#not speaker related

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Sorry, do you know if there is something wrong with the Speaker's itch page? I'm getting "There was an error with your request" every time I try to see it.

there seems to be an issue with itch.io in general, actually! I've seen a lot of other games having the same problem, and I'm having issues logging into the site at all

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YOU'RE STILL AROUND???? I THOUGHT THIS BLOG HAD BEEN ABANDONED

I'm still here, neither Speaker or this blog have been abandoned

but bro, I am Going Through It™

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Happy birthday!!

thank you!! 🥰🥰🥰 despite my comment in the previous tags, I'm very excited to move out of my

era, and into the era of

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Do you have a link to your fanfictions or other works at all? I'd love to read more of your writing!! 🥰

my main blog is @haledamage, and most of the things I write end up there (in theory under the tag "rhi writes", but I know there's a few I've forgotten to tag. I should fix that). I'm also on ao3 under the same name, though most of the stuff I've written hasn't made it there yet because titles are the bane of my existence

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do you have friends here? why?

yes, I do have friends here! quite a few of them, I'm happy to say. I'm not sure what prompted this question exactly, but I'm gonna use it as an excuse to tell a story:

a little over five years ago, I signed up for a Fic Exchange. it had been probably 10 years since the last time I'd shared anything I'd written online, I was (and still am, to a lesser extent) cripplingly shy, both about my writing and just when it came to talking to people. but something about this exchange called to me, so I signed up before I could talk myself out of it

it's the smartest thing I've ever done

that exchange introduced me to some wonderful people who I've become good friends with, and to a wider community through which I made more friends. it made me more confident, and more willing to put myself and my stories out in the world. it's safe to say that Speaker wouldn't exist without them, because I never would have been brave enough to do this without their encouragement and support

I'm not gonna name any names or @ anyone because I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but I know a few of them will read this, and I'm pretty sure they know who they are 💙

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tagged by: @nightshadedawn 💙

Favorite Color: cobalt blue and burgundy red

Currently Reading: Make, Sew and Mend by Bernadette Banner

Last Song: "Hangover Blues" by Amythyst Kiah

Last TV Series: Sandman was the last one I watched of my own free will. Junior Bake Off was the last one I watched because my kid wanted to

Favorite Movies: Lost Boys, Willow, Fellowship of the Ring (the whole LotR trilogy, really, but if I had to just pick one it would be Fellowship), Blues Brothers, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Currently Working On: the update post for Speaker. the perpetual coding of Partially Stars. some fanfic prompt fills

Who I’m Tagging: hmmmm @lureofthegallowsgame @birdtown-if and @moonless-if (only if you want to 💙 no pressure of course)

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I've been tagged in that WIP ask game by a few different people, and while I'm very flattered that y'all are interested in what I work on, I will... not be doing that.

besides Speaker and Partially Stars, every WIP I have is named Untitled Document. I don't name things very often, and when I do they don't earn names until after they're finished 😅

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This is coffee anon, I promise my caffeine tolerance is unreasonably and unhealthily high!! Right now it's actually probably the lowest it's been since I was in college 😅 I've never tried double brew coffee before but it /sounds/ amazing, with the weather cooling down I'm transitioning from cold brew and my poor french press is getting overworked trying to keep up. Have you ever tried double brew using double the coffee to water ratio before? My wallet would hate it, but curious how it compares

personally, I find double-grounds coffee to be really bitter, so it's not to my taste, but I've got friends that swear by it and say it tastes more like espresso to them so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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ooh - sorry this isn’t speaker related (so feel free to ignore if you want) but - how are you liking the new pathfinder? I’m playing the first right now and I don’t looove it but the new one looks really cool and I kinda wanna try it when I finish with kingmaker

I'm enjoying it a lot! Wrath of the Righteous is very much built on the same framework as Kingmaker, so if you don't like Kingmaker, chances are you might not like WotR either, but they've also improved or fixed all the things I took issue with in the first game so I find it to, in general, be a better game

the story is very different too. Kingmaker felt like it was a series of things being done to you that you then had to react to. Wrath of the Righteous has you playing a more active role in the progression of the plot, with a lot less of those "wait for something to happen" quests.

I also find the characters as a whole much more likeable. Kingmaker's companions I either loved wholeheartedly or despised entirely, there wasn't any in between. In WotR, even the characters I don't like as people I still find interesting as characters, and "good" and "evil" are treated with a lot more nuance than you usually see in a game like this. that makes a really big difference in my opinion

I played it for about 60 hours in the beta, and I've put almost 100 hours in the full release and I'm still having fun, so there's that :D

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i may be a little late, but i just read your welcome back post, so welcome back!

if i might be allowed to inquire, what video games did you play?

I played some of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, both of which are like the video game versions of comfort food for me and were a blessing to have while I was sick

and then I tried out Greedfall, which I went into with basically no knowledge except that my bestie loves it, and I really enjoyed it! It has a very loveable cast of characters that I got very attached to, and I was legitimately sad when it ended because I wasn't ready to leave yet

and then! I got early access to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous because I'm a sometimes-game-reviewer and my editors know exactly what kind of games to offer me in order to get content out of me 😂 so I played a whole lot of that, and now that the full version is out I'm still playing that, when I have time!

