A tough question, or a brief story on how I started writing BNAA

All right, folks. Tough question time.

If you weren't aware, I have a bit of an interest in writing fiction. I don't write much (fiction or non-fiction) these days, but from time to time I come up with some ideas for a story that I /really/ want to put into words and share. My goal - at least, once I settled on one - was to come up with a story that appeals to me and carries emotional weight; ideally I'd like to come up with a situation that builds up to something where the reader bawls like they were at a Pixar movie, and then delivers something tense while it builds a climax and moves on to a heartwarming finale. Yeah, I know, cheesy, right? But my experience tells me that the stories that stay with you the most do something along those lines, as long as the execution's great and the story and/or characters are solid.

More on that later.

Around 2010, I came across a series of stories known as the Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB) Case Files [link if I can find it], written by someone known as ShadowKnux. It was a crossover series of Smash and Ace Attorney, and it was written like a game script - in fact, originally, it was posted in a playable "audience follows along" form on a forum. Basically, Phoenix and Maya go around assorted Nintendo locales and solve murder mysteries, meeting characters from all sorts of Nintendo games (most of which were in Brawl), gathering evidence and testimony, and of course duking it out with Edgeworth in court to find the culprit and save an innocent client from being found guilty.

The story that stuck out in my mind the most was themed around Pokemon. Mewtwo took part in it, and he played a sort of mentor role to yet another accused - Ness - and was willing to sabotage his own defense to prevent Ness from being tried for murder. (Phoenix ends up saving them both, natch.) I really don't remember what the true inspiration was, but I liked the idea of Ace Attorney-style courtroom tales set in Pokemon locales with Pokemon characters - and decided to try my hand with writing a case, even doing it in the same script style that SSBB Case Files was using. I called it "Brendan Namron: Ace Attorney" after the title character, chosen because he was also the male player character from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, which were my favorite Pokemon games at the time.

The first case was ... pretty lame, to be honest, but it got my feet wet and I felt pretty good about it. I even shared it on a message board, and posted it there using the same "play along" style SSBBCF used. I also shared it with a good friend over ... was it IRC or Google Talk? and did more-or-less the same play-along thing. We had actually been doing that with SSBBCF - I would paste the text into the chat and he'd supply the answers when the "game" asked for one. I even made up press text when he pressed a statement that had no text from the original author, so it was good practice and probably contributed to my desire to write my own case. In both places, the story seemed to be met with positive responses - what few there were - and I felt encouraged to write a second case. I wanted to make it bigger, and I certainly wanted to make it better; the first case was completely amateurish and ridiculous in the way the trial played out, and mostly served as a warm-up. But I wrote an ending to it that was supposed to set up the theme - because I wanted to try and make a complete four-case story out of it, and now I was confident that I could do so.

Things kinda went downhill.

I had a good chunk of text written by the time I started posting the first case to the message board, but I was hungry for feedback and spent a lot of time posting it, and it didn't take long to catch up. After that, my momentum took a nosedive, and on top of that I wrote such a horrendously sloppy section that the board's admin called me out on it. (I scrapped it and rewrote most of that part, and the admin seemed to enjoy the new version.) I came to a near-complete halt when I hit the final trial, because I was struggling with a lot of things about it - not the least of which included how to lead-in to the final trial day, as well as how to *end the case*. (Endings really are hard.) I think I scrapped about a dozen versions of the lead-in before I allowed myself to continue.

I still mostly write sequentially. B cannot happen until A has, and consequently I have a lot of trouble planning. Which also means I mostly write by the seat of my pants, and other than some vague idea of what I want to convey or make happen, I don't know in advance what *will* happen. This usually makes for fun writing until I remember that I'm writing a /murder mystery/ - one that's supposed to be in the style of a solvable visual novel, at that - and *everything* has to make consistent sense or suspension of disbelief goes out the window.

So yeah, I think case 2 ended up taking me over a year to finish, and by then interest had died down greatly. Still, I wasn't giving up, so I set to work on case 3.

