The postmortem for It’s Family Business! is finally here!
What’s a “postmortem”?
A breakdown of how I made this fic, from start to finish. It includes drafts, sketches, and a handful of scrapped ideas.
I hope that this postmortem inspires you to make your own story… or at the very least, is interesting to read.
Enjoy!
“Why did you make It’s Family Business!?”
The short answer:To cook my own food.
The long answer:To cook my own food!
The Bravecogs are my favorite characters in ToonTown: Corporate Clash. However, there aren’t many stories about Cathal. Even fewer stories focus on his father, Allan (the Senior VP). As a firm believer of “be the change you want to see in the world”, I took matters into my own hands.
In the Corporate Clash fandom, many believe that Suits build their own children, like in Robots (2004). And when I saw how cute Cathal’s design was, I thought to myself; Did Allan make him that way on purpose?
So with those ideas in mind, I drew this comic.
A lot of people liked it! But I still found myself wanting a proper answer to “Why was Cathal designed like that?”
And that’s how It’s Family Business! began.
Planning It’s Family Business!
To start, I drew a spider diagram. This was where I explored IFB’s central theme; “fatherhood”.
At this stage, I wanted IFB to be about Allan raising Cathal to adulthood, and the many ups and downs that came with that. But I also wanted this project to be manageable, so I shifted the story’s focus to Allan becoming a father.
Within IFB, I wanted to explore Allan’s happiness, fear and ulterior motives behind having a child. I intended IFB to be a happy story, but it’s pretty screwed up for him to make a designer baby as a marketing tactic. Still, that mentality is very Cog-like…
Anyways, as our Senior VP spends more time and money building Cathal, his true feelings begin to show. Since Allan’s a jolly guy, he’s happy that he's having a baby. But he's also afraid of hurting them - because he didn't initially create them out of love. Allan has to grow into the role of a father over the course of the story.
After I drew my spider diagram, I wrote a basic outline for IFB. This was where I made my plot skeleton and set the pacing of the story. Many of the beats here ended up in the final fic!
From there, I brought my outline into Scrivener and began writing the full story.
Writing It’s Family Business!
As with most of my storytelling projects, I wrote three drafts before I completed IFB’s plot.
My first draft, as with most first drafts, was to get words on a page. I didn’t pay attention to character voices or detail consistencies. In fact, some of the scenes were a series of bullet points. One example is the scene in the ending where Allan takes Cathal’s package and runs back to his office. At the time, I couldn't think of any good prose ideas for this scene, so I left it as a series of detailed bullet points.
Then, I took some time away from IFB so that I could come to the second draft with a fresh pair of eyes. The purpose of my second draft was getting my fic from “written” to “well written”. I structured business letters, refined character voices, and fixed awkward speeches. I also turned my bullet-points into proper prose and cut out unneeded pieces of dialogue. This line below is one example.
Once I was satisfied with my rewrite, I gave my fic to my twin Clu for editing. She thoroughly destroyed it.
Then, I handled the third draft. This was where I checked my fic for consistency. I made sure certain minor names were the same, and checked that the timeline I wrote made sense. I should mention that when I wrote IFB, I wasn’t aware of Scrivener’s timeline notecard feature. So I still worry that I mixed up a date or two in the final version of IFB… If I did, I apologize!
After that, the writing was 90% done, and I moved onto the coding/formatting stage. I say 90% done because I’d continue tweaking the fic until it released in mid-June.
Coding It’s Family Business!
Coding could only start once I completed the writing for IFB. Ever since I learned about AO3’s HTML/CSS support, I wanted IFB to be an epistolary story with many formats.
I modified my code off of these tutorials:
• [Base letters code]
• [Lined letters code, (with written comments on top!)]
• [Custom dividers code]
• [Base emails code]
• [Base sticky notes code]
• [Image formatting code]
• [Traditional book formatting code, (with an illustrated initial letter)]
• [Custom Title code] (I also followed this guide to use an image as my title.)
Of all the HTML and CSS I wrote, I’m most proud of the email windows. I referenced old 2000’s email windows to make them feel as accurate as possible.
The tricky part with formatting was implementing it into AO3’s HTML textbox. Because IFB used so many CSS styles, I’d sometimes mess up the formatting when editing my writing. I was also conscious of the time limit I had for IFB’s draft; when you post a draft on AO3, it’s deleted after a month.
Eventually, I found a workaround for the time limit. I saved the code for IFB’s HTML/CSS into a code editor (I chose SublimeText), and then copy-pasted it into a new draft. That way, I could continue where I left off with formatting.
Illustrating It’s Family Business!
I started the illustration process towards the end of IFB's coding stage. I wanted the fic to have illustrations so that readers could view the story from Allan’s point of view.
First, I drew the initial sketches. I set the canvas proportions and drew thumbnails of the scenes I wanted illustrated. Then, I imported these sketches as placeholders, and adjusted IFB's formatting around them.
After that, I asked Clu to make the neat illustrations. We’ve wanted to collaborate on a project for a long time, so I’m glad we could make that a reality here.
She drew the lineart first...
Then passed the .psds to me for greyscale flatting...
...And then I passed the flatted illustration back to her. At this point, she would use a gradient map, paint over the illustration, and add final details.
Finally, I added textural details for certain illustrations (like the transcript photos). These included paper crinkles, drop shadows, and sticky tape; which made them feel real.
Once we completed an illustration, I uploaded it to Imgur and implemented it into IFB.
Conclusion
…And that’s the making of It’s Family Business!
This project was a blast, and I learned a lot from it as a storyteller.
Will I write another TTCC story in the future? I can't make any promises, but there is another tale I want to tell. If it comes out, it’ll serve as a contrast piece to this one. That’s what I’ll say.
But whether that story happens or not, I want to thank everyone for enjoying this story. I’m glad Allan and Cathal could move you in the same way they continue to move me.
Until next time!
-Mado 
