#i just kept struggling with it and it never worked but i redid the sketch and was finally able to move forward with it - i was so happy to!

[good-beansdraws]

In echoes, witches are made by sacrificing someone to the Mad God, and one of the final bosses involves a character we've seen turned into a unique fire-elemental witch. Her fight is more sad than scary, since she's just a silent, soulless echo of the kind woman we saw before.

I really liked combining this idea with the witch-hunt vibes in Bring it On. In my fantasy au, Fuuta wrongfully leads his band of knights against a village girl, resulting in the townspeople burning her before all the facts were laid out. She was using magic, which is what Fuuta called her out for, but she wasn't using it for any malicious or witchy purposes. When she dies, the bit of magic in her flares up with her emotion and she returns as this type of fire spirit. As well as Fuuta's abstract haunting guilt, he now has a silent, destruction-bringing ghost haunting him each time he tries to run away from what he did.

[tsarinastorm]

Old Wounds, New Roommates-Adam Sackler/Reader-Chapter 2

Chapter 1

ONE YEAR AND SIX MONTHS AGO

Ever since your hookup with Adam, he’s texted you every day, and you had had another intense fucking sessions.  You had thought things were going well, but tried not to think too much into it. He was clearly a damaged soul that was processing a lot lately. He had went from some girl before Hannah to Hannah to some other girl back to begging for Hannah back to Jessa to you. That’s why you were surprised and tried to act nonchalantly when he informed you of his ‘feelings’ one day.

               “I like you, I really like you. I never thought I could feel like this again but with you I feel it.” He tells you while holding your hand to his chest, his eyes never leaving yours. He was looking at you with such adoration, you fell for it. He then insisted on taking you on a real date, you reluctantly agreed.

               Now sitting at the restaurant, he’s already twenty minutes late. The waiter keeps coming to your table to ask if you need anything. More wine is definitely needed. You’re giving him ten more minutes then you’re leaving. You scold yourself because you should have never expected anything from him. Furthermore, you were growing furious because you were normally the one in control of your relationships and here you were getting played. You knew better.

               It had been three weeks since Adam stood you up and he never had the decency to shoot you a text with an explanation…

                                                                               *******

PRESENT

               A lot had changed since your debacle with Adam Sackler over a year and a half ago. Now, you had two best-sellers under your belt, granted they were closer to memoirs based on your life. You wrote them to joke and parody your own life. It wasn’t your best work, but you were still happy that they were published under a pen name. Your next venture was historical fiction, and writing history books, your true passion. The novels brought you enough cash to pay off a majority of your student debt, and pay for your travels. You had spent most the past year doing promotional work around the world then leisurely travel. Either way, it burnt through your bank account fast.

               At the moment you were crashing at a friend’s apartment with your dog, Salem, and cat, Olive, joining you while your belongings were still in storage. You had given yourself a week to find a place. It was proving to be difficult: you needed a roommate because you would become depressed living on your own, and you didn’t want to live in Manhattan, and you had a limited budget at the moment. To add to the problems, most of the potential roommates were not roommate material. You were near your breaking point, something had to give.

               On top of everything you already had going on, you were almost ran over by Adam Sackler on a bike. Talk about a blast from the past. You couldn’t deny that he looked even better than you remembered: his hair was now slightly longer and he was even more toned. He also threw out there that he and his girlfriend broke up pretty quickly in your conversation. He was your biggest mistake: you shouldn’t have gotten attached and you shouldn’t have let him play you like that. Now all was left of your feelings for him was a burning rage, and deep down below that, a desire for him.

               You walk into Ray’s coffee shop to re-caffeinate and catch up with him. As you wait in line, you notice that Adam is there near the register. You really can’t a catch a break lately. You order your usual and do your best to ignore Adam. Luckily, Ray keeps the conversation going.

               “Hey, Y/N, how’s the apartment and roommate search going?” Ray asks as he hands your coffee.  You take it and decide to let it cool, you needed caffeine but it wasn’t worth the mouth burn.

               “Horrible. You should see some of the options.” You admit and settle near the register. There’s not a line so you standing there it shouldn’t disturb much. You can tell that Adam’s purposefully eavesdropping on your conversation. Typical. Shouldn’t he be worried about his own acting gigs, or one of the many exes or future exes you’re sure he has around.

