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oc-review-shop · 6 years

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OC Review: Keith Gatti

Review by: Mod Charle

(continuing with the dating sim idea, although lookin it closely it fits better for a reverse harem… here’s the first dateable guy) human name: Keith Gatti

It does seem more like a reverse harem series than a dating sim. However, it is possible to make this into a dating sim by changing the backstories of each alien to have them appear around the same time.

real name: unknown,due to his language being incompatible with human languages

I do wonder, if this is the case, when in human form, is Keith able to communicate with Ida and others?

biological age: around 26-27 years old Height: 1.65 meters- somewhat taller (has two personas, but essentiallty they are the same)

If they are the same persona, I don’t feel the need to keep “two personas” in his bio. If they are the same, it is one persona.

Weight: HEAVY Body build: skinny/muscular

If he is very heavy, I would assume he is more big and muscular rather than skinny, like bodybuilders. Skinny doesn’t seem like it fits.

Voice: high pitched, soft, cute / rough, deep (closer to his true alien voice) dere type: Yandere. it will be explained why.

Yandere.... hmm.....

gifts from him: flowers, rollerskates… Approach level: VERY EASY

He kinda seems like a loving puppy lololol

chronological age: 5470 years old, but he spent time on earth (and the space (research) station ) only 40 years (dude, he travelled to earth, and didnt have faster than light time travel)

I am very confused on his age. His biological age is 26-27 years but there are 40 years, and 5470 years sprawled in this little section. How old is he? In alien years? In human years?

Species description: Keith’s species are some sort of gigantic amphibians, living in equally big aquatic enviroments, their skin is coloured accordingly to the “sand” and vegetation of the environment, having a stocky build to resist the changing pressure in land and underwater, and fins, to build resistance.

The species are also predators, but rather than chasing down the prey, they just lure them using changing patterns on the skin and their visible veins to create a mesmerizing visage, and when the prey approaches, they hold it with their legs and commence eating them, first sucking their juices dry and then munching their dry bodies like a snack. besides obvious predator abilities, they can read feelings, and the reasons for those feelings, they just hold their claws onto the location of the heart of whoever they are reading and using their eyes to make them focus on the reader, its really simple, y'know-

I really like the species description and how each “amphibian-like” creature appears, but I am a little put off on how they lure their prey in. Generally, prey would only go near something if it looks like something familiar or safe. Therefore, I would have to recommend their skin and veins create different colors that resemble coral and such, although I do really like the idea! Also, you may need to go more in depth about how these creatures read feelings. Human emotions and alien emotions, I would imagine, are drastically different given they’re from different worlds. I suggest elaborating a little more on how they vary and how they are similar.

about keith: Keith is one excitable, cheerful boy, who’s really amazed by everything and might as well be a dog, loving to cuddle and nuzzle, however he has a cruel, jealous side, that he shows whenever someone outside the social circle he is in steps in and takes an interest to Ida,and uses their fear to his advantage, or manipulates them to do his biding.or else he would eat them, although he does it more on an impulsive whim, Ida has no idea of this , thinking he is an uwu soft dumb marshmallow , and neither does Mabel, who would tell Ida inmediately, Caleb knows but shrugs it off, Drake is really angry at this because it might blow up their cover, and Xander just scolds him because eating people isnt nice, and because Ida might find out. yeah… (I know this only covered a few personality traits…sorry)

I think this is a good personality trait for Keith. He seems lovable but is easily jealous and vicious. This dating sim or harem would actually work out very well because Keith is a character that could easily get into the way of another character’s move on Ida.

while not much of his past is known other than him being the first of his batch to hatch, it is theorized that his jealous, manipulative, vengeful cruel persona is the real one , due to other members of his species cowering in fear in his presence, however, he IS genuinely cheerful around Ida and truly supports her and her dreams.he is also very optimistic in that he is going to be her one true love, despite all his jealousness

Keith has some major issues lmao

He still remembers the first time he met Ida, he was going to go crazy after years of isolation, the only contact he has had was with scientists who just checked him up and left, but then came Ida, she was just cleaning up stuff, looking him and rambling about some things about travels and tourism, venting about her frustrations, he felt the urge of cheer her up, playing like a cat, humans like cats, however, maybe due to his size, she was more scared and angry , thus she searched for the nearest object which happened to be a metal bar that was used in case the door needed to be extra locked, and she knocked out two of his teeth with it.

