Pre-Production

While the comic was originally intended as a mundane, queer college-age slice-of-life, I knew our target audience would find the material more engaging with a distinctive premise. I pitched a fair number of spins on the genre, but the team kept circling back to my idea of magic as a mundane technology, seen through the eyes of an arcane IT student. Soon enough, our protagonist was born: The melodramatic yet competent Tyler, who in spite of his love of spell-coding was completely new to much of the internet.

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From there, I built personalities for the other three characters designed by the project's illustrator, Bekkomi. Tyler was played as more serious than the suave, attention-seeking Adrian, but more adventurous than his agoraphobic hometown friend Alyssa. For the crush Carter, I envisioned a complicated man who buried his toxicity under charm, and had plans to bring his girlfriend Valentine on as a friend to Tyler later in the story.

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Writing & Publishing

Of course, in such a unique medium, restrictions are rampant. There were stringent guidelines in place that went far beyond Twitter's character limit, all of them carefully designed and tested to maximize engagement. Writing within these confines was a challenge I took to gladly, and I'm proud of how quickly I picked it up.

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My work was done in episodes that released across about a week each. I would hash out the plot I had in mind with the lead editor, then outline the script in the studio's unique format. Once the outline was approved, I'd write the final text, develop precise image descriptions for Bekkomi, and take another round or two of edits. It was also my responsibility to upload the tweets in the online tool we used to post the main story for us.

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The real treat with BLurry came when the episodes went live. As the writer, it was my responsibility not only to compose the story, but to interact with fans on Twitter as the characters in question. The fans were engaged and intrigued from the get-go, and gave me plenty of delightful questions about the world, the characters, and more, all while playing along as though they, too, were of this world I had created. It was a true privilege to work with such an enthusiastic audience in real time.

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Postmortem

Looking back on my work with 555, I feel both pride for the quality of my work and a bit of embarrassment about its heavy-handedness. Still, I'm grateful to 555 for giving me the chance to build a playground for myself and our audience alike, and it was a true pleasure to work with them.