#go read soulsov !!!!

[victamined]

Tried drawing one of Loïc portraits (from soul of sovereignty) in pixel art !!

reference jumpscare

[winstontheiii]

i haven't really been drawing lately but finally playing the soulsov demo made my brain do cartwheels so here we are

the world's most specialist girl

[windienine]

the best game of 2024 was an hour-long visual novel demo, and i can't tell you how it ends

attack and dethrone god.

okay. oh my god. soul of sovereignty by ggdg (of lady of the shard & deltarune fame) is discounted for only a few more days, so i need to get this one out while the iron's hot.

so: i'm inviting you along on another journey. we're following a polite gentleman of the wizardly inclination (loïc) who is approached by a sickly woman in dire need (ysmé). all she requests, in her plea, is an escort to guide her to the nearby temple. his decision to support her may turn out to be the most important choice he ever makes.

... have you ever enjoyed the kind of narrative that traps two people with heavily contrasting motives and personalities together in an unbreakable contract? do you like stories of absolute devotion?

i could look at this shot forever ngl

... are you compelled by immersive speculative fantasy worlds where the use and study of magic heavily influences the rhythm of people's day-to-day lives?

(really intriguing magical linguistics system going on here)

... do you ever promise too much of yourself to others, sometimes, even when it's a bad idea?

... if it was possible -- if you could -- would you abandon your humanity for the power to change your world forever?

and, whatever you may feel in your heart about the above...

do you want to see behind the eyes of a hot trans girl as she bullshits her way into a truly volatile level of power and influence and gets everything she wants?

(+ her pet dilf lovely assistant)

if even one of these elicited a "yes," i think you'll love this story.

i'll go out of a limb:

i think, if you open up your heart, you'll find yourself falling for both of the leads. It's a game that really wants you to look at it from every angle, take it apart, and ask questions about loïc, ysmé, their stories, and what they believe to be true about the world and one another. subtext -- especially the charged subtext this story throws at you and hopes you'll piece together -- is a beautiful thing.

the number of talksprites in this demo is kind of staggering

the jrpg-inspired world of the mosaic and its surroundings is as vibrant as it is profoundly lonely, color folded into every facet of its character as you move through it. appropriately, it's really invested in a lot of questions that arise not just from high fantasy as a genre, but from the modern fantasy sensibilities of jrpgs and the interrogation of what divinity even means in a world where the gods are forces you can interact with and draw power from, however indirectly.

what can i even say? that gg and toby fox's collab score for the prelude is downright heavenly and made it onto my work playlist right alongside the deltarune ost the day it came out on bandcamp? that gg's art, especially their use of light, conveys every scene with vivid beauty?

i wouldn't be posting so much of it if i didn't want to eat every CG. oh my god. he's so pretty. it's not even fair

beyond all of that, i think the game's main resonance point with people is that gg's writing is genuinely thoughtful. they use art detail and deft character writing to convey everything about the leads, using the limited time you get with it to paint layers and layers of information on who these people are and why they make the decisions they do. soulsov's roughly an-hour-and-change of text, expressive talksprites, and lush CGs is infused with so much heart and so much horror and so much intrigue that it leaves you feeling like you're a part of this world, carried along for the ride right alongside the two leads. gg clearly really adores these two, and that level of passion makes everything loïc and ysmé do shine even brighter. in spite of (or perhaps because of) all their friction and flaws, they're easy to love.

(it's really fun to read aloud as a script, too! ysmé's a hoot.)

i hope you experience it with high expectations and an open heart. i don't think it will disappoint. it is, perhaps, just a little bit magical.

i hope you see it through to the end!

[crowdsourced-webcomic-reviews]

Ggdg is a famous face in webcomics, and a few other mediums too. The artist and brain behind works such as Lady of the Shard, Idle Divination, Undyne’s banging outfit on her date in Undertale and countless other contributions to UTDR, and their most recent hit Soul of Sovereignity (soulsov real 2023!)—but they got their start with original storytelling through the much beloved Cucumber Quest:

Narrative wise, Cucumber Quest is as the requester for this review put it about “bunny kids going on a quest to save the world”. Like a lot of ggdg’s work, CuQu is steeped in their love of JRPGs, and there’s an undeniable touch of JRPG flavour in the plot.

The comic opens with our antagonist having acquired the seventh of their eight macguffins required to summon the big bad, and later our heroes must re-collect these macguffins and fight all the disaster masters they’re associated with, and defeat the evil Nightmare Knight!!!

