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Topic Started: Dec 19 2015, 10:11 AM (3,014 Views)
CrystalElemental
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The Phantom Squee
Dec 20 2015, 03:07 PM
That was an eminently reasonable response.

To be fair, I'm mostly exaggerating my dislike for the sake of my e-persona. Really I just find that archetype tiresome. And you're right, it's almost entirely down to execution--I just have yet to see it done in a way that struck me as more than a cheap play for sympathy (look how ~tragique~ her life was to make her like this! (ignoring that children have impressive mental plasticity and can recover from most tragedy much better than adults can)), edginess (she can mow down crowds of people and doesn't even care that she's covered in blood!), or a facsimile of maturity. In the end I just think Ilya's not particularly interesting because she seems like a rehash that's been done to death. I play it up more because it gets under Satty's skin.

Also agreed, defending characters who do awful things because they have a sympathetic backstory is dumb. Looking at you, Avengers fans.
That's fair. Though there are traumas that kids can't necessarily get past, but the presentation of that trauma is really different from "intentionally a psychopath." I think the reason I liked Illya was because she turned off the crazy a lot of the time in the VN. In Heaven's Feel she winds up being adorable and barely goes into kill mode at all. UBW, she's a little more focused on kill mode because she gets like no screentime, but that's also the only segment where you learn anything about her history and why she's so messed up. I'm not saying that her character type hasn't been done before; it definitely has. But like you said, it's in the execution, and I feel like she's a solid execution of this character type. She turns on the murder when it's time to fight because that's literally her entire purpose, but when presented with alternatives and given the opportunity to try and work within society she tries but is charmingly terrible at it. Those traits blend together nicely with the history together, so it feels like she fits together as a whole character, rather than just tossing in one part murder to two parts uguu~.
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The Phantom Squee
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"

Yeah, like you mentioned in your earlier post, I haven't in fact read enough of the VN to get much into her backstory. I know a lot of it secondhand, but even after three attempts at the VN I haven't managed to make it past somewhere in the day 7-10 range. It's just such a dense beginning, full of repeated explanations of things I understood the first time, that it takes me forever to get through a scene and I feel like I'm being talked down to the entire time. So my context for her is largely coming from the Fate and Zero animes.
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Chrono Ivan
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He who strikes like lightning

Holy crap this topic blew up.

Hi.

Don't mind me, I'm not much of a fatenerd or a touhoumaniac, I just hang around them.

RE: the saber thing, I just realized Saber's gone all wolverine.

Like, in X-men, they legitimately released a show called wolverine and the X-men, and wolverine is famous for taking over the narrative of literally every story he's in.

So given how annoyed people get at 'the punisher, only it's actually Wolverine doing the punisher's job with him in the background' for example, I can understand why he gets annoyed at Saber being shoved everywhere. Any old admiration for the character is lost in how bloody annoying it is.
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CrystalElemental
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The Phantom Squee
http://forum.templeofkraden.com/single/?p=8775738&t=7460956
Yeah, like you mentioned in your earlier post, I haven't in fact read enough of the VN to get much into her backstory. I know a lot of it secondhand, but even after three attempts at the VN I haven't managed to make it past somewhere in the day 7-10 range. It's just such a dense beginning, full of repeated explanations of things I understood the first time, that it takes me forever to get through a scene and I feel like I'm being talked down to the entire time. So my context for her is largely coming from the Fate and Zero animes.


Ah, okay. That's...entirely fair. The Fate route is a difficult thing to drag yourself through. The other routes are way better, though Shirou never really stops being...the way that he is. From the anime options though, I imagine it would be hard to really care about her character. I don't know how the original F/SN anime went, so I don't know what they did with Illya, but it's really the Heaven's Feel route and the bit in UBW that makes her character work for me.

Chrono Ivan
http://forum.templeofkraden.com/single/?p=8775742&t=7460956
Holy crap this topic blew up.

Hi.

Don't mind me, I'm not much of a fatenerd or a touhoumaniac, I just hang around them.

RE: the saber thing, I just realized Saber's gone all wolverine.

Like, in X-men, they legitimately released a show called wolverine and the X-men, and wolverine is famous for taking over the narrative of literally every story he's in.

So given how annoyed people get at 'the punisher, only it's actually Wolverine doing the punisher's job with him in the background' for example, I can understand why he gets annoyed at Saber being shoved everywhere. Any old admiration for the character is lost in how bloody annoying it is.


Blame Draco for drawing like half a dozen of us over here.

Oh wow, you're right. Saberine.

Also hello.
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The Phantom Squee
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"

CrystalElemental
Dec 20 2015, 03:56 PM
The Phantom Squee
http://forum.templeofkraden.com/single/?p=8775738&t=7460956
Yeah, like you mentioned in your earlier post, I haven't in fact read enough of the VN to get much into her backstory. I know a lot of it secondhand, but even after three attempts at the VN I haven't managed to make it past somewhere in the day 7-10 range. It's just such a dense beginning, full of repeated explanations of things I understood the first time, that it takes me forever to get through a scene and I feel like I'm being talked down to the entire time. So my context for her is largely coming from the Fate and Zero animes.


