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ideahat-universe · 1 year ago

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4chan strikes when you least suspect it

So have you seen this video?

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I knew about Goodbye Volcano high when people reacted to the trailer but I forgot about it after that.

Next thing I know I see this video and learn about Snoot game. This is probably a very rare example of a fan fix and there's a lot to learn from it. For starters, Goodbye Volcano High simultaneously bit off more than it can chew while having no ambition. In a David Cage like manner it opted to turn what is essentially a short film or a novel into a video game experience via a lot of game elements that are accepted but never fun (the only time someone found QTE events fun was when the animation it correlated with was batshit crazy but maybe they felt like their little dinosaur game was more important than it needed to be.

Not to put too fine a point on it but a LGBT project that was supposedly being partially funded by the Canadian government would explain why it was a feature at a triple A trailer reel despite being a Renpy visual novel. A lot of good PR would have been obtained had the game been a huge success, good for the LGBT community and Sony and Canada pats themselves on the back for supporting a minority group.

Everyone wins. IF THE GAME IS GOOD. Everybody would have won if the game was good. But the game wasn't good. You could say when a notable member of the staff was kicked off the project and it had to be re-written was the point where the game's success was lost. You could say that 4chan sabotaging the game by creating a parody that ended up stealing the thunder of the original game was when the game's success was lost.

But the reality is that, similar to the phrase "every battle is won before it is fought." by Sun Tzu, The reality is that systematically Goodbye Volcano High was never prepared for success. Despite all the shortcomings the trailer is still completely in line with the game. Goodbye Volcano High was no Doki Doki Literature Club. There was no secret meta defying layer to the story. It wasn't Slay the Princess where it simply opted to work within the limitations of being a story driven game and focus on an extreme amount of player guided writing.

It was always going to be about Fang and her friends discovering themselves while also facing obliteration from the meteor. It was linear and simple from the very beginning.

And that is the point where the game failed and let its community down. It put too much hope on making the game almost a cinematic experience and it almost feels like this game wanted to function more like Life is Strange but the team working on the game don't know how to handle a robust game engine and it shows as the programming mistakes made in Goodbye Volcano High are quite damning when you know how straight forward the Renpy game engine is.

So the question is, how could Goodbye Volcano High been saved?

Well the first step would be to dial back everything it showed off in the trailer. No animation beyond a GIF, no QTEs, and instead add branching paths with endings and choices that matter. That's all Snoot game did to be successful. Well, they had one more trick.

4chan utilized it's own identity to craft a narrative to work with. The main character in Snoot game is 4chan personified and the story of Snoot Game in a very meta way is about how 4chan observed Fang and by extension the basic premise and the world of Volcano High. At first it was the general loathing that you come to expect but based on your choices you can actually develop quite a fondness for the characters and the setting.

You fall in love. Quite romantic for a website that's under constant surveillance from the FBI for, well you know the reasons.

Maybe instead of the meteor being ignored until it lands it's the driving narrative. Sure, Fang still has identity and self confidence issues but on top of that she has to deal with also the thought of dying, but what if, she found a way to stop it, or at the very least survive it?

If the Dinosaurs are basically a modern society but dinos then they would have seen the Meteor months ago. The player playing as Fang could be tasked with finding some way to survive the meteor. She could befriend the 1% who are going to hide in their bunker. Doing this she would possibly have to suck up to nasty individuals and betray good friends.

Maybe you could spend the play through making enough money to buy a car and the money you have decides how many of your friends you can rescue (you can even have it to where some of your friends don't want to leave and you have to save them against their own will).

Lets get really crazy, lets say there was a Laser gun being developed to zap the meteor but it was abandoned when the government realized that it would still do a huge amount across pangea as opposed to having most of the damage in just one place but if you zap the meteor you can save your town specifically from being obliterated.

The story then becomes you breaking into the facility and dealing with the fact that while your town will consider what you did a moral good, you'll go to jail, possibly for the rest of your life and everyone affected by the fragments of the meteor will want you dead.

Lets get even crazier and say that the meteor can be destroyed completely with magic but in order to use this magic you'll have to specifically sacrifice people who are close to you. Maybe that means killing your best friends or it means becoming good friends with bad people just so you can kill them instead.

Every choice would have life changing consequences and shape the kind of character who Fang is and it would make the player very involved in the story and in Fang's development. With all those paths there's still sit around and wait death. Why not?

Renpy is a story telling tool but it functions best as a choose your own adventure novel and that's what Goodbye Volcano High should have been.

Before we wrap things up we need to talk about zoomers underestimating the wily nature of 4chan.

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Keyan Carlie who is a very good content creator made his video about the forgotten failed Gravity Falls theories and during the video he didn't understand why 4chan would latch onto Gravity Falls given the nature of the show and ya know. 4chan is a den of evil white supremacy.

Yes. 4chan is crazy, dangerous even. The people on that website have gone on to ruin more than a few lives (most white) for very little other than because it amused them but 4chan is also where a lot of popular culture mutates and turns into a meme.

As a result, this concoction of crazy anonymous people who have nothing but time will find the time to obsess over anything, that includes a children show. If 4chan can obsess over Deltarune and Undertale it's not going to find any reason to hands off on Gravity Falls.

Ahh, I should lay off the lad, Carlie is just a boy in his echo chamber. Not everyone grew up knowing that 4chan could strike at any moment, from any place, and for any reason.

Goodbye Volcano High devs had to learn that lesson the hard way. Are you next?

#4chan #snoot game #video games #goodbye volcano high #controversy #Youtube

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brownskinallure · 10 months ago

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A Journey Toward Forgiveness

Recently, I came across a thought-provoking video that explored the notion of healing from betrayal and dishonesty. According to the video, it can take a staggering two years of consistent effort and change to truly recover and let go of the pain caused by being lied to. This revelation struck a chord with me, as I often find myself grappling with the complexities of forgiveness in my own life. In a world that seems to constantly challenge our capacity to trust, understanding the healing process is more crucial than ever.

In my journey toward healing, I’ve been diving into my faith, which includes watching the TV series "The Chosen." This series, centered around the life of Jesus and His disciples, has beautifully illustrated the theme of forgiveness throughout its narrative. Watching it has reminded me of the transformative power of forgiveness, not just for those we forgive, but for ourselves as well. Yet, I find that the deeper I explore this theme, the more tangled my own feelings become.

One particular dynamic that resonated with me was the relationship between Matthew and Peter. Their interactions have been a lens through which I see the complexities of forgiveness. Matthew, the tax collector, was ostracized by his people and viewed with disdain, while Peter, a devoted fisherman, had his own preconceived notions about who Matthew was. The tensions between them—stemming from betrayal and misunderstanding—mirror many of the conflicts we face in our daily lives. They each needed to forgive and reconcile with one another in order to move forward, which is often a difficult but necessary step in rebuilding trust.

As I consider my own experiences with betrayal, the struggle with forgiveness comes to the forefront. It’s not just about letting go of what happened but also about battling the emotions that linger long after the initial hurt has occurred. I have found that, like Matthew and Peter, I often hold onto judgments about others and myself, complicating my ability to forgive authentically.

Through my journey of faith and reflection, I’ve come to realize that forgiveness is less about the actions of others and more about the state of my own heart and mind. It’s a process—a continuous choice to release anger and resentment in favor of grace and understanding. This isn’t easy, especially when betrayal feels fresh or painfully relevant.

In watching "The Chosen," I’ve seen how Jesus continuously encourages His followers to embrace forgiveness, even when it feels impossible. His teachings challenge me to examine my own perception of forgiveness, to see it not only as a gift I give to others but as a balm for my own wounds. The weight of bitterness can be isolating, and letting go can feel like a mountain to climb.

As I embark on this path, I remind myself that healing is not linear. There are days when I feel strong and capable of letting go, and there are days when I struggle to forgive, feeling as though I’m right back where I started. The video emphasized that the journey may take time—up to two years— and that’s a sobering yet hopeful reminder. Healing takes patience, and each step toward forgiveness can bring greater clarity and ease.

For anyone else who finds themselves wrestling with the scars of betrayal and struggling with the concept of forgiveness, I encourage you to lean into the stories that inspire you. Whether it’s through the relatable characters in shows like "The Chosen" or other forms of media and personal reflection, allow their journeys to guide you.

As I continue to navigate my own path, I hope to find the grace to forgive—not just for the sake of others, but for the freedom it brings my own spirit. It’s a work in progress, but one worth undertaking. After all, forgiveness is not only a gift; it’s a journey toward healing, one small step at a time.

#encouragement #forgiveness #the chosen #self love #healing #tumblr #emotional intelligence #self help #inspiring quotes #spiritual journey #clarity #peace #change #life

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icharchivist · 1 year ago

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Square really had no faith in this game doing well if they didn't frontload it with popular characters, huh

Honestly that's the feeling i get.

