RobinHarper
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Being Fiona 331
🕑 Added 2025-07-14 04:35:46 +0000 UTCOf course, if Felix did follow Hugo's advice, we would lose half of the plot!
Spoilers below as I ponder about future plot possibilities
I recently started watching an anime on Netflix called Leviathan which is set in an alternate reality of World War 1 where there are mechs and genetically modified creatures. I bring this up because one of the main characters is a girl who is cross-dressing as a boy so that she can join the army as an aviator.
This got me thinking that it might be a weird experience for Felix to experience a VR story where the protagonist is a girl cross-dressing as a boy. It would be like one of those dreams where you struggle to accomplish an ordinary task, but the dream prevents you from doing it. But in Felix's case, he knows how to act as a boy, but the character he inhabits constantly fails at his attempts to act normal. And not only that, but his clothes never feel right, how he moves doesn't feel right, and whenever he loses focus, his voices strays into the wrong pitch.
And then the next question is, if I do add this in, where would I fit it into the story?
Going off on a 'brief' tangent for a moment, my current plan, is for Jess and Hugo to have their date night, and then jump over to Felix and company as they play Lost Desert as shown in the final panels way back in strip 176.
And then, since Hugo will be staying the night with Jess, he'll be around the following morning when Jess and Felix make their final preparations for meeting Lisa at the cafe. Originally I considered having Jess suggest that Felix simulate meeting Lisa at the cafe in VR as a practice run, but how would that work in the comic? Would I show the cafe scene twice? From a story perspective, it didn't seem like a good idea, despite practicing the meeting being a good idea.
Which is where Hugo comes in, he takes Fiona out on a 'date' for the morning, and asks her questions that he thinks Lisa might ask, and helps Jess and Felix flesh out Fiona's character and backstory.
One of those questions would be "what are you reading/watching," "what series/franchises are you into?"
And then when the topic comes up when Fiona meets with Lisa, Lisa adds the question "who is your favorite character in that story?" leading Felix to talk about all the wonderful qualities the protagonist has, causing Lisa to think that Fiona wants to be her instead of Felix wanting to date a girl like the protagonist.
Which then leads to Lisa suggesting that after her exams are over, Fiona use Sophie's VR game engine to make a game around that story, with Fiona as the protagonist, and Lisa and Craig as her pair of friends. (which Lisa doesn't realize form a love triangle in the story, MC in love with the boy, girl in love with the MC, thinking MC is a boy, boy in love with the girl).
After that we'll have the Star League convention and Superhero game I described in previous posts.
And then finally, what is the story? I could set it in World War 1 like the anime that inspired this, or perhaps the Victorian era? But I don't really have the art assets for either of those periods.
Back in strip 241, Jess found out Felix likes "King of the Rings" or rather Lord of the Rings. Maybe this story is "King of the Rings" where the fellowship is cut down to five characters (to save me from designing a ton of characters for a short story arc). And instead of focusing on the hobbits, in this version, Arwen one of the main characters and she is in disguise pretending to be Legolas (but wouldn't Aragorn recognize her?), and Lisa plays as Éowyn who replaces Boromir?
Or maybe its a different, more modern fantasy story (since Felix is more a fantasy nerd in contrast to Craig and Lisa being Sci-fi nerds). A dark lord has invaded the land, and a party of 3-5 heroes set out to find a legendary magic sword to defeat him. A princess, forbidden from joining the fight, sneaks out, disguised as her injured brother, to aid the heroic party in their quest. (I probably don't need to figure out too much of the plot, since it would mostly be Felix attempting to turn the tables on Lisa, and trying to push her and Craig together, while trying to avoid the story beats that push the MC and the boy together). What I like about this last one, is that this story has more space for a lot of romantic tension much to Fiona's chagrin.
Comments
Natalia
I agree with your brainstorming description lol
D
I say lean into "romantic tension". This is an ambitious story line... but my observation of your plot threads over the years is that your workflow has you many months in advance of the current content so you can work out the conflicts and tensions. I think your instincts to have the locally hosted custom game be clearly different from modern "reality" will mitigate any confusion between what's real and what's VR as you flip back and forth. What is complex is that you have a third world... one where characters inhabit the bodies of real people in reality. If I were to pick one genre, I think your narrative fits comfortably into the "romantic farce" genre, I guess the big architectural issues are _who ends up with whom_ and what are the practical and emotional outcomes of Felix's impulsive deceit back in Episode 20 (I had to look it up). This requires an end of the story... ... or you are creating a new genre without those specific conventions (but still having conventions). The genre could be called something like "parallel worlds romance" with farce-like elements and the tensions aren't so much within each world (where each character wears a mask) but the interface between the two... or really three: real, game and impersonation worlds working concurrently. (And there's an argument to be made that the "texting" conversations consist of yet another world that the characters inhabit, either with their real identity or masked). I'm trying to think of an analog in some other narrative/movie that explore this and I'm not coming up with anything close. For example, a lot of "parallel worlds" stories run things in some sort of "fractal" narrative based on decisions or chance in the plot and a firm sense of either looping or parallel time. I'm thinking of movies like "Sliding Doors" or "Run, Lola, Run". This is not what you are doing... although "game time" is suspended functionally from real time. I'm also struck by how there are aspects of your narrative that are like the "masked ball" where the reader knows who is who, but other characters may or may not know the true identities of your players. Again, I sense that the major genre-like thread through all of this is farce. I'm thinking about genre specific conventions now as I just finished a series of Robert McKee seminars on genre conventions and requirements. I think you are plowing new ground here and so the interaction between your story and your readers' expectations is evolving. Your recognition of the love triangle speaks to this complexity, specifically, there are conventions implicit in this new form. I'm excited to see how you explore them.
