Hi everyone!

I’m RakaP, the alleged writer of The Butterfly Dreams!

This story (originally titled I Dreamt I Was A Butterfly) started as an entry for a writing challenge in August 2016. It was held by my university club POCHU Genshiken (never mind that I graduated in 2015).

The theme was ‘Creativity’. As a theme, it allows for nearly limitless interpretation. You can even go meta and write whatever you want – you’re just being creative after all.

But I’m sure the RakaP from 8 years ago set out to write a story that can rightfully claim to be about Creativity.

Creativity takes many forms. My creativity is different from yours, and so on. So I wrote a story that allowed different characters to express their creativity. Not just artists, because they’re expected to be creative. But also a gamer, an accountant, and a neurosurgeon.

But as they are not well-acquainted with brush or pen, I gave them a machine that would allow them to realize their imagination. This, hopefully, allows them to express their creativity without the constraint of artistic skills.

Of course, what they come up with also reflects their limits as individuals, whether or not they realize it. Even with a machine that offers (theoretically) boundless possibility, they are still constrained by the self: that is, the experiences, biases, expectations, emotions, and doubts that shape their minds.

It goes to show that one’s artistic expression reflects what’s inside. Not only by what things the creator chooses to include in it, but also what they would not, or could not, include in it.

Yet, as the old adage goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. People might not include things they want, even if they could, for a myriad of reasons. Maybe that it would offer others a glimpse into their psyche, which is like tearing one’s chest apart to expose the beating heart inside.

Or, maybe… They have other, more insidious reasons.

As for The Butterfly Dreams itself, I drew inspiration from interactive fiction works that I was obsessed with at the time. Namely, the Dangan Ronpa and Zero Escape series. Zero Time Dilemma, the final game of the Zero Escape series, had just been released in June of 2016. It’s a brilliant game that plays with the player’s expectations (although it’s got its own shortcomings). I sought to evoke that feeling of uniquely satisfying wonder you get from peeling layers of a story.

Then, I also have to give credit to Zhuang Zhou’s timeless philosophical meditation on the nature of reality and self (and of course, to the translators, as I cannot read Chinese).

We can confidently say a dream is a dream because we have a baseline waking reality that we deem real. But what if I’m but a butterfly who dreams about this waking reality, yet to wake up to the true reality?

Well, at the end of the day, I don’t think this story ends up as thought-evoking as I wanted it to be, but I love it just the same. It’s an expression of my creativity, and the limits of it (or, at least, at the time). I hope you’ll enjoy exploring what creativity means just like I did all those years ago.

Finally, I owe the adaptation of this short story into a visual novel format to my friends at AveQ. First and foremost, Requiem, who led this effort and laboriously coded the whole thing. The idea was thrown around a few years back, but she finally made it happen. Next, my long-time collaborator Riesling, whose beautiful art gave form to these words. And finally, to our rock Om Tivi, whose support is reliable and steady as a bedrock.

Now, please enjoy this little, fickle, flitting story before it flies away to the great unknown. And should it leave an impression on you, please kindly share it with us.

🦋 RakaP 🦋