Behind the scenes: The SLARPG Prologue Comic

Instead of talking about the game, this month I'm shifting gears to talk about the other big piece of the SLARPG story - the prologue comic by myself and Kyle Smeallie! Let's get right into the story of how I sat on this script for years before it finally got turned into a real comic.

Conception

"The Offer" was conceived very early in SLARPG's development, with the first draft of the script being written all the way back in the spring of 2016, shortly after the game was announced. It's so old that Faith didn't have a design yet, and Beverly hadn't even really been worked out as a character - which is why she only makes a tiny cameo in the final comic. (I would have liked to include more of Beverly, as well as more of the residents of Greenridge, but the comic was already long enough and had enough characters to introduce.)

The idea behind the comic was to have something that could exist to promote the game on social media and give people a taste of the writing, but that would also stand pretty well on its own as a cute little queer love story with a beginning, middle, and end. I'll readily admit that my assumption that having a tie-in comic is just A Thing You Do when you make a video game was influenced by the fact that I grew up reading Archie Sonic. At the time I was also becoming obsessed with Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, so I felt very inspired to write my own comic with fun, snappy, characterful dialogue.

Because the game was planned to start with Melody and Allison already dating and the Novas already being a guild, this meant that there was ample room to set those things up in a prologue comic. And so I got to work on a draft which largely resembles the final product, but also features some key differences.

The early drafts

The very first draft opened with Melody walking into Greenridge and giving Allison The Whacker. I quickly realized that this was unnecessary, and there wasn't enough of the other main characters in the draft, so I inserted an opening scene about Claire and Jodie trying to convince Faith to approve of their new guild. It was initially written to take place in Faith's office, but I later changed it to take place in Diamond Square amidst the mess made by an unseen monster battle to make it more interesting and better illustrate why Faith is distrustful of Claire.

Opening on Claire, Jodie, and Faith before shifting focus to Allison and Melody is a less extreme version of my fixation with doing a bait and switch with who the actual main character is, as previously discussed in my post about the game's scrapped opening. We focus at first on characters who are already adventurers, then it's revealed that this goofball Allison is more the focus with Melody being her sidekick, and THEN we follow Melody home and realize that SHE'S the real character whose inner life we focus on, despite being the least likely hero of them all.

In general, it was tricky to balance introducing the characters' personalities and relationships efficiently - the comic needed to remain pretty short, unlike the meandering conversations in the game - while still making everything sound natural. For example: originally, in the scene in the woods, Allison looked at the guild charter and said "Wait, is that... Jodie signed up?? I thought she was supposed to be the responsible one, how was she your first volunteer?" This was changed to simply "Wow, you really did talk Jodie into it" so that it didn't come off as the characters explaining each other's personalities out loud to the audience. A lot of individual lines were tweaked like this. The explanation that Jodie chose to form The Novas with Claire in part because she felt it would be awkward to work for Faith also wasn't mentioned, as that was a character detail I figured out later.

(Fun fact: I remained indecisive on the guild name "The Novas," inspired by the star symbol on Claire's tabard, for years. I kept a list of the places where it was mentioned in the game in case I ever decided to change it, but it was ultimately set in stone by its use in the final comic script I sent to Kyle. Because it was finalized at the last minute, I'm not sure I actually used the guild name anywhere prior to the release of the prologue comic, mere days before launch.)

Then we come to the big moment: Allison says she and Melody are "practically married," which sets everything in motion. (She originally said they were "practically dating," but "married" sounded more impactful.) As some of you will already know, this comes from a very personal place, as it was inspired by how Anthony and I started dating in 2014. It was one of those things where Anthony started joking that we were basically in a relationship, doing things like sharing various images in our friend group chats and labeling them "me and Bobby." I played along because, deep down, I liked the sound of it. (I imagine Melody and Allison did the same thing for a very long time before they figured out they were in love, driving all of their friends crazy.) Then, at the climax of the comic, Allison asks "Are we dating?" This is a direct quote of what Anthony asked me in the fateful Skype call when we finally cut the bullshit and started dating for real.

The most significant little story detail that changed

The first draft of the dinner scene at Higgledy Piggledy's has a few more differences than prior scenes. For one, Melody was going to arrive late and spot Allison across the restaurant, drawn from Melody's POV in a very sparkly shoujo anime style to illustrate how hopelessly smitten Melody is for her. (If you're an oldhead who remembers where I previously used this exact gag, congrats: you've unearthed the truth about the prologue comic's ancestry.) The Whacker was also referred to as "The Fwoosher," because I guess it made a FWOOSH noise, and Allison's story that immediately gets cut off as a joke was supposed to be about her getting The Whacker to turn into a gun.

Perhaps the most significant changes in the script, to me at least, were in Melody and Claire's one-on-one sequence. It's literally just a few lines, but they would have changed a lot.

In the first draft, Melody says that Allison is "probably straight," and Claire shuts this down by saying that Allison is "the gayest person we know - and that's saying a lot." This was another thing drawn from my own experiences, but it just didn't really make sense for the characters. Allison is very obviously and openly gay, as are all her friends, and it wouldn't make sense for Melody to not know that, even if she's really just trying to make up excuses for why she shouldn't ask Allison out.

