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silvensei · 6 years

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Complementary

Shou, having grown up messing with psychic powers, figured out how to leave his body. The obvious next step is trying to take over another.

Started this like a year ago, based on this post I stumbled upon by @hydrachea, and finally got around to finishing it! Just some rowdy espers being teen boys.

(On AO3 too! Link in a reblog because I never know if external links are functional)

Ritsu narrowed his eyes, the question he was just given running through his head for a third and fourth time. Sitting on his bed, staring ahead, he tried for a fifth pass to work out what he could possibly say next. Mmm…nope. “You’re going to have to say that…one more time.”

Seated on the ground in the center of his room, legs crossed, back straight (a bit unusual for the rowdy teen), and a barely contained smirk on his lips, Shou drummed his hands on his ankles. “I asked,” he repeated, carefully, “if I could perhaps…for a little bit…borrow…your body.”

Ritsu ran a hand down his face. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, that’s what I thought you said.”

“I know what you’re thinking, dude: It’s not something you hear every day—”

“No, it’s really not!”

His hands changed their rhythm, quickening into a drumroll before finding their pattern. “So. To give you some backstory—”

“That would be great, thanks.”

“—some lore, now, okay.” Pata-tata pata-tata pata-tata. “So my dad used to know this one psychic in town. Or not know him; he kept tabs on every esper around, so I would steal copies of his records to see what powers people had, because if some rando can do it, why can’t I? And so this guy, his specialty was astral projection, but he like, leapt from his body just to spy on people or watch his neighbor’s Netflix or some shit. Anyway, didn’t take long to figure out. You could probably pick it up, too. Your brother is probably doing it right now, watching from above, oooo….” He tapped out a light decrescendo, leaning forward for effect.

Ritsu quirked his eyebrows. It was just a joke, but he still wondered. What would Shigeo even use it for?

With one final beat, Shou swung his hands to the floor behind him, leaning back on his propped arms. “It got me thinking: What am I when I astral project? It’s still me, but not in my body, so am I a ghost? Am I like a spirit? And since regular spirits can possess people, then….” As if going over it again knocked his confidence down a peg, he flashed a sheepish smile.

His friend did not react. “You want to possess me,” he said.

“I want to see if it’s possible!” Shou corrected. “And if it is, then would I get—would we have double the power? Would you look different at all, like some sign that it wasn’t all you in there? Will you be awake at all? Just think of the possibilities! The pranks!”

Ritsu’s stomach turned. This is crazy. This doesn’t just happen. Your friend doesn’t just saunter into your house unannounced, steal a soda from the fridge, make light banter with your family, and then body snatch you. It doesn’t happen!

…but…what if...?

He closed his eyes, head shaking back and forth. “This is insane,” he grumbled. “People ask to borrow phone chargers and cups of sugar, not....” He waved a hand towards his head before letting it drop to his blankets.

Shou took a swig of his soda. It was already almost empty. “I get it, I’ve been sitting on this for like, weeks, but I’m not just gonna go possess some poor bastard off the street; I do have some morals. And who else am I supposed to ask, a non-esper? My old man? Your brother?”

Process of elimination, that made logical sense, but it didn’t do much to quell his concerns. It’s not like he didn’t trust Shou. His close friend Shou Suzuki was different from the enigmatic threat Shou Suzuki that burned down his house on their second meeting. Now, that didn’t mean he would trust Shou with everything. Maybe to return a loaned book. Maybe not with the care and well-being of a life. His life in this case.

But it’s not like he would be unsupervised. Probably. When Dimple possessed him, not only was he awake, but in control, too, so there was a chance Shou wouldn’t even be able to do anything. And Dimple did help his powers develop astonishingly quickly. Maybe….

Ritsu grumbled, falling back on the bed. God damn it, he was curious to see what would happen, but just the thought of it made his skin crawl. It was enough of a tough decision when it was a weak little smart-aleck of a ghost whom he could use solely as a mean to a desperate end. This, however, was his friend. His living human friend that he saw on a regular basis, in his own living human body. They hadn’t ever hugged before, and now Shou would be using his arms, existing within his head—oh god, would he be able to hear Shou’s thoughts?

“You overthinking things with that big brain of yours again?” The empty can clattered onto Ritsu’s desk. “It’s not like I’m going to steal your life and go on a heist spree. It’ll be a few minutes, maybe more if something cool happens. A day max.”

“A day?!”

“A couple hours, absolute max, it’s up to you. I’d offer to do your homework while I’m you, too, but we both know I don’t know shit about school and no one would want that.”

That earned a half-smile from Ritsu. If Shou went to class as him, he felt his grades would instantly drop a letter as soon as he walked through the door. Student Council would fall into shambles. Shigeo would try to exorcise him.

The mattress tossed him an inch into the air when Shou flopped on his stomach to Ritsu’s left. “So…?” he asked, looking over with one of his trademarked trickster teen grins.

It’d be an experiment. Had this ever been done before? Few people seem to be as versatile in the psychic arts as Shou and the other espers of Seasoning City. And even if it had, he doubted it was documented in any way, so the previous query was really a moot point. But would it actually combine their powers into an unstoppable force? Should another threat ever come to this magnet of a town, it would be useful to have a trump card like that. A trump card like…having control of himself wrest from his grasp from a being within his own skin….

Ritsu folded his hands over his midriff, tapping a finger against his knuckle. “None of this seems just the least bit…wrong to you?” he asked, pointedly looking at the ceiling.

“What, hanging out over the weekend to possess my best friend?”

He pursed his lips. “Yes, that.”

“Uncommon, yeah, but it’s only wrong based on your definition of it.” Shou tried to make wise and erudite gestures like pointing and tapping his head even though lying face-down restricted his movement. “Spirits do it all the time, it’s just how they are, but we only question their intentions, not the action itself.”

“But you’re not a spirit! You’re alive, you have your own body, and this isn’t natural at all, intentions or otherwise.”

