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Extended Thoughts on: Samantha Brody/Baskinbolt
2 years ago
120 stages. And my first “real” double TF. Even if I split it between the two characters, that's two 60 stage characters, which is an average size. There's a lot I could talk about-- the notes I was given for this character are three pages!-- but let's focus on Hana first.
I wanted to have her inclusion kind of a twist. That at first the reader would see Hana's inclusion as a sort of “accessory” to Sam's changes; Lillian Desmond, another beast of a character, has that for her husband and daughter. Perhaps the four stages dedicated to Hana might strike people as odd, but maybe they'd assume Hana will change in the audience. But then she storms onstage, and the game changes quite a bit. Even format-wise: when she joins the game, Hana's name is coloured similarly to Samantha's. Which was an absolute horror to get right; more on that in the trivia...
But Sam also changes with Hana's appearance. Her mental changes don't really start until she's with Hana, and Hana makes more appearances in the transformations. Over time, Hana's transformations begin to overshadow Sam's, until the game mainly focuses on Hana; the last couple of stages are exclusive to her. She also receives a bit more mental changes than Sam, though I'm not as pleased with how they turned out as I usually am. I guess the focus is more on their changing bodies, and their changing relationship. Speaking of...
I wanted to have somewhat of the inverse to Elspeth and Mina. Those two were very different, and yet truly loved each other, and so even when they became even more different, their relationship continued. Sam and Hana, however... aren't in the best relationship. While they're also very different, neither feels comfortable addressing the issues they have with each other, which snowball into misunderstandings. And since both women are combative type A's (though Hana stuffs it down), neither of them will stop arguing until they've '''won'''.
I tried not to “take sides” with the argument; both women are in the wrong. While Hana does start the argument, Samantha takes things way too far. But she's the first one to apologize. And yet, she doesn't accept the response she gets. It's a relationship that brings out the worst in both of them, and it really wouldn't have survived long. That's why the only thing that keeps them together is a severe change in dynamic. Now Hana is the capable extrovert, and Sam is the brooding subordinate. And both have fun fighting each other. Even so, I'm a little worried I made Hana more unlikable... eh, it's not like the blame is equally spread in RL breakups. And I don't think either are bad people... they're just horrible together.
I think that's it. I'm kinda surprised at how short this section is. As for the trivia... well, just look:
- Names first, as usual. My commissioner came up with Samantha Brody (named after Jaws and Hana Serizawa (named after Godzilla). Their monster names were super fun to make! ...At first. Baskinbolt hits both the water and electric theme for her, and Ryuzako was... tricky. I wanted to make Hana's name an amalgam of two Japanese words, and I think it involved dragons and fire? It used to be “Ryuzanko”, and it's only now, literally as I'm writing this, that I decided to google that word. And it is... not fire dragon. Google Translate might be wrong, but I don't wanna risk it. So I had to scramble to change it to Ryuzako, which is probably nonsense... but at least it's not that. Moral of the story: languages are tricky, and I am dumb. There's a reason I mainly use Latin to create new names...
- Here's something I don't often talk about: the pacing of the changes. I not only have to keep track of what stages have happened, but how many stages. The game can do 1-3 transformations each round, so I have to be careful not to say that a certain TF is “the only one this round”, because that might not be true. There's an instance in this character where the game goes on a “commercial break”, and comes back after a stage; if my calculations were right, that stage will always be the last stage in a round. Math is fun!
- Music choices were... frenetic? Some Renard, some JPEG, a lot of Pizza Tower... and one session that exclusively had penis music. Remember penis music? Good times... I think. For proofreading, I followed the cheesy credits theme, and chose Simon Says by Pharoahe Monch for that hard af Godzilla sample.
- I'm... really connecting to the Host in these characters, enough that I'm worried it's turning into a sort of self-insert? They're a mix of things I am (somewhat male-presenting, optimistically nihilist, presents weird transformations to a crowd) and things I wish I was (confident and showy, comfortable playing with gender, attractive). If in my next character they've got hooves and are annoyingly ace, you'll know I've gone too far.
