Friday Update #43: All Bi Ourselves

So, you're alone on Saturday night, and you're bi, so you're all bi yourself?

Hey folks, CaptainCaption here.

This update will be about bisexuality and how I am exploring that with Zach, but first, I want to say that I am sorry for the radio silence for November. My life has been very stressful as of late, and as I said in the announcement of the fourth anniversary release (which you might have missed and I really need to just make stuff like this into separate posts so that people aren't missing it):

"Hi. I am probably going to be taking a mental health break update of sorts for November. I need to get artist design documents done, get my mental health treatment affairs in order, clean my goddamned bomb crater of a room, change out my old and dying iPhone 11 for a Pixel 8 since I want off the Apple ecosystem and I can use it to test Android features for re:Dreamer,I need to switch out the SSD on my desktop as it is dying, and probably upgrade my motherboard since it is falling apart, which also means that I need a new CPU since the socket I have for my good CPU isn't common anymore, and look into apartments again. There will still be work going on for this visual novel, likely stuff I am forgetting here, but it probably won't [sic] stuff you will see until later."

So, let's do a progress report:

• I got the two big artist design documents that I needed done (more on the other later, but one is a Britney cunnilingus scene whose NSFW design document you can check out here; the artist tackling this one is Myumi as I want to let him do HCGs; here's a NSFW sketch of what he's got so far and yes it does deviate from the camera angle and yes he needs to adjust it to better fit the size of the game window).
• I am still getting weekly therapy sessions, but there's a whole Gordian Knot to unravel or cut through before I can work on the deeper issues of my identity and the drama of my life just keeps piling up. It is helping, but it's not a good sign when your therapist says "wow" with any frequency.
• I tried to clean my room last Friday, but I pushed myself too hard at the tail end of pseudo-PMS that might have been because I forgot to take my antiandrogens for an entire week because I am an idiot. In my defense, I ran out of my prescription of bicalutamide and went back to my backup pills, but those somehow got shoved to the back of my pill shelf and I didn't realize I hadn't taken them until I knocked over another bottle and felt the one from Otokonoko Pharmacy (which I very much do not recommend purchasing from as they've had constant supply issues and have fucked me out of $150 with missing items). I am honestly mad at myself with this one, as I'm usually a rock star with remembering to take my medications in a timely manner as I have to with my corticobasal syndrome.
• I have gotten a Pixel 8, but it has a hardware issue with the screen and I am waiting on the RMA I started to fix it since the licensed tech shop I took it to said it was fine. I did test out re:Dreamer on it and made the user interface a bit more friendly for Android users, so that's happened at least.
• I got a Ryzen 9 7900X for a pretty decent price from a Cyber Monday deal (as my i9 9900K is starting to show its age and as I mentioned my motherboard is dying), but I'm waiting for Christmas to get further parts for a build I'll likely do in January.

But it's not just been personal stuff. I have done a lot of work on the visual novel, such as:

• A lot of typo fixes, which included hiring an editor (who wanted to work for free, but fuck that noise since this is a "professional" product and I have the money to pay people).
• Fixing the issues when loading a save that messes up the saved outfit (I am gonna blame myself for not checking Espeon's work).
• Fixing some of the "jank" of the sprite viewer, such as making Zoey's base outfit the fitted male uniform since it was kind of jarring to see her naked in the sprite viewer. I still need to standardize Zach and Zoey's sprite viewer pages, but that's not for this update.
• Giving Keisuke a flaccid penis, blushes, a wet layer of water droplets, and swim goggles on his face and forehead.
• Fixing up most of the Day 1 baths scenes with Keisuke to fit modern standards, including more polished art for the CGs and much less rambling writing.
• Some things behind the scenes with my workflow to make working on this game easier for the long run, such as Visual Studio Code hotkeys and code snippets, more intuitive Clip Studio Paint hotkeys and commands, and better project file organization.

