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cupids-chamber · 10 months

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— " 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 " | Listen to this on loop for full experience.... ★. Content tags/warnings , 1.1k+ words, gender neutral reader, technically everyone x reader (including staff/not so much RSA), can be seen as both platonic and romantic, angst, mentions of food/eating less (reader no longer has an appetite), reader is tired, reader is having a really bad day, reminder: I haven't written in awhile.

Today was a difficult day, many days have challenged you in so many different ways, yet a keen feeling of gloominess had washed over you this particular morning. Your alarm rang blankly into the silent room, you let out a groan of displeasure as you sat up on your bed, staring blankly at the wall feeling a churn in your gut. The curtains were closed, a small ray of light shone through the empty space between your window and the fabric of the curtain; you took a moment to sit and stretch.

Mentally you cursed yourself, reaching a hand to shut off your phone alarm. Perhaps it was a bad idea staying up late after all, yet how could you resist the urge to finish that new Twisted Wonderland fanfic you found on AO3 recently; The reader resonated deeply with you, and the author's writing was just what you needed. Your eyes stung, you felt like banging your head into your headboard just to stop it from ringing and aching, not to mention you could practically feel the weight of your eyebags.—had you known your body would behave in such a way, you'd have slept at least a bit earlier—Well that's what you're saying now at least, you knew you'd probably repeat the same mistake tonight if another storyline enraptured you just as much as the previous did.

You began standing up, your whole body woozy from the lack of sleep, you found yourself stumbling over something you left on the floor. You recall how tired you were, too done with the day to be bothered to pick it back up. You walked right past it, 'today was going to end badly' you thought to yourself, since your morning had been a dead giveaway.

You pocketed some random snack, as breakfast; Running a bit later as per usual. You'd lie to yourself, saying that you'd get up a bit earlier tomorrow but you knew for a fact that unless a miracle happened, you wouldn't.

The rest of the day was but the same routine, you felt tired all throughout your morning classes, on edge. You would've fallen asleep but you tried to keep your eyes open, as your professor was going over some important project intel that you really didn't want to miss—though you were only half understanding what they were saying—their words felt like gibberish for your only half-functioning brain.

Lunch felt like a chore, despite it usually feeling like a break. You felt like something bad was definitely going to happen, which made you feel anxious; The churn in your gut made it difficult to eat, chew, or drink. Your lunches weren't all that gigantic, as you disliked the feeling of being bloated, yet you barely could find it in yourself to eat. You took a deep breath, you logged into tumblr, perhaps one of your favorite fanfic writers uploaded something new? Anything to distract this heavy mind of yours.

You checked @kalims page first, they hadn't uploaded in a while—It's been a couple days since they've posted; you figured they'd be busy with school… You pondered on the following page for a while, checking @spadecentral‘s blog, they were far more active then most other blogs you’ve been following and their soft and sweet writings was perhaps just what you needed in this tim—They haven’t uploaded in a while as well? You looked at your screen, maybe everyone was just busy with their finals and/or finishing up midterms at this time.

You hummed, scrolling frantically through your follows, you sighed softly, maybe today wasn't the day to read fluff, you started checking yandere blogs; ‘nothing like obsessive men to calm you down’ you thought as you clicked on @writingforatwistedworld‘s blog, you scrolled down..

‘Weird, nothing new..’, it was as if the whole world had conspired against you today, you took a sigh, perhaps @honey-milk-depresso had uploaded something new on her art blog, after all their wholesome tsundere ship art was just the perfect source of serotonin—And if you were just a bit lucky, perhaps she’s uploaded writing onto her main blog an—Oh.. She hasn’t uploaded either?..

Your brows furrowed letting out a tired sigh, maybe you should just listen to some music. ‘How bad could this day possibly go?’—you consoled yourself with those words, as you tried finishing up at least a small portion of your meal.

You forced yourself to clean up and change, crashing onto your bed afterwards. It always felt softer on these sorts of days. Like a welcoming warm embrace, that you didn't want to leave. You took a few moments to vent your stress onto one of your poor pillows, before getting nice and cozy with your warm blankets.

You laid down on your bed, burying yourself in the blankets, as you grabbed your device from near you, turning the brightness to the lowest possible setting, perhaps you should finish your general tasks on Twst before you take a nap..

10 minutes passed and you let out a groan, where did the app go? You never heard of an app disappearing randomly; perhaps you miss-clicked and hid it by accident? A few minutes passed, and you still couldn't find the Twisted Wonderland app, you desperately opened up your computer.. Typing in panic, and yet the official website was gone as well—perhaps it’s just going through some weird update?—Maybe this was only happening to certain servers. You logged into tumblr once again, checking your mutuals profiles and.. some of them were gone? Most of the blogs had nothing from Twisted Wonderland left, the tumblr tags for Twst were completely empty.

Two hours had only passed and your panic grew, it was odd. You scrolled through your mutual’s blogs for minutes on end hoping to find one post about the game which put a smile on your face on the daily... Yet none... You went on AO3 and even checked other websites which you'd only go to out of sheer desperation for content... Yet nothing...

You took deep breaths, your breathing pacing as you scrolled till your fingers began to sting from pressure and stress.. Your back arched, as you stared at the screen with an intense expression, desperately tapping away… finally you entered the app store hoping this was a weird dream or update, like those movies and manga’s and yet.. the app was gone. No mention of it.

You couldn’t even trace a single picture of the game down, not even on Pinterest where everything deleted was still sometimes somehow available.

'Were you crying? You couldn't quite tell, you felt tired, perhaps this fictional world was just something you created as an escape, yet you didn't think you'd get this attached to some characters on a screen, and now that's it's all gone you feel... kind of.. empty.'

‘Maybe it was all just a fragment of your imagination…’

| Masterlist | Kofi | Join Taglist

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nxiispire · 2 years

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HI HI HI! MY KIND OF A MOOT FRIEND ON BOTH GENSHIN AND TUMBLR EHE🤭

so i saw that ur reqs were open and ever thought of corruption with xiao???? i just feel like it would work so well

|･ω･`)ﾉ a/n : hihi!!!! tyty nobu for your wise ideas hehe

✰ [ nxiispire ] .. ! Corrupting Xiao

cw : corruption k1nk, loss of v1rginity, sub!xiao

no cause i think about this way more then i should ( ˘･з･˘) he’s just so urrrgg

Thinking about how for a majority of Xiao’s life he thought of himself as merely a weapon, his only purpose was to kill for the sake of others. So of course the idea of indulging in humanly pleasures was forbidden, it wasn’t even something he considered, seeing sex as just a method of reproducing.

Though of course when he eventually found himself looking over wangshu inn, he inadvertently became aware of humans habits to have sex, not for reproducing, but for pleasure.

Despite the curiosity, Xiao never thought such meaningless pleasures was meant for him. He didn’t even know if someone like him was even capable of feeling like that. That was until you came around.

Xiao had no idea that the touch of someone else could fee so good.

Admittedly it took him awhile to warm up to the idea of physical affection. It took him a ridiculously long time for him to not jump out of his skin at a mere hug. But he trusted you, and slowly he began to anticipate your embrace (only in private of course), even letting you kiss him from time to time.

But unlike the slow work up to hugging and kissing, in the heat of the moment you and Xiao took the next step in your relationship in a single night. Xiao didn’t quite understand the difference between innocent hugging and kissing, and full blown sex, so he wasn’t too apprehensive when you asked if you could start undressing him during a heated make out session.

But by the time he realised how different these acts were, he was feeling way to good to stop.

You had your hand wrapped around his cock, slowly jerking him off while muttering praises into his ear, telling how good he was being and how pretty he was.

He almost sobbed at your praises, as the combination of this newfound pleasure and your words felt almost too much. He began bucking his hips up into your hand as he felt an unfamiliar feeling being to rise in his stomach.

“Ahhah- mhh shit i feel- i feel like- aAhh” he paused his efforts to express how he was feeling in order let out even more pornographic moans.

“i- i feel like i’m going ahh~ to explode!!” he whines out, finally finding the words to express this new feeling.

“it’s ok you can let it all out ok? just let go and cum for me” you reassured, feeling as though you could finish at the sight itself. And at your command he came with a loud moan, jerking as you rubbed him through his high.

Xiao didn’t have time to think about what just happened as his eyes began fluttering shut, purely exhausted from the intense orgasm he just had.

