\nYou remember the smell of maple oatmeal and the hardwood floors of your stepdad's house whenever you play this game.\n\n A soft, quiet place where you made peace with yourself and stayed up until the sun splashed against your knees. Your depression, slick ugly monster that it is, abates while you play. It cowers while you kiss girls with blue lips.\n\nIt's this game that revolutionizes the way you think about video games. They are suddenly books that someone has permitted you to exist in and escape to. \n\nEvery book has an author and every choice, and every line has a person behind it.\n\nFor the first time, you consider the galaxy.\n\nEverything else is so insignificant, and too many people have stopped pursuing their dreams already.\n\nWould it be so bad to pursue your own?\n\n[[Return|consoles]]
The whole thing is a mess.\n\nSix million tabs open and most of them are the same [[one|yukidama]] that you've opened again and again by accident. \n\nYour old folder labeled [['SCHOOL'|school]] collects dust under your recycling bin. \n\nSometimes you search for your [[acceptance letter|nyu]] just to look at it and remind yourself it's all real. You keep it in a folder on your desktop in case anyone doubts that you're really supposed to be here. \n\nMostly, you sit here and lay your head on the keyboard, waiting for a spark to ignite. \n\nIsn't that what all writers do?\n\n\n[[Go back|room]]\n
Standing in front of the mirror gets easier over time. \n\nYou start from the top of your [[head|head]] and focus on what makes you, you. \n\nMove down to your [[face|face]] and try not to judge anything there. \n\nIgnore the middle half of you. You have breasts and a [[tummy|tummy]] and they're perfect, no matter what the magazines tell you. \n\nYour [[thighs|thighs]] are thick. Once upon a time they were roped with muscle and they remember it fondly with the echo of the shape. \n\n\n[[Go back|room]]
A man contacts you about writing for his team's game.\n\n"We're a bunch of guys, think you can handle it?" he asks. \n\nYou think maybe you should be offended, but then you realize he's asking to be polite. \n\nThe first chance you get, you write a female character. \n\nShe's a shopkeeper and has three lines of dialogue.\n\nIt's a start. \n\n[[Return|computer]]
Breathe in.\n\nOut.\n\nIn.\n\nOut.\n\nTake your body and your dreams and everything you've spent your whole life waiting for.\n\nThen go kick the industry in the teeth. \n\nDo not ask permission.\n\nDo not hesitate.\n\n[[You have waited long enough.|final]] \n\n
\nYou were wait-listed.\n\nIt's not something your proud of, but maybe to be expected. All you had to show was a zombie apocalypse novel you wrote when you were in your teens and six firsthand accounts of comic book characters.\n\nYou cried the whole day and the whole night. You wanted to beg.\n\nGive me a chance.\n\nJust give me a chance and I promise I will show you how much this means to me.\n\nPlease.\n\nI have never wanted anything more than this.\n\nI have crawled through hell to be here.\n\n I am a visionary, I am a dreamer, I will reinvent everything I can.\n\nBut you held your pretty tongue; waited, still as marble, and feared that if you took in a breath you would allow yourself to hope.\n\nWhen they said yes, you cried again. Harder, this time, because being grateful and vindicated at the same time tends to rips you open from the inside out. \n\n[[Return|computer]]
Good, you're ready.\n\nIt's nice in there, but the world does not begin and end inside those 7x8 walls.\n\nTake the stairs down two at a time. \n\nRush [[outside.|end]]
\nLife as an only child was full of the start-up music for the title screen. You sat in your room with your legs crossed and a cat nuzzling your controller and played this for hours when no on else was home.\n\nAt some point, you remember stuffing the case under your bed; stuffing all the cases of all the games far, far away so there would be no evidence.\n\nYou thought the boys in school wouldn't like you if they found out you played video games. \n\nSo you let them collect dust. \n\n\n\n[[Return|consoles]]
Her Room
The End.