I will forever remember this interview before the Remake came out of one of the main dev of the game (who had gone on record saying he Hated Zack btw -- i still have the magazines with this interview in it!!! bc the guy was the guy focused on Sephiroth and the Zack plotline replaced his initial plot) was talking about "we know fans are looking forward to go back to their favorite, like Cloud, Sephiroth and Zack, and i hope the remake will make them appreciate to see their favs again who have left such an impact on people", and it raised fucking red flags to me because in what circumstances are those the characters you narrow down from ff7, especially THIS GUY. Especially when the game OPENS on Aerith.

Genuinely red flags that they were genuinely worried about how the game would do without those three being there despite the fact Sephiroth and Zack couldn't be there if they followed the plot of the OG

Like i think they were caught in a contradictory set up of, they knew fans liked the setting of Midgar, and would love to see it expended, so they wanted to focus the remake entirely on the first Midgar parts of the OG.

Midgar parts that are *not that long*, so to make it a coherent game, you'd need a lot of padding.

While ALSO the fact the Midgar part plot is extremely tight in term of timing, this is where the game is at its most linear, so it's not like there's a lot of room in the narrative of the OG itself to insert supplementary content.

while ALSO the fact that the most memorable things of the game, (aside perhaps from Wall Market that even people who never played the OG knew about because of all the memes and stuff) are ways later in the game.

Sephiroth is a legendary villain, everyone knows his iconography, if you saw him in KH or Dissidia or like that Smash Bros Trailer, would expect a couple of things about him. But all of those itterations of Sephiroth came from Late Game Sephiroth.

But Sephiroth was legendary because of the frankly unsettling slow burn they do to reveal him, to show you the extend of his power, and showing how slowly he eventually gets to pay attention to the main group. The threat of Sephiroth comes from the unsettling way he's set up, but everyone in pop culture knows bits of Late Game Sephiroth.

And as his whole thing was a slow built, he doesn't appear at all in Midgar. He gets mentioned in some conversations in ways that only makes you think there's a shared past going on, then you see the aftermath of his crimes, and it's only once you leave Midgar that you then get to hear Cloud's flashbacks about Sephiroth, and even much more later that you actually meet him.

And Sephiroth's biggest move is a way he will start to manipulate Cloud slowly but surely in a way that that is difficult to explain but require also the slow built the OG made. I think like. The thing about the beginning of the OG is that lots of Cloud's mental breakdown has nothing to do with Sephiroth (or at least not Sephiroth as he in right now, at best it's from memories). So once the Sephiroth stuff enter the pictures you kinda get to freak out because you dismissed Cloud's mental breakdowns as just this kind of weird thing but it's fine right? into seeing how the line between "mental breakdowns out of memories" and "mental breakdowns because Sephiroth is influencing him" start to blur.

This line never existed in the Remake because almost every single time Cloud has a break down, Sephiroth appear to be ominous. lol. lmao even.

then we also have Zack. Poor Zack. A mystery that is built through the entire OG, passing mentions and seeing Cloud barely flinch, and how it's his existence that ends up used in a way that triggers Cloud so badly it triggers the apocalypse. In a way the player also gets to follow the horror of Cloud losing his mind because you never left Cloud's point of view when Zack is concerned and all the reveals will hit you just as hard.

but Zack is legendary because of what this reveal tells you about his character. He was already beloved before the prequel even came around because of how just what you could connect once you knew what to look for. And then the prequel came out and Zack became one of the most popular character from the whole FF saga. because he's charming and fun and tragic.

But it doesn't happen before the late part of the game. So what do you do now? Square decided to just reveal him from the start instead of realizing people have been obsessed with Zack for years because of the way his absence is built.

One of the most well known scene is also the Major Character Death, considered a death of legend. In the game it is built to it slowly because of what the character it involves grow into the more they learn into this journey. In the remake they already lampshade all of this in a way the character sound a lot more self important than they were at this point.

and all of that for what?? i'm near the end of the game and no matter what it still seems unfinished as hell. I don't get the feeling i got a whole game experience that maybe could have a follow up, i feel like i played an overlong first part of a game with a weirdly stitched on ending.

because they couldn't trust the fans would follow and they had to rewrite a whole main plot to change things.

*bites fist and screams* seems like i'll die mad about it huh. man.

#ichareply #anonymous #ichafantalks ffvii #ichablogging ffviirg

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booasaur · 1 year ago

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Have you been keeping up with Hightown? I’ve always liked Jackie more than the relationships she found herself in (the actress is so endearing to me in this role idk) but the show has always pushed my limits (so many terrible men!) and this season is just so draining and bleak. I was already fast forwarding through the men in S1&3 but atp it’s like I might as well not watch. Idk, I feel like a lot of the lesbian fans left after the wreck of Leslie and Jackie but I stuck around to see Jackie grow from that and it just seems to have shifted into the Ray show with a side of Jackie. Also ik growths isn’t linear but something about Jackie’s relapse cycles feel gratuitous

No, right, this was one of those shows where you had to watch with the understanding that it was gonna be about Jackie the character more than any ship. THOUGH, they did kind of raise our hopes themselves by making Jackie the Character seem so much happier and healthier with Leslie, one can hardly blame viewers for getting invested in their particular relationship since it was tied to Jackie's own progress.

But of course, given that seasons always end with a change, things flipping from how they'd been so far, and given this show in particular, I expected them to ruin Jackie/Leslie somehow but why is Leslie not even on the show anymore? She was an interesting character in her own right and her being angry with Jackie could have been its own thing. That's the thing with f/f relationships so often, right, it can't just be that they're broken up but still sharing scenes with a changed dynamic, the other character is just written off the show (though at least less so by dying now).

Ray and his love interest don't get that treatment, his love interest is the third lead. And if I'm honest, I've resented his screentime and narrative focus for much longer than just this season, but it's really beginning to chafe now that, as you said, Jackie has regressed so much. The opening scene with her on the beach, it just felt like literally the pilot ep?

It'd be one thing if this was part of a three steps forward, two steps back journey but the show doesn't seem to care to give her the space for that. It's hard to see where we can go from here.

I ended up not watching the second ep, actually, since I read the Autostraddle review and it didn't give much hope for the rest of the season. I might binge at some point but this seems super painful as a weekly watch.

#replies #femslash related stuff #Anonymous #sent on 20240203 #5 #hightown #the only promising thing is that ray seems happy now #hopefully he'll end horribly

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reelvibes91 · 2 months ago

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The Last of Us- How do they move on from Joel?

After last weeks episode, The Last of Us really had to begin showing what comes next. While it definitely moved forward without Joel in the story did it really do enough to move the plot forward?

No. Simply put, they did not. Most of the episode was spent moping around, debating whether to go and seek revenge. The reason why this does not work in TV format is because even if we had not played the game, we knew the outcome. Dina and Ellie had been set up as our main protagonists since episode one. We knew when the time came they would go. We knew it was coming. It was all just a matter of when.

Truth be told, there were moments during this episode that I debated abandonning the show altogether. Then finally Ellie and Dina reach Seattle, and the final minute or so of this episode flipped the potential back. For the narrative to have flowed better, starting this season in Seattle and telling the Joel stuff via flashbacks would have been a better choice. Doing it in a linear structure really slowed down the show week to week. It truly became a drag just to reach a point that was inevitable.

It's the tale of bad writing. It's fans accepting bad writing because it is supposed to have a shocking moment occur. Shocking moments in themselves are not enough after 3 to 4 weeks of a snoozefest series. This issue seems to be plaguing a lot more than The Last of Us. One of my good friends who has his own YouTube channel (Shoutout Nerd Doctors) asked me if I was going to give them another week. I answered yes and for a particular couple reasons.

We are finally getting more about the resistance groups vs. Fedra. Something that personally is a more fitting narrative than two strangers navigating the world. We are also getting Jeffrey Wright reprising his role from the game, and he is a phenomenal actor. He is a game changer in terms of talent. He can hopefully take some of the pressure off of Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced each and every week. This show finally seems to be finding its footing as it approaches the halfway point. Let's hope the rock is stable enough to continue the climb.

#the last of us #bella ramsey #isabela merced #Dina #Ellie #HBO #jeffrey wright #Isaac

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cowbot-lumberjane · 4 months ago

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Claire tears apart Sony's State of Play (Feb 2025)

Howdy! I think the triple A spheres of the gaming landscape are a fucking flat plateau of samey garbage and im here to tell YOU about all the samey garbage as well as the couple of cool looking things Sony announced for their 500-700$ console.

Lets start on a high note, shall we?

THE GOOD (or at least the inoffensive):

Darwin’s Paradox!

its one of those side scrolling narrative platformers with heavy physics, this time with a goofy twist! You play as an octopus trying to rescue another octopus from a food packing facility. Nothing crazy but it does look cute/fun. I'm sure fans of this genre will like it. Darwin reminds me of octodad in a good way so thats something. A good lookin' game.

Dreams of Another

A thoughtful looking game from PixelJunk about how nothing can exist without changing (if not destroying) something else. The game revolves around destroying your environments with guns to reconstruct the scenarios around you. This is the kind of game executives tend to go for when they wanna use "indie" as a selling point. Particularly the weirder gameplay angle and eye catching graphical style. Overall I'm curious.

