On Despair Stories

Stories have shapes. This should be a surprise to no one in the literary field. Typically they look like wave patterns; rise, then fall, rise then fall, etc. building up to the glorious climax. The truth is that this pattern doesn't just apply to typical stories you could read in a bookstore, but porn as well if it has anything more than a token plot.

Of particular interest to me is something I call a "despair" story. The point of those stories is that the bad guy wins and everything ends up terrible. These are different from tragedies in that the victim(s) often are not at fault at all. None of my games are really despair stories, but they're essential to a lot of adult content out there. It's important to know why we enjoy them.

An AI recently gave a basic overview of these patterns in an article. For the sake of convenience I'll post it here.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/the-six-main-arcs-in-storytelling-identified-by-a-computer/490733/

These are the story types:

1. Rags to Riches (rise)
2. Riches to Rags (fall)
3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise)
4. Icarus (rise then fall)
5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise)
           6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall)


The ones of particular interest to despair stories are 2, 4, and 6. These are stories that end on a down note. They also end on a kind of twisted up note. Whatever perverse plans the villain has have succeeded. Be that mind break, brainwashing or what have you.

Let's break these down a little bit more. We'll start with the Riches to Rags story. This is the quintessential "invaded kingdom" story. The story goes like this: There's a kingdom with attractive lady knights and/or princesses and it's invaded. The invaders win and the story starts. These stories are always ramps simultaneously both upwards and downwards. The female characters are slowly degraded and lowered in status over the course of the story. That progression effectively IS the story. It only ends when the heroine has hit rock bottom. It's also going upwards in terms of sexual content. While they typically start with sex or rape of the main character they then move onto public humiliation, violating the character's friends and often monster sex. They generally end with some sort of public gangbang.

That's not the only story that uses it. In the Erotic Mind Control writing community there's a pretty typical story. There's a girl that's unpleasant to be around, she's brainwashed and the sex is steadily ramped up along with the mind control until she's essentially a meat puppet.

The common theme here is the humiliation and despair in defeat. Someone is flawed or fails in some way and is punished for it. Perhaps the person is blameless, in which case the focus is on evil simply having its way with the innocent. The joy here has several layers, not all of which everyone will experience. First is sympathy with the character; like we watch horror films to feel fake horror as we self insert into the roles of the protagonist, many watch despair flicks to feel this fake despair. Second people can sympathize with the villain; for them this is a rags to riches story. The lower the princess goes the higher the villain is buoyed up. This split-narrative is really important to despair stories. Unpleasant joy mixed with despair create a unique sensation in the viewer some will like. The point of a genuine evil villain winning is to tinge any sympathetic joy with disgust or horror. It makes the sympathetic sensation of "victory" bittersweet.

The second type of story is Icarus. Generally speaking the theme of these stories is hubris and punishment. This is the Taiminin Asagi type of story. You've got very powerful heroines. Maybe they're sentai or magical girls or ninjas, but they start off the story from a strong position wiping out weaker foes. They embrace their power and confront the villain. The turning point is generally hubris. The heroines underestimate the villain or the villain has an unforeseen trick the heroines might have avoided if they were less contemptuous of their opponent.

For instance in Kangoku Senkan the characters Lieri and Naomi are stuck on a ship with a crew actively trying to turn them into sex slaves. They successfully fight off the entire ship and the villain, but the villain turns out to have been hiding knockout gas canisters beneath his shirt. From there it's like story one; a long slow ramp of humiliation and escalating sex scenes while at the same time the villain's status keeps going up. For them the story is usually the Man in a Hole story. Commander Bowgun, for instance, the villain-protagonist of Kangoku Senkan starts out having just gotten out of the prison Naomi and Lieri put him in. They have weapons and authority on their side; for him it's an uphill battle against powerful opponents.