I also polished up a few small bits in the fourth anniversary release, added a sort of "debriefing" in regards to the consequences of its canonicity, giving players the choice to make the even not canon and to not let it affect any of Samantha's dialogue, added those small variant lines here and there as I respond to her through Author's Notes, making readers need to reach a placeholder "end of content" screen at least once to unlock the prompt for it at the start of the game (which can be turned off), and for it to be in the extras menu on the title screen. That writing was very important to me, but I can understand if it doesn't really fit the rest of the visual novel and if you want to never think about it again.

​

Now, I could elaborate on the tragic situation of my life, with the sadness, rage, bitterness, and all those powerful emotions I feel from everything happening to me and around me, but no, not today. I just did that with the fourth wall break in the fourth anniversary release, a lot of you are probably tired about how much I talk about that, and a few of you have been a bit parasocial about how you've treated me in a way that makes me really uncomfortable. re:Dreamer is an extremely important project to me, and while I know this is slightly hypocritical to say when I just self-inserted "myself" into re:Dreamer in an elaborate fanfiction/canon event, but I think a larger degree of separation from the writer and the writing than I have had in the past is needed.

Instead of that depressing subject, let's talk about how I figured out I was bisexual and why that's even more relevant to Zach.

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Sex hormones are... interesting. They're also very complicated and there are multiple fields of medical science dedicated to attempting to understand them.

I'll be keeping things relatively simplified, but somewhere in your genes is the majority of the information for how your body exists as the opposite sex from the one you were born with. This is true for every single person. Even intersex people exist as having aspects of one sex while existing as the other and don't exist outside the binary of the sexes (so no, sex isn't bimodal; this is something I've discussed with those who would know).

It is surprisingly uncommon knowledge that the few milligrams of the male and female sex hormones your body naturally makes (or has shoved into it through hormone replacement therapy) to reach male hormone levels or female hormone levels doesn't change your body itself, but rather send information to your body for it to work in a way matching the sex of those hormones. That genetic expression of being male or female is encoded into your DNA, which is why hormone replacement therapy works. That is also why, once a certain optimal threshold has been reached, additional hormones won't really increase or decrease your body's rate and/or amount of feminization or masculation.

For instance, I am on what is considered a low dose of female hormone replacement therapy at only 4 milligrams of estrogen and 50 milligrams of bicalutamide (an antiandrogen which blocks testosterone receptors) a day, yet I have gotten very noticeable results in less than 9 months that I've seen trans women envy for themselves with openly expressed jealousy. I've been called a genetic freak, which, while greatly upsetting as my genetics are something I have no control over, is kind of true.

Those "rigged genetics" are the number one reason my body responded so, well, not "well" but "strongly," to HRT. There are (hypothetical) ancillary reasons for why HRT hit me so hard, such as (hypothetically) my liver being strained from my other medications and being unable to filter out the female hormones in my body (thereby keeping them in my system longer much like how SSRIs "recycle" serotonin to make less of it work more), (hypothetically) estrogen absorbing more easily because of how my medications have a side effect of increasing how readily I absorb substances (for instance, I get plastered on a single beer when I used to be able to drink most of a fifth of tequila without too many issues; HRT has made me even more of a lightweight), (hypothetically) my very high baseline testosterone level allowing for more female sex hormones to exist alongside them once my testosterone receptors (but not my production) decreased, and my unique neurochemistry doing god knows what to this.

My own experiences with female hormones and how I can't safely stop taking them because I played with fire and they changed my neurochemistry too much were tragic and upsetting. The revelation that I had made a choice I couldn't undo nearly destroyed me, and I have some strong opinions on HRT.

