postmortem

it's been a weird year for me.

getting in a car crash that totaled my car and gave me back and nerve problems, fainting in the shower and getting a concussion, getting mono immediately after and losing what little energy i had to function, even now – and all of that started in the span of 6 months. and yet, despite all of that, i somehow started and finished my own visual novel in the span of a little over a month. 

woof.

first off, to everyone that read my story, had anything to say about it, gave critique, anything – thank you all so much. i almost considered not releasing this at all, and despite feeling a bit sad it didnt get as much attention as i would've liked, the responses i did get were very lovely. 

i wish i felt better about my story. i am admittedly a bit praise-seeking about things i make – the fact that it didn't get a whole lot of engagement, even in my inner circles, definitely stung – but i think i've come to realize just how much of that is me simply trying to compensate for the fact that i am incredibly self-critical, and struggle to view the things i make in an even remotely positive light.

i first had the beginnings of the idea for this story back in april. the original conceit was basically the same: stella dies, pops herself into lilith's head, who confesses she's dying. back then, though, lilith was simply dying from terminal illness, likely to do with her implants, and the story was going to take place in the real world rather than in her server, with stella acting sort of as a johnny silverhand-type hologram accompanying her everywhere. it was going to be a much darker story, likely with one or both of them dying in the end, as the world around them falls apart.

ultimately, though, i couldn't really figure out a way to make a compelling story out of it. stella would have had a much more passive role than i wanted, and lilith as a protagonist didnt really spark my interest as much. so, despite my reservations with the story as it is now, i think it was for the best i rewrote that original premise. i also realized a lot of the themes i wanted to explore in this story were super similar to another story (codenamed dolltype for now) i have in the works, and it had gradually morphed into being in the same setting. i spent… WAY more time on the lore for that overall setting than i probably should have. i wrote out the outline of the ENTIRE timeline leading up to the story, which is 300 YEARS worth of lore, with 10 or 11 events total. helpful in the long run, not as helpful for the actual story i was trying to finish and write all on my own.

i think i actually underwrote this time around. usually i over-write my stories, with very slow paces that burn me out fairly quick, but this time i rushed to fit in so much content, it all feels a little rushed, at least to me. everyone gets a healthy bit of character development, but it's definitely a lot shorter and faster than i intended it to be.

my writing is still definitely my weakest link. im not sure why, but it's always been really hard for me to make things start-to-finish; making story beats flow together nicely is a struggle for me, and i spend a lot of mental energy just trying to make it happen. my way of thinking is very disjointed, eccentric, and disorganized, and it feels like im not very good at communicating ideas as a result. it's also very very hard for me not to get tired of an idea, to get the urge to shift my focus onto something else, something new, instead of staying in place and working on something. even when i do manage to, i get stuck tweaking little details that irk me, and my ocd locks me into place working on something for a completely unnecessary amount of time.

i still have a long way to go before im able to deal with my OCD affecting my writing, i think. it will definitely happen with time, as it did with my art process, but once im able to, i think it will really help prevent me from getting too burnt out, too quickly. as for the fact that i tend to get restless and tired of ideas, stories, characters – im still working on that one. 

i've been crashing at a friend's place, this past week, waiting to finally move in to the new place (obligatory gofundme plug if you'd like to help), and when i haven't been having a bit of a quasi-psychotic break, i've been thinking about my stories a lot. i was rereading a very old (it was like a year ago, dude) hdg fic i was working on last night, and i didn't feel as negatively towards it as i thought i would; in fact, i felt kind of nostalgic, wistful even. the main protagonists of that story, eve and lyn, are almost like a proto-lilith and proto-stella, respectively – a burnt out veteran of her trade, and her overly optimistic ~~sister~~ headmate. i was going to repurpose them for DOLLTYPE, since the characters in that story (excepting the affini obviously) were originally from the prototype story that became DOLLTYPE anyways, but a part of me kind of wants to go back and finish my fanfic instead? i have my qualms with the setting feeling a little restrictive with all the rules and lore guidelines, but i wrote a LOT of the story and outline already, so rewriting it and finishing it wouldn't be too hard. shrug

as for this story, i hope i eventually get the motivation to go back and finish act 2 at some point. my basic idea for it is essentially just giving you time to spend either with lilith, sakuya, or alone looking for clues, with each route leading to a specific ending, and then one final, dramatic ending; pretty simple, but it'll be easier to finish in a decent amount of time, while also letting me focus more on my writing. ive got a lot of other ideas i want to work on, in the mean time, and i want to make another, much shorter VN sometime soon, so i can polish up my storycrafting skills and improve the narrative flow and cohesion of my works. or something.

i put a lot of myself into this story - blood, sweat, tears, memories, emotions, beliefs, fears. dead end system is a story about change, about nostalgia, how we desperately want things to stay the same, go back to the way they were, and how we hurt ourselves and others trying to do so, sacrifice our empathy for emotional self-preservation above all else. it's about the way we sometimes hurt those just like us, those hurting the same way we are,  more than we hurt those who marginalize us, those who victimize us.

i hope you enjoyed it, regardless. thanks for reading, i hope you stay tuned for more <3

my initial sketches of  lilith and stella

first digital designs for the trio