"I will not be spoiled if I've played. . .":
Trails of Cold Steel
Trails of Cold Steel II
Conceptualisation Foreword
"The point isn't to replicate the conclusions of tradition [. . .] but rather to enter into the same problems as the ancients and make them one's own. That is how traditions remain alive."
- 'The World Beyond Your Head' by Mathew Crawford
Remember this for every Sen no Kiseki story you will read from the Virtual Delirium alias. My storytelling of Erebonia's tales isn't going to 100% replicate Falcom's products that are defined by the hard edges of hardware limitation. In other words, creators across different mediums usually ask different questions depending on what's accessible to them. Examples being:
o. How big can we (Falcom) make Trista before the memory streaming is too much for the PS3/Vita's RAM?
o. How many NPCs can we put in the town square before the CELL chip is at its limit?
o. What complexity level of in-world simulation can the PlayStation 3 reach?
This extends to engine tools and sophistication limits and production values like:
o. Should we spend production budget and development time to flesh out the Lower Class dormitories in rich fidelity?
o. Program a simulation of a natural ecosystem surrounding Trista?
o. Is it within our programmers' capability to implement Gundam 00-type aerial showdowns for the Divine Knight battle(s), given that Valimar can fly and even emits particles like Gundam Exia?
To synthesise the quote: The point of tradition is to enter into the same inquiry, the same ideas, the distillation of vision which defines the Kiseki games' appeal – enter as a writer whose tools isn't the Phyre Engine but prose, commas, ellipses, footnotes, anything from the entire arsenal that a writer can conceive from literature's armoury and use all that, to tell a fan fiction story of Falcom's beloved series.
FAQ (will be updated if need be as the story progresses)
1. Is this a harem story? No. I hate fun.
2. OK, so it's a monogamous one-true-pairing/I'm-saving-my-virginity-for-my-soulmate vanilla as fuck, story? No.
3. Who is Rean going to be shipped with? Rean will have two phases of romance that will reflect his character development as a young man. The first phase will be Rean x Vivi & Linde. Phase two will be Rean x Laura Arseid. Irrespective of what happens, Laura is the endgame for Rean's heart.
4. Typing that last answer, did you realise that Falcom hasn't told us what the twins' surname is? Yes :| Until canon is confirmed, their surname will be Bösche.
5. This is an AU-story? Yes. It's Rean's hero journey told through my self-styled kaleidoscope of fan fiction storytelling. A major addition to this take is the Arseid family. Laura has an older sister who will be mostly out-of-sight in the story, until (I guess) Class VII visits Legram. This decision is partially inspired by a DC Comics I.P, Titans. How Starfire has an older sister, Blackfire. Koriand'r's bitter relationship with Komand'r will not strictly reflect how the Arseid sisters treat each other. That said, I'm still sorting out the finer nuances of their interpersonal dynamics.
Oh and one more important thing. I'm implementing perma-death for certain fake-out deaths which happened in the Trails game for what I consider to be wasted drama ex machina. This will not apply to all – like the Osborne assassination in the first game, as stuff like that is integral to the plot and makes sense with character lore. Do not take the major characters for granted.
6. How far into the series will you take Laura's Melody? Up until the end of CS2 most likely. Without launching into a long essay on this topic, I'll simply state that I'm unhappy with many things which happened in CS4 and few things from CS3; from both the critical lens in storytelling balance and as someone who's gone through the tired trope that's been done by many manga, anime, movies, religion and video games which takes on the soapbox preaching to blame all the world's suffering/darkness on one single entity or concept and that if the hero defeats it, all will be well because all of sentient creation is that simple and it TOTALLY has nothing to do with the writing department's lack of initiative for enacting uncompromised character drive and decision making.
Because part III is deeply tied to IV, I will instead focus on the the Erebonian civil war arc - AU style. It will end itself as if that potential is still there for an epic conclusion to a saga that does not infantilise humanity and bratfully point the finger at the Devil archetype saying, 'You made me do this!'.
7. Will Rean be different compared to the games then? Yes. I've taken a surgeon's knife, excised all the cheesiness and thrown it into the brimstone hellfire. On a more serious note, Rean isn't as vocal about his martyrdom that he's unimportant to those that care for him. Or being open with his self-deprecation addiction that keeps coming back in the sequels, wrinkling legacy character development. My Rean will be more on the reserved side, holding such emotional cards close to his chest. Our hero's outward demeanour is somewhat shifted closer to Crow Armbrust's casual persona, which will turbo Rean in becoming close to him *evil laugh.
Rean is also aware of Elise's infatuation with him which he passively discourages (in this story, one of his reasons to get away from Ymir is to avoid an incestuous incident within the family). Another defining aspect to Rean is his attitude to the way of the sword. I'll let the story do the talking for specifics like whys but basically, he's averse to the part of him that wields supernatural power and attempts to veil this with a lazy cavalier attitude. This fools most people except the very few who are acutely trained in swordplay and are able to sense the dormant power he chains up so carefully. The source of Rean's self-deprecating attitude comes trying to compensate against how powerful he is, so he pretends to be a terrible disciple of Yun Ka-fai.
8. What's your writing style like? I sometimes drop into descriptivism of environments and places. Prose matters to me. Writing a story for where it wants to go my personal feel-good preferences often takes priority so that means there might be moments which will be uncomfortable to read, like showing horrors of war or a villain's capacity for cruelty. Or – fleshing out character's backstories in full capacity (think, Machias's cousin – Elsa). There will be no gore.
I once read somewhere that the true origins of rock music was to tap into the primal; violence and sex in uncompromising fidelity. Translating that into narrative fiction, I'm able to tap into a part of the reader's psyche in a way that no other storytelling device can do just as easily. In another longfic I wrote for Persona 5; that story's style is loosely based on this aforementioned idea and to a degree, it will be applied in this fic too. Layers and layers of the story will wrap up rock n' roll in prose.
The spectrum between indifference and sex will be written to the explicit, taking people for what they are and not necessarily what the sanctimonious want them to be. This also applies to the distinctions beyond friendly sparring and other violence(s). War will have glory. War shall also have ugly casualties.
Vocabulary will be applied wherever appropriate and only ever for enhancing the narration as I see fit and never; exotic words for the sake of exotic words.
9. The girls; the Bösche twins and Laura, will they have a prior relationship(s) to Rean? Yes. I want to be upfront on this as I know many prefer otherwise. I'm laying out the cards now for what this story is like down the line.
10. Does this apply to Rean too? Yes. With Rean, they were casual trysts thanks to the stream of a few friskier guests that stayed at The Phoenix Wings in Ymir.
11. Is magic going to be batshit crazy like Emma bringing a mini-sun from the sky to blow everything up? Or Millium reaching escape velocity then shooting like a Death Star from space? Uh. Unless there's a demi-god type deity trying to kill something (Emma could be called a goddess in a figurative sense by her fans but doesn't qualify for literal), combat magic and dolls will take a grounded approach in this story.
12. Will you be using artificial (general) intelligence? Tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT will not be used for this story. I've assessed what A.I quantifies as appropriate prose and it's got rigid ideas which are completely at odds with my style of storytelling or setting up a scene. This fic is typed with LibreOffice Writer and MS Word so in the 'riskiest scenario', Microsoft might stealth update the grammar checker to loop back with A.I tensor cores. Irrespective of the technology's evolution (I suspect this will play out for civilisation differently to what Hollywood has shown), I will not use A.I
