LiS: All Wounds

Life is Strange: All Wounds is a fandom story project managed by @Destiny-Smasher, a personal and exploratory PriceField story told as a fic and as a visual novel. Fic is FINISHED! Visual Novel was produced through Chapter 4 and has been laid to rest but is playable.

[lis-allwounds]

So I don’t think I posted about it here, but I did update the AO3 version of All Wounds to have a 10k epilogue last autumn to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the ending of LiS1.

So yeah, check that out if you haven’t.

[destiny-smasher]

So, about that new Life is Strange game announcement….

(Gonna copypaste stuff I’ve said in the Pricefield subreddit)

My wife (@mollifiable) and I wanted this whole thing to be over with Before the Storm even ahead of when that game released lol Companies just can’t leave well enough alone. We skipped Double Exposure and it sounds like we made the right call. Even IF this game somehow manages to make a lot of ‘right’ decisions in our eyes, (and that’s a big ‘if’) how can we justify all of the nonsense it will have taken to get to that point? Especially when it would’ve just been better to leave the original story alone, as the creators intended.

I think even Before the Storm ultimately wasn’t quite worth it in the end. D9 DID do their own game with their original, separate story and protagonist - with True Colors. And it was great! In some ways, I think it’s the best LiS game. It even has my singular favorite character in Alex Chen (because to, Max and Chloe are a DUO innerently) But TC was overpriced, more subtle, and I suspect it did not sell as well. (Even though I think more grounded and subtle stories are what we NEED in the genre lately).

So they pivoted hard in desperation, it seems. And I think a lot of fans could smell that desperation. Quality stories with thoughtful decisions don’t really get told when the storyteller is desperate for your attention. It’s the equivalent of shit on YouTube like Mr. Beast or something - adults can TELL what it is, the ways it’s patently trying to cheaply grab your attention. They could’ve tried pivoting to targeting a younger audience I GUESS? But they didn’t. They could’ve even just done a total AU with the original cast - which I still think could’ve been a clever and creative middle ground in a world where AU’s are canonical.

They could’ve done so many different kinds of things. But whoever is making these calls seems to lack imagination or creativity. They’ve only got eyes for dollar signs, not genuine storytelling. That’s how it all feels to me.

And at this point, they’ve burned through any good will they may have still had for many fans. The ‘slop consumers’ who don’t put much thought into the media they consume may still eat this up no matter what it’s like. But I dunno how many folks like that still care about Max and Chloe. Enough for this to be a success where DE was a flop? We shall see.

Regardless, word is that Deck Nine is finished, they’ve been bleeding employees in recent times. I feel bad for the good folks whose careers have been upended by dumb decisions. Even if the game is miraculously good, the people who WORKED on it won’t seem to benefit from that.

But the evidence suggests it’s not going to be good - not in ways that a PriceField fan like me takes interest in. Which, at that point, ambivalence is like emotional self-defense lol

I am damaging my emotional well being just checking into ‘discourse’ spaces like this. That’s how bad a job they’ve done.

Let the decline of Life is Strange be a reminder that not every property needs or can even support invite expansion. That some stories are better left alone canonically. That some stories can only truly be told by their original storytellers, and sometimes the best thing is to leave well enough alone.

And sometimes, like the entire POINT OF LIFE IS STRANGE 1 REMINDS US,

we will serve ourselves and others better by moving FORWARD with life, accepting our choices and what has happened,

rather than childishly clinging to the past in a desperate bid to infinitely relive it.

[destiny-smasher]

So Eurogamer recently asked Ashly Burch about this, and FUCKIN’ SURPRISE SURPRISE

they didn’t even ASK HER

to play Chloe this time.

She didn’t even know the game was being made.

Talk about fucking inconsiderate. So there’s another log to add to the fire that is the disingenuous mess this series has become.

[destiny-smasher]

Nishiko, Marisol, Kayla, and Seiko.

Sample sprites of the four main characters from my work-in-progress visual novel, DownRight Fierce. Also a couple of screenshots showing different kinds of vibes it may skew toward (placeholder backgrounds, still feeling that stuff out).

