Hello, everyone! It’s Marionette, bringing you some updates that we hope you didn’t notice!

Migration successful!

A few weeks ago, we made a post giving a head’s up that we’d be migrating the domain (that is, “bottledstarlight.com”) to a new registrar. This process has been completed successfully and without any issues.

The migration began at 5:15 AM my local time and was completed by 5:35 AM. Not only that, the DNS records migrated successfully (something that doesn’t always happen), so there was no additional downtime while those propagated.

Thank you for your patience, and we hope everyone has a wonderful day!

What was done and why?

If you missed the original post and wanted some background information on why this migration was being done, you can find the original post here:

Changes are coming (but you shouldn’t notice)

Hello, everyone! It’s Marionette, bringing you some updates that you hopefully won’t notice! We have a few changes that will be occurring on this blog/site on the back-end, and if everything goes well, nobody will notice anything! …but since things inevitably go wrong, we’re making sure folks know it’ll be happening, so if the site is down for a few hours or (Tiro forbid) for a day, you’ll all know why and won’t have to worry.

tl;dr

We’ll be cutting over our domain (“bottledstarlight.com”) to a new domain registrar in July. The exact date will be announced once it draws near. We’re doing this because our current registrar is becoming expensive trash and we’d like to get out before we get bled dry. Downtime should be 15-30 minutes, but depends on forces outside our control. Announcements will be made on Discord and Bluesky to let folks know what’s happening and once it’s finished.

Full details follow.

What is happening?

We will be changing our domain registrar, which will require a change in DNS servers. This will cause a (hopefully) short amount of downtime for the site.

We’ll post about it in our Discord and on Bluesky while it’s happening and once it’s finished, as well as to apprise people if any issues do come up, so if you aren’t already on our Discord or follow us on Bluesky, you should join us!

When will this happen?

We will be making the cutover in July. We’ll announce the actual date as the time draws closer.

What will we see?

Hopefully, you won’t see or notice any difference, other than a 15-30 minute window where the site will be unavailable. Once the cutover is completed, everything will look the same as it ever has, and bottledstarlight.com should come right back to the blog.

We’ll be making the cutover early in the morning in my time zone. I’m an early riser, whereas almost everyone here seems to be a night owl, so to reduce the visible downtime I’ll be handling the cutover when most folks aren’t around.

What could go wrong?

There shouldn’t be any big issues. I’ve done a good amount of testing with my own domains and so far, there haven’t been any issues.

That said, domain propagation is beyond any of our control. Depending on how quickly the domain propagation goes, it could take up to a full day for the site to return. Usually it’s pretty fast, but there’s always the risk.

Beyond this, risks should be minimal and the site should be back up within 15-30 minutes, or possibly a day if the domain propagation decides to be slow.

Why is this happening?

Ever since we began using a custom domain (“bottledstarlight.com”), we’ve had the domain registered with Gandi. Unfortunately, about two years ago, Gandi were bought out by a company who seem to be little better than vulture capitalist groups. Prices have been going up while services have been getting cut and small, non-corporate users are being pushed out. Gandi were never the cheapest domain registrar to begin with, but they included a lot of useful tools and resources with the registration instead of nickel-and-diming for them like many others.

To renew the bottledstarlight.com domain with Gandi would be almost 3x the cost this year as when we first registered it. Additionally, there’s no longer a multi-year registration discount. If we took into account the multi-year discount we received when we first registered with Gandi, the actual per-year cost would be roughly 4x the cost per year of what we originally paid.

We (and by “we” I mean “me”, “myself”, and “I” since I, Marionette, handle all of this on the back-end) have been looking for an alternative to Gandi for since late last year and have finally settled on Porkbun. After doing a good amount of testing using my own private domains with them, I’m comfortable enough to make the cutover for the bottledstarlight.com domain.

This is scary!

It’s not really scary. Or concerning. Or even difficult. In the world of tech, these things happen. I’ve had my own personal site since the early-2000s and have had to change the domain registrar a few times already. We’ll probably have to do this again in 3-5 years, and then again 3-5 years after that. It’s just the nature of how the tech industry works. Well, no, that’s not true. It’s just the nature of how capitalism works, but the tech industry is a major part of capitalism, so hey.

