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deandoesthingstome · 1 year

Text

Forest Fantasy

Pairing: Werewolf!Walter Marshall x Reader

Summary: There's a new hotel in town. It can't possibly be what it's advertised as, can it?

Word Count: 6.5K

Warnings: 18+, NO MINORS, cunnilingus, p in v (missionary and doggy style), monster fucking (right?).

A/N: I was considering waiting until Oct, but it's a fucking Super Moon tonight so let's gooooo.....!!!!!

When The Fantasy Hotel opened up in town, you scoffed at first. "What’s with this name? What kind of depravity is this? Why can't folks just fuck in their own homes?" you thought to yourself. “At least they have someone to fuck. Why must they flaunt their relationships in my face this way?”

But then you heard the whispers. The suggestions. The innuendos. A few of your online friends, who know you'd been through a dry spell for some time now, had been asking if you'd given any thought to trying it out and you were...confused. They wouldn't say outright what they'd heard about the place, but curiosity got the better of you.

You opened the incognito browser and typed the hotel name and were...shocked. Shocked at the images and the rave reviews. This hotel wasn't strictly for couples. As a matter of fact, it was designed for singles. And you shut your laptop quickly, convinced this wasn't for you and worried what your anonymous, online friends must think of you. You broached the subject delicately, so as not to offend in case maybe they didn't really know what they were asking about.

MNstrluvr: Come on. You've read the fics. You've liked and commented. Are you really saying you weren't into it? The idea of it?

sendmeanangel: I was sucked in by the phenomenal writing. You know me. I read anything if it's told well, descriptive, immersive, get you out of your head.

darkgothnightengale: This is THAT. But IRL. You're fucking lucky they picked your town to open the first one. You HAVE to try it and tell us how it is!!!

sendmeanangel: Have you seen the prices?

darkgothnightengale: We chipped in.

sendmeanangel:...

MNstrluvr: Come on! We're dying to know first hand from someone we actually know. Please. For science!

It took a few more gentle prods and pokes, with promises of no jokes unless you gave specific permission. And under NO CIRCUMSTANCES were your friends allowed to post anything that even vaguely alluded to the fact that you were trying the place out. Private DMs and Super Private Chat Room discussions only.

Your visit was booked. You opted for a brief stay only. Two hours. You couldn't bring yourself to book a longer stay and the theme you selected was one that allowed for less than full evenings. It was also the only slot available on the day you were able to ask off work.

You showered and primped, pampering yourself with your favorite body wash and lotion, knowing how good it made you feel to be fresh and clean and smelling delicious. You checked your clothes and your makeup in the full length mirror by your apartment door, opting not to change for the fiftieth time since stepping out of the shower. A few final items stuffed into your travel satchel and the large floppy hat on your head you'd bought specifically to hide your face as you made your way into the hotel and you were off for your adventure, trepidation buzzing around your insides and threatening to derail your purpose.

Your friends had paid and you figured you were already past a normal hotel refund window, so paying them back would mean picking up a few extra shifts on top of your already hectic university schedule. Besides, you didn't want to disappoint them. They were so curious to know if the stories that were starting to pop-up on Tumblr did any justice to the experience. You really couldn’t imagine this was anything more than some extremely well put together costumes and perhaps use of silicon implements, which had you really wondering about sanitation, but whatever.

The cab pulled up at the hotel entrance and a petite woman with a pixie cut stepped forward to open the door and help you out. She gave a warm smile with no hint of derision or teasing about the hat as she welcomed you sincerely and led you through the front doors, depositing you at the registration desk.

"Enjoy your stay!" she beamed at you, with a conspiratorial wink before heading back out to, you assumed, await the next guest.

You called out a thanks after her, then turned to the front desk attendant, who welcomed you by name.

"You have the only check in slot at this time," he answered your unspoken question with a kind smile. "We stagger arrival on purpose to ensure privacy for our guests. Especially first time visits. We have you booked in the Deep Forest Suite for the next two hours, and it looks like you requested the basket add on. That will be waiting for you in the room. Since it is your first time, we just need you to sign a few waivers and I'll run through the hotel safety rules for you. A copy has also been sent to your email, if you want to check them during your stay. But also, rest assured, your host is well versed and knows exactly how to keep you safe. You are in good hands here, I promise."

Every word spoken carefully and with respect, every inflection designed to put your worries at ease. If you had butterflies going in, you'd never know it now. You had taken notice of the lush and inviting lobby, dark wood furniture covered in rich velvet, chandeliers and wall sconces casting a warm glow around you. There was nothing menacing or untoward, nothing like you had expected, even after seeing the interior photos online. You'd experienced marketing ploys before. This wasn't glue disguised as milk or fries on toothpicks to stand up straight in the box or a long angle shot of the tiniest pool ever. Everything so far was exactly as depicted and you were impressed.

Then you remembered the photo of your host and had to swallow hard. You had assumed it was a doctored image, maybe some unique lighting to draw attention. But if the decor was real, then maybe he was too. The rules were oddly specific for an experience with a guy in a costume.

Maybe everything you had assumed about the nature of this hotel was wrong.

"Everything okay?" the clerk asked with a furrowed brow. "Is there something worrisome about the rules?"

"Oh. No. No everything is fine. I'm just..." you trailed off. Nervous wasn't the right word. Nor were you embarrassed, as you thought you would be. The door attendant, the desk clerk...neither had made you feel anything but welcome and safe and not self-conscious at all.

"It's perfectly reasonable to feel a little apprehension your first time. If it makes you feel better, you should know: you actually can opt out at any time. We do have to retain a portion of the room fee, but a partial refund is available. Should you change your mind."

"That's nice to know, thank you. I think I'll be okay."

"Then let's get you to your room,” he clapped his hands together with a mirth. “427. Elevator is down the hall and there are directional signs, but I'm happy to escort you if you'd like."

"I think I'll manage, but thank you."

As he placed the key in your possession and sent you on your way, the reality sunk in a little deeper. Weighed down by the heavy iron key in your hand as you rode the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped down the hall to your room, you could no longer deny what was about to occur.

You were headed into the wolf's den.

The door unlocked with a satisfying click as you turned the iron key. You were transported to a lush forest setting when you stepped into the room. Or as close as you could get indoors, anyway. A carpet of deep, soft green lay on the floor beneath your feet, and you immediately slipped out of your shoes to feel the cool material on your skin. It was impossibly silky, smooth, and comforting.

Large potted fir and pine plants lined the walls and stood in corners. At least a few held miniature deciduous trees and some with limbs stretching across the ceiling. You finally let your eyes fall on the chunky, four-poster bed, the legs, head- and foot-boards crafted of smooth finished logs you might find in a high-end cabin or ski chalet and covered in a thick feather mattress wrapped in luxurious blankets and piled high with pillows.

A picnic basket sat prim and proper on the coffee table nestled between two plump, overstuffed chairs and you had just reached out to peek beneath the deep red cloth when the door closed softly behind you and a throat cleared.

"I hope I haven't startled you."

You turned and gasped as you took in the sight of one of the largest, and, for lack of a better description because your brain was starting to fail you, manliest men you'd ever set eyes on. His photograph might have been deceptive, but only because it didn't do him justice. He wore a thick, blue cable knit sweater and dark gray cargo pants that seemed to mold around his thighs. He was barefoot, which surprised you a little, but then who were you to judge at the moment?

You caught his smirk as you lifted your gaze to appreciate the rugged beard and full head of chocolate curls that framed his face, offsetting mesmerizing blue eyes.

"I'm Walter," he offered you his hand as he spoke your name with a gentle growl. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"You're not..." you stopped yourself, suddenly embarrassed at how eager you'd found yourself. "Forgive me. That may have been a rude way to start."

"It's okay," he chuckled. "This isn't the form you signed up for, but I've found it more enjoyable to at least meet in this state. If I bounded in here all claws and snarls, we wouldn't have a chance to speak first. And I prefer to have at least a quick chat, if that's okay with you."

"It's fine," you whispered, your throat dry though your mouth was watering.

Walter stepped past you and reached a large mitt into the basket to pull out a bottle of water.

"Would you like to talk with me a bit?" he asked, offering you the bottle. Your eyes lingered on the basket, though, curious what else might be in there. The amenity said “Fantasy Basket”, so it could have just been a riff on the hotel name, but still, you had assumed…

“Did you not get a chance to peek before I arrived?” he asked as you took a sip of water.

“No. Do you know what’s in there?”

“I do,” another chuckle, deeper and darker than before. “Do you want to know now, or later?”

“We don’t have a lot of time, do we?” you asked, suddenly aware and mentally kicking yourself for thinking you didn’t need more than a few hours to get the lay of the land. Literally, you snorted at your internal joke.

“Something funny?”

“Lay of the land,” you replied with a grin and as he laughed with you, you caught sight of his canines. They seemed a little longer than when you saw them in his first grin. At the moan that slipped from your throat, he darkened again.

“That it will be.”

You gasped and squeezed your thighs, clenching at the reverberation in his voice. Something had changed from even just the moment before when he’d entered the room. Aside from the physical appearance, you sensed a shift in the air, something wavering in the ether around you. A heat crept from your core to your cheeks, through your spine and settled into your chest. You were breathless.

“How do we…um, how does this start?”

“We’ve already started, haven’t we?” he replied, a little mysteriously. “Sit with me?”

What made you drop to the floor beneath you instead of onto the comfortable looking seat, you couldn’t say, but here you were resting back on your heels as you took another drink of water from the glass bottle in your hand.

“I was going to suggest the chairs, but if you prefer the ground, I’m happy to say I do too.”

Walter stepped forward and lowered himself to the ground beside you, one knee splayed wide and almost touching yours, the other knee bent with an elbow draped over it as he leaned toward you. You could swear you caught him sniffing the air.

“I don’t know what to say,” you spoke with caution, suddenly overwhelmed. The day was just becoming a series of flip-flops in your mind as you imagined yourself, sometimes bold and determined to experience what you could, then timid and nervous as the reality overcame you. Once at ease and open, now shy and reserved.

“That’s okay,” Walter replied. “The better for me to begin.”

Why did that sound like such a familiar phrase? You took another drink and nodded for him to continue.

“I’d like to continue our time together by undressing you, one way or another. You have a choice, which you can leave to me if you’d like. I can do it now, in this form,” he paused, cocked his head to one side, then the other as he cracked his neck. “Or I can shift, in your presence or not, and do it that way.”

What did he mean by “shift”? Surely, he must mean change. As in undress and don a mask. But then you remembered his teeth, somehow longer. And you thought about the subtle way the atmosphere seemed to shimmer and transport you and you wondered if he really did mean “shift.’

“That sounds like two choices,” you whispered and caught his grin, canines even longer than before.

“Perceptive. I like it. Need a few moments?”

“What happens after I’m…I mean, I know what happens, I guess… but just, like, how…” you trailed off, not really sure what you were asking.

“We’re playing a game here, really. That’s all. It can be as simple or intricate as you’d like, though, you’re right. Our time is ticking away.”

“You do it.” You rushed, barely letting him finish his response.

“Here or…?”

“I’ll close my eyes.” The thought of watching his shift, though intriguing, also made you wonder if it would make you more nervous than you already suddenly found yourself again. Maybe it was better to just jump in and get started, as much as you were also enjoying speaking with Walter in his human form.

“Why don’t you take the basket into the bathroom? Pick out whatever intrigues you for use and come out when you’re ready. I’ll shift before you return. Sound okay?”

You nodded and he helped you to stand, then handed you the basket and gently urged you toward the bathroom door. Before he let go of your arm, he stepped in close, slipping his hand over yours and pressing it to his chest as he tugged you toward him.

“Do you mind if I give you one kiss this way before we meet next? You can say no, but it’s nice, I think, a good way to gauge your interest.”

Did he somehow think you weren’t interested? How had you hidden the drool from him? You’d been too quiet, clearly. Mesmerized by everything that had happened already in such a short time and you’d lost your voice, unable to truly communicate your desire. You were ruining everything, obviously.

“I’d like to kiss you very much,” you admitted, peering up into his eyes, which you now noticed were not the 100% blue you’d originally thought. Was this man really about to change shape? Did it matter? It didn’t matter in the least as far as how well he could kiss you, because while you were contemplating the genetics of the man in front of you, he was leaning down to capture your lips in what started as a chaste, closed mouth peck that grew steadily more intense as you felt his free arm slip up your back to settle a hand against the nape of your neck while yours slipped around his waist and urged him closer, as if you were guided by some unknown force. You felt his tongue lick along your bottom lip and you opened your mouth to him as if you’d known him your whole life.

With your hand still pressed against his sternum, you could feel his heart beat faster as each second passed and the kiss grew more heated. When he pulled away you actually whined.

“I’m glad to see you are interested,” he teased with a grin before he spun you toward the door again and pressed you inside. “Now hop on in and don’t take too long. I want to treat you for as long as I can.”

The bathroom was just as sumptuous as the main room. A dark tiled shower took up one entire wall of the room and you couldn’t tell if the color was black or just the deepest forest green you’d ever seen. Instead of a curtain or sliding door, a glass panel separated the shower from the rest of the room with an opening opposite the brass water valves to step in. What you imagined must be a rain shower head jutted out from the ceiling. You didn’t want to waste any more of your precious time, but wondered if there’d be any left to enjoy this shower when all was said and done. The rest of the bathroom fixtures and amenities would have to wait for inspection, since you needed to pay attention to your basket. You set it on the veined marble counter and finally lifted the cloth completely off.

Only the cloth wasn’t exactly a cloth. It was a cape, tucked neatly on top of a few more bottles of water, a small loaf of bread, some cut cheeses and fruit in a covered bowl. And that was it for the tame picnic items.

You pulled a short, white peasant dress trimmed in lace and a red apron with black satin ribbon criss-crossing the front out of the basket, along with what appeared to be a pair of black fishnet stockings and thought of Walter’s comments. Were you expected to change or only if you wanted this part of the experience? Finally, you noticed a few heavy leather straps and as you pulled them from the basket you realized they must be meant as restraints, but for whom? You or him? You also noticed a distinct lack of silicon implements.

You heard a rustle of some sort outside the bathroom door, reminding you that Walter was waiting and time was fleeting and you really needed to make a decision about how you wanted to enter the room again. Walter had suggested you take the basket with you. And he was going to be … different when you saw him again, wasn’t he? And you had asked him to undress you. Maybe he anticipated that undressing would be … vigorous. What if this costume was meant for that? You had brought a change of clothes but didn’t think you’d be leaving here with one less outfit in your already sparse wardrobe.

Your mind made up, you stripped quickly and donned the outfit, amazed at how simple the apron was to slip over your head, then pull the satin ties tight with your own hand. You always imagined an intricate article of intimate clothing like this would take so much more effort. Maybe it would be something you’d feel comfortable and confident enough to do outside this hotel someday.

For now, you were drawn back into the moment with a thud on the door and a low growl that sounded like “Come out.”

You finished dressing, wrapping the cape around your neck and drawing up the hood. You still weren’t wearing shoes, so you could feel the ground through the wide gaps of the fishnets as you stepped back into the room, picnic basket on your arm. It felt different. More uneven. Crunchy leaves crackled beneath as you stepped onto what now felt like real grass, fading to dirt, fading to ground littered with pine needles and dry leaves. Ferns peaked out from the tree trunks. And a supermoon shone overhead.

This was not your room. It was on the other side of the bathroom door, to be fair, but this was not the room you’d stepped into 20 minutes ago. And yet, how could it be anything but? A twig snapped to your left and drew your attention as you realized you didn’t see Walter. You’d thought he’d be right outside the door, waiting for you, maybe in a chair, maybe on the bed. But you didn’t see him, only his clothes folded neatly on the table where your picnic basket had been. Suddenly, you felt a rush of air next to you.

“What are you doing here, little one?”

You had a hard time deciding what to focus on as the words were spoken. The actual choice of the words themselves, which harkened back to that story that drifted through the tendrils of your mind, whispering “You know me?” Or the rough, low way those words tumbled from him, hungry and full of want. Was this the game?

“Your voice sounds so strange, Walter. Is everything okay?” you asked, plucking the words from the cobwebs in your head.

“I think I just swallowed some water wrong.”

You took a deep breath and turned, ready to catch him, ready to see. He was glorious and you were awestruck. It took a few moments of taking in the sight of his body, arms slightly elongated, up on the balls of his feet, hair that looked like chocolate silk covering his body but not in a way that you couldn’t see the tone and definition of his skin underneath, nose and mouth pulled forward, ears up. Ears up.

“Walter, what big ears you have,” you cooed, reaching up to touch them, though waiting for the assent in his eyes. When you could see he would allow it, you brushed your fingers along the back side, then scratched a little in the crease where they met his head and he closed his eyes for a moment. His eyes.

“Walter, what big eyes you have,” your voice a bit lower, sultry, as if the confidence you’d lost earlier had found its way back to you. He opened them and you’d have sworn sparks flew as his deep blue eyes pierced yours before you saw him drag his gaze over your face, down your neck, back and forth between your breasts, unfortunately still covered. He must have felt the same because he didn’t linger on the clothes, but when he reached your thighs, clad in the black hose he snarled, baring his sharp teeth. Sharp teeth.

“Walter,” you teased. “What big teeth you have.”

“The better to eat you with, my dear,” he growled and pounced, swatting the picnic basket to the ground before lifting you by the waist and hoisting you over his shoulder. He only needed a few steps before he could toss you back onto the plump bed. Your cape hood dropped off your head and your dress skirt hiked up a little, but not like it mattered.

Walter was between your legs, nudging your thighs wide with his own as he folded himself over you, arms caging your head. With a snarl, he began to nuzzle down your neck, sniffing along the way.

“You smell good,” he grunted as he drew a paw over your chest. “Smelled you from the moment I walked in the room, but I wanted to be closer. Like this.”

You peered down towards his hand and noticed the sharp claw of what should be an index finger drawn back and ready to slice through the black satin down your breast. The apron draped to your sides as easily as you’d put it on, practically one handed, and it was gone now. You didn’t really care if the white dress met the same fate as the apron, but the cape was quality. Surely there was no need to ruin it. You reached to untie the bow at your neck just as Walter sliced easily through the front of the dress. The rip as he reared back and grabbed a side of split fabric in both hands to finish the job was satisfying.

Since you’d decided to just leave off the bra and panties for the sake of time, you were now left like an unwrapped package on the bed, intricately woven stretchy black thread the only thing sitting between you and Walter. Your chest was heaving and so was his. And since he was now up on his knees instead of bent over you, you had a chance to glance away from his face toward his hips and you had to bite your lip.

He was huge. Like, possibly not gonna fit huge. He must have seen the hesitation on your face.

“Don’t worry,” came the sound as he dropped back off the bed, knelt on the floor, hooked his arms under your thighs, and tugged you to the edge of the bed. You felt his nuzzle against the skin of your belly, the warm, wet air of his exhale trailing down your side, into the crook of your thigh, and finally settling right on top of your cunt. He was so deft as he slipped a finger into your slit, then cut the thread between your legs as he pulled the finger free, widening the hole to give him greater access.

The noises you made could absolutely be interpreted as nothing other than consent, but you wanted to make sure he didn’t stop, as the contract said he could if he had any doubt about your permission. There could be no doubt.

“Please, don’t stop. Put your mouth on me. Make me cum.”

There was the slightest of huffs, as if he was smiling the briefest of victory smiles, before his assail began. It was measured, it was slow, it was a thorough gathering of information. It was infuriating. As you were about to open your impatient mouth and remind him that the clock was ticking the minutes away, like the insufferable bitch she was, he shifted tactics.

Every little nuance he’d taken note of, every amount of pressure and length of lick that produced some desired effect was now fortified. This was the only thing he did. And at a brisker rate, as if he’d calculated the pleasure you’d derived at the low speed and determined the exponential pleasure you’d get from the real speed.

They had not put mathematical genius in his bio, but here you were getting eaten alive better than anyone had ever done it before. And you dared say, maybe after. This could get expensive.

When you couldn’t take it anymore, when you were afraid the remaining time had to be expired because you kept awakening from mind bending bliss to find him still lapping and sucking at your pussy as if he just got started and how long had it been, my gods, you grabbed hold of the curly hair around his head and tugged as you begged.

