LARKIN PLAYLISTS

are you in college?

i am in pain

The Golden Rose: Book One is OUT NOW!!!

“As the artist mourns his fortune

So the Dynasty falls to crumble,

And the two branches snatch asunder”

You are a recent member of The White Company, a mercenary guild on the far side of the law. Your job consists of hunting artifacts and roaming ruins that the Church has forbidden to mention. One of your expeditions, however, leads you down a path that is much deeper than you ever anticipated.

“The Golden Rose: Book One” is a thrilling 1.2-million-word interactive fantasy novel by Ana Ventura, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Juggle friendships, new alliances, and flames of romance in this epic adventure that will take you to an Europe where History took a different turn.

Play as male or female; straight, gay, or bisexual.

Find romance, friendship, or rivalry with a cast of colorful characters.

Hunt down the thief that stole your forbidden maps!

Fight against bandits and city guards while trying to stray away from the all-seeing Eyes of the Church.

Explore ancient ruins and the cobble-stoned streets of the medieval city of Tarragona. Step into a grand cathedral, a sprawling market, a multicolored harbor, the dark gates of the city, or an aqueduct that no one dares to come close to.

Bond with a stubborn old horse.

Choose to ally with a street urchin or the feral captain of the Guard.

Uncover what is true in a world where denial reigns supreme.

Start to unravel your own mysterious past.

Immerse yourself in a world rich with characters, story, and lore.

Do you believe in Destiny?

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The Golden Rose: Book One is out for you to play!

You can find it at the links below:

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1892950/The_Golden_Rose_Book_One/

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.hostedgames.goldenrose1&hl=pt_PT&gl=US

App Store Omnibus: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hosted-games/id1302297731

Choice of Games: https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/golden-rose-book-one/

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I hope you enjoy it! 🌹

What Happens:

Get some one on one time with Vanessa and Charlie, chat with Theo or Izzie, potentially have a sneaky kiss with someone else, watch a budding relationship fall apart (maybe yours does, too) and have time with your partner before bed.

Word Count:

Total of 175k words (+38k words), the longest twine chapter yet - I was hoping there would be a bit more content, but the chapter ended up being a bit of a monster as it was.

Game Summary:

Welcome to Summer of Love. You and nine other singles will enter a luxury villa and couple up, spending a month in each other’s company, along with a few extras along the way – you’ll live together, eat together, sleep together, and hopefully, fall in love together. Sound familiar? Thought so – but instead of coupling ceremonies being split by boys and girls as is typical in shows like these, the public will be the ones deciding the order of who gets to pick, and as the cast is an all-bi one, you can pick whoever you like, so long as they haven’t already been picked. At the end of the month, the most popular couple could win as much as £500,000, depending on what challenges you win or lose and how well you win over the public. As for the other couples? As there are no dumpings, everyone has the potential to find love, and those in exclusive relationships by the end could also win as much as £100,000 per couple. So, how much you win is entirely down to you. Ready for your summer of love to begin?

Play chapters 1-6 on Itch.io now!

hi hi!! i hope everyone has had a wonderful last couple of days of the year. i’ve seen so much growth and love for this project over the past couple of months so as a gift to all of you, i’ve written a new year’s eve special that will release publicly january 7, 2023 (before noon EST). it is already up for those on the midnight tier on patreon and will be released sometime on sunday for the twilight tier. only those in those tiers will have access to page until the story is released for the public. 

WHAT TO EXPECT.

soft moments with each of the ros, platonic and romantic available

a chance to see what the gang is up to outside of chaotic caine business

less bickering between A and Blane than usual (you won’t believe me until you see it i’m sure)

overall tooth-rotting fluff

thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me this year. it’s unimaginable how much support this story has gotten and the positive reception it’s received. never did i ever think something like this would be possible. i hope you enjoy the short when it comes out <33

“A moment of patience in a moment of anger prevents a thousand moments of regret.”

— Ali Ibn Abu Talib

We all know MC isn't the most unbiased narrator, so what was really going on in Golden Scorpion's mind when they saw their former commander almost kill Overseer from behind bars? How'd they feel when they couldn't get MC to let go right away?

Ooh, okay. So I love this scene a lot and I need to set up the variations + reasoning for those before getting to the core of the question!

There are two versions of the prison scene-- one with hardened!Trystan and one with softened!Trystan. In the first version, Trystan is the one antagonizing MC, and as such, if you choose to lunge out and attack someone, you end up attacking Trystan themself. Otherwise, if you're playing with a softened!Trystan, The Overseer is the one antagonizing MC and, as a result, is the one who is grabbed.

Another fun fact is that in the hardened version, Trystan is just as strong as MC is and has chance of completely overpowering them. If they're physically stronger, they'll nearly break MC's arm again. Otherwise, if they lose, they goad MC into hurting them more... mostly b/c they're not scared. They're angry and unhinged-- laughing and smiling as MC threatens to break their neck in half.