“You can say none of these powers are ‘natural’ in the first place, but we’re stuck with ‘em anyway.” He mimed air quotes a couple times more.

Ritsu didn’t have an argument for that. It was a good point. A year ago, bending spoons wouldn’t have seemed natural to him, either; it was just an anomalous habit of his anomalous brother.

“And I do have a body, no shit, Sherlock,” he continued, “but since I can separate myself from it, it’s more like just a sweet suit with bitchin’ hair. The me that’s me is the personality and the superpowers. It doesn’t really matter to me whether that personality is in my head or yours, ‘cause I’m me either way, and you’ll still be you.”

Ritsu looked over at him, for the first time since he posited the question. Shou had dropped the grin in favor for a small, neutral frown as he picked at a loose thread he found in the blankets. “How long did you say you’ve been thinking about this…?” he asked.

The boy met his eyes, but instead of an answer, he got a smile with too many teeth. “Does that mean you’re game?”

Ritsu took a deep breath. Then he took another one. If anything, it beat doing algebra. “Sure. Fine. I don’t have to do anything besides be here, after all. But—!” He sat up and pointed a finger at his overzealous companion. “No leaving this house—no leaving this room, actually, why would you need to. No haircuts, no photos, no calls, no texts, no— just—!” He stopped himself. He did trust him. To an extent. He sighed. Instead of trying to tie up every possible loophole, he concluded with, “Just have some respect, is all.”

Shou’s burnt orange aura flared up, throwing him off the bed to stand. He snapped his feet together to attention and saluted, a giddy grin on his face and supernatural fire in his eyes. “You can count on me, Captain!”

And then his aura moved without him, whipping around at the edges before amassing over his shoulders. The energy glowed and coalesced before it darted away, a pale tangerine shape spinning in circuits up to the ceiling.

Shou’s face went slack, his eyes losing their light as they slid shut, mouth falling with the rest of his body. “Don’t—!” Ritsu swore before swooping in to catch him, half holding him up before his upper torso could hit the edge of the bed. “Don’t just do that with no warning! I didn’t think you meant right this instant!”

He kneeled to safely lower his friend to the floor. As soon as he let go, the orange form darted into view. He winced and threw up an arm on reflex, but it hung in front of him, over the body lying comatose (lifeless?) on the ground. It was Shou-shaped for the most part, if Shou were made of fog physically vibrating with excitement. Which he currently was.

Ritsu lowered his arm, as well as his instinctive psychic defenses. He sighed and turned to lean back against his bed. “Just give me more of a heads up next time,” he said before closing his eyes.

He could hear the hum of power before he felt it. A force slammed into his senses, causing a barrier to flare up before he steadied himself and dispelled it. The moment it wisped away, it was like a frozen stake shot through his brain. A telltale sign of possession, he knew, but it didn’t stop there this time. His breath caught in his throat as a chill clouded his head, sending a violent shiver down his spine, seeping into his lungs and through his skin to his fingertips. A gasp escaped him, and his eyes blinked open, before the cold stopped in its tracks, fully freezing over, encasing him in ice and locking him in place.

And then his eyes blinked again. A slow breath filled his chest that bubbled to a roll of laughter as his lips spread to bare his teeth. “Oh, Ritsu,” he sung, “you better be awake for this, ‘cause this is fucking wicked!”

Jesus, thought Ritsu, most definitely still conscious and most definitely thrown out of control. He tried to say that aloud with a grimace, neither of which his body emulated. This is disconcerting.

His head perked up. “Hey, there you are!” his voice announced. “You still sound like you in my head—our head—”

My head.

“Our head, and I sound like you, too! Double the Ritsu!” Shou cracked his borrowed neck, interlacing his fingers and pushing his palms to the sky in a stretch. “I’ve never heard you sound this happy before!”

And you still haven’t.

“Mm, that’s a debate you will lose on a technicality. And you should stretch more often, bro, it feels cramped in here.”

Because it is cramped in here!

Shou jumped to his feet, rolling his shoulders. Ritsu groaned. This was nothing like the time with Dimple. He was just hoping he wouldn’t regret this decision any more than he already did.

His eyes swept the room, his hands rotating in loose circles that cracked his wrists. “Yo, you don’t have a mirror in here?”

No.

“That’s fine, probably one in the bathroom, right?” he asked, already moving to open the door into the hallway.

Shou, what did I—!

“Chill, dude, I just wanna see how you look.” Shou cracked open the door, checked for anyone in sight, and slipped into the bathroom across the hall, closing the door behind him with a soft click. When the lights flicked on, they both gasped.

Shou stared back from the square mirror over the sink. Anyone would know it was Shou. Blue eyes were a rarity in Japan, and anyone would immediately know that what looked and sounded like Ritsu Kageyama was in reality the furthest thing from him, an impostor that replaced his dark russet eyes with stark sea blue. Ritsu did not like it one bit, oh, no no no.

“Whoa,” Shou breathed in awe. He gripped the sides of the mirror, tilting his head every which way while taking in the reflection. “This is dope! This…is a bit creepy, not gonna lie, but it could work, you could make it work! Fluff up your hair a bit, get rid of the haunting sleepless gaze, give ‘em a smile—just play it like I would! Oh, pshh. Forgot!” He cocked his head to a three-quarter view, shooting a half-smirk and wink at himself. “That won’t be hard.”

Ritsu wanted to die. His image, being perverted so. The embarrassment was unprecedented, and the fact that he physically could not look away and hide from the world made it that much worse. At least that meant his face wouldn’t show the disturbed blush. Don’t act like it’ll stay that way, he whined. It’ll go back to normal when you’re gone.

His hand held up a finger. Still talking to the reflection, Shou asked, “What if I’m not in control? Still blue?”

Ritsu would have scrunched up his nose if he still could. Damn him and his good questions.