“Stop. Stop,” you were breathless. “Walter, please stop. It’s so good. It’s too good. I don’t want you to stop but we have to stop. My time must be up, I have to go.”

His laugh wasn’t cruel, but it was sinister “We have time. Don’t worry. I made sure.”

You didn’t dare look at the clock. Your gaze was locked into his anyway, whites of his eyes replaced by a deep, lustful red. He held your stare while dragging his tongue and snout along your heated skin.

He slipped an arm under your waist, tugging your torso in one direction as he stepped a hind leg up to nudge your hips in the other. He settled in between your legs once he had you parallel to the edge of the bed. You threw your arms over your head as he caressed your outer thigh, coaxing it around his waist while bending to savor the scent you'd released for him. When he was satisfied, he moved again to climb over your body.

You were aching for him, arching into the heat radiating from the closeness of his form. As you reached for his neck to pull him even closer, you realized why he'd kissed you before the turn. It would be awkward now to put your mouth on his. The shape didn't lend itself to an easy slotting of lips against one another, though you yearned for the recent memory.

As if he could sense your desire, he leaned in and nuzzled against your neck, behind your ear, then along your throat. He pushed your chin up with his muzzle to bare your pulse to him and then he nipped.

You whimpered at the sensation and even as he licked to soothe it, he did it again, a little harder, just shy of breaking skin.

"Please," you begged, eager to feel the power, though you knew it was strictly forbidden and you trusted he did as well.

His growl was full of bravado, as if he was proud to have you begging him to break the rules.

"You wanna get me in trouble?" Walter grumbled in your ear as he ran his paws up and down your body, dragging his claws carefully over your skin. He snarled when they snagged on the stockings and looked to you for approval before he tore them away from your legs completely.

"If you can't bite me, then at least mate me," you pleaded, knowing full well he couldn't do that either but you were too far gone to care. It would at least get him thinking about sinking his cock in you one way or another.

He reached for the drawer of the heavy wooden night stand and produced a few foil packets, dropping all but one on the bedside table and handing you the last, prompting an eyebrow raised in question from you. His response was measured, as if he struggled to control something deep inside.

"You have another choice to make," he began with a low rumble as he sought understanding in your eyes. "I can't mate you directly and I'm sure you know that. I have access to...toys, equipment that would allow you to feel that sensation, but it won't be me. If instead, you're willing to use protection with me, I will gladly fill you up."

If he wouldn't go bare, so be it. He wiggled his claws as you attempted to hand him the packet, sure you'd make a debacle of trying to sheath the monster between his legs.

"Just to be safe, you'd better do it. These are pretty sharp. That ok?" he grunted at you in question.

You nodded and scooted out from under him, up the bed so you had a little leverage. He kept a knee on the mattress as he stood tall from his other hind leg still on the floor and waited for you to tear the package and roll the condom down his cock.

"Is there anything special I need to do to make it fit?" you asked, vaguely aware of how ridiculous the question sounded but eager nonetheless to get past this part and onto the one where Walter would be deep inside you, filling every inch, stroking every wall. You'd already seen the size, but forgotten your initial trepidation thanks to the glorious head he'd given you.

Surely, no standard drugstore rubber would cover it. His huff was kind, and you could swear you saw the twinkle of a smile in his eyes as he answered.

"We bring them in special. They're designed for a ... more substantial, and sometimes even exotic, need. But if you know how to use one, you know how to use them all. Still alright?"

You nodded with a smile, and set to work, letting the heft and feel of his member draw you back into your haze of lust and desire now that logistics were out of the way. You worked the rubber over his girth and found yourself imagining what it would be like to have him split you in two. You couldn't wait and he could tell.

"So eager," he grumbled as he grasped your shoulders and eased you onto your back.

You thought about trying to tame your excitement, but to what end? For a brief moment the thought that you surely didn't have much more time left flitted through your mind and then you let the excitement and anticipation take over.

"Please take me now," you begged and captured the side of your lower lip with your teeth as you once again pictured the incoming pleasure.

"If anything feels uncomfortable, you can tell me to stop," he murmured in your ear as he lowered himself over you. "Say 'woodsman' and I stop. Understood?"

He pulled back to find your reply and when he had his confirmation he didn't hold back any further. As if no time had passed between when he had coaxed so much moisture from your core and now, you were still dripping for him when he grabbed ahold of his thick member and placed the tip at your entrance.

Any other man would have slid in easily, but Walter wasn't any other man and he knew it. Once the tip breached your aching pussy, he carefully nudged a knuckle alongside, pressing in and loosening the way. You spread your legs wider for him and willed your walls to relax, though they wouldn't.

Remembering what he said during the exchange about the condom, you pulled a hand off his shoulder, down his furry chest, and in between your bodies, reaching for the spot where you were connected. The growl he let out when he realized what you were doing was invigorating and spurred you on.

You watched him bend his head down so he could take in the sight of you stroking him a few times before you began to massage the folds at your entrance. You let your fingers tease your clit and when you couldn't stand it any longer, a time which you were sure had already passed, you split your index and middle finger and gently coaxed your opening wider.

As he felt the ease, Walter sank ever deeper until he was bottomed out and pressed as far in as he could. You saw stars, immediately, and loosened even more, coating him with warmth and juices that helped his movements.

In another time, with another man, that may have been it. Most men, if they even took the time to draw an orgasm from you through the missionary position, would collapse in almost relief as soon as you came, spending their load and ending the night then and there.

But you'd already established Walter was no mere man. He took your sigh as his cue to help you feel that way again and again. And when he couldn't tear another orgasm from you in this position, no matter how hard he pumped or how high he got your legs over his head, he pulled out and flipped you to all fours and slammed back in from behind, eager to wrench at least one last shout of pleasure from your lips before he spilled his seed in the condom and sent you to your belly with a slap on your ass as he withdrew from you entirely.

"Am I charged extra for that?" you mustered the energy to ask once he'd returned from the bathroom. You peeled one exhausted eye open to see he was back to his human form, though still completely unclothed and you wondered if anyone was lucky enough to enjoy that experience as well.

"Sorry?" he asked, a quizzical look on his face.

"Does this place charge by the volume? Was there a limit to the number of orgasms allowed? I imagine it has to be like the extra mini-bar charges they tack onto your bill when you check out of any other hotel, right?"

His laugh was deep and infectious. It reverberated through the room and your chest as he climbed into the bed beside you with the bowl of cheese and fruit in one hand and the bread in the other.

"We don't have a limit. You can have as many as you want. Care for a snack? Get your energy back?” Walter took the time to feed you small bites while your boneless body slowly recovered.

"We have to be so far over my time limit. Am I about to turn into a pumpkin now?" you asked after swallowing a final bite of bread.

Walter laughed again and it warmed your heart. Maybe he was just a really good actor, but nothing so far had rang false, so why would he try to fake this? He thought you were funny.

"No, nothing so drastic. But if you do want to rinse off before checkout, you should get a move on. I could carry you if you're still not up to moving just yet?"

You nodded, and as if you weighed nothing, Walter lifted you from the bed and deposited you in the shower cabin, away from the shower head while he fiddled with the water faucet. Once the steam began to rise, he pulled you in with him and helped you lather up and rinse off, careful to keep your hair away from the spray as best he could. Then he dried you off with a fluffy towel and helped you dress in your extra set of clothes, before tucking the cape in your bag with your original outfit.

"It's part of the basket fee," he answered your unasked question with a ridiculous wink. "If you book it again, they'll give you a discount, but you'll have to remember to bring it with you."

As you stepped out of the bathroom, the room again appeared as it did when you first entered what felt like hours ago. Surely more than two. Walter could sense your confusion.

“The hotel has some special features we don’t actually advertise,” he offered, as he pulled on his pants. “We use them at our discretion, but it means you get an experience unlike others. This room, for example, truly can transform into a deep forest. And I like to stretch the time here, especially for newcomers. When you walk out into that hall, it’ll be two hours since your arrival. We’ve been here for longer though. But do me a favor, wouldja? Keep that to yourself?”

You nodded and smiled, appreciative of his special treatment, then took one last look around the room to make sure you hadn't forgotten anything. Walter walked you to the door and gave you a final kiss goodbye.

“I do hope everything was to your satisfaction. Hopefully, you’ll come back sometime,” he grinned at you as you stumbled backwards down the hall, not wanting to turn away from his gorgeous face. You were absolutely going to figure out a way to pick up some extra shift and make your way back to this hotel again if it killed you.

Bonus Edit: Absolutely GORGEOUS headers made for me by my wonderful friend in fic @geralts-yenn:

Everything HC Taglist: (as always, let me know if you want on or off)

@sillyrabbit81 @mayloma @geralts-yenn @raccoon-eyed-rebel @fvckinghenrycavill @kebabgirl67 @beck07990 @itsrubberbisquit @sweetdreamsofgelato @liveoncoffeeandflowersss @alexakeyloveloki @marantha @aireraume @angelmather1 @lizzystuffsthings @enchantedbytomandhenry @omgkatinka @littlefreya @avengersfan25 @just-chirpin @thesaucynomad @valacirca @henryownsme @summersong69 @foxyjwls007

Special tag: @kittenofdoomage (cause sometimes you love my stuff and this one's a monster fucker lol!)

Werewolf!walter only (if you asked on the teaser):

@ellethespaceunicorn (hope this is okay! Tag me in whichever HC character werewolf you end up with!) @juliaorpll78 @martha-oi @cardierreh15 if you asked and aren't here, Tumblr won’t let me tag you. Sorry!

#walter marshall fanfiction #walter marshall x reader #werewolf!walter x reader #walter marshall #werewolf!walter #spoopy season #forest fantasy #henry cavill characters #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #could be a series #who knows?#mine #deandoesthingstome

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if-whats-new · 2 months

Text

What's New In IF? Issue 17 (2024)

By Erika, Marjorie, Axelle, and Noi

Now Available!

Itch.io. - Keep Reading below

Note: Due to the links limit per post (100), some links included in the zine won't appear in this version. It is, however, on both the PDF and .txt versions on itch.

~ EDITORIAL ~

Another Milestone!

This week, we were surprised to see we passed a few milestones! Our reader base grew quite drastically, ever since we started this zine four months ago. It is being shared in places we didn't even know discussed IF!

We are very grateful for your unwavering support! It means so much to see people cheering for us, and most remarkably helping us!

Without you all, this zine wouldn't exist!

On to the zine!!

We had a wonderful discussion with Barbara Truelove this week, who let us bombard her inbox with many many questions!

In our exchanges we learned some really neat stuff about her work and her trajectory as a creator. And if you want to know what we learned... check out our interview with Barbara Truelove on Small Talk...

We hope you enjoy this extra long issue!

ERIKA, MARJORIE, AXELLE, AND NOI

~ BE PART OF THE ZINE ~

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? HAS EXPANDED!

Since the release of issue #14, we've enacted some changes with the zine. It is now expanded with interviews of creators from all around the IF world, as well as direct contributions from you, our readers!

THIS ZINE ONLY HAPPENS WITH YOU!

Want to write 1-2 pages about a neat topic, or deep-dive into a game and review it in details? Share personal experiences or get all academic?

WRITE FOR THE COLUMN!

Prefer to be more low-key but still have something to share? Send us a Zine Letter or share a game title for Highlight on…!

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Excited as we are about next week's interview and have questions for our guest? Or want to see a certain author answer questions next? Message us!

SMALL TALK... IS WAITING!

Came across something interesting? Know a release or an update announced? Saw an event happening? Whether it's a game, an article, a podcast… Add any IF-related content to our mini-database!

EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS!

~ EVENT SPOTLIGHT : Bitsy Jam ~

Tiny bites of games, with a retro feel…

The Bitsy Jam is a series of short unranked game jams, focusing on the use of the bitsy program and its forks (e.g. mosi, bipsi, ...). The jam is organized by Adam Le Doux, the creator of bitsy.

Happening monthly, based on a previously voted theme (follow Ledoux!), the Bitsy Jam brings together creators from all corners of the game development world for two weeks, to create itsy bitsy games.

Bitsy is a program to create interactive and visual short games, with a retro-pixel feel on a 2D format. Allowing for short and linear stories, as well as lengthy puzzly branching games, bitsy is a great starting point for tiny interactive fiction and pixel art.

Bisty was used in many prominent creators like cecile richard, dreamingamaris, christine mi and @cerberus-writes. A fork was used in the 2023 ECTOCOMP winning game InGirum.

The current edition (#82) is ending in two days, with the theme INTENTIONALLY BAD!

~ ENDED ~

If you like “murderboys”, the 72h Murderboys Mayhem Jam ended last weekend, with 15 entries. Check them out!

Currently in closed voting, the Ukrainian Visual Novel Jam saw 49 entries submitted last weekend. Come show your support before the results!

~ ONGOING (VOTING) ~

You can now check out the entries submitted to the IntroComp and vote for your favorite demo!

~ ONGOING (SUBMITTING) ~

If you are looking for a challenge, the yearly Velox Fabula just started! For the next ten days, this ranked jam is looking for visual novel submissions around a theme: “You Shouldn't Be Here”.

If you still want thrills but in a chiller way, the Tales to Thrill Jam also just started. Take your pick from the three themes and try your best at emulating the creepy campfire vibes!

For those who created an intent to participate at the IFComp, you have until the end of the month to submit a full game… or wait for next year! (Or you can look our for beta-openings, create an account to vote when the games are released, or offer prizes!) @ifcomp

Less than a week left to create a short game with only One Choice, for the Single Choice Jam!

For the francophones, the French IF community is organizing a summer-long camp to create parsers. Join the Confiture de Parser if you're interested!

Ending at the end of August, is the summer-long unranked SuNoFes Jam (Summer Novel Festival), where you can only submit one IF/VN game!

On the CoG Forum, Halloween is already there! Until Oct 31st, submit to the Halloween Jam - it has funky themes!

Looking for motivation to try your hands at Visual Novels? The Phantasia Jam just started, and will run until Halloween! Three months to create a fantasy VN, with the theme of “Hidden Magic”.

Do you understand or write Ukrainian? Until the end of the year, the Ukrainian IF Festival is happening on itch.io!

~ OTHER ~

Over on the IntFiction Forum, the Review-a-thon is continuing its initiative to get more reviews for games. Check out this post by Tabitha if you want to participate! It ends on the 30th. This is also a sponsored event, aiming to raise funds for one of the Forum members.

The Interactive Fiction Showcase is still running! If you have completed an IF piece this year, consider submitting it! It is happening only on itch!

SMALL TALK…

WITH BARBARA TRUELOE (@barbwritesstuff - Web)

Joining us today is werewolf enthusiast, IF creator and author: Barbara Truelove - Author of the “Blood Moon”, “Thicker Than” and more!

Links included in this interview were not included due to the Tumblr links limits. Please download the itch.io version!

⟶ Welcome Barbara on Small Talk…!

Happy to be here!

⟶ Let’s jump right in! Who are you and how did you find IF?

The line I usually use is: I'm an Australian writer, game developer, and a werewolf enthusiast. I think that sums me up pretty well. I've been writing since I was little (my mum has the scrappy, incomprehensible notebooks to prove it) and have always had a particular soft spot for stories about monsters.

My journey to IF was a bit meandering. Compressing things as much as I can: In 2018 I wrote a book [Crying Wolf]. It was about werewolves in prison and I ended up selling it in 2019 to a small, independent publisher. I was editing it throughout the later half of 2019. Unfortunately, in hindsight, I don't think the editor and I were very well suited for each other. The process left me feeling really insecure about my writing. So insecure that I actually stopped writing for a while.

In 2020, I moved to South Korea. Covid arrived in the country only a couple of weeks before I did. The pandemic made it much harder for me to make friends, so I ended up playing more games and stumbled across IF. I've always liked interactive stories (I had an unhealthy love for Dragon Age: Origins back in the day) and in October 2020 I decided to try and write my own. I used ChoiceScript, because it seemed like the easiest coding language to learn, and almost gave up half a dozen times that first night. But, I was having fun writing again which was amazing.

A month later, I posted the first couple of chapters of Blood Moon which is my first Interactive Fiction project. About half a dozen people messaged me telling me they loved it and encouraging me to continue, and so I did. It might seem corny and cliche, but I'll be forever grateful for this community. IF made me enjoy writing again. Writing interactive stories is so stupidly fun, and it was wonderful having a creative outlet and a little online community during the pandemic.

⟶ Anything about IF you’d like to nerd about to start?

IF is in such a weird, odd space in the market. Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it both? Is it neither? When I'm talking about it in person I always find myself saying stuff along the lines of: “It's like those old choose-your-own-adventure books from the 90s but on your phone”. This hazy definition makes it hard in some ways. For example, the Hugo awards are happening very soon [tomorrow]. There is an interactive fiction/game category, which is awesome, but the nominations are things like Baldur's Gate 3. Obviously, that's a game. A very gamey game. IFs like the kind made in ChoiceScript or Twine aren't going to compete.

I hope IF grows in popularity and we start to see a distinct niche for it in mainstream pop culture and media. I think that would be nice. Not saying we have to get our own Hugo Award... but I'm not not saying that either. Shoot for the moon and all that.

⟶ Could you tell us a bit more about your interactive work?

My IF projects are:

Blood Moon - A ChoiceScript game about dating werewolves and fighting vampires.

Thicker Than - Another ChoiceScript game and sequel to Blood Moon. It's about surviving vampire politics as a young fledgling. Currently in development.

Something A Little Super - A game I made in Ren'py, free on itch.io. It's about raising a super powered child. A love letter to my favourite superhero: Martha Kent.

A Fairy Tale - A Visual Novel made in Ren'py, also free on itch.io. You play as a young fairy noble seeking an advantageous marriage. It's very silly. Murder is optional.

Drown With Me - A dark mermaid tale made with Ren'py. Development on his game is currently on hold.

⟶ Your ChoiceScript games are pretty chunky and inter-connected. How do you manage creating such intricate stories and keep track of everything?

I'm a VERY bad planner. I write in Choicescript and use CSIDE. I have a thousand little notebooks filled with badly scribbled ideas. I usually have a rough idea about where a story is going but I won't know 100% how it'll happen until I'm writing it. Editing is my best friend. I also just use a lot of variables and (when in doubt) go back and look at my variable list to remember what I was doing and what different choices players may have made.

Variables are still a tricky thing to keep track of! I don't have a good system for it, honestly. I just use my brain which sometimes makes mistakes or forgets about certain choices, and the variable list. But that's what editing is for. I try not to be too hard on myself if my first draft isn't perfect. I'm really grateful for readers who send me discrepancies or things they've encountered that don't make sense in my demos and WIPs.

⟶ When you started Blood Moon, did you ever think it would end up being published under Hosted Games?

When I started Blood Moon, I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea if I'd be able to finish it, let alone get it published. The whole thing was a learning process. Hosted Games is very upfront about the requirements of publication. I followed those and submitted the game when it was finished. They reviewed my submission, asked for a few minor edits, and then gave me a publication date. Overall, I think the whole process went very smoothly.

⟶ What about Thicker Than? When did you know you wanted to write a sequel?

I didn't think there would be a sequel, just because I didn't think I would be able to do that much writing again. But then the idea of flipping the script and telling a story from a vampire's perspective happened and I just couldn't hold myself back. 😅 This happened after I'd finished writing Blood Moon, but before Blood Moon came out. I wrote a short demo for Thicker Than, but didn't start work in earnest until after Blood Moon's release.

⟶ Blood Moon is told from the perspective of werewolves, while Thicker Than is from the vampire's. How was changing that perspective between the different titles?

It was so fun!

The werewolves are very modern and have a strong rough 'n tumble found family vibe. They'd go to hell and back for each other, that they're not afraid to have distinct and loud personalities, and that they're low-key epic. They don't realise how scary they are because they're used to being the biggest, meanest thing around.

The vampires are shady, sneaky, and old fashioned, both in the way they talk and the way they do business. The most powerful vampires are really powerful, but the average vampire is much more humble and blending in is how they survive. They've also hilariously bad at team work.

The fact that these two monsters are so different makes them so fun to write. They really are the opposite sides of the same coin. Two types of paranormal monster living in the same city, but with very different struggles, cultures, and experiences. I really wanted to show that difference and give the vampires (who were very unsympathetic in Blood Moon) their due... without taking away their darkness.

⟶ You are really passionate about werewolves. What's so cool about them?