This game is maybe what would happen if Street FIghter met Butterfly Soup. And had a gay fighting child together. (the main character, Nishiko, will come out as enby partway into the narrative, too)

Artwork is by @sakura-rose12 who always does reliable, solid commission work.

I'm hoping to have a new private build of the first three chapters ready sometime at the end of the year or start of next.

If you're interested in supporting the project and getting a monthly update, you can do that on Patreon, but you can also DM me to let me know you're interested in trying it out and providing feedback.

[lis-allwounds]

I doubt anyone follows this blog anymore but if you do, this is what I've been working on lately.

[brakken]

Strange Days

[brakken]

Glad y’all liked this series - had been missing Max & Chloe a lot lately and wanted to do something for Storm Week.

The way I designed these was, with each day she’s getting closer to water, until finally she’s in the storm. And at the same time, she’s getting closer to Chloe, until she’s standing with her. The lyrics for the individual posts (1|2|3|4|5) are from a song from their respective episodes, and meant to represent togetherness or apartness. 

Thanks, everyone <3

[lis-allwounds]

”If I fell through a crack in time would you remember these eyes of mine If the waves fail to reach this shore evermore my soul will find yours”

This time of year always gets me reflecting on things like this - the passage of time and all that.

This year, after what a rough 2020 it has been, but still being the first entire calendar year I have been able to live, married happily (despite 2020) with the Max to my Chloe.

Reflecting back on All Wounds, in a strange way, this song is maybe the one I’m most nostalgic for regarding the story. From early on in the project’s development, one of the core plot ideas I had was that Max’s consciousness would become ‘lost in time’ and she’d find her way back to her present by visiting the moment she and Chloe first met. This would cement their relationship as one apart from the normal rules of time - the literal consciousness Chloe meets is a version of Max from the future, in love with and getting ready to marry her. It was an idea inspired by that famous Dr. Manhattan quote I referenced:

“Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future.”

I wanted to capture that idea through Max’s character. This wonderful fanmade song was arranged from a track from Chrono Cross, the strange but wonderful sequel to Chrono Trigger. Between that source of it, the lyrics themselves, the nostalgia I have for the original track, I dunno, it all gels together. It’s ironic because this exact same artist has also written a lovely vocal arrangement to Max and Chloe’s theme, and I guess that only further cements how much I love their music.

[lis-allwounds]

Hey uh.. Why can't I download it? It says the URL can't be found.

Ah, sorry - it’s been so long since I’ve posted links like that, it’s likely an old broken one.

You can find the last version I created here.

https://destiny-smasher.itch.io/life-is-strange-all-wounds

[destiny-smasher]

