Post by Gaming Variety Potato in Aurorae Equitas comments

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Gaming Variety Potato2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Slowly going through some of the (possibly overlooked) Winter Jam 2021 entries, I encountered this gem of a VN. The art is cute and lively and the characters are written as authentic old-timers. The story has the right mix of nostalgia and regrets, which makes it a thoughtful little story for the winter moods.

I love the diversity in character representation and how they're drawn within the cartoony anthropomorphic animal art style. At first I mixed up the two characters until I realised which of the two is Rubina - when she brought up that she's a lesbian. Then it clicked to me how there are a lot of subtle hints that make the character designs stand out uniquely when I took a better look so I gained a new appreciation for them.

Destiny-Smasher2 years ago(+1)

Thanks so much for trying this out and leaving a comment! Representation is really important to me but I always want it to feel as organic as I can. We meet people in real life from different identities, backgrounds, etc. and I wanted to make the interactions here feel plausible and realistic - though without the typical visual novel format, the character names aren't always present on screen! They do introduce themselves early on but it can be easy to lose track of that, so if I ever revise this project, I'll probably try working their names in a bit more!

I can't remember if it's made super clear, but Ceferino is actually nonbinary, as well! I kind of based them a bit on Raine from The Owl House, though I didn't really realize that until...well, just now, actually! Rubina is actually inspired by Martin Crane from Frasier - the character is straight but the actor who played him was apparently gay, and since I only just recently watched the show for the first time last year, it seemed like a fun way to pay an indirect tribute to the late actor.

I'm actually chipping away at an original visual novel inspired by fighting games, and plan to post a demo here on my itch at some point when it's ready. Thanks again for your time and interest!

Gaming Variety Potato2 years ago

Don't worry about it, it's fine, I probably didn't pay attention at the start. For me it was briefly skimming through summary to see names where one sounds feminine and the other masculine, so I then incorrectly assumed their gender through superficial identifiers like gender expression, clothing and eyelash length. The comment is not meant as a critique/feedback, just a personal anecdote that felt oddly fitting to the story told. (Halfway I also remembered that the History log shows it with character names.)

Thank you for sharing where the character inspirations came from. It's really fun to look them up.

Yes, I only found out that Ceferino is non-binary when they explained that to Rubina. That felt very real to me, that older (queer) people still learn so much more about themselves and the world. I guess I'm low-key an old person too, haha, as I came with certain biases, and I enjoyed the subtle reminder not to judge a book by its cover!

That sounds cool about your new VN. Good luck with that!

itch.io

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