studiocoattails

Olive Profile - Twofold

Added 2022-09-03 19:30:46 +0000 UTC

Sorry for posting this late, Caps. - Syon XOXO

XXX

Hello again, welcome to my second development post for Twofold. I have a talking point lined up for today, but first I wanted to provide a quick progress report: as of last month, we've entirely finalized our script! Everything is locked down and we're 100% committing to it. It's a bit scary to say that after so long of things in flux, but it's a giant milestone! This unblocks a lot of other aspects of development, especially in the planning department, so the ball should really start rolling now.

Happy Augus(-ish. This was written in August, at least!) Olive's birthday was the first of this month, and that's as good of an excuse as any to make this month's post about our protagonist. I'll be keeping this entirely spoiler-free for Twofold obviously, so this will end up being a little shorter than the previous post. Nevertheless, I feel like there's some interesting things to discuss.

Who is Olive? Olive is a pessimist, but isn't cynical. They're always quick to assume the worst case scenario, and constantly feels pressure from all aspects of their life. However, they recognize that this is a problem with themselves and doesn't pin the blame on the people around them.

Even if they think bad outcomes are the natural expectation, they still strive to overcome them regardless, due in part to not wanting to burden their mother, August (timely!), unnecessarily. In truth, things aren't as dire as Olive's outlook may imply, with a large amount of Olive's internal turmoil resulting from them not living up to the high standards they set for themselves.

What is Olive? While Twofold takes place through the eyes of Olive, some readers may end up questioning whether or not they're the protagonist. While Twofold begins with Olive needing to take initiative to save themselves from failing, they end up taking a more passive role in the story as it progresses, becoming more of a more supportive role to either Caprice or Millie. This leads directly into the next point:

Why is Olive? We could have realistically made Twofold a single-path story with either Caprice or Millie acting as the protagonist and removing the romance element, but Olive's position is vitally important because of three things:

1: As an outsider to all of the characters, they don't have any preconceived notions about the people involved or what's going on. Even a "neutral" character like Hayley wouldn't be entirely free from this. Olive's position as an initial stranger is very important. This allows us to pace our information out to the reader better.

2: It allows us to maintain the two-path structure without any baggage using another character may bring. While both paths are (hopefully) enjoyable standalone, Twofold is really designed with the intention that people will eventually see EVERYTHING in it. TF focuses around one core conflict, and being able to explore that from two different angles was something we had in mind since day 1 of the project, which says... a lot, given the length of the development cycle.

3: Have you seen them? They're wonderful. Perfect. Without flaw. Who would want to read a Twofold where Olive doesn't exist? Absolutely no one.

How is Olive? Fine. They're fine.