Friday Update #38: The Anti-Britney (Patreon)

NSFW sketches on a Patron-locked post (I can't show them uncensored in a public post due to Patreon ToS).

Hey everyone, I'm back at it again so soon! Today's update covers Molly, love, and using mimetic, diegetic, non-diegetic, and extradiegetic information to make a point about relationships and romance.

For the past few days, Myumi and I have been doing back-and-forth revisions where he sends me a sketch, I edit them to get closer to what I am looking for, and he redraws parts to match the edit more closely. We've done this because he has told me he finds this process very helpful compared to text instructions with references as there is a bit of a language barrier between us, and after 6 days (with weekends off for Myumi), we've finally come to rough sketches of Molly (aka "Bagpipe"), Britney's theater club's student director and her Junior upperclassman.

A previous Patreon post announcing her sprites being in production gives her artist design document on Google Docs, but let me quote her short blurb since I can tell this is going to turn into a Friday Update about her (the joke of Friday Updates is that COVID-19 locked the world down and they are just as likely to come out on Friday as any other day of the week):

A redheaded Scottish girl with a complicated family situation, Molly is Britney's upperclassman in the theater department at university. She serves as the student theater director and has been given an enormous degree of control over the theater club and its activities. This role has little faculty oversight and a lot of responsibility. It's a heavy burden to carry that gives her a lot of stress and which is compounded by her emotional baggage from a difficult childhood in poverty, her current difficulties with her father and stepmother, and her false starts with romance. Over time, she slowly opens up to Zach, the protagonist of this visual novel who has been turned into a woman named Zoey, and their kind but oblivious nature unintentionally creates a love triangle with them, Molly, and Britney.

Molly has ended up an important enough character in the Britney route outline that she needs to have sprites to get some points across (and once that outline is in a more final state, I'll share it like I shared Keisuke's outline; only 2 small but important linking pieces to the route remain to be solved, so that might not take too long).

First off, Molly is the anti-Britney, as this post title states, and I don't mean that she's a nice, docile, and low-energy girl in a way that Britney isn't. I mean that she's Britney through a different lens that keeps a lot of the same design DNA but changes some of that around (in other words, being the same, but different):

• Texans can be proud of their heritage to the point of being boorish, and so can Scottish people.
• Blonde hair is the most-preferred hair female color by men, but red hair is a close second (source: I heard this somewhere before).
• Both Texans and Scots can have a very thick accent (but Britney goes out of her way to hide hers and Molly embraces her vocal heritage, even calling herself "Bagpipe" and wanting to make sure people know she's Scottish).
• Britney, at 5'4.5", is slightly shorter than average for a woman; Molly, at 5'8.5", is taller than average for a woman, but she's also taller that average by a good bit for a Scot, as they have the shortest and lightest women in the UK.
• Britney loves her body and isn't afraid to show it off in cosplay or sluttier-than-average clothing, but Molly thinks her tall and thin body looks awkward or even a bit ugly, and she's particularly upset that she never gains enough weight in her chest.
• Britney wishes she were a bit taller and a tiny bit less busty; Molly wishes she were shorter and a decent bit bustier. Part of the reason Molly was so insistent on making Zach show up to theater club presenting as a woman (besides not understand the concept of gender and sex being different) was that she viewed it as offensive that Zoey has what she considers to be a close-to-ideal body type and wanted to hide it out of what she viewed as self-confidence issues (aka, projecting into a mirror).
• Britney, because she is a lesbian who has to stay closeted, has had to keep herself aromantic despite wanting to date a woman so badly; conversely, Molly is a very romantic open bisexual who has issues getting a relationship started beyond a first date. Molly considers the chief issue of this to be her awkward body type that people don't find attractive, but it's also that she's so wounded as an individual that she has a hard time trusting other people and truly opening up to them.
• Zach, with his kindness and ability to listen to problems and provide unique insight on them, is the first person Molly has opened up to besides her half-brother in a long time. In a similar fashion, the lack of threat Britney feels from Zach and how he isn't a woman (or at least, what society sees as a woman) led to something similar happening between them.
• Neither will openly say it, but Molly and Britney consider each other very attractive. Had Zach not reentered Britney's life in such a close and intimate way, Molly and Britney would have hooked up right before Molly graduated in a year and a half. Zach also considers Molly to be very attractive (and Molly Zoey), but part of that might be treating Molly's body type as exotic and anti-breast envy.

