Juniper

My intention when setting out to produce Opportunity was for Jacqueline to be supported by a pair of her best friends: Olive and Juniper. In the finest traditions of fictional trios, if Jacqueline was our Fairly Average One and Olive was The One Who Is Short And Round, it naturally followed that Juniper would need to be The One Who Is Tall And Thin. I had originally planned for Olive and Juniper to have roughly equal prominence in the story, but things didn’t really work out that way – Olive wound up enjoying much, MUCH greater prominence than originally envisioned, while I think Juniper unfortunately fades into the background somewhat. In some ways, I think this perhaps mirrors the three women’s friendship. Yes, it’s true that Jacqueline, Olive, and Juniper are a group of three best friends, but I think they all privately understand that Jacqueline and Olive are the capital-B capital-F Best Friends in the equation.

(Reminder: significant plot spoilers to follow below the cut!)

On a certain level, this is understandable. Perhaps more than any other member of the cast, Juniper is very sure of her place in the world. And why shouldn’t she be? She’s tall, hot, ripped, loves her job, loves her dog, loves her town, and loves her slammin’ hot wife with whom she regularly makes Evil Pornography. Juniper has her life together, and as such, doesn’t really have anything in the way of a character arc to complete.

Of course, that’s largely just excuse-making on my part. As the writer, I certainly COULD have introduced some manner of conflict or challenge or turmoil into Juniper’s life anytime I wanted, I just chose to prioritize other characters. Narratively, Juniper winds up mostly functioning as a facilitator for the resolution of other characters’ conflict with each other (namely, Jacqueline and Rose) – most of the time she just sets up scenes and then gets out of the way (quite literally sometimes, as in the case of Jacqueline and Rose’s sex scene in chapter 3). By the end of the story, we still know very little about Juniper’s past, her hopes for the future, her ambitions, or anything about the experiences that might have shaped her into the person she is today. Which is too bad, because I suspect that Juniper’s an extremely interesting person.

Appearance-wise, most of Juniper’s DNA comes from Jae, an original character created by artist Maren Nerei. Like Juniper, Jae is extremely fit, tall, lanky, has an exceptionally-long ponytail, and is a huge lesbian. I’ve always been somewhat in awe of Maren’s work, so having a member of the cast be an homage to one of her notable OCs felt right. Juniper’s striking silver hair color was a whim of Pacha’s – I failed to specify what color hair the character should have when describing the concept, so Pacha gave me a few options, and the silver was so cool that I couldn’t not pick it.

One thing I’ll say about Juniper is that all of the sex scenes in which she features were a blast. The woman simply L.O.V.E.S. bottoming for other women, and really loses herself in the experience whenever she gets the opportunity. Juniper’s proportions always seem to lend her scenes a really artful dynamism – I especially love the way she’s draped along the couch in the shot above.

Rose

There are a few significant antagonistic forces in Opportunity‘s story. Capitalism is one of them, a system that demands Jacqueline sacrifice her time, energy, youth, and happiness to simply not starve and die. Another is Rufus, Jacqueline’s husband, whose sudden departure two years before the start of Opportunity‘s story exposed Jacqueline to the worst of capitalism’s depredations. And, of course, there is Jacqueline’s own anxiety, constantly gnawing away at her happiness and making her second-guess all of her decisions. What all of these things have in common is that they are invisible, intangible. Although they’re certainly negative influences on our heroine, you can’t put a face to any of them. So, I decided that Opportunity needed an actual character who at least STARTS antagonistic, if for no other reason than to give me an excuse to use Jacqueline’s “angry” face sprites more often. Which brings us to Rose: the salt in the cookie.

I had to walk a pretty fine line when writing Rose, simply because there are so many ugly, uncharitable narratives about trans women in fiction (and in society at large) that it makes writing any kind of transfem antagonist a real minefield. Rose is a transgender woman who is aggressively rude towards the cisgender woman main character, and her reasons for being so are not made immediately clear. This puts her in danger of being read as a unflattering caricature of a Scary Trans Woman Who By The Mere Fact Of Her Trans-ness Is Compelled To Lash Out Irrationally At Poor Vulnerable Helpless Cis Women. Then, when the reasoning behind Rose’s behaviour is made clear in chapter 3, I also wanted to avoid drawing Rose as a Pathetic Trans Woman Who Is So Insecure That She’s Threatened By Any Cis Woman Spending Time With Her Partner. Tough stuff, but I think I pulled it off – I’ve yet to read a review of Opportunity that takes exception to how Rose is represented.

