ButterBoi69: Easy. Galaxynth.
GuildMaster42: ...
ButterBoi69: Castle collapses but during credits you see them rebuilding. Hope AND heartbreak. Perfect balance.
GuildMaster42: Holy shit Galaxynth mention. Marry me.
GuildMaster42: I mean. Good example. Very normal response.
I bite back a laugh. The anger’s completely gone now.
ButterBoi69: You’ve played it?
GuildMaster42: Only about seventeen times. That credits sequence destroyed me
ButterBoi69: The music when the first stone gets placed? Incredible.
GuildMaster42: Stop, I’m getting emotional in Econ
I’m grinninglike an idiot at my laptop screen. This stranger went from pissed to marriage proposals over an obscure indie game. And honestly? Valid.
The thing is, I know games. Or I used to. Freshman year, I was that girl with three monitors and RPGs, indies, puzzle games—I played everything. I’d stay up until 4 AM just to see how they ended.
Then Miles happened.
“Games are such a waste of time,” he’d said one night, watching me play Galaxynth in the common room. “All those hours you could be coding something real.”
And because I was eighteen and stupid and thought his attention was worth more than my hobbies, I agreed. Just... stopped. Told myself he was being practical, that he made sense. Packed away my controller, deleted everything, became the girl who was too focused on “real” work for silly distractions.
Looking back, that was just the first thing I changed.
What else did I give up trying to fit into his narrow definition of worthwhile? How many pieces of myself did I reshape for him?
Wycliff’s voice cuts through: “Miss Renner, perhaps you’d like to explain the difference between 2PC and 3PC?”
Shit.
“Two-phase has a blocking problem that three-phase solves with an extra round of communication,” I answer on autopilot, silently thanking past-Piper for actually reading the textbook.
He nods, moving on. I glance back at Discord.
GuildMaster42: Gtg, Econ prof giving me death glares. Thanks for caring enough to destroy me with that review
ButterBoi69: Thanks for making something worth destroying me over
ButterBoi69: For what it’s worth, your ending has potential. Just needs refinement.
GuildMaster42: Working on it. Your review helped. Even if it bruised my ego, and my gpa.
ButterBoi69: Sorry about the harsh scoring
GuildMaster42: Just... maybe next time lead with “this game is brilliant” before destroying my will to live? And give me at least a 3?
ButterBoi69: Deal. Next time I’ll cushion the blow.
GuildMaster42: Next time?
ButterBoi69: When you fix that ending, I’m playing again