Ah, okay. That's...entirely fair. The Fate route is a difficult thing to drag yourself through. The other routes are way better, though Shirou never really stops being...the way that he is. From the anime options though, I imagine it would be hard to really care about her character. I don't know how the original F/SN anime went, so I don't know what they did with Illya, but it's really the Heaven's Feel route and the bit in UBW that makes her character work for me.
It's not even a problem with Shirou so much; yeah, his characterization's all over the place, but it's pretty universally accepted that he's not well written, so it doesn't come up as much. And I think people don't make such a big deal about it because that's kind of par for the course with VN protagonists. Makes it easier for readers to project themselves onto him, etc.

I really haven't had any major issues with the characterization so far, it's just the density and Nasuing.
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Saturos
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heart-under-blade

That's fair. There were definitely parts, especially in Fate, where I just spedread through because it was repeating a lot of information. I haven't read Tsukihime or the Kara no Kyoukai LNs yet, but I like to think that Nasu effectively polished his writing in the process of F/SN. Hence why Fate, the first written, is the roughest, UBW is better, and HF is better still. I think it does get better, but it's up to you whether you want to push through to that.

I do think stylistically, Nasu has a tendency to repeat things and ideas, whether in fights or philosophy, as a way of building tension or really ruminating on it. In fights it would be the literary equivalent of slow-motion, I think, prolonging the tension and commenting on the fight itself (or at least, that's the effect it has for me), and when it comes to introspection... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends how much sympathy you have for the characters and ideas in question.
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Gilgamesh
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solbowz Aurarius

Saturos
Dec 20 2015, 07:46 PM
I do think stylistically, Nasu has a tendency to repeat things
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CrystalElemental
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Saturos
Dec 20 2015, 07:46 PM
That's fair. There were definitely parts, especially in Fate, where I just spedread through because it was repeating a lot of information. I haven't read Tsukihime or the Kara no Kyoukai LNs yet, but I like to think that Nasu effectively polished his writing in the process of F/SN. Hence why Fate, the first written, is the roughest, UBW is better, and HF is better still. I think it does get better, but it's up to you whether you want to push through to that.

I do think stylistically, Nasu has a tendency to repeat things and ideas, whether in fights or philosophy, as a way of building tension or really ruminating on it. In fights it would be the literary equivalent of slow-motion, I think, prolonging the tension and commenting on the fight itself (or at least, that's the effect it has for me), and when it comes to introspection... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends how much sympathy you have for the characters and ideas in question.
I specifically remember skipping every sex scene that happened. His writing may have improved overall, but those were constantly bad.
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Gilgamesh
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solbowz Aurarius

Probably because Takeuchi basically wrote them instead.
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CrystalElemental
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Gilgamesh
Dec 20 2015, 08:14 PM
Probably because Takeuchi basically wrote them instead.
That may or may not explain a lot.
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Saturos
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heart-under-blade

At least once the music starts you can just park it on autoread and go do other stuff until the music stops
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CrystalElemental
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Saturos
Dec 20 2015, 08:29 PM
At least once the music starts you can just park it on autoread and go do other stuff until the music stops
Which is exactly what I did, every time.
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Saturos
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heart-under-blade

Oh, and of course now we have the Realta Nua patches to remove them completely, so that's also a thing.
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The Phantom Squee
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Sound the horn and call the cry: "How many of them can we make die?"

Saturos
Dec 20 2015, 07:46 PM
That's fair. There were definitely parts, especially in Fate, where I just spedread through because it was repeating a lot of information. I haven't read Tsukihime or the Kara no Kyoukai LNs yet, but I like to think that Nasu effectively polished his writing in the process of F/SN. Hence why Fate, the first written, is the roughest, UBW is better, and HF is better still. I think it does get better, but it's up to you whether you want to push through to that.

I do think stylistically, Nasu has a tendency to repeat things and ideas, whether in fights or philosophy, as a way of building tension or really ruminating on it. In fights it would be the literary equivalent of slow-motion, I think, prolonging the tension and commenting on the fight itself (or at least, that's the effect it has for me), and when it comes to introspection... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It depends how much sympathy you have for the characters and ideas in question.
I do want to push through them, I just lack the willpower, I think. =P I think it would be easier to slog through the Everglades dragging a boat behind me than wade through some of these infodumps at times. And that's really where the issue is to me--the infodumps, not the character-establishing scenes. I mentioned a while back the part where Rin's explaining magecraft to Shirou. It's pretty clearly meant for the player's benefit, but I understood it quite well the first time... and then she goes and explains it again in a slightly different way, and I'm sitting here going "I got it, I'm not an idiot, can we move on now?" And I don't want to just skip through these scenes, because I really am interested in learning how the setting works. But I also can't just skip to the end because I have to read the whole conversation to know where it ends. Really makes me wish I could speedread like you can.

But yeah, TL;DR in a character-establishing or similar scene, there's definitely a place for that sort of repetition of motifs or ideas. It's the info dumps that I have a problem with. And I gather they get better not too long after where I am, I just... lack the prodigious willpower to push through for the time being.
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