#adastra spoilers

[fullpurpart]

[thisfuckingdork]

[lion-socks]

will you submit yourself to the benevolent will of the parents?

[cassiusbitingisbanned]

Just some Cassius and Marco thoughts and parallels!

Let me know if theres anything I missed that wasnt mentioned on coldmail750's post, or if theres anything I misremembered!

[starberry-skies]

if adastra was more popular on tumblr and i was in the fandom more i would absolutely be on every blocklist as an alexios apologist. like yeah i guessss he actively manipulated everyone he could just to cause as much chaos as possible but. cmonnn he's just a little guy can't a cat have some fun? meow?

[h-worksrambles]

I feel like it’s my hot take that I really want Cassius and Alexios to come back in a future Adastra story.

Yes, I know. Alex is a back stabbing, lying little shit, 90% of the things that go wrong in the visual novel are his fault and the majority of fans’ instinct at me even showing this image of his face will be to instinctively reach for something to throw at it. But dammit, he’s genuinely really interesting to me. He voices a lot of the same criticisms about how screwed up wolven culture is that Marco has. A big thing they bond over is that they both have the same perspective on their society as outsiders. The Omorfans aren’t entirely wrong to see the wolves as dangerous, bigoted warmongerers. Neferu makes a lot of the same points. But I think that’s another factor in why Alex’s betrayal hits so hard for players. It’s not just that he’s nice and he presents himself like Marco’s first friend and violates his trust. It’s that you thought he had a moral backbone, that he shared your viewpoint, and yet he was able to use all those points you agreed with him on as justification to do something awful, to sabotage Adastran government and send the whole city spiralling into chaos.

But here’s the thing, and this is definitely not a defence, but it’s why I find him so interesting. Alexios is willing to sabotage a nation in a way that results in horrific riots, which is of course, disgusting. But he’s able to mentally excuse himself by saying ‘hey they’re not MY people. I’m just doing my job for my country and planet. It’s not MY problem’. Alexios is doing what’s expected of him by his country. I’m not saying that excuses him. The fact that he doesn’t grow a trace of conscience about this is deplorable. But I can see the thought process at play. The Omorfans think they’re doing the Galaxias a favour by keeping the wolves at bay, even though actually they’re just responding to one form of bigotry with another. Alex going along with his orders without complaint is horrible but at the end of the day, he’s a spy. That’s his job.

What complicates this is Cassius. I do believe Alexios’ feelings for Cass are genuine. Do I think he started out with the intention to manipulate his position at Cass’ side to help him spread chaos on Adastra? Yes. Do I think somewhere along the way, he became the mask and started to care for Cassius genuinely, but still pressed on with his mission anyway? Also yes. I know it’s easy to see this as ‘poor baby Cass being used by evil Alex’ but not only is that kind of a simplification of Cass’ character (which I could also write more about but some other time), it makes Alex more one dimensional if there’s nothing genuine there.

The payoff for this is when Alex tips off Cato to Marco and Virginia’s plan and so Cato poisons Cassius. Cassius nearly dying forces Alex to experience the pain his actions have inflicted on others. Because now all his lying, manipulating and playing both sides has gotten someone he cares about hurt. Now for the first time, Alexios feels even a fraction of the pain his actions have inflicted on other people. The shoe’s on the other foot for the first time. He can’t pretend this doesn’t affect him anymore.

Look at this face. This doesn’t say: ‘I’m just using this man’ to me. This says: ‘I’m in too deep. The one person I care about here has gotten hurt and it’s my fault.’

Of course, the question a lot of folks ask is, why does Cassius still love Alexios knowing what’s he’s done?. Well the justification Cass gives is that Alex was just doing what he was ordered to do. He had no choice. Now I’ve already given my opinion there. Alex very clearly had no moral scruples about following this orders. This is not something he was forced to do. But why does Cassius think that? Well, because that’s how Cassius feels about himself.

Keep in mind Cassius has gone from a bid for power that he believed would allow him to enact major change on Adastra. Only to realise that he got taken in by the words of a fascist (who he trusted as a long time family friend, mind you) ended up being little more than a mouthpiece for the guy, had his his self image utterly shaken and is almost killed for his trouble. Cassius insists that Alex is a good person following orders because he desperately wants to believe that. Because he sees himself in Alex that way. He’s realised that he was little more than Cato’s puppet for so long and wants to believe Alexios is the same. He wants to believe he’s found a kindred spirit who understands what he’s been through. But has he? I want see that explored.

Assuming that they’re going back to Omorfa as they planned, that can go so many different ways. Can Alex maintain that level of cold indifference while serving his country in the future now that he’s gotten attached? Even if his feelings for Cass are genuine, how far would Alex go for him? If Alex had to choose between his duty to Omorfa or his love for Cassius, which would he pick?

I don’t even necessarily want an Alexios redemption arc. I think that’d be going a little too far. But I certainly hope that Howly will give us a deeper examination of the Cassius/Alexios relationship because it’s honestly fascinating. I think seeing despicable characters navigating concepts like love in a way that doesn’t absolve them of wrong doing can be so interesting when it’s written well. And this dynamic gives me that in spades.

I guess you could say Alexios is my poor little meow meow (no pun intended). He’s an awful person who does despicable things but that’s what makes him so fascinating. I don’t know if there are plans to bring him back in Khemia specifically, but he is still around for Interea, and I hope that dichotomy of his selfishness, his duty and his love for Cass are explored further at some point.

[montygatorshusband]

Him 🩷🩷🩷

Please note I am not finished with Adastra, only on the part right after coming out to Amicus. No spoilers please.

I love this idiot so much 😫😫😫😫

Edit: I finished Adastra a while ago, but yeah, I still love him :3

[lostcereal]

spoilers: does Adastra fall into the category of theological horror?

like, i've seen people place it as cosmic horror, and i get that, especially when we talk about "the other", but i don't think it really fits with the whole concept of the parents.

even though they're probably not gods (and the monitor even remarks that), the characters frame them as such, it's engraved in their culture via religion, soo, maybe?

either way i don't really care, i just think that it's more interesting to refer to it as theological horror rather that cosmic because of how the term interacts with all the queer text and subtext of the story.

[chaoschenoo]

Queer Itch.io VN List

So IDK when I'll be able to post art again so here's another bit of content. Queer visual novels from itch.io. Not all of these are itch exclusive so you steam only? Feel free to check. Oh these will be 18+. Four things going in; 1.) Not all of these are finished. I'll be breaking it up between finished and unfinished.

2.) A lot of them are furry because the furry VN and queer VN venn diagram is a pair of nested circles.

3.) Spoilers, will be light but they will exists.

4.) Mostly MLM because that's the place I tend to live.

Coming Out On Top: 5/10

Starting with Coming Out on Top because it's the most average of the list and the quinessential baby gay VN. It's cute, fun, funny, sexy and has the depth of a brook at best. Light fun but has a couple of issues one with stereotypes, the other with power dynamics it adamantly doesn't want to think about because sexy.

Nekojishi: 6/10

Nekojishi is a bit more interesting than Coming Out on Top. Has more depth by and large but is also more fun than deep. Cute characters and while I cannot speak to cultural fidelity the husbandos are all in front of an interesting situational backdrop.

Full Service: 5/10

Similar to COoT, hot guys, sexy CGs, fun and silly moments with big personalities for the husbandos. But doesn't really explore the conflict beyond having something to spice up the romance, tempted to dock points for an infuriating mascot character.

Human Cargo: 6/10

Has a bit more going on between the ears than the baseline but the plot is still more a vehicle for the husbandos. Hot CGs, very cute, a good bit of soft moments and the romance feels at least a bit like an earned climax to the relationship.

