Behind the scenes writing: Episode 4 (1/4) (Patreon)
Content
(Warning! This post may contain major spoilers for the story! Read further at your own risk.)
This is only 1/4th of the total episode! The rest will come along in other behind the scenes writing posts leading up to the release.
Episode 4: The strange life and times at the academy.
The episode begins with a proposed meeting to take place up on the rooftop where Brandon and Nathan would sneak some time to hang out early in the morning before classes start up or even other students are fully awake, roaming around yet.
What they soon find waiting there instead is Zoey, dressed up in a cow onesie and lost in pure bliss while coloring.
It's at this point Brandon hints about his previous encounter with the girl, but he's surprised to find out that he isn't the only one who has some explaining to do... It turns out Nathan and Zoey are related and he feels like it'd be best to help explain the whole situation about Zoey, who she is exactly and why she seems a bit off.
While Nathan is going into story time about Zoey as the two of them standby the entrance of the rooftop. Zoey still isn't aware of their presence yet and it would seem she takes advanage of her coloring time to also use her diaper too.
With Nathan's explaining coming along, he's interrupted as the two notice Zoey has noticed the two and she rushes over to pull them into her fun she seems to be up to this morning. Things feel a bit awkward between the three of them, but end up having some great humorous moments that pop out.
The question about why she's wearing a onesie comes up, among other questions that don't quite end up giving either of them real answers. The only real answer they get out of her is that she's waiting for Lola to meet her and give her a custom item.
As their wacky little moments continue, a girl comes along and it would seem that with the package in hand, this has to be the Lola girl that Zoey was mentioning.
After a very brief and not so verbal interaction between them, before they know it. Lola heads off as if she was barely there in the first place, leaving the three to look over what Zoey received...
~Writer notes~
-Episode 4 can roughly be split up into 4 major events with a few minor bridging moments, which might feel a bit similar to previous episodes. One thing that I think helps this episode greatly is that there's a nice mix of some loose ends being tied up and new encounters being seen, with a more light and silly tone set with most of episode 4.
-The writing for this first major event to be seen came out to be a little over 3000 word count, with episode 4 looking like it'll be similar to episode 3 overall for word count being about 14,000-15,000 range.
-I thought that Zoey's original rooftop event from long ago felt like it still suited her in a lighter and more fun tone to help contrast what we saw for her intro at the end of episode 3. My only issue I had originally with Zoey is that I felt that there were times where she feels too similar to Miki, both characters of course do share some tones together. But I really wanted to focus on ensuring Zoey felt much more of her own character, which is to focus things around her being viewed by others as a "airhead" or "stupid".
Regardless, I do think that seeing Zoey's intro in episode 3 and the events here in episode 4. It should give a better impression of her as a character and possibly help split her from feeling too much of a copy cat of Miki. (Hopefully)
-There are some new changes to this once older scene or event that felt needed to be adjusted a bit to make it work better. One of these things was the way to have her diaper accident take place, where before it could be fitting for her, but also kind of seems a bit too random as well. I really wanted to touch on Nathan and Zoey's relationship as cousins, making full use of this to have Nathan help fill in some missing puzzle pieces about Zoey that would naturally feel fitting and not forced either.
-This event should be very interesting as there's the first cg scene for episode 4 to be viewed within this moment. It'll be making use and showing off some new effects to see in future cg art that we hope feels like a bigger improvement than how they originally would've felt. (More on this later with cg previews coming still.)