In response to: "What did she [Terri] do now? Whatever it is, I'll take care of it. Just please don't hurt her."
So, the thing about Lewyn is that he's a closet sadist, or at least he aspires to be one (the closeted part, I should specify). It's blindly obvious just how much he enjoys having power over people and then exerting that said power. Astoria despises grovelling, but Lewyn's always willing to watch a human beg plead their case.
The thing about Lewyn occasionally going mask off is that the mask isn't about care for humans or whether he likes them, but it's that he's not really as capable of tapering his obvious desire to rip them apart (emotionally or physically) as he wants to portray himself as being. Astoria gets her kicks from tearing and scarring flesh (her joy when branding the trio in book two, or Cas' dominatrix joke in that same chapter about her literal torture dungeon), and Lewyn does too as that "we'll kill them together" line seems to imply. Of course he does; he's a vampire. But he refuses to engage in it (probably because it's too messy for him). He acts out vampirism in other more convoluted, non-bloodshed ways (like stalking both MC and Gabe himself even though he can have someone else do it), and he also kind of controls Astoria by robbing her of her own preferred method of vamping out in doing so (which is part of their own centuries long power play).
I don't know. It's just very interesting that Lewyn likely prefers emotional sadism (making people uncomfortable, intimidation, watching them trip over themselves) which Astoria seems to despise, and Astoria enjoys physical sadism (killing, beating, branding) which Lewyn might find it slightly thrilling but very tasteless in most cases. You even see it in how they handle Sarah and Gabe; Astoria resorting to physical torture and killing while Lewyn weaponizes the turning ceremony as a means of humiliating Gabe and the Adalhard name instead (at least from MC and Gabe's read of it).
It makes for moments like this where, instead of Astoria getting too in her feelings while Lewyn has to bring her down, it's Lewyn who's momentarily distracted because he's having too much fun watching MC switch to being completely deferential while Astoria has to play the serious, clear-headed one.
The implication that Lewyn knows Gabe is self-harming via starvation, and something like this has almost happened before enough times that it's making it difficult for them to keep undercover. Astoria glaring daggers at him with the later knowledge that she was planning on killing Gabe and Lewyn overturned her to instead suggest making Gabe a vampire. The fact that Lewyn is actually likely being somewhat genuine here because MC doesn't lampshade his reaction like they do later on in the scene when he talks about killing them and their mother, but he's still placing the blame on Gabriela being unable to adjust rather than him turning her to begin with?
Crazy ass character beat that makes me want to chew glass.
So now that we've gotten to that moment, I have to ask: do you guys think Cas was talking about Gabe's family being vampire hunters in the gym back in Chapter 3, or was that a red herring and he was actually alluding to the fact that Gabe was a vampire? I personally think it's the latter.
Also if mc asks Cas what Gabe ever did to them, Cas tells them "Don't ask questions you don't want answers to." (Sth along those lines). Andddd until it got debunked in book 2, I did always assume that Cas meant Gabe turned them (or took part in their turning at least).
Honestly I STILL do because idk what else they could've meant by that? And since iirc book 2 had a different writing team...
Oh, I didn't know they had a different writer's room; that's interesting and makes a lot of sense. Book One was definitely super vague about the turning situation on purpose. As much as I did also think they were alluding to Gabe turning Cas, I also think Cas being the one to turn Gabe does work because it does make sense why Gabe has such a strong resentment towards Cas (I kind of want to write a meta about the implications of Gabe's turning and their relationship with their body), and it is implied that Gabe did something after finding out about Cas being a vampire that got him punished pretty severely (the extremely vague worst brand of his life), which could explain his anger towards her.
It's all very Bryonic, though (in the sense of neither of these two are willing to talk about their past); whatever the hell happened between them was bad. I have a lot of headcanons, but my main one is that Cas might have been the reason Gabe located where Sarah was after she got kidnapped. It could've been because Gabe figured out how to force it out of him (they had access to the talismans at that point, after all), but I'm not opposed to the idea of Cas willingly helping for whatever reason. Either way, after the operation went bust, Gabe turned on him. Then, when Gabe was made into a vampire and placed in the Clements, they put most of the blame for their turning on Cas rather than Lewyn, and things just got ugly from there. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a change in script, though.