Except I had no idea what case 3 was going to be about for several months. I had no idea what the /overarching story/ was going to be about.

On top of that, I got this idea into my head that people just *really* hate reading script formats, and that that was probably why BNAA wasn't getting much feedback. So I eventually took it upon myself to write case 3 in prose, telling myself it would be good writing practice anyway.

I was still writing without much direction in mind, but as I tossed idea after idea, I started drifting to case 4 and what I wanted to do with that. I eventually settled on incorporating some tension between Brendan and his father, Norman, since many fan theories involving the Norman from the video games do the same thing. I went through a ton of tweaks on the idea, and currently I have a pretty good concept formed of how the relationship between Brendan and Norman is supposed to go throughout case 4 - kickstarted by a plot twist that I want to reveal right at the end of case 3.

... actually, wait, no. I did pick a murder mystery to go with for case 3, but I only had the "day of the crime" stuff nailed down and I just wanted to get something going. A scene not two far into the case's story involves a conversation between Phoenix and Brendan (Phoenix being one of Brendan's assistants) about his dad. Brendan sums up for Phoenix why he dislikes his father, and in this canon it's due to a misunderstanding over a competition victory.

Over the years, I took that and fleshed it out in my notes.

But I didn't flesh out case 3's mystery nearly as well. I wanted a Pokemon to be the murder - since it was a human in the first two cases - and I didn't want to scrap and start the case over because I'd already gotten a lot done and I didn't know how else to approach this - and starting over would almost certainly kill my momentum, I thought. I wanted to get something /out there/ before interest died completely, because to be honest, I crave feedback. Positive validation. Wooooo. (This is the part where I try to persuade you to leave a comment, but I guess I shouldn't bother.)

And I just. Kept. Getting. Stuck.

So as I write this, I've had this /one story/ in development for /six years/ and counting, and it's not looking like I can finish it any time soon. I don't know if I'll /ever/ finish it, despite currently sitting on the *last trial* of case 3, desperately trying to tie everything in the case together so I can move on to the damned plot twist and start *really* working on case 4, because *that's* the part of the story I really want to show everyone and the part where I've had so many ideas come and go it's ridiculous and I need to breathe. Inhale. Exhale.

So this is the question, folks. Hopefully some of the above made sense. Is it time to move on?

Case 3 has been fermenting for five years. Chances are case 4 will take about as long, no matter what I convince myself of otherwise. Somewhere along the line, I lost interest in actually *writing* the thing, even if I continued to have ideas for it and felt eager to show them to people. Indeed, I did try to show my notes to two people, and I got basially nothing in response. I don't know if they ever cared about BNAA, but they certainly don't seem to now. And why should they? It's clearly going nowhere, for starters, and if they want to get their Ace Attorney or Pokemon fix, they can just *play the games* and find stories of infinitely better quality than what I'm producing.

I tell myself I really want to finish this. I tell myself that I have too good an idea for a father-son relationship story to let it die. I tell myself that *someone* else wants to see how this thing ends, even if it's just one person.

I just don't know if I can write any more.

On the merging of phone and gaming device

I'm a gadget addict. I like having multiple pieces of technology on me, at nearly all times. For the past eight years, I've carried around three staple devices on most days: a phone, a music player, and a gaming handheld. (Naturally, I wear a lot of cargo pants/shorts.)

That may sound ridiculous, but one of the things I love about relying on multiple gadgets is the "division of labor" - by not trying to force one device to do everything, I can conserve battery life on all of them and juggle multiple activities (to the extent that my brain can keep up).

Most of you have guessed where I'm going with this: the modern "smartphone" - pocket computers that happen to be telecommunications devices - has taken over nearly every "gadget" functionality for a huge chunk of the population. MP3 players and standalone PDAs have basically died out, while compact digital cameras are almost never seen outside of a retail store shelf. Even portable gaming devices are on the decline; many have asserted that the 3DS and the Vita (especially the Vita) have all but lost to the age of the smartphone, as the latter packs more convenience and computational power than the former, and most games for phones are much cheaper or outright "free".