Werewolves are fun! They're my go-to monster. But I like all kinds of monsters. Vampires, fairies, evil robots. I'm a fan of stories that explore humanity through the inhuman.

I think inhuman characters are fun because they can reflect us (our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences) in unique and sometimes fantastical ways. So, for example, in Blood Moon, a major theme was family. But, rather than write about humans with families, I'm writing about werewolves with packs. It makes those themes pop. But also, monsters are fun! It's fun to imagine the world as seen through the eyes of a werewolf, or a vampire, or a robot, or an alien, or a god.

⟶ Are there other themes you'd like to explore in future projects?

I never know what I'm writing about until I'm writing it, and sometimes not even then. I process my life through my writing, so the themes often reflect what I'm thinking about and feeling at the time. I can't really predict exactly what it is I'm going to zero in on and explore until I'm already doing it.

⟶ Then, what inspires and influences your creative process?

Inspiration can come from anywhere. From books I've read, to places I've been, to people I've met. I can never predict what will spark the next idea.

Blood Moon has some obvious inspirations. The city setting is inspired by Seoul. When I wrote Blood Moon I was trying to make the city setting feel generic enough that it could be any city. I wanted players to be able to imagine it was taking place in their hometown, which is why I never named the city the characters were in. But, in my mind, the inspiration for the city is Seoul. Seoul is both a remarkably beautiful and remarkably ugly place. It's polluted, built up, and bathed in neon lights with tiny traditional alleyways twisting through the modern buildings. Magical and sinister and wonderful all at once. The perfect city for vampires and werewolves.

The various characters are all pieces of myself and/or people I've met. The vampires and werewolves have been informed by all the vampires and werewolves I read and watched growing up. I drew inspiration from: Underworld, Interview with the Vampire, Twilight, Vampire the Masquerade, and (of course) Dracula. These things are what helped shape my idea of what werewolves and vampires could be throughout my teen years.

⟶ Is there anything you wished you’d known before starting creating IF or using ChoiceScript?

I chronically underestimate how much work writing IF is. When I first started Blood Moon I naively thought I would be able to finish it in 8ish months (ha! It took about 2 years.). IFs are big. Much bigger than novels. They take a lot of work and a lot of time to write. It's also hard sometimes just holding all the different narrative threads in my brain and weaving them together in fun and satisfying ways. I want the different routes to feel unique and dynamic while also not overwhelming myself with too many variations and options. That balancing act is a skill I'm still learning and developing to this day. I think I often bite off more than I can chew and have to slow things down for a while as I try to untangle and work through it all.

⟶ Are there things you wish you’d done differently with Blood Moon?

Blood Moon is not a perfect game, but I did the best I could at the time, so I'm not going to be too harsh on myself when it comes to things I could've done better.

⟶ Then, let’s focus on the positive. Do you have a favorite scene from all your games?

I don't think I could choose a favourite scene. 😅 There's a few oddballs I'm very fond of. Marco's 'octopuses' rant in Blood Moon is so weird and wonderful, I can't help but think of it. The flashback scene in Something A Little Super is exactly my brand of corny. I'm also thinking of some more epic things I've written that I really enjoyed bringing to life. There's some moments like that in my book Of Monsters and Mainframes that'll be coming out next year.

⟶ What about a scene that was particularly challenging to put together, but satisfying to complete?

The scene I worked the hardest on was probably the final showdown in Blood Moon. I really wanted it to feel satisfying, challenging, and impactful. There's this moment (spoilers!) where the player's character gets to go toe-to-toe with the BBEG [Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal], who just so happens to be a vampire. Werewolves vs Vampires! It's an iconic match up. I wanted to write something worthy of it. I couldn't really figure out a way to make it special. Originally, it was going to be outside, in the snow. That way I'd get the dramatic visual of red blood splattering on white snow. But it also felt a little cliche. Then I saw a Say Yes To The Dress clip somewhere online and suddenly I'm writing this scene not in a snowy street but in a bridal boutique. Blood splattering on white lace felt brutal and messy and visceral in all the right ways. It really made that final showdown work. I think that flash of inspiration really rescued that scene. The early drafts of it aren't half as good.

⟶ Having branches can be hard to balance. Have you ever struggled with choices for which you can’t write a path? How do you handle it?

Some stories want to branch a lot. Some stories don't. I write the stories that don't want to branch as novels. However, sometimes I'll stumble across a section of an IF that I'm struggling to give interesting branches/stories to. In those moments, I do a faux pas and don't give the player a choice. I think it's better to have a few good/exciting choices than a lot of boring choices. And, if my brain doesn't want to write a certain choice outcome, that means that outcome probably won't be fun or rewarding for the reader either. I really hope that makes sense.

⟶ Last year, you branched out, and created 3 Visual Novels in Ren’Py. What was the driver behind this switch up?

I just wanted to challenge myself and see if I could figure out a different coding style. I'm really proud of my Ren’Py games. They're short, silly, and strange, but I learnt so much doing them. Also it allowed me to experiment with shorter interactive stories.

And I might do it again! It was a lot of fun. I'm just so overloaded with writing projects right now that I can't promise anything. 😅

⟶ Since two of these are text-only, why the choice of Ren'Py over other more traditional choice-based programs like Twine?

I don’t know why, but my brain doesn't like Twine. Totally subjective opinion! I've seen other writers do amazing things with it. I just have never been able to make it go.

Ren’Py is a really powerful tool and works in a way that is easy for me to understand. I love the built in features like the menu and save functions.

⟶ Unlike your other works, Something A Little Super is more of a slice-of-life first and foremost. What inspired you to write this story?

My mum! I wanted to tell a superhero story with a twist. Something A Little Super is inspired by Superman and Martha Kent, but the main focus of the story isn't flying around, saving the world. It's about the choices that parents make while raising their kids.

I've never been a parent, so I used my mum as my main inspiration. My mum was (and still is) a superhero.

I also really wanted to explore how different parenting choices can have a big impact on who a child grows up to be. I tried to write the game in such a way that there weren't any ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choices. All the choices are reasonable and make sense. But they do shape who the super powered kid grows up to become. I'm so proud of Something A Little Super. It's such a personal wee story in so many ways. It makes me so happy knowing people enjoyed it.

⟶ Your other releases are more anchored in fantasy: one focusing on fairies, the other having a more nautical approach. Was there something specific that inspired you?

A Fairy Tale was my first Ren'Py game. I wanted to write something small while I figured it out... and fairies are very small.

Which is a joke, but also very true. The whole premise of the game is these tiny little creatures with very short life spans that meet and find love in one night. I used Tinkerbell and Peter Pan as inspirations but the motive behind the fairies was the ability to compress everything down into a very short, but also very high stakes story.

Drown With Me is a project I wish I had time to work on. Dark mermaids are always a ton of fun. As for inspirations... that'd be pirate music.

⟶ Did you notice differences when working on those VNs compared to more traditional text-only IF?

Writing a visual novel is much more like writing and directing a stage play than writing a book. It was fun experimenting with the script style.

⟶ You don’t just create IF games, but also write novels. How do you manage to balance all these different projects?

I don't. I'm very bad at balancing my time between projects. I often overcommit and underestimate how much work a project is going to need. I need to get better at balancing my writing in general. I just always want to do so much.

⟶ Still, you are pretty consistent with your updates (1/month). How do you manage this?

I update every full moon! It's a silly thing that I started when I was writing Blood Moon. It's a fun gimmick that I've kept up with. Some months I don't write very much, and that's okay. Some months I write heaps and that's awesome! I try to be kind to myself, no matter how much or little I get done. That's the only advice I can give. Have fun and be nice to yourself.

⟶ How do you assess whether your work is enjoyed by people?

I don't know how many people enjoy my work. That's a really hard thing to know! I know there's some very lovely people who message me sometimes. I think I'm very lucky to have found people who mesh with my style of writing. The internet is a big, tangly place and it's always wonderful when you find people who are on your wavelength. It's really humbling to know there are other humans out there who think about my characters and stories.

⟶ As an outsider, it is undeniable you are pretty popular on Tumblr, where parasociality is pretty common. Have you experienced this phenomenon yourself?

There are boundaries I set when I talk to people online. I think that's important. I'm kinda private, actually, and a wee bit shy in my day-to-day life. I don't always seem that way, but when I'm online I'm usually just talking about my writing. That's what I really enjoy doing.

⟶ Have you gotten messages, like feedback or reviews, that weren’t as nice? How do you handle criticism and negative comments?

Oh, all the time. I get some very harsh feedback in my inbox. I try to take it in my stride, but some days that's easier said than done.

I divide all feedback I receive into two groups: Actionable feedback and Unactionable feedback, i.e., something I can fix, or something that I can't. Examples of unactionable feedback would be stuff like ‘I don't like werewolves’. Obviously, my story isn't the right fit for that person, and there's nothing I can do about that. I ignore unactionable feedback. If someone sends me actionable feedback, I try to do my best to fix it.

The good thing is, I get a lot more positive messages than negative.

An author I met last year said something very wise that's stuck with me. She said, no matter what, there are some people who won't like what you write. And that's fine. In fact, that's good. You want people to love or hate your work. That means they're reading it!

There is no such thing as a game/book that everyone likes. Keeping that in mind, it's much easier to read the negative feedback, find the actionable feedback in it, then get back to work.

⟶ On days that are difficult to take the feedback in, do you take breaks or get right back to work?

I let myself feel my feelings and (if I need to) I complain to my friends. 😅 But it honestly doesn't happen often. I'm pretty good at taking negative feedback, bad news, rejections, etc... in my stride. It sucks, but it's also just part of being a writer.

⟶ Do you think your traditional writing background helped you process this negative feedback this productively?

I don't think so. I think being able to take negative feedback is just a skill writers learn over time, no matter the medium. When I was in university, I did a couple of units in scriptwriting, and some of the feedback I got then was very critical. Before that, when I was in school, I did a creative writing class which was also pretty brutal. I used to write fanfiction, and people didn't pull their punches there either. It sucks, but I think it's normal to get a lot of various responses to your writing. Like I said, I ignore any feedback which is unactionable.

That said, there are times when it gets to me. Like I said before, I was very insecure about my writing after editing my first novel. It's hard some days. But writing is my art. It's how I process the world. When I stop, I feel like I'm missing something in my life. I focus on the good because I want to feel good about what I do. It's not always easy, but it's important to me.

⟶ You started your writing journey publishing a book, with another one on the way. How does writing a novel compare to creating interactive fiction?

I'm really not sure how to compare writing a novel and writing IF. In some ways, they're not that different. The main focus of both is to tell a good story. There are some nitty gritty differences, but overall I think stories are stories. I will say, some stories need to be IFs and some need to be novels. Blood Moon wouldn't work as a novel. That story wanted to branch from the moment I started writing it. Similarly, my most recent novel, Of Monsters and Mainframes wouldn't have ever worked as an IF. That story felt more direct, contained, and character focused from the first word typed.

I guess it's just whichever medium suits the story.

⟶ What advice would you give to an aspiring IF creator, based on your experiences?

Write something you're passionate about! For me, it was werewolves. It doesn't matter what the subject is, just make it something you could stay up until 4am talking about. I worry a lot of new writers feel they have to chase trends, but the only thing that does is ensure you'll be behind the curve. Write what makes you happy, and that love will shine through.

⟶ Many people rave about your work, but are there any games you rave about? Anything you would recommend to our readers?

Recommendations are so hard! I feel like I'm just going to gush about the games everyone already loves. VTM: Night Roads, Fields of Asphodel (@chrysanthemumgames), The Northern Passage (@northern-passage), Choice of the Vampire, etc.

There are so many fantastic games out there and so many WIPs!

⟶ After Thicker Than, what is on the horizon for Barbara Truelove? And where will we be able to follow your progress?

Thicker Than still needs a lot of work. It's a very big, complex game and I think I'll probably be working on it in some capacity for at least another year. IFs aren't quick and easy but they're a ton of fun! I've also got a (non-interactive) novel coming out next year with Jaysen Headley at Bindery Books titled Of Monsters and Mainframes and I've got a couple more projects I'm working away on behind the scenes. You can find me on my website, Tumblr (@barbwritesstuff), and KoFi.

HUGE THANKS TO BARBARA TRUELOVE FOR ANSWERING OUR MANY BRUNING QUESTIONS!

~ NEW RELEASE ~

The Ghost and the Golem (CScript) is the latest release from Choice of Games @choiceofgames

Oh, Vagabond (Ink) is an atmospheric short text horror adventure about what remains. @an-excess-of-eyes

Nusantara: Bermuda Triangle (Ren’Py) is an eight-year-long in the making adventure otome visual novel.

Can't Buy Me Love (Ren’Py) is a visual novel based and all about the Beatles. @brummelliana

passenger9027 (Twine) is a short sci-fi game, where you wake up in a spaceship.

The Robot (Twine) is a short sci-fi game, where you have a conversation with a robot.

TECH // LOOP (Twine) is a cyberpunk game where you play a looper.

As always, don't forget to check out the submitted entries to the events mentioned in the previous pages. They deserve some love too!

~ NEW RELEASE (WIP) ~

Small Charms (Ren’Py) is Visual Novel project about daily use magic, a coffee date and a terrible decision. @viscereye

We Troubled Souls (CScript) is a high fantasy project involving godly and mystical beings, and survival.

to the place where death rests (Twine) is a sapphic project where a woman falls in love with the lady of/in her dreams. @bntarwarn

Intensions (CScript) is a high fantasy project where you play as a fae, with the weight of your people on your shoulders.

Vessel of Harkahn (CScript) is a fantasy project where the survival of the world resides in your locked memories. @vatiiagames

That Distant Shore (Twine) is a supernatural fantasy project where your curse will be your undoing, unless… . @exkowrites

Aphni's Quartet (Twine) is a cyber-punk fantasy project where you play a loath prophet. @marblesstorystudio

Press Play (CScript) is a slice-of-life project where you are part of a mysterious band. @pressplay-if

Tale of the Dragoons (CScript) is a fantasy project where you are a dragoon.

Carrion (Twine) is a mermen adventure game where you must defeat an ocean cult. @kinglyoverlord

~ GAMES UPDATES ~

Social Democracy (DendryNexus) has received multiple updates.

Dice & Dungeon Masters (CScript) added extra content to the demo.

Echoes of Kingdom: The Last Stand (CScript) updated with dozens of new words.

Honor Among Thieves (CScript) added extra content to the demo. @leoneliterary

The Judgement of Tarkar (CScript) came back with 2 new chapters.

Summer of Love (Twine) added a new chapter to the demo. @summeroflove-if

Dance of the Night (CScript)'s demo now includes Chapter 2.

Remnants of the Past (Twine) started its second act in this update. @remnantsofthepast-if

The Abyssal Song (Twine) added Chapter 4 to the demo. @ri-writes-if

The Bureau (CScript) added extra content to the demo. @morbethgames

The Game of War (CScript) updated with extra content.

The Night Market (Twine) added Chapter 6 to the Patreon demo. @night-market-if

Path of Martial Arts (CScript) added new paths to the demo. @nicky-if

Love in a Time of Earthquakes (CScript) completed Chapter 6.

Vendetta (CScript) updated the Patreon demo. @vendetta-if

The Bastard Crown (CScript) updated with major re-writes. @eddyiewriting

The Ultimate Magic Student (CScript) updated the Patreon demo.

Abnormal (CScript) updated the demo with major re-writes. @abnormal-aninteractivezombiegame

The Six That Thrives (Twine) added Chapter 3 to the Patreon demo. @the-six-that-thrive-if

Dragon of Steelhorn (CScript) has put out the demo for bonus chapters for beta.

~ OTHER ~

The last HG release, Halls of Sorcery has been withdrawn from sale due to AI-generated content. If you have bought the game, and have not received a refund yet, you should contact HG support.

Magehunter: Phoenix Flame's demo (CScript) will be soon removed from viewing, as it is expected to go into beta testing. This might be your last chance to play it.

Heavens’ Revolution (CScript) is looking for official beta-testers.

Drew Cook started a new series of articles: Let's Write IF. @golmac

If you are fan of podcasts about IF, Adam Cadre uploaded the latest episode of Radio K, discussing Lost Pig, Child's Play, and An Act of Murder. @adamcadre

The 55th issue of the Indipocalypse was released recently, including multiple IF games.

On IntFiction, mathbursh completed the Brief History of the SpringThing, ahead of the release of his IF History Textbook.

As always, we apologize in advance for missing any update or release from the past week. We are only volunteers using their limited free time to find as much as we can - but sometimes things pass through the cracks.

If you think something should have been included in this week's zine but did not appear, please shoot us a message! We'll do our best to add it next week! And if you know oncoming news, add it here!

~ A CYOA Poem ~

1 Catered with abundance, the player peruses the IF wares, meticulously thinking about what to take next. Go to 2.

6 There isn't a single choice. You are bombarded with options. Your commands push the story seamlessly. It only returns failed actions. Your fingers go numb from clicking, pressing, typing... Go to 7.

4 The world is simple but immersive. The world is large and neverending. You only stand in your room. You travel wide distances. It is a peaceful journey. You get hurt at every turn. Go to 5.

3 The adventure doesn't start before a character is selected. Or maybe it has already. There is so much to choose from. There is nothing to choose from. Go to 4.

7 And it's already the ending. You won't get there for another dozens of hours. You wait patiently for the next update. The experience is complete. You lurk. You ask for details. You rate. You comment. Go to 8.

END You played an IF game. Return to 1 to restart.

8 You spam everyone with links so they play it too. You never speak of that experience ever again. You make fanart and daydream about everything. Go to END.

5 You meet a bunch of characters. You are utterly alone. You romance one, or maybe six. You only find peace with yourself. You love them. You hurt them. Go to 6.

2 Yesterday was slice-of-life, tomorrow surely sci-fi. But for today, a simple fantasy will do. Go to 3.

IFLover2495

~ HIGHLIGHT ON ~

A couple of games that we thought were cool.

(Don't) Save Me by Coral Nulla @nullamirrors (Decker - itch.io - IFDB)

What happens to the ‘manic pixie girl’ at the end of the story? This is what the game tries to find out, giving a voice to the trope we love but never wonder what is under the surface. A wacky adventure filled with choices, with a funky UI.

//recommended by anonymous//

Swooning over Stans by sovonight @gfdatingsim (Ren'Py - itch.io - VNDB)

“Recent memes reminded me of the insanity that is this game. You barely need to know any lore of Gravity Fall to reach the endings and feel fulfilled by this weird fan-game. And it's not just SO GOOD story-wise, it's so freaking well made too! Fans are the best, they make the coolest shit.”

//submitted by (peace sign emoji)//

The Dying of the Light by Amanda Walker (Inform7 - itch.io - IFDB)

A heartbreaking text-adventure told from the perspective of an older woman with dementia, as she struggles to communicate her needs, wants, and fears.

Though fighting the engine may be frustrating, it displays an effective manner to convey the difficulties of dementia.

Linear progression. Input HINT for help.

//recommended by C.//

Your favourite game here?

Do you have a favourite game that deserve some highlighting?

A old or recent game that wowed you so much you spam it to everyone?

Tell us about it! And it might appear here!

WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU ALL! WETHER IT'S GOOD OR BAD, OR EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN...

Hi What's New in IF team! This is a tiny zine letter for you, to thank you a whole lot for including my game in your zine. It was really nice of you! and I got a whole lot of new people checking it out thanks to you. Keep up the good work! - anonymous

I hope @catskets sees this, because I really enjoyed their interview. It was so fun and insightful, and honestly, pretty inspiring. And now I have 30+ new games to play, and links to link between all the stories! - a new fan

Hi ThereIsMoreButICantFindIt, Thank you for the links, it was pretty enlightening. Please keep me in mind if you do find other sources about Modern IF! -Rich

is this section limited to authors only? because i wanted to give a shout-out to @elfroot-and-laurels, my favourite artist, who's done imo the best (fan)art of IF projects i've ever seen. -aureuslaureus

Have something to say? Send us a message entitled: Zine Letter!

As we end this issue, we would like to thank:

a new fan, aureuslaureus, C., ghostlykittenshark, Rich, (peace sign emoji), and a bunch of you anonymous users!

For sending news, interview questions, helpful tips, cool links, filled form, written Sheet line, even emails... all these help us so much to make this Zine possible!

