The Definitive Guide To DitR - Part 3: Epilogue

Part 3: Epilogue

Chapter 6: Beta Reactions

Right out the gate, DitR got some pretty good reviews: they loved the action scenes, they loved the ending, and if you watched it live, audiences loved the interactive element. However, showing an incomplete movie can create different reactions depending on what was missing. As DitR went through production, the audience had some interesting reactions depending on what I had told them during the "fill-in-the-blank" moments.

The First Screenings:
Era: August 2012-September 2012
What was shown: Only Episodes 1-5, 18-20, only the Tenshi fight in the climax.
What was implied: Brolli would be the one who torched Yuuka's flower field and willingly destroyed the SDM. He also had sex with pretty much everyone.
What was changed by the end: Brolli's character development didn't begin until the incident, Brolli took the Kappa Valley's metal only moments before the incident, and he didn't know about Tenshi.
General Reaction: Sympathy went to the Touhou characters, citing Brolli as too impulsive, rash, and a dick. However, his dying moment of awesome helped sway the viewers a bit.

To explain this, there's a concept called The Center Of Good: the audience empathizes and identifies the most with the goodest good guy. Here, the Touhou cast is seen as the Center of Good, so it's easier for the audience to distance themselves from the jerkish Brolli than the Touhou cast (and why the ending is still sad: the "Center of Good" characters suffered the worst of it all).

Another issue with the early screenings was the hype built around the ending: as soon as the first reviews came in, most of the focus was on how dark the ending was (or was not, which I'm thankful for). Ever since Day 1, DitR has suffered from a case of Angst Aversion: some people are just too scared to watch the full film. I assure you that if you've seen Watchmen or Fight Club, you can handle DitR.


The Post-Cirno Day Screenings:
Era: September 2012-July 2013
What was shown: Episodes 1-10, 18-20, climax is finished, epilogue extended.
What was implied: Brolli actually tried to save Gensokyo this time, but failed, and he decided to run like a coward.
What was changed by the end: Brolli's character development hit more of a zig-zag: rather than running to save Gensokyo, he ran to save himself.
General Reaction: Sympathy was split between Brolli and the Touhou characters, ending was a bit too dark/hopeless.

This is probably the darkest iteration of DitR. In this version, it's implied Brolli will repeat Arturo's mistakes, and it's plenty clear that he does. He does try to develop, but when he fails after Ferin dies in Makai (in this version, he accidentally kills him), he decides to run to save himself. In the epilogue, Mokou and Kaguya's scene is missing, and the audience wondered if they were killed off permanently. In one later review by aranicar, he said that there was basically no hope for Gensokyo: everyone was screwed, Brolli was getting a second chance, and everything was just going to start over again. His words were definitely not lost: I spent the rest of production finding ways to offer some glimmer of hope (immediately by adding Kaguya and Mokou's scene), and I eventually gave his reaction to Reimu in the revised ending.

After finishing the climax and showing the nightmarish lengths Gensokyo went through to save or kill Brolli, audience sympathy was split: people didn't know whether to feel sorry for Brolli, feel sorry for the Touhou cast, both, or neither. At this point, I was working at finding a way to share the Center of Good with Brolli, but this is a difficult task: especially with a cast as large as this and a plot as delicate as DitR's. Plus, many of the climatic scenes had not been revised yet.

Another issue that got brought up was Marisa: she was a female Brolli that did get away with everything she did. So, I did my best to make her regain sympathy by making her basically what Brolli would be like if he did care about the balance. Audiences were very warm to the changes: especially after Marisa's monologue about how she will protect the balance at any cost.


The Reel 2 Screenings:
Era: July 2013-July 2014
What Was Shown: Eventually all Episodes, but Episodes 18-20 now need revision.
What was implied: The ending just needed cleanup to reflect the events of the story. Yukari picked Brolli specifically because she knew he'd mess up.
What was changed by the end: Episodes 18-20 now need revision.
General Reaction: Good balance between the Touhou cast and Brolli, but there are still some minor character gripes and plot issues here and there.

Eventually, the main file for DitR became so large that I couldn't add anything else without Sony Vegas crashing. To remedy this, I began splitting the project into Reels: Reel 1 for the not-so-serious half, and Reel 2 for the darker half, both equaling out at two hours with an intermission in-between.

