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pride-vns-blog · 6 years

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LGBTQ VN Week: Day One! (6/18)

Welcome to the first day of my LGBTQ visual novel recommendation week, in honor of Pride Month 2018! Every day from today (June 18th) to Sunday (June 24th), I’ll be talking about four visual novels with LGBTQ themes, characters, and/or creators that have stood out to me and explaining a little bit about why I like them! I also reached out to a handful of those VNs’ developers and talked with them about their work, so you’ll be seeing a casual interview tagged onto the end of every post, too. ✨

To kick things off today, I’m highlighting four visual novels that are practically bursting at the seams with personality, all in their own ways — Saturn’s WORST DATING SIM, Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top, Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup, and Madeleine’s Inverness Nights!

Hit the jump to read about watching Animal Planet with punks, beta-testing hookup apps, Mario fire alarms, and why it is that so many visual novels seem to use character archetypes.

One note before we get started! This list isn't meant to be reflective of "the objectively best LGBTQ visual novels" or anything like that, which I want to be ultra-clear about upfront. It's not a list of all the ones I've ever played, either. There are plenty of visual novels with LGBTQ characters/themes that have been recommended to me frequently — while I was working on this list and over the past couple years — that didn't make it onto this list because I couldn't afford to buy them, or because they just weren't for me when I did buy them, or because of a million other reasons.

To give an example of this in action: I barely have any originally-Japanese language visual novels on here, because the number of M/M ones that get translated is already so low and already nearly 100% commercial, and I'm way more inclined to pay for M/M than anything else. (Reason: I'm gay and I like looking at hot guys.) For the purposes of this list specifically, I've also cut out a fair few BL-marketed VNs — from both Western and Eastern developers — that skirt around the issue of whether or not the protagonist is gay/bi/etc awkwardly.

I also tried to limit myself to one VN per team, picking the ones I thought were best representative of their output and leaving space to mention other works of theirs that I'd liked, with the aim of keeping this list from being totally dominated by studios who'd put out a lot over a long period of time. And then personal taste for other genre and content details comes into play, so it cuts out even more from what's left! In the originally-Japanese BL category alone, that left me with a single nominee, which was... Well, you'll see!

Basically, I went over a lot of different options to settle onto a list that's ultimately only supposed to be things that I, personally, would recommend! And I don't want to recommend things I didn't enjoy, one way or another. Nobody wants to sit through multiple paragraphs of a slog where I'm trying to talk about a game I didn't actually like (or, in plenty of cases, a game I couldn't afford) without acknowledging that I didn't like it. To be totally honest, that sounds like it would suck to try and write.

So if your favorite LGBTQ visual novels aren't on here, but you want to give people an excuse to play them, I'd love to read anyone else's personal recommendation lists! I'm not a journalist or a reviewer and this isn't anything close to a formalized games review blog that I'm planning to update ever again; I'm just a VN dev who felt like sitting down and making a list of other LGBTQ VNs I liked one day, so I went and I did it. And I felt like giving those other devs a platform if I was going to talk about their work, so I took my own Patreon earnings to pay for as many as I could, then I went and did some interviews, too.

Thanks for sitting through (or skimming, as the case may be) that wall of text! Without further ado, let's talk WORST DATING SIM!

WORST DATING SIM (SATURN)

Itchio Tagline: “MRGRGR.” Genre(s): Slice of life, shitpost. Release Date: January 22nd, 2018. Content Warnings: Brief depiction of blood; violence.

Out of all the visual novels I’ll be covering over the next week, WORST DATING SIM is the only one I haven’t seen nearly all the content for, and not for a lack of trying! Saturn’s debut visual novel, a challenging conversational simulator where a punk named Etsuji decides to follow you home and hang out with you purely because he can, features a grand total of 69 ways you can get a GAME OVER. By and large, these endings come at the hands of your newfound friend (?), who’s got a temper and a sensitive streak a mile wide. If Etsuji doesn’t like what you’re saying, he’ll knock your lights out, and you’ll get booted back to the title screen.

The way WORST DATING SIM doubles down on this challenge is by intentionally removing Ren’Py’s default save feature — if you piss Etsuji off, you’re back at square one, period. You have to either somehow retain the information yourself or turn to someone else’s successful run for help, because it’s deliberately designed to be done in a single playthrough without reloading. Even a fair few jokes in the script, like “I’m sure in several alternate universes he’s punched my lights out, but so far I’m safe,” are dropped in to acknowledge the fact that beating WORST DATING SIM is more akin to powering through a run of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. (But don’t worry, the Skip Text function is still there to help you out!)

As someone who does turn to guides frequently to find out what I’m missing on my third or fourth playthroughs of visual novels, I assumed from the start that at some point that I’d want to find a walkthrough in order to see any real endings. But the sheer charm of Etsuji’s responses and, to be completely frank, how much fun I was having just trying to scale Etsuji’s emotional mountain meant that I never really hit that point while playing. WORST DATING SIM’s distinct personality struck exactly the right chord in my brain that made me want to keep playing by myself, tunneling away at it persistently, and it made the ending(s!) feel all that much more rewarding.

