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The Story of Simoun The Catboy
🕑 Added 2023-07-26 18:00:07 +0000 UTCHi everyone! It's BáiYù here with the long awaited post on our newest bachelor, Simoun. We know you've all been abuzz with questions about him so we hope to answer some of that in this deep dive into his creation. This post is in lieu of our usual Wednesday devlogs as we've been writing this over the span of several weeks, and was co-authored, edited, and reviewed by Tobias, Jude, ToyboxToonz, Primarvelous, and Sauce. The above image was drawn by ToyboxToonz.
Personally speaking, some of my concerns since Simoun's debut are thoughts like "Do people think I'm making SnaccPop Studios push an agenda?" and "Do people think I'm going through a checklist while making new characters?" It's made it difficult for us to write this quickly because this is quite personal to myself and the rest of the sensitivity consultation team on the DachaBo team.
Concept to Creation
The story of DachaBo begins way before SnaccPop Studios itself was even a concept (that's Sauce's story to tell though). Early Patreon art of Simoun exists from November 2022, back before I was signed on to manage the Patreon and any other projects besides Sunny Day Jack. Sauce had some ideas laying around for several other characters in the DachaBo universe that didn't make it into the proof-of-concept demo:
I dug up an old draft for the DachaBo cat character we teased and it featured a story concept where the cat character was originally a female DachaBo character, referencing the original female design. And overtime he got tired of how he was being treated and decided to change his own self to reflect who he wanted to be, not the sycophants who collected the toys and whatnot
...
It was shelved because I didnt have the means to sensitivity check it
The designs are half cooked is all but he was supposed to be Indian ethnicity coded for no other reason than I've never seen a character like that
One thing that's important to note is that there definitely are Indian folks who are gender diverse (see Hijra on Wikipedia for a quick primer on one of the traditionally recognized nonbinary genders in South Asia) so it's not a novel concept by any means, but it's also not very common in media whatsoever.
Why The Long Wait?
One of the other contributing reasons as to why Sauce wasn't able to do much with the concept at the time is because we didn't have a VA for him confirmed yet, as I explained in May:
One thing that's rather unique to SnaccPop Studios in all of my experience as a game developer is the fact that all of our series involve coordinating with Voice Actors from the start, which means we need to take the VAs themselves into account when making characters. Adding another layer of complexity in hiring is the fact that SnaccPop Studios is a strictly Erotic Adult brand focusing on masculine love interests, and even if we focus more on the softcore, there's still the unfortunate stigma that any 18+ work has when attached to your name. All of these contributing factors make the potential talent pool that much smaller.
This isn't to make excuses: I know SnaccPop Studios can do better on this front. While we can't make changes to some of the existing series' main cast (we don't want to put people out of a role they've been promised), we will do better moving forward to incorporate more diverse characters into our future titles, and that's a pledge.
In the field of voice acting, it's best practice to cast actors with similar backgrounds to the character they're voicing, particularly for characters from marginalized populations (ethnicity, culture, gender, etc.), because it's a recurring issue in all professions where marginalized folks are regularly turned down for employment or career opportunities. You don't have to look far for instances where other voice directors failed to cast the proper talent for a character, even in the AAA sphere where they ought to have the resources to be able to find the proper talent; at SnaccPop, we wanted to avoid that situation at all costs.
Finding Simoun's Voice
So we had to confirm a VA first before we could do anything. Sauce, Reece, and I all tried to put private ads out for a trans masc POC (any ethnicity with dark skin) actor for a R18 game, which was largely met with silence at first, then responded to by folks who didn't fit the role in a full capacity (many only hit one or two of the criteria we laid out, some of them none at all). And it's not hard to imagine why: it's common knowledge that the majority of erotic works often fetishize marginalized people who are otherwise underrepresented in mainstream media. Things such as skin color, body type, hair color, age, etc. are treated as traits to be objectified, and on the off chance that queer folks or people of color might see themselves in porn… it's usually not for the most flattering or empowering of reasons. How could we, an exclusively Adults-only studio, convince someone who isn't familiar with us that we wanted to make something for people like them rather than something that turns them into mere masturbating material?
We were almost about to give up on the Catboy until I decided to take a chance on contacting a VA whom I hadn't had any formal and proper interactions with before. I'd been a fan of his work and knew him from an audition he sent in from a previous game I had worked on, but he knew me solely by name at best since we were following each other on Twitter. Still, it was a lead, and after chewing my nails for half a day, I shot off a message to Soren Viloria.
And what do you know? He said he'd give it a shot as his first NSFW role.
Naming the Lad
Soren is a Filipino VA, and despite the fact that I myself seem to be mistaken as Filipino by other Asians quite regularly, I'm actually not as well-versed in that culture as I ought to be.
There's actually a reason why we were so secretive with Simoun's name for a while: he didn't have one yet, so internally we just kept calling him "the Catboy." We wanted to pick a culture-appropriate name for him, something that was meaningful: Soren initially suggested "Siopao" as it was a common cat name (it's a type of Filipino Steamed Bun, so think of how many pets you've seen who have names like Cupcake or Nacho Supreme), but that didn't seem serious enough for a tsundere catboy like him. A few days later, Soren did a little research on a few well-known characters from Philippine media/culture that fit the bill a bit better:
- Elías from the Philippine Revolution novel Noli Me Tángere (a required reading in the Philippines). Cat may like his radical tendencies for revolution and his deep, devoted connections.
- Simoun from Noli's sequel, El filibusterismo. Holds revolutionary values similar to Elías, but far less noble and more of a loner. Violent at times, and will do what it takes to get his way.
