#touchstarved theory

[queen-shiba]

OKAY OKAY I MIGHT BE ONTO SOMETHING HERE

@killersweetie @fizzydreamz

I WANTED TO KNOW WHY AIS CALLS MC SPARROW AND I WAS LIKE

"Okay, so what does a Sparrow symbolize?"

Y'ALL

"In conclusion, the sparrow is a beloved bird that has played an important role in culture and literature for centuries. Its symbolism has been used to represent themes such as love, loyalty, and hope, and it has been significant in religious contexts as a symbol of God's care for all creatures."

And even more than this.

I grabbed an article.

This makes me wonder what the dynamic between Ais and MC is supposed to be.

Ais said he found the nickname "Sparrow" to be more fitting.

Clearly the Sparrow is supposed to represent some form of remaining positive and persevering in the face of adversity. Perhaps this relates to keeping Ais grounded; maybe even helping him keep control of himself.

MC is a source of hope for Ais?

And if a Sparrow visits you, in many cultures it means protection and good luck.

Ais saw something in you that made him view you as that symbol. A symbol of good luck at the very least, and seeing how low his luck is, we can confirm he certainly needs it.

Now maybe, even if MC's luck isn't as good as it could be, MC is still luckier than anyone else there. MC lucks up a lot, and based on the implications that Ais brought MC to Kuras' clinic, he probably knows that. That's why he called them Sparrow. They were lucky enough to survive.

And if MC stays with him and chooses to help him, that would make MC his protective charm against Ocudeus and the Seaspring in a way, keeping him from losing himself. He has something else to focus on now, and someone to help him, and probably someone to return the favor for.

IT'S 4AM AND THE THOUGHTS PLAGUE ME I JUST ATE A SHIT TON OF ICE CREAM AND I'M READY TO KILL GOD

[theravenanarchy]

I realized something about the Touchstarved mc. A lot of people have said they think it's goofy or overly edgy that they wear bandages rather than gloves because "yeah obviously gloves would be safer and less conspicuous", but for one I don't think wearing elbow length gloves 24/7 is as incognito as y'all might think. Second I think reason they actually wear is because they want it to seem like they have wounds like severe burns or something similar because then people are less likely to even try to touch them. If you're wearing gloves someone may still try to grab your hand or if you're purchasing something they may try to give you the money directly, where as if they think your hands are wounded or sensitive they'll avoid it even if necessary (like Ais catching them around their waist in the Seaspring) or placing things on tables rather than passing it directly. It seems like the kind of thing the team would use for sublet story telling, maybe we'll even get a scene of one of the love interests asking about it and this will the MC's answer. Idk what do y'all think?

[kekeke32]

TOUCHSTARVED trailer theme theory??

Hi guys, hi everyone. Hope we’re doing well!

SO the full version of the trailer theme is finally out on YouTube and holy shit??? It goes so HARD!!! Give it a listen here.

After rewatching it over and over again, I noticed something so I’ll map out which lyrics appear with which character for y’all to see:

Wish I could’ve added more ss but I’m on the mobile app 🥲 Anyways, I really don’t think the dev team added the characters photos randomly ‘cause check this out:

In Ais’s part, the lyrics are about a certain weakness (ik the lyrics “my weakness” refer to a person but I chose to ignore that jskdksk) and survival. This may be a reach BUT doesn’t this reminds you of Ais’s official character description? Specifically of this part: “Ais seems capable of curing you...but a sick sense of dread surrounds him. He's beginning to suspect that he may not be as in control of his powers as he thought. Can you save each other, or will he drag you down to the abyss with him?" This so-called “weakness” could be his very own powers and he’ll need the player to help him, to “survive”.