For now, I'll just put a pin in a whole separate long rant from me for a later date about the worrying way I've seen some trans spaces treat whether or not someone is on hormones as the determining factor of them being "truly" trans, how some people treat hormones with this reverence and humor themselves as being more informed that endocrinologists based on the sketchy pseudoscientific data of personal anecdotes while also treating them as recreational drugs, how some trans people co-opt a life-altering decision into fueling a sexual lifestyle (the amount of times I've seen someone try to "recruit" men into a transbian polycule is sickening), how some trans people push hormones as an easy fix on people who aren't properly informed as a toxic way to live vicariously through their results, how there's this urgency place on trans people to start hormone replacement therapy when someone is young or else they won't get "good" results instilled by those who regret that they didn't start HRT as a minor (which honestly isn't backed up by the science; I'm 30 and less than 9 months into HRT and I've got noticeable hip rotation and other traits I've seen people say can't be gotten after 26 due to pelvic bones fusing, but that hip rotation is caused by ligaments more than anything), how catastrophic unmonitored DIY can be, and how informed consent often isn't sufficient when a desperate person in that situation who wants hormones and has been told they need them by those not qualified to say that they do can and often will say whatever is necessary to get them.

As I said, I have got strong opinions on this after seeing one of the ugliest sides of the trans community, but that's not the topic for this Friday Update.

​

Anyways, segueing from "hormones" to the subject matter... one of the least fun parts of HRT for me has been premenstrual syndrome, more commonly known as PMS. Yes, I get it even if don't menstruate as I lack a female reproductive system, although some women have accused me of being intersex to justify why I got results they envied (which is a really toxic accusation and some next-level version of that "transvestigation" that is so rightfully decried by trans people).

So, the fact that I get PMS without a female reproductive system asks interesting questions.

Logically, I first thought it had a psychosomatic link as that's the easiest explanation, but it's been on a (fairly) consistent schedule, I experience it with symptoms intense enough to feel genuine, and I've had a wide range of symptoms closely matching the real experience, many of which I was unaware of.

Raised as a male, I was kind of squeamish about the topic (like almost every guy on the planet), but even I knew that PMS came with cramps, mood swings, and cravings. But then when I started to get those cramps, mood swings, and cravings, I also got back pain, breast sensitivity, hip sensitivity, headaches, general aches, bloating, gassiness, fatigue, trouble sleeping, brain fog, greater irritability, and arousal dips and spikes (more on the last of these later).

If I am able to eliminate a truly somatoform disorder (which seems logical as getting a type of PMS on feminizing HRT isn't unique or even all that uncommon and we can't all be crazy in the same way), the questions are now about why that happens.

With the full disclosure that I am out of practice reading medical journals since my days of taking psychology courses in college and the early days of researching my neurodegenerative disorder to discuss plans for treatment with my doctors and that I am not a doctor myself, intersex people and cis women who have had full hysterectomies experience symptoms of PMS. It's a partial list of these symptoms, of course, as the reproductive cycle that human females have (which is rather unique for mammals) doesn't factor into this.

God, I feel like a space alien referring to my fellow humans (which I am definitely one of) in abstract terms like that...

​

My current assumption is that the same genetic information in my cells to make my body exist as the opposite sex than I was born with and that responded so strongly to feminizing HRT also has the information for my body to participate in that female reproductive cycle. My cells are dumb (especially my neurons; this is a clever double joke about my neurological system falling apart and me being dumb), so regardless of whether or not some parts are missing, they have the information to do the best they can to match the experience of the female reproductive cycle, and I get something very close to PMS.

While some trans women find this "pseudo-PMS" to be a validating experience, I have a strong negative opinion about it. For me, it's not a validating experience, but it is a painful reminder that what I'm experiencing is pain without use or benefit. The way I see it, nature calls every 25 or so days, my body answers on speaker, and I'm in the room I can't leave and having to listen to the loud conversation that isn't relevant to me as I get a headache.

I've been making this face for the past hour as I have that pseudo-PMS going on right now and am going to bed early (which is why this Friday Update skipped being on Friday). Yay me, as usual...

​

One of the crazy facts of nature that stuck with me is that humans have a 60% identical genetic overlap with something like a banana. This is for the general housekeeping functions, such as DNA replication, controlling the cell cycle, and helping cells divide. But humans are not bananas (nor are we gorillas, who we share a 96% DNA overlap; chimpanzees are our closest relatives at 98% or more DNA overlap). Humans need a mate of the opposite sex to reproduce, and we do not reproduce asexually like bananas; in fact, cultivated bananas are seedless and planted from cut branches.

