#route 65

[thisfuckingdork]

I love him, I hate him, he's a monster, he's only a kid,

[blindseer0]

Echo: November 1st

Happy Day of the Dead everyone. It’s the 16th* anniversary of Chase and Leo hooking up (in universe), so I felt like I’d do a long, rambling post about that day. For fun. Hopefully you find something to enjoy here.

First thing of note is that, in “Route 65”, November 1st, 2008, was a Friday. In our world it was a Saturday. Not super important, but as someone who pretty vividly remembers that day, it stands out.

(Well, the day before. My friend had invited me to her Aunt’s Halloween Costume wedding, which turned out to be at a strip club. There were poles but no dancers, unless you count the guests who were dressed as Sexy Devil in a speedo, sexy police women, and two sexy Borats in swimwear.)

Anyways, back to Echo. TJ was 13, Carl was 14 (though they imply 15 a few times), Chase was 15, and Flynn was 18. We don’t know the exact ages of any of the other characters, though we can guess. It’s implied Flynn is still in school, which probably means he’s in 12th grade, Leo in 11th, Jenna in 10th, Chase/Carl in 9th, and TJ in 8th.

Interestingly, TJ talks about how he talked to Flynn and Leo at lunch, which means either the schools are really close together and have open campuses, or they go to a combined Middle/High school (I assume this wasn’t intended).

Micha is implied to be in a grade below Chase, meaning he would have been an 8th grader. Jenna says in her route that he and Leo have a 3-year age gap. Micha also says in that route that he’s “almost 21”. Which means he’s either 13 or 14.

In Flynn’s route its mentioned that Leo is a year younger than Flynn and his birthday is in February. What that means is he’s either 16 or 17 (you can decide which age gap is worse/you prefer).

Usually the bus also carries (at least) Heather, Jenna, Jeremy, Clint, and TJ (no mention of Micha or Clint’s sister). We know Leo drives, and we can assume Flynn does as well. (It’s possible Micha hitches a ride with Leo, but no proof.)

Jenna didn’t go to school and TJ got a ride home from his mother. Jeremy was at school, but we don’t know how he got home. We don’t know if Clint or Heather went to school that day, though we do see Heather at the party.

November 1st is also Chase’s parents’ anniversary. That’s why they were home to catch him with his pants (literally) down. He says his mom is usually gone by five and his father by six, implying they caught him after six.

He says it takes about 45 minutes to get from Echo to Payton, so since school in the USA usually starts between 7:30 am and 8 am, we can assume they caught him around 6:30 am. (Now for the return timeline). School usually ends between 3 pm and 3:30 pm (though it obviously varies). 45 minutes back (plus time for the students to get on the bus in the first place) means the earliest they’d be getting off the bus is 4 pm.

We see the sun start to set while they’re driving back and while they’re walking to Carl’s house. Carl’s house is on top of a hill, so they walk up to it, walk back down, and then go to Jenna’s house. By the time they get there, Jeremy is back and lying on the couch in his underwear.

It’s hard to tell when the sun has fully set in game, but by the time they’re on their way to the factory, its officially night.  Sundown on that day was between 5:30 and 6 (depending on state). That means another hour and a half had to pass.

If we assume at least 20 minutes per mile (and arguably more for casual pace, uphill, and probably no sidewalks), then that adds at least another hour (plus talking to Jenna), which would get them right to when the sun is set.

(Chase and Carl aren’t mentioned to have their school stuff on them during the party, so we can assume they dropped them off at Carl’s before heading back down.)

Then the Parsons factory is three-ish miles away. Again, we can assume an hour to an hour and a half walk, putting their arrival between 7-8 (including hesitating at the entrance). They go in, things go bad, and Chase gets punched.

He wanders around in a haze for a bit before finding Leo and Micha in a van by the road (not that he remembers). Leo brings him back to the factory, finds TJ being dragged around, and kicks the shit out of some people.

By the time Chase wakes up, the blood on Leo’s hands is dry and TJ’s mother is on her way to pick him up. Carl has also run far enough away to regain cell service. We have absolutely no idea how long any of this actually takes.

While Leo and Chase are coming back from the factory, the sun is starting to rise, which means its probably around 6/6:30 (sunrise was 7 am ish that day, depending on state). This leaves like 6 hours unaccounted for.

