Bad News, Good News

I forgot to write an intro to this post like an idiot, so... uhhh... real quick, this is a big post that's seperated into The Bad Stuff and The Good Stuff. The Bad Stuff is real bad, but the Good Stuff is pretty good, so I hope it evens out.

The Bad Stuff

This post is going to be a public one, so I'm going to go through everything from the beginning so that non-Patrons reading this are in the loop.

I'm not sure if this warrants an explicit content warning, but I will say that this particular section of the post isn't going to be super fun to read. If you'd like to skip it and just focus on the positive stuff - understandably - then scroll down until you hit the section marked 'good news'.

Here's a bit of backstory. I live in the United States, but I am originally from the United Kingdom. Many years ago via a complicated series of events - let's just call it 'family stuff' - I ended up moving to the States. My Mum (who most of this entry is about) is someone who lived in the UK. We were seperated, but not in a way that was sad or unamicable. She's been to visit before, I call her every Sunday, we sent little packages of stuff back and forth, UK stuff I like, US stuff she likes, etc etc. In other words, I have a pretty good long distance relationship with my Mum.

Back around the middle of April, on a Sunday, she didn't call me like she usually did. This was odd, because she's a creature of routine and habit. I figured that maybe she was with some friends or something, or maybe taking a nap, but ultimately decided that if I didn't hear anything from her by the end of the day then I'd try to get someone around to check up on her.

This is where the story gets quite harrowing.

I didn't get a call, so I ultimately got in contact with one of my cousins. My cousin came over. The front door was locked, but he could hear my Mum talking behind it. It turned out that she had fallen down the stairs at some point, maybe on Sunday, maybe before. With the help of the next door neighbours he managed to get the front door keys from her, unlock the door, and get an ambulance over to take her to the hospital.

I was in the States at the time, so I was getting a lot of updates from said cousin. My cousin informed me that my mother had a stroke and was in the hospital with something that resembled dementia.

I'm probably revealing a little too much here but fuck it, it's important for context. My cousin is... not the most reliable person in the world. He is actually a compulsive liar, as in, he lies about literally everything and anything, major and minor, and he cannot fucking help himself. I love him and he helped my Mum at a time when nobody else could. He is not, however, someone that I wanted to be on the ground floor of her treatment going forward. So, with nobody else that I could really rely on, I booked the first available flight to the UK that I could. I've been here since around the end of April.

If you want an example of that whole compulsive liar thing, then, my Mum didn't actually have a stroke. That was something he made up, I guess. As soon as I arrived at the hospital and asked about my Mum having a stroke the nurses looked at me very, very confused. No, she's not had a stroke, she's just fallen down the stairs and is presenting severe dementia symptoms. So the dementia part was true, just not the stroke bit.

Whatever. It's fine. I would have come whether she had a stroke or not. But I hope that this paints a picture that this man is just a completely unreliable fuck. The very last person that I'd want to have any kind of authority in this situation.

Further context: I have three siblings. I'm the youngest of the four. My eldest sibling, bless them, was on the phone with me every day and night. My other siblings, though... I haven't a fucking word from them. I've reached out and told them, but I haven't heard anything. Not even a wow that sucks, good luck with that! I was hoping that if I came over here then I would able to stir them up into action, but I have had absolutely no success, so little success in fact that, as I say, I haven't actually heard ANYTHING from them aside from my eldest sibling.

My eldest sibling came over a couple of weeks after I did. He left about two or three weeks ago now. While he was here, he did help a lot, but it was very clear that he was highly overwhelmed by the situation and financially burdened by being over here. So I've kind of been dealing with this... mostly on my own.

This isn't how I expected it to turn out. Patrons will know that when I first posted about this I was under the impression that I'd get over there first, establish some kind of 'vanguard', and then other folk would come in to help me with the heavy lifting. This didn't happen. Bar the one sibling I've been on my own and when they were here - as much as I don't want to complain, their company was great - it didn't really feel like they were alleviating the burden. I don't blame him for this. I've realized that nobody could have alleviated this burden.