Life desires to propagate itself. Even those seedless banana trees grow their fruit without knowing they aren't able to reproduce. But humans are far more complex organisms than bananas, and we've managed to get to where we are today as the dominant species on our planet by overcoming much of those baser instincts nature gives us. We've not just overcome nature, but commanded it to our will, and when it suits us, we bend it.

Those banana trees we've bred so laboriously to stray from their natural roots in their ecosystems to be cultivated on plantations to make palatable fruits fit for human consumption will not survive without us planting them. A cultivated commercial banana tree will try to reproduce on its own, but it can't. It doesn't get a choice in either aspect as it has to rely on humans.

Humans (usually) have the ability to reproduce, and we also (usually) get the choice to do so. Sometimes we choose not to reproduce, and there are a myriad of reasons for making that choice; for instance, a baby is a huge investment, and for humans, one that is greater for the mother than the father. And some of us are interested in the same sex where reproduction isn't possible (i.e., lesbians).

Now, that's awfully inconvenient for us as a species. What good is that fairly unique female reproductive cycle human females have without a desire to procreate with the opposite sex? Wouldn't it be convenient if the female reproductive cycle could overcome a woman's conscious resistance to having sex with a man at those moments where the chances of conception are the strongest, like ovulation?

Well, that's literally what happens, and very curiously, that's what happened to me earlier this month during pseudo-PMS. I don't have a female reproductive system, but when nature called, my body held the phone up to my head, and I listened and tried my best to obey.

First of all, I really like women, because seriously, have you seen how fucking pretty they are?

I've literally triggered gender identity shifts from masculinity to femininity just by saying "I might be a man, but I am a lesbian for this anime girl." Yes, there's a weird component to my genderfluid "fluid" of how part of my gender is intermixed with my sexual arousal, but it's hard to pin down.
Also, I literally just triggered that right now looking at that screenshot from the fourth anniversary side route, but I'm too disoriented to really think further about it. I'll pass that ball to you, future me!

I am self-aware enough to know that I am slightly bisexuality in some vague aspect, but I never considered it an important factor to explore. Whatever latent attraction to men exists is a tiny shadow to how much I like women.

Unironically, my love of gender bender being as strong as it is must be the most straight thing possible, because I am attracted to that barrier between the sexes being broken and someone being shoved from masculinity to femininity. So, it's just a love of women, so pay no mind that I self-inserted into those genderbent women (and maybe even envied them), or that I now wound up in a very stupid twisted monkey's paw wish of that gender bending event (I never imagined my life's calling would end up with me being the "gender bender" to this degree like I'm a really weird part of the Avatar franchise), or that a lot of those gender bender stories see a former man attracted to a man and embracing sexual femininity by "embracing" sexual masculinity in sex (some might call it comphet; I call it comphot), or even that my gender frequently fluctuates in confusing and disorienting experiences that leave the definition of "straight attraction" open to ambiguity.

Sure, that's a cope (much like how I've probably been coping with being genderfluid since puberty began by finding gender bender porn and medicating myself without realizing it), but in a moment which I am calling "the first baby fever incident," whatever my sexual attractions truly are got overwritten.

I went from being "dysphoric" as a woman with pseudo-PMS in some vague sense I couldn't pin down to realizing what was happening and drowning in lust and sexual desire.

I wanted to get pregnant. I needed to get pregnant. I needed it more than anything I have ever needed in my fucking life, and, as I typed that night, "the thought of some guy impregnating me (was) turning me on so much I can’t think of anything else."

There are some fucking choice lines from that night, as my stupid idiot self didn't just close Discord and decided to overshare the experience (for science, of course), like: "Holy shit, I’ve got this fucking massive dopey smile on my face imagining myself wrapping my arms around some guy’s neck and kissing him and him fucking me against a bed as I wrap my legs around his back as he plows into me."

