viv·i·sec·tion

noun - the practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research

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SO, WHAT THE FIG IS ALL THIS?

Hi! Hello. This blog is an archive of the work I'm doing for a fangame based on the Deltora Quest series, as well as a testament to my supermassive levels of autistic hyperfixation. I am a grown man with a full time job, and this project is purely one of passion with no profit involved, so the going will be slow. I'll be posting sketches, thoughts, and eventually animations and gameplay here. But we're nowhere near that point yet. If you're interested in the project or have suggestions for me, please reach out!

THE GAME

Deltora: Vivisection will be a free open-world* version of the original 8 books in the Deltora series, wherein the gems can be collected in any order, and many events will be altered depending on player choice and the order in which quests are finished. It will be part visual-novel, part JRPG, with tons of original art and frame-by-frame pixel animation. When will it be finished? When will the demo drop? I have no idea.

*There will be limits - I'm not a AAA studio. But there will be plenty to explore.

THE CREDO

Though there will be some minor rewrites, the goal is to be as faithful as possible to the original books. Even as a child, I found the anime lacking. I craved blood. To make up for this, I want to create something that would make my younger self go completely insane, while appealing to the now mostly adult fanbase and expanding on ideas I felt could be explored further. We're keeping the blood, we're keeping the terror, and we're also keeping it clean.

THE TEAM

Meeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (With help from friends for designs and ideas. Full and specific credits will be present ingame.) (My name is Miles btw.)

THE PLAN

PRE-PRODUCTION PAHSE:

Concepting ✔️

Outline ✔️

Character Designs (In progress)

Creature Designs (In progress)

Dialogue/Event Scripts (In progress) - Forests of Silence ✔️ - Lake of Tears ✔️ - City of Rats ✔️ - Shifting Sands ✔️ - Dread Mountain ✔️ - Maze of the Beast ✔️ - Valley of the Lost ✔️ - Return to Del ✔️ - Midpoint Revision/Edits ✔️ - Ranesh Sidequests ✔️ - Shopkeeper Dialogue ✔️ - Environmental Interactions ❌ - Inventory Item Descriptions (In Progress) - NPC Dialogue (In Progress) - Final Revision/Edits ❌

Talksprites (In progress -- MAIN FOCUS) - Neutral Poses/Color Layouts (In Progress) - All Variation Sketches ❌ - All Rough Colors ❌ - Final Versions ❌

Environment Art ❌

Sprite Art (In progress)

Animations ❌

Sound/Music Sourcing (In progress)

Combat Mechanics (In progress)

UI Design (In progress)

DEVELOPMENT PHASE:

God Forgive Us All ❌ (We'll cross that bridge when we get there.)

DOWNLOAD THE IN-PROGRESS SCRIPT HERE!!!

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Been writing optional dialogue for Neridah and I'm a little obsessed with her now. She's so enchantingly rizzless

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Lake of Tears has been uploaded!!!

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Was going through old sketches and got jumpsacred by these concepts for SOD-era Lief and Jasmine. Imagining Jasmine does actually start caring about looking presentable but is exclusively interested in aura farming with menswear and Lief grows his hair out as an homage to his dad lol. And the facial hair is to cover up the worst of the scarring from the Masked Ones incident. It's still pretty visible over his right eye though. On the bright side I would think that having a king with some gnarly facial scars would lend Deltora a certain aura factor on the world stage.

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Since we're on the subject just a random PSA about my character designs for Deltora: growing up I knew a lot of mixed and/or white-passing native american and hispanic people, and that demographic spread is sort of the image I had in my head when designing a lot of the cast. Which like. Is very US-centric and doesn't really make sense if Deltora is fantasy Australia, but because Deltora is about what it's about I just wanted to specify that the paler character designs I've done aren't necessarily intended to be European 😅

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With the exception of Neridah. My Neridah is definitely a category 5 white woman.

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Bloody and haggard crawling across the ground. Next ep of the DS game is done and will be up tomorrow.

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Since we're on the subject just a random PSA about my character designs for Deltora: growing up I knew a lot of mixed and/or white-passing native american and hispanic people, and that demographic spread is sort of the image I had in my head when designing a lot of the cast. Which like. Is very US-centric and doesn't really make sense if Deltora is fantasy Australia, but because Deltora is about what it's about I just wanted to specify that the paler character designs I've done aren't necessarily intended to be European 😅

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Barda is Italian

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Modern AU Barda has like very mixed Mediterranean heritage but Min is divorced on bad terms and doesn't really gaf about her own family tree so she just told Barda they were Italian and now he says he's Italian. And he's not even that Italian. He's mostly Albanian.