Visit Original Link

(Music by Samantha Pena, soudncloud user spena1989) Not gonna lie, I’m at a point with All Wounds where I’m like…oof, I wasn’t able to envision everything I wanted to a few years back (by a long shot) but I’m kinda…wanting to be done with it. Even though I don’t want to be done with it. 😅All Wounds was created from the get-go to be a visual novel - that’s why the initial demo released so early into the project’s life. My original intent was to go back and forth between fic and VN. But my original intent was also to end the story during the Portland road trip (Chapter 7). And while you could certainly make a case that the story is technically stronger up until that point, and becomes less potent and more dragged out for it’s post-time-skip stuff, the latter stuff was also just…a lot more fun to write. And when I look back, if I had committed to the visual novel as intended, we’d not have gotten, like, ANY of that post-time-skip stuff, which includes Other Max being as fully fleshed out as she became. She’d have been stuck being a ghost in Max’s head, pretty much. At this point, though, it’s been so long, the fic I made INSTEAD of working on the visual novel is SO long, interest in the project peaked back while it was being written, working on this by myself is DAMN exhausting in terms of time spent, emotion and mentality drained, etc. Whenever I go back and listen to all of the amazing music made by people in the LiS it reinspires me to keep working on All Wounds but that’s had diminishing returns as my life has changed drastically this past year. I love Max and Chloe. But, tbh, I just moved to a new country and got married, and I love my wife more than Max and Chloe? ^_^;; I’m not depressed and stuck in retail hell anymore, relying on staying up late working on a LiS fan project to channel that depression. I don’t wanna completely shut the door on the visual novel and there’s a chance I may still try to keep pushing to at least get to that road trip and maybe fudge it a bit. After all, a LOT of work has been done to the project that isn’t apparently or accessible in the public version; and I was able to add pretty well presented versions of Chapters 3 and 4 recently. So it’s entirely possible I could at least push it a little bit further if I end up inspired to do so. Either way, regardless, I still want to try some kind of epilogue, end-cap, etc, maybe even in VN form (Jenny and I had envisioned an epilogue where the characters play DnD). Max and Chloe mean the world to me, and exploring a version of events where both endings of the original game are expanded and tied together felt very cathartic. I’d rather that exist in SOME form (fic) than none at all; I think I’d still have done things this way a second time. But All Wounds inherently was a story about processing pain and grief and trauma and figuring out how to cope with it and heal and move on. And when I was at such low points, that made sense to write and steep myself in. But now? It just kinda doesn’t. More than anything, though, is the fact that it’s still a fan project - one that has had a lot of its interest evaporated for multiple reasons. The game’s ending is over four years old now; a prequel AND a sequel have both come out, further fragmenting the fandom; people have moved on. And it’s easy for outsiders to not realize how emotionally exhausting and sometimes painful All Wounds was, has been, and can still be for me to work on. Even things like pieces of music or art made by people who hurt me, who I hurt, that shit isn’t easy to work with. I could be spending all of this effort and energy on something less emotionally painful that isn’t complete in ANY form AND is original. It feels bad to seriously consider dropping it when I’m sure there are still SOME people out there waiting for it, but I have other stories that I really need to work on. I can’t keep myself locked in this cage forever when the work is such an unreasonable mountain to surpass. What I HAVE created is a fleshed out and substantial story and a chunk of it imagined in VN format which all kind of acts as a love letter to PriceField as well as an ultimately cathartic way to leave that original game to rest, I hope. Going forward I really think I’d like for Arcadian Rhythms to function as my one sole fanfic project I do inbetween original works, with one-shots or other bits (like the Butterfly Soup fic) just being other, far less intensive ways of working out those kinds of inspiration. It would probably do me better to also not talk about what I’m working on (aside from AR I suppose) in much depth or detail until I have something finished to really show for it. 😓 So if you want to see what I’ve been able to make of the visual novel so far, you can find that here.If you want to read the prose fic version of the story, which was finished quite some time ago (and which is where I want to update with an epilogue eventually), you can find that here. My newer fandom project, Arcadian Rhythms, which actually does feature Life is Strange characters, can be checked out here. You can follow our Patreon over here - we’ve been on hiatus as we deal with immigration but that should be all sorted soon. Regardless, any major updates to projects will be getting posted there once we’re back up and running. And you can follow me on Twitter over here; or just check back on my personal Tumblr here as I’m sure any meaningful thing I complete, fanfic or otherwise, will get posted here. So to clarify, current creative plans for the future on my own time: - original fiction projects (I’ve actually started work on an original VN for ex.) - Arcadian Rhythms for fun - some kind of epilogue for All Wounds - some kind of conclusion to Runners at the Corners (Butterfly Soup)

Interest in AW severely declined after the fic was done, no one else seems interested in working on it, either, it’d be SO MUCH work still. Sunken cost fallacy is a thing and tbh that’s part of why I even pushed myself to finish the update I did a few weeks ago. I am sorry to anyone who’s been waiting all this time for it - what I managed to produce is still a multi-hour visual novel, and I am still contemplating trying to at least get it to the end of the pre-time-skip. At the very least, there is still a complete story that can be read in fic form, the project just floated up and away from a reasonable grasp for one person, mainly because I just…wrote way more than I originally intended to. When I started work on this prokect, I also didn’t expect to fall in love, struggle to make ends meet, move across an ocean, and get married. And as important as All Wounds has been to me, I did at least finish telling the story I started, and the story it became, but I’ve learned all I can from it at this point and am so tired of trying to drag it out on my own. In the same way All Wounds sees Max and Chloe needing to accept their losses and let themselves move forward despite not everything going how they wanted, I guess I have to do the same with this project. Max and Chloe start a new future together, and it’s that time in my life where I probably should start doing the same. I need to start focusing on telling my own stories with my own characters more than I have been, as well as making more space for this new future with my new wife. And to All Wounds, the most difficult project I’ve worked on to date, as someone I once knew once sang, “I know, I know I made so many promises I know I left you such a mess; Gotta let go, gotta let go, and move on Been walking in a circle for too long”

