thedogmanarchives

[thedogmanarchives]

Dialtown is the most USA-core game I've ever played. It's so fucking American that it's scary, and I've lived there my entire life! Like, this feels fundamentally tied with the game's themes and narrative, that's how extreme it is. And it's not even alienating OR nationalist?? It makes such genuine commentary? And then there's so much other shit to think about too; Dialtown has a very real identity outside this that anyone could love?

One: I am VERY impressed that you have done the USA and its people this well. I am actually astounded, bewildered, and chuffed. I've never felt so seen by a video game, culturally-speaking. I didn't even know there was a culture to see.

Two: WHY did you do that. Dialtown is like USA Culture Absurdified: The Visual Novel. What drove you to make a game this rich with American culture and ideas???

Hello!

It would've been odd for an outsider (non American) who enjoys reading up on history to make my setting nationalist or alienating. America is a country with a lot of serious issues. You can't really study how America is (and has been) internally run without facing glaring and obvious systematic issues. DT's setting is one of scarcity and most of the main characters you follow in DT are kinda just scraping by without much hope for true mobility/advancement. A lot of Americans (especially younger generations) would agree this sorta encapsulates the national mood of the country right now.

Of course, the systems that run a country don't define its citizens - many of the finest people I've ever known are American and are victims of the whims of those with power, not willing participants in this system. I could be wrong, but that's why I think the setting connected with a lot of people. We all know Randys, Olivers + Karens, people who've fallen through the cracks in some way. To them, America's spirit of self-determination isn't about individual identity - it's more "you're on your own."

Why I chose to set DT in America would be a novel length answer in of itself, but it mainly came down to history + narrative opportunity. I wanted to set the game in the epicenter of where the phone-revolution came from and Crown likely couldn't have pulled his plan off anywhere else and probably not during any other time. It had to be 1960's America.

Of course, some parts of DT are sorta universal and were inspired by the the Great Recession and what followed. I remember there was an area not that far from my house that was full of green fields when I was born and when I was a kid (and when real estate boomed), stuff started being built there. Parts of it looked really nice, not quite like anything nearby. Like the future was coming. Then the economy crashed and stuff was left sitting there, half-built for like a decade. Skeletal, unfinished buildings. DT is much the same.

There's a feeling that the city could've been something better and while things could be more equal, it does feel like there are no easy solutions to fix everything - unless someone very smart and determined somehow bypassed every safeguard that was set up to halt radical change and enacted a genius plan to somehow eliminate scarcity. It happened once and might never again.

I don't think most people understand the intricacies of stuff like global commerce all that well (myself included), but when you're sitting looking at a half built neighbourhood mere hours after speaking to a friend who just kicked out of rented accommodation and doesn't have a stable family unit to fall back on, you'd have to be a real dolt not to understand that things aren't great right now. Most people are scraping by and feel if they could just get affordable housing locked down, if they had maybe one good opportunity - maybe there's hope that things could change for the better.

The end of DT isn't really utopian, things don't massively change for the better and indeed, the town has a lot of rebuilding to do. But, a collection of lonely people are now looking out for each other and through the relationships they have, now feel like they have a place in this world. That no matter how bad things really get - they aren't truly by themselves anymore. Most individuals don't have the means to significantly advance change on their own - but you can live your life, love those around you and support others and plan for when the opportunity to affect change comes about.

I guess that's what life is, in America or anywhere else. Sorry I rambled for so long. Hope this answered the question!

[thedogmanarchives]

Is it worth archiving the few posts where Randy and Oliver are given voice acting? I know they're meant for ads... But if so, I have some links!!!

https://www.tumblr.com/directdogman/764880273687150592/mayor-mingus-plushie?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/directdogman/756375036577841152/gee-oliver-how-come-dogman-let-you-have-two?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/directdogman/757897731628023808/olivers-campaign-has-just-over-3-days-left-before?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/directdogman/755451258544996352/guess-whos-back?source=share

sure, why not! i do really love the voiced randy promo clip for the mingus plush her voice is SOOOO CUUUUTE . UGH.

im not suuuure if id consider the oliver clips on the same level since theyre a "placeholder" text-to-speech voice. i do feel like i remember dogman mentioning voice acting will be in the olandy dlc? VERY hyped for that .

