im sorry if anyones asked this before but! what's your process for planning out your vns? it might be too open-ended a question but playing malmaid its clear that you have a lot of skill and really have the medium nailed, so like... what does your workflow look like? how do you piece together whatever beginning idea fragments you have into something so coherent and well put together as this? what kinds of things do you prioritize? have you written about your process before?
i should tag my shit better i had to scroll forever to find these
but uhhhhhh i think. i seriously think the biggest misconception is that i somehow know what I'm doing like consistently the moments that people like in my games are moments i wsnt even thinking about and instead i put my effort into some entirely dismissed location.
i dont know what im doing but if i am to point at a skill my skill is the fact that i can in fact complete games and that gives people an opportunity to enjoy them
if you go read my first vns you'll notice they are not malmaid but after having made so many its just helped me build a repertoire of scripting abilities and knowledge on how to express myself in a visual novel format.. ultimately i am kinda writing the same thing over and over again in my vns cause that's just what i like to do
so its just trial and error really while having fun with the process
but yeah theres two other links wheere itry to go in the details but everything is so vague and shifting i might be doing something entirely different for my next game I'm already learning that i HATE planning so much as I've done for NAOMIDA and i have way more fun just winging it like i did with hopeless junction and dddeviance
my notes are actually insane like
lmao
look at these are my current notes and starting baseline for my lina side story in my game
like srly i just throw shit in be it memes or tweets or snippets of my own thoughts i wrote half asleep at 4 am and then figure out the details later and when i feel like my story is clear enough in my brain from shit like this i just start writing it hopping from scene to scene usually writing the fun scenes first and then suffering when i gotta string everything together
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500 followers! dropping personal lore to mark the occasion... this is a big day for me :p thank u for humoring me so much lololol
if we are mutuals, just know that i am plotting to become your friend. im twiddling my fingers and rubbing my hands together about it. cant wait to be ur friend. u cant do anything about it either, its just gonna happen (im kidding, please be my friend).
i live in nyc
im a may taurus
i have a note where i screenshot every single nice comment ive ever gotten from someone on this page and i put it in there. if u have ever said anything nice to me even in reblogs its in there 😭
i never wrote smut before i started this blog in august, and i am used to the stuffy confines of academia. i cant describe how freeing it feels to write this stuff
i have a phobia of flies and theres one in my room rn and i cant get it out its literally terrorizing me. also i found a lanternfly in my grocery bag today and screamed, im not being hyperbolic
i have a scar on my chin and i was going to get plastic surgery on it but decided not to because i think it gives my face character and also (please humor me) i told myself yooo anime characters have scars like that and they look cool so why not HAHAHA
my favorite thing to use while i write is the em-dash. it is the panacea/pharmakon of any sentence. i eat that shit up
Zoro usurped Gojo for my #1 anime man of all time. I have a list for that as well. Idk if it will stay this way though because I love gojo so much I would die for him. But theres also Law and Ace and Aki and Itachi and Choso AGHHHHH I START TO GET SO SCRAMBLED ABOUT IT this is why i need my list.
if you read this far omg... (o˘◡˘o) come here NOW and let me give u a big smooch
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okay here goes nothing please dont be mad at me for this afterwards
i am so fucking tired of feeling left out in every. single. friendgroup. i'll ever have.
i just cant stop thinking "what if they hate me secretly" "they probably laugh behind me" "they probably talk about how annoying and stupid i am when im not there" and this one is pretty stupid but "what if they have another groupchat that im not in and they talk there all day and thats why they never talk to me" i know people said it a million times but i really cant stop thinking like this.