Again we see how the story is split. Another layer of all this is Schadenfreude; these stories often go out of their way to ensure than the female victims are rather unpleasant people to start with. All the more reason to see them punished. Not only for the hubris but also for their character flaws. While this should bring the reader closer to the villain the villain is often despicable enough that they're not even slightly sympathetic even when they should be in the narrative. The joy of seeing those who have done wrong punished is tainted by the villains perversion and nature. Yet a common theme here is also that the victims flaws are not worth even the slightest fraction of the punishment they receive. The punishment is always, by nature, unfair and disproportionate.


The final story is Oedipus. We all know Oedipus, of course, but it's a tragedy. A despair story isn't usually a tragedy because the events that happen are usually outside the victim's control. Tragedies are, at their core, watching someone fall due to their own flaws. The Oedipus despair story is different. In them characters fall because outside forces (the villain) make them happen. They need not be passive victims but it is futile. They are doomed from the start.

Perhaps the best example of this I can recall is a mind control story called Radio Flyer. Now while the story is much too lighthearted to be thought of as a despair story it would take almost no effort to tweak it into a story that would be.

In it, the main character develops a mind control device and brainwashes various girls. A councillor discovers this and helps the girls resist and break free temporarily. The villain is almost defeated. Then he overcomes their resistance and gradually breaks the councillor's mind using the same method she protected the girls with. The girls in the story follow the pattern. Low as they're enslaved, high as they're freed, and then low again as they're re-enslaved, more tightly than ever. And again it's the opposite arc for the villain protagonist. Low before the device, then high after he gets his harem. Low again as it goes free and he's on the run, but it once he defeats his nemesis he's back on top again with everything he could ever want.


Understanding the patterns of stories is essential to writing them and I'm particularly fond of the despair genre myself. They have a pleasing duality to them that's both a greasy kind of wonderful and terrible. They're unusual stories in that the villain and the heroine often get equal screentime. They're erotic but also tickle the part of us that feels the drop starting when a rollercoaster tips over the hill. We want the dread and misery. We want the joy of evil triumphing over good.

Why? Because we've all suffered unfairly at the hands of forces outside our control. Be that slow lines at the DMV or the victim of a hurricane many of us know the feeling of unfair pain that we did nothing to cause. We've also seen villains win before. Real life doesn't mandate good always wins like a Saturday Morning Cartoon series. Moreover sometimes all of us are a little evil and we like it. Essentially this is just a way of freeing the id and doing whatever you please without regard for the consequences, something every single human being has dreamed about at various points. So you combine them. The joy of evil's triumph and the despair of the innocent violated. The point isn't to cause you to feel real pain but sympathetic pain and joy. Nor is it something so crude as to "show dem wimmenz what fer" or anything like that. Though misogyny is a big part of this genre it's a part of it because degradation is part of the downward spiral. And indeed, nothing keeps this story from having a female villain and male victim, or a villain and victim of the same gender.

Things like this are a part of how the human mind works. To learn how to deal with fear we set up fake fear simulators and call them "horror stories". To learn how to deal with despair and our own dark impulses we seek out stories like these. Some love them because they imagine themselves the villain; others love them because they imagine themselves the victim. There's nothing wrong with either side for so long as it remains fantasy no one is harmed. Indeed, those who go in and read these stories may emerge refreshed and better able to deal with life's unfairness and cruelty. We're not evil creatures but we're not wholly good, either. From time to time even the best of us loves to see a little evil.

Japanese cross-promotion!

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Cross Promotion!

Hey all, you may not be familiar with one of the most fun parts of being a game maker: talking to other devs and doing cross promotion.

I talk about other games on here from time to time but not as much as I'd like.

http://pervyfantasyproductions.blogspot.com/
https://www.patreon.com/Pervyfantasyproductions?ty=h


Pervy makes RPG's like The Last Demonhunter and The Order of Light and a few others. They're VERY different games from mine and might not meet your sensibilities. However if you're looking for something a bit different from my rather vanilla sex focused maledom style you should take a look at their stuff.