In Case of Emergency: 8/10

So this is where we've broken the 'plot as car for husbandos' glass cieling. This is one that definitely has something more going on than date hotties. I dock a little bit of points for it being a bit hard to parse towards the end as to how interactions gets a good ending. BUT gets points for it being the start of the relationship. It feels like the MC matters to the route but not like he 'fixes' their problems. They're all on the road to a better place. Be warned a bittersweet game.

Adastra: 9/10

So I did play Echo first which makes me a bit of an oddity apparently. I think that was a part of the reason the emotions of Adastra didn't hit me quite as hard. Like I was expecting the other shoe to drop. Also since I was waiting for that I also spent much of the early game frustrated by 'Marco's' choices. That said Amicus is everything the Echo fandom wishes Leo was.

Arches: 8/10

Arches is going here before Echo for a reason despite being a nominal sequel, but also... I have so many mixed feelings here. It's an objectively good story, it makes me feel things. It's also REALLY depressing and I feel genuinely conflicted about if it's a very good or very bad representation of schizophrenia.

Echo: 10/10

Yeah I know it's the bloody posterchild for the subversive dating sim, it's also why the spoiler tag exists. Because Echo sets up as a dating sim meant to evoke nostalgia and then devolves into a psychological horror on the level of one of the classic Silent Hill games. Also Leo is the Ur-Furry Thirst Trap and the fandom shows just how terrifyingly effective he is at it. Horror and tragedy in equal measure. And at the end so I can start the unfinished list with it's prequel...

UNFINISHED: There are enough here that are so solid despite still being updated that I needed to keep the list separate. They would get points docked for not being one but I didn't want that to reflect on how evocative they are.

The Smoke Room: 10/10

The prequel and chronologically first game in the Echo Trilogy. Set one hundred years before Echo shortly before the 1915 hysteria and following Sam, a sex worker at the local Saloon. It's charming, unnerving, tragic (especially given Echo ESPECIALLY WILLIAM'S route if you know you know.) All the husbandos and side characters are delightful and charming in their own ways.

Errant Kingdom: 6/10

I would award it a higher score but between being bought, unfinished, and having been slow to update I'm worried it's a dying project. I am more sympathetic to the slow updates because every chapter is functionally three chapters as each origin point is a genuinely different story even when they are at a converging point such as the speech, or merchant's party. The art is beautiful and the characters are fun and interesting. I truly hope it's still in development.

Andromeda Six: 7/10

Also in development hell but getting slightly more updates and has a valentines day side story that is complete. Sci-fi story about an amnesiac with a crew of mercs on the wrong side of a successful coup. There's twists and turns some obvious some much less so that make it engaging. Fun romance options for straight mlm and wlw.

Repeat: 9/10

Repeat OOZES charm, it's fun, has a shockingly fun core of mystery hilarious and engaging characters. Fun and sexy CGs. And a lot of heart that makes the tragic lows hit just that much harder.

Santa Lucia: 8/10

Fun with an Echo-esque mystery and horror subplot. Engaging and been following it for a while. That said I do dock a little points for the routes not intersecting with the main plot as well as Echo which inextricably links the two. Still overall a very good time.

Socially Awkward: 9/10

Hilarious and also incredibly charming, bonus points for all the characters being incredibly similar to actual people I know. It makes the whole friend group cast likeable and realistic. Even the trash goblins like John.

Soulcreek: 9/10

Interesting, intense, one of my favorite genres, good art, but has some frustrating moments early game similarly to Adastra. Ultimately not enough to really drag it and the mystery and setting is MORE than enough to keep you clicking.

Dawn Chorus: 10/10

Okay so this one's a bit of a cheat for me. It's only a 10/10 because it's my comfort VN. Dawn Chorus is like a warm bowl of soup or cup of tea on a cold rainy day. It's cute, sweet, and character driven with an undercurrent of tragedy for many of the characters that makes you hope for the best.

Shelter: 10/10

Remember how I said Soulcreek's my facorite genre? Well so is Shelter. Fantasy that's secretly a Post Apocalyptic sci-fi. It's got mystery, uses the Visual Novel format in unique and amazing ways. Also puns, SO FUCKING MANY PUNS. The world building Raus does here drove me to dip my toes into the setting with a fic it was that inspiring.

[generation1point5]

True love is possible

Only in the next world - for new people

It is too late for us

If there was any summary of the sentiments that encapsulate my thoughts and response to Echo, it is this line from Disco Elysium. Though decidedly on the psycho-paranormal spectrum of narrative than political, the same sentiment is expressed. A complex combination of psychological and paranormal factors, external and internal forces, contribute to an intense and gut-wrenching backdrop for a horror-themed visual novel. Because of this, Echo’s focus and sentiments trend extremely closely to Night in the Woods. Like Disco Elysium’s more American counterpart, the culture and sentiments expressed in Echo are decidedly exclusive to the geographical area of its setting. Its approach is undeniably rooted in American individualism and the American psyche, tailored further to portray the particular quirks of the post-frontier United States. 

Normally I’m not really one for horror, having not enough of a visceral imagination for Steven King but also lacking the stomach for the same genre in motion picture. Echo, for its part, trends more towards the former than the latter, and the genre serves as an excellent backdrop to explore themes of generational trauma, the border between perception and reality, and the external and internal circumstances that become the driving force behind the formation of identity and interpersonal relationships. 

Like Adastra, Echo acknowledges a baseline awareness of socioeconomic conditions, but it’s primary focus lies elsewhere. Adastra has often been described by others as an inversed dating sim, while Echo is often described as an anti-dating sim. The analysis carries merit on a number of points for consideration.

If horror and fear is the recognition of one's helplessness in the face of a dire threat, it is only natural that the game presents a perpetual and necessary sense of powerlessness to the cast of characters; whether driven by their own will or by circumstances they are helpless to alter, they are all subject to forces that can neither be fully articulated nor influenced. None of them fully understand themselves or their peers; the bonds that unite the cast of friends and define them all are contextualized by trauma, even victimhood. Their efforts and desire to escape their victimhood defines them as much as the victimization itself. There are “better” endings and some “worse” endings, but I don’t think any of them could truly be said to be “happy.” No matter whom you choose, no matter what route is pursued, there is no “ideal” or “perfect” ending for Echo. The sense of futility instilled within the player is given as a disclaimer from the very beginning. 

You’re only going in circles.

Historical trends within Echo are cyclical; likewise, the paths available to the player do not necessarily distinguish between “good” and “bad” endings, but merely serve to paint a clearer picture of what happens. The other routes do little other than to add splashes of color to what is largely an already foregone conclusion. Pursuing all of the routes is better performed as an act of morbid curiosity than any sort of hope that things will turn out fine.

Of course, the pull and the quality of Echo as a visual novel is getting the player to, in fact, care for the characters trapped in a largely bleak situation. Unlike Adastra, I had incentive to approach the game at arm’s length, but even with my reservations in mind, I ended up hooked onto just about every character and route presented in the game. Perhaps it is just my parasocial and sentimentally-prone heart being at odds with my better judgement, but that is part of the draw, the appeal of this visual novel; it pits the heart against the mind, hope against hope. 

From here on, since I will be getting into specifics and potential spoilers, I’m putting the rest of my review under a readmore.

The limited impact of player choice recurs frequently in Echo in a myriad of ways; Chase as a protagonist lacks agency not only as a result of his own socioeconomic conditions and past trauma, but also by the very nature that his actions are partly determined by the player’s choices as well as the remnant influence of Samuel Ayers. Sometimes this manifests as internal monologue inconsistent within Chase’s own mind, and in more extreme examples, locking players into a single choice and even a perspective shift to the second-person. In such instances, the narrative is railroaded into advancing the plot. In other circumstances, the player is hampered by the dispositions and actions of the characters themselves. Few (if any) opportunities exist for the characters to change who they are; many have already grown into themselves with varying degrees of personal baggage and history that largely determine their behavior and reaction to certain events. Chase as protagonist and player character, by contrast, has extremely little personal autonomy and personality, despite having a name and a backstory that cannot be changed, only discovered.