WORST DATING SIM is available now for free on Itchio, and you can follow Saturn on his Itch.io or Twitter (NSFW) for updates on more potential WDS content or his other upcoming visual novels.

COMING OUT ON TOP (OBSCURASOFT)

Itchio Tagline: “The erotic comedy gay dating game that'll make [you] laugh, cry, and get a little boned up! Hot dudes included.” Genre(s): Comedy, romance. Release Date: December 10th, 2014. Content Warnings: Nudity; mentions of homophobia; sexual content; seriously there’s a lot of sex in this.

If you’ve played M/M dating sims in the English language sphere any time in the last five years, you’ve probably heard of Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top — drawing more from the Western tradition of porn by and for gay men than anything else, it tells the story of newly-out college senior Mark Matthews and his run-ins with hot guy after hot guy (after hot guy, after... you get the picture). With the help of his roommate Penny, he also takes on the hookup app scene and delves into a sea of bonus dates funded by Kickstarter backers, which were released steadily from January 2015 to December 2016.

Coming Out On Top’s steady stream of humor never goes so far as to be totally derailing from its focus on sexuality and Mark’s genuinely sincere approach to relationships, casual or otherwise; Obscurasoft manages to infuse the numerous sex scenes with enough awkwardness, humor, and personality that actually playing through them back-to-back feels less like a string of pinups and more like scenes Mark is actively involved in or growing from. As a character, especially one whose archetype has gotten a lot of mileage in gay porn since the dawn of mankind, it’d be narratively easy to let Mark remain a generally undefined slate for players to project themselves onto.

And while there is a degree of personalization, especially when it comes to how blatantly horned-up some of the dialogue is compared to other options the player can choose, Coming Out On Top is still very distinctly Mark’s story. His specific insecurities from years of being closeted don’t vanish as soon as he comes out, and hookups don’t always work out for him the way they might in ten minute long “first time” AVs. His grades still matter, and his friends still exist, and he’s still got his own sense of priorities the player can disregard (at their own fish-related peril) or see through on the slow climb to the end of his senior year.

Coming Out On Top is available now for $14.99 on Itch.io, and Obscurasoft’s website; to get early updates about what they’re working on next, you can follow their News & Updates blog or their Twitter.

BUTTERFLY SOUP (BRIANNA LEI)

Itchio Tagline: “Gay girls playing baseball and falling in love.” Genre(s): Comedy, slice of life. Release Date: September 16th, 2017. Content Warnings: Parental abuse; violence; racist language; homophobic language; ableist abuse and slurs.

The strength of Butterfly Soup’s personality, from beginning to end, is founded in its four point-of-view characters — kindhearted Diya, reckless Min, sharp Noelle, and carefree (?) Akarsha. As a group of ninth grade friends with different priorities and different reasons for joining their shared baseball team, which are as obvious as the hugely-varied color schemes of each girl’s clothes, they play off of one another easily. Lei uses her fair share of actual memes, but never ones that feel like the speaking character — usually Akarsha — wouldn’t say them, which holds true to the rest of Lei’s dialogue writing. It feels distinctly ninth grade without ever being mocking or trivializing the way everything is so extremely important all the time when you’re a ninth grader.

Part of that strength definitely comes from Lei’s willingness to lean on each character’s archetype and unpack it at the same time; Diya’s physical strength and sheer skill, combined with her reluctance to talk to strangers, could have easily seen her shoehorned into a much more detached character than she’s written as. Instead, she’s thoughtful, expressive, and deeply concerned with the people she cares about, even if she can’t always necessarily communicate that to them very well through her ever-present anxiety. Exactly how their own differences manifest and each of the three other girls’ reasons for being that way are slightly trending into spoiler territory, but I think Diya’s fellow main characters also each have their own similarly-smart tweaks on familiar archetypes that make their joke-filled banter all that much more personalized and memorable.

Although there’s a lot to love about the positive, hilarious moments in the protagonists’ everyday lives, one of the things that I think worked just as well narratively were the scenes that required all those content warnings up there. They're very much going to be a YMMV situation for different players, especially with my own caveat that my relationship to dysfunctional families is coming from white Irish ex-Catholicism rather than those two specific Asian cultures’ values — trying not to give any spoilers about which characters I’m referring to, here! — but in-text, they’re never situations without any future, because we can see that future where the group has each other, and they always have room in the moment to be angry, or upset, or hurt without the narrative itself punishing them for failing to be perfect. Instead, they get to play baseball and fall in love and set off fire alarms, and they do pretty okay.

Butterfly Soup is available now for free, and you can follow Brianna Lei on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to learn more about her upcoming work.