So now that we've gotten to that moment, I have to ask: do you guys think Cas was talking about Gabe's family being vampire hunters in the gym back in Chapter 3, or was that a red herring and he was actually alluding to the fact that Gabe was a vampire? I personally think it's the latter.
Name and Meaning: Luca — Bringer of Light / O'Rinn — Descendant of the Stars
Book: Immortal Desires
Love Interests: Cas Harlow and Gabriel Adalhard
Pronouns: He/they
Birthday: 5th January 1997
Sign: Aquarius
Born: Kinloch Rannoch, Scotland
Raised: Inverness, Scotland
Heritage: Scottish with ancestral roots in Ireland
Dance, drums, butterfly knives, annoying ancient vampires with incessant questions and somehow not being murdered outright
Random Trivia
Luca has an avid curiosity (which often gets them into trouble) and is fascinated by how the world works — in every possible universe, they would have found out about the vampires in Crimson Beech.
He gets bored if he hasn’t learnt something new in a while.
Luca has Combined Type ADHD and frequently needs something to do with their hands — they can often be found flipping small items (pens, drum sticks, balisongs, etc, their phone, if they can’t get their hands on anything else)
...His phone screen is always cracked.
TERRIBLE at replying to text messages if they don’t do it then and there. Cannot make a phone call to save their life.
Has no problem biting ice cream, but sometimes sensory things ( unexplained sticky hands, clothes textures that feel suddenly wrong) with make them explode with sudden rage that comes on fast and goes away even faster. (It always alarms Gabriel whenever it happens. He tries to help and inevitably gets in the way and makes it worse. Cas knows to just ignore him when he’s having a moment.)
Loves playfighting with Cas (despite always losing and probably getting thrown somewhere)
Late. For everything. All the time. Zero time management skills.
Luca's first crush was Howl Pendragon of Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle
He takes his tea/coffee without milk bc he’s forever forgetting to drink it — there is always a small army of half-full, forgotten cups and mugs around his room.
Restless sleeper, abhors early mornings, can’t fall asleep unless he feels safe (which leads to a lot of falling asleep on Gabriel and Cas)
He despises math and still counts on his fingers. Numbers make his brain short-circuit.
Will absolutely eat food off the floor if they drop it.
Forests have always made him feel calm and want to dance.
Luca has had a habit since childhood where, any time they are walking alone through a forest, they’ll slow their pace and hum a gentle tune, trying to see if they can catch sight of any fairies or little fae creatures out of the corner of their eye. (Which seemed like a silly superstition until a few months ago, but now that they know vampires are real? Hey, maybe little Luca was on to something.)
Education (Scotland)
Rather than traditional schooling, Luca attended a specialised Arts school from the age of 14, in their hometown of Inverness, Scotland. Avalon Academy of the Arts is an alternative educational institution, covering both secondary- and tertiary-level studies in fields such as traditional arts and media, photography, music, theatre, and dance.
At Avalon, Luca trained primarily in ballet, lyrical jazz, contemporary, jazz funk, street dance, and urban hip-hop. Luca does enjoy ballet, but he found most of the ballet students too pretentious, cut-throat, and close-minded to consider pursuing a career in ballet long-term (especially as a non-binary dancer in an extremely gendered environment).
Luca’s main dance style tends toward a unique blend of lyrical, ballet, and street — though in recent years, there is definitely something of a K-Pop influence present in their choreography. They idolise Lee Taemin of SHINee, in part because of his expression and technical precision, but also because of the androgyny and power of Taemin’s dance style. They enjoy watching dance practice videos on YouTube in order to study other dancer’s body lines, transitions, and use of tension.
Education (USA)
In transferring to Crimson Beech High to round out their formal education, it became clear that Luca was very behind in some areas (math, physics, sciences) and very ahead in others (history, literature, anything pertaining to arts studies).
The semesters at Avalon do not align with traditional US schooling system (beginning in February and wrapping up in December to mirror their sister school in Avalon, Australia), so Luca is actually marginally older than many of his current classmates at Crimson Beech High.
(well. Those that aren’t vampires, anyway).
As at the first chapter of ID/SICSIG, Luca is 18, and will be turning 19 in January.