Man, if I was looking for a man to be my significant other, I would search for one that would knock two of my teeth out with a metal bar on sight. But this is very reasonable. While it is cliche, if you were all alone and someone came to give you company, I bet something would start to blossom.

Keith understood perfectly she was ready to kill him in self defense if necessary, and she was about to start a ruckus (she does have anger issues, and her training was strictly cleaning related) , and she was going to get kicked out, thus, he was not going to see her again, he just calmly laid a claw on her, and looked her directly in the eyes, and found her frustrations and issues.

I think another reason why Keith might have the jealousness is because he was the first to meet Ida. You could maybe add in that these creatures have an “imprinting” thing going on that allows one to claim someone else as their significant other. This could work, but then again, all the other aliens are also going after Ida. Idk it’s just a thought.

Though he needed to talk to her and meet her outside of the job, the morphing device that was on a laboratory was perfect for creating his new persona, his human self, but he needed dna, which… wasnt hard to obtain, Ida’s suit was probably full of hairs, and whatnot, so he did what he had to do, take her suit and go away, it was a hard and painful process until he took a completely human form.

Dang that must hurt. However, I feel like using Ida’s DNA would make him look more like a girl. I would change this to Keith finding a way to obtain a male’s hair and then complete the transformation.

I think I explained in Ida’s profile what happened the next day…

Yes, yes you did.

Relationships:

with Ida: he is completely infatuated with her, idolizing her, and admiring her, although this is not good, but once he starts respecting her as a human being and acknowledging her faults the ship can sail, if not, there’s suffering for both of them, he is taking steps, for example, he respects her space.

Overprotective but not pushy. Honestly Keith isn’t that bad of a dude.

With Mabel: Mabel is helping him woo Ida, although she isnt aware of his Yandere tendencies.

What a girl Mabel, yes. But I still think Ida and Mabel could be a route in this sim.

With Drake: they dont get along very well, because despite Drake being violent and bloodthirsty he doesnt sugarcoat it , they like to play toghether though…

If “play” means “trying to rip each others’ throats out”, yeah, I guess they love to play.

With Caleb : Caleb and Keith get along very well with each other, is not hard since both of them are very approachable.

Good boys.

With Xander: both are very jealous of Ida, although Xander fears keith, and keith fears xander as well, no reason

I feel like there should be a reason they fear each other. We generally know why Keith is feared, but Xander should have an underlying trait or secret that makes him extremely dangerous. Its always the sweet/quiet ones.

Trivia: *He adopted the manic pixie dream guy persona to cheer Ida up, he loves seeing her smile *According to Ida he weights like a horse, it might be hyperbole though. *His human form presents no glamour failure at first, but if very stressed he shows parts of his true form. *And mantaining his cute voice is difficult for him too *he is an amphibian and thus needs to be hydrated constantly, he carries a purse full of bottled water.

I honestly really like Keith a lot more now. He originally seemed too generic and likable, but he has flaws and I do want to learn more about the fear everyone seems to show around him. Don’t be afraid to send in your other characters, i would be happy to review them!

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps! (◕ ω ◕✿)

*All OC credit goes to daniluni

~Mod Charle

#ocreview #oc review shop #oc #alien #alienoc #idanorth #keith gatti #amphibian oc #daniluni

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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George Saunders: what writers really do when they write

A series of instincts, thousands of tiny adjustments, hundreds of drafts What is the mysterious process writers go through to get an idea on to the page?

Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wifes cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that, in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son, Willie, died, and was temporarily interred in that crypt, and that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt on several occasions to hold the boys body. An image spontaneously leapt into my mind a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Piet. I carried that image around for the next 20-odd years, too scared to try something that seemed so profound, and then finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasnt getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read Afraid to Embark on Scary Artistic Project He Desperately Longed to Attempt, decided to take a run at it, in exploratory fashion, no commitments. My novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is the result of that attempt, and now I find myself in the familiar writerly fix of trying to talk about that process as if I were in control of it.

We often discuss art this way: the artist had something he wanted to express, and then he just, you know expressed it. We buy into some version of the intentional fallacy: the notion that art is about having a clear-cut intention and then confidently executing same.

The actual process, in my experience, is much more mysterious and more of a pain in the ass to discuss truthfully.