               “Why don’t you wanna live alone again?” Ray ponders as he cleans the counter top, before leaning on it with his elbows. Ugh, this again. You have to remind people how screwed up you are, how much you’ve screwed up your life.

               “Because I’m miserable living alone, and it’s better for me to split rent at the moment.” You’re silently praying that Ray takes the hint and drops the topic. You’d prefer not to talk about it at all, let alone in front of the banes of your life: Adam Sackler. Ray however, is not dropping it, instead he focuses in on one of comments.

               “Wait, did you fly through your profits already?” Ray gives you a judging look that resembles a scowl. You feel like you’re being scolded by one of your parents. You roll your eyes as you answer.

“Yeah between paying off my student debt and traveling, it went by pretty fast.” You grind your teeth, a bad habit, and give him a stern look in return. Hopefully, he’ll get the hint this time. To your surprise and chagrin, it’s Adam who chimes in next.

“I have an extra room you’re welcome to it. I just redid it.” He turns toward you now, both you and Ray stare at him shocked.  Adam then continues sipping on his drink like nothing happened.

“You serious?!” Ray shouts, and you add in with, “What?”

               “I added on, it’s a nice bedroom and has its own bath. You can stay there. The rent is fixed for me so the price shouldn’t be a problem.” The initial reaction is: fuck no, you would leave the city and go move in with your parents before you’d move in with Adam. Then, you thought that Adam was better than most of the roommate options you had met so far. He might be your last choice, but then again, you’re at your last choice.

               “Can I see the room before I make a decision?” You ask, because knowing Sackler the room could either be very nice or it could be a total disaster. There was little room for middle ground with Sackler. Also you’re curious if the place looks as disheveled as it did the last time (one other time) you were there. If so, you would need to do a thorough cleaning before moving in.

“Oh I have a dog and cat, is that okay?” You think that the apartment will have to be pet-proofed. Adam runs his hands through his hair before nodding saying, “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

               “Wait, are you really considering this? Have you lost your fucking mind?” Ray puts his hands up in the air, and waits for you tell him that you’re joking, that this is some kind of joke. Your face stays serious because you definitely need some place to live ASAP. You ignore Ray and keep your eyes on Adam.

               “Ya, want to go now?” Adam asks as he motions his head in the direction of the door.

“Yeah.” You gather up your bag and your coffee, prepared to go. Adam heads out the door, waits for you by the doorway, and you’re right behind him. Ray gives you an incredulous look and you explain, “I want to see if there are proper floorboards.”

“Why would the floorboards matter?” Ray asks before he turns back to cleaning the counter or whatever he’s doing.

“In case I end up having to hide a body…” You joke but it’s the truth, it might end up being reality. If you weren’t desperate you wouldn’t even consider living with Adam: it was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

****

When you get to the apartment, after a one-sided conversation with Adam on the walk over, you’re surprised that it’s cleaner than last time. Apparently, Adam is a nervous talker, and can actually clean on occasion. The apartment isn’t as well kept as when Ray was living there but you could live with it.

“Your room is back here.”  Adam leads you back through the hallway, and you find yourself checking out his book collection. You also notice that the yellow sofa hasn’t left even though it should probably be retired.

“My maybe room.” You correct him as you follow him. Of course the apartment smells like him and it brings back memories that you’d prefer to forget even though they’re sketched in your memory. When you walk into the added room, you can’t help but let out a sharp inhale as you take it all in. It’s stunning, and surprisingly roomy for New York.

“This is actually nice, did you do all of this?” You head into the bathroom, which has a new shower with tub, and a sink with decent counter space. In New York there was never enough space unless you were a billionaire, but you could see yourself living here. Though you might have to wear noise-cancelling headphones and blinders to avoid your roommate.

“Yeah, I like to do this kind of stuff.” Adam answers, downplaying his craftsmanship. When you walked back into the bedroom, you notice that the walls are still white, and not painted. Adam breaks your train of thought by asking, “What do you think?”

He waits for your answer, and you can tell he’s waiting for you to rip into the place. You turn to look at him, placing your hands on your hips. You tell him, “I have only one question: can I paint it?”

Adam gives you that goofy smile that you’ve always been fond of, before agreeing, “Yeah no problem. Just preferably not hot pink or some shit like that.”

And just like that, you’re going to be roommates with a former fuck buddy, who stood you up and played you in the past. Maybe Ray was right, maybe you had lost your damn mind.

