My Thoughts On This Project

This was a fun project. It followed a similar project I made for Nimi Nightmare, who had only recently debuted at the time. The Nimi project isn't currently on my website, but the approach was similar: I wanted to make a proof of concept and see what could be done with the loose concept of an existing VTuber.

With Gigi, I wanted to create a world that she could actually inhabit.

What does she work with? Where does she live? What does she do? How does she act in certain scenarios, and what kinds of situations might push us to see more of who she is?

This ultimately led to the Lore Portrait story where we passively learn about Gigi through the eyes of other people. How does her coworkers at the police station see her? How do I capture that chaos that is Gigi’s personality in a way where a viewer may perceive it?

That's where Desk Worker 14 comes in: the nameless viewer, fan, or chatter observing Gigi from the outside.

This was also the go-to mindset for the Viewer-Insert Microfic. I wanted to write about a scenario where the reader can put themselves in the same room as Gigi, and learn how it would be. It also introduces Gigi, but still in a way a viewer may perceive her, and not with her as the protagonist. The idea is that the stories are for the viewer and not for Gigi, hence this approach.

Writing Within an Existing World

The Short Story was difficult to write, and I ended up with three or four different drafts.

How do I write about a world that doesn’t exist?

Well, that’s easy, just make it up.

But it's a Hololive world, and Gigi's friends and fellow content creators should also be part of it. That meant taking into account the roles they occupy within the loosely established world they inhabit.

There were rules I needed to follow. Gigi is a police officer. She has an established personality and way of thinking. The antagonist should come from Hololive Advent, according to the existing lore. But those characters aren't actually villains, so I couldn't simply turn one of them into a conventional antagonist.

I also wanted the story to feel serious enough to pull the reader in, while eventually returning to something more friendly and casual so that it could transition back toward the reality of the character and the streamer's world.

It should be serious, but it can’t be too serious, and that balance was probably the biggest challenge of the story.

Writing for the Viewer

In the end, I wanted the project to give viewers more lore and background on who Gigi is while still feeling like Gigi.

The stories are serious enough to create a sense of a world, but lighthearted enough to fit the character and the kind of experience viewers already associate with her.

The viewer is also effectively the first-person perspective, even when they aren't the protagonist. This puts the reader into a story with Gigi instead of it just being a story about Gigi.

One thing I think was really important is that I didn't want the story to become bigger than Gigi herself. It shouldn't create some enormous new conflict between her and her fellow Hololive members or establish a fictional situation that overwhelms the character.

Instead the idea was to create a window into a possible world around Gigi that can provide additional lore, create possibilities for inside jokes, and give viewers another way to learn about her and get to know her.

— Elliot

Interested in developing your own VTuber's character, lore or world?