And that links to Molly's other role as the anti-Zoey:

• Molly has such pale skin that burns so easily in the sun that she has to wear sunscreen and a large straw hat (an important keepsake from her rural life in the Scottish Highlands with her mom). Zach/Zoey has such unique red eyes that are at risk of damage with prolonged exposure to bright light (especially UV rays) that they usually carry around a pair of nearly-opaque sunglasses.
• While Zach and Britney have a lot in common, in many ways, Molly resonates more with who Zach is as a person. Britney and Zach operate on a similar wavelength, but Britney runs at a higher frequency and has to drag Zach along (or Zach has to run after her) to keep up. Molly and Zach just vibe with each other on the same level of energy.
• Both Molly and Zach are dealing with the emotional trauma of an absent dad who abandoned them to their mom. Molly loved her mother dearly and was distraught by her passing yet had so little options for what to do next she was forced to reconnect with her abandoning father for survival; Zach was abused by his mom and had to reconnect with his dad for his own sanity when he started to worry Zoey was becoming her mom, a woman whose shadow Zach has been living under all his life.
• Both deeply miss the absence of a deceased parental figure (Zach with his grandpa, Molly with her mother), and both are doing their best to keep the memory of that person alive in any way they can.

Now, let's talk about Molly's family situation, since I went a bit ham (ha!) on this.

Molly's last name is O'Brien (making her a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 reference), and she hates that she has to have that last name. If she could, she would use her mother's maiden name on every legal form for the rest of her life, but she's can't be Molly Hamilton and has to accept the charity of the dad who ran off from her and her mom.

Her non-school outfits proudly feature the Hamilton Modern and Hamilton Hunting Modern tartans and are her way of connecting with her mother, and showing that is the family she belongs to. I chose the last name since the fall theater production in Britney's route is a "historical" musical about the French Revolution themed after Hamilton, and like Hamilton, it is grossly inaccurate. Loosely, I am calling this musical Off With Their Heads, and if you thought Hamilton was a travesty for historical accuracy, then... let's just say that I'm a history nerd and I am going to hate myself for writing parts of that musical within the visual novel.

This is a NVL monologue about a conversation Zach and Patrick had with Awkwardness >= 3, that Zach explains with Awkwardness == 5 during the theater set disassembly:

Patrick and I had spent the three hours talking about our families.

His comment about "growing up with a strict mother" had intrigued me enough as someone who had an overcontrolling mom to ask him about it.

What I got was a dramatic story straight out of a soap opera.

As Molly explained, she's from Scotland, but her half-brother Patrick is from Ireland.

Patrick didn't even know she existed until three years ago when she showed up at his door without warning. His father had never told him how one day, he had suddenly abandoned his wife and four-year-old daughter in Scotland to elope with an Irish baroness.

Molly's mother had just passed away, and with nowhere else to go, she returned to the father that had abandoned her and her mother over 15 years ago.

Molly drove a wedge through Patrick's happy family life with her sudden, dramatic reappearance.

Patrick's mom was not pleased by her husband's daughter living with her. To her, Molly was an unwelcome interloper, little more than a leech sucking up her family's happiness and money, who was causing issues simply by existing.

She had always been a strict mother with Patrick, but her strictness had come from a place of love, which was something I could personally relate to; however, when it came to dealing with Molly, she became Lady Tremaine, Cinderella's cruel and sadistic stepmother.

Screaming matches between the two were a common occurrence, and for as much as Molly loathed the man who had packed up his bags and left her and her mom with no explanation, she blamed Patrick's mother as the root cause. To her, she was the harlot who had seduced a married man away from his family.

On the other hand, Patrick's father seemed like he was trying to do right to his estranged daughter and make up for his sixteen-year absence as her father, but Molly wanted nothing to do with him except have him provide the house over her head and money for higher education.

Legally speaking, she was Molly O'Brien (her parents had never divorced, and her father had taken his new wife's last name when he married into the lower ranks of Irish nobility), but she only admitted to being his daughter with the greatest possible reluctance. Her heart was still in Scotland, and when she jokingly called herself "a bagpipe" one day after a cooling off with a sore throat from a particularly long screaming match with her stepmother, the name stuck.

Sitting between the two parents was Patrick, who didn't know what to make of his new half-sister at first. She was a proud, bold, and brash woman who was hard to get along with, and despite being only three years older than he, she had become more mature than her years out of necessity of the rougher life she had lived after her father had abandoned her and her mother.

She was also deeply, deeply unhappy with her new life and in pain, still privately grieving the death of her mother. Little by little, Patrick saw this, and he made an effort to get closer to her.

After a while, the ice between them melted, and two half-siblings were getting along great. Despite the difference in their upbringings, they had a lot in common, including a shared love of theater.

That's not to say that there isn't friction between the two.