Hobbies
Luca could have taken music as an elective at Avalon, but he never did. Music is something that is purely for self expression and fun. While he did take drum lessons for about a year as a child, most of Luca’s musical ability comes from the school of fucking around and finding out — he is a kinaesthetic learner, so much of his drumming is self-taught.
Wayne (read: awful person) never really approved of Luca’s dancing and wanted them to quit when they first started taking lessons in primary school, but Terri put her foot down when she saw how happy it made them to have a form of self-expression that really spoke to who they were. As a means of compromise, Wayne suggested Luca take up drumming — something he saw as a suitably “masculine” hobby to “help him man up”.
A lot of the arguments Wayne and Terri had regarding Luca’s hobbies in their formative years were, in truth, veiled conversations about Luca’s sexuality and gender identity. Terri has never been anything but accepting of her child, and Wayne has never been able to get his head out of his own ass around Luca being gay, let alone non-binary. Though Terri tried to shield them from it, Luca often bore the burnt of a tirade of queerphobic verbal abuse, which escalated to physical violence in the years preceding Wayne and Terri’s separation.
There were a whole host of reasons why the O’Rinn household wasn’t the easiest or safest place to be growing up (which I have explored more in Starlight!); understandably, Luca had a lot of energy (and, in the years before Wayne’s arrest, a lot of anger) that he was able to take out on his drum kit.
Drumming on his own has turned into a really therapeutic space for Luca, wherein he can get into a flow state, lose the outside world, and work through a lot of his feelings. As much as Luca despises his father, he loves his drums — and knowing his father was the one to buy him his first ever drum kit is something of a sore spot. To this day, Luca still has mixed feelings about it.
Drumming with Viktor’s band, however, became a space of growth and celebration. Your Bisexual Awakening (as they are currently called — the band's name changes with almost every gig) is made up of other students from Avalon, and is unapologetically queer and in your face about it. They mostly play classic rock, punk, and grunge tracks, but ultimately do not limit themselves by genre.
Viktor, the band’s vocalist and frontman, is an OC (and will probably get his own "Meet My OC" profile!) (eventually); the other band members are Easter Eggs from other Choices books: WtD’s Angel on bass, NB’s Cal on keys, and ILITW’s Ava on lead electric guitar.
You can find out more about Luca via my masterlist, or read about them in my longfic, snow in crimson, starlight in gold on AO3! 🖤(direct link, fic is rated Explicit)
Hair: Long and raven black and usually straightened. Long black hair styled in cornrows shaved on the sides and under or left natural.
Eyes: Dark brown
Family: Terri Rusanen, née Williamson (mother)
Kristian Rusanen (father, deceased)
Nationality: Finnish-African-American
Hometown: Born in Cherryfield, Maine. Moved to Portland, Maine at 8. Moved to Crimson Beech, located in New England, at 18.
Friends: Skylar Barnett-Lyons (childhood best friend) and Katherine (Trina), Jasmine (Mina) || Gabriel Adalhard, Libby, Nicole, Harrison.
Love Interest: Cassius Harlow
Nicknames: New Kid, babe (Cas); honey (Terri); Rosa (Skylar, the rest of the Barnett-Lyons family, Katherine, Jasmine); Flower (Skylar).
Personality traits: witty, compassionate, friendly, independent, stubborn, open-minded, adventurous, playful, resilient, a little rebellious, kind-hearted.
Likes: the book series Vampires' Eden by Amy Stake (so badly-written that it's good); flower-flavoured food; getting flowers; good banter; holding hands; the pink colour (especially old pink, peach pink and tea rose); long walks; summertime; peaches; making mocktails; plain Earl Grey tea; dancing; road trips (before, can't do them anymore); animals, especially lovebirds; logic games; learning Finnish language; self-care; their friends, their mom, Cas and the Barnett-Lyons family.
Dislikes: piercing noise; injustice; bullies; discrimination; that one old red and black dress; country music, neon colours.
Random facts:
Saini is extremely close to Skylar, they both know everything about the other.
They met when they were 8 and they call each other "siblings from other parents".
They used to share a bed as kids when they were having sleepovers.
Saini usually doesn't like troublemakers like Cas. He's the exception.
Saini can also speak French and Spanish. They are learning Finnish in memory of their father who had started to teach them the language, but passed away a year after.
