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...I haven't written anything for the past nine days. Other things have sucked up my time, and it's my own fault. But now that the novelty has worn off, I can focus on the Big Bangs that I've signed up for.
(At least I did make my word count for the month for GYWO. Barely, though. I guess that was part of the reason why I allowed myself to become distracted.)
Anyway, in case anyone was curious, this is pretty much my outline for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hardmode. Since I mentioned that this outline was a factor in my decision to write this idea (instead of several others) this time around, I think that I had better save it, or else I fear that it might get lost.
Here it is. In case you're wondering, the numbers in parentheses are the chronological order of events. I originally wrote this in chronological order and then re-numbered it in the order that I was actually going to write it.
(By the way, for the other fans of this game that might be reading this, if you're wondering... the other endings that would probably happen in this particular "game" would be Rena and Dias, Precis and Chisato, and Noel and Ernest. This whole scenario wouldn't happen in an actual game, though, because I'm pretty shamelessly mixing PAs from the different scenarios.)
1. (10) Opera arrives back on Tetragenis with Ernest and Noel and is waiting in a very posh quarantine chamber. Noel and Ernest are talking about the city and the planet, while Opera is off on her own and being pensive about something.
2. (1) In the Mountain Palace, Opera meets up with Claude, Rena and Precis. I'm trying not to go into too much detail about scenes that happen in the game, so this is mostly going to focus on Opera's travels on Expel before she meets them, and then Claude and Opera clashing over "regulations" and such during the trip underground. I might split this into two chapters.
3. (11) Back at home, Opera is at her apartment, and feeling very restless. She sees Ernest and Noel watching a movie that she doesn't care for, something that she and Ernest have watched over and over because it's one of his favorites, and the two of them get into a short argument over it.
4. (2) On Expel, Opera and Claude are out in the Shingo Forest. Opera shows him where her ship crash-landed. Shortly after, Rena and Precis come after them (having followed them) and find them talking about it. (I might incorporate a bit about the PA where Rena and Opera talk about Claude, and Rena says how mortified she would be if anything developed between Claude and herself, and Claude overhears.)
5. (12)Back to Tetragenis. Opera has a chat with her family. (Her mother and father are stern, glad that she's home but rather demanding of her time - they want her to take over the family name, and the Vectra family owns a LOT of the city that they'd in, so there's a lot of business to take over. She also would talk to her little sister Opal - I think that's her name? - who is currently off in college and would be kind of jealous of her sister for having Ernest around. She has a crush on him too. Yeah, that's canon. :P)
6. (3 or 4) Expel. The scene at the Hoffmann Ruins where Opera finds Ernest, and the whole thing with the ghost tempting her. (This might be pushed later in the story; I haven't decided if I want to have this before or after the next scene I have for Expel...)
7. (13) Another conversation, this one with her butler Alfred. (I'll more than likely end up merging this with #5 if I don't cut it outright.)
8.(3 or 4) Expel. A scene that I really think I'll enjoy writing. Opera follows Claude into the forest in Mars and sees him fighting a gigantic bird by himself with an unfamiliar sword. Seeing that he's doing fine but about to be ambushed by another bird, she shoots the second one down. He explains why he was in the forest alone with the sword, which is the one that Dias had Master Gamgee make for Claude; this inevitably goes into Claude's strange little rivalry with Dias and what he really feels about the whole thing with him and Rena.
9. (5) Energy Nede, Giveaway. I have this scene planned out, where Claude and Opera go to a soda shop (they're bound to have one somewhere, it's a college town for crying out loud) and talk for a bit. May be cut because I can't remember what they were talking about.
10. (8) Space, on the ship before they take Claude home. Opera and Ernest are taking Claude and Noel to school with card games, which leads to a few more talks about gambling... Opera seems uncomfortable with it, oddly, and most of them notice.
11. (6) Energy Nede, North City. Opera tries to tell Claude that he's trying too hard to make everyone happy after what he's just been through, after Claude is stressing out after making Precis upset. Claude, during the conversation, blurts out that Opera is the one who got him through the Field of Love. Opera, who is a little wierded out by this, does not know what to say to what is basically a confession.
12. (7, 9) Energy Nede, L'Aqua. Claude and Opera have their scene on the beach. During the same scene: Earth, at Port. Basically the two scenes run parallel to each other, with the beach scene on one hand (Claude and Opera make a bet over which one of them ends up with the other, and Opera comments that it's foolish of her to make a bet when she knows the outcome) and a sad conversation on the port (in which Opera basically tells him that it was a sucker's bet and that they must've both known all along that there was no way it would've worked out, and Claude is unhappy.)