#𖦹 sub!char #genshin impact smut #genshin smut #sub genshin #sub genshin impact #genshin x reader #sub xiao #xiao x reader smut #xiao smut #xiao x reader #genshin xiao x reader #genshin impact x reader

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harkre · 1 month

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I don't know where to post this—

But it isn't like she and her "group" can't drive me off the server—because I've long left it behind. And it was I who originally introduced them to "Minecraft" which I had made a realm and invited them alongside friends. However, when people were suggesting I made a server—I told them it would take me awhile to make one. Well—Niklos couldn't wait and took everyone off from my realm and invited them to 'their server' without inviting me which I had to third-party to get a invite because I didn't even know about it!

And many don't know the actually reason why I left Moon Guard—it was due to "Niklos Adamant" Guild Leader of the Remnants of Lordaeron and it wasn't due to the "Minecraft" incident. They are manipulative and most of this stems due to lack of communication from them and other people. The only person that really communicated to me about any complaints was the leader from the Residuum. Apparently "Niklos" had a problem with me for months but never communicated about it once despite our close proximity in-game and being friends in discord. They never contacted me to expression their complaints to me directly for "months" and when they did contact me about it—

Literally didn't communicated back with me for "months" via discord and accused me of "siccing" my friends after them. When I wasn't even online in-game for that and don't know the full context of what had happened. Just that I was doing a role-play that involved someone wanting to role-play with people from the Cathedral group and that wanted to be involved with my story. But something happened and it blew way out of proportion and was never given screenshots of what actually occurred from either party. But as you can see Niklos hadn't contacted me since December of 2021 and all the way until May of 2022 and /whisper communication in-game was non-existent.

And the screenshots in regards to the conversation that had with Hillsbradian below were originally shown to me by Niklos herself before I joined their discord back in 2019 when I had originally joined Moon Guard and was desperate for friends. I should have taken screenshots but I never thought anything like this could occur in the future with "drama"

Basically they whispered me this tinyurl link that they were "sad" that these screenshots were going around framing them in a bad way and that they were fake. And basically said something like this: "you know that isn't my discord profile picture and name" and I was dumb enough to believe them—because I didn't know better and was just desperate for a friend. However the conversation always hit me as fishy because—"you can change your profile picture and name" at any time!

I stumbled back on the screenshots here on tumblr and clearly other people seem to be aware of them and that they aren't "fake"

I've made even more people aware of them. For example: "Gnews" "Eveneah Rosewood" and some of the core officers and the leader for the "Residuum of Icecrown" are aware of the screenshots and if there is more evidence apparently this Maxen has them.

Including of Bishop "Tyragonfal" which the Residuum of Icecrown does have a document about them with evidence for why they are "blacklisted"

Tyragonfal also stalked my character from the Residuum of Icecrown various times until I had to join a voice chat for the "Midnight Repose" to tell them to stop parking themselves right nearby me in emote range. They would also metagame using their alt in the Residuum of Icecrown at the time called "Nightravens" and they are a 38+ female player who was sending inappropriate messages to the officers from the Residuum of Icecrown in a very "s*xuel matter" and seem to target young men for their "r*pe" kinks and even wrote an inappropriate fanfiction with them and another character without their consent. Eitherway "Midnight Repose" defends them and Niklos gave them a high role in their Remnant of Lordaeron discord.

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fleurywiththesave · 3 months

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for your Tumblr request Matt/Drai story on AO3, can you do one that has Leon telling Matt about his fantasies for their future - marriage, babies, etc.

Or one seeing the other with their baby and it gets them hot

First of all, I am weak as hell for sweet conversations about the future, so jot that down. I love this prompt, thank you for sending it! This is basically a sequel to my little post-game 7 ficlet.

They’re still out by the pool. The rest of the family started calling it quits one by one a couple hours ago, but Matthew doesn’t want to miss a single second of this. He can sleep after the cup’s been picked up in the morning, to be spirited away to Benny. For now, he’s more than content to be exactly where he is – lying on his back listening to the sounds of a St. Louis summer night, feet dangling in the cool water, looking at Leon look at the Stanley Cup.

He’s been very careful not to touch it. Someone had almost accidentally nudged him into it earlier in the day and Dad absolutely barked at them, then stonily informed everyone in the vicinity that Leon would be winning it next year and nobody had his permission to interfere with that. Leon had turned bright red. Matthew had furtively texted Davo to make sure he knew his marching orders.

He still isn’t touching it, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off of it in awhile. He doesn’t look sad, or regretful, or jealous. He looks thoughtful.

“Would you two like a moment alone?” Matthew asks. Leon reaches out and gently swats him on the face without looking away.

“Says the man who would’ve made out with it at center ice if there weren’t guys still waiting to lift it,” he snarks. Matthew catches his hand before he can pull it away and twines their fingers together.

“I want to put a baby there,” Leon tells him.

Matthew pauses.

“Well, Gads might not notice right away if we borrow one of his,” he says.

“Matty.”

It’s quiet, amused, long-suffering, loving. It makes Matthew’s chest go soft and light. He rolls over so he can see Leon better.

“Tell me more,” he says softly.

Leon is still looking at the cup, but his hand tightens around Matthew’s.

“It doesn’t have to be a baby. It could be a kid. Or kids.”

“Yeah?” Matthew can feel the smile stealing over his face. “How many?”

“Three,” Leon says immediately.

“That’s a good number,” Matthew agrees. “Keeps everybody on their toes.”

“One offense, one defense, one goalie.”

“And who exactly is going to take responsibility for raising a goalie?” Matthew asks. Leon laughs.

“We can call in reinforcements for that one.”

God, Matthew loves to hear him laugh. He loves to watch the way his eyes crinkle. He loves how surprised people sometimes seem to be by the fact that Leon is capable of laughing.

Matthew stopped being surprised by him awhile ago, for the most part, but he can’t say he saw this particular conversation coming. He scoots over and lets his head rest in Leon’s lap. “What else?”

Leon picks up Matthew’s left hand and traces his ring finger. Matthew shivers, just a little bit.

“I was thinking Mallorca,” Leon says. “That way everyone has to travel, so they can all complain equally.”

“At the house?”

“Or on the beach.”

The beach at sunset, Matthew thinks. Taryn would love an excuse to be barefoot for a wedding. So would Dad, for that matter.

“No tuxedos,” he murmurs. His eyelids are finally getting heavy, despite his best efforts.

“Of course not,” Leon says, combing his fingers through Matthew’s hair. “But we’ll make sure Brady and Emma’s baby has a bowtie.”

Matthew doesn’t sleep. He drifts, the most content he’s ever been in his life, while Leon paints him a picture of their future.

#mattdrai #leon draisaitl/matthew tkachuk #tumblr fic #my writing #hockey rpf #asks #ctlifeguard

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amitiagailec · 6 months

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Wowie what's this? Me active in Tumblr (and Discord again??)

I am still uncertain how I want to go with this but I am motivated by the idea of making an AU in CRK. Look if you want content you gotta make em yourself.

Not much is decided but here's the idea so far:

Fragment!AU. SM is named Ternate Milk Cookie/Fragment!SM

•Inspired from how a part of WL (or WL herself now) "survived"/stayed lingering despite DE, I just decided maybe the Beasts will have a manifestation of their own, be it just remnants/manifestations of them that continues to walk Earthbread despite their true selves being sealed.

Just as how the soul jams can kinda imitate and preserve the will of their holders it seemed, I think they'd be somewhat like that in that regard, in the middle of the Darkness and Light of the Virtues.

•TM Cookie as manifestation of SM is often at Ghost City and Blueberry Yogurt Academy, because of connection to his past, a continuation of what he started as the Virtue, and the source of power/dimension of this place.

•There's also SM's territory in Beast Yeast. But he doesn't always do so.

•This decreased after PV inherited the Light of Truth, but not completely.

•Every headmaster of the academy is aware of TM. From every predecessor to a new one he is to be regarded as a "guest" providing him things when he needed it, and only be cautious when he is displaying...tendencies. Every once in a while, some professors would find an unknown Cookie wandering the school and disappearing before they could find him. Most times they'd forget but the quiet rumor of a ghost lingers from time to time.

•Students when familiar are very much warned when they were found to have seen or interacted with him for there have been a few cases of...luring.

