I already addressed the issue of intimacy in an earlier devlog, but I thought there was enough left to say about the subject to make it worth revisiting. While the previous post focused mostly on intimacy between the characters in a story, the considerations in this one apply not just to the relationships between characters, but the feeling of intimacy between the characters and the audience.

Characters in romance stories are generally designed to be appealing. That’s a basic element of their role; the characters are intended to sell the idea that a relationship between them, or an imagined relationship between them and the reader, would be enjoyable and fulfilling. So the characters are more effective in their roles if they seem like more desirable relationship partners, right?

Well, yes, sort of. But a lot of works go too far in making their characters seem flawless in order to sell them to the audience as desirable relationship partners. The problem with making characters seem too perfect is not just that it fails to satisfy some abstract value of realism that’s necessary for a work to qualify as “good writing.” The problem with characters who seem too perfect is that they connect to a relatable real-life experience of interacting with people who aren’t comfortable enough around you to let their guards down.

Most romantic interest characters in anime and visual novels do have noticeable flaws, but in many cases, they only show flaws that it’s easy to imagine a person airing on a first date. They continue to feel like they’re trying to put their best foot forward in making a good impression on the protagonist for the entire duration of the narrative. The result is that they feel, not necessarily like implausibly perfect people, but like people the audience never gets close enough to to get an uncurated look at their personalities.

Intimacy is about emotional closeness as much as physical. If it doesn’t feel like a character is sharing their true self, it’s that much harder to feel close to them.

This is a part of the reason why all the main characters in Complex Relations are perspective characters. Giving the audience a direct window to the characters’ thoughts helps cultivate a sense of closeness that’s harder to develop when the audience only sees their actions. But even a viewpoint character can end up feeling sanitized and artificial, like they’re hiding from the audience. In order to make the audience feel closer to the characters, they should be able to see a side of the characters that it feels like they’d only share with people they have a special connection with.

Having them completely embarrass themselves sometimes helps.

I think it’s characters who show particularly raw emotional exposure that audiences will tend to feel closest to though. Not just cutely embarrassing stuff, but things they’d really want to keep hidden away. Things which make the audience feel not just lucky to have gotten a peek, but like they stand in a place reserved only for important people in the characters’ emotional lives.

I have some other, slightly more unorthodox ideas about ways to cultivate a sense of intimacy between characters and the audience which I’m planning to feature in Complex Relations, which I’m playing a bit closer to the chest for now. I’m looking forward to seeing how audiences will react to those ideas once they’ve played out in full. It should make for a fun trip.