bardictype

Developer Blog: Cupid Calamity

Added 2021-02-13 03:34:21 +0000 UTC

The Good News: K's route alone is twice as long as Santa Scam.

The Bad News: Only K's route is available.

The Link: https://dashingdon.com/play/wildelight/button-and-the-cupid-calamity/mygame/

The Warning: If the plot makes you uncomfortable (because it involves Button getting their mind read), you can nope out of it early on. This takes you to the very end, but you miss all the story.

The Reasoning for Gray's (Temporary) Exclusion: So, I wrote Gray's route as well. I coded it. I edited it. And . . . I disliked it. I love Gray to the moon and back, but I disliked him in this role. Especially since Button is still a Zero and writing this plot meant preempting a lot of great moments that I want to save for Mind Blind's main story (like the first time Gray deliberately touches Button while being able to hear their thoughts).

Also, the undercover trope worked well for K. But the same beats didn't hit when Gray was the joint protagonist instead. Gray's character felt unnatural, Button didn't feel like Button, the story felt odd with those characters, and the whole thing just didn't feel right.

Thus, instead of having different "routes" in Cupid Calamity, I've instead decided to make Cupid Calamity an anthology of romantic AU ficlets with different plots. Each RO route will be completely unique and use a different trope that works for that RO, rather than me trying to make a story "one size fits all."

Unfortunately, this means that Gray's route needs to go back into the oven and will probably be released late February/early March. On the bright side, this means that Gray's route will be completely unique (there's only one aspect of these stories that will remain the same, and I'd rather not reveal what that is because it would spoil the ending).

The BEST News: Mind Blind's playable demo is over 200,000 words! I have most of Chapter 7 now coded (and one really weird looping bug that makes K an amnesiac but I'll fix that).

. . . I'm writing more now that this is up--I wanted to get Cupid Calamity's link posted asap, since it was delayed by my deletion of Gray's route. I'll probably go back tomorrow and polish some things up as well as add a few choices, since K's route was plenty when it was one of two routes being provided, but can feel kind of short since they're the only option.

February has been absurdly busy for me. It feels much later than the 12th? I think I spent too much time trying to make Gray's route fit into the undercover subplot in Cupid Calamity, rather than simply being willing to readjust my plans. It can be difficult to lay out a schedule for writing. While I can guarantee that X-amount of words will get typed, there's no way to guarantee that those words will be at all good. Inspiration is a tricky business that I can often brute force if I just keep typing until something half-decent eventually emerges. Lack of inspiration does leave a mark, as seen in Mind Blind's Chapter 5, but at least functional placeholders can be edited out later in larger works.

This isn't really the case with short stories and ficlets. If a small part of the short story doesn't work, then none of it works. K's route is around 8,000ish words, but there are parts I want to refine. Now that it's only K's story (and not Gray's), I feel like I can go back and add some reactivity without "unbalancing" K's route compared to Gray's. Because Gray will get his own mini-story (as will Sally, Glitch, and Rosy). I figure I'll add a route each month or so provided my schedule allows? Gray will be released for everyone (since that's what I initially promised), but the rest of the RO's will probably stay Patreon only until I release the whole shebang for the public next Valentine's Day.

Also, and maybe this is just me being super tired and thus even more easily amused than normal, but isn't "shebang" a great word? I just googled it and apparently the term is derived from coding. And is also an archaic term for "hut." The more you know, right?