•Despite the wariness, TM still provides support every once in awhile. Correcting formulas for spells and potions by professors, returning books to the library when someone forgot and often arranging them, making suggestions to the headmasters themselves, and teaching young cookies when they passed by him. The last one be how he will bond with a certain Cookie.

•As a manifestation, TM cannot interact with anything in his surroundings unless he puts his effort into it, drawing from what energy and magic he can, another reason why the place is important. Appearing alone draws a lot from him if he were anywhere else.

•He can recall what knowledge he still has from before, but anything related to Beast Yeast, his comrades, and his own deeds are always blocked from his mind. Any trigger makes him uncomfortable. He'd eventually forget that happened.

•TM is still connected to his real self SM, who would often show when his attitude changes. Just another way of SM to interact and spectate outside of his prison, mostly showing when his expression darkens. What TM forgets, SM remembers very well.

#crk #cookie run #crk au #shadow milk cookie #fragment au #vanillaverse #except its just my SM for now #pv is in academy days or pre as well #what is this lore dump

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tanix-dragon · 3 months

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To Be the Dragon: Living as Tanix lei Dramon ak Hyuukii

For many years now (about 6!), I've been in the alterhuman community, thinking about how I want to write about my dragon kintype. I’ve never written much, though, despite being fairly comfortable doing so. This isn’t out of lack of things to talk about—it’s more because I have such a basic run-of-the-mill spiritual dragon kintype (in my mind) that I wasn’t sure that writing about it would do anything for anyone. Besides, it’s all so normal to me. It’s hard to write about your life when it feels so utterly mundane that to pick each piece out of it feels ridiculous. I have a dozen concepts for essays in my Tumblr drafts, but in the end, I’ve just decided to write something big. I’m going to go through it all, all I can think of, because I don’t know if I can pull it apart enough to write about each piece separately. It’s all so intertwined that it’s just easier to write a big one.

Strap in. This is going to take awhile. I’m a wordy bastard and despite how little I actually go into it, I do know a lot about this kintype.

Awakening

This is where most people start, and I’m sorry to disappoint; this is a short one. When I was a kid, I loved dinosaurs, and when I discovered dragons, and I mean really discovered them, realized how cool they are, I felt some kind of deep resonance. As a kid, I figured that it was just because they were the coolest thing of all time. In reality, this awakened phantom limbs (I think? Or just strengthened them. I don’t really remember very well; “I” as I’m known didn’t quite exist at the time, system stuff, you understand) and set me on a path of self-discovery and overwhelming draconity. I was known as the “crazy dragon kid” at school, even for years after I stopped talking about them, and I’ve always been very recognizable, even at a distance, even for people that barely know me, because I “move differently.” A friend once told me that I move like someone put a lizard or a bird in a human’s body, that I have a dragon’s walk cycle, that I have the wrong animation set for my skeleton. That was a very nice thing to be told.

I don’t know. I spent a lot of years with constant phantom limbs and sort of figured that they were normal, more or less? I didn’t think about them. They were just a part of me. Only once I tripped over a dragonkin’s blog completely accidentally in early 2018 did I start putting pieces together, and then it hit me like lightning: oh. I’m a dragon. I’m actually a dragon. And I’m not alone. I started my Tumblr kin blog and that was that. No questioning, no kinsidering, no “am I really?”--I had known that the thing was dragon, but I hadn’t known how it applied to me, and the second I did, I knew it was right. I am a dragon, and that was that.

I’d wondered off and on for a while if someone could have a past life as a dragon, but had never mentioned it to anyone (at least as far as I remember), because I was worried about the response I’d get. Once I realized that I was otherkin, though, I embraced that wholeheartedly: I had been a dragon, and that had rolled over so powerfully that I still am a dragon. It fits, and I love it.

What’s it like?

“What’s it like being a dragon?” my non-kin friends ask me sometimes. It’s kind of almost exactly the same as being not a dragon, except my mental image of myself is a big blue dragon instead of a human. Chronic pain flaring up? Dragon curled up and complaining about it. OCD lashing out? Dragon resting head against the wall with shut eyes and half-bared teeth. Someone annoying me? Dragon with exposed teeth and fangs all puffed up to try to make them back down.

My dragon body maps onto my human body to produce feeling like an anthro dragon most of the time, even though my dragonself isn’t even bipedal. It’s the happy medium my brain can settle on between what I feel I should be and my physical reality, although, again, mentally, most of the time when I imagine myself, I’m as I should be. In headspace where my headmates can see me, I’m quadrupedal unless I’m doing something that requires me to be bipedal. (Our headspace is pretty flexible, don’t worry about it.) All of this evens out to me moving kind of oddly—toss in how stiff and sore I am all the time (it’s some kind of unknown but disabling condition, hooray), and you get someone who moves very oddly. I turn my head like there’s significantly more weight to it than there should be, I visibly squeeze through spaces that are plenty big enough for me as if trying to accommodate great wings, I walk with a slight adjustment to my hips to compensate for a heavy tail, and I lift my shoulders to flare or gesture with my wings. I have slight head movements that correspond to how I move my ear fins, expressions that call for me to bare my teeth, gestures that only make sense with wings, tail, and claws, and a dozen other little things I probably don’t even notice that I do.

I don’t get a lot of species dysphoria anymore. I’d prefer to be able to switch in and out of dragon form (ideally with that anthro dragon that my brain has invented for me as an option too! I do love it as a middle ground), but I can make do as-is. I spent untold centuries as a dragon, I can handle some decades as a human. I’m here now, and I have a different life to live, and frankly, I love humans. I love the things they do, the cultures they have, the things they make, the ways they act, and I feel really lucky that I get to be in one of those human cultures and witness others. I have a minor in anthropology—I promise I’m not about to become a misanthrope anytime soon. I believe that humans are inherently creatures like any other, and can be driven to great good or great evil. I don’t believe that’s a reason to hate them, and besides, some part of me identifies as human as well as my kintypes. Not everyone does, but I do, and it’s comfortable for me.

I do have a few draconic instincts I have to juggle, but none are terribly maladaptive or troublesome. I know exactly how to breathe fire and want to when angry or struggling to keep a fire going in winter, and I know that there’s something in my chest and something else in my throat that are missing, structures that allow firebreathing, but I have phantoms and can mimic it okay, so I can huff and puff and burn nothing down. I have a prey drive that kicks in hard watching squirrels or, worse, rabbits out of my window, but I don’t ever actually chase anything (not that my slow ass could catch anything even if I did). I want to sharpen my claws, curl up in the sun, growl and threat-display with my wings (and do flare my phantoms when I’m in the car and another vehicle does something I don’t like), and a bunch of other small things I can’t think of right now. Again, it doesn’t bother me—it’s just affirmations of my draconity, and most are subtle enough that I can do them in front of people and they don’t notice, or, if they do, they don’t think much of it.

What’s it like? What a question. What else do I say? Sometimes my chronic back pain reaches into my rhomboid muscles, which is where my phantom wings connect, so it registers as wing pain, I guess. That doesn’t usually happen, but it can. I walk on my toes a lot because I naturally want to move digitigrade. Shocker, I know. I don’t know—what’s it like being a dragon? What’s it like being human, or anything else? What’s it like to be who and what you are?

The Dragon Driik’lor

Tanix lei Dramon ak Hyuukii. Tanix of Fire and Breath. What a name—and one I have known parts of for a long, long time. As a kid, I’d sign off messages and emails as Tanadin of Fire and Air. When choosing a name for myself when I came out as trans (Tanix), I knew that I wanted something with the nickname ‘Tan’ still, derived originally from my username “Tanadin,” because it felt right. Was my name truly Tanix? I don’t know. It feels right, or at least, right enough. I swapped out “air” for “breath” because Tanix lei Dramon ak Voron didn’t feel as right. I guess the question is—who is, or was, this Tanix, and what language is that?

(I'll occasionally be referring to my dragonself as Tanix and myself as… me, I guess. I know, I’m sorry, that’s confusing, but that’s driiv name as far as I know, and calling driik anything else feels weird.)

Tanix lei Dramon ak Hyuukii was a mature adult dragon of a sapient and extremely intelligent species with its own language. My noemata have provided me with pieces of this language—individual words and ideas on its structure, some suffixes, some sounds and pieces of what a sentence should sound like. A few letters, even, for the written version. For the past fourteen or so years, I have worked on uncovering as much of this language (that, as a kid, I called Dranonic, and I haven’t changed that) as I can, and have made up much of the rest. I will never reconstruct an entire language from noemata alone, and I know that, so I just do what doesn’t feel wrong and change things if I get an inkling that I’m off somewhere.