Now, about Vere’s part, I don’t have much to say tbh other than the fact that the lyrics “Cause everytime we touch” appear for the first time in his part and I guess you could say it’s related to his frequenting at the brothel? (iykwim 😏) Oh! And you could also see him being touched by a lot of different hands in the trailer. Besides that, his part ends with the lyrics “need you by my side” sung softly by the singer hmm…

Kuras’s part on the other hand, starts strongly (I suck balls at describing music so pls listen 4 urselves, you’ll know what I mean😭) and at 1:59 mins the lyrics are “Cause everytime we touch” then his face darkens a little and it stars an instrumental interlude. I don’t know what that really means but he’s sus

Mhin’s part is sung very softly as well and the lyrics “We’ve been through them all. You make me rise when I fall” are so sweet more so because I think in their route they’ll open up more to the player after going together through incomprehensible horrors and we’ll learn how to support each other <33

Finally, Leander’s part!! Now, LISTEN. His part is the reason why I even made this post in the first place lmao This mf is way too sus but first of all, the building synth progression at 2:58???? oh my god I got CHILLS. literal chills. *ahem* Moving on, his part, starts strongly the same as Kuras’s part did. Their parts are the only ones sung like that… Weird, huh? Anyway, after the lyrics “I can’t let you go. Want you in my life” at 3:49, the song gets SUPER intense and starts sounding very desperate ig?? (kudos to Dan! love his voice frfr) and Leander’s part ends with “Need you by my side”. Okayy y'all… Y'ALL. THIS IS CRAZY. In his part we have both the lyrics "I can't let you go. Want you in my life" AND "I want this to last. Need you by my side". AHHHH Leander you obsessed little bitch (affectionate)

In conclusion, there’s no fucking way the red spring team didn’t assign the certain parts of the lyrics very and I mean VERY purposefully to each LI. The parts suit them specifically well so I highly doubt it’s random but it could also just be me reading too much into this

Whatever!!! Good morning/Good night to this fandom only ^_^

[eggroll-sama]

People are talking about how Leander will play a huge role in Ais route and possibly get super possessive and competitive with Ais over MC, but are we going to ignore the threat that is Vere?? He was getting a bit hmmm possessiveness over Ais in the 1-1 convo with MC: “you don’t know him. Not like I do.” And not to mention he showed signs of being romantically interested as well: (I thought you didn’t like most people), “Ais isn’t most people. He’s better.” Ok so Vere clearly feels a deep connection with Ais, and as far as we’re concerned Ais is the ONLY person that makes him feel this way in forever. If MC is suddenly brought into the picture in Ais route, how would Vere exactly feel? Replaced? Betrayed? Furious?

Now don’t get me wrong I’m all for a delicious love triangle any day I love the drama and angst that it brings, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Vere kills you in Ais’ route for getting too close, or at least there would be heavy implications that he hates seeing you getting too close with Ais because he thought he was the only that can get personal with Ais. I could see it playing out like Felix and Rime’s route in Last Legacy, but possibly less possessiveness from Vere; technically it was a friends with benefit’s relationship with accidental attachment. Actually scratch that. This is a horror gothic game, so it can take a dark-ass turn with Vere and Ais relationship. Vere over-stepping his boundaries and trying to kill you, then Ais going berserk and confronting Vere >:(. I just know that Vere isn’t going to back down without a fight cuz the moment I saw him blushing I knew. He might legitimately love Ais and I can’t blame him for wanting to kill us for him.

[portsandstars]

Bad Ending Bingo!

Any bad endings you anticipate happening?

[certainstarfishsandwich]

It's not that Mhin turns full Corvid Monster, but that their body is still stuck in the between phase where they're both human and Monster, like a more fucked up version of Howl's Raven form in Howl's Moving Castle.

[kimiro-art]

This might be a very far reach but...

