November Q&A - Answers

How do you say "Raif, please marry me" in Eswonian?

🤣

"Raif, u noli lhara."

How long is When stars collide going to be?

I think I've mentioned an exact word count before but my estimate is somewhere between 460k - 500k. I don't know for sure where it will land.

Right now, my target word count in my spreadsheet is set at 466000 words. and that's based on how long Asher's route ended up being.

There is a 100% chance that the rough draft is longer than that.

And usually when I edit, I expand more than I cut, so that's why I am currently giving a range. I expect it to be closer to 500k but I really don't know yet.

Will there be a premium version of WSC?

At this point I'm not planning for a distinct premium version.

If you were forced to name your games like a teen novel, what would you have called them? (Format of YA novel "A thing of this and that" where you have to replace "thing", "this", and that")

Funnily enough I do have a side project that is jokingly named "A Song of Wind and Magic" for that exact reason. I have to come up with a proper name though because I just cannot with that one.

If I had to rename GS....I mean it would probably be something like "A World of Light and Shadow" or some nonsense.

I don't know about Changeling though. "A Court of Lies and Coffee" or something. 🤣

Speaking of which, have you ever considered turning one or more of these into a novel? I noticed there's plenty of world-building we never see and you put out a lot of words per game already.

Changeling and Gilded Shadows did both start as concepts for novels that I revamped into visual novels instead. But taking a linear story and breaking it into a branched narrative isn't too difficult. However, I'm not sure how easy it would be to do the opposite.

Trying to condense something that has many branches into a single branch story seems fraught with problems. I think this is why a lot of the animes that are based on otome games just aren't...good.

How do you take a story that thrives on the possibilities and make it just as engaging when you strip all of that away.

If you are talking about taking the lore and building a side story novel that is set in the world, I could probably do that kind of thing if I happened to have an idea.

Any LI that you look back on and don't like?

Nope!

There are routes I think I may have done differently if I were to tackle them now - particularly in Changeling. Particularly Elliot. But I still very much like him as a character and LI. I just struggled with his route and gave up on an idea that, looking back, could have been fun. I just struggled to make it work at the time.

Constellations? Seriously that's amazing. I love them (ok so this isn't really a question)

╰(*°▽°*)╯

Honestly, they didn't have proper constellations at first. I just made them for fun and the only ones that existed were the ones for the LIs. But then I figured people would ask what the rest of the zodiac was so I made the whole thing. LoL

I'm glad someone does!

********** NSFW Discussion below **********

The next question is about the love scenes in WSC and, specifically, nudity. I do talk frankly about sexual content as well as language used when writing it and body parts that may or may not be depicted visually.

There are no images but if you don't want to read a discussion about love scenes, you may want to skip over this question!

Have you decided on what the nudity limits will be in WSC yet?

No. Ha ha! I'm still so undecided on it!

Obviously anyone who has the scenes set to fade to black will see none. But for people who do read the love scenes?

I keep kind of going back and forth on it. I can say that I will not be showing any genitalia or penetration. I just don't particularly want to draw it or take my game up to that rating level. No one wants to see me try to draw a non-comical 🍆 - much less non-comical *alien* 🍆.

But...

When we are depicting intimacy and sexual intercourse in a visual novel, there's a lot more to it than just that part.

This is a deep dive on where I am with it right now (bearing in mind I've written 5 of the 6 main love scenes and 2 of the shorter ones towards the end of the routes.)

Love scenes in VNs obviously have two components. Text and Visuals. And the text gives way to how spicy it makes sense to make the visuals.

Text-wise, the love scenes are slightly more detailed than Gilded Shadows, but not that much. If you think of a fully explicit game like Tailor Tales where male genitals are being described in terms of colour stuff, I don't think I'll write something that detailed. It's just not really my style.

Which, to be clear, is not me shading that game or any other explicit game. It is some people's style and they do it really well and I have played their games and enjoyed them. There's just a line in the sand where I feel like I step past what I'm able to write naturally and well.

But the description spectrum for love scenes is huge. You can imply a lot without going into that level of detail.

In GS, for example, there are a couple of places where it is implied that there is oral sex happening. Even so, some people missed that it was going on, because it is kind of vague and purely based on implication of where someone's head was in relation to the necessary anatomy...

Someone kisses someone's stomach and then the head "goes lower" - and you can figure out what's probably going on from there.

In WSC, it's a little more forward while still not being brutally explicit. Rather than the vague geographic location of "lower" it's just much more clearly that, yes, head was nestled betwixt the thighs (not in those words. I have never used the word betwixt until this very moment). 🤣

But beyond that, I'm not really describing a lot of specific action, so it's still relying heavily on what's being implied more than described.

In that regard, I would say the text is definitely spicier but it's like a half-step spicier.

And what that means for visuals is that, in my opinion, there is opportunity to make them a lot spicier even if I don't show any nudity. It depends on where I choose to place the CG within the scene because you can infer what the characters are doing just from how they're positioned, even if I don't show a single boob or bare chest.

With GS I was somewhat limited on when and where and how I could illustrate love scenes because I didn't want to show Morgan's nude chest, basically. So the CG had to be either at a point before Morgan's shirt came off or a point after it came off...but where I could hide it with the composition. And then I had to consider where the scene was cutting due to the "fade to black" toggle.

That is all trickier than it seems because I don't write the scene with a CG in mind. I write the scene how it feels natural to write it, I put the fade split where it feels the most logical to put it, then I go back and find a place where I can put a CG in.

And when I had this limitation about top nudity in addition to the scene structure, it was sometimes tricky to find a moment that worked with the text and limitations. A couple of times I had to actually edit the scene to create a space for a non-nude CG.

And I just don't want to have to struggle with it this time, basically.

One other thing I have to keep in mind, always - especially in this game - is character and scene "equity." If I give one character a spicy nudity CG and I don't give another character that because it just didn't fit the scene, it can give the impression that I favour one character over another. Or it can make players feel like their favourite character didn't get as much TLC.

On one hand I don't want to say every love scene CG will have nudity because maybe the composition and writing won't favour it in some instances, and on the other I want the freedom to have it if it is the most convenient way to compose the CG.

That's why I'm being a bit indecisive with it.

What I will probably do is sketch out some love scene concepts after I have the last one written. That will give me a much clearer idea of how it's probably going to go. Then I'll have a more solid answer for this question.

So all of that was to say. "No, I don't know yet! 🥲"

LoL