I was thankfully feminine at that moment, but I went from being a fucking useless/disaster lesbian (on technicality) to being straight as an arrow (on technicality) in 30 seconds. My thighs clenched down so hard it hurt, my heart pumped like a drum, I felt a huge surge in arousal, and had one of the most intense experiences of my life and would have done anything in that exact moment to have that fantasy become real. Sold my soul, killed people, paid a trillion dollars... doesn't matter. It was such a primal need that everything else didn't matter. Logically, I knew how hard of a pivot that was, but I didn't care. It was a complete override to every other desire I had. I tried to think of myself being attracted to women a few times during this, but that love of the female form I am able to gush about for hours got shoved hard to the side as my body made me want male intimacy so much more.

Male attraction finally clicked, and it was kind of like stepping out of Plato's cave and seeing a whole new world I had only seen shadows of.

Sure, I don't feel that male attraction now as I think it's tied to my hormones anyways, but it is there, lurking under the surface. Attempting to explore it outside of PMS weirded me out (but it didn't disgust me) so I quickly gave up, and women are simply just too hot for me to give it further effort in the meantime.

Well, uh, anyways... some things happened that night that are too embarrassing to share here, even for an oversharing blabbermouth like me, but it was such a powerful experience that it made me re-question my sexuality, because yeah, this does technically make me bisexual.

I do think in heterosexual binaries about relationships and attractions, so maybe there was a psychosomatic vibe shift of "I am female I am therefor attracted to males" when I got really turned on from whatever that fucking stuff was (which definitely wasn't ovulation, as I don't have ovaries, but it's really hard to know what biology is involved even if it's probably not the most important to know the precise mechanism). But after talking about this, some very lesbian trans women have told me they have had similar experiences and I've even heard ovulation can override the sexual preferences of cis lesbians.

Wild... but let's wrap back to re:Dreamer and why I did this whole preamble about bisexuality.

​

As my sister has said once or twice, "bisexual girls and golden retriever boys were made for each other." After saying that again after I told her about the visual novel (loosely "I write an adult story in a video game that thoroughly talks about gender and our parents can never know"), I then told her the loose plot of one of the routes of that game I make is a "girl" realizing she has a crush on her himbo best friend, and she literally clapped and said, "Yay! I love himbos!"

By the way... have you figured out that Zach is bi? Because Zach sure hasn't!

Keisuke is Zach's best friend and the two have known each other since they were toddlers, but the sheer deference Zach has for Keisuke makes a lot more sense when you piece together that Zach has got a crush on his best friend. It's not even much of a spoiler to say that given how (even in this "early" part of the visual novel) Zach has put Keisuke on a pedestal to look up to for most of his life, frequently complimented Keisuke's personality, frequently complimented Keisuke's looks, easily accept Zoey's cover story as Keisuke's "girlfriend" and even leaned into it, thought about having sex with Keisuke when he was trying to convince himself that he wasn't going to masturbate in Keisuke's dorm room while he was away, kissed Keisuke while drunk, and even acted like a bit of a possessive yandere.

​

(The following has some slight spoilers, but this is more stuff that would appear in a world information entry than as something directly stated by Zach or Keisuke.)

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On that last point specifically, when Keisuke started his chivalrous rescuing of damsels in distress in middle school, Zach got a bit jealous about it, since Keisuke spent more time rescuing women and less time rescuing Zach from bullies like he'd done for most of elementary school (even if Zach often escalated things just to be protected by Keisuke). The most notable and disastrous example of this was with the school baseball team Zach and Keisuke were on in middle school.

Zach didn't end up with anything close to his best friend's athleticism, but he tried hard to get good at baseball and hated himself for lacking the talent he wanted. It was the first time Zach had ever truly applied himself to something and failed despite all his best efforts, and it was a heartbreaking moment to realize that his best friend was eclipsing him in baseball. Zach knew that Keisuke tried hard to get good at baseball, but it upset Zach that he couldn't just try even harder and keep up.