The only notable exception to this rule is in Flynn’s route, where the player experiences a perspective shift from Chase to Flynn, accompanied by a restoration of Chase’s personality and individual identity at the direct erosion of Flynn’s. It’s a subtle implication that the nature of the player’s choices and interactions alter the identities of the characters by whose perspective they take. There is a give-and-take dynamic at work; we get to see the inner workings of the friend group from the protagonist’s perspective even as their perspective is altered by the player’s presence. This is most pronounced when Sam’s thoughts intrude on that of his host character. In general, the player’s experience in Echo serves to highlight the disconnect between influencing an individual directly and the ability to influence the people around them, not in the least because there are other external forces competing for control as well.

Further complicating this dynamic are the presence of the paranormal entities that amplify and otherwise alter the already unstable disposition of the people of the town, some borne of intense desire, others out of an almost consequential animus from past misdeeds committed in Echo. A scientific explanation for these occurrences is sometimes posited but never directly linked; what is clear is that the cyclical appearance of these entities is triggered by a slow accumulation of injustice and suffering that spill over in key moments that trigger the mass hysteria in the town. The experiences are simultaneous and shared to some degree, but are often perceived differently, colored by the accumulation of (often traumatic) experiences of those witnessing the events unfold. Some of these entities are manifestations made to witness tragedy, others entities seem intent to directly incite them. There is no clear dynamic between the forces that seem to overlap and intersect with each other at various points in the story; only that their appearance is the mark of a general decline of sanity for the town. Prevention other than complete avoidance is impossible; efforts to mitigate its effects are limited. 

Though the exact causes of Echo’s decline are not made entirely clear, the pattern of mass hysteria throughout its troubled history, coupled with a broader socioeconomic decline over the decades, reinforces a general impression of inevitable failure. By the time of the events depicted in the visual novel, it is all-but guaranteed to become nothing more than a troubled memory. Its persistence is largely the result of habit, the last gasps of people living in spite of their circumstances, and a seemingly overall desire to salvage what good is left. The existential crisis is palpable; a sentiment that is also shared with Night in the Woods.

But here Echo takes the paranormal and the psychological breaks a little bit further. What happens, exactly, when we hold on to anything at the end of everything? Each of the routes are an answer to this question, none of which are designed to be all-encompassing or comprehensive; the act of choosing a route is simply a different examination of how the cookie crumbles.

Of all the routes in the game, Carl’s shows a good deal of character growth, detailing the ram’s journey of paralysis and coping in the face of his fears and expectations placed upon him to a broader acceptance for responsibility in the choices available to him in life. This is, in part, dependent on the player’s choice for him to face his fears directly or to rely on external forces to bolster his shortcomings. The horror setting serves as a backdrop to force a resolution to Carl’s issues, when so much is at stake. Should Chase encourage him to be his own person and not rely on the ghost of his dead ancestor, he will be set on the path of self-actualization. It is not a momentous or glamorous occasion; it is grounded and modest, an honest reckoning of himself and his circumstances that dispels the hold that the socioeconomic legacy of his family has upon him. He frees himself and Chase is there to witness it; but as a result of all this effort spent with a single individual, the rest of the cast of friends all turn out worse by the end of the hysteria, to varying degrees. In terms of material conditions, Carl is given more than any of the others the means to break from the legacy of his past despite the ways he is also hampered by it. The rest are not so lucky.

A prominent but mostly background force in Echo is that of family; many that try their best to accept and love one another and many more that are broken, dysfunctional, and outright abusive, and all of them a product of their cultures and socioeconomic conditions. Though distant and fairly permissive, Carl’s well-off family offers him a secure foundation towards financial independence and success, and to this end has also railroaded him with expectations that he one day assumes the mantle of the family business. Leo’s own family sticks closely together as a tight-knit group of immigrants from a distant country, one that shares much of their lives with each other and expects, at least to some degree, reciprocal goodwill. Leo himself buys fully into this mentality, even as he easily grasps the idea of family beyond blood relations. It also comes with traditional expressions of heteronormativity and patriarchal attitudes. The same heteronormative expectations are reflected in Chase’s otherwise loving and accepting family, and expressed in much more toxic ways in Flynn and Sydney’s parents. At first glance this toxic heteronormativity can be attributed to the religiosity of the two characters’ families, but this dynamic is not evident in TJ’s own deeply religious background. TJ himself could be considered a more ideal product of someone who had more or less fulfilled the expectations of his parents, to both the benefit and detriment of his person. Socioeconomic considerations for the characters’ families play a greater role in affecting the growth and the outlook of the friend group, as evidenced by Jenna’s impoverished household. Their coping mechanisms in the face of poverty often turned self-destructive and abusive without the presence of religion in their lives. Jenna in turn sought to escape her conditions but also to understand them; she hints at her political views more often than most others, and her interest in psychology is rooted in not only understanding her own situation but also how similar life events have affected all of the people around her. Broadly, those within loving families adopted their parents' values to some extent, while the others found it easier to make (and value) their own choices in life. In some respects, the latter grew up faster, though it is also notable to point out that TJ, not only being the youngest, is also treated as the baby of the group.

TJ’s route is less about his own personal growth and more about how Chase’s desire to nurture and protect him leads to an extreme psychotic breakdown, culminating in a (repeat) murder and the reinforcement of the cyclical violence that plagues Echo. TJ’s fragility and non-aggression makes him something of a victim that Chase feels compelled to protect; it is not the first time that he has acted in response to this compulsion. Here we see the road to hell, paved with good intentions; Chase in his efforts to protect the remnants of good from otherwise awful parts of Echo perpetuates the same cycles of violence that ultimately lead to the town’s final demise. This compulsion is not unique to Chase; the entire group dynamic involving TJ reflects this at-times unhealthy protectiveness of his apparent naivety, albeit to lesser extents.  TJ remains a victim partly because of the tendency of his friend-group to treat him as such in an effort to protect him from harm.

One of the most dominant (and relatable) themes within Echo is pain aversion, not only oneself but for the community that one identifies with. These manifest in all sorts of coping mechanisms and scars that manifest in both beneficial and harmful consequences down the road. Drug use features prominently, as does therapy and prescribed medication, but none of this addresses the root cause of the chronic illness plaguing Echo. The wounds that fester run much deeper, beneath an already thin veneer of civilization until the caustic buildup spills out into a mass-hysteria event. All at once, everyone’s personal problems and historical baggage become everyone’s problem, and the cycle begins again. While there may be healing of the initial wound, there is no restoration in the aftermath, only scar tissue and new points of sensitivity, fertile ground for the cycle to begin afresh.

Of all the routes, Flynn’s is the clearest glimpse players get into the paranormal workings of this cycle. Indeed, his inability to process his grief with the others as a result of unresolved questions over Sydney’s death is what drives him away from the group, and join into a gruesome and timeless entity positioned to glimpse at all the moments of great suffering and tragedy that kicks off the cresting wave of hysteria. His desire for answers ultimately outpaces his capacity for relationships with his friends, and even his own desire for closure. The price for the knowledge he desperately seeks is his own identity, his very personhood. He merges with the cycle and becomes witness to it. Of all the characters in Echo’s cast of friends, Flynn was understood least, in no small part for his frustration and relative inability to express himself with any degree of sincerity outside of biting, dry humor and his stilted desire for intimacy following the death of his closest friend Sydney. His transformation marks the end of the road where his trauma drives him, where he becomes a stranger even to himself, losing all sense of self.