And as another musician put it,

“Come and see the light of day out in the open It’s like I’m waking from a dream, oh Many days since I have seen the end unfolded Many times that I’ve looked back on all the times that we have had”

[lis-allwounds]

Starting a new future with the love of my life, finally putting the past that has haunted me to rest, “This is the place to be”

I’ll make sure to write some kind of epilogue or end-cap for this story (maybe a mini visual novel, even) and say all of my thank you’s to people then, but yea, thanks for the journey this has been.

I’m excited to take all I’ve learned and apply it to new stories.

[destiny-smasher]

Jenny bought this for us as a lunch snack and was like ‘it’s All Wounds’

FFFFF <3

[lis-allwounds]

LiS: All Wounds (Chapters 3 + 4)

Ya'll thought it would never happen but I finally finished a major update to Life is Strange: All Wounds. Special thanks to my wife @mollifiable whose encouragement and support have made working on this possible.

https://destiny-smasher.itch.io/life-is-strange-all-wounds/devlog/122160/chapter-34-update

https://pic.twitter.com/HnybcB3N9X

I've made a few tweaks to what was already there, as well as essentially doubling the amount of content by adding in Chapters 3 + 4. After all of this time, it was an uphill battle getting the momentum back but I want to keep going.

[lis-allwounds]

So you’ve maybe been wondering what the deal has been with All Wounds as a visual novel. Truth be told, I needed a break from it. I wanted to work on other things (mainly Arcadian Rhythms while I was waiting and working to move in with Jenny), and I was honestly burned out from Life is Strange after the disappointing and salt-inducing Before the Storm. And then Life is Strange 2, while being good in its own right, and certainly a more ambitious game than the original, ultimately just didn’t grab me emotionally the way I had expected it to going into it. With LiS2 officially over, and 2019 on the way out, I thought now might be a good time to finally try to pick back up the mantle of the visual novel -- because despite my aversion and my muddled feelings about the LiS brand, I am still passionate about my original vision of the VN, it’s just way more time consuming to work on than it initially seemed. In the summer of 2018 I put in a lot of time adapting the written prose of All Wounds into code format for the visual novel. Hours and hours were spent converting the text to code, and I’m sure just me working on it leaves some bugs. I’ve gone back this autumn and tried to continue work on Chapter 3, but it’s been rough, especially when I’m trying to incorporate new daily habits in -- writing has been basically non existent for months, sadly, despite things I want to catch up on. The fact of the matter is that All Wounds is such a big story that adapting the whole thing to visual novel format while still working in my original vision of alternate dialogue, scenes, etc. is just very tricky, and I don’t even have assets to work with for a lot of it. I figured it’d be worth asking, then: Does anyone want to help make it? Mainly I could use bug-testers, people who can help me sort out where the VN breaks and provide feedback on the choice-based stuff. But someone who actually knows how to work with python/Renpy and could help with coding would be a great help. I could also use someone who is interested in scoping out royalty free sound effects and the like to add more ambience to various scenes/moments, someone who can help look up creative commons photos that can be modified to work as backgrounds, etc. I haven’t put out a new release of the VN in a very long time because despite how much more code has been added to it, nothing past Chapter 2 is presentable, it’s pretty much all just text past that atm. Anyway, I’m not expecting much from this, and for all I know, the desire and interest on this project as waned by now -- but part of me just can’t let it go, I just need to swing back into momentum on it, I suppose, which I am hoping to do going into next year. Regardless of what the future may hold, I’m still pretty satisfied overall with the story I was able to tell in prose, what I was able to make in visual novel format at all in the first place, the people I’ve connected with because of this project.

[destiny-smasher]

“Why not both?”

“Will you share a future with me?” 

[destiny-smasher]

BTW update:

I moved to England to live with her and we are now legally married!!

