Is it alright if I ask about your beef with LS, SXH and QC on both the technical and personal parts? Iām really curious since I only knew about the general dislike for the game/community for obvious reasons lol
Of course you can ask, but I'm scared LMFAO. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I've considered how to respond to this for 3 months and, since I've recently received more perches about this, I've decided to make your perch the go-to response.
For once, I'm going to say something my fellow CN sisters always say LOL. DISCLAIMER: These are my personal opinions and I don't care enough to convince anyone, so if you disagree then everything you think is right and you don't have to let me know.
First, personal beef against a character is really nothing interesting or deep. It's just literally "I'm annoyed by this character and the greatest sin a fictional character can commit is being annoying" because I'll have to struggle with myself to engage with them.
LI SHEN. His first crime is being a childhood friend and I've already spoken at length about why I dislike them. His second crime is having a brusque speech style with Miss Hunter on top of being a childhood friend. His third and last crime is being a doctor on top of having a brusque speech style and being a childhood friend.
Now, why are these crimes, especially when I can get along with characters like Jesse, Sariel, Li Zeyan, and Charlie? It's because the combination of these 3 traits means his character will utilize the familiarity of being childhood friends to be proprietary and scold Miss Hunter about her health without borders. Ordinarily, this would just be mildly annoying to me but still salvageable depending on Miss Hunter's reaction to him, because relationship dynamics are driven by two people. Unfortunately, Miss Hunter makes me erupt like a volcano because she's a toolbox.
She appears to lack all regard for her own safety and health to give Li Shen opportunities to show off his charm as a doctor and a caring, protective, talented childhood friend and lover. I'm capable of not seeing myself as otome game heroines and I can treat these two as characters on their own, but I cannotāfor the life of meāenjoy or appreciate their dynamic because of Miss Hunter's inconsiderate and reckless choices (I'm looking at that recent archery card). Even if I don't see myself as Miss Hunter, the 1st person POV makes me feel like I'm forced to attend a scolding session for things I would never do or think, so it just feels patronizing to me.
In short, right out of the gate Li Shen was already at -50 points with me and would have to work hard to hit neutrality with me. However, his and his heroine's dynamics nuked this down to -1000 and that's why I have personal beef with him.
Second, I'm a proponent of the belief that there are no rules when it comes to writing. However, you have to understand the principles of storytelling in order to break them, because readers are subconsciously expecting writers to follow these principles.
Generally, to write an engaging character you need to give them internal conflict. Characters have a need (this can be seen as their narrative destiny, something that fulfills them, grows them, or gives them true happiness) and a want (something they believe will make them happy) that are contradictory to each other. Pursuing what a character wants makes their need unattainable and vice versa.
I don't claim to know the needs and wants of CN mobile otome game characters because their stories are ongoing and newly revealed information can make me adjust my thoughts. That being said, there should be an established direction for characters from the beginning to carry them through several story arcs or even seasons.
SHEN XINGHUI. I'm seeing his want to be saving Philos and his heroine without any sacrifices, and I'm seeing his need to be reconciling himself with his responsibilities, perceived guilt, and moving forward instead of being haunted by the past. The outline Love and Deepspace gave for him in their character interview and pre-release materials was a natural airhead and mysterious man, but if I had to pick words to create a mind map for him it would be Responsibility, Knight, Royalty, and Time.
I'm automatically wary of the natural airhead archetype because their writing difficulty is higher than other archetypes. If you don't place enough foreshadowing, then their personality switches come out of left field. If you lean too much into their natural airhead antics, then they lose all depth and become a joke.
From the beginning, LaDS did not give me any confidence in their writing ability. The setting, the pacing, the consistency, everything was haphazard and barely held together by duct tape. So naturally, Shen Xinghui did not get any good writing treatment either. He wasn't given much of a baseline personality because he became whatever the scene needed him to be without any of these personality traits being hinted at elsewhere and sometimes they even contradicted themselves.
For example, I vaguely remember that SXH has lived for a long time and that he doesn't care if people see him as eccentric nor does he need any acknowledgment for his deeds. However, in Chapter 3 and his bond story he showed an unusual amount of pride at his skills being questioned by Miss Hunter or losing at the claw machine. If he was uncharacteristically feeling that his pride was attacked in those situations (because Miss Hunter is special), then the writing should have hinted at that somewhere.
It doesn't take much to pepper hints about his royal lineage because of unconscious habits like palace etiquette making it so that he always walks or sits with perfect posture. Don't misunderstand, the writing doesn't have to be like this, I'm merely giving examples for how the writers could have strengthened his core to make his personality more consistent instead of what they actually did.
This technical beef became personal beef because, contrary to popular belief, I don't see myself as some sort of authority on writing and so if I can see such basic mistakes, then I get annoyed when professional writers drop the ball. In my opinion, they messed up a good character whose charm point would be discovering his rich personality underneath an unassuming first impression.