Tanix’s species had some extremely complex social rules and dances that driit largely didn’t do much with. Dragons could be either solitary or live in clans, and driit was pretty solitary. Driit was also fucking annoying. Sorry, but it’s true—Tanix lei Dramon ak Hyuukii was a pretentious, self-centered, prideful, overconfident bastard that had other dragons going “oh gods here comes Tanix again, just smile and wave.” Driit was a bulky, powerful, physically imposing dragon, and driit knew it. (In this human life, my family is actually fairly dense and stout despite being quite tall, so that’s free species euphoria.) As far as I can tell, given driiv five horns and larger stature, driit was female. (I talk about horn count and dragon gender more in my essay Counting Horns and Making Assumptions, or, Draconic Age and Gender, if you’re interested.) However, pronouns in Dranonic are based on age category, not gender, so the fact that Tanix and driiv mate have different pronouns is because of a difference in age, not gender.

Oh, Selkhenar. Selkhenar of the Darkened Swamp. I wish I knew more about you. Muut seems to be the only dragon that Tanix wasn’t a huge bitch to—and let me tell you something. Driit was vain as fuck. My dragon instincts know what driit did and did not find attractive in a dragon, and Selkhenar was considered, in that society, to be a kind of dumpy little green and black swamp beast with a weirdly long face, short ass legs, and kind of weird proportions.

And driit loved muut more than anything. Every time I think about Selkhenar, I get holdover fuzzies and butterflies from my time as the dragon the first go-around, and man, driit was gone for this swamp dragon. I have flashes of memory of much more impressive-looking dragons trying to woo driik and getting passed up, but accidentally tripping over Selkhenar in the swamp just beyond the edge of driiv territory was apparently what driik needed.

They had at least one clutch of eggs together. I remember guarding them ferociously, even growling at Selkhenar once before recognizing muuk. I remember them hatching into the cutest little whelplings of all time, and I remember them being a mix of blue and green and red and black. I remember teaching them to fly, throwing them over the ledge outside of the cave and off the cliff. Selkhenar was below, ready to catch if they didn’t figure it out, but still, uh, not the strategy I would recommend, necessarily. I remember hunting for them, both land animals and skimming the lake outside of our cave, down in the evergreens at the base of the mountain, for fish, even though… Selkhenar was a water dragon and therefore better suited to fishing…. I think it was a pride thing. Tanix was a ferociously prideful dragon and I suspect driit was like NO, MY LOVE, I WILL HUNT FOR YOU, YOU TINY THING… YOU GUARD THE BABIES WHILE I PROVIDE FOR YOU…. and then proceeded to accidentally driik’lor (Dranonic for him/her/themself) into the water. Repeatedly. Over and over. I have very firm noemata of hunting fish, eating fish, and fucking up while hunting fish and fouling my wings and falling into the lake. I was an okay swimmer and was mostly just glad that no one saw, but like… come on. Let the swamp dragon do it. I mean, I’m sure muut did, but I don’t have memories of that.

What’d This Dragon Look Like, Anyway?

Good question! That’s something I have the firmest grasp on. I’ve been drawing this dragon for as long as I’ve been super aware of dragons, and driit has been through a lot of iterations, but I think I’m very close.

Tanix lei Dramon ak Hyuukii was approximately fifty feet long from nose to tailtip. Driit was a deep, intense blue (take a peek at any art I’ve ever done of driik/myself) with bright red stripes along driiv midline—basically, along the spine, down the tail, and along the face. The stripes also appeared on driiv legs and maybe wings, but I’m not sure about that one. Driit had five horns that were either darker blue or slightly purple that curved slightly back and were slightly offset from one another, with each set being slightly smaller than the last and a bit further back, with the single horn being the smallest and furthest back. Driit also had a single nose spike that matched the horns. Driit had big (kind of disproportionately big) ear fins, a more recent discovery of mine and out of date on most of my art, used for communication and showing of mood, mostly. Driiv “hands” had three fingers and a thumb, driiv back feet had three toes and a dewclaw, and driiv wings had four “fingers” with membrane stretched between them and a fifth “finger” that seemed to serve little to no purpose. This wing membrane connected pretty low down on the body (near or on the tail), providing a large area for lift. I believe this membrane was a lighter color than the scales around it, and I have the distinct feeling that I could flush blood into it to make it change color—red, I think? Maybe it was just some markings that could appear. I’m not sure.

Along driiv back were spikes or spines, of a similar color to the horns, lined up perfectly with the stripes. I know that driit had some kind of dangerous weapon on the dip of driiv tail, and I know that this thing had three sharp points, but its exact shape and color, I’m less sure on. I know that the tail itself was fairly flexible, especially near the tip, but was most assuredly a powerful weapon when needed. Driiv belly was lightly plated, providing protection for the vital organs. Driit also, of course, had sharp teeth and a forked tongue, although two of driiv teeth were elongated and poked slightly out of the mouth when shut, which I tend to call driiv fangs.

The Binding

Back in August of 2023, I tripped over an image that made dragonbrain click on and triggered a fear response as well as a flood of noemata. The post I wrote at the time of that discovery is here, but I’ll write it out in a more comprehensible format, both for your convenience and so that I have a more organized version in general.

Some kind of humanoid species (not humans) on my planet found and trapped me when I was quite young, and dragged me to a structure not dissimilar to the image I found, not far from or in one of their cities. My limbs and jaws were chained so that I couldn’t fight or escape, and I so clearly remember feeling my claws and scales scrape over that rough, coarse stone, and the sound of the chains dragging across it. Some of the humanoids rode other dragons, who were clearly enslaved and, in many ways, broken. They had no choice but to obey, or face punishment. Their eyes were dull and they passed over me without registering me, because to acknowledge that such a young dragon was facing their same fate was, I imagine, too painful.

For the record, I was so young that I thought I might be able to carry one of these humanoids, maybe, and not all of my red markings had come in yet. I was very young.

For some reason or another—maybe I was misbehaving, maybe this was protocol with all new dragons, I don’t know—they dragged me to a dungeon underneath a great arena where they made some dragons that they figured they could never turn into mounts fight for their amusement. I was chained up down there, fairly tightly, barely fed and barely able to move. There were a couple of other dragons down there with me, in the dark and the damp, curled up on those horrible stone bricks just like I was. I could barely see them, it was so dark, but they could see me, their eyes more adjusted due to years or decades down here.

My primary companion was a dull red dragon, an adult male, as far as I can figure. I don’t remember muuv name, but it started with an Ez- or an El- with a z in there somewhere, and ended in -iel or something along those lines. Elaziel, Ezkhaliel, Ezkerial, Elzariel? I don’t remember. I wish I did. I remember muut being as reassuring as muut could be, trying to do muuv best for this poor scared youngling. Muut was beaten and broken but incapable of either fighting or being a mount—one or more of muuv limbs were gone or broken and healed incorrectly. Muut couldn’t fly and I think muut struggled to walk. I don’t know why the humanoids kept muut alive, but I do know that I reinvigorated muuk, and muut decided to do whatever muut could to get me out.

I don’t remember what happened, really. All I know is that, at some point, there was an escape, and multiple dragons made it out, or at least tried to. I remember the red dragon shouting “Mor anor axid, mor anor axid! Mor anor axid veran!”, which is Dranonic for “Let them fly, let them fly! Let them fly away!” with “anor” being distinctly plural—you would never call a single dragon “anor,” indicating that there were multiple dragons trying to get away. I know muut wasn’t among them—muut would never make it out, and I’m sure that the humanoids killed him after. I never looked back. I never saw.

I know that there was a light green dragon involved in all that, a female, I think. Muut was chained down there with myself and the red dragon, and maybe others. Maybe muut was the other one in “anor.” I don’t know. I don’t remember much about muut.

I do remember part of the escape—the red dragon’s shouted pleas, the hesitation of the dragon mounts, the sting of the dragonbone arrows fired from the humanoids that pierced my scales (because of course they harvested the bodies of their spent slaves, why wouldn’t they, the bastards), the screaming of my underused wing muscles as I tore out of that place and never looked back, not once.