Cucumber Quest is a comedy and a parody of fantasy video games, but it does all this from a place of sincere love and joy. I’m confident if you asked ggdg if they they thought all the incredibly clunky, tonally dissonant kingdom hearts cutscenes with michael rat talking about the heart of the darkness to cloud final fantasy or whatever were “cringe”, they’d say “are you kidding me they fucking rule”.

Cucumber Quest is filled with jokes, but it’s never meanspirited. It pokes fun at the trappings of fantasy video games, and as it does, it goes “but that’s why we love them so much!”

It’s not all jokes though, there’s a sincere heart at the core of CuQu. Ggdg loves their characters through and through, and the story loves them too. While the setup of the story might suggest a simplistic angle of good-vs-evil like a lot of video games, it is very quickly revealed that this story is anything but. The biggest heart of the story is the Nightmare Knight himself:

The truth of his motives and why any of this is even happening, whether or not our heroes will find out the truth and break the cycle, or if everything will continue as it always has are the crux of the plot. But to hear more about that, you need to read it for yourself!! If you like sad dads though, this is The comic for you.

You’ve probably noticed by now also, the use of colour in CuQu is absolutely stunning. Everything from their big set piece atmospheric pages with deep, powerful emotions seeping from every panel as they use limited colours to create a specific mood, to the individual panels of their lighthearted pages—ggdg has a masterful control over colour and mood. The entire comic is just a visual delight, and you can pick any random page in the archive and be provided with a treat for the eyes.

Cucumber Quest it should be noted is an incomplete story. Though not wholly abandoned, it last updated in 2019. Since then, ggdg has been busy focusing on other projects—the newly released soulsov is one such project. One day, perhaps after soulsov’s conclusion, perhaps earlier, perhaps later, ggdg intends to return and wrap up the remainder of CuQu via a series of scripts and illustrations.

It was a story a bit too big for its breeches if you will: after almost a decade of work it was nowhere near reaching its conclusion, and understandably ggdg needed a break.

Nonetheless, what exists is a wonderful heartfelt story and visual delight that deserves a read and the patient wait for its conclusion some day ❤

[pallisia]

Hello! I loved playing (reading?) through soulsov and its worldbuilding and am excited for the rest. I apologize if this question was asked before, but I just wanted to ask, what inspired you to create a visual novel (as opposed to another medium)?

thank you very much. i'm sure i've answered this before, but i don't have it on hand. basically, if i had chosen to write the prelude as a comic, it would have taken three times as long, at least. vn dev obviously has its drawbacks, but being able to reuse art assets instead of drawing out every new line of every conversation from scratch is the only way i'm going to tell this story.

you might wonder why i didn't just write a normal novel. well, i don't have that much confidence in my prose to carry a story by itself. i'm also still a visual artist at heart, so i didn't want to tell it without a visual component. also, vns have music, which is a nice addition.

[ohcorny]

i need to post loic soulsov character analysis because if i don't i'll die. he's been plaguing my thoughts for *checks watch* like three to four days because we get SO much information about him and who he is in just this one nugget of the game and i'm spinning out of control about it.

spoilers for the most raw bits of the prelude so obviously go play the game first and then come back and read me ramble and make wild assumptions about this man and the direction of his character

so i have been obsessed with this (paraphrased because i'd have to whip through nearly the whole game again to correctly quote it) exchange between the voice and loic:

"Are you prepared for the world Ysme would create?" "Could it really be any worse than this one?"

and god. bro. bro. the absolute devastation necessary for this man to feel this way, about a woman who lied to him from the moment they met (which he clocked! very early on!), mugged him with a gun, SHOT him with that gun, and then when she became his ghost-god immediately realized she could force him to commit suicide by cop if she wanted. this woman did all of this to him, and when given the opportunity to just let her die--arguably justifiable given her goals and how she threatened him and the fact her death was entirely of her own doing--he doesn't. even though "don't let this woman die", a morally good thing on its face, is actually "let this violent, selfish woman become god with the ability to remake the world in her image, while also becoming her slave" and he knows it.

because to him, that's preferable to the world he lives in. your world has to be so bad for that to be the case.

and it is! his world is that bad. not the physical actual world, which yes, is harsh and cold and dangerous outside the mosaic, but his world, his daughter, in an incurable coma. there is a cruelty to somebody you love being incurably sick. to the selfish, hurting heart, it can be worse than if they were just dead. you can mourn somebody who's dead, and move on from your grief, but as long as they're still living, you're shackled to hope, constantly grieving. there is no moving on, there is only waiting for it to end. you might bargain, as loic does in his search for the flower to cure her, but it's still just waiting.