INVERNESS NIGHTS (MADELEINE)

Itchio Tagline: “Every relationship ends.” Genre(s): Historical fantasy, drama. Release Date: June 30th, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

There are a lot of things about Inverness Nights that worked for me in a way I don’t know that they would have in another visual novel — in particular, Tristram’s character is difficult in ways that pretty directly pertain to some of the content warnings linked above, and I was personally interested in seeing the text unpack that bit by bit. The eventual turn the story takes further on in your playtime, to try and phrase that in a way that isn’t super spoilery, was something I personally didn’t mind taking a little longer to get to.

Curious to hear what its developer Madeleine had to say about the story, their thoughts on character design, and what they’re up to next, I reached out to them for an interview!

IVAN: Thanks for having me, Madeleine! To get this conversation started, how would you sum up Inverness Nights to everyone reading this?

MADELEINE: Inverness Nights is a game about queer isolation and the importance of queer community outside of romantic relationships. Set in 18th c Scotland you play as Tristram Rose, an immortal gay man who has just broken up with his mortal boyfriend, and decide how he’ll cope with the loss as someone unable to tell the world around him that he’s magical and queer.

Sounds spot-on! And definitely a great summary of all the things that made it super appealing — to me, at least, haha. Before anything else, I want to note that it's been just about a year since you released Inverness Nights! Congratulations! How's the experience been, and what particular highlights or lowlights over the past year stand out to you?

It was good actually releasing a game, I enjoyed that part a lot! Aside from that, I really appreciated a couple of thoughtful reviews it got where people connected with it as a game where being queer is difficult, but not bleak. I think that because AAA games love tragic gay stories indie games can sometimes feel they need to be ultra-positive to balance that in the other direction, which is cool, but as someone who likes stories that’re more in-the-middle it was a gap I wanted to fill. There was a good reaction to that, albeit a quiet reaction. It’s a very ‘first game, niche game’ complaint but the lowlight would probably be that not many people played it — however, there are a lot of understandable reasons why it worked out that way so I’m not too hurt overall.

Haha, getting something finished and released is definitely a great feeling; I'm personally really glad you stepped in to fill that niche, as someone who likes things that are honest about their characters' pain without feeling exploitative or endlessly hopeless! In the fantastic (but spoiler-filled) Medium postmortem you wrote on your process, you say that "an important part of marketing visual novels is selling your characters"; the postmortem goes into that in fairly great detail, especially as it pertains to ensemble casts, but would you care to expand upon that observation in the scope of the visual novel genre (and how you're keeping it in mind for future projects) a little bit here?

People make fun of visual novels sometimes for their reliance on archetypes — you know, look up the average dating sim and you can probably tell in an instant who the bad boy is, who the smart girl is, so on — but when you’re selling a character driven game to people, you can’t give away the cast’s backstories and quirks up front or there’s nothing to play for, so you’ve got to find some sort of shorthand to suggest what an audience wants will be there, and that usually comes back to telling them which archetypes you’ve got. When I started Inverness Nights I kind of laughed at that reliance on archetypes and tried to do something different but I learnt the hard way why it’s important. At the moment I’m finishing a game called Catacomb Prince with my didn’t-quite-finish-it-for-a-jam group Skeleteam, and when our character artist Roxy was doing the designs I gave her very broad notes on who the cast were so they’d be more archetypical. Consequently we have a very recognisable cool girl/frat boy/petite NB slate of romance options that people’ve connected with waaay more easily and way faster than anyone did with the IN cast, which I think speaks to why it’s a sound approach.

I definitely agree in the importance of finding a good balance with archetypes; I've had people who've instantly bonded when I invoked "shy genius" or "lovestruck best friend", which ironically has given me a bit more of that freedom in telling their stories more uniquely! Could you shed a little light on what Catacomb Prince is, without too many spoilers, and what your storytelling influences for a visual novel like that have been?

Catacomb Prince is a Gothic comedy; you are Prince Vitali, trashy heir to a fantasy Renaissance kingdom, and you have woken up dead five years after a raging party. Your parents still expect you to inherit the throne despite your new skeletal appearance, but your kingdom’s laws require the King to be married. Find love, find your killer — or die again trying.

It’s mostly inspired by Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, which is an old kitschy BL VN about a guy named Georik taking up alchemy to make a new body for his decapitated (still living) sister while hiding his hobby from his friends. Animamundi has some very gloomy stuff happening but it’s so over-the-top about it that it loops around to being a very funny game, and I wanted more experiences like that in the world, so here we are. There’re also some aspects of other goofy Gothic stories in there, like Hammer Horror movies and EC Comics, though the romance aspect of it means it’s not all rib-ticklers all the time. We took care to make the love interests more than just fodder for jokes and/or horror. They’re complete, kissable people, with flesh and everything.

I am not doing a good job of easing up on the skeleton jokes but please believe me on that last point.

Glad to hear the love interests have skin! Not super fussed about that, personally, but I'm sure some players would have logistical concerns about things like skeleton-on-skeleton kissing. (I'd like to go on the record and say I'm pro-skeleton and extremely pro-skeleton puns, so I'm waiting with bated breath to get to play as your not-breathing protagonist.) Other than what we'll be seeing in Catacomb Prince, what kind of genres and themes are you interested in exploring more of in the future?

