I got 20 likes on Reaper's Storm yesterday, and I just now remembered this thread, so uh... let's do this again!
- The name "Reaper's Storm" was a name derived before any significant plot points had actually been thought out. It has a very big significance now, but when I first started, I lowkey just wrote the name cuz it sounded cool
- The main character, Poppy, began as a male character named "Popeye" who was so remarkably short it was ridiculous. They were the mariest sue that ever sued, and when I did a huge story rewrite, I decided to rewrite them, too. Now they're a female named Poppy who struggles with mental issues <.<
- The story has always been focused on souls, but the actual premise of a soul has changed a lot over the years. At one point, every soul had its own unique abilities and weaknesses, but I decided that idea would make the story devolve into the next Shonen manga real fast. Instead, it evolved into the idea that 7 souls are reincarnations of long-dead gods, and I've stuck with that idea since!
- Reaper's Storm was heavily inspired by Attack on Titan in its early development, and although that's been alleviated quite a bit, you can still see traces. For instance, Maria actually got her name from Wall Maria!
- The main cast being named mostly named after flowers has almost no significance. To this day, I scratch my head as to why I named them the way I did. I love all the names I chose, but why flowers? Couldn't tell ya.
- The main villain used to be a walking, talking dinosaur in a lab coat. Not joking.
- The clock icon used as Reaper's Storm's logo is intended to be symbolic of life and death, but when I made it, I had zero plans in mind. I just opened up Google Drawings and went ham.
- The current "Reaper's Storm" title sprawl was actually made for my Patreon a while back, but it ended up being repurposed for general use because it was so cool!
- Reaper's Storm started out as a pure volunteer project, and a lot of the ideas in the story are a culmination of many different viewpoints. Not many of the ideas are purely my own!
- Reaper's Storm was originally published on Tapas as a written novel, taken down for a rewrite, reposted, taken down for another rewrite, reposted, then taken down a third time to be reconsidered entirely. Yeah. I was very indecisive back then. Still am, but less so <.<
- Much of the storyline for Reaper's Storm was thought out on long walks or bus rides over the course of 2+ years.
- The icon used for The Insurgency was largely inspired by the Papers Please logo!
- The idea behind The Insurgency was to create a mechanical army of enforcers so vast and indestructible that it would be virtually impossible to topple them. This has shifted a bit as the story has developed, but even today, it's very rare for an enforcer to be taken down by the main cast, and I'm very proud of that philosophy!
- Time travel, space travel, and plasma weapons were very strictly off-limits when constructing RStorm. Time travel was simply too complex and opened too many plotholes, space travel just seemed a bit too sci-fi for me and opened up standards for the worldbuilding that I didn't think fit with the type of world I was going for, and plasma has been and always will be boring to me as a technology. I understand plasma exists and it's a very useful state of matter, but the way it's used in sci-fi (especially Star Wars) has always bored me.
- On the note of time travel, I eventually retracted that statement in part. There's no time travel in the sense that you're probably thinking, but there is a special system in place that allows for some time travel shenanigans without the complexities that go with it. Go me!
- At one point, I played with the idea of having gunpowder weapons be a thing of the past, replaced by coilguns. This ultimately was discarded, in part due to the limitations, and in part because gunpowder weapons are fascinating to me, and I feel as though it's not unreasonable to think that we'd still be using them. Railguns are used, though! Just not as infantry weapons, and not all that often.
- When designing certain weapons, I discovered that you can't call a weapon a "rifle" if it doesn't have a rifled barrel. So that made me have to think of an entirely new term to call a class of weapons used in the story, and I ultimately settled on "chempiercers"!
- After playing through OMORI, Poppy's arc was changed drastically. That's all I'ma say!
- Maria's last name, "Pines", is inspired by Gravity Falls!
- Daisy briefly speaks German to her father in an upcoming chapter, and this is largely due to my own father - having been stationed in Germany - teaching me bits and pieces of German. I also learned quite a few words from playing Call of Duty: Zombies, but... you know
