Thank you for watching! Check out this other video if you like this one: Writers... DONT K*LL YOUR CHARACTERS - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tiQl8kGOGo8.html
Continuation 1 My high school English inadvertently taught me about character flaws by living one. Let us take a famous 'villain', Snape. Everyone praises the writing for making him conflicted, for being both cold and passionately in love, both helpful and toxic. To me, he is two dimensional and unreal. Had he praised Harry sometimes, at random and not because he was feeling good that day, then he would have been three dimensional and realistic. For example, in the famous first encounter, had he praised Harry for being honest and not trying to fake knowledge he did not yet possess, that mood would have been completely different. Instead he is portrayed as anger personified. But Rowling wanted us to hate him so that she could spring the surprise at the end that Snape was trying to help Harry, for example, during the Quidditch game. She loves to do those misdirects. I realised that in my own story early on and so in early editing, I went back and deliberately inserted opposing thoughts. For example, the protagonist is very dismissive and condescending to one character, but at the same time, she wishes her mother could have made hot tea the way he does. Not only does it show that her opinion can change (she can eventually consider him a true friend), but also she does not appear to be evil incarnate and unlovable. Hope that helps.
@@wrestlingwithwords I just talked with my girlfriend about it and apparently she already has it on Steam. Thank you for making this video, I cannot wait to play it
I just wanna say that your videos have really helped me get over myself. I'm a self taught, amateur writer, and for a while I was so resistant to advice unless it came from what I consider the very best. Your videos, among others, have really helped me see through my ego and appreciate just how much I can learn from so many different places. I value your effort and wish you well in whatever you do.
Thank you for your kind words and support. It means a lot to me to know that I've made a positive impact on your writing process. I really appreciate you and am so glad this has been helpful.
I haven’t ever played this game but it looks beautiful. And, this was an interesting topic-flaws and handicaps are something I’ve thought about but hadn’t really considered that closely but I will now.
Continuation 2 In case it was not clear, I know the sound editing you did took hours. Definitely not fun work. The alternative is to read from a prepared script and that also takes training/practice to pull off so that it sounds natural. To me, complexity means an inability to predict what the next line is going to say. It's used to somewhat comedic effect when one person ends a heated argument by stating that the fresh rose on the piano smells divinely and the hostess did a great job finding it. More often the line is more, 'You didn't cut it from one of my bushes, did you?' I suppose I would have the guest go over to the rose, take a long deep breathe, and say, 'I envy you the rose. I have been enjoying it so our entire discussion.' (Yeah, dated language. I am listening to Wodehouse.) And you are left wondering what happened with the argument. Now where I come from, an argument sounds differently. Two guests are leaving and one says to the other, 'Well, I really showed her. She knows I am absolutely furious.' 'What do you mean? All you two did was exchange greetings and discuss pleasantries.' 'Yes, but she was waiting the whole time for me to compliment her on that dam rose, and I didn't say a thing. I didn't even act like I could smell it.'
'What rose?' 'The one she stuck in my face.' 'The only rose I remember was on the table on the far side of the room.' 'That's the one.' 'But neither of you came anywhere near it.' 'She deliberately put it there just to bug me.' (And she had, too.)
Ok. Good steady oral pacing. It gives one time to reflect, to absorb, but not too much time. If someone is wondering why the 'accent' sounds weird, the longer pauses have been clipped. If you notice, there are no 'uhhhh's in the recording. Next, your message is consistent with your writing style, at least the short story I read. Little is worse than someone who says one thing but does another. I just disagree with the view. Thank you for the Rothfuss mention. No doubt it was directed at a number of viewers, but it feels like an ear lobe tug (Carol Burnett message, if you remember that programme (The Carol Burnett Show). No idea if the explanation is available yet on the YT channel.) Why do I disagree. The diagnosis for one mental health challenge I face (developmental prosopagnosia) did not exist anywhere in the world until I was already 30. For another challenge, I do not want to find out the diagnosis because I don't think I am going to like a misdiagnosis. Speaking with that background, I do not see all that much in life that I have had a direct say in. At random, let us take anger. How much each of us expresses it and how we express it has a lot to do with how we were raised, both at home and outside of it. Can we change that programming? Yes, but it is not a simple decision. We can mask it while we feel it full force but do not allow others to see how angry we feel or act angry when we are not, but to stop (or start) feeling that anger is a much more difficult prospect. So, please be careful when saying that we have the ability to change our flaws because someone with an undiagnosed mental illness in particular may see that as just one more accusation that they have chosen poorly when the culprit, a physical abnormality of the brain, cannot be altered. Would a person, with or without my personal challenges, have acted differently? Certainly. But a lack of awareness of what caused that difference does not imply free will, just unidentified influences. I am who I am and there is little I could have changed in my life at the time. TBC
21:48 i want to add that elcem is not really the "mental illness" skill. Its the pleasure skill. Which contains substances sure but also sex and attraction and other things that make Harry happy. Its a bit scary tho but only bc the protag is very dysfuntional during the game but its not entirely bad.