Lies of P: Overture

VERY happy to see Lies of P back with a new game. New devs doing what fromsoft should stop doing by scratching the grittier fantasy action RPG itch is exactly what the genre needs. The first Lies of P was excellent, if not a bit too difficult for my tastes. I'm delighted to see it return without losing its sense of whimsy that goes along with its "dark take on a classic tale" vibe. The music in the new trailer is a massive highlight for me. Upbeat and fantastical while showing off the honestly very Bioshock world they continue to build. Quite excited for this one as a fan of action games and the previous title.

The Midnight Walk

Claymation meets first person puzzle adventure gameplay with some delightfully horrific art. Sign me up. Seems to revolve around leading and protecting a little guy with a firepot for a head. Fending off all sorts of weird clay beasties and solving puzzles to move forward on the way. Whats not to love? And before anyone says it: I dont give a fuck about Tim Burton.

Shinobi: Art of vengeance

A little while ago Sega announced that they wanted to try reviving some classic series with new games, and Shinobi was one of them. Personally I think the game LOOKS incredible. Hand drawn style games have been all the rage since Hollow Knight and Cuphead hit the scene, but looks aren't everything. My biggest concern is that itll be yet another hand drawn metroidvania. We just have way too many of those. But from what the trailer shows off, it gives me hope that itll stick much closer to its action platformer roots with fun weapons and cool combos/abilities. I'd trade endless 2D mazes for a succinct linear action platforming experience any day at this point. (Shovel Knight we need you now more than ever!)

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds

It just looks FUN, okay? Sega All Stars Racing Transformed was incredible and even if its just Sonic and the gang, I'm happy to have a new arcade racer that isnt fucking Mario Kart hitting the mainstreeam. Looks good! I don't think the graphics are overdone or too hyper realistic, all the characters and cars look great! Stages seem fun, curious about the course swapping mechanic, very excited for the lineup! Look! Jet is back! He's on his board!

Borderlands 4

(Look I said at least inoffensive) I'm a shooter girlie. I like me some good guns and baddies to blow apart with said guns, this I cannot deny. I am also (unfortunately) a long time Borderlands fan. I thought 3 was, okay. The writing was atrocious in almost every regard, I hope Randy Pitchford fucking dies, and the OVERWHELMING amount of meme and "lol modern!" humor in it was terrible. The shooting, at least, was very fun. I liked a lot about 3 despite my gripes, enough to be excited for a game that can move past 3's dogshit villains and burdensome reliance on memeyness. At least I hope it can... I appreciate how the art style has been preserved despite the newer graphics, though I do think theyve lost a little bit of the cartoonish style that the first 3 games had. I'm (tentatively) excited.

THE NEBULOUS (things I don't really care about):

Dave the Diver: Ichiban's Holiday

I didn't play Dave. I don't like DLC as a concept. I think it looks fine. If you liked Dave, I'm sure you'll like it. I appreciate Dave giving a fat king some time in the spotlight.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater

Remakes are already a tiresome thing at this point. MGS3 didn't NEED a remake, none of them need remakes. They need PORTS. It looks fine. Its whatever. Im sure Kojima doesn't care about it one way or the other, and neither do I. Its just gonna be another remake that a bunch of white guys online make videos titled "THE DEFINITIVE WAY TO PLAY MGS3 IS HERE" about.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Looks great running on a PS5 pro doesn't it :) I'm not gonna care about this game until its patched to hell and actually runs on PC. Sick of unoptimized garbage from triple A studios. Looks fun in theory, two betas later, I'm not paying 70$ for this and you shouldn't either.

Stellar Blade DLC

Warriors: Abyss

Day's Gone Remastered

Terrible terrible terrible.

Digimon Time Stranger

I'm actually like, KIND OF interested in this? I've been meaning to get back into Digimon but have trouble knowing how or where to start. People say the digimon games are good, I have no experience with them. looks like Digimon!

THE BAD (AKA: STOP MAKING GAMES THAT LOOK LIKE THIS I BEG OF YOU)

Directive 8020

Can we stop trying to be David Cage? These boring ass "playable movie" games suck so bad. Until Dawn was bad (for several reasons) and everything that followed is just new age David Cage trash. Stop it. Bland visual style, bland writing, bland bland bland.

Five Nights At Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic

(I'm not putting a screenshot of this one)

Scott Cawthon is a piece of shit who donated multiple time to Donald Trump's campaign fund as well as anti LGBTQIA charities. Stop giving this shit heel money.

Hell Is Us

Actually, hell is yet another sci-fi fantasy 3rd person action game with neon particle effects and a hyper realistic art style. This is nothing to me.

Onimushia: Way of the Sword

Remember when Onimusha had colour and interesting style? Yeah....yeah me too..... It looks like mud

Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny

HEY GUYS DONT LOOK AT THE NEW ONE THAT LOOKS LIKE GAMER GOOP LOOK AT THIS WE'RE REMASTERING THE OLD ONE! LOOK! 40$ PLEASE!

Split Fiction:

Erm, he's standing right behind me, isn't he? Marvel movie ass game.

Tides of Annihilation

Tired of games that look like this yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah me too. Its another dark fantasy 3rd person action game. And. yeah, she has abilities.

MindsEye

We REALLY like tech demos.

Metal Eden

Eeeeeveryone wants to make a DOOM (2016) but no one wants to make satisfying looking gunplay. Gameplay looks loose/light/weak. Its got that Guardians of the Galaxy/Concord/Cyberpunk 2077 sci-fi art style that everything has now. Does nothing for me. Looks boring.

Saros

Looks as bad as the new Dune movies. They show 0 gameplay, but it looks like eeeeverything else.

Lost Soul Aside

IDK what else to say, dog. It looks the same as everything else! Its little to no style! Its got no flavour! Weird black shapes moving around to form dragons because we have the TECHNOLOGY to make those weird little shapes look really good! It sounds and looks like the last 2 Final Fantasy games. Main character's design looks like a straight romance book protag. C-. Try harder.

And thats it! overall: Kinda bad! Go find your new favourite game on itch.io today!

#my stuff #my writing #video games #clair yells about video games #state of play #sony

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talenlee · 11 months ago

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How To Be: Joker from Persona 5 (in 4e D&D)

In How To Be we’re going to look at a variety of characters from Not D&D and conceptualise how you might go about making a version of that character in the form of D&D that matters on this blog, D&D 4th Edition. Our guidelines are as follows:

This is going to be a brief rundown of ways to make a character that ‘feels’ like the source character

This isn’t meant to be comprehensive or authoritative but as a creative exercise

While not every character can work immediately out of the box, the aim is to make sure they have a character ‘feel’ as soon as possible

The character has to have the ‘feeling’ of the character by at least midway through Heroic

When building characters in 4th Edition it’s worth remembering that there are a lot of different ways to do the same basic thing. This isn’t going to be comprehensive, or even particularly fleshed out, and instead give you some places to start when you want to make something.

Another thing to remember is that 4e characters tend to be more about collected interactions of groups of things – it’s not that you get a build with specific rules about what you have to take, and when, and why, like you’re lockpicking your way through a design in the hopes of getting an overlap eventually. Character building is about packages, not programs, and we’ll talk about some packages and reference them going forwards.

When I plan for the year in front of me, one of the things I like to do is put ideas in the schedule for much later in the year, so that when that time of the year arrives, I have something challenging to work on with a lot of time thinking about it in the lead up. I apparently wrote down ‘Joker’ at some point in 2023, and then… didn’t think about it much. After all, what kind of character is Joker? A chaotic, clownish fool who gives a lecture from inside a police station’s interrogation room — what was I going to do? He’s a cipher, he’s a mystery, he’s an enigma, and whatever we know about his backstory is inherently untrustworthy.

Well, at least we’ll put on some cool music when we do it.

Oh wait what do you mean I put ‘in Persona 5’ in the blog title, that’s going to give away which Joker I mean, oh dang. Anyway.

Analysing Joker

Before we can start talking about how to represent a character we have to look at the character as they exist in their original text. This immediately presents a problem when you translate a a character like Joker. See, Joker is a Persona protagonist, which means that they are nearly a blank slate. Oh, I mean he is a blank slate. I mean, I dunno, something about that name makes having pronouns in the first place feel like an inappropriate overstep. Still just because I interpret Joker on sight as a fundamentally agender queerbo cosplaying whatever identity they fancy, that doesn’t mean you’re going to. It’s the least important part of the character for this build.

Point is, JRPGs that are like Persona 5 tend to try and make the protagonist an everyperson player character that you, the player can guide through a certain narrative, and their input or choices are largely unnecessary; that is, most of them just do what they’re told or presented with a series of non-choices. Not just the classic ‘but thou must!’ story, but even characters like Butz from Final Fantasy V are rarely asked to make choices based on their values because they’re being confronted with a linear series of requests from a secondary character. This isn’t to say all JRPG characters are largely blank slates, but Joker very much is.

