Ruin Me 0.14 Preview and 0.13 BTS on Ambiguity

Hello, perverts! I hope you all liked update 13; I was pretty proud of how it turned out, and both big scenes were ones that I found personally pretty hot, which is always nice.

The most recent Center of Attention vote ended up with two play scenes rising to the top: "Put Theresa in Bondage" and "Get Theresa Off". I'm hoping to get the latter out in this release! The former should probably have a bit more art, so it'll likely wait until next release. My next poll will probably be about writing priorities, although I haven't managed to get it posted yet. If you want to vote in these polls, you can raise your pledge to $5, but I appreciate your support to any degree, even non-monetary.

I've got some behind-the-scenes musings on update 13, followed by a preview of what's going to be in update 14.

Ambiguity In Horror

"The Momentary Cabin" was a weird one. The horror expeditions in each act follow an escalating structure: Act 1 has expeditions that the protagonist could theoretically explain away as an oddity or hallucination, Act 2 has ones that are clearly supernatural, and Act 3 will have expeditions that bend reality itself. This expedition may end up getting moved to Act 3 by the end, as it's one that gets really weird.

It's not clear from the text exactly what's going on in that clearing. Is Emily being changed by the space, or is this just something that naturally happens to humans freed from senescence? In the end, is she ascending to something more, or performing some mad and ill-advised experiment? How exactly does time work there?

I have some clearer idea of the mechanics of the space than I put in the text, but one fun thing about horror and weird fiction is that you don't need to define stuff as clearly as in other genres. Science fiction works best when you know the science behind what's going on, regardless of how pulpy it is. Good fantasy runs by rules, even if they're more cultural and thematic than scientific. But horror is a space where, often, the fact that the rules are unknown or unknowable is part of the appeal.

This can be taken too far, of course. One of the marks of bad creepypasta or schlock horror is when a story has monsters that lack motivations for their actions or abilities, or when there's gore or violence that's unjustified by the story being told. But just like the old adage about Jaws and Alien not showing the monster in the first act, horror and weird fiction often functions best when there is no good explanation for an incongruity or premise.

So like many parts of Ruin Me, there's no solid explanation for exactly what's going on in Emily's clearing, even in my head. I'm not interested in plotting out "Cernunnos"'s abilities, or the origins of Castille or the cavebound cephalopod. To do so definitively would weaken their impact.

Next Update

The big thing in the next update will be something I bet a lot of people have been looking forward to: training Theresa in vaginal sex. This'll include a new art pose, and will bring her from Permissivity 2 to 3. Initially, my plans were for the training sequence to include several sex positions, but as I wrote it it started feeling better to push the actual coitus to the end. As a result, the lovely variety of ways a person's vagina can be fucked will wait for play scenes and future training.

I'm also aiming to implement the "Get Theresa Off" play scene; this one probably won't have new art, at least for now. It'll probably involve a reorganization of how play scenes are accessed; I've never liked how I chose to name or categorize them, so I'd like to do an overhaul on that.

That's about it for this one! I love hearing from y'all, so let me know if you:

• have any questions
• find any bugs
• have anything you want to see more of in the game
• would like to see something specific in these posts
• want to tell me exactly when the game last made you come! 

You can PM me or write: phanes@phanes.me You are also welcome to comment here with most things, but maybe only share your orgasms privately with people who have given you permission. 😘