Thank you for the comment and for pointing that out. I do think that because of Harry's current mental and physical state, Electrochemistry is tied to addiction and teeters the line between "pleasure" and substance abuse. Thank you for mentioning this and I appreciate you for watching!
Okay, okay, okay! I give up! You're the enough'th person praising this game, and I kept spoiler free until now, so I'll play it first and return whenever I'm done. Looking forward to hearing more thoughts when it's time. Honestly, it's one of those where the title got me disinterested. Knowing absolutely nothing about it, it just didn't sound like my kind of thing. Even when I heard that the title sounded different to what it had to offer, I didn't bring myself to trying it out. But okay, I'll go. 'If three people tell you you're sick, go see a doctor', I guess.
I've also had the same thoughts, because I thought this game looked like it involved some first person shooting or sneaking around and I was extremely pleasantly surprised that it was more like reading a book and not depending on any mechanical skill.
Just found your channel and subscribed! This is a great video and gave me a breakthrough about my character’s weakness, thinking about it as a 2 part changeable/ unchangable: the flaw battling the handicap. The handicap always wins, so the only way to succeed is to adjust or conquer the flaw, but if they are unwilling to, then the handicap will doom them. But if they adjust or fix their flaw, the handicap will either not block them overtly, or be a benefit to them in the future. (Ex: Black Swan: she wants to be perfect (flaw) but she is going through psychosis (handicap). If she pushes against the psychosis, she hallucinates and goes mad and fails, but if she allows the psychosis to be there and uses it to her advantage, channeling the urges, she actually succeeds in being perfect and “wins”. And if she accepts the psychosis and gets help, she’ll fail in being perfect but her flaw will disappear. She chooses to use the psychosis to aid in her perfection (channel the “monster” within her in order to play the part of the monster perfectly on the stage in the role she got). So it’s a bittersweet ending, handicap wins, and flaw remains. But she achieves her goal. How would you say goal connects into it? Is the goal tied to the flaw?
This is exactly right. The goal will always be tied to the flaw or handicap in some way. Either as something to overcome, to reframe the “true” goal, or as an obstacle to build tension and conflict. Thank you so much for the kind words and thoughtful comment! Welcome to the community:).
Disco Elysium is in my top 10. Maybe top 5. It's one of those games I didn't know if I would like, but has this odd gut feeling of "play meeee..." But oddly enough while I love it, I do think Disco is only half-satisfying. It's quite obvious the murder mystery and case is supposed to be consumed by everything else, but it is still the main driving force, the one the game ends on. And... It's not satisfying. You don't piece anything together yourself, you don't have a grand revelations. It's like the mystery is snatched from you and instead you are given a used condom but a homeless guy. At the ending of the game, that point, I didn't care about whatever symbolic or meta reasons there were for this choice: The murder mystery sucked in this murder mystery game. It's the only real con I have with the game and ironically the weakest part of the game.
I appreciate the comment and critique. I know my style and delivery isn’t perfect and isn’t for everyone. I’m trying to make it a little better with each video! Thank you for watching and for sharing your opinion.
@@Psychonaut165 well no. This is a video. people can replay if they don't understand something the first time. What this really strikes me as is a lazy attempt at padding out the vid to make it seem long and dense (in this climate of youtube where people have gravitated towards longer video essays) and also running more ads. In school people would get an F if they wrote like this.
@@egomaniac7230 yeah but it’s not school. In an essay it’s pretty easy to turn a page or scan back up the page a few paragraphs for information. In a video format it’s not feasible to rewatch the whole video or spend multiple minutes rewinding or searching for something you need to go over again.
Thanks for the feedback but I’d politely disagree. I would say that there are plenty of useful points regarding writing characters and how DE wrote the complex character, Harry. My delivery and style might not be for everyone. However, I appreciate you for watching.