(you have every right to be mad for this part its not even a big thing why am i sad over this)
just today a new friend of mine decided to co peletely ignore my existence and talk with another friend of hers, and thats okay, really, she has other friends and i have other friends aswell, its okay. the thing is i went to her class to talk to her and she just walked beside me, exitted her class and went to mine to talk with her another friend. i know im short but like she shoul've seen me right? i dont know this feels so stupid when i say it out loud
then theres the server, dont get me wrong please i love every one of you so much its just im not active 24/7 and that makes me feel left out. there are certain people who are active all day or people that are loved by everyone and even if they wont answer for days everyone is always having fun with them, i know im not the best friend a person can ask for but i'm really trying my best and i just want to be loved the same amount as i love people, do i really want so much? its really stupid, really, but fuck it no one would probably even see this so fuck it we ball
today when the staff was talking about if we should invite someone or not, everyones opinion was asked, the people that didnt respond were tagged, but i wasnt. this is really really stupid but it just made me feel horrible, like i didnt matter
yeah i know its pretty stupid.
im just too scared that people will lost interest in me one day and i'll just be forgotten, ignored, not important anymore. im so scared we will have a huge fight over something stupid i said and never talk again, then after a few months someone will mention my name and people will just say "we were friends once, never liked her anyways"
i know its really stupid its just how i feel
i fucking hate my attachment issues. i spam people a lot amd then get sad when they dont respond, and i dont even know why i do it myself
im just an obsessive idiot whos always scared of people leaving her. but i never realize how annoying and stupid i sound and then i get sad when they leave me, even tho the signs were super obvious that we were drifting away
im sorry this is stupid i dont need any help i just needed to scream to the void
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Riz has counted four casseroles this week alone. Five, if one goes by the method of cooking, but Yelen's scary when she's crossed, and calling her burek by its proper name is important to her, so Riz does her the courtesy and doesn't include it in his mental tally.
He holds the tupperware over his head to keep it out if the way as he takes careful steps over the piles of notes in his path. The dockman case just closed, relevant documentations handed over to relevant personnels, evidences dealt with as needed; all he has lying around now is just record of the process and traces of himself thinking through it. Unsurprisingly they still haven't invented a surface more convenient for people under five feet who like to pace to put pieces of paper on than the ground.
Actual records go into the case folder with the other documents. Anything else with at least one side still blank is going to the school kids in the block - they chew through an astounding amount of paper just learning arithmetic. The rest is for the recycling basket.
Later. It's his mandated lunch break right now.
Riz sits down in front of the corner file cabinet. In an office often overrun with papers and strings and sometimes even thumbtacks, he's never really managed to clutter up this exact square of surface like every other ones. Ever since the bottom drawer rattled for no discernible reason a day long past, his eyes have always just kinda decided to slide across the space without acknowledging it.
It's years out, now. Riz doesn't know why he thought it such a big deal anymore, back then. He wasn't scared, he doesn't think. Not anymore. Maybe just uncomfortable with the idea that certain things persist despite all efforts to change.
He opens the tupperware. Dame Carabelle's experiment greets him with enough spice in the aroma alone to knock out a small mammal. When he chopped the vegetables for this casserole he couldn't really imagine the eventual heft of it, evident even through just these few ladles' worth, maybe weighing heavier for being still warm. His folk eat more through the smell and the textures and the aftertastes than the taste itself. His folk's meal is really the cooking rather than the eating. The eating is the meal's end.
"Hey," he tells the file cabinet's bottom drawer. "Um."
It's the anniversary. Riz doesn't know the exact date of his dad's death; nobody currently alive does. He and Mom both use the date of the funeral, though as he moved out to Bastion and then got more directly involved with Interplanar he hasn't really been going to Dad's grave as much. Doesn't seem like very efficient use of his time, catching a train or borrowing a car or spending a whole spell slot on going somewhere he knows Dad isn't at. They're sorta coworkers now. They talk on and off every other week between missions. When he goes now, it's just to clean up the place, keeping the landmark tidy and respectable.
Without that work to mark the date he doesn't really know what it serves anymore. But he still remembers it. Still takes note, absently or not, when it comes around.
There's not really a good way to tell the drawer that. Riz looks for another way to start the... conversation, hopefully. The question at play, he'd guess, is why he's doing this. He's been pretty content ignoring all the rattlings and the knocks from inside and the times it sits slightly ajar without him ever opening it himself; hell, he still uses the three drawers on top of it. Space is fucking precious in Bastion.
Precious enough to finally fix this damn drawer so he gets his turn to use it? Riz asks himself. Is that what we're getting to? Then he dismisses the thought - he didn't manage to fix it the times he actually tried, let alone-- now. When he doesn't really care that much to.