[cacaobean760]

OMG GUYS I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS OR WHAT IT IMPLIES BUT I NOTICED THIS

So Kuras is kinda out of the picture or on the sidelines all by his lonesome which is kinda weird because I feel like it would be more in character for Mhin to be on the side by themselves BUT what’s also weird is that Mhin is NEXT TO AIS and we know from the demo and Ais talking about Mhin that they do not like Ais, sooo why are they sitting next to him???? Also it’s the same exact thing with Vere and Leander. I have even talked about this before, about how Vere HATES LEANDER with a passion so why is he also next to Leander???????? Like I don’t know what this means but it’s interesting that the people who don’t like each other are next to one another and kinda paired up because they are on opposite sides of that table and Kuras is by himself. ALSO KURAS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS HIS EYES CLOSED!!! This is unusual because it seems like Ais and Mhin are looking at each other but is obvious that Vere and Leander are staring at each other so, again, why is Kuras by himself not looking at anyone or anything and the rest of them are paired and looking at each other???

[beheamothscreamoth]

Hear Me Out on This-

Okay, I'm like 100% sure that someone has talked about this, but for my own sanity, I need to say it again. So, in the trailer for Touchstarved, we get flashes of the LIs' "true nature"/"hidden side" if that makes sense? We get a glimpse of what's going on beneath the surface of these characters and what they're hiding - We see the outline of Kuras's angel form, Vere's monster form, Mhin's cursed bird form, Ais and Ocudeus, but Leander?

Leander's got nothing going on, which I find both funny and a little scary- He has no body transformation, no big monster, nothing. It's just him.

From just the silhouette alone, and comparing it to the other's silhouettes in these cuts, he's Just A Guy™. He's Just Some Dude™. He's not hiding anything! :) (He is-)

I think his having no physical changes can be sort of tied into the fact that Leander is trying to present himself as more trustworthy/normal than the other LIs?? Everyone else has something going on with them in these quick cuts, but Leander has nothing but his usual sprite and FNAF movie glowing eyes (/j /lh). Leander not having any sort of changes in this cut could be him trying to convince us as the viewer/player that he's trustworthy, not just the MC in the game,, He has no transformation/glowing magic tattoos/chains binding him, so obviously he can be trusted, right?? Am I making sense??

Leander doesn't have any hidden horrors/monstrosities beneath the surface because he IS the horror /lh

[kurarelalma]

In the stat chart for Leander it says he likes to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. But if you look closely behind Leander and the Ouroboros and flowers theres blood smeared all over. It’s like he’s hiding it, using the flowers and the Ouroboros to distract. Like he used his pretty flower magic in the demo. So what is the necessary bloodshed he is hiding? Also, his chart looks like it has damp dirt around the paper and thats why it’s falling apart. Could be damp dirt from the Silent Crypts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[queen-shiba]

LITERALLY WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT AIS' FATAL FLAW???

@killersweetie @fizzydreamz

"Lets his emotions rule him, with destructive consequences"

Do you not understand how BIG this is???

He would fall in love so hastily and let himself open up to you, desperate to feel some form of security. Like he's grounded and not floating amongst an endless sea of minds lost in his own.

But oh, when Ocudeus steps in and hurts you using Ais' body, he regrets it all. He hates that he allowed you so close and he would chase you away to protect you from the being in his head that wouldn't hesitate to hurt you again.

While he feels his control slipping, he isolates himself and again, he is left with the voices and screams in his head that are constant. The only thing that would drown them out is the overwhelming voice of Ocudeus that whispers in his ears to lose himself.

And he would endure without you there to remind him of who he is. Everything would jumble up and become a million blurred lines. He will break without you, and when you think he's finally let you back in, he'll be shattered.

He won't be the Ais you knew.

[lu-dao-writes]

This is a crack thought… But like…

What if Kuras and Vere are exes?👀

[toxintouch]

Lovent Theories off the top of my head...

⟡ Mhin is not from Lovent, but they DID contract their curse there. "Anything for the pursuit of knowledge..." Perhaps Mhin had only intended to go there for study and they unwittingly brought Something Else back...

Title tag is #lost expeditions... Mhin went to Lovent with loved ones and is the lone survivor of the expedition?? No one has ever made it back except for Mhin?

⟡ Mhin is from Lovent but...