This end strongly contrasts with Jenna’s route, which arguably contains the strongest example of player agency affecting the outcome. It has one the most positive of the endings available and arguably one of the worst; a decision that is largely contingent in the face of an existential, yet everyday question. How much control can we exert over our own will? Over others who seem to have no power to control themselves or the circumstances they were subject to? When agreeing with her initially negative mindset, she is intent on wiping the wounds of the past (the whole slate really) clean through violence, first by the murder of Heather and then by the flooding of the town of Echo. But when Chase encourages her to see the good in the company of friends that gave her the solidarity to endure, Jenna can forgive and let go of her past rather than destroying it. Most of the others are given the opportunity to do the same, and in the end they all survive. The group retains its cohesion despite their flaws and is given a clear road to move on; Echo is left behind forever. The cycle continues, but they are no longer party to it.

And then, of course, there’s Leo.

I saved his route for last because I found it odd that the anchor bracelet on his arm is the same as the icon used for cursor mouse in-game. Being Chase’s ex-boyfriend and the catalyst behind the whole group get-together in the story, it was clear his role in the story was meant to be a central one; even so, knowing how messy things would be, I avoided going for his route until I had exhausted all the others. In a stroke of irony, I believe this is what ended up making me fixate on him the most, and (despite my best efforts) wanting to see him happy; not just happy in the sense that he would no longer captivated by Echo, but happy because his old happiness could be restored to him. But this is a horror VN, and Leo of all the characters can never truly get a happy ending. For both narrative and character reasons, I knew he would not find what he was looking for. What he seeks had died and was buried three years ago; to try and bring it back would be a necromancy of the worst order. And so, in the act of giving the wolf kept taking, until what he had become was a stranger and a monster, unable to understand that he had sacrificed everything: himself, his friends, his former lover and best friend, for a temporary and psychotic happiness. I had understood this from the beginning, and yet I could not help but desire for a path forward for Chase and Leo to be together once again.

Part of Echo’s peerless quality is its ability to showcase the past in the rose-tinted lens and the lens of trauma in equal measure. It is not simplified of its complexity, nor reduced to a lesson in building character. The people in Echo do their best to deal with the past, clinging to the good and rejecting the bad each in their own way, and often to their own detriment. All the same, the past exists independent of the desires and aims set upon it, and its echos reverberate to the present day from the days of old, far beyond any single lifetime. The weight of thousands of years of history exercises itself upon the world, heedless of the will of the living to alter it. 

Both in spite of this animus and because of it, there is a persistence to Echo; it is not a town that passes into memory from apathy and despair, but from illness, neglect, and the chronic failure that has been present from the beginning. Echo’s paranormal conditions merely accelerate the pattern of history that had followed the people who had founded the town, and all who had come and gone since. It magnifies the essence of, for a lack of a better term, the human condition. Even as Echo itself expires in the face of its own entropy, the lives that once called it home live on, forever marked by the scars it leaves behind. It does not kill them, and yet it will not fully disappear. Humanity in its near entirety permeates every single aspect of Echo as a visual novel. It is existential persistence in its rawest form.

This existential persistence is the same found in Night in the Woods, the same as in Disco Elysium. It is far removed from any sort of idealism, or any sort of ending that resolves all the underlying issues plaguing the characters from the beginning until the moment the player enters their lives. In this respect, Echo and its sentiments deconstruct the traditional purposes and structures of its genre. None of the characters who seek romance here will find it. For those within the cast that do, it remains a possibility for the future, but that future is beyond the world of Echo, and beyond its people as they currently find themselves. As far as love relates to Echo itself, there is only a shadow and a passing remnant that ought never make its return.

[azelle-intermisson]

Echo vn review

i have finally finished echo as my second ever visual novel after adastra. i really loved this vn and it was a super interesting read. for anyone who hasn't read it if a furry horror vn with very human feeling characters peaks your interest then i would 100% recommend echo its a really good story with some really strong characters that i enjoyed thoroughly. in this review im gonna be going through all the main cast and some of the side cast so its gonna be a kinda long post where i just gush about parts of each route i really liked but there will be titles before each section if you want to see what i have to say about one character in particular for whatever reason.

this review is all my opinion and is not going to be exhaustive so i will end up missing some things (mainly because i did not take notes while reading and forgot a lot oops). so if there is something i missed you wanna hear my opinion on ask :). also this is my first time writing something like this so lmk if there are things i can do better if i end up doing this again.

SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE GAME AFTER THE READ MORE

before i fully dive into the review i wanna go over some of the external factors that have influenced how i view this vn. during flynn's route i was the most sick ive ever been in my whole life and im pretty sure i missed out on some vital details because of the brain fog during that sickness. i am not well versed at all in vns the only other vn i have played is adastra, however i am familiar with romance tropes so even though i feel like i missed out on some cool moments simply because i haven't played many vns i did not miss out entirely. also about halfway through my playthrough i learned that there is kinda an order you are supposed to read the routes in which is:  Carl > Leo > TJ > Flynn > Jenna, i ended up reading it in this order: TJ > Leo > Flynn > Jenna > Carl. i don't really know how much this ended up changing how i view the story but thats how i did it. i also made chase gay i don't really know what that ended up affecting since i played all the routes as gay chase and whenever i got something i considered a "bad ending" i would reset to my last decision and do something different. the last thing that might have some sway on how i feel is how sweet the community has been to me so far, i don't usually get myself involved with a community before i finish something but this time was different since i was making fan art and everyone was super nice <3

Visuals/Music

I really loved the music and artwork for this game. i feel like the music did such a good job of creating an atmosphere whether it was chilling in the diner with jenna and tj or getting kidnapped by brian it always did an amazing job at really putting me in the shoes of the characters. i adored all of the fully rendered drawings throughout the game i love the colors i love everything about it. of all of them i think the one below is my favorite i just love how serene it looks.

this was my favorite track i feel like it does such a good job of capturing the tone of the whole game so well or the one that plays whenever they are just chilling idk what its called and i can't find it for the life of me it is driving me crazy.

Misc

there are a few things i couldn't quite fit into any of the next sections so i wanted to put them here. i really loved every character in this game i feel like the reason why i loved them all was because of how human they felt. whenever someone did something i didn't agree with i always defaulted to sympathizing with them because of how human they felt to me. also after writing this i have realized my ranking of each of the routes is just how much leo is involved with each of them i guess i just really love the guy.

Prologue

this part of the game is a little less fresh in my mind since i only read through it once on my first playthrough but from what i remember it did a really good job of establishing the setting and getting me interested in the lore of these characters. the first river scene was such an amazing moment i love how the route split happens in a way that makes you choose between emotionally comforting someone or going after who you want to romance. my only issue with it was that i did not realize that this was a route split in my first playthrough and ended up picking tj since he seemed the most affected by flynn and i was really worried about him even though the character i really wanted to romance was leo. even though i did not realize it was a game with so many diverging paths at first i still think the prologue was really good and got me very invested in the lore of echo.

MAIN CAST

Chase

i walked into this game not really expecting to care for chase too much since i kinda didn't like marco in adastra and i was expecting him to be more of the same type of guy but i was pleasantly surprised. i hate it so much when player inserts are just blank slates so im very glad that chase is an actual character who interacts with the world and people around him. he never had any moments where i was frustrated with him and wished he had said something different(aside from the ending of tj's route) and for the most part he reacted the way i think i would in his situation so i really liked him in all of the routes.

