We was given two variations of A Rakes Progress, one being Tom inheriting his fathers wealth, getting drunk, hiring whores, losing everything and becoming insane by his own hand, but in the other, a character called Nick Shadow tells Tom he has a vast fortune from a dead uncle, and Nick Shadow aids Toms rake lifestyle and leads him to his downfall.
Since I really liked the original paintings story, I'm sticking with that variation, but Nick Shadow was such an interesting character that I couldn't leave him out...or should I say her?
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| Nicola Shadow, the mysterious entity that aids Tom in his downfall. |
Why a female? Nick Shadow was a male in the play.
This was something I thought about in the early stages.
I noticed almost everything that goes wrong during Tom's progress is somehow related to a woman.
He dumped Sarah Young, went to whore houses who stole his valuables, married an old hag just for money, and was comforted by Sarah as he laid in insanity.
This made me think, if Nick Shadow was to aid Tom in his downfall, they could be a woman to tie into it.
Plus, as a character that pracitically seduces Tom into being a Rake, a sultry shady female character seemed to fit perfectly.
Also, her name is changed to 'Nicola', which is just a female variation on Nick.
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| Nicola Shadow's Headshots. I tried showing she has eyes under her bangs and also a glimpse of a teaser for a twist near the end. |
The big twist.
There's an infamous bug in the game Pacman, where if the player managed to reach the final 256th level, half of the screen would be nothing but scrambled digits, broken sprites and code.
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| The Kill Screen from Pac-Man. The level can still be completed, though it takes a lot of practice and has only been done a few times legitimately. |
No-one knows why this happens, not even Namco.
Because of this, I've had an idea that could be a really big twist in the story.
Nicola Shadow was originally a 'fifth' Pac-Man ghost, intended to be on the final level of the game.
She would have moved faster, been able to pass through walls and have been a 'Final boss' of sorts, but due to the limited memory and the unique code of the character, she made the game buggy and unplayable.
She was to be removed, but she had already caused damage to the level, but since it was so far in game, the developers let it slide since they thought no-one would play that far.
Because the world this story is set in was self-aware characters, when the developers tried to remove her,
She escaped the game, and over time developed into the glitch she is today that caused many glitches over the cause of gaming history for kicks, but usually nothing major and her influence was short-lived.
Tom's downfall by her hand is to be her biggest corruption to date.
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