"In a bygone era,"

Is Mhin just...very old? An extended lifespan due to their curse?

Or maybe the whole city got swallowed up the the Shroud and there were some dimension time shenanigans...? The city ended up in a halfway point? And the city is actually still inhabited, but has been in a perpetual state of Zombie Appocalypse Fogfall. Silent Hill...?? am I describing Silent Hill? Mhin fought to escape and that is when Kuras finds and help them?

⟡ Did they learn something about the Senobium while in Lovent? Is that why they are so determined, so sure that what they need is inside?

[kekeke32]

I love how whenever red spring posts something about Leander I stop whatever I was doing and start going full MatPat mode. He genuinely makes me lose my mind in the best way possible.

[eggroll-sama]

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to LOVE Ocudeus in Ais route. If you guys haven’t see the recent post for Ais, there is a new Ais’ line, “Obedience suits you, sparrow.” Someone else on here said that it’s Ocodeus speaking, not Ais, and I can’t agree more.

This line goes completely against Ais’ character. In the Demo, Ais tells MC that he likes their “shitty attitude” and when they disobey him (i.e, biting him, swearing at him, putting him in his place). Ais loves it when MC is rebellious, while Ocudeus doesn’t.

But you know what Ais and Ocudeus relationship gives off?? VENOM. It’s giving Venom. And I love Venom. A sentient living inside a host, giving them supernatural powers, and enabling them to do terrible things. I’m going to theorize that Ocudeus is power hungry, greedy, and what Ais has to fight off throughout the story. Ais is hanging on to the bit of humanity that he has left, and the bad ending is if Ocudeus consumes Ais’ soul and fully takes over.

But if Ocudeus has a soul, does that mean that they are susceptible to gaining feelings for MC- as Ais gains feelings for MC, will Ocudeus start to love us as well? Or will Ocudeus only see us as a tool for power? Will he fake his affection to get us under their thumb? I can imagine it: taking over Ais body, MC confused, him approaching you in a voice you’ve never heard before, and trying to seduce you so you’d obey him (I know I’m going to be puddy if he actually does this in the game). Of course, this is all acting so he can use your powers for his own gains.

GAHHHH so many possibilities! So excited to find out what this character is all about.

[portsandstars]

Revisiting Red Spring Studio's Interview with Blerdy Otome - Select Quotes

It's been almost a year since RSS had this interview, but I think that many people have not listened to it, or recently revisited it. I thought I'd highlight some quotes from it, though the entire interview is worth watching! Some of these quotes I have lightly modified for clarity or succinctness but the majority are direct transcripts.

23:30: "Touchstarved is a horror romance visual novel where the entire cast is made up of characters where you're like, "I can fix them!" but you actually can't. I think that Touchstarved is a very complex and mature story with really really complex themes and interwoven routes and obviously it's very sexy at the same it's a romance - and I think it's one of those games that I've always wanted to see exist and I think that a lot of the team has always wanted to see this game exist as far as being this kind of like dark, broody, moody, but also very deep, right, and authentic and honest exploration - Monsters, and the feeling of being a monster - feeling of being an "other", right, whether you're queer or POC or anything like that… we've created a game that's not only really fun and action-packed and bloody and all that kind of stuff… but very heartfelt in a way that I hope readers can pick up on.

Imo, this line of reasoning ("you can't fix them", and the cast's monstrous nature and how it intrinsically ties to/is an analogy for being queer, or POC) - makes me think that even in the good endings for the game, your character won't be minimizing the character's monstrousness. For example, even if your character has the Power of True Love, it's not going to make Vere nonviolent or absolve Kuras's guilt.

25:35: "These themes are pretty complicated in a way that's messy and honestly bloody and I think for that reason is why we're looking at a mature rating - that said, when we set out to make the game our goal wasn't really to be explicit, it was much more to focus on sexiness . . ."

Just clarifying that there won't be explicit sex scenes in the game.