For instance, the "Baron" nickname Patrick's half-sister gave him is meant to be a somewhat insulting reminder that he is technically a bastard child ineligible for Irish nobility, and he doesn't like being called that.

Besides, barons and baronesses aren't even a formal rank of nobility in Scotland anymore, but I think Bagpipe had simply intended to make fun of her half-brother for not being fully Irish.

I'm going to keep why this happens under wraps for now, but after the first theater club meeting Zach attends, Britney firmly rejects the possibility of real romance with Zach, Zach gets distraught at this and is desperate for someone to talk to about his relationship problems, and that person ends up being Molly. She and Zach develop a strong friendship very quickly, and Zach starts to trust Molly. After Zach tells Molly the reason why he and Britney were "dating" in the first place, the idea of romance with Zach gets planted into Molly's mind. She's struck out with romance so much in her life, and here, for the first time, is someone she thinks can truly relate to having a weird body that was never wanted (Molly has health issues from a childhood of poverty in the Scottish Highlands and lack of nutrition from that formative period of her life, and she hates that all her gained wait goes to her thighs). Maybe they can lean on each other, together?

If it sounds like I'm crafting a wonderful and unique person (or at least a sympathetic person) with actual depth that Zach would be lucky to have in his life and even date and that he should chose over Britney, that's the fucking point.

As the blurb quote says, Zach unintentionally forms a love triangle with himself, Molly, and Britney. He should be conflicted about rejecting Molly. He should be conflicted about perhaps rejecting Britney for Molly instead. After all, Britney hasn't been open about her feelings to him outside of firmly telling Zach that they have to keep their emotional distance lest romance develop or deepen and Zach gets hurt because he loves some who is being polite and isn't loving him back (as Britney has reminded Zach, "I can't force myself to fall in love with someone"). But Molly, at a key point in the route, opens up about her feelings to Zach, and unlike Britney, who is a lesbian who could only love Zoey, Molly is bisexual and would love Z either as Zach or Zoey. And he's gotten so close to Molly in these past few weeks in a way that feels more mature and adult than his first high-school crush with Britney. And Zach and Molly have a lot in common, too...

You, as the reader, are going to know Molly in a way that Zach never could because of her World Information entries and this Friday Update. For as wonderful and unique of a person with actual depth Molly will appear to Zach, she is ultimately a collection of pixels on a screen who is given a sympathetic backstory. She might love Zach, but she can't love you, the reader, back.

You, the reader, might choose Molly in a heartbeat over Britney, and I know a lot of people think Britney is a bitch. But Zach doesn't get to choose Molly over Britney, and that is deliberate. You see, you can't force someone to fall in love with someone, but you also don't get to choose who you fall in love with, and Zach loves Britney so much that other concerns are secondary.

When it comes to Zach and Britney, Zach always chooses Britney first. There are so many examples of this in the backstory to their relationship, the current events of the written visual novel, and future unwritten events in the visual novel, but Britney has noticed this, and she's incredibly concerned about how the smartest person she knows doesn't think clearly when it comes to her.

Britney might think Zach is an egg, but Zach has been so insistent on changing back, and if he changes that tune just because he thinks that would make Britney love him like he loves her, then that's a mistake that he can't take back that affects the trajectory of his entire life. And if Zach is an egg, and he won't admit that to her, and he says he's staying as a woman for Britney's sake instead of his own sake, then Britney can't love him back because that means he's not being honest with her, let alone himself.

Maybe Zach is Zoey, and if she is, then she's her yandere mother's diluted yandere daughter. If Zach or Zoey wants to break that cycle, they're going to have to be selfish and tell Britney the truth about what they want. Assuming what Britney wants is not good enough, as the last thing she wants is to be put on a pedestal like Zach has been doing for years.

In fact, Britney has been deliberately trying to push Zach away to make him stop doing that, but he puts up with her at her worst in a way that worries her.

But then Molly starts to get close to Zach, and for some reason that Britney can't figure out, that really gets under Britney's skin.

Like Britney said, you can't force someone to fall in love with someone, but as Zach and I have expanded it to, you also don't get to choose who you fall in love with. You can choose to express that love, and Britney has to decide if what she is feeling is love, and if it is, if she is going to express it.

Britney has a line she pulls out once per route, and it's a deeply personal one from her favorite book, Eventide Dusk (aka Twilight): "Love is never wrong, but it has consequences." Britney, above all else, has to decide if she's ready for the consequences of love, be it with Zoey, the body, or Zach, the person... or with Zoey, the person?

"Also, maybe a threesome with Molly and Zoey would be sorta hot?" the horny sapphic Texan thinks to herself, but that's a whole other set of consequences there.

Until next time!