This was quickly changed in my second and third drafts, where instead Melody worries that Allison might not be interested in dating a trans woman, and Claire counters with "You know Allison's not like that." This was just a can of worms that I didn't need to open for a lot of reasons - the way it feels way too heavy for the rest of the comic despite only being the focus of two lines, the way TERFs would be able to twist it if they decided to target the game, and, again, the fact that it just doesn't fit the characters. Allison had always been Melody's biggest cheerleader throughout her transition, after all, which is even mentioned in this draft.

As such, that stuff got cut entirely, and Melody just sticks to worrying that Allison doesn't really like her back. Some have nonetheless suspected that, in the subtext of both the comic and the game, Melody's self-consciousness may contain some internalized transphobia that she's working through. While I made it a point to say that Melody is comfortable with her body, there are certainly many things with Melody and Claire that will read differently to a trans audience, even when they aren't outright talking about being trans. For this reason, I tend to describe them as characters whose narrative arcs make them both allegorically and literally trans.

The confession scene

Wait, isn't there supposed to be a monster fight in here somewhere? Where's that? Well, actually... it wasn't in the early drafts! I just had the detail that The Whacker was going to accidentally change the weather, forcing Melody to stay at Allison's place for the night. How exactly they got to that point was left vague, a problem for Future Bobby to figure out later.

At some point I did decide to add a climactic monster fight, tying it back to the monster Claire and Jodie had defeated off-screen. It felt important to give the comic a little action, especially for the sake of helping convey why Melody is about to decide she could be an adventurer. It became her first big heroic moment, the first foreshadowing of the hero Melody would ultimately become in the climax of the game. It's kind of important! But I didn't actually write that scene until I was finishing the script for Kyle. I hadn't even decided on what kind of monster it would be - for a long time I thought it would be a tar elemental of some kind, but I realized that I was probably subconsciously ripping off the sludge guy from the first episode of My Hero Academia. Instead it became a giant slime. Sludge and slime are totally different.

Because the slime fight was finalized so late, it ended up being extremely short and condensed, taking up just under two pages. In a perfect world, it probably could've been longer, but the clock was ticking and the comic was already longer than I originally thought it would be.

Anyway! The confession scene at Allison's place! It was originally COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

Melody: Why did you say that, anyway?
Allison: Say what?
Melody: That we're "practically dating"
Allison: Oh God, I'm sorry. Is that why you've been so tense? I just meant we're, like. Really close, y'know? I'll stop if you want me to.
Melody: No!
(Allison finally notices the way Melody is looking at her. Melody looks away)
Melody: Um, I mean... oh, Allison, you're too good to me. You're fun to be around, and you're always so supportive, and we just. We get each other.
Melody: So, when you said that, I guess I liked the way it sounded.
(Melody covers her face)
Melody: Oh God, that was weird, wasn't it? I made this weird. I'm sorry, Allison, let's forget this ever -
(Allison puts her hand on Melody's shoulder)
Allison: I'm mega gay and I think we should go out
(Melody stares at Allison in surprise for a moment, then hugs her very hard. They're quiet for a moment.)
Melody: So...are we...?
Allison: I think we basically already were.

Yeah I just kind of hate this version of the scene and totally rewrote it a few years later lmao

In the final version, instead of starting off with things being tense, I opened with a much lighter moment reminding us how well Allison and Melody get along. The tension from the dinner scene has dissolved since they're just happy to be okay following the fight, and Melody gets a chance to make her own "joke" about the two of them being a couple. (She also gets her first moment as a "healer," even if it's literally just her putting band-aids on Allison.) This, in turn, prompts Allison to just cut the shit and ask if they're already in love. We'd already seen Melody's point of view in the comic, so here we get to see Allison open up about her feelings and reveal that deep down she's just as much of a self-conscious mess as Melody. Meanwhile, Melody gets to be more indirect about her feelings, which is truer to her character. The final version feels much more real to me because... well, again, it's based in large part on the conversation where Anthony and I started dating.

And then there's the last scene with the two of them in bed, setting up the plot of the game, which I nailed down relatively quickly. The little discussion about the bright light from the tower was supposed to include Allison saying "that's why my rent's so cheap," before I realized that I had probably ripped this straight from Netflix's Daredevil. I considered changing the point of discussion entirely, but I couldn't think of an alternative and I liked the idea of the tower creating very rosy lighting in the afterglow of their first kiss.

I also considered tacking on one last tease with Claire working on the blueprints for the Basement Dungeon with Fortuna's spellbook nearby, but this felt like the wrong note to end on - too much of a mid-credits stinger type scene that shifted the focus away from the central love story.

And that's the script! I then proceeded to sit on it for six years.

The magic of collaboration

The script and the looming need to make the damn comic (as promised via a Patreon goal) were a big source of stress for me for a long time. The thing is, I'm just not really a comic artist. I don't have much experience with them, and I'm an extremely slow illustrator in general. As I got further and further into work on the game, the thought of having to set aside an entire month or two just to draw the comic filled me with dread. I kept telling myself that someday I'd be confident enough with drawing these characters to finally start, but those comic-making skills never magically materialized.