Saini broke their left wrist by falling from a tree when they were 7. Sometimes, it hurts out of the blue.
Vampire Heart series masterlist
Made for the Choices Spread Kindness Celebration by @choicesfandomappreciation : Self-Love Day, for the @choicesficwriterscreations 's MCs/OCs database and for the Transgender Awareness Week by @choicespride .
Perma + ID Tags: @inlocusmads @peonierose @kyra75 @lilyoffandoms 💛
I am playing Immortal Desires for the first time with @choicesbookclub.
Love Interests: M!Gabe and F!Cas.
Tumblr Summary Masterlist: get to know Sammy through her posts about each chapter
Other HCs I come up with as I'm reading/thinking:
Sammy is bisexual
She's 5 ft 5 in (1.65m)
Gabe calls her Sammy or Sam, but Cas calls her Evans
Plays lacrosse, is a midfielder
Was on the debate team at her last school
Her father was a Navy pilot who died in the line of duty. (not sure if there is background for MC's dad in the book, but I'm leaving this here for now)
Avid tumblr user (uses it as a digital journal for herself): I will be sharing some snippets of her blog through out the book club but rather than make edits, I'm just making her a blog and screenshotting it: @betweenpagesandtides
Sammy's growing hat HCs: HC Post (also in comments) || Art
Nicknames: Buffy (by Cas), little wolf (by her mom), Rip, Rippy, Rimby etc. (by friends)
Age: 18 but turns 19 in book 1
Love interests: Cas and Gabriela
Link to her diary fic where you can find out more about her version of ID: Tumblr Ao3
Other fun facts/hc's:
Her mom's a single mother by choice and had Ripley with the help of a donor (one of her best friends, just a human man, even if he looks more like a vampire than even some Venandi's do, to answer the question about mc's dad that so many have, lol)
She has a dog named Bram Stoker (everyone just calls him Bram though), he looks like a Maltese but is prolly some kinda mix.
Her best friend is called Joy, they've been friends since they were kids and very very briefly dated in their early teens. When Ripley was 16 Joy moved to Florida with her mother but they still keep contact.
She already got picked on sometimes while Joy still lived in Chicago, but the bullying got more out of hand after she left now that Ripley was alone more often and obviously feeling a bit down to begin with. She did have other friends but either downplayed or outright hid the bullying from them or they were the type of people that wouldn't stand up for her and were scared they'd just get hit too.
She's experimented with her gender identity and tried out different pronouns in the past before concluding she's a cis woman.
She can be very naive and just in general isn't always exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.
Can go from 0 to 100 when she feels threathened by someone or when someone suddenly touches her when she's already riled up.
Ripley generally does not lie unless she absolutely has to and even then she's more likely to just avoid the subject rather than having to fabricate an actual lie.
She watches Blades of Light and Shadow (is a show in ID universe) and her fave characters are my mc Rex, Imtura and Mal.
Ripley is surprisingly sporty, at her old school she was part of the wrestling team and she does have a bunch of medals and trophies she's won through the years. Due to everything that went down after the move, she never got the chance to look into joining a team again.
Ripley loves reading werewolf novels but werewolf romance has a 85% chance of getting a bad review from her.
She likes doodling sometimes and does have some oc's of her own though she's not super invested or attached to them.
She's like world's least picky eater.
She loves the way she feels with vampire blood in her system, she tbh kinda treats it like a drug.
Despite that, Ripley has no interest in being turned because she still wants to grow up and live a normal life and start a family of her own eventually.
I def do think she can be a bit of an asshole about her situationships with Cas and Gabriela but I also always imagine especially Cas does not tell her how much she actually hurts him because he thinks it makes him look #pathetic. She def kinda jojo's between feeling guilty for being unable to just choose and actually feeling like They are the problem for expecting her to choose because they just don't Understand.
Love Interests: Cassius Harlow and Gabriel Adalhard
Lara is the daughter of Czech immigrants Maxim and Tereza “Terri” Kopic. She grew up in Tampa, Florida. Her grandparents live in Czechia and the family would visit them occasionally. She can speak Czech. Her father was killed in a car accident the year before she and her mother moved to Crimson Beech.
