July Behind the Scenes: Of Trails and Snails

For those of you who've started reading Of Trails and Snails, thank you so much! Your positivity means the world to me, and I'm so glad that you're enjoying it!

So, you may be asking yourself, how snailgirls?

Back in October 2022, Galahad made a joke that we had multiple accounts, and "Everyone's a Snailgirl!" was already in production.

Sky and I (Cat/Lynx) started chatting about it, and we decided, "Why not?"

It was originally supposed to be a one-off, 5,000 - 10,000 word fiction. We wanted to skip the "traditional isekai LitRPG" beginning. You know the one - main character lands in a world and must explore/discover/learn the entire system for the first 20 - 30 chapters. Nah, get Jack into the action. One fight scene, one NSFW scene, call it a day.

Step One: Research

I knew very little about them, and wanted to incorporate traits about them into the characters. I created a full World Doc full of "Snail Facts" and info. Here are a few snips!

And then, my favorite snail fact, Love Darts. Whenever I've worked on this story on stream and when I posted chapter 3 on Patreon, I don't think anyone realized that they were real.

They're very real. Interestingly, experts believe that they're what inspired Cupid's arrows.

The only issue is that they're 1/5th the size of the snail/slug. Furthermore, sometimes they pierce through their partner's head, killing them. I didn't want that to happen, so I shrank them to needle-sized. One little pinch instead of an ice pick through Jack's brain.

Lina... Lina, put that down...

Step Two: Design

There aren't a lot of snailgirl designs out there. There are a couple of "snailgirl" vtubers now, but I believe they just have the antennae and completely human bodies. I wanted the shell and all.

I really loved the epic miniatures design (bottom right). I thought the travel packs on the backs of their shells was ingenious, and the split looked good. I brought the split in the foot (that's what the snail body is called) up higher because I liked the idea of them being able to wrap around Jack with it. We also decided to go less leaf-armor and more modern outfits.

Maon was an absolute sweetheart and helped us bring Mia and Skye's designs to life.

And Jack's:

Step Three: The GameLit System

Ry was very kind to let me utilize the ideas he's built behind Everyone's a Catgirl! The first idea was to copy the system over into Snailgirls, but I realized two things:

1. The majority of the skills built into Catgirls won't work with snailgirls. They need constant mobility, shielding, protection, and range.

2. I didn't want to write another LitRPG where stats had to be calculated constantly and a ton of number crunching would be involved. Seriously, it's nuts the amount of behind the scenes work that Ry puts into the Catgirls systems.

As a result, while Snailgirls has an EaC! frame, the majority of it was changed. I added the bubbles for Mia's spells, and Jack's toolkit is entirely different. Skye's [Void Knight] skills are the closest example of the source material, but even her portals I swapped around a bit.

[Warp] still has a two-week cool down. Sorry, Mia.

Step Four: It's so much bigger than a one-off...

The more art we got and the more I researched, the bigger I realized this story could be. Writing the crane fight was so much fun, Jack, Mia, and Skye played so well off of each other, and that first intimate scene between them is red-hot.

I've had a blast building the world, adding in symbiotic relationships with frogs, spiders, bugs, tortoises, and more. The characters are so unique and the light-hearted nature of it all brings me so much joy.

Thank you, Sky.

Sky is championing this series in its entirety. It wouldn't exist without him, and I'm so grateful and honored to have the chance to write and publish a commission that I adore.

I hope you guys continue to enjoy the story! Thank you for all of your support. I wouldn't be here without you!

See you soon!