To be fair though, this technical issue isn't that hard to correct, LaDS writers just need to strengthen his core and learn to properly hint at things.
QIN CHE. His need doesn't seem apparent although his wants are clear with protecting and being together with Miss Hunter and defying fate. It doesn't matter if readers cannot guess his need right now as long as the writers know and are heading towards that goal but, well, my thesis here is that Love and Deepspace writers have no idea what they're doing LOL. At any rate, if I had to pick words for his mind map, then it would be Freedom, Vitality, and Underground Gentleman.
Now, LaDS made the mistake of stepping into my comfort zone. I've written dozens of characters like Qin Che, I've consumed hundreds of characters like Qin Che, and his two archetypes are pretty much the staple of most of my entertainment. What this means is that I can write a 50-page document on avenues of development depending on the narrative destiny of his character; instead, I had to watch with morbid curiosity as LaDS decided to crash into every warning sign on the road.
See, the moment QC was announced I knew LaDS had a challenge on their hands because their game design is not suitable for a character like him, someone who needs a long slow burn to develop a push-pull relationship with Miss Hunter and keep the attractive mystery of his character and goals because of his morally grey social position. This environment is nonexistent when cards jump all over the timeline, players cannot accept the existence of "missing content", banners demand equal treatment and so everyone gets a sex card if the man with the quickest relationship development has one, affinity can be maxed in one or two days, and he can be dressed in ridiculous outfits. None of this is conducive to maintaining the intrigue of QC's character.
Additionally, the greatest error the Love and Deepspace writers made was giving Qin Che two opposing archetypes. As I mentioned at the start of this section, principles of storytelling can be broken but a writer needs to be very aware of what they're doing to ensure that, in breaking the principles, everything else remains coherent and consistent. LaDS writers were stacking difficulties on top of difficulties for themselves when it came to QC and so, unsurprisingly, the writing suffered.
Qin Che has both the maverick archetype, someone who doesn't think or behave like others and operates very independently outside of society, and the underground gentleman archetype, someone cultured and aristocratic but also possesses a streak of cruelty or tyranny.
Let me ask the question, if QC is a maverick who doesn't conform to society, given how he lives in N109 and his role in the AU space opera, why would he have an interest in "high social rank" signifiers like antiques, art, and wine? If QC is an underground gentleman, given how he's the leader of Onychinus and his role in the AU gufeng, why does he have elements of mavericks like being a biker, his dragon myth, and his grasslands card, which all strengthen his themes of freedom and not being bound by society and rules? The irony of the underground gentleman archetype is that they think they are outside of society but instead they create a "dark mirror" of society in the underground world, and they should show some self-awareness of this fact.
LaDS writers need to choose which core they want to be dominant, because this 50:50 split is causing a lot of issues with his characterization. For example, either QC operates within society's rules with a sober awareness and has bouts of wildness, or he operates outside of society's rules and masks himself in society but shows no interest in their social dance and games.
As far as I know, LaDS writers don't explain anything for Qin Che and they just throw whatever makes him hot and attractive to the players at the wall to see what sticks. Look at his knowledge. Look at his collections. Look at his languages. Look at his skills. All of these are swept under the pale label of "his interests". Humans can have interests just because, but fictional charactersāno matter how human they seemāare written to achieve their narrative destinies and everything should serve their core and themes. IF a writer wants to write a character who has a million interests just because, they need to be aware they are going against a principle of storytelling and they have to explain that.
In conclusion, Qin Che does not have a defining core because LaDS writers wrote his character poorly and that's why his community is constantly fighting internally and externally. There are tons of videos out there of players saying they don't recognize QC anymore and want to return to 2.0 QC because the writers keep flip-flopping between his cores. He's the only CN otome game character out of the 28 characters of the Big 6 called Frankenstein's Monster, and he has 3 plagiarism claims against him (the BL manhwa incident and 2 stolen AO3 content ones). Every other CN otome game character's community I've visited argues about the degrees of aspects shown, not the actual core of the character. All of this says something about the writing of his character on top of my own personal observations.
Love and Deepspace's writing needles me because sometimes it feels like a mockery of the craft. Their recent GDC talk did no favors with me either because I was wholly unimpressed with their PPT slides about how their characters are just vibes and everyone latched onto how their imagination is supposed to fill in the gaps. Imagination filling in the gaps is something like players deciding on when the relationships start in Light and Night based on a time range the canon offers, not filling in the gaps of entire aspects of the character. The LaDS developers couldn't even offer up keywords for their characters.
I periodically check in on the game to see if the writing has improved (and I have friends still playing the game) but, from the beginning, the technical level of the Love and Deepspace writers was so weak that the possibility of their writing improving over the years was extremely low. If you have a discerning eye, you can tell if writing has potential at any point. No one has said that Love and Deepspace's writing has improved over these 2 years, at most it's stayed the same for some people or it's decreased for the majority of the people.