******

The new living situation was tempestuous at best. Adam had a habit of being a slob and leaving glasses of milk around the apartment at all hours. Then, there was the case of his tools which were quickly spreading throughout the common areas of the apartment. The worst was the nights: he was in and out all night, up and down. You had to get up and be productive and he should be too but apparently he preferred to live like the struggling artist.

You were hoping that tonight would be different: he might go to bed at a decent hour like the rest of civilized society. All of those hopes crashed when you heard a woman’s voice talking on the other side of the wall. This was not going to be a fun night, at all.

“Do you like my cock, you fucking whore?” You hear Adam ask on the other side of the wall.

“I really like your cock,” you hear the unknown woman answer back.

You roll over to your side, and turn up the volume of your headphones. That works for a short period of time because soon you can hear the bed hitting the wall. The bed’s hitting the wall to the point it’s making your own headboard rattle from the vibrations. You try in vain to knock against the wall, hoping they’d get the hint. Sadly, it doesn’t even phase them.

Then, the moaning and screaming starts. Adam is groaning and grunting, while his companion is screaming his name like a chant. This continues for several moments until the woman says, “Adam, fuck, I’m cumming.”

“Fuck, fuck where do you want me to cum?” You hear Adam say, followed by a response, “Cum outside.”

               “You’d like that, huh, for me to fucking cover you in my cum?” The woman moans something intelligible back that you can’t discern. After a few thrust that you hear through the wall, it’s over as you hear Adam let out a guttural moan. Now, you just hope that it was a one round night, and hope that the girl doesn’t stay the night.

               Round two did happen, loudly, and right when you had just gotten to sleep. You did think that you heard the girl leave earlier, and did not want to ever encounter whoever she was. You would however make sure Adam knew how you felt. Some people actually have to wake up in the morning have some semblance of a routine. You put the food in Salem’s and Olive’s respective bowls then pour yourself a cup of extra strong coffee and make a bowl of cereal.

               Adam comes out of the room as if on cue. He’s only wearing a pair of black briefs, and you can’t help but ogle him just a little bit. He was toned and in shape when you met him, but now he’s built like Adonis, and his longer hair only adds to the likeness. You stop yourself from admiring his bulge, you already know what his dick is like, and know what he’s like in bed: mindblowing.

               That thought process reminds you that you’re still pissed that his escapades kept you up all night. You wait to say something when he’s sat down across from you and eating his own cereal.

“Did you have fun fucking the Banshee last night?” You ask as you sip your coffee. Shock goes across his face, he looks embarrassed for a moment then he covers it with cool arrogance.

“I did…thanks for your concern.” He answers. His cool, smug demeanor pisses you off more. Not only did he keep you up all night having to listen to him to fuck, now he has the nerve to pretend it’s no big deal.

“I could tell. I could hear it. You can keep it down, no one wants to hear a porno being made.”  You tell him sternly, squinting your eyes at him, and then getting up to put your cup in the sink. You put in there loudly, to exaggerate your frustration.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.” Adam has the nerve to say as you begin retreating into your room. His comment makes you halt and stalk back into the kitchen.

“Ha! Why would I be jealous? Have you forgotten I’ve already been on that ride?” You cock your head to the side and cross your arms. Adam is looking at you with eyes that are a hot amber, he’s trying to provoke you. You see his jaw twitch in frustration to your comment.

“Which is why you know you’re missing out. You miss me fucking your brains out.” Adam stands and is invading your personal space.  You’d almost forgotten how much taller he was than you. You hadn’t forgotten what kind of sexual chemistry you had, the chemistry has now turned to tension as your eyes stay locked on one another’s. You wanted to punch him, stay away from him, but you also want to kiss him, to fuck him so hard that he’s absolutely wrecked.

Instead, you provoke him by hitting him where you know it will hurt.

“Uh no…it wasn’t that good.” You know there are three possible results from what you just said. One, you’ll hate each other even more. Two, you’ll end up fucking right here and now. Or three, a combination of one and two. Adam’s eyes darken and his brow furrows as he takes a step closer to you.        

[game-meak]

A Proper Postmortem

Maybe?!  Heck if I know how to actually format a good post but let’s try.  As game development went on for almost four years, this is probably gonna be long... and also give away basically the whole game oops!  Read on with caution.