and when ysme comes into his life, he gives up on waiting. he has been haunting his own life until then, doing good at lamplight because it was within his power while he was there, but i don't think it was ever with dedication. it was something to pass the time as he looked for the flower. essentially selling his soul, surrendering his free will to ysme, this incredibly dangerous, selfish woman, is better than living as he has been. because he's selfish too.

what i like so much about loic is that he's presented as this very kind, soft, unassailable dad who wants to do the right thing. A Down to Earth Good Guy, to contrast with the chaos of ysme, but he's fucking selfish! while he couldn't have predicted the raw physical power of exalted ysme, he still knew she would receive the power to remake the world. and he still decided: fuck this world.

the natural assumption is that his kindness will balance out ysme, and i'm here for that narrative, but honestly. i think she's going to make him worse. the seed of selfishness is already in him, and he's indulged it by giving her power over him, and that must be in some way a relief. he's effectively surrendered responsibility for himself and his actions over to her. he can no longer be fully blamed for anything now that she has power over him.

and i think he's tired of being nice. i think he's ready to go apeshit.

.........and while that would make a good button to end this on, i have to mention: there is a non-zero chance he thinks she's hot and the idea of being a goddess' slave is hot. he's a grown ass man who we know for a fact HAS fucked, and while ysme was like "i thought you were a dead wife guy. i guess you still could be" my money is on divorced. my theory is lia was going over to her mom's house in that flashback.

like yes, all of that above is the main motivator, but i'm not ready to discount sex. loic wants to be lifestyle dommed. because what i just described about surrendering his free will is literally the appeal of being a sub: giving somebody else control, so you don't have to feel the weight of it. this is a story for adults about adults and it is on that le guin shit of linking a sexual fantasy inexorably to the world building and plot thrust, and i am ESPECIALLY here for that.

and i think that's everything i had to say about loic soulsov. i am exorcised. i'm better now.

[tisorridalamor]

Games I’ve been enjoying lately!!!

Soul of Sovereignty Prelude: The first beautiful, funny, clever, and dark chapter of @ pallisia’s new linear visual novel was a blast to go through and totally exceeded all my expectations. While the full piece won’t be out for a few years, this is a peak into a vast world that I can’t wait to see more of. I will be waiting very very patiently for the full story cause the level of care and detail on display shows that SoulSov has an incredible story to tell (and if you want to check out their other works, Lady of the Shard is a beautiful, finished comic the creator made that you can read for FREE right here!).

Corru.Observer: Corru.Observer is weird and it’s free and you should go play it now with no more input from me. But if you want more, it’s an ongoing neocities game/site about exploring a half broken alien biocomputer with great world building, atmosphere, and graphics. It’s part point and click, part exploration, part visual novel, and part turn based RPG. While it’s in active development with new updates coming ever few months, the creator (@ corruworks) has started working on it full time and I’d guess there’s already a good 10ish?? hours of gameplay and lots of secrets to find! Please give it a shot, I think everyone should know about it!

START AGAIN START AGAIN START AGAIN: A Prologue: If you’ve been enjoying the time loop jokes that have been going around on tumblr recently (or just like time loops in general??) you’re gonna really enjoy this. It’s more of a puzzle than an RPG (though it has turn based combat) because I think the real gameplay is in on how you approach repeating the same final dungeon over and over. I was surprised at the level of depth in the dialog/writing - seeing how the characters react to different choices and what the main character lets you do / not do makes multiple runs to see different outcomes so worth it. I think the creator (@ insertdisc5) absolutely nailed the ‘funny guy in despair’ writing. I totally plan on getting the companion / full game In Stars and Time, but waiting a bit to see if there will be a physical release :D (here is the Itch link but it's on sale on Steam rn so here's that link too)

[ot3]

hi! i love reading your analysis/thoughts/etc on media (i think i sent in an ask about kim kitsuragi way back that you very thoroughly responded to—thank you btw loved reading it!). i finally got around to playing the first chapter of soul of sovereignty—don’t want to put outright spoilers in the ask but i’d love to hear anything you have to say re ysme and loic! they truly have taken up so much space in my brain. keep thinking about a) the subtext of ysme being trans (in addition to her whole deal) and b) loic making his choice at the end of the chapter & his Big Line re the world a character will create and what that says about him. i knew i’d become obsessed with soulsov like all of ggdg’s work but i didn’t expect for it to be so outright political? i’m so intrigued by what’s to come.

