The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of changing Divine Dreams' protagonist from the old Mardek to a new character, a golden-hearted 'devil' called Dayvha...
For the first few months of Sindrel Song's development, the protagonist was a character called Glimmer, who was based on a couple of characters I'd used in earlier work, and who I'd been planning to include (in a different form) in Taming Dreams, had I got far enough with it.
However, a bunch of factors eventually inspired me to reinvent the protagonist as Memody, a new character, designed specifically for the novel world I was designing. Looking back, imagining Glimmer in this story feels so strange, while Memody feels like the protagonist the story was meant for.
In ∞ last week's post ∞, I wondered whether to reinvent the protagonist of Divine Dreams; whether I should 'make Mardek into a pink elf', because thats what his genetics would suggest. I've been giving that some more thought.
Here's a thing I made last night:
In MARDEK, the character Mardek was a fairly boring generic Caucasian male without all that much in the way of a personality. This, according to my old notes, was kind of the point; he was supposed to be a bland player avatar rather than the driver of his own story, an idea developed before the later, deeper story turns were.
He was refined and given greater depth and a new appearance in Taming Dreams, deeply intertwining who he was and how he looked with the new story, and I felt happy enough with that design to use it again for Divine Dreams.
The name Mardek was random; it wasn't inspired by anything. However, its similarity to the name of ∞ a Mesopotamian deity ∞ inspired me to use the name of ∞ another ∞ for his father, and the name ∞ Anunnaki ∞ (misspelled as Annunaki in the games) for the alien villains, though the characters didn't have anything in common with these mythological figures so it was shallow, superficial.
In Divine Dreams, I'm making use of Indian mythology instead, as this - and India itself - is strongly intertwined with the whole New Age world, which itself is intertwined with things like lucid dreaming, meditation, non-Christian 'spirituality' etc in the modern West, all of which have inspired aspects of the story and setting.
I also really like some concepts I played around with when designing Belief last year, where the protagonist is someone who looks like a literal devil, but who's got truly good intentions. How people might react to a character like that seems interesting to me.
So, all these things have led to this concept. It's not final, and I'm still not certain I'll keep it, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
Originally I was just going to keep calling him Mardek, varying nothing but his appearance, but I felt that if I were making changes this drastic, I might as well go all the way and call him something different too.
After some brainstorming, the name Dayvha stood out to me. This is from the word ∞ deva ∞, meaning a god or heavenly being in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and New Age philosophies. It's pronounced 'DAY-vuh', not like 'diva' (as I'd naturally pronounce it), so Dayvha stresses that pronunciation while also incorporating the sunny 'day' and 'ha' and bringing it to six letters (I'm trying to give all the major characters six-letter names).
It also sounds vaguely like 'devil', plus it's amusing thinking of him being given the much more mundane nickname 'Dave'.
As mentioned in the other post, his father is now called ∞ Savitr ∞ after an Indian solar deity.
A brown-skinned Mardek would be 'representation', right? Wow, a POC protagonist, we need more of those! Virtue points! But isn't that just completely superficial?
A character who looks unusual not just to the in-game NPCs, but to the player themselves, seems more interesting to me, as it allows an opportunity to explore being different, not belonging, in a much deeper way. It'd feel uncomfortable to me exploring these themes with a brown-skinned character, like it'd be too close to issues real people face, but with someone who looks different to any actual human race, whose differentness could be a stand-in for many kinds of human differentnesses, it could avoid that, maybe? I don't know; these issues are very touchy, and I'm aware other people don't see them as I do.
I personally haven't experienced race-based issues in my life, so I'm in no position to explore those from any angle. I have however felt different all my life, like I don't belong, and I'd much rather have a protagonist who can be used to explore these issues rather than an empty vessel like Mardek was deliberately meant to be.
In Sindrel Song, I explored deeper themes in a way that might be uncomfortable to some people. With humour, sometimes, but a lot of darkness too. With this character, I like the thought of making him cheery and friendly - perhaps his Bliss mother always taught him to keep a smile on his face - but with this darkness inside which is only revealed later on, or subtly hinted at, rather than dumped all over the player from the start. It adds a depth that can be explored both by the player and the story. It could be something his possessor, Dharma, could leverage in an interesting way.
It's interesting how - to me - the more human-looking Mardek on the left here looks sweet and kind and good, but the devilish Dayvha on the right looks like he's got mischievous intentions, despite the exact same facial expression. Do you get this too?
This bubbling-up of subconscious associations based on what we've been exposed to in the past is a fundamental part of human psychology, and all kinds of discrimination are born of it.
I haven't really given too much thought to his design yet, but these hair horns and spiked 'tail' - quickly added - amuse me in the same way that Mardek's 'whale tail' cowlick(s) did. Some of the "M" motifs are still there but no longer relevant, but it's not something you'd notice unless you already knew about it.
The more time I've spent with this character, the more open I've become to the idea of using him as a more interesting protagonist. Though it did take me time, and at first he just felt so wrong because he wasn't what I was used to.
It'd be interesting - strange? - to change the main character like this while keeping all the supporting characters the same. Hmm.
I can understand why old MARDEK fans might not like it, though I'm intending to use the MARDEK Steam release to gauge how many of those fans there actually are. Currently it's only at 398 wishlists, so I'm not expecting any more sales than that (some people who've not wishlisted it will buy it, others who have wishlisted it won't buy it). Disappointing, but I've also not exactly advertised it. I'm working on that, as I've been posting about in the purple Personal entries, though it's probably a bit late now.
So I don't know how many childhoods this would ruin. Perhaps it's best to consider what works best for the story rather than keeping old characters for entirely historical reasons.
And perhaps distancing from MARDEK in this way is actually a good thing? That way, it feels less like trying to redefine the past and more like creating something new that's inspired by it.
Also, the video thing I showed up there is something I quite like, and I'd be happy to make more of those for promotional purposes and/or for Patreon patrons (they might get them first?), as I talked about in one of the personal blogs, but I don't know how interesting they'd be to people ("not very" is the feeling I get). I like them because I made them, but I'm also aware of every little detail that feels unnatural, off, and how there are aspects an observer would want that aren't there. They'd certainly be better with voice acting, but sadly that's not an option.
They could be called "Divine Scenes"!! Even if nobody cares about them, I might make some more anyway just to familiarise myself with the characters. They don't take long at all, as they're using the game's conversation system. I'd aim for under a minute with others.
Originally I had something more jokey for this one, but I felt this communicated the message I wanted to more effectively.
I haven't really done much work on Divine Dreams this week because I've been looking into breaking out of my shell for promotion purposes, which is mentally exhausting. I imagine next week will be the same since I'll be releasing MARDEK on the Wednesday. It's something that needs to be done, though, and hopefully by the end of next week I'll have my Patreon revisions sorted out and I'll be more familiar with posting on sites like Reddit.
If you got here from the MARDEK Steam release, or Sindrel Song (which I'll also be putting on sale for the next week), you can find out more about Divine Dreams by checking ∞ other posts using the "MARDEK Remake" tag ∞! (Which would get a bit silly if I do end up renaming the protagonist!)
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