Sometime around July 2014, a month after the initial release of my first game, my room was being remodeled and I was stuck with nothing for free time but a garbage laptop I could do anything on, an old flip phone, my sketchbook, and my 3DS.  So beyond playing an obscene amount of Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life, I at some point went “hey, what if I made a second game starring the kids.”  So I started trying to plan it out!  And it went

absolutely nowhere that I intended it to go!!!

For instance, this is the very first page of sketches.  This squirrel was supposed to be really important.  It’s not.  I don’t even KNOW what’s up with that duck.

A thing I like to think about before I set off making any of the story, assets, or scripts for my games tend to be themes and motifs.  And I kept circling back to a very important, very personal “theme.”  Without using the internet at large as my therapy couch, I was emotionally abused and taken advantage of multiple times in my life and it greatly impacts how I interact with people to this very day, as you’d expect events of such a degree would.  Particularly, I kept thinking that the RPG Maker fan crowd tends to skew young and be in the teenage range and at ages 14-16, I could’ve used something to help.

Of course, my entire thought process isn’t necessarily one of charity and selflessness.  It was also a way of me expressing what I’d dealt with in ways I’ve only ever communicated with my friends who were also victims of the same circumstances, the closest I would let myself come to personal stories and retellings with a cover of plastic children and wild adventures.  It was also in some ways a way of me verifying to myself that something ongoing was, in fact, bananas and should not have been happening, but that might be another story for another time.

As you can probably guess, Haze and Seal came into the picture since I needed to make two characters who would have this struggle.  A lot of decisions came about because of my personal experience.  They’re 15/16 because I was at the time of the incidents that primarily inspired me to make this game.  They’re both nonbinary because I am.  They love anime because I did (and do...?!)  One of their friends is even directly modeled off how one of my friends looked in high school.  To that degree, I guess someone, somewhere can call them self inserts.  But they’re also not, since I didn’t want to just do a personal retelling with fictional characters.  I’d just write a memoir or something at that point.

Haze’s design came first, and then Seal’s was sort of made as a foil to them.  Haze’s “colors” are pink, black, grey, and red.  Seal’s are teal and light purple... and also black.  Haze had a rabbit motif (which got toned down as I went on), Seal had an owl motif (which is now just a single mention in their list of likes...), etc.

Though in the beginning, the story was entirely different.  Initially, everything took place in the neon-ish areas with black sky and reflective, celestial water (that I, very eloquently, call “spacewater”).  The idea was that Haze and Seal were beings from another dimension and that their “fighting” was causing a rip in the universe that the kids stumbled into and therefore got wrapped up in this mess.  I had an entire script written and started making assets and when I went to sum up the game’s plot in a neat paragraph, I realized... I hated it!!!

So I chucked all I had done by that point writing-wise and started again.

In fact, I rewrote a lot.  After the first it was mostly small tweaks and adjustments, but the biggest ones (and the ones that still present a challenge to me!) usually involved trying to make Seal feel like a believable character.  I had shown an early draft to someone who said that Seal felt too much like trying to get back at someone, so I scrapped a ton of their lines and tried again.  I still worry whether or not they come across too Strawman-y, but I’ve done the best I can and whatever criticism people have can apply to my next writing attempts.  It’s very hard to separate yourself from subject matter you feel really personally attached to.  I don’t want to write them in a way that you immediately hate them, or hate me for writing such a blatant “villain” character, but in a way that you can formulate your own thoughts.  That said, though, I am violently allergic to people who call Seal a “tsundere,” even in jest.  So I guess I want people to have their own thoughts as long as it’s not that specific one...! (;;;;)

You may be thinking “heck, this is a lot of paragraphs in and you haven’t even brought up gameplay thoughts” and yes... that’s very true.  Shamefully, for a game where I thought “I should definitely, absolutely focus more on making it a Fun Game than a walking visual novel” I might’ve actually dropped the ball in that area.  I’d like to think I was more adventurous than I had been with my first game.  Some parts do kind of fall into the “walk to the next cutscene, find a key to unlock the next cutscene” pit, but I did put effort into figuring out what I could do with RMXP.  My obligatory “please don’t use this engine here, people thinking of using RPG Maker” statements here.  In the final product, though they’re very simple, I’m most proud of the chalkboard puzzle and the paint sorting puzzle.