I'm not here to go into an argument about the quality or merit of the games on one platform or the other. I love my gaming handhelds, but I've found plenty of games for Android devices that I'll sing praises about. What I do want to talk about is a problem I keep running into that indirectly affects every portable game out there - the consolidation effect (yes, I just made that name up. Don't snicker).

The thing about folding "handheld gaming" into a smartphone is that it's an enormous drain on a device that's already being asked to do so much. Think about it: with our phones, we: make phone calls; communicate with text messages and similar OTI services; browse the web and research things; take photos and videos; edit photos; listen to music; navigate and find places to navigate to; pay for things; check our email; check on documents; check our schedule; check the news; take and utilize notes; watch videos; control TV accessories; and so. Much. More. It's almost no wonder that, despite nearly two decades and counting of smartphone development and growth, we're all still struggling to make most phones get through a full day of use without needing a recharge.

And we seriously want to add video games, one of the most resource-intensive tasks a personal computer can do in this day and age, to that list of daily tasks with nothing to siphon it off to?

I'm excited for Nintendo's plans for mobile games (I'm really hoping their Fire Emblem title will be worthwhile). I've joined the Pokémon GO craze. I've found games that I really enjoy playing on my phone, from Super Hexagon (a port) to Space Grunts (an original title; and a pretty fun rougelike) to Monument Valley (an original puzzle game). But no matter how good, or how deep, or how fun those games are, I always find myself keeping play sessions short - much shorter than I do when I'm playing a game on my DS, my Wii, or my desktop PC.

Primarily, that's because my phone gets hot (which forces the phone to reduce performance and which hurts the battery's lifespan), and the battery drains fast. I have a Droid Turbo, mind - a phone that was touted by Motorola and Verizon as being capable of getting through 48 hours without needing a charger. Not once has it quite lived up to that claim in practice - and since I started playing Pokémon GO, it's become hard to even get through sixteen hours without reaching for extra juice (granted, that game is an extreme example). Unlike my DS, I have to make sure my phone still has power to actually be used as a phone - I certainly don't want someone to call me at 3 PM only for me to realize I have 10% left on the battery gauge. (Which is exactly what can happen to someone playing a lot of Pokémon GO in the middle of the day, with no outlet nearby.)

Secondarily, there's the issue of activity focus, yet another thing we as a society have been doubtlessly struggling with thanks to "smart" devices. While you're playing a game on a phone, a notification may appear; a phone call may come in; a text message may arrive; or something else may come up that forces you to switch apps. Besides breaking your focus, responding to these interruptions put extra work on the phone and may even push the game out of working memory - forcing the software to reload when you switch back to it. This, of course, contributes to the primary issue of battery life and phone heat. If this happens while you're gaming on a DS? Pause and/or close the lid, optionally pocketing/setting down the console. It's little things like that that make the experience much less annoying, in my opinion.

My point is, Sony's probably not making another handheld, and after whatever rumored portable segment of Nintendo's "NX" comes to light, who knows if there will be a handheld successor? If the answer is "none", then the future of portable gaming will left entirely in the hands of our cell phones.

I just don't think our batteries are ready for that.

A Breath of the Wild, Fresh Air

Open-world games and I kind of have a rocky relationship. I ignore them, and they ignore me. I have avoided, among other franchises, Fable and The Elder Scrolls (I tried Skyrim once, on an Xbox 360, and I simply failed to stay interested), largely because the open-world nature of those games leaves me in a sort of choice-paralysis.