I also wanna give a shout out to HentaiWriter, the maker of Future Fragments. HentaiWriter has been an absolute awesome dude since the first time we met. He makes some awesome stuff. He also hired Drew, who did some work in Overwhored to work on Magic Matchup's art. I think you'll find a lot in common between our content.

http://hentaiwriter.tumblr.com/
https://www.patreon.com/FutureFragments?ty=c

Home Invasion Color Stream

Hi everyone! If you're lucky enough to read this it means that you're in time to watch a stream! Brellom is one of the awesome artists on the project and she's streaming some color work for the first sex scene in the game.
I'll delete this post once the stream is done, so come and watch while you can!

https://picarto.tv/brellom

Edit:

Right, the game portion of the stream is over. Brell's gonna do other stuff now. For those that stopped by and watched I hope you enjoyed it!

Exercising your right to vote means paying a price

So I'm American and I voted in a primary recently. I won't say which one or where; it isn't much of a mystery though. Long story short some woman with the plague was stuck next to me and I got REALLY sick there and I'm pretty much stuck in bed. I will be taking a day or two off. I'd been working while sick, but my fever has gotten to the point where it's not smart to ignore it anymore.

See you in a day or two!

Home Invasion

Hey all! I'm going to work on another game after Overwhored. It isn't far enough along for its own thread yet, but I want to link you all to a post on my Patreon that goes into it in detail and shows a bunch of picture previews.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/4793439

Please let me know what you think!

Overwhored Version 1.1

Hello again all! There were some bugs that slipped through the beta tests, I've played through myself and fixed up just about all of them. There will still be a few typos in the items but otherwise this should be good to go. Version 1.1 has nothing new, just bugfixes. If you completed version 1.0 without issue then you won't need this. If you hit a game-stopping bug this should help!

https://mega.nz/#!GlwxGAAT!wdyVV3fVTKe9QjAUmQ5arxMRpAODzCqrPuPjD-QZSeI

It has been a wild ride, everyone. Five years and tons of support have produced a spectacular game. When I started there was one adult RPG in english (Legend of Queen Opala), now there's several. I wanted to give my own spin on things and create a game where you played the bad guy and ended up basing it on a parody of Overlord and a Theology Essay that I wrote.

Now it is done. Enjoy, everyone.

(NoMoshing will no longer be hosting other people's games on BadKittyGames, so here is a Mega link for now. I'll add more options including a torrent option in the near future.)

https://mega.nz/#!CgYjyYrZ!2lGJIocmYM1PSNmp4h62vkTt1-0bIqqgLPKK--x70Zg

(NoMoshing Agreed to host this for a while, so there IS a BadKittyGames link!)

http://www.badkittygames.net/games/ow/

And in case you've been linked here and have no idea what Overwhored is:
Overwhored is a fun RPG that puts you in the role of the Overmind, an immortal man that seeks to brainwash and bang all the women of the world. Three years ago you were slain by a group of mighty heroines, but now you have been revived by your loyal servants to fight them again!
The game has commissioned art from spectacular artists like Sleepymaid, PChronos, Hombre Blanco, and Mindwipe, as well as many other skilled artists!


Here are some previews of what you'll find in the game:



The Overwhored Trailer:
https://youtu.be/3rnYoIUXyfc
This is not the end of the journey - I will make more games in the future. So long as you support I will create.

Final Beta Tonight

Hi all! I just wanted to let you know that I've been crunching down on the game over the past few days. All that remains is nametagging, and the blunt truth is that I'm going completely insane from doing nothing but this repetitive stuff. I can do it just as well while you're beta testing and if/when you find bugs it'll give me something else to do.  There's no sense in putting things off any longer - I'm sorry it took so long to get here, I just want to get this done so I don't have to come back to it again. Every major bug fixed, every major issue solved.

I'm going to do a bit more polish, fill out one sex scene I put off to the end and then upload this to Patreon tonight.

