I’ve pretty well finished Chapter 18. Now all I have to do is let it sit until Wednesday and go back over it before posting it to the site. Given my lead on TTWC1, I may continue to stick with Tico3 this week and try to get a little ahead in the story.

I’m a little worried about how the Battle of Mars Arc is weighted heavily in favor of the Army and Marines with a little high-level Navy stuff interspersed. We’ll see, though. I may opt to continue as it’s laid out and then reevaluate the whole when it’s done. I’m thinking about how Jeff’s plotline was so dominant in Volume II (though rightfully so) and I have some concerns with the balance of the cast. Even though Matt is ostensibly the protagonist, the Tico series isn’t like, say, KoG where the protagonist overwhelmingly retains his spot center stage. Maybe I’m on the right track in spite of my concerns. Who knows? We’ll see how things develop.

I managed to get through the second section of Chapter 18 and I just have to fill out the narrative of the third section to wrap things up. Shouldn’t be too hard to finish. Stay tuned.

I have most of the dialog written on Chapter 18 of Tico3. I just need to round it out and fill in the narrative and I’ll be good to go. Another day or two of work should do the trick.

I said I was going to post some commentary about Duke Cronos once his section of the story came to a close and now is as good a time as any to do so. If you haven’t read through his section, turn back now because below there be spoilers.

Duke Cronos was originally named Cromwell before I settled on a pseudo-Byzantine culture for Zephyr. The name was, of course, a reference to Oliver Cromwell. I wanted to evoke Cromwell’s military genius, even though the character himself is more of an inversion. It’s actually Rowland, the leader of the Promethean Alliance, who has more in common with Cromwell, politically speaking at least. Anyway, ‘military genius’ is the key setting when I was devising the character.

I needed Cronos to have demonstrated his abilities beforehand, so I devised the Nanoi Campaigns. When Solon became King, he sent out olive branches to the non-human communities of Zephyr: the Elves of Goldleaf and the Dwarves of Delate and Vione. (In-universe, the two races are known as the Xotikes and Nanoi respectively.) Were anyone other than Xanthe Queen of Goldleaf, the Elves probably would’ve just dismissed the Zephyrian envoys and that would’ve been the end of it. The Dwarves, on the other hand, were much more suspicious of Solon’s overtures. The King of the Vionan Dwarves in particular was paranoid that the Zephyrians were simply trying to find a way through their defenses to plunder their cities. Rather than simply rebuff the Zephyrian envoys, the Vione Dwarves declared war and when the Zephyrians responded, the Dwarves of Delate joined in as well.

You’ll see a little more of this in Garm’s scenario in Book 3 (Garm being a refugee of Vione resettled in Notos), but the Dwarven side of the war was horribly mismanaged. (What would you expect when the primary driver of the war is mad with greed and paranoia?) Cronos happened to catch on to this and use it to his advantage, thereby bringing the war to a quick end. (The Nanoi Campaigns didn’t even last four months, though they were rather bloody.)

Cronos’ star rises after this, as you might expect. He goes from being a common knight to a peer and is later selected to become the new Governor-General of the Protectorate and Legate of the Third Legion (the two were previously separate positions, a sort of duumvirate, but because of his famed ability, Cronos was entrusted with both posts).

I’d mentioned in an earlier post that in the earlier draft of the story, Cronos felt terribly incompetent to me. You may still get that impression, but I was kinda working two angles in the current draft. On the one hand, I wanted Cronos to actually live up to his name, but on the other, I wanted to cast some doubts. Cronos himself suffering so much self-doubt is a major part of this new development. It’ll become especially clear in Book 3 that the Promethean Alliance has a lot going for it that really doesn’t make it a fair fight, though wars are never fair. It’s worth noting that the position of governor-general is typically for eight years (though some have served longer and many have served for much less) and Cronos was winding down his term of service when the challenge from the Monarch Lich was first issued.

