Midara: Paradox

Okay, so those familiar with Requiem have already been made familiar with the basic backstory of Midara, but, now... let's do an overview of Paradox.

This was the first truly complete story I'd ever written. Ever. While Midara itself has a very long history of poorly organized notes dating back to the days I was in middle-school, Paradox was the first time I sat down and created a full length... well, not a novel, because it's more like a script for a game. A poorly written script. A script that is four hundred thousand words long.

All of it written like this:

Spoiler: For Paradox Ch- probably five-ish? Very lazily written spoilers showcasing how shit I was.

PORT CITY KALE
Start with a view from sea of a fairly large port. There's a couple obviously military vessels, one docked and one out at sea.
Zoom in rapidly, skipping over dozens of smaller vessels, mostly fishing boats. Some exotic small vessels with blue/white motiffs in the port that contrast heavily with the standard wood construction of the others.
The "tour" drops onto the beach and goes to where Arakash and Ada are climbing over a few stones into view.
ARAKASH: This place never changes.
ADA: You've been here before?
ARA: On occasion. I remember when your kingdom was nothing but a Siral fishing colony.
ADA: That was over two hundred years ago!
ARA: Actually, closer to a hundred and fifty. Your historians exaggerate. Typical. Now, we have to get you new clothes. For now, I'll just put a simple illusion on you so no one notices. But that's a temporary solution.

Now... imagine 400,000 words with that sort of information density. Set scene, do dialogue like a play. Yeah... I should mention I'm also a big fan of Planescape: Torment. Though I didn't play that game until after Paradox was more or less complete. Also, that 400k doesn't include most of the game design concepts like character classes, abilities, which (voice) actors and body concept models I'd use... and various info you'll only see in lore menus and/or in-game tomes. That's at least another 90k words right there.

But let's not delve too much on the fact that the script version of the story has a word count rivaling the combined Lord of the Rings novels and the completed story might wind up bigger than the Song of Ice and Fire series (less incest, however)... down that path lay madness.


Instead- Paradox has a whole lot more history behind it than some teenage geek who grew up loving Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger trying desperately to bring a similar joy to others. More tragic and probably longer than this super-novel itself promises to be. Don't worry, you'll be getting a very brief summary.

It begins with a little trivia- there were two times when I managed to make contacts with actual gaming companies which held pretty strong possibilities of turning Paradox into a game. I'm going to try not to give much detail because I really don't want anyone being able to guess which companies I am speaking of. One I'm not too worried about since I wasn't close enough to know anything that's not public information. The other... well... the other ended in more than a few tears and there's the possibility that if I say too much, I might be talking to lawyers. I'm not certain and I don't want to find out.

One fell through when a certain mistake sent a certain company into chaos, cost I don't want to know how much money, and resulted in a lot of people losing jobs while many other projects- speculative and otherwise- going up in smoke. Mine was just one of many.

The other... well, again, I'd made a few contacts and even got a "job" there. It was something between a freelance gig and an internship, so air-quotes are appropriate. Still, foot in the door, right?

I was quite a bit younger and a whole not more naive back then. Plus people hadn't quite caught on to how truly shitty a lot of game companies were back then.

To avoid getting too deep into this, suffice it to say there was a great deal of drama I had nothing to do with save for being collateral damage. A false rape accusation was made (not that we peons knew anything but rumors), jobs were lost, a project was destroyed, a good man's life was ruined and ultimately ended, a little girl lost a damn good father... and I lost the closest thing I've ever had to a positive male role model, and stopped writing for the better part of a decade.

I feel like a selfish prick- others suffered so much more than me in that fiasco. But don't mind me, I like to get angry at myself when I fall into this melodramatic self-pity party. Getting pissed helps me pull myself out of the funk. I doubt it's healthy, but, well, fuck me I guess.

Then, when I started writing again, it was by convincing myself that it didn't matter. That it was okay if I was bad at it, and that I was writing to bring myself happiness, and it didn't matter if anyone read or liked what I did. Not to say I was lazy or uncaring about my other projects- I loved them all passionately- it just didn't matter to me if others loved them.

And that worked for me... until it didn't.

What were you expecting? I told you I'm a coward.

And also melodramatic, but I'm getting sick of this shit, so time for me to get pissed at myself and face down this psychological trainwreck. If only for the sake of what remains of my damn sanity.

Because every time I wrote, my mind kept drifting back to that first truly realized project, the one which I attached all my dreams to and then saw them burn. In truth, I don't think I have ever felt for a lover the same unflinching passion as I do for this story. I can't not care what others think, and I've run out of excuses to keep running to other projects.

I'd say it's starting to hurt me in other aspects of my life, but that implies I haven't been letting these demons walk all over me for a long time, now. Enough is enough


So now, when I say that I hope you enjoy it and I value your feedback, you know how much I mean it. This time, I don't just enjoy the feedback- I need it. And I don't mean some unearned hugbox praise or other such bullshit. Tear it apart and help rebuild it the way it would have been if it had been set in front of a proper series of story designers.


Thank you for reading this trainwreck-of-thought post, and I'm sorry for inflicting my baggage on you. I promise future updates will avoid this heavy personal stuff and instead will be about demons, slavery, and assassinations. You know- cheerful topics.

And, who knows, maybe some day, I'll tell you the story of a damn good man who deserved better from life. Of course, knowing him, he'd be pissed at me for writing it... but it's not only his story to tell.