summer fundamentals (Patreon)

hi darlings

so here's the dee-ell. cass and i are moving again. like again-again. like this is the third time in a year and at neither of the past two places (well, one is still sorta current) have we actually been financially stable.

it's rocky out here. economy is... yeah... i continue to be very grateful for you all but for all the obvious "thank you for supporting" reasons but also because you are presumably not chipping to in here your own detriment (you better not be, anyway !!!) and that is a beacon of hope for the state of the world. actually, rather than guessing at that, i would love to hear how YOU all are doing with the tumult.

meanwhile-- the move. okay so if you were around last spring you might remember when i said i was taking a hiatus to deal with some emotional stuff, and one of the factors on that pile was reconnecting with my dad.

brief background: parents divorced young, dad became big alcohol, abuse ensued, step mom figure was nightmare, eventually they relinquished custody to my mom who was safer, so i stopped going to his house, and my relationship with my dad settled into a couple awkward conversations a year.

a lot of the father-child conversations in reborn, especially with taka and solaris, are informed by my past experiences with him. and the bit from cal and blake's backstory about being left out in the cold as punishment-- that didnt actually happen to me, it was just a drunk threat-- but still.

so anyway last year we got to talking again and he's been genuinely emotionally receptive to hearing my experience of those things and he's been great at accepting responsibility for it. kinda crazy. so we actually have like moved past it and have a real relationship now. would NOT have expected it.

and then a few weeks ago
i got a drunk call from my step mom figure.
it was 2 in the afternoon. she was hammed. this was completely unprompted. she and my dad don't speak. she and my sister don't speak.
i have talked to this woman once in the last twenty years. i was like 12. wtf.
she called me and said a bunch of bullshit that has no basis in reality. whatever.
but oddly, the consequence of that random call is that i realized
wow
yeah
that is just a disaster person
and whatever went on when i was a kid obviously had nothing to do with me, i was just party to it.

meanwhile, that situation sucked for him too. he was obviously drinking to drown his feelings, eventually that relationship (that he kinda felt like a hostage in) ended, and he decided to skip town and not come back.

but the house is still there.
personally, i had such horrible memories of that place that i never wanted to see it again, let alone have anything to do with it.
it was kinda the same with him. cursed place.
he didn't sell it. it's just been sitting there, collecting dust for 15 years.

so ironically, the consequence of this drunk call was that i decided,
man, that person was awful,
but maybe i would be comfortable trying to reclaim that house.

so that's what we're doing. there's 15 years of dust and all the clutter that my dad left when he decided he just wasn't coming back to clean up. but it's much cheaper for us. and it helps him out. and we have a house. im gonna have to go stardew valley on the place.

but. it's a lot of work. a lot of logistics. place isn't exactly habitable yet. lots to do.
so that's been our focus this month.

DEVELOPMENT
okay so. if i dont someday make a tRPG-- probably starlight-- i WILL go insane. it's non-negotiable. can barely look at a fire emblem game without feeling my heart tear in two a little bit. but now is not the time.

so i'm working on a different project-- a smaller project, to try and unjelly some jam.

example. cass was really rightfully lambasting me for getting hung up on making a save system for the new project. i got it baseline working but there were some bugs with it i was fussing over-- and she's like "hun what the fuck are you doing."

my attitude with development has tended to be: pick the hardest, most uncertain thing first, and throw myself at it until it works. then it'll only get easier as we go on.

turns out, that's not very fun. or energy-effective. or, perhaps, smart.

i'm the sort of person who saves their favorite part of a meal for last. i used to think it was a harmless matter of preference. now i think it might just be stupid. if you do, won't it be cold by the time you get to it?

so cass was like "why are you fretting over the save system before you've even made the game to save"
and i was like "ah perhaps this is indicative of a larger attitude problem that negatively impacts my ability to make games"

so how do i eat my favorite part of the meal first. well, my favorite parts are design and writing. so im just gonna start with that.

i haven't talked much about this new small project. i said i dont want to place expectations because they just suffocate me. but i suffocate myself anyway. so maybe learning to work within budgeting time and expectations is the smarter play too.

so i'm considering options. something like making a writing diary of the patreon, where even if i dont share what i'm writing yet (as it won't be in an enjoyable format), maybe i can share how the experience of writing within expectations and such is actually going. the challenge of doing it. even if quiet, i want to make something of this, you know?

i just want to make sure i am not promising something i cannot act on.

and before any of that, we need a stable living environment. need the dust to settle. and also be cleaned out.

thank you, as always, for the patience. tell me how you're doing, ok?

<3