ponett town

Most people in Greenridge generally weren't aware of the specifics of what happened. The final battle was pretty far from town, and it also happened late at night when most people were asleep. Anyone looking would notice weird shit happening on the mountain followed by a big flash of light and a series of smaller flashes from spells being flung around, but anyone not looking outside probably just thought it was a bad thunderstorm

However, that is definitely something Allison would do. I like that headcanon

I honestly hadn't even considered this possibility when creating those two separate jokes but I like this coincidence enough that I'm going to declare this canon

nope

We've left the true nature of Hugh Mann intentionally vague, and I'll probably be keeping it that way for the foreseeable future. I have some of the logic of his whole deal worked out on my end, and there is definitely some overlap with the undead in Mumford, but at the end of the day Anthony created him because he thought it would be funny to have a skeleton named Hugh Mann who insists he's a human in a fantasy world where humans never existed. It's funnier if there's no elaboration on this, at least for now

As for the mechanics of undeath, I will say that staying in a mana-rich environment isn't necessary for them. It certainly makes things easier, but they can live just about anywhere with a steady supply of Ethers in place of food. Crud mentions that some of the Wasteland's undead have already relocated to the surface, for example, and Hugh Mann is from Brightport

Oh there's no way that Bartholomew wasn't using any excuse he could find to bring up the fact that he made her with dark magicks around the house when Catherine was growing up. "I used all of the unholy power at my disposal to bring you into this world, and now my greatest creation can't even put her toys away when she's done playing with them?" He was very explicit with her about the fact that she was created to be his ultimate evil minion, he just gave up after a while and let her be normal when it became clear that she didn't have an evil bone in her body

(SLARPG spoilers)

The game balancing reasons are that 1) Jodie has the smallest MP pool in the party while Claire has the largest, so Jodie's basic skills can't cost as much MP if I want people to actually use them, and 2) as the glass cannon who's the player's main source of magical damage, giving Claire a buff will give you more of an advantage than giving Jodie a buff.

The in-universe reason is that Faith is the one doing most of the magic when Jodie summons her (Jodie basically just has to channel a little bit of mana into her locket to ping Faith and then Faith warps over herself), whereas Claire has to do all of the work when summoning Beverly since Beverly knows very little magic.

I previously talked about the dynamic between those characters here. (SLARPG spoilers, obviously.) Like I've said, it wasn't my intent to depict that character as plural, but I also won't tell fans putting their own spin on things or relating to the character in their own way that they're wrong. People finding their own ways to connect with my work is a good thing

i wouldn't say that my intent with the scene was to say "melody and claire canonically have romantic feelings for each other" - nor do i think any of the fan works exploring that idea are necessarily saying that was my intent. but also... yeah, i knew that reading was there from the moment i wrote the scene lmao. i was like "oh, this is really sweet. these two have chemistry. people are gonna ship this." while not the literal text of the scene, it's not like i made any efforts to lean away from the idea. can't blame people for picking up what i put down and wanting to explore those possibilities

allison's whole fighting style is very much influenced by other genres of game, yes. (and, by extension, i suppose amelia's is as well.) character action games are one element, but i would also point to fighting games and old school beat-em-ups. and also just, like, shounen battle anime

allison's directional attacks are actually a leftover from a combo system i wanted to implement early on using a script from yanfly, which would have made that influence even more obvious. you would be able to do a few different directional attacks and/or a sword slash in real time when allison's turn comes up, and if you did specific input sequences it would trigger special moves. (this is also sort of like sabin's blitz moves in ff6, except the individual inputs are all attacks in and of themselves.) i abandoned this almost immediately because it felt overwhelming in a game that otherwise had no active input mechanics during combat, and also because lisa uses the exact same script to some extent and i didn't want to be seen as riding their coattails. but i was able to turn the directional attacks into their own skills to retain some of that flavor

Got a spoilery ask about SLARPG regarding Melody's character arc and, to a lesser extent, the ending, so I'll put this below a read more!