Still, Zach didn't give up as stubbornness is one of his key attributes as a person, but he had a bad attitude with the rest of the baseball team because he didn't react well when they tried to move him away from the more important role of third baseman (complimenting Keisuke at shortstop) to the right fielder, as that's a position with a reputation as being for unathletic players due to right-handed batters hitting the ball to the left far more often (and rarely even to the outfield in little league).

The way Zach protested this was by sucking up to Keisuke and getting him to defend him, but that didn't win him any favors with the rest of the team. He was viewed as Keisuke's sycophantic lackey, and they wanted to knock him down a peg.

After one too many fielding errors from Zach and one that they blamed for costing them a game, the players convinced the coach that Zach wasn't fit for an important infielder role, and he was demoted to right field despite Keisuke's objections.

This was humiliating enough for Zach, but because of his poor reputation with the rest of the team, he was asked to throw the ball to third base from his new position and failed the trial of his arm strength like his team knew he would and was incessantly mocked for "throwing like a girl," giving Zach one of his strongest trigger phrases.

Keisuke tried to stick up for Zach and get him back to an infielder role, but Zach saw the writing on the wall. He couldn't stand the further humiliation of Keisuke sticking his neck out for him just to carry dead weight that hurt the team, and he became an inactive player charged with maintaining the equipment, hating how he was little more than a glorified batboy not even trusted enough to be the pitch hitter as a designated bunter but staying on the team just so he could be around Keisuke in the dugout.

The embarrassment, anger, and frustration of his emasculation quickly led Zach to stumbling upon his first gender bender doujin on the family computer. He was at first filled with a slightly sadistic glee as he imagined someone who wasn't him being humiliated and stripped of his masculinity by being turned into a woman, but as he consumed more of that genre of porn, he started to realize he had begun self-inserting as the girl in the porn and lost sight of the revenge fantasies that had made him find the genre in the first place as another one developed.

Zach never put much thought into his sexuality, as he's always assumed he was straight just because he liked women in porn (even if he was self-inserting as them in what were frequently heterosexual situations), but ever the romantic at heart, he's had a vague fantasy rattling around in the back of his head for years of some man (who was masculine in the ways Zach couldn't be) standing up for Zach (after he got turned into a woman) with a favor so massive that Zach would have no possible way to ever truly repay him... except for offering himself to his savior. Sure, Keisuke standing up for Zach and protecting him hadn't been enough for him to stay on the baseball team, but if Zach had gotten turned into one of those damsels in distress that Keisuke seemed to care more about than his best friend and that Zach was so jealous of, and if Zach had to repay Keisuke for protecting him not just now but for his entire childhood, there wouldn't have been a problem, right? In a way, Zach seeking out Keisuke after stumbling upon re:Dreamer was a way for Zach to live out this vague fantasy, but that alone wouldn't have been enough for him to be markedly accepting of things between him and Keisuke becoming this sexual this soon. Zach needs to actually be attracted to Keisuke.

As you've seen, Zach is very good at compartmentalizing things and repressing them, and it took a life-changing event of finding himself in a woman's body to even slightly open that tightly-closed box of thoughts that make him ashamed. I feel kind of weird saying this, but Zach is such a victim of masculine idolization that he would be a lot more okay thinking of herself as a bisexual woman named Zoey who has a crush on her best friend that's the exception to her not being attracted to men than as a bisexual man named Zach who has a crush on his best friend. It's him leaning into that "role" of Zoey without instantly burying those uncomfortable thoughts that makes Zach realize how he has feelings for Keisuke regardless of her having a role, which might come with a further revelation of what other desires Zach was repressing (or accepting herself as Zoey because she's terrified that not doing so and continuing to be a man means giving up her romantic feelings for Keisuke as she won't be loved back).