“Now how do I do that…?” his voice muttered. His hands dropped to the sink as he finally looked away, drumming his fingers on the porcelain. “What if…I dissociate, but not project…?” He closed those foreign eyes and repeated it under his breath, slowing his tapping.

The fog seemed to clear from Ritsu's head, loosening the chill he was in, until it rushed back through his palms—the cold porcelain underhand. He was also immediately reminded that his chest had weight from the beating heart and lungs just beginning to tighten and burn without air. He took a breath, curling his toes and taking stock of everything else. Everything back under his control.

He still didn’t feel completely himself, but it was worlds better than before, when his feet were too numb to even feel grounded.

Relishing the feeling of just being able to feel his breathing again, Ritsu glanced up into the mirror. He grimaced, an action meant to distract him from the knot in his stomach. Still blue.

“I really don’t like these eyes,” he said. His voice sounded better in his cadence. “They’re...too bright.”

Nah, bro, yours are just too dark. The idea bloomed in his head, like he had imagined Shou’s voice, except that it kept going without his permission: At least now you don’t look like a zombie.

“I don’t look like a zombie,” he muttered before narrowing his eyes at his reflection. He just realized he was having a conversation with himself. Technically schizophrenia. What a day.

Ya totally do, dude, you barely sleep some days. Yo, use your powers on something!

“Hm?” Ritsu raised an eyebrow at the mirror. Right, they were testing their powers like this. He noticed the hand towel on the wall behind him and directed his focus at it. The familiar light tingle of his powers prickled his skin as his turquoise aura appeared around it, darting it around him to float over the sink. “It looks the same. Same color, same texture.”

And coming in for the pass—! His breath caught for a mere moment as the ground was snatched from under him, dropped into a dunk tank of ice water after a successful throw. His aura splashed around the towel before swirling into a glittering citrine. His fists punched the air. “Fuck yeah!”

I’m gonna be sick.

“Don’t be dramatic; not while I’m driving, you’re not.”

Ritsu groaned and dragged his hands down his face. Neither of those things actually happened.

Shou laughed, his current voice rising to the point where it could almost be called a giggle. “No, no, I get it, it’s weird as shit, but come on! It’s so rad!” The towel darted around the small room at his behest, the bright orange aura highlighting its path like a comet. “Like, I dunno if you can feel it, but my powers don’t have the same oomf to them. Your body might not have enough juice to keep ‘em running like I’m used to.”

Well, sorry we can’t all be hotshot prodigies. Ritsu skipped being offended and instead watched the towel spin in a tight circle—not like he had any choice in where his eyes went. Just in the top right of his periphery, he could still make out a bit of his reflection in the mirror. It was out of focus, but it was still enough to notice his too-light eyes. Think my powers can add to yours? he asked, bringing up one of Shou’s earlier inquiries to change the subject.

“Give it a shot, bro.”

He focused on the towel and its path, trying to help push it along, to speed it up. After a moment, he was unsure if his powers were even working, his hands too far from his senses to tell if his palms were tingling. Then something slotted into place in his head and the towel kicked into double time, instantly spinning so fast it twisted and knotted itself into a plush wad. Aquamarine swirled among the amber aura, making...an uncomfortable color, actually; blue and orange mixed together like that was rather unappealing to look at.

“Sweet!” The grin Shou had pulled onto Ritsu’s face only grew. His face was starting to get sore. “Now try the other way! I’ll throw it left, you go right, yeah?”

What, oppose each other?

“Yeah! Psychic arm wrestling! ‘Kay, in three, two, one—”

The towel ignited.

Shou beamed like a kid on Christmas. He threw his arms up fast enough to bounce his heels off the floor. “Fuck yeah! Now it’s a party!”

Out of sheer panic and adrenaline, Ritsu snatched hold of his hands, throwing them at the towel, encasing it in a bubble of energy. His breathing was quick (hey, he was breathing) as he watched the flame flicker and reflect off his aura for a few seconds before it suffocated and snuffed out. He blinked (hey!) and tried to slow his hyperventilation, gripping his shirt in an attempt to dampen the thumping of his racing heart. The towel fell into the sink, the faintest bit of smoke pluming from its singed corner. “Who the fuck did that?” he asked, a slight strain to his voice he failed to wrangle. “Because it wasn't me!”

Not me!

“Uh-huh.” Ritsu glared into the mirror, fully accusing those eyes. “Sorry, but I've come not to trust you with fire.”

Honest, man, I didn't mean to do it! Our fusion powers are probably just different now, unpredictable! Guess we just gotta get out there and practice: bend a lot of spoons or some shit, maybe go teach some thugs a lesson, go lift some rocks in Dagobah—

“Hang on, fusion? You gave it a name already?!” Ritsu twisted the tap on for a half second to douse the towel before dropping it in the trash. “Nuh-uh, that's enough. We're not going out getting into fights, not when it's my body on the line.”

Fine, we can use mine next time.

“Next time?!” Ritsu’s fuming as a defense mechanism was made even more frustrating by not having a target to direct his reproval at; blaming his reflection was just too strange. “Wha— Why— How could you—!”

The door clicked open behind him. He spun around, startled and already trying to come up with explanations, excuses. He was able to open his mouth before he was pushed out of control again, his excuses contained within his head.

Shigeo raised his eyebrows, standing in the doorway. “Oh. Hi, Suzuki.”

The grin was back on his face. Shou shifted his weight to one leg and waved a hand. “Yo, lil’ bro! What’s up?”

“I was going to ask Ritsu a question and noticed something seemed off upstairs.”

Ritsu was thanking any power up there that Shigeo was taking this so well. By this point, it shouldn’t be surprising, but still. Shou hummed. “A disturbance in the force, you say….”

“I didn’t say that—”

“Nah, nothing’s wrong. Just guys bein’ dudes, hangin’ out.”

Shigeo paused for a beat. “Why are you in my brother?”

