Hello again, everyone. 

It's been two weeks or so since the story of All in Love and War has been completed and published to everyone. I wanted to put write down this postmortem earlier but I felt like it was a good idea to wait until I saw people's reaction to the VN's ending, as I was concerned if people would react positively or negatively. I even added a question to my survey that asked what they thought about it. The reaction I received was certainly surprising to me. So today, I wanted to look back on All in Love and War, what went into making the game, what I learned from making the game, and how I'll move on forward with my future projects.

Before we start, I'd like to tell everyone that All in Love and War is in the GDWC! You can check it out here. Make sure you like and share it because it helps the VN get more attention on the website and therefore more eyes on the VN in general. I also want to warn everyone that there will be spoilers for the entire game in this devlog. If you haven't already read the game, do not continue reading if you want to avoid spoilers for the game. Without further ado, let's start.

I already mentioned in a previous devlog that All in Love and War came as a result of wanting to create a small project before moving on to a much bigger project that would take me years to complete. However, I severely underestimated how long it would take to complete the VN. A project that was supposed to be completed in 2 months ended up taking up 7 months of work. Part of this was due to weak planning (I only made one outline for the VN that I ignored after the story started to deviate from it), college, and me just lacking the motivation to work on the project. That being said, I do think the extra 5 months made the VN a better project than if I went with the original plan. I don't think we would have gotten the shower scenes, the flashbacks, the dancing scene, the epilogue, and other stuff had I rushed the game in just two months. At the same time, I was always considering adding more and more stuff and I had to limit myself or else the game would never be released. As I'm still bettering my skills as an artist and as a writer, there's always something I want to improve upon. But you just have to settle with what you think is good to get anything done as an artist. That was something I learned when making the VN.

What's the story behind Hardy?

I want to talk about the creation of Hardy. I'm sure a lot of you are interested in what went into developing this character. Well, let's go back several years or so. When I was a teenager, I thought that if you were a man over twice the age of the protagonist and you had "manly" interests like fighting and drinking (basically the kind of man I was into), you were 90% guaranteed to die in the story. It happened because I watched several anime and played a couple of JRPGs where I liked a certain older character's personality, backstory, and character design, and then they just die, so I just assumed that's how it was in all media. And that perception of young adult-oriented fiction never really left me after all these years. Because of that, I always valued middle-aged and elderly men who were respected by the narrative in fiction. So I told myself that I wouldn't kill off any such man in the stories I write. And in the projects I planned (which I talked more about in a previous devlog), I held by my word by having all the characters that die be twenty-something characters. One of the characters in the projects I created for myself was this mentor figure who did the impossible (to 14-year-old me) by staying alive throughout the whole story. That character would eventually become Jayden Jones. He'd be a mentor to both Ahmed, because they're both Marines, and the protagonist of the story. However, for some reason I wanted Ahmed to have a previous mentor figure that died before the events of the story. Ahmed would look up to this character in the story a lot and he'd have a huge presence in the story. I thought about this concept a lot and how I could make it more interesting. Eventually, I made it so that Jayden Jones slept with this previous Marine mentor before he died, and that's why he has this awkward relationship with Ahmed. I have no idea how I came up with this, but just be glad I did. As you can imagine, this character became Walter Hardy.

This character would become more prominent in my mind when I read some of Gengoroh Tagame's manga. There was at least three explicit manga he made that revolved around the relationship between a Lieutenant General and a soldier named Akashi. The manga I read were A Long Lonely Night, Run My Horse Run!, and The Vast Snow Field. The two had a secret relationship and they weren't able to see each other much, but the time they did have together was sacred and super romantic. The Lieutenant-General was this old man who I found to be hot. He was pretty anal, in both the good way and the bad way, and he was also quite submissive. The story of these two connected with me. I thought what they had was super cute, passionate even. I wanted to write a story that captured the feelings I got from reading the manga about this couple. But at the time of reading these manga, I was more interested in working on that Dating Sim idea, so I instead just created the character design for Hardy. I got somewhat attached to this character, but I decided that he would be dead at the start of the story. I mused that his story would be told through flashbacks and that you'd be able to piece out his full story by just playing one route of the game.

The first sketch of Hardy.

But as I mentioned before, people kept on telling me that having a dating sim with 6+ guys was as good an idea as smacking the ass of a buff bouncer at a gay bar when you're 160 cm tall. So I decided that it was best that I tackled a smaller project, something I would be able to complete in a few months. But I wanted this smaller project to connect to the bigger one I wanted to do in some way. Of the characters in the dating sim project, only one of them had a backstory that I thought was interesting enough to make into its own stand-alone story (At least at the time, now I could name one or two other characters that could have had their backstories made into a standalone story but I'll save that for another time). And that character was Jayden Jones. I wanted to explore this character's past and the love story he had. I wanted to tell the story of Hardy, and so I decided that it was perfect for a small project.

