post mortem - no mice in heaven

hello everyone!

i originally planned to get this out to celebrate 60+ downloads but THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 200+ DOWNLOADS!!! genuinely cannot believe we're at that number already.... thank you to everyone who has read nmih, provided a comment on itch, and/or shared their thoughts on it on the toxic yuri vn jam discord. there are a few people i gotta get back to but whehwehw trying to just truck on with my job while burnt out ngl. while we put in a small afterword in the actual project file, i thought it would be fun to make a  post mortem.

notes on production - how was no mice in heaven?

writing

nmih is my very first writing project i've ever completed to this scale, and the first i've ever shared. i was proud to note in the afterword that i wrote nmih (12k words) within three weeks basically solely during my commute. but after speaking with other writers for the toxic yuri vn jam, wow, experienced writers are fast. i'm not super aware of my writing style, but from a previous vn i was writing (that will likely remain in developer hell due to poor planning on my part), chao has told me i do a very good job with trapping the reader in the main character's perspective. for some reason i can't perceive how my own writing feels, but i relied on this apparent strength of mine as the core of nmih's suspense-- dreams melt into reality. the passage of time is abrupt and disorienting. 

originally, i was going to have the character names mostly be redacted aside from the first letter of each name to evoke the idea of redacted names in scientific papers (although most papers actually refer to participants with descriptors instead of names/aliases). so instead of April, it would've been A████. i'm glad i decided against this, as not only would it have been distracting, but i'm sure a good number of people (myself included) would have just internally referred to the characters as Asshole, Bitch and Dr. Cunt. - -;

one of my favorite scenes to write was the dissection scene early on. while i'll describe the reason i chose mice as a motif later on, the thing that sold me on it was the dissection scene. the joy of fulfilling one's purpose as their beloved cuts them open and uses their body. i've always been a fan of eroguro, but i liked melding its obscene nature with that of pure love and worship. a gentle defilement. it reminds me a little of the feeling i had while listening to bjork's vespertine album. (sorry ryona content, you'll get your turn another day *pat pat*)

aside from that, i feel like i took one too many ideas from that previous vn into nmih. some part of me feels worried that if i ever release that vn, it would just end up being a rehash of concepts i've already covered. on the other, as someone prone to scope creep, perhaps trimming excess concepts and letting them flourish elsewhere is better in the long run. speaking of my tendency to succumb to scope creep, i think this being a jam game definitely helped in having me actually complete it. deadlines are stressful, but mostly necessary for me to work.

ui and backgrounds

i had a very strong image in my head for the aesthetic of nmih: black and white, cross between a comic book and an old-school academic paper. that being said though, while i am an artist, i suck at graphic design. i slapped together the ui being like 'oh that'd look kinda cool' but tbh i had no idea what i was doing.

for the backgrounds, i had noted down a very specific set of filters on krita after i got the lab bg to look almost exactly how i wanted. i did it this way because i thought 'if i use slightly different parameters, people are gonna notice it looks inconsistent and it'll look baaaad!!' obviously, nobody would have noticed, and instead i ended up making backgrounds that even at the time of making i thought hurt my eyes. chao thought it was fine, but because im a dumbass i just ignored it and slapped on the eye strain warning instead. lesson learnt: if something hurts your eyes, it'll probably hurt someone else's eyes too.

also fun story, after taking the photo for the street background, a group of drunk middle aged women rolled up and started verbally accusing (and abusing) chao and i of taking photos of their car to rob later. thankfully the issue was sorted out, but it turns out in that background, the car (which you can't even see the license plate of in the original photo) was theirs so. fun times. :p

cgs and sprites (23noko)

while i am primarily a digital artist, i decided against being the main sprite/cg artist for this project several reasons:

1. i already have several projects that im juggling, including ones that involve my digital art

2. i was also the main writer for the project and didn't want to wear myself too thin

3. imo, chao's artstyle fit the mood of the project better

if i ever get around to completing my next project, i will likely use my own art, as none of these factors will be influencing the process (sorry chao).

although for nmih, chao ended up being unavailable most of the time due to deadlines. by the beginning of the second to last week, we only had two sprites done and no cgs, so we both thought 'okay, we both need to go hard, as there is no way only one of us can finish all the art'. as a result, i ended up trying to emulate chao's style and drew around 5 of the cgs. originally, i planned on drawing more, however, by the start of the final week, i caught a bad cold that put me mostly out of commission.   

anyway, time for chao.

cgs and sprites (chao)

Hi everyone! I’m Chao, I was the main artist for No Mice in Heaven. It feels so strange I can say that now.

I was responsible for the character designs, a good number of the CGs, and a dozen other odds-and-ends.

This is the first project of this scale I’ve undertaken and actually seen to completion, so a lot of my reflection on No Mice is just amazement that it’s out there, that people are reading it, and that we managed to finish it on time. I think I can credit that pretty clearly to 23noko keeping me on track with my work, and narrowing our scope as we went. A lot of the project was something we pushed each other to work on while on our commutes, but without 23noko, I’d probably still be sitting here with something different on my desk half-finished and ballooned into something impossible.

Because I had to swap devices a lot, my poor ibisPaint file for this game is sitting at something ridiculous like 10hrs of work, most of which is pasting in WIPs from SAI2 and sketching over them like some terrible little collage. It’s awful. But it works. So whatever.

Most of No Mice’s art was drawn between major deadlines, in lunch breaks, and on train rides. It’s definitely rough around the edges in some places because of that, but really, I’m just basking in the fact that it’s out there now. Thank you so, so much for reading our VN. 