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Someone brought up the parkour gif quote to the IF writer of Underbelly. 😂

REALLY?! 😂😂 I'm so proud that this is my brand lmao

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hi rhi!! i hope you’re doing well today!!! i have a writing question if that’s ok!!?

i’ve been planning out an IF story in my free time since the beginning of the year and haven’t been able to really make progress beyond broadly planning the plot because i’m having a really hard time fleshing out the ROs and nonplayer characters? i’ve never written original fiction before so idk if thats’s the problem but like all my characters are very nebulous ideas that i have and then ???? it’s like i’m looking at them without my glasses on and can’t make out any finer details djdjdjsjjs 😵‍💫😵‍💫 your characters are so incredibly vivid and distinct and have so much depth and with all your projects that is so many characters to come up with my head is absolutely spinning thinking about it?? i was wondering if you have any tips or could share how your characters come to be and you give them such life?? ((so sorry for how wordy this got sjsjjsks feel free to ignore this if it’s Too Much))

characters have always been my favorite part 🥰 I'm one of those people who makes DnD characters even when I don't have games to play, and a lot of times the characters for a story will come to me before a plot does, though usually in just an amorphous form to begin with

I find the best thing to do to turn a character idea into an actualized character is to write it down. whatever little details come to you about them, write them down. it makes them more concrete and also makes it harder to forget them

then, fill out a character sheet. seriously! one of those questionnaires that asks things like "when's your birthday? what's your favorite color? do you like dogs or cats better?" if a character doesn't want to take shape, it's okay to push them into one! make them take shape!

another good thing is to have friends (or a couple thousand strangers on the internet) ask you questions about them. I've had people ask questions about the Speaker cast that I never would have thought about on my own, and each one helps make the image of the character a little more clear

I hope this makes sense, it got a little rambley 😅 but I hope it's useful to you, rambling as it is, and I'd love to read your IF story when you write it!

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hello, you mentioned you’re non binary is it ok if i ask you something related to that ?

of course it is! 

though if you’re on anon I’ll only be able to answer publicly, if you’d prefer a private conversation feel free to DM me or to send a message off anon so I can answer privately 😊 I don’t mind answering publicly though, if you’d prefer to stay anonymous

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i can't believe the IF community has been blessed this April Fool's Day,,, first the sequel to KoTSaM, and now your WiP updated 😭 i loved the update so much, so thank you for sharing your story with us. i seriously can't wait to read what you write next!

KoTDaN came out today?! brb I have some reading to do~

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uhh this question is going to be weird but: i remember you saying you know a lot of punks and/or goths?? thats one of my favorite subcultures, but i cant ever seem to find anyone irl, and i think that comes from not being able to go to concerts/clubs bc i get too overstimulated by the sound. do you have any advice??

I’m not a big concert/club person either, loud music or flashing lights set off my migraines, so I definitely get where you’re coming from. and then there’s, y’know, a plague, which can make it even harder to meet people.

I’m not a very social person, even before entering lockdown. my in-person social circle is pretty small and is mostly my family and my dnd group. most of the friends I have (goth, punk, or otherwise) are online. the best advice I could give is to find a forum or discord group for a subculture you’re interested in!

I have also met quite a few punk and goth folks at Pride (being gnc and dressed in all black in the middle of summer tends to be a beacon to like-minded folks) and I meet a lot of people through my sister, who has always been the sun to my moon and is outgoing where I’m a hermit, so she has a habit of bringing stray friends home for me 🥰

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very out of the blue but do you have any favorite books? I'm trying to read more this year 👀

Reading more is a fantastic goal to have, and one I highly encourage! I love books and will read just about anything you put in front of me (though my tastes when left to my own devices skew heavily toward fantasy, especially modern fantasy), but let’s see if I can narrow it down just a little :)

my favorite book series is The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. if you are a fan of Welsh history, found family, dream magic, and talking trees, I really cannot recommend this series highly enough

my friends Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett recently had a new book come out, Master of One, and it’s really really good! more found family, which you’ll find is a favorite theme of mine. plus fae shenanigans, can’t go wrong there

Ghost Days by Asher Elbein and Tiffany Turrill is also great. it’s one I actually backed on kickstarter a couple years back. it’s a collection of Appalachian horror short stories and is wonderfully atmospheric.

I recommend anything and everything Seanan McGuire has written, especially the Toby Daye series. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is excellent, though you’d have to ask more organized minds than mine where you should start with that. Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys and Sandman were both formative for me. So was Elvenbane by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey, though I admittedly haven’t reread it in a long time. (so was the Dresden Files, but I very much do not recommend them, for a whole host of reasons that others have gone into more eloquently than I could. The Dresden Files were, in fact, one of the things that first inspired Speaker as a novel series, but not in a positive way... more out of spite. long story, accidental tangent)

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy probably seem obvious, but I had an elementary school teacher read the first chapter of The Hobbit to me and that was how I discovered fantasy as a genre, so that one’s always been important to me. it’s probably also not surprising that I, a known goth and literature nerd, am a fan of both William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as any and all Arthuriana I can get my hands on.

admittedly, most of the reading I’ve been doing lately is of the interactive variety instead of physical/traditional books, but I love them too. and I would love to know what your favorite books are too!