I hate calling it a burden, by the way. It's not really a burden. I just don't know what else to call it. My Mum isn't the burden, the pain and weight in my body and soul is... if that clarifies it all. I don't blame her for this.

Anyway. So I get over here. Mum is showing dementia symptoms. Really bad ones. Like I sit down and I talk to her and she recognizes me, which was a big fucking relief tell you what, but everything else is... muddled. The first question she asks me is... where's my car? This is an understandable question, Mum loved her car, it was the key to her independence. Anyway, the car is on the drive at home, so I tell her that, and so she says to me... which home? This street or that street?

In this case, this street was the house that she had lived in the 1980s. That street was the home, her actual home, that she'd been living in for the past... thirty or so years. For some reason, the place that she'd moved out of over 30 years ago was a viable place for her car to be. Shit, as far as she was concerned, she hadn't even moved out of that old place yet. She kept going on about how she needed to move everything out of there and get it into this new house... or this old house, because like I say, she's owned it for thirty years or more. The other one got sold forever ago.

Another example... and this is one is kinda heavy... she thinks that her Mum and Dad are still alive. Her Mum died 20 years ago now, her Dad more than 20. She grieved for them, for years, she struggled to get over the loss of them, particularly her mother. But as far as she's concerned, they're still alive. Those years of grieving no longer exist, or at least, don't present themselves in her persona.

You'd think that she's stuck in the 80s or something by this logic, but no, not quite. It's weird, really weird. She doesn't know what year it is mind. Ask her what year it is and she'll give you a different answer every time. But some recent stuff remains. Her husband dying, for example. She remembers that, and that happened fairly recently in the grand scheme of things. So certain events are still there, just... everything is jumbled. The record plays, but it's skipping around constantly...

This is without going into how much of a madhouse her home was. I've been living in it for the past two months and it's been a trip. My Mum was a creature of order, but it's clear that she's been suffering with the dementia for some time. A drawer that I specifically remember being for keys was instead filled with hundreds of wooden forks. Yeah, hundreds of wooden forks. Another drawer was full of those tokens that you put on a shopping cart, there must have been like... fifty of them. There were so many bottles of water that I haven't actually drank tap water the entire time I've been here in an effort just to get rid of them all. And I'm someone who drinks like six bottles of a water a day. It's like she went to the shops, bought things, came home, put them away, went back to the shops, forget she'd bought them...

At first we thought - or perhaps hoped - that these dementia symptoms were presenting because of a particularly bad UTI that she had, or, urinary tract infection, or in other words, it burns when I pee. This is apparently a thing. Elderly people go a little loopy or something. But as the weeks went on, the symptoms didn't clear. If anything they just presented themselves more persistently. So, over the course of two months and many assessments, it was deemed that she was no longer capable of living by herself.

I don't have power of attorney, so there were a lot of things that I couldn't sort out. I couldn't phone the banks or sort out the car lease she has or do anything with the house, really, so the best I have been able to do is get a lawyer involved who will ultimately manage her affairs from here on out. There's also social services over here who have been wonderful throughout the entire thing. Mum is in a care home, and she will be staying there.

It's an unfortunate and sad ending to her story. She was a woman who always valued her independence. Owning her own home, driving her own car, having her own job and being able to carve her own way through life. For it to end in a way where she is utterly dependent on people is... miserable. At the same time though, her staying at home is not a viable option.

I've been to see her every day since I've got here. Every time I visit it's like the first time. She doesn't remember that I've been to see her every day for the past two months. Today I went to see her and she figured that I had just gotten off the flight. It's the same every day. Talk to her about a family memory or retell a story and she's all there, but the second you're out of that space then she's in a place where nothing really makes sense.

I hate to say it, but I'm so tired. So, so tired. I don't think I've ever been this exhausted, and that's saying something. I don't want to sit here and wax on about it but I've been through a lot in my life, seen people die, seen dreams die, seen so many unfortunate and terrible things, and yet... this is something else.

