Hey, folks. It’s the day of love here and I was late getting this out because I was out there enjoying a sexy time with my beautiful love… Okay, that’s a total lie. I spent all day with my cat and staying at home. There’s a blizzard out there! That, and my only love is my love of writing. That’s pretty hard to romance.

-Wordcount: 2,396 (This week was slow. I ended up being the only person working my office this week and we got 4x the amount of work we normally get with our full staff. If I wasn’t doing my day job, I was sleeping and trying to recover. The good news is that most of the time I was preparing for this week. This week is going to be my first attempt at breaking my personal record for most words written in one week. Do I think I can write 105,000 in a week like I did so many years ago? Probably not. Do I think I can make some serious headway into getting Fates finished? Most certainly!)

-Voice Acting update: Voice acting is closed (or in the process of closing as we speak). There have been some amazing entries and a lot of them. I’m pretty impressed by the number of people interested in voicing this project. At the risk of being cliché, I’m a bit sad we don’t have enough roles for everyone. The good news is that there will be more minor roles available at a later time when we cast the rest of the cast. For those of you who auditioned, we will be announcing the roles in the next week.

-Art update: Just a little showing this week of some of the rough work being done on the CG. No matter where Natalie goes, there is always a pair of hidden spies listening in as they follow behind. Sadly, neither of them are very good at the whole disguising thing… (“But at least I’m trying, unlike someone,” Name grumbles.)

Today’s character is Sylvania Logivechk, one of the longest standing characters in the series. As I’ve talked about before, Syl is very strange in that her core personality has never really faltered or changed. However, Anton’s Vacation was a bad moment when her inner shell was shown a lot more than the reason she is by far my most favorite female character from the series. Let’s go into some depth on that.

Name: Sylvania Logivechk

Age: 29

Gender: F

Species: Human

Chief’s Notes: First thing that should jump out at you is the radical differences in the sprite itself. AV was so far off canon when it came to that we might as well have been talking about Lord of the Rings. Syl wore glasses, a schoolgirl uniform, green eyes, very big breasts, very wispy hair, and a stance that was very out of place for her. The sprite was just utterly wrong for Syl, but we used it because that was what we had at the time. Out of all of the characters, Syl’s sprite underwent the most changes. Changes that made her both canon and fell better within how she composes herself. Then we went from the Whispered Voyage’s Syl design and moved to the current one. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about it.

Out of all the cast, Syl has been out there saving the universe the longest. She started out as a government killer at the young age of 13 and has been earning her keep since then. Prior to an incident involving her brother, Syl wasn’t the stonewall she is now. Young Syl was a tad bit shy and very devoted to studying everything she could about anything. The only real friend she had was the problematic child of a local politician who would constantly drag her into trouble; a friendship that still exists in this story with Sora Doichu. Back in those days, Syl was borderline naive, even to the trade she was a master of performing.

Then a certain incident happened when she was a young adult and everything changed. Only a couple people are still around who remember the fateful mission or the girl she used to be. After that, Syl almost never spoke, going from never saying a word to her current limit of less than 3 words at a time. She became a lot more focused on perfecting her trade and her combative, the wonder of the universe that once inspired her disappearing. While she has warmed up a bit from the days after the incident, Syl never returned to the way she was before.

If there is one thing I loath from AV, it is how Syl was portrayed. She’s determined, ingenuous in matters both physical and emotional, and a team player. She can be forceful when the situation calls for it; I always picture her walking along side Anton, stepping in front when danger lurks or falling back when they enter the political arena. Falling back, but always there to step in. Almost always, Syl will hold back and gather the facts, using moderation when unexpected situations arise.

What she isn’t is a clingy servant of Anton. The thing that seemed to be missing from Anton’s Vacation is the badarseness that makes Syl herself. There was the closeness with Anton that came from three years of living alongside him night and day, but it didn’t have the feel that I wanted. They weren’t two close friends who had been through hell together, it was a shy girl who couldn’t express her feelings. Good story, I often enjoy it, not Syl’s story. While that is a facet of their relationship in the story, I focused a little too closely on it. What I want to do is show the relationship before I try forcing the changes down the reader’s throat.

As I’ve said before, Syl and Name do not get along in the slightest. Name only sees the cold exterior of a former assassin with a mission to protect Anton. Syl sees Name as a glory hound who cares little for anything more than her own pride. For there to be an effective route between them that isn’t them exchanging barbs every other line they share, there has to be something that to give them some sort of common ground. I’ve spent almost the entire last two weeks mulling over what sort of thing could give them that bridge and only one thing comes to mind. Anton.

While she has no problem laying into Anton about every little mistake, Name does care for her boss as an intellectual and as the person who kept her from ending up on the streets after failing as a SITO. Syl has protected Anton for years and the two are incredibly close. If there is one thing that I think would bring them together long enough to gain even a little traction as friends, it would be saving Anton’s bacon. So… it is looking less and less deus ex machina to get those two to have a solid route, but I’ve still got some ground to cover before I feel like it would be worthy to play.

That’s all for this week. Tune in next week for another update! Until then, Chief out!

 

Got a video of the post this week! Don’t ask why this relates to the Syl and Sora.