And as always, huge thanks to all you readers to liked, shared, and commented on last week's issue! What might be tiny actions are huge support and motivators to us! Thank you for cheering us on this journey!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We also hope you join us again next week, for we have a very special guest on the zine:

Award-winning creator, retro-IF enthusiast, parser craft writer, Drew Cook @golmac sits down with us next week!

Want to know more about his work? How he found IF? Or learn more about his non-dev projects? Send us all your burning questions!

And see you again next week!

ERIKA, MARJORIE, AXELLE, AND NOI

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? 2024-ISSUE 17

154 notes · View notes

justagalwhowrites · 6 months

Text

Yearling - Ch. 32: Promises

Joel adjusts to life in Jackson after his brush with death. A continuation of Yearling ch. 1-31 found on Tumblr here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

Warnings: References to canon-typical violence. Smut :). No use of Y/N. Minors DNI 18+ Only

Length: 9.5k

A/N: Hi y'all. If you're still looking at this fic but have skipped the last few chapters because of spoilers, this is a pretty safe chapter to jump back in at. You do need to understand that Joel was nearly killed in an encounter with an unnamed person while on patrol and that someone was looking for him in particular to have the context for this chapter. If you have any questions, feel free to DM me.

AO3 | Chapter One | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

December, 2027

“No.”

“Baby…”

“I said no, Joel.”

You stalked off to another room and Joel could feel your frustration from where he sat on the couch.

He sighed, debating whether or not to follow you or if he should stay where he was and let you cool off.

It wasn’t the first time the two of you had had this discussion over the last six weeks.

Joel had made significant recovery since the incident in November. His leg had mostly healed, though he still walked with a slight limp. But he could breathe deeply without feeling the burning pain of broken ribs now. And the parts of him the doctors had to cut away so he would survive - part of his liver, part of his intestine, one of his kidneys - no longer constantly hurt to the point of occasional agony. Everything was tolerable now, if not necessarily what it was before.

As a result, he was starting to go a little stir crazy. Admittedly, the doctors hadn’t cleared him for anything too strenuous - though he wondered how much of that was your doing versus theirs - but he wanted to start preparing to go back to the life he had in Jackson. One where he felt fulfilled, like he had his place in the community and a way to contribute.

You, however, weren’t too happy with that plan.

Joel sighed and got up from the couch, the muscle in his leg burning as he did. Things still hurt and pulled at first - and he was sure getting on a horse would be uncomfortable at best - but it would pass. Or he’d get used to it.

Either way, he wasn’t content with continuing to sit in his house and rot.

“Sweetheart,” he said, finding you in the kitchen.

You closed the fridge door with too much force, making the jars of canned produce inside rattle.

“No,” you said, adding milk to a cup of tea on the counter. “Find a place to sit, I don’t want you spilling hot tea all over yourself.”

“I’m not a kid,” he said, a little defensive. “I know perfectly well what I’m capable of…”

“No, you don’t,” you said, leveling him with a glare before returning the milk to the fridge and pointing to his spot at the table. “Now sit.”

Joel squared his jaw for a moment before going for the kitchen table - trying to walk with as little a limp as he could manage even though it fucking hurt - and sitting down there. He took a deep breath as you got the mugs of tea and carried them to the table, setting one in front of him and the other in front of the seat he’d come to think of as yours. You settled in beside him, holding the mug with both hands, seemingly determined to not actually look at him.

“We need to talk about it,” he said gently.

“I’m not going to discuss you going out there to get yourself fucking killed, Joel,” you snapped. “I’m not doing it, I’m not going through that again. End of story.”

Joel tried to remind himself that he wouldn’t feel any differently if he were in your position. He couldn’t blame you for it.

You’d been a mess when he woke up. It had just taken him a few minutes to really realize it.

It was like you couldn’t get close enough to him once you were against him, clinging to him as you tried to not disturb him or put any weight on him. But once he got you settled, you fell asleep quickly.

Joel, however, was wide awake. Part of him was afraid to go to sleep again. He didn’t want to not wake up, he wasn’t confident enough that he would. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious but it felt like he’d slept enough for a lifetime.

So he just held onto you. He soaked up the feel of you in his arms, a sensation he thought he’d never have again. He tried to pick through the fog of his mind, remember what had happened before, but it felt so far away, nothing but a haze of blood and hurt before your voice was there. After a while, he left it alone.

But you didn’t sleep the way you normally did. At first, you seemed stiff, like you were still conscious enough to be worried about hurting him. That didn’t last too long. Your whole body relaxed, as limp and pliant as you were when he’d just made you come again and again. But you almost never actually found rest that way. Even with Joel beside you, there was part of you that was always tense and ready to defend yourself. A byproduct, he was sure, of years of torment that could strike at any time. You only slept that way when you were at the point of total exhaustion, when your body physically couldn’t be on guard anymore.

As much as he wanted to talk to you - ask you what happened, how you were feeling, how long he’d been like this - he wanted you to rest more. You needed it, your whole body desperate for it. So when his door opened just as the light in the room shifted to the pink and orange of dawn, his hold on you tightened ever so slightly.

Carol, one of the doctors, didn’t even notice him watching her come in at first, nearly jumping out of her skin when she realized that his eyes were open.

“Joel!” She yelped and you stirred ever so slightly against him. He held you tighter.

“Shhh,” he hushed her before whispering, soft and low. “She needs her rest. Don’t think she’s had much of that lately.”

“But…”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he said. “Let ‘er sleep. Can look me over in a bit.”

She rolled her eyes but left all the same and he watched you, lost in you. You’d survived. He remembered being afraid that you wouldn’t but you had, and so had he. He trailed his fingers gently over your exposed skin, marveling at the softness of you, that you loved and trusted him enough to let your softness be this close.

The sun was high when the door opened again, not easing open this time but flying, Ellie tearing into the room in a blur of wild hair and disheveled clothes. The door smacking into the wall made you wake with a jolt and he held you close as he felt that tension shock back into your limbs.

“Joel!” Ellie barreled over to him and he couldn’t help but smile as she skidded to a stop at his bedside as you sat up.

“Hey baby girl.”

“You’re awake,” her voice was thick as she sat down near you at the edge of the bed. “Fuck, I didn’t…”

“Are you OK?” He asked, trying to look her over.

“I’m fine,” she waved him off. “You scared the shit out of me but I’m fine. The doc said I needed to get you to let her look you over? What the fuck, Joel?”

“Joel!” You looked down at him, wide awake now, his head propped up on pillows.

“You needed rest,” he shrugged.

“You needed to be examined by a doctor!” You snapped, unfolding yourself from your place at his side. He tried to hold onto you but you leveled him with a glare. “After everything we did to get you here alive, don’t even start.”

He tried very hard not to laugh.

“Whatever you say, baby.”

He seemed to frustrate you a lot after that. You talked to the doctors more than he did, never leaving his side and listening to everything they said with a hard look on your face. He tried to ask more about what happened to you - he remembered you bleeding and your face was still damaged but healing - but you changed the subject back to him immediately every time.

Joel was ready for things to go back to normal as quickly as he could manage but you were nervous, hesitant. The first time you dared leave him at the clinic, something happened with a horse and Olivia came to get you. It was the third day he was awake and you were gone long enough that he was able to get out of bed and try to walk on his own. He didn’t make it very far, all but falling into a chair near the door after using the wall to haphazardly balance as he went. The chair smacked into the wall and Joel heard scrambling from the hall before Carol threw open the door, her eyes wide and panicky before she saw where Joel had ended up.

“Are you trying to get yourself hurt?” She demanded as she helped him back to bed.

“No,” he said, defensive. “I’m tryin’ to get myself back to normal…”

“Joel, you’re 60 years old…”

“Don’t remind me.”

“…And injuries take time to recover from. You’re not a young man anymore, you can’t push yourself the way you used to.”

“I’m not a young man anymore,” he agreed as she helped lower him to the bed, his body seeming so hulking and large beside hers. “I can’t afford to waste time bein’ useless.”

“Recovery isn’t useless,” she narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re not going to listen to me then you need to listen to that woman of yours, Joel. Take it easy and don’t do things like get up without someone there to help if you need it.”

Carol was nice enough to not tell you about the fact that he got out of bed and walked to the chair, at least. But she had distinctly sided with you in all matters related to his recovery after that, as had Tommy, Ellie, Maria and Savvy.

It didn’t help that there were clearly conversations happening that no one wanted to tell him about. He heard raised voices from the front room of the clinic one day, you and Ellie going back and forth about something he couldn’t quite make out until there was the sharp boom of Tommy’s voice ending the conversation.

“Care to tell me what that was this afternoon?” He asked as you settled into his side to sleep after Ellie and Tommy had gone home for the night.

“Depends on how pissed off you want to be,” you replied, draping your arm gingerly over his chest and settling in with your head on his shoulder.

“Not gonna piss me off,” he said gently. You had shrugged out of the button down of his that you’d worn that day before climbing in bed, stripped down to the tank top below and he could feel your skin so easily like this, his hand skimming over your bared arm. You pressed yourself closer.

“Yes it is,” you said quietly, stretching and kissing his throat before settling at his side again.

“Can’t go the rest of our lives without shit pissin’ me off, baby,” he said gently. “Don’t think I can handle you treatin’ me like glass the whole time, either.”

“I just worry,” you said softly. “I don’t want to do this without you, can’t give you a damn heart attack because Ellie has some scheme…”

“So it’s Ellie that’s causin’ the trouble,” he said.

You groaned.

“Fine,” you said. “Better not get all worked up and just let me handle it. Trust me when I say I have it, Joel, I really do…”

“Baby.”

You sighed again.

“From what Tommy was conscious for and what little you remember,” you said slowly. “The people who… those people. They were after you. Specifically you. And Ellie… she hasn’t taken kindly to that.”

“Alright…”

“She wants to go find them,” you sighed. “She thinks she can handle it…”

“No,” he said, already moving to get up but you held him down.

“Joel.”

“She’s not doin’ that…”

“I know she’s not,” you said, still holding him in place. “I told you, Tommy and I have it handled.”

“I don’t want her to go after them,” Joel said, letting himself relax back into the mattress and your hold on him eased. “Don’t want any of you putting yourself at risk on some damn fool mission…”

“I know.”

“She needs to get that shit outta her head…”

“I know, Joel.”

He sighed.

“This is such a fuckin’ mess. All of it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you said quietly, nuzzling in closer to him. “All that matters is you’re alive and you’re here. We’ll figure it out.”

You figuring it out, apparently, just meant keeping Joel under lock and key for the foreseeable future. Your jaw was set tight across the table and you fidgeted with your mug, your thumb tapping out a stuttering rhythm on the handle.

“I need to contribute,” Joel said gently. You glared at him. “Sweetheart…”

“You can contribute without leaving Jackson,” you said. “Your value here isn’t limited to going on fucking patrol…”

“It’s a big part of my value, Baby, yeah,” he said. “I don’t got a lot of skills…”

“You were a contractor before,” you snapped. “You think buildings here don’t need to be repaired? That things don’t need to be constructed? Do that, let them take you out of the patrol rotation.”

“I’m not gonna hide,” he said, trying to get you to look at him even as you seemed bound and determined not to. “I want to get back out there, I want to do my part…”

“Your part doesn’t include getting fucking murdered, Joel!”

“I sure hope it doesn’t,” he reached out and took your hand, his thumb running over your knuckles. “I want to be here, with you, for a good, long time, baby. But I can’t… I can’t be something I’m not. And I’m not someone who just lets other people take on all the risk while he sits at home, on his ass…”

“Joel.”

“You say you love me,” he said. You actually met his eyes with that, glassy and wet at the edges.

“Of course I love you,” you said, not as harsh now. “I love you so goddamn much, I can’t lose you, I can’t, do you understand me?”

“I know, Baby,” he reached out, his large hand cupping your face. “And I’m not planning on going anywhere. But I can’t be the man you love by hidin’ away and waitin’ for trouble to come to someone else. I need to be the one to handle it. Me. I need to take care of my own business, need to look after you, need to take care of our girls. I can’t do that here, acting like I’m not capable of doing my part. I’m going back out there, Baby, and I’d like to do it knowin’ that you’ll still be speaking to me when I get back.”

“You don’t get to ask me to watch you hurt yourself,” your voice was thick. “I will not watch you die, Joel. I’m not going to do it and you don’t get to ask me to.”

“I’m not,” he said gently. “But, Sweetheart, if I am gonna go? I’d like to go out as myself. And that means going back out on patrol.”

Your eyes searched his for a moment before you all but collapsed against his shoulder, your arms snaking up around his neck, a sob cracking through you. He put his arms around you, rocking you gently.

Part of him had been waiting for this to happen. Beyond when he caught you off guard when he first woke up, you’d been nothing but strong and stoic. The only time there was a hint of anything else was when the two of you went to bed at night. You clung to him then, Joel swallowing any hint of hurt you accidentally caused when you held him tight. You breathed him in deep, pressed as much skin to him as you could manage. Sometimes, those deep breaths were shaky ones, like you were trying not to cry. He just held onto you, wishing you’d say something - anything - so he’d know how you were feeling. But you didn’t. So he took care of you the best way he could while you were focused on taking care of him.

“It’s alright,” his hand spread wide over your back, keeping a slow and steady rhythm as it ran up and down your spine. Your tears were racking, choking, making your whole body shake. “You’re OK, I’ve got you, s’alright…”

“I can’t,” you sobbed against him. “I can’t, I can’t… you can’t leave me, Joel, you can’t.”

“M’not gonna leave you, Baby,” he said softly. “I promise you. I’ll always come home to you.”

“You can’t know that,” you sniffed, your sobs calming to sniffles. “Seeing you like that…”

“I know,” he said quietly. He’d seen you nearly dead enough times, he knew. He understood it. “I’m sorry, Baby, I’m so sorry…”

“Then why are you insisting on trying to go back out there,” you sat back from him. “If you understood it, you’d stay here with me and with Ellie and Savvy, you wouldn’t do this. Not to yourself, not to me, not to them…”

“I know,” he said again, looking in your eyes, begging you to understand. “But that girl… she took a lot from me, baby. A few organs, more time than I really want. Almost took my future with you and the girls. Not gonna let her take who I am, too. And I need to go back out there. Not gonna just hide in here, afraid, for the rest of my life.”

Your eyes searched his, wide and wet, and then you sighed.

“I have conditions. If you expect me to be OK with this…”

“Of course,” he said quickly. “What are they?”

“You go out with Tommy or me,” you said. “No one else. I don’t trust you out there with Jesse or fucking Gene…”

“They were tryin’ to do the right thing…”

“The right thing was saving you,” you snapped. “You go out with Tommy or with me or not at all.”

“Alright,” he said. “You or Tommy. At least to start.”

You glared at him for a moment but you pressed on.

“You don’t even think about going out until you’re fully cleared by both doctors,” you said. “None of this second opinion bullshit, they’re both on board or you don’t go.”

“I can do that,” he nodded slowly. “You’re being very reasonable, Baby, I’m impressed…”

“Oh, fuck off.”

He laughed a little and tugged you closer to press a kiss to your temple. You melted into his chest, head nestling against his shoulder so that your nose brushed his neck.

“I promise, I don’t have a death wish,” he said, thumb tracing a path over your arm. “I always want to come home to you. I just need to do this, too.”

“I know,” you said softly. “I’m just… I’m so scared with you. All the time, I’m so afraid. It’s different than with Savvy, I’ve always been afraid with her. Scared I was gonna drop her or accidentally hurt her or not teach her the right thing or teach her too much. Scared I couldn’t save her. She’s my heart just walking around outside my body, I’m used to being afraid with her. But it’s different than how I feel about you and I just… I’ve never loved someone the way I love you and I don’t know how to live with being afraid of losing that.”

He took a deep breath and held you a little tighter.

“Know the feeling.”

It was just a few days to Christmas and preparations were in full swing. The tree was up in the middle of town, lights lined the buildings, Julie had been hoarding supplies for some kind of holiday cocktail that she claimed was a surprise that you were highly skeptical of. You, Ellie and Savvy had picked a tree for his living room just the week before and set it up, Savvy standing back with a slight frown on her face the whole time.

“What’s up, baby girl?” Joel asked, sitting in an arm chair as he watched you and Ellie decorate. His leg wasn’t quite up for standing that much yet.

“It’s just…” She looked at him for a moment and perched on the arm of the chair before looking back at you. “People really did this before? Put trees in their houses?”

“Yeah,” Joel smiled up at her. “They did. Biggest holiday of the year for a lot of the world, trees inside stores and offices and shit, too.”

She crossed her arms, her brows knitting together as she frowned.

“She never did this with me,” she said quietly. “I read about Christmas in a book once but it didn’t talk about this part and she didn’t talk about it much when I asked and… I don’t get it.”

Joel nodded slowly. Savvy was still warming up to you. She seemed skeptical of your motivations, of your intentions, of everything you said. It was hard to tell how much of it was teenaged cynicism and how much was rooted in her feelings of abandonment. But since you’d all but moved into Joel’s house, she’d been around you more and more and you did your best to let her guide it. He could tell how much it was killing you, though. He knew the feeling well, remembering back to the days when Ellie wouldn’t even look at him. He could tell how badly you wanted to cling to her. He saw how much you wanted her to stay close and tell you everything in the way you hung on her every word, the way you watched the door for a full minute after she left to go back to Ellie’s. But you needed her to be OK with it more. That just didn’t make things any easier.

“What did she tell you?” Joel asked, keeping his voice low enough that it wouldn’t rise over the Christmas carols you’d put on the stereo.

“Stuff she did with her parents,” she shrugged. “That her brothers would tease her about being bad… None of this stuff.”

“Well,” Joel said slowly. “Think she told you the important stuff.”

She looked at him, skeptical.

“The important stuff ain’t the decorations, it’s the people,” he said. “She couldn’t give you the other things so she told you about your family. Don’t think she was trying to hide anything from you. She shared with you what mattered.”

She nodded slowly and looked toward the tree again until Ellie turned around and called her over to put an ornament on the tree. You bit your lip as you watched her do it, your eyes wide and soft and you hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a squeeze when she stepped back to look at her handiwork.

Joel was steadfastly trying to focus on the holiday instead of the tension that had settled over the town since his attack. Patrols had been ramped up, sending people out in small groups instead of pairs. There were growing signs of people present in the wilderness, more xes on trees and remains of fires. Tommy had told Joel - much to your chagrin - that the prevailing theory was they were marking Jackson territory, the signs always found at the edges of where patrols ran. As though someone was watching for where they could seize power. Everyone was on tenterhooks, waiting for something worse to happen.

But the build up to Christmas seemed to have taken everyone’s minds off the looming threat. Joel was thankful for it. It seemed to have lightened your mood some, too - part of why he decided to bring up the patrol issue yet again.

He didn’t tell you that he was set to see Carol the next day to hopefully get cleared for patrol. And… other activities.

The cruelty of the timing of the attack hadn’t been lost on Joel. He’d just gotten you back, hadn’t even had 12 damn hours with you before he had to leave for patrol and then almost never came back. But he’d lived and, while you’d been close ever since, you weren’t close enough.

He wanted you.

That wasn’t quite right, he always wanted you. He was pretty sure he’d wanted you since the moment he first saw you. He was beyond that now. He needed you so bad he ached with it, his whole fucking body hurt with it sometimes. But you wouldn’t touch him without the doctors saying it was OK. Even though, at this point, he was starting to think it was medically dangerous to be so fucking wanting.

“Are you goin’ to the stables today?” Joel asked, holding you close. You nodded against him. “You think you’ll be done in time for the movie?”

“Definitely,” you said. “Savvy’s never seen a Christmas movie, not missing that.”

He kissed your forehead.

“Been meanin’ to ask you something,” he said.

“Hm.”

“Think you’ll be my date for the dance tomorrow night?” He asked. You pulled back from him and glared, your eyes still red. He smiled a little. “Know I left it to last minute but I’m hoping…”

“Of course I’ll be your date,” you shoved him ever so lightly. “Who else am I gonna go with? Been cooped up here with you for the last month, all my other prospects have given up on me…”

He laughed and kissed you.

“Guess you’ll just have to be my girl, then.”

“Guess so.”