I haven't cried since I've got here. This is a weird thing for me, because I'm someone who cries all the time. Crying is good. Everyone should cry. It's a great way to relieve pent up stress. But I've just felt so numb. My brain is stuck in this state between grieving and wanting to help. I can't grieve because she's right there. She's still Mum. Mum is still there. But I can't help because there's no help with this.

The only thing I can do is make sure that she's safe, that people are looking after her, but to do that I have to put her in what is essentially her worst nightmare. There is no other option. I am not able to take care of her, to do the things that would be required. I would have to keep her under constant surveillance. I don't have the strength or the willpower for it, not without sacrificing everything that is... mine. My life. I'd have to give up everything to make that happen, and I feel so fucking selfish for not wanting to do that. But at the same time she wouldn't want that for me either.

So I tell myself that she's in the best place possible. She is. It's a good care home. I made sure that she would get in a care home that was good, that she would hopefully like, and she does like it there. But she's also not cognizant of the fact that she's even in a care home. She thinks she's on vacation or something. Of course I correct this if it comes up, gently, but it's so fucking persistent. No amount of telling her that she's in a care home and she needs to be looked after settles in.

I really do just want to lay down and give in. Don't be concerned that I'm saying that, because I won't. I know I won't. I know I'll pick myself up from this somehow, emotionally and physically, and come to terms with everything that's happened. I know that I have the strength to do that, and I know that it's something that I want to do. I don't want anyone to think that I'm going to do anything drastic. I'm not.

So... that's it. I say that's it, this was several fucking paragraphs long, but that is it. That's as much of the story as I think is required to get a full picture.

Let's get into the good news.

The Good Stuff

Despite the fact that I have been very quiet on here, I have been busily working away on things that I believe will be very, very exciting. The things that I have been working on are both A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest and the 'remake' of A Tiny Furry In A Huge World. Predominantly I have been working on the latter, for no particular reason other than that it felt like the right thing to do.

So, I'm going to talk about the remake a bit, and kind of give people a picture of what's going on.

Before I do, though, I would like to apologize for the final update or A Tiny Furry In A Huge World v1.3 (the quest version, that is) not coming out this month once again. I guess this is dipping back into bad news territory again, but I just have not had the energy required to do the final push on it. The headspace required for it has just not been there unfortunately. To try and justify this a little, closing up an update is a lot of work. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, things to do, scenes to polish off, etc etc... it adds up into a mound of a lot of little things. I have done all of the big work, but I have just not been able to sit down and get the hundred tiny things done because the thought of all that on top of everything else has been overwhelming.

Here is the good news, though. I am flying back to the United States on July 1st. Yes, literally tomorrow. There, I will be back to my proper setup, my comfortable chair and desk, my nice computer that isn't a half-boiled gaming laptop from ten years ago... and most importantly, I will have some distance from... everything here. I will be in a much better headspace to do it. I will have my ADHD medication again, which makes handling a hundred little tasks more possible.

Anyway. I am going to make a cast iron promise that it will be out and finished around the middle of July.

I know that this has been a while coming. I'm sorry that everything has been so disrupted. I promise that I will make it up to everyone, genuinely. Everyone being patient and supportive through this has been one of the few lights in the dark.

Which is one of the only reasons why I've been able to work this month at all. Work has been a solace. The work I've been doing a little different from my usual stuff. I've been writing plenty, but I've also been drawing some stuff.

Yeah, drawing. Well... I've kinda been practicing drawing for a few years now. Well, I've kinda been drawing through my life. Most of my teenage years I was always doodling, but I kinda fell off of it later on in life and... I've been getting back into it. It's been kind of a secret project. I didn't really intend to do anything major with it, just sorta like... game stuff. Sprites, stuff for effects, you know the score.

