Laptop death, a new one, and my origin story

Warning: This will be a long blog-style post with a bunch of whining.  If you're not interested in the issues listed above, just know I'll be running behind for an unknown amount of time, but I don't expect it to be catastrophic.

My laptop died a few nights ago.  Just complete blue screen of death, no saving it.  It was a Lenovo designed pretty much explicitly for art, and costed me around $1,000 when I first bought it about 2 years ago.  I originally bought it for something completely unrelated to Domain, but that's neither here nor there.  To say that losing my laptop devastated me?  That's a HUGE understatement.  I put up a good show on my discord I like to believe, by my DM's were a mess.  I was hysterical.

A little more than a year ago, something terrible happened to me that completely destroyed my world.  I won't get into details, but I became suicidal, and in August, put myself in my car with a hose from the exhaust into the window, and sealed it up.  For whatever reason, when I started to feel sick from it, I decided to get out.  I told myself in that moment, if I wanted to die so badly, then I was dead.  I was going to become someone knew by looking into myself, taking all of my traits, good and bad, and finding something positive to make out of it all.  With this, I became "Mia," and started to use my laptop to learn, at first, how to animate.

I made a small game connected to these animations (it was just a 8x8 area with one battle,) which at the time were created using real life images, since I didn't have any way to draw (no stylist.)  Even though it was really rough, I decided to make something out of it, and that became Domain.  I decided I'd try to go public with it, and didn't really know what to expect.  All I knew was that making this was very therapeutic for me, and if I could make people happy along the way?  All the more better.

It was received in a mixed fashion.  For everyone that saw potential in me, I was getting negative messages as well.  I'm not talking criticism: I'm talking outright mean messages.  One of the one's that stuck with me, and still bothers me, was about the fact that I had a Patreon account.  They said not only was I not worth of one, but that I was actively just in this to scam people out of money.  I shouldn't have let this bother me, because I release everything for free eventually, but it did hurt me.  After the events that lead to my suicide attempt, I was broke beyond words, and just was hoping to cover some kind of bills, since my aunt was basically keeping me alive by buying my groceries.

Admittedly, I had no idea what I was doing.  All I knew was I was going to see making this thing through.  A couple of my OG supports set up a Discord for me and taught me how to use it.  One of them bought me a stylist, and told me to get better.  That if I was able to make the stuff I made with nothing but a touchpad and my fingertips, that I certainly had hidden potential if I had a pen.  I worked with that pen, and on Domain, every single day, for at least 2 hours.  If you've been following my work since I first released, you no doubt can see the changes in my overall abilities and quality, and I'm only getting better.

So, when my laptop died?  My world in that moment felt like it was ending all over again for me.  I have no friends IRL and most of my family either abandoned me, has passed away, or lives very far away.  I consider you all to be my friends, as sad/cheesy as that may seem.  I find it to be my duty to make this game, to spread happiness to others, since I find it so hard to find happiness of my own.  Instead of give up because of this?  I went out a bought an even better laptop that my original.  I can say that I've probably made about $750 through patreon and commissions since I started up in September.  So, if anyone ever tries to tell you I'm out for the money?  Slap that bitch, because Domain has now officially netted me ~-$500, and I couldn't care less.  It's not about the money for me, and never was.  I absolutely appreciate all the support, hell, I need it.  Even so, I never once accepted any sort of "Donation."  Every single one of my tiers comes with a reward, and each one of those rewards takes an enormous amount of time.  I did the math once, and I basically work for less than $0.50/hour when I'm doing this (commissioned Animations I make more, but I digress.)

Making this game, and you all mean the world to me.  I'm currently setting up my new laptop, and trying to gauge the damage.  At very least, I'm thinking I lost around 3 weeks of work, but if I try so salvage from my old laptop by using some tricks people have mentioned on Discord, it might not be that bad.  Even so, I told myself that even if I lost EVERYTHING, I was going to remake it.  Nothing was going to stop me from completing this.  I know that sounds a little obsessive, maybe even over the top, but that's how much this means to me.  Once I have everything stabilized, I'm going to announce a small event.  Absolutely everyone, whether you've ever financially supported me or not, will be able to make a small request on that day.  I'm thinking a single sprite of an OC you want to see made.  Those who supported me will of course get dibs, but I will make something for anyone who requests it on that day.  The best way to make that request will be by DM'ing me on Discord or here.  My mind is gunna need a break after all of this, and this seems like a fun way to do that, that also keeps me busy and my followers entertained.

Thank you all for your continued support!  I hope my next update is about something much better!