For those unaware, read this and this first.
So, I’ve actually finished it. Not showing the whole thing yet as there’s a plot point that at the moment is left unresolved and I can’t find a narrative place to fix it without pausing the story for unnecessary dialogue. Also I changed my mind on how one of the characters operates so I need to go back and modify that, tweak some of the traps to make them more on-brand etc. I’m not sure whether to show any reactions to it from the outside world or not. On the plus side it would allow me to cut between times easily, and getting reactions from people is the easiest way to nudge the audience towards certain things. But another part of me feels that cutting away from a trapped house will make it feel less trapped. I’ll figure it out. But until then, here’s the ending.
Quick summary of what’s happened before this that you haven’t seen: Terri has lost an eye and has had to resort to cannibalism after being locked in a room with a dead body for 63 days, she saved Anna and the two are the last survivors.
Now, as someone else pointed out, Harley Quinn isn’t a nurse, and that’s not her name. In my head her visual aesthetic is the same as from the Arkham Asylum games which just seemed more “nurse” to me. In the second draft I’m likely to change it to a hospital room. The downside of that is it wouldn’t feel as trapped as it is in an ambulance. Although it being set in an ambulance does raise one question: Who’s driving? I need an answer to that in my Harley Quinn episode, and if I can’t think of one I will definitely have to change it. And I’m still not sure whether to actually have the Joker in it more. At the moment he’s almost a cameo, I need a way to remind the audience that this is his doing, and he’s overseeing it all. But it’s hard to figure out a natural way to do that. There is a really obvious way, I know, but I need to realise what it is. Also, I’m still not completely sure whether Harley was lying about whether Anna survived. In my head I had two endings: one where Terri thought she got away with it but then found out Anna survived, and had the realisation of what that meant, and the Harley Quinn one. This was my way of kind of doing both, but I need to pull it off better.