Waging insurgent warfare is a very different beast than fighting an insurgency and when the Duke’s attention is also divided between fighting the rebels and preparing as much manpower and materiel for the war effort in the Darklands, it’s little wonder he fared as poorly as he did. Cronos was always looking on the horizon to the Dominion and he fought the Alliance with one hand tied behind his back, though Rowland proved to be an opponent that you have to pull out all the stops to take on.

You might think that Cronos’ failure in the Darklands seals the deal. If he really was as great as he was celebrated to be, he wouldn’t have lost as badly as he did. Well, even there I have to cut him some slack. Sir Caligo, the Knight of Chaos, who went unnamed in Cronos’ scenario, happens to be an ancient vampire who was once one of the most celebrated generals in all of Euros. Again, the deck was wildly stacked against poor Cronos and so he comes off looking much worse than he would have in a more conventional campaign.

Looking back, I find Cronos as a man to be pitied. He rose to greatness in his youth and it cast a long shadow over the rest of his career. He faced odds that perhaps no man could’ve won against and ultimately died in a bid to salvage what honor he had left. It’s a shame. It really is.

Hello. My name is James and I’m a gaming addict.

Group: Hi, James.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter (not exactly the ideal platform for long discourses, though I have a habit of treating it like my IM with the world), then you’ve heard me talk about my general disillusionment with gaming, which was once a major part of my life and continues to hold some influence, though I’ve largely “grown up” as someone close to me has said on the matter.

You may also remember me talking about the game Fantasica, a grind-heavy Japanese TCG that plays on my inclination to indulge in the grinding so many JRPGs demand and my obsessive sense of completionism. It is also one of the many free-to-play games out there that backloads the actual cost with incentives to advance. I didn’t originally intend to put any money down on the game, but I have. It only amounted to $28, which I suppose is fair given the number of hours I’ve devoted to it, but not really worth it in the grand scheme of things. At least with physical TCGs, your money gets you actual cards and not just imaginary ones that last as long as the game server’s integrity. I should be happy that I’m not like many players who plunk down $200 or more in one sitting and have nothing to show for it. Perhaps the poor yield during my two experimental stabs at premium content successfully disabused me of the idea of actually getting ahead through paid transactions.

Despite the game lacking any significant plot or characterization beyond the blurb on the back of the cards, I’ve spent a no small percentage of my waking hours on the game since I started back in August. Perhaps the minimal interaction via touchscreen has facilitated this (as it doesn’t cause me the pain of holding a controller). I’ve been late to some classes (the ones I can get away with showing up late) and nearly late to others (the ones that I’d incur a significant penalty for tardiness), which got me to scale back a bit, but it wasn’t until the latest event that really put things in perspective for me.

The guild battle event requires you to physically be present for and participate in five guild battles at set times every day for the duration of the event. I didn’t fully figure this out until the fourth battle of the day yesterday, but the vast majority of my guild was non-participatory as well. The chance of the higher-level rewards was quickly fading from view. However, I was going to make a point to participate in as many as possible, since other guilds can have as significant a participation problem as mine. (For instance, one of the two battles I participated in yesterday had no defenders whatsoever.) The first battle of the day is 0600 CST. I planned on being awake for it (despite having gone to bed at 0430) and then catching a little more sleep until the next one at 1100 and I planned on continuing this pattern until the end of the even next Thursday. In theory, I would only be missing four battles due to classes and I might just be able to rack up enough victories to score my first six-star card.

This was the plan, but it was after 0900 when I woke up. My alarm didn’t work for some reason (or I just slept through it until it gave up). By grinding for an item called Blue Souls, you can raise the morale of your guild and have more action points during a battle. This resets after each battle, so it would’ve made sense to just grind until 1100. However, I decided I’d instead get another hour’s sleep. While I was lying on the couch trying to squeeze in that little extra rest, I realized how foolish it was to let a game (and not a very satisfying one at that) dictate my schedule. I promptly deleted the game and went back to bed.