[lis-allwounds]

So, yea, it’s been a while since you’ve last heard from me. A lot has changed over the past year. A good chunk of my spare time over the past year has been put into getting Season of Arcadian Rhythms finished. @arcadian-rhythms The story is the most ambitious and complex project I’ve ever worked on, and you could even read it like an original fic if you wanted -- it’s kind of like modern TV/film adaptations of comics where newcomers can read it fine but those familiar with certain references or nods get a little extra out of it. You can read it in PDF form here with proper formatting/fonts or just read it on AO3 here. Season 1 is about as long as the entirety of All Wounds but was written in about half the time. I also spent some time last autumn/winter working on motion graphics samples, which I kind of topped off with by doing a tribute to Smash Ultimate leading to its release as well as a Pearl x Marina themed AMV. We don’t have proper access to AfterEffects at the moment but when we do I’d like to pick that stuff up again. Going into 2019, I was desperate for a job and ended up stuck in the same song and dance only worse than ever in many respects as I was stuck in retail again for the spring and summer. Finally, at long last, we had everything we needed at the start of August I left America to move to England to live with @mollifiable, and we’ve been starting to build a life together under one roof after years of long distance. Since moving, I’ve been working on improving at Smash Bros. Ultimate, getting in daily exercise and changing my diet, and trying to stay caught up on various things. I’ll make a separate post about the current state of the VN but just wanted to update on personal stuff here. Thanks again for everyone who has helped support us and get us here.

[lis-allwounds]

Are you even alive? Any updates? We haven't heard from you in awhile.

You haven’t heard from me here in a while.

I’ve been very busy with @arcadian-rhythms​, which is about to finish its first ‘Season’ soon. You can read that in PDF here or on AO3 here. I’ve also been working on occasional writing commissions here and there.

The visual novel got a lot of groundwork coding done last year, but I’ve been at a bit of an impasse -- with no art assets to complete things (and a lot of art assets would need to be made still), I can’t really update things in any kind of presentable fashion, so I’ve been taking a break from the project to work on other things, as well as try to get my life in order and actually live with Jenny. We are CLOSE to finally getting to live together, as long as the immigration process goes smoothly, and even THEN we’ll still have financial hurdles to deal with. Having that said, I am hoping to finally get back to coding the visual novel for All Wounds after I’ve moved -- though, again, without any art assets I won’t really have anything presentable for a while yet. I’ve put too much work into the visual novel to give up on it, and there’s still things I really want to do with the story that just wouldn’t work in prose form, so even though it’s been quite some time, I haven’t given up on it -- I’ve just prioritized things like commissions, another shitty retail job to get me by, immigrating to finally get married, and Arcadian Rhythms, which has proven to be a motivating and energizing passion project (which does include Life is Strange characters in its cast).

My plan for the autumn is to try and finally finish an original novel as well as put more time into coding choices/alternate dialogue/etc. into the visual novel for All Wounds. Rest assured that when I actually have something worth sharing, it will be posted here, but you can also follow monthly updates on our Team Turtleducks page, or follow my private Tumblr or Twitter, as I always share story content I create. The two chapter demo and the prose version of All Wounds took me, like, three years to make, and adapting the whole thing to the same level as the demo is quite an undertaking for a single person, so I’ve just had to prioritize other things for right now. Much like the original novels I’ve started, I just haven’t had the time/resources to finish the project, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on it. In fact, some time away from All Wounds and Life is Strange’s original/prequel narrative has probably been good for me, to be honest. When I have something meaningful to share (probably an updated version of the VN with Chapters 3 and 4?), I will share it here.

[lis-allwounds]

Are you planning on making the artwork more consistent as you get done with All Wounds?

You might need to clarify what you mean. The sprites in the demo are very consistent with each other, for example. But I also probably can’t use that same art style for all of the sprites in the whole story if I want to explore the post time-skip stuff (which imo is kind of a whole big thing of DOING the visual novel).In a way, I don’t have much control over this, because it comes down to who ends up making the art for it. Since I’m broke currently, I can’t afford to pay anyone for more new assets. Meaning either someone will have to volunteer (my fiancee has expressed interest but it would be some time before she had the means to work on something like this), or I will have to earn the money to commission more.As of right NOW, the current thinking is that the pre and post time skip parts of the narrative would have different art styles, and IDEALLY the different/alt timelines would also have their own art styles. But practically speaking, I couldn’t say. For as much time as I’ve spent adapting the fic into code, I still only really have assets through to chapter ¾, I think (and even then, that’s not accounting for Max’s parents).In a way, the problem is a symptom of designing a story for prose instead of visual novel format. I’d have to completely reformat the entire plot and presentation if I wanted a less resource-heavy project, and I’m not sure the story could still do what it needs to in that case.tl;drI dunno, depends on where my resources are at when I’m able to dig back into this.