In the softened version, however, Trystan has no chance of overpowering MC. It doesn't have to do with the physical part of it-- both Trystan's are just as strong as the other-- but the mental part. Trystan is scared of MC in that scene. They're watching someone they looked up to snap a second time-- though this one is undeniably on purpose and intentional.

You look at Trystan. They look at you. There's no emotions to be found other than a child-like confusion in their eyes. The longer you look at them, the more they begin to look like a child. A kid.

To Trystan, it's upsetting to see The Commander like this-- to see how far they've fallen. It's not pity but genuine distress, and the ever growing gut-feeling that they're the MC's enemy now.

And... well, they've seen what happens to The Commander's enemies.

The Universe's Brightest Lights Have Some Dark Origins

Did you know some of the brightest sources of light in the sky come from black holes in the centers of galaxies? It sounds a little contradictory, but it’s true! They may not look bright to our eyes, but satellites have spotted oodles of them across the universe. 

One of those satellites is our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi has found thousands of these kinds of galaxies in the 10 years it’s been operating, and there are many more out there!

Black holes are regions of space that have so much gravity that nothing - not light, not particles, nada - can escape. Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers - these are black holes that are hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of our sun - but active galactic nuclei (also called “AGN” for short, or just “active galaxies”) are surrounded by gas and dust that’s constantly falling into the black hole. As the gas and dust fall, they start to spin and form a disk. Because of the friction and other forces at work, the spinning disk starts to heat up.

The disk’s heat gets emitted as light - but not just wavelengths of it that we can see with our eyes. We see light from AGN across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the more familiar radio and optical waves through to the more exotic X-rays and gamma rays, which we need special telescopes to spot.

About one in 10 AGN beam out jets of energetic particles, which are traveling almost as fast as light. Scientists are studying these jets to try to understand how black holes - which pull everything in with their huge amounts of gravity - somehow provide the energy needed to propel the particles in these jets.

Many of the ways we tell one type of AGN from another depend on how they’re oriented from our point of view. With radio galaxies, for example, we see the jets from the side as they’re beaming vast amounts of energy into space. Then there’s blazars, which are a type of AGN that have a jet that is pointed almost directly at Earth, which makes the AGN particularly bright.  

Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has been searching the sky for gamma ray sources for 10 years. More than half (57%) of the sources it has found have been blazars. Gamma rays are useful because they can tell us a lot about how particles accelerate and how they interact with their environment.

So why do we care about AGN? We know that some AGN formed early in the history of the universe. With their enormous power, they almost certainly affected how the universe changed over time. By discovering how AGN work, we can understand better how the universe came to be the way it is now.

Fermi’s helped us learn a lot about the gamma-ray universe over the last 10 years. Learn more about Fermi and how we’re celebrating its accomplishments all year.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

I am back, and with something to say "welcome back" -- a Bestiary of Sinners and Saints, volume 1, now available for download right here (click!)

I am glad to have taken that break, I needed it. I still may not be as active, as I have two major exams coming up, and defense of my BA thesis, but I'll try to answer a few asks here and there, and give you all some content.

I've been working more on the chapters in this time I took away, and I'm happy to say that Chapter 2 for Sinners and Saints is going amazing so far (1/10 is done), and Chapter 1 for The Numbers Game is 1/3 done (both coding and writing).

So, stay safe, and enjoy! <3

Christmas in Wayhaven.

It’s magical.

…Quite literally.

--

Christmas has come to Wayhaven, and you and Unit Bravo have been thrown into another mystery with a little more sparkle than usual!

Upside-down Christmas trees, toys springing to life, and an army of waddling plastic Santas are just some of the magical festive pranks being cast on townsfolk and places alike.

To find whoever is casting these supernatural antics, you and the team of vampires are sent chasing around town in search of the merry Christmas culprit before magic is revealed to everyone in Wayhaven.

But the festive spirit brings with it a dreamy air that makes all too easy to get distracted by just how romantic Christmas can be with a vampire at your side…

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Enjoy this short, novella-style interactive side-story set within the world of Wayhaven, where you are the main character! It’s a Christmas tale filled with cozy festive fun and plenty of fluffy romantic moments.

(This game can be played as a Stand-Alone story away from the main series of The Wayhaven Chronicles. But it should be noted that it does involve characters and relationships that have developed already during the main games, but extra explanation is provided throughout where needed to help you enjoy it to the fullest!)

Stock Media provided by ikoliks / Pond5

PLAY CHAPTER ONE HERE

Meet all of the ROs, investigate a crime scene, chase a murderer!

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I wanted to post the chapter, since it's been a while -- minor things may change as I'm still applying the feedback from my amazing beta testers.

also, here's explained how to turn off the music/noises, since I have not found a way to make that an option in twine