13. (14) Tetragenis. Opera overhears Ernest and Noel talking about Ern's plans to get out of town and off planet again, and this gives Opera pause, since he'd promised he wouldn't. She starts seriously thinking about whether or not she made a mistake. (Okay, she's been thinking about it the whole story, but this is the point at which leaving Ernest and her family might actually seem like a viable outcome.) I also want to make sure that it doesn't feel like Ern's being a complete scumbag. Yes, he's doing something he promised he wouldn't, but I kind of want to play it in the way that he thinks he's giving Opera what he wants by letting her chase him, and maybe in a way he always was, until recently. It makes more sense in my head...
14. (15) Tetragenis. Opera makes arrangements to leave, which include basically breaking up with Ern (a fairly benign one, but still a breakup,) leaving goodbyes for her parents, talking to her sister again... basically getting her affairs in order, as if she doesn't know whether or not she's coming back to Vectra City.
15. (16) Earth, although there might be a scene or two in space between this, en route. Opera finally meets up with Claude at the Federation Academy again, and after some ice cream and some awkwardness (because she really did hurt Claude's feelings before and I don't want to forget that) she finally admits that for the first time since she was a child she lost a bet, and now she's coming back to concede. It ends on an upnote, but not everything's going to be perfect right away.
That's about it. I might end up swapping things around, or even deleting a couple of scenes outright, depending on how they end up feeling within the story. There are a few scenes that I'm not sure I really need. I want to give the reader an idea of what Opera's family is really like, but I don't want to get bogged down in it to the point that it distracts from the point of the story. It'll require some thought, and probably a lot of editing after the fact. (There's at least one scene that I kind of want to add to this, which involves what happens with the rest of the group while Claude is out comforting Rena at the Heraldic Research Facility on Nede. Considering that I think I've only played one SO2 game where Rena and Claude have ended up together, and that was the one I played with just Claude and Rena in the party to see what the script changes were, I always wonder what would have been going on between the others in the group at that time, especially the people that Claude and Rena are closest to.)
As for my other sign up, well. I still really don't have an outline for that one. It's still going to involve a lot of flying blind and editing after the fact, so that might have mixed results. So I'll probably end up posting a lot about that.
I'll be posting pieces of them here under lock, if anyone's interested. It'll be an interesting attempt, trying to get all of this written in a fairly short time span. I'm going to have to cut out the other time-wasters that have sapped my productivity, or at least cut them down to a manageable level. I don't want to end up having to drop out because I was too busy playing games to get one of these finished, especially since they're both old ideas. (As I've said before, nothing motivates me quite like the idea of getting art drawn for something that I did!)
(At least I did make my word count for the month for GYWO. Barely, though. I guess that was part of the reason why I allowed myself to become distracted.)
Anyway, in case anyone was curious, this is pretty much my outline for
hardmode. Since I mentioned that this outline was a factor in my decision to write this idea (instead of several others) this time around, I think that I had better save it, or else I fear that it might get lost. Here it is. In case you're wondering, the numbers in parentheses are the chronological order of events. I originally wrote this in chronological order and then re-numbered it in the order that I was actually going to write it.
(By the way, for the other fans of this game that might be reading this, if you're wondering... the other endings that would probably happen in this particular "game" would be Rena and Dias, Precis and Chisato, and Noel and Ernest. This whole scenario wouldn't happen in an actual game, though, because I'm pretty shamelessly mixing PAs from the different scenarios.)
1. (10) Opera arrives back on Tetragenis with Ernest and Noel and is waiting in a very posh quarantine chamber. Noel and Ernest are talking about the city and the planet, while Opera is off on her own and being pensive about something.
2. (1) In the Mountain Palace, Opera meets up with Claude, Rena and Precis. I'm trying not to go into too much detail about scenes that happen in the game, so this is mostly going to focus on Opera's travels on Expel before she meets them, and then Claude and Opera clashing over "regulations" and such during the trip underground. I might split this into two chapters.
3. (11) Back at home, Opera is at her apartment, and feeling very restless. She sees Ernest and Noel watching a movie that she doesn't care for, something that she and Ernest have watched over and over because it's one of his favorites, and the two of them get into a short argument over it.
4. (2) On Expel, Opera and Claude are out in the Shingo Forest. Opera shows him where her ship crash-landed. Shortly after, Rena and Precis come after them (having followed them) and find them talking about it. (I might incorporate a bit about the PA where Rena and Opera talk about Claude, and Rena says how mortified she would be if anything developed between Claude and herself, and Claude overhears.)
5. (12)Back to Tetragenis. Opera has a chat with her family. (Her mother and father are stern, glad that she's home but rather demanding of her time - they want her to take over the family name, and the Vectra family owns a LOT of the city that they'd in, so there's a lot of business to take over. She also would talk to her little sister Opal - I think that's her name? - who is currently off in college and would be kind of jealous of her sister for having Ernest around. She has a crush on him too. Yeah, that's canon. :P)
6. (3 or 4) Expel. The scene at the Hoffmann Ruins where Opera finds Ernest, and the whole thing with the ghost tempting her. (This might be pushed later in the story; I haven't decided if I want to have this before or after the next scene I have for Expel...)