That's probably a good place to start. "'s fine if you keep being in there, turns out," Riz says.
The lunch hours are quiet in the block, sleepy and bright with the brief window of sunlight that manages to break through roof overhangs and extended balconies and laundry lines and climbing vines. Riz's work isn't loud here (the loud parts happen away from his office, if everything goes right), but the fragment of early summer heat reflected in the steady warmth his meal still carries compels him to lower his voice even more. It makes the words feel intimate, in a way he's never been familiar with - if he says something he just says it. He doesn't whisper. If he gives his friends something, he gives it open-palm. He's found out, along the way, that people usually don't think of rituals and courtesies the way he does.
Small voice for a diminished monster. "You know why I think so?" Riz asks. "Because almost two decades ago you kidnapped me and almost killed me, and now you rattle a drawer in my office."
It doesn't sound as much like a taunt as Riz wanted it to; the drawer has made a lot of noises again this morning when he checked the calendar, and he was definitely annoyed at it. Now, though, facing it like this after cooking the whole morning with more grandparents and peers from the block than he can count on both hands to cater for a tenant union meeting, he thinks the annoyance has morphed. Changed shape.
It has the shades of something like pity. Riz is not prone to pity, and especially not at these kinda matters. It's slightly maddening that he coheres perfectly outside of this one spot. That he commands his spaces, except for a drawer.
He puts the tupperware onto the floor between himself and the cabinet. "I know we're aware it's the anniversary," he says at the drawer. "You do this every year. You make a ruckus every time I decide to go do my job instead of mooching off my friends' aircon, and every time I get an invitation to some stupid social thing I want to turn down, and every time one of the old people tries to introduce me to a child or a nibling, because being a bachelor over thirty is weird," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have three fucking jobs. I love doing my fucking jobs. I'm forcing funds into infrastructures. You're never leaving, are you."
The drawer vibrates lightly. It's a very, very mild acknowledgement, considering the history of reactions Riz has gotten from this thing. Riz thinks it's emanating joyous agreement, or satisfaction.
It only sharpens the pity. Riz doesn't like that, but it's how it is. That's, ultimately, the lesson he's been taught over and over and over again, just by existing as himself, turned every which way by space after space that don't see him eye-to-eye: it's not like he'd quit living over any of it. It's not like any of it can sand off these fundamental pieces of him.
He's outgrown a lot of things, he's found out. Again, and again, and again. A childhood home, a yearly trip, a monster.
"'s probably scary for you, huh?" He asks. "Because I left."
He thinks he hears joints creak that sound like you did. Probably the way a scorned lover would say it, in a movie or a yellowback. He has no more connection to the idea than he did as a kid. Less, because it doesn't even scare him.
"That's what it is, right? That it's the anniversary, and I'll never be like Dad." He raises a knee from the floor, pulls it back closer to him. Slings an arm over it. "You love to remind me. The thing is, Dad also left. He loved Mom and he loved me, and none of us wanted it to happen, but it still did. Because love does fuckall to make anyone stay on its own."
He's long past being bitter about it. It's just the facts. Once upon a time he looked into the future and the specter of his friends' happily-ever-after casted lightless, fathomless shadow over him. Love, marriage, that kind of devotion, to a fifteen-year-old with more solved cases than friends seemed so eternal. Final.
But you can only watch your friends build up apps' worth of jilted lovers for so long before getting over it.
"You know what I learned?" Riz tells the drawer. "Love doesn't make anyone stay. Project management does."
He stands up, and picks up the tupperware of Dame Carabelle's casserole, that he helped make, that he helped share with a block's worth of neighbors and members of a community he's at home with, and goes sit at his desk to eat. "Last chance to get any," he drops an offer over his shoulder as he walks away.
He doesn't eat all of his share in one go. What he's spared he leaves on the desk when going outside for a smoke break. Baron looks the exact same as when he saw them last, when he catches a glimpse; they haven't grown at all. They aren't there when he comes back inside, but the leftover has gone days-old cold, like someone's sucked the future out of it.
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