My Skeptical Angel

Hi everyone,

As always, thank you all for following my newsletter. Last time, I talked about how the idea for My Skeptical Angel came to me. Today, we’ll keep going with how the basic concept for Rose Ricdeau, the winged woman whose image popped in my mind, evolved into a full-fledged character.

Since everything started with a nameless winged woman, it seemed clear to me that the first step should be determining who she was. Once I threw out the idea of having the story set in the afterlife, she could be anyone I wanted. Remained to figure out what that was. The obvious choice was an angel, but that tied her too much to Christianity for my taste. The answer came quickly, thanks to a seed of inspiration given to me by a woman named Elehayym Van Houten, or Elly for short.

There’s a good chance that name is unfamiliar to you, dear reader, and that’s understandable. Elly isn’t particularly famous or even real. She’s a character from a JRPG video game named Xenogears that came out in North America on the PlayStation way back in 1998, eight years before the initial spark for MSA came to me.

Hearing that my idea for a book was (in part) inspired by a video game might sound strange. They’re not exactly reputed for their excellent storylines. I’ll admit that more often than not video game stories leave a lot to be desired, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some quality hidden in there. Does Xenogears buck the trend and offer a literary gem? Well, no, not really, but I’ll get to that.

Xenogears is a Japanese Role Playing Game or JRPG for short. If you don’t know what that is, it’s fine. Suffice to understand JRPGs often put more emphasis on stories than other genres. In fact, for some of them, it’s the highlight.

Whether Xenogears tells a good story is debatable. Many fans would argue that yes. At the very least, it has an impressive scope and interesting ideas. When I first played it as a teen, I thought it was brilliant. Now an adult, I see how flawed and uneven it is. Some moments are great and original. Others feel like a rip off of a popular anime named Evangelion, and since I don’t like Evangelion much, that’s not exactly a compliment from me. There’s a ton of pacing problems and the dialogs quality is mediocre, though that might be because of the translation. Characters are also a mixed bag, some I liked a lot, but others felt underdeveloped and underutilized. There are several questionable scenes, like the infamous Chufixon. Despite all this, Xenogears will always have a place in my heart and I’d recommend it to any JRPG fans that missed it back in the days. Sure, it has plenty of flaws, but when it does something well, it does it really well. For my money, I’d take it over Final Fantasy VII, which is probably the most popular JRPG of all time.

So, how similar is My Skeptical Angel to Xenogears? In all honesty, not very much. As I have said, I recognize many flaws in Xenogears and have no intention of repeating them. In particular, I believe I learned from its mistake in pacing. Besides, Xenogears put a large focus on giant robots, something I have no interest in doing. Like I suggested, the biggest influence takes the form of Elly, the lead female character. Elly has a rough start; I didn’t like her at first, especially since she embodied the trope of the supposedly talented female soldier who somehow always ends up being a damsel in distress. However, as the game progresses she grows and develops into something different. Eventually, she becomes a religious icon and is a symbol of hope for an oppressed people without meaning to. Elly doesn’t see herself that way. To her, she’s just a normal woman, but she understands people need her to be more so she accepts the role she is given. Soon, I realized I wanted this aspect Elly reflected in Rose Ricdeau. Now, I dare say Rose is her own character with plenty of differences when compared to Elly, but I doubt she would be 100% the same if I had never played Xenogears.

There is more to the creation of Rose, I mean at this point in the story she doesn’t even have a name yet! I wish to share more, but I feel this entry is long enough so I’ll continue another day. Next time, we’ll look into how a music album of all things helped refine the shadow of a character Xenogears offered me. Thank you all for reading and have a great rest of your day.