Dev Journal 02/27/2023

And here's this months Dev Journal, this month we're spending a little time with Viridiana Davis.

I chose the name Viridiana for a few reasons. It's the name of an old movie that I rather enjoyed, and the name of one of my favourite characters from a book that had a rather large impact on me when I was younger. Additionally it means green and Vi has a whole green motif to her. Just a silly little thing I enjoy.

Physically, Vi had the least changes of any character in the early development stage.  I actually had her designed about halfway through my development of The Author. Some characters are a big pain in the ass but Vi was an absolute angel.  The largest and really the only big change (not counting the boring technical stuff that only 3d modeling nerds would care about) is her scars.  In early drafts of her art, which you can still find if you want to go digging through Discord, she didn't have a facial scar.  Originally her scars were mostly to be concealed on her body, however as I was working on her I just felt like something was missing.  After some time I decided on expanding her scars and adding one to her face.  I really like the result, it gives her face a dash of imperfection and also is a little unique focal point. 

Emotionally Vi represents a lot of things. On the surface she of course has the sense of innocence, a young woman with stars in her eyes who still believes in true love and destiny and things working out okay in the end. I think that aspect of her is important it gives her a sort of inherent goodness. There are a few people like that in the world, who have such an inner warmness to them. I like people like that, I'm a curmudgeonly old mummy so I enjoy people who are warm and convivial.

But for all her good and warmth there's another part to who Vi is. Obviously the evidence of that is, as mentioned earlier, all over her body. Vi is innocent in her desire for things to be right, for the world to be a positive place she's not innocent to how the world isn't like that.  Every day she wakes up with the evidence of such cruelty staring back at her in the mirror.  For everything she believes Vi has already seen horrors that many never will and she's not ignorant to the fact that it can happy again to anybody at anytime. That's part of her muted response to the death of her brother.  We've also had brief glimpses of other traumatic responses. Vi keeps soldiering on though, trying her best to find her way in the world.

Over the next few updates and of course continuing into the endgame you're going to start seeing a different side of Vi, not only the way she is but who she's hoping to become. If you choose to help her romantically or as her platonic protector your choices will help Vi be more of who she wants to be. I hope you have a lovely time bonding with the resident broken dove.

Thank you as always for the support and I hope you have a lovely rest of your week.

Sláinte!