1am emoposting lmao (Patreon)

hello this is cass.
i'm doing my best to keep ame duct taped together through testing. this is a post about that! it's a bit more raw than most of the other testing-related posts. raw enough that i'm putting a note at the start of it mentioning that in advance!
and idk if ame would just do that herself or not, but it's probably easier if i just spare her the effort.

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me: ahhh i should make a post but i don't have any funny cats to post, what do i even say
cass: oh just make a post about how you're doing, it'll be fine
well okay hi

i feel like this is the most high stakes testing we've had just by merit of it being the final release.
like, in past releases when there was valuable criticism, i could always be like,
yeah okay that's a good point i'll keep that in mind for future episodes
and a lot of that has been super helpful!
now it's like
sometimes people have good points, things fall flat, and even independent of everyone else's opinions, there are many things i wish i could've executed better or just had more time and energy to focus on
and now what do i do?
i can't take notes and come back and fix the problem later.
like i CAN, but i also can't, i think i'll just die of psychic DoT if i keep working on this for another year
i'm already still suffering DoT from being on this for this long, for being "almost done" (in my heart if nothing else) for the last eight years
at this point i just have to accept the criticism and live with it forever

and there are tangible questions and stakes like i don't know what happens when we hit the final release
do we blow up like uranium
do we get c&d'd?
do i just get to walk away peacefully and work on my own things happily?
or does everyone get tired of waiting for starlight and i need to find something else?

(which for that last point, you know, huge appreciation to everyone who's already voiced support and interest in that; i'm incredibly grateful for it and counting on you all so much. just, the insecurity is still there, you know?)

so i think for these reasons i seem to be especially sensitive this testing cycle

there's also the fact that it's the first release test for reborn since i feel like i've really gotten better at not emotionally dissociating all the time ???? that's an old habit for me lmao so maybe this is kind of expected regardless
or maybe it's just double whammy
but i find my mood ping-ponging back and forth quite rapidly
like i'll see a few reports of things and immediately my perception is
oh god everything is broken oh fuck shit panik
or there'll be some like, light, well-intentioned constructive criticism
and internally i'm like
fuck shit the game is shit assdammit my career is over
conversely i will totally still, at least internally, bounce around seeing people's reactions and what they liked
and then i'll spend like two days being a lump on the couch, engaging in my time-honored tradition of shoving my head in the sand and refusing to perceive the testing server like some kind of digital ostrich
and then when the stress hits a breaking point because i don't know what i'm avoiding and it's always worse in my imagination, i look at the cat list and fix everything that's not in the scripts in an evening and suddenly i'm like
hahaha wha was i even worried about everything is perfect we are wholesome, clean, seiso, pure of heart and body both and untouchable in all ways
kalm

brief shout out to cass for, as usual, generally checking in and keeping me together and stuff
also shoutout to perry crim and vulpes who've really been pulling a lot of legwork on the fixes and letting me focus on the things that need my attention the most!!!
wow i would've fallen to pieces already without all of them lmao, huge love and appreciation

so i realize this post has pretty much entirely been about me being an emotional disaster
which is true
but i don't want to make it sound like i'm doing horribly, i'm really okay, i just don't have much emotional temperance after trying for years to break habits of emotional dissociation
now it's like oh there's feelings EVERYWHERE and i somehow have to hold them all at once????????
humans just do this normally????????
the only way i know how to deal with feelings is by not feeling them,
and that is p r o b l e m a t i c
so it's a work in progress like everything else i guess

um cats

i feel like there hasn't been anything terrrribly funny other than like
the end credits broke someone's game because they were too long. . . . . .
which was both hilarious and heartbreaking to me 

we're getting ready to actually move into the multitesting phase of alpha in the next week or so. so far after two weeks of playing only one person has actually finished postgame so far, but that's about to be two,  and others are not too terribly far behind. i can only hope it won't be inherently overwhelming to get more and more people going at once.
theoretically, cats are finite, aren't they?
eventually the game will stop having problems enough that even however many people are testing, it'll be manageable... right?
...it doesn't feel like it.
i think i've developed a rather fatalistic view that Cats are Simply Inevitable and though the severity of them may lessen as we fix the most major things, that will only bring another stream of smaller ones to the surface.
also that's stupid.
but here i am thinking like that.
...there's just a lot of history of anxiety and poor practices, such as trying to fix everything myself, that have left me with an inappropriate amount of stress in response to many things which frankly never warranted it.
i wish i were a little bit better about getting past mistakes off of me.
that's part of why i'm quite eagerly looking forward to a fresh start with a new project as well. 

just a little more until then, i tell myself, for the seventh year

the newest content is not nearly as polished as i'd like.
also, half the game is 'newest' content now.
coming in at somewhere around 90 hours of playtime from game start to postgame end now, the patently irresponsible scope of this game means that as the lead i fundamentally am not able to sit with it all and give every piece of content the attention and polish it should deserve.
but then, "irresponsible scope" was probably an original selling premise of the project.
lesson learned,
kind of.

i doubt i'll do something on this scale again without postgame promises mandating me into making quests for an arbitrary number of dozens of legendaries (as i've said in the past, i don't even like postgames as a concept that much)
but at the same time, as a player, i always have some kind of stupid anxiety about games that i enjoy ending too soon
(which i say is stupid not as a criticism of my own feelings, but because even when i feel that way, i often don't end up finishing the existing content of those games erkjkjd)
this probably speaks to greater anxieties i have made plain about the passage of time within life in general
but those are easier said than overcome. 

legends arceus is probably the most recent example. i'm just about through with the third area, and because of the UI, i have a rough idea of how many areas overall there are in the game. and it feels like i'm coming up on it too quickly, too soon.
but, i'm not there yet, and already worrying about that?
and once i am there, i'll probably be done with the game and never look back. i almost never play postgames. i just want to move on ksjkdjdkd

fun game though, best i've felt about pokemon's direction since B2W2. i'm frankly also grateful to be getting out of pokemon as of this coming out. compared to any of the earlier main series, it wasn't hard to outdo them. this is the first game they've produced that i think, simply by merit of it being a modernized 3d system, i can't compete.

that much isn't a point of insecurity; i'm aware reborn's strengths are very much opposite to PLA's, and the two games are only barely recognizable to each other. just, there is a lot within PLA as far as design that i value (such as the speed of combat) and i would not want to continue trying to be accountable for a "modern" pokemon game in the face of it.

for now i am excited and eager just to move on.
i just have to learn how to deal with everything that didn't live up to expectations. whether that's mine or others'. 

one line from PLA i liked--
"The universe is vast. And I am small within it."
...don't get me wrong, it's silly in context and the entire conflict in game is about as galaxy-brained (heh) as the team aqua vs magma conflict. which is to say, not at all.
but in a vacuum, i think it helps me to remind myself that although this is all of the stakes for my entire life, it is also just a small corner of everyone else's universe.
i started making this game because it was fun for me.
i lose sight of that a lot.
thanks to everyone for coming to hang out in my corner of the universe.
i'm glad to be able to be here with you all how ever things shake out 

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