I considered a few alternatives over the years, hoping to lessen my workload while still getting the prologue story out there somehow. Maybe I could keep the comic relatively sketchy with limited colors, or I could turn it into a short visual novel, or I could even scrap the separate prologue altogether and tack those scenes onto the front of the game. But none of these felt right.

As the finish line approached in 2022, I accepted the truth: I would have to hire an artist. Anthony very generously offered to pay for this to help promote the game, because throughout 2022 I perpetually had less than $200 in my bank account at any given time. Anthony, Bee, and I all immediately thought of the same person: Kyle. I'm still so, so glad he was available. I've been friends with Kyle for years, but I'm also a big fan of his webcomic Softies, which is what made me think he'd be a perfect fit. (He'd even already drawn members of the SLARPG cast a few times before!)

Kyle has already posted process material for the entire comic over on his own Patreon, so I won't steal his thunder here, but I did want to share my favorite page from the thumbnails:

Kyle's impact on the end product really can't be overstated. Tons of individual acting choices for the characters were his idea, including a lot of my favorite expressions. There were very, very few places where I felt the need to change anything, because he just got the characters immediately. Framing choices like the way Melody's flashbacks are presented within the panels and the way Jodie pulls Allison out of the shot were Kyle's idea. The designs for The Whacker, the slime monster, and even young Melody were also Kyle's, based on relatively simple descriptions from me. The cameos of Pepper and Brittney in Higgledy Piggledy's were his. And, most importantly: the idea that Allison would ironically buy a fishing T-shirt, then wear it to bed in the last page, was Kyle's. Truly, where would Allison be as a character without the "wishin' I was fishin'" shirt?

With such great lineart to work off of, I was sure to put a lot of love into the colors to really make the comic shine. (I was also heavily inspired to push myself by the extremely impressive coloring work being published in IDW Sonic at the time, particularly that of Reggie Graham and Nathalie Fourdraine.) Most of the palette is taken straight from the game to help it "feel like SLARPG," but I played with lighting in different scenes to fit the mood. The warm glow of the interior of Piggledy's at night, the rim lighting in a few shots, the way the cool nighttime palette is interrupted by extremely saturated backdrops and bright lighting when the slime monster appears. Uncharacteristically for my art, I also used a soft noise brush to give the backgrounds a little more texture, which I think turned out looking really nice.

There was one thing I changed, though. I originally gave the first few pages a subtle layer of "sunlight" lighting coming from above, which I thought might make it look more like a "professional" comic, but I felt like it was washing out the colors a bit and clashing with the sky gradients.

It was certainly stressful coloring comic pages into the wee hours of the night during Beta week, right before launch, but I'm extremely happy with how everything turned out. It's kind of a dream come true for my game to have a tie-in comic like this.

Other random notes:

• Kyle's original files are named "slarp01," "slarp02," etc.
• Allison was originally supposed to be Whacking a dead tree, but I didn't want to introduce her as someone who's mean to trees. Now instead she's a menace to barrels and crates like any good video game character.
• While never addressed in either the comic or game, my explanation for where The Whacker went is that it ran on a limited reserve of mana, which was depleted when Melody cast her big weather-changing spell.
• This one's a spoiler for the game, so I'm hiding it behind a ROT13 cipher: Guvf jnf abg ng nyy vagragvbany ba Xlyr'f cneg nf ur qvqa'g xabj guvf fcbvyre, ohg V YBIR gung gur ebhaq funcr bs gur fyvzr pbirevat gur Sbeghan fgnghr ba gur svefg cntr znxrf vg ybbx zber yvxr gur funcr bs Ireran'f unve. Vapyhqvat gur Sbeghan fgnghr naq Zg. Fnccub ng gur fgneg bs gur pbzvp jrer vagragvbany sberfunqbjvat ba zl cneg, ohg V ybir gung rkgen yvggyr ynlre.
• I chose to interpret Melody's plain undershirt on the last page as the mint green shirt from her standard outfit in the game, creating a sort of "fashion arc" for her in the comic. She begins the comic wearing very neutral colors and an outfit completely different from her paladin gear, then tries to dress up to impress Allison and incorporates some of her accessories from her game outfit (but her proper shade of green is absent), and in the end a central element of her "true self," as it were, is revealed from underneath her prior outfit.
• Allison wearing jeans in bed is very funny to me. That wasn't in the script it just ended up that way
• I almost didn't wanna name it "The Offer" because I found out that name was taken by a Paramount+ biographical drama about the making of The Godfather but literally who gives a shit
• In 2017 I quickly did an MS Paint mouse scribble to get down my original idea for the establishing shot of Melody and Allison. It looked like this:

And that's it for this behind-the-scenes post! This one ended up being a LOT longer than I expected, but hey, the comic's a big deal!

As always, thank you for your continued support, and if there's anything y'all are interested in hearing about in future breakdowns like this, let me know! And be sure to keep your eyes peeled for something special from us during Pride Month!