I never returned. Not even as an adult, not even once my fifth horn came in. I flew far, far away, and never drew closer again. I never wanted to see that place, never wanted to fear it, never wanted to risk it. My two fears as a dragon were that place and the ocean, and the second, I feel, had some kind of horrible dragon-slaughtering beast in it that was a long, instinctive, genetic terror. That horrible place beat it out by miles.

A Couple Other Memories

I remember other things, too, not just that whole… sequence, or what I talked about before. I know that there were some kind of “dragon mimics” out there, some kind of insectoid things that looked like dragons at a distance but revealed what they were close up. They’d either do displays intended to anger a dragon and draw them close, or courtship displays to interest a dragon. Either way, once a dragon was close enough for the mimic to strike, it was too late. A lot of insectoid dragon designs set off my dragonbrain’s “mimic alarm,” and it’s kind of interesting to play with and see what triggers it and what doesn’t. I’m sure I had personal experience with them—I have too clear of a mental image of one trying to lure me in for anything else—but I don’t know the specifics.

One of the memories that I’ve had, crystal clear, for a long time, is my death. I was falling from a great height, wings too damaged to hold me, uselessly streaming behind me as I fell. Selkhenar flew down with me in a panic, knowing muut could never catch me (I was far bigger than muuk), trying to talk me into getting my wings sorted out and at least slowing my fall or something. I remember there being wounds all over me—I’d been losing some great, horrible battle—and peering at Selkhenar, thinking it was very sweet of muuk to be so worried about me but I was clearly lost, muut needed to get out of here—and then a sharp pain at the base of my skull, where it connects to my spine, and nothing. I feel like it was some sort of projectile, well-aimed, that took me out instantly.

I’m still afraid of heights without my wings.

Wrap-Up

There’s more, I’m sure. More specific essays that I feel like I can write now that I’ve gotten most of it down. I could write an essay on draconic courtship, or what little I know of rearing offspring, or whatever else comes to mind. For now, though—that’s most of it. That’s The Everything. I’ve been meaning to put this together for a long time, and now I have, and I hope it’s helpful to someone—either in understanding me, or in understanding yourself. I know that, when you’re questioning something, reading about someone else’s experiences helps a lot. I’ve never felt like talking about my dragon kintype was ever going to be terribly helpful in that regard—after all, there’s a dozen other similar essays out there—but I decided, well, it’s not for other people. It’s for me. And no one’s written four thousand words detailing my kintype before.

That’s the thing about writing like this. It’s for you, and if it helps someone else, that’s just a bonus. Write what will help you, what will let you figure yourself out and document it so that, if it changes, you can pinpoint when that was and track your own growth and change. I wonder what, in a few years, will be inaccurate in this essay? I wonder what I will add, what I will change, in a theoretical future version?

I guess we’ll find out together. Thanks for reading.

#tans journals #otherkin #otherkind #dragonkin #alterhuman

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yuseirra · 3 months

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i need u to know I read your tags on my post about the OnK side stories and got blasted into a crater by my feelings 😭 I COMPLETELY AGREE....... idol is such an incredibly personal and revealing song, it rly does feel like Ai's whole arc compressed into a really densely packed mv....

Hello!! sorry for taking awhile! I wanted to reply to this fast, but I also wanted to attach an Ai to the reply because she deserves the love. I haven't used the search function on tumblr lately, but whenever I did for this series, I found many good analysis from you. I thought 'wow, they write so well!' So, it's an honor to hear you agree! ;v; Ah, I read tags on my posts all the time too and I LOVE the really sweet ones, so I'm glad what I've written's felt like a good piece of feedback for you. I felt like jotting down my thoughts after having read the side B story.

Yeah.. IDOL felt like a song that was "painfully revealing", it was very exposing of everything Ai went through, so blatantly without a single filter of protection, that's how I felt about the song at first. As I read the comics, I came to understood that's probably what Ai wanted to do all along. I understand why that character said that lies are a form of love, she tried so hard to pose as this invincible and perfect individual, not just to save her face and be loved, but for everyone around her. I believe that Ai must have thought being that way would be a way to compensate for others, meeting other's expectations and all, what they want from her as well so she tried again again and nobody ended up seeing her behind her mask because she ended up being too good at it. All of that seems to have resulted from the lack of love in her upbringing. She wasn't loved, so she wasn't sure what love was. I think the thing here isn't that she CAN'T love, but is unsure of the idea of love. She was quite loving all along, but she wasn't sure if she had was really love and she had a hard time expressing it. Keeping up a front was her idea of "loving" but that kept her from being understood and accepted as a person. So that's why she was so straightforward about everything in the song IDOL. She wanted to be understood and loved back and engage in a "truthful" manner.

People say Ai is a complex character and she is, but I don't think she's so hard to understand. Her mentality may seem a bit extreme for some, but I feel none of it is exaggerated or unrealistic. There could be a lot of people feeling this way, just in various degrees. Her story was short, but I think that's why it was still able to leave a lot of impact.. ;v; whenever I listen to IDOL, I feel Ai is a great character. She's always been striving to get what she wants, and she did in the end.. you can feel how much she tried despite all the troubles she had! She's in fact, not as perfect and a bit awkward at times, but she was always hardworking. So I like that in that song. It really shows a lot about her character :)

Thank you for the message, and for the translations again! Hope you have fun with the series, I'd love to see more good analysis from you because I agreed with a lot of the takes you had from your posts, I appreciate you insights!

#oshi no ko #ai hoshino #aihoshiino #and I could see you really care about this character as well!#it's nice to be able to make something that makes a fan of said work/character enjoy #this got long but I've had a lot of thoughts about Ai also and it was a good opportunity~#she was a character that made me think about a lot of things!#asknreply

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nerdieforpedro · 2 months

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WIP Wednesday/Thursday

I did try and post this on Wednesday (sure late but it’s been awhile 👀) and on this rainy night, my computer decided to it be a a team player. Not cool.

So…writing has been slow and I’m pretty sure I posted stuff on AO3 and not here because half the time Tumblr eats my posts that aren’t reblogs 😭

I blame @megamindsecretlair and @soft-persephone for summoning from my cozy gremlin activities under a bridge and planting this brainworm:

“If you are open to doing so my fair General. I feel a bit fatigued. I will let my attendant know that I am heading inside to rest as my husband and I will travel back to our estate tomorrow.” Her round face stretches with the smile she has upon her face, briefly she touches his hand, her fingertips touching his calloused ones. “He will not return as Gaius does not enjoy my company. Only tolerates it. The last room, third floor on the left.” Her hand leaves his as he attempts to grab it and he turns to watch her step away. “Call me Arcus. See what message I shall impart to you tonight.” His eyes focus on her wide hips that are headed toward the main building where the invites and their wives were staying for the duration of the soiree. Swallowing hard, the General knows he should not follow her. It would be participating in infidelity and despite many offers over the years, Marcus resisted. He nearly always had access to women that were unattached and available. Milling around for ten minutes felt like an eternity, speaking to other officials and so-called important people, yawning and mentioning that he would likely retire to his room soon and would be no good to anyone until the sun rose. Hopefully this would be enough to cement that he should not be disturbed.

Infidelity? Sure! Murder? Very likely. Bad humor somewhere? It’s a Nerdie fic and General Marcus Acacius is not except. Smut? Somewhere in there. 👀 It will happen. I need mental lube, I can’t just dive in there. Gotta give a fic a couple rubs in a circle before the smut. 🤣

Yeah the General is not immune. Pfft.

The second one I was pleasantly surprised to make some headway on, apparently Nerdie is about her historical men and violence. That’s not at all concerning. 🤔

“I agree with the lady Father. She is our responsibility and should remain with us.” Pero steps between her and the Father. He knows men like this priest, who act holier than most but if given the funds, access and anonymity, they would live in a brothel. Father Ignacio takes a step back, the Spaniard is intimidating to say the least and the priest is sure that he has no qualms about spilling blood in a house of God. William is watching the exchange between the three and is trying to think of a compromise, it’s a bad one, but it’s better than being run out of the village for killing this man.

