#21 questions vn

[dreamtydraw]

Received really sweet message about 21 questions recently and it warmed my heart so as a little thank you I doodled Clem !

[citrusbuds]

so i played 21 questions by @dreamtydraw (smiling kicking my feet giggling blushing batting my eyelashes)

[decafdoodlez]

Pinned Post: Welcome and Intro ✨🤍🫶

UPDATED: 05/22/24

Hi there! Thank you for stopping by and checking out my blog!

Here you will find a lot of posts regarding Ren Hana (Fox), and my TPoF OC, Marina! I mainly post a lot of self-indulgent oc x canon content on this blog, so please be mindful of that!

Please be aware that this is an 18+ ADULTS ONLY blog. There are mature and graphic/sensitive themes throughout my posts and likes. If you're a bigot and/or a minor, please do not interact with my posts.

Blog Links (blog specific tags):

My Art My Writing RenRina Decaf Answers Decaf Rambles 🦊✨🤍 (Ren/Fox Reblogs) (commissioned art) (commissioned fics)

Outgoing Links:

Twitter Etsy Shop Instagram Ko-Fi

Quick Artist FAQ:

Who are you?

I’m Allie! Or Decafdoodles/Decafdoodlez :)

What do you do?

I’m an illustrator and graphic designer, both professionally and as a hobby. I also do like to write on occasion. ❤️‍🩹

What fandoms are you in?

Currently: BTD/TPOF (mostly Ren/Fox content)

On occasion: MHA (mostly Dabi content), OC Content

What do you draw?

Fanart

OC x Canon content

SFW & NSFW content

Do you offer commissions?

Not at this time, sorry! My freelance work takes a bit of my time right now, but I’ll update when I’m available for commissions though!

Got any other design or art related questions? Shoot me an ask box question!

OC FAQ:

Who are your current OCs?

Marina Kaninsen (25F/165 cm) - TPoF (OCxCanon ship: RenRina)

Rory Shay Flynn (28M/176 cm) - Personal OC for unamed VN project

Frederika Kumamoto (21-23F/157 cm) - BTD/YKMET (OCxCanon Ship: Main - StradeRika, Secondary - RenRika)

Kohaku Hajime (20-22F/170 cm) - MHA (OCxCanon ship: Main - DabiHaku, Secondary - MirkoHaku)

Are your OCs self inserts?

No! There may be some aspects of myself written into my OCs, such as Haku being timid, or Marina being results-driven, or Rika being emotionally guarded, but that can be said about mostly anybody who has ever made an OC, haha. My OCs are not vectors of me as a person, they don’t look like me, they don’t dress like me, and they are their own characters driven by different aspirations and goals. I have no issues with self-inserts though! If you go the self-insert route for your OC, that is totally valid! <3

Can I draw your OCs?

Of course! Please tag me if you do! :) <3

Can I draw your OC interacting with my OC?

Absolutely! =^~^= <3

Can I ship/pair your OC with my OC?

Absolutely, that is so fun! You can pair my OCs with anyone of any gender identity as long as they are of age (18+). All of my OCs are either unlabeled, or pansexual.

Can I ship/pair your OC with a canon character and my OC?

Yes! The more the merrier! For example, if you’d like to ship my TPoF OC Marina with the canon character Fox and your own OC, or my MHA OC Haku with the canon character Dabi and your own OC, that is A-OK!

If you have any OC related questions, please feel free to reach out to me through my ask box! :)

Thank you for reading through my pinned post! I love you, tyty! ╰(*´︶`*)╯❤️‍🩹

[bestlaidplansproductions]

We are delighted to announce that we will be giving a talk for Game Devs of Colors' 2024 expo from September 18 - 21!

Our talk is called "Why Save the Villainess? Challenging Injustice through Perspective."

Summary: "Save the Villainess is a romantic mystery visual novel (VN) that centers on a neurodiverse woman of color (WOC) named Jane who falls into a historical romance novel… only to become its hated villainess. While the game begins as a mystery focusing on who wants to kill the villainess, it develops into a meditation on betrayal, forgiveness, identity and free-will – one that examines how a WOC can survive an unjust society that condemns her. By questioning the concept of a villainess and using satire to deconstruct related injustices, Save the Villainess reflects on the inequities of a sexist, racist, and classist society – and shows how the inequities of the past resonate today."

If you are interested in seeing our talk - as well as many other talks by other fantastic game devs of color - please join us!

Tickets are available here - use promo code gdoc20 for 20%!

Want to learn more about Save the Villainess, our upcoming dark comedy murder-mystery with deep themes and romances with 5 striking and dangerous love interests?