- Panday/Flavio, a very popular hero. Part of his charm is that he doesn't have special powers, but took matters into his own hands and forged a magical blade. Has been portrayed in both 'cool' and comedic ways.
- Ricardo "Cardo" from the Philippines' longest-running TV drama Ang Probinsyano. Just a cool action hero dude who cares about family, but is also very ambitious and angy.
Seeing as how we already had an Elias Gallagher, Simoun seemed to be the perfect fit, and the name stuck pretty easily.
Simoun's Boundaries
Now that Simoun had a name, we were able to talk about him more seriously beyond the simple "tsundere cat" tropes. You've all already met Gil Finnegan, who we originally brought into SnaccPop Studios to handle the narrative design for DachaBo but was then onboarded to help with Sunny Day Jack, and those of you in the Patreon Discord server are familiar with our mods Tobias and Jude; along with me and Soren Viloria, that brought the grand total of openly trans masculine members on the team.
We all talked about our personal experiences as trans masc/AFAB people, what things we rarely saw reflected in both mainstream and indie media, things we wanted to see more of. Something we all agreed that was difficult to find was trans masculine folks in sexually dominant roles in erotic media, whether that was live video, audio, writing, art, or a combination thereof; there was only a handful of series we could count on our fingers as far as sexually explicit content that featured trans masculine people in roles that weren't exclusively submissive/bottoms, and the majority of us had already seen those or at least heard of them before (ie. Gummy and the Doctor and Sasha From The Gym were prominent ones). Either discovering this content was difficult due to Search Engine Optimization favoring depictions of trans feminine folks, or it simply didn't exist.
All of this, along with the backstory that Sauce had for Simoun, led us to determine that Simoun would be adverse to submissive roles in intimate situations. Simoun isn't the type to want to be penetrated either due to previous trauma surrounding his gender. Bear in mind that this isn't meant to imply or suggest that there is only one "acceptable" sexual preference for trans masculine folks, nor is Simoun meant to represent all of trans masculinity; he may be our first trans masculine character but certainly isn't the last, as we hope to feature more types of characters at SnaccPop Studios.
As an aside, it should be noted that the trend of erotic trans feminine content being more readily available doesn't necessarily mean that trans women have more positive representation per se; for every kinky piece of art created by trans feminine folks out there, there could be ten more works that fetishize and objectify their bodies. We probably don't need to tell you about the common derogatory slurs that have been used to refer to them; trans feminine and trans masculine people deal with varying levels and types of transphobia as well as situations that oversexualize (or even undersexualize) them, and it's important to focus on content that doesn't strip them of their autonomy.
There actually was a period of time between the release of his concept art after Soren was onboarded where the team observed comments both on Patreon and in the Discord regarding Simoun, and we discussed how we could avoid having people try to ship Bo and Simoun together; because Simoun hasn't had bottom surgery of any kind, we wanted to ensure that tokophobia (fear of pregnancy) or dysphoria wouldn't become a thing for any of us involved in the team or for our trans masculine Patrons. It was a bit of a chicken or the egg situation, trying to keep up with the evolving comments about Simoun to try and anticipate what people might accidentally say.
Debut Day Thoughts, & Moving Forward
We were quite happy with the general reception everyone had with Simoun, and we're excited to see so many people taking a liking to Simoun after his reveal. SnaccPop Studios has always strived to provide inclusive and diverse stories for those who don't often get represented in media, much less NSFW media, and the team was quite elated to see folks who were just as happy to see Simoun.
We hope that the love and care we put into building Simoun has shone through in this post and will continue to shine as we write more of him for DachaBo, because we're just getting started.
Comments
I ....love Simoun!
Saturn - Stari ☆
Seeing such care and thought go into designing Simoun truly fills my heart with immense joy, I loved reading this and seeing his debut! Everything about this is just amazing and refreshing and I’m so over the moon excited to see more 💙⭐️
Jaine Dough
Moving forward, when it comes to respectfully portraying Simoun in fan media, how should we approach sexual situations and physical depictions? For instance, should we always ensure his genitalia is covered in art and refrain from mentioning them in writing? Additionally, is it acceptable depicting Simoun with a strap-on or packer or does Simoun not wish to wear one at all?
ScootyMcGoo
Simoun?? More like Sameown am I right
VV
Hey there! I’m a bit new around here, but I wanted to say how nice it is to be able to understand the care and concern you put into developing this character. Everything I learn about him makes me like him more, and I am very eager to meet him properly. Thank you for a little behind the scenes look at your process.
Kitty Bathory
I cant wait for this ❤️ being a filipina and knowing the backstory and especially that his name originated from something from our culture is just so 🥰... it fills my heart with so much joy ❤️ Im so happy and excited to see all of this blossom. I cant wait for my little masungit (grumpy) cat.
Rose
I can't wait to meet and play with Simoun in game!!! I'll be sure to give him all my love ❤️
Helianthos
I think it speaks to the quality of the writing and character design that even before this was posted, my immediate assumption was "Simoun must have been sold as The Girl Version, but turned out to be trans." It's really cool to have that theory confirmed though!! It doesn't seem like you're "making SnaccPop push an agenda" or anything like that. I think it's depressing and revealing when people see a character belonging to a minority group and assume incompetence or a lack of creative passion on the part of the creator right away, and I hope you won't feel too hampered in your ability to create new stories and characters by that assumption.
HeadlessProphet
I am very happy to see all the thought put into his character and i’m very happy he is in a non sub role. Like you guys pointed out it is very hard to find content like that, i’m looking forward to more trans characters!!!!
Kuro_fan1
YEAH!! SIMOUN LORE AND CONCEPT ART!!!! AAAAHHH I LOVR HIS DUE SO FREAKIN MUCH!!
