Queen Adriana Rys and Princess Kenna Rys, The Study - by me
YOU ARE THE REASON
One Nice Bug Per Day

Love Begins
Cosimo Galluzzi

Product Placement
Xuebing Du

Andulka

pixel skylines
ojovivo

★
dirt enthusiast
Peter Solarz
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
noise dept.
$LAYYYTER

No title available
RMH
Today's Document
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@scrumptioustimemachinetragedy
Queen Adriana Rys and Princess Kenna Rys, The Study - by me
Just Passing Through
based on this image from Across The Universe
ACT I, Chapter Four: Cut and Run
hehe my Open Heart MC : Judah “Jude” Lynn Marion
Jude was born in Namur,Belgium and moved to India (Puducherry)with his mom when he was quite young , along with his twin and younger sister.Then moved back to Belgium , back to his father (terrible time really) and made it to the United States for med school!Yippee!
There’s much more detail to all this but like that’s better being told another time lmao
So in OH you can choose what sort of doctor your mc can be and for Jude I’ve always chosen the very patient oriented dialogue options.Jude loves to help people , he loves getting to know his patients , he loves being able to do so much good for other people.He was raised catholic (Both parents were VERY religious and conservative ) and in the years spent away from his family he’s able to explore his relationship with God and such with more freedom and really slowly realises he doesn’t have to be so damn miserable all the time lmao.So yeah this sort of ties in with how he treats the people around him.Jude Marion , always ready to save someone’s day.Really just trying to spread some good in the world and also believing in a force of good.He does question his faith quite a bit during his second and third year for certain reasons I feel is better to reveal later.But overall he’s just an empathetic and caring person , and can be a little timid at times.
Jude is an avid fan of Ethan Ramsey and considers his diagnostic principles textbook a second bible (he would never say this out loud).So during his first year…unfortunately….he can’t help but idolize Ethan and think that he’s like the greatest of all time 😭 This perception changes significantly over the course of the trilogy and he learns that he really shouldn’t have had such a view of Ethan.He does respect him as a mentor and very grateful for his guidance but it’s also like…hmmm I was wrong about you in so many ways…Ethan takes on more of a fatherly mentor role in my canon like how Naveen is to Ethan.
Jude had this….thing? With Raphael but never went anywhere and fizzled out when he ended up with Sora.His official love interest is Bryce :) . Their relationship is quite slow to develop into anything serious because of Bryce’s issues with vulnerability and ‘not wanting to be tied down’ (also I really like the demiromantic Bryce HC) and Jude still coming to terms with his sexuality.And they’re both just terrified but don’t say anything to each other.And also they’re very busy people lmfao
anyways um yeah this is a bit about Jude, birthed this guy when OH 3 was releasing I think idk but uh yeah can’t wait to share more of his lore later heeehee
WAIT FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION IMPORTANT DETAIL
He has mild to moderate hearing loss in his right ear , which occurred when he was like 11 I think , you can see his hearing aid in his lil badge picture hehe
hehe my Open Heart MC : Judah “Jude” Lynn Marion
Jude was born in Namur,Belgium and moved to India (Puducherry)with his mom when he was quite young , along with his twin and younger sister.Then moved back to Belgium , back to his father (terrible time really) and made it to the United States for med school!Yippee!
There’s much more detail to all this but like that’s better being told another time lmao
So in OH you can choose what sort of doctor your mc can be and for Jude I’ve always chosen the very patient oriented dialogue options.Jude loves to help people , he loves getting to know his patients , he loves being able to do so much good for other people.He was raised catholic (Both parents were VERY religious and conservative ) and in the years spent away from his family he’s able to explore his relationship with God and such with more freedom and really slowly realises he doesn’t have to be so damn miserable all the time lmao.So yeah this sort of ties in with how he treats the people around him.Jude Marion , always ready to save someone’s day.Really just trying to spread some good in the world and also believing in a force of good.He does question his faith quite a bit during his second and third year for certain reasons I feel is better to reveal later.But overall he’s just an empathetic and caring person , and can be a little timid at times.
Jude is an avid fan of Ethan Ramsey and considers his diagnostic principles textbook a second bible (he would never say this out loud).So during his first year…unfortunately….he can’t help but idolize Ethan and think that he’s like the greatest of all time 😭 This perception changes significantly over the course of the trilogy and he learns that he really shouldn’t have had such a view of Ethan.He does respect him as a mentor and very grateful for his guidance but it’s also like…hmmm I was wrong about you in so many ways…Ethan takes on more of a fatherly mentor role in my canon like how Naveen is to Ethan.
Jude had this….thing? With Raphael but never went anywhere and fizzled out when he ended up with Sora.His official love interest is Bryce :) . Their relationship is quite slow to develop into anything serious because of Bryce’s issues with vulnerability and ‘not wanting to be tied down’ (also I really like the demiromantic Bryce HC) and Jude still coming to terms with his sexuality.And they’re both just terrified but don’t say anything to each other.And also they’re very busy people lmfao
anyways um yeah this is a bit about Jude, birthed this guy when OH 3 was releasing I think idk but uh yeah can’t wait to share more of his lore later heeehee
actually here's my hot take of the day: people complain too much about heterosexual romance in stories. specifically lgbt people. like if it's not misogynist or otherwise shittily done, you'll probably survive. it's actually deeply annoying to me when the only thing someone has to say about something is "ugh it has straight romance in it" like okay you sound unintelligent to me if that was the only thing worth discussing to you
got a crick in my neck and a frog in my throat and a chip on my shoulder and a stick up my ass and now you're gonna stand there puttin words in my mouth? haven't I been through enough?
hi bryce......🙄😒
the racism against indians is just overwhelming and insane. its everywhere. people go out of their way to talk about how indian immigrants are 'the worst kind of immigrants' when its people working their ass off to get a medical degree while working underpaid jobs in delivery just to get a better life.
people are literally chomping at the bit to say indians are the reason their wages are falling and their life is getting worse because indians are ready to work for less money or some shit. it's actually very disturbing
my favorite conversation in open heart so far i think :P
terrifying when you watch a movie or a show or whatever & youre like that was fun but it felt a little redundant they didnt need to hammer the point home that much & then you go online & theres thousands of people going that was so weird i did not get it what did that mean google.com ending explained please?
I replayed Open Heart and why is book 3 like that.
Coloured tht one drawing
Theeee cuties 2 babies
The lady was sitting on his sofa, wearing a slip, staring at him and batting her eyelashes and going: Where are you going? Why won’t you tell me where you’re going? Are you bored of me? Am I boring now? Am I ugly? I can bake a cake.
Rare shaded art
Also giggle comparison thing bc i thought th sketch was sooo cute n th drawpike lineart wasnt doing it justice so
sıla's terrible horrible no good very bad first day
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.