Even having to have tread such a fine line was vexing at times. I’m firmly of the belief that considering any oppressed group as full human beings is accepting that members of said group can be real pieces of shit to other people at times. It’s an observable phenomenon that some oppressed people, despite having faced significant bullying and abuse in their lives, will sometimes respond to attaining a measure of security and acceptance within a community by replicating the patterns of bullying and abuse they themselves suffered, simply because they feel they’re owed some measure of retribution and feel that it’s “their turn”. Furthermore, it’s important to remember that a person can be oppressed along one vector while privileged along another. Rose is trans, but she was raised in a big city instead of a small town, has the benefit of an extensive arts education, and has enjoyed a somewhat-successful career as a curator. It’s not inconceivable that she could look down on Jacqueline from a classist perspective, even setting aside their interpersonal issues.

Rose’s visual design had an interesting journey, in that she started her two-dimensional life as another character altogether. The first version of the character that would eventually become Opportunity‘s Rose was Baker Bulwark, a character from As Above/So Below, BP Games’ first attempt at game creation. As Above/So Below was about a school for prospective pilots of colossal God-killing mechs, and Baker was one such prospective pilot. The character, the lead singer of a massively-popular band, was inspired by Super Defence Fortress Macross character Lynn Minmei, a pop idol who becomes the lynchpin of Earth’s strategy in a war against an overwhelming alien fleet. The first version of the character (whose concepts were created by Darcy Dureau prior to Pacha coming on board) was also a cisgender man who happened to do his idol performances in drag.

After health concerns kept Darcy from being able to continue working with me, I connected with Pacha and she set about redoing our existing concepts in her style. When it came time to revisit Baker, I decided to change the character from a male idol with a feminine stage persona to a transgender woman who was much more comfortable owning her celebrity status. The reasons for doing this were extremely superficial: on balance, I just like woman characters more than men, and I personally find a trans woman a lot more sexually-appealing than an effete man who does drag. I don’t recall exactly how old she was supposed to be, but this version of the character still feels quite a bit younger than Rose – her expressions are a lot bigger, she’s less reserved, she seems to have noticeably more energy.

Finally, there’s Rose as she appeared in Opportunity. Although I do think it’s quite funny that the character basically wound up having her very own transition timeline, this was largely unplanned – I had just always been quite taken with how legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka would very often “recast” characters into multiple series, treating the designs like actors on a film lot, and decided it’d be neat to do something like that with the designs we liked from AA/SB that were sadly mothballed when Pacha and I shifted gears to working on Opportunity. (If you’ve been following Monstrous Liberation‘s development updates, you might notice that the character of Nadia looks pretty familiar, for that matter!)

Rose being such a 100% Gold-Star Top followed naturally from my decision to make Juniper into the quintessential Bratty Bottom. I think her top energy provides a much-needed balance for the rest of the cast, who are largely either bottoms, switches, or undecided. Rose’s sex scenes always came pretty easily (no pun intended) because of how much fun it was to write for a character who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to be a little mean about it.

Before moving on from Juniper and Rose, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention D’Artagnan, the third member of their family. D’Artagnan is an elderly Schnauzer, and is completely spoiled in every way by his mothers. D’Artagnan doesn’t get very much screentime, but I think he makes the most of what he gets. He was Rose’s dog from a puppy (yes, she DID name him after the character from Dumas’s The Three Musketeers), and Juniper likes to joke that half the reason she married Rose was so she’d get to spend more time with D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan smells pretty weird and sneezes as loud as a dog four times his size, but he’s nevertheless an extremely Good Boy.