More for my Pero series which is like historical fiction with dragons 🐉 because why not? ☺️ I will have Pero destroying something because he needs to be using those powers and why not? Wanton destruction sometimes, am I right? 🫡

Yup, quit while I’m behind. Anyway, that’s what I got. Weddings 101 with Dieter is still in the works with @angelofsmalldeath-codeine . So are all the other series I’ve got, there’s a lot 🤭

I also might be writing an anime one-shot. First one in years. 😃

People who I’m 75.8% sure tagged me in the last few weeks:

@604to647 @for-a-longlongtime @magpiepills @syd-djarin @djarinmuse

@maggiemayhemnj @sin-djarin @tinytinymenace @lotusbxtch @mysterious-moonstruck-musings

@connectioneverywhere @morallyinept @doscharolastras @chaithetics @lady-bess

@secretelephanttattoo @goodwithcheese @missladym1981 @pedroshotwifey @slippinninque

@inept-the-magnificent @avastrasposts @frenchiereading @soft-girl-musings @perotovar

@legendary-pink-dot @fhatbhabiee @yorksgirl

#current wip #wip wednesday #wip thursday #pedro pascal characters #fanfiction #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #marcus acacius #pero tovar #dieter bravo #all the series are in progress #I type like two sentences or a paragraph #then stare at the screen for an hour 😭#scribbles #in bursts

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arimiadev · 4 months

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Developer Interview — Making A Date with Death

6 months ago, a brand new self-insert romance visual novel hit the market called A Date with Death, created by visual novel veterans Two and a Half Studios. Coming off of the success of The Divine Speaker, they dived into the chat sim space in visual novels with a huge splash. A Date with Death is currently sitting at over 5,000 positive reviews on Steam with a Kickstarter for an after story launching this week.

Read the interview on my blog or read it below.

Arimia: Hi Gabby, thanks for sitting down to talk about A Date with Death! Both of us have been into visual novels for quite a while, but what got you into them?

Gabby: I feel like my introduction to visual novels was probably similar to a lot of people my age…. and that was being on Tumblr too much and being introduced to Dramatical Murder much too young, and installing the fantranslation for myself and all of my friends, hahaha. From there I played the rest of the N+C games, and then moved to things like No Thank You! since it had a translation. After that I moved further to Japanese games that didn’t have a translation. These were 95% BL as well – I’ve played one or two otome games in my time but never really been super into them.

Actually, when I first got into development, I hadn’t played any Western visual novels yet. It was only after I started in game development that I tried more indie visual novels in general.

As for my favorite VNs, I have a few favorites! My first favorite and it’ll always have my heart is Lamento. It was kind of the culmination of a lot of different things I love in media, and I still love the game. There’s another untranslated game I really like called Pigeon Blood. I actually helped with some editing of translations for some of the routes a looong, long time ago. A more recent favorite, and probably my favorite overall, is MAMIYA! MAMIYA is a Japanese indie visual novel by KENKOULAND which I will happily shill over my own games (LOL) about a group of people at the “end of the world”. The way the story is presented, I don’t think I’ve ever played anything like it, and I found it very inspiring. I was lucky enough to work with the creator Kokoroten on an animation for my own game Dreambound, which was fantastic.

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Arimia: Would you believe I’ve never played DMMD? Definitely cut from the same cloth though about being exposed from too much Tumblr time and hearing about all of these Japanese VNs that would never get localized over here, but now Fate/Stay Night is coming to Steam in a few months…. the visual novel landscape has changed so much.

You’ve worked on several boys love and girls love titles before A Date With Death that are more in the fantasy historical realm – how did you come up with the idea for ADWD?

Gabby: Well, we’d actually been wanting to try something more modern for awhile now, despite our love for fantasy settings, and we only happened across a screenshot from another developer’s chat sim and I kind of fell in love with the format. I’ve been really wanting to try my hand at something “cozy”, and though A Date with Death doesn’t really sound cozy on the box, we have a lot of features that I think set well with that crowd. I’m a very big fan of the informal aspect of the writing. I think even in my more serious games, I always lean into humor a little bit and I really enjoy writing banter, so the chat sim format was perfect for that.

(I styled my MC after my character Rose. he’d probably wind up in a shady chatroom like this)

Arimia: Having played some of A Date with Death, I can definitely see how it’s more “cozy” than some of your other games, and I think a lot of the player reactions I’ve seen have shown that too. The overall scope of the game is also on the smaller side, despite the player customization. How did you go about deciding the size of the game? Were there any parts/features you wanted to include but didn’t?

Gabby: Actually, the size is a lot BIGGER than we originally planned. Being our first free to play game, it’s always a little bit of a risk to put a lot of money into something when visual novel development is your livelihood, and obviously with a free game there’s no guarantee of a return. We originally planned for each “day” of the game to be only around 2000 words, for a grand total of 14,000 words for the game. Very short and sweet. Over the development we realized we had a lot more words than originally planned that we wanted to tell, and part of that is owing to just how many choices and options there are. There’s some conversations in the game which people are honestly surprised about because they’ve never managed to get them on any of their playthroughs. The game actually ended up being around 60,000 words, and this should be near doubled when Beyond the Bet releases.

We also included a lot of other things that weren’t originally planned when we concepted the game. We knew we wanted character creation and some degree of room decorating, but we also added a lot of small missable content – like interacting with your pet, watering your plant, reading books on your bookcase, minigames and websites on your computer, eavesdropping on your neighbor… the one thing we had originally planned but cut was voice acting. It’s something we really wanted to do, and we wrote Casper’s character with a very talented voice actor in mind, but it was a bit too much of a risk with the price of it and the unknown of releasing a free game but still making money on it. We don’t believe in having people work for us for free, even on free projects or jam games, so it wasn’t something we were prepared to have someone do for free even though I’m certain we could have.

Luckily, in the end we decided to hold a Kickstarter for the project, and that allows us the possibility of adding voice acting if it goes well!

Arimia: Yeah, it’s definitely a risk to spend so much time and effort on a free project, but I’m glad it worked out in the end. When announcing the game, what was your strategy? Did it differ any from how you announced and marketed your previous games?

Gabby: It was a little different! This is the first time we’ve had TikTok as one of our platforms when announcing a new project, and we knew we wanted to focus a lot of our attention there. Video content is very strong performing we’ve found, but it is definitely a skill in and of itself. We spent a lot of time honing down on our hook and how we could make people get it in a single line. On a platform like TikTok, you have a split second to catch someone’s attention.

We also had a much shorter amount of marketing time than our usual multi-year projects. We knew we wanted it out within a few months of announcing it, so we needed as much impact as possible in a short amount of time. We knew we wanted to get an animated opening since it can be a very powerful piece of marketing material, and I think that was a great idea and we’ll likely continue it going forward.

At the time of announcement, we had less than 10,000 followers on Twitter. Twitter is probably my favorite platform, but it was kind of falling off for us a little when we were ready to announce A Date with Death – but it just took off after we announced the game. We had a multi-month document with marketing beats and announcements we’d make over the few months we had, but with everything taking off much more than we expected we added to it a lot. I think you always have to be ready to adapt to change quickly in this field.

We actually never planned to market the game as “tease the babygirl”, but it’s something fans latched onto, and you can’t make that kind of marketing yourself, I think. We really leaned into our audience and what THEY thought of the game, and used that to our advantage in a way. I’m very thankful for whoever first asked if he was a babygirl.

Arimia: Twitter (was) probably my favorite platform too, mainly because it’s so easy to just make a quick post or update. TikTok has so much reach but it’s just so much easier to tweet a meme out somedays.

A little side question- with the name having the word “death” in it, were you worried about SEO / being censored on social media, or did it affect you? When I was creating Drops of Death years ago, I was worried social media platforms would suppress posts about it but ultimately went with it because it fit with the serial killer theme.

Gabby: Actually we weren’t too worried about that – we’ve definitely used words like death, kill, murderer, etc. in relation to our other games before and haven’t have much trouble. There ARE certain words especially on TikTok that it’s best to censor, but I haven’t had any problem using the name anywhere and we were prepared to risk it to use the name we wanted.

Arimia: It’s definitely a catchy name that summarizes the experience well. Back to the part where when people were first getting exposed to the concept and came up with Grim being a babygirl— how would you advise other devs to understand what keywords and pitches work better for their games?

Gabby: My first suggestion is to look at similar games to yours and the words they use. Look at the concept of your story and try to boil it down to a paragraph, then a sentence. Look at what makes your game unique, or how you can lean into what fans will get out of your work. Give your players elements that they can recognize instantly without a lengthy explanation.

