Friendship, Editors, Endings and the Effervescent Feeling

After joining Small Loan Studio, I wrote for the NPC Asha, Avatar of the Eternal Light, with my writing partner, Dylan Sands, on the visual novel, The Ouroboros Express.

My writing partner, Dylan, went off to GDC, and I had Acts I and III to myself (though I made sure to check in with him often to consult). I pumped out Act I in no time, then I had Act III and different endings: friendship, romance, rejection.

Friendship makes people equals, and these two had several barriers to this: Vivi was shorter than Asha, but Vivi was older. So imagine when Asha called her “little one”? We received great advice from Haley Bulen, who did a sensitivity pass and edited our scenes. By having Vivi stand up for herself, she would win the respect of Asha and it worked. By solving the inequality in the power dynamic, the friendship ran true.

I took a peek into my abyss to create the bad ending for Asha. In a hundred words, I tried to create a horrifying, Lovecraftian finale for our beloved avatar, dying without knowing love. I was aided in this by our lead editor, the inestimable and jovial Salvador Bas-Folch.

Then I worked on the happy ending. I remember welling up as I wrote Asha’s final words; a statement of purpose, of self-realization, of love for self and for another.?

Another lesson that helped us to keep to our schedule was to remember that we had editors to help us in myriad ways; to find holes in the story, to correct grammar and spelling, to check for consistency in voices, and so much more. When we felt stressed by the deadlines, I remembered we had help! Then we were more able to focus on finishing the job instead of sweating every detail.

It was sheer magic seeing the art department conjure Asha out of our words. I really enjoyed getting to know the artists and their work blew me away. They made our vision the drop-dead, golden tiara adorned, immaculate love child I’d imagined.?

Once we, the readers and Najmah Salam, read through our scene, and I had the opportunity to read in Asha’s voice. Since I’m obviously not a black woman, I did my best to hit the timber, tone, and register of Danai Gurira from her role in Black Panther as Okoye. I rolled my Rs something fierce for fun.

And then the last day of the Otome game jam arrived and we released The Ouroboros Express. We’d pulled it off. Dylan and I handily met all our deadlines. It felt fantastic. We were done writing.

I signed up to do QA and play testing, even though I’d played earlier versions of the game as the programming and art teams cranked out their own magic. I’d avoided playing the other characters, so I had the chance then to experience the other two romanceable characters. Much like the titular train, the read was quite a trip. I logged my bugs and did my best to find a misspelled word or a grammar faux pas.

Then I made it to the credits.

I felt such pride seeing my name in the credits. A real game writer at last.