- Also, I just now realised that the host could be in a situation where they're got kaiju contestants on one side, and a reality-changing contestant on the other. Poor host... :(
- That lawsuit they mentioned is a reference to the aforementioned Lillian Desmond, who TFed into a succubus and kidnapped her family. Hopefully people don't pit her against Samantha, cuz continuity...
- I had to put in two blatant monster movie references in, because... because. The “we're gonna need a bigger ceiling” is obvious, but the host talking about “the greatest thing your eyes will ever see” is a King Kong reference.
- A recent character from thriller12345 mentioned the show's “high ceilings”, which gave me the perfect opportunity to canonize it in my character. Thanks, Thriller!
- “Thagomizers” joins a growing list of words I had to add to the Character Creator's dictionary, joining “Mesoamerican”, “pilates”, and “parentless”. I have no idea when I used any of those.
- Hot damn did I struggle with the format of this character. Like I said, I wanted Hana's inclusion to be a sort of twist, which meant I'd have to colour her name. I used a variable for all instances of Hana... and then found out the character wouldn't load if the same variable is used twice in one section. So I had to replace every multiple of $HANA$ with <pink>Hana</pink>... and then found out that the game only colours the first instance of a name. And all the code nearly crashed the game. So I had to delete all the colourations. I'm still kinda impressed this beast works at all...
- Because I'm me, I replaced the Groin stages with descriptions of the two's skin; that way, its description would come directly after their bodies were fully described. This meant if I wanted to mention Skin's variable, I'd have to type $GROIN$ instead... which led to a gross situation where I had to write about Sam's hair “gaining the same slimy texture as her $GROIN$”... yuck.
- That Grand Canyon marathon is a real thing! I don't think it's possible to complete twice in one day, though... it's 126km!
My question for you: What's the biggest project (writing or otherwise) you've completed? I doubt I'll write something this big any time soon... or at least, not for a couple characters xD
*Deep breath, scream of victory, then collapse*
- yoshielder
I wanted to have her inclusion kind of a twist. That at first the reader would see Hana's inclusion as a sort of “accessory” to Sam's changes; Lillian Desmond, another beast of a character, has that for her husband and daughter. Perhaps the four stages dedicated to Hana might strike people as odd, but maybe they'd assume Hana will change in the audience. But then she storms onstage, and the game changes quite a bit. Even format-wise: when she joins the game, Hana's name is coloured similarly to Samantha's. Which was an absolute horror to get right; more on that in the trivia...
But Sam also changes with Hana's appearance. Her mental changes don't really start until she's with Hana, and Hana makes more appearances in the transformations. Over time, Hana's transformations begin to overshadow Sam's, until the game mainly focuses on Hana; the last couple of stages are exclusive to her. She also receives a bit more mental changes than Sam, though I'm not as pleased with how they turned out as I usually am. I guess the focus is more on their changing bodies, and their changing relationship. Speaking of...
I wanted to have somewhat of the inverse to Elspeth and Mina. Those two were very different, and yet truly loved each other, and so even when they became even more different, their relationship continued. Sam and Hana, however... aren't in the best relationship. While they're also very different, neither feels comfortable addressing the issues they have with each other, which snowball into misunderstandings. And since both women are combative type A's (though Hana stuffs it down), neither of them will stop arguing until they've '''won'''.
I tried not to “take sides” with the argument; both women are in the wrong. While Hana does start the argument, Samantha takes things way too far. But she's the first one to apologize. And yet, she doesn't accept the response she gets. It's a relationship that brings out the worst in both of them, and it really wouldn't have survived long. That's why the only thing that keeps them together is a severe change in dynamic. Now Hana is the capable extrovert, and Sam is the brooding subordinate. And both have fun fighting each other. Even so, I'm a little worried I made Hana more unlikable... eh, it's not like the blame is equally spread in RL breakups. And I don't think either are bad people... they're just horrible together.