“Just messing around, testing out some powers. Hey, you wanna be Ritsu, too? It’s fun!”

Shou, don’t just say shit like that, Ritsu protested, uncomfortable. What was he, a sampler plate?

Shigeo’s brief hesitation didn’t help his unease. “No,” he eventually answered. His expression changed, ever so slightly, so much so he doubted Shou caught it. “No, I’ve had my share of possession, I think. I’ll keep to myself.”

Ritsu’s stomach would’ve dropped if it could. What the fuck does that mean??

Turns out Shou didn’t catch it. He whistled and lightly jabbed Shigeo’s shoulder with his elbow, asking, “What’s that, a rebellious streak? Moonlighting as a spirit? Spy missions?”

Shigeo ignored him, his composure already back to normal. “Is Ritsu in there, too?”

“Mm-hm.” Shou gave him a brisk nod before pushing Ritsu to the front, all his numbed senses switching on at once. He blinked to catch his bearings before opening his mouth to actually voice his concerns over that cryptic statement. He stopped himself, though, realizing Shigeo wouldn’t answer in this situation. He’d save it for later. “Yeah,” he said instead, “I’m here.”

“Mom wants to know if Suzuki is staying for dinner.”

Ritsu smiled—a normal, content smile, not one of Shou’s manic grins. “You could’ve just asked him, you know.”

“I guess, but you’re the host, so it seemed polite to ask you.”

Despite the last half hour’s whirlpool of emotions, he couldn’t help but snicker at his brother’s word choice. “I don’t know, are you staying— Hell yeah, I am!” Shou jumped in. The last thing Ritsu clearly felt was nearly biting his tongue.

“Okay.” Shigeo watched them for a moment. “You know, Ritsu, your eyes are blue now.”

“Yeah! It’s cool, right? Ritsu doesn’t like ‘em, but I think it makes him look less tired.”

He considered it. “A little.”

What do you want from me? Ritsu muttered, as well as he could in his head. Should I start wearing contacts now?

From downstairs, he heard his mom call something; he wasn’t paying enough attention to hear what. Shigeo stepped out into the hallway and called back, “Suzuki would like to stay for dinner.”

“How is he, anyway?” she asked, probably from the base of the stairs. “He’s quieter than usual.”

“He’s just possessing Ritsu for a bit.”

“Well, tell him that while I don’t mind one less mouth to feed, he should stop soon and come down himself. Growing boys need to eat.”

Ritsu wanted to hold his face in his hands. Why is my family like this.

Shigeo turned to relay the info, but Shou waved him off, saying, “No worries, I’ll leave in a sec.” Shigeo nodded and left.

“Yo. Bro.” Shou spun back to the mirror, raising an eyebrow with a smirk. It was the look he had when he was planning to get into trouble. “Next time? We gotta go flying. With our powers combined, we could go. So fast. As long as we don’t spontaneously combust, but hey, everyone needs a bit of practice!”

Damn it. Pushed into being a passenger in his head, possessed like it was the god damn Exorcist, and here he was, being tempted by power. Again. They did seem stronger together, and Shou had a wider variety of psychic talents than him. It could be beneficial to learn from him like this. Maybe it would even be—dare he think it—fun, doing things he wouldn’t normally be able to. The blue eyes still creeped him out, though. That wouldn’t change. He’d still hate that.

Good thing there weren’t any mirrors a hundred feet in the air.

Fine, Ritsu huffed. But now, you’re getting out. Dinner first. Flying later.

“Fuck yeah!”

#Mob Psycho 100 #Suzuki Shou #Kageyama Ritsu #MP100 fanfiction #My writing #getting back into the swing of things with writing #finally #the season 2 hype caught me #possession #shenanigans #and the like #I've been debating titles for 24 hours now just take it #Complementary like colors like blue and orange yeah?#*tired shrug*

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quietdaysco · 5 years

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Primrose Path - Devlog #006

Hey, it’s us again—two indie devs with fresh dirt on our visual novel progress. Ready?

Behind the Scenes

Playtesting Feedback

Last month we closed the pre-alpha Ink build of Primrose Path’s common route outline. It met its purpose of proving the basic concepts of our game were viable and that it interested players in our target demographic. In fact, playtesters gave us overwhelmingly positive feedback in our post-test form about the characters and story. Here are a few quotes from their responses:

“The number of elements of the MC's [main character’s] life added in to the story in increments helped me not only relate to the MC but also stay interested.”

“There's a good variety of calmer moments and more outlandish/exciting/otherwise more high tension moment [sic], no issues for me.”

“[T]he clients are a rainbow of people with a few that [sic] very much stand out [to me]”

“By the end, I was definitely considering who I was going to chose as my client and was sad the pre-alpha ended even though I knew it was going to.”

“I 100% would dance [in a mini-game similar to] DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]”

As you can see, the beginnings of Primrose Path went over well and players definitely had a lot of interesting things to say about our mischievous clients! We can’t spoil them here, but you may be able to see for yourself when alpha testing comes to our server in the future!

Now, for all the good we received, it’s not to say the pre-alpha went without its criticisms:

“This might be silly, but I wish there were an option that weren't a dress for her outfit to the party.”

It’s not silly at all, playtester! It had us thinking about the different ways our protagonist, Lynn Austen, could express herself. This concern lead to one outfit redesign and introduced a number of new ones!

“The beginning was a little slow, but I love Priya, so all of her scenes brought my attention back instantly.”

We love co-worker and bestie, Priya, too, but she can’t be an exception for pacing. We’ve since reevaluated and tweaked Part 1: Work Day. Plenty of visual changes and cutting scenes entirely were discussed in order to tighten up the overall pacing.

“Harper seems harsh but has pressure on her to make her harsh, but then you see her and shes [sic] just straight up scary.”

