The PAFL That Never Was. Part 1: Characters

Behind the Scenes. August 2023

A lineup of early character designs made before the first video

Hi! This is my first ever Patreon post:) 

If you’re reading this, I couldn’t be more grateful for your support. Thank you so much! I assume you’ve found me through my PAFL vocaloid series and joined in part to learn more about its lore and characters. So talking about how PAFL itself came to be seems like an appropriate way to kick off my posting history!

Short intro

Parties Are For Losers is the result of many unrelated characters and ideas gradually amalgamating into one world – as is the case for many such projects.

Because of how long it’s been, I won’t be able to show much of the early materials, particularly old fully-fledged artworks (and there were a bunch). So alas, in parts we’ll have to make do with old sketchbook photos, artistic recreations and imagination.

This is gonna be a long read, so strap yourselves in.

Another early (and very messy) character lineup. Why is Dima's nosebleed a constant

Anya & Dmitry

The main trio of Punch It, Punk is probably the oldest character group in the cast.

The very first version of Anya. Recreation

I drew the first Anya when I was around 14 myself – sadly all images of her oldest iterations have been left in Belarus.

I wanted to write a murder mystery story where each character corresponded with a Zodiac sign (you’ll never guess what I was into at that age), and Anya was Saggitarius. She was a cool girl, chill and reasonable, way different from her current personality – although her base design was very similar.

Compilation of old Anya doodles circa 2016-2018. She used to have freckles

A little later I got overcome with teenage angst and made Anya a much angrier Asuka-like character. This iteration was a lot more similar to her PAFL self, although she was a bit older, significantly smarter and kinda sadistic.

I had a very edgy story in mind: a wannabe murderer looks for a camgirl to kill on 4chan’s /soc/ and actually manages to have one agree to a meetup. But when he sees her for the first time, he instantly falls in love. The camgirl, on the other hand, turns out to be the more violent one of the two. As you’d probably guessed, the killer was proto-Dima.

I remember when the End of the Fucking World series came out - I was shocked at how similar it was to that idea, though by then I’d already moved on from it. It was actually a bit uncanny, but hey, edgy minds think alike.

Main characters from The End of the Fucking World

By that time, Anya was still as angsty and violent as ever, but gained a more prominent manipulative streak. A lot of her negative traits from this era later migrated to Yura. Dmitry turned into a regular runaway kid from an abusive home named Denis.

His personality wasn’t especially different from his current introverted self, though he had none of the snobbiness and all of the “scared dirty dog ready to kill in self defence”. At his core, he was actually a pretty normal teenager and a victim of circumstance.

Still awkward and quiet, but more athletic – I remember one of his old character notes was “likes jogging”.

Dima/Denis sketch from around 2017

The main story of Dmitry and Anya started to form around that time, with him rescuing her from alleyway thugs, getting beat up, and then nurtured back to health at Olya’s place. There was even a "running away from home" subplot planned for them. Though, it would be initiated by Anya as opposed to Dmitry.

Olga

Olya changed in small but significant ways since her first appearance - sadly, I don’t recall the exact specifics of how and why she was designed. Her calm and unbothered self floated between miscellaneous story concepts from drama to sci-fi until landing in the vicinity of the two angstiest children on earth.

Compilation of Olya doodles circa 2016-2018. Note the two fully functioning eyes

If Anya was Asuka, she would take on the role of Misato, packaged with all of its problematic undertones.

Olya was a younger character, somewhere in her late teens, but the behaviours that version of her portrayed were inappropriate nonetheless. Nothing overt, but still enough to feel uncomfortable. It was very much intentional, but I don’t think I had enough life experience to handle such heavy topics with a proper degree of maturity.

Colour block jacket Olya. Recreation (not sure how accurate, but it looked something like this)

As I developed the characters into their current selves, things got a lot more digestible. Olya kept her dissatisfaction and self-worth issues, but became an actual adult that the kids could rely on.

In terms of design, the biggest change was probably her ditching a colour block jacket that was very similar to the ones worn by Dmitry and KT. And gaining a big ol’ hole in her head, I guess.

Sanya

Much like Anya, Sanya came from a very edgy place. Her thing was being a yandere in a VN that had all the girls be messed up in some way - a revolutionary concept for my 13 year old brain.

First version of Sanya and her sister. Recreation

Sanya’s story was surprisingly similar to the current canon when boiled down to its bare essentials: an albino with an overprotective older sibling that brings in a guy to help with homeschooling, whom she subsequently gets way too attached to. That’s where the similarities end, though.

Sanya’s personality was less tomboyish, though she still had a rebellious streak: she snuck out of the house at night without her sibling’s knowing. Said sibling was a red haired older sister – I think I saw Haruko Kamio screaming in the rain in some AMV and got inspiration from that. I never even watched Air, but that image stuck with me somehow.

Haruko Kamio from Air. Haven’t seen this shot in 10 years prior to googling it for this post

The sister’s character was kind of a Mary Sue in that she was the popular girl with a dark secret: working a bit too hard for the sake of her sibling. 

