IWSG: July

     Love that creative title post, right?

    *sigh*

    Yeah.  That pretty much sums up where I am right now.  The game jam started on June 30th, so I've been working on my visual novel script for a week now, and I'm making pretty good progress...except that the early scenes are much better than the later ones.  Like, as soon as the conflict started, it all just went out the window.  :(  I just can't write arguments to save my life, evidently.

    Which makes me wonder why I chose to write a visual novel about a guy having an extended temper tantrum over an argument.

    *cough*

    To start over at the beginning, since I don't think I ever outlined this on the blog, the idea for this visual novel is that I am adapting parts of the Iliad through a 1980s rock'n'roll filter:  instead of being warriors on the fields of Troy, Achilles and Hector are rock performers, and Agamemnon and Priam are their managers (though Priam is also still Hector's father).  The fight between Achilles and Agamemnon is pretty weird and artificial:  Achilles and Hector are up for the same award, it's given to Achilles, but then Agamemnon is informed that the announcer lied about whose name was on the card, and that it was supposed to go to Hector.  Not wanting the bad press of refusing to return the award, Agamemnon sends it back, and Achilles has a conniption fit, but he's blaming everything on Agamemnon instead of on the people who run the award or on Hector.  (As to the reason it's set in the 1980s, it's complicated, but stems out of its origin as the capsule description of a movie in a Velvet Goldmine fanfiction I wrote a while back.)

    It was going great until I got to writing him blaming everything on Agamemnon's willingness to capitulate.  Suddenly he makes no sense and is acting like a sullen twelve year old.  (Which, admittedly, Achilles always did.  Only, you know, a dangerous one with a spear and divine blood to make him stronger than normal men.)  His immaturity is made rather more awkward since he and Patroclos have had sex like three times already at this point in the game.  (Never on screen, though.  One of the two game jams I'm submitting this to doesn't accept 18+ material, and I would never be able to write a convincing sex scene even if it did.)

    The worst part, to me, is that I'm part of a team here.  Admittedly, since the whole thing was my idea, I kind of ended up in the lead of the team, but that doesn't change the "team" thing in its most important respect:  if my writing ends up being utter trash, then everyone else will have wasted their time and effort.  :(  I did at least give them all a link to my writing on AO3 before the jam started so they would have the chance to back out if they thought my script would be garbage, but that doesn't make me feel any less nervous about potentially wasting everyone's effort.

    Especially since our composer has already produced a number of pieces (none polished and perfected yet, but still), and they make me feel all the more incompetent as a writer, because they're just so good!  It's like, how can my mediocre-to-awful words be on screen while that awesome music is playing?

    So far, our artists have only produced sketches, so I can't know for a fact, but I'm pretty sure the art, too, is going to overwhelm the words.  Which I guess is kind of the point, but...bottom line, I feel awkward and uncomfortable about it no matter how you slice it.

    On top of everything else, I'm afraid I'm getting sick.  Just an allergy-induced sinus thing, but still.  (It shouldn't be possible for it to be COVID-related, at least:  I'm fully vaccinated, and although a lot of people in my area aren't and the Delta variant has been making headlines as it tears through the local population, I've been careful about wearing a mask in public, so between the vaccine and the mask, I should be okay on that score.)  If I do end up sick, that could make finishing the game really difficult.  We do have two months, but sometimes my sinus things can hang on for weeks, even a full month if they're really nasty.

    (Also, yesterday morning a chipmunk decided to sit on my front porch and make annoying little chirpy noises that I fear are it trying to attract a mate.  I can hear it totally well through my front door (which is very near my standing desk), and it is super annoying.  It hasn't come back since I went and partially blocked its hole (leading under my front porch) with little rocks from the fill around my yews, but I'm sure it'll be back soon.  That is not going to help me concentrate on my writing.)