Our Life: Now & Forever - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

OLNF Week Day 1: Soulmates !!

The red string of fate has a special place in my heart because it’s one of the first tropes I came across when I started reading fanfics years ago. I was brainstorming possible ideas for soulmates and then it hit me soooo yeah :3

ugh, they’re so cute it makes me ill </3

@olnfweek2024

SOBBING AND CRYING, my dear friend @naraspan and I did an art trade and they drew this LOVELY ART OF TAMARACK!! Please look at this and if you like this art piece I 100% recommend following them on twitter, though they're not an Our Life artist (yet, I've peer pressured them to play the games and they will), but they're art is so so lovely and is 100% worth it to give them a follow <333

OlNF Week Day 3: Crossover

at first, I really struggled to come up with something for today. i originally drew them playing with lalaloopsy dolls but then i was like…. what if they were the lalaloopsy dolls

also cheyomi step 2 outfit reveal?! crazyness. (@olnfweek2024)

black eyed version!! don’t rlly know which one i like more though tbh

i care them. i care them so much

yeah they’re gay, keep scrolling /ref

no lipstick marks version

also link to reference used: chericheribanan on twt

i seem to always draw cheyomi with a softer demeanor when she’s more of a serious/composed person. but around tamarack? yeah no, she’s gone.

also tested out some new brushes here. i need to stop testing brushes cause i end up liking all of them then don’t know which to use anymore </3 boooo!!!

Alright, it's time....

Say hello to my main OLNF MC!!!!!

This is my baby Marceline Jeandel!!! σ(≧ε≦σ) ♡

I want to make a much more formal post about them in the future where I go more in depth into who they are but that'll wait until later because I want to talk about Marceline and I want to talk about them NOW!! So this'll just be a quick intro (under the read more)

So! At 10 years old little Marceline Jeandel moved to Golden Grove all the way from their birthplace, France! The move was a pretty daunting event, especially since they were travelling to a completely different continent, to Marceline it was as if they went to a different dimension entirely! But, Marceline had their Maman, their most loved and trusted figure in their life, if she was there then they'd be able to do anything

Marceline (in this step) is a young transgender boy with He/Him pronouns, their journey with their gender is one filled with quite a few twists, turns, and feelings that I won't delve into in full here, all you really need to know now is that they eventually figure out that they are genderqueer and primarily use they/them pronouns!

For the most part, Marceline is nonverbal in step one (in steps two, three, and four they're not necessarily nonverbal but they still talk very rarely). The reason for this is that they have a fairly severe form of Apraxia of Speech, a neurological disorder that essentially makes it extremely difficult if not impossible for the brain to send signals to the parts of the body that control speech, this renders Marceline unable to form coherent sentences and makes it so they can only really make random vocalizations and maaaybe say a word or two on good days. They are in speech therapy for this and are slowly but steadily getting better at forming proper speech but for now, they only really communicate through various vocalizations when it's needed. I will mention here as well that Marceline is also Autistic! I've done extremely thorough research into both of these conditions to make sure I'm representing both in a respectful way, I'm aware of the stereotypes a nonverbal autistic character can easily fall into and whenever I do anything Marceline related I always make sure I'm not running them right into any possible stereotypes

Lastly! Their relationship with the leads!

When it comes to romance, Marceline is paired with the one and only Qiu Lin, it was a crush at first sight for them, Marceline just couldn't resist the typical Qiu charm! For step one Marceline and Qiu are naturally very close but there is just a tad bit of a distance between the two simply due to the fact that because of their crush, Marceline holds Qiu on an extremely high pedestal and greatly admires them which ends up leading to Marceline never acting like they're on the same level as Qiu and letting them guide everything (basically, Marceline is accidentally feeding into Qiu's self-sacrificing behaviour, but don't worry! They grow out of it by step two I promise!!) Nevertheless, while the two go through many hardships they do end up on the other side as forever lovers <3

As for one Tamarack Baumann, she and Marceline are inseparable lemme tell you- From day one those two became the best of best friends and get along with each other better than anyone else. Their playful and carefree personalities and energy melded together perfectly which led to them almost immediately forming an unbreakable bond with one another that lasts all the way into adulthood. Whatever Tamarack needs Marceline will almost always be there, whether she needs a playmate, support, personal cheerleader, partner in crime, and whatever else Marceline will always be there. The only time there's ever any tension between the dynamic duo is if Tamarack's bossiness gets the better of her and annoys Marceline, but the two are always quick to apologize and make amends (and this pretty much stops being a problem entirely by step two as they both for the most part grow out of these habits)

And I believe that's all the main stuff you need to know about Marceline! Now I can actually talk about them more!! Thank you so much for taking a look at my MC and have a wonderful day!

P.S. Dividers by @cafekitsune

step 1 vs step 2

more doodles + rambles under the cut!

HELLO!! this is my nnew mc ames!! (she/her, although characters are bound to use the wrong pronouns in step 1 since nothings figured out yet).

as a kid, she's very brash and rude as a way to cope with the anxieties of being in a new place with practically nothing but her mom.

shes better at dealing with it in step 2! but theres the big dilemma of her favourite people hating each other.. uh oh

she's my mc for the Poly Route!!! they don't get together until step 3 however </3 feel free to ask about her!

I need to yap and swoon with someone over olnf and/or olba and actually knows the games. I love my best friend, but she is clueless 99% of the time since she hasn't played the games.