She enjoys dancing and moves very gracefully. She studied ballet and tap dancing as a child. She participated in a gymnastics club when she was in high school, and she was on the swim team. When she lived in Florida, she liked to go to the beach.
Moving to Crimson Beech was an adjustment in terms of climate, but she loves being able to wear her favorite black leather jacket more often.
I thought I knew all there was to know about Callie, but as it turns out, most of what I thought I knew about her background changed. All I kept of her original backstory are her hometown (Chicago) and her relationship with her dad (polite, fun, inconsequential). Looking forward to seeing if this changes anything in this playthrough.
NICKNAMES/ALIAS: Nathan (Preferred); Johnny (used by Terri); "New Guy/New Boy" (used by Cas); "Bottle Blonde"/"Bottle Blondie" (used by Val, Margo, and Scott); Aleksić (used by The Creator); "Busy-body" (Shiloh).
AGE: 17 (Book One); 18 (Book Two)
DATE OF BIRTH: March 14th, 2006
GENDER & PRONOUNS: Cis(?), he/him.
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
ETHNICITY: Slavic
HEIGHT: 188 cm. (6'2 ft.)
HAIR: Black (bleached blonde)
EYES: Blue-Grey
SCARS/MARKINGS: IV track marks on both arms.
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Dull, pallor skin; extremely cold extremities (fingers and feet); patchy/peeling skin on knees and upper biceps, shoulder length bleached hair (limp and definitely fried), minor overbite with slightly elongated canines, two twin moles resting on the left side of his chest.
Though Nathan was originally born in Crimson Beech, he has extremely faint memories of living there. Shortly after he was born, his father walked out on him and his mother. Terri would move them out of Crimson Beech, bouncing from district to district for work, eventually landing back in her home city of Boston. Pouring most of her attention in her job, Nathan grew up as a latchkey kid, balancing his time between school and keeping their apartment afloat while Terri was often working late.
While in the eighth grade, Nathan would suffer a severe concussion during a baseball game. This would cause Terri to begin reducing her hours dramatically until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, where Nathan would start high school in remote learned while Terri, an essential worker, would start working longer shifts again, both isolated and unable to form many close connections outside of one another.
Though his junior year wasn't remote, Nathan still struggled with emotionally connecting to his classmates, especially following his injury. This didn't stop him from being unnerved when Terri informed him about a new job offer in Crimson Beech halfway through the second semester. He's sure that her decision to accept are for reasons related to the recent murders than the actual job itself, but he can't quite figure out why these deaths seem to enthrall her so much.
FUN FACTS:
Nathan is named after Terri's late maternal grandfather, Jonatan. In reality though, the author named him after Jonathan Harker. Because Terri and Aleksa never got married, his surname is Olszewski, which is Polish and means "alder tree." It's also not the original surname I gave him, but don't worry about that. Don't look at my tags.
He's been bleaching his hair since Freshman year of high school, and he's doing it poorly with no remorse. Every blonde strand on his head is completely fucked. This was mostly an act of boredom, but it is worth noting that he has the same black hair as his father and gets extremely defensive if people point out his roots (pun intended).
Nathan has lived in every district in Massachusetts. As a result, his accent is kind of incomprehensible.
He planned on traveling abroad after high school, hoping to go to Eastern Europe in particular.
Originally, Nathan wanted to join his Junior High swim team, but all of the spots on the team were taken. He only tried out for the baseball team to pass time while Terri was not at home.
Nathan got his license at sixteen, coincidentally around the same time Terri's expired. She never got it renewed, so now that they live in Crimson Beech, he mostly drives her around in the car she bought before moving. He copes with it by telling himself it's easier than trying to remind her to go to the DMV.
The family car is pretty much his as a result; a used and crusty Chevy van with an abysmal paint job and a busted AC unit that basically spits out car fumes while the radio only has access to two stations. Her name is Ellie, and he loves her in spite of her many flaws, mostly because she has a functioning CD player and she's great at stashing things, like blankets and lukewarm beer cans and maybe even a few bodies one day. Who knows?
Nathan had his first girlfriend during his Junior year of high school. They broke up shortly before the move, and he was admittedly kind of grateful for the excuse to do so.