(Again, I am putting more thought into this than the creators probably did, and definitely more than they should be expected to). The point being, Leo and Chase’s Anniversary was officially November 2nd (which means this post is still on time).

(In a previous route, I think Leo’s, its mentioned that their first kiss was actually in summer, which this story definitely isn’t. Not an issue, just something I think is interesting.)

Chase mentions on the way back that he’s been up for almost 24 hours, and that’s before they get to the train tracks. So in conclusion Route 65 (probably) takes place from roughly 4 pm to 7:30 am.

Thank you for joining me for this long, rambling journey. Hope everyone had a better Day of the Dead than our favorite unlucky friend group.

[nitw]

this is my beautiful son tj hes 2 days old and doesnt know anything

[eldritchdraaks]

Furry Visual Novel Hell

Quick context for this post, it is written by my boyfriend who has been through furry visual novel hell over the past few days. He has not been on tumblr in years, and has shitposts running through his brain daily. I’m posting this for him because his thoughts need to be made public. I love this freak.

SPOILERS FOR: Echo, Route 65, Arches, The Smoke Room, and The Burrows.

His mad ramblings begin now!

I have no idea why im typing this but I just cant let all this bounce around my head with my classes starting up in a day.

SO, after a few rather poor lifestyle choices I stayed up watching videos of furry visual novels. This little rabbit hole led me down to a familiar visual novel by the name of Echo. I’ve heard of it through a video talking about the film everything everywhere all at once. The only other form of context I had with Echo was that its creator went to make the very well proclaimed visual novel by the name of Adastra. For anyone wondering, the one of the main characters of Adastra (A black wolf named Amicus) is part of the “You have never felt the warmth of a man” starter pack as seen below

(Sidenote: I am so fucking mad literally two of the characters there are from the Echo series. These motherfuckers are everywhere)

So after that, Echo was stored somewhere in my subconscious or something. Honestly the exact sequence of events escapes me but I do know that I was watching one of Samwiz1’s videos of him dicking around as engineers,I was just going down another twitter rabbit hole. In the video, the first game he joined had a group of 5 medic bots 3 of em with names of characters from The Smoke Room, A sort of prequel to Echo. As for the twitter rabbit hole, I think hoyoverse (the company that made genshin impact) released a new game going by Zenless Zone Zero. One of the characters you could play was a big bear bastard named Ben which Eld and I immediately latched onto. A few days later, I saw that someone modded Ben into a fighting game called Guilty Gear Strive as seen below

AND GUESS WHO HE WAS FIGHTING???

That twinky lookin stoat swinging his little scythes in the gayest way you could caught my attention. Then literally a few tweets below I find this

And there he is, in the replies I found the twink in question was named CLIFFORD GOT DAMN TIBBITS???? How can you find a cuter name than Tibbits?? Not only did it reveal his name but also the visual novel he comes from called The Smoke Room. (Also the coyote in the suspenders is in the You have never felt the warmth of a man” starter pack is from The Smoke Room).

So in a misguided attempt to find it, I confused it with another visual novel that I found out was called The burrows. The Burrows was one I found myself enjoying other than the tangled fucking mess that is Echo.

So im actually going to talk about echo first.

Echo is a story about an otter named Chase who returns back to his hometown, Echo, to work on a college project on the town in 2015. Echo is a dying mining town that screams southwestern gothic with a mysterious past. Chase joins his childhood friends a native American fennec fox named Jenna, his ex boyfriend a wolf from El Salvador, a timid lynx named TJ, a blunt gila lizard named Flynn, and a ram named Carl who smokes weed to cope with his demons.

The thing that ties them together was the death of their friend Sydney. In the story a lot of paranormal shit happens regarding the town of echo, possession by ancestors, straight up cursed cryptids, murder, all on top of drama and slight hints of romance. This is a bit too much for my brain to process whatever the hell is going on. The story is a mess and I don’t think I will ever be able to process it in it’s entirety. The only characters I really like are Jenna, Carl, and TJ. God poor TJ… OK SO I WENT THROUGH ALL THE ROUTES AND JESUS FUCK I don’t think that my insanity will end anytime soon but Flynn’s route really fucked me up. Its so fucked, all you do is go around in circles AND I STILL NEVER GOT MY AWNSER IN HOW THE SMOKE ROOM LINKS INTO THIS LIKE WHY IS SAMUEL POSSESSING CHASE AND EVENTUALLY FLYNN???