A guy (Stan) constructs a model railroad town in his basement. Stan acquires a small hobo, places him under a plastic railroad bridge, near that fake campfire, then notices hes arranged his hobo into a certain posture the hobo seems to be gazing back at the town. Why is he looking over there? At that little blue Victorian house? Stan notes a plastic woman in the window, then turns her a little, so shes gazing out. Over at the railroad bridge, actually. Huh. Suddenly, Stan has made a love story. Oh, why cant they be together? If only Little Jack would just go home. To his wife. To Linda.

What did Stan (the artist) just do? Well, first, surveying his little domain, he noticed which way his hobo was looking. Then he chose to change that little universe, by turning the plastic woman. Now, Stan didnt exactly decide to turn her. It might be more accurate to say that it occurred to him to do so; in a split-second, with no accompanying language, except maybe a very quiet internal Yes.

He just liked it better that way, for reasons he couldnt articulate, and before hed had the time or inclination to articulate them.

An artist works outside the realm of strict logic. Simply knowing ones intention and then executing it does not make good art. Artists know this. According to Donald Barthelme: The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do. Gerald Stern put it this way: If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking. Einstein, always the smarty-pants, outdid them both: No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.

How, then, to proceed? My method is: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with P on this side (Positive) and N on this side (Negative). I try to read what Ive written uninflectedly, the way a first-time reader might (without hope and without despair). Wheres the needle? Accept the result without whining. Then edit, so as to move the needle into the P zone. Enact a repetitive, obsessive, iterative application of preference: watch the needle, adjust the prose, watch the needle, adjust the prose (rinse, lather, repeat), through (sometimes) hundreds of drafts. Like a cruise ship slowly turning, the story will start to alter course via those thousands of incremental adjustments.

The artist, in this model, is like the optometrist, always asking: Is it better like this? Or like this?

The interesting thing, in my experience, is that the result of this laborious and slightly obsessive process is a story that is better than I am in real life funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathetic, with a clearer sense of virtue, both wiser and more entertaining.

And what a pleasure that is; to be, on the page, less of a dope than usual.

Revising by the method described is a form of increasing the ambient intelligence of a piece of writing. This, in turn, communicates a sense of respect for your reader. As text is revised, it becomes more specific and embodied in the particular. It becomes more sane. It becomes less hyperbolic, sentimental, and misleading. It loses its ability to create a propagandistic fog. Falsehoods get squeezed out of it, lazy assertions stand up, naked and blushing, and rush out of the room.

Is any of this relevant to our current political moment?

Hoo, boy.

When I write, Bob was an asshole, and then, feeling this perhaps somewhat lacking in specificity, revise it to read, Bob snapped impatiently at the barista, then ask myself, seeking yet more specificity, why Bob might have done that, and revise to, Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife, and then pause and add, who he missed so much, especially now, at Christmas, I didnt make that series of changes because I wanted the story to be more compassionate. I did it because I wanted it to be less lame.

But it is more compassionate. Bob has gone from pure asshole to grieving widower, so overcome with grief that he has behaved ungraciously to a young person, to whom, normally, he would have been nice. Bob has changed. He started out a cartoon, on which we could heap scorn, but now he is closer to me, on a different day.

How was this done? Via pursuit of specificity. I turned my attention to Bob and, under the pressure of trying not to suck, my prose moved in the direction of specificity, and in the process my gaze became more loving toward him (ie, more gentle, nuanced, complex), and you, dear reader, witnessing my gaze become more loving, might have found your own gaze becoming slightly more loving, and together (the two of us, assisted by that imaginary grouch) reminded ourselves that it is possible for ones gaze to become more loving.

Or we could just stick with Bob was an asshole, and post it, and wait for the likes, and for the pro-Bob forces to rally, and the anti-barista trolls to anonymously weigh in but, meanwhile, theres poor Bob, grieving and misunderstood, and theres our poor abused barista, feeling crappy and not exactly knowing why, incrementally more convinced that the world is irrationally cruel.

Illustration by Yann Kebbi for Review

What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which shes already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly were adjusting that which is already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs. I write, Jane came into the room and sat down on the blue couch, read that, wince, cross out came into the room and down and blue (Why does she have to come into the room? Can someone sit UP on a couch? Why do we care if its blue?) and the sentence becomes Jane sat on the couch and suddenly, its better (Hemingwayesque, even!), although why is it meaningful for Jane to sit on a couch? Do we really need that? And soon we have arrived, simply, at Jane, which at least doesnt suck, and has the virtue of brevity.

