facing your fears

2022-01-28 11:47:11

I found it excruciating to work on Rubble and Rust these last few months. I felt disheartened with my project, feeling like it isn't professional enough and lacks idk, shallow shit like the art not being sparkly enough.

It seems like most gamers aren't interested in visual novels. I sure as heck ain't because I don't want to see more glommy art of perverted smushy monster waifus than I have to endure on a daily basis.

Being a developer doesn't mean playing a bunch of games, that makes you a gamer. A developer is trying to make something. It's just different. Non creative people will never understand that dismissing a creative persons' attempts simply because they 'don't read enough to be a writer' or 'game enough to be a gamer' is just putting someone down.

I can safely say I took a long enough break from thinking about it to begin to want to face it again. I took the plunge of pulling it down from github, putting in the demo music track from one of my musicians, and began to feel reinvigorated. Hey, it's actually really good! It's heartfelt and honest about my experiences growing up and with mental health, at least...part one is.

It has felt sad to let my project sit around untouched for months, feeling stumped on how to move forward. It felt like I let it die, but instead it was sealed away like a fine wine, ageing lol.

I plan to release Part1 - "Stranger" onto itch.io once I get enough music for it. There I'll try to open myself up to feedback (maybe) and above all, make sure I am in a good mental place to finish the story.

It involves some very explicit content, not visual but in the writing. Ranging from mildly sexy to violence and some trauma a character endures.

I found it was so easy to write the porny section, it just flowed straight out of me like a fanfiction. The ending however, is a whole new can of worms.

The ending is what you are trying to say. Hope? Despair? That mental health is deeper than what it seems? That is maybe what I am going for. To open up the viewer to how I've seen the world in my psychosis. But since my perspective on psychosis changed to be more spiritual/supernatural last year, I've needed ample time to process things.

I'm trying to convey an honest insanity. Disjointed perception of time and space, the world whispering and caressing you and the ecstasy flying you higher. Maybe these are things Bipolar type 1 people haven't felt, but I have.

Of course, a big focus in this story is horror. It's hard to separate that from my attempts to capture Bipolar. Maybe it's turned out like all other mental health murder stories, maybe I'm part of the problem. :(


More things nobody will read

I faced my fears by turning back to this project eventually. Writing is hard, but for me and many others, storytelling is the essence of being human. It is a hard craft no matter what medium you are trying to tell a story in, but its especially hard with simply words and a smattering of images like I've done.

I hope I can keep people engaged for at least 45-60 minutes to read part one of my story. Then I have two other parts, both each an hour in length.

I decided I want this project to be as good as it can be for me, that means the art can be however I want it to, I want to call it good enough and hope a handful of people play it.

I'm afraid nobody will play it, which will hurt if that happens. I know I don't have a big amount of followers but every one counts. (This is my itch.io of you wanna follow) Just a few people playing is enough for me to know I got a story 'out there'.

I was feeling fearful and uptight over it because its easy to wrap your self worth into a project, rather than accept it's just a journey. Nowadays it doesn't even have to be permanent, as you can always update the files on itch.io later anyways. That calms me down and reminds me I can let it be what it's gonna be.

This had been another daily post, a lonely woman rambling into the starry abyss. I'm proud I faced my fears and made some progress.