WAS IT TO CONTINUE THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE AND SECRETS THAT ECHO LIVES ON??? god its so fucked, and Flynn actually becomes the monster Jenna talks about and TJ saw the day Sydney drowned in his endless pursuit of the truth of what happened as he wanders into the mines and turns into the plug-faced monster (prolly a wendigo) Jenna mentioned. So many questions… God its so fucked Speaking of The Smoke Room…

The Smoke Room is set 100 years before Echo and focuses on the ancestors of the main cast as well as the locals of Echo in 1915. Following an Albino Mountain Lion sex worker by the name of Samuel who was trying to leave Echo, but was ambushed by the guy who was helping him and out of self defense killed him in the mine. This murder sets the town ablaze with problems as Samuel and his associates encounter something is unleashed and latches onto a guilty party.

At this point, I just looked at Clifford’s route because he is admittedly adorable but kinda stopped there.

Then while browsing other Visual Novels I found this fucking affront to god only to find out its in The Smoke Room

And holy fuck I thought it was bad on my phone but it is so much worse on my computer. Something in the mines where I think Sam, one of his closest clients a badger that goes by Nikolai and a tiger named Yao are trying to escape the deeper part of the mines or something. What’s even worse is that it looks to be made from body parts of the main cast which is so fucked up in so many ways.

Then we have Arches and Route 65. Arches follows a bear and a coyote named Devon and Cameron in the town of Echo after its been abandoned in 2015. All I know is that the Coyote gets rufied and ends up dead in the mines. Route 65 is an actual prequel looking at the main cast of Echo at a Halloween party in 2008. Don’t remember what happens in this one other than character setup. ANYWAY, echo aside now I can talk about The Burrows.

This one I know from an artist that I like going by Captain Nikko. The Burrows follows Grey, a possum living in New Orleans in 1928. On his way to commit suicide, he stops into a bar run by a round rabbit named Virgil. He makes a deal with Virgil and he gives Grey a card and after a trippy sequence of infinitely falling, he finds himself in front of his old house in a field of yellow flowers. He meets 4 other souls, Mark a Maned Fox who works in a museum in New York, Gabriel a shark training for his school’s swim relay race, Ken a panther who is a cyclist, and Yasahiro a Japanese fennec fox that is an engineer.

When they suddenly disappear with Grey crying, the card Virgil gave Grey begins to glow and 4 other cards appear. Each of them have unique designs for each character, Though only Ken Gabriel and Mark are available at the moment. Each card Zaps Grey into the future with the order being Ken (1958), Mark (1965), and Gabriel (1987). You then find out that the reason that they are linked together is suicide. Grey then becomes determined to protect the character you chose. At this point, you go through the route, make important choices that affect the outcome of the route (only in mark’s route though as of late) and grow close to who you chose. I eventually broke down and downloaded The Burrows and played through the new content of Gabriel’s route and got damn i am unashamedly attached to this man. Like, he reminds me of myself of one point body image issues, feeling useless, jovial bastard. Mark has some pretty weird vibes that he gives off, lot of questions for him that will be answered hopefully soon. Ken is just really damn mean and beats the hell outta some kid that was messing his bike up. Hiro doesn’t have a route out yet so we know next to nothing about him other than he’s working with a german engineering company and he is thinking of committing suicide.

I would totally recommend The Burrows and not for you to binge the entire Echo project saga at 4 in the damn morning.

[lemonsuz]

confiding in Jenna

[fuckyeahechoproject]

The Art of Echo: Route 65

Echo: Route 65 is out for free now on the Echo Project patreon.

The story of the Echo: Route 65 visual novel is centered on the protagonist, Chase, a teenager in the rural southwest whose parents just found out he was gay in a less-than-dignified way. After getting off the bus from school, he flees facing his new reality as an outed individual and goes a nighttime adventure along a stretch of road called Route 65.

In addition to creating expressive sprites for the first time, we hired on background artists to create these really interesting southwestern landscapes. Here’s a couple of them:

If you’d like to check out more of their work, here are their art accounts:

Hiccupby

Click

And again, if you’d like to check out Echo: Route 65, it’s available for free on the Echo Project Patreon, along with our other games Echo and Adastra.

[thisfuckingdork]

Tobias Jedidiah Hess: The kindest friend. The accidental accomplice