Wanderers of Sorceria Dedicated Update Thread

[RazorclawX]

The conclusion of the Hokuto and Vance plot -

Spoiler

Hokuto freeing Vance and/or fighting directly against Pixy Amy or their boss and prevail?

It's a little more nuanced than that (the ending was one of the things I did finish)

Spoiler

Hokuto defeats Pixy Amy in the second-to-last map which frees Vance from her spell, but he disappears when he wakes up, finally remembering Hokuto. At the end, Hokuto makes the decision to 'chase after him' and has a heartwarming good-bye with Shizuka, with the two of them settling their underlying tension that was the bed of the campaign.

That second-to-last map itself wasn't finished, though. The final map itself was against Raven Queen Orphea and that was the map that was the most complete because it was (naturally) a MOBA-style mission

[SilverGauntlet]

Sound like a good ending, I'll say, and the rest of your draft for X3 was pretty solid. I want to see more Sorceria post-books, and maybe some "Real life" cutscene.

One thing I don't quite understand regarding your original draft for X3, although you may already knew it yourself:

Spoiler

Shizuka's first death being just altered memory instead of an actual death was... I dunno, a bit off?

Not sure how I can explain this part feeling wrong, but does Hokuto knows Shizuka have multiple lives at the time of the latter's "first death"? That is very irresponsible of Hokuto, because Shizu may kill herself for real later down the line - if not for Deathclaw.

Also will there be a modified X3 story in text if you won't go through with another Warcraft 3 campaign? X2 actually left me with more questions than answers.

[RazorclawX]

I think that was one of the things I was really having a problem with. It kind of took something away from her because it defined how flagrantly reckless she was in the rest of her life. Since that was a pretty central part of the story it would've called for something really different to happen to make the story work.

I'm sure I thought it was a good idea at one time, but over time I really soured on the idea.

In the future I might tackle the idea again with a different angle. It's probably not going to be the same story (in fact it'd probably be separated in segments, like just Shizuka and Mizuki and no Heroes of the Storm stuff. Not so sure how I'd settle Hokuto and Vance)

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I think part of the reason "Shizuka the Fashion Model" exists is as a character study of a Shizuka that didn't have such a violent life growing up and how that would change her (and of course some things are different, like she's not crazy/reckless about her well-being, but some things remain the same)

[SilverGauntlet]

The Fashion Model was a good read so far. Some things never changes, indeed. I wonder about the reaction of the cast from the 'canon' timeline if they ever read it.

Also I have been wondering, what would be the most powerful class in the six books? I think it is either the WoW Rogue class in book 6 or Shizu's current Book 6/post-game class. And if we talk theory, I think I will get the WoW Rogue class and replace the third ability with Hunter Skills from Shizu's current Book 6/post-game class for maximum damage. Ziel from any book is a close second because Twister Form is that broken.

Weakest class must be Kurumi's Book 4 Trapper, just because it cannot deal any meaningful amount of area damage and enemies target the ward first for some reason. Torch is good for 1v1 fights though. Hikaru's original is a close second tbh, but at least he can self-heal and damage enemies... sometimes. Or Bubblehearth out of a fight.

[RazorclawX]

Uploaded more stuff to Fiction which is the remaining portions of The Fashion Model Part 3 and Prism, the Second Generation.

The main reason why I didn't upload these before is because I needed to rearrange one event to happen earlier in the story and adjust some of the text accordingly, and divided the sixth part into two parts because it was ridiculously long (the seventh part is much shorter than the others as a result).

Prism the Second Generation is basically a wholesale experiment in getting a restrained AI to write a story. Still had to edit it to make everything link together correctly (especially some events generated out of order), but it worked... sort of. A lot of it is basically throwing stuff at a dartboard to see what sticks and it's yet another music story (which is another vehicle to bag on idol culture). I mean, there's still a Miranda and Kurumi I have sitting around on top of that which is actually a more positive take on idols.

Admittedly the reason I have such a fixation on bagging on idols comes from watching Perfect Blue. If you saw it, you'd understand.

The Fashion Model was a good read so far. Some things never changes, indeed. I wonder about the reaction of the cast from the 'canon' timeline if they ever read it.

I just think of it as another story. Shion and Kanna are pretty much the same (I like believing Kanna is just extremely quirky and somehow Shizuka will always understand her). Yuki is basically what Mizuki was in the main story and the differences reflect that (except I think Shizuka was the one who harbored strong feelings in that case).

