Tell me about yourself:

I'm the creator of Silverstone the Morning After & Silverstone. I usually make music and play video games in my free time. 

What do you like to play?

RPGS or side scrolling action games. Hollow Knight  is one of my favorite games. The Final Fantasy series as well.

             

What is your Fursona?

My fursona is a cat. Specifically, a Bengal cat. 

Those are supposed to be difficult ones to have as a pet in the real world, I think.

I guess I chose the wrong one, as I can see they only have a single brain cell.

Now I believe that’s the dominion of orange cats, haha. What does having a fursona mean to you?

For me, it’s an extension of self, that allows you to sort of be more of yourself than you are in real life. When you go out into a store you have to put on a persona that’s more acceptable, when you talk online with your fursona you can be yourself and talk like you want to.

So your fursona is more yourself than the flesh self?

I would say the “flesh self” for lack of a better word, is more quiet compared to when I talk online with my Fursona.

Why?

Anxiety.

I guess I’m wondering… how is fursona specifically sidestepping the anxiety as opposed to not being physically present.

I don’t really know. Creates more of an air of confidence. Sometimes you’re looking at other’s fursonas as well, so it’s less about the human/flesh interaction and more about a personality interaction.

I see, interesting.

That was a good quick primer on you, so now something a little more spicy. What is your hear me out?

I’ve seen him mentioned before,  but not enough acknowledgement for Vysache from Shangrila Frontier. He's a magical yakuza bunny.

I wonder if that’s less of the appearance and more the source material not being explicitly furry. One of those things with furry nods that only catches the most devoted anime stans and thereby goes under the radar otherwise.

I can definitely see that. 

But I can see the appeal. Which I guess makes him less of a hear me out?

Whoops!

In line of the community talk: Would you say you’re an active member of the Furry community? If so, what do you get from your engagement with them? And how do you engage? 

I would say I’m pretty active. I like and retweet a lot of art on the personal accounts. Of course I try to talk to other furry developers as well. I’ve been around in the fandom for 15 years so it's hard to say I’ve not been active.

What did being part of it mean 15 years ago?

I’ve been a furry since 2009. I talked, drew, and interacted with other furrys.

I was thinking back— how old are you?

I’m 29, turning 30 next September. (Editorial note: this interview took place prior to then!)

I was thinking back to —so that was when you were 15?

When I was 14.

When I was 14, I was doing some play by post RP stuff on forums for anime fandoms, and I remember being frustrated with everyone.

Yeah, I was rping with other people on DeviantArt and Fur Affinity. Not the best choice to be honest.

Well, what’s youth if not for making poor choices?

Final question in your personal sphere, so to speak. What’s your furry hot take? I want this to be hotter than your hear me out!

It might not be the spiciest, but as someone that worked in the entertainment industry, fursuits are not too expensive. As someone that’s done budgeting and stuff like that, it takes a hell of a lot to make a fursuit. I could think of another if it’s not too spicy—

I don’t know. I’m not too invested in Fursuits personally. I find them aesthetically not pleasing for the most part.

That’s completely fair. They’re very cartoony.

They’re kinda uncanny valley for me.

Oh yeah, that’s something I see a lot. I think what they’ve been doing for digital effects recently has been cool though.

Maybe that would be spicy for the people that feel called out.

Maybe!

I think that gives my limited readers a good sense of you, as much as one can gather from these little bite-sized portions of your thoughts. Now let’s get into your work, and your feelings on FVNs overall. 

As you noted, you have two works. One that you made for May Wolf 2024, Silverstone: The Morning After, which is a horror romance, to put it lightly. As the name says, it’s the morning after a hookupish situation, and then things can go nicely or not. That’s the very abridged summary, whereas Silverstone has just come out by the time of this release but not the interview, and that’s more of a horror tale with nods to Junji Itoand Stephen King

although it'll likely garner comparisons to Echo too. You can actually read these for more details, surprise.

What made you want to make a Furry Visual Novel? 

Weirdly, it wasn’t a visual novel that started it. I bought the early access version of World of Horror.

I have/know that!