One of the first inspirations for No Mice’s art was CRUORMOR’s art in GHOST’s End-World Normopathy. The simple eyes and monochrome colour palette stuck, though originally, I was floating the idea of sharper shapes and thinner lines for the character sprites, like certain shots from Normopathy. Instead, No Mice ended up being in my usual style for the most part. 

Another idea we were floating at the early stages was that the characters would all have the same build, only swapping the hair and eyes to differentiate them. In an actual lab, they would all be wearing even more PPE, too. In the end we leant away from both ideas so they would feel more distinct. Because of lab restrictions, April and Bri both needed to have their hair not cover their face. Because of this, we gave April hair that wasn’t quite long enough to put up into a ponytail. Bri, meanwhile, was given hair vents because they gave off the impression of cat ears. Caroline’s hair is short, so she doesn’t need to worry about it at all.

Oh yeah, and April’s shirt was originally a Pink Floyd shirt, but then I looked over at 23noko working in Ren’Py and noticed -

     

resuscitation of the author - why is no mice in heaven? 

to anyone who has played nmih and extracted their own meaning, thank you. im the dreaded 'ideas guy', who has a lot of stories in my head, but zero drive to put them to paper. it means a lot that my first actual work has managed to communicate with someone out there. genuinely amazing. i also just really love hearing other people's thoughts and interpretations!!! when my friends read nmih, i felt like grabbing their ankles, flipping them upside down and just shaking out all the thoughts in their heads like loose change. i do not want to remove any personal feelings you had while with the work.

that being said, i had very specific things in mind when writing nmih, which i'd like to share. though, i have a tendency to overshare, so if you don't want to read personal shit, you can skip the next two paragraphs to get to why i chose mice as a central motif.

you are (not) alone

nmih is a culmination of thoughts and hindsights i've had as an introverted, neurotic person. i always had this impression that most other people at the schools/uni i went to looked down on me. i fed and strengthened that thought with faulty logic like 'because of my niche hobbies' 'because of my mental illnesses' 'because im queer'. those things can be the case under certain circumstances, but i never even let most people in for them to even form those as reasoning. hindsight is 20/20 though, and i'm gaining more evidence that most people were either just completely ambivalent to me, or as i learnt in some cases, (to my surprise) curious about me but never spoke to me.

various people admitting they were curious about me  over the years has made me reflect on those clauses i used to justify my worldview before. everyone else seemed so completely out of reach in that state of 'normalcy' i attempted to approximate for years. but i never knew if they shared my weird hobbies, or if they were also struggling with similar mental illnesses, or if they were also queer. hell, if they are queer, which some of them probably are, that makes me realise how stupid my past queer experiences were. experiences that consisted entirely of idolising and pining over women who i knew that i had no chance of realistically being with. additionally, i was also at one of my lowest points in my mental health during the period i thought everyone hated me. i've sometimes wondered if those people reaching out sooner would have saved me faster. it's a comforting thought.

nmih is about ruining this perfect hypothetical.

significance of mice

mice are obviously a big motif in nmih. mice and rats are different, but in this postmortem, i'm going to use the terms somewhat interchangeably. i personally find the relationship between humans and mice interesting. mice are a fairly common pest in most parts of the world, that spread diseases and cause a variety of other problems. yet simultaneously, mice and rats make up 95% of all animal models for biomedical research. lab mice are the reason why we're not constantly dying of diseases that would've killed us even less than a century ago. in lab settings too, most researchers seem to really respect their mice and their sacrifices. hell, a common verb in these labs is 'to sac'-- an abbreviated form of 'to sacrifice'. for some greater good.

the thought then came that maybe there's not so much of a difference between the researcher and the mice they sacrifice. maybe the researcher isn't very good at their job, someone who likens themselves to a regular mouse. but if they just try again, if they tried harder, if they pushed their body and mind to the limit, then they could be useful. just like the mice, they could be a worthy sacrifice for the sake of humanity. (very 'abnormality dancin girl'.) but this is a false equivalency. the 'sacrifice' verb we ascribe to lab mice is simply to our own benefit as humans. a street mouse cannot become a lab mouse. a lab mouse does not get to choose to be born and killed for the sake of humans.

'but what about the relationships humans have with pet mice?' that's why mus exists. unfortunately, april isn't a very good owner.  

nmih as a toxic yuri vn - does no mice in heaven is gay?

i originally wrote this section of the post-mortem late last night. it seems in my tired state, i accidentally deleted this section unknowingly and didn't notice while reading through. anyway.

as is the nature of a narcissistically introspective work like this, april ended up being the main focus. as a fan of character studies, i'm satisfied with how the work came out in that regard. although, taking a step back, i can definitely see how nmih might not have been that satisfying for some toxic yuri fans. i understand that some people go into these works for more-or-less two-sided relationships, with one or more members of the relationship being awful to the other. all yuri in nmih is one-sided. additionally, most of the toxicity involves april poisoning herself through her unhealthy infatuation with caroline. the rest of it is shown through april's complete disregard of bri after her criminal acts against her.

in that sense, i am a little dissatisfied that i didn't get to fully explore the relationships between the girls, despite nmih being made for the toxic yuri vn jam. though, near the end of the jam, i did have some ideas for these characters that serves to alleviate this dissatisfaction. if i get around to it, i'll get around to it. although, we'll see if i'll even be able to publish it, considering the stuff going on with itch.io at the moment.

conclusion - in heaven, mice, no?

probably. thank you for reading. im tired. mouse good. squeak squeak.