[lis-allwounds]

New Year 2019 updates

Quick reminder that while All Wounds is on hiatus, it’s not dead! I put a lot of work into re-tooling the initial demo last spring because I knew the final product was going to be a WAYS off. I ended up feeling so emotionally exhausted from the story and so inspired by my new project, @arcadian-rhythms​ (which also does feature LiS characters, specifically Max, Chloe, and Rachel) that after months and hours and hours of coding/formatting the visual novel this spring/summer, I decided to take a break from All Wounds. My new goal is to have it done by the time Life is Strange 2 is complete. The base coding is actually finished -- you could theoretically read the entire story in visual novel form through to the end. This in and of itself has taken dozens of hours, believe it or not. The next big step is to start properly implementing choice-based elements into the story, which I have done some of for earlier segments like chapters 3-5. (ex. Max and Chloe arriving at Max’s home with her parents involves a number of different variations based on how the reader chooses for Max to ‘come out’ to her folks). And while there ARE plenty of musical options to cover BGM needs and I could probably come up with backgrounds on my own for most of the project...the matter of character sprites is a still a big lacking component. At this point, the majority of required sprites, mainly from the post time-skip section, which would entail a LOT of work from a singular artist (much less my original vision of commissioning different artists for each alternate reality, especially the Other timeline), and I’m in no position to be able to afford that kind of artwork. Not when I am still unemployed and my fiancee and I are STILL struggling to figure out how to live together across country lines. I did end up taking some donations received last year or earlier and put them toward specific pieces of art and sprites for the chapters leading up to the story’s time-skip (which I can probably still get away with), and a few folks have been supporting us on Patreon, which doesn’t look like much BUT has immensely helped us in our current state. We even have been doing some Let’s Play vids here and there, including Life is Strange 2, which we plan to continue covering (living together would turn this from a bit of an inconvenience to something we could do basically whenever) Jenny and I do both want to work on All Wounds together, but...when we’re struggling just to get by, separately, we’ve had to put other things ahead of it, on top of the emotional stress recent developments in the Life is Strange brand have given us. So until Jenny and I can afford the time to work on it, All Wounds can’t physically get completed for some time yet. When we’re in a more stable financial position, I can more reasonably set time aside to continue work on the visual novel. I have not given up on it, just please understand that I am...one person. And the majority of this project (which is massive in terms of the medium) has been handled by just that one person. Inbetween a dayjob, then inbetween trying to find a NEW dayjob, and other projects, etc. If you’d like to support us so we can build our desired future together, you can donate to our fundraiser to pay for visa application fees - or you can share it around!

tl;dr The visual novel is still alive, but currently sleeping, until life situations open up the opportunity to finish it.

In the meantime, please stay tuned for the debut of Season 1 of Arcadian Rhythms, a 100,000+ word chunk of fiction I’ve been working on over the past year, set to start rolling out in weekly episodes in early 2019. You can read the pilot here if you wish and follow that project at @arcadian-rhythms​ as well as try out a mini visual novel sample I created set within its universe. I also want to take a moment to specifically promote a finished, free to play visual novel by @brianna-lei​ that fans of this project will probably find a lot to love about!

BUTTERFLY SOUP

From the creator’s page: A visual novel about gay asian girls playing baseball and falling in love. Features: -harold they're lesbians* -3-4 hours long -memes *except not really, one of them is bi

The primary romance shares a lot in common with Max and Chloe’s relationship dynamic (only without like 95% of the traumatic events!) and all four of the protagonists are just wonderful. I STRONGLY recommend you check it out, it’s built using the same program as All Wounds and is a very uplifting, funny, charming story. So! Happy new year! Sorry for the wait on things. It may not look like it, but I’ve spent even more time in 2018 working on writing/programming than any year prior, it’s just been stuff that isn’t finished or ready for the public. Thanks a lot for everyone’s support, I hope you all have a good start to 2019.