I think that's it. I'm kinda surprised at how short this section is. As for the trivia... well, just look:
- Names first, as usual. My commissioner came up with Samantha Brody (named after Jaws and Hana Serizawa (named after Godzilla). Their monster names were super fun to make! ...At first. Baskinbolt hits both the water and electric theme for her, and Ryuzako was... tricky. I wanted to make Hana's name an amalgam of two Japanese words, and I think it involved dragons and fire? It used to be “Ryuzanko”, and it's only now, literally as I'm writing this, that I decided to google that word. And it is... not fire dragon. Google Translate might be wrong, but I don't wanna risk it. So I had to scramble to change it to Ryuzako, which is probably nonsense... but at least it's not that. Moral of the story: languages are tricky, and I am dumb. There's a reason I mainly use Latin to create new names...
- Here's something I don't often talk about: the pacing of the changes. I not only have to keep track of what stages have happened, but how many stages. The game can do 1-3 transformations each round, so I have to be careful not to say that a certain TF is “the only one this round”, because that might not be true. There's an instance in this character where the game goes on a “commercial break”, and comes back after a stage; if my calculations were right, that stage will always be the last stage in a round. Math is fun!
- Music choices were... frenetic? Some Renard, some JPEG, a lot of Pizza Tower... and one session that exclusively had penis music. Remember penis music? Good times... I think. For proofreading, I followed the cheesy credits theme, and chose Simon Says by Pharoahe Monch for that hard af Godzilla sample.
- I'm... really connecting to the Host in these characters, enough that I'm worried it's turning into a sort of self-insert? They're a mix of things I am (somewhat male-presenting, optimistically nihilist, presents weird transformations to a crowd) and things I wish I was (confident and showy, comfortable playing with gender, attractive). If in my next character they've got hooves and are annoyingly ace, you'll know I've gone too far.
- Also, I just now realised that the host could be in a situation where they're got kaiju contestants on one side, and a reality-changing contestant on the other. Poor host... :(
- That lawsuit they mentioned is a reference to the aforementioned Lillian Desmond, who TFed into a succubus and kidnapped her family. Hopefully people don't pit her against Samantha, cuz continuity...
- I had to put in two blatant monster movie references in, because... because. The “we're gonna need a bigger ceiling” is obvious, but the host talking about “the greatest thing your eyes will ever see” is a King Kong reference.
- A recent character from thriller12345 mentioned the show's “high ceilings”, which gave me the perfect opportunity to canonize it in my character. Thanks, Thriller!
- “Thagomizers” joins a growing list of words I had to add to the Character Creator's dictionary, joining “Mesoamerican”, “pilates”, and “parentless”. I have no idea when I used any of those.
- Hot damn did I struggle with the format of this character. Like I said, I wanted Hana's inclusion to be a sort of twist, which meant I'd have to colour her name. I used a variable for all instances of Hana... and then found out the character wouldn't load if the same variable is used twice in one section. So I had to replace every multiple of $HANA$ with <pink>Hana</pink>... and then found out that the game only colours the first instance of a name. And all the code nearly crashed the game. So I had to delete all the colourations. I'm still kinda impressed this beast works at all...
- Because I'm me, I replaced the Groin stages with descriptions of the two's skin; that way, its description would come directly after their bodies were fully described. This meant if I wanted to mention Skin's variable, I'd have to type $GROIN$ instead... which led to a gross situation where I had to write about Sam's hair “gaining the same slimy texture as her $GROIN$”... yuck.
- That Grand Canyon marathon is a real thing! I don't think it's possible to complete twice in one day, though... it's 126km!
My question for you: What's the biggest project (writing or otherwise) you've completed? I doubt I'll write something this big any time soon... or at least, not for a couple characters xD
*Deep breath, scream of victory, then collapse*
- yoshielder