I was displeased by that. I didn’t think It was the best game ever. My ex turned me onto The Smoke Room (editorial note: The last TSR build they played was 16 or 17 when it came out), and that clash of Junji Ito and Furry Vibes wanted me to make my own visual novel. The very early version of Silverstone started, which is very different from the final product. It took place in Japan, it had fewer routes, and personally I don’t think it would have been a good product.

Fair enough. What are the parts you hated about World of Horror?

I wasn’t really scared by anything. Some of the audio was too much. It was just an overall disappointment. I should probably replay it now that it’s properly out.

I don’t know if I'm ever truly scared of Junji Ito’s works, so it felt similar in vibe to me. 

There are some people that are like “this works”, and I can see that making sense.

There's a limited community that knows of the World or Horror so that was a funny connection for me.

What is your creative history? What got you started?

I have been creative since I was a child, but I’d say High School is when it really stepped up and I took filmmaking classes. I initially wanted to become a filmmaker, but I ended up dropping that when COVID hit. That’s around the time I was introduced more to video game development and visual novels.

I have a few old movie scripts that I don’t really like anymore.

Movies as a medium, at least, script-wise, are not a bad starting point for a visual novel. Script is like script, although calling them fully the same is a misnomer.

Yeah, especially with the descriptive narrative stuff. You don’t see that on film.

Ostensibly, you should not see that regularly in a visual novel either, but that’s my hot take perhaps.

Yeah you don’t want to overload the audience.

I briefly noted some of your inspirations earlier, but what are the other ones? 

The works of Stephen King, Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni is a major inspiration, the 70’s-90’s stuff that takes place in a small town. That isolation with just shitty people and supernatural incidents, stuff like that. Silent Hill, also a huge inspiration. That’s probably one of my favorite video games of all time to be honest. Denpa media is a huge inspiration as well.

Denpa?

What is that?

An aesthetic— radio waves, collective madness, otherworldly interventions, delusions of grandeur, societal collapse. Some more beginner friendly works are Serial Experiments Lain, Welcome to the NHK, You Me and Her and Satoshi Kon thrillers .

   

What do you hope people get from your work?

Mostly I hope they feel something from it. Even if they don’t really care for the story, I want them to have an emotive experience from it all. Thankfully, I’ve gotten that, I guess.

If we’re talking about an actual message, I’d say a lot of my works are looking forwards to the future instead of dwelling on the past. While we’re scared of the future, just looking at what was a happy time can distract us from the good that will happen.

Yeah, it's not good to linger in the past, I agree.

Nostalgia is a double edged sword.

And both are faced at the looker.

Exactly!

What’s next for you, which is funny to say as you’ve just released this?

Right now we’re focusing on Silverstone, me and my team. That will take a while. Six builds per route. Right now we have basically just the first build, which is right before the route split. I do have ideas for VNs after Silverstone, but I’ll keep that locked behind a box for now.

Fair enough, I like your early route splitting. Getting straight to the drama.

Yeah, I definitely wanted to build a world but at the same time, you kinda need to give people a sense as to what’s gonna happen as well.

That’s a brief look at your work— if they want more, they need to read it. Now I want to hear about your colleagues, so to speak, the industry. not your literal team haha.

What’s something you wish there were more of in FVNs?

To be honest, I don’t read as many FVNs as I probably should, but one thing I  have noticed is a sort of lack of intimacy in sex scenes. Most of the time it feels like it’s supposed to be titillating, whereas I prefer it when sex scenes feel more like an experience, a close experience between the characters, rather than just “this dick is so good”.

Yeah, some of that writing can get unintentionally comical, and that can take someone out unless they don’t really care about the words in the first place.

There’s one FVN that I really like, and when it got to the first sex scene, I was completely taken out because it was completely comical and out of character.

Say their names!

No!

Wow! Okay!

I will not tell!

Wowwwww!

So what makes you want to read an FVN then?

Most of the time it’s typically an interesting premise, so to say. Like I do like some of those isekai FVNs, but I usually like things that I’ve never really seen before.

So nothing!

There’s some creativity.

I like your diplomatic answer there.

