Two New Scripts and Lofty Plans - Update 6/1/2025

Hey y’all, hope all’s well!

Happy Pride Month from Scotland! SulMatul says hello~

So, going to lead off with a bit of bad news: 

The preview for Day 4 of Haruspex is going to be a little delayed, probably till around the middle of the month. There’s a couple complicated reasons for this, but the short version is that I am unable to open the master project file for the Haruspex project on SulMatul’s computer despite considerable efforts. Without access to that file, there is only so much I can do without it becoming a flatly inefficient use of my time.

Rest assured that there has been progress made though: 

This timeline represents the completion of the most difficult and time consuming bits of recording and principle editing, all that's missing is music, implementing VA, and a handful of important effects and assets. I haven’t had access to the right version of Premiere, but I have had access to a version of it, and with that I’ve been about to get a rough cut of Day 4 is in order, though as the roughest of rough cuts. 

This means that it’ll only be a day or two of getting it in order once I have access to my own computer again.

For now though, it is in a state I consider to be unwatchable even after I’ve done all I feel is reasonable. Anymore than this and I start to worry that the tools and effects I use might not import into the newer version the way I like thus undoing the work in question, or take hours if not days to recreate assets and presets that would otherwise take seconds to copy and paste.

Lessons learned for next time I leave the States.

Additionally, I know I promised a write up on one of the books I’d read for the project, and I still plan to do that. Unfortunately, in my infinite wisdom, I forgot to pack the goddamn book in question, which makes writing about it a bit thorny, especially if i’d like to include any quotes and so on. Another mistake on my part. My apologies.

So does that mean I’ve just been lounging on the famously tropical Scottish beaches with some mimosas and deep fried Mars bars?

Of course not. In fact, I’ve been kind of staggeringly productive during the windows of time where I’ve had some time to get things done.

Here: Have two new scripts I’ve written~

One about how Persona 3 Portable is the only scripted narrative game where your choice of gender actually changes all the things which change with gender in real life, and what that looks like in practice.

And another about Wanderstop’s perspective on work and self-improvement which in no way turned into a deeply ironic meditation over what it means to be Better.

Each is around 4-5k words a piece, so that’s been around 10k words written this month in total. I also like to think this proves that I can, in fact, still write short scripts.

Both of these are still decidedly in the rough draft phase. I will be revisiting each game in more depth before I consider either of them truly Final, but the skeleton is there for each and are well worth a read imho. This is in addition to some other projects I’ve been working on with SulMatul which I’m not at liberty to share quite yet, but will manifest in good time and be keenly interesting to all of you, I have no doubt.

Additionally, I’ve been able to use the opportunity to get more reading done than I’ve been able to in a while! Officially wrapping up the last of my Stanislavski research with Building a Character, I began reading things that I know will be central for two future projects (including the Changeling’s Route~), and most notably, finished up rereading Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal. As an apology for the tardiness on the last research review, I’ll be writing up a thing for that as well and posting it shortly after this update goes live.

Suffice to say, while it hasn’t been productive in quite the way I was hoping it’d be, it has nonetheless been a wildly productive month all the same. This statement is probably going to become really funny for those who read the Wanderstop script.

So then, what’s the plan for now?

A rather ambitious one, but one I’m confident about:

I will be returning home around the 10th. Once there, I’ll be taking a day to de-jetlag myself, get settled in, and all the good stuff you do after a long sojourn away from home. After that, I'll then charging into a bit of a work sprint:

By the middle of the month, I’ll have a preview with Day 4 available up here. By the end of the month, I want the intro Haruspex’s intro in order and, ideally, Day 5 as well. I don’t want to overpromise, but that is still my hope.

In my downtime, I’ll be wrapping up my Persona 3 Portable playthrough for footage while refining that script to a razor's edge. The script for that has generated a lot of enthusiasm over on Tumblr (and I am also admittedly quite excited about it too), which tells me that I'm onto something so I’d prefer to get that in order ASAP as well. 

Also helps that it gives me an excuse to not live inside the Gorkhon 24/7 as well. Despite how I’m sure it looks, I am still trying to pace myself with this. That said, this doesn’t mean I’ll be neglecting Haruspex either: Day 6 will be happening in July as well.

As I said, I recognize this is ambitious bordering on unreasonable, but it’s also all things I’m very excited about, have a strong headstart on all of them so keeping optimistic on them.

So to recap:

Intro + Day 1-5 of Haruspex by the end of June.

Day 6 and a rough cut of the Persona 3 Portable video by the end of July. 

Wanderstop will happen at some point thereafter, probably the next time I feel I need a Patho break.

Apologies again for the slight delay on Haruspex, but I hope seeing everything I’ve been working on otherwise laid out like this makes up for it.

And for now I think I’ll leave it there, at least until I post the next Research Review.

Thank you as always for your support, it truly means the world especially in these uncertain times. Looking forward to sharing more with you soon!

Love ya all,

Ruby <33