6:16:42 PM
&Mishie
Hmm
6:16:45 PM
&Mishie
Had a look at it Marceline
6:17:00 PM
Marceline
oh hey
6:17:04 PM
Marceline
good to hear
6:17:08 PM
Marceline
any thoughts?
6:17:28 PM
&Mishie
Story feels a bit...  I'm not too sure if bland is the right word, maybe...  Not really all that full of tension or impact?
6:17:28 PM
&Mishie
Although I'm not sure if it's meant to be deliberate or not at this stage.
6:17:34 PM
&Mishie
Is the main character a second gen cape?
6:17:41 PM
&Mishie
Because that's the impression that I'm getting
6:17:43 PM
&Mishie
Which could be fun
6:18:00 PM
Marceline
she isn't meant to be
6:18:18 PM
&Mishie
huh
6:18:33 PM
Marceline
what makes you say that?
6:18:57 PM
Marceline
her being second gen i mean
6:19:21 PM
&Mishie
Shame, her talking about the trigger really reminded me of that early scene in Worm with the Undersiders talking about shit.  About how they went through what they did, and then Lisa talks about Glory Girl getting her powers from being fouled at a game or whatever it was.
6:20:34 PM
Marceline
like the trigger event seems mild to you?
6:21:00 PM
Marceline
i can sort of see that
6:21:14 PM
&Mishie
not so much mild as much as...
6:21:20 PM
&Mishie
There's buildup, but no payoff.
6:21:56 PM
Marceline
like it should have escalated more before she triggered?
6:23:15 PM
&Mishie
Right now it kinda feels like Ray is just a caricature of a person, which I feel could work out well if we hadn't seen the conversation and instead we were just running on the main characters biased opinion more obviously.
6:24:46 PM
&Mishie
Like...
6:25:03 PM
&Mishie
From what we can see there's been this back and forth between Ray and the protag.
6:25:12 PM
Marceline
mmhmm
6:26:15 PM
← thetwomind has quit (Quit: Connection closed for inactivity)
6:26:19 PM
&Mishie
Where she's been a shitty person to live with, but the others haven't had the time or patience to put up with it.  She's apparently done something even worse that's been the final straw for them and...
6:26:24 PM
&Mishie
Hmmm
6:26:39 PM
&Mishie
Honestly I almost get the feeling like she's a second gen from his shard if that makes sense?
6:26:53 PM
Marceline
huh
6:27:01 PM
&Mishie
Where she's pushed someone there to triggering, and now it's all coming around full circle.
6:27:08 PM
&Mishie
Which could be a fascinating dynamic to play around with
6:27:16 PM
Marceline
the terrible final straw was resetting the wifi password
6:27:23 PM
Marceline
like that's literally it
6:27:59 PM
&Mishie
See that almost sounds like the ending to his trigger
6:28:10 PM
&Mishie
one of those final straw moments
6:28:15 PM
Marceline
but why would that bother him? he could just change his password himself
6:28:24 PM
Marceline
it's literally written on the back of the thing
6:28:49 PM
&Mishie
I dunno, he's your character.
6:29:08 PM
Marceline
well yeah
6:29:23 PM
Marceline
but also not really
6:30:05 PM
&Mishie
But based on what I can see, it feels like a clever final straw thing.
6:30:14 PM
&Mishie
Where it's not so much this specific incident
6:30:31 PM
&Mishie
As much as the buildup over time, which makes for a great contrast to the protags trigger
6:31:06 PM
&Mishie
One where it's a variety of incidents of varying degrees over time, culminating in something minor being like a final straw.
6:31:10 PM
&Mishie
And the other where it's a ramping intensity to something more.
6:31:21 PM
Marceline
you seem to be taking her roommate's ideas of how terrible she is to live with at face value
6:31:37 PM
&Mishie
Well
6:32:09 PM
&Mishie
The protags internal dialogue kinda supports it pretty heavily tbh
6:32:33 PM
Marceline
i mean, the accusations aren't entirely baseless no
6:32:49 PM
Marceline
it's more that their response to her behavior is disproportional
6:32:56 PM
Marceline
and cruel
6:33:19 PM
Marceline
particularly since they knew she was going to move out soon anyway
6:35:36 PM
&Mishie
It kinda seems like there's very much so a toxic spiral and back and forth between everyone involved
6:35:37 PM
&Mishie
Like uh
6:35:55 PM
Marceline
sure
6:36:06 PM
Marceline
but i feel like it's noteworthy that there's three of them and one of her
6:36:29 PM
&Mishie
oh totally
6:37:40 PM
&Mishie
But it seems like the trigger is "protag does (or doesn't do) X because they're a mess, roommates complain because X effects them, protag gets worse due to how it effects them, cycle continues"
6:37:40 PM
&Mishie
With the escalation to the first scene where we see the triggers
6:38:27 PM
&Mishie
Where Ray has snapped from the stress of it all and is taking it out on the protag, pretty shittily, only for things to get physical and go crazy.
6:38:41 PM
Marceline
i'm pretty confident their anger was more because it was a useful tool for controlling her than them genuinely being that harmed/upset by her
6:38:49 PM
Marceline
it's pretty classic abusive behavior
6:38:57 PM
Marceline
including the escalation over time
6:39:09 PM
&Mishie
Well I guess if that's how you want to write it.
6:39:15 PM
Marceline
i should probably come out and say this trigger event drew heavily from personal experience
6:39:21 PM
&Mishie
But it feels kind of odd when contrasted with the early scene of-
6:39:25 PM
&Mishie
Yeah okay then
6:39:30 PM
&Mishie
Uh
6:39:42 PM
Marceline
every incident mentioned was something that actually happened to me
6:40:10 PM
&Mishie
Yeah sorry, in that case I'm not really comfortable touching shit because no offense, there's going to be a lot of personal bias, which is totally okay, that's going to get in the way of the actual story itself.
6:40:27 PM
Marceline
i'm not trying to argue that actually she's a great roommate and her roommates should have appreciated her
6:40:30 PM
Marceline
but
6:40:55 PM
Marceline
the stuff they did was still wrong
6:41:01 PM
&Mishie
oh totally
6:41:09 PM
Marceline
and completely disproportionate
6:41:15 PM
Marceline
and made the problem worse
6:41:20 PM
&Mishie
Honestly I was initially really interested by the idea of two people driving each other to trigger from their shitty behaviour
6:41:36 PM
Marceline
ray wasn't the one scared of leaving his room
6:42:09 PM
&Mishie
Yeah I'm just going to bow out, sorry.
6:42:13 PM
Marceline
yeah
6:42:21 PM
Marceline
i don't wanna bludgeon you with this
6:42:37 PM
Marceline
it's just
6:43:30 PM
&Mishie
All I can really say
6:43:45 PM
&Mishie
Is that trying to write a trigger about your own experiences feels like asking for trouble.
6:44:14 PM
Marceline
i mean
6:44:21 PM
Marceline
there are worse ways to cope with ptsd
6:45:12 PM
Marceline
for real though this is a project that's as much about wrestling with my own trauma as it is about writing a story