Black redesign and some thoughts

So, I have decided to completely redesign one of the characters in the game. "Black" started out as a wolf character and an antagonist. One of the very earliest versions of the script has "black" as a wolf character that the protagonist meets while in a kind of jail. Black beat Red up pretty badly, but it felt wrong. The story was clumsy, poorly motivated and problematic so I dropped it. 

I kept the idea of "Black" but made him a small house cat instead of a big scary wolf (the big scary wolf became Gray). I made Black a good-guy, a supporting character, and I made a different character the antagonist. I made him a secret character you would have to work to find, so I wanted his story to be interesting.  

- Patrick, that's a pickle

Yet even after that change, I have still been troubled by how to portray Black in the game for over a year now, maybe longer. I started not even knowing there was a problem, then having it pointed out to me but to be honest I didn’t really get it. Much like Patrick here, I understood the outcome but not the process. 

The way I understood the problem originally was “Black the character is coded black in the game and is portrayed as a caricature, this is offensive and needs to change, you as a white guy can’t really fix that, you need to get a black author to fix it and make it more authentic so it’s not offensive”. This was wrong, but that’s how I understood the problem at the time. 

So I hired a black author, they did a great job of making some minor edits, making the writing itself objectively better, but that didn’t fix the problem. I knew the problem remained, but I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t until one of my collaborators pointed out the problem wasn’t inside the story, but outside the story and challenged me with a few questions that I realised I could never fix the story by having someone else make a “more authentic” rewrite. 

The central question is “why”. Why did I create the character in the first place?

So, why did I add Black to the game? It basically boils down to me wanting to have a vulnerable character that needed to be rescued from the jail. Everything about Black was written to lead up to that single moment in the story. His entire design was surrounding that single payoff. 

Now, of course, this wasn’t entirely conscious and it took ages for me to realise that this is what I had done. Once I realised it though, I cringed a bit and it instantly became clear this had to change in a big way. 

This explains why Black was coded black. As I wrote about a character that would end up in some kind of jail, I came up with a sympathetic backstory for him. A difficult past which was not his fault. A broken family, systemic prejudice against his species, and, of course, a mother who abused catnip. - What can I say but "Yikes".  

- Don't get me wrong, he's adorable, but this design is problematic. 

It also explains why once Black gets “rescued” by Red I don’t really know where to go with him. His purpose was to be rescued, not drive the story or have his own motivation. So why would anything happen after that? It also explains why he doesn’t have a sex scene. I tried to write a bunch but they all felt wrong. 

So, I have thrown that all away. Most of Black's story is getting a re-write. 

I am honestly still learning how to do this properly, but I can see some clear things. I don’t know if I am qualified to do the fixing, but I think I need to at least understand this so I can properly commission someone to do the fixing.  

Firstly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with Black’s stated motivation in the story. I won't write about it here because of spoilers, but I can keep his motivation in the story intact but just make it stronger.  

The wrongness comes from my motivation, not his, and by extension the motivation of Red. Black is a prop or a tool for Red to feel good about himself, for the player to feel good about themselves, not a character with his own dreams and aspirations and his own sub plot. He may as well be a literal cat, a puppy or a bag of chips. 

Secondly, Black’s backstory is entirely gratuitously “kick the dog” unnecessary. I wrote it to make Black more sympathetic, so we would feel sorry for him. But why? What we’re missing is understanding Black’s motivation. Why is he here? What does he want? What are his dreams and aspirations? These are things I honestly hadn’t thought much about and I need to think about them more. 

Thirdly (and I am keen on feedback for all of this). There’s nothing inherently wrong with Black being coded black… as long as it’s for the right reasons. Creating a “black” character to rescue him from prison is objectively bad writing. Creating a “black” character to explore how someone feels in a culture that is systemically geared against you? That seems interesting and worthwhile to me. 

So, armed with those realisations, I would like to have another go at writing Black. If you don’t think I have the right end of the stick, I would love to have your feedback. 

He's now modelled after French resistance fighters:

And he gets a beret because a black cat in a beret is cute:

He's a lot more sure of himself and yes, of course, now that he has more of a personality, he's going to get a sex scene. 

Thank you everyone for your continued interest and patience with me. I hope these changes enhance your enjoyment of the game.