life updates, prophetic anaphylaxis, and other dynamic colors (Patreon)

i'll start with the good news: our search for a new apartment ended quickly and efficiently. 

we actually only looked at three places, the first of which had quirks but was large and far under priced, the second of which was characterized by a lot of grime and cigarette butts and   a man with about three bottom teeth, and the third of which had halls that i'm fairly certain any public toilet would have been hard pressed to out do in terms of pure nose-pinching stenchiness. 

we realized what an oasis in the desert the first one was for its price point, jumped on it, got it three days later, and signed the lease on sunday. we'll start moving in next week. i'll post pictures or something, with or without our "modest" secondhand starter pack furnishings.

but god bless, because it is actually a really nice place all things considered. it's a fantastic location near where i used to work, where cass will be working now, one block from grocery, and two from the biggest park in the city. some might be offended by nearby traffic but we're in a basement so we can't hear it at all.  i feel extremely blessed to have it (and to have been able to go for it at all!)

other news--

some of you might remember that i had polled for which character would be chosen for the next wallpaper, and by a predictable longshot, taka was the winner. i previewed this on the last stream, but I'll show the art here too!

so, before too long i will be compiling this into the various resolutions and posting it up for everyone to use.
by the way, this art comes from the very talented Houpo! who was quick, efficient, and quite friendly with everything, but who i currently do not plan to commission again for personal reasons.

and now, we backpedal to a funny thing that happened on the way to the forum...
about two days before i received the commission, i had a dream about it.
in the dream, houpo had given me the commission in person, showing it to me on a cell phone he used for such purposes. i do not know houpo in person, but in the dream he was there nonetheless, and for whatever reason the scenario was mildly uncomfortable. that discomfort quickly compounded when i found that the phone he handed me was drenched in some kind of dark greasy oil that got all over my hands from touching it, and then all over everything else i touched, and so on and so forth until i was absolutely covered in the stuff.
and then it turned out i was allergic to that oil.
the aftermath of the dream saw me nearly die from anaphylactic shock.
i lived, bitch.
but not without scars.
the oil had had the effect of turning all of my skin purple, shriveled, and stiff to the touch. i guess i was like a pruney hardened version of steven universe's Amethyst, but with blonde hair. not very attractive-- no offense, SU Amethyst fans.
so my skin was possibly permanently trashed, but hey, at least i was alive in the dream. if nothing else, i could go on making games still. by the time i woke up, i was really appreciative just of that.  
though make no mistake, i was much relieved to find my skin in perfect, non-purple working order.

still, by the time i got the commission from him, i had already decided not to hire him again-- not because of the allergy business or all that, but just because of the discomfort i felt about him even prior to that. i downplay it here compared to the content, but it was a rather potent feeling.
i suspect that it has something to do some quantity of his other artwork focusing on anime girls in rather provocative contexts-- which is fine and certainly his prerogative, but with where i am emotionally and recent events in my life, i would apparently prefer distance from that kind of thing. in short, i am deciding to trust my emotional instinct and step back before it actually gets to an uncomfortable place with him. i leave the door open for it in the future, but now isn't the time for him, for me.

now the weird part:

one or two days after i had that dream, i got the commission. the very next day, my skin began breaking out. just acne, from all the recent stress-- i thought.
nope.
one thing most of you probably do not know is that i have had a skin condition on my legs for the better part of ten years. it is probably related to that event that i had blacked out and recently remembered-- the timing matches. i'd explain more about that event, but it's so directly related to reborn it would be a spoiler, so lol. nevertheless, time has proven the condition to be primarily stress-based (like most of my problems). and indeed, for the first time it had almost entirely gone away just a few weeks ago.
but then it suddenly got worse.
as the next few days after the commission showed, it was suddenly on my face.
and way worse than it had ever been.
where i was hoping to buckle down and get to some work in this dead week between signing the lease and moving in, suddenly i've been fighting this whole thing on a regular basis. frankly, my face is kind of a mess, but eventually i got over that and was mainly concerned about the pain/itchiness.
so my mom gave me a topical painkiller to go ahead and try. cool, thanks mom
after failing to sleep due to the stuff for the third night in a row, i rolled over and tried the product in desperation. 

turns out, i'm allergic to it.

so i had a pretty significant reaction.
my face swelled up and crusted over so much that i couldn't even talk or chew for most of yesterday. today is much better-- i'll be fine, though i still look like i could portray a really solid jigglypuff cosplay with little additional help based on swelling alone.
what struck me was the way my skin felt.
rough and hard-- just like in my dream.
i have never had an allergic reaction before. this is a first.
fortunately my skin isn't purple
but in retrospect it is extremely bizarre that i had had that dream just days before actually having such a reaction.
i don't really know what to make of that,
one silver lining is the feeling i was left with at the end of the dream. frankly, my face is still a mess right now. aside from the aftermath of the allergy, the original condition is still a concern (but i have a better cream that i am not allergic to now, so i just have to be patient with it, hopefully)
but i am definitely trying to hold onto the feeling that i had at the end
instead of being upset about it all, i'm just appreciating that (unlike my chronic pain, for instance) this doesn't actually significantly impact my ability to keep doing what i love,
though sure, it sucks.
it'll get better, and in the mean time, i'll practice that gratitude i preach to myself so much about.

that said
i am also still trying to address the underlying causes of the original condition so that it can get up and shove off ASAP.
as i said before, i'm sure it's stress-based. i've been reading a book to understand it better, one that cross references psychology and dermatology in an incredibly relevant niche. that book has one exercise detailing how skin conditions can arise due to latent stress from any kind of change in a person's life-- even positive ones. based on a chart of how much change a person has recently undergone, they can tally it up as a sort of pseudo 'score' and compare it to other thresholds at which conditions occur.
according to the book, people at a change score of around 200-299 in a year are... often fine, above 300+ nearly all of them develop some kind of symptoms.
i tallied my stuff up for the year.
i am at 1000+.
oh.
doing pretty well, i guess-- all things considered.
still, i have some kind of hope/expectation that as soon as i get settled into the new place, a lot of that stress will dissipate. it makes sense given some dramatic circumstances here, and that this is the first time i'll finally be able to move away from home.
in the mean time, i just have to wait it out
-- but also, i am doing as much as i can about any peripheral stress while waiting
which brings me to the primary purpose of this post.

as i've already alluded to on the development blog page, i'm not planning on working on development stuff for the remainder of the month.
some typical, normal part of my stress is always based in not feeling like i'm working enough on the game-- and many of you guys are consistently always so reassuring about that, and that means so much to me. thank you for always being patient, and in this transition period especially.
still, i expect myself to keep up with it to a certain amount
and even if that is only 10% of the stress that's causing my skin to jank out, that's 10% i have control over right now, unlike the rest that i have to wait for. i'll do everything i can for now in the hopes of a quick and efficient recovery.

so, basically, small mental/physical health break.
i'll start working again once i'm in our new place.
still, this doesn't mean i won't be around discord. i will, at least as much as i have been (any waiting for internet at new apartment notwithstanding). i'm also still involving myself in organizing this winter party business on the site (which by the way, check out the schedule for if you haven't already!)
so, not a stranger. just tryna find calm in the storm.

one more parting gift for the evening-- many of you have seen the full map already, but here's an in game screenshot for the first map on E19 now that everything is fully evented etc. linked for minor spoilers.
https://i.imgur.com/wwvNFpA.png

cheers, dears. i'm down for a bit, but never out.