🦋Join Save the Villainess' Kickstarter & Demo Pre-Launch.

🦋Wishlist Save the Villainess on Steam.

🦋Follow Save the Villainess on Itch.

🦋Sign up to the Mailing List for exclusive character cards every month.

Credits: Somate Studio for characters; @arodude & Karel Kok for backgrounds; Sokei for video design.

[turquoisesea01]

~ Welcome to TurquoiseSea ~

This is an 18+ Art Account.

Which means this account does not want minors interact with this blog. Any ageless blogs will be blocked immediately. If you’re an adult who hasn’t put their age in their bio yet, I advised you to do that immediately, especially to the people who are new to tumblr. People will think your are just a bot and will block you immediately if they don’t see anything written on your bio.

Anyways, once again, NO MINORS ARE ALLOWED TO INTERACT NOR FOLLOW THIS ACCOUNT. THIS IS AN ADULT SPACE. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. And no. I do not care if you’re turning 18 this month or 3 days or a week early, you’ll have to wait to interact this blog until you’re actually 18.

Another thing, I don’t want any, pedos, zoophiles, homophobic/transphobic content interact with me, keep that shit away from me.

Who Am I?

Hello! I am TurquoiseSea! But that’s just my username for art. My actual name is Jocelyne, but I usually go as Yoshi!

Why Yoshi? It’s just a nickname I had since childhood and I prefer that more than my actual name ^v^!

This is my sona Yoshi! ^v^

I am 21 years old, I am a pansexual Demi romantic cis girl and my pronouns are she/her! I am Salvadoran and Peruvian! However my Spanish isnt my best language to

Im an artist that loves to draw Yan characters, drawing fanart of anime and video game characters I like! I usually draw self inserts and my ocs, especially Virgil Evans!

Just a heads up, in this account I’ll also be venting through text posts and vent arts and will let you know that I’m okay. I just only want to get something off of my chest.

Who is Vigil?

Virgil Evans is an oc I had since childhood. At first he was roleplay character I use for, well, roleplay! Until when I stop roleplaying, I ended up making him his own character and eventually grew up with me throughout the years! He played a huge role throughout my life so expect to see much Virgil content in this blog.

HOWEVER!

To those who have gotten to this blog through my VN blog of Yan Virgil, Would You Stay, I’m not posting any Yan Virgil content in this blog. So please do not ask me any Yan Virgil or my VN related questions in my inbox. Those questions goes to my VN blog.

Yan Virgil in WYS is just an alternate version of my Og Virgil if things gone wrong in his world. Think of it as an alternative timeline.

Which fandom I’m currently in?

Yandere Visual Novels (more like a community than a fandom lol) : Such as See Thru Need A Friend? , Restart Heart, YOU and HIM, MINE VN, You Guardian Angel, My Ange, Camp WillowPeak, Drop In The Ocean, Favor, etc. ^v^ Im practically everywhere lmao (although I try my best to make fanart ;v; )

Degrees Of Lewdity : You can expect artwork of Kylar. I am a Kylar girlie lmao, I love that stinky icky lil skrunkly <3 My disgusting lil meow meow.

Obey Me! One Master to Rule Them All/ Obey Me! Nightbringer : Oof currently I’m burning out of the two games but I still lurks around in the fandom and sometimes draw fanart with my Mc :3, however! I have an AU about Lilith, if she were alive! So feel free to check out my side blog if you’re interested! Also I am a Barbatos simp! <3

Genshin Impact : The only time I draw fanart is Wanderer and a sketch of Nahida. And my ocs if they were Genshin playable characters lmao. But either way, RAAAAA I WANT TO PULL FOR NEUVILLETTE BUT I GOTTA WAIT A LITTLE MORE TILL I GET AT LEAST 50 PULLs PLEASE COME HIME NEVU—

Twisted Wonderland : I’m currently hyperfixated on the game for like since the English release came out lmao, I already have like two ocs! And two are basically based on the live action of Alice in Wonderland characters! Fior Rosehearts (based off of the White Queen) and Jasper Woods (based off of the Jabberwocky!) but eeee I’m so excited for the Glorious Masquerade event!

What Are My Boundaries?

Please don’t sexualize or be weird about my ocs who are minors. Such as Kota, Miski, Irvin, etc. Or even when I drew my adult ocs as their young version, do not be weird about it.

I do not mind playful flirting, virtual smooches, cuddles, hugs are okay with me! I don’t mind nicknames as well! Sexual flirting is ok as well, usually as jokes lol. But please keep in mind that I am also a human behind the screen, I have feelings and thoughts. I will feel uncomfortable if you go out of your way to my inbox to threaten me for sexual purposes, you will be blocked

I absolutely don’t mind if you shipped yourself or ocs with my ocs! As long it’s not problematic! I also don’t mind if my sona is also being shipped lol.