While all playtesters understood Harper’s role as Lynn’s no-slack boss, a few found her consequentially unapproachable. We have a lot in store for her in later routes, but acknowledge she was sparse during the common route. We’ve since taken this concern and made her more available in new scenes, adjusted her tone in some of the older ones, and had other characters—who have a very different relationship with her than Lynn does—reflect more openly on her. We think this humanizes Harper much more.

“Unfortunately [Bellarmino] feels like a snobbier, more irritating Matt. [...] I personally don't find him very likable but I'm looking forward to being proven wrong.”

In our feedback form, we asked about character impressions. We also polled if players didn’t have to play all routes at least once, which clients they’d pick. While character impression responses expressed a willingness to give our model and fashion designer, Bellarmino LaFauci, a chance, he was our least popular choice in the poll. We figured it may have been that his personality wasn’t differentiated enough against the company with whom Lynn encounters him, so we’ve made adjustments to contrast him more against his judgmental cabal.

So as we went through and addressed feedback, we had some ideas of our own to implement, which leads us to...

Updated Revised Outline

Double the wordcount! Yep, we’re just shy of 32,000 words for the revised common route outline. How could this be? Look: don’t mistake Primrose Path for a linear narrative. Your choices affect the world from day one.

Beyond changes from playtester feedback, other new content includes:

New Characters! We work to make sure our side characters leave an impression. We’ve added a few more with the means to salvage or devastate Lynn’s career. Until you yourself can meet them, look out for future Lore snippets on our Twitter!

New Events! Lynn has more opportunities than before, and under different states of mind, to navigate and impact the world around her. Depending on what Lynn did, where, and when can completely change an encounter within that same space and time.

New Key Items! There are a couple of items Lynn can collect if she meets the right people and takes certain actions. These items can reveal some important information in client routes later on—and some hints for others, too!

New Areas! A few more places have been added to the common route, including whole new scenes. What could possibly lie behind these doors?

So how’s that sound? If you said “Damn, that’s hella rad,” well you just took the words right out of our mouths. But we’re not done yet; we take feedback seriously. When we can’t decide on what our audience may want, we leave no room for speculation. There’s really only one way to settle that.

VN Protagonist Sprite Survey

We run a survey! We wanted to know how visual novel fans preferred to see a customizable MC represented as a sprite, if at all. It’s tough for us because as much as we want to make Lynn as visually present as her sense of self, we also acknowledge that “immersion” for many players also means different levels of “intrusion” from MC’s sprite—down to none at all, for folks wanting to self-insert despite taking on another character’s existing backstory. While we think we’ve come to a happy medium that serves our purposes and would appeal to a good number of players, we’ll be sharing with you all in a separate post our findings.

Two things are for certain:

Visual novel players are an incredibly dedicated base, having turned out over 100 responses to our form! Thank you so much for helping us see your side on the matter!

The communities we frequent overwhelmingly take issue with one specific manner of MC representation—one that seems to plague the industry. If you’re not an avid consumer of visual novels, this begrudged answer may surprise you!

But hey, we haven’t closed it yet: you can contribute your opinion too until August 5th, 11:59 PM EDT. Stay tuned for our detailed write-up on the results, next time. We’ve got another survey in the works too (sounds like we’ve got a few hard decisions, huh?) so keep tabs on our Twitter when we release that form.

Greyson’s Twitter

Greyson’s been taking a break from Twitter for a minute. Working Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday overheated him, and in that vulnerable time, he caught a virus! So now he’s on sick leave and we’ve promised him an easier schedule of one day a week when he gets better. His posting schedule will be announced soon. You can still send him some love on his Twitter account. He’ll be sure to respond when he’s feeling up to it. He’s always there for you. Will you return the favor?

Main Game Progress

Common Route:

Rough Outline: 100% ✔

Revised Outline: 100% ✔

Draft Script: --%

The Artist: Matthias Barousse

Rough Outline: 100% ✔

Revised Outline: --%

Progress on the main game has primarily been on the common route outline. Some interesting things to note are that last time we reported our revision to be at 90%. After implementing feedback, our clean outline doubled in word count and we’ve reviewed it entirely since then. So now we’re thoroughly at 100%!

The breakdown of that is:

We finished up the common route’s Part 3: The Interviews, in which Lynn meets all her clients whom she may or may not have stumbled upon at a legendary bash.

We elaborated on Part 2: The Party encounters and added more variations which subsequently trickle over into alternate interactions in The Interviews.

We added an interactive, portent dream sequence the night of The Interviews, right when Lynn hits the bed after evaluating all potential clients at work.

... and a few other additions. Also among other things, we’ve actually started work on the draft script already, but we’ve not had time to properly calculate the percentage. It’ll be updated accordingly in our next log.

What’s Next For Us

We’re going to finish up our script draft and start focusing our efforts into creating a playable, visual alpha build of Primrose Path. Yes, we want to play our game as much as you do and that’s motivation enough!

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:

Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see here? We want to know! Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox here on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and Lemma Soft!

Thanks for reading! Keep up and remember to enjoy your Quiet Days. ♥

Socials

- Micro-updates on Twitter!

♦ Factoids with Greyson!

- Live art development on Twitch!

- Art logging on Instagram!

- Ask us anything here!

- Continue the discussion on Discord!

- Master thread on Lemma Soft!