But why did I make those changes? On what basis?

On the basis that, if its better this new way for me, over here, now, it will be better for you, later, over there, when you read it. When I pull on this rope here, you lurch forward over there.

This is a hopeful notion, because it implies that our minds are built on common architecture that whatever is present in me might also be present in you. I might be a 19th-century Russian count, you a part-time Walmart clerk in 2017, in Boise, Idaho, but when you start crying at the end of my (Tolstoys) story Master and Man, you have proved that we have something in common, communicable across language and miles and time, and despite the fact that one of us is dead.

Another reason youre crying: youve just realised that Tolstoy thought well of you he believed that his own notions about life here on earth would be discernible to you, and would move you.

Tolstoy imagined you generously, you rose to the occasion.

We often think that the empathetic function in fiction is accomplished via the writers relation to his characters, but its also accomplished via the writers relation to his reader. You make a rarefied place (rarefied in language, in form; perfected in many inarticulable beauties the way two scenes abut; a certain formal device that self-escalates; the perfect place at which a chapter cuts off); and then welcome the reader in. She cant believe that you believe in her that much; that you are so confident that the subtle nuances of the place will speak to her; she is flattered. And they do speak to her. This mode of revision, then, is ultimately about imagining that your reader is as humane, bright, witty, experienced and well intentioned as you, and that, to communicate intimately with her, you have to maintain the state, through revision, of generously imagining her. You revise your reader up, in your imagination, with every pass. You keep saying to yourself: No, shes smarter than that. Dont dishonour her with that lazy prose or that easy notion.

And in revising your reader up, you revise yourself up too.

I had written short stories by this method for the last 20 years, always assuming that an entirely new method (more planning, more overt intention, big messy charts, elaborate systems of numerology underlying the letters in the characters names, say) would be required for a novel. But, no. My novel proceeded by essentially the same principles as my stories always have: somehow get to the writing desk, read what youve got so far, watch that forehead needle, adjust accordingly. The whole thing was being done on a slightly larger frame, admittedly, but there was a moment when I finally realised that, if one is going to do something artistically intense at 55 years old, he is probably going to use the same skills hes been obsessively honing all of those years; the trick might be to destabilise oneself enough that the skills come to the table fresh-eyed and a little confused. A bandleader used to working with three accordionists is granted a symphony orchestra; what hes been developing all of those years, he may find, runs deeper than mere instrumentation his take on melody and harmony should be transferable to this new group, and he might even find himself looking anew at himself, so to speak: reinvigorated by his own sudden strangeness in that new domain.

It was as if, over the years, Id become adept at setting up tents and then a very large tent showed up: bigger frame, more fabric, same procedure. Or, to be more precise (yet stay within my temporary housing motif): it was as if Id spent my life designing custom yurts and then got a commission to build a mansion. At first I thought Not sure I can do that. But then it occurred to me that a mansion of sorts might be constructed from a series of connected yurts each small unit built by the usual rules of construction, their interconnection creating new opportunities for beauty.

Any work of art quickly reveals itself to be a linked system of problems. A book has personality, and personality, as anyone burdened with one will attest, is a mixed blessing. This guy has great energy but never sits still. This girl is sensitive maybe too much; she weeps when the wrong type of pasta is served. Almost from the first paragraph, the writer becomes aware that a works strengths and weaknesses are bound together, and that, sadly, his great idea has baggage.

For example: I loved the idea of Lincoln, alone at night in the graveyard. But how is a novel made from one guy in a graveyard at night? Unless we want to write a 300-page monologue in the voice of Lincoln (Four score and seven minutes ago, I did enter this ghastly place) or inject a really long-winded and omniscient gravedigger into the book (we dont, trust me, I tried), we need some other presences there in the graveyard. Is this a problem? Well, it sure felt like one, back in 2012. But, as new age gurus are always assuring us, a problem is actually an opportunity. In art, this is true. The reader will sense the impending problem at about the same moment the writer does, and part of what we call artistic satisfaction is the readers feeling that just the right cavalry has arrived, at just the right moment. Another wave of artistic satisfaction occurs if she feels that the cavalry is not only arriving efficiently, but is a cool, interesting cavalry, ie, is an opportunity for added fun/beauty a broadening-out of the aesthetic terms.

