all my many years of writing delusional abusers have been practice for st. black, patron saint of post-hoc rationalization

I commissioned @sinnykitt.bsky.social to draw theodore and st. black!! the prompt was "POV: you're gonna die" and they absolutely knocked it out of the park TToTT

maybe today I'll do proper character sheets with more info and stuff... I've been meaning to

hiraeth is a dating sim protag, but it's one of those fucked-up otome games where all the love interests are unfathomably toxic and the fun of it is seeing what horrible things they'll do to you

I've spent most of the day working on The Scene with st. black and hiraeth and god hiraeth is so fun to torment... I love it when a man who simply wants to be left in peace is instead subjected to horrific and gratuitous violence by another man who really really wants to fuck him u_u

btw if you HAVE played Predatory... I would love to know your thoughts... a lil review... anything....

I pulled my punches on the first arc because I wanted it to be something most people could read. all those pulled punches are going into the later material, this is now DEFINITELY going to be the nastiest thing I've ever written. I keep coming up with setpieces that make me go "ughghgh" 😬

suit theo~ he very much prefers this to the shorts and tank top lol

good question! he was turned as a kid and happened to be missing that tooth, and it never grew back in. or from a design perspective, I always drew him with only one fang as a stylistic thing, and decided at the last minute it'd make sense/be distinctive if that tooth was missing entirely

back to writing! it's genuinely kind of astonishing it took me this long to write a needles-under-fingernails torture scene, I've had a thing for it since I first watched Kaiji

I lowkey wanna change the cover image for Predatory, I don't love the one I have now in a general sense and I REALLY don't love it as the first impression of the game. I'm no great shakes as a visual artist and it doesn't convey the subtleties I want it to :/ idk what'd be better though

apropos of all these platforms cracking down on "obscenity," Predatory is very much a response to me being confused that people are more bothered by abnormal sexuality than they are by murder, and where that line is drawn and why

dev is on hold while my life is consumed by Slay the Spire 2

Go play a short, cool game by a good friend, you won't regret it! I was there for the entire development, and I'm so impressed with the final result. When I gave feedback I would say "What you already have is great!" and then they'd somehow go make it even better. Witchcraft.

I'm glad you asked! A) I live in the midwest, and I like to set things here both for that ~sense of place~ and because you don't see it that often B) Predatory is, in part, about being really bored and isolated because there's no one else around that can connect to your experience, so it fits

the Predatory vamps! #predatoryvn

Cruel Hero. Starving Monster. "Some people have it coming." PREDATORY, a 10k word linear kinetic novel about the only two vampires in the midwest kikai-hentai.itch.io/predatory #gameDev #indieDev #indieGameDev #soloGameDev #gamesky #devsky #games #indieGames #vn #vndev #shota #vampire #visualnovel

Predatory is done for realsies this time... I'd love to get feedback from at least one more person before I publish but I've fixed everything that needed fixed. sound design and UI could be better but it's crazy polished for baby's first renpy imo

ugh fine I guess today I renovate this account

Tainted Love by Soft Cell is a Predatory song? somehow??

japanese AU where everything is exactly the same except st. black is a samurai named seikuro (literally "saint black")

I should draw hiraeth and theodore as leonard and the faerie from Drakengard. I know seere is the obvious pick for theodore, but in terms of disposition and attitude towards hiraeth, he's the faerie

Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo is the Predatory song. Insanity is also good but it's more a fit for when st. black enters the picture

st. black! this was a fun outfit to do ^u^

the title for the followup is going to be Predatory: It Gets Worse. this is not a joke

st black is the worst person in the universe but he's so fun that I can't bring myself to kill him off. now I know how kishimoto felt with orochimaru

we watched Let the Right One In last night and ofc I kept thinking about what the vamps would think, since they've both def seen it. it makes hiraeth yearn in ways that are kind of uncomfortable for him. theodore hates it with his fucking life

HOLY FUCK I FOUND THEODORE'S ANIMALS

might fuck around and make an inventory sheet for theodore, since everything he owns fits in a backpack

seeing other people's vns (esp ones with CGs and/or good UI design) makes me so insecure >< I just gotta keep reminding myself that I'm making the stuff I wanna see, because no one else is making it, and that's more important than "measuring up"

fun fact: the track I'm using as hiraeth's leitmotif is literally called "sad intro," a fact funny enough that if a Predatory OST ever happens, I might insist on keeping that title. sadboy intro u_u (theodore's leimotif is "deserters" incidentally)

time to take more background photos... it's nice that I'm within walking distance of a park at least

actually y'know what, theodore would be super into animal crossing. it would be his favorite thing in the world. he gets to have his own little house with his own stuff and he can run around in the sun and everyone is nice to him and he never has to feel afraid

me: okay, I should be able to set up these sprites in a formulaic fashion so I can use a variable to designate pose and angle also me: *has no fucking clue how to code that into renpy*

after much thought I've concluded/realized that theodore would be really into superheroes, which is inconvenient cause I'm not and there's no one in my circles who is :/

Hard Candy would probably be good reference, but I haven't heard particularly good things about it as a film and I suspect I'd find it v triggering :/

my brother referred to hiraeth as a "tortured artist" which isn't a phrase that had occurred to me, but is COMPLETELY accurate lmao. the two sides of hiraeth are "dreams every night of the labyrinth" and "infodumps about the environmental importance of mosquitoes." tortured artist/weird bug guy

had myself a double-feature last night, idk about This Boy's Life but The Basketball Diaries is 100000% on theodore's Red Flag Media Bingo Card (which I will never actually make cause I'd rather not completely tell on myself)

started rereading IWTV and I'd forgotten that a) louis was a slave owner, b) the book completely no-sells this. anne please