EDIT: It is now up on Patreon. The post with a link to the beta is visible to $1+ donors. If you don't want to donate remember, the public release will be out next week!

https://www.patreon.com/cypressz?ty=h

Upcoming plans and a release date

Right now I'm looking at next Monday as a release date for the beta. I really want Overwhored done, and I want it done right. I don't want to revisit this a bunch of times. I've been working on this for five years. I think it's fair to say I'm deeply satisfied to see it come to a close but also utterly sick of it. When I'm done with it I intend to stay done with it. I don't intend to delay it any further than that, but if I'm not satisfied with it at that point I will. I want this beta to be the very last beta.

I went and did my taxes, and doing them like this for the first time was an enlightening experience. The taxes weren't as much as I expected, but having the taxes done cost as much as the taxes themselves. That is a first, and was quite startling. I'll have to make alternate arrangements next year. The main reason they were so low was because I didn't keep any of the money for myself, I used it all to pay for artists! There's an upside to it after all.

Some people have had issues accessing donor content with the current system. I'm going to make new posts to get that stuff as well as message current donors with that. You can still access it, you just have to scroll through ALL my posts to see the old ones that have it. Obviously that's unacceptable, so a repost will come in short order. I hope Patreon fixes this soon.

I also have a few announcements to make. I'm bringing on a new artist to the team who goes by Tsudanym, or Short Blue Imp. Imp did a bonus sketch I'll send to donors this month (bonus sketches are a bit lean this month as taxes and pre-production for Home Invasion are ramping up). Right now I'm considering him for the underlying sketch-work for the Home Invasion sex scenes. I'm also having some color tests done on this sketch to see how it'll look colored by various artists who might end up doing color work for the project.

http://short-blue-imp.tumblr.com/

Another thing to announce is that one of the artists working on the project, F-ing, has put out a new issue of Dimension H. This is their comic, and it sort of reminds me of the old days of Heavy Metal magazine in some respects. Give it a look over!

http://f-ingart.tumblr.com/
http://www.e-junkie.com/297027

Also, Shameful Display has also posted a select few bonus images done for the patreon on his tumblr. As with Mindwipe, I approved this. I won't lie, I hope that having a taste of the bonus art encourages a few more people to donate at the $10 level.

http://shameful-display.tumblr.com/
http://planetofjunk2.tumblr.com/


Finally, a bit more long term prospect material. I'm not sure how long Home Invasion will take to produce. There will be about 15-20 full pictures, voice actresses to find and pay, editors and a number of other things to deal with. I'll probably have to slow down the progress more than I'd like to get it done without breaking the bank. I basically didn't take any of the money from the Patreon last year for myself; I'd like to make a LITTLE bit of money from it this year. I intend to move off the farm and go to Washington no matter what. If Patreon doesn't provide living wages on top of funding the games (and it won't because I'm not the Breeding Season team) I'll have to get a full time job there, which puts us in the same production situation as we have now. Home Invasion won't have monthly updates - visual novels are a different beast and it won't be so regular. On the other hand, the releases will be more substantial when they are done. There are five days, I'll probably make a release every time a day is complete. Writing doesn't take long, but art does. That's part of why I'm going through a slightly more expensive but faster process of having one person sketch, one person do ink, and one person do color.

I'm going to work on a demo, first. It won't have voice work and will have some placeholder assets. The pic with this post is one of them. While I'm working on that I'll also work on a game guide for Overwhored.

I hope this helps keep you well informed. Thanks a bunch for your time and support!

Overwhored Ver 0.9.5 Public Release - Final Story Release!

This is it, it's here! It's at the usual place at BadKittyGames.

badkittygames.net/games/ow

This adds a LOT of stuff, but most importantly you can finish the game!

I will note that this is NOT the final version of the game. There are two flashback sequences that need added in and some features (such as the orb of dominion) are functional system wise but need content added on. The combat in this chapter is also very basic right now but will be filled in with the 1.0 release at the end of this month/start of February. Still, if you want to see the ending this is where you do it!

A quick note: Some weather effects were causing a ton of problems in the beta, so I've disabled them for now. They still render old saves non-functional, however. I'm working on a fix that should be in during the 1.0 release.  In case I missed something I put my avatar in the game next to the bridge leading up to the Tower of Heaven.