#777wms

Originally posted on October 27th, 2017

Images originally posted during late November 2018

In mid-October 2018, I came down with a rather bad bout of food poisoning, and basically remained bedridden for about two weeks. Normally, you’d say that getting really sick like that isn’t a good thing, and I’d agree. But, in this case, there was a silver lining: I had a lot of time to think about things, and in turn, came up with a way to salvage Delilah’s Tumblr.

Back in mid-summer 2018, I’d begun thinking about how we don’t get much in the way of happy families in media. Generally speaking, happiness is treated as something the protagonist needs to lose at the start of their story, or it’s something they only find right before the credits roll and the curtain falls. Defeat the bad guy, save the world, get the girl. The end.

But what if we didn’t make happy-ever-after the ultimate goal?

There are many types of conflicts in storytelling, so why not focus on something other than person vs person, good vs evil? Why not person vs self, or person vs environment?

Thus, the idea of having Delilah, a character rooted in hedonism and self-interest, deal with being a “responsible” parent. There would be no demons, no bad guys, nor a world to save. Just an average mare trying to be a good mother.

Originally posted on July 23rd, 2018 (top) and August 2nd 2018 (bottom).

After repeated attempts to revive the Tumblr had failed, I considered changing the focus of the story to get away from the Hellish and demonic aspects that had been bothering me. In this new reboot idea, the story would take place in the world of a roleplaying board game. Thus, the new characters would be based on playable characters in the game, such as the Alchemist, Chivalric Knight, and Prophetess. Delilah would appear as a snarky, self-interested assistant to the corrupted Alchemist. Additionally, to give everything a more unique theme (and keep things slightly easier to manipulate in the graphic editor I use), it would use a limited grayscale color palette.

However, two problems came up while working on this reboot. As before, I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the anthro-style puppets, which diminished my enthusiasm for the project.

The other issue was that the board game turned out to be somewhat obscure with only a niche following. Thus, playing by the rules would appear arbitrary and random, making any story or update difficult for people to follow. You see, unlike a game like D&D, this board game implements character classes by having each class follow a slightly different ruleset. Rules that govern one class’s behavior don’t always apply to another class, and if you’re not familiar with this system, it just looks like things are being made up as you go along.

Originally posted on February 6th 2018 (left) and June 12th, 2018 (right).

Originally posted on October 27th, 2016