doodles 🌷🌈✨

Magical Girl Kaneeka design ideas: "The Reaper" and "The Spider".

some thoughts, including ep 5 spoilers, below:

In her own flashbacks, she first demonstrates a willingness to turn the other cheek to others' suffering when she benefits from it, especially when it's not overt like with the revolt. She has a place in the upper class, so she defends their safety over allowing the revolution to take place because people will die as a direct result of war. But when the lower classes faced what was likely centuries of political and economic suppression, she doesn't see that as harm

Then she moves to America. She marries a man who is literally worse Robert E. Lee because of the social power it affords her. She doesn't mind the thousands of Black lives she directly endangered by enabling a man like that. The only time she stops him is when her first daughter's vision shows him taking power, taking lives, away from the white spheres she cares about.

And in the modern day? She uses a Black man to produce another daughter that she can manipulate into giving up her power. She sees her daughter--a young Black girl, so intelligent and compassionate and in love with the world, a girl who wants to take care of animals and loves nature and wants magic to be real so she can finally feel special--and fears losing control so she tries for another daughter. And for once? She fails. She has a son and she ignores him when she needs to make sure Kaneeka feels the weight of the responsibility of others' lives when it's not her job to. She coddles him when she needs Kaneeka desperate for connection. She gives him too much freedom because she doesn't truly value his safety.

And Kaneeka, encouraged by her dad, leaves. She goes to college, she finally gets out of Scarlet Hollow. And to make sure she can still control Kaneeka, she kills her husband. Directly harms someone to keep control of a Black woman, after centuries of ignoring Black suffering, or outright enabling it

She views herself as this savior but she's not omniscient and she doesn't value all lives equally. She is biased, and while her actions are rarely blatant violence, she has a hierarchy of suffering that she magically enforces. She will insert herself into events at a massive scale because of a narrow understanding of the repercussions.

Sybil Forsyth is the quintessential white woman, she smothers certain groups to maintain her own sense of the world and she is willing to use Black bodies to do it. Even if she doesn't have any conscious biases against Black people, her past and her current actions show how implicitly racist her viewpoint is. She made sure that a Black woman felt that her life was meaningless unless she gave up her entire existence for a cause that wouldn't have helped her much, if at all, had she no connection to Sybil

Each of our characters is on a personal narrative arc, which the player can opt in and out of. A romance lock usually happens during or around an intense moment of vulnerability, and is planned around a moment when the MC feels closest to a given character, though there is some variation with that.

Stella really likes you from the start, and forms quick, arguably shallow connections, easily broken if you try to assert yourself. That doesn't mean these connections can't be deepened, but that's also why she gets an early lock compared to other characters-- so you have the chance to deepen that bond, teaching her how to form a more solid emotional connection than she has in years.

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Kaneeka gets an earlier lock than we would usually do for someone whose story winds up where it does, since you can lock in before the main conflict in Episode 4. But having two versions of a romance lock means you can approach certain events in episode 5 from different directions, leading to interesting roleplaying opportunities and story routes. Her lock-in during Episode 5 is probably my favorite so far :] Tony's, too!

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Oscar also gets a relatively early lock, because the shift that happens afterward is the main arc of the relationship. Before the lock, you're drawn together because he's involved in several major turning points that are shaped by your actions, and as he says, that feels like it means something. He is at his most vulnerable here, uncertain of the future, but knowing you helped shape it.

But in the aftermath of the lock-in, he finds a new purpose, where he (often, not always) convinces himself he has to help you, and knows exactly how! And that 'how' seems to be by isolating himself and neglecting anything outside the task he seems to think will be helpful. It is designed to help the player understand the true face of his relationship with his daughter and his struggles with his own identity, something that could only be done once he let you in during that moment of vulnerability.

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For Avery, their arc requires them to be a more isolated character in general, to show the outsider nature that connects them most of all with the events of Episode 5 (since each LI gets a big decision keyed to them.) And because they are isolated, they've taken on a pseudo-personality of agreeability. They are already a relatively goes-with-the-flow kind of person, but they've also learned not to share too much of themselves with other people. This includes the player, who has to choose to purposefully include them to see the little snippets of what would eventually blossom into what happens in the middle of 5.

Because they were so closed-off, excited to be included, unflappable, it meant they weren't able to truly be vulnerable until they were involved in something that touched them on a very personal level. I'm a big fan of where Avery is going from here... I have been looking forward to certain scenes in Episode 6 for a looong time.

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In slight contrast to Stella, Reese forms quick but very deep bonds. His moment of vulnerability is a big sign with flashing lights, and probably requires the least dissection on my part, considering he seems pretty well-understood and there have been many discussions about that particular moment.

Because he just had his big moment in the previous episode, his appearance in 5 can be a little understated at times, as his arc is in the process of rebuilding itself around his new reality.

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Doctor Kelly is currently convinced she is not going to be interested in you. She has never been someone who was into relationships, preferring to stick to her work, so the feelings that may be blooming in her chest when she sees you are being ground into dust as she tries desperately not to think of you in any way but platonically.

Her true moment of vulnerability, then, is still yet to come.

~~~~~ Scarlet Hollow is a narrative game above all else, and our focus is always making it feel satisfying and giving our characters the space they need to go through the emotional journeys that best suit them.

"I only understood what you wanted me to understand. You didn't let me think any differently. Well, I'm thinking differently now! I'm getting the hell out of here, and I'm taking Misty with me!"

Kaneeka let's fight fate together!!! We will have a happy ending even if I'm in hardcore mode and can't use the Mystical safe!!!! We will get out of there Kaneeka!!!!!! Kaneeka I love you!!!!

Forfeit your individuality

No, I don’t think I will.