When it comes to addiction, oftentimes efforts to wean yourself off the source of your addiction or to apply less harmful substitutes only facilitate a relapse. I’m not going to say it works for everyone, but the cold turkey approach gives your system the sufficient shock that–if you get through it–you have a good chance of kicking the habit once and for all. It was what my dad had to do to get off chewing tobacco and what I’m doing to get off an inane TCG.

My obsessive-compulsive addiction with regards to gaming has countless examples. My youth was filled with gaming binges. I remember Christmas break of ’98, where I played Xenogears all day until about 0400 in the morning, caught a little sleep and picked right back up as soon as I woke up. During my brief time playing WoW, I’d clock crazy hours on the grind until the gank-happy Hordies drove me away. Even more recently, after getting the PS2 rerelease of Dragon Force in Japan last year (a game I’d wanted ever since I saw a review for the original Saturn version back in ’96), I’d pull all-nighters going through a character’s scenario (until the pace dropped off in the third act) in multiple playthroughs. The damage to my hands is one of the main things curbing my gaming addiction, but so is my disenchantment with the current tangent of the games industry. (The lack of funds to feed the habit also play a role.) Nevertheless, this sort of behavior is very disturbing to me and I’m glad I’ve refrained from any other habit-forming activities.

I don’t plan on ever becoming a parent, but if I did, I wouldn’t ban my kids from playing video games. I would, however, regulate usage. When I was really little, my mom did the same and as I got older and more independent, I was able to skate by even as my usage increased. Even now, I can get away with quite a bit, but just because you can get away with feeding an addiction doesn’t mean that you should.

I managed to inch along a little more, but as the content of the upcoming post will reveal, I should now have more time to focus on my writing. Stay tuned.

I made some progress on Chapter 18 of Tico3. Not as much as I would’ve liked, but progress is progress. There aren’t any big action setpieces I have to choreograph in this chapter, so it should go by fairly quickly once I buckle down. Stay tuned.

I haven’t made any progress the past couple days because I’ve been preoccupied not only with my everyday stuff but also the developments in my potential paths for next year. There are four main options I have to consider, two of which involve furthering my education. Just moments ago, I withdrew my application for one after concluding it was financially infeasible. I’ll be looking into financing for the other in a few weeks once I find out if my current gig is going to pan out the way I’m hoping or not.

Ever since high school, I’ve scarcely stayed in any one spot for more than two years. That being said, it feels like only yesterday that my previous Japan venture fell apart and I had to return home in defeat. I managed to make the most of it, though, and though my footing is still a little uncertain, I’m ready to try for something new. I don’t know how things will shape up or how they’ll affect my writing career, but you never can tell.

I have a strange pseudo-fatalistic view of the universe. I believe in endless possibilities but ultimately only one path that you follow. We each have a path that we are supposed to follow, but our ultimate purpose may not come to fruition anytime soon. Somewhat paradoxically, I’m a firm believer in free will. We have our set path, but we make the choices that put us on that path. When faced with multiple options, we just have to grope about in the dark until we find the track. I believe I’ve just resolved one branch that wasn’t meant to be. One down, two go.

I finished up Cronos’ epilogue and pretty well resolved Daphne’s Chapter 3. TTWC1 updates are squared away up until December. I imagine I’ll spend another day or two trying to build my buffer up a little further and then switch back to Tico3 to try to get ahead there.

After the update, I plan on doing a postmortem commentary on the character of Duke Cronos. Stay tuned.

These past couple days, I really haven’t had any time to focus on my writing. However, I did manage to put down some of the dialog for a new short that’s been bouncing around in my head for the past several months. It’s interesting the percentage of the Space Arc shorts that involve the Han family. Hard to say why I’m drawn to fleshing out their backstory more than anyone else’s.

Anyway, I plan on switching gears over to TTWC1 to finish up Cronos’ epilogue. Hopefully I can knock out what little remains to be written in one sitting and move on from there. Stay tuned.