#if you think this most likely is a kind of self-insert for my yume thoughts... it COULD be okay

[koumeowkami]

✧ introducing my paralive oc!

★ NAME: Mitsuki Kuroki (黒木美月 → a beautiful moon shining over the darkness of a black tree)

★ MC NAME: Tsuki

★ THEME COLOR: Wisteria #B172B9

★ TRAUMA: "I don't wanna be treated like an object ever again."

★ AGE: 20

★ GENDER: female (cisgender)

★ SEXUALITY: asexual

★ PHANTOMETAL: her goth butterfly hairclips; they usually materialize a full moon over her as an illusion

★ HOBBY: listening to music (she enjoys every genre and appreciates every spectrum of freedom it offers + always carries headphones with her)

★ LIKES: sweets, collecting CDs (mostly because of her job), annoying Kanata (affectionately)

★ DISLIKES: being judged, being told she's short (it happens often)

★ APPEARANCE: a slim girl with fair skin, a bit shorter than the japanese average (1.57 m). she has short dark purple hair with a few lilac streaks on her bangs and sharp violet and blue colored eyes. she wears dark colored clothes, mostly baggy and comfy, plus a couple of piercings. she has chubby cheeks.

— past Mitsuki (10-18 years old): she kept her hair long and not dyed. she dressed elegantly, in an old-fashioned way, almost looking like a doll. she didn't wear earrings.

★ PERSONALITY: growing up in the facility allowed her to become strong and independent ever since she was little, plus she has a great sense of justice. she's not used to affection, having spent her childhood by herself, so she's a bit of a tsundere. she's also really sensitive to touch and that makes her more reserved and shy, in contrast to her usual personality. she's greatly empathetic, to the point other people wonder if it's a superpower. she always speaks her mind, even accidentally, ending up putting herself in tough situations. she can be playful at times and has a mischievous side, especially with people who are more closed off than her (aka cozmez).

[rpgmgames]

July’s Featured Game: Melon Journey 2

DEVELOPER(S): Froach Club ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003 GENRE: Story-exploration SUMMARY: Melon Journey 2 is a story-exploration game about revisiting a town full of adorable animals with eccentric personalities. Yet under its cute and nostalgic surface lies a dark tale of crime and corruption... Play as Honeydew, an employee of a huge melon factory, and travel to Hog Town where melons are illegal. While searching for a missing friend, you'll have to explore the town and its surrounding areas, and speak with suspicious characters in dangerous situations to uncover the truth.

Download the demo from the discord server here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! We're Froach Club! (Mario - @markeryjane, Karolina - @minipete, & Simon - @carpetbones) Our CEO is rude little roach who goes by the name of Froach. We've all been making games together and separately for a quite a while now and we're currently working on our magnum opus... To see our other games check out froachclub.itch.io & carpetbones.itch.io

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *Froach Club: Melon Journey 2 is a story of crime and political corruption in a town where melons are outlawed. It's a sequel to our (Mario & Karolina) very first game we ever made back in 2012. Back then we had no idea what we were doing and were pretty awful at using RPG Maker 2003, so we had the idea to do kind of a remaster of the game. We accidentally expanded it so much though that it became a huge, fully-formed sequel.

How long have you been working on your project? *FC: Almost 2 years now.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *FC: Columbo, The Big Sleep, Chulip, Hamtaro Ham Ham Heartbreak, Kino's Journey, Twin Peaks, and Shenmue!

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *FC: This is our first real large-scale project, spanning multiple years of development, so staying organized was a huge challenge. At first we would just work on whatever we felt like, jumping from one part of the game to another. But once Simon became more involved in the project, he taught us his amazing organization skills and we learned how to use to-do lists efficiently and and keep our files straight. And now that we have, things go much more smoothly.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *FC: We started with a really bare-bones story, and as we built up the world by adding more characters, side-quests, and subplots to the main storyline, the game’s scope began to grow. The world of Melon Journey 2 is now much more detailed and immersive than we originally imagined.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *FC: Back in 2012, when Melon Journey 1 came out, we were just a two person team (Mario and Karolina). We continued making games together for a few years until we started calling ourselves Froach Club and added our 3rd member, Simon. We worked together on u1f439 (https://carpetbones.itch.io/u1f439) and Fish Fly Fever (https://froachclub.itch.io/fish-fly-fever) and now Melon Journey 2!

What is the best part of developing a game? *Mario: Making the music, when a scene comes together and the music fits the tone perfectly it's really satisfying. Karolina: Coming up with crazy ideas in the beginning and thinking of all the possibilities! Simon: Creating any form of a dense or rich world for people to interact with or experience.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *FC: Back when we started out, we played a lot of RPG Maker games on rpgmaker.net and it was a big source of inspiration because it helped us feel like our ideas were doable without any previous knowledge of programming or game making. Yume Nikki in particular gave us a lot of ideas on how to make the most out of RPG Maker 2003, like hacking together menus out of pictures, and creating complex animations using multiple charsets.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Mario: Bailey is my self-insert character kinda. Karolina: Lily. She has really strict Russian parents (who are actually based on mine) and she has a hard time finding a place where she feels like she truly belongs. She goes through a lot but never truly stops caring about what she believes in. Simon: I actually am Ham Ghost Jr.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *FC: At some point the project kind of outgrew RPGMaker 2003 and we really regretted using it, but we've come to appreciate the limitations and they've helped to shape the game in some ways so we regret it less now, especially since discovering easyRPG which we're using to port the game!