Even with The Legend of Zelda, one of my favorite franchises, there are games I have not completed because of how little they hold your hand. I have a copy of the original game for the NES, as a real cartridge, and on my 3DS as a Virtual Console title. The former, I've never actually played, and the latter, I've owned for over a year and a half, and I still have three dungeons left to do. Every time I pick up that game, I get frustrated with something and leave it alone again before I can accomplish anything. Everything I have accomplished was done with the aid of a detailed map and a textual walkthrough; the latter was used to find some items to reduce frustration (White Ring, more Hearts, etc.), and the former was used to give me a sense of direction. Without both at hand, I don't feel free - I feel lost. The freedom to aimlessly wander without being told about a specific, immediate goal almost always leaves me feeling like I'm wandering around without purpose, wasting time, when I could be getting something done in the game. Even in Zelda games I otherwise love, there are occasionally parts where, if I don't have them memorized, I become frustrated so easily from a lack of direction that I turn to a walkthrough (big example: the Triforce Shard quest in Wind Waker; also, the mandatory trading subquest in Link's Awakening). It's weird, because if I know what my goal is, and how to do it, then I don't mind taking a little detour from time to time (example: hunting for Maiamais in A Link Between Worlds between dungeons), because I know what I have to do and I'm free to break off my distraction to go do it and move on.

And yet, somehow, I am incredibly excited for Breath of the Wild.

I don't know what it is.

I know that I got excited watching much of the footage during E3. It looked like great fun to wander upon a bunch of Bokoblins with naught but a stick, and come out victorious with a club and a bow. The whole way the weapon breakage worked, combined with the system for switching weapons, got me a bit giddy at the challenge it should offer. Just the prospect of exploring the world, and the footage showing off some of that, yet still having at least a few people point me in the direction the player should go for answers, special items, and the like - giving purpose to the wandering beyond resource gathering, one the player is free to follow at their leisure.

So many open-world games have done these things already, and yet I've not wanted to give them a chance. Why is this Zelda game different to me? Why is it different for anyone?

I don't know. Maybe it's just that Nintendo touch.

"Meh" About Miitomo

If you haven't heard, Nintendo is preventing rooted Android users from using Miitomo by running a check at launch, and killing the app if root access is detected. There's a workaround, but it requires Xposed, which itself is too "hackish" for my liking on a daily driver.

I'm more than a little miffed that I can't use the app on any of my devices, which all are either rooted or running custom ROMs - mainly to get rid of carrier bloatware, run newer Android versions, and give me the ability to actually tether. Definitely nothing that I think Nintendo is worried about happening to Miitomo.

But more to the point, it's increasingly obvious that Nintendo will block root users in all future titles as well. They're the only company I know that has been consistent about this. (See: Pokémon Shuffle and Pokémon Jukebox. Ninty may not have developed those, but they are the parent company ...)

I mostly love Nintendo and their software, but I'm not giving up greater ownership of my devices just to walk with them on their journey into the smartphone age.

EDIT: Version 1.1.2 presumably reduced the strictness of the root check, as Miitomo now runs on my main phone without issues. I've heard reports that it still won't work for many Cyanogenmod users, so that's a bummer. I'm using Miitomo now, and it's neat, but it's probably not worth the trouble of removing root/reflashing stock/flashing Xposed just for this one (battery-eating, while in the foreground) app.

Brendan Namron: Ace Attorney

If you're a fan of both the Ace Attorney and Pokemon franchises, and have ever wondered what it might be like if the two have ever merged, do I have a post for you. If not, then you can ignore this one.

For the past six years, I've been doing off-and-on writing on a series that I call Brendan Namron: Ace Attorney. It takes the Ace Attorney approach to writing (with most cases even being done in a script format, meant to resemble playing the real games) with cases set in the Pokemon universe. I have a few original characters, but those familiar with the Pokemon games will find old favorites as well.

You can read the first case here, and the second one here. The third case is in progress, but lately I've been pushing myself to get the darn thing done already (which is why I'm bothering to post about this now). You can read the completed chapters of case three here.

EDIT on 2016-08-27: Here's a short side-story featuring Skye and Phoenix.

I hope you enjoy them. Please feel free to leave feedback in this post's comments.

Reasons I Love Pokémon Black and White

[It's been a while since my last post, hasn't it ... ?