For Keisuke's route, that's a rather tidy way to deal with the "Zach has been a repressed trans woman from the start" plot point that I'm now starting to realize doesn't pan out and is a way to make this game uncomfortable for readers who aren't comfortable with feeling like their story was rigged from the start to end with that conclusion despite their C.H.E.A.T.S. stats and choices. Even in Britney's route, I feel that if the player has the stats and choices to justify it, Zoey should be able to sit Britney down a year or so into the epilogue long after the opportunity to change back has passed and tell their girlfriend that they're more comfortable identifying as non-binary than as a she/her trans woman and that they (Britney and Zoey) jumped the gun explaining Zach and Zoey being the same person with Zoey being a trans woman rather than something like being intersex or even attempting to keep that line of continuity between those two periods of Zoey's life (or "Z's life," as they might want to identify with a more neutral name).

I know that's going to annoy some transbians who want that perfect indisputable reputation, but this protagonist should really fit the player (as much as possible) and this is meant to be a visual novel for a wider group of people than just "trans female lesbians." Speaking of that... let me talk about what I'm doing for Keisuke's route and further exacerbate the page's dropping revenue (we were close to $4,000 a month back in July this year, and now we're just over $3,000 a month)!

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(The following has some slight spoilers for upcoming content in the near future with Keisuke's route.)

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As I've mentioned, the update for this upcoming version of the game will cover fixing the Day 1 baths scene with better writing, more fitting sprites, and better CGs. I was recently watching someone read re:Dreamer in a voice call in its entirety, and there's such a noticeable drop in quality between the revised Keisuke writing and the baths scene that I winced and filled with embarrassment. Sure, it's a good sign that I've improved as a writer when my old writing makes me cringe, but at the same time, I am on a clock with my life and can't revise every little bit of content when there's so much to write in the future.

That being said, that baths stuff is some very sloppy writing, and it has earned being fixed. Part of that is revising my writing, but another part of that was commissioning TiltSHIFT back in August for edits to the HCG set of the scene(s) we commissioned from him over 3 years ago, correcting things such as Zoey's inconsistent breast size, adding proper wet layers to the bodies, adjusting the shading on Keisuke's arms, and overall just making them look better to match the current quality higher of the rest of TiltSHIFT's art.

I wish I could simply share the edited art for it here in this post but haha, Patreon TOS says that I can't embed NSFW art on public posts! I'll instead link a NSFW example of what expanding just one of the HCGs with the new faces and arm positions that I've made lets me do, with the comment on each image describing the idea.

Haha, well fuck you too, imgur! Here they are on a separate post on Patreon which is unfortunately behind a paywall. 

I am excited to make these edits, and it's an important moment as it's the first time Zach has gone out of his way to give pleasure to someone else (and not just receive it like he did back in Keisuke's dorm room earlier that night). Zach's going to have a lot of those small moments of exploring his sexuality with Keisuke over the next two months (until the hammer drops just before his 21st birthday and everything falls into place with why he's been so eagerly doing that so early into their relationship turning into a mutual "friends with benefits" with the cover story of Zoey being Keisuke's girlfriend).

One of these key moments will be revisions to the Day 3 party on Sunday night where Zoey gets drunk and Ai gives her a re:Dreamer quest for points to kiss Keisuke. That party scene needs some fat trimmed, but the writing there is largely solid (albeit with too much branching). I'd need to focus on what that night looks like before I more properly explain the plans for revising it, but I'm definitely leaving the talk in the basement with the girls and Zoey finding Keisuke upstairs and meeting the rest of his swim team as part of that.

Another one of those key moments is the one that is right after the current end of the content to Keisuke's route, which is Zach and Keisuke exercising in a smaller pool Keisuke has rented out for two hours of private use.

TiltSHIFT is currently working on the HCGs for that, which you can check out in this NSFW design document. I'm also linking that document as it better explains the context of the scene:

Keisuke is trying to create a workout regimen for his friend. Jogging didn’t work as that’s much harder for women with large chests, so they moved on to a second plan for exercise: swimming.

Since Keisuke is a member of the swim team, he can reserve a time slot at a smaller indoor swimming pool on campus for private use (25 x 13.72 meters/82 x 45 feet and 1.22 meters/4 feet deep). He does a lap to demonstrate the general technique (and to show off) as his friend watches from the back corner of the room.