After Catacomb Prince I’m going to work on finishing an IF game I started last year called Captain Dracula, about being the last survivor on a submarine after your Captain reveals he’s Dracula. That’s also a comedy. I spent three years making Inverness Nights so taking a breather to make funny games for a while seemed like a good plan, and I’m really into classic horror, so I’ve gravitated in that direction with it. I’ve also got a regular no-pictures no-choices fantasy novel I’m several drafts through at the moment which I’ll hopefully be releasing later this year. Once those’re off my plate, I’m keen to try making either an 80 Days-style narrative travel game or a Clock Tower-style point-and-click horror for a change of pace. I want to do something that’s more about exploring a place; I do academic stuff as well as indie development and all my academic work has been on how we explore places in games, so it feels weird that I haven’t made anything that utilises my research.

It sounds like you've got a lot coming up! I'm looking forward to seeing how you can combine your academic studies with your fiction work, which already have such strong settings of place from the get-go. And last but not least, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers would you like to recommend?

It's IF rather than a VN but I love Heart of the House by Nissa Campbell, which is a Gothic game about an exorcist trying to remove an evil presence from a Victorian manor house, and maybe also wooing some of its residents. It’s very atmospheric and you can be NB, two things I like a lot. With caveats I’m also really keen on Animamundi (like I mentioned earlier — fun, funny MLM but warning for violent horror elements and sexual abuse), and The House in Fata Morgana (a dark romance about a trans man trying to rescue his girlfriend from a cursed manor, there’s an extensive content warning list on its website). Lastly, on the lighter side, Butterfly Soup and The Duenkhy are both good VNs about queer people making friends :) probably play them when you need to smile after all the grimmer suggestions I’ve made.

Awesome — and thanks again for your time, Madeleine! It was a pleasure.

Inverness Nights is available now for $12 USD, and you can follow Madeleine on Twitter or Itch.io to keep up with all the skeleton romances and Dracula adventures they're setting their sights on next!

Thanks to everyone who read this far! Keep an eye on the Twitter thread or this blog for tomorrow’s post, where I’ll be talking about four more visual novels that I think do some crafty things with their creative design!

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brianna-lei · 6 years

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Butterfly Soup Asks #18

I’ll be spending the week of Thanksgiving in Taiwan w/ relatives, so I tried to answer as many as I could ^^; It’s my first time there in around 10 years so I’m really excited! I would do the rest on the plane but I don’t think I’ll have wi-fi...

Highlights of this batch: The squad’s Halloween, pets, and Ester info

Yup! The others finally convinced Noelle to go trick-or-treating for the first time

Diya and Min matched, Diya was Red Riding Hood and Min was the Big Bad Wolf. Min got to wear a wolf mask that went over her head

Noelle: But that doesn’t make sense as a couple’s costume. The wolf wants to eat Red Riding Hood

Akarsha: :^)

Akarsha went as Guy Fieri

Noelle is boring so she was a doctor. She basically looks the same as normal except wearing a lab coat

While trick or treating, Min started complaining partway through that she was thirsty and drank sprinkler water even though Noelle repeatedly told her not to. She immediately spat it out and went “YUCK!! TASTES BAD” apparently it tastes like mud

A few times, Akarsha ran ahead of the gang and jumped out at them from behind bushes. Noelle screams, Diya jumps back, and Min reacts like this

Min dared Akarsha to lick a mailbox and she did

One house’s decorations were too good and Diya got scared

Noelle didn’t want most of her candy so Diya got it

Diya doesn’t have a dog yet in high school -- she’s always begged for one but her parents knew they’d be too busy to handle it. So their house has a fish tank with guppies

Akarsha had a pet snail in elementary school but accidentally killed it when she tried to wash it with shampoo. She still mourns it. The way she talks about it made Noelle believe for a long time that Akarsha had a deceased sibling or other close family member and she got mad when she found out it was a snail

Hayden’s had a dog since elementary school, much to Diya’s delight and jealousy

Yuki has a hamster

Liz has 2 cats. They’re siblings, one of them has a crooked tail

Chryssa doesn’t exactly have pets, but her family runs a wildlife rescue/rehabilitation center. They mostly pick up birds but also get other critters like possums and skunks. They even have a hawk there

Ester is just as much a weeb as Sakura and Yuki, but tries to hide it because she worries about how other people see her and wants to be perceived as normal. Whenever they talk about anime she acts like she’s too cool for them but is actually really interested. She set all the anime and vocaloid songs on her iPod to Skip on shuffle so that if someone else happens to listen to it, they won’t hear any.

She has friends but isn’t anyone’s Best friend -- they all have someone they like more than her and she thinks about this a lot

knowing she wouldn’t wear it, I never bothered to design one for her haha

I imagine that she’d want a dark colored one, and only wear one strap bc she thinks it looks cooler like that

Yes, I really want Butterfly Soup 2 and my other future games to have their own soundtracks of music written for them! Feel free to send me examples of your work and rates! Once I properly start development for them I’ll probably make an open call for musicians too ^^

During the story Min doesn’t know about alternative pronouns like they/ze/ey yet, so she currently only uses she/her. In the future, she still mostly uses she/her but will also be fine with they/them

They’re both 17

Yup!