Kate (Beryl)

Kate came as a bit of a surprise to me, I have to admit. She was originally planned to appear in the third chapter alone, providing Jacqueline with some much-needed advice and a few new experiences before going on her merry way. However, a few things wound up happening. On the story side, I realized that Jackie would obviously want to stay in contact with someone who had so much experience in the career she was just embarking on, and that Kate, for her part, would likely feel both charmed by and protective towards Jackie. On the art side, Pacha simply had a lot of fun illustrating Kate’s scenes (Kate and Rose were Pacha’s favorite characters to do art for). Finally, Kate is just an extremely charismatic character with a tendency to take charge of every scene she’s in. It simply didn’t make any sense to keep her benched.

Kate fills a few useful roles within the story. She’s a good mentor and sounding board for Jacqueline, someone outside of her usual friend group she can turn to for a certain amount of wisdom when needed (Olive and Juniper might be supportive, but that doesn’t mean that either of them really know anything about being a sex worker). As Jacqueline gains experience, Kate also becomes someone with whom she can talk shop (a vital component for enjoying any career). Kate’s also important for Roman. Since I had been so carefully keeping Roman siloed-off from Jacqueline’s friend group, he was sorely in need of another character besides Jacqueline with whom to interact. Kate is good for Roman – she’s known him a while, and isn’t afraid of bossing him around or teasing him (to be fair, he makes it pretty easy sometimes).

Because Kate is meant to be an experienced, highly-sought-after sex worker, it was important that she feel genuine. I was extremely fortunate while writing Opportunity to be good friends with a woman whose resume included more than a decade of that exact kind of sex work and who was even in a sugar baby relationship herself at the time. Although I had already picked up quite a bit about the particulars of her work through the simple osmosis granted by years of friendship, she was an absolutely invaluable source of information and feedback throughout the game’s development. It seemed only right that Kate’s appearance be partially based on her own – Kate’s oversized glasses and comfy-looking loungewear ensemble were directly inspired by similar garments my friend would wear.

Kate’s other visual inspiration came courtesy of porn performer (and face of catfishing dating accounts the world over) Sabrina Nichole. I had been a fan of Nichole’s for a long while, and she happened to have the exact body type I was picturing for Kate: definitely conventionally-attractive, a little bit top-heavy, but also comfortably well-fed. A younger full-service sex worker early in their career might feel a lot of pressure to maintain a body that’s sexually-appealing by normative standards, but once a more mature sex worker attains a certain level of success in their career, with a stable supply of regular clients and a strong reputation, it’s common for them to allow themselves to ease off from workouts and diet. Being a sugar baby is all about letting someone spoil you with gifts and treats and rich, expensive food, after all – putting on a few pounds is just advertising that you’ve Made It.

Sexually, Kate is a bit of a chameleon – she tries to read the energy of whatever situation she’s in and return it at the appropriate level. This isn’t to say that sex isn’t fun for her (it very much is) but just that she’s very, very practised at it at this point. It’s worth mentioning that at basically no point in Opportunity‘s story do we see Kate engaging in sex in what one might call a private, intimate way. Most of her on-screen sexual activity takes place within professional or semi-professional contexts, and even chapter 5’s orgy is more of an indulgent performance on her part than a reflection of how she likes to fuck in her personal life. I suspect that when fucking non-client partners, Kate is something of a pillow princess (as is her right).

Speaking of Kate’s personal life, it’s implied to be somewhat eclectic. Despite being a little older than Jacqueline, Kate still likes to cut loose a significant amount and is no stranger to party drugs and hard liquor. She’s also prone to binge-watching period dramas while spending too much money on delivery. She’s also a not-so-secret Sailor Moon fan, as evidenced by her choice of pseudonym being that of Queen Beryl. Again, we really don’t see Kate outside professional or performative contexts in Opportunity – I suspect that when she’s not working or partying, she tends to have long periods of low-energy hibernation to recharge.

That does it for this portion of the Opportunity retrospective! The next post will complete our review of the cast, covering Alejandro, Sasha, Dominic, Yasmin, and Shruthi! Leave a comment if you have specific question about Opportunity or our approach to adult game development, and I’ll try to work it in! Thank you for reading! Please consider supporting my work by purchasing the game on Steam, Itch, or GOG! See you next time!

NEXT ESSAY IN THIS SERIES: Opportunity Retrospective Part 6: The Rest Of The Cast

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