Ut0p1a in (Code) Review: Righting Right to Code
[Some stuff I thought would be worth posting about, surrounding Ut0p1a's 8-year (?!) gap between entries. It spoils things from all the stories, so you should only read it after reading the whole thing. Also, I do go into my thought process on some things, but I aimed to leave most things not clearly stated in the stories ambiguous.]
Ever since Down to Code, I'd had the notion of there being two more stories that would "conclude" the Ut0p1a series. I'm pretty sure I wrote Up to Code as a standalone thing, just with some additional floating ideas about the world, but Down to Code definitely namedropped Rena as a lead-in for Right to Code.
And in fact, I did write Right to Code way back when... but I was never able to write the very end of it, and came to feel that my ideas for continuing the series were so lacking in any meaningful substance that for a long time, I figured I never would continue it. After From the Sidelines, I got thinking about Ut0p1a again, considered ideas for a total rewrite of Right to Code, and quickly had brain blasts about brand new better plans for Right to Code and Left to Code.
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So what was the original draft of Right to Code like? Well, the first half of the story actually focused on Rena's (Ut0p1an) childhood. The recurring dream intro was basically the same, but the first real scene was a chance encounter with Eda at Brake Point when Rena was around 10.
While a good deal of the "facts" about Eda remained the same, their personality was extremely different, though it somewhat lines up with how I describe them having been in the past in the final version. They were wandering the planet invisible to everyone, and so were shocked when Rena was able to see them (due to her having corrupted permissions), falling off a cliff into water in surprise. They also spoke in all lowercase, were extremely unconfident and listless, and came up with their name on the spot by listing "some of their favorite letters" (though with the implication it came from a vague bit-rotted memory).
Overall, they were much more of an aberrant weirdo, and I felt iffy about that characterization, especially given their position as the only known nonbinary character at the time. So I aimed to avoid this perception in the new version, albeit still having them be kind of a dork. While I still only gave a basic description of them and didn't feel up for drawing an official design, in my mind (contrary to the image given by the original draft), they're actually, like, kind of hot now. (Which makes things like Mona embarrassing them all the funnier.)
Anyway, the story mostly revolved around Eda being Rena's only friend and vice versa, with Rena being the only person who could see Eda and trying to boost their self-esteem. Since Eda couldn't remember their birthday (noted as separate from "initialization date," accompanied by a weird miscommunication that stirs up Rena's human memories, and with a joke about them thinking it's December 31st, 1969), Rena decided they could make it the same as her birthday and celebrate together. There were various cute moments between them (or at least attempts at such), like Eda invisibly riding on Rena's shoulders, but it didn't add up to much.
Eventually, it timeskipped to Rena attending Chexum. She had roughly the same conversation with her History professor and subsequent meeting with Lina (who falls for her) from the new version. But this was then followed by awkward discussions with Eda about their relationship, Eda worrying that Lina might be able to sense them, and Rena wanting Eda to introduce themselves to more people instead of it just being her forever. Eda also went "ping" in response to Meyer's nervous habit (with them not knowing why), though it was at a weird, random time and didn't really fit as well as the final implementation of that idea.
Rena later had a roughly-identical-to-final meeting with Lily (who she falls for) in Lina's room. While the three talked, Rena caught hiccups from Lina, and Lina fixed them for her in much the same way. However, in this version, Lina unquestionably did accidentally alter Rena's permissions in the process, in such a way that Rena could no longer see Eda. She freaked out about this, to the others' confusion, and they called in Meyer. (It's also mentioned Lina has a dedicated button to call Meyer on her phone, which might still be canon.)
Meyer fixed the issue, but decided to make Eda visible to everyone in the room so they could talk about what in the world was going on here. She pieced together some things about their world by combining the new information from Eda (such as Rena being marked as a "human" in a way only Eda could see) with her own, muttering things out loud as she did. Realizing what she might have let slip, she promised to tell the others about the things she knew in her office later, if they dared to learn, suggesting that would be how the next story started.
And then I couldn't really write an ending after that. Because none of it was really going anywhere. Rena's memories were sort of shockingly not a major element, and I'm not sure if I ever entertained her particularly putting together what was going on there. I did want to at least vaguely suggest that her human basis was trans, but didn't have any sort of clear picture of who she was (even compared to the broad-strokes picture I've established now).
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The original Left to Code, which probably would've been narrated by Lily for no particular reason other than to round things out, never got much further than an assortment of ideas. But the likely premise was that Lina, Lily, Rena, Eda, and Meyer would for some reason go into space (with no punny name for it at the time)... by, uh, climbing a very tall ladder. (I definitely didn't consider position editing to be something that was possible at this point.) Once past the planet's sphere of gravity, which got stronger near the edge as part of deterring people from leaving, they would suddenly be able to just float around freely, and discover how things got lower and lower detail the further they got from the planet. There was also a vague idea about the edge of the universe being a glitchy wall of code, which Lina would be able to navigate because of her glitchy nature.
