should check out Danaduchy's tumblr youtube and everything else #ACABH #writing about writing FC5 fanfiction #FC5 #fc5 au #Far Cry 5 #original fic talk #original character talk #OCs

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