What there is of Joker in Persona 5 is mostly about the kinds of choices the game presents you with. Fortunately, there is a common thread of characterisation and behaviour there. It’s not like a truly freeform thing like, for example, a Dark Souls character who doesn’t even have a meaningful mechanical thread to hold them together. Joker is a thief, he’s capable of being sassy, and he’s an insightful planner. He uses knives, and sometimes guns, moves quickly and freely, wears a mask, a longcoat and maybe has wings.

More than that is going to be challenging, but the good news is it’s kinda not important, we don’t need anything else. Oh, there’s more stuff, if I wanted to dive deep into a very thoroughly written wiki, but that’s the exact opposite approach to this that I think is helpful. See, it wasn’t my plan to dedicate two of this year’s How To Be entries to the task of reading enormous wiki pages written by people who see a comprehensive sequence of events one after another as a meaningful explanation of who a character is. There’s just something about the fandom space of wikis that seems completely allergic to the notion of considering a character’s inner life or things they care about versus caring about a bulleted list of every single game memorised step by step, which, you know what, to some extent, you do you, Fandom contributors.

You absolute weirdoes.

Instead, the plan is to follow a much purer version of what it means when someone produces pictures of a character and says ‘I want to do what they do.’ They’re thinking not about the canon narrative of the character, but typically, the prototype of what that character is in how they’re presented. In much the same way that fanfiction boils a character down to their most memetic moments, How To Be is trying to capture a character in the moments you most want to ensoul.

If you show up to the table with Joker’s character art in the image section of your character sheet, you’re not here to have a conversation about menus that go click and animate nicely, you’re probably here to play a ridiculously hot boy who is also a bird, a thief, and the centre of attention whenever he wants to be, and absolutely unnoticed when he doesn’t want to be. It’s fascinating in that this is composed out of a superficial interest (this character looks interesting) and then involves a deliberate attempt to add depth to that interest (this look implies things).

With that in mind, then, here’s our First Principles for Joker.

The Basics

Joker wields two weapons, wears light armour but not no armour (coat and mask), is personable, witty, and driven, and he’s a leader in his group. A literal demonic conspiracy is what keeps his natural charm from taking over the world and all of those things cook together to present a character with a reasonably simple set of parameters to build in.

No heavy armour

Wields two weapons

A mask that’s important

Charismatic, intelligent, and perceptive

With that, there are some build options that are best considered in terms of the role you want to fulfil.

Defender

Your options for a defender who wields a knife have to get a little deliberately weird because knives are typically small, light blades and most defenders don’t tend to wield those. Not that they can’t, and light blades are a good category, it’s just that you might need to look at ‘knives’ and ask yourself how close you care about that specific idea.

I don’t think I care very much about the idea of treating a longsword and shield as a knife and the mask; the pieces are there, they’re attackable, and they both have similar purposes, and neither puts exceptional demands on the character mechanically. A DM can happily mess with both without needing to change any rules. To me, that’s a simple theme shift. Take a sword-and-board Paladin, use Charisma melee powers, and maybe even look at poaching the mount from the Cavalier with a power swap feat.

If you are a hardcore ride or die no-way-no-else option then the Paladin – the default Charisma-based melee defender – is going to need to rely on something other than its weapon attacks to punish people. Good news, the Paladin has Divine Challenge and Divine Sanction to manage both of those things. This pushes you towards a high-Charisma, highly mobile build of the Paladin sacrificing melee damage for spellcasting power, but it does open up dagger implement options for your divine powers, and the Accurate Dagger, which is neat.

Controller

I cannot believe I am saying this but in Heroes of Shadow, the Essentials lines presents the Binder Warlock.

I know I know I know, that book sucks. It’s got the Vampire and the Blackguard in it, those are not good classes. And I don’t think the Binder is a great class. It’s building on the Warlock, which has always been a class struggling to pull ahead of its contemporaries in the base classes. Not a bad class – few classes are bad – but less of an outright damage beast than other strikers.

The Binder sidesteps the Warlock’s problem by instead focusing on controlling enemies – dealing with larger groups of minions and having powers that deprived enemies of actions or made the actions they had inefficient. And at that, in terms of sheer ability to make a single target’s life difficult, the Binder is pretty good. What’s more, because the Binder gets powers with levels from the Warlock spell list, the Binder can just pick up Warlock powers, instead of being locked into a small number of specifics along with their starting package.

What’s more, the Star Pact even gives you stealth and free movement around enemies’ behaviour, which plays into the roguish, playful vibes here. Intelligence and Charisma are important stats, take a dagger as your implement, and when the time comes to pick your powers, grab stuff from the core Warlock books, like Curse of the Dark Dream and Shadow Tentacles. You can also build to play with the Charm and Psychic keywords. Check out Psychic Lock in the paragon tier for a reason to care about doing psychic damage.

Striker

I imagined when I started that our parameters would present a serious barrier for the striker role. Charisma is typically a spellcaster stat, and strikers that use Charisma are typically using it to cast spells, throwing energy. That’s fine and all, but it somehow seems out of type for a Striker version of Joker to have knives and not use them.

Guess what?

There’s a knife sorcerer.

Oh, the knife sorcerer is still a sorcerer, they still blast things and have access to blasts and bursts and all sorts of classic ‘fistfuls of dice’ style blaster platform. But it also has along with that, a melee basic attack that can be typed, an encounter teleport, and you don’t need to commit hard to using these things to make them good, they’re just solid on their own if you’re already starting from the position of ‘I want to hold daggers.’

If you take this route and go Storm Sorcerer, the character immediately slots into the space of a Mark of Storm build; you have a melee basic attack that shoves people away from you, your flights last longer and all your area effect lightning attacks can be used to sculpt the battlefield. But also because you’ve got a melee basic attack that��s not worth nothing, you can build for powers like the White Lotus line of Arcane power feats that punish people for retaliating against you.

It’s a nice, snug package, it all works together and none of the parts are bad without one another.

Leader

And really, this is is what this is all building up to.

As a leader, Joker can be a bard. Bards are great. Bards are in fact, amazing. Bards are so good as leaders that you can kinda just wing it with your powers. If you start with a Bard as your base and focus on the melee powers, you’re pushed towards the Valorous bard, which in turn means you’re going to be producing a lot of temporary hit points for the whole group, and your powers can focus on playing with that.

But also.

A bard has access to the amazing feat Combat Virtuoso. Combat Virtuoso lets you use your Charisma in place of the attacking stat for other powers you have, if you got them through multiclassing. Which means that a Half-Elf bard with Combat Virtuoso can have Twin Strike that feeds on Charisma. That’s spicy. But also you don’t even need to be a Half-Elf. If you multiclass Ranger, such as with Warrior of the Wilds (with the less strict requirements and a single-turn Hunter’s Quarry bonus in it), you can then use the feat Martial Readiness to swap one of your bard At-Wills for Twin Strike.

“Hang on,” you may say, “That needs a martial at-will attack power to swap.”

Okay, take any of the Skald Aura powers, which, for some reason, are listed as level 1 At-Will Bard attack powers. You can take them. And then you can use Martial Readiness to swap one for Twin Strike. At level 2.

This is obviously very silly, but it’s a way to get access to this trick – Twin Strike on a charismatic, magical supporting leader type – very early. Twin Strike’s really good, and it’s worth building to play around with.

Conclusion

Joker is a really sweet look and for this kind of exercise the problem was much more about finding ways to make a character who could justify it than it was trying to ensoul his specific ideas in a game. But the joy of this exercise is that each of these variations still carries within it something of the promise of Persona. There’s the mind-melting of the Binder, there’s the dashing team leader of the Bard, and there’s even room for the high-damage, high-impact flashiness of a sorcerer wielding those cool daggers.

Fun exercise, I liked it a lot.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#How to Be #Games #Making

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idrellegames · 4 years ago

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If I were to make an interactive story how would I make it?

If you're thinking about developing an interactive fiction game, there's a few things to consider before you start development.

1) What kind of game do you want to make?

IF covers a lot of different things. It's not really a genre; it's more of classification or a medium. To that end, you need to consider what you want to do with your game. Do you want to make a dating sim? A slice-of-life game? A puzzle game? An RPG that incorporates skills and abilities alongside player choice?

What's the scale of your game? Do you want to make something that is finished in a short session, something that takes a few hours, or something that intended to take 20+ hours? The shorter and more compact your game, the easier it will be to design and code. That's something to keep in mind of this is your first time delving into game development.

Figuring out what direction you want to go with your game is the first step to answering a lot of questions and leads directly into #2.

2) What kind of story do you want to tell?

The type of story you're going to write will impact a lot of your design decisions in #1. Different stories have different needs in regards to mechanics (a dating sim will look quite different than an action RPG in terms of its characters, character development, pacing and structure), so you will need to make some specific choices about this before you move forwards.

As you're thinking about your story, also consider this: why interactive fiction for this story? Why this medium? Not every story works in every medium, so you want to think about how your story fits an interactive structure.

What does player choice and interactivity bring to it?

How does player choice and player agency shift the plot or characters?

If you remove all player choice from the story, does it mostly stay the same?