Feel free to ask me any questions! However do keep in mind that I might respond late due to me thinking carefully of what to answer or I get distracted lmao or if the question has gone too personal for me to answer, I’d rather not answer.

Once again if you came from my VN blog, do not ask me questions related about Yan Virgil. That’s for my WYS VN blog.

Please don’t ask me to draw for you unless I am taking art requests. I usually draw for the people I’m close to or my moots!

Sooo that’s pretty much it! I’ll add more if I remembered something! ^v^ I’ll have to add tags later but that requires me to organize my tags! So it will take awhile!

[hermitcyclop]

for the ask game…

fuck you. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25.

jk. 1, 2, 7, 13. bonus points if they are homestuck related

list 3 positive things about your current fandom(s)

Ok so for one, the sheer variety and uniqueness of fancontent produced by this fandom. The MSPFAs. The reanimated flashes. The dozens of fanmusic albums. The fangames, from VNs to fighting games to puzzle games to even multiplayer online sburb simulators. Fan merch like I've never seen before. Even more "classic" fancontent, like fanarts and fanfics, are distinct. Seriously, I didn't know it was possible to do all these things on ao3 before I started reading homestuck fanfics.

2, I don't know if this reflects the hs fandom at large (probably not) of the communities I dwelve in, but the fans are pretty queer, and it shows into their character depictions and comic analysis, so that's pretty cool.

3, I love all the little events and celebrations that rhythm the year, be it important dates such as 413 or 612 or the kids' birthday, or fan-led events such as the dirkjake big bang or rosemary month. These events persisting after years is pretty cool too.

a headcanon you weren't sure about at first but have come to like!

I'm not sure how to answer that bc I'm either pretty lenient about my HCs, or a die-hard about some of them and will have a hard time coming around an HC that contradicts them. Although when I was pretty new to the fandom I didn't really see Dirk as a trans guy, and look at me now.

your favorite tropes to read/write/draw

I *love* seeing two characters, who aren't into each other or related, who are ride or die for each other. BFFs who'll go to the end of the world if this means the other is happy. Bonus if one of them is a guy and the other a girl, for personal reasons. As for hs tropes, it's probably not really one but I like godtier garb and dream pajamas redesigns.

your favorite type of fandom event (gift exchange, ship week, secret santa, prompt meme, etc)

Fuck I already kind of answered that in the first question. Pretend you didn't read it. Anyway my fav fandom event is the djbb. Second place is SAHCon.

[shanicetjn]

Been meaning to ask a few of these uncommon questions for a while – your ocs are very cool and I want to know more! But life keeps happening and distracting me :(

Could you answer 7 for Azrael and 2 for Asmo? And I'm interested in 21 for both! I'm also very curious about A and B too! Feel free to pick and choose if this is too much for one ask!

(and sorry if you've been asked these before!)

PS. Saw on twitter that you'd made the deadline for your VN work - congratulations!

Aaa that means so much and I'm glad you like my OCs. I hope things will get better for you soon. Hang in there, I'm rooting for ya!! ♥

7. What triggers nostalgia for Azrael, most often? Does he enjoy that feeling?

Food, I think! He didn't grow up with many good memories but food has always been very comforting throughout his childhood. Hmm, I believe that he does! It's more along the lines of bittersweetness.

2. How easy is it for Asmodeus to laugh?

So very very easy! Asmo is your resident goofy silly sunshiney boi. ; v ;;

21. Why do they get up in the morning?

Azrael - To take the doggos out for a jog and to go to work. The 2 things that actually bring him some form of joy! xD Az loves his kids and he loves his work. [ Copied from a previous ask ]

Asmodeus - To go to uni unwillingly...He was forced by his brother to pursue his degree. xD But getting to hang out with his friends and go to football practice makes going there worthwhile!

A) Why are you excited about this character?

Azrael - It's honestly just because I have always been very obsessed with Death. The Angel of Death is my absolute favourite "being" and they are automatically my favourite in whatever media they appear in.

My Azrael has gone through many changes over the years and my love and excitement for him has not stopped growing. He's just a character that ticks all the boxes for me! :>

Asmodeus - He actually makes me so damn happy- It makes no sense to me honestly! xD Is it weird to say that Asmo makes me want to become a better person? He's a kind, sweet and bubbly character that views the world in such a positive light...It's nice.

B) What inspired you to create them?

