JP's NPC

Link to Original Story: NPC - JP

This pitch spoke so perfectly to the setting in my video game pitch that I couldn’t resist. I had invented a number of NPC’s who got only name mention, and I’d said I wanted to flesh them out, so here was the opportunity. Kokyangwuti appealed to me because I felt like she was one of the least exciting of the NPC’s, and easily blown off and forgotten (Jason said he actually remembered her, though). I like the idea of this minor character, who really does occupy a minor role in the main story, reflecting some kind of deep universal truth that supercedes everything the player (I still think of it as a game) has been lead to believe about the nature of the story’s universe. Thus, the player is left with the barest of hints, through the unlikeliest of sources, that there is far more to this world than meets the eye.

So this one is based on JP's "Video Game Plot." It's dark, it's nasty, it's fantastical. It's over the top and under the bottom, and I like it. It's what I think of as a "shallow in the deep end" type story. Which is to say, it makes you think, but not too much, and the themes are fairly obvious. But it's a good bit of wicked fun. Plus the bad get their comeupance from the even badder, so its got a well-framed little moral there too. Little fish, big fish - no free lunch.

One thing he does a bit differently here, is to spend a lot of time on description and less on dialogue. And the descriptions pop. Vivid, easy to see, fun to read. It's not his usual modus operandi, but he pulls it off with aplomb.

I'd honestly love to see him do a story like this for every single NPC in his "video game plot" storyline. The characters are creative interpretations of old standbys, and the way that JP presents them is both entertaining and engrossing.