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Power Corrupts: Final Showdown (ch. 90) (Finale)

🕑 Added 2021-08-28 15:26:16 +0000 UTC

Comments

Alex Piskura

For all my criticism this story was entertaining, all the way through. I'm glad that you learned from it and to be fair, looking at your other, later projects I have to say that you did gain a lot from writing this in terms of skill and experience. I do think you hit the nail on the head with the big, primary issues you had with this story and that's okay. Writing is a journey, not a destination. I think, honestly, some of the big issues that a lot of jumpchain/waifu/CYOA style stories has is plot progression and character development and the Gamer's conundrum, as you pointed out, to varying degrees. I've always felt that using an artificial means to show character growth, like numbers or ability popups hamstrings the story and of the protagonist. It plays nicely into the idea of a fair world, since nothing is more absolute than a number to show growth, but very rarely have I seen someone step out of that shadow. If you look at any stat-based system, be it DnD or Shadowrun or a video game or whatever, the numbers are for the player, not the character. It's to give a solid sense of progression, but it doesn't give that same sense of personal growth, and without a counterweight it takes out the failure factor. The success of any kind of system isn't based on it's ability to accomplish, but the ability to make the player struggle. Manwa like The Gamer do a bad job of showing this, because there's no randomization in the system. There's no visible way to show failure, which is what the real power fantasy is. Nobody likes having an ultimate badass character roll a 4 where they're good at something and fail, but if you've ever played tabletop, well, that happens. It can happen often, even with good numbers. But without that randomization, that chance of failure, the numbers don't mean anything. Having a Strength of 1500 means nothing without anything to compare it to, especially if the MC is the only one with their nature represented as such. That's the trap. It turns situations where the MC needs cunning or guile or creativity into a scenario where they can solve it by punching it really hard. Or casting punch at it really hard. Same difference. The other two issues kinda go hand in hand. Lack of plot and character development tend to be the other two horsemen of the CYOA apocalypse. In a lot of ways in this situation, it's the characters that drive a lot of the plot, which is why Jumpchain, I think, is a very difficult writing exercise that's set up in the way it is to mitigate the issue of character bloat. We love stories for the people in them, as much as the world itself, but they go hand in hand. When you start collecting waifu's or just companions, you start to run into the issue of there not being enough screentime for everyone, and you get tagalongs. In this case, Hestia and Lili fell into both categories. They were important to the MC because of his experiences, but you as a writer were done with them before the story ended. That's a huge issue that ties into the plot problem. Characters exist in a written story to motivate aspects of the plot. They need to be there to do something, or provide something, be it conflict or emotional support or as a call to adventure. Whatever, really, and their activity in the plot generally gets dictated by that purpose. But that also means that regardless of their role, they do need a beginning, middle and endgame. At what point does their arc end in fulfillment. What's their goal and how does interacting with the MC accomplish it? It really felt like a number of characters didn't have that arc, that they were collected like Pokemon, and then relegated to storage. It caused character bloat, with most of them riding on the familiarity bus to evoke emotion or interest in them, and even that only goes so far. I advise, as a reader, a fan and a critic of your work, that before you really dig into your next project you look at all the worlds you want to go to, all of the characters you want to pull from them, and figure out their beginning, middle and end, and how the MC gets them there. Ask yourself if you're going to want those characters be active through each arc, or not, and what they're going to contribute not only in their own world, but in the subsequent worlds that they're going to be involved in. And for the love of god, don't put everything into a single story. Come up with an actual full character arc for your MC. Give them goals and motivations and an endgame that they can accomplish. Find their challenges to those goals, and how they're going to respond. The biggest issue in this entire story was just that. The MC had no challenge, and given what you wrote for your long term goals in this story, I'm honestly very glad you ended it when you did. There was nothing attractive in post-Skyrim Jericho being More Powerful Joker. Blind hedonism or vague, bored sadism is entertaining as a foil, as an antagonist, but as an MC, it's disturbing and not in a good way. There is an attraction to seeing heroes fall, and power corrupting someone, but the attraction there is in seeing their hubris come back to bite them, to see them destroy what they have in the pursuit of more. Not to watch them Karma Houdini their way through raping, kidnapping and conquering the universe to no appreciable consequence. There's a reason the Joker doesn't have his own comic series. It's something to think about.

Kabir Kumar

Thank you

Mioismoe

Sad to see it end and even more sad there was no more Tiona since so long ago, but looking forward to what you bring in next. Your writing has certainly improved since you first started Power Corrupts so I'm sure the plot will be much more fleshed out and enjoyable.

Insertusername099

Thanks for writing this, dude. Do we have an eta on Fool's arrival?

rockus4

Bravo ideas guy I admit this was the story that made sign up first for your Pateron. It was fun to watch the story and always something to look forward to and btw is fool's world out yet?