By this point, DitR's plot and Brolli's character development had solidified, so there was very little to explain in between everything other than what would be changed by the end.

Screenings were more limited since most of my time went to fixing community issues and other activities. Eventually, I'd have impromptu screenings of the final episode since people had been waiting forever, and those got very positive reviews. Plus, it gave me a chance to hang out with the viewers and let them ask questions since I was so busy.

Chapter 7: Final Reactions

The moment I uploaded the final episode, my inbox was flooded with an overwhelming amount of reviews: most of them positive. The common threads I keep seeing among the reviews are how the movie made them cry, how the ending made them dislike [character or characters], and how they loved the final shot of Brolli and Komachi.

Now, I had anticipated them saying they thought the ending was sad and that Brolli's redemption was heartwarming. I even hoped that some hardcore Yukari fans would see her in a new less-than-pure light, which I had achieved (but remember: while there's more to Yukari than being "youkai santa," she's also more than a manipulative humanoid abomination, as her backstory with Yuyuko ought to show). This has been the general reaction all throughout production, which I am thankful for.

What I had not anticipated was people questioning why they liked Touhou in the first place after such a dark and dismal ending. This is actually pretty interesting, because this was unintended, but a number of reviews like Random Numbers and ZeroBeat pointed out just how selfish, political, and dystopian Gensokyo felt after the ending. Everyone was pursuing their own agenda, Yukari's explanation of the balance left a nasty "Utopia Justifies the Means" taste in everyone's mouth, and morality descended into the worst Grey Vs. Gray morality you could encounter. On one hand, I like this reaction because it means there are even depths to DitR that I'm unaware about. On the other hand, I don't want Touhou fans turning on Touhou because of something I made. I'm a huge Touhou fan: I wouldn't have made this film if it weren't for that. When Random Numbers told me his experience, leaving a comment on the video, "This video made me question why I liked Touhou," I summed up my response as thus, "You like Touhou because Touhou is NOTHING like this." It's true: even in Symposium of Post-Mysticism, where Marisa and Akyuu explore Gensokyo's political depths, or even in Hopeless Masquerade, it's all done in whimsical and lighthearted fashion.

I rarely encounter any legit bad reviews for DitR; at least after finishing production. During production, if I ever got a bad review, I went back to the drawing board and found a way to revise the story (preferably with the help of the person who left the bad review). The same goes for any of my projects: if somebody gives me a bad review, I will co-write revisions with the reviewer. However, with DitR finished, I've never really encountered many deep critiques against DitR, and all I can really do is apologize since production is finished (though, I might retcon some stuff when I made the DitR: After Story series).

Most of the bad reviews only focus on the fact it's a deconstruction that has to play its tropes straight before tearing them apart. Each one basically says, "DitR tries to tear bad fanfics apart by being a bad fanfic." But that's normally how deconstructions work: set up the tropes, then knock them down. Spec Ops: The Line's opening menu shows a sniper next to an American flag as Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the National Anthem plays, followed by you blasting middle-eastern rebels in Dubai with your wise-cracking teammates, only to descend into friendly fire on American troops, civilian casualties, and literal insanity. Neon Genesis Evangelion played many of its mecha anime tropes straight (normal teen hero, surrounded by cute girls as co-pilots, hot surrogate stepmother figure, alien invasion, etc.) before descending into body horror, mind rape, psychoanalysese of its character, and the utter destruction of the mecha genre for the time. Puella Magi Madoka Magicka had frilly magical girl hijinks before somebody's head got bitten off. I don't know how I'd make DitR another way: yes, it begins as a bad fanfic to tear apart bad fanfics, but when "Gappy Fics" long pass, who will remember the contemporaries? DitR needs that element of self-parody to work: even if you don't know what a "Gappy fic" is, the first half lets you know right up front what this story is trying to tear apart. That anger you feel towards the protagonist? That's intentional. You wishing the other characters had a longer time in the spotlight? Intentional. Thinking the protagonist's life is too easy and he seriously needs to get his ass kicked? Intentional, because that's the rug audiences stand on that's eventually yanked out from under them.