All of my OCs are actually AU versions of my Angel-verse! Hence, the (weird) biblical names!! I've changed most of their names to better suit the modern setting (e.g. Amadeo, Belvan, Josias etc.) which is reflected in all the VNs they've appeared in. And I'm sure you can tell that I can't seem to change my habit of calling them by their biblical names... xD

Thus I was inspired by the angels and demons to create my OCs' earliest renditions...But for the Uni-verse? I made the decision to move them over because it's just easier for me to create and develop them. (Without getting too many unwanted comments from people because it touches on religion...I unfortunately shared it with irl people that weren't very open-minded so I just stopped. That was late-2014 I think aklsdfjalksdf)

I was in uni at the time and I have always been into Mafia-related media so I guess I just mixed both of those together! :>

Hopefully my long wall of text makes sense! ;; V ;; Thank you so much for these questions, they really got my brain working! And thank you for your kind words!! I honestly can't wait to share the VN with everyone. It's going to be a Halloween-themed one! >:]c

[megalommi]

I posted 227 times in 2022

145 posts created (64%)

82 posts reblogged (36%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@megalommi

@askdrstiofficial

@kimiwillsinforever

@mmishee-art

@wishing-stones

I tagged 214 of my posts in 2022

Only 6% of my posts had no tags

#megalosomnia - 134 posts

#baggs - 124 posts

#asks - 87 posts

#anon - 67 posts

#fan works - 53 posts

#fanart - 30 posts

#my art - 27 posts

#other's art - 20 posts

#lore - 12 posts

#derpychocho - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 84 characters

#but if its the same question with little else to add then i will probably not bother

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

((A message from DerpyChoCho )) -- CW: hypnosis, unreality, eye strain -- Take a deep breath. Relax. It's... "Just an Experiment"

A VN Game by DerpyChoCho Voice acting by @davetasticdave Megalosomnia AU by @megalommi

Play it here

359 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

#4

See the full post

405 notes - Posted January 21, 2022

#3

* You try your best to recall.

* A memory flickers.

Wake up soon, pet.

419 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

#2

Has it been a year already?

524 notes - Posted April 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Finally completed a proper ref sheet for Baggs!

543 notes - Posted February 10, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[papaziggy-devblog]

300 asks!?! TT-TT I am so sorry your cat did this to you.(tumblr, why won't you let me space) My ask was if it'd be okay if I used your vn characters in my fanfics when the demo/game comes out. The mc will be an aged up Frisk/Chara[21-23] from undertale and its aus.[it takes place 15 years after the end of UT] I want to respect the creators wants for their creations, which is why I'm asking. I also want to make sure their in character which is why I asked if crossover questions were okay.

O, ye you can do whatever it's cool o3o

All CWP characters are already 18+ tho

[dreamtydraw]

could you draw clem and aurore singing karaoke 👉👈

They are the type of duo who sing bad but very loudly with a lot of emotions, they'll have a voice extinction the next day.

[citrusbuds]

I LOVE YOU CLEM FROM 21 QUESTIONS AURGH IM CRYING

how i met your mother but its a french college student and a filipino foreign exchange. theyre so gorjus eaurgh wiping tears from my eyes

[gryphons-n-kelpies]

Question for Bird, what really inspired you to have the idea for DITO? Was it the folklore in general or have you had it on your mind for a while?

OH HO! This is actually a good story. Comes in 3 parts:

The easiest part. Was that I wanted to make something as a bit of a love letter for the Yandere VN community. Sure I could have settled with the yandere sticker bundles, but that didn't come until AFTER I developed Drop in the Ocean.. I just made a list, added some lovelies, kicked some out.. It's rather tough because I have to be aware that some Yans and their VNs will NOT mesh well with people and other Yans don't mesh well with me, but otherwise. This was a fun list to make... over and over and over... Then came the "I want to make a VN" popped up late '21 to early '22. I kept making a story on a Yan who 'saved' me from a Bar as I pretended to have them as my partner. So the Bar idea sprung on that, which built upon "easter egg," which caused me to go to Zack to bounce off the ideas in excitement. The enabler made club music for the VN, which in turn named the VN. It's thanks to Zack that DITO started to grow and become a whole story. It originally was to be a "I go to the bar and get a "taster" of other VN's" before it became a story of it's own. The third and final part. I held onto a story since my 10th year in school (originally thought it was my 9th, but nope), I wrote a story about a kelpie and a young girl. The kelpie posed as a child who tried to get the girl into the water. This story is actually part of DITO as "the accident"

[chimeriquement]

Annelise in a ball gown. That's it. That's the post.

Hey there! So, I watched Disenchanted and it made me want to draw a concept art for Annelise, so… here she is!