In this case, the solution was pretty simple contained, joke-like, in the very statement of the problem (Who else might be in a graveyard late at night?).

I remembered an earlier, abandoned novel, set in a New York State graveyard that featured wait for it talking ghosts. I also remembered a conversation with a brilliant former student of mine, who said that if I ever wrote a novel, it should be a series of monologues, as in a story of mine called Four Institutional Monologues.

So: the book would be narrated by a group of monologuing ghosts stuck in that graveyard.

And suddenly what was a problem really did become an opportunity: someone who loves doing voices, and thinking about death, now had the opportunity to spend four years trying to make a group of talking ghosts be charming, spooky, substantial, moving, and, well, human.

There is something wonderful in feeling the presence of the writer within you, of something wilful that seems to have a plan George Saunders. Photograph: Tim Knox for the Guardian

A work of fiction can be understood as a three-beat movement: a juggler gathers bowling pins; throws them in the air; catches them. This intuitive approach Ive been discussing is most essential, I think, during the first phase: the gathering of the pins. This gathering phase really is: conjuring up the pins. Somehow the best pins are the ones made inadvertently, through this system of radical, iterative preference Ive described. Concentrating on the line-to-line sound of the prose, or some matter of internal logic, or describing a certain swath of nature in the most evocative way (that is, by doing whatever gives us delight, and about which we have a strong opinion), we suddenly find that weve made a pin. Which pin? Better not to name it. To name it is to reduce it. Often pin exists simply as some form of imperative, or a thing about which were curious; a threat, a promise, a pattern, a vow we feel must soon be broken. Scrooge says it would be best if Tiny Tim died and eliminated the surplus population; Romeo loves Juliet; Akaky Akakievich needs a new overcoat; Gatsby really wants Daisy. (The colour grey keeps showing up; everything that occurs in the story does so in pairs.)

Then: up go the pins. The reader knows they are up there and waits for them to come down and be caught. If they dont come down (Romeo decides not to date Juliet after all, but to go to law school; the weather in St Petersburg suddenly gets tropical, and the overcoat will not be needed; Gatsby sours on Daisy, falls for Betty; the writer seems to have forgotten about his grey motif) the reader cries foul, and her forehead needle plummets into the N zone and she throws down the book and wanders away to get on to Facebook, or rob a store.

The writer, having tossed up some suitably interesting pins, knows they have to come down, and, in my experience, the greatest pleasure in writing fiction is when they come down in a surprising way that conveys more and better meaning than youd had any idea was possible. One of the new pleasures I experienced writing this, my first novel, was simply that the pins were more numerous, stayed in the air longer, and landed in ways that were more unforeseen and complexly instructive to me than has happened in shorter works.

Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. They were sort of cynical; they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because theyd been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential incapable of influencing the living. Enter Willie Lincoln, just dead, in imminent danger (children dont fare well in that realm). In the last third of the book, the bowling pins started raining down. Certain decisions Id made early on forced certain actions to fulfilment. The rules of the universe created certain compulsions, as did the formal and structural conventions Id put in motion. Slowly, without any volition from me (I was, always, focused on my forehead needle), the characters started to do certain things, each on his or her own, the sum total of which resulted, in the end, in a broad, cooperative pattern that seemed to be arguing for what Id call a viral theory of goodness. All of these imaginary beings started working together, without me having decided they should do so (each simply doing that which produced the best prose), and they were, it seemed, working together to save young Willie Lincoln, in a complex pattern seemingly being dictated from elsewhere. (It wasnt me, it was them.)

Something like this had happened in stories before, but never on this scale, and never so unrelated to my intention. It was a beautiful, mysterious experience and I find myself craving it while, at the same time, flinching at the thousands of hours of work it will take to set such a machine in motion again.

Why do I feel this to be a hopeful thing? The way this pattern thrillingly completed itself? It may just be almost surely is a feature of the brain, the byproduct of any rigorous, iterative engagement in a thought system. But there is something wonderful in watching a figure emerge from the stone unsummoned, feeling the presence of something within you, the writer, and also beyond you something consistent, wilful, and benevolent, that seems to have a plan, which seems to be: to lead you to your own higher ground.

Lincoln in the Bardo is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for 14.24 (RRP 18.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.