I still welcome anyone to make an in-depth negative critique of DitR. If it's really good, I'll likely feature it in the description to this guide: as I said before, I welcome my bad reviews.

Edit - May 21, 2016: Looks like I've gotten my first in-depth negative review! Critic Afterthought Carver recently wrote a rather in-depth review series about DitR, covering everything listed above, but in much greater detail than I described, plus addressing many plot holes that I and the crew missed. I've talked to the guy himself and he gave me permission to link to his review. My only word of warning is that don't flame the guy or I'll personally disown you as a fan: he's entitled to his opinion just as you are. Besides, all this started because I critiqued Brolli, so let this guy critique me. Even if you like DitR, DitR's not perfect.

• An at-a-glance review
• Observations about Deconstruction (comparing Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Diamond In The Rough, and Digimon Tamers)
  
• The Main Review
• Final Thoughts (this covers why we need to rethink deconstructions, plus his own recommendations)

Chapter 8: The Future of Touhou Self-Insert Fics

Little did I know, back in that Jim's Diner, that Stevo and I were coining a term for a genre: the Gappy Fic.

But really, every fandom has their Self-Insert Fic stereotypes. Many fandoms set in schools (Harry Potter, numerous anime series) usually have the main character transfer in, and then they go on a tour of their story's location before the big bad arrives. Touhou has the Gappy Fic: our personal archetype for Self-Insert Fics, which DitR set out to destroy.

In making DitR, I had two goals based on the Genre Killer trope:

• Expose the common tropes of the typical bad Touhou self-insert fic and then poke so many holes in them that nobody could use them anymore: the uncommonly nice behavior from all of the Gensokyo residents, the powers with seemingly no side-effects, the shallow and easy romance, Yukari's seemingly altruistic reasons for bringing in random children, and the idea that the gappy is "the chosen one" to save Gensokyo.
  
• Set the bar so ridiculously high that nobody could ever hope to top it. DitR is the first (and, as of writing, the only) Walfas movie. It's also one of the very rare finished feature-length Gappy fanfics. It was met with mostly good reviews. It features fully-animated battle scenes and unprecedented destruction never seen before in a Touhou fanfic. Even if it doesn't exactly hurt the genre, even Stevo The Human, the co-coiner of the term Gappy, said, "It's the greatest Gappy Fic of all time." (That, and when Brolli said, "I'll be different," he said, "Of course you will: your story's actually compelling!")

Unfortunately/predictably, DitR also spawned its own cliches, as referenced in the Intermission Sequence:

• Yukari (and other characters) supplying the new gappies with the guides to Gensokyo.
  
• Remilia drinking blood as payment for breaking into her library.
• Sakuya's time magic causing mild decompression sickness.
• Reisen stunning people with her eyes of lunacy.
• Tenshi somehow ending up as the big bad. (Did they even see the whole movie?!)
• Reminders that the previous gappies have all died before them. (Again, did they see this movie? Especially when Shiki says no Gappy escapes their fate?)
• Reimu apparently angry that she's encountered a Gappy/outsider.

DitR is also responsible for launching a new subgenre: The Gappy/Outsider Tragedy Fic, with such fics as Miki Bandy's Miss Y, Shingo Yabuki's Lesson of Life, and the giant collab The Crossroad. Although these are great works, Gappy/Outsider Tragedy Fics can also be done for ill, and as the genre expands, it is likely to attract its own cliches and bad fics.

On a long enough timeline, I do plan to eventually make a sequel to DitR, which will be much smaller in scope and focused on reconstructing everything I took apart. I've also been on-and-off working on Flight of the Steel Butterly, a Gappy fic that avoids the archetype by focusing on a tiny cast and a specific goal (a girl is trying to rescue her brother from the Scarlet Devil Mansion in a month). But in the meantime, what can Self-Insert Fic writers do to vary their stories?

