#chattering sparrow

“You never want to hang out anymore.”

Shelby, who’d been making sad eyes at Drift, turns to Scott and says, softly admonishing, “We talked about this.”

Scott sighs, drawing Shelby to his side, squeezing briefly without looking away from Drift. “I feel like you never want to hang out anymore.”

Drift wants to shut the door, keep the neighbours from hearing. “I want to! I do, I just— This client, her kid’s missing—”

“You always say you want to but you never do.”

Standing there at Oakhurst’s edge, before the longest fifty years of Drift’s un-life, Cleo says, sidelong, “I could keep you.”

Drift shuffles apologetically. “I promised Shelby. We’re gonna see the world together.”

“They don’t know anything,” Cleo says, soft like distant, violent waves. “You don’t know anything. Without the code, you’re just going to keep getting into trouble.” They shake out their long hair, riverine, and sigh. “You’ll always be welcome back. But try not to bring too much mayhem with you when you come, all right?”

Legundo stands at the edge of another half-named town and says to the shadows of the trees, “I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Owen murmurs, “Just checking.”

Legundo laughs. “Where could I go that you wouldn’t come after me?”

(pretty sure u know who i am already just by virtue of both having recently become rgupilled + having always been vshelbypilled but it’s candle btw alaksjsdh)

hi candle :D!! i have wonderful news for you: i originally thought i'd have something more explicit/elaborated-on for that not-memory and then i specifically remembered that one series of shots of anthy on the couch :) your parallels are real and beautiful

It’s one of those days: Owen’s wearing a skirt and doesn’t want to be touched and even if Scott and Pyro were here Owen would probably kick them out straight away.

Shelby’s allowed though. She gets to be in Owen’s room and perch on Owen’s bed and see Owen’s bare eggshell walls. Scott told Shelby once, sitting in the quad with her and lit mostly by his phone’s glow in the early autumn night, You’re so cute, you’re everyone’s exception.

“Have you ever thought about covering them with makeup?” Shelby nods at Owen’s neck, where there’s that pitted scar so easily mistaken for a hole into Owen’s throat. And others, trailing down under the collar of Owen’s faded red button-down.

“No.” Owen’s hand rises almost protectively. “Why should I? Let them stare. Let them wonder if it’s contagious.”

Shelby glances away. “I heard Scott saying— Y’know.” Owen says nothing, which is frightening. Shelby holds their hands up and hurries out: “Plus I was thinking it’d be nice to learn something new together. We could— go shopping?”

Baleful blink. “You don’t already know how?”

Abolish’s eyes gleam unnaturally in the evening light behind the doctor’s clinic.

“Oh,” Cleo says. “You mean that kind of problem.”

Abolish is tense like a thing straining against its leash. In this case, the leash is Legs’s arm. Legs clutches the collar of Abolish’s bloodied shirt, keeps Abolish in place with grim unhappiness.

“You know more about this than me,” Legs says. “I thought you might know how to… help. Without causing further panic.”

But I've not been able to shake Slay the Princess out of my head since I played it the first time. It is also, unfortunately, one of the few games I feel is genuinely worth going into mostly blind, so I'm somewhat obligated to not spoil Everything,, but it's a psychological horror visual novel about perspective, choice, change, understanding, and two not-quite-people beating the ever-loving Fuck out of one another in a time loop and falling in love through Acts of Incredible Violence (there's,, a lot to it. The ways in which assumption can change how people behave. The effects of trauma. The fear of death and change. Agency in the face of horrifying circumstance. Divinity and mortality. What it means to seek happiness. Gestures vaguely. It's a good game, and I've spent ages going through the variations on different routes, because even slightly different choices result in different dialogue later on. Also,, the presence of women who would turn me into a bloody pulp is usually a great selling point for me, so,,,,)

- 🕷️

!!! beautiful, i'm so glad i asked :D of the five you mention here, i have played One (1) of them. (do you want to guess. do you want to take a wild guess which one :P) but i've heard tell of them all and am offering you the official sparrowlark stamp of approval for your good taste. (completely meaningless stamp. on account of not having played most of these games. but perhaps you will derive some amusement from knowing you have it.)