If you feel your story can be better told as a novel/play/screenplay etc, then you might want to reconsider the direction you're going in.

3) What kind of mechanics do you want to have?

The next thing to decide is how you're going to structure your game.

How linear will the story be vs how much player choice will you offer?

How does the player affect and change the narrative?

How does the player interact with the characters and the world?

You need to make some decisions on how you're going to have the player interact with the world you create. There's no right or wrong answers here; there's only what works for you and your game. But you do need to have some kind of design plan in place before you even start coding, otherwise you'll end up doing a lot of work that won't necessarily be used.

I think a mistake that a lot of new IF creators make is assuming that IF games need to have the certain mechanics to be IF. This is kind of silly. Certain mechanics or tropes are very popular, but just because a lot of creators use them does not mean that you have to as well (unless you want to!).

No interest in writing romances? Don't incorporate romances into your game.

Don't want to use personality stats? Use a different system--or no system! You don't have to use and manage stats if you don't want to.

More comfortable writing a pre-established main character than one the player can create? That's fine, too.

This is your project. You're in charge of the design of your own game, and it's best to do something that makes you happy, rather than trying to meet a standard that doesn't interest you. You need to work out what you want for your game, and don't worry about what other creators are doing with theirs.

4) Worldbuilding

You'll want to have a good grip on the world of your game before you proceed too far. This is especially true if you're writing fantasy or science-fiction or anything set in a world that is not our own. Take some time to work out notes about the setting--often figuring out these details will help you figure out what you want for your game mechanics.

5) Outlining

If you're writing an IF game, you need to have an outline. There's no if ands or buts about this--if you're a pantser-type writer and go in without an outline, you are going to have a rough time.

Writing an IF game has similarities to writing a novel because they're both prose, but at the end of the day there are some massive differences between writing IF and writing a novel. Namely, IF incorporates interactivity and player choice, which means you are going to have some level of branching scenes and paths. Which means variations. The more player choice you have, the more detailed your variations become, and suddenly a scene that is 3,000 words for the player is actually 30,000 words behind-the-scenes.

If you have no idea where your story is going, you're going to get overwhelmed. You're going to struggle with implementing stats changes (if you're using them). You need to have a plan. You don't need to know every single tiny detail, but you do need to know the overall story beats of your game, where they occur, how they branch (and how much), and how they end.

6) Choosing an Engine

With all of the above in mind, you need to do some research into IF engines. There are a lot of engines out there--Twine, ChoiceScript, Ren'py and Inkle being some of the more popular ones, but of course there are others I am probably forgetting.

Each engine has its pros and cons and different levels of accessibility (ChoiceScript, for example, is pretty popular because it is relatively easy to learn).

Choosing the right engine for your game will depend on your comfort level with coding, how much time you have to learn, what you want your game to look like, and what kind of mechanics you want to have. You will have to spend some time researching and reading and seeing what you like; you can try out different engines, too, and familiarize yourself with their languages to see what works best for you.

I chose Twine (and specifically the SugarCube format) because it is thoroughly documented, it has a lot of resources, there are plenty of folks who create custom macros to help enable more game-like mechanics, you can control what your game looks like visually (though you do need to learn CSS for that), and the code is open-source. All that matched with what I wanted out of something I'd be using for an independently produced and funded long-term project.

Hope that helps!

#interactive fiction #cyoa #interactive novel #twine game #twine #choicescript #ren'py #inkle #resources #long post #coding in twine

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ikahnik-gaming · 2 years ago

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Hey There, I'm Jace with Ikahnik Studio. As you probably know, Star wars Jedi: Survivor is coming out in just about two months, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I think the previous game is one of the best Star Wars games we've ever seen in recent years. Few Star wars games captured the feel of a Jedi like Fallen Order did. And for that reason, I'm very much looking forward to play Star wars Jedi: Survivor. While we're waiting for the release, here's a short list of things that I would love to see in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.

Less linearity I know this is a long shot, but I would love to see a more opened world. Now we don't have to go full GTA5 or anything like that, but less linearity would be a welcomed change. I remember so many parts of the last game was moving from one small area to the next. And some of these areas were just dark corridors. I understand that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was strongly inspired by the Dark Souls series, but even those moved away, very successfully I might add, from linearity, like we saw in Elden Ring. Which brings us to the next topic on the list.

Npc Quests The last game had few interactions with NPCs. They were almost all instrumental to the story. It felt like the player was travelling from barren world to barren world with little or no interactions with in-world NPCs. Even in Dark Souls series, the small worlds occasionally had non-story related NPCs that can be interacted with. Some even gave quests. And the NPCs made those gloomy Dark Souls worlds feel more alive than Star Wars the Last Jedi. I think interactions with NPCs can make a world of difference in terms of not just narrative but in making the world come alive. So I'm really hoping that we see some NPCs that can give us some quests for optional loot. Which takes us to the next topic.

More Cosmetics There was nothing wrong with the way Cal looked, but something about him felt too fixed. Not only was he already a well defined character, but there were also very few ways to "really" give him that personal touch. Everything you changed seemed inconsequential, and Cal appeared the same nonetheless. So I am really looking forward to more customization options. I hope I can dress him up like Boba Fett or Cad Bane if want to. Those might be going a little too far, but the point is that I want more options than a simple re-color for a pouch or lightsaber.

Dismemberment The next thing I want to see is some decapitation on trooper or humanoid characters. In the last game, we saw Cal use the lightsaber to cut down giant fleshy animals and metallic robots. It was baffling that we never saw any trooper lose a limb. I kind of understand, after all the game was rated "T" for teen by the ESRB. Because Star wars is such a family friendly brand now, the upcoming Jedi Survivor game might also get a teen rating. The only hope I have for seeing dismemberment is that the game, just like Cal, is supposed to be more mature and darker. So, here's hoping that maturity comes with a side of blood. Speaking of bloody, terrible things...

Dark Side I'd love to see Cal flirt with the dark side. We're talking about the Star Wars universe where there's always a struggle between the light and dark side. I want to see Cal walk the line between good and bad. Which would work well if there was a choice and consequences system. A system that players would have to deal with depending on actions taken. Now, considering how linear the last game was, this one might be wishful thinking. But still. It would be awesome. Recently Harry potter came out and the most popular house has been Slithering. Which means people love to role play the bad guy too sometimes, not that Slithering house is inherently bad, but you get the idea. So having a choice to follow in Anakin's foot steps wouldn't be such a bad idea at all.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and let me know if you're as excited as I am for this game.

Here's a link to the Video on YouTube

#star wars #star wars jedi: survivor #video games

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marjansmarwani · 4 years ago

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From a second @911lonestarangstweek fic that I will have up probaby Sunday.

I never start anything without an outline, but this one I am writing completely unplanned with nothing more than a general idea to guide the plot, which is both thrilling and mildly terrifying. It’s another non-linear narrative though because that just seems to be what my muse wants, and that’s fine with me.

--------

Marjan had been wrapping up practice when she got the call. It was Mateo on the other line, his shaking voice informing her that he was driving Captain Strand to St. David’s because he had been in the kitchen with the older man and Buttercup when he had been informed.

It was what he had said next that had sent her crashing back down onto the bench, skates in hand and concerned expressions trained on her as she tried her best to not absolutely shatter at the edge of the roller rink.

Nancy was at her sister’s, rolling her eyes at the antics of her nephews as she stirred the sauce on the stove and her sister gossiped about their Aunt Susan and her much younger boyfriend when her phone rang. Then she was out the door, the spoon abandoned on the counter beside with a shouted apology to her sister as she grabbed her coat and keys and tried not to show how much her hands were shaking as she reached for the doorknob and stepped out into the chilly Austin night. At least, she reasoned as she hurried to her car, if anyone did notice the way she trembled they would assume it was the cold — they didn’t have to know it was because it felt like her world was fraying at the seams.

Paul had been on a date and he felt bad for leaving her at the restaurant, he really did, but there was no other option. He knew his mother would string him up if she ever heard he had done something so rude to any of his dates, but he also had a feeling that in this case even Cynthia Stickland would allow him this one. Maybe he should have taken her home first but she had assured him it was fine and he knew that he couldn’t have handled the wait. He knew that every moment he was driving in the opposite direction of the hospital would weigh on him, that he would crack under the strain and that was not second date territory. So he returned to the table after he ended his call, voice tight as he made his hurried apologies and she assured him that no, it was fine, that she hoped everything turned out okay.

He had somehow managed a smile as he turned away and he thanked her for her sentiments, even if he didn’t share just how desperately he wished they came true.

Judd had been getting their daughter ready for her evening bath when Grace had appeared in the doorway with his phone in her hand and eyes full of fear. He had taken the phone from her and sat heavily on the edge of the tub as Mateo quietly explained what had happened, and where they would be. Grace had already scooped up little Ava and merely shook her head when he looked at her.

“You need to go, Judd,” she said softly, squeezing their little girl close as she spoke, “go be with them, and keep me posted. Tell them I’ll be praying.”