“A romance chat sim where you flirt with and/or bully the Grim Reaper”

“Compete against the Grim Reaper to keep your soul… or die trying”

“Create your custom MC and flirt with the man trying to take your soul”

I use all of these in our marketing, because even though there’s a lot more to the game we’re not talking about, this is a hook that can capture someone’s attention straight away and then you can funnel them to your game.

Arimia: Getting hooks down can be such a difficult part but it’s so, so important. What do you think helped you most marketing-wise?

Gabby: It’s a tough question. We did a lot, and had huge amount of attention from all over the place and it just snowballed more, and more, and more. I think honestly what started the snowball was TikTok. Once we had one video go big, we were having multiple a week go 30k-400k views. We were getting 500-1300 wishlists per day for months. A lot of people joined our Discord from there and went to follow us on Twitter. TikTok is hard and the format is a lot to handle when you’re new to the platform, but it was absolutely worthwhile for us. Another thing I’ll quickly note – reuse your content. I just repost my TikToks to Insta Reels and they get a similar, if not more views, for no extra effort.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Two and a Half Studios (@twohalfstudios)

instagram

Arimia: Yeah, it’s wild how quickly TikTok can blow up for someone. I’ve had posts get 100k+ views and then a few posts later they’ll struggle to hit 1k.

Side note: Gabby has written about her experiences with TikTok on her blog. You can also read about my discussions on TikTok marketing for visual novels here.

What do you think was the least effective thing you did for marketing?

Gabby: I suppose Steam events this time around kind of paled in comparison to our own marketing efforts. They’re always worth doing though – any Steam events you can get into, participate in them! You’ll always see some kind of return. But for us, an event giving 200-300 wishlists was just a drop in the water. Not at all not worth doing, but certainly it wasn’t a huge focus for us this time around.

[A]ny Steam events you can get into, participate in them!

Apart from that, I posted also to some other social media sites like bluesky, but I didn’t find it very worthwhile and stopped rather quickly. There’s only so much time in a day, and as the only person handling all of the marketing, it just wasn’t worth it.

Arimia: For newbie devs, what would you recommend they focus on? TikTok, Twitter, or something else?

Gabby: I think TikTok is the easiest platform to hit it big on “fast”. I say “fast” because it’s not guaranteed that you’re going to hit it big, it really depends how well you adapt to the platform, but your content there has a chance of being seen, even without any followers at all. That’s probably why I recommend it as a platform for new and old visual novel devs alike.

I think you’ll also find that once you pick up the format, it can be pretty fun to make. I think platforms like Twitter are easier to use, but getting started on them is hard. VNs are so visual heavy so we already have so much content that works well on TikTok. Of course, there could be problems in the future with using TikTok in the US, so we’ll see how that goes.

It’s best to focus on a few places though, and not to put all of your eggs in one basket. When you’re putting your audience in places that can go away, it’s always a risk, so it’s good to spread them between places like TikTok, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

Arimia: Yeah, I think one thing devs forget is that these social media platforms are ran by big tech that don’t care about the little guys – if your account gets banned or falsely flagged, what are you going to do if you can’t get it back? Always best to have more than one site you’re posting on, but you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.

At what point in ADWD’s development cycle did you start marketing it? It was a pretty short development cycle to begin with.

Gabby: We started working on the concept of A Date with Death January of last year, and announced it on the 5th of July. This wasn’t really 6-7 months of dev time though – we were working on two of our other games at the time. By that point, we’d finished maybe half of the game and announced the game in time for the Steam Visual Novel Fest a month later.

This was actually pretty successful for us, and gave us a decent boost to start from. We then released the demo at the end of September in time for Steam Next Fest, which was a bit more meh for us despite going in with a high wishlist velocity. We then released the game at the start of December. But, like I said, we were working full time on Dreambound and The Divine Speaker: The Sun and the Moon, so I think we could have made it in much less time if we didn’t have other games on our plate.

My suggestion is to announce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post. My strat is usually announce the game at the same time the Steam page is ready, so you can use the announcement to drive people straight to it. A trailer can be another marketing beat, and then lead up to the demo release. Going in with a solid marketing plan is a great idea, too.

Side note: despite the short amount of time to market the game, they were able to enter it into at least 2 different Steam-ran festivals! That’s a great boost to wishlists and they usually don’t require much work from yourself.

[A]nnounce the game and start marketing early, but not so early you run out of content you can post.

Arimia: Once you’ve worked on a few games it’s a lot easier to gauge when that sweet spot is, but when you haven’t it’s definitely hard to figure out. I usually go with how much progress I have towards something playable like a demo. When ADWD was ready to release, how did you reach out to press?

Gabby: Actually, I didn’t sent out any press releases for the full game! I can’t tell you exactly if this was a good thing or not – but the way I’ve done it for all of my other games is that I send out a press release and streamer keys for the demo only. Especially for A Date with Death, we already had a lot of press and streamer interest naturally, so we decided to use our time for other forms of marketing and polishing up the game instead.

For the demo though, we curated a list of ~70 people to send out early keys to. I think this is quite worthwhile in hyping up the demo release, and it’s quite easy these days with tools like sullygnome.

Arimia: What lessons learnt from your previous games did you bring with you when making ADWD?

Gabby: We’ve been very lucky to work with our amazing artist Fuyuure for over six years now, so we came in with a great team who worked incredibly well together. I think that was a big bonus – working on something like a big character creator can be a difficult task for many artists, because of the sheer amount of assets you need. So, I would say coming in with a talented team who were ready for their tasks was a massive boon.

I think working on so many games beforehand prepared us to make the game in the time we did. We usually work on bigger, multi-year projects, and this was our first proper commercial endeavor into a smaller game. Our experience helped us to pinpoint exactly what we would need, which is a lot less than our other projects. The game actually only has 5 CGs, which is less than usual for us, but I think we managed to do it in a way where it doesn’t feel lacking, either. Getting scope right is a difficult thing and it’s easy to want to include anything and everything, but we were very particular about what we wanted and how long it would take.

Arimia: I can definitely see how that helped – working with people you’re already comfortable with can alleviate a lot of stress. For the A Date with Death: Beyond the Bet Kickstarter, how did you prepare the marketing campaign for it? How long did that pre-planning take you?

Gabby: We really started planning the new DLC the day A Date with Death launched last December. We knew we wanted to make more content, and with Dreambound nearly complete it was a good time to start thinking of running a new campaign. I would say the preplanning took a couple of months – working on a good date, working with lots of artists on new merch, setting up the page, getting the page to our graphic designer to make some images up for it… running a Kickstarter is definitely a lot of work! Even organizing the tiers takes some time.

We prepared mostly by getting the prelaunch page up as early as possible and getting the word out on all of our socials – Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok, Reels, Steam itself, Discord, our email list, itch…. basically, did a big blast out everywhere and we had a huge amount of people come and prelaunch straight away. We also really enjoy doing countdown images the week before launching – it lets us work with a bunch of amazing artists, and we use the art for rewards during the campaign too (as prints). Being our third campaign, we came into it knowing what we had to do, which is a big timesaver. For new developers, I’ll say don’t sleep on the prelaunch time – it’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Honestly, the support so far has blown our mind. With a similar amount of prep, Dreambound launched with less than 300 followers on the page, but as of writing this we’re already over 4500 on A Date with Death.

[I]t’s not a good idea to put up a Kickstarter and instantly launch it. You need to bring an audience with you and get as many pledges lined up on that first day as possible.

Arimia: Even though I’ve helped run and advised several Kickstarters before, there’s always something I forget or push off until the last minute. Was there anything you learned from the Dreambound KS that you used/did differently for the ADWD KS?

Gabby: Oh, for sure. I learned a lot about my tiers and page organization from our past Kickstarters. We actually have a lot more tiers than usual on this Kickstarter and I don’t think we’d be able to manage that without our past experiences.

If I had to pick one thing from the Dreambound Kickstarter that I’ve changed for A Date with Death’s, we decided to have all of our stretch goals viewable from the get-go. I enjoyed the “unlocking” of stretch goals we had before, but with the amount of attention I think we’ll get, it’s just easier to lay everything out for everyone.

Arimia: Yeah, I imagine you’ll probably be hitting stretch goals pretty early on with how many people are excited for the KS. Aside from social media like TikTok and Twitter, how do you keep your audience interested?

