[Other] OJ VN Brief + Plans
I've mentioned on Ko-fi that I want to do an OJ VN and would be using my Ko-fi donations to pursue that goal, so I'd like to talk a little more about that project - what it involves, what the scope is, a very basic outline of the plot, how the plans have changed from the original draft, and a few other minor details.
First, I'll talk about the original draft. I came up with it a year or two ago, and did some semi-detailed planning on the way the plot would flow. The setting would be a university/college setting, which retains some of what makes high school AUs so enjoyable, but allows for greater character agency and a wider range of experiences than a standard high school.
The protagonist and viewpoint character would be Sora, for a range of reasons. Firstly, she's my favourite, which isn't a great reason in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a reason. Secondly, my experiences with writing OJ fanfic have taught me that Sora adapts very well to the role of protagonist -- much more so than other 'protagonist' characters like QP, Aru, Suguri, Marc, and Kai, , who I'll briefly discuss my reasons for not picking.
QP and Aru suffer from monomania. Their entire character revolves around some outside stimulus like pudding or Christmas; we rarely, if ever, get to see them interacting outside of that stimulus, and without it, it becomes difficult to give them proper motivations. While I probably could do it -- and in fact have done very little but that in the course of writing stories about them already -- it's an extra wrinkle in the plan. They're also from a naturally more comedic universe, and do better in that context, which isn't always the feel I'll want to pursue.
Kai is the next easiest to discard, because he is literally designed as a blank protagonist type character -- an archetype I'm really not that fond of in visual novels. I get the intent of them, but I'd rather experience a story with a flavourful, fleshed out main character than with a blank slate nine times out of ten, and the tenth time is out of respect to nominally blank but subtly characterised protagonists like Hisao in Katawa Shoujo. Also, one reason you haven't seen me develop Kai, even in fanfic, is because developing him removes his entire gimmick of being a forgettable guy with no major personality traits.
Marc is our next option. Her motivations are a lot more definite and permanent than QP or Aru's, and make it easier to give her a long-term character focus. Unfortunately, she's one of the more obscure characters who I have less experience with writing, and while I can definitely come up with one plot about a plane in a university setting, I don't think I'd want to chance multiple. In that sense, her more definitive motivations work against her.
Suguri is next. Suguri and Sora are very similar characters, but I honestly feel like Suguri is a lot more bland; she faces less moral quandaries than Sora did in her canon interactions, her major interest points of 'eternal life', 'environmental conservation' and 'wolverine regen' wouldn't shine in a fairly peaceful university setting, and overall I feel like she works more as an 'overarching force for good' type of character than a consistent focus.
Sora, I feel, strikes a very good balance of things I'd want in a protagonist -- she's hardworking when it's called for and can be lazy when it's not, she's both able to make choices rashly based on emotion/pure morality and capable of being introspective about things, and her character doesn't revolve around any one thing unless she's in a war -- but since she's the type to stop and smell the roses, and desires a peaceful life, she's probably curious enough to want to experience a lot of different things.
Next, routes. Originally, I wanted to have a very basic route structure that would give me a few different genres to work with: a more romance/drama inclined route, which would have had two endings and a path to a 'true route', a more aimless slice of life route, and a more standard educational/drama route. Each route would be 'represented' by a pair of characters, each pair from a different series within the OJ umbrella. The pairs were as follows:
Romance: Nath and Sham, Sora series reps. The true ending route would also be located in this branch.
Slice of Life: QP and Syura, QPS series reps.
Drama: Marc and Peat, Flying Red Barrel reps.
The Nath/Sham route would centre more around the arts, and eventually split into mini-routes and separate endings depending on whether you picked Nath or Sham. The QP/Syura route would be more episodic and slice of life inclined, but would focus more generally on the theme of transitioning from studenthood to being a working adult. The Marc/Peat route would be focused on extra-curricular clubs, and focus on both observing somebody else's budding romance, and the theme of chasing your dreams and making sacrifices to attain them.
This is the major point of division between the original draft and the current plan: simply put, there's no way I can do all that. I don't have the resources, and I'm unlikely to get them. In light of that, I've scaled back my ambitions to just the Nath/Sham route (the true ending would be too deeply tied into the other routes that aren't there, so that would have to be cut as well). If I did get the resources, the missing routes could be adapted back in since the plans exist, but that can be dealt with in the event it happens.
Since I don't have experience with visual novels, it's hard to estimate wordcounts, but my early projections are that I would expect to do 30k words in setup and general route body, followed by 10,000 words each for the Sham/Nath route split, although that might change -- I could very easily imagine it being 20/15/15, or even 10/20/20, but at the moment it's difficult for me to tell until I've begun work.
Before that, though, I'd like to do a 10k word 'test route' to experiment with the gui, get used to the editor and dev environment, and generally demonstrate what people would be getting; I'm thinking of doing this based on the unused QP/Syura or Marc/Peat routes, depending on what sprites I can lay my hands on. That, for me, is step one.
Another little novelty idea I had, when I was thinking of the story, was some little side-stories involving the characters who didn't have featuring roles in any of the routes being taken care of by Suguri and Hime as children -- think something a little bit like the Acchi Kocchi Kindergarten segments from the anime of the the same name, or omake manga chapters. That probably won't come to fruition, but was a thing.
That's probably enough of the very basic info. In the future, I'll talk a little bit about what each of the routes will/were going to entail, and also about stuff like the GUI and general aesthetic I'm going for, but for now I think this is a good enough jumping off point. Feel free to grab me on either twitter or blogspot if there's anything you'd like an answer to (e.g. where might such and such a character be/have been); my twitter handle is @thevulpinehero1, as always.