That was also the year Nathan got into his first fight. In his defense, the altercation began because he was sticking up for another kid in his class, and he didn't even throw the first punch until the other guy called him a "stupid motherfucker." He got suspended for a week, and Terri took him out for ice cream after they got out of the meeting.
He has remarkably bad taste in movies. It's difficult to tell if his ardent defense of Michael Bay's Transformers is genuine or the most elaborate ploy to make Cas lose his mind.
For his tenth birthday, Terri gifted him her old walkman. That was the summer he learned how to record cassette tapes.
As a kid, he constantly chewed on things, mainly his shirts. He used to always come home with his collar soaked with spit. He's since graduated to ice, 50 cent packs of mint gum, and his fingernails.
Nathan suffers from iron deficiency anemia, which he takes both oral iron tablets for as well as iron infusions once a month. He also has persistent post-concussion syndrome, which has contributed to a medley of migraines, vertigo, and instances of suicidal ideation, particularly during his freshman year. He always keeps a spare bag of Alieve in his pocket alongside his iron tablets.
He can hold his breath underwater for over a minute. He learned it by messing around in the bath when he was a kid; one of Terri's roommates found him underwater once and freaked out. He still does it sometimes because he thinks people panicking is funny (it's also nice to know they care).
He prefers baths to showers. Because he's crazy, he likes his baths cold or lukewarm at best, so that he doesn't fall asleep while in the tub. His freezing hands aren't only because of his illness.
Nathan's blood tastes pretty bad to vampires for some weird reason. Cas compares it to drinking Everclear, and Gabe likens it to a mouthful of raw cinnamon. He is deeply offended by both of these descriptions.
He was born during a Lunar Eclipse.
Hobbies: While Nathan never learned how to surf like he wanted to when he was younger, he is a big fan of swimming. He also enjoys going out on long drives, preferably at night where there's less people on the road, collecting music CDs and vinyls, and photography (though that was mostly a COVID hobby and he's sort of abandoned it since).
Not sure. I'm a little preoccupied with another show going on at the moment, which is why I haven't been active on this blog (among other reasons related to silly personal stuff). If I do, I'll might have to join in kind of late (hope you guys all have fun though).
Hello everyone! For people just discovering us, or for those of you who do know about us and would like a better summary of what’s to come, this is the right place! We are the It Lives Project, a fan team working in our free time to make the visual novel It Lives Within, the third and final book in the It Lives series.
You’re finally ready to leave your past behind and move on. But apparently, moving on means enrolling at a community college in a supernatural town overflowing with monsters and dark magic…
IT LIVES WITHIN fully released 🖤
Our ask box is always open, but make sure you read our FAQ first. To prevent our blog from being too cluttered and chaotic, we will delete any asks that are answered in our FAQ.
You know, it's funny that while the entire run.tv debacle has been going on thanks to what happened with the Its Lives series, I was actually pondering another event that's recently passed by that I'm not too sure most people in the fandom might know about. For those who still play with the original Choices app, about a few days ago, Choices put out a system update that, consequentially, managed to break every single Choices APK mod that was available online.
If you, for whatever reason, don't know what I'm talking about, back in 2016, there was practically no way of acquiring diamonds in the Choices app outside of paying for them. If I remember correctly, the three diamonds a day ad watches weren't part of the original debut, so many fans took it upon themselves to dive into the game's code where they discovered that even though the keys are directly connected to a specific server that made it impossible to edit, the diamonds weren't. So, these tech savvy individuals did what they do best and modded their games to give them infinite amounts of diamonds or just make it so that the diamond counter didn't go down when you chose a premium option. They would then upload these modded apps to pirating sites or other APK sites for other fans to download.
This basically made Choices a real free to play app, unless you lacked the patience to wait four hours a day to play two chapter of a visual novel until the ads for keys basically rendered that wait hollow as well. To the many people who did not have 100 dollars to blow on numerous books, these apps were a godsend. The reason this sparked my interest (aside from my own personal experience) is because I've never seen this happen before.
I've had the Choices app since at least 2017, and I've never seen any update that the people who maintain these mods couldn't crack. More curious is that Pixelberry's official blog just so happened to put out a post talking about how their code was out of date. They, of course, frame it as an issue where the "current architecture significantly limits what's possible" in their goals, and maybe that's true. I just think it's extremely interesting that after ten years, there's a sudden concern for the game's code that coincides with a complete breakdown of these apps that literally removed the primary way in which the Choices makes money.