Hardy fulfills a character archetype I'm strongly attached to for reasons that are difficult to explain. I've had difficulties with mental health and I'm always worried that at some point I'll just lose any reason to live. Whenever someone in fiction has lost everything in their life, there's always hope that this character will still find meaning in their life, and in more optimistic works they will find it. I always held onto that idea, that you can always create meaning in your life even after it seemed like it all meaning had run out. For Hardy, his character was always about trying to clutch onto a purpose in life when everything was out to make his life hell. Hardy's constantly on the brink of losing all hope, yet he tries with all his might to make sure that doesn't happen. It's what he's afraid of. So he only faces the issues in his life when he knows he has something to live for. He acts positive and full of energy at the start of the VN, but then Jayden eventually sees the many cracks in his exterior. Characters who never break their will to live by sheer willpower are admirable to me. I want to believe that there will never be a day where I can't find a single reason to live as long as I keep trying in life. That's why I wanted to write about Hardy. The life he lived would certainly inspire others to never give up so easily. Writing him makes me look forward to writing more characters that are just as tragic and interesting as him.

However, there was one concern I had with the story. Hardy has to die at the end of the story. There was no getting around it. But I didn't want people to get mad at me for such a tragic ending. After all, I told myself I wouldn't kill off any older male characters in my story, and yet here I am, killing the exact type of character I wished didn't die so much in fiction. Not to mention, gay men are so accustomed to the tragic gay romance stories they've been given, that they don't need them anymore. The first half of the VN is pretty lighthearted all things considered, so I was worried that the shift into a sad direction would be too drastic for people reading the VN. I tried thinking of ways to make the ending less sad. I thought about maybe letting Hardy live for a decade or so before dying a natural death. I thought about ending the VN before Hardy died. But ultimately, I decided that the ending in the finished version of the game was the only ending it should have. I felt that the way the VN ended was the most satisfying and the most natural compared to all the other ways it could have ended. You may disagree with me and that's fine. I just write what I want to write, and there are no two ways about it. Yet still, I can't help but be afraid of disappointing the people who have read the VN before it was finished. Part of the reason why I wanted the entire story to be finished in the first published build was that I felt like people would handle the ending better if it was all in one package. Having the story be updated in chunks made me even more nervous. Yet despite all of that, I still decided to go with what I had.

The Reaction to All in Love and War

When I first released the 1.0 build on May 1st, I was surprised how so many people liked the entire story. Yeah there was at least one person that got mad at me, and some others expressed disappointment, but most people loved the story and felt like they wouldn't have it any other way. They praised the story and told me how it moved them to tears. Many of them expressed how they appreciated how Jayden changed throughout the story. That being said, several of them did agree with me and said that they would like to see me write a story with a happy ending. I think seeing the response I got told me a few things. First is that if you truly believe in a story, then go for it. This sounds obvious, but it's something a lot of writers often forget in their lives. Writing is fueled by passion, so you can't make the best stories if you only make the stories other people want you to make. That doesn't mean you have to stick to your entire vision. There are some things we think are essential to our story when in fact they're stopping it from reaching its full potential. That's why we show our stories to people and ask them what it could use to become the story it deserves to be. But the most important part is to keep the core of your vision, the thing that gives your story its identity. If you lost that, then your story becomes a shell of what it used to be. Another thing I learned is that you can still use old, dated tropes to make great stories. As I mentioned before, a lot of gay men have read many tragic romance stories. That doesn't mean they can't enjoy more of those stories. Is it going to be hard to make it fresh and interesting? Of course, it will be. Do we need more gay stories that don't end with part of the main couple dying? Absolutely. But does that mean that I and anyone else on the planet should never write another gay tragedy? Hell no.

What I learned from making All in Love and War

I'll be honest with you guys. I used to hate writing. It would be agonizing trying to put words on the page and I would wish I would do anything else. I'm an artist first and foremost, which means I want my stories expressed through visuals rather than through words. I was seriously considering hiring a writer for my next project after I was finished with this project. However as I continued to write All in Love and War, I started to enjoy it. I started to learn what my style is, what rhythm is good for me, and I found joy in bringing life to these characters I've grown attached. It's quite satisfying seeing the characters and worlds you've come up with being fleshed out in scenes that you have created. When I wrote the story for the VN, I felt this personal connection in having my own words being read by everyone who downloaded it. Not to mention, writing made certain things click for me. For example, originally Hardy had no previous connection with Ahmed before he became a Marine. Hardy had only a daughter. Ahmed was just a Marine who looked up toward Hardy and Jayden. Yet when I was writing the backstory for his necklace and came up with the lost child, I realized that it would make the story much more intriguing if Hardy was Ahmed's stepfather. Judging from the response I received, I believe that it made the narrative better and also made Ahmed a more valuable character. I would have never come up with this if I didn't spend time crafting their stories. Drawing will forever be my passion over anything else, but I think I'll keep on writing in the foreseeable future.