You woke up one morning and decided you wanted to shave all your hair off. Really lean into the gay thing. \n\nThe soft down tickles the palm of your hand. \n\nIt's nice to reinvent beauty every now and again on your own body. \n\nThe great part about being a writer is that you get to reinvent it every time you put something down on a page. \n\nYou think the best part about writing video games is probably being able to do the same thing, but on a screen. \n\n[[Return|mirror]]\n\n
You cry like a goddamn baby. \n\nYou're sure a lot of people cry like goddamn babies over this game. The writing has a way of kicking you hard in the belly over and over until you're at the end and you're breathing so quiet you can barely feel your cracked ribs.\n\nIt's not a question of power, when you think about doing this to other people. It's a question of human connection. How beautiful would it be to reach people through a story that they themselves are active participants in? How humbling, how worthy, it must be. \n\nAn idea for your life unfurls slowly from the thought. \n\n\n[[Return|consoles]]
\n\nThere are too many games to play and never enough time. \n\nYou fantasize sometimes about playing them all at once, filling your brain until it bursts; until the future of this industry is pouring out of your eyes, nose and mouth. \n\n[[Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly|spyro]]\n[[Mass Effect|masseffect]]\n[[The Last of Us|tlou]]\n\nEvery time you pick up a controller it's like you're performing a ritual. How many games do you have to play before you're allowed to make them?\n\n[[Go back|room]]\n
When you were little, you could only stay under the blankets for so long before it felt stifling and hot. \n\nNow, this is where you do your best work. Lost in the cocoon, you dream about all the things you will create. You spin stories and characters around until one day the goo of you will form into butterfly wings and take you out of this place.\n\n\n[[Return|bed]]
You graduated with a Psychology degree because you loved people. You applied to get your master's because you didn't know anything else.\n\nIt was nice to pretend that you were content with that while you worked a shitty job and spent your breaks writing ideas down on post it notes and sticking them to the pocket of your backpack. \n\nYou've been through enough that happiness has become a priority; even at the risk of everything falling apart to pursue it. \n\nYou defer your application for your master's degree. \n\nLater that night, with trembling hands, you search for game design schools online.\n\nYou still love people and you still want to help them. \n\nVideo games are just a different form of therapy, anyway.\n\n[[Return|computer]]
Your room is so tiny that if you stretch your arms out in either direction, you can almost touch the walls. \n\nThe TV is propped up against the window and it hovers with authority over your shrine of [[gaming consoles|consoles]]. Pigeons often come sit on the window ledge and spectate. \n\nAgainst the left wall sits your thirty dollar desk from Amazon. Your roommate put it together for you and you bought him a bottle of expensive rum as payment. New York has made you love a good drink, after all. Your [[computer|computer]] sits open-mouthed and eager on the desk's surface. \n\nThere is a [[mirror|mirror]] on the back of your door. You've learned not to take it too seriously. \n\nYour [[bed|bed]] is a loft. The landlord won't let you drill holes in the walls so every time you climb into it, it shakes and wobbles. You think it makes your dreams more exciting. \n\n<<if visited("consoles", "computer", "mirror", "bed")>>\s\n[[Leave room|outside]]\n<<endif>>\n\n
You live in a tiny apartment in Manhattan.\n\nThe kitchen is too small to cook in. The bathroom feels like it's closing in on you if you stand in it too long. \n\nOne of the windows is broken and cold air slips in and frosts your covers in the morning.\n\nYou have a mouse problem.\n\nThe couple in the apartment below you has a drug problem.\n\nSomeone got shot Sunday night on your steps. You didn't hear a thing. \n\nBut god, you love it here. \n\n[[This is where all your dreams have taken root.|room]]
The bed has a cage so you don't roll off in the middle of night, but you don't feel trapped.\n\nYour mind is free against the curve of your [[pillow|pillow]] - which happens to be a stuffed Simba.\n\nThere are so many [[blankets|blankets]] that sometimes you get lost inside their arms. On nights when you succumb to their embrace, you get your best sleep.\n\n[[Go back|room]]\n\n\n\n\n
You have most of your mother's face. \n\nIt is soft and kind just like her.\n\nMom doesn't understand a thing about video games, but she knows you'll make them for girls and daughters.\n\nShe knows your dream is to inspire your twelve-year-old self who wanted nothing more than to be the hero in the games she hid under her bed. \n\n\n\n[[Return|mirror]]
You want curvy superheroes. \n\nYou want characters with birth marks and moles and bushy eyebrows and hair on their upper lips.\n\nYou want a queen with stretch marks.\n\nLet every girl in every size, shape and color find a character that makes them feel strong and beautiful. \n\n\n[[Return|mirror]]
There's a giant mass relay tattoo down the side of your left thigh.\n\nIt's all about reclaiming parts of yourself that you used to hate, that you used to hurt. \n\nVideo games make you feel brave. \n\nSomeday, you will write games that other girls will tattoo on themselves.\n\nYou will endeavor to make them feel brave, too. \n\n[[Return|mirror]]
Taylor Cyr
Simba holds all of the ideas you don't have time to act on now. \n\nHe keeps all the stories that don't have games and all the characters that don't have names between his teeth for you.\n\nA girl with dark hair and freckles who can break someone's bones just by looking at them.\n\nA story about lesbian mermaids with razors for teeth and a war fought on dry land. \n\nA woman who beats her eating disorder with a sword and a crown. \n\nA tale of three friends who sell real estate on alien planets.\n\n"Hold these for me," you mumble into his soft belly, "I'll be back for them later."\n\n[[Return|bed]]\n\n