TJ

in retrospect i really like tj's route for how subversive it is as a romance with tj not reciprocating chases feelings and how nasty chase's jealousy felt. while playing it i kept waiting for leo to show up and whenever chase would try and romantically pursue him i would get kinda sad because i wanted to hangout with big wolf man. however i feel like this gave me a really interesting perspective on this route since before chase even kissed tj i never expected them to actually get together since it didn't feel like tj was all that interesting to me. this made chase's jealousy over julian feel even more scary than it already was and that final confrontation at the lake with flynn horrifying. i loved how the horror aspects where handled in this route and how subtle a lot of it was in comparison to other routes. chase drowning flynn and the description of it is one of the most haunting things from this game for me. overall i thought tj's route was pretty good even if i spent the whole thing wanting to hangout with leo because i was dumb and didn't know i had gotten to the route split. its in 4th place in order of my favorite routes in this game.

Leo

leo's route is my favorite i love him so much. i love how you get the bad ending of his route for trying to stay with him. his route was also my first time seeing the hysteria in full swing so that was a crazy twist. every single scene with brian made me feel so anxious i never really knew what to expect from him. i loved how his unhealthy obsession with chase was treated with the weight that it really deserved. the way he reacts to kudzu and chase's relationship not only feels like a natural progression of his character but also adds so much to the horror of his route since his jealousy often ends up causing serious harm. it was so sad to see him unravel and act the way he does during the hysteria because i really wanted to see him be happy and somehow move on from chase. the final scene of the "good" ending gave me what i wanted in the most evil way possible. i had wanted him to move on so bad that i had forgotten how brutal moving on can actually be. leo ends up losing the person he is closest to in the worst way possible i say this with love though it made me cry real hard. and the implication that he is planning on staying in echo is too just heartbreaking. i could go on forever about all the things i love about leo's character but i don't want this section to be too long so i will end it here and say leo is my favorite of the main cast and he has my favorite route of this whole game.

Flynn

i feel super conflicted on flynn's route, it does so many things so well but the ending left me feeling weird. i wanna talk about the things i liked first, which is most of the route. aside from leo he was the character i was most interested from the prologue mainly because i could tell that he wasn't just going to be a one-note mean guy and i thought he had a ton of potential for a really interesting story and i was right . i really enjoyed how his mean demeanor was written the times when he decided to be nice never felt out of character, like the way he helps carl with his interview and really wants his friend to do well and when things don't turn out well he still supports carl but does it in such a flynn way i just loved it so much. flynn and chase's relationship during this route stressed me out the most out of all of the routes mainly because of how they hid it from leo i really wanted chase to just talk to leo about everything but i can understand why he was avoiding it so much. i really loved the reveal of chase killing sydney and how flynn reacts to it. the way everything in that scene plays out was just amazing i can't be mad at either side of the it since i can understand why jenna and leo don't want to believe that their childhood friend killed someone but i can also understand flynn's immediate reaction to this and wanting to lash out at chase. the sydney flashback really got to me everything about it felt so real to me and flynn trying to take a big brother role for sydney and try and protect him from seeing the corpse anymore was so heartbreaking. my favorite part of this route was when you get the perspective of flynn rather than chase it was not something i was expecting in the slightest and i was so happy to be able to see some of his thought process when he does stuff. i really liked the hysteria portion of his route but im a little iffy on the ending. on one hand i like it for the story the fact that flynn dies kinda makes sense to me i just really wished he had lived and we had gotten to see a healed flynn who now knows the truth of what happened fully, even though i know this vn doesn't like giving out easy solutions. overall flynn's route is really good i just wish it had ended differently i would put it at 3rd place in my ranking of the routes in this game.

Jenna

i almost adore jenna's route as much as leo's. i really like her personality and aside from leo she is my favorite character. learning that she likes manga and watching anime with her was such a fun little moment that i thought was cute. it really surprised me when carl went missing in this route i was kinda expecting his birthday to play out the same in every route but i this was a really good plotline. i liked that this route forced jenna and flynn to interact more since the tension they have is always so fun to read. i loved the side characters in this route micha was my favorite out of all of them(even though i think jeremy is really cute). i want to give micha his own section in this review but to put it shortly his relationship with leo made me super happy. i really liked the tension between jenna and leo it was such a good conflict that i enjoyed reading. the whole fake cheating prank was such a gut wrenching scene that i was honestly having a hard time getting through. i liked the section where they are kidnapped by brian more in this route than in leo's mainly because brian getting rocked by the ghost thing was really satisfying. the implication that carl was tortured the same way chase was for multiple days is unfathomable to me. leo and chase being sewn together made me feel sick because anything remotely body horror related gets me and micha having to sever that tie was really cool foreshadowing for leo and micha's whole thing. the whole van section was also really incredible and seeing leo start to move on from chase warmed my heart in an otherwise very intense route. i liked heather she is such an intresting character to me since i really want to sympathize with her because its clear she has a lot of unresolved trauma but she was also an asshole to jenna and tried to flood all of echo. i really loved her trying to flood the town it is such a crazy plot point but i still really loved it and jenna having to put aside how shitty heather was to her to talk her down was a really good moment. the dinner scene after everything also felt very satisfying and it was good to see micha be apart of the group for a bit his interactions with everyone made me smile. i really liked jenna's route all around it is my 2nd favorite and was a super fun read.

Carl

i really liked carl's route i relate to a lot of his struggles and even though there where less scenes that scared me it was still really good. this was the last route i played so i was feeling kinda melancholic while reading since echo had become my nightly routine for about 3 weeks and i was really loving the characters and story. i liked how much lighter(in comparison to the other routes) of a tone carl's route took staying over at his big haunted mansion is such a silly concept on paper but it ends up playing out super well. i thought raven was a silly guy even if he didn't really add or remove much from this route and he helped keep jenna somewhat in check so that was nice. the escape room stuff was so interesting to go through. i found myself feeling scared that they may not actually make it out or they would end up killing each other. my favorite scene from this route was the hanging tree stuff. i had such a vivd picture of everything happening and it was really hard to watch jenna and carl to do things that i know they wouldn't. this route also had a ton of echo lore so i kinda wish i had played it first since i feel like i missed out in other route because i was trying to piece together things that are revealed in carl's route. i really liked the james hendricks and john begay stuff . even though carl's route is my 5th favorite by no means do i think it's bad.

Side Characters

i'm not going to only talk about the ones that really stood out to me and in a much shorter way than the main cast (other than micha)

Micha

micha is my favorite of the whole side cast and i really adored him and leo's relationship that i interpreted as romantic during the last bit of jenna's route. at first i didn't really like him and thought he was kinda an asshole. as the plot kept going i kept getting more and more attached to him since he was still an asshole but he was working with the main group. normally i don't like characters like him but i feel like he was written in such a realistic way that i found it hard to stay mad at him. i really loved him and leo's relationship their connection felt so real and i think they could be soooooo good for each other. the van scene was so incredible the way the player and chase have to fill in the blanks as leo and micha talk about what happened between the two of them really immersed me in the story .leo feeling guilt over never reaching out to micha after he was disowned was such an interesting thing i never really expected leo to want to help someone who was a bully to his friends but i still feel like it makes sense for leo to feel this way since he just wants to protect people. i think its really sweet that leo ends up leaning on micha more after the van scene. also the scene in the dinner at the end of jenna was really sweet i loved seeing micha being added to their group dynamic and i wish i got even more. in conclusion leo and micha should kiss and live happily ever after <3.