I considered, some way or another - maybe by going inside of the sun, or via a goofy joke about "throwing an exception" where the "exception" was Lina - having a climax where the group temporarily enters a "version control system" for Ut0p1a as disembodied spirits (much like Lina's phone adventure from the final version). They would see all the work and branches that had gone into their world, and the possibility of rolling back past mistakes and making major fixes. I never settled on anything concrete about what they could or would do with it, though, ala the "fixing" of the Once-in-a-While Loop in the final; in fact, I was sort of leaning toward each of them narrating their perspective and individually deciding they didn't want to change anything (while also making blatant wordplay on their respective directions, i.e. Lina up, Meyer down, Rena right, Lily left).
And then for some reason Meyer would've had a reallocation ceremony where she adopted Lina. (She'd initially want to adopt the whole trio, but respect that it might make their relationships weird. She'd also discuss this with Lina's parents, who I conceived as simply being "three moms." Nowadays I'd say that if Meyer had to adopt someone, it would more likely be Lily, as they feel like they have more of a history - the choice of Lina was more forced for the sake of bookending.) Meyer's ex-husband (who may have become an admin after she left?) would've been there and it would've be awkward. And Lina would wear her favorite glitchy skirt that's always fluttering in the wind, which Meyer would explain to someone with a tearful smile "was just like that."
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So eight years later, I decided most of the stuff worth keeping from the original Right to Code was Rena's introduction to and relationship with Lina and Lily - since that stuff was cute and those simply were their relationship dynamics in my mind - and that Eda should still exist but in a less awkward form. I also felt like Lily deserved more of a focus, as she didn't really have a story of her own; even if she got to be the primary narrator for Left to Code, it never would've actually been "about" her without a very different premise, I think. Also, in the past, I'd sort of thought of her as "the first trans person in all of Ut0p1a who had to go to special lengths with Meyer to cover up her past," but that just felt awkward, unrealistic, and uninteresting.
All this sort of led to the idea of Lily and Rena going wild experimenting with their own properties, but then I concluded "Lily would've done that already" and "would Rena be that interested in changing anything?" So then I considered the more abstract idea of editing position, and combined with the aforementioned general ideas about space, Undefined was born. Incidentally, while I determined Eda's role there during the planning stages, it wasn't until I actually wrote up to the part where they land on Undefined that I just... had the idea for Mona, almost fully formed. Perfect angel, no notes.
Because I never really figured out what Rena was all about in the original draft, that took some time to work out for the rewrite. In the original, I think my notion was that her being a singleton was sort of "made up for" by having Eda - her big sib, so to speak - as she grew up. By taking that part out, it then made more sense to focus on how being a singleton made her self-conscious about choices and anxious about her future, and tie that into her lack of desire to change any of her properties. As stated rather directly in the story, this also makes the culture of Undefined put a weird sort of pressure on her despite part of her feeling like she "should" belong there. So her deciding to become an admin on the planet to help those who don't feel they belong, and putting together the truth about her human "basis" so as to resolve those feelings, ended up being natural conclusions.
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I've always kept in mind with Ut0p1a in particular that it's good to leave some mystery, and I'd always pictured a continuation of the series still leaving it fully ambiguous what Ut0p1a was made to be, why people stopped coming in, and whether humanity had died out or what. At most, I imagined possibilities like getting a glimpse of an empty server room, or being able to send messages to a printer that no one would read. Both Up to Code and Down to Code have this message of "life may be hard, the world may be broken, but you find a way to live in it," so doesn't it just fit for the Ut0p1ans to be fully on their own? Part of me was hesitant to provide any elaboration on the state of the outside world, much less in such a direct way as a human actually "returning."
But besides just the point of "how/why would it still be running all this time if everyone were dead, though?", I realized there were too many good thematic possibilities that could come of sacrificing that somewhat, largely around a focal question of "what kind of human would still be interested in Ut0p1a?" It became apparent that if someone was running their own version of Ut0p1a decades after the fact (the natural explanation for it still being up), they would have a) a vested interest in bringing it back and b) actually very little idea what they're doing.
The former meant that I could highlight the possible reasons for people's continued interested in Ut0p1a after its shutdown, as well as finally give some acknowledgement to everyone being a furry (or scalie) instead of it coming off as mere flavor. (Actually, for a long time, I was thinking there were only ever furries in Ut0p1a and you couldn't just be human, but looking at it realistically, that would be a hard sell.) And the latter meant that Cecilia's presence would hardly invalidate the efforts of the Ut0p1ans the way I feared it might to have a "god" show up. I also realized there were lots of parallels to be drawn between the two worlds, especially given some of my general notions on events in the outside world (hinted at throughout the stories).
Obviously, despite the decision to go to this direction, I was still very selective about what's revealed to leave the rest up to your imagination, mostly restricting it to things that would mean something thematically. Primarily for this reason, I was careful to minimize switches to Cecilia's perspective, especially while she's outside of Ut0p1a. Not that she seems to get out much or anything prior to the climactic turn, but still.
Finally, one thing I didn't come up with completely in 2023 and haven't already mentioned here was Cubits. A sign of just how old the idea was: they were originally called Bitcubes. I came up with them as a currency, figured they should be mergeable and splittable and innately countable in order to be remotely convenient, and conceived of the issue of modern-day admins having to effectively counterfeit imperfect ones that can't be split fully. So that ended up being a natural fit for something to "solve" in the new Left to Code.