[lis-allwounds]

You’re the shadow of doubt in the back of my head You’re the fire that burns like its under my skin You’re the shame that I feel when I feel who I am And I know who you are And I know who you were

[mollifiable]

[destiny-smasher]

This year has been difficult so far.

We’ve spent the majority of it apart, and while we got engaged during a visit Jenny made to the States this spring, in the time since, I’ve been unemployed, she’s been hard at work at her freelance job, and…we haven’t been able to get things on track so far as living together is concerned.

We’ve struggled over the past year with feelings regarding the very series that brought us together, as we’ve seen it get turned into something we’re still not really sure how we feel about.

I have personally struggled with coming to terms with how unhealthy my old job was (I finally quit after four years of it gradually eating away at my health more and more) and feeling more lost than I ever have with trying to find a new job. I’ve struggled dealing with @lis-allwounds, a fic that was finished seven months ago, and yet dozens of hours later and the visual novel is still very far from completion. All this while, my original projects continue to be neglected as I fumble from one thing to the next, never really feeling like I’m making meaningful progress with any of it. It’s been a relief to receive generous support from some of our followers to help me get by, but there’s a great frustration in being 31 years old and not being able to pay my own bills despite how much time and effort I’ve spent applying for jobs I don’t even want.

I still don’t even know where I will be living this time next year, much less what I’ll be doing for work, or if I will even be living with the one person I want to by then.

For months, everything has been in the air, with the tether keeping me from floating away being the love of my life and the Determination to not give up on somehow, some way, figuring out a way to build that future together. It’s been one kind of struggle I have experienced time and again, attaching to people, doubting things, watching them fall apart as I secretly knew they would, and leaving people behind.

It’s been another, altogether unfamiliar struggle to know exactly who is most important to me, have no doubts about it, toil and fumble and work for months, all scattered apart, unable to find or even see any path toward sharing the future with that person I want to. To keep telling ourselves “we’ll figure something out” despite the fact that saying that and thinking that does in no way guarantee a solution magically falling into our laps.

We may not be sharing a present together in the way we would prefer, but we are still Determined to share a future together, co-captains on a ship built for two. Even if the lighthouse’s beams haven’t yet revealed themselves through the ocean’s fog to lead us both to the same shore just yet…

We just have to stay strong.

A little while longer.

[lis-allwounds]

“So. Are you still up to being my partner in crime?” Chloe asked slyly, latching her hand around Max's. “And all the dumb shit I'm gonna drag you into?”

Max replied contently, “As long as you still want to be my partner in time – and all of the...crazy-ass shit I'm  gonna drag you  into.” As they walked together, side by side, Max could feel it – that glow between their hands. Like a beacon, it led her back to shore.

Max and Chloe -- their dynamic, their relationship, and the potential of that relationship -- will always have a special place for us, I think. And I have to admit, the complex mixture of things their relationship represents is the main reason I haven’t given up on All Wounds yet. Regardless of where canon takes us, I still think there’s something very personal trying to get its way out of my being as an expression through these two.

[qtori]

“so, i’ve got a question for ya.

Do you think even the worst person can change?

That everyone can be a good person, if they just try?

Heh heh heh heh…

all right.

Well, here’s a better question.

Do you wanna have a bad time?”

Commission for @destiny-smasher‘s VN @lis-allwounds. Check it out if you’re a fan of both Undertale and Life is Strange!

[lis-allwounds]

“Control can sometimes be an illusion. But sometimes, we need an illusion to gain control.” ~ Mr. Robot

[lis-allwounds]

Was reminded of this piece earlier today and I realized there was another aspect to this part of the story that I commissioned from Qtori but we never finished (yet?).

We were working on an animatic related to the scene above (which was designed for the VN only ;D ). In All Wounds, I used the Ep.5 Nightmare as inspiration for a new ‘mutation’ to Max’s powers and did some weird things with it. There was a Chloe-perspective equivalent (which DID get written into the fic) which you can see over here.

You can watch what we came up with for that anaimatic over here.