To tie this into an even longer rant, I genuinely don't believe that Choices' use of generative AI is what most people's problem is. I'm not saying it's not a factor; I just don't think it's the main core. Spellfyre, a game that I've been nursing for about a week and change, outsources it's art to studios that have used generative AI, likely because these companies either don't charge as much or they have only recently introduced generative AI into their process. Yet, the very same people I see getting angry at Choices' use of GenAI in their projects have no problem playing and posting about Spellfyre.
Now, this is not a place of shaming; hypocrisy doesn't necessarily make you wrong. Instead, I think it shows that whatever is going on between the fanbase and Pixelberry Studios is much deeper than the generative AI debates. Frankly, I think the actual issue here is that the Choices app has been growing a lot more hostile to its players, and it's been doing so in a very short amount of time.
When Pixelberry made a post on their blog calling their business model "unsustainable," I think they're being a little gracious with themselves. I would not be surprised if Choices never made a profit ever. I remember the day where Choices decided to change the diamond output for ads from 3 to 100, and I thought to myself "Oh, they're planning on discarding this thing soon." This is why when Choices made the decision to roll back those 100 gems, I wasn't surprised. What I was surprised by was them cutting it down to ten and expecting nobody to say anything.
An average chapter of Choices typically contains a special dress option (25), a special hangout event that's either to give the player an advantage in a later scene or just to pad the time (15-20), and a love interest oriented hangout scene (20). There are exceptions to this rule like a smut-oriented diamond choice costing 30 diamonds (and maybe 20 in books that are more erotica oriented) or the dreaded wedding books that are notoriously expensive. That said, on average, a player can look to spend about 60-80 diamonds a chapter.
Choices did not need to cut the diamonds that low, and it's a really bad look that they did. I truly believe that if they just halved the 100 diamonds a day to about 50, players probably wouldn't have felt so disoriented, even though Choices would still be making a profit. To cut it down to ten was a deliberate choice not just to make diamond farming a little less unfair to the corporation, but to actively frustrate the more stubborn players into just giving up on their hoarding.
The fact that Choices also stopped doing diamond rush events based on playing books or spending on premium choices didn't help either. Neither did getting rid of book passes or the ability to farm diamonds through replaying old books. These were avenues for players to not only regularly engage with the app, but also feel rewarded for doing so. The decision to remove all of these options at once was deeply jarring and cruel. At least those who follow Pixelberry's official accounts got some form of a head-ups about the diamonds; they just removed the other stuff and fucked off.
Prior to that, the shift in book genres had also been creating a lot of tension in the fanbase. Regardless of your opinions on Choices' long standing history of prioritizing romance and then eventually erotica thanks in part to the success of The Nanny Affair (though I would argue that Bloodbound walked so that series could take off sprinting), the reality is that there were a lot of complaints from fans about this that persist to this day, and those complaint largely fell on deaf ears.
The biggest nail in the coffin, to me at least, was the creation of the VIP service. While this was an additional way of making money for the app that went beyond single purchases of keys or diamonds, the decision to include VIP books in the line up for special content increased production pressure on an already swamped work environment as well likely created complaints within fan spaces, which why I think they stopped making VIP exclusive books and shifted to early access books. This has had a tremendous effect on the fandom because now the communal aspect of playing these serialized chapters as they were released have been broken, killing fan discussions due to the fear of spoilers. This whole thing has been amusing to me because the unlimited keys and extra diamond rewards from the package are pretty good on their own; they didn't need to add that extra pressure.
Ever since this acquisition (and honestly even before), Pixelberry has been quietly rolling back a lot of their goodwill gestures to the fandom, likely under the impression that these gestures haven't given enough back for them to continue. The fact that Choices is still, without a doubt, one of the most professional iterations of these types of game has also granted it a monopoly that only Romance Club has seemingly made in a crack in, though we'll see where Spellfyre goes in the future.
What Pixelberry, or rather this new company head, needs to understand is that Choices is a live service game. These types of games are built on a deeply tenuous relationship between fan and developer entirely based on a give and take dynamic. Perhaps Choices felt like the fans were doing much taking, so instead of incentivizing them to do so through small, incremental changes, they just gave up.