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controversial question, but who in dialtown would enjoy the mint + choco combination?

Karen, canonically. Mint choc ice cream is her favourite flavour!

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hiya dogman!! i've got a little question

as far as i'm aware, you like IASIP!

that being said, was mayor mingus inspired by maureen ponderosa at all? specifically the transition-to-cat thing lol,,,

just a question i had thought up while i was replaying chapter 2 :)

Nope, but I can totally see why you'd think that. Mingus' character is based on a bunch of separate things I wanted to include somewhere in the game that wound up being all fused into one character.

Basically, when I came up with the idea of Mayor Mingus, I initially imagined Mayor Mingus as male (the name is usually a boy's name.) I had a few other project drafts that used the name (because it's a funny name) and when I found out that the name means 'tenant of a manor', I figured it was the right name for my corrupt Mayor character.

I also really wanted to sneak my cat's head into the game somewhere and figured Mingus would be a good candidate. Having the game's villain have my cat's face seemed really funny in my head.

Then I had the idea to make Mingus a woman and pitched the idea to some collaborators, and they vastly preferred Mingus' female design (instead of just looking like Crown with a cat head.) The backstory for the cat head was a way to justify why Mingus had an organic cat head in the first place and the name, along with cementing her odd relationship with her paw paw in a more visual way.

[thedogmanarchives]

Let's say, if Callum made some sort of memory in a short moment of lucidity, would the memory be stored somewhere in his head? Or would he just forget about it forever?

It depends on timing. What's happening inside his head is that the memories on his head are cycling like a film reel. The moments of lucidity Crown gets basically occur when certain parts of the 'belt' are being read. Crown can STILL form new memories, but only very occasionally. It's basically a dice roll with exceedingly low probability.

[thedogmanarchives]

Does Rebecca in dt have phone head? Or something diffrent?

Typewriter head! She had a phone head previously bc she was given one, so it makes less sense for her to have one this time around.

[thedogmanarchives]

I have a couple questions.. 🐛

1. What’s Callum’s silly level?

2. Does Karen like carrots? (my friends call her karrot)

1)Took over the united states government with his best friend + wife. pretty silly.

2)carrots are the key to befriending any horse and they turn up in chinese food. definite yes.

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Hey dogman, out of all the characters you’ve made who was your favorite to make/write? Oh and who was the hardest?

I truly like writing for all of my characters, but Callum Crown, Phonegingi + Mayor Mingus are three favourites. Stabby + Shooty are always a joy to write as well. All three characters are fun in solo scenes but also make for really fun pairings, though I know you guys haven't seen much of Crown interacting with different characters.

Hardest I think was Oliver. I had intense writer's block when I started with his route. I had basically the whole character outlined but felt something was missing, like I couldn't really see into his head? I could see him, hear him, but I was wondering how I'd write a whole route with the guy. Y'see, I'd finished Randy + Karen's routes at that point and both of them had a pay-off where you wound up learning about a core insecurity of each. Oliver isn't directly insecure in any way and I knew in my heart + soul that I was missing something big in his characterization. I knew who he was, but not why he was the person he was. The question tortured me to the point I almost scrapped the character for a time.

It wound up being his devotion to Mr Dickens and his early life stuff that was missing. Oliver has a really positive attitude, but there is a very subtle underlying sadness to him. In his route, he's doing everything in his power to save his mentor's business, knowing that if he doesn't, Mr Dickens loses out on his dream. We wind up learning later that Mr Dickens has more or less made peace with his fate but Oliver refuses to give up, vows to tear part reality at the seams if he must - if it means he can change the outcome of Mr Dickens' story.