He kissed you again, deeply, firmly. But it was different than so many other kisses he’d shared with you over the past few weeks. There was heat behind it. A twinge of need and want that tasted so familiar on your tongue. You moaned and adjusted so you were closer to him, your body curving, leg hitching up over his so you could press your mound against his thigh. He gripped you tighter, pulled you closer, but you pulled back with a groan.

“Baby,” he breathed but you shook your head.

“Not going to risk hurting you,” you panted.

“Not gonna hurt me…”

“Not sure I trust your judgement,” you gave him a final, chaste, peck on the lips. “I’ll see you tonight, walk over with you and the girls.”

“Have a good day,” he said.

“I will if you take it easy,” you replied, extracting yourself gently from his grip and heading out the door.

He watched you leave and waited for a few minutes to make sure you were gone before he got up, too. It was almost Christmas and there were things he wanted to do.

***

Joel looked far too pleased with himself, his hand on your thigh as you sat beside him at the Tipsy Bison. You had one of Julie’s special cocktails - something she called the Grinch and tasted like mint - and were well on your way to being tipsy for the first time in months.

Savvy and Ellie were sitting with some friends - Dina, Jesse, the boy from school you suspected Savvy had a crush on named Kyle - and looked to be having fun. You hoped Savvy would talk to you about it later. She’d been opening up a little bit more, never fully pulling away like she had for so long. You took what you could get, thankful that she was willing to speak to you at all.

She’d gone with you, Joel and Ellie to the movie the night before. It was Miracle on 34th Street. She seemed to enjoy it, smiling and watching the screen in wonder, soaking it all in. It was bittersweet to see. You’d always wanted to be able to give her these things, the kinds of things you remembered loving as a girl at the holidays. But there was a certain cruelty in it, too. She’d never see a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, never visit a mall Santa. Jackson brought her closer to the life you’d led as a girl but it was still so far away and it was hard, not being able to share it with her.

But Ellie had talked her into spending Christmas Day with you and Joel. You’d damn near kissed her when she told you and you felt a little like you had as a child on Christmas Eve, the greatest gift you could have ever asked for, spending the day with Savvy, Joel and Ellie all together.

But Joel seemed as excited as you were, a small smile tugging at his lips as you sat across from Tommy and Maria.

“Can’t believe it’s Christmas again,” Maria said, taking a drink of his beer. “Swear, time goes by faster and faster every damn year.”

“I’ll take time goin’ faster as long as that means it’s still goin’,” Joel replied.

“Know that’s right,” Tommy shook his head a little, half smile on his face. “We’re all still standing and after the last year, seems like the best I can ask for.”

“Y’all doing anything special for William this year?” You asked, turning your cocktail glass slowly in your fingers. “He’s getting big enough to know what’s going on now.”

“Santa’s planning to make a visit,” Tommy smiled a little. “He’s been pretty good lately, figure that should be rewarded.”

You smiled back, looking toward Savvy. She was facing the boy on the bench next to her and his fingers traced the outside of her knee and she smiled.

The music changed, the strains of the song familiar. Hallelujah. You looked toward Joel and he smiled a little wider, the change so subtle you doubted anyone but you would notice.

“This is hardly a Christmas song.”

“There’s an argument to be made,” he said. “Heard it on the radio sometimes at Christmastime, it counts.”

He took his hand off your thigh and held it out to you. An offering.

“C’mon, baby,” his eyes were hot on you. “Call it an early Christmas present.”

You put your hand in his and let him lead you to the dance floor. You draped your arms over his shoulders, fingers trailing through his hair as he tugged your body close to his.

“See?” He said, tracing your nose with his. “Not so bad.”

“Helps when you’ve got a good partner,” you smiled a little. “How’s that leg of yours doing?”

“Good as new,” he said. “Definitely isn’t gonna keep me from dancing with you, that’s for damn sure.”

You laughed a little before you nestled your head against his chest, sighing contentedly.

“I’m so glad you’re still here to dance with,” you said quietly as you swayed with him. He gave you a gentle squeeze.

“Me too,” he said softly, almost sadly.

“I feel like I wasted so much time,” you whispered, tears pricking the corners of your eyes and making your throat tight. You got like this a lot lately, this haze of what almost was hanging over you. “I should have known better and…”

“Hey,” he said, pulling back from you just enough to look in your eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong, didn’t waste anything. I gave you a lot of shit to work through, more than you ever should have had to deal with. You did what you needed to do, s’not a waste.”

“What if I’d lost you?” You asked softly. “What if I never came over that night, what if…”

“What if a lot of things,” he cut you off. “Doesn’t matter. We got here. That’s the important thing.”

He pulled you back against him and you pressed your ear to his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“Gotta ask,” he said, tone lighter after a moment. “Never had any of those fancy dance classes you had. How do I hold up compared to the guys who did?”

You laughed once, burying your face in his chest for a moment.

“Best partner I ever had,” you said.

He chuckled a little, his lips brushing your forehead.

“Good.”

You held him closer, moving with him slowly on the dance floor for a while. You weren’t sure how long. You let yourself get lost in him. The way he swayed in time to a rhythm your body was more in tune with than your mind, the way he felt so warm as he wrapped around you, the way his heart beat and the rise and fall of his chest were constant and stable. The way he was whole in your arms. It was like you could finally relax into that reality, you’d reached a point that you weren’t just scared anymore. He was here, he wasn’t going to fade away to nothing in the night. His heart would keep beating, his chest would keep rising, you wouldn’t need to find a way to do this without him.

“Ready to go?” He asked softly after what felt like a while. “Want to get you home.”

“Yeah,” you said, separating from him enough to look at him. “Let’s go.”

You went and said your goodbyes to Tommy and Maria and Joel stopped by the girls’ table - scaring the shit out of Kyle by the look of it, Kyle’s eyes wide and terrified - before lacing his fingers with yours for the walk home.

“What did you say to them?” You asked, walking close enough to him that you could feel the slight limp he had now.

“Told ‘em to get home at a reasonable time,” he shrugged. “And no boys behind closed doors. Don’t want that Kyle kid gettin’ any ideas…”

You snorted.

“It looked like you threatened to castrate the boy,” you said. “I don’t want anyone taking advantage of Savvy but I don’t want everyone terrified to date her, either.”

“Didn’t get that specific with it,” Joel said, a little defensive. “Just made it clear that someone was watchin’. And that someone was me.”

You smiled and shook your head a little.

“You’re ridiculous,” you said. “But… thank you. For taking care of my daughter.”

He looked at you, his face serious as you came to a stop at his front walk.

“Course,” he said. “She’s an amazing kid, Bambi. You did a great job with her. And… might not deserve it but… feels like she’s mine, too. Love her like she’s mine. Hope that’s OK.”

You looked at him for a moment, his eyes soft and warm, the lines of his face familiar landscapes. For a moment, it was as though your heart had broken open with him, cracked down to the center because the love you had for him couldn’t be held there anymore. You pulled him close to you, kissing him soft and deep.

Or it started that way, at least. But his body against yours, the sharpness of your love in your chest, the taste of him on your tongue pushed you into desire. It didn’t take much to spark it - it had been so long since you’d had him - but once it was there, it burned hot and fast, swallowing the reminder that you should keep yourself under control quickly.

“C’mon,” Joel said against your lips, breathless. “Let’s go inside.”

You nodded and followed him inside, using the short walk from the street to his front door as a chance to try to get the want that was flaring inside you under control. It was too soon, it had to be too soon and you weren’t going to risk Joel’s health just because you were aching to have him as close as possible.

Joel pulled you back against him as he he closed the door behind the two of you, tilting your head to give him better access to your mouth, his fingertips sinking into your skin as he gripped you tight. You swallowed a moan and tried to keep yourself from giving in even as you pressed yourself closer to him.

“Joel,” you breathed, pulling your lips from his, his hands still holding you against him. “We… we should stop…”

“Don’t need to,” he said, kissing you gently again.

“Joel…”

“Went to the doctor today,” he kissed over the line of your jaw, following the curve of your bones up to your temple where his lips lingered. “Said there’s a lot I’m allowed to do now. Including everything I want to do to you.”

He trailed kisses down to your neck and you moaned as his lips pressed into the sensitive skin there.

“I’ll beg if I have to,” he whispered. “But I need you, baby. Need to have you close, need to be inside of you.”

“Fuck,” you panted, eyes closed, fighting to focus. “Are…” his mouth found a particularly sensitive spot, kissing and sucking you gently and sending goosebumps spreading over your skin. “Jesus… are you… are you sure? I don’t want you gettin’ hurt…”

“I’m sure,” he said softly, finally pulling his lips from your skin to look in your eyes again, your body cradled against his. “Bein’ apart from you has damn near killed me. Need to feel you.”

“Need you, too,” you breathed, caving to your baser instincts. “Please, Joel.”

He kissed you again and you could taste the desperation on his tongue, heat pooling between your hips. He guided you toward the stairs as he shrugged out of his coat and pushed yours off your shoulders and down your arms. He left both in a heap on the floor, keeping his mouth against your own until the two of you were at the base of the stairs. You only separated long enough to go up them, Joel pulling you back against him on the second story landing.

You let him guide you, tried to focus on being gentle with him instead of pulling him to you and pressing him against you the way you wanted.

But you could only resist so long. You tugged at his shirt, pulling at the buttons until you could shove it down his arms and toss it to the floor, too. He did the same with yours, discarding it in the hall before pulling you into his bedroom, nudging the door closed with his foot. It wasn’t long before you were both naked next to his bed, bodies pressed close and tight, his cock thick and hard and weeping against your stomach.

You took control then, turning him in your arms so that he was against the bed. He lowered himself back onto it slowly, his grip on you gentle but secure so you were on his lap, straddling him as you kissed him.

“Really fucking missed you,” he whispered, kissing down your jaw to your neck to your chest. He rocked his hips up against you, his thick shaft nestled against your clit, the motion making you moan. “Goddamn, missed you so much.”

His hands slipped over your skin to your breasts, cupping and cradling them before lavishing his hot, wet mouth over the soft swell of flesh there. He sucked a nipple into his mouth with a needy groan and you couldn’t help but roll your hips against him as he did, your tight, hot center clenching and gripping at nothing, desperate for something to pull deep inside. Joel’s tongue teased the firm nub between his lips, licking and sucking you, making you moan and rock yourself against him on his lap before moving to the other breast, giving you the same treatment there.

“Joel,” you whimpered, fingers tangling in his curls. He pulled his mouth from your chest to look in your eyes, his gaze soft and hot like starlight.

“Think you can come like this for me?” He asked softly. “Want you to come for me, want you to be so wet and soft inside for me, think you can do that?”

You just nodded and his hands slid around to your back as he buried his face in your throat before going back to your breasts as he rutted his thick, dripping length up against your clit, the silken firmness of him pressing close and tight against your wet heat. You ground your hips down against him, desperate for more, to be as close as you could be to him, his body determinedly angled to keep you from working him into you. There was a tightening ache in you, the burn of need for something that was just out of reach making your head spin and pleasure spool.

“Just gotta come for me,” his voice was hot and needy. “Just come for me, all you gotta do. Just come, just come, please baby, just come, want to feel you come like this, you can give me that, know you can…”

His desperate words were what you needed, the tension in you rising until you felt like you were going to break with wanting before your orgasm hit you hard, a wave of pleasure rolling over you. It was sharp, you hadn’t come in weeks, and you could feel all of it. How your clit throbbed against his cock, how your entranced pulsed and grasped at the root of him, how it seemed like your entire being was trying to pull him into yourself.

“Oh fuck,” he held you tight to him, his cock pressed tight against you, so firm that you could feel him against your pubic bone. “Fuck, just like that. Gonna feel so good inside you baby, gonna be so goddamn good, just get all that come all over me, feel so good drippin’ all over me.”

You dropped your head to his shoulder, body going limp for a moment as your orgasm finished. Joel cradled you to him before going to adjust you on the bed but you stopped him, sitting up again and pressing back on his shoulders.

“Baby,” he groaned but you took his face in your hands and tilted his head so you could kiss him, really kiss him, the kind of kiss that was more hungry and consuming and claiming than anything else.

“Let me,” you whispered when you pulled your lips from his just enough to speak. He let you adjust him then, until he was flat on his back in the middle of the bed, your folded legs bracketing his thighs. You stroked his cock - wet with your come and leaking his own arousal - before rising onto your knees to notch his thick head at your entrance. Joel’s hands went to your thighs, his thumb tracing the scar there, the one from the knife you’d taken to the leg when trying to save him. His eyes were trained on it, his fingertips digging into your flesh more sharply there than your other leg. His eyes traced up your body to the scar at your stomach, just as harsh and red and raw as the one at your leg.

“Not tonight,” you said quietly. His eyes found yours. “It’s not about that tonight.”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, his callused hands slid up your thighs to your hips and you eased down onto his hard length. You moaned as you took him into yourself, his thick cock sinking into your soft heat. He felt so good inside of you, your body remembering just how to make him a part of you. It had been weeks but it didn’t matter, he was built into you now, he fit into you the way no one else ever could, filling and stretching you totally. His breaths stuttered as more and more of him entered you, his fingertips clutching onto the soft flesh of your hips and ass harder and harder with every inch of him that worked its way into you. Just as the ridge of his head ghosted against the back wall of your channel, your hips met his and you let yourself adjust for a moment, savoring the feel of him inside you that way.

Joel was panting for breath below you, his eyes tracing over your body again and again as your channel gripped him.

“You’re so fucking perfect,” he looked in your eyes as he said it. “Most beautiful goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.”

You just moaned a little, your hands coming to rest on the broad expanse of his chest, fingers splaying wide over his skin. But you didn’t move otherwise. He felt too good like this, so deep inside you. You almost didn’t want to move, didn’t care if you didn’t make yourself come with him in you. He was deep inside and he was secure there. You could feel how whole and alive he was, the way his cock throbbed, the pulse of him, the comforting heat. Like this, he was yours. Unquestionably, undoubtedly yours and no one could take him away from you.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” his fingers tightened on you. “I… fuck… I need you to move, baby… I can’t keep goin’ like this, I need… I need you to move, need to feel you, please baby, please.”

You didn’t respond. You just started to rise on his cock, moving your hips slow and shaky over him, making him groan. When just his head was left barely inside your entrance, you thrust back down, his cock splitting you open again, his head falling back, mouth open in a desperate gasp.

You rode him like that for a while, you weren’t sure how long. The slow and aching lift, the devastating reclaiming as you took him again and again almost meditative. You watched each other, lost in the feeling of your bodies together, working in tandem to become something more than just yourselves.

Eventually, Joel tugged you closer, tilting you down until he could reach your face, his large palm curving over your jaw, his thumb pressing into your cheek.

“C’mere,” he whispered in the dim light of the moon on the snow outside his window. “Want to feel more of you.”

You folded yourself into him, your bodies aligned, his cock still buried deep but your chest now against his, your lips overing over his own, noses against each other. Even in the night, you could see the different shades of brown in his iris like this, all of them soft and full of love for you.

His hand slid to the small of your back, tilting your hips just so and holding you there as he started thrusting up into you and making you whimper.

“Let me,” he said softly.

You just nodded, letting him gently work himself into you again and again. The strokes were aching and smooth, almost rocking as he moved inside of you. The deep, full press of his thick cock into all the soft parts of you that existed because of him, the brief moment of feeling so full and whole before the tender rhythm he set within you pulled him back again.

“Joel,” you whimpered, so desperate. You weren’t sure you could even say anything else, every other word you’d ever learned reduced down to the only one that mattered in that moment.

“Together,” he said quietly, never breaking his rhythm. “OK baby? Together.”

You just nodded quickly. Your body was getting tighter and tighter and you kept your eyes on his, breathing the same air, feeling the press of his warm, soft skin into yours as your orgasm built alongside his.

“You’re close,” he said. It wasn’t a question and you didn’t need to answer. He could feel you and you could feel him, too. “I’m gonna come, want you to come with me. Going to fill you up so deep, baby, going to feel me so deep and I need to feel you, too.”

His hand that was on your back pressed into you firmer, taking root at the base of your spine and pushing your hips lower so his cock was deeper longer, his hips pressed against your clit with more heat and tension and, for a moment, it felt as though your entire body was on fire with need before the band of pleasure that had been winding tight inside you snapped. Your orgasm hit you like a wave, rushing out from your core and flooding through the rest of your being just as Joel pressed your hips down and flush with his, holding himself deep as he came with a strangled moan. Your channel fluttered around him, rippling and pulling him into you as he pulsed deep inside. You could feel him so clearly against and inside you, every inch of his skin, every throb of his cock, every gasping breath. You kissed him then, bodies connected in every way, until your orgasms eased and you went limp on top of him. Your head nuzzled against the side of his neck and you breathed in the scent of his skin as you came back down to earth, his arms keeping you flush against him as his cock softened inside of you, the combination of his come and yours already dripping out of you.

“Never goin’ that long without you again,” he said softly, his fingers tracing slow and easy abstract patterns over your skin. You hummed in agreement. “I’m gettin’ to be too old to be so deprived.”

You laughed a little.

“Should start being more careful then,” you said, reaching out to card your fingers through his hair.

“Well now that I have the proper motivation…”

You laughed again and closed your eyes. He held you like that for a while, until goosebumps from the winter air started prickling over your skin. He took you more firmly then, slipping his soft cock from the safe, soft warmth of you and slipping you down beside him on the bed. He pulled a blanket over the two of you and you sighed contentedly. He tugged you closer and you happily obliged, your legs tanging with his as he brushed your hair back before holding your face gently in his large hand. You just smiled a little, eyes on his. He smiled back, just enough that his cheek dimpled.

“You’re still feeling OK?” You asked quietly after a few minutes.

He laughed lightly.

“Whole lot better than OK,” he replied. “I’m amazing. Always amazing when I’m with you.”

You smiled a little wider.

“You know,” he said slowly. “I had a lot of time to think when I thought I was about to die.”

Your smile shifted to a frown but his didn’t, not really. His gaze was just soft, gentle. Like he was trying to leave himself as open as he could to take as much of you in as possible.

“I remember more of that than anything that actually happened in that room. Didn’t have much in the way of regrets,” he continued. “Had you to thank for most of that. Ellie and I had made things right, I was thankful for that. I was thankful you’d come back to me, even if it was just for a night. Thankful I got to tell you I loved you one last time…”

“Joel,” you whispered. His thumb stroked your cheek.

“I saw Sarah,” he said quietly. Your eyes went wide but you stayed silent. “When I was unconscious, I saw her. She was someplace good, somewhere that was bright and warm like her. And there was part of me that wanted to stay with her, take care of her and make sure she was OK. But… most of me wanted to come back here and be with you and the girls. And Sarah… she told me that it wasn’t my time yet. Told me I still had things to do here, that I needed to take care of you and Ellie and Savvy and I just… I knew she was right. I felt it, more than I’d felt so many other things, I felt that. I belong here, next to you. I don’t want to have any regrets when it comes to you but right now… well, I got one big one.”

“What?” You asked quietly, your heart beating faster.

“That I almost died before having the chance to live as your husband,” he said. Your breath caught. “But you saved me, gave me a chance to do it right. And I don’t think I deserve to ask you for a damn thing but I’m hopin’ you’ll let me, anyway. Will you give me that chance? Will you be my wife, will you marry me?”

Your heart was beating so fast that you could hear your blood in your ears. You reached out, hand trembling, and cupped his cheek.

“Of course I will,” you said softly, voice thick and wet. Joel smiled, tears glistening in his eyes, and he kissed you, gentle and deep and lovely, a kiss empty of expectation and full of promise.

When you separated, you just looked at him for a moment, taking him in, the man who would be your husband. The whole concept made you laugh, the sound bubbling up in you.

He just smiled.

“What, baby?”

“I just…” you paused, still laughing a little. “It’s the end of the world, how do you even get married now? Not like there’s a courthouse…”

“Well,” he said, rolling away from you for a moment and reaching into the drawer of his nightstand. You propped yourself up on your elbow and frowned, watching as he rolled back with a small wooden box in his hand. “Figure since the paperwork part don’t exist anymore, we can do it whatever way you want to but…” he opened the box. Inside was two rings, both dark metal, one band slender, the other thick. “Thought I’d make sure this part was covered.”

“Oh Joel,” you sat up all the way, letting the blanket pool around your hips. You took the smaller ring from the box and held it up, looking at it up close. “Where did you find these?”