thank you! i wish i felt like i had something to say here for you! but i feel like it's still way too early into things for me to really have anything coherent to say. i feel like i'm notoriously kind of bad at having complex or insightful things to say about media where not a lot of stuff is locked in yet. my first go through of anything is really just a wow! cool robot! level of engagement where i try and take whatever i'm being given. i'm sure i'll be getting around to replaying it at some point because i love all of gg's stuff so much, and once i do i'll definitely be able to form some sort of more thoughtful things to say other than 'its good'. ill try and post whatever that ends up being when the time comes !

[pizzazz-party]

oh, did you also enjoy "soul of sovereignty"?

the way this is phrased is making me think you saw my recent drawings and figured that gigidigi Must be one of my main artistic inspirations. and you’d be correct! i have been following their work since I was roughly fifteen.

but soulsov—soulsov was amazing! at times it had me terrified and gasping and tearing up, and the characters themselves feel so rich and densely crafted. ysme herself is a star. im transfixed by her, and how wonderfully complicated she is.

for anyone else reading this, go check out Soul of Sovereignty. i cannot recommend it enough.

[obstinaterixatrix]

I want to finish paper mario before going into my gl vn backlog, so after paper mario I’ll play butterfly soup 2 (I can’t believe I haven’t played it yet) and then I’ll play the moon is beautiful and then I’ll play that other one by the same person (?) because a friend rec’d it. I think I also need to replace some of my 1 hr reading manga before bed with writing in bed, and I need to play the timeloop full game… stars and something. and soulsov. I think I’ll go in the order of mario -> yuri -> soulsov -> time prison -> strikers, and sprinkled throughout I’ll backseat game pentiment with sister. maybe I’ll make sister play timeloop with me… or make her stream it for me…

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: Soul of Sovereignty Prelude (2023)

There was a time when I was very much into webcomics. Don’t get me wrong, I still am into them in theory, but I have not had energy to read as voraciously as I did before. I haven’t had time to get into new ones either. I am still fond of them, however, and keep up with a couple webcomics.

It is during my webcomics phase that I discovered the works of ggdg. I found myself reading Cucumber Quest and enjoyed it a lot! When the comic went on indefinite hiatus, I kind of lost track of what they were up to, though I have faint memories of reading Lady of the Shard.

Years later, a friend of mine told me about this game. When they linked it, I realized that wait, this is from ggdg! And the memories came flooding back. It made me so excited to play this game. Well, now I have! I’m excited to talk about it :)

What’s it about?

“Soul of Sovereignty is a tale of deadly kindness and selfish virtue in a world of magic and ruin,” says the game’s itch.io page. It is a visual novel about two souls whose fates become intertwined. They go on a journey that will be of more importance than they would expect.

It should be noted that this game is just a prelude to the whole story. Not all of the questions you will find yourself asking will end up being answered here. Also! I’ll just call it SoulSov from this point on because that’s shorter lmao

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

SoulSov is a visual novel. It shows background art with characters in the foreground, displaying text to tell the story itself. As far as gameplay goes, it is pretty simple… but I think ggdg does some subtle things here. The layout, the way the movement of the text flows with the art, there’s a few things that help with the conveyance of the story itself. I don’t really know how common it is in the genre, as I haven’t played enough visual novels, but I appreciate these small things.

The art is beautiful. Downright ethereal at some points even! I loved seeing the old yet homey inn and the snowy woods. I loved seeing these wonderfully designed characters. They look so solid, yet soft at times.

The music, I find, is pretty good and apt. It’s nice and gentle in some places, and intense when it needs to be. The sound design is also good, shifts in the snow can be heard, creaking floorboards, the howling of the wind.

The UI is good. I like how there’s a History tab so that I can easily backtrack when I feel like I missed some words. I also like how there’s a Cast section so I can easily see descriptions of the characters. I like that the Glossary section is an external way to provide more lore to the world.

Overall, I definitely like the style of this game. Beautiful art, wonderful prose, it all combines well and lets me experience a story in a nice way.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

I loved the story. I loved how the world unfolded before me, from a cold, sleepy hamlet to a sprawling empire of a city. I loved seeing all the characters, their quirks, how they interacted with each other. Most of all, I loved how the worldbuilding revealed itself. The importance of flowers, the history of certain sites, the pantheon of the world… ggdg discusses just enough to paint a picture but leaves out enough to make me want to know more.

