Writer's Blog: 11/15, 4 2 Go* (Patreon)

I FINISHED WRITING ANOTHER ENDING! That’s 11/15 now fully written; I’m trying to remain positive and not contemplate how much coding awaits me once I’m done with all the fun creation bits 😅

The most recently completed ending sees the completion of Sally’s vision about Gray (from Chapter 5). While some of the details changed from my initial draft (most notably, location), the overall impact is exactly as I’d hoped: Gray being stupidly sacrificial to protect someone else, and Button having the option to force Gray into looking out for himself by contouring themself around him like a handsy monkey (or a too-small parachute, in the case of short Buttons). Anyways, I love it.

The new context in which this scene occurs has presented a problem, however: namely, that it isn’t guaranteed to happen for every Button that had the vision. My dilemma then is whether to change Sally’s vision into something more mundane that’s guaranteed to happen, or to have Button wonder in the final chapter if Sally’s crystal ball is broken (or, more depressingly, if Sally’s unfulfilled vision means that there’s more hardship ahead). Neither seems like a perfect fix.

I contemplated a few other options based on Sally’s other visions.

Some of Sally’s visions can play out two different ways: the intended oh-shit-revelation way, and a failsafe dummy backup scene with just enough similarities to make Button think that Sally’s vision came true (because it did, kinda). But Grayson’s future as described by Sally is so, well, soap-opera dramatic that I’m unable to use this technique. I mean, the admittedly (deliciously) cheesy line of “Don’t look down, focus on me” would seem semi-ludicrous if all Gray and Button were doing is jumping out a first story window. The context is important.

Then there’s Sally’s (revised as of the 2.0 demo) vision for Glitch, which happens off-page during (spoiler alert!) Button’s carnapping by Andy/Liz. Changing Sally’s vision to an event where Button isn’t present would—

Huh. You know, now that I’m typing all this out, I suppose there’s another option.

Button can be replaceable.

. . . Which sounds bad given that interactive fiction is all YOUR CHOICES MATTER, okay, but hear me out (and please keep in mind that this post has just switched to Dear-Diary-esque stream of conscious brainstorming rather than my planned musings on the nature of fortune telling and foreshadowing in interactive fiction).

The scene with Gray only happens should Button make a certain choice (descriptive, I know, but I’m trying to keep this as vague as possible to avoid spoilers for the unreleased material). For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say that this choice puts Button on Route A.

Route A features Grayson, Rosy, and Sally.

Route B stars Kenzie and Glitch.

(This is a vast oversimplification of how the endings work, since relationship dynamics do play a huge part, but again, I’m tiptoeing around spoilers.)

If Button instead selects Route B, the events of Route A still play out. Without Button’s help, however, the result is . . . not as ideal. But Sally can still later tell Button about how her vision came true and she was the one cradled in Gray’s arms as they REDACTED to their REDACTED. There’s nothing intrinsically romantic about Sally’s vision, and Grayson is a good enough egg that he’d definitely protect Sally over himself. Heck, Grayson would probably even protect Reese.

So that could work, and also make it so that I didn’t have to change Sally’s vision, which is good because I'm pretty attached to Sally's vision for Gray (it's so over the top dramatic, you know?).

Hmm.

Possibilities.

Good talk, gang. Thanks for the brainstorming session.

This helped, and I now need to go edit a few endings. Updated Mind Blind Status after writing this post: 10.5/15 endings fully written.

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*The title is a pun that I spent way too much time coming up with. It doesn't really work well (clearly, since I felt the need to explain it) and also probably isn't funny to anyone but me. But as "go" is 5 in Japanese, so technically the title is nothing but numbers. It's a numerical pun!

. . . Granted, a pun so bad that even Rosy wouldn't laugh. But, look, it made me giggle-snort and I'm taking what I can these days.