“Made ‘em,” he said, sitting up, too. “They’re from one of Ares’ old horseshoes. Figured it was only appropriate…”

“They’re perfect,” you breathed, turning it over in your fingers for a moment before looking at him. “Could we… I mean, I know it’s fast but… would you be OK if we just did it now?”

“Did what?”

“Got married,” you said, watching him. “I understand if you want to wait or want the girls there but…”

“How do you want to do it?” He cut you off.

You smiled a little.

“How about we just make promises to each other.”

He smiled back.

“I like it,” he took his ring out and set the box aside. He held it out toward you and you took it before putting your ring in his palm. The two of you faced each other, blankets in your laps, knees brushing under the covers.

He took a deep breath.

“I promise I’ll love you with every part of me,” he said. “And I promise I’ll keep lovin’ you until there’s none of me left.”

“I promise to love you every second of the rest of my life,” you replied. “And every second of whatever comes after, too.”

“I promise to protect you,” he said. “Promise to never let anything hurt you.”

“I promise to take care of you,” you said. “And look out for you and protect you because where you go, I go.”

“I promise to love your girl like she’s my own,” he continued. “And I promise to take care of her and do everything I can to make sure she’s safe and happy.”

“I promise to love Ellie like you do,” you said. “I promise to help guide her and protect her and give her the life she deserves to have.”

You looked at each other for a moment, tears in your eyes, before Joel gently took your left hand in his.

“Think they used to say ‘with this ring, I thee wed,’ or something like that,” he said, thumb tracing your knuckles.

“That sounds right,” you smiled a little.

“Alright then,” he said, lining the ring up with your finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

He slipped it into place. It fit perfectly, settling at the base of your finger with a soothing sense of finality. Joel lifted your hand to his mouth and kissed you there, his lips lingering on your skin for a moment before releasing you. You held his ring tight in your palm for a second, warming the metal, before taking Joel’s left hand. You lined the ring up with his finger and took a deep breath before looking him in the eye.

“With this ring, I thee wed.”

You slipped it into place, lacing your fingers with his once it settled where it belonged. You smiled, looking down and seeing his ring on your finger before looking back at him again.

“Think I get to kiss the bride now,” he said.

You laughed.

“I think so, too.”

He pulled you against him gently and kissed you all soft and deep, his lips holding every promise he’d made to you and, for the first time since the end of the world, you knew what it was to feel secure.

Next Chapter

A/N: ❤️

And that's all I have to say about that.

And that there's a lot more story to come. We're not quite to the end yet, I promise.

Thank you for being here and for reading. Love you!

Taglist: @ashleymsnodgrass@planet-marz1@kalea-bane @juneswonderlust@ilovepedro @h-annahayy @starstruckmusiciansartghost@beccerjune@mumma-moonchild@netonetoneto@mellymbee@purplelye@n7cje@flugazi@evyiione@randomhoex@aliengirl99@orcasoul@reds-ramblings@pedropascalsbbg @fupoola @tinypotatothing @knopes-waffles @lilmizmoz @ayamenimthiriel@jenispunk@panda-pascal@sarap-77@flugazi@your-slutty-gf@daniegraceg@partyofone3413@cumberpegg@noisynightmarepoetry.@fifia-writes@grumpygrumperton @srmacaroni @txlady37 @bigboiseason123@ashleyfilm

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #yearling #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x oc #smut fic

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ruvviks · 8 months

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// COMMISSIONS!

opening up general commissions so i thought i'd make a new post, most info is already in the slides but i require a document with information and references before we can get started, list below!

// WHAT YOU'LL PUT IN THE DOC.

which type of commission you want (head/bust/half body + lines/color)

short description / introduction of your oc

at least one visual reference but preferably more; face claim, art, picrew (if the maker allows it), NO a/i art!

additional visual references such as pose, clothing, tattoos, and color scheme; if you don't have any preferences, you can skip this!

additional details that i need to keep in mind (freckles, scars, stuff like that)

what kind of background you'd like (solid color, gradient, dual color)

// NOTES.

DM me before paying! i would like to see references first before receiving payment, so i'll know what i'll be working on!

if there's no open slots left, i can put you on the waiting list and i'll reach out to you as soon as i've worked through my queue :D i work in batches as to not overwork myself, so i cannot give you an indication on how long you'll be on the waiting list

i'll keep you updated throughout the entire process, please keep an eye on your tumblr dms when commissioning me for smooth communication! i'm willing to move to discord for communication too, but if i don't know you well please keep it professional

i might charge extra for complicated background pattern requests, complicated armor or complicated tattoos, but feel free to request anything because we can always discuss details about stuff!

the end result is a digital artwork of your oc, you will not receive any physical goods!

you’re allowed to post the art wherever and use it for icons and such, as long as you don’t take credits for the art yourself. you are not allowed to sell it or use it for n/f/t or a/i purposes

ko-fi: ko-fi.com/nuclearvessel

#commissions #rbs much appreciated!! <3 #i'll have anywhere between 2-4 slots open at a time depending on complexity of the art!!#i'll try to reply to dms i get timely but please go easy on me if i take a while. my blog also runs on a queue so if you see me posting #that's probably my queue and it doesn't mean i'm actively online at the time!#anyway you can also check my art tag on my blog for more examples if you're interested in what i do :^)

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blue-willow-tree · 17 days

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⋆｡˚୨ About Me୧˚｡⋆

Hi there xx

ִֶָ࣪☾. You can call me Willow

ִֶָ࣪☾. I am 19, and my pronouns are She/Her

ִֶָ࣪☾. I'm a wlw/wlnb/wltm Fem Switch.

ִֶָ࣪☾. My dm's and asks are always open x please look at my rules after the break

ִֶָ࣪☾. I have a soft spot for older women and sweet girls. To trans women, trans men and non-binary cuties and handsomes, this is a safe space

ִֶָ࣪☾. Sexual asks are absolutely welcome, however I will not respond if they make me uncomfortable or are rude.

ִֶָ࣪☾. When domming through asks, I like to be called mommy or anything sweet

ִֶָ࣪☾. When subbing through asks, I like to be called baby, lovey, dove, or anything non-masculine. Degrading terms such as slut are welcome.

Click "Keep reading" to see my rules, DNI, and extra information. Read these before DM'ing me.

WHAT I WILL FEATURE IN MY BLOG:

I am apart of the bdsm community, and will post my thoughts and needs in this blog. I am a wlw fem switch, currently without a sub or dom.

My amazing, beautiful, sweetheart claimed anons:

👸

🎀

🐰

🍒

🛸 18 | ꜱʜᴇ/ᴛʜᴇʏ/ʜᴇʀ | ᴄᴜᴛᴇ ᴛʜᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ ɴᴇʀᴅ

🦆20+ | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ᴍʏ ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴛᴀᴛᴛᴏᴏɪꜱᴛ

🌷23 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ᴛʜʀɪꜰᴛ ꜱʜᴏᴘ ᴘᴀʀᴛɴᴇʀ/ɢᴇɴɪᴜꜱ

🐻 18 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ꜰᴀᴠᴏᴜʀɪᴛᴇ ꜱᴡɪᴛᴄʜ

🌻19 | ʜᴇ/ɪᴛ | ʜᴀᴍɪʟᴛᴏɴ ʟᴏᴠᴇʀ

🐇 23 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ᴡɪᴛᴄʜʏ, ꜱᴡɪᴛᴄʜʏ, ꜱᴄᴀʀᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ꜰʟɪʀᴛʏ

💫

💟 18 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ɴᴇᴇᴅʏ ᴛᴏʏ <3

🪩 19 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ᴀᴅᴏʀᴀʙʟᴇ ᴀɴɪᴍᴀʟ ʟᴏᴠᴇʀ

🌚

🦇

🦢 21 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ʟɪʟ ɢᴇɴɪᴜꜱ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ꜰᴏʀ ʙᴏᴏᴋꜱ

🪿

🧃18 | ꜱʜᴇ/ᴛʜᴇʏ | ᴘʜɪʟᴏꜱᴏᴘʜɪᴄᴀʟ (+ᴀᴅᴏʀᴀʙʟᴇ) ɴᴇʀᴅ

🪶 18 | ꜱʜᴇ/ʜᴇʀ | ᴍʏ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴᴀʟ ᴛᴏʀᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴍᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ

🐿️ 18 | ᴛʜᴇʏ/ᴛʜᴇᴍ | ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʙᴇ ᴀ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ ᴋɪʟʟᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴀɴ ᴀᴅᴏʀᴀʙʟᴇ ᴀᴘʀᴏɴ

I am a ginormous Marvel fan. You will see drabbles every now and then about Wanda or Natasha.

RULES FOR MY BLOG:

- If you dm me, please understand that I am not a therapist. I also have my own triggers. Please do not have a sweet conversation with me then start talking about going back on an Ed or self harm. This has happened before, and it makes me feel backed into a corner.

- Do not dm me for sexting. Keep sexual words for the asks. If you'd like to dm me, I like genuine and real conversations. Also, do not think we can have 3 conversations and then start sexting me. I will block you. It makes me feel used, and I have feelings.

- If I have a normal conversation with a dom or a sub, that does not mean you are immediately my sub or dom. Those things take time, trust, boundaries, and discussions.

- Even if your partner finds it okay for you to flirt with other people on tumblr, that does not mean that I am immediately comfortable with it. I do not like speaking to people that already have a partner, unless both of you are apart of the conversation. I am still understanding if I possibly have a polyamorous side. (only wlw, no men.)

- I am a SWITCH. Yes I mostly have dominant posts, but understand that I am a SWITCH. I can never be in a relationship where I am purely submissive, or purely dominant. Please understand that. Please do not dm me wanting to possibly get a relationship out of it if you are purely submissive or purely dominant.

- I am open to recieving a switch dom/sub, however, that takes time, trust, boundaries and discussions. NOT immediately sexting and I would want the conversation to start off as a normal, genuine conversation. Also, do not expect me to agree to anything if you are not willing to show what you look like.

- I will only show my face to people I grow connections with or become genuine friends with. Nudes will never be sent by me to anyone, don't bother asking for that or for pictures of what I'm wearing either.

DO NOT INTERACT:

Cis het men. Minors. Pedophiles. Homophobes. Transphobes. Haters. Fake BDSM members. Ageless accounts. Blank accounts.

WHAT I LIKE:

I am femme4all <3

I like sweet subby women, as well as dominant women. Older women are my weakness

I am a switch, with no lean. Sometimes I need a pretty sub to do whatever I want with, and sometimes I need a gorgeous or handsome (wlw) dom to turn me into their mess.

I love choking, service subs, sweet petnames, slightly mean petnames, degrading, praise, somno, bit of pervy-ness, strap usage, finger sucking, and much more. I'm a soft dom, but a bratty sub. My submission has to be earned.

WHAT I DONT LIKE:

Scat.

Feet.

Piss.

Gore.

Incest.

Cis Het Men.

Unsolicited sexting in my dm's. (Keep that for the asks please unless you want a genuine conversation with me, then my dm's are open <3)

The above images are not me, they merely resemble me

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stellamancer · 4 months

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fics for gaza

hello! like many of my fellow writers, i'll be joining the @ficsforgaza initiative! there will be two ways to show your support!

last updated: aug 20

-> wip sponsorship

how it works: please make a donation to a vetted fundraiser and send me an ask with a screenshot with proof of donation as well as the name of the wip you want to sponsor and for every 1USD you donate I'll write one hundred words for the wip you've chosen! the asks will not be published and I ask for your own safety to conceal any of your personal information when sending me the screenshot!

wip list:

surface of the sun — bnha || fem!reader x katsuki bakugou

summary: your family's restaurant is on the very verge of closing and you do everything you can to keep things afloat. your efforts bring a certain hot headed pro-hero through the door and for some damn reason, he keeps coming back.

estimated word count: 7,000 || current word count: 3,982

donated words: 1,864 || written words: 582

shine on the sea — jjk || fem!reader x satoru gojo

summary: you were excited to return home for the summer, but all that excitement is quickly thrown out the window and you nearly resign yourself to a quiet and lonely summer.

the insufferable merman you rescued, however, has other plans.

estimated word count: 30,000 (10 chapters) || current word count: 9,700 (2 chapters)

donated words: 1,000 || written words: 0

ready steady — jjk || fem!reader + satoru gojo

summary: it is november 30, 2018 and your life is beginning anew.

(sequel to beyond the unending night)

estimated word count: 10,000 || current word count: 200

donated word count: 1,000 || written words: 0

-> requests

how it works: please DM me or send me and ask prior to making your donation with your request so that we can discuss it. once I approve your request feel free to make your donation and send me your proof of donation. (I'm begging please DM me first and don't just request whatever I'll cry) just like with wip sponsorship, the rate is 1USD per 100 words with a cap of 1,000 words. please be aware I will not accept NSFW requests if you are a minor or have no age shown on your tumblr.

willing to write:

jjk — satoru gojo, suguru geto, yuta okkotsu

bnha — izuku midoriya, katsuki bakugou, shouto todoroki

will not write:

pregnancy/kid fic

scat/piss kink

finally please note, I am a slow writer and should you request a fic, it may take some time for me to write. also I am very vanilla so if you request NSFW from me.... lmao.

REQUESTS: 3 / 3

#SCREAMS HOPING I DIDN'T FUCK UP ME POST

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flecks-of-stardust · 3 months

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Donation Commissions for Palestine (PAUSED)

I am opening commissions in exchange for donations to any particular fundraiser I choose for any given day. I am not asking you to donate to me. Payment involves showing proof of donation to the selected channels, and we will discuss from there.

I am opening commissions primarily for writing and fiber arts patterns. If you are unfamiliar with my written work, my old pinned post has links to the work I've done in the past. Additionally, my AO3 is flecks_of_stardust. I am focusing on fanfiction for writing commissions.

The general run down of this process is as follows: You have the option to donate to either the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund or a selected fundraiser for the day. I will change the fundraiser selected for any particular day at 11 am Pacific Time. The selected fundraiser is chosen from the Vetted Gaza Evacuation Fundraiser List. To commission me, you must donate to either the PCRF or the chosen fundraiser and send proof of donation to me through DMs. Please ensure that the fundraiser you donate to matches the one I have selected for today. Once I have received proof of your donation, we can discuss the commission.

More specifics on donations are under the cut.

The fundraiser for now is for the Abu Ramadan family.

General Policies

I am but one person, so there are limits to what I can do. For each donation category, there are a limited number of commission slots that can be taken up. Once those slots are filled up, I will temporarily close commissions for that category. Proof of donation is accepted based on the time you DM me. However, if all my slots are taken, even if you have sent me appropriate proof of donation, I cannot take on your commission until a slot is open. I will notify you when I've taken on your commission should this happen to you.

In the event that this happens to anyone, I will list the overflow slots next to the commission slots. Overflow slots indicate how many people have shown me proper proof of donation, but are not currently having their commission being worked on. This is an estimate of how long it may take for me to get to your commission.

Some notes and rules that apply to all the commission categories:

Donation to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund does not include the processing fee. You must donate the whole dollar to PCRF. This means that if you're donating only a dollar, your actual charge is going to be around 1.35 USD. Keep this in mind for the donation categories; if less than 1 USD goes to PCRF, I cannot accept your donation. Similarly, PCRF must receive at least 2 USD in full for me to accept your donation for the lowest writing commission category.

I will not make anything involving NSFW content, but I am okay with a certain extent of gore and violence. Discuss it with me. I have the right to refuse to create anything I'm uncomfortable with, but I am willing to negotiate.

You will not get anything extra from donating more than the commission category you're asking for, but it's very kind of you if you choose to do so.

I am extremely aromantic. Please keep that in mind if you want me to create something romantic. It is highly likely I cannot deliver, and I recommend you ask someone else.

Do not send me an ask with proof of donation. I need a reliable means to discuss with you, and an ask is not that. You have to DM me. You may request to communicate over Discord if you already know what my username is there, but primarily I will be communicating through Tumblr DMs.

Though all prices are listed in USD, I do not need you to pay in USD. This is just a relative measure of pricing. If your native currency is not USD and/or the payment doesn't display in USD, please let me know what it is so I can confirm how much you've donated.

I will refuse all offers for extensions. While the gesture is sweet, my goal is to get more donations out, not to polish every commission I do to the best I could manage. Quantity over quality, if you will. While I'll make sure to make my commission pieces as high quality as I can manage, if you're really concerned about the quality of what I create, I suggest you commission someone else.

In general, these are the media I am comfortable doing commissions for:

Hollow Knight

Rain World (Downpour included)

Bug Fables

If you'd like to request something that isn't on this list, note that I will only be accepting commission requests for fan media that I am familiar with, and where an exchange of money is allowed. One example is Team Cherry's explicit permission for small scale selling of fan merch. If I cannot confirm it and you do not show me proof that it is allowed, I will refuse your request.

If you at any point violate the rules I have stated in this post and any additional rules I may issue upon discussion of the commission, I reserve the right to refuse future requests to take your commissions even with proper proof of donation. If you do not respect my time and energy, I will not entertain you.

If you are unable to donate yourself, please spread this post around, and I welcome you to follow my lead! There's more than one way to get donations to the people that need it.

Writing (0/3)

Because I want to get through these commissions fast, I will not be spending more than 3 days or 12 total writing hours, whichever comes first, on each commission. I will be churning out these commissions as fast as possible while maintaining as satisfactory a level of writing quality as I can manage. To reflect this, the word counts and the prices for each word count are relatively low:

2 USD - approximately 500 words (hard limit 800) [must donate to PCRF due to donation limitations]

5 USD - approximately 1000 words (hard limit 1500)

10 USD - approximately 2000 words (hard limit 2500)

In the interest of time, I will not be taking original fiction requests. I will allow OCs, but you must let me know specifics on how you'd like me to write them. I am most confident working with canon characters, but please specify the type of characterization you want if you don't want me to use my own characterization.

Once the commission is complete, the completed work will be posted to a Donations for Palestine collection on AO3 unless you decline it. Additionally, you are discouraged from posting the finished commission in public spaces, but if you do so, then you must credit me without making edits to my writing. If you post it on Tumblr, please tag me in your post.

Fiber Arts Patterns (0/2)

I'm also willing to provide you with crochet or knitting amigurumi patterns. I will not send you the finished product. I will, however, send a picture of the finished product alongside the pattern. I will spend a maximum of 10 days on each pattern, and the resulting product will not be larger than 4"x4"x4"/10cmx10cmx10cm in approximate size. Pricing guidelines are as follows:

Baseline price: 12 USD

3 or more colors on the design: +3 USD (be warned that I may not have these colors)

Knitted pattern: +5 USD

I am most comfortable making little animals, and am significantly more familiar with crocheting little dolls than I am with knitting them, though I'm willing to try my hand at that too. I will also try my best to make characters from the above listed media; if you've browsed my crochet and knitting tags, you'll see that I've already made many characters from these franchises, but in much larger dimensions. If I think I'll need the doll to be bigger than my listed dimension limits for the pattern to be viable, I will refuse your request. In either case, please provide a reference picture/drawing of what you'd like me to make, and I'll match it as closely as I'm able to.

The pattern will be delivered to you through a File Garden link to a PDF; please download this PDF, as I may accidentally delete the link later on. Once you have received the pattern, you are not allowed to post it in public spaces. You may, however, post the finished product created from the pattern with credit to me. If you post it on Tumblr, please tag me in the post.

Bonus: Shitty Doodles

If you have less than 2 USD lying around but would still like to donate something, you can still show me proof of donation to PCRF of whatever amount that is for a shitty 10 minute doodle of anything you choose. I will set a timer for 10 minutes and scribble as fast as I can, and what comes out the other side is your commission piece. Do note that this will be a pencil sketch. While I have drawn in the past and consider myself a semi-decent visual artist, it is very much not my forte, hence why I'm not offering it as a serious commission. But if you're down for it, I'm willing to do this too. Just don't expect it to have any sort of quality. Be as ridiculous as you want (as long as you adhere to the above rules)! This is meant to be silly, so pretty much anything goes.

If you have any further questions or concerns, shoot me an ask or a DM. These guidelines will likely be refined as I gain more experience with this.

Major edit on July 10th: I finally noticed that the donation limit for GFM is 5 USD minimum. I have updated the guidelines to allow donation to PCRF as well.