So, if you were in my Twitter circle, you must be thinking: “oh, finally”. If you weren’t, you may ask: who the heck is Annelise?

Well, I’m working, at a very slow pace for now (since my main focus is on The Stories of the Boys I Loved), on a Cinderella-themed Visual Novel, inspired by the Princess Maker series (although the project is meant to be more VN-ish and story-driven; the integration of a stats system that define a large variety of endings is what I decided to steal from this game series). Annelise is the Cinderella in question.

So, I created this character four years ago and planned on making a game involving her; but I never actually started this project. And although I have already drawn Annelise in the past (with… various designs), I never made a “concept art”, meant to be a tool to develop the actual game. So, it’s somehow the first official Annelise I draw?

So, regarding this dress, this is (you can guess it) the ball gown she wears at the ball (if she even goes… all according to her stats!). Yet, Annelise will have several way to get a dress and, therefore, she could wear different dresses at the ball according to how she gets the dress. For instance, a character who will get involved in the game is a tailor: there will be ways for Annelise to get the dress from him. Yet, this concept art is meant to be the dress she gets from her fairy godmother. So, since Annelise is blonde, I didn’t want to go to the “blue-dress” cliché, although it suits the “glass slipper” theme. A good colour to contrast blonde with is purple (yes, I can’t draw for the sake of me, but for some reason, I know a thing or two about colour theory). I thought putting more pink and making the dress a blueish green or a greenish blue couldn’t be a bad idea, and I’ll admit she looks cute! Maybe a bit young (Annelise is supposed to be 21; she looks a bit like a teenager), but I really love the softness of her face here though (which kinda fits to be honest: the criteria for Annelise to meet her fairy godmother is to have fairly high kindness at this point in game).

Yeah, so, for those who need to catch up because they aren’t in my Twitter circle, Annelise is going to have seven stats to determine her endings:

- Charm: Annelise is beautiful for now; but when beauty fades, only true charm remains. By raising this stat, Annelise will develop this “je-ne-sais-quoi” that’ll make her stand out from other equally beautiful girls. - Logic: Annelise can get some big brain energy, which will help to quickly analyse a situation to find practical and effective solutions. - Rheotric: There is a difference between being right and being able to persuade others that you are. Play on words, overly-complicated grammar that makes you sound intelligent and makes your ideas look sophisticated, anacoluths or hypotyposers, these are the tools raising this stat will give Annelise. - Manners: Although Annelise is a noble, she doesn’t know as much about decorum as she should at her age, since she was raised more as a maid rather than a lady, due to her father’s death. Yet, she can catch up! - Willpower: Annelise has dreams of independence, of discovering the world… But what good is a dream if you don’t have the willpower to make it true? - Kindness: Annelise is empathetic by nature. Yet, it takes actions to turn this empathy into kidness. - Faith: Annelise has dreams and hopes, and she’ll need faith to carry on believing in them when times are rough.

And from these stats, a variety of different destinies await Annelise: opera soprano, scholar, married to the prince charming, just leaving her toxic household to finally discover the world… and many others!

But I guess I’ve been rambling enough about Annelise, and that I should go back to my own little corner to flesh out things more.

Also, if you’re interested by this concept, there exists an excellent (and that’s an understatement) visual novel entitled Cinders which might interest you: I discovered it after having created the concept for Annelise and Cinders’s not exactly the same. But God, it is good: you play as Cinders, the developers’ interpretation as Cinderella, you can pursue different suitors, make different things happen (in a darker tone: for instance, you might succeed in poisoning your stepmother; such a thought would never occur to Annelise). Even in terms of gameplay, although Annelise is more stat-focused than Cinders, it relies a lot on choices like Cinders, which only relies on choices (in contrast with the Princess Maker series, Annelise can’t just use some item to raise one of her stats!). So, I’m not saying playing Cinders is like playing what I have in mind for Annelise because, well, first, there wouldn’t be any point in making a bad knock-off of Cinders, but also, I don’t want to explore ambiguous morality like Cinders do and focus on different themes (patriotism, impostor syndrome, gaslighting, Pygmalion’s myth, to name a few).

So, it’s been a long post, but I’m kinda happy to be able to write more about my process! Most of my projects require to be kept spoiler-free to be fully appreciated, but I feel like Annelise’s charm is less about the plot than building your own Annelise to get her to a unique destiny (and there is no huge plot twist to expect from this story, I swear, no ending in which Annelise, for some weird reason, dates her stepmother)! And because everyone knows Cinderella's story, prepare to get a lot of info about the slow development of this ambitious game!

Toodles!

