jaxxy !

Well, folks. Our eyeballs are falling out and the last two weeks have felt a little like cramming for an exam— which is very funny considering none of the leads have been in college for a minute— but we did it. The Spring Semester demo that isn't really a demo is up!

You can now finally(!) enjoy the last two weeks of your semester with Deja, Cameron, Elio, Jamie, and Percy. Play from five new events, completely free on our itch.io page— including partial voice acting, eight CGs, and about 280,000 words total!

As we've mentioned before, we are releasing this update ahead of the Kickstarter!

If you haven't already heard, the Kickstarter only aims to fund production for Summer. We'll explain the reasons for this in full detail later, but for now, keep an eye on our social channels for news!

It's been a long year of development and an even longer wait, and we're excited to hear what you all think. We'll be taking a short break to recuperate, but our askbox is open! (But if you encounter any bugs, please send a report to [email protected].)

I'm dying of pure joy

(why stop at sungho, actually, WHAT IF ITS ALL THE LIS—)

ngl... just by looking at how Vere sketches everyone is so telling about how he feels about them, even beyond what the relationship chart tells you. Makes you think...

Kuras, pure rough sketch (no. ??? at this point, cause he can't stop drawing him badly on purpose) and totally was not going to be bothered with the clothes details. A moment of silence for Vere for he had to suffer Kuras' design with us too...

Mhin's is... curious. Why so many sketches, hm? Have them in that pose just festering in your mind, Vere? Clearly a lot of thought went into sketching them. Does he really think about their ██ ███ ██ so much...?

Leander's is a surprisingly neat mess— Vere supposes he must give the man his money's worth. Once he was done he probably shoved it right into his arms and didn't allow Leander a single revision lmao

Oh, if Vere was ever into digital art (or had the means, if we're being realistic), Ais' drawing would have been a fully rendered illustration, you can't tell me otherwise. Drawn with such care and precision, not a line out of place, heck, the shading was done with effort. And he just had that in his sketchbook? I know what you are Vere...

BUT ELIO, OH GODDD

THE WAY I NEED THIS MAN.

with the upmost respect, i need to love this man like no other

but sadly i’ve been seeing it so much recently and so i’m just gonna post it

We need to talk about Qiu’s pronouns and gender identity and how to use it correctly!!!

So as we all know, in step 3 Qiu is genderfluid which means that sometimes they use they/them and other times they use he/him and that is expressed through their nail polish. They do not use both they/them and he/him at the same time. As they also said, if you don’t know what pronouns they use, you should use they/them.

So when you are making those headcanon posts referring to step 3 qiu please only use they/them if you are writing a short story or a full fanfic and you mention that at the time of the story that they prefer he/him that is completely okay!

now let’s talk about step 2…

for step 2, qiu does not know what they identify as they are not non-binary

they do use and only use they/them do not refer to step 2 qiu using he/him

conclusion:

the only time you use he/him pronouns on qiu is if you’re referring to step 1 and if you mention that at the time they refer he/him in step 3

use they/them in step 2, if they prefer it in step 3, and if you don’t know what pronouns they prefer in step 3

And as a non binary person I feel like it's important to mention, mainly to the young or cisgender audiences who aren't familiar with the concept of non binary and genderfluid but it's not a third special gender where amab are feminized and afab are masculinized. Enbies don't own anyone androginity and someone's gender identity isn't something that needs to be "proven" by A + B