What’s something you hate seeing in FVNs?

I really hate when stuff is just treated flippantly. There’ll be this important scene or plot point, and then it gets shoved to the side later on. I’m not gonna say that I’m—with The Morning After, I was kinda guilty with that, so I’m not innocent there either.

Yeah, we’re maybe most aware of our own issues that we see in others too.

I vibe with that. You could see that in most of my commentary for May Wolf 2024. I think I was more explicit about that in my thoughts than most.

Other people want to be more tame as a first time developer.

I don’t know if that’s a tame thing so much as a follow through thing.

What are your thoughts on some of the common gripes of the fandom?

I feel like a lot of those gripes are more complex than people realize. VNs never finishing or slow to update—that can be due to real life things, or team restructuring. Patreon stuff—I mean, people need to pay their team. That’s just something that’s going to happen. Too many routes? If it’s five routes, that’s not a huge issue. Ten routes? You need to slow down. Merch on game drop is the only one I feel like is definitely getting to be a problem recently because I feel like you need to wait a bit for that. I’m not gonna buy a shirt if there’s only one build out. For side stories? I see a lot of people saying it’s the creator getting bored, I don’t agree with that personally. It's just a very complex thing, and I feel like a lot of people treat it more black and white than it actually is.

Yeah, I didn’t agree with the side stories being derived from boredom. That’s so cynical a thought to note that someone’s bored of their story barely even into the depths of it.

It’s a very cynical take for sure.

And I don’t know. Some people like getting tattoos of stuff that only has one build. The look is right, therefore it goes on the body.

Oh god I didn’t know about the tattoos.

I don’t know how many there are, but that one contentious game did have someone get a tattoo with only like one build out . 

Oh dear.

All it takes for certain fans is a design they really like and thirst after, to be honest, and if anything, that speaks to me that merch on drop is a viable strategy if one has pretty enough character, to be honest.

Yeah, it’s definitely true.

That being said, no more negativity, for the moment. Let’s get positive. What are some of your favorite underground/niche FVN? We don’t need to hear the big names. We don’t need to hear Adastra (because everyone knows it already).

Trainwreck by Harmonius—that was a really good hybrid VN where it had puzzle elements like the nonary game series. Great character writing. I’ve been enjoying reading By Your Hands . It’s definitely more like a regular college setting, but I feel it does it more—I think it feels more serious than the other college VNs. To embarrass you, Love Games & Love Signs, D&D meet furry, that’s a great visual for sure. Definitely love the characters in that. (Editorial note: I did not bully Brick into saying this, although I am the creator of that work for full disclosure.). 

Recently got into Polar Night. Just the premise of paying to go on an expedition to find a missing vessel is really interesting. Usually don’t see that too much. Reminds me of “The Thing” with where it takes place. I’m gonna shout out some of my fellow May Wolf Contestants— One More Light.  I thought was a really dark visual novel, but it handled its writing really well and was one of my favorites from the Jam. One that’s very long but was a very good long one shot was A Rebound From MARS!—more people need to read that, a sci-fi romance that isn’t sort of an Isekai.

The classic reverse isekai sci-fi.

Yeah, it technically is reverse isekai.

Well thanks for the shoutout.  We’re approaching the end and I hope you’ve had a good time so far.

I really like this interview, yeah.

So what I want to know of all my guests— what is the meaning of life?

Eat write sleep repeat.

What’s something you wished I asked you about?

Maybe a little bit more about the actual creative process? We did talk about inspirations, but I like talking about the process, but I like talking about the process and programming.

What is your process then? You get to answer it!

Mostly it’s just thinking of an aesthetic, creating the outline and then writing the dialog. I’m particularly excited for people to see the first route, which is Mason’s. For that one I took a lot of inspiration from Junji Ito, but it has its own sort of spin. My artist definitely contributes to some suggestions in the writing process, so you’ll see some of their work in a little bit as well.

Alright then. Anything you’d like to plug? And where can we find you?

I don’t know if I have anything else. You can find me on itch.io  and Twitter , and Silverstone has its own twitter and Bluesky  as well.