Gabby: I think one of the things that mobile games have as an advantage is continuously adding more content and patches. That really keeps people interested and coming back to your game and characters. Obviously we don’t really have a big enough team or enough time to be adding more and more content, so keeping people interested can be quite tough. We were very conscious of this when deciding WHEN to hold a Kickstarter in the first place – if we wait too long, people will move on. It’s already been 6 months since the game released, after all.

There’s multiple ways we’ve kept people interested during these months. One is that we funneled a lot of people to our Patreon, where we have exclusive art every month from the game, as well as behind the scenes stuff about the new DLC. We then can tease these on social media too, and drip feeding content works pretty well to keep people interested.

Another is we now have near 8000 members in our Discord, and these people become some of your core audience. We encourage interaction with each other and the game by weekly game questions that players can answer. If you had enough time to organize it, I honestly think even doing daily questions would be a really great idea. Anything to kind of keep people chatting and thinking about the game.

Arimia: To wrap this up – what advice would you give to other visual novel devs?

Gabby: There’s so much I’d like to say, but I’ll just give a few pieces of advice that I think could help newer developers. Don’t think of marketing as a bad thing, or an annoying thing. I see a lot of new developers come in and say “I won’t market. I feel like a shill and my game will speak for itself”. I think this is a huge mistake, because people won’t play your game if they don’t know it exists. Marketing can be fun! Share your little stories with the world proudly, don’t feel bad about that.

If you want to do game dev as just a hobby, then that’s absolutely fine – but it’s totally possible to do this as a profession, too. My partner and I have been working on visual novels full time for over two years now. A lot of people tend to think that’s there’s no money in visual novels, but I would say that’s not true at all. It’s hard work – like all small businesses are – and not every game is going to be wildly profitable, but it’s totally possible with a good game and good marketing. Keep making the games you love, doing market research to see what other people love, and you might be able to find a good crossover.

-------------------

And there you have it, some insight into the development and creation of A Date with Death! If you haven’t already, check the game out – the base game is completely free to play on Steam and itch.io. You can check out their social media here:

Twitter – TikTok – Tumblr

Support their Kickstarter!

#visual novel #visual novels #a date with death #two and a half studios #visual novel game #my articles #interview #Youtube #Instagram

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krinsbez · 2 months

Text

A BT Storybuilding Poll

So, I've been doing the BT-ify Pulp Heroes for awhile now on a certain forumboard, and there are a couple things I really want to storybuild, with particular emphasis on how this butterflies the setting going forward, but interest on said forumboard has worn off, and I've hit a wall on.

So, me being me, despite a near-total lack of success with this sort of thing in the past, because I am definitionally insane, wanna see if maybe I could get something out of it by bringing 'em to Tumblr.

So, here are the choices:

(Norby isn't actually a Pulp Hero, but I am very fond of this bizarre idea, don't ask me why)

#Random Thoughts #A Question #Poll #A Poll #BattleTech #Crossover #Norby the Mixed-Up Robot #Tarzan #Conan #Flash Gordon #Disney Ducks #Pulp Heroes #Storybuilding

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griancraft · 6 months

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Hello, would you like to expand on the DID being treated similarly to Autism and ADHD by tiktok and tumblr?

Hi this is already getting long and I wanna post this as soon as possible so people who want to see it will see it. This is written on like 3 hours of sleep after a 8 hour shift and it took me 3 HOURS because I am so fucking out of it ask for clarification before getting upset if something is wrong.

I also want to preface this with the fact I am an advocate for healthy multiplicity. I’ve written essays for classes on non monogamy and DID. I’ve written about how identifying as separate but whole has been the best way to heal for ME. I am in no way saying that the way professionals talk about us is a complete picture. Our history is important and self advocacy is important and I think both disordered and non disordered advocacy should be taken seriously.

In the context of the disorder of DID, which is characterized specifically by distress and impairment, talking about it as a disorder is really fucking important. If you’re interested in the history of non disordered systems Sai’s card is absolutely incredible and I really really think it’s important to read. This is not a “syscourse” post or whatever, this all existed before the internet. I feel like discoursing over wether what real people experience is real is stupid because you’re never going to get into their brain.

Much of our history is self recorded because professionals for so long treated us like we were unable to understand our situation and unable to advocate for ourselves. All of these are reputable and sourced with great care by someone I trust.

https://plural.neocities.org

Alright preface over or whatever uh. Here we go.

While the DID community is much smaller than the ADHD/Autistic community, the issue of “well, I can do that, why can’t you?” is very present in a LOT of spaces. There are many similarities in how our “weirdnesses” is perceived outwardly by society. Some things are very very similar such as us being “off putting” and a lot of us being disabled to the point where we are unable to work a job. So, so much is similar in how society views us because there are so many crossover symptoms. But in terms of different experiences I’ve had people say it’s weird that I seem to switch between “emotional states” so quickly, that it’s weird how my voice changes pitch and my stims are different, that its “weird” when I switch to certain alters (my ex said this to his face btw) because they act so differently from me, I often feel the discomfort from certain friends when an alter introduces themselves with their own name. Some of these were said by systems, too!

We find it difficult to identify switches and tell who is fronting, sometimes we can’t tell until I (the host) am back in the front and things are disorienting. There is a massive push to CONSTANTLY be able to identify who’s fronting to other people.

I’ve noticed that a lot of what I experience isn’t in line with what people talk about on tumblr and TikTok and I struggled with that for awhile. Despite having the closest thing I can have to a diagnosis at this point, and doing what I can to read the literature. I do not know who is fronting if it is not me most of the time and identifying who can actually put a lot of strain on us. Sometimes we are distinct enough to tell, but not always. Many people I know also experience this.

Tools like pluralkit and simplyplural are great, but I’ve heard so many stories of singlets and even other systems feeling “lied to” when someone doesn’t identify who is fronting. For a very very long time we felt a lot of pressure to constantly be able to identify who is in the front. This is a symptom that is kinda supposed to happen though, you are dissociating from yourself.

I also think a lot of other systems find littles, animals alters, and fictives/factives cringe/weird and feel very self righteous in bullying them because of it especially if they are “normal” systems.

Littles are “weird” because it’s a child alter in a usually adult body. It’s “weird” that an adult is acting like a kid. DID is a dissociative disorder with the cause being linked to childhood trauma. An alter may form as a child as a result of said trauma. Animal alters are “weird” because it is abnormal to see people acting like animals and the (often) non speaking aspect of this isn’t taken seriously. Again, DID is linked to childhood abuse, if a child with DID was treated like an animal by their abusers they are probably going to form an animal alter.

Fictives and factives are more complex because it’s so often used as an indicator that people are faking because it’s “weird”. This is silly. I’m just going to repost something I’ve already wrote on it because I think explaining it again would make me loose my actual fucking mind.

“Things like “if I were this character I wouldn’t be in this situation” and “this character would take care of me, they wouldn’t hurt me” and “if I was this character I would be strong enough to survive” are all things I’ve thought of as probable reasons and I’ve heard similar from others too!

Also, it is a LOT easier to make something from a blueprint/template than create something entirely new in anything. I don’t see why that would be different in the brain especially if one is going through a lot already. Normal alters pull from our experiences already so it’s kinda just a more extreme version of that imo!”

And what you need to understand about living with DID is that it’s fucking weird. It will be weird. Systems aren’t any more “normal” if they don’t experience weird symptoms.

I think the “tee hee alters in my head” talk is SOMETIMES overwhelming discussions of what it is like to live day to day with the disorder. There are days when there is very little internal communication within us, and many people I know do not have any internal communication at all.

The idea that alters are separate people and not ‘parts of a whole’ is something I’ve seen people very defensive on. while I like. Get this sentiment, and it can be very very invalidating to be told this. But it’s not really consistent with the literature and if you want to treat your plurality like DID you have to at least consider parts language IMO. Modern papers in my experience do affirm the individual identities of alters while still using parts language. This is very good in my opinion because it not only validates the lived experiences of someone with DID but also stays on the track of treating the disorder in one way or another.

There are severe and dangerous symptoms related to DID that are NOT talked about enough. There are comorbidities that are not talked about at all that I like, only found out about from scouring papers. But I do not want to get into that until I have at least. A week to recover from finals dear FUCK.

#this crashed my app the first few times I tried to post it btw #Ahg #I hope people understand my intentions and the point is clear

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