Secret for the reasons above, sorry!

It’s funny because there’s only 2 reactions to Min’s height, with almost no in between:

HOLY SHIT I DIDN’T REALIZE SHE'S SO TINY

I related to her bc I’m small too, but she’s 5′1″?? IM NOT EVEN 5 FEET TALL I FEEL BETRAYED

This is a common enough sentiment that I really want to make it happen. I’ve found decent places that make custom hoodies for Diya’s jacket, but I still have yet to find a reasonably priced option for custom bomber/letterman jackets. If anyone has places they recommend please let me know!

In high school I wanted to be an artist but my parents didn’t approve of it, so I didn’t really know what I wanted to do yet. UC Berkeley is considered the best UC to a lot of Asian parents, so it was just naturally somewhere I wanted to get into.

It wasn’t until I actually got into USC that I found out game design majors even existed. It was insanely lucky that I happened to go to a college that had such a well known game design program

I’ve said a bit about this on twitter before, but that part of Min’s story was inspired by things my friends and I experienced growing up. Most stories about fictional bad parents come in 2 flavors:

The parents see the error of their ways in the end and aim to be better

The kid escapes from the parents and lives happily ever after

But in reality, it’s often not that simple. Sometimes your parents never change and there’s no easy way out, that’s just how it is and you have to live with it. So I wanted to show characters who have to bear with it, and at the end of the story are still bearing with it, but are able to find happiness despite it. I wanted people like that to know they aren’t alone in never getting a storybook resolution to what they went through and it’s ok

It is a difficult subject to handle, and it was a challenge figuring out how to realistically show Min going through this without being gratuitous about her suffering. A lot of people like my beta testers were happy seeing a character having the same arguments with her parents as they did, but everyone reacts to things differently and I hope that the trigger warnings prevent too many people from being blindsided by it

you’d be surprised at how small of a space you can fit in! ...not that I endorse getting free meals like this. kids don’t try this at home

oh?? Do you mean PC Gamer? I haven’t seen an IGN one yet :o

oh no! I’m sorry it’s doing that :( dam u tumblr

I’m not sure what this means but it sounds right

SFDJHKJ I actually don’t think she would, I feel like it’s not the right vibe for her if that makes sense

They were mostly drawn in Clip Studio Paint! It goes on sale for as low as $15 every few months and it’s my favorite drawing program atm

I generally welcome Lets players, it’s fun seeing them enjoy the game! I specifically dislike Pewdiepie, though. I don’t know a lot about Markiplier, but I don’t think he ever played Pom Gets Wi-Fi?

I’m really touched that people like it enough to replay it, it’s only been out for 2 months!! Thank you!!

You’re welcome!! I’m really really happy you appreciated it!

It makes me so happy to see it too!! You’re welcome, thank you for the message ;u;

You’re welcome!! I’m always really glad to hear people relate to Diya ;u;

You’re welcome! I hope you like the game!

You’re welcome!!!

Thank you! I’m really glad you liked it :>

You’re welcome! Thank you for playing it!!

#briANSWER #my post #Butterfly Soup

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waitingonsnow · 6 years

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Butterfly Soup Review

Butterfly Soup represents a rarity in game development, a game so full of energy and passion that it feels like the best of rock music’s first albums. By turns brilliant and fumbling, overthought and underthought, it bears the force of art whose creator had little choice in its creation. That developer Brianna Lei had to tell this story of young Asian women discovering their queer sexuality by way of a hastily assembled baseball team is obvious throughout, and gives it a driving force much stronger than any of its missteps.

Developed in the much (and wrongly) maligned Ren’Py game engine, Butterfly Soup is a visual novel that appears to offer almost nothing in the way of meaningful choices. That’s not to say the few choices the game offers are completely without consequence, but you won’t find yourself going down any truly divergent paths. For the most part, the choices are either used as part of elaborate gags, or to give the player a stake in actions the characters are going to take anyway. Personally, I appreciated this take on player choice, but if you come to visual novels primarily for the feeling of agency in directing the story, know that for the most part this is the author’s story, not the player’s.

Given that you spend most of your time with Butterfly Soup clicking through dialogue rather than influencing the characters’ actions, it’s a good thing that Lei’s dialogue and characterization shine throughout. The main cast--painfully shy Diya, overly aggressive Min-seo, uptight Noelle, and exhaustingly jokey Akarsha--all have individual voices even when they’re talking in memes and anime nerd in-jokes. As the game bounces back and forth between the friends’ elementary and high school lives, their voices remain consistent, but with believable development over the years (and some endearing non-development, like Min-seo’s perpetual difficulties with English swearing).