This is just a small list I wrote about a year ago; I kept it tucked away in my Google Drive and never posted it anywhere. Today, while reorganizing my Drive, I stumbled upon it, and decided it might be fun to share.]

Beware of unmarked spoilers. [EDIT: December 12, 2015: Now with some TV Tropes links.]

• This is the only game (pair) in the franchise where your motivation for challenging the Elite Four is, at any point, not the comparatively self-centered goal of becoming the Champion for glory or ranking. Instead, you challenge them because it's the only option you have to reach and confront N, who at this point has issued a challenge where failure to win - and presumably, refusing to meet the challenge - means separation of Pokémon and humans the world over.
• Related to the above:
• The climax of the game's "Team X" storyline doesn't end before the 7th or 8th Gym badge, as it did in pretty much every other generation - instead, it's the final bosses, just after the Elite Four. This time, prior to the 8th badge is when the player learns of N's ultimate intention, and suddenly the heat is on to chase him to the Pokémon League, making the pursuit of the 8th badge much more purposeful.
• The game's experience system - which is only used in this generation - makes it harder to overlevel a team without seriously going out of one's way to level grind. As a result, many players arrive at the Elite Four with a team roughly equal in levels to the opponents'. This, I think, makes the final bosses much more exciting and challenging, with an increased reliance on good tactics even for veterans. (That Hydregion though.)
• The flow of events after defeating the Elite Four and marching forth to face N has a more-traditional JRPG feel, in my opinion. There's a lot of buildup, and it meets expectations instead of being an underwhelming letdown that's resolved in five minutes.
• Just after the "Pokémon League Under Siege" cutscene comes one of my favorite tracks in the game, "Carrying Out A Mission". It's right up there with "For the Savior" from Lufia 2 as far as heroic "we gotta do this" songs go - but unless you stand around for a bit, you only hear the first ten seconds, and it never plays again.
• The final boss feels like a final boss; that's not to say the Champions were never climactic or challenging or anything, but see my first bullet point - it was all friendly competition, and there was no danger or menace in those fights (with the possible slight exception of your Rival in Gen 1). This time, you're fighting a madman, and as far as you can tell, he's angry enough to kill you (he doesn't exactly try, but still).
• The ending cutscene is somewhat emotionally charged and has a beautiful track to go with it. You don't get the usual Hall of Fame bit, which may leave veterans feeling like they have unfinished business ...
• The game sets up a good ol' Checkov's Plot Trinket, which isn't made terribly obvious unless you play both versions of the game. I'm pretty sure this is the first time in the series that such a thing is done so early in the story, and without a huge neon sign that says "SUPER IMPORTANT THING HERE".
• Bianca, Cheren, Bianca's father, and N all get noticeable character development. This is well below (above? it's a negative thing after all, and in golf you score low ...) par for the course for most stories in general, but for a Pokémon game it's pretty nice, and it's done fairly well. Two of the related cutscenes even get pretty emotional pieces (and there are even more for N, delivered as flashbacks, in B2W2).
• The whole plot related to Team Plasma's purported goal legitimately calls into question the "slave or friend" debate on Pokémon, something that has been on the minds of many fans and Moral Guardians since the series' debut. It's not often that a kid-friendly game examines itself in this manner, and it provides plenty of food for thought. (N's possible backstory does too, though more in the form of Fridge Horror.)
• Despite the first bullet point, you can return to the Pokémon League after the credits and rematch the Elite Four - then properly challenge the Champion. He doesn't quite get the awesome battle theme other Champions have, but he makes up for it by having a pretty tough team at high levels (though keep in mind that, in story, N stomped this team flat), hot on the heels of Red's team. It takes a lot of level grinding to stand a chance if you didn't import a battle-hardened team from Gen 4, so it's a pretty meaningful battle for a lot of players.

What do you like about the Gen 5 games? Please tell me in the comments!

I picked up a used iPod Mini

Wheeeeeeee!

That's all for now. :P