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Extended Thoughts: Ralphie Frye/Gao Hu
2 years ago
So this is a first for me: I don't have pages upon pages of thoughts for this character. There's a few here and there, but no long diatribes, no pretentious themes, and most importantly, no dour tangents!! It's a Christmas New Year's miracle!
Ralphie Frye comes from my oldest commissioner, who's been with me from the start, and he always has great prompts. He also has been waiting on this for way longer than he should've, but no dour tangents. It's a fairly standard character (no earth-rending deities or canon-breaking AUs), but one that I'm really pleased with, both the starting form and the transformation. Let's talk about it. As in just me; I'm gonna talk about it. Apologies in advance.
I wanted to really emphasize the laziness of Ralphie, not just his slobbiness, so I leaned heavily on the meta of the game itself, and how you (the player, not the reader) would react to a lazy opponent. The confidence from having an easy game, alongside the paranoia that it won't be so easy after all. Because Ralphie is far from inept: he's quite intelligent, and it shows even in his mechanics. Ralphie has one of the highest “intelligence” stats I've had in a character, around the same as the professors and doctors. “Reflex” and “prediction” are both some of the lowest, though, so if you're one to play through the minigames (where these stats dictate how the AI performs), you might also think that something's not right. Of course, Ralphie isn't really playing to win: he wants to lose just enough to get rid of some of his weight, all the while sandbagging his opponent so he can turn around and win the game. But those pesky mental changes might make it a little harder to purposefully lose... speaking of changes...
From the beginning, I'd planned the character's trajectory to look like an exercise routine. The changes start slow, then have little “spikes” followed by periods of rest, ending with a “final sprint” of changes. I also put in a theme of exercise in general, and its real world “transformation”. Ralphie works hard, and he sees some changes: then the changes stop, and he wonders why he's “plateaued”. It takes some willpower for him to push through, and realize that he's still changing; that the plateau is “all in his head”. Of course, the willpower is actually the game's will, and the changes are, literally, “all in his head”.
Huh, managed to get a lot here after all! Let's talk trivia:
- Name time! “Frye” is pretty self-explanatory, while “Ralphie” was chosen so there'd be two f sounds in succession, which not only sounds kinda gross, but it also sounds like a sharp breath. Cuz exercise! As for Gao Hu, uhhh... I can't remember. Whoops.
- Shoutout to the weirdest typo I've found in a while, where called Ralphie “Bradley”. I have... no idea how that happened.
- I couldn't resist quoting perhaps the most infamous bodybuilding line of all time, from a pre-Terminator Arnie. I'm surprised that I didn't even have to paraphrase it!
- My music choices for the first half were, fittingly, workout jams. The second half was more of a mishmash, but mostly post-rock. And in a disturbing trend, music choices for proofreading once again took the form of cheesy end-credits themes: Drift Away, and Kung Fu Fighting.
My question to you: what's your usual form of exercise? My new year's resolution is to get in shape (I know, original), so I'm gonna be doing some cardio to get me into the routine.
- yoshielder
Ralphie Frye comes from my oldest commissioner, who's been with me from the start, and he always has great prompts. He also has been waiting on this for way longer than he should've, but no dour tangents. It's a fairly standard character (no earth-rending deities or canon-breaking AUs), but one that I'm really pleased with, both the starting form and the transformation. Let's talk about it. As in just me; I'm gonna talk about it. Apologies in advance.
I wanted to really emphasize the laziness of Ralphie, not just his slobbiness, so I leaned heavily on the meta of the game itself, and how you (the player, not the reader) would react to a lazy opponent. The confidence from having an easy game, alongside the paranoia that it won't be so easy after all. Because Ralphie is far from inept: he's quite intelligent, and it shows even in his mechanics. Ralphie has one of the highest “intelligence” stats I've had in a character, around the same as the professors and doctors. “Reflex” and “prediction” are both some of the lowest, though, so if you're one to play through the minigames (where these stats dictate how the AI performs), you might also think that something's not right. Of course, Ralphie isn't really playing to win: he wants to lose just enough to get rid of some of his weight, all the while sandbagging his opponent so he can turn around and win the game. But those pesky mental changes might make it a little harder to purposefully lose... speaking of changes...
From the beginning, I'd planned the character's trajectory to look like an exercise routine. The changes start slow, then have little “spikes” followed by periods of rest, ending with a “final sprint” of changes. I also put in a theme of exercise in general, and its real world “transformation”. Ralphie works hard, and he sees some changes: then the changes stop, and he wonders why he's “plateaued”. It takes some willpower for him to push through, and realize that he's still changing; that the plateau is “all in his head”. Of course, the willpower is actually the game's will, and the changes are, literally, “all in his head”.
Huh, managed to get a lot here after all! Let's talk trivia:
- Name time! “Frye” is pretty self-explanatory, while “Ralphie” was chosen so there'd be two f sounds in succession, which not only sounds kinda gross, but it also sounds like a sharp breath. Cuz exercise! As for Gao Hu, uhhh... I can't remember. Whoops.
- Shoutout to the weirdest typo I've found in a while, where called Ralphie “Bradley”. I have... no idea how that happened.
- I couldn't resist quoting perhaps the most infamous bodybuilding line of all time, from a pre-Terminator Arnie. I'm surprised that I didn't even have to paraphrase it!
- My music choices for the first half were, fittingly, workout jams. The second half was more of a mishmash, but mostly post-rock. And in a disturbing trend, music choices for proofreading once again took the form of cheesy end-credits themes: Drift Away, and Kung Fu Fighting.
My question to you: what's your usual form of exercise? My new year's resolution is to get in shape (I know, original), so I'm gonna be doing some cardio to get me into the routine.
- yoshielder