I'm still debating how much of his early life stuff to show and what to put in the DLC vs, say, a short story, but that cements why Oliver feels he has to do anything in order to save Mr Dickens. That extra layer is why I really like Oliver and what makes Randy such a good foil to Oliver as a datable. It makes a lot of sense why Oliver is so much more positive than Randy. Oliver was exposed to more kindness than Randy and feels he has a duty to return it back to the world.

[thedogmanarchives]

those decorative fruits made from styrofoam that are often displayed in waiting rooms in beautiful vases... WOULD ROGER EAT THEM? PLEASE TELL ME.

Roger doesn't really care for fruit for the most part, so no. If you told him they were real and adamantly reassured him that they were not fake, you could probably convince him to eat them!

[thedogmanarchives]

So I know Gingi and Callum have.... some kind of weird connection or something but what I'm wondering is if younger/pre-memory wipe Callum would even like Gingi. Like considering they aren't super interested in being a productive part of society I wondered if Callum would dislike Gingi for choosing to be "useless"

Definitely not.

There's an important thing to acknowledge in Crown's backstory: Crown was seen as different/expendable and it influenced how people treated him. This influenced how he thought, governed and even bled into the town motto: 'All are welcome here in Dialtown!

I think Crown'd have a lot of sympathy for Gingi, especially from chapter 3 onwards, recognizing its value to the town and the people around it. Crown tends to root for the underdog and takes issue with how society itself is structured. Crown would view someone who's willingly unemployed as not an individual failure, but a systematic one. An identifier of a society that has failed to find a niche for many of its citizens.

[thedogmanarchives]

hi dogman!! last night i was doing some research and realized various government/military projects like MKUltra (1953-1973), the Edgewood Arsenal experiments (1948-1975), and Project 112 (1962-1973, so it would have started during Callum's presidency) would have taken place while Callum was in office. i'm curious, did he condone these experiments or help lead them at all, or did they not even exist in the dialtown universe?

With the exception of certain technological advances (many of which happened even sooner, like the moon landing shifting into the early 60's), the general rule for anything from 1961 to 1965 is that it happens roughly 4 years later on the timeline. (Operation Northwoods, for instance, was shifted later into the timeline as Cuba + the Bay of Pigs happened a term later amidst Crown's chaotic tenure as the head of the UN... Which led to JFK getting an earful from Crown.)

Ofc, Crown had his own weapon development initiatives during his term, which are a whole other topic.

Funnily enough, MK-Ultra is actually something I've considered. Yes, it still happened, but research died down during Crown's term since he pulled people from the project to work on other projects. He did voraciously consume (not literally) all of their available research/findings during one of his late night binges, which hilariously means that Crown knew who the Unabomber was before he even was the Unabomber. Sorry, strange side-note.

A few other projects were also temporarily dissolved, with some being brought back after his term ended and the rest discarded entirely.

[thedogmanarchives]

Marla Crown facts:

A little known fact is that Marla Crown was also disabled, like her husband, and Mingus' iconic cane belonged to Marla (sans the cat head, which Mingus added in the same way she added the concrete cat head to Town Hall.)

In her early days, she was a journalist/radio news reporter and was instrumental in getting Crown elected as the mayor of Dialtown. While it's possible Crown might've found a path to success on his own, what he didn't expect were the workers who flooded in from nearby towns looking for work, hearing about him from Marla's radio broadcasts where she depicted him as pro-worker, someone who took care of his own, come hell of high water. In many ways, you can attribute the start of Crown's political movement to her.

She believed in Crown's mission with the same ferocity that he had and in the early days, pushed him to harden his rhetoric and seek out the best outcome regardless of the cost. The Crown saviour narrative was her invention more than his.