The main route would have Sanya gradually get jealous of her sister and the MC regardless of the player’s actions, ending with Sanya beating her sister up with a metal bat. I guess the choice of weapon originated from there, now that I think about it.

Sanya variations. Recreation

I grew out of that VN concept pretty quickly, but Sanya's character stuck with me. Visually, the design was pretty bland all things considered. For a while I wasn't sure about what to do with it, trying to spice it up with overalls (yes) and a different hairstyle, but nothing felt right.

Compilation of old Sanya doodles circa 2016-2018

In parallel with trying to make her design work, I developed her teenage gang leader persona. If I remember right, it was inspired by Hachi's Panda Hero - you can attribute the bags under her eyes and me keeping the bat on her to it.

She was a more aggressive and jaded character, far better acquainted with the criminal underbelly of the city. She was even meant to act as a minor antagonist to Dima and Anya at a certain point, though I'll get more into that later.

Baseball Sanya drawn around 2017

I finally started to get a feel for her design after drawing her in baseball gear; the cap and the ponytail just looked right. Around 2018 I doodled her as a gopnik girl with a samurai-like silhouette - and that's when I knew: yes, that was it!

Gopnik samurai from 2018

When the first song of the series just came out I still had more of her old personality in mind. But then, as I thought more logically about her surroundings and backstory, her softer side emerged.

I always had a bit of a problem with her old character being too tough and street savvy for a young girl that spent most of her life isolated from her peers. Granted, she was slightly older in her previous iterations, but it still didn't sit right with me - she didn't feel like a proper result of her environment.

I think a lot of the character changes I implemented were of that sort: less angst for angst's sake and more consideration for what made them the way they are.

Sergei

Sergei was a very loose continuation of the overprotective older sister idea I had way back when.

The gender was switched mainly to give the sibling a more imposing societal and physical presence - it could not be someone Sanya would be able to even remotely compare to in power and it could not be someone she could easily relate to. It created a bigger surface-level rift between them.

Old Sergei design. Recreation

From the start, his character was very distinct from its first iteration, if you can even call it that. The first Sergei ever rocked a buzz cut and dressed like the shadiest man you'll ever meet, though his personality was fairly similar to the one we know today.

Still stern and restrictive, he had a much colder aura around him. It was hard to tell if he actually cared for Sanya and Olya or not, since he came across as very emotionally withdrawn. I frequently imagined him in front of computers, always, always working.

If the current Sergei is a tough character to love, his old version would give him a real run for his money. Extremely dry, uninvolved, in a sense almost robotic, he wasn't especially fun to either write or watch.

Sergei and Yura from 2017

Interestingly enough, he and Yura were initially closer in terms of age and maturity. As a result, they had a more friendly relationship, treating each other more or less as equals. Wild how that has changed.

Sergei and Sanya doodle made before the production of the first video. First time I drew his new design

Sergei got a redesign not long before me starting work on the first episode to better fit in with the rest of the characters and to make him look less like a dark blob. He also became notably more emotive and protective of the people he cared for, which gave him some very much needed endearing qualities.

Here’s a silly tidbit: for a long time his name was Victor, but I changed it to avoid Yuri on Ice jokes. Really didn't need those associations between a teenager and a grown ass man.

Katya

Doodles from around 2016. First Katya I’ve ever drawn (left), and a coloured one from the same year

Katya changed little both in terms of design and personality, though her powers took some time to figure out. I always imagined her as this happy-go-lucky street urchin that had something deeply wrong hidden under the surface, a great evil of sorts.

Katya from around 2017

For a while I didn’t have a clear concept of what that evil would be. It was something to be hinted at through strange throwaway lines or expressions, but never direct action. 90% of the time she would behave exactly like her current self, but in some scenes she’d say or imply something that would follow an almost inhuman kind of logic or morality.

It’s still a very interesting version of her character to me, but back then I didn’t know what to do with it storywise.

Katya doodle from 2017

One of the ideas for her brand of monstrosity was heavily inspired by Saya no Uta (skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to get spoiled on it).

For a while, Katya wasn’t even meant to be a child, but an eldritch being disguised as one. She would be a large mass of flesh that only visually appeared as a little girl to humans. But that was difficult to implement, considering she wasn’t meant to occupy a singular space. I wanted Katya to freely roam the city, yet she wouldn’t be able to fit in confined areas or rooms that were in any way crowded. It just didn’t work logistically unless I wanted to make her abnormal nature obvious from the get-go. Plus, it did feel all too similar to SnU.

Transformation scene from Akira

I had to change my approach. After watching Akira for the Nth time, I got an epiphany: she should just explode into meat, duh! Figuring out how her mutation worked really helped with laying out the initial plot and character dynamics, it was basically the moment at which PAFL as a whole began to take shape.

Plus, while Katya’s overall disposition didn’t really change, she gained an actual moral core and aspirations, i.e. things that naturally come with being human. She also gained some mildly obnoxious traits by virtue of being a 13 year old (no offence to any 13 year olds reading this, that's lyfe).