[questioningespecialy]

i’m constantly reminded of mortality, and it doesn’t bother me the way you’d think

repost from that time i deleted an article i spent 4 days on T-T actual post this time since i somehow posted it privately yesterday 😭

---

Hi, I’m Questioning. And I like to waste my life away dedicate my free time to random hobbies that catch my hyperfixation interest on the fly. Currently, I’ve returned to something most important. Updating the encyclopedia-esque database of AlternativeTo.net. o_o

Let me finish.

See, I started exploring the world of Visual Novel (VN) makers, which led to me discovering the world of Interactive Fiction (IF)–their predecessor afaic. And that’s where it got strange. What I’ve found is interesting developments in terms of innovation and such. Like Undum (image)–“a game framework for building a sophisticated form of hypertext interactive fiction” according to its GitHub. IFWiki calls it “an authoring system for CYOA-style stories playable on web browsers.” It was created by I.D. Millington in 2009, released in 2010, had returned in 2018, and would’ve changed the IF genre (kinda like Twine did) if not for how hard it was to get into.

Undum’s flexibility and power have made it the engine that drove some of the most significant works in IF (The Play, Almost Goodbye). But it has always been relatively inaccessible. Undum is not the system of choice for writing straightforward hypertext games; it’s a challenging system to learn and use that demands the author build their own engine on top of it to drive their game logic. Consider Raconteur for “Undum with batteries included.” -Bruno Dias (x)

Enter Raconteur, “a friendlier way to write Undum hypertext fiction” that was announced by Bruno Dias in 2015. More accurately described as “a library of Undum tools that can get someone writing their story quickly.” Here’s the thing about the “library of Undum tools” part: Undum did not come prepackaged with any… even though they were required to write your game,…😐 which “meant doing a lot of your own tooling.” 😑

Yeah, no surprise it won the award for Best Technological Development in XYZZY Awards 2015.

But hold up, somethin’ ain’t right…

Undum’s only got 21 games on IFDB.org and Raconteur’s got 4… with 1 overlap with Undum. 😐

So~… wth?

Well, someone else had a similar question on intfiction.org in March and got Josh Grams’ opinion on it: JavaScript.

🤷🏿‍♂️

So even though Undum was designed as the visual version of bookbinding and with the specific goals “aesthetic” & “technical” in mind, shit’s too intimidating compared to alternatives.

I hoped [writing Undum in JavaScript] would make it accessible for a wider range of dabblers, requiring transferable skills rather than learning a new language. It also made it achievable to write and document over a few weekends: I didn’t have to worry about parsing, or creating a complete runtime. But the best benefit, and in some ways the one least exploited in practice, is the ability to use Undum as part of a bigger game. I imagined a strategy game with CYOA elements, or a piece of interactive fiction using natural language generation to be different each time. -Ian Millington (x)

And here’s~ where it gets a bit fucked.

Remember the other person who had a similar question–J. J. Guest? Well, they ended their post with “Was it simply superseded by Ink / Inky?”

Let’s keep this simple:

Ink [image] is the core narrative engine itself, written in C#. It includes the code for the compiler. If you’re not technical, you don’t need to worry about this. Inky [image] is our ink editor, which is a text editor with support for playing as you write. If you’re just starting out with ink, this is all you need. inkle is the game development studio that created ink (x)

So it’s “a narrative scripting language for games” and yet another CYOA maker. Why do I bring them up? Well, Inkle (the company) “was founded in 2011 by two Cambridge game developers [Joseph Humfrey & Jon Ingold] with a passion for storytelling and beautiful design” (x). They started off with their unique “inklebook” format, which had an early prototype game in ~2008 that Jon described as

an iPad-based choice-driven story made of ‘pages’ which stitched together into a single flow via frequent choice points. It was a lovely UI for a choice-based game, even in prototype form, and we had a strong scripting language underneath it – the first version of ink. (x)

In January of 2012, they released “a web-tool for writing and reading simple interactive stories” called inklewriter. Joseph described it as “a simpler subset of the inklebook format” (x) and admitted “inklewriter was partly born out of the surprise that there isn’t anything out there for quickly and easily writing non-linearly.” (x)

After already having “moved away from developing inklewriter for a long time,” it went “permanent beta” in September of 2017 due to “increasing frequency of persistent bug-reports.” Sad news considering the statement “we’ve had hundreds of thousands of stories created by hundreds of thousands of users; we’ve won awards from school and library associations; and hopefully we’ve helped kickstart a few interactive writers careers” (x). And since writers (who became aware in time) were able to “rescue” their story from the bugs and potential wipeout with a simple Save Page As, it was probably a bit less heartbreaking when inkle revealed less than a year later that inklewriter would be shutting down completely in August of 2018. Seemingly because “it’s real work to fix the issues that arise” with the constant browser changes. 😐

Only 7 months later, it returned in March of 2019. Stable, still free, and now open-source after developers in the open-source community “produced a full port of inklewriter to modern web-tech.” 🥳 Writers needed to make new accounts and import their stories to the new database, but that was it. And since the legacy version was (and is) still around, they could do it pretty quickly. (x)

But where dahell was I going with this? Let me tell you about the original connection first: Unity Integration.