As delightful as Lei’s characters are, her pacing and plotting could use a bit of work. Butterfly Soup presents itself as a romantic sports story. Diya and Min-seo become friends and eventually fall in love thanks to their shared passion for baseball, and much of the plot revolves around their grassroots effort to start an actual team with some like-minded girls at their school. While the first half of the story hints at the four girls having troubled home lives, it’s largely in the form of Asian-American parenting stereotypes played for laughs (”Did you fail, or did you Asian fail?” Akarsha asks Diya as she frets over a test score). For the most part, though, the game occupies the time between plot points with Diya’s sweet pining for Min, and Akarsha’s (probably) romantically motivated rivalry with Noelle.

That makes it all the more jarring when, as the focus turns to Noelle and Min’s home lives, we’re suddenly confronted with the emotional and physical abuse they face at the hands of their parents. The game doesn’t dwell on these issues; in fact, it almost completely breezes past them. What seemed like a coming out/coming of age story about four queer teens suddenly introduces a host of deeply serious topics--not only the parental abuse, but Min’s strained relationship with her twin brother Jun and intimations that she’s experiencing gender dysphoria; the dark motivation for Akarsha’s relentless joking; and the psychological toll the passing of California’s homophobic Prop 8 takes on Diya as she struggles to accept her homosexuality. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that any one of the subjects that the game quickly broaches then passes over in its second act could have been a game on its own, and their scattershot appearance in what had previously been a bittersweet comedy is not the strongest creative decision. It’s far from game-breaking, but like the darker revelations in Undertale, it does make the game’s ultimate attempt to put a happy face on on the group’s relationships ring a little hollow.

Butterfly Soup is, as I said, strong enough overall to survive these missteps, but to some extent that’s only because it chooses to abandon them in its final half hour or so in favor of some feel good tropes lifted from sports movies and high school anime. The girls have, by the end of the game, taken some actions for which they’ll definitely face retribution at home, but that is forgotten in favor of a sentimental ending, and a personal message from Lei at the end of the credits that, intentionally or not, caused me to rethink the game’s motivations in telling its story.

It’s nothing new to say that the best thing about democratizing tools like Ren’Py, GameMaker, Twine, and others is the ability they give creators whose voices were previously marginalized to get their games in front of an audience. Butterfly Soup is what happens when that democratization is successful. Lei’s voice is simultaneously that of an insider (she clearly knows the visual novel and dating sim canon) and an outsider (visually, the game has a bit of a slapdash feel with Photoshop-filtered photos used as backgrounds, and some instances of blatant copyright infringement). Butterfly Soup doesn’t come anywhere near the polish of higher profile Ren’Py games like Analog: A Hate Story, and Doki Doki Literature Club. But it does represent another vital step in video games as a medium that can be used to tell deeply personal stories by voices that even a few years ago would have struggled to be heard in the medium.

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brianna-lei · 7 years

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Butterfly Soup asks #11

More under the cut, including MBTI types, angry akarsha and diya, and min musical instrument facts

Absolutely. They’re the corniest, sappiest couple imaginable

There’s no deep meaning behind it. Knowing that Akarsha would be delighted that her birthday is the weed number, I just decided to grant her that simple pleasure

They kept in touch until they went to different middle schools. By the time they met again at the baseball game, they hadn’t seen each other for a few years

Akarsha is pretty normal when annoyed, but when she’s really angry, she tries to yell/argue with you and ends up angry crying. She constantly half-masks over her feelings with humor, so when she’s really seriously upset, everything suddenly ends up coming to surface at once.

In the game, if Diya promises not to get mad at Akarsha’s plan, Diya says she’ll just be “annoyed internally” and that’s a pretty accurate reflection of how she is about this stuff. Diya hates confrontation and doesn’t trust herself to be able to articulate her feelings, so she just glares daggers at everything and looks really sulky, and exercises like crazy to get the bad feeling out. This sounds really silly, but I’m definitely like this too...if you see me suddenly pick up the pace while running it’s because I remembered something I’m upset about and internally am like “RRRJFKDSJ!!!!!!!!!!”

Akarsha, “Sakura”, and “Yuki” are the type to like personality tests...They take all kinds of quizzes like “which naruto character are you?” I’m not super knowledgable on MBTI personalities, but the one I know for sure is that Noelle is ISTJ because this is EXACTLY her

I think Akarsha is ESFP, Min is maybe ESTP, she’s very direct and defiant to rules.

I had no clue what Diya was, so I took the test pretending to be Diya and got ISFJ-T (I don’t know what the “T” is for).

She tried to learn electric guitar at one point, but didn’t have the patience for it and stopped The only instrument Min knows how to play is the kkwaenggwari, she had to learn it as a kid. It’s extremely loud and potentially VERY annoying sounding in the hands on young Min

Here’s a video of what it sounds like

:^)

:^)))

I feel that way too, especially since (like you said) Diya already self-identifies as lesbian. Thanks for the input, I’m not nb myself so I wasn’t totally sure!

She totally is! Any relationship for her would have to start from friendship first. During their first meeting, Min said the exact correct thing when she asked Diya if she wanted to be friends haha

So yeah, for those of you keeping track, Diya is a demi lesbian.