#rain world #bug fables #hollow knight #downpour #palestine donations

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void-authority · 2 months

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Hey. This already isn't news at this point, but we need help, again. I'm waiting for an answer on a job if I'll be accepted or not with high hopes I will, but we need to pay rent tomorrow and that'll leave us with basically No money for food and other essentials and gas so mom can go to work. Mom and I had already to starve ourselves for a couple of days to get through the rest of this month and had to ask for her pay early so we wouldn't deteriorate from it and be able to eat these past 3 days. I know how to write, if you want to win something out of donating you're free to DM me or send me an ask for examples and we can discuss a price out. I'm setting a goal of 400 euros, as gas is pretty expensive and my mom has to travel 30 minutes to and back from work so it runs out fast, but any little amount is welcome. pay/pal.me/elisabetenogueira0 (word broken in hopes Tumblr doesn't hide this post) https://ko-fi.com/moondew0/goal?g=0 <- I also added a Kofi at the suggestion of some friends. If you prefer that approach please look into it if you can.

#urgent #please help #starvation #money problems

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cat-dragron-arts · 2 months

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Commissions Open!

Hey hey! New commission info is here! Make sure to read the TOS below, check out my kofi page to see more examples and to order a commission. Feel free to DM me here on Tumblr with any questions!!

Purchase a commission here!

TOS:

- Other forms of payment through Paypal or Venmo (Kofi preferred), payment is upfront. DM me if Kofi won't work for you.

- You can use the commission for personal use only with proper credit. Feel free to upload pieces to toyhouse, artfight, etc. You may not use my art in anything relating to AI, crypto or NFTs.

- Will not draw, hateful messages, IRL people, characters from live action shows/movies.

- Will draw characters from animated shows/movies, OCs, feral and athro characters, gore (realistic or candy), monsters, body horror.

- Want something else I'm not offering then feel free to DM me and we can discuss details from there!

- I reserve the right to deny any commission request.

#my art #commission sheet #digital art commissions #open commissions #fanart #sonic #sonic commission #pixel art #sfw furry #furry comms open #furry commissions

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de-fanzine-cpr-pale · 2 months

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SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW OPEN!

For ART go >HERE<.

For WRITING go >HERE<.

SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE SATURDAY OCTOBER 19, 2024 at 3:59 AM UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

LINK: DUE DATE TIME AND DATE IN YOUR TIME ZONE

If you need more time, direct message (DM) me on Discord at dr.tycho or on Tumblr @de-fanzine-cpr-pale as soon as possible.

Please do not post your submission publicly online anywhere until the zine is released! Thank you!

~~~

If you are doing mixed media (both art and writing), please fill out both forms!

If you are doing a collaboration (collab), fill out the part of the collaboration you are doing (art if you are the artist, writing if you are the writer).

If you have any questions about submissions or this form, DM me on Discord at dr.tycho or on Tumblr @de-fanzine-cpr-pale as soon as possible.

If you submit something, and you did NOT fill out the sign-up form (I will be cross-checking), I will not accept your submission! Please direct message (DM) at @de-fanzine-cpr-pale or @p0rchc0ll4ps3, and we can figure something out! Sign-ups may be closed, but I will accept anyone who still wants to join who is willing to work on a tighter schedule (I will not be giving you an extension unless certain circumstances come up and are discussed with me).

~~~

General Guidelines

If you do not provide either name or username (neither are required), you will be listed as "Anonymous."

As per the theme of the zine, lyrics should be included in your piece or in the title!

Optional but highly encouraged! Include the theme of past, present, or future in your work. More information below the cut.

Writing must be submitted as a PDF only. The PDF must include only prose. The file name should be USERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE. Italics must be denoted in game style (*word*).

Art must be submitted as a LINK to your submission from IMGUR or Google Drive. Make sure downloads are allowed. Art must be 300 DPI resolution. Art must be 5400 ⨯ 3633 pixels (A3, landscape) for full spread, 2500 ⨯ 3713 pixels (A4, portrait) for single page, or 2621 ⨯ 3847 pixels (A4, portrait) per page (up to five (5) pages) for comics. File name should be USERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE.

REMINDER! Sexual NSFW, 18+ and fetish content, and suggestive themes are NOT ALLOWED. We have minors participating in this zine. Submissions found with any of this content will result in a ban from the zine and potential future zines organized by me (k1ll3r-k4rg0 / p0rchc0ll4ps3).

Depictions of heavy topics ARE allowed within reason, but just remember to list them in the provided space on the forms! We are not trying to make an X rated / whump zine, but the game does deal with darker themes. Thank you for your understanding!

Twitter Version HERE

More In-Depth Guidelines and Format Examples Under the Cut

This information is the same as the information found on each form.

THEME OPTION

Does your piece describe past memories, present events, or future hopes and fears? You do not need to strictly adhere to this. These themes are a way to thematically tie everyone's pieces together as well as provide an organization scheme to the zine. This zine is intended to be a scrapbook of memories, after all.

Past relates to things that have happened before the events of the game, memories you or the characters want to preserve or forget. Present relates to events of the game as well as things that happen around those events, the new life that the characters are going into, unexplored territories, and bonds forming and breaking. This is the here and now. Future relates to events that happen way ahead from now. Revolution, for example, or the failure to achieve it. Whatever you may think the characters will be going through in the months and years to come after the main events of the game. Whatever hopes or dreams or fears they may have.

ZINE FORMATTING

The format on the zine will appear as follows:

ARTISTS

SUBMISSION TITLE [submission image] YOUR NAME (your username)

SUBMISSION TITLE YOUR NAME (your username) [submission image]

Content warnings for art will appear at the beginning of the zine (subject to change).

WRITERS

Your Name (your username) Submission Title Word Count Submission Characters + Relationships (if any) Tags (if any) Content Warnings (if any) Submission Summary [submission]

GUIDELINES

>Artists<

You must submit a LINK to your submission from IMGUR or Google Drive. Make sure downloads are allowed.

As per the theme of the zine, lyrics should be included in your piece or in the title!

Art must be 300 DPI resolution. The size on your canvas should be set to PIXELS (px) or POINTS (pt).

File name should be USERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE. If you do not have a username, use your name, and if you have neither just title it ANONYMOUS_NAME_OF_PIECE. Example Given: k1ll3r-k4rg0_endlessly.png

Submit ONE of these: Page Artists: Double Page A3 Landscape or Single Page A4 Portrait Comic Artists: Comic Pages Sized A4 (Up to Five (5) Pages)

If you do not follow sizing guidelines, I may have to crop your image.

Page Artists:

Please submit 1 piece of art that features a clean sketch, clean line art, or no line art that is fully colored or toned (includes grayscale / monotone).

Double-Page Spread Art (A3, Landscape Horizontal, Wide [ ]) ——5400 ⨯ 3633 pixels (px) (4050 ⨯ 2725 points (pt)) landscape

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

Single-Page Spread Art (A4, Portrait Vertical, Tall [ ] ) ——2500 ⨯ 3713 pixels (px) (1875 ⨯ 2785 points (pt)) portrait

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

Comic Artists:

Please submit five (5) maximum pages of art that feature a clean sketch, clean line art, or no line art that are fully colored or toned (includes grayscale / monotone).

Comic (A4, Portrait Vertical, Tall [ ] ) ——2621 ⨯ 3847 pixels (px) (1966 ⨯ 2885 points (pt)) portrait

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

If you do not follow sizing guidelines, I may have to crop your image.

>WRITERS<

Writers: Please submit one (1) piece of writing no longer than five thousand words (5k). The writing can be prose, a poem, a script, etc. It must be in English, as I have to make sure the content is not breaking any rules. Your piece should be polished! (basically: if you are not good at grammar, that is okay; I would simply suggest you look over the piece / edit it / polish it before submitting!).

Please submit a PDF only.

As per the theme of the zine, lyrics should be included in your piece or in the title!

Italics must be denoted in game style (*word*).

Submit the PDF with prose only.All the extra information such as title, word count, characters, tags, etc. should be filled out in this form.

File name should beUSERNAME_NAME_OF_PIECE. If you do not have a username, use your name, and if you have neither just title it ANONYMOUS_NAME_OF_PIECE. Example Given: k1ll3r-k4rg0_endlessly.pdf

LAYOUT EXAMPLE:

#disco elysium #disco elysium fanzine #disco elysium zine #disco elysium fanart #disco elysium writing #zine #fanzine #zine promo #submissions open #long post #asdjkhffgg i hope this is legible and clear

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mcsr-events · 9 days

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Announcing the MCSR Winter Big Bang!

This winter, I will be running a Big Bang event where writers and artists will work together to produce MCSR works! More information can be found beneath the cut, including the rules and format. If you're interested, join the MCSR Events Discord server, where we will be running the event!!

Winter Big Bang Dates: 23rd September - Writer signups open 30th September - Writer signups close 1st October - Writer creation period opens 2nd November - Writer check-in 15th November - Writer creation closes

16th November - Artist claims open 20th November - Aritst claims close 21st November - Artist creation period opens 7th December - Artist check-in 21st December - Artist creation period closes

25th December-1st January - Posting period

Big Bang Event rules:

You agree to do your best to produce a writing piece of minimum word count 3k if you are a writer. If you are an artist, you agree to work with your writer on creating an art piece to complement the fic the writer has written.

If you at any point feel you are unable to continue with your piece, be it fic or art, you must contact @ilyfynn by opening a ticket or DM.

As per Discord, Ao3 and Tumblr TOS, you must be at least 13 years old to participate. You must have a Tumblr and Discord account.

Shipping is allowed for the event. Don't like, don't read - practice typical fandom etiquette.

Dark, violent or triggering topics must be appropriately tagged.

No NSFW content.

Artists must respect the wants and DNWs of their writer, and appropriate communication should take place to ensure this.

No AI generated content.

Mods reserve the right to ban anybody who is overly most.

The event will run as follows:

Participants will join a Discord server, as this is where the event will be run through.

Writers will fill out a writer signup form to indicate their interest in creating a piece for this event.

Writers will have one and a half months to create a piece of minimum 3k words. One check-in will occur midway through. The work must be standalone so that the artist only has to read one piece to understand.

Writers will submit a link to their work (unposted), some information about their piece, all of which will be placed into a claims spreadsheet. It is crucial that writers meet the allocated deadline as artist claims must open afterwards.

Artists will claim a piece they would like to create art for. Initially, this will be anonymous, so no discussions of 'who wrote this?' etc. Artists will be able to choose multiple pieces in order of preference. These are done on a first come, first served basis.

I will DM artists and writers with their writer and artist respectively. Once all fics have been claimed, you are free from the bars of anonymity and can tell everyone about your status as a team.

Artist creation period opens, where artists create their corresponding art piece. Communication should occur here to ensure everything is okay with the writer. One check-in will occur midway through.

Once artist creation period closes, a few days will remain to allow mods to sort things out.

After that, posting period begins for both artists and writers. They should tag each other's pieces in their posts. Once participants have completed the posting form, the event is over!

#mcsr #mcsrblr #mcyt #mcytblr #sorry if there are mistakes in this post i wrote it on 3h sleep #mcsr event #mcyt event #winter 2024

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hystixia · 3 months

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-> WRITING COMMISSIONS <-

-> if you’re interested in supporting me in any way please read below for details and prices. reblogs are appreciated and any type of help or support are appreciated as well.

i never thought i’d have to do this but my living situation has gotten increasingly worse and i am facing being potentially homeless sooner rather than later. i don’t have a job due to no sort of transportation and any money i had originally saved up has been pocketed by my parents and i am unable to get back nor am i even allowed to touch the money i did rightfully earn. so i am reaching out in this way to make some sort of money to get by and survive at this point. any type of help is greatly appreciated and i thank you for even reading this at all. it means a lot :,)

-> PAYMENT METHODS <-

my cashapp is $hystixia

my paypal is @hystixia

cashapp & paypal are the only ways of sending payment at the moment. these are the only options for commissioning for now.

-> COMMISSION DETAILS <-

commissions will always be open. there are no slots or deadlines to meet to get a commission. feel free to get one whenever and if u want to!! if you’re interested in commissioning please read the details below and dm me!! dms are always open for any questions during the process as well so don’t be scared to ask abt anything to do with your commission! :)

will do: nsfw, sfw, dark content, long fics/oneshots, chapters ( for more info check below ) + potentially more. can be discussed in dms!!

$10 for 1k words, $20 for 2k words, etc. every thousand words is $10 basically. if it goes over the commissioned amount (example: you pay for 2k but it’s nearly 3k by the end of it) you will not be charged extra.

if you would like to see chapters for rampage come out sooner you can also send tips ranging from $5 or more to help out in small ways and also get more chapters way quicker!

payment is sent after discussing details and specifics + a rough short draft/snippet is shown to confirm that you’re satisfied with what you will receive in full. commissions may take anytime between a day to a couple weeks. like i mentioned before i’m struggling terribly right now and so its even harder to find time to write but i promise i will get any and all commissions out as as i possibly am able to!!

your commission will be posted on my tumblr & ao3 & quotev once finished. i own all rights to my works and do not allow nor consent to my works — commissioned or not — being reposted on any platform, copied, stolen or any other form of plagiarism. ur identity will remain anonymous when ur commission is published unless you want your identity to be public (example: “this was commissioned by hystixia!”)

if you commission anything that falls under suggestive content, nsfw or dark content you will have to send photo proof of your age via id. you can block out all information besides your birthdate. that’s all that i need to see to verify that you are a legal adult. if you cannot provide proof of being an adult then i will refuse to accept your commission.

once payment has been made and i have started working on your commission, there will be no refunds allowed. so please be positive you want to commission something and you’re happy with the draft i offer before paying.

i’m sure i’m probably missing some things as i’ve never had to do this and i’m sure this is terribly formatted and set up so i do apologize for the sloppy format :,) i do however appreciate all of you for all the support you’ve given me thus far and i am sorry for coming to u all in such a way. i never thought i’d be in this position but here we are. if you’ve read this far i thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking time to read through all of this. any type of help is appreciated whether its thru commissions, tips, reblogs or anything of the sort. i appreciate every single one of you for all you’ve given me :,) you truly have no idea the impact u’ve all left on my life since i first started writing fics on tumblr. i hope u all have a wonderful day/night wherever you are <3

#writing commissions #commissions open #emergency commissions #creepypasta x reader #jeff the killer x reader #i hate to put this in tags but.. exposure helps a lot :’)#jtk x reader #jeff the killer smut #creepypasta smut #my commissions

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if-whats-new · 1 month

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What's New In IF? Issue 19 (2024)

By Marjorie, Axelle, and Noi

Now Available!

Itch.io. - Keep Reading below

If you read the zine, consider liking the post: it helps us see how many people sees it! And sharing is caring! <3

~ EDITORIAL ~

New faces for a new season!

This week, we had to say goodbye to Erika, who is returning to legal pastures after their incredible hard work with the zine. They were a core member of our team, digging through so many spots to help us find all the news for our readers!

With their departure leaving a big gap, we have been discussing the future of the zine, and have decided to add new faces to our roster!

If you would like to help us out in a more official capacity, shoot us a message!

For this issue, we talked with E. Jade Lomax, author of the beloved Stay? and More a Haunting than History, fan-fic writer (dirgewithoutmusic) and podcaster.

We got quite the scoop during our discussion, and dove quite a bit into spoiler territory… So you only get a tease today… and see the rest Wednesday!

Check out our interview with E. Jade Lomax on Small Talk…

We hope you enjoy this extra long issue!

MARJORIE, AXELLE, AND NOI

~ BE PART OF THE ZINE ~

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? HAS EXPANDED!

THIS ZINE ONLY HAPPENS WITH YOU!

Want to write 1-2 pages about a neat topic, or deep-dive into a game and review it in details? Share personal experiences or get all academic?

WRITE FOR THE COLUMN!

Prefer to be more low-key but still have something to share? Send us a Zine Letter or share a game title for Highlight on…!

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Excited as we are about next week's interview and have questions for our guest? Or want to see a certain author answer questions next? Message us!

SMALL TALK... IS WAITING!

Came across something interesting? Know a release or an update announced? Saw an event happening? Whether it's a game, an article, a podcast… Add any IF-related content to our mini-database!

EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS!

~ EVENT SPOTLIGHT : Tales to Thrill Jam ~

Get your snacks, sit around the campfire, get thrills!

Hosted by Catsket (@catskets), who was interviewed in a previous issue of this Zine, the Tales to Thrill Jam is an unranked game jam with a focus on the Visual Novel medium all about stories.

Inspired by the campfire setting, the jam hopes participants would be inspired by this vibe: people gathering around a fire to tell stories, any kind of stories. No matter the genre, the aim is to give thrills to the players!

To help participants thinking of stories to tell, the jam includes different themes, from which at least one has to be chosen: Possessive Possessions, Lost & Found, and Forgotten Promise.

There is just a bit more than a week left to mess around and create a thrilling Visual Novel, with at least some plot, a conflict and an end!

And if you prefer experiencing thrills, there are already a couple of submitted entries!

~ ENDED ~

Two dozens entries were submitted to the Velox Fabula game jam. While it is a ranked jam, voting is restricted to entrants. But you can still check and cheer for the games submitted!

~ ONGOING (VOTING) ~

Though the winner of the IntroComp has already been decided, as only one project was submitted, consider checking it out and give it some feedback! The author will only receive its prize if the game is completed...

~ ONGOING (SUBMITTING) ~

For those who created an intent to participate at the IFComp, there is less than a week left to submit a full game... or wait for next year! (Or you can look our for beta-openings, create an account to vote when the games are released, or offer prizes!) @ifcomp

For the francophones, the French IF community is organizing a summer-long camp to create parsers. Join the Confiture de Parser if you're interested!

With just a bit over one week to go, the SuNoFes is still accepting narrative games, whether they be visual novels or more text-focused.

Do you have WIPs on indefinite hiatus? Projects you've started forced to be set aside? Bring Out Your Ghost is a jam to show off your ghosts (and maybe even spruce them up and finish them)! @neointeractives

On the CoG Forum, Halloween is already there! Until Oct 31st, submit to the Halloween Jam - it has funky themes!

Running until Halloween, the Phantasia Jam is a three months game jam to create a fantasy narrative game, with the theme of “Hidden Magic”. It accepts both VN and IF.

Do you understand or write Ukrainian? Until the end of the year, the Ukrainian IF Festival is happening on itch.io!

~ OTHER ~

There is only a short week left to participate in the Review-a-thon on the IntFiction Forum, whose initiative is to get more reviews for games. Check out this post by Tabitha! This is also a sponsored event, aiming to raise funds for one of the Forum members.

The Interactive Fiction Showcase is still running! If you have completed an IF piece this year, consider submitting it! It is happening only on itch!

~ SMALL TALK… ~

WITH E. JADE LOMAX (@ink-splotch)

Joining us this week is IF author, fanfic writer, and podcaster: E. Jade Lomax ~ Author of Stay? and More a Haunting than History

The interview below is not in its complete form, but it will be released in its entirety shortly. See at the end.

⟶ Hi E! Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you found IF?

I grew up playing very few video games (the city-builder Pharoah being a massive exception), and hardly any narrative-based ones. After college, one of my best friends started introducing me to some of his favorite games, all of which had strong narrative elements – I think we started with Witcher 3 – and GDC talks. Not just IF, but computer-games-with-stories in general were something I hadn't really gotten deeply into before.

As the pandemic trapped us inside, we mainlined sourdough and Emily Short blog posts, and I grew more and more intrigued by the idea of narrative with choice and exploration included. It was (and is) just really satisfying to my brain to think about breaking a story and a possibility space down to comprehensible units and stitching them back together to make a navigable whole. You always find something new in doing it.

I made an interactive quiz for my personality sorting system, sortinghatchats, as a small project just to learn the ink tool. (I genuinely don't remember how I found out about ink, but blessings to the inkle guys for sharing that with the world so freely. That sort of generosity, easy knowledge-sharing, and joy in others' creations is one of the things that's made the IF community, like fandom, so enjoyable to engage in). Then I wrote Stay? in a four month binge and I'm a little hooked.

⟶ For those who don't know Stay?, can you tell us more about this game?

Stay? is an IF game in which you play as a young adult attending a magical university, choosing your career path, your relationships, etc. About a decade later, unbeknownst to you, the world is meant to end.