Also I have been wondering, what would be the most powerful class in the six books? I think it is either the WoW Rogue class in book 6 or Shizu's current Book 6/post-game class. And if we talk theory, I think I will get the WoW Rogue class and replace the third ability with Hunter Skills from Shizu's current Book 6/post-game class for maximum damage. Ziel from any book is a close second because Twister Form is that broken.

Weakest class must be Kurumi's Book 4 Trapper, just because it cannot deal any meaningful amount of area damage and enemies target the ward first for some reason. Torch is good for 1v1 fights though. Hikaru's original is a close second tbh, but at least he can self-heal and damage enemies... sometimes. Or Bubblehearth out of a fight.

I'm sure some of Shizuka's classes are overpowered, deliberately so. Ziel was more of an accident since he wasn't a Hero in the original version of the campaign, but Twister Form was the whole point of him (he had it even when he wasn't a Hero unit; giving him Hero-type scaling just made it broken as heck and I'm not apologetic about it).

Kurumi's Trapper class was basically trying to make the Diablo 2 Trap Assassin build. It would probably work a lot better if the 'traps' hit more than one guy at a time like it does in Diablo 2.

[RazorclawX]

Uploaded more stuff to Fiction which is more stories following Prism, the Second Generation.

I probably should get around to editing the Miranda/Kurumi story, but I also ought to stop writing about music. I didn't set out to do that intentionally, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I think maybe a lot of it might be I had a bunch of story ideas rather than things that could be turned into a game, which was a huge source of frustration in the past couple of years, but having a sort of release for it gave me some purpose. I can't say that I've thought much about doing another game lately (I've been fairly passive as far as playing games go compared to the last 20 years; I don't play as much as I used to, like the last three games I played are World of Warcraft, Fire Emblem Three Houses and Arcturus: The Curse and Loss of Divinity, the latter of which I actually spent time modding for the fun of it since it's actually pretty easy to do)

The crazy thing is I actually have a conceptual idea for a Fire Emblem Three Houses fanfic, but I don't actually want to write it. That would make the first piece of fanfiction I would have written in a really frickin' long time and I don't want to go back to that.

[RazorclawX]

Fiction update, which is two more stories following Prism, the Second Generation and the Miranda/Kurumi story.

The Miranda/Kurumi story is listed under the 'rebranded' Miranda Idol category. Half of the story is redone, but oddly the other half of it was mostly fine, so if it feels kind of like it has a jank stylistic change in the middle that's why. It's not really that good and a lot of things were removed out of it to refocus the story on Kurumi's situation which now starts about a quarter of the way through the story which starts a whole chain of events that puts Kurumi in a lot of hot water.

Spoiler

because she unwitting becomes a lesbian icon despite being straight and it really gets to her

The two Prism stories, on the other hand, feature Shizuka as a guest character. The way she is presented she is from a clear point in her "Fashion Model" story that'll be easy to recognize because it's based on her body of work done at that point (although I think doing this fudges with Prism's timeline, but to be fair each story segment takes place at indeterminant intervals after each other. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.) And to be honest, Shizuka kind of fits in with the two Moonlight girls since they all share the same moon symbolism motif.

I actually have two more Prism stories, but I'm not posting them yet because of proofreading/editing reasons. The stuff that happens in those parts are kind of a 'shit hits the fan' situation.

[RazorclawX]

Fiction update, which is two more stories following Prism, the Second Generation.

The two Prism parts I mentioned in the last post plus an 'epilogue'. This is probably the longest of the 'short' stories so far and generally deals with Akari and how her relationship with Hana and the other girls are changed through her reckless actions. Frankly, the entire series of events happened by accident, but I decided to follow through on it because it provided the first real conflict since the original Prism story.

It's probably my attitudes changing over time, but writing slice of life stuff probably works for me at the moment. As it usually goes, I generally write for myself and let other people look at it if they want; I'm not particularly after renown or fame, and this stuff is unlikely to reach any sort of wide audience, but that's the way it goes. I guess I'm just weird like that (it's basically the same attitude I had with Wanderers of Sorceria. Back when I was writing fanfiction I think I did try to make a name for myself, but even when I did I felt really bad about it and it never felt fulfilling).

[RazorclawX]

Fiction update, which is two more stories following Prism, the Second Generation.

Basically my 'monthly' update and there's a lot of them... 11 through 17. I guess you can say I was inspired. This set features Miranda as a character.

I am writing a story that features Shizuka and Mizuki, but it's not what you'd think. In a sort, it is kind of revising the Shizuka from Wanderers of Sorceria, but not directly, and weirdly, I kind of miss this dynamic.