And there was so much Judd wanted to say to that, so many thoughts in his head and so many feelings fighting for dominance that in the end, he said nothing. Instead he simply stood on shaking legs and leaned forward to press a kiss each to Ava and Grace, pausing for another moment to hold them both close before he stepped around them, grabbing his coat and heading out into the night.

#911 lone star #wip wednesday #don't ask me for specifics because I don't have them yet #but I am pretty 👀 about any feedback #thoughts? questions? comments? concerns?#scheduled

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morganaspendragonss · 4 years ago

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´till death do us part

@911lonestarangstweek day 4 - m is for...mcd, mourning

if you saw my posts about the 'crying fic'... this is it

thanks to liz and @halsteadmarchs for the beta!

ao3 | 5.5k | major character death, hurt/comfort, mourning, non-linear narrative, car accidents, hopeful ending

This is a mistake.

It’s been a long time since Carlos last did this, but not long enough at the same time. His friends would disagree with him—they tell him he needs to get back in the game, and it’s well-meaning, but they don’t get it. They don’t know how hard these past few years have been for him.

They don’t know what it’s like to lose the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with; they don’t know what it’s like to go from being engaged one day to alone the next. In fact, there’s only one person Carlos knows who even has a hope of understanding, and he really doesn’t appreciate the irony that it’s the one person he’s guaranteed to never see again.

It’s not that he meant to turn himself into a recluse after it happened; he knows that’s not what he would want for him.

Thing is, Carlos isn't sure that he gets to have an opinion anymore, since he was the one who left. Carlos doesn’t blame him for what happened—that would be stupid—but sometimes, sometimes, he just gets so damn angry at him.

(he always feels guilty for it after, which is equally as stupid as the anger. there’s no one left for him to direct it at, after all)

Carlos sighs, shaking his head as he steps into the bar. He doesn’t want to be here—he wouldn’t be here, but Michelle had threatened to make a special trip back to Austin specifically to kick his ass if he didn’t at least give this a try.

This, being the blind date his friends had insisted he go on. Technically, he could leave and still not be lying when he tells Michelle he went—he is in the bar, after all—but Carlos has never liked the idea of standing someone up, no matter the circumstances.

So here he is. Alone at a bar, nursing a lukewarm beer, and wishing he were anywhere else.

Someone slides into the seat next to him, and Carlos barely gets a second to prepare himself before he’s met with a winning smile and sparkling green eyes.

God, why did they have to be green?

“Hey,” the guy says, still smiling. “Carlos, right? Nice to meet you. I’m Domenic.”

Carlos is still trying to catch his breath, his head thumping back against the wall of the bathroom stall they’ve ended up in, when lips brush his ear, hot breath sending electricity down his spine.

“I’m TK, by the way.” The whisper is rough, a smirk laced into it, like TK knows exactly what he’s done to him.

And Carlos is so far from fully-functioning that the only response he can come up with is a breathy, “I know.”

TK pulls back, his brows furrowing though there’s a wry quirk to his lips. “Didn’t take you for a Star Wars fan, but okay.”

Now it’s Carlos’s turn to frown as his addled brain struggles to put together TK’s thought process there. “What?”

“Never mind.”

Well. This took a turn. Carlos has no idea what’s going on, but there is something in the back of his mind that tells him he must have sounded like a creep, telling this guy he’s pretty much only just met that he already knows his name. He gestures lamely towards TK in explanation. “Your turn-out coat at the scene the other night. I thought it probably stood for something but then one of your team—Marwani, I think?—called you. So.”

Carlos shrugs, embarrassment quickly catching up with him, which seems absurd given what they just did. Then again, it’s been a long time since he’s done anything like this; he’s more of a wine-and-dine kind of guy than the type to make out with a near stranger in a less-than-sanitary bathroom.

But there’s something about TK Strand that has Carlos wanting to know everything about him.

And if everything starts here, well. He’s more than happy to take it.

Thankfully, TK seems to pick up on the sudden awkwardness in the stall. He takes a couple of steps back until he’s leaning against the opposite wall, which doesn’t really put that much space between them, but Carlos appreciates it all the same.

“So, do I get a name, or…?”

The question has Carlos flushing all over again, turning a bright red when he sees TK’s smile. He clears his throat and smiles, trying not to wince. “Carlos.”

“Carlos,” TK repeats, dragging the syllables out like he’s testing the sound of them on his tongue. Carlos shivers a little, his breath catching in his throat at the small smile that spreads across TK’s face.

Then a phone is being thrust in his hand, unlocked and opened on the Add contact page. “Put your number in,” TK says. “In case you ever, you know. Feel like doing this again.”

A thrill runs down Carlos’s spine at the thought that TK wants to do this again. Maybe he’s not the only one who feels this connection. Maybe…

Well. It’s too soon for that. But as he types in his number, Carlos can’t help but wonder where, exactly, this road might lead.

His house is quiet when he gets home. It’s a familiar kind of quiet, one that’s lain over the place like a blanket ever since that day three years ago. Carlos has gotten used to it over time, and he thinks that maybe it’s eased a little—but only a little.

Things haven’t changed much over the years. TK’s stuff still decorates the house, not as much as it used to, but Carlos hadn’t been able to bring himself to remove the stuffed bear that sits on the chair by their bed, or the plastic duck TK had insisted they have in the bathroom for ‘the vibes’, or the hand-sewn heart a little girl whose parents TK had saved had gifted him, which hangs proudly in their front window.

And the pictures; Carlos refuses to take the pictures down. The one sitting on his nightstand had been turned over for a long time after the accident, but now he can’t imagine going to bed each night without seeing it. It’s from their engagement party, a candid captured by Evie, a professional photographer in the making according to Tommy.

Carlos is inclined to agree—the photo, showing him and TK looking at each other, wide smiles on both their faces, is his favourite thing in the world.

His phone rings, making him jump. Carlos sighs heavily when he sees Michelle’s name flash up on FaceTime and he briefly considers declining, but there’s no way she’d be deterred so easily.

He takes a second to get himself together, then answers, plastering a smile on his face. “Hey chica.”

Michelle doesn’t waste a second in getting to the point. “So,” she says, leaning forward and grinning, “how’d it go?”

“It went.”

Her smile falters and she frowns, scrutinising him. “Did you even go?”

“Yes.” Carlos purses his lips, not wanting to get into it anymore, but Michelle is insistent and he’s too tired to make excuses right now. “His name is Domenic, he’s nice, I’m not seeing him again.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Carlos.” Michelle sighs, her voice going quiet. “It’s been three years.”

“That’s not a long time.”

“I know.”

“I still dream about him, ‘Chelle,” Carlos cuts in, sudden tears overwhelming him. “I still—I still think about what I could have done differently to save him, I still imagine the future we could have had. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop. I don’t know if I can stop.”

“When Iris disappeared—”

“It’s not the same,” he snaps, harsher than he means to. “You always had that hope, right? Everyone was telling you Iris was dead, but you always believed that she would come back. And she did, and I am so happy about that, I am, but guess what, Michelle? TK is dead. He’s dead. I’m never gonna see him again—in fact, the last time I did see him, it was when his body was lying in a morgue, and he was so cold and so still and so—so not TK that I could barely believe it was him.

“But it was, because he’s dead. It’s not the same.”

He’s properly crying by the time he finishes his speech, and Michelle has tears in her eyes too. Carlos feels a little guilty now, but he can’t bring himself to be fully sorry for what he said. Still, Michelle looks crushed, and Carlos can’t lose his best friend.

One more loss would kill him, he thinks.

“Michelle, listen—”

“It’s fine, Carlos,” she interrupts, swiping a hand under her eyes. “You… You’re right. It’s not the same. I’ll just. I’ll leave you alone now. I’m sorry the date didn’t work out.”

Then she’s gone, and Carlos is alone again, the weight of it settling uncomfortably on his shoulders.

Their first real date is painfully awkward, reminiscent of covert high school meet-ups with boys in the nearby diners, or like that one time Carlos tried using a dating app. That had been an experience he’d wanted to forget, but now he finds himself recalling it in horrific detail as he and TK sit on opposite sides of a table, a plate of limp fries slowly cooling between them.

“So—”

“I was thinking—”

They both speak at the same time, and an embarrassed flush rises on Carlos’s cheeks. He swallows past the lump in his throat and gestures to TK, barely able to look him in the eyes. “You should go first.”

TK laughs and shakes his head. “I was about to tell you the same thing. Since when have things been this awkward between us? We fucked on the floor of your front room about a week after meeting, surely we should be well past this stage by now.”

He has a point.

Carlos laughs too and finally works up the courage to meet TK’s gaze. “I mean, it’s not like we were doing much talking back then.”

“Things are a lot simpler without clothes,” TK agrees, a suggestive lilt to his tone and, somehow, it’s all that’s needed to break the tense silence they’d previously been suffering in. Carlos grabs a fry, grimacing at the grease that instantly coats his fingers, and points it at TK.

“Cool it, Strand,” he warns. “You aren’t going to find it that easy to seduce me anymore.”

TK grins, his eyes sparkling. “Oh, we’ll see about that, Officer.”