But the morning before the world ends, your taciturn friend Jo pulls you aside and tells you that they've been working, living, and dying for hundreds of lives, trying to figure out how to save it. They've figured out how to stop the final cataclysm (a comet on collision course), but there's so many things that are still imperfect, war-torn, or poisoned in your world. Things Jo wishes they could fix.

But they're tired. And they're done. They don't think they can do any better than this. So Jo is passing the work on to you.

They give you a magical stone that sends you back to the start of the game, to a Jo that doesn't remember any of this, and your work begins.

Over the course of the many lives you lead, you have to figure out how to stop the comet that destroys your little country-- but after you manage to keep from dying and being forcibly re-set every time the comet hits ground, it's not a strict victory. You're offered a choice: do you re-set the world anyway, because you think you can do better, save more people, change more lives, fall in love a little differently if you're given another chance-- or do you decide that this life is the one you want to keep?

Do you choose to stay?

And that gameplay loop is really the heart of the story. It's one of the first things I knew about the game, when it was scribbles in a notebook, and of course it's where the name comes from. I knew that question was going to be the heart of it, and I think that held through in the final version.

⟶ Why center the game around this choice? What was interesting for you to explore in this gameplay?

Hm. Making that the final choice – to stay or to say I'm not done yet, I can do better, or I want something different – changes the focus of the story from being about a challenge or a victory and into a story about deciding who you want to be and deciding how you want to impact the world you live in. The world you will, eventually, have to stay in, to live in and die in for one final time.

It's not about saving the world from the comet – that's just a prerequisite. It's about deciding what the world will be, both on a personal level and at a more monumental scale, and what work you're willing to put in to change, shift, and shape it. What is your happy ending? (There are no wrong answers).

⟶ Stay? is a pretty beloved game in the IF community, often shared in recommendations lists, and ranking among the top 100 best rated games on IFDB. Have you received interesting returns from players?

That's very nice of you to say! And yes, there's been a lot of fun player feedback. I try to respond to most of the itch comments, and folks also write to me on my tumblr and other places. I really enjoy hearing about what their “lives” were like – folks who lived six happy marital lifetimes with Suzie before finally trying romancing someone else and learning about some of the alternate Suzie timelines; or who went back again and again to try to rescue a particular character or fix a particular wrong; who walked off into the hills and lived a quiet life, or found a revelation among the orange groves. There are so

many different orders, connections, conclusions, and most of all feelings that different folks find in their own playthroughs and I like hearing about them all – especially the ones I didn't intend! A couple folks have even written fanfiction, which is a delight to me. I also enjoy hearing from the folks who are new to IF, who knew me through my novels or fic, and tried Stay? anyways. I appreciate them following me into something new.

⟶ Do you have a particular scene or path from Stay? that is your favorite? and one that you found challenging to write/code?

I didn’t originally have a way to prevent the war, in the game. The only thing you could do was win it. That was an eleventh hour epiphany and I think eventually vital to what the game became, but I was all but done with everything else before I went in and added the long walk south, the orange groves, and the various ways to commit treason.

The ability to “fuck off into the hills” had existed from an early date, including the three “lives” you can lead in that little village. It was meant to be a respite or a distraction, but made a wonderful launching point for that final path once I realized I needed it— and realized that I had all the pieces (the poisoned land, the history of artifacts, the famine, the dam upstream, the beginning of the path south) to build players a place to walk there.

So that one still feels very satisfying to me.

Honorable mention also to Suzette’s overall arc, though. Her story has the greatest breadth— her highs and lows are the furthest apart while still being compatible with each other (I think), and I’m proud of pulling that off. I wasn’t sure it would hang true in the end, but it does to me at least.

⟶ You mentioned getting into IF during the pandemic, but what brought on Stay? specifically? How did it come to be?

Outer Wilds. If you haven’t played this game, I highly recommend it. We played through it, and the story is lovely of course, but I was fascinated by how well it was able to maintain a feeling of forward momentum and exploration. I wanted to understand how and why it worked so well. And one of the best ways to see if you understand how a system works is to try to build it yourself.

There’s a few fascinating things that Outer Wilds does, some of which I didn’t implement. For example, they hide secret areas or solutions behind fear. It’s a really interesting pattern. They teach you specifically to avoid or fear a certain danger; and over and over again the puzzle secret is to step into the fear. It doesn’t get old! And it ties so well into the overall narrative themes.

I didn’t do that — with non-parser IF, I don’t think there’s an easy way to lean into that. Instead, I tried to key into one of their other design patterns: concentric secrets.

Outer Wilds is built around a few core secrets; specifically three final secrets that gate your access to the climax/final area. Putting those three secrets together enables you to gain access to that final climax. The path to each of those three final secrets have barriers that are passable if you know certain other secrets. It’s this repeated pattern of “gather secrets → have epiphany → use new conclusions to access new areas and gain new secrets”. This is not in itself novel or groundbreaking, though the repeated, nested patterns of Outer Wilds have a particularly satisfying beauty.

What I tried to hone into and replicate in Stay? was the way Outer Wilds seeds their secrets and the hints that lead to them. Along the path to Secret A, you have to bypass various barriers; same with B, same with C. But after the first barrier on the way to Secret A, you stumble across a hint that points you to something that will help with Secret C, or a secret/key that opens up new possibilities for getting to Secret B. Outer Wilds is filled with distractions – that’s one way to look at it. It’s also filled with constant signposts and will o’ th’ wisps and reminders such that wherever you go, wherever you wish to explore, wander, or wonder, you will find something to answer you and something to lead you on. And what you find almost never immediately points you to what’s ahead of you – it points you somewhere else, over another horizon, almost always.

I loved that feeling and I loved that play space. I wanted to see if I could build it in words. I didn’t make Outer Wilds, of course (and I wouldn’t want to – it already exists!) but I think I captured something of that feeling I was after, and I’m glad of that.

⟶ Were there other sources that inspired the making of Stay?

Nothing as direct as that, though I find Emily Short’s blog posts very influential, and for the aesthetics of Stay? I drew on a childhood trip to the Mediterranean. I can’t think of anything else specific…

⟶ Your next game, More a Haunting than History, has been coined as an emotional sequel to Stay?. Can you tell us a bit more about how that game came to be?

...

READ HER ANSWER AND MORE IN THE FULL INTERVIEW! (to be) RELEASED ON WEDNESDAY!

~ NEW RELEASE ~

LITHOBREAKERS - Defenestration is a collection of 10 short games from multiple interactive anonymous authors, inspired by the secret jam of the same name.

Parser author Ryan Veeder recently published two games: another sequel to the LMG series, The Little Match Girl and His Holiness Pope Pius IX (Inform 7), and the experimental standalone Welcome (Inform 7).

Jerusalem (Twine) is a Twine port of the text-adventure Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna.

Fairweather Friends (Twine) is a thriller game where you can play different characters going through the sadistic Killing Game.

You Are Out of Gas (Decker) is a short horror game set in a gas station.

Rabbitat (Twine) follows the adventures of a rabbit named Paige, trying to go home.

life without honey (VideotomeSuper) is a short conversation about love and life.

Deek's Deed (Adventuron) is a remastered sci-fi text-adventure from the 90s with extra elements.

The Super Tiny Pirate Tale (Unity) is a tiny CYOA story where you play as a pirate captain.

Miss Concepcion's Mysteries and Rumors (Ren’Py) follows Maria, a child-detective on a case to find a missing students and reveal secrets.

Through the Storm (Twine) is a short sim game where you play as a therapist, trying to make your patient open up.

The Last Rays of Autumn (Twine) is a slice-of-life about an average person living an average life.

Concoeur (Custom) lets you play as an emotional king, whose choice may literally break your heart.

A Date to Remember (Ren’Py) is a dating-sim about the highs and lows of online dating.

Maus House (Ren’Py) is a cute slice-of-life visual novel where you play as a mouse.

As always, don't forget to check out the submitted entries to the events mentioned in the previous pages. They deserve some love too!

~ NEW RELEASE (WIP) ~

Lost in Limbo (Ren’Py) is a dark fantasy otome mystery project where you must face your fears to reveal the truth and find your way home. @ravenstargames

Azrael (CScript) is a thriller project where you play as a former legendary assassin.

Tales of Wocdes: The Silver Protector (Twine) is a high fantasy following your progression from a helpless child to the all powerful Silver Protector. @tales-of-wocdes

Viatica (Twine) is a post-apocalyptic romance project where you play a healer named H-313.

Texas Hold’em (CScript) is an experimental game where you can play the said card game.

Scale the Scale with Scale between Scale (Unity) is a surreal humorous VN about ocean life.

~ GAMES UPDATES ~

Dragon Kin (CScript) updated the demo with Chapter 4.

Drink Your Villain Juice (CScript) added the first part of Chapter 7 to the Patreon demo. @drinkyourvillainjuice

Adoriel's Tears (Twine) added extra content to the demo. @adoriels-tears-if

Chains of Destiny (CScript) updated the demo with the second part of Chapter 2. @chains-of-destiny

Blood Moon (CScript)'s demo now includes extra content for Chapter 11. @barbwritesstuff

Vendetta (CScript) made its latest update available to all. @vendetta-if

Crown of Ashes and Flames (Twine) added Chapter 4 to the Patreon demo. @coeluvr

Blood Legacies (CScript) updated the demo with extra content. @bloodlegacies

Starless (Twine) returned with re-writes of its first Chapter. @cheryl-writes

Peninsula Campaign (CScript) updated the Patreon demo with extra content.

Aesemyr: The Withering (CScript) added the second part of Chapter 2 to the demo. @wiz-writes

After the end (Twine) completed Chapter 1. @albywritesfiction

Weeping Gods (CScript) added extra content to the demo. @jcollinswrites

~ OTHER ~

Leas: City of the Sun (CScript) has started the beta testing process. The last version is available to all patrons, but you can request a spot as a beta tester here. @sailingshellsgames

Until next Thursday (Aug-29th), ChoiceofGames is having a sale on all its games with management mechanics. See more here. @choiceofgames

The author of Love the guard - Be the king (Ren’Py) is doing a giveaway for game keys. Just fill in the survey to participate. @ligiawrites

If you think something should have been included in this week's zine but did not appear, please shoot us a message! We'll do our best to add it next week! And if you know oncoming news, add it here!

~ THE COLUMN ~

In Defense of ESL Authors

One of my favorite IF creators decided to call it quit recently, after the barrage of negative comments about their writing. This hadn't bothered them when they started: being ESL, they knew their writing wasn't perfect but still wanted to try their best. They used multiple spellcheckers, looked for beta-readers, asked players to send them any errors they would come across. And, in my opinion, it did pay off! Since the first version, their writing improved and flourished. It was a joy to see the progression of all their improvements.

But for some vocal readers, it wasn't enough; it never was enough Every update came with the same criticism: “fix your writing, there are too many typos, it's unreadable”. Like clock-work, they were there, for every update, only pointing out what was wrong with their project, with very little positive comments. The author even asked some if they'd want to be part of the beta-testing - none were actually interested. It was frustrating, for them to keep receiving the same thing over and over, and for us to see them struggle and still not get their due. Yet, they continued to push through, since the project meant a lot to them.

Except... the criticism got worse over time, more and more aggressive. One went as far as ‘advising’ the creator to find a native author to write the story for them instead, because they liked the premise but hated the writing. And when one told them they might as well use AI to write their project, the creator just... gave up.

The problem is... this wasn't the first time or place I've seen this happening.

All over the IF space, ESL authors can't escape those comments. Replies in forum threads, comments on game pages, reviews, public asks... Time and time again, no matter their writing skills, someone publicly will point out that something in the writing doesn't sounds natural, that the structure of a sentence might be technically correct but still not right, that the wrong homonym was used... It's like we all look down on ESL writers for not reaching some unspecified level (that we keep raising every time they get close) of writing quality.

And, honestly, part of me sort of gets it. Interactive Fiction is almost exclusively textual (maybe there's a background or two, or some audio, or you're doing a VN), so the writing will make or break the story. Typos and awkward sentences will break a reader's immersion, the same way bugs and badly built puzzles would. It can be pretty frustrating to butt against every other page because a word is clearly missing or is wrongly spelled. No matter how great a story can be, if the writing is inconsistent, staying invested will be a challenge. Because you can't unsee those issues.

However, what I don't understand is the way the community has decided to deal with this as a whole. And I know, every commenter, every reviewer, every reader is different, and will convey their feelings about a work in different ways, some much kinder than others, some more constructive than others. There are obviously good apples out there, and the MVPs who will report all the typos or issues they've found to the author, unprompted (outside of beta), with a kind message with it should be given their flowers.

But as a whole, the community has not been kind when discussing issues with writings. Worse still, I've noticed a pretty substantial difference when native or ESL authors were on the receiving ends of those comments. People were much harsher to the latter group when reporting typos. While the former would more often get a passing comments or simply a list of found errors, ESL authors were more likely to get condescending comments about their writing to borderline insulting.

It is incredibly disheartening the tone many have taken when discussing someone's prose. From the downward-looking comments (“It's so obvious the author is not native, because the game is riddled with the most basic of errors.”) to the fake-nice ones (“Ah, I really don't want to sound like a dick for pointing it out again, but you really *need* some spellchecking.”), without touching upon the insulting ones (I will spare you an example), I can't blame authors for throwing in the towel and disappearing quietly. It's incredibly dismissive of their efforts, and demoralizing.

Take a moment, just to imagine this: you've spent weeks, maybe months or years, writing a story, to the best of your abilities, in another language than your mother tongue (do you know a second language and feel confident enough to create something with it?); you decided to take the plunge and share it with others, on a public platform, with maybe an invitation for readers to provide comments because you're not fluent. Feeling anxious yet?

Now, imagine getting the these kinds of comments. Imagine your efforts being completely dismissed because “I couldn't finish it, there were too many typos”. Imagine your work deemed unworthy of people's time because “you clearly didn't make any effort writing this, it's unreadable”. Imagine being told to “pay more attention to how you write, it's all just... so wrong”. Imagine having readers assume things about your process: “if I were you, I'd at least use a spellchecker”, “you know, there are plenty of people here who would proofread for you, you just need to ask”. All the while, none of those commenters provided a single concrete example of typos or wrong sentence structure. And if you asked, they'd reply “just read your text again, it's so obvious” or “oh, there were just too many to keep track”.

So, you put your heart out, all that blood, sweat, and tears into creating something, only to get a ‘Git Gud’ in return. How can you not be demoralized? Why would you want to be part of a community who is all too ready to punch down?

Over the years, I've my fair share of ESL authors abandoning their projects because of those unfiltered and unhelpful reactions. Some quit writing altogether, leaving behind a hobby that stopped bringing joy and fulfilment; others returned to their mother tongue and now exclusively write in that language; a few pushed through and continue releasing, regardless of the harsh environment. None ever really get the kudo’s they deserve for writing in another language (how many native English IF creator can say they wrote a game in another language?).

Maybe I'm a bit disillusioned by it all, but... I don't understand how, in our community, we are not trying to uplift each other, to help one another, to be kind to one another. Where in this darn community can we find actual empathy and compassion? Because I've seen enough of sweeping under the rug when an ESL author tries to raise their concerns and their feelings on the matter. You know, the “oh, but I do the same thing with native speakers”, or “if it makes you feel any better, I didn't realize you were ESL, so you should take those comments as praise”, or “but there are native speakers here who would totally help if you asked”, or “but there are ESL authors that have done really good work, like so-and-so”. None ever really address the crux of the issue, do they…

Sometimes, I wonder whether the English-speaking side of the IF community really realize how incredibly catered it is. Out of all the languages used to make IF, English is overwhelmingly the most used (it's the lingua franca of the Internet...). Not only are they getting a diverse library of stories from native authors, the community will find ESL giving extra efforts for theirs to be seen. Served on silver (maybe a bit banged up) platter, the community doesn't even need to spend time or energy learning a new language: it's already in English for them!

And plenty are obviously taking for granted this gift.

See, in trying to uphold rigid (and often unwritten) rules about what is proper and improper writing, we lose an incredible amount of diversity in language, of beauty in poetic prose that sings because the author's mother tongue is lyrical, of strange (good!) idioms translated word for word that actually make a scene more impactful than if its “proper” counterpart was used, of personality in writing stemming from the author's identity and background, of bringing forward unique phrasings to an ever-changing language, of flourishes and aesthetic that wouldn't exist otherwise. This is something that cannot be recreated by native speakers. And this is not something that should be suppressed either.

Honestly, if we continue like this, we would lose all these vibrant voices, diverse stories and perspectives, and variety in use of the language. Not just that, we'd also scare away any ESL newcomers.

So, before someone brings up the ‘awesome’ idea of making authors explicitly indicate their fluency in languages in their blurb so “we can all have the same expectation”, or tells us to “stop coddling people because if they can’t take it then they shouldn’t make it public”, or replies that “ESL should use GenAI to help improve their writing” (don't you fucking dare!), I just have one advice for people who comments on an author’s prose (and maybe forget about their tone): please, instead of generally say “there’s quite a bit of typos here” or “it could do with another round of spellcheck”, consider explaining a specific issue and how it affected your experience as the player. You know, the “it made me feel like…” rather than “you did something wrong”. Or reach out to the author with concrete examples of their errors. General passing comments don't help people improve their writing, but explanations and details do.

And for my ESL authors out there… You are truly awesome. The work you put into creating stories in a language that you had to learn, the constant effort put into writing with structures that might still be foreign to you, the commitment you made into creating and translating, it is mind-blowing. You are doing amazing, one word at a time!

ludatwilight

~ HIGHLIGHT ON ~

A couple of games that we thought were cool.

The Queen's Menagerie by Chandler Groover (Texture - IFDB)

“honestly, I really hate Texture as an engine, with its frustrating click-drag interactive. So there are very few Texture games that are worth it. And this one. Oh boy, this one is weirdly enjoyable. It's also pretty short (15min), that helps. IF you're into Gothic vibes and guilt, now, this game is going to be worth your time.”

//submitted by anonymous//

Invite the blackbird by ana.merzlaya (Unity - itch.io)

Invite the blackbird is an adorable interactive VN, with beautiful handdrawn watercolor illustrations, where you follow Sonya, a young girl, and a blackbird, enjoying a very chill day. The aesthetic is very charming and surprisingly emotional.

//recommended by Erika//

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich by Rex Mundane (Adventuron - itch.io - IFDB)

A funky nonsensical adventure where the goal is to make a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Except the game twist and turns, and gets pretty meta for a joke game.

If you are looking for a fun silly time, with fairly easy puzzles (it was made for the TALJ), you should try this one!

//recommended by Axelle [Team]//

Your favourite game here?

Do you have a favourite game that deserves some highlighting?

An old or recent game that wowed you so much you spam it to everyone?

Tell us about it! And it might appear here!

WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU ALL! WHETHER IT'S GOOD OR BAD, OR EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN...

i loved your interview with Drew Cook (@golmac)!! All your interviews so far have been so expansive and interesting, full of useful info for gamemakers as well as context for players. This is a great project and I hope it continues. - @adz

so bummed class is starting soon... cause i won't have enough free time to enjoy all the cool IF games being updated every week :( - anonymous

hiiiii! this is for the shoutout bit! to Grayson (@if-30x30), hands-down the best sci-fi author and illustrator (if i wasn't super broke, you'd get all my money!) of this community. your stuff is insane <3 - a super shy fan

Have something to say? Send us a message titled: Zine Letter!

As we end this issue, we would like to thank:

@adz, a super shy fan, Erika, ludatwilight, SailingShellsGames @tabitha-writes, and a bunch of very helpful anonymous users!

For sending news, interview questions, helpful tips, cool links, filled form, written Sheet line, even emails... all these help us so much to make this Zine possible!

And as always, huge thanks to all you readers who liked, shared, and commented on last week's issue! What might be tiny actions are huge support and motivators to us! Thank you for cheering us on this journey!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We also hope you join us again next week, for we have a very special guest on the zine:

IFComp Organiser, Founder of ClubFloyd, and IF author : Jacqueline A. Lott is our guest next week!

Want to know more about her work? How she found IF? Or learn more about her community projects?

Send us all your burning questions!

And see you again next week!

MARJORIE, AXELLE, AND NOI

WHAT'S NEW IN IF? 2024-ISSUE 19

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