We’ll keep folks apprised of the goingson with this in our Discord and on Bluesky, so be sure to keep an eye out there. If there are any issues, we’ll make post about them there, as well as making a note on when the cutover is completed.

A big pile of links!

Where to find us

Our Patreon and Subscribestar are great places to support development! You can also get cool bonus stuff like concept art and early releases of Pandemonium!

If you want extra pictures of cats, you can follow us on Bluesky.

And there’s always Our Discord. You can shout at Salty *in person*.

You can ask us anonymous question on Whisp.sh. If you’ve ever wanted to get smarmy answers to questions, or just know more lore, that’s the place!

We also have a Wiki! We’d appreciate it greatly if people keep it maintained for us. :3

Bottled Starlight Games

Runes of Pandemonium, the big adventure TF RPG, always free on Steam and Itch.io.

Witch Hunter Izana, a battle-TF RPG. Available on Steam or Itch.io.

Witches of Ravenbrook, a battle-TF dungeon-crawler. The prototype is out now and free on Itch.io.

String Tyrant, a survival horror game, is on Steam and Itch.io.

Other Bottled Starlight Stuff

Salty writes a book series, with audiobooks and illustrations, called Tales of Strings.
Instruments is out now on Itch.io.
Passed Hand is now on Itch.io!
Spiderweb Theory is now on Itch.io!
Urban Explorers is now on Itch.io!

Mario is currently working on bringing the Pandemonium story series to Itch.

We have some ridiculous merch on Redbubble and Teepublic if you want to be the center of conversation (derogatory / celebratory).

At long last, the final book adaption for Mei’s adventures has come to Amazon! Book 5, “Petting the Werekitty” can be found at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW7NF5C6 for US$2.99 or for free through Kindle Unlimited (KU accessibility may take another day to become fully available due to how Amazon works, sorry!). All royalties for book sales and from pages read in Kindle Unlimited goes towards the studio for the continued development of

If you want to check out the rest of the book adaptions, you can check them out at https://www.amazon.com/stores/M.-Onette/author/B07N8ZX4PH.

With all six books out (yes, book 5 is the last, not book 6, because fans wanted to see 6 before 5 so 6 was written and published before 5), this marks the end of Mei’s adventures in story form (at least for now!) We hope you enjoy them!

Hello to everyone! MarioneTTe, here, with some great news: after a rather long wait (including one rejection due to keywords and a description that may have been a bit too spicy), Mei’s next episode is now available in book format.

Pandemonium: Blooming in the Hot Springs follows Mei as she seeks a way to test her runestone’s powers, ultimately deciding that being transformed into an alraune to do so. Florentina isn’t too happy about this, especially when Rochea gets involved.

You can check it out at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BG8JZ8FZ for $2.99, or if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free!

You can also check out all of the books at my author page, https://www.amazon.com/author/monette

Coming up next: The werecat story, Petting the Werekitty!

Good evening (or morning, or afternoon, or… whatever time it is for you)! MarioneTTe, here!

I don’t post often, but I felt I owed everyone a bit of info on the Werebat TF. It is coming along, but I’ve ran into a bit of a personal snag on it. I don’t know if I’m obsessing about it more than I really should be, but for some reason, this TF feels more weighty than a normal TF does for the story in my own mind.

Maybe it’s because it’s an easy-to-miss TF that I want to have a special kick for when someone finds it late in a run or in an NG+ run.

Maybe it’s because it’s a bit of a unique TF and I want to give it that extra sliver of TLC.

Maybe because Pyxxis is fond of bat gals and I feel like the Team’s Choice TFs (TM) (C) needs a bit more polish.

Or maybe I’m simply obsessing over it.

Whatever it is, I feel like the Werebat TF needs to be… more… before it gets released.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been using the wrong tone for the scene. My goal for the scene is to make it a bit spicier than the Steam Droid TF from Chapter 5. Nothing overt, but hints and allusions with a bit of a kick at the end if you can read between the lines.

Instead, it’s coming out more like a solo Raiju scene (also from Chapter 5, except definitely not solo).