Carlos is surprised when he wakes up the next morning to a text from Domenic.

Hey, it reads. Sorry about last night. I know that you’re not into me or whatever and that’s cool, but I like you. Do you think we could maybe still be friends?

He sighs and drops his phone onto his bare chest, arm flopping onto the other side of the bed. It’s funny, he thinks idly; before TK, he’d tended to sleep closer to the middle and it had never bothered him. Now, it feels weird to break from the way things used to be—in Carlos’s head, the left side is still TK’s, and the right his.

He knows what Domenic’s text implies. ‘Let’s be friends and then we can see how it goes’. Carlos could tell him now that it’s not going anywhere and save them both the trouble, but he kind of...wants a friend.

It sounds pathetic, even to his own ears, but all his friends are either fellow cops, the 126, or Michelle, who’s in another state. And Domenic was nice. So, really, what’s the harm?

Twenty minutes later, they have plans to meet at a coffee shop.

Ten minutes after that, Carlos arrives.

Carlos startles as TK’s arms suddenly slip around his waist, his chin pressing into Carlos’s shoulder. He quickly relaxes into the hold, covering TK’s hands with his own, but TK isn’t fooled.

“Where did you go?” he murmurs, breath tickling Carlos’s neck.

“Nowhere,” Carlos answers. “I was just...thinking.”

“About what?”

“Well…” He hesitates, biting his lip, then spins to face TK, letting their still-joined hands swing in the minute space between them. “This is crazy, right? Not, like, bad crazy—well, a little bit bad crazy; our last place did burn down—but all of this. Getting a house together. Three bedrooms. All of it. It’s crazy.”

TK grins, the little frown that had emerged at Carlos’s first words quickly melting away. “Completely,” he agrees. He kisses Carlos briefly, then steps away, breaking their hands apart to tread a slow circuit around their new front room. Carlos watches him fondly, somehow falling even more in love with him.

“You know,” TK says suddenly, his eyes roving around the empty space, “I’ve never actually done this before.”

“What do you mean?”

He waves his hands, gesturing at the flaking paint on the walls and the lack of furniture. “Decorated a house. I had an apartment in New York but that came fully-furnished and I didn’t exactly have a ton of stuff to add. And then when I moved here with my dad, I didn’t care too much about how the house looked, and you know how my dad is about interior design. It’s a little...scary, thinking about doing it now, with you.”

Carlos’s eyes widen, his heart clenching at the words. “Do you… Do you not want to do this?” he asks, half-dreading the answer. He’d thought they were both on the same page here, but what if… What if…

“What?” TK frowns, crossing the room in three quick strides to meet Carlos. “Babe, no, of course I want to. It’s a good kind of scary, I promise.”

“You sure?” Carlos scans his boyfriend’s face, searching for any hint of doubt or anxiety. But there is none, and TK just smiles, kissing Carlos’s cheek.

“A thousand percent,” he says. “It’ll be fun.”

(‘Fun’ isn’t the word Carlos would give to what came next. ‘Frustrating’, possibly. Or ‘exhausting’. Maybe even ‘interminable’.)

(But, at the end of it all, they have a home. Their home. And Carlos can see their future taking shape before his very eyes.)

Domenic grins when he sees Carlos approaching him, and a part of Carlos regrets even agreeing to come. But he can hardly turn around now, so he forces a smile and slides into the chair next to him, extending a hand to shake. Domenic sends him a strange look at that, but obliges anyway, shaking Carlos’s hand with a surprising firmness.

“Hey,” he says, still smiling.

“Hey.” Carlos sighs, taking in Domenic’s bright eyes and warm, hopeful face, and decides, fuck it. “Look, before you say anything, I just want you to know that I’m not looking for anything right now. My friends set me up on that date with you—and it’s not that I don’t think you’re a good guy, I honestly do, but—”

“Carlos.” Domenic appears to be fighting off laughter, though he’s not entirely successful in it, a brief chuckle slipping past his lips. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me. I know it sounds hard to believe, but I really am okay with being friends. Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing where it goes, but…”

He trails off, seeing what must be obvious doubt on Carlos’s face. “Look, I’m kind of new in town, alright? I don’t really know many people around here, and I’m just...fuck, man. I’m lonely. So if you wanna be friends, then that’s incredible and more than enough for me. I swear.”

And Domenic is looking at him so earnestly that Carlos really has no choice but to believe him. He feels himself flushing a bright red, embarrassed at how self-centred and narcissistic he must have seemed, and a stammered apology is halfway out of his mouth when Domenic reaches over and lays a firm hand on his arm.

“It’s no big deal,” he says, patting once before drawing back. “I do want to ask, though, if you don’t mind? Why did you come on the date if you didn’t want to? Not many guys would.”

Carlos huffs a laugh. “My friends think I’m turning into a hermit. It’s an assessment that I...wouldn’t disagree with. Let’s just say you’re not the only one looking for a friend.”

Domenic’s eyebrows quirk up in interest. “Oh? Anything to do with your unwillingness to date? I mean, a guy like you—it’s hard to imagine that you don’t have men practically throwing themselves at you. Maybe even literally. How come you’re still single? Is there...someone else?”

Carlos’s whole body tenses at the question, his gaze dropping to his hands and his heart in his shoes. Tension lies thick in the air, and he feels the sudden urge to flee, but he’s rooted to his chair, stuck under Domenic’s scrutiny.

“Shit,” Domenic says, voice hushed. “Carlos, I—I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to… Fuck, forget I said anythin—”

“I was engaged.”

Carlos hadn’t meant to say it. He doesn’t know why he did. It’s just… He hasn’t really talked about TK properly with anyone in the three years since; his friends were all TK’s friends too, and they all knew him—knew them.

This is the first time he’s actually spending time with someone who didn’t know, and it’s not freeing exactly, but it’s the first time he feels free to speak about TK the way he wants to, without anyone else’s memories looming over it.

“I’m not anymore, obviously,” he laughs wryly, finally managing to look back up at Domenic, finding shock on his face. “It was… It ended.”

Domenic’s mouth opens and closes several times before he’s able to pull himself together enough to speak. “Who called it off?” he asks—which was not what Carlos was expecting. “Because if it was him, man. He really missed out there.”

Carlos hesitates a moment, then answers, “It was him. But it wasn’t on purpose.” He breathes out shakily, swallowing hard. “He died a month before the wedding.”

Carlos smirks as he hears a groan at his back, glancing over his shoulder to find TK pretending to bang his head on the table. “Having fun, babe?”

Another groan. “Let’s just elope. Let’s get married in some random courthouse by some random Texas official. That way we wouldn’t have to figure out stuff like a seating plan or—or what kind of cake knife to use. I mean, babe.” TK sends a pleading look in Carlos’s direction, and Carlos can’t help but laugh, cruel though it feels when TK’s wounded expression just gets worse.

“I’m pretty sure my mother and your dad would kill us if we did that,” he points out, causing TK’s mouth to twist.

“I hate it when you’re right.”

“No, you don’t.” Grinning, Carlos turns back to his chopping, except, when he reaches out for the next ingredient, he only meets empty space. “Mierda. TK, babe, can you run to the store? I forgot the chilis.”

“Can’t you just leave them out?”

There’s a hopeful note to TK’s tone, but Carlos stands firm—his cooking is the one thing he’s able to resist TK for. “You’d think you’d be used to spices by now,” he comments. “And the answer is no; go on. You’ll barely even taste them.”

TK mutters his disagreement, but he gets up and leaves anyway. Carlos watches him go, shaking his head fondly before returning to dinner. Technically, he could leave the chilis out, but he’s been brought up to consider even the mere suggestion as sacrilege, and he’s not planning on letting TK persuade him otherwise any time soon.

Twenty minutes later, he’ll regret that decision more than anything else in the world.

“Carlos, I’m so sorry. You don’t have to—”

“I want to. As long as you’re okay with it; I don’t want to just unload all over you.”

“It’s okay, I promise. What are friends for?”

Carlos frowns, checking the clock. TK should have been back by now; the store is only a five minute drive from their place, and surely he would have texted if he was going to be delayed. He’s about to call him himself when his phone starts ringing, TK’s name flashing up on the screen.

He sighs in relief, answering the call. “Did you get lost or something?”

Silence.

“TK?”

Nothing again, and Carlos’s panic starts to skyrocket. “TK!”

And, this time, he gets an answer.

“C-Carlos.”

Carlos’s heart drops into his stomach at the rasp of TK’s voice. He sounds like he can barely breathe—in fact, if Carlos strains to listen, he can hear stilted, ragged breaths coming through the phone’s speakers. TK is hurt, probably seriously, and, fuck, it was Carlos who sent him out in the first place, this is his fault, he—

“Carlos, please.”

He breaks out of his spiral and clutches his phone tight to his ear, racing around the house to get his shoes on and grab his keys. “TK, where are you? I’ll find you, I promise I will, and you’re gonna be just fine, okay?”

TK doesn’t speak for a few seconds, before, “No.”

Carlos screeches to a halt. “What?”