#devlog #primrosepath #visual novel #otome #english otome #indiedev #gamedev #otomedev

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violetsystems · 3 years

Text

#personal

For once I’m not terribly moody although I did wake up pretty early. My mom called last night presumably while I fell asleep watching the Road Warrior. I also watched Alien Covenant for the first time yesterday all the way through. I’ve been living all this time thinking they never patched the plot holes together from Prometheus. Lots of DNA porn in that. If there is such a thing. I’m sure everyone has seen it by now so I’m not spoiling anything. But the bomb dropping on an alien planet in the form of a chain of nucleotides is kind of raw. Bleached blond android reminiscent of 1940′s Germany though still undoubtably referencing Lawrence of Arabia. It reminds me of an avalanche moreover the effect of how snow particles reorganize themselves. This effect is called the Catherine Wheel and forms together when smaller particles shift together between bigger mass movements. I love that quote from Stone Island somewhere back in 2008. A purple jacket with embroidery talking about snowflake responsibility when it all comes tumbling down. Life lately seems to be a nonstop seesaw of hope and fear. I’ve been kind of stuck in a holding pattern with everything. One of the biggest roadblocks was a vaccine. I took the train earlier in the week one block to Bulls Stadium. I live that close. In about twenty minutes I was all patched up with the latest update. It’s 2021 mind you. I’m still recovering from a mortal wound back last July. I was in New York that February at the heat of it. The simple fact that I’ve stayed alive is a triumph to me. But after a full five days after being vaccinated there are no real side effects to talk about. I read somewhere someone who wrote at length how the side effect they felt was guilt. That somehow they didn’t deserve this when the rest of the world is suffering. That narrative is problematic at the moment for me. The sticker I received after getting poked in the arm helped me understand it better. Protect Chicago. When the military nurse injected me I replied that I was thankful for their help. They replied it was the other way around. Getting vaccinated is certainly the healthy thing you can do if you can get it. It’s also rather understandable to feel confused as to which one to get. I do feel lucky to be able to experience a platform that is the start of something new for medical science. MRNA is about as real as it gets. There is no live virus. It is more a set of instructions. I was eligible because I live in a high risk zip code. The dosages for Chicago were made available federally. So I don’t feel so much as guilt really after what I’ve been through. However it all worked out in the end doesn’t honor or dignify all that was sacrificed in the process. The virus to me was an exogenous shock to the system here in America. And it was ongoing. It trapped me. It trapped us all really. And the light at the end of the tunnel couldn’t start until the shot was in my arm. It’s too bad the tunnel pretty much collapsed behind me. But things reorder themselves after a disaster. Gravity pulls everything back to earth. My mom’s call was to inform me her new neighbors knocked on the door. Her old neighbor died. A terribly awful lady who yelled at my mom anytime she stepped into her backyard. My mom suspects her new neighbors are from Jamaica. She loves Jamaica. We went there one summer when I was little. She loved embarrassing me dancing to live music. I love the clear ocean water and being solicited on the street with huge garbage bags of weed. I was twelve back then. I thought it was salad. Either way I mentioned to her not to assume anything from an accent. She’s going to go to Home Depot and buy them a plant to show them some love.

As far as neighbors go, we’ve had a little turnover in my building. According to my landlord, it’s a full house. My mom lives just outside the city on the border. I live near the Heart of Chicago in an area called the Lower West Side. West side and south side are night and day. People from the South Side wear their White Sox hats like they’re part of a shock troop invasion sometimes. People on the west side don’t give a fuck. Dance Mania records originated in the Lawndale neighborhood far west. Most of the Teklife footwork culture started further south near 95th and the Dan Ryan. My mom lives a bus ride away from the old Battlegrounds spot. But Chicago is by definition safer when you understand we live block by block. DJ Deeon said it best. Block business. Every street has it’s own culture and lore. It gets harder to parse as the years go by mostly because things get more diverse. Narratives get buried. People get it twisted. And you never know whose toes you are stepping on. People are always trying to get a read on you. Maybe pigeonhole you into a social group so they can worry less. I’ve had people tell me they get nervous when they couldn’t keep tabs on me. I’ve never been one to hold myself back from exploring. I’ve wandered back and forth to Korea, Japan and China by myself. The last year and a half has been sort of torture for me. I’ve felt trapped and in limbo. Much less the last few weeks. There’s always little signs that things are getting better around you. Or at least signs that people understand your context and what it is that makes you happy. There’s also always people out there that think they know you better. Chicago can be up in your face at times. Accusatory. It doesn’t like lone wolves unless it can corral them together in a pen. There’s always an agenda here. Much like anywhere. But in Chicago, it moves slower. Gentrification to me here has always been a sweeping motion. People come in that you don’t know and claim to be neighbors. They set up camp in your sacred spaces and you assume there’s some sort of mutual understanding. Community can be somewhat pushy when it comes to sharing power. Nobody has ever really ever asked me anything. It’s always statements or projections. I can explain this by how many times people have asked or said my name in the last year. It’s painfully low. People aren’t polite. They are balancing huge weights on their shoulders. I get that nobody has time for me. Living in a city like Chicago is facetime every time you walk out the door. But there’s times when people would rather just be rid of you than have to settle up. And there’s enough intimidation out here that goes hand in hand with gentrification. If you resist you obviously have some problem. And when you do, you are asking for more trouble. And yet after awhile standing your ground in Chicago is a lot like being a stick in the mud. There’s a point when people give up trying to push an immovable object. They just build around the foundation of it. And in some ways having a history of being both exceptionally mobile and classically predictable is a good thing. Of all the things I could have worried about the last nine months it was having a place to live and shelter in place. It isn’t like I have to go very far for real culture. I don’t own a car. The train is literally out my kitchen window. I can walk to Chinatown. I get Korean stew every Sunday. The faces I see every day are not exclusively Caucasian although the intimidation I feel is primarily from White people. I stumbled the other day when the operator on the vaccine line asked my race. I said white at first but white isn’t a race. It isn’t even a culture. I’m half Swedish, a little German and Croatian. I don’t see anybody sitting home on a Saturday night watching Anthony Hopkins as Hrothgar to celebrate their heritage around here with me. I do see a bunch of generic white people fearful that I’m something they can’t control. Welcome to America I guess.