The story takes its time. It wants you to feel the weight of each sentence, to understand each brushstroke of a painting. ggdg makes sure that each click of the mouse moves the story in an efficient and economical way, which makes for a tight story that still expresses itself well.

I have not played much graphic novels, but what I find interesting is how you can “turn the page” so to speak. When I say turn the page, I talk of how certain forms of media dictate the flow of stories. With books, you turn the page. With comics, you go from panel to panel and turn the page. With film, you frame the story with your camera and dictate the very story itself with what you choose to record with it. With games? It’s different with each genre. But for this game, each click of the mouse (or press of the spacebar) turns the page. At some points, turning the page here means it reveals each sentence when you’re ready, showing accompanying art and changes in character sprites. At other points, it reveals each block of text, revealing changes in background and introducing new areas. While describing it this way feels a bit granular, it didn’t feel too slow when I moved through the story. And I think this approach makes the important moments hit better.

Overall, the story fucks. I enjoyed it a lot!

VERDICT

I haven’t played enough graphic novels to judge this as a graphic novel, but as a game I enjoyed SoulSov immensely. The art is great. The story is great. I’m excited to experience more installments of this game and find out more about this world! I am glad to have this game be the first game I finished in 2024. I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone!

Door Rates Soul of Sovereignty Prelude: 5/5!

[pory-z]

tag 9 mutuals you want to get to know better !

tagged by @haarute ! thanks, i enjoyed rambling about nothing and everything for a while

last song - Société tu m'auras pas, by Renaud. don't make fun of me i like his old stuff, it's one of the only non-metal artists i listened to in the car with my dad as a kid. for some reason i got really into old political music lately like union and french resistance songs so Renaud fits right in. i wanna learn some of them on the guitar. i enjoy singing a lot and i wanna improve ! a lot of my irl bros are musicians so i wanna impress them (i won't but they might find the effort endearing)

currently reading - The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodricke-Clarke, although i kinda put it on hold right now because even though it's a very interesting subject matter, it's a very dense book for the attention span i have at the moment lmao

also it's not a book but i'm reading through the various documents from the french Helloween fanclub from the 90's i got from my dad, who was the secretary at the time. there's paperwork, fanzines, interviews, old merch ads, fanmail, etc. it's a really fascinating time capsule and i'm so grateful for the opportunity to access all these documents. as soon as the university opens again i'm scanning all of it. i'll translate and publish the interviews too, it's bound to catch the attention of some pumpkinheads out there.

currently watching - houseki no kuni, again. because it's just so good. i watched the dub this time and even though it's pretty good, the constant avoidance of pronouns is getting more and more awkward and it's absolute cowardice. just let the damn rocks be gnc !!

i'm also rewatching holly hollowtones's 7 hour sandwich stream, again. for the fourth time. it makes me really happy for some reason.

current obsession - i'm slowly getting back into the rhythm of getting invested in things again after a rough patch of time, brain-wise. for now there's nothing much going on and my days are kinda empty.

i started octopath 2 and it's great so far but i need the motivation to keep going. i still need to continue 13 sentinels. i guess the closest thing i have to an obsession right now is utena, since i watched adolescence of utena recently and fell back into the crazy whirlwind of analysis and interpretation. it's an incredible anime i love it so much. idk how long it will last but for now i guess it's the biggest thing in my life even though i got back into it very recently. i might rewatch the original series. or madoka, i fucking love madoka. or maybe princess tutu, i'm told it's like. utena-lite in terms of themes but turbo-utena in terms of meta-fuckery, so that's exciting !

WAIT WAIT WAIT i just thought of something i'm forever and always obsessed with : soulsov, @pallisia's upcoming visual novel. i'm so in love with the main characters loic (chill florist dad) and ysme (weird clown woman). i'm not at-ing them because i don't wanna bother them but definitely go check out their art and read their webcomic lady of the shard it's real good and not that long ok i'm done now

that was fun ! i don't have that many mutuals but there you go, feel free to keep this thing going, folks

@aymisdumb @otasunestanblog @hibiscusandhoney @cyanampersand @oldwomanyaoi @alyxtried @littleoceanbabe @pinkminimarshmallow @musecalliope

[pallisia]

reading spare parts and feeling moved by it in such a similar way to soulsov moved my heart months ago. excellent recommendation; i'm going to hunker down tomorrow and begin writing a VN.

