priorities and personal rambling (Patreon)

first up-- mentioned it on the server earlier but gotta do so here too:

patreon is being required to start charging sales tax on pledges. no one likes it, it sucks, i think this is only just applying to the US now? might vary depending on state? i don't know enough about the legal details but i believe they will be charging you extra rather than me, so please lower your pledges now if it is necessary! i've done what i can to mitigate the extra costs to you, but i don't want anyone to be blindsided by this so please please prioritize your stability as always

anyway, a real post now.

my updates have been a little sparser this month than i would like. far have i fallen from the admittedly unsustainable heydays of daily updates a couple years ago... but rest assured that is not for lacking progress-- and in some respects, may in fact be a symptom of it.

the past two weeks have been very up and down for me. for a regrettable few days, i admit to having been borderline paralyzed by anxieties based in everything from the ever-tumultuous and unchangeably crumbling state of the world to the most petty and insignificant domestic trivialities you can imagine. 

cass has done a lot to take care of and help me in that time, and i count myself unspeakably lucky to have her support and wisdom, and also i love her a lot (hey maybe go say some nice words to her on the server or something; she'll never see it coming).
anyway, i feel like with her help i've been making a lot of positive mental changes in the last week. 

one of the things i think i have to admit is that, as a creator, i have a problem. several, probably. we'll talk about two.

let's start with the first one, the obvious one: we're coming up on two years since i released anything. and it hurts.  

now, i'm incredibly grateful for the patience you all have shown me now, in the past, and over all this time in between. don't rush, take it at your own pace, it's okay.  you're right, of course. and there have been many times in the past where i've been worried about getting episodes out fast enough for you guys.
but this one isn't about you guys.
this one's about me.

it's the longest i've gone without a release since i started making reborn. and even before that, i had the online league to develop and run. before that, i was actively in theatre and doing performances. and before that i was tooling around with games and releasing episodes of my old projects and other demos.

in some regards, it's the longest i've gone without a release since i was like, 11. and i'm pretty sure before then doesn't even count.

there are two wolves inside me.
one knows that i am working every day with rare exception and constantly pushing my projects forward in a meaningful way, no matter how long it takes.
the second one is fucking bitter and feels like i am constantly doing nothing. 

whenever i watch or play something, a lot of my thoughts are just like, why aren't i making anything cool like this, huh
and technically i am.
but it sure doesn't feel like it.
i'm not making it in a way that's still meaningful, anyway. not in a way that others can interact with and appreciate and i can feel like i'm actually moving my life forward.

and i suspect one response to this might be: why don't you go ahead and release e19 and do postgame later?
it would be a fair question, though i've already outlined some reasons: i want the starlight demo to come first for the sake of the community, and i want to finish postgame before releasing because fangames often get C&D'd at the champion release and i want to make sure i can finish.
I'll add an additional reason to that that I haven't said openly before: I think e19's story will in some ways feel incomplete without postgame there to tie up loose ends and support it. we hit the climax, but it still crashes forward. that's part of why we've also got plenty of work in postgame

now for my second problem:

i am beginning to realize that i have an unspecified resistance to meaningful progress.

there are several angles to this, but the most obvious form this takes is perfectionism. 

i am keenly aware of everything wrong with both of my games, and much of what can be done to improve them, especially in starlight's case since it is just now growing its proverbial wings before taking off. 

the amount of time required to fix everything is not infinite, but it feels like it is. and more importantly, it could probably be stretched out to give my lifetime a run for its money. i understand well how any of the roles in game development could be a full time position. and for some reason i have regrettably still not signed a contract with the eldritch being that will allow me to clone myself or alter time so that i may fill all of them.

i begin to appreciate the second wolf, the one that knows i am doing nothing.

i have always been a fan of the advice to just go for it and make it work later. reborn happened that way-- not the reborn that's taken the past six years for five episodes, but the one that did 13 in 2. and, to be fair, there is definitely a huge difference in quality there. but i think it's time to reprioritize.

i have forgotten that advice. i feel like i've lost many parts of myself in the last eight years of development. i've learned and grown much from it, but i did not mean to take a faustian bargain.

a lot of my perfectionism is based in the aforementioned anxieties. they are at a peak right now. i will need to practice other ways to deal with them. and i will need to unlearn several standards i've set for myself.

they were unattainable standards anyway. there is a certain amount of time, effort and skill required to achieve them, but those things can be acquired alongside a history of imperfect releases and learning from mistakes rather than the extra time needed to try to make it perfect right off the bat. that was always silly, and i always knew it. still, i've been trying because i am but a freckle in the greater folly of mankind.

so, for the last several days i've been pushing myself to start making the story of the starlight demo early. 

use placeholders, fill in the assets as they're finished, do what i can imperfectly now,
rather than waiting to have 100% of everything order 

fuck the roadmap

this shift in perspective is part of why i have not made as many updates lately. a scoreboard and a roadmap exist as items to be checked off, but for all the time i spend organizing it and trying to make them comprehensive, they cannot account for the innumerable little everythings that constantly come up in development
more importantly, they keep me focused on the destination
not the journey
i am never there yet
i am always never there yet rather than enjoying the ride

these things don't have to be mutually exclusive, but my focus has been misplaced. 

this is true at every level of my interaction with the project-- how i present it to you guys, focusing on what i've done rather than what i'm doing, how i talk about it to my dev team, and even to cass, who i live with. she sets more good examples for me here.
i have a lot to learn there.

at the same time, the second wolf despises talking about something more than actually working on it.
i don't know if that's wrong yet, but there is so little anything right now that i don't care.

i consider a respite from progress updates in favor of making the progress in a way that i can enjoy more personally. we'll see how that goes.
we'll still bring streams back in july. i have some things planned. the end of june has been busier than i'd like with party planning

yeah by the way the summer social is tomorrow, come hang out with us on the party server, link will be on the main discord, it's from 2p-2a EST so timezones aren't an excuse, do it 

now, the second wolf will devour me whole if i don't post at least some kind of tangible progress here. so, working on getting the story going, one of the things i realized i hadn't done yet was add in-combat text. 

so i added in-combat text

it was actually more difficult than i expected, but i got it working using an otherwise unused section of RPG Maker's default database which actually makes it way  easier and more practical to work with than i expected, so i'm really happy with that. technically i still have a few kinks to work out including text-on-death, but uhhhhh journey over destination haha am i rite guise

guise
rite

bueller

enough talk. back to work.