As he gets out of the pool, he shoots Zoey a confident and slightly smug grin right before boasting about how fast his swimming was.

She sees her best friend get out of the pool, and despite not (really) being attracted to men and thinking she’s exclusively attracted to women, thinks, "Oh no, he’s hot!" and she becomes a flustered mess who keeps sneaking glances at her friend for the rest of the exercise session, which reduces her performance.

After Keisuke grabs her as she starts to sink on a lap, she slaps his arm away and huddles over the side of the pool and admits that she’s too turned on to concentrate, which leads to them having sex in the swimming pool.

TiltSHIFT is still working on the HCGs and is only in the rough sketch phase as there was some back-and-forth with making sure the camera angles and positions would work that took a bit to sort out; thus, I only have two things from it so far. Both are NSFW and can't be embedded in this post, but I will link to the first and to the second.

This scene is pivotal as one of the moments building to Zach realizing he's bisexual and has a crush on Keisuke, as Zach can't deny that he felt strong sexual attraction toward the male form during that sex. But when Zach brings that up to Keisuke out of embarrassment, Keisuke's suggestion about how Zach might have gotten his sexual preferences widened to be a better re:Dreamer player lets Zach use that as a convenient excuse to justify what he felt without further thinking (alongside some bioessentialism excuse he comes up with himself). But, y'know... Zach would prefer if he and Keisuke face each other during sex from now on, just because it's, uh, more comfortable!

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Another moment will be during the Halloween night party at the same frat house as the one from the Day 3 party.

Keisuke's outfit is something very low effort, like animal ears and maybe a tail, and Zach attends in a Playboy bunny outfit which Keisuke got upsold into getting when he got the animal ears headband for his costume from something like Spirit Halloween.

Zach has a unique re:Dreamer quest for Halloween for each route, but it's a mental change related to his costume. In Keisuke's route, Zach's mental transformation imbues a sultry and confident vibe like those mature women that Zoey knows Keisuke likes, but over the course of the party her attitude shifts to being needy and clingy, and eventually she consumed with baby fever and thoughts of getting knocked up from getting the phrase "breed like rabbits" stuck in her head and she enters what is pretty much estrus.

Source: bacius on pixiv (and translated on Danbooru).

When she drags Keisuke off to an unoccupied room to fuck (and breed), she literally smacks a condom out of Keisuke's hand and leg locks him to keep him inside as she moans about how much she wants to get impregnated and knocked up and have Keisuke's kid and be a mom. She wants it, no, needs it more than she's ever needed anything, and she's not ashamed of expressing that she needs that with Keisuke while straddling him in bliss.

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Zach will of course utterly mortified when the transformation wears off at midnight, but he thankfully doesn't need to wait long to learn that he didn't get pregnant as his first period is the very next day (which also provides a needed distraction for Zach from worrying about how he acted and Keisuke having to come over to Zach's dorm to take care of him clears the air between them).

But despite how risky that Halloween sex was and how much Zach winces when he thinks of how he acted that night, there will be a lot of good in that experience, as Zach learns from that it's okay to be aggressive with initiating sex even if he's not the most confident being aggressive during it, and Keisuke wasn't even that weirded out from his best friend gushing about how much he needed at least three kids with him. All of that (and especially the way Keisuke cared for him when he was sick with PMS) really makes Zach see Keisuke in another light, and to his surprise, he realizes he wouldn't mind seeing more of Keisuke like that.

Some might call it comphet; I call it romantic. After all, Zach/Zoey is bisexual, and Keisuke is themed after a golden retriever...

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I wish I could give a definitive date for when the next update is out. I'm not biting off more than I can chew for a single release with fixing that baths sex scene, but the art has been a bit complicated and it involves a fairly large rewrite even if the rambling preamble will be shorter. I can promise it'll be out by the end of the month, but things like a Christmas party, gifts shopping, and the like might bring up unexpected delays.

But until then, adios! Or... feliz navidad?

Either way, happy holidays!