If you go back far enough on my art blog, you can see that I first created Diya and Min in winter break in college (my new OCs!!)...ALMOST 3 YEARS AGO. THREEEE!!!!!! I didn’t really properly start working on the game until much later, and even then it was on/off due to work, but still! I’m still in disbelief at how long it took...

The good news is, most of the time was spent:

1. figuring out how to make the game work (like getting the chat sections to show up correctly)

2. drawing art

All that can be reused for the sequel, so I’d only have to do about 25% as much work as the first time THANK GOD

Yup, I’m planning on making a sequel eventually

For consistency’s sake I don’t think I’ll have voices in the sequel! Having voiced lines in my other future games is one of my goals, though, so I’m super happy you’re interested :)

Akarsha is “pee pee” because she said “it’s pee pee time,” “friendship is like peeing on yourself,” etc., Noelle is “ketchup man” because of the incident at the buffet. I know it’s more difficult to remember than akano or noesha but I'm SO pleased that people came up with this terrible ship tag for my terrible children

I’ll definitely consider it, there’ll be a few new characters in the sequel :>

I hate to not answer stuff, but I’d like to keep this secret for the sequel, sorry!

I feel so blessed!! I almost can’t believe there’s enough people who care about my game to qualify as a fandom?? Thank you!

One thing I will say, though...there’s probably no such thing as an unproblematic fandom. I’m problematic and screw up sometimes! It’s good to keep in mind that a lot of people are still learning and can become better people if you give them the chance

Thank you! One day your wish will come true haha :)

Yes, I’m talking about them in Pom Gets Wi-Fi! I hope not too many other people who haven’t played it were confused

I’m really glad it was cathartic for you, I really hoped people would connect to Min’s part. Thank you so much for your support!

Thanks for taking a chance on it, I’m ridiculously happy you liked it and even changed the way you look at different people??! That’s awesome!

You’re welcome, it means a lot to me to read comments like this!!

Thank you!! :>

You’re welcome!! :>

You’re welcome!! I’m so glad my characters have so many adoptive parents now

I’m glad my children are so loved! thanks for the message

Thank you!! I’ll do my best!

#briANSWER #ask #butterfly soup #my post

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brianna-lei · 7 years

Text

Anonymous Butterfly Soup asks, batch 6

IT’S RIGHT NEXT TO THE BIG TOBLERONE I’M ALIVE

Being covered by a big gaming news site was one of my fantasies, so I’m elated this happened. The article is here, for anyone curious!

More asks under the cut!!

A note before I start -- if you submitted a bug, I saw it!! Thank you for reporting them!

Yes, she did! Her Facebook profile pic is her posing in front of a store at the mall, and you can see Jun’s reflection taking the pic in the store window

Akarsha didn’t realize, but Noelle totally heard it. Noelle kind of had a sense of what was up already, but actually hearing it worried her. She was debating whether or not to intervene when Min showed up.

On a small note, Min trying to cheer Akarsha up slightly improved Noelle’s opinion of Min (even though Min and Akarsha almost end up fist fighting again afterward).

Min plays video games too, imagine them playing Team Fortress 2 and later Overwatch together... Diya, Min, and Noelle have all seen some basic anime like Pokemon, Digimon, and Yugioh, but Akarsha’s the only real hardcore anime fan. I’m glad she met “Sakura”, “Yuki”, and Ester through the baseball club, because now she has weeb friends to talk about that stuff too.

(Ester is less obvious about liking anime than “Sakura” and “Yuki”, but you can still tell by her outfit’s style. Lowkey but not lowkey enough)

I can totally relate to all of them, but I’d say Diya!

Yes, they grow close over the course of the year and Noelle has to try really hard not to cry LMAO They still keep in touch afterward.

Yep, they both feel this huge gulf between themselves and their parents due to cultural differences. Many Asian immigrant parents are extremely conservative so it feels like they’re on a completely different wavelength from you, and at the same time they have complete power over you. It’s kind of a bad feeling.

...Also, shadowing their faces saved me the work of drawing their different facial expressions.

Min was actually out of town when the fire happened, so Diya had to call her and tell her what happened :( Diya (and eventually Min) sleeps on Noelle’s couch for a bit. Noelle and Akarsha aren’t living together at the time and Noelle has the nicer/cleaner apartment

It sounds really miserable, but they’re ok in the end

Noelle's passion is math and science, so she definitely ends up doing something in STEM that she likes, just not what her parents were expecting. Akarsha is similar and becomes a software engineer -- They’re actually both naturally interested in those subjects, which says a lot about how bad the parental pressure really is.

I like to think Diya and Min actually manage to break into minor league baseball and eventually MLB

Most of my outfit inspiration comes from my tumblr/twitter feeds. I wish I could recommend you fashion blogs, but I’m not following any?! They’re all just fandom mutuals who randomly reblog cool clothes sometimes.

I used to have trouble deciding what clothes characters should wear, so every time I see an image of a cool outfit I save it for reference. After doing this since high school I now have...uh...