I've decided to be a bit more daring than though. People really wanted character art, and... people honestly have really wanted character art for a while. My intention for this was to go to an artist, someone in the community. I have a couple of people who are interested in doing game art for me, and don't get me wrong, I still intend on getting art from those people for A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest. For the upcoming (remake?) of A Tiny Furry In A Huge World though, I decided I'm gonna do most if not all of the art myself.

Why? Well, it's kind of my own thing. It always has been my own thing. I always had a very solid vision for how I wanted the game to look stylistically, it's just I was never really able to achieve it. Instead I went for something else, the rendered backgrounds with the filters on them, and they work fine, I like them a lot even, but they're not really what I wanted for the game.

What I wanted was pixel art. Why? Well, the game is kind of very inspired by what are now very old point and click adventure games. It's where the wry kinda dickish narrator and such comes from. It's also why the game says thank you for playing at the end of every scene, because that was something old Sierra games used to do whenever you died... usually before saying something really sarcastic and calling you a moron.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning the game into a point and click, but those games did have an aesthetic, and aesthetic was pixel art. Pixel art has always fascinated me because it's one of those things that can either look real bad or real good. The process of creating it is fascinating too, because you generally have quite a small space to work in and every pixel sorta counts.

So yeah, I'm doing pixel art for A Tiny Furry On A Huge Quest... the remake, that is. I do have a title for it in mind that's not Ultra Plus Super Deluxe or whatever but the game's full title is a spoiler. There are, perhaps surprisingly, a lot of things I could reveal that would be spoilers for the game. I really want to keep most everything I can about this remake to be a surprise. It's going to be very surprising. It's not going to be a bog standard remake, there are way too many of those on the market and I'd rather do something different and interesting and exciting. So if you're thinking... oh man, not A Tiny Furry In A Huge World again... I promise, it's not that. It's not going to be that. It's going to be something more.

With the above in mind, though, I can't really show off a lot because it would hamper the surprise. I don't want to show off the portraits that I've drawn for the central characters that everyone knows and loves, for example, because it would hamper the surprise of them showing up in game and you being like oh huh, that's what they actually looked like! Everyone is going to have dialogue portraits with several expressions, kinda like a real slick visual novel I guess or... Persona social links. What's the difference, right?

But I will show off a few things. Like this bozo! Who is he? I dunno, a new character. There's a few of those...

Oh. It probably goes without saying, but these are obviously very rough sketches. I'm showing the rough sketches because it spoils less of the surprise or... something. So yes, there's mixels and weird shit but it's not there in the final product. Also they're colored and shaded and stuff, obviously...

Here's another mysterious character, including a bonus Kyo:

If people don't end up liking the pixel art then that's fine. I will explore other avenues, but I'd like to give it a shot and put my whole ass into it. Why not? You might think it's a lot of work to do like, fifteen characters and a handful of expressions for each, as well as backgrounds and gosh knows what, and it is, but I've been steadily working away at it over the past two months, this month in particular.

In total, I think I've maybe done about... 40% of the game's art, or 40% of the art that will be required for it's launch. On top of that, I've done a decent chunk of the programming, writing, and other such silly things that need to be done when it comes to making games. Honestly, I'd say it's about 40% complete. Portions of it are even pretty playable. I'm not sure how long it'll take overall, but I'm optimistic that it'll be out long before the end of the year. I'm very excited to show it to people, because I've been working on it for a long time, keeping lots of it under wraps, making secret plans...

I've shown off art, but let's kinda put everything together and talk about a new gameplay feature. This is a bit new for me, but I thought it'd be a fun idea... which is to give the protagonist a phone. I think this offers both a bunch of really fun gameplay opportunities and really fun vore opportunities. It's a neat way to do a lot of things diagetically as well as doing silly things like being able to call certain numbers when you're inside of people, or... well, that one alone adds a shit ton of interactions, so I'm sure you get my point.