She was particularly close to her husband's best friend and vice president, Milton R. Wallace and balanced out Crown in more ways than one. Aside from her generally smart advice, she was the only person in Crown's life that his honeyed words never worked on.

After the end of Crown's presidency (and doubly so after his memory was erased), Marla's post-political career was quiet and withdrawn. Having to raise a kid on her own and being legally responsible for the husk of her husband was enough stress for her, especially with a turbulent conscience. For decades after her public life ended, she was occasionally hounded by reporters demanding information from her about her husband.

While history books are kind to Marla Crown, coverage of her at the end of her life was unfairly negative due to the timing of when she withdrew from the public eye. Since it coincided with the end of her time working with Crown (and she returned to a normal civilian life), many pundits assumed that Crown had carried her with him and that her work in his administration was something he granted as a token courtesy.

Archives of her early broadcasts of her Crown interviews were buried when Crown became a national candidate (to not polarize the electorate with Crown's harder socialist rhetoric), so a lot of her early contributions are lost to history.

Most frustratingly of all, a novelty arcade machine was mass produced and sold to funfairs/arcades nation-wide. Fitted with a crystal ball, an outfit resembling the vibrant hue of purple she often wore and dubbed the 'Madame Mediocre Clairvoyant' (sharing its initials with her), these machines can occasionally still be found around the country, often in rundown places (due to a catastrophic programming error that rendered the machine basically unusable.)

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mingus question number a BILLION. i think you've . mentioned her father a lot but i havent heard much of mingus' mom ! is there any information about her that you have or has that not been thought about a lot yet ? :-) also how tall is mingus . what is her height .

Mingus' mother is a mystery character because she wasn't in Mingus' life and Mingus' feelings on her aren't positive (she was really only close to her grandmother.) I might get around to writing that short Mingus story soon now that the DLC's out (as a warmup for the Olandy route!) Been meaning to post more short stories, I just also don't wanna dump too many lengthy text posts on here.

What do you guys think? I've definitely got a few more of these in me.

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Hey hound silly question here. Which of your characters could you beat in a fight?

I'm confident I could beat: Randy

I think I could beat: Jerry, God, Stabby, Shooty, Roger

50/50: Oliver

I'd lose a fair fight with: Norm, Theoroar

I'd be annihilated by: Bigfoot, Mayor Mingus

Not included is Gingi (who fights very dirty but isn't actually that physically strong. I have no clue where I'd place this thing) and Karen, who is too powerful for me to even mention (outside of this sublistual paragraph.) Thank you.

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Do phone heads have sensitive cords/dials/buttons and stuff

To some extent, yeah. For buttons/dials in particular, they're kinda like fingernails (or tortoise shells) in that they're hard material without nerve receptors, but they sit over flesh that have nerve receptors. The sensitivity would depend on how the head's internally configured and what the buttons/dial is sitting on!

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Not sure if this has been asked before, but what kind of head would Dialtown Satan have? ⁽ᴾᵉʳˢᵒⁿᵃˡˡʸ, ᴵ ᶦᵐᵃᵍᶦⁿᵉ ʰᶦᵐ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᵃⁿ ᵃᵗᵃʳᶦ ʲᵃᵍᵘᵃʳ.⁾

I'm actually not 100% sure, since I've gone back and forth with a few designs I've really liked.

First design I considered was an AM radio, which he'd use to play songs that he thinks people hate (but usually failing to get a rise out of anyone), but I'd probably go for something with a screen if I showed the character, so I could use it and give his design a visual parallel to God.

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heya hound! if callums presidency ended in 1965, how come he had the means to send norm to space in '66?

Oh, huh, I thought I'd changed that line. Did I forget to patch it?

Short answer is, he didn't. The timeline shifted slightly while I was writing Dialtown (when I came up with other events and realized it worked better if I shifted stuff around slightly) and that line wound up getting missed on revision. The revised year is 1964, so final year of the Crown presidency. Norm missed the finale.