And those are just the unorganized ones, the ones i have in folders are like...

Now if I’m stumped for what a character should wear, I just browse these massive folders for inspiration. I can actually pinpoint the omocat jacket that gave me the idea for Min’s:

I thought, “it should be a warning: high voltage sign on the back!”, and then I just went on Google images and looked them up.

Sorry if this isn’t helpful!

I don’t think Min really minds, but The Squad is even better! Deke squad

Yeah, Akarsha’s parents wouldn’t approve either. Out of the main four, Diya is actually the only one whose parents are fine with it

Ooh thank you this is an awesome compliment to receive!!

I REALLY want to make merch some day! I’ve never made physical merch before and I’m a bit intimidated not knowing where to start/how to handle shipping, so it may take a while, though :(

I didn’t give anyone last names and I doubt I ever will, sorry! Feel free to give them your own if you want

This was intentional, but at the same time I can’t believe everyone IMMEDIATELY noticed. You guys are so in tune with 4/20

Diya and Akarsha are Indian, Min-seo is Korean, Noelle is Taiwanese, Chryssa is black, Liz is…mostly Irish, I think? “Sakura” is Pakistani, “Yuki” is Filipino. I’ve heard a lot of guesses for Ester, but she’s half black and half Chinese!

i got u son!!

Thank you, I really love hearing this because the feeling that this narrative was missing was what made me want to make this game in the first place!

you might feel a bit more sympathetic to min when you reach her part of the story! Your mileage may vary, though

If you want to make a game like Butterfly Soup, try the program Renpy! It doesn’t require programming experience to use and there’s a lot of guides online on how to use it. My NUMBER ONE BIG ADVICE IS MAKE A REALLY, REALLY SMALL GAME FIRST. My first game, Pom Gets Wi-Fi, was only 30-45 minutes long. If you make it any bigger than that, you almost guaranteed will never finish it. The dream game that you want to make is probably longer than that, so don’t make your dream game first! That’s kind of why I was so alarmed when Pom Gets Wi-Fi took off -- I’m very proud of that game and still love it, but it was like my test for the games I dreamed of making like Butterfly Soup. (Also, 17 is a great age to start making games, good for you!) Other stuff I’ve learned: Programming: I mostly learned super specific things that can’t be easily applied to other situations. If you want to know how I did a specific thing in Renpy, message me!

Writing: If you’re struggling to write something, it might be for a good reason. Maybe the scene is unnecessary or boring, your mental image of the scene doesn’t translate well to the format of your work, or the character motivations aren’t convincing enough. Deleting a scene altogether isn’t defeat, sometimes it’s the best path forward! Give up more!

Artwise: Drawing for non-pixel art games takes FOREVER. The sheer amount of time it’d take to draw all the characters and backgrounds was so demoralizing that I found myself procrastinating because I didn’t want to tackle it. Not only did I have a large cast of characters (9 in the baseball club alone), but because of flashbacks, I had to draw half of them again as kids!

To anyone thinking about making a game by themselves, SERIOUSLY consider making it a pixel art game. If you’re that set on making a non-pixel art game, SEVERELY limit the number of characters and backgrounds you have to draw!! I’m begging u...learn from my mistakes...

You’re welcome!!! :>

I loved USC! The Interactive Media major was cool and fun -- I met a lot of good friends through the program! It was probably the best few years of my life.

Unfortunately...I felt like it did nothing to prepare me for finding a job. There are very few classes for aspiring game artists and game writers. There wasn’t a single professor who worked as an artist at a triple A studio while I was there, and only one who was a major writer. I get that you gotta be self motivated, but I wish I had someone in the faculty I felt comfortable discussing my career path with. Some of the professors had clear favorite students and if you weren’t one of them, they’d make very little effort to reach out to you or interact with you. I know I'm introverted, but I never got this feeling with my general elective classes -- I had plenty of chances to talk to my writing professor, architecture lab professor, art teacher, etc., yet I came out of a lot of my Interactive Media classes wondering if my professors even remembered me.

If you want to be a game designer or maybe a writer, and are really focused/outgoing with your professors, it could be the major for you, but if you want to be a game artist I’m not sure it’s the best place to be.

I was actually crazy stressed out when it came out, so nope! It’s happening this weekend

I was super nervous right after it came out because I was worried people wouldn’t like it! I put a lot into it, and actually teared up writing parts of it, so it was a ridiculous relief to see that people were touched by it. I’m really happy now and really want to make a sequel. Also, I’m beyond grateful to my friends/mutuals/fans spreading the word and tweeting/posting about the game and making fancontent ;~; I really owe everything to them! A few people wondered about how I was holding up attention-wise, and actually...as a fanartist I sort of thrive on this, haha. Also, this is much less intense than when I released Pom Gets Wi-Fi. For perspective, it took Butterfly Soup a week to reach the number of downloads Pom got in one day.

Good!!! You’re welcome!

you’re welcome!!!

#Butterfly Soup #briANSWER #ask #my post

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