So here's what the old phone looks like. As you can see, there's a wide variety of apps. The phone lets you call people. There's also a messaging app because I thought receiving/sending messages might be fun. The contacts app is a part of the phone's diagetic nonsense, as in it will work as a scene selector. The other three things... well, one of them is settings, but what are the other two? Surprises, surprises...

Anyway. You can call funny numbers on the phone.

123, for example, is a number you can call. Where does the number take you? Well, it's a replacement for the old in game guide. Again, something more diagetic and in-universe and fun, rather than just... here's how ya do it! Don't get me wrong, I'll probably write a guide for the game again because it's a nice thing to have and to offer, but I'd like a more 'fun' in game way of nudging players toward solutions and alternate paths than just listing it in a non-immersive guide somewhere.

Anyway, consider it a hint line... of sorts. Because I'm me, I wanted to do something a little creepy and weird with it. Calling 123 will connect you to The Far End, one of those strange places between places, a fold in reality, a tone between tones if you will...

Manning the phone is, of course, Kyobi... or... is that Kyobi? Maybe it's just someone who looks like Kyobi. They call themselves The Operator, because of course they do. They are the operator, after all...

I show you this less to talk about the hint system and more because it's a pretty spoiler free way of giving you a fair impression of what the game is going to ultimately look like. Pixel art backgrounds, characters on the side, a nice text box...

This is going to be my attempt at doing the best possible version of A Tiny Furry In A Huge World. I hope that this brief and rather mysterious preview gives you a glance at the amount of effort that I'm putting into this. I am going to make my dream version of this game. Before I came back to the UK, I was half in the mind to take the easy way out with it, to just kinda port the game over as simply and easily as I could, and that still would have taken a lot of effort. But this whole thing with Mum has given me a new perspective. I don't want to let my dreams fade into nothing. I want to make the best version of the best game that I can make and I'm going to do it and I'm not going to be afraid that my art sucks or that the game will be bad or any of that, I'm just going to make it, it's going to be full of passion, surprises, and everything else.

All of this is maybe... like, 5% of what I've been working on this month. There's going to be so many cool things in this game. I cannot wait to surprise you all with it.

It's going to be the best thing I've ever made by far, and then I'm going to fucking follow that up with the best fucking possible version of A Tiny Furry In A Huge Quest too. This is not going to kill me. This is going to empower me. I'm tired now, exhausted really, and I need some distance from this whole thing - I am really looking forward to being able to hug and pet my cats again, and also the sweet embrace of AC fuck it's been hot over here - but this will not kill me, it will not kill my dreams, no.

I also have a lot of stuff I've wrote this month that I am looking forward to uploading over the next month, including but not limited to the Tiny Furry In A Huge World update. I have a few stories, a couple of chapters of my novel, and a whole bunch of other neat things to share. After I get home tomorrow - and have a good sleep, probably - I'm going to be coming straight back here with a content drop for everyone.

Thank you for being patient with me. It means everything. I promise it'll be rewarded.

Concluding Thoughts

So, yeah, there we go. Bad news, good news, all the news.

I don't really want to bring this up, and I don't want anyone to panic because the worst case scenario is that I'll just open up emergency commissions or something, but being over here with all of the solicitors fees and having to pay my rent back home and... the money... has not left me in a great financial state. If you're already a Patron, then, great! If you're reading this and you aren't, then hopping on right now for a month would be a great help. If you're adverse to Patreon for whatever reason, then I have a tip jar over on Kofi. Anything would help alleviate the burden a little right now. If you can't help, then don't worry, I will be okay. I have a way of continuing to live, a bit like mold or something...

This is a long post, so if you'd like a TLDR: back in the UK, miserable situation with Mum, dealt with it but it sucked because I was on my own. I've been on working on big things though that I'll be ready to share soon, and as sad as all this is, I won't let it kill me. I'm mold! I just told you!

I've been writing this for the past four hours or so, so I'm going to close it off here because this is a few thousand words long I think and I've said enough. I need to go pack my bags and get ready for a long, long flight. I'll see you all on the other side.