The [ink-unity-integration] plugin provides you with everything you need to get started with ink in Unity. It automatically recompiles ink files as you edit them, and even comes with a simple previewer that lets you play stories directly within the Editor, without writing a line of code. (x)

Remember Ian Millington’s statement from awhile ago? “But the best benefit, and in some ways the one least exploited in practice, is the ability to use Undum as part of a bigger game. I imagined a strategy game with CYOA elements, or a piece of interactive fiction using natural language generation to be different each time.” (x)

Well,… Stoic Studio (announced that they) did it in January 2013 when they used inklewriter for The Banner Saga. Though, inkle recommends you use their ink scripting language instead for Unity projects. 🤷🏿‍♀️ A scripting language that was ported to JavaScript in May of 2016, btw. The port (inkjs) having its latest release just 6 freaking days ago while Undum and Raconteur had their last GitHub edits in 2018 & 2020 respectively.

Either way, Ian’s imagination of “a strategy game with CYOA elements” happened… with another mofo’s software. 😐

And what’s that? I left something out?

I left working on Undum to develop Varytale, a short lived commercial IF endeavour that shared a lot of the same aesthetic and narrative structure. And then I retired, and it lay fallow, aside from email help requests that still drip into my inbox. -Ian Millington (x)

Let’s see what IFWiki says about this endeavor:

Varytale was a platform for authoring and publishing browser-based CYOA, created by Ian Millington and Alexis Kennedy; it occupied a point somewhere between Undum and StoryNexus [a comparatively mostly defunct endeavor from 2012]. The Varytale website was live from approximately 2011 to 2015. The first posts on Varytale’s blog appeared in June 2011. On March 7, 2014, Varytale posted a comment on the Varytale Facebook page saying, “The project is stalled, due to key people leaving the project. So there’s no news, and I’m not sure if or when there will be.” The last Wayback Machine snapshot of www.varytale.com/books was taken in September 2015. (x)

On its May of 2012 public beta announcement on FailbetterGames website, something slightly poignant was said.

But the technology is great [seriously] - it’s easily the most flexible and powerful tool of its kind, and it’ll be fascinating to see what people can do with it once the writers’ programme opens up. And as it happens, Jon Ingold / Joseph Humfrey’s very elegant inklewriter has also just gone live [4 months prior]. (…) …[inklewriter] covers some of the same territory as Varytale, but it’s (by design) simpler in concept and execution. (x)

Life is truly cruel.

If you check the archive from possibly days before its shut down in September of 2015, you’ll see 4 official books (Bee, Fighting, How To Read, Hymn & Shanty) and 3 User Published Books (London Road, Sixth Tower, Tillinghast). That’s 7… 7 books. 😐

But it’s not that sad. According to the Varytale blog’s 2nd to last post (in June of 2012), “we passed 50,000 reads across the seven books currently on our reader’s beta.” This was perhaps a full week after they released the floodgates and actually allowed people to start readin’. Das alot to me. They clearly succeeded in “building a platform for authors to write great books, and for publishers to publish them.” Even built a whole-ass “system that does generative design,” creating “artwork based on the author’s choice of patterned design or photograph” (x). Or, as we’d quickly say 12 years later, some AI shit.

So wut 👏🏿 in da fuq 👏🏿

Why’d they never get past the 7 book mark in the 2 years between Reader’s Beta and project stallation? Well,… there’s a hint at the end of that 2012 blog post: “We have a queue of people wanting to write content, who are been added a few at a time. So lots of hard work in the beta still to go.” hm~ 🤔

If The Way Back Machine had archives past January of 2013, we’d definitely know more, but this is it (i ain’t diggin’ a wider hole at this point). And what is it? I think it’s a matter of workload. Too much for too few people who had however much goin’ on in their lives. Remember much earlier this bit from IFWiki?

On March 7, 2014, Varytale posted a comment on the Varytale Facebook page saying, “The project is stalled, due to key people leaving the project. (x)

Maybe things weren’t smooth enough for awhile. Maybe it was something else for those 2 years prior. 🤷🏿‍♂️ And you know… the end of Emily Short’s blog post Writing for Varytale might hold the answer.

