Tlaero: AMA 1

We've had enough questions already to do a post with answers. But keep them coming. I'll keep doing these as long as there are questions to answer.

"What country/place would you like to visit?"

Yes, some day this pandemic will be over, and we'll be able to travel fearlessly again. My favorite thing to do when I travel is go on food tours. So, I'd want to go somewhere with an interesting food scene. My spouse is interested in Scotland, and that sounds fun, but hard to imagine in today's world...

"You are the creator of your characters, effectively their god. If your characters asked you the classic existential questions, what would you tell them?"

This is a really interesting question. Let's go:

"Why are we here?" To be brutally honest, you (my creations) are there for the enjoyment of others. It doesn't mean that I don't love you, though.

"Why was the world made this way?" My primary goal was to create a world where interesting things could happen.

"Does free will exist?" You'd think that, since I write what you say and how you act, the answer would be "no," but some of you have refused to be constrained to the fates I imagined for you. So, I think the accurate answer is, "maybe."

"Why do good things happen to bad people?" To make us hate them and root for you.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?" To make us care about you.

That, I believe was the last existential question requested.

"Are there real-world inspirations for your characters?"

Someone very dear to me is in nearly continuous pain. Miranda is inspired by this person. I've said before that Miranda isn't a superhero because of all of the things she can do. She's a superhero because she manages to even function every day. While I'm saying "Miranda" there, I'm really talking about her real-life inspiration.

There are aspects of Won that were inspired by someone I met online.

Xara was clearly influenced by Master Chief.

I'm sure there are influences for other characters, but they're not overt or explicit like those three are. That said, often the name of a character comes from a TV show I was watching at the time I was creating the character, even though my characters aren't anything like the ones whose name I lifted. "Morland" was because I was watching Elementary when it came time to name him. "Paul" was because I was watching Orphan Black, etc. I think the name "Beth" came from something I was watching too, but I can't remember what.

"Often times, the male player character is the 'sidekick' to his romantic partner. Is that intentional?"

It's definitely intentional that the characters you're trying to romance are the story drivers. There are a number of reasons for that.

First: I got into this genre to combat the stereotypes of women being mindless sex objects for the men to use. I wanted to show competent, intelligent women who would also have mind-blowing sex with you. If I've ever convinced even one man to think, "Maybe my life would be better if I found a woman who could be my partner rather than my servant," then ... wow.

Second: It's taken me a long time to learn how to make the player character interesting in his own right. At the start, I thought I had to make him a blank slate so that players could put themselves in his shoes. It's taken a lot of feedback from you all and a lot of experimentation from me to get to a point I'm currently at with player characters. (And, I can't wait for you to meet Joel in Chasing Beth.)

Third: There appears to be a disconnect between what a man and a woman think is "heroic." I don't see the men in my games as "sidekicks." I see them as the heroes in the story. But I don't think of the hero as the person who punches the bad guy. Even though my female characters are competent, they're also all broken. The heroes in my stories are the people who are caring and supportive enough to help the women heal. I guess that's the difference between "male fantasy" and "female fantasy." A male fantasy hero is a fighter. A female fantasy hero is a lover.

"Do you need special inspiration to create your stories? What emotions are you feeling when you create them?"

I write the kinds of stories that I want to read. I enjoy a lot of media, but frequently it seems to be written for a different audience than me. As for the emotions, certain things set me off. I get choked up at certain points in my games, Jess on the podium being a prime example. If you're asking if the sex scenes trigger me, though, they usually don't. I'm more interested in the emotions that lead to the sex scene than the thrusting itself. Certainly, the hardest part of writing these games for me is writing the words that go with the sex images.

Mechanically, I write the script, send a scene to Mortze, he creates images for it, and sends them to me. I place the images in the scene I wrote and modify the text where appropriate. However, usually when we get to a sex scene I write a few parameters and leave it to Mortze to create. He makes the images first and I then figure out what words to write for them.

"Does the switch to renpy make your life better?"

Renpy has strong positives for the player. For the creator, it has positives and negatives. It is unquestionably less capable than HTML in terms of interactivity. I had to remove all of the mouse animations and timing things in the HTML games I converted to Renpy. And the code debugger for Renpy is garbage. But, for simple things, like generating pages, it's pretty efficient. I wrote a program to simplify the adding of pictures to the script, and that helps. All in all, for me it's probably a wash. The benefits of infinite saves, rollback, and skip for players are great enough, though, that I'm happy to work in renpy for them.

"How do you go about writing these stories, in particular, how do you start them?"

I tend to think of a few anchor scenes and build the rest of the story around them. For instance, the first thing I thought of in RfJ was the scene with her on the podium at the end.  I usually don't start writing anything down until I have the opening scene, the climatic scene, and a few important points between them straight in my head.  Even when I've written a lot, I spend a large percentage of my free time thinking though scenes in my head before I ever them down. I largely write the script for the scenes in story order, though I'm often thinking about scenes later in the story and keeping them in my head.

"Do you ever have to make significant changes in the plot after you start writing?"

While I'm in my head, I change scenes over and over again until I get to something I like. Then I write it down. So I don't tend to need to dramatically rewrite text I've typed. I've certainly thrown out a lot of stuff I've thought of. In Westbank, in particular, I thought of about 5 different stories and threw them all out before settling on what I eventually wrote. Though, there have been events that made me change my plans.  Originally Serena was going to have a small part in Saving Chloe, but the model that Mortze made was so compelling that I wrote a much more involved story for her. And, in the game I'm currently writing, there are two characters that started out small but have been demanding more and more screen time. In the end, you're all going to wonder why I didn't name the game after them.  😊

That's all the questions so far.  Feel free to ask more, or do followups.

Tlaero