A Plan for Reconstruction/Innovation of Touhou Self-Inserts:

• First of all, take my classic challenge: don't write a self-insert fic until you finish a normal vanilla Touhou fic. Yes, there are those like ChibiChen who went in blind and finished a fic with an OC, but first, know your strength (even he had some stories/fanfics under his belt before taking on Mind The Gap).
• Start your character in Gensokyo, Japan, or find a legit reason why they should go to Gensokyo. Most people pick Yukari because it's the easiest way from their house to Gensokyo, but you have to remember your Self-Insert is not you. You can start anywhere you want: if you're already a resident of Gensokyo, you can build a neat backstory of how you grew up in this fantasy world. If you're already living in Japan, you can wander into Gensokyo by accident. Otherwise, if you're starting from the outside world, you better have a damn good reason to go to Gensokyo. I've seen people try to avoid gapping via Yukari by using other characters like Ran, but this is just the same thing with a different character: more wish fulfillment. If DitR is to prove anything, it's that stories aren't about getting everything you want, but fighting for it, and that it's not about the hero winning (or even losing), but the shifts between the two.
• Focus on a small cast. A common complaint with DitR is people want to see more of the Touhou cast, but for a cast size of more than 60 characters, it's impossible. The smaller the cast, the more time you can spend with them. If your character is to end up in Gensokyo, put them among a small group of characters and never let them stray. If your character is stuck at the Scarlet Devil Mansion, we will only get to know a few characters at the Scarlet Devil Mansion: if anyone else shows up, they're going to be secondary or background characters.
  
• Focus on a specific goal. DitR was tough because it's a story of internal conflict, so there was no real external goal: Brolli's inner conscious goal was to live a carefree and easy life, but his unconscious goal was to learn to break free of his shallowness and ignorance. As a result, much of Brolli's external goals changed with every other episode. Viewers of DitR are ever so lucky because it's structured: most Gappy fics aren't. Give your character a goal we can visualize: if their goal is even something like, "Win [Touhou character]'s heart," you make the plot the struggle for your character to win over the other.
• Understand relationships don't happen chronologically, but progressively. Speaking of romance, the key to a good romance story is, "What's to keep them apart?" It can be other characters, rules of society, or the quirks of eachothers' characters. Bad romances happen with length: no matter how much the characters hate/ignore eachother throughout the story, by the end, the characters say they love eachother, kiss, and forget everything that happened before. This was a common complaint with The Matrix: for all it's cool action, Neo and Trinity were nothing more than teammates trying to rescue their commanding officer and nothing more. Then, during the climax, Trinity confesses her love for Neo, kisses him, revives him, and nowhere does Neo later go, "Wait! You were in love with me this whole time!?" It's no wonder many of these kinds of writers have relationship issues and use fiction as their chance to build their own romance. In the least, study relationship models, romance novels, and even build real relationships. See how people grow closer together, then replicate it on the page.
• Understand that everyone has their motives: Although the political atmosphere made DitR even darker than I intended, it's also a commentary on how little thought most writers give to their characters in terms of motivation. Most Gappy Fics have the Touhou cast selflessly giving away everything they have to the Gappies/Outsiders (which, in DitR, results in utter destruction). Put yourselves in the shoes of your characters: would you really be doing all these nice things for no apparent reason? And wouldn't you be busier with more important things than helping out a total stranger? That's one of the biggest problems with Yukari giving these kids a free pass to Gensokyo: she gaps them over and leaves them alone. Hopefully, by filling out the "why?" with my nightmarish answer in DitR's end, new writers will come up with better reasons to get their character into Gensokyo.
• Darker is not always better. As I told Random Numbers, we like Touhou because Touhou is nothing like DitR: Touhou is a lighthearted comic fantasy. If you're going to make a Touhou fanfic, you'd do better to fill the fandom with fun stories than a nightmarish descent into death, murder, and despair. I write a lot of dark stories, yes, but it's to contrast the bright side of life: when we remember the pain of what we're trying to avoid, we can more easily embrace the good of the things we want.

There are likely more strategies I haven't thought of, but remember: I wrote DitR as a call to innovate Touhou Self-insert Fics. The "formula" has been done to death: we're done with the Rumia encounter, the Spell Card Rule explanation over tea with Reimu and Marisa, the kid hero getting weapons from the Kappa Valley, then running off all over Gensokyo to save it from a big bad who clobbers all of the other characters. One of my favorite writing proverbs is, "Write the thing that will become a cliche used by everyone else." In that case, it's time to write new cliches for people to rip off!