Believe it or not, All in Love and War was the first time I ever drew fully-illustrated explicit sex scenes. I have drawn explicit NSFW art before, but it was just a guy jacking off at most. I also made a few sketches of guys having sex, but I made them for fun. I didn't have any serious experience drawing sex between two people before, so it was certainly an experience being able to draw entire sex scenes complete with variations. It was also a little awkward creating enough variations that flowed with the story and making each variation look just as good as the previous one. That's why the first sex scene at the motel looks a little rough because I didn't have much to go on in making a sexy CG. I'm surprised how many people told me that it was their favorite sex scene even with the other two sex scenes. I want to make the sex in my future VNs to be a lot more dynamic, more fun, and more erotic than the sex in All in Love and War.

I think the biggest complaint I got for All in Love and War was that the relationship between Jayden and Hardy developed too fast, and I can agree with that. I will admit that the VN never goes in-depth about what their relationship was like before they got into a relationship. At the same time, I only had so much time to develop these characters, and I didn't want their entire dialogue to go on and on about their shared history. Part of the reason why it ended up like this is that I'm kind of a sucker for friends to lovers plots, and I tend to forgive those stories whenever they don't give enough information about their friendship and all that. In the future, I'll give a bigger effort to developing the romance between any given two characters.

What went into developing certain scenes?

The final date between Hardy and Jayden came about due to several things. I don't like explaining the meaning behind scenes in stuff I make because I want the reader to make their conclusions, but I want to elaborate on the date. The limo, the fancy suits, the five-star restaurant, and the dance they had before they went to their dorms were all there because I wanted to send off the relationship between Hardy and Jayden in the grandest way possible. Ahmed also mentioned that he wanted to look as good as Jayden does when he gets married. That wasn't unintentional. There was this scene in Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? where the main character and the girl he was with went into an entertainment room where you can step on little podiums and it will project a hologram that makes it look like you're wearing a costume. At one point, the girl steps onto a podium and she dawns a Wedding Dress hologram, while the MC had a Wedding Tuxedo hologram (I wonder what would have happened if they stepped on each other's podiums). Do You Remember Love? was a movie based on an anime that aired a year ago. In that anime, the girl said she wanted to get married before she died so she had a miniature wedding ceremony when it looked like the two of them were going to rot away(they turned out fine by the way). That scene in DYRL? stuck with me, because it represents what the girl wants versus what she has. That's what inspired me to make the final date what it is in the final version. A swan song between two characters before they both leave each other forever.

There were other little things I wanted to talk about. The scene with Jayden reading Hardy's will was something that was planned from the beginning. I wanted Hardy to give Jayden his last few words while also revealing his backstory, and I'm happy with how it turned out. I'm also interested in what people have to say about Ahmed. So far I haven't heard much about what people thought about him, which is unfortunate because he's what ties this whole VN and its themes together. His role as a bystander to the main relationship gives more weight to the narrative, as it shows that Hardy and Jayden want to keep their relationship a secret for fear of losing the trust of a law-abiding Marine. Ahmed also serves to contrast with Jayden as Jayden learns to be more lenient when it comes to following the rules, whereas Ahmed is strictly lawful by end of the story. One of my favorite scenes from the VN is the conversation he has with Jayden near Hardy's grave. It shows how much Jayden has changed since the beginning of the story and also hints at the possibility for Ahmed to change as well. Ahmed will be getting a lot of focus in my next project, so I hope you guys will enjoy what's in store for him.

And finally the epilogue. Now originally, Jayden was supposed to keep his job as a Marine. The reason for this was that I wanted him to stay a Marine by the beginning of the next project. However, I soon realized how this just wasn't the direction Jayden was going in the story. The whole time he's being told that he should do what he wants to do, not what he thinks he should do. There were a few things I got wrong about the Marines and I think I got away with it because I don't know many liberals who have been Marines in the past. But one of the things I think I got wrong about the Marines was the ages of the characters. The chances of Jayden being a Marine for over 20 years are unlikely considering how much he disliked being a Marine. Possible, but certainly not likely. That's not even getting into how Hardy probably would have long been done being a Marine before the story even started, but that's beside the point. I noticed these inaccuracies and turned them into their character flaws, even if they didn't make 100% sense. Jayden kept on being a Marine because he didn't know what else to do with his life and didn't want to go through the uncomfortable experience of reconsidering his life while Hardy kept being a Marine because he felt like it was the only thing that made him feel valued as a person. With this in mind, I realized that the best thing for Jayden to do is to quit the Marines and do what his heart wants him to do. That's why the epilogue takes place 10 years later, as seeing Jayden grow up and live out the life he made for himself shows us that he did make the right decision.

Conclusion

All in all, I learned a lot from making All in Love and War that I'm sure will help me out in making future projects. I'm happy to say that I think making this VN was well worth my time. I hope you enjoyed reading this DevLog and the VN as well.

See you later.