I have family all over the world. A cousin who lives in Hong Kong who I’ve reached out to again but has gone silent. Another cousin from Africa I’ve never met who shares the same name as me but not the same color of skin. These little details are lost amongst a sea of paranoia, disinformation and pranks. I write the same shit here every weekend like a faq on Usenet. Frequently asked questions about our friend we’ve known for years but can’t trust. Things better left unsaid or skimmed over. Most of being confident in this age is realizing when you are not the problem. Everybody is looking for someone to blame. And everybody is talking on the internet. Everybody wants to win their argument in a cage match to an audience of influencers around the globe. There are real people in every situation suffering in complex ways that you size up on your forums. Everyone is a private detective. Everybody plays CSI. Everybody got the latest dirt on the tiniest speck of dust in the wind. And everything is twisted to fit a larger agenda and narrative that becomes impossibly complex until it collapses. We all get lost in the Avalanche. Failures and fuckups get lost in an alternate reality game of ABC’s and P’s and Q’s. Trying to juggle and wiggle through these busy bodies that don’t give a fuck about us. Trying to argue with a brick wall that will soon shift and crumble. And we all feel completely small in the process. A little snowflake. All by itself. Resorted by the tides of the moon with each passing invisible wave of gravity and physics. The entropy of things that what we build can fall apart eventually. How long that happens is determined by the bonds we keep. Whether it’s worth it in the long run. And I worry less these days about what isn’t working and more about what keeps me together. Where I land within all of this. I’ve felt alone and not so much over the last year or so. I long for physical connection just like anybody else. But without the right foundation it’s damn near impossible to connect it all together. Sometimes when the avalanche comes, it’s better to roll with the punches and see how it all sorts out. And there are plenty of seismic rifts happening in the world today acting upon by any number of exogenous shocks. The virus being one of them. When it’s lifted, the problems we had before all of this are still there. And the tunnel to the past has all but been demolished. Where do you go forward in the light? Maybe you just take a rest. Maybe you wait for people to recover their sense of balance and direction. After that kind of disaster you definitely don’t make any sudden movements. I’ve thought about travelling again this summer. This idea of revenge travel is ridiculous to me and slightly toxic. If everybody is filled with bloodlust, I’d rather just relax at home until it’s my time to shine. I’ve been to New York so many times already and nobody ever wants to hang out. And for once in my life all the signposts point back to here at least when it comes to sanctuary. Everybody in the world is looking for Sanctuary. Everybody in the world wants peace. And yet not everyone in the world wants to see eye to eye and share this planet together. Not everyone wants to put their ego aside and respect the dignity and horror of being alive. And subsequently many people have an internalized guilt over this. They romanticize it. They deflect and project it back onto you. They gaslight and pretend you are invisible. They create false narratives to help them sleep at night when their nerves are on fire from consumption, greed, and guilt. And the bullshit ultimately floats to the surface of this toilet we call life. My life at times in the last nine months feels like it was flushed down the toilet. Like some well meaning android dropped a bomb of toxic shit on my entire game plan. I’m resilient enough to live through it. I’m smart enough not to consider revenge. I’ll be more comfortable with that statement after I get my second shot. Until then I’m not making any sudden moves. Or any controversial statements other than I still love you. <3 Tim

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wyrmguardsecrets · 7 years

Text

To people complaining about Blood Elf RP.

**MOD NOTE: Placing this under a cut because jesus christ dude this shit was fucking long**

Dear players who continually complain about Blood Elves,

I came to Wyrmrest Accord from a dead server, completely alone, no contacts, no friends. I was elated to find a Silvermoon that actually had people in it, I moved my priest over before my main and sat on the edge of the fountain in Silvermoon while alt tabbed finishing my last night of raiding with a guild before transferring my main.

I tabbed back in to jump and noticed there were people roleplaying at me. My first roleplay experience on Wyrmrest Accord. It was a pair of Orcs who had come to Silvermoon specifically to antagonize and hate on Blood Elves. So here my dude was, sitting there minding his own business, gazing at the fountain, and being the recipient of hostility. What made so little sense about it was that they were antagonizing my character because there are too many Blood Elves in Silvermoon. I think my character gave them a look as if they were wearing their pants on their head because that’s like going to France and complaining that too many people are speaking French.

Over the years I’ve witnessed a non-stop bombardment, mostly from Orcs, Trolls, and Undead, but from everyone to a lesser extent, hating me despite not even knowing me simply because when I made a Blood Elf Paladin in Burning Crusade I found I like playing Blood Elves. I like their animations, I like their jokes, I like their voice actor who was also responsible for playing many characters I enjoyed on television when growing up. I liked their background story, being a zombie apocalypse survivor for whom the ends justify the means is really cool. What kind of pain, what kind of suffering must this character have gone through? How has he coped? How does he think, how does his experiences shape him? Who has he lost? How has he survived? That’s some nifty lore.

But this hate has come from all sides and is constant. I see it on Forums, Tumblr, Facebook when I bothered, Discord, OOC in chat channels, IC by people who have decided to come to Silvermoon just to pick on the elves. It’s everywhere and it’s inescapable. I watch as almost daily RPer bashes people for playing elves. Every. Day.

I’ve begun to just see images of indignant children shouting in shrill voices, “STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE” and “STOP NOT LIKING WHAT I LIKE” when I read complaints about Blood Elves. And no, it doesn’t matter how you frame it, it’s still complaining.

You can try to frame it as a “diversity” issue but when push comes to shove you aren’t paying for anyone else’s subscription so you don’t really have a say in what they play. You could go to Blizzard and demand that they put a limit on the number of one class you can play but I can tell you right now that they will never enact such a limit. In reality we will probably see further relaxation on race/class choices as time goes on. When Blood Elves can be shamans and druids my Horde roster will consist entirely of Blood Elves.

And before you start questioning why I play Horde if I just want to be pretty, I’m going to point out that I’ve been playing Horde for a long time, probably longer than you, since November of 2003. I remember what it was like before Blood Elves, I remember the massive faction imbalance that Blood Elves helped solve. I remember how much harder it was to do things like Blackwing Lair with Shamans instead of Paladins, how we were stuck with Resto Shamans having to heal while not having the best class set allocations while having priests dispel on Baron Geddon while Alliance had their Paladins cleanse and their priests heal. I remember having to learn to stance dance to get out of fears while tanking Magmadar while Alliance had fear ward. Blood Elves and Paladins coming to the Horde was the absolute best game balancing step Blizzard has EVER taken.

