FM: Hope

FM: Hope (FM: H) is a short story set in the Elsaverse. It's a special case in the saga as it's the result of a special commission requested by a Tora Productions' patron: this mysterious supporter wanted a large sex scene with Miranda on it, and the dev team writer, Tlaero, decided to write a canon story to go with the commissioned pics as a show of appreciation for this financial contribution. With this anonymous backer's blessing, FM: Hope was released for the rest of Tora Productions' patrons on December 19, 2022; and then made public one day later. Due to this special origin, the story contains way more pics than usual for other HTML short stories, and those renders are mostly focused on the sex scene and its most immediate build-up.

FM: H tells a particularly emotional story for Miranda, as she recalls the evening in which a stranger named Cassandra O'Rourke taught her how to shut her brain down while painting, giving her hope to endure her sleep deprivation condition.

Plot
FM: Hope takes place right after Lucas came back from his business trip to Switzerland that was mentioned in Elsa's Nightmares (2019-2020): he and Miranda are spending the night together and she notices a familiar face on a glossy magazine he has taken from the plane. The woman on the magazine's cover is Cassandra O'Rourke, and she is a talented artist from Sangrive Miranda met some time ago, shortly after waking up from her coma. Then, in a lengthy flashback, Miranda recalls that evening: being one of the most successful businesswomen in Sangrive before her coma, she was taking part in a charity event from a local entrepreneurs' society and, probably affected by her lack of sleep, she had agreed to let them auction a dinner date with her. Just before stepping onto the scene, though, she went to the restroom and was second-guessing herself, but a young woman who introduced herself as Sandra reassured her. Then, the auction started and bids quickly skyrocketed in a tough competition between two creepy men. Seeing Miranda's discomfort with the situation, as she feared those men would be actually interested in trying to sleep with her, Sandra made a one thousand dollar bid and won the dinner date with Miranda, saving her from them.

After Miranda thanked her, a visibly shy and nervous Sandra confessed that she was there because she wanted to get some tips from an experienced entrepreneur on how to build her own business: she was currently working for a marketing firm, but she actually wanted to pursue a career in arts. Miranda noticed how Sandra's mood and attitude seemed to radically change whenever she talked about art, becoming a confident woman, and she agreed to help her after watching a picture of one of Sandra's paintings; also, she was amazed by how Sandra described her creative process, as she mentioned that she kind of shut her brain down while painting, almost as if she was in a dream. However, their talk was cut short due to the arrival of one of the male bidders: in a spontaneous move, Sandra abruptly kissed Miranda to make him understand they weren't interested in his company, and both women left the bar together. Then she tried to apologize to Miranda for her sudden reaction, but Miranda waved that off and they went to Sandra's apartment so that Miranda could better assess the quality of her artwork. There, Miranda found a bunch of worthy paintings and then asked Sandra to teach her how to paint; after listening to her explaining how to channel her inner artist, Miranda started to paint and, for almost an hour long, she managed to make her brain rest for the first time since she woke up from her coma. This gave her hope about her chances of surviving her condition, as she immediately wonder what other activities she could use to achieve that same result. Then, the mutual attraction between Miranda and the artist side of Sandra took the best of them.

The story ends with Miranda confessing to Lucas that, hadn't she met this now-famous Cassandra O'Rourke when she did, she probably wouldn't have survived to that dark period in her life.

Miscellaneous

 * Prior to the release of FM: Hope, Tora Productions told their fans that they were planning to finally give Miranda a last name, as it had never been mentioned in the whole saga, and asked them to submit their personal suggestions. Then, a couple of weeks later, Tlaero announced that she would pick one from these three options: Hopper, Mara, and Wright. The chosen one, Wright, was unveiled when FM: Hope was eventually released.


 * The last picture in FM: H is a shot of the magazine cover, with the now well-known artist Cassandra O'Rourke on it, that triggered the whole story. Other articles supposedly included in that magazine are two easter-eggs created by Tora Productions' artist, Mortze: one is about Tora Productions' writer, Tlaero (Is Tlaero finally going to reveal more of herself?), while the other headline wonders whether the rumors about Jessica Springfield and her friend and bandmate SeraB hooking up are true.


 * The official build of FM: Hope includes a couple of hidden sexual pictures in the files folder that are not displayed in the story. After Tlaero finished writing it, Mortze still made a couple of extra, non-commissioned renders, and Tlaero included a couple of lines to make them fit into the narrative. However, even though the commissioner was more than happy with this extra content, she felt this last-minute edition was detrimental to the story and eventually decided to comment out those lines of code while also leaving the now uncalled pics in the build. This way everyone can still read and see the 'hidden' content just by editing those lines in the HTML file, near the end of the story.