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Assigning like actual real world ethnicity headcanons for Deltora characters is tricky since like the tribes are mostly Their Own Thing. Feel like it would be kinda weird to assign one specific culture to them. Most of my own designs are kinda pure bullshit mixed with inspo from a hodgepodge of real life cultures. So take the following with a grain of salt BUT ☝️

Lief: I've seen a lot of people interpret the Torans as east asian but I'm gonna extend that to south Asia as well and say Endon is [undetermined Mediterranean ethnicity]/Hmong and Sharn is Indian.

Barda: See previous reblog^

Jasmine: Doom is Pakistani and Anna is indigenous Australian (though I don't know enough to be more specific tbh I should look into the history of pre-colonial Australia). No particular reason, just basing this on how I drew them.

Steven: also indiginous Australian. Extends to QB and Nevets obviously. Dad is out of the picture so they don't gaf about his side of the family.

Glock: Mongolian/Polish

Tom Ava and Jack: I have always very solidly envisioned them as white-passing Oneida people (probably because of where I grew up) which is like very out of place if they live in Australia. So fuck it they're American and run online storefronts lmfao. Jack is an overt grifter Tom sells regulated chemicals (literal chemicals for chemistry not drugs) on the dark web and Ava is the only etsy witch who genuinely Has Powers.

Lindal: Genuine mystery. DNA test came back 100% Big Apple. She's never even been to the US. (Real answer is Icelandic.)

TSL: white guy who constantly brings up being like 2% native but about being Maori (Dorne is New Zealand in this scenario)

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Barda is Italian

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Modern AU Barda has like very mixed Mediterranean heritage but Min is divorced on bad terms and doesn't really gaf about her own family tree so she just told Barda they were Italian and now he says he's Italian. And he's not even that Italian. He's mostly Albanian.

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Barda is Italian

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I figure that the parents of the Deltora kids had them young since that's kinda just how it Was in ye olden days but looking at it as an adult I'm just like damn Anna and Sharn should have been at the club...

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In a modern AU Jasmine isn't Like That because of trauma or anything it was just the natural result of being raised by a woman who shows up to goth raves in a tshirt sweatpants and flipflops and a guy who blasted System of a Down every morning driving her to kindergarten.

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Writing more npc dialogue. I've really been trying to go easy on OC content but I wanted Lindal to tell a story about her childhood and there are no canon characters I can use for it... And I accidentally made the one I fabricated unbelievably cool 😅 Sorry guys.

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Crazy how I made a full 3 hour video essay about my opinions on the anime and I'm still coming up with new shit to say on the matter.

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... I wrote a short followup to my video essay about my thoughts on the manga 🙈

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Crazy how I made a full 3 hour video essay about my opinions on the anime and I'm still coming up with new shit to say on the matter.

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Min is kinda more of a plot device than an actual character but I honestly think her portrayal in the anime pisses me off more than anyone else but Jasmine. Said it in my video essay but the anime couldn't even let a woman die for the sake of other characters. Then they had to add salt to the wound by making the tragedy of her death all about Barda's vapid revenge plot instead of what it is in the book - a case of a woman being ignored by the men in her life until it's too late to change anything. Let's all drill holes in our skulls to ease the pain.

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I don't know if it was intended to be read this deeply into but the gendered undercurrents of Min's whole situation are not lost on me. The way Jarred in the prologue views her as an overbearing nag. The way she's referred to as being a huge gossip. Her association with menial labor considered to be women's work. Her subservient power dynamic to both her surrogate and literal son - a monarch and a soldier, both masculine archetypes. The way Barda later mirrors the exact thing he looked down on by putting himself in a vulnerable, nonthreatening social position in order to gain information and fight against the political forces that killed his mother. The way he knows that the note in the cabin was a fake because of what Min told him all those years ago. But rather than her death being a slap in the face for both of these men and a turning point in their worldview, rather than being a figure whose actions have continued to protect her loved ones from beyond the grave, the anime just glosses over all of it. She's a prop for Barda's turbomasc revenge and honor plotline. It's fucked. It's so evil. It's literally so fucked up. Hello? Can anyone hear me??

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Doing my part for feminism by overanalyzing irrelevant female side characters the same way fujoshis make up backstories for background men.