weekly dev log #15, september 18th, 2023

Mild spoilers for worldbuilding and stuff I want to change!

Oh, and the polls will close on Friday, so make sure to leave your votes ❤️

We live another week! Not going to lie, having started up with my therapist on a regular basis again has been pretty damn brutal on my mental health. The mind-numbing fatigue is real. The processing mind is so damn scattered. But! I have worked as much as I'm able to- with the plot & twine UI mainly, and changing the worldbuilding for this story a bit- as I'm rewriting the early meeting with Id, and the arrival to the hedge, I feel myself wanting more emphasis on sci-fi. I have a wild idea of changing the shapeshifting horse to a sort of hovercraft instead, to introduce the fact that Id is a speed junkie that has been deprived of their adrenaline for far too long. 👀. 

It has been slow going, a lot of back and forth, but I have also reached a point where I'm just accepting my creative cycles and trying to find the fun in these 'low' periods without beating myself up. The most important thing to me right now is retaining my joy with the story, in any way I can, because of my pathological demand avoidance, which has been like a stick in the wheel. It has really helped to put a name to it, and I'm still learning about it, but that, together with the knowledge that the 'microdosing on post-launch depression' I told you about weeks ago actually means I'm going through an autistic burnout and have to take time to recover. Discovering this with my therapist has been the best shift in perspective I could have asked for, although it sucks so much that I can't brute force my way through it the way I could when I was younger 😂

I've been writing some short stories and dabbling in rewrites, and when I was in the discord voice chat the other day (hi lovelies!!), I explored writing a spinoff that had less emotional vulnerability to it: part of why Ouro is so slow going is because I need to tap into some really dark places to get into the mindset of the MC. It can be very exhausting. And I know I can write more than I currently am. So, maybe, I want to write something with a lighter tone. A bit more humor to it. (I have been craving it like a madman). Still thinking about it… plotting and scheming. Maybe a prequel for when the hedge was being built. Or something else entirely. Something short, and something sweet. 

Other than that, there is not much else to say; I'm trying to get out some extra stuffs for you this week, but otherwise I will be in the discord dropping snippets and such again :> I wrote a lovely story last week that I want to share, but at the last second I wanted to change the POV from second person to Leith, because it fits better. I think you'll like it :]