I remember after Majordomo, we’d all kill our characters and corpse run back to the raid to go kill Ragnaros. Everyone would get naked and hop on domo’s hotplate. Everyone but me. I couldn’t stand the look of my main naked, so I ate a repair bill so I didn’t have to look at the shriveled hunched body of a male troll as I ran naked across the Searing Gorge. The shape of the male troll reminded me of haunting photos I had seen of emaciated people (“Muselmänner”, living corpses) rescued from Auschwitz. Even though trolls are buff, their mass compred to their length and their posture was just too uncomfortabe. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe non-blood Elves aren’t everyone’s RP style, and sometimes for very good reasons?

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about Blood Elves that are homophobia driven. The males are too gay. Why yes, their voice actor is an openly gay voice acting legend, problem? Blizard actually made them ‘buffer’ than elves should be because of homophobia. To this day I think that having mildly pretty men by contrast to other men in the game triggers homophobia. Perhaps Blood Elves weren’t made for the straight male eye, perhaps they were made for the female eye. They were made for the queer eye. They were made because the Horde races lacked mass appeal, and their designs made it very hard for the average player to empathize or immerse themselves into these characters.

Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is being made to think that everyone who doesn’t play a Blood Elf hates you just because you happen to play one? Can you imagine being the recipient of hate being your very first experience on this server? Oh I know you’re going to say, “It’s just IC” except for, it isn’t really. This hatred is a constant bombardment across mediums, this is self-insertion of the author’s opinion into characters in a way that makes no sense. Stop it.

Now here’s my point: You blame Blood Elf roleplayers for there not being enough of other things, you blame Blood Elves for the dearth of good guilds or communities that center around other Horde races. What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

If this site had the ability to do pull quotes (where you take a sentence, separate it out with horizontal rules and make the text very big) I’d totally pull quote that. But I can’t so I’m going to repeat it a few times for emphasis.

What race people choose to RP on WOW is not zero sum.

The popularity of Blood Elves is not taking away from the creation of other guilds, groups, and communities. The popularity of Blood Elves is not taking players away from other guilds, groups, and communities.

Blood Elves are not the problem. Would you like to know what the problem is? Take those crooked little fingers you’re pointing and rotate them 180 degrees on the horizontal axis. Where are those fingers pointing? Why they’re pointing at you. YOU are the problem.

There. I said it. You are the problem. Every single person who is blaming people who RP Blood Elves for their problems, every person passive-aggressively screaming “STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE,” every person denigrating people who RP Blood Elves as shallow, uncreative, unskilled, bland, superficial, in it for the ERP, boring, or whatever. You are the problem.

One more time. You are the problem. Yes you. If you yourself haven’t engaged in this behavior, then the behavior of others around you. When was the last time you told your Belf bashing friends to shut the fuck up? I bet you don’t like blanket statements being made about you but you sit by quietly while your friends do the same damn thing.

Players of non Blood Elves are to blame for the dearth of non Blood Elf RP, not Blood Elf Roleplayers. All y'all’s actions, your behavior, and your choices are the poison that has stunted your community growth.

When you people sit there and denigtate people who RP Blood Elves, you need to understand that other people are doing it too, and that if we’re listening we find a symphony of hate from theother side. I know why you do it, you’re hoping to discourage, to pressure, to force, to make Blood Elf RPers feel bad so they will decide to stop liking what you don’t like and start liking what you like so you can have more RP partners.

Except it doesn’t actually work that way. What you’re actually doing is painting yourselves as hostile and it makes people who main Blood Elves. It makes us think that if we decide to make an alt and go play with you, that you’re going to be hostile to us the moment you find out we main a Belf. This deters us from wanting to play with you. Why would we subject ourselves to such hostility?

I had a male orc prot warrior that I played as an argent aligned male orc prot paladin, a character with all of the ferocity and strength of an orc combined with a stalwart defender who may or may not actually be able to use the light. It was a fun character. I deleted it because I realized that I could never RP it among other orcs because I main a belf. I made a pair of male blood elf hunters intended to be dark ranger bards. 80s metal wailing manshees in undead elf bodies with red eyes, big hair, and sun lutes. But I realized that while the idea is cool and fun that undead RPers would likely hate my characters for having belf models let alone being male instead of female, even though manshees were added in Legion. I repurposed the characters into something else. While these things are weird and quirky, they’re examples of some of the ideas, possibly fun ideas, that non-Belf RPers lose out on when they constantly bombard other creative people with endless hostility.

The only non-Belf groups that I’ve ever seen try to reach out and engage others has been a group of really nice Tauren. If I was going to RP something other than a Bloof, I’d probably RP a Tauren because I’ve seen that there’s at least some circles of Tauren who likely won’t shit at me for maining a Belf. They’re doing it right. Learn from them.

No one will listen to the Blood Elf RPers’ critiques of what you all need to do and change. Change must come from the inside.

If you want to see things get better you need to start being excellent to each other, you need to be the change you want to see, and you need to quit yer bitchin’. Then you need to tell the people who are being passive aggressive, or outright aggressive, to people playing Blood Elves just because they’re playing Blood Elves, to have a nice glass of shut the fuck up.

Change comes from making a stand. Let me tell you that when these people start getting bombarded by a couple dozen scoldings from their peers for being a jackass they’re going to learn that it’s uncool and stop being a jackass. Then the community healing process can start.

When hating on players for playing Blood Elves becomes uncool, then players who have decided that all y'all are hostile may consider trying to interact with you, put alts in communities, and help you grow and nurture your own communities.

#submission #not a mod post

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