Chapter 9: My Personal Reaction/Final Comments

Even before getting into Touhou, my production philosophy has always been, "Make the thing you will enjoy." When I found out it was Zun's same philosophy, I felt right at home in Touhou. To think, it all started with an hour-long critique of another Walfaser, and it spiraled into this: my first ever movie. Like a for-real production-length cult hit movie. It even had the same production length as a movie! It had all the behind-the-scenes drama and good times of a movie.

It's needless to say I freaking love Diamond In The Rough. Although I wish it were shorter, fully-animated, and voice-acted, I'm still pleased with what it is (though one day, I vow to find a way to fully-animate it: it's way easier anyway). It's got all of the qualities of a movie I'd like, and thanks to all of the bad reviews, I was able to make it better with each screening. I know it's common for writers to fall in love with their own work and how dangerous that can be, but Diamond In The Rough is the ultimate labor of love: I worked hard for it, and now I have a movie I and others can enjoy.

What I learned from this whole experience...

• A little work a day pays off in the end. So many people had doubts DitR would ever get finished. In fact, there are still people saying DitR will never be finished. However, I worked on it every week for two years, in-between all of the chaos happening online and offline. In the end, I still finished it. You can do this for any goal, really: even if tiny little improvements don't pay off right away, those tiny improvements make all the world of difference in the end.
• Plan ahead. I really should have written a more in-depth script for DitR. The climax was so tight because I had written it far in advanced. When I had to go back and set everything up, I had my outlines, but some of the sentencing was vague, and I ended up stumbling for a while until getting back on track. In the future, I'm going to meticulously outline my next movie (Mind The Gap).
• Your audience is the best measuring stick for your writing. I've mentioned this many times before, but I need audience feedback to thrive. I have all my writing guides, but they're a starting point: the audience gives you the best in-context feedback you can ever receive, and the more audience members tell you to change course, the more likely it's a good idea. Thanks to them, I was able to cut out the plot holes and grievances they all had to make the story better.
• Your audience is also your best moral support. Without the Spaztique (And Friends) Make Stuff Live crew or the Walfas Station Wagon, I wouldn't have finished DitR. They not only supplied me with tons of ideas, but they built up my morale in the bad times and helped me power through the good times. Every time I streamed DitR production, it was more than just animating a cartoon: it was a time to bond and have fun. We talked about story ideas, yes, but more importantly, we told jokes, shared stories, had fun, and gathered for games after it was all done. As a result, I ended up meeting tons of current community members, and now they have the blessing of joining the Walfas community with us. Even though I was working on a cartoon, the stream was more about bringing people together to have a good time, regardless of what was being made.
• Never lose momentum. Every time I had to take a break (or rather, was forced to take a break during the turmoil of the Wagon administration), I'd lose days at a time on not just DitR, but all of my projects. What kept me plowing ahead was working on some aspect of DitR night after night after night, which helped me during National Novel Writing Month. I don't believe in "burnout" from overwork: I believe the worst thing you can do is stop working, only to find you can't start again without extra effort. No matter what, I will find a way to keep working to keep my engine going.
• Don't listen to the naysayers when something works. I have been told multiple times (often by the same people) to stop streaming production, stop talking to my audience, stop working so hard on DitR, and just accept it will never get finished. I didn't listen, and that's why it not only got done, but it met most audience expectations.
  
• Do not be afraid of big goals. I didn't think I could have made a four hour Touhou epic... until I did.

The real Brolli and I are actually planning to find a way to take DitR out of Touhou and into its own separate universe. I won't reveal any details on that until far, far into the future.

And lastly...

If you have been on this journey with me since that fateful summer in 2012, I thank you from the deepest pit of my soul. Thank you for supporting me, for giving me ideas, helping me, and for making this story possible.

If you joined late, I still thank you. Even if we haven't met, I still thank you for your interest in Diamond In The Rough. Perhaps our paths will one day cross.

If you're new to Touhou, new to Diamond In The Rough, or new to Walfas, I welcome you and hope your future days in our community are pleasant.

Thank you all,
-David "Spaztique" Z.