ANYWAY! The Werebat TF is just around the corner, Come Hells or High Water. And hopefully Salty isn’t too upset at this unexpected little post!

Hello, all! MarioneTTe here again! This time, I bring you the results of the poll on how mermaids would feel about rope bondage.

In total, there were 61 responses.

You might notice this is a pie graph, and not a bar graph, which would have been much better for this type of poll. That’s because I made a pretty big error while creating this poll and made a second version, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

ANYWAY!, Those percentages break down as follows:

• MORE likely – 11
• LESS likely – 4
• HATE* – 14
• Rebellious/Others – 24
• Different Opinion – 8

There were actually 9 things listed, so ONE OF YOU decided to post an opinion while also voting in the normal poll! This is fine, mind you, I’m just listing why there are 9 opinions but only 8 in the actual poll. They were:

• Nets are used to catch prey/food. Sub mermaids would be into it. Also all of them are jealous of fishnet stockings.
• No change in likelyhood compared to Surface Dwellers. And why is that Option not included above?*
• Depends on how much of a deviant the mermaid in question is.
• Ropes would peel off their scales! No other reason to fear it then any other kidnapping if they don’t suffocate
• The REAL question is if they’re into fishnets or not.
• Sort of depends if these are mermaids exposed to land dwellers fishing. If so it’s like someone hunting near you, it’s a known danger that might actually get you. As a result it would be fairly niche (getting bitten by sharks and struck by lightning aren’t common kinks.) If not then probably ambvalent based on the merperson.
• some mermaids are into it but only ironically, some mermaids aren’t personally into it but complain about cultural appropriation when other species do it, some mermaids prefer handcuffs and sexy police officer uniforms, some mermaids are the kind that have human legs and fish heads and are unable to express their opinion on the matter
• mermaids with alraune gfs prefer vine bondage
• It would probably depend on the setting? If mermaids were actually being hunted in nets, they’d probably be less into it, but other than that I don’t think they’d care. It’s not like we’re less into rope bondage because we use nets to capture other mammals.

Interesting thoughts, all around! There are a few interesting thoughts in there that might make for an interesting bit of story. We’ll see in the future!

Now you might notice that the options are… a bit odd. One “other opinion” even mentions it: where’s the “no change” option? The astute among you might even notice the asterisks next to the “HATE” numbers, as well as the opinion saying ‘no change’ and asking why that option wasn’t available.

It turns out, I posted the first version of the poll, where I had originally messed up the options and graph type then decided to go to bed then redo the poll the next day.

The second version I made had a “No Change” option instead of the “Hate” option (having “Hate” but not “Love” doesn’t make sense, especially when there are already options for liking it more or liking it less), and it was a bar graph instead of a pie graph. Did you know you can’t change the type of graph after the poll is made? I didn’t!

(If you can, tell me how in our Discord, please!)

I did realize my error a day after posting the poll, but by then it had already received a dozen or so responses and I didn’t want to throw that all away.

Oh, well. The results DO give me a few ideas, but whether they appear in-game or as random story tie-ins depends on whether Salty can be convinced to add mermaids to [LOCATION REDACTED] in [CHAPTER REDACTED] where you have to [EVENT REDACTED] in order to [RESULT REDACTED].

Hmm… That reads kind of like a madlib! “Add mermaids to ___ in ___ where you have to ___ in order to ___.”

Let’s see… “Add mermaids to my apartment in my city where you have to figure out how to stand them up in a stand-up shower in order to keep them from drying out.”

…I’m not very good at madlibs…

Hello, all! MarioneTTe here!

I’ve had a weird little thought in my head for a while, and I’m curious to find out what the community thinks. To find out, I made a poll!

The question is whether or not mermaids would be more or less likely to view rope bondage positively due to the association between ropes and nets, and how nets are used to capture aquatic creatures for food.

You can view the poll at the Mermaid Rope Bondage Poll. Thank you in advance for your responses!

The poll will stay open for one week (until 8/30), after which I’ll add the results and a few additional thoughts on the subject matter to next week’s dev post.

• MarioneTTe