Brian and Clint

i don't have a lot to say about these guys other than the fact that they are horrifying antagonists. before i saw brian fight i was under the assumption that if leo is present then we are probably safe but brian ends up breaking that sense of safety in such a horrifying way. i like that even though clint isn't physically strong the fact that he has the strongest character following his orders made him so intimidating

Jeremy

i wanna give him a big kiss even tho he is mean

Janice

i really liked janice in tj's route. i love the fact that we never get a clear answer for why she needed chase and tj to be digging holes. i almost want to trust that she isn't killing people but she clearly has a few screws loose.

Closing Thoughts

i really loved this furry visual novel and its really human feeling characters. i had way more to say about it than i thought and the more i write the more i love the story and the more i want to say but this is already such a long post. i liked adastra more but i don't really feel like it is a fair comparison because if i hadn't played adastra this account would not exist and i prob would not be drawing at all but maybe if i had played echo first it would have done that to me since it still is really good. this was super fun to write even tho i know some of it might not make any sense lol because this is just kinda stream of conscious. i might end up doing this with other things i read/watch since it also gives me an actual reason to take notes when i read/watch things. also i wanna say thank you to the community on here i haven't been involved with fandom spaces for a really long time and im still not very involved with this one but you guys have been super nice and i wanna continue making art and talking about this game :)

[ottspot]

EXCLUSIVE: Lillybug and Abyuse Interview - The Brains Behind Echo's Music

Music makes the world go 'round, as the saying goes. It's all around us whether we like it or not! And one itty bitty little part of the internet that music affects are visual novels. Furry visual novels, to be more specific.

Echo is one such visual novel, originally starting development in 2015 and wrapping up in April of 2021. Many people have read this novel as it was getting made, or once it was complete, and lots have praised the usage of music. Some of the tracks are royalty free, but a lot of it is original. Two of the people behind these original songs are Lillybug and Abyuse. The two of them were able to spend a little bit of their time with me to discuss the behind-the-scenes of their work.

Please note that the following interview contains spoilers for Echo.

The original text of these interviews was slightly edited to fix grammatical mistakes, as well as expanding some abbreviations. These interviews were also conducted at separate times.

Could you please introduce yourself to everyone? Name (real or online, whatever you prefer), pronouns, role on the Echo Project, current and/or past occupation, etc.

L: Hi there! My name is Lilly, my pronouns are she/they as well! I'm a musician for the Echo Project and I work full time as a barista outside of the online world.

A: Hello! I am Abyuse/Salem/Cervines. My pronouns are he/him. I worked on the soundtrack for Echo, made a few songs for A Role To Play, and beyond that I don’t do a whole lot.

How did you come to learn about the Echo visual novel?

L: One of my friends had recommended Adastra to me at first, so I played it and then checked out Echo and like, instantly fell in love with it.

A: Back in high school I happened upon Blackgate by chance. I followed it for a bit and was enamored with the idea of a visual novel (which was new to me). Echo was one of the side projects advertised on the Blackgate Patreon, so after a while, I checked it out and the rest is history.

Did the team give you any specific keywords or directions while making the tracks? You can be as specific as you would like.

L: Not exactly, because I had made both of my songs for Echo before I was even a part of the team haha. When I posted my WIP song called echo (Carl's route's ending) McSkinny then reached out to me asking to use it in game, to which I completely obliged!

A: When I was first approached with the idea of working on some music for Echo, the main descriptor that was given to me was something like “Southwestern gothic”. I know the use of guitars was emphasized as being quintessential, so I made sure to incorporate that. My first attempt at making something in that vein is the last bonus track on the Echo soundtrack. It was sort of a feeler for that kind of sound, because it wasn’t something I had done before.

For Backstage I and II, the image painted to me was essentially that of The Smoke Room before I knew what The Smoke Room was, that being a sleazy club with a perpetual haze of dust in the air, slightly sultry but muffled music playing the background, an old CRT up in the corner of the room. Also something about wood walls, I think? Maybe not. I may have added that myself.

And then for the main theme remix, it was like “hey the main theme, but make it evil.” Which was actually a bit harder than I thought it would be, it took about three full iterations before I found one I liked.

Honestly though, stuff like when your arms were around me v2, Theme for a Lonely Wolf, Shiver, and Good Morning were all things I made not because of a request, but because of personal interest. A lot of my music tends to be darker in nature, so as I grew as an artist, I ended up making things that fit Echo pretty well.

With the team's directions (if any), how were you able to get that perfect 'feel' for the music? Did you have your own inspirations and other resources to draw from?

L: I didn't exactly get any input from the team when making my tracks, but I tried to capture the atmosphere of the game the best that I could. My song blurry was pretty much written from Leo's point of view and that was the idea I had going into the track, so I guess it just worked out decently.

A: I was such a big fan of Echo that I felt that I knew, more or less, what would and would not fit the VN in terms of sound. That’s not to say I didn’t have inspiration, because my entire catalogue is heavily inspired. When it comes to sounds that fit the Echo aesthetic, I listened to a lot of music that I thought would fit. I’ll list a few but I couldn’t recount everything that inspired me if I tried.

Something I always tried to keep in mind when I made music for it was that it was not meant to be the main attraction, but serve as an effective backdrop for the writing and help to immerse the reader more into what was going on in the VN.

Could you go more in-depth to how your songs were made? This could be anything from the writing/making-of process, software and equipment used, whatever you interpret the question as.

L: So for blurry it was the first time I was using my new microphone I had just gotten, so the vocals on the song weren't exactly the most well made, but in a sense I feel like that worked even better for the song. It makes the song feel sort of jumbled, like it's a window into an afterthought into Leo's head, of him just wishing for something that could never really come in the end. echo was honestly more of an experiment than anything because it was my first time trying to figure out the DAW Ableton. I've been using FL Studio my whole career, but I liked the end result, so on a whim I just sort of posted the track in the Echo fan art channel (in the Discord).

A: It is no secret that I use FL Studio for everything, but something that is a definite secret (until now) is that I know next to nothing about the intricacies of music theory or instrumental work. I took piano lessons for the duration of my junior high and high school years, but none of that stuck with me. I have a 49 key MIDI keyboard, but it is collecting dust across the room for me. 

Pretty much every single melody I make is drag and drop, which means it probably takes longer for me to write music than others, but it has never bothered me to the point of wanting to learn (that and I'm extremely stubborn). 

As for my writing process, it’s different for everything. I make a bunch of different stuff so with different styles of music, comes different processes for creation. For the Echo type stuff (when your arms were around me and Leo’s theme in particular), I focus in on one aspect or sound I really like, and then build outwards from that. A lot of times I start in the main section, but that turns into the intro and I rewrite the main section. I usually make a skeleton of a melody or whatever, then do all the drum and percussion work, then go back to the melodies, then tune the drums again. Mixing and mastering is a scam (read: I'm lazy) so I avoid doing that as much as I can. Then I listen to the song about 50 times and I either revise or export it and listen to it another 50 times. 

If you are able to, do you have any rejected/unpublished drafts or demos of the songs that you would like to share? 

L: Yeah sure! I can try to dig up some old drafts of blurry and such, I provided an instrumental version of it to someone who wished to cover it, so that version is probably floating around out there somewhere.

A: There are a few! I have an alternate version of Good Morning, a track for ambience that was cave-like (made with the mine in mind), Salem’s theme (which ended up not being used), and a sort of chase theme (not Chase the character but chase as a verb). HOWEVER. These are pretty much all slated to come out on my next project already (more on that later).

https://soundcloud.com/abyuse/mysterious_1-salems-theme/s-cQir4lugvFO - This is what Salem's theme was going to be. Now, I may have the timeline for this messed up, but I believe a theme for him was requested before his final placement in the story was decided, so when the decision was made to kill my precious little innocent boar, this song no longer had a place. 

This article will be updated as these are received.

