Ephemorial

[babykatafan]

[ephemorial]

They're my favorite ❤️ Absolutely amazing art

[proton41]

OLBA Boys as Past, Present & Future

Derek - Past || Cove - Present || Baxter - Future

I’m a massive sucker for the moral messages (or themes, if you will) that can be gained from each of the lead’s different routes. Recently, I realized each of their main struggles revolves around either past, present, or future. I WILL EXPLAIN!!

These mainly come out in their Step 4 epilogues.

Derek - He beats himself up over the decisions he made in the past. He wishes he could go back and change the way things were. He wishes he acted sooner, reached out to MC, had been more proactive instead of passive. Together, MC and Derek connect in the present, learning to let go of what could have been.

Cove - Again and again, Cove’s route emphasizes being in the present moment. This is in many of the things he tells MC, such as “I can’t see what the future is gonna look like again, but… I think that’s alright”, and “You choose who you are today.” Slowly, MC and Cove use self-autonomy to create a present together that is just as good as their shared past, and accept that worrying about the future holds no value in their present moment.

Baxter - At face value, it may seem like Baxter is also concerned with the past, what with how he must reconcile his past actions and thought processes. However, Baxter’s ultimate issue has always been about the future. He worries about the long-term stability of relationships, and sees no future with himself and the people he cares about. MC ultimately helps Baxter to realize a future for himself he never could have imagined; one in which he is loved and cherished just for being himself.

It’s been a while since I’ve played their respective epilogues, so I could probably come up with more to say if I replayed them with these things in mind.

Bonus: Derek/Cove/Baxter are even aligned in this linear order at the screen where you choose whose epilogue to play. I doubt this was intentional, but it makes my realizations feel more concrete :P

[ephemorial]

I really like this interpretation, especially because it puts words to how I was actually feeling about all of the characters.

Derek felt especially fleeting to me, due to his moments taking place in Step 2 but not really making an appearance in Step 3 at all. Even while playing, I felt the loss of that. Derek and MC had all these moments together, but those moments don't exist in the present anymore; they're a thing of the past.

Cove, however, is the one constant in everything; he's there from beginning to end. Perhaps Cove is really the one that embodies the aspect of "Beginnings and Always".

Baxter, in every way, is focused on the future. You meet Baxter during a transitional period in your life, when you're figuring out where you want the future to take you. But Baxter, himself, is constantly geared towards the future. As the original post says, Baxter sees no future with himself and the people he cares about. At the same time, he's making his own future, away from everything he's known. He left Golden Grove, went to college across the country, and hardly, if even, keeps contact with his parents. Even when you choose to marry Cove, Baxter is there during that transitional period.

Anyways, those were just my thoughts. I'm also not sure if it was intentional, but I wouldn't be surprised, especially as the game focuses on stages of life.

[ephemorial]

Since a lot of my focus lately has been completely rehauling the fic (that's what I had the motivation to do), there's been a lot of work involving the text messages, which I really wanted to make look nice.

Here is what every step of the process looks like:

Word: How the text messages look as I write the story.

VS Code: How the text messages look as I code them into the official copy-paste.

AO3: How the text messages look in AO3 with the workskin enabled.

And the fourth picture is just an unfortunate side-effect of my not knowing how to format the text in case users hide the creator's style. While I hope to fix this in the future in order to make sure everyone can read it, regardless of settings, it's not something I can do without completely rehauling the code to the workskin, which I'm just barely beginning to feel confident in. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

[ephemorial]

And I introduce to you: Rei Last from my fanfic titled Black and White with a Shade of Red (BWSR). My vision for him has changed over the course of his creation, and will probably continue to change, but I hope to flesh him out more in the future.

Credits to gb-patch for the original story, characters, and assets.