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *FC: We like to joke about making Melon Journey 3D, but who knows, it might actually happen one day! We are leaving the ending of MJ2 a little bit open ended~

What do you most look forward to upon/after the release of a project? *Mario: Being able to start a new project. Usually by the end of one project the only thing motivating me is getting it out of the way so we can start on the next thing. Karolina: Seeing if people enjoy our game! I dream about people making fanart and silly deep lore videos. That would seriously make everything 100% worth it. Simon: I cannot wait to get started on a new (maybe even bigger) project!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *FC: All three of us have an intense fear of something going horribly wrong on the day of the release. That's honestly the scariest part of making a game - saying that you're officially finished with it.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *FC: Try your best to get your game done and limit the scope! Even if it's not perfect or exactly like how you imagined it, the experience and growth you get from releasing a game is the most important thing.

Question from last month's featured dev @midnighttrain-project: What do you value most in a game? (story, gameplay, art,...) Is that an important aspect of your game? *Mario: I think the interplay of the elements of a game is more important than what the individual parts are like on their own. Like, a simple animation can be transformed by adding a really good sound effect to it, so it's hard to separate elements or say that I value one more than the other. Karolina: I value the story most in games. Even when the art or gameplay is great, if there are glaring plot holes I always spend too much time focusing on them and get pulled out of the experience. That's why we spent so much time making a super well thought-out world and characters for MJ2! Simon: I really enjoy gameplay over most parts of any game, especially if the gameplay is well designed and interesting.

We mods would like to thank Froach Club for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Melon Journey 2 if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[my1stgirlfriendturnedintothemoon]

Writing is so weird for me to be so honest

Like I've been writing for as long as I can remember, fanfic shit before I even knew what fanfic was, me and my friend Sarah used to tell each other stories about our HP self insert OCs in like 5th grade. I have a whole plastic storage tub of notebooks filled with random fanfic and original writing going back to middle school. I'm 29. Some of those notebooks are old enough to vote.

And I've never finished anything lmao. Even stuff where I'm like "this is a oneshot!" I never considered really finished, because there's always some other connected idea.

Anyways I haven't shared any of my writing outside of like, posting things here on tumblr that I know only 3 specific people will read, since like. Before I joined the army??? I think?? Back when I was still using ff net lmao and it was like old Naruto and KH stuff and the one Yume Nikki fic I still wish I had finished, so like 8 years I think.

I hadn't even really been writing much at all this year, outside of a really self-indulgent Warden Surana/Warden Carver Hawke fic that never left my phone notes and will never see daylight bc it's just for me. And then I started replaying FE:A in July and realized I wanted to write about Inigo and Gerome, and I did it! I fuckin opened up my neglected AO3 and I spit out two chapters, and like 300 people read my story and I lost my mind! Three Hundred People! More than my damn high school graduating class. I never in my life would have thought 300 people would want to read my writing lmao

And then of course FE3H dropped and I was like. This is a new fandom, there's not a lot of content out for the ship I want to see, I have a small idea of something I would like to read, I should write it. I'm going to cook this food because the fandom is hungry. And my small idea wound up being a fucking 5k fic, my first smut fic ever, and today it got its hundredth bookmark. 100 fucking people read and bookmarked my horny fic in just one month. Two days after I posted that, I spit out a comedy fic that is currently THREE SHORT of FIVE HUNDRED kudos!!!! Five (5) hundred!!! Like, I'm Math Lady Meme over here trying to imagine 500 different individuals reading and enjoying something I wrote. That is TWICE my graduating class.

So of course, not satisfied with what I had produced, I went out and wrote a 6k fic of a rare pair that was basically entirely smut and the start of a series, because my brain is 100% on Clown Hours, and then made the second part a complete left-field crackpair, and people. Still love it. No one has come to end my life, no one has come with the torches my LJ and FFnet childhood promised. Instead they are praising me and I appreciate it but I still feel like a huge fool lmao!!

Like I'm so scared of negative feedback that I have literally stopped myself from writing things or sharing things for years, and in just one month of sharing things I have gotten so much positive response its overwhelming. I've seen my fics mentioned twice now in the wild while scrolling Twitter, by complete strangers. I bit the bullet and recced one of my fic to someone asking for my rare pair and people like it! I am pretty sure my first smut fic spawned a gift fic for someone else who commented they were interested in a rare OT3 I hinted at!

Anyways I've spent the last week alternately rereading everything I've written this month and going "fuck what the hell this is bile" or feeling like the Palpatine "Unlimited Power" gif even though this is the most attention and 'success' I've ever known in a fandom space, so. This is literally the most productive I've been with writing in years, I've put up 20k words on AO3 since the end of July and I still have like. 6 chapters of this story finished and waiting to be posted if I can just get the damn 2nd chapter out of the way and one of them, all by itself, is 4k. I've been writing like crazy lmao.

This was kind of a ramble but I've been feeling bad about my writing because it's not like some other people's and that's stupid, I may not be writing as much or in the same way but I'm doing numbers for the first time and I should be proud of that.

Over 10k hits I'm gonna shit!!!

Anyways I guess, like. Don't be stupid like me lmao and think no one wants to hear your idea or read your fic, or feel bad if someone else has already "done it", because no one can write it the way you will and there's always going to be someone who is starving for more of that content. I personally don't feel like my stories are that good or even original, but apparently people like them lmao! Share your stuff! You may be surprised.