Kaleifable

"What does someone like me have to say, thematically?"

What if I made a local level design memento, with themes?

As I'm creating backwards against Kalei's way, in order to truly enjoy the process, and so actually create something...

z w e i

-- This story came to mind, something I feel that only I can tell, or at least, a theme that couldn't be backed up in this way w/o the past 27yrs of my life behind it.

Project Motivations

• Focus on world design > level design
• Enjoy toybox dioramas process > gameplay-1st
• "Open up" world via SoB onward, Zweibles, et al
• Cover even the half-baked plots like SoLoop
• Randomize/androgynize gender in a low-cost scope

Project's Theme: Zwei

• what Zwei represents, to Twila vs. Kalei
  • Twila's chasing the concept
  • Kalei's chasing the character
  • Both becoming kayfabe reality, as accepting Zwei is something Twila likes the idea of more than enjoying realizing it as a creation <=> Kalei's origin doesn't actually exist in this world, making her a paradox not unlike others in SoB... and yet, in this act, and in rejecting Kalei's way, Twila is finally actually creating and enjoying it <=> Zwei exists...?
• i.e. Twila accepting another person isn't going to come along to unchain him from his own mind and inner world, supernatural or otherwise

1. Linking together LVL1 -> LVL2: what Kalei is to the cast, and vice versa. The cast are the afterimages of their games, i.e. their original conflicts having reached a "happy ending" of no longer being there. However, in this post-finale realm, there are many things they can no longer return to.

2. What this means for Kalei: her ability is ultimately to be the opposite pushing force to Twila's -- for lack of a better term -- nonsense. In this case, that's the core of these series in themselves: the consequences resulting from a focus on the meta aspect of characters, creators, and players' relationships with one another.

- So the plot really first starts when Kalei's original story of encountering the ghosts of stories past in her performances begins to happen in Kaleifable. For example, Sara appearing when Sam is in the crowd.

- Over time, this then becomes the ability not to simply deny deaths of characters who are important to others in the cast, but to remove the "self-awareness" and return the cast who did make it to the post-finale world back to their stories. For example, Rintaun going back to his fable because of his existential incompatibility with the world around him. His identity was tied up in being able to move between worlds, a game that can't truly exist in our reality beyond one's imagination.

- Ultimately, Twila here concluding it is best to go on no longer creating people with self-awareness of being characters -- though Twila and Kalei aren't able to do this for themselves. It is in this way that Twila/Kalei remove the chains in the ending. Twila accepts it is a catch-22 fault of the "Why I Design to Reify" mindset, and that this game in itself was the best compromise he could find, despite even it becoming troubling to find things for everyone to do -- relying on that same nearly 2-decades old interview method to give each person a world they could be in together. The arc is ultimately "think about it, but don't think everything into nihilism." The escaping of a 20-year long trap by admitting defeat, saying thank you and goodbye. (Think Angel Beats, but Tenshi is Kalei. But unlike Demiana before her, she's not just arriving for one person.)

3. However, this should be underlying the simple motive to make Kaleifable straightforward: she simply seeks to find a person (external conflict), but over time realizes everything and everyone is imprisoned behind this problematic meta-conscious mindfulness (and her attitude toward that becomes her internal conflict, seeing how not just Twila but her goal Zwei manifests the heart of that, as now does she herself).

4. The key antidote to all this painful existentialism is time's passing: it has been 5 years, and a large portion of the cast have resigned themselves to - wouldn't you know it - providing entertainment to resist that existentialism. Just like Kalei's performances. Just like Twila's creations.

Point of View Character

Kalei

Motivation

Exploring the world in order to come across information that will help find Zwei, Kalei seeks the character in the way Twila seeks the concept, before realizing the idea was enjoyable more than making.

... but Twila not reifying it means the Zwei who Kalei has in mind is but a fable. More specifically: a kayfabe reality - now SoBelief'd.

Personality

Concepted as the inverse of Twila's creative faults, Kalei actually makes things. Actually lives out the "just do it, don't overthink" idea distinct from Twila: it's all the advice will ultimately conclude, and yet saps the ability to enjoy the process -- Kalei instead thinks with her actions over to a reckless fault perhaps?

Origins

Penned to be the first thing made by ZweiC after their freedom from ZweiP made them slowly lose humanity - and gain gradually more and more of the opposite in all its many varieties. But Kalei as the first to drop from ZweiC is simple: a semi-humanoid, but not a dragon girl as in her kayfabe story origins.

A Story of Stories
Worldbuilding

Yueenchi+++

Premise

A pixel diorama toybox for each story within SoB, etc. The FABLES of the world building are SoB's kayfabe realities never reified. This is the finale world where SoBelief's cast now reside, aka HTML5 Karashan, but X years since Streaming <3 and Mono Poisoner. Those deceased appearing in more mystical encounters.

Delivering on the "<3 Your World" as heavily as I can.

Delivering on LVL2 of the worldbuilding psychology via overlap with #sob-tai.

Closure to the 2 decades this world has given me. Even if I don't reify them, this suffices as a send-off (the most "me" I've been).

The Conservatory

Reference 

1. The scenes in SoBelief structure it > trying to find a real How's Moving Castle music school building
   • The post-AELL sleeping pods
   • The mess hall
   • The grand performance hall: a surprise to Kalei who reports it to her troupe excitedly only to be met with uncertainty from both Kalen/Sam and from Anna/Nicholas because of DJ vs. Rintaun (opening door to Anna talking about DTwila, and her "quasi-host" experience for Twila)
   • The practice rooms
   • The control room
2. Ref imgs online often feature almost-bay windows, think on how to mix that with below?
3. 1 dynamic focus per area that begins opening up the Kalei play context = the "tumbling" form of movement from Instrumentalist - ref here is the castle playset I had always liked to play with by turning on its side or upside-down
   • Vocalist hiding behind water areas not a fan, concerned it might draw Doria/Rose/Lawrence/Seth to them (although Vocalist-Seth might be good)
   • Sam/Victor wants to bring it back secretly in hopes of revealing the AELL chamber room again
     • Kalen's watchful eye, b/c he wouldn't want Merie to return - but also vexed b/c Yuri is gone so he can't rely on her wisdom/strength either