First, I'll talk about the original draft. I came up with it a year or two ago, and did some semi-detailed planning on the way the plot would flow. The setting would be a university/college setting, which retains some of what makes high school AUs so enjoyable, but allows for greater character agency and a wider range of experiences than a standard high school.
The protagonist and viewpoint character would be Sora, for a range of reasons. Firstly, she's my favourite, which isn't a great reason in the grand scheme of things, but it's still a reason. Secondly, my experiences with writing OJ fanfic have taught me that Sora adapts very well to the role of protagonist -- much more so than other 'protagonist' characters like QP, Aru, Suguri, Marc, and Kai, , who I'll briefly discuss my reasons for not picking.
QP and Aru suffer from monomania. Their entire character revolves around some outside stimulus like pudding or Christmas; we rarely, if ever, get to see them interacting outside of that stimulus, and without it, it becomes difficult to give them proper motivations. While I probably could do it -- and in fact have done very little but that in the course of writing stories about them already -- it's an extra wrinkle in the plan. They're also from a naturally more comedic universe, and do better in that context, which isn't always the feel I'll want to pursue.
Kai is the next easiest to discard, because he is literally designed as a blank protagonist type character -- an archetype I'm really not that fond of in visual novels. I get the intent of them, but I'd rather experience a story with a flavourful, fleshed out main character than with a blank slate nine times out of ten, and the tenth time is out of respect to nominally blank but subtly characterised protagonists like Hisao in Katawa Shoujo. Also, one reason you haven't seen me develop Kai, even in fanfic, is because developing him removes his entire gimmick of being a forgettable guy with no major personality traits.
Marc is our next option. Her motivations are a lot more definite and permanent than QP or Aru's, and make it easier to give her a long-term character focus. Unfortunately, she's one of the more obscure characters who I have less experience with writing, and while I can definitely come up with one plot about a plane in a university setting, I don't think I'd want to chance multiple. In that sense, her more definitive motivations work against her.
Suguri is next. Suguri and Sora are very similar characters, but I honestly feel like Suguri is a lot more bland; she faces less moral quandaries than Sora did in her canon interactions, her major interest points of 'eternal life', 'environmental conservation' and 'wolverine regen' wouldn't shine in a fairly peaceful university setting, and overall I feel like she works more as an 'overarching force for good' type of character than a consistent focus.
Sora, I feel, strikes a very good balance of things I'd want in a protagonist -- she's hardworking when it's called for and can be lazy when it's not, she's both able to make choices rashly based on emotion/pure morality and capable of being introspective about things, and her character doesn't revolve around any one thing unless she's in a war -- but since she's the type to stop and smell the roses, and desires a peaceful life, she's probably curious enough to want to experience a lot of different things.
Next, routes. Originally, I wanted to have a very basic route structure that would give me a few different genres to work with: a more romance/drama inclined route, which would have had two endings and a path to a 'true route', a more aimless slice of life route, and a more standard educational/drama route. Each route would be 'represented' by a pair of characters, each pair from a different series within the OJ umbrella. The pairs were as follows:
Romance: Nath and Sham, Sora series reps. The true ending route would also be located in this branch.
Slice of Life: QP and Syura, QPS series reps.
Drama: Marc and Peat, Flying Red Barrel reps.
The Nath/Sham route would centre more around the arts, and eventually split into mini-routes and separate endings depending on whether you picked Nath or Sham. The QP/Syura route would be more episodic and slice of life inclined, but would focus more generally on the theme of transitioning from studenthood to being a working adult. The Marc/Peat route would be focused on extra-curricular clubs, and focus on both observing somebody else's budding romance, and the theme of chasing your dreams and making sacrifices to attain them.
This is the major point of division between the original draft and the current plan: simply put, there's no way I can do all that. I don't have the resources, and I'm unlikely to get them. In light of that, I've scaled back my ambitions to just the Nath/Sham route (the true ending would be too deeply tied into the other routes that aren't there, so that would have to be cut as well). If I did get the resources, the missing routes could be adapted back in since the plans exist, but that can be dealt with in the event it happens.
Since I don't have experience with visual novels, it's hard to estimate wordcounts, but my early projections are that I would expect to do 30k words in setup and general route body, followed by 10,000 words each for the Sham/Nath route split, although that might change -- I could very easily imagine it being 20/15/15, or even 10/20/20, but at the moment it's difficult for me to tell until I've begun work.
Before that, though, I'd like to do a 10k word 'test route' to experiment with the gui, get used to the editor and dev environment, and generally demonstrate what people would be getting; I'm thinking of doing this based on the unused QP/Syura or Marc/Peat routes, depending on what sprites I can lay my hands on. That, for me, is step one.
Another little novelty idea I had, when I was thinking of the story, was some little side-stories involving the characters who didn't have featuring roles in any of the routes being taken care of by Suguri and Hime as children -- think something a little bit like the Acchi Kocchi Kindergarten segments from the anime of the the same name, or omake manga chapters. That probably won't come to fruition, but was a thing.
That's probably enough of the very basic info. In the future, I'll talk a little bit about what each of the routes will/were going to entail, and also about stuff like the GUI and general aesthetic I'm going for, but for now I think this is a good enough jumping off point. Feel free to grab me on either twitter or blogspot if there's anything you'd like an answer to (e.g. where might such and such a character be/have been); my twitter handle is @thevulpinehero1, as always.
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