awesome, good luck

[ohcorny]

I remember you had a little dissertation about Loic's character in SoulSov, but did you have any thoughts on where Ysme's might be going? Just finished the prelude yesterday and your post was eye-opening for me.

as per usual my recall is not perfectly fresh because i played this in january, but i think her arc/direction is fairly straightforward based on what little we Actually, Factually know of her.

and because i care more about spoilers for this than a twenty year old bad manga series, don't click through unless you've read it

we really don't know a lot of the specifics of her background, other than she is Probably closely related to the architect(builder? like i said it's been a while i've lost my grasp on the terms) since they are like, completely identical when she's not aggressively girlmoding. we know she was involved in the religion surrounding him, and that she bailed, and that people are going to be upset that she bailed. (i think. this is how i remember it)

she strikes me as somebody who was probably raised fairly spoiled, but not spoiled in the way that she actually wanted to be spoiled. do you understand what i mean. like she's definitely trans, and being raised as a prince when you want to be a princess would piss you off, right. she has a clear aesthetic and you don't develop that from nowhere, if we take her illusions and some of the extra costume art as indicative of what she'd like to wear. she aspires to power because she knows what it tastes like, but she wants it in her flavor. she's a lying, conniving little brat, not completely clueless or sheltered, but not truly prepared for the world outside. but because she's powerful she's like 'no yeah i can do and get whatever i want. i can Make a gun and effectively shapeshift. no one can stop me.'

and then she got stopped. and then so completely Unstopped that she's not going to give up.

i think she is going to have to unlearn a lot of her bullshit, because terrible people remaining terrible all the time without changing isn't, like, a Story. and with an adult like loic in the room, even under her thumb, she is going to be steered in better directions. she will absolutely make him worse, of this i am convinced, but i think he will make her better. or at the very least better at acting like she's better. i don't think she'll ever lose the brat that makes her fundamentally ysme.

i think she is going to claw and scrape and bite but ultimately i think she is going to get what she wants. it's just not going to be exactly how she wanted it.

[pallisia]

hello gg! I've gone through the prelude twice now, the second time with two friends and we took turns voicing all the lines. I had a great time speaking Ysme's. This is a compliment I've not seen crop up yet, so I wanted to say your pacing is remarkably done. I've a hard time keeping attention on most things I do or watch, especially VNs, but soulsov hooked me from the beginning and did not let go. Thank you for sharing your stories with all your heart poured in always. They're such a delight.

thanks so much. i'm always happy to hear that my dialogue is fun to read out loud.

i learned my lesson about pacing from making webcomics. i have a few regrets about how long it took cq to get off the ground, so with this project, i knew from the beginning that i wanted to get to the point as quickly as possible. i'm really relieved by this kind of praise.

also:

nobody's rakin' you across the coals for seeing yourself in my characters. the only faux pas that comes close in my book is the one or two times people told me loic looks like some minecraft youtuber i've never heard of. i'm sincerely glad they resonated with you and your friend.

[pallisia]

im always intrigued by what other solo game devs/small teams choose to share about their projects before they are released, especially w/ how easy social media makes it. some people will choose to post just about every new thing added, even spoiling key plot details, while others will keep everything a total secret, sometimes at the expense of garnering interest. i feel like with my projects, i gravitate towards secrecy to a pretty big fault. so i was curious -- do you have any sorta "philosophy" you follow when it comes to what details about soulsov you will or will not share publicly? and do you ever find it especially difficult to keep certain things secret?

i was pretty secretive about the details of soulsov at first. i wasn't even going to post that flower language comic because i thought it would be "giving away too much." my stance has softened over the past few months, largely thanks to everyone's genuine interest and excitement. (thank you!)

i was especially protective of spoilers when making cq. in retrospect, i don't think anyone's enjoyment was lessened by already knowing that the nightmare knight was nice, for example. that realization has informed my approach with soulsov lately.

the nature of loic's magic could be considered a "spoiler" because it's revealed in chapter 1. but does it detract from the experience to know going in? the audience will see him give someone a flower and go "hehe... 😏" doesn't that make it more fun? i mean, some of my friends who read the script already knew what was going to happen beat-for-beat and still freaked out. the experience is what matters most.

anyway, i guess this ties into my recent "get to the point" philosophy toward storytelling... i understand wanting to keep some secrets, but you can't be so afraid of "spoiling" what makes your story interesting that it doesn't catch people's interest. especially in the age of social media where people only have 30 milliseconds to give your post.