Hello, Students! It's been a while. I've finally finished Melody's events/route, and it turned out to be much more massive than I had originally thought it would be. As it stands she currently has the second most amount of dialogue in the game; though that dialogue is spread across six events, and one alternative scene.
She's been a really unique character in both physical design as well as mechanically, and I suppose even kind of narratively. So I thought she would be a great character to take some time to talk about.
I want to first start off by saying that I started working on Melody's route at a very interesting time for me emotionally. After about day one, I had sort of I suppose a PTSD moment from how my last relationship ended and I carried that feeling for several days while working on her route. Which I do think innately shaped her mannerisms and informed the subtle parts of her personality. To be clear she was already broadly defined at this point and even her ending was already written. But I think my trauma made me write her as this sort of comfort character.
A part of me thinks writing her exacerbated my feelings and another part of me thinks she helped me return to an equilibrium.
Design wise, all I really had envisioned when I created her initially was a beautiful girl with long green hair and a green aesthetic. Her and all the Sirens were initially inspired by the Mermaids from Disney's Peter Pan. I then decided I wanted names for them that tied into their colors a bit, I didn't necessarily want it super direct hence why there's Alice, Lysandra, and Melody vs say Sapphira. But I wanted it that if someone knew that they'd be able to maybe guess why each name was picked and what they were referencing. In Melody's case it's very obvious (to me) it's Saria from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My thought process was she's a Siren so she sings, she has this green color palette, Saria teaches you a melody, so Melody. Which then in turn informed the idea that she loves Zelda which then led to "oh maybe she loves to play the ocarina because of it, and actually doesn't want to sing because it's something she doesn't actually have to try at, she would just be successful." Her personality came very easy and it all just started with that name and it's inspiration. From there it was how to I incorporate video games into her life. And something I know a little bit about is streaming so I thought, "okay I can make her a streamer." Which is what I then sort of used to inform her mannerisms and how she spoke. As I was writing I would often think about kind of how my partner whose a streamer speaks and how a friend of mine whose also a streamer and small influencer speaks. How they sort of both carry themselves. And my trauma, then decided how she behaved romantically, I based that sort of side of her off admittedly my ex which I had just this insanely passionate affection for, very YA novel, teen romance movie relationship. So Melody's personality went from generic sort of streamer, here's the bare bones (essentially what's in the bio) to this deep, nuanced, character because I pulled from four people to put her together, me, my partner, my friend, and who my ex was at the time of dating (that's important to note, might not seem it, but it is). After that the initial hump which can sometimes be a challenge it sort of fell into place. I had decided for Melody I didn't want her "route" to be generic I wanted to try and do something different. So I decided, "what if her route could be modular, so you can experience these two different sides of her more in depth, the gaming and the artist."
So I gave her two items that trigger events with her instead of just say one. The player can only use either item up to three times. But that ultimately gives the player six different events to experience rather than the typical three. I had intended for them to be shorter because of this, but through the course of writing them, they each kind of ended up the standard length I would have done for any other character. Thusly Melody has easily become the character with the second highest amount of dialogue in the game only beaten out by Uni. Which is funny because she's 100% optional, in the "main route" she only has single word of dialogue. So the dichotomy is just funny to me, if you were to play the game no items and follow the suggested route she would seem like such a side character. But if you take the initiative you'll get a substantial amount of time with her, more than like I said was ever intended.
I don't think there's much else I can say about her without getting into spoilers. But I am a little surprised at some of my own personal things I was able to work into her, to flesh her out more. There's definitely more of myself in her than I expected there to be when I started. And I went from thinking, "this'll be an easy character to finish" to "oh my gods what was I thinking?" to "well that wasn't so hard." In like the span of a couple weeks. And I really hope you guys enjoy her company as much as I did; I choose to believe that writing her definitely helped me in a time I was struggling. Because she's just so loving and nurturing and smitten with the player in my opinion it's hard not to like her and want to spend more time with her.
Anyways! That's all from me folks! I am so, so incredibly excited to get to casting her, and I just really think going off of everyone's reactions to her so far. That she's going to be a real standout character that people gravitate towards. It'll be interesting to see how everyone reacts to her when the game finally comes out in the future.
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