All of that made her more “protectable”, which wasn’t even remotely applicable before and worked great for pushing the story forward.

Yura

Not counting Sergei’s trans journey from anime girl to brooding square, Yura underwent the most radical changes out of the entire cast. He started out slightly older, being around 19, and was named Lev.

Compilation of prep Yura/Lev doodles

He began as a preppy kid that got entangled in gang wars because he wanted to spice up his life - you know, as all of us do. He was a kind of straight man to Sanya’s and Katya’s shenanigans, while also adding comedic relief by trying to be prim and snooty in the least appropriate of times.

He wasn’t particularly interesting and didn’t feel organic in any serious context, so he was almost completely redesigned after Katya’s concept got more fleshed (lol) out.

Compilation of Yura/Lev doodles after the personality change. Most of this iteration's drawings were digital and are now lost

Lev became a more relaxed and street smart character, gained Anya as his little sister and took up smoking. His mother being a prostitute and him preparing to be a stalker also came in at that point.

He was more mellow than the current Yura, being closer to Sergei and Olya in terms of maturity than to Sanya or any of the younger characters.

He was still a very troubled person. Him being somebody who parties non-stop to drown out his sorrows was inspired by Минотавр, a song by Петля Пристрастия (the Spotify release is from 2019, but it was first dropped a couple years prior). The design of Kafka (the demon girl you see in the Miserable Story of My Destruction) was also fueled by this song.

Sanya and Lev's first meeting. Recreation, duh

Lev and Sanya’s relationship was very different, considering he already met her when she had earned herself some street cred. He pushed her to create a new gang, which later evolved into Tsar, Arthur, Ivan and Yana.

As a result, the power dynamic wasn’t as clear cut between the two, though Sanya still apparently held some reverence for him for reasons I didn’t come up with.

Lev wasn’t meant to be a main character at all. He was an important piece of the puzzle, but was by no means the focus of the narrative. Though I’ll get more into it in the next post.

Design sketches for the first PAFL video

The great shift from Lev to Yura happened not long before I started working on the first video of the series. I redesigned him to be more in line with the two girls – the trio had to look good together.

Plus, I never particularly enjoyed his button-up fit. It worked for an older and more collected version of the character, but since I decided to make him a couple years younger and several times messier, a loose-hanging jersey felt more appropriate.

A lot of his old self was still very much there during production, at least in terms of the character development that was planned for him afterwards.

I was still unsure about which direction the overall story would go, so I had to operate on the general notions I had already set up: poor family, prostitute mother, stepford smiler, smug, partying to forget, loose gang ties, stalker in training. Enough to suggest depth without actively digging.

Side note:

Why did I change his name?

Lev is a pretty rare name, and sounds almost pompous in Russian, meaning literally ‘Lion’ and being associated with Lev Tolstoy. I thought it was fitting for his preppy version. However, it didn’t work for his rougher devil-may-care self. Yura, on the other hand, always sounded fun and casual to me, while at the same time being neither too overplayed nor too unusual.

I also try to pick character names that are relatively easy to pronounce for foreign audiences, mostly ones that are easy to read for those familiar with romaji – so the majority of Vocaloid fans. Yura, Nikita, simple names ending in -nya, avoiding Zhs, Gs, and Js, things like that.

This is also part of the reason for why Denis got changed to Dmitry/Dima – Dmitry fit with the XT naming convention for mutants, and it’s pretty hard to pronounce Dima wrong. Denis, on the other hand, would often be read as the western name Dennis despite its slavic counterpart being pronounced closer to Denise. It would avoid needless confusion, and frankly, Dima’s “dim” sound is a lot more fitting for Dmitry’s quiet character.

Scrapped mutant

You’ve probably seen this one if you’ve dug deep enough into my tumblr archive. This white haired boy was meant to be a mutant antagonist who, if I recall correctly, despised humans.

Scrapped mutant artwork from 2016

His character wasn’t especially well defined aside from being generally unfriendly and humourless – sometimes he had a colder personality, sometimes he was more of a hothead.

In a way he fulfilled a similar role to modern Dmitry, what with being very powerful and having a superiority complex, as well as some connection to Katya. At a certain point he was even considered as a version of Lev/Yura who had changed radically after going to the Zone.

In the end, as Dima took on the role of a runaway mutant, the inclusion of this guy became unnecessary. His white hair also made him look too similar to Sanya despite having zero relation to her, which wasn’t a great idea from a design standpoint.

Compilation of scrapped mutant doodles circa 2018

Maybe one day I’ll use his design (albeit a little tweaked) for something, but the current PAFL storyline has no place for him. Sorry, lil fella.

***

I think this is about all I can say about older character versions and their development. As you've already guessed, the story that was initially intended for the series was quite different as well.

But this post is long enough as is.

Next month we'll continue with Part 2, where I'll talk about how PAFL was supposed to play out before it became a music video series. Thank you for reading Part 1, and I hope you'll find the next one interesting!