7. (13) Another conversation, this one with her butler Alfred. (I'll more than likely end up merging this with #5 if I don't cut it outright.)
8.(3 or 4) Expel. A scene that I really think I'll enjoy writing. Opera follows Claude into the forest in Mars and sees him fighting a gigantic bird by himself with an unfamiliar sword. Seeing that he's doing fine but about to be ambushed by another bird, she shoots the second one down. He explains why he was in the forest alone with the sword, which is the one that Dias had Master Gamgee make for Claude; this inevitably goes into Claude's strange little rivalry with Dias and what he really feels about the whole thing with him and Rena.
9. (5) Energy Nede, Giveaway. I have this scene planned out, where Claude and Opera go to a soda shop (they're bound to have one somewhere, it's a college town for crying out loud) and talk for a bit. May be cut because I can't remember what they were talking about.
10. (8) Space, on the ship before they take Claude home. Opera and Ernest are taking Claude and Noel to school with card games, which leads to a few more talks about gambling... Opera seems uncomfortable with it, oddly, and most of them notice.
11. (6) Energy Nede, North City. Opera tries to tell Claude that he's trying too hard to make everyone happy after what he's just been through, after Claude is stressing out after making Precis upset. Claude, during the conversation, blurts out that Opera is the one who got him through the Field of Love. Opera, who is a little wierded out by this, does not know what to say to what is basically a confession.
12. (7, 9) Energy Nede, L'Aqua. Claude and Opera have their scene on the beach. During the same scene: Earth, at Port. Basically the two scenes run parallel to each other, with the beach scene on one hand (Claude and Opera make a bet over which one of them ends up with the other, and Opera comments that it's foolish of her to make a bet when she knows the outcome) and a sad conversation on the port (in which Opera basically tells him that it was a sucker's bet and that they must've both known all along that there was no way it would've worked out, and Claude is unhappy.)
13. (14) Tetragenis. Opera overhears Ernest and Noel talking about Ern's plans to get out of town and off planet again, and this gives Opera pause, since he'd promised he wouldn't. She starts seriously thinking about whether or not she made a mistake. (Okay, she's been thinking about it the whole story, but this is the point at which leaving Ernest and her family might actually seem like a viable outcome.) I also want to make sure that it doesn't feel like Ern's being a complete scumbag. Yes, he's doing something he promised he wouldn't, but I kind of want to play it in the way that he thinks he's giving Opera what he wants by letting her chase him, and maybe in a way he always was, until recently. It makes more sense in my head...
14. (15) Tetragenis. Opera makes arrangements to leave, which include basically breaking up with Ern (a fairly benign one, but still a breakup,) leaving goodbyes for her parents, talking to her sister again... basically getting her affairs in order, as if she doesn't know whether or not she's coming back to Vectra City.
15. (16) Earth, although there might be a scene or two in space between this, en route. Opera finally meets up with Claude at the Federation Academy again, and after some ice cream and some awkwardness (because she really did hurt Claude's feelings before and I don't want to forget that) she finally admits that for the first time since she was a child she lost a bet, and now she's coming back to concede. It ends on an upnote, but not everything's going to be perfect right away.
That's about it. I might end up swapping things around, or even deleting a couple of scenes outright, depending on how they end up feeling within the story. There are a few scenes that I'm not sure I really need. I want to give the reader an idea of what Opera's family is really like, but I don't want to get bogged down in it to the point that it distracts from the point of the story. It'll require some thought, and probably a lot of editing after the fact. (There's at least one scene that I kind of want to add to this, which involves what happens with the rest of the group while Claude is out comforting Rena at the Heraldic Research Facility on Nede. Considering that I think I've only played one SO2 game where Rena and Claude have ended up together, and that was the one I played with just Claude and Rena in the party to see what the script changes were, I always wonder what would have been going on between the others in the group at that time, especially the people that Claude and Rena are closest to.)
As for my other sign up, well. I still really don't have an outline for that one. It's still going to involve a lot of flying blind and editing after the fact, so that might have mixed results. So I'll probably end up posting a lot about that.
I'll be posting pieces of them here under lock, if anyone's interested. It'll be an interesting attempt, trying to get all of this written in a fairly short time span. I'm going to have to cut out the other time-wasters that have sapped my productivity, or at least cut them down to a manageable level. I don't want to end up having to drop out because I was too busy playing games to get one of these finished, especially since they're both old ideas. (As I've said before, nothing motivates me quite like the idea of getting art drawn for something that I did!)
