Developer's Journal 4:9 (Patreon)

Hello everyone.

Usually when I work on renders I have videos playing in the background. I never watch anything I really have to pay attention to, like a new movie I've never seen before. It's stuff like Family Guy or Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes which I've seen multiple times already. I also like YouTube videos about writing or movie critics stuff.

This week I had on an interview with John Grisham. I've read a few of his novels and seen a few of the movies based on his novels. I never read his first book, A Time to Kill, but I loved the movie. In Episode Three, the scene where Rockford and Emmeline are driving to the wedding, there was originally a conversation about "jury nullification," which is when the jury thinks a criminal defendant is actually guilty of whatever they're charged with but acquits him/her anyway. And they talk about A Time to Kill, as the defense attorney in that case basically asks the jury to do just that. I cut that dialogue from the final version because the tone was wrong for the pre-wedding vibe, because it felt duplicative of the training scene with Malena, and because that topic really isn't ideal for the Emmeline/Rockford relationship dynamic.

Anyway, during the interview, Grisham said that the protagonist defense lawyer in A Time to Kill was him (Grisham). That surprised me because whenever players suggest that I am Rockford I think, "I'll bet Grisham never has to deal with this shit." Well, apparently I was wrong. But I thought I'd address whether or not I inserted myself into Leaving DNA as the MC.

I saw once where someone said that an author inevitably puts some of themselves into each of their characters. I think that's fair. Some of my own life experience is injected not only into Rockford but into each of the LI's and even some of the side characters like Armin. I took the oft repeated advice "write what you know" literally and used my legal background to create the legal setting of LDNA. And It's easy for me to interject some material about Marvel comics since I did read them growing up, so that inspired the fact that Rockford and Jamie share a love for Marvel comics. Also I once sat as a juror in a gang homicide case where a cousin testified against the defendant whom he looked up to as an older brother (the underlying facts of the trial in Episode Three are completely different, though). But on the other hand, I come from a very large family, I fucking hate basketball, and I really, really hate pulling all-nighters for work and will only do it if I am facing down a hard deadline.

I don't want to go on drawing comparisons and contrasts, but suffice it to say that my answer is a very definite no, I'm not Rockford. I do have some things in common with him, but I also have some things in common with my other characters, and there are way more things we don't have in common than we do.

Maybe I'll do another journal about why I created Rockford the way I did. There are some spoilers involved in that explanation, though, so anything I write on that topic will have to be limited. But either way that's all for tonight.

Thank you for your support!

--Monk