Ixi Chieftain Sexy

Okay I know this is largely just me being a hater but I keep thinking about this particular question/answer from Jellyneo’s interview with TNT about The Void Within. Admittedly as a writer myself I just find it fascinating. The Void Within’s story is pretty unbearably bad imo, and I know I’m far from the only person to think this. I have seen little to no praise for literally any aspect of it at all. Listing THIS MANY inspirations, especially such… ambitious? ones, for something that has amounted to a handful of characters with nearly 0 individual characterization sitting around in various rooms and talking about their feelings followed by a couple of mundane puzzles or action sequences is really fascinating to me. I think it just really speaks to a really amateur writing process. Like, really amateur.

Is it possible to have “two many” influences on a work of art? Not… necessarily. A very good artist can draw from a shitload of sources and combine a bunch of things that inspire them into something new. But I also think that most good artists… don’t? At least it’s a very particular writing style that would take a lot of intentionality to pull off. I mean, there is something to be said in restraint, right. Especially because part of the creative process is inevitably going to involve taking all those inspirations and elevating them, or otherwise incorporating them into your own ideas as well. As it stands The Void Within is literally not long enough or complex enough or well made enough on any level to adequately take inspiration from (deep breath) Gravity Falls Over the Garden Wall Avatar: The Last Airbender J.R.R. Tolkien Terry Pratchett Lovecraft Guillermo del Toro Horizon Zero Dawn Slay the Princess God of War Ragnarok Pokemon.

Within the context of what The Void Within actually amounts to that is a meaningless list. And I think it speaks to a harsher truth about TVW’s writing, which is that it is so devoid of original thought or a personality of its own. You can tell me that this story takes inspiration from a dozen different IPs but nobody can articulate with confidence a meaningful major character trait or conflict for a single one of the protagonists. It’d be hard to even articulate a single meaningful story beat. And it’s been going on since 2023. I’m also kind of fascinated by the fact that I don’t think any of the above IPs they claim to take reference from really… is reflected by TVW, anyway? And like, it’s fine to take inspiration from eclectic sources OF COURSE, but where is absolutely any of this within the story we actually got? Do we really need to say that a Neopets story (which has been a largely high fantasy fictional setting with established lore since its advent in the late 90s) needed to be inspired by Tolkien…? Like, you’d think that something more like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (high fantasy with tech-as-needed, fantasy animal protagonists, predominantly female-led cast, balances external conflict and action/adventure elements with social/emotional interpersonal conflict… I mean My Little Pony: The Movie feels like pretty much exactly like what TVW is going for) or Steven Universe (pretty similar, but also includes a more explicit science-fantasy aspect with things like dark magical corruption / G-rated cosmic horror l that think really mirrors some parts of TVW) would be more apt than like. God of War Ragnarok LOL.