A bit more of a specific question here. There's a song that you have released officially [echo for lillybug | Main Theme (Dark) for abyuse] that uses the royalty-free music from the novel [Look Forwards for lillybug | Pepper's Theme for abyuse]. How does that work? Do you have to go through any legal things in order to publish the music with the royalty-free sections? Go through the company to make sure it's good to be put online?

L: Honestly, I didn't really go through anything or ask the company/producer, which is a pretty big oversight now that I think about it. I mean the song isn't really big enough where I feel it will cause problems? But if some do arise from it I'll surely deal with it. My best guess is that it shouldn't be a huge deal because the song was royalty free, and I believe it falls under fair use because I changed it and put a different spin on it.

A: My lawyer has advised me to refrain from answering this question.

Have you read the visual novel yet? If so, when was the last time you did so? It could be while it was still in development, or after it was completed last year.

L: I definitely have! I've gone through it many times with friends, and more recently with my girlfriend Chaia! Not exactly sure when I played it last, I believe it was after the game was completed.

A: Yes… kind of. I followed the visual novel from update to update up until the end of Leo’s route. Then, school got in the way of things and now reading anything absolutely beats my ass and I can’t focus enough to consume literature in any form. I think, in total, I have read around half of Flynn’s route, none of Jenna’s, and then all of Leo’s, Carl’s, and TJ’s (which was the most recent, for me). 

If you have read it, do you have a favorite character? Favorite moment from any route? Favorite ending?

L: It's sad to admit, but I definitely have a soft spot for Leo. I like how complex of a character he is. I think one of my favorite moments in the game was at the end of TJ's route when they're hugging by the lake and pretty much it all gets revealed, that moment packed a punch and a half.

A: Cop out answer time, I like all characters in the VN that I have encountered (except Leo) for different reasons, but I think they’re all well written. If a gun were pointed to my head, though… I think that Kudzu, Brian, and Jenna are my favorites, in descending order.

I think my favorite moment in the VN was, and it’s been a while so you’ll have to forgive my inaccuracies, was the later part in Carl’s route where it took place on a spooky college campus. I just remember liking the vibe of that section a whole lot.

My favorite ending of those that I have read is definitely TJ’s. 

If you have read it, when you got to a part where your music was used, what was your first reaction like?

L: It was so crazy! When I first played the game through I sort of imagined having a track or something in the game, so seeing it come to fruition was definitely surreal.

A: It was surreal. There’s no other way to describe it. There are still moments where it doesn’t feel like it actually happened, it's hard to believe that so many people have heard my music, whether they know it or not. 

I had always dreamt of making music for something or someone other than myself, and Echo was the first time that really happened. It felt like I was driven by something other than personal enjoyment for once, and it made making music feel a lot more rewarding, and a lot less masturbatory.

Do you have any favorite memory with a fan of Echo talking to you about your music that you would like to share?

L: Not a specific one, but it always really warms my heart to see people talking about it fondly. Sometimes I'll get a ping from the Echo Project Discord about someone asking who made blurry, and it's just really sweet to see that people enjoy the song and others I've made as well. always brings a smile to my face.

A: I try to avoid extended conversations when possible so I don’t think I've really allowed myself to talk to pretty much anyone about my music. I did talk to shyno about my production but my answers were so immediately off the rails that I think that only reaffirmed that I don’t like talking. I like it when people enjoy my music though, it makes me smile.

Do you have any favorite memory while making your tracks? Discussions with the rest of the team, some 'lightbulb moment', anything that comes to mind.

L: I'd definitely have to say getting a message from McSkinny about putting echo, and blurry later on, in the game. It was such a sort of surreal moment to me, because I had sort of imagined it happening before, and then it really did happen!

A: Leo’s theme. It’s a bit of an interesting story. when your arms were around me is a pain point for me, I hate that song and I hate hearing it (it's not to say I wish it didn’t exist or whatever, I'm glad people like it. My producer ears just cannot stand it anymore). So, Theme for a Lonely Wolf was made because I was so frustrated with that song existing that I wanted to make something in the same vein, but better. I was not prompted to make this by McSkinny, nor was it made with any intention to be Leo’s theme. I just made it out of spite, and the end product ended up being one of the songs I am most proud of, out of everything I made for Echo. I sent it to McSkinny, he said he wanted to use it, I made a reprise because I wanted to try that out, and then next thing I know, it’s Leo’s theme. I don’t think I could have picked a better choice in terms of usage. As much as I personally dislike Leo, he’s one of the most prominent and polarizing characters of the visual novel, and since I was so proud of that song, I am happy it was given to such a figurehead.

Another one is a track that wasn’t actually in the VN (I think), Circles. That song is not only an emotional response to the entire TJ ending, but a personal illustration of how the ending sounded. It still isn’t finished in the state it’s in, but I put so much time into it that I feel like it wasn’t fair to leave it rotting away on my hard drive.

Is there anything else related to the project that you would like to share?

L: blurry wasn't originally going to be added to the game, McSkinny talked to me about adding echo first, and then listened to blurry and wanted that in the game on a whim too.

A: I don’t think there’s much else that I know or want to share that hasn’t been shared already.

A question for Lillybug - Your track blurry is a part of your EP i'm dreaming, and not a standalone track like echo is. Was blurry originally made for Echo? Or was it a track that was already made and just picked up for the novel?

L: Sort of both? It was written about Echo from Leo's perspective (and Chase's in the outro) but it wasn't made to go in the game, McSkinny just wanted to pick it up for the game. And since the source material was written about the game, I decided to say it was written for the game, rather than sourced outwards.

A question for Abyuse - You revealed on the Bandcamp page for your Echo tracks that you had originally lost the project files to the music. Is there more insight you would like to give with that situation? Any warning to musicians to prevent it from happening to others?

A: A few years ago I wanted to upgrade my PC because it was started to get dated. I bought a really nice prebuilt that I still use to this day, but I made the fatal error of not moving any of my music making files over because I was both at a point where I wasn’t making music (Destiny 2 had me by the neck) and I thought I could just get it later. Eventually, I decided I wanted those files back, but when I dug the computer out and plugged it in, the SSD the operating system was on was nuked, somehow. I gave up for about a year, thinking that I had just lost everything. I eventually decided to try and just install Windows from a USB onto a new SSD, and that ended up working. I still lost a lot of personal stuff but I got all my music files back. All that to say, don’t be an idiot like I was and back your work up onto an external hard drive.

Final question: is there anything you'd like to say in general? To any fans of the music, or anything you want to promote, the floor is all yours.

L: I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for your kind words! It all means so much to me. I've also got an album coming out soon, so stay tuned!

A: I don’t say this enough, but a massive thank you to not only everyone who has listened to my music, but supported me through Bandcamp. It is absolutely not necessary to do so, but I appreciate it immensely. Making music has always been nothing more than a passionate hobby of mine, and I honestly don’t want it to be anything more than that for the moment. Although I have slowed down quite a bit, I promise I am still making music. My latest album is all heavily inspired by games and media that have shaped me, and it currently sits at 29 tracks, with more that I'm working on right now. 

Thank you again to McSkinny and Howly for everything, working on Echo has been not only an extremely valuable experience artistically, but has helped me build confidence in my music tenfold. Appreciate that forever.

Thank you as well for this opportunity! It is a bit stressful to answer all this stuff accurately but I feel like after re-writing every answer five times I got what I wanted to say across.

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Thanks so much to Lillybug and Abyuse once again for participating, and thank you for reading. It was so fun to learn something new about Echo, and I hope you enjoyed it too!

You can find Lillybug on Spotify and Soundcloud.

You can find Abyuse on Bandcamp and Soundcloud. You can also download his tracks for Echo here!

