First Q&A Answers (May) (Patreon)

Hi everyone! Here are the responses to the questions we got for this month's Q&A. There weren't that many but there are some development related ones and some story/character related ones!

I have them all divided up below by category...

Development related Questions

How long will WSC be?

I don't know if I've touched on this in some of my WSC rambles or not. But I don't have an exact number. Right now I'm estimating somewhere between 400k and 450k. And I'm planning on 11 chapters/segments (including the prologue)

When will Yuu's route release?

I am estimating sometime towards the end of Q3 at this point. I don't have an exact date and it really depends on how several difficult-to-predict parts of development go (like editing and completing the art.)

How far along is WSC right now?

It's between 70% complete. This is just an estimate based on a predicted word count for the draft. 

Story/Content/Character related

What was your inspiration for WSC?

Honestly? Scientists discovering that a black hole emits the deepest "note" of anything in the universe.

Basically, I saw an article stating this years ago. I did some googling recently to try to pinpoint when exactly I probably read this and found articles from 2003 stating:

"Black hole sings the deepest B-flat"

The black hole in question is in the Perseus Cluster and since 2003, we've discovered far larger ultramassive black holes that are probably emitting deeper frequencies.

I don't really know when I saw the article stating this but I know that I have a file from 2010 named "blackhole_story.dox" that holds the very first story concept for WSC.

When I read this article, the idea of black holes "singing" really stuck with me as a mental image. And I had the thought of "What if you could use music to go inside a black hole?" - which is an interesting speculative question since we don't know what inside a black hole. So this idea of using music to somehow interact with a black hole and go inside it is really what started the ball rolling with the setting.

The original story did involve a Veleian-like species and their technology but the MC was actually the Virtuoso of the ship. There was also a little bit of influence from a dream I had around the same time I read the article - of a fantasy world where music could be used to create magic and "wizards" were called "Virtuosos" - which is where I got that name idea from.

The idea for the space guilds also came from another dream (though it's hardly a unique idea) I had around that time where there were...you guessed it. Space guilds. So like a lot of my settings it had a flashpoint and was then cobbled together from a lot of different things.

Obviously being exposed to numerous books, stories, movies, and shows through the years have fed inspiration into the story to make it what it is.

But the flashpoint of inspiration was reading an article about a cool astronomy discovery a long time ago.

Why has Asher never heard of Veleians or the Vim Eradio if they were such major events?

First of all, it's important to note that the Vim Eradio was over 600 years prior to the start of the story. It's quite a historical event.

If I were to ask most people to name a major war from the 1400s, I imagine many of them wouldn't be able to. There are decades long conflicts during the 1400s that I'd never heard of (when I looked into it). And many of the ones I have heard of, I know very little about. I wouldn't be able to tell you much more than where they took place or who was involved. But probably not why they started or how they ended.

Many historical events are taught only regionally and in brief if they were very long ago.

I imagine the same would apply in this setting as well, which is why multiple characters are vague on the details of the Eradio. Not all the species of the main cast were even involved in galactic events at that time. In addition, the galaxy is massive and lots of events happen in it. So, realistically, I feel like students are only going to learn things that are recent and related to the region they live in.

Also, though it gets touched more on in the game, Asher's school years were interrupted by a war where he grew up. This happened when he was quite young and he never received further formal education.

The Vim Eradio isn't something that gets brought up in conversations casually any more than something like that 100 years war or War of the Roses gets randomly brought up in every day conversation today. It's possible Asher has heard of the Vim Eradio, but just didn't commit to long-term memory. Beyond that, he knows nothing about it.

The same is really true of Veleians. They've been relegated to past history and people pursue their sightings much the way people today hunt big foot or moth man. But there are so many random 'space cryptids' that, again, he's never committed the name 'Psion' to memory.

So even though he probably has heard of them before, it probably wasn't recent and he probably just doesn't really remember.

Also, frankly, he just really doesn't care enough about that sort of thing to pay attention. 

That's why

And those are the only questions I go this time around! We will do another Q&A on the first of next month.