When fans feel as if they are simply bags of disposable income in the eyes of the developers, it actually turns them more stubborn and spiteful. I've never bought a pack of diamonds in my life. The two times I did, it was my sister footing a birthday bill. Trying to squeeze money out of those who are determined not to spend any never results in those groups actually forking over cash. They just leave or turn to alternative ways to cheat you. It is what it is. You just have to get over it as a business rather than trying to irritate them into submission and turning away audiences that were actually giving you money.
The whole GenAI thing is just an extension of this need to actually make money on an app that, again, I don't think has ever made money nor really could never make money running the same way that it did in 2016, which was an absurdly different time and economy. And it's also serves as an extension with fan frustration that Choices really just views them as faceless wallets. That fact that there are obvious obfuscation going on here in what is being told to us and what is happening only makes things worse.
If the cost of making books was so high, why are you remaking older books where all you do is slap on a new visual art change that forces you to spend time replacing all of the visual code on a game that nobody was complaining about, unless it was to use these books as testing dummies for a new art style shift?
If the the cost of making these books was so high, why are there just as many if not even more books released in 2025 than there were in 2019? Clearly, they can't cost that much otherwise there would've been some form of a production slowdown, whether that would be putting books on hiatus, making books with a short chapter span like the Haunting of Briar Manor, or simply reducing the amount of projects the studio is taking on at a given time?
If the the cost of making these books was so high, why are you spending extra time and money on side projects in tandem with release books, especially knowing that these shows will never be popular among fans because the entire selling point of your app has always been interactive visual novels?
Again, I believe Choices when they say their former way of life is unsustainable these days. What I don't believe is that they actually care about fixing that; in fact, I believe they're more interested in short-term cheap solutions that basically amount to the "special magic bandage" my Kindergarten teacher gave me when I trip on a sidewalk during recess and left 3/4 of my skin on the hot pavement of a basketball court. How am I supposed to engage with you as a consumer when you have shown an active disdain/or distrust in me and frankly your own business model?
I forgot what the conclusion of this post was supposed to be, so I guess it's just a lengthy prose with an unsatisfying ending that really amounts to nothing. Sort of like a Choices book. The only difference is that I can say I wrote this myself, and people would actually believe me.
Like many of you, I woke up to the AI slop It Lives Within "TV show" on the Choices app. Having spent thousands (no joke) of loving hours on the fan-made It Lives Within, I admit it felt like a bit of a kick to the gut, especially since I'd stayed up until 2 AM the night before, meticulously working on improving the programming of textbox animations for the updated version of the game.
But at the end of the day, the people are what own stories. It doesn't matter what PB puts out, especially when it so blatantly disrespects a series we all hold close to our hearts. We can choose what to support, what to value, and what to be our true version of these stories.
As such, I wanted to provide an update for "It Lives Within: The Obsidian Cut." We are working extremely hard to finish rewrites, and I apologize it's taking so long - but real work takes time. We take so long because we don't use AI to do our work for us. Our testers have found hundreds of bugs, which have been corrected. I'm currently working on some rewrites for chapters 21-22, and once that's finished, I'm going to play from start to finish with different MCs to include more complete personality variants for your MC.
While our game was highly beloved (which I am still so wholly grateful for three years after the final episode aired), I know some of you tried the original version and decided it wasn't for you. Others maybe never heard of it. But, with the news of AI It Lives Within dropping today, I just wanted to invite everyone to give our fan version a chance. If you tried it before and gave up, or haven't played it yet, I recommend waiting until Obsidian airs to experience that version for the first time. And if you did play the original, stick around! You'll love Obsidian when it airs. All of our testers are highly enjoying it and say that it improves on the story with every change, while still be the story they knew and love.
AI It Lives Within is frustrating and offensive, but ultimately, we never needed their blessing, and neither do you. Our story started small, with a team that never made any money. Everything was done out of passion and love for this series and these characters, and we were and still are, devoted to creating truly player-drive stories where your choices matter. A LOT. That passion is something that can never be generated in any machine. Stories from the heart speak to the heart, "canon" or not, and what really matters is how theses stories impact and inspire us.