Tamarack's fancy dress comes with a fancy purse 💖

Our Life Now & Forever: Polyamorous Relationship Feature Announcement!

So, I’ve changed my own mind! You will be able to end up in a relationship with both Qiu and Tamarack if you want to when Our Life: Now & Forever is fully released. I originally didn't guarantee a polyamorous relationship option because I didn’t know for sure if it'd be possible to add it without pushing the game back, however this story would simply feel incomplete without that. It was very obvious when writing the Step 2 preview for the soon-to-release demo update. Qiu, Tamarack, and the MC are as important as a group as they are in individual pairings. It has to be done. Besides, tons of choice and having relationships be whatever makes you most comfortable is why people wait years for GB Patch to finish these games in the first place, haha.

Now, the way the optional poly relationship will work is that Qiu and Tamarack would be in a committed platonic relationship with each other and can be in a committed platonic or romantic relationship with the MC. Qiu and Tamarack won’t be romantically involved with each other regardless of the choices the MC makes.

This relationship dynamic will only be available in Step 4: Adulthood. It won’t be something you can get together during the bulk of the story because Qiu and Tamarack do need time to sort things with each other over the years before taking that kind of step.

Nothing is going to change with our plans so far. Our Life: Now & Forever will have a Kickstarter that's launching less than two weeks. If everything goes well, the goal will be to release the first three Steps and most of the DLCs in late 2025. The Step 4 Epilogue with the poly relationship option and any bonus DLCs that get funded by the Kickstarter would come out later on. 

Our Life: Now & Forever Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page

I’ll be updating the game’s information to reflect this new element as a basic part of the project ✨.

Thank you to everyone who’s loved both Tamarack and Qiu already! I hope this will make the story that much happier to experience.

Hello! I've noticed a racism problem within the Our Life fandom, particularly Our Life: Now and Forever. I won't name names, but there is an overabundance of fanart where the artist has HEAVILY whitewashed Qiu. It's pretty upsetting to see them overwrite Qiu's identity as a person of color. Given that you are the game dev, I was hoping to see you speak out about this problem and condemn the act of whitewashing your characters. Thanks

I'm sorry that is happening. There's no reason for it and I don't agree with anyone who has chosen to do it.

To try and be helpful, here are the base skin tone colors for the OL LIs (besides Tamarack and Baxter who don't have this problem).

Cove: f2b795 Derek: d29e77 Qiu: e0a48a

I could do this for every character in all our games, but if people are getting the hair and eyes and clothes right, they shouldn't need to be told what the skin tones are. Popular white guys can be drawn thousands of times and it's always the exact right shade of pale somehow, isn't it.

If people are thinking white is "neutral" and can just stay as is, but once a character has a darker skin tone than it's fair game to start making tweaks to their color palette so you can "get creative" or have "dramatic lighting" or to bluntly have it be more to your preference in appearance or whatever, my answer is no. That's not for you to decide and it's not harmless. Don't whitewash our, or any, characters.

Saw an ask about an apparent problem of people drawing Qiu whiter than he is and whitewashing. With that in mind, I think you should hold the same standard for Tamarack for artists that draw her darker than she is to outright black. Tumblr and Twitter in general have an obsession with coloring traditionally white/pale characters the complete opposite race or adding details like kinky/coiled hair and see no issue with it but raise hell the moment a poc is one hue lighter. It erases their identity just as much as everyone says whitewashing does but everyone constantly falls back on the "only whites can be racist so changing their identity in art is okay!!" pipeline

Tamarack comes from a German family and is white, so please take the same level of importance when artists "blackwash" her or any other character in your series.

You know generally, I don’t like to use this blog to as a place to act like I’m the best, most correct person in the world and respond to things where I’m simply telling an anonymous person they’re wrong. I’m just someone who has people following me because they like the stories this company makes.

However, this is something that people should know. If our POC players draw our characters having a darker skin tone than they do in-game and/or give them a different hair texture, that’s alright. I’ve fallen off on reblogging stuff on Tumblr but it’d still be liked or reposted on Twitter.

Whitewashing means far more than the literal act of a single individual making someone look white in a fanart. If a trans player wanted to headcanon a cis character was trans, that’s one thing. If a cis person decided to take the only trans character for miles and insist they are, in fact, cis, well that’s another matter entirely. Your experience with your race and your experience based on sexuality or gender aren’t the same things, it’s not a one-to-one comparison at all. But can people who don’t get it at least start to see how there can be a difference in impact here?

The people who are oppressed in this country aren’t hurting you by trying to enjoy the media that most of the time intentionally excludes them. POC weren’t the ones dehumanizing white people in horrific ways. The overwhelming majority of stories and representations of heritages out there have been and still are white people’s already. Anyone reading this who was thinking along the lines of what’s in this ask need to get comfortable understanding and accepting that. And if you don’t, maybe you should find another game because I’m not going to “protect white identities” from being drawn as people of color. In fact, I think it’s actually really nice if our characters are fun and comforting to people of color so much so that they’d like to imagine those characters being included in their own culture. I think it’s strange that someone would be angry about it.

My OL2 oc, who can speak fine around girls but not around boys in Step 1, upon meeting this new redhead who can speak fine around boys but not around girls, also in Step 1: Ah, a kindred spirit.