Creator Commentary: Blood is Mine

**what inspired me to write blood is mine:** Many, many moons ago it was going to be an RPG Maker game, though it was a lot different then, and was going to be way more about blooding monsters to make them fight each other (I was torn between just leaning into a Confusion type effect, or going full Pokemon with "recruiting" monsters). Michelle and Fuse were in the original concept but they were very different. I was mostly just mashing up Silent Hill and a lot of 90s sci fi anime (when I mention Akira people tend to go "ohhhhhh"). This brings me smoothly to

**why an interactive thing:** I have never finished an RPG Maker game (I barely finish making any games at all, honk honk) so the original idea sat in my brain for years. Well, I had juuust gotten pretty decent at making sprite art and had just gotten burned out on roleplaying and was thinking about webcomics again and it kind of created a perfect storm for my brain to go "hey wait a minute."
Sprite art takes time and a lot of work to get made but after that it's way faster and easier to reuse and juggle around set pieces and characters, so I could pump out pages at a frantic rate. That, combined with the interactive element, would make it more engaging and draw readers in more because they're participating and it keeps happening so they're constantly re-invested. Based on all that, making it a horror story seemed like a no-brainer... it set up for an element of mystery and danger that doubled down on sucking people in and keeping them there. For a good chunk of the comic I was updating 10 to 20 times *per day* and by the second chapter the audience was growing pretty fast (which was good, because an interactive comic with no readers would flop hard and I was terrified of that)

**What writing in that format is like:** It's like DMing, except instead of five players with five characters it's 500 people with one character

**Awful Hospital:** I have not read it and also I can't, because if I find out what all they did and that they did it before me it's going to drive me insane. I'm not reading Homestuck, either, for roughly the same reason (though I did read Problem Sleuth a looong ass time ago, like, I stopped because it wasn't finished yet). I imagine we're drawing from a lot of the same sources; the scary monster filled hospital in particular was drawn from Silent Hill, which in turn got it off Jacob's Ladder (an influence I'm drawing on more now for MDA, along with other more mystical/supernatural body horror like Hellraiser). I do hear Awful Hospital is really good, but if I never read it then I can never have accidentally retroactively stolen from it(edited)

basically the moment I found out Awful Hospital existed, was interactive, and was called Awful Hospital the first thing I did was thank god BiM was no longer in a hospital, and that's my relationship with Awful Hospital lol

Originally if Mine's personality was killed, control of the red would go to whoever had the most of her blood, which was for a long time Dr. Finch; she had at *least* circumvented the blood rule enough by the end that she no longer needed to have the majority of her *own* blood to maintain control, but I hadn't quite decided whether or not that meant she (or the audience) would be able to manipulate who gets the powers if she still died. Red getting a physical body complicated that further; honestly, I dunno lmao
a bad end I envisioned that never came to pass was if, by the time the Mine had figured out portals (and Dr. Finch had learned about Zone Fifty's paradox protection system) Dr. Finch *did* gain control because of Mine dying, Dr. Finch would 100% figure out how to shut down the paradox protection, deduce how to replicate the portals-overlapping-each-other trick, and would then physically drag whichever Thale he could get a hold of into the Paradox Zone (effectively erasing both Finch and Thale from having ever existed)

Fuse would wake up in his apartment with both legs, the only human being that remembered the events of BiM ever happened

I almost did the Fuse Wakes Up With Both Legs scenario *several* times, with only that version of it being basically permanent; the others were ideas I had for cosmic forces trying to fuck with things by, for example, preventing Mine's dad from being killed retroactively (so he continues to give her rides to work, she never develops her powers, and Thale never has to escalate. Thale would still be in the process of winning, but more slowly and quietly with no opposition but a Fuse that remembers *everything* and is fully capable of fixing the fix). I felt like that would have just been a detour/distraction and not built to anything really, though, so I ditched it. Fuse being the Guy That Remembers Undone Things was something I wanted to play more with, but could never really fit it in organically

I think I've mentioned it before, but I briefly humored the idea of Full Blown AU Shenanigans for a chapter that didn't happen

I really dig resets / groundhogs day style time loops, but I'm reserving that weird fondness for them for something else later probably, and not BiM

alright, so: originally, in chapter 1 when Vasquez revealed he was actually a bad guy, and Michelle turned on him? My original idea was for Michelle not to do that. She was going to begrudgingly betray Mine, and the two of them would proceed to chase Mine around the hospital for a while. The flamethrower parts--like, the water gun, the lighter, all that, they were originally put there to give Mine a defense *against Vasquez and Michelle.* Michelle would, eventually, be able to be convinced to work against Vasquez. ...Except, the readers were so damn nice to her, and so dedicated to making sure she was okay and patching her up, I couldn't justify her turning on Mine. So, Michelle became a party member *right then.*

Also yeah, Finch was supposed to die, and the protagonist wasn't supposed to be Mine--the "real" main character was a giant heart somewhere, controlling Mine remotely. The nurse herself didn't matter, she was just a body with The Blood in it. But, the readers were determined to save Finch, and they developed so much of a personality for Mine herself in such a short time that I scrapped all that.

Shiiiit Caius and Finch was *extremely* spur of the moment. *Caius himself* wasn't meant to happen

*The entire fucking nightclub* wasn't planned. I was *trying* to steer folks toward the church. Someone asked Grizwald where he got the info, I pulled "he heard it in a nightclub" out of my ass, and people went dashing after that nightclub. So, I had to make all that up as I went. A bouncer got blooded, a bartender got blooded, I randomly decided to have the bartender get offed and the bouncer kept for questioning so the readers could learn from him. ...But of course, the audience decided to save that bouncer, and thus Caius happened.