28:55: "What are some aspects of the story that you are most excited to showcase?" "I'm so excited that people get to die terribly, that just gets me so pumped up. Like in previous jobs I have not been allowed to brutally murder . . . main characters permanently and it's very important to me that I now have the power to write really just messed up awful endings…Don't worry, there's also good endings there too, they just get as much passion and all that stuff as the bad endings… but the bad endings, oh my gosh, those are some of my favorites."

This line makes me curious about whether the main characters are just MC, or if the other characters will brutally die as well!

30:50 "A little while ago we posted Kuras's character reveal and people really like the fact that he can't cook so for me it's really cute and innocent seeing people obsess over that fact and I really just want them to see the contrast between that version of Kuras in their head and what he's actually like in his route. Like I just really want to see them react to like the terrible things he's going to do. . . They're all awful in different ways that I'm really excited for people to see it - it's very funny to see everyone be like _Literally name any of the characters of the cast and be like "they're my little meow meow" and it's like, oh. good. I hope this continues once they learn more about the characters. Obviously they're all wonderful - right, the characters are all awful but they're also all wonderful".

32:26 : "the theme of monstrousness and how each character kind of approaches it differently . . . because they're all monsters, even if they're not literally monsters . . .it also plays into each character's brand of horror in their own way as well that ties into their monstrous nature."

This line especially (to me) hints at how Leander is likely not SPECIFICALLY a monster, but a human with a monstrous nature.

34:30: - Ais was the first character they made and each of the other characters build upon him, so they spent a lot of time getting him right. Vere was the easiest to create and they made him in a weekend. Kuras was the hardest to create (especially visually).

38:00 "This is a romance game and a big draw of the game is making a love connection with these characters - do you all plan on including platonic friendship routes in addition to romance routes, or is it strictly romance?" The way that we planned out this game is that we wanted to focus on the intimacy of these individual relationships between the main character and the love interest and the route that they're on, right, so this is the way we had planned the game from the beginning. We really like poly romances, for example, and friendships, but we think that it wouldn't have made much sense for the characters in the story that we had written for them because this entire story - with who the main character is and why they're having to turn to these mysterious monstrous strangers - there's a level of intimacy involved in the themes and stories that we really focused on for how we're writing…

It's almost like a narrative design intentionality we did early on because each route that you'll be able to play from the main five cast is very driven and each character is like a ticking time bomb in their own way. So if you choose to romance Vere, Kuras's route still continues and you can see the effects of what not choosing Kuras is in Vere's route when you're playing Vere's route. So the world is meant to be very interwoven and interconnected where you can see the ripples of everyone's choices even when you're not romancing them and in that way we've designed this cast that's woven together. So if we did want to do a poly route, we would probably have to do entirely new characters . ."

43:30: "One of the fundamental goals of this game was to have, as you've been saying, a living world - a world that's evolving, and one of the ways that we wanted to communicate that was with the idea that these characters are not doing great… um, they're all in very very bad situations, uh, they're all essentially doomed if you do not go with them and it's seeing that carried out in each route that I hope will be really interesting for people.. it will be very sad, in a good way".

ARGHHH this is the WORST. This means that if you choose a character, you're essentially dooming the others. Though this will undoubtedly manufacture delicious angst, I'm soooo sad at imagining each of the other characters faltering and ultimately failing on their paths because you didn't chose them. Though, I wonder if there are some routes where multiple characters turn out ok, or if the entire cast is doomed as soon as you don't select them (in different ways depending on the route)?

54:30: "I also want to clarify too that even though we've been talking about blood a lot and all that kind of stuff and death and we love those parts of the story, um, if you get those endings there's a reason why, you know what I'm saying - you have to actively try to get those endings - poke the bear with a stick."

Definitely referencing Vere's bad ending in the demo. Personally I am too curious to avoid them, but it's encouraging that some of the MC deaths appear to be because you deliberately make dangerous choices, rather than simply "tricking" the player and surprising them.

Let me know what you think of these quotes, and the whole interview is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it!