There are still some challenges about using the Varytale system, though it’s evolved tremendously over the course of beta. One of the biggest authorial challenges is that, while there’s the awesome structure tool shown above for looking at branching structure inside a storylet, it can be considerably more challenging to get a view of what’s going on at the macro level. And I’m not even sure what the tool for this ought to look like. The strength of storylets is that they can affect which other ones pop up in a fairly freeform way, and one can affect another (via their shared stat use) without explicit logic in either. But that’s also what makes it really hard to graph how they will act. Most of the bugs that arose in Bee were related to this issue of envisioning the total structure of the work and detecting storylets that were going to break that structure. (x)

So in this case aswell, the innovations of Ian’s Varytale make it… (a bit) intimidating to work with. 😑Whether or not this difficulty was ever ironed out post-beta is unknown to me, especially considering the end of Ian’s thankful response to Tom H.’s suggestion for fixing the macro level problem: “When will I get chance to code it? That’s a whole other matter!”

…hm~

And on the same post lies magnus4444’s statement that “There isn’t a lot of documentation out there yet on the implementation of more advanced effects but, on the plus side, Ian is generous with advice and tips.”

🤷🏿‍♀️

So wtf do we have here. Effectively two developers (i’m simplifying it; fight me) who 1) made a CYOA maker (Undum & inklewriter) for very similar reasons, 2) put development aside to focus on other CYOA makers (Varytale & Inky), 3) had their neglected work taken up by open-source developers for the good of everyone, and 4) reaped the benefit of the other’s labor in some way. Now, here’s where we’re back to the sad part. Inkle’s version of the tale is the American Dream ™. Inklewriter was beloved by many and had mainstream success. Ian’s version is the harsh American Reality. Undum only bore 24+ games over the course of its 13 year existence on the internet and in the world of IF. And if a single person’s opinion is to be taken as fact… then the reason was simple: shit wasn’t easy to pickup. And thus, regardless of Ian & Bruno’s efforts, it (at this rate) is bound to become an obscure software regardless of its potential. All while Varytale remains gone and Inky (released in June of 2016) is still goin’ strong with 160+ games released using its Ink language/engine.

Which brings me back to the matter…

i’m constantly reminded of [my] mortality

[dont-go-into-the-woods]

FAQ

Any common questions will be added here for connivence

Who’s Avery?

Avery is a spur of the moment OC I made in class, I loved him so quickly I doodled him out, gave him a personality and boom, Avery was born. He was also the product of my love for yandere VN’s.

Here’s a link to his short bio

What’re some things to know about him?

He’s a 23 year old grad student living in the Midwest (I put him Michigan since, that where I live lol). He’s currently studying Mycology, and has a love for photography. There’s some other things as well but spoilers.

Is Avery gonna have a VN?

Maybe one day?? I have no clue how to program a VN also the time I have is limited as I’m in my junior year of undergrad. I’d love to at some point but not quite yet. Also my art isn’t quite where I want it yet, I only recently picked it up at the time of writing this out.

Who’re you?

You can call me Nyx. I’m a humble 21 year old English student lol. You can find me under the blog wrennyx :p

What kinda asks can I send?

Feel free to send in questions and in-character asks hehe. I’ll probably flesh this part out as I go since I haven’t done this in forever.

- don’t send in hate speech of any kind

- asks regarding certain kinks

- homophobia/transphobia will not be tolerated

last updated: april 27th 2023

[self-shipper-snowdrop]

New Side Blog!

Heyo everybody;

So, to keep this blog all organized and as it is while also letting me post from any series I enjoy, I created a side blog. Info below the cut!

It’s still a self ship blog and this one will remain active, but this new side blog allows me to post about series and content that only adults may view. This blog has content from the yandere VNs I enjoy [which are all specified to be 18+, thus my hesitance to post here] and games that are, overall, restricted for certain audiences. Basically, if you have to be an adult to interact with it, that blog is for that.

I won’t post the URL here, but if you are above 18 and interested in what I have to post over that way, then please send me a message! I will be checking ages, since that’s the whole purpose of that blog as being an adult space lol.

I made this blog years ago when I was around 16, if memory serves, but now I’m 21 and I do enjoy some content that I couldn’t when I was younger. But to respect my younger self as well as the statement I made before saying this blog would remain with SFW content only, I made this separate one so I can do that but still have fun. I probably won’t get crazy over there anyway, being shy as hell and all, but since the various series in question do not allow minors I want to respect that.

Anyway! Love ya all, and please message if you’re an adult and interested. I’d love you have you so long as you’re okay with my yandere and other game posting that I can’t post here!