Next up: Here's How I Got 8 Copies of Bayonetta 1 (And Why I Wanted Them)

[thisfuckingdork]

[muffin-dog]

Currently have adastra brain rot so here are some headcanons. Heavy spoilers so read at your own risk

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When amicus was researching weddings he saw that usually there was a person in a dress and a person in a suit. He decided to wear a dress.

Virginia is aroace and gets annoyed when asked if she'll get married

Cassius is secretly very kind and Amicus always calls him out when he does something extremely nice. Cass hates it

When Marco gets back from his 8 year mission on earth he brings a bunch of earth things for amicus, including but not limited to pizza.

I'll reblog this post if I think of more headcannons

[eldritchdraaks]

Furry Visual Novel Hell

Quick context for this post, it is written by my boyfriend who has been through furry visual novel hell over the past few days. He has not been on tumblr in years, and has shitposts running through his brain daily. I’m posting this for him because his thoughts need to be made public. I love this freak.

SPOILERS FOR: Echo, Route 65, Arches, The Smoke Room, and The Burrows.

His mad ramblings begin now!

I have no idea why im typing this but I just cant let all this bounce around my head with my classes starting up in a day.

SO, after a few rather poor lifestyle choices I stayed up watching videos of furry visual novels. This little rabbit hole led me down to a familiar visual novel by the name of Echo. I’ve heard of it through a video talking about the film everything everywhere all at once. The only other form of context I had with Echo was that its creator went to make the very well proclaimed visual novel by the name of Adastra. For anyone wondering, the one of the main characters of Adastra (A black wolf named Amicus) is part of the “You have never felt the warmth of a man” starter pack as seen below

(Sidenote: I am so fucking mad literally two of the characters there are from the Echo series. These motherfuckers are everywhere)

So after that, Echo was stored somewhere in my subconscious or something. Honestly the exact sequence of events escapes me but I do know that I was watching one of Samwiz1’s videos of him dicking around as engineers,I was just going down another twitter rabbit hole. In the video, the first game he joined had a group of 5 medic bots 3 of em with names of characters from The Smoke Room, A sort of prequel to Echo. As for the twitter rabbit hole, I think hoyoverse (the company that made genshin impact) released a new game going by Zenless Zone Zero. One of the characters you could play was a big bear bastard named Ben which Eld and I immediately latched onto. A few days later, I saw that someone modded Ben into a fighting game called Guilty Gear Strive as seen below

AND GUESS WHO HE WAS FIGHTING???

That twinky lookin stoat swinging his little scythes in the gayest way you could caught my attention. Then literally a few tweets below I find this

And there he is, in the replies I found the twink in question was named CLIFFORD GOT DAMN TIBBITS???? How can you find a cuter name than Tibbits?? Not only did it reveal his name but also the visual novel he comes from called The Smoke Room. (Also the coyote in the suspenders is in the You have never felt the warmth of a man” starter pack is from The Smoke Room).

So in a misguided attempt to find it, I confused it with another visual novel that I found out was called The burrows. The Burrows was one I found myself enjoying other than the tangled fucking mess that is Echo.

So im actually going to talk about echo first.

Echo is a story about an otter named Chase who returns back to his hometown, Echo, to work on a college project on the town in 2015. Echo is a dying mining town that screams southwestern gothic with a mysterious past. Chase joins his childhood friends a native American fennec fox named Jenna, his ex boyfriend a wolf from El Salvador, a timid lynx named TJ, a blunt gila lizard named Flynn, and a ram named Carl who smokes weed to cope with his demons.

The thing that ties them together was the death of their friend Sydney. In the story a lot of paranormal shit happens regarding the town of echo, possession by ancestors, straight up cursed cryptids, murder, all on top of drama and slight hints of romance. This is a bit too much for my brain to process whatever the hell is going on. The story is a mess and I don’t think I will ever be able to process it in it’s entirety. The only characters I really like are Jenna, Carl, and TJ. God poor TJ… OK SO I WENT THROUGH ALL THE ROUTES AND JESUS FUCK I don’t think that my insanity will end anytime soon but Flynn’s route really fucked me up. Its so fucked, all you do is go around in circles AND I STILL NEVER GOT MY AWNSER IN HOW THE SMOKE ROOM LINKS INTO THIS LIKE WHY IS SAMUEL POSSESSING CHASE AND EVENTUALLY FLYNN???

WAS IT TO CONTINUE THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE AND SECRETS THAT ECHO LIVES ON??? god its so fucked, and Flynn actually becomes the monster Jenna talks about and TJ saw the day Sydney drowned in his endless pursuit of the truth of what happened as he wanders into the mines and turns into the plug-faced monster (prolly a wendigo) Jenna mentioned. So many questions… God its so fucked Speaking of The Smoke Room…

The Smoke Room is set 100 years before Echo and focuses on the ancestors of the main cast as well as the locals of Echo in 1915. Following an Albino Mountain Lion sex worker by the name of Samuel who was trying to leave Echo, but was ambushed by the guy who was helping him and out of self defense killed him in the mine. This murder sets the town ablaze with problems as Samuel and his associates encounter something is unleashed and latches onto a guilty party.

At this point, I just looked at Clifford’s route because he is admittedly adorable but kinda stopped there.

Then while browsing other Visual Novels I found this fucking affront to god only to find out its in The Smoke Room

And holy fuck I thought it was bad on my phone but it is so much worse on my computer. Something in the mines where I think Sam, one of his closest clients a badger that goes by Nikolai and a tiger named Yao are trying to escape the deeper part of the mines or something. What’s even worse is that it looks to be made from body parts of the main cast which is so fucked up in so many ways.

Then we have Arches and Route 65. Arches follows a bear and a coyote named Devon and Cameron in the town of Echo after its been abandoned in 2015. All I know is that the Coyote gets rufied and ends up dead in the mines. Route 65 is an actual prequel looking at the main cast of Echo at a Halloween party in 2008. Don’t remember what happens in this one other than character setup. ANYWAY, echo aside now I can talk about The Burrows.

This one I know from an artist that I like going by Captain Nikko. The Burrows follows Grey, a possum living in New Orleans in 1928. On his way to commit suicide, he stops into a bar run by a round rabbit named Virgil. He makes a deal with Virgil and he gives Grey a card and after a trippy sequence of infinitely falling, he finds himself in front of his old house in a field of yellow flowers. He meets 4 other souls, Mark a Maned Fox who works in a museum in New York, Gabriel a shark training for his school’s swim relay race, Ken a panther who is a cyclist, and Yasahiro a Japanese fennec fox that is an engineer.

When they suddenly disappear with Grey crying, the card Virgil gave Grey begins to glow and 4 other cards appear. Each of them have unique designs for each character, Though only Ken Gabriel and Mark are available at the moment. Each card Zaps Grey into the future with the order being Ken (1958), Mark (1965), and Gabriel (1987). You then find out that the reason that they are linked together is suicide. Grey then becomes determined to protect the character you chose. At this point, you go through the route, make important choices that affect the outcome of the route (only in mark’s route though as of late) and grow close to who you chose. I eventually broke down and downloaded The Burrows and played through the new content of Gabriel’s route and got damn i am unashamedly attached to this man. Like, he reminds me of myself of one point body image issues, feeling useless, jovial bastard. Mark has some pretty weird vibes that he gives off, lot of questions for him that will be answered hopefully soon. Ken is just really damn mean and beats the hell outta some kid that was messing his bike up. Hiro doesn’t have a route out yet so we know next to nothing about him other than he’s working with a german engineering company and he is thinking of committing suicide.

I would totally recommend The Burrows and not for you to binge the entire Echo project saga at 4 in the damn morning.

[starberry-skies]

OH MY GOD.