“I don’t—I can’t tell you where I am. I don’t know. And there’s—there’s no time. No— Someone found me, they called 9-1-1, but they won’t—there’s no time.”

“TK, don’t you dare give up, okay, don’t you dare talk like that. You just need to focus on my voice and stay awake for a little while longer and then they’ll get you to a hospital where they’ll fix you up. You’ll be good as new right in time for the wedding.”

“The wedding. Carlos, I—”

“And if this is your way of getting out of making all the decisions, then it’s a little bit over the top, you know? I mean, point proven and all that, but you could have just told me.” He’s getting hysterical now, he can feel it, standing in the middle of his front room trying to keep his fiancé alive and talking when he’s god-knows-where in god-knows-what condition.

But, as always, TK is there to centre him again. “Carlos, stop, please.”

Carlos doesn’t know if it’s the way TK’s voice is getting quieter and quieter, his energy obviously flagging, or if it’s his pleading tone, but he’s suddenly struck completely still. He can’t move a muscle, every sense tuned into whatever is happening on the other end of the phone.

“I don’t—I don’t want to spend the time we have left lying to each other,” TK eventually says, his words riding on broken breaths now. “I don’t want to leave you, but I think… No, I know that I have to now. I’m s-so sorry. I wish… I wish we…” A gasp, and a horrific cough that sounds like it’s tearing TK apart. “I love you.”

Carlos doesn’t get a chance to reply before there’s a loud thud, and it doesn’t take him long to figure out what caused it.

TK dropped the phone.

TK passed out.

It’s salt in the wound when, seconds later, Carlos hears the wail of sirens approaching the scene.

There are tears dripping down his face as he tells Domenic of the sheer, gut-wrenching panic and fear of those next few minutes.

How he’d been unable to put the phone down, instead listening as the screech of machinery and the raised voices of firefighters and paramedics drifted through the speakers.

How the noises had dimmed when they extracted TK, and how Carlos had strained to listen as the paramedics began to work on him.

And how, when he’d heard those final words, his world had come crashing down.

“I’m calling it. McRae, radio it in to the ME’s office.”

This isn’t happening.

Carlos cannot be sitting in his parents’ backyard, at his fiancé’s wake, in the same place and wearing the same suit that he was supposed to be getting married in a month from now.

He—

Fuck.

Carlos presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and curls in on himself, barely suppressing a moan of agony at the pain in his chest. He’s distantly aware of everyone’s gazes on him, but he can’t stop this tidal wave of emotion anymore than he can turn back time and change the fact that TK is dead and that Carlos failed him.

TK died all alone, and Carlos didn’t get the chance to say goodbye or tell him that he loved him. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak at the funeral—the one thing, the last thing he could do for the love of his life.

Instead, when it was his turn to speak, he’d been frozen in his chair, eyes locked on the coffin—(and, fuck, TK was in there, that was TK, fuckfuckfuck)—and Judd had had to take over.

Carlos hadn’t heard a word he'd said, though he’s sure it was beautiful, and everything that TK deserved.

Everything that Carlos couldn’t give him.

He failed him, he failed, he—

“No,” a hushed voice says, warm arms pulling him into a tight hug, and Carlos must have been talking aloud without realising because the voice keeps reassuring him. “You didn’t fail, sweetheart, you didn’t, I promise. You were there for him at the end and that’s all that matters; that he wasn’t alone when it happened. I know it hurts but it’s okay, it’s all going to be okay.”

Carlos tenses, wanting to scream at whoever’s holding him because how could anything possibly be okay? But when he pulls out of their grip, he sees that it’s Gwyn, her eyes red and cheeks tear-stained, and all Carlos can do is fall apart in his not-quite-mother-in-law’s arms.

She keeps whispering that it’s okay, and Carlos knows that it’s as much for her own benefit as for his.

“Hey sweetheart,” Carlos whispers, getting out of his car and leaning against the closed door. He always comes here when he wants to remember TK; it is where they said goodbye to him after all. And it’s the place where they had so many important moments—it’s where they became official, and where they finally spoke openly and completely with each other for the first time, and where they got engaged.

It’s their place, ridiculous as it might sound.

“Remember that night?” he asks, even now feeling a little self-conscious talking to the air. “I made you a picnic and we came out here to eat it and you somehow managed to get chocolate on your nose from the chocolate-covered strawberries.” Carlos chuckles, then sighs wistfully. “You were so beautiful. I had this whole plan to propose to you, but one look at your face and that damn bit of chocolate and I forgot the entire thing.

“I just blurted it out, right there and then. ‘Marry me, Tyler Kennedy’, and you said yes, and it was perfect.”

He blinks furiously, tears beginning to blur his vision. “I thought… But it was too perfect, I guess. Perfect things never last, and since I was never going to leave you, the universe forced you to leave me.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It’s nothing you don’t already know, and I’m not sure if I even believe that you can hear me. I never used to, back when we were together, but things change when suddenly the one who’s gone is someone you love. I’d give anything, Ty, anything to talk to you again, so I’m here.

“You know… Just in case.”

His hands tremble and he swallows reflexively against the pain and grief crawling up his throat. He reaches inside the car through the window and grabs the bouquet of flowers he brought with him off the passenger seat.

It’s the same one he always brings whenever he comes out here—red camellias, hydrangeas, blue salvias, and forget-me-nots—all flowers that have meaning to them and their relationship. Hydrangeas for understanding; it had been the first flower TK had given him, his way of saying thanks for sticking around even after their disastrous beginnings.

The camellia, Carlos had gifted TK one anniversary. It means ‘you’re a flame in my heart’, which TK always was, always, and Carlos had found it a little funny too, given TK’s background. TK had loved it, and had made sure to tell Carlos in as many ways as he could think of that he felt the same.

The salvias were something they both did, often and at random, sometimes with no particular reason. Just whenever they wanted each other to know they were thinking of them—though, that was something they knew anyway.

Carlos had added the forget-me-nots himself after… After it had happened. It’s a reassurance, both to him and to TK, that he’s not forgetting; that he never will.

That he can’t, even now, three years down the line.

On shaky legs, he walks over to the tree a little distance away, laying the bouquet between the roots almost reverently. Carlos stares down at them long after he’s straightened back up, leaning against the tree, and he allows the memories and the pain to overwhelm him for a moment.

“Can you believe it’s been three years?” he asks the empty air, shaking his head. “I swear, I still miss you like it was yesterday; it doesn’t seem real that I haven’t seen you or kissed you or heard your voice in three whole years.

“I’m going to see your dad later. He’s… He’s doing okay, all things considered. He misses you—we all do—but I think he tries to hide it, like he has to be the strong one for everyone else. Don’t worry though, Ty, we’re looking after him. Making sure he doesn’t, you know. Do anything stupid.

“Your mom helps out a lot too, her and Enzo and Isaac. God, TK you’d be so proud of Isaac now—he’s started school, making loads of friends, and he’s just… He’s such a good kid. I wish you could see him; he was so young when you— You’d be amazed at how big he’s getting. And, hey, we’re making sure that he knows who his big brother was, so...so don’t worry about that either.”

Carlos hesitates before continuing; it feels weird to talk about Domenic here. He doesn’t need to, he knows—technically, there’s nothing even going on between them, though Carlos couldn’t deny how good it had felt when Domenic had hugged him when they parted ways after coffee. But there’s been a weird lump of guilt sitting in his stomach since that first date at the bar, and Carlos figures that TK deserves to know about it.

Even if he’s three years dead and probably can’t hear any of this.

“I met someone, you know,” he says, trying to keep his tone light. “It’s not like that, we’re just friends, but I think… I think maybe it could be like that? Maybe? I don’t know, Ty. I thought I’d never be able to love anyone in that way ever again, but Domenic is so kind and sweet and he makes me wonder if there’s a chance.

“I’m terrified. It’s—It’s stupid and selfish, but I’m so scared of getting hurt again, of having to go through what I went through with you again. Not that I blame you for the accident, it’s just… I can’t do it again. I can’t.

“God, even considering this feels like I’m betraying you. I do hate you a little for that; you still own so much of my heart and I’m never getting it back, whereas all I have of you are your hoodies and your mugs and that goddamn stuffed bear. Why did you have to go and ruin me like that, huh? Why, TK?”

He’s almost shouting now, but the question fades unanswered into the air, and Carlos’s anger vanishes with it. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t… I don’t hate you. I love you so much, and I always will, but I think maybe it’s time for me to let some of that go. I can’t carry on like this for much longer; you understand that, right?”

And maybe he’s imagining it, or maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the breeze picks up a little then, gently ruffling Carlos’s curls, and it feels like… It feels like peace.

He closes his eyes, and for a moment, it’s like he can feel TK there, like he never left at all.

I know, it feels like, his voice ringing loud and clear in Carlos’s head. I love you.

“I love you, too,” Carlos whispers, opening his eyes. TK isn’t there, of course, but, somehow, he doesn’t feel so empty anymore.

Then, with one final glance at the flowers, Carlos turns and walks away, his heart feeling lighter than it has in three years.

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