[M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

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zacker35601
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[M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

Post by zacker35601 »

http://aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=102671
You guys can comment and tell me how I did. No insults. If there's something I did wrong, politely tell me. Any hate or comments I find insulting to me or others will be removed.
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Enthalpy
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Re: [M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

Post by Enthalpy »

I just finished playing through this.

Could you describe what kind of case you wanted to make? Was this supposed to be funny, dramatic...? I honestly can't tell.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
zacker35601
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Re: [M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

Post by zacker35601 »

It’s supposed to be a visual novel. I stated that in the title and beginning. You’re not supposed to actually DO anything, you just watch it like a book. Hence the name “Visual Novel”.
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Enthalpy
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Re: [M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

Post by Enthalpy »

Let me be more specific.

What tone did you want to have? I couldn't tell if this was trying to make me laugh, was supposed to present a laidback few days during a relatively low-stress killing game, whether it was supposed to make me anxious for which characters would win the game, ect.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
zacker35601
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Re: [M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

Post by zacker35601 »

It was supposed to have a varied tone. Like, one scene would be happy, another sad, another funny. It’s just varied. I worked on this over a 5-day split period and wasn’t sure what tone to use. I just kept jumping between tones. I don’t know if it’s my autism or what but it just varies in between scenes.
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Enthalpy
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Re: [M] Danganronpa: The Visual Novel

Post by Enthalpy »

I see. Alright, so a few paragraphs of my thoughts. Let me know if you need me to clarify something.
Spoiler : :
Humans organize information by looking for patterns in it. It's a lot easier to remember "counting by 7" than 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 77, and so on. This is also how we organize stories! There are patterns of "X caused Y" and "this scene helps make another scene later on much more emotionally hard-hitting."

Your story doesn't have these unifying patterns. Let's start by looking at Monobear's introduction to the game. He says that the four of them need to live together for ten days, and at the end, the two who are the closest can live with each other permanently. This makes me wonder why Monobear is doing this. He has only ever hosted killing games and mocks people caring about each other. Why would he hold a non-killing game and take "two contestants care about each other" seriously? I can't unify this with what I already know of the world of Dangan Ronpa.

Kaede's death on Day 1 has a similar problem. Yes, she died, but now I have an ever harder time unifying the events of the game. The goal of the game isn't to murder, but characters still die? That seems disconnected from what has happened before. How does this connect to the future of the game? Not very well. A character may die, and the others will be sad when the character is dead, but when the character is resurrected (why do they get resurrected?), the point is forgotten. I don't know whether I'm supposed to take the deaths seriously or not, which leaves me even more confused about how I'm supposed to bring these various parts of the game together. The unrealistic reactions of the characters don't help. Does Himiko crying and moaning like a whale mean her grief is intense and serious, or comical? I can't tell.

Togami going on his murderous rampage has the same problem. Why does he do it? I'm not sure. Does it allow me to unify events in the case into a story? No. I can't even identify the climax or conflict in a story. I'm sorry to tell you that these seem to be just random events that happened to the same people over a few days, without regard for making a whole story out of them.

I really recommend that when you try writing again, you ask yourself what the climax and conflict are, and how the rest of the story relates to them. I think that will make your future work much better.
[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson
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