Even if, y’know... I somehow neglected to include the letter “k”

Speaking of, I’m not sure if this is a general RPG Maker thing, a “man I hate RMXP” thing, or a “meaka cannot gamemake” thing, but I had several event/puzzles just up and quit on me a few times.  Like they would work fine for months and months, but one day I’d go to them and just nope, suddenly they’re not working, sorry.  Copy+pasting the event to a new map wouldn’t work, so I’d have to manually redo the event.  One of them was the chalkboard puzzle.  The other was the sliding puzzle when Tony is by herself.  Which I’m also aware slows the game down a ton, but I have legitimately no idea how to fix that... I tried and I could never get to to not lag like crazy.

Like I said, I started in July 2014.  I’d shipped the game off to my beta testers in March 2018.  A vast majority of that time was spent creating the visual assets since everything you see in the game is custom.  All the sprites, all the tilesets, every little pixel of it.  All me!  Needless to say... it was very exhausting and very time consuming. I grossly underestimated how much time I thought it’d take.  I never accounted for the very real possibility of burnout, which is incredibly silly considering I was making something entirely by myself that was also an occasionally difficult subject matter...!  There were quite a few weeks where I touched nothing because I couldn’t bring myself to and even a few times where I just considered deleting everything and cancelling the project.  I knew I’d be mad at myself if I quit, especially as I got later into production, so I just tried my best to make sure I didn’t turn it into a huge chore.  Obviously, there were parts that were more tedious than others, but this game really is a very large labor of love that I put a lot of my heart into.

Part of that time is also a little bit of indecision.  Did you know I went through 3 possible title screens?  I sure did!  I’ve also publicly posted about redoing both Haze and Seal’s bust sprites before.  I almost redid all of the kids’, too, but I didn’t wanna get caught in the loop of remaking everything, so I opted to just leave them as they are.  Most of them don’t bug me as much.  M...most of them!

I’m hopping back on the Story train since obviously that was my main focus, but the decision to have Seal sort of “reveal” their true nature (or at least have a jealousy-related anger burst) to Octavio as an animated cutscene was one I’d decided pretty early.  Which is also why, unsurprisingly, I was debating getting voice actors for a hot minute.  But I wouldn’t have used it anywhere else in the game, so I opted not to.  I also wanted to keep the file size low, but that wound up not happening so much, h-haha...   For someone who uses the only engine without native support for videos, I sure do like making animated cutscenes, huh.

Anyway.  This scene originally bridged Octavio’s section of the game to Pablo’s, which would’ve been (for some reason) in an abandoned hospital.  But that didn’t pan out because it didn’t fit what I wanted the game to be and also by switching the order of the two, it builds up more tension(?) on the kind of character you expect Seal to be.  I hope their very first “fuck off, maybe” took someone out there by surprise!

This also was the point when I decided I wanted to commission an original soundtrack, since nothing quite got across what I wanted at the time.  Which is when I put out my silly ad post and somehow managed to get the amazing ProjectTrinity to compose for me...!  I’m still amazed by the sheer quality of music he made for my little RPGMaker game.

Having the teen characters curse was also something I waffled on for a bit.�� Clearly, I dwell on the important things as a writer.  I wanted it to contrast the cutesy, kidlike way the siblings talk and also the sort of squeaky-clean image the witches (particularly Seal) present to the kids by contrasting how they talk to each other, most importantly how Seal talks to Haze and their other friends.  I did have the same issue with the Mother in my first game, but I opted to not have her curse at all either since she’s childish in her own way, too.  But that’s not for THIS game’s postmortem, get otta here!!!

I also very much was set on a “battle” with words being the final event of the game.  Though I had a hard time imagining what that would be initially, but eventually arrived at a sort of fake battle system that was introduced in the mine.  The setting for this battle changed with time (everywhere from the park to the academy and in between) was considered...!  The dirty secret is that while I did like the decision to make it take place in the voids between worlds, I also sort of did not want to draw the staircase in the witch academy.  Originally, the kids would’ve also helped Haze “reach” Seal (who was putting actual obstacles in the way), but I guess in my own way, I wanted to give Haze the ability to confront Seal on their own, one-on-one.  Or something like that...!  I also didn’t want to add too much needless backtracking.

I’m... unsure what other point I really want to make, so I guess I’ll end this here unless anyone has anything in particular that interests them they’d want me to answer!

All in all, this game means a lot to me and took a chunk of my life to make and I really hope it’s able to reach at least one person who might need it, even if it’s only a little. 

To all of you who gave it a try, thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.

A shameless link to the game:  [itch.io] & [RMN]