hi everyone! four months later i'm back. this one will probably take about 35 minutes to read on average, possibly longer if you're taking more time to digest it. it covers heavy themes. it features writing by tem, kuri, eevee, myself...

i've been putting a lot of time into this and i'm ready to do something else. sometimes i feel like a lot of story needs to be told at once or else i just don't feel like sharing it. i guess ellaroux talks about that kind of thing near the end of the VN with intensity.

i had an audience i didn't really like before. it made me not want to post a lot. i had it shoved down my throat that if someone was either a minor or a fan, that i HAD to not say anything if i was being hurt by them, that i needed to address their feelings first, always, even if they were terrifying to me and i wanted to not talk to them. sometimes people would be so scary about this. about me not wanting to talk to them.

this has honestly been very painful in the past few years and made me close off a lot. a lot of people have been very cruel at times, and i have definitely lashed out at times, but i try not to get angry with someone if they're trying to be respectful of me. when it feels like they start to act entitled to me, that's it. i need space. i can't be around that. i don't really care about the rest of the details because consistently when i connect to someone entitled to my time and attention, my life seems to get worse in just about every way. and then i'm emotionally berated for not doing this. no.

i have long processed a lot of stuff in this VN but it was important to me to think about and capture very painful feelings and dynamics that i've been in. but finally i've found a linear thread in my story, after years of searching for one. so thanks Quixate. i love that guy. even as painful as he's been to masked papaya / ellaroux, he has always tried to care when he's been made aware of something that has hurt, and that's been really unusual i guess. i definitely appreciate it. talking to him is grounding often even if it can also be extremely ungrounding. i equally laughed a lot drawing some of these parts with him as i felt a deep burning pain in my chest at his actions. simultaneously...

it has been nice to release a lot of garbage thought processes that i can't do anything with really. things feel a lot better to do that. this update for me signifies a lot of things that i understand because of being part of, but also lets me see myself in a removed light. it has been really weird i guess to see a character for myself start to fork from myself, and this to lead me to be able to start seeing my older patterns in a way that helps presently...

it is just weird. i have appreciated the opportunity to work on this though. eevee's neobverse was really funny but also frustrating to play with. kuri's quixate is always so funny but also can be so trying of the patience. tem's neobverse and string-along were inspirational in the original writing, and some of it got used here. there's a lot with krypto that has been told in private, but it's been for me, to care about things that i went through too. and i just don't feel like sharing that with the internet at large right now. it has been honestly complete bullshit to deal with stuff around minors and it's majorly sucked. i don't tolerate them in the owel server anymore because the lack of caring for others in actionable ways really started to hurt a lot of people - it pains me to recognize a lot of the same mistakes as from when i was around that age too. but that's how it goes.

i dunno. i basically just remove from around me anything that acts unempathetic. i don't have room for it. and i don't want to put that kind of energy out. so i don't really like posting as much if i don't feel stable in who's around me. and even when i do, i like doing stuff in private a lot more usually, because people around me are more likely to care directly, and i appreciate that and can feel that much more.

these past few months have been a lot better for me. simultaneously i've gotten more done and it feels more hopeful for me in terms of stuff i've worked out emotionally. i've had to cut back a lot of contact with people and mostly spend the month to myself or talking to one or two people while i made this vn. the songs were mostly preexisting but maybe tweaked a little, this time, because i had an arbitrary date chosen to do this work by, almost treating it like a game jam.

i had some rough patches concerning people acting bitter over not having my attention and the attention of a friend, or being upset at not being able to explain. this is so draining. even if i care about the person, resentfulness makes me withdraw a lot and sometimes have nightmares if i connect with the person. i feel sensitive to that. so i've had to disconnect in that kind of place...

i spent today drawing. i intended to put an album together but it was more important to let my hand/arm rest.

something i feel like i'd like to do is update the site more regularly with comic things that i actually want to do, but if i do this, my boundaries on who i interact with will have to be super specific. because if they aren't, then i don't like being present, and being present is required for the kind of work i'd do.

deciding to share art for me is a large matter because i really felt fed up with the way people acted towards me over the years. i have dealt with so many people being shitty and abusive and that kind of thing genuinely makes me want to die. i don't deal with that anymore because i am strict with what i take in emotionally. i have felt overall like i can handle things even if it feels crushing or horribly sad. i basically just decide to care about my experience between myself and my close friends. and this has been just much better overall.

i've been interested in witchcraft. i care about the earth being preserved and helped. i wish that people did more for the planet. i've tried to with gardening and that's gone overall nicely and well.

regarding cenastre server, i wanted to open that up earlier in the year but my energy changed. i went through a ton of unstable friendship things at the start of the year and it threw me off for months. i spent a lot of time working out character situations because i needed to extract myself from needing to connect with people i no longer wanted to speak with. that took time. i just do not really like interacting with someone's character if we don't talk anymore, like if there's a boundary either way. i mostly just don't really want to put energy into connections like that. putting energy into things that weren't connecting very well meant not doing as much as i'd have liked re: updates, earlier in the year. it got complicated and i really just needed to focus on my own characters and those of a couple of people close to me to feel like i existed in my own setting again.

i've really enjoyed writing characters though. it's taken me a very long time to get to this point of being able to represent one very long story thread in a row.

seriously... i haven't done this in like almost 7 years? i just haven't wanted to. i haven't been able to maintain the energy for a solid story thread since like 2018. it just did not feel worth it. the rate at which people were cruel in my direction or manipulated others over me, fucking sucked. it's fine to be upset that i had lashed out at anyone, sure, and i agree it sucks to be on the receiving end of that - but that applies to me too. the way people have mistreated me has been abhorrent at times. i'm really done with it.

i feel relief talking about this because it has been so long of being unable to find these exact words.

people hounded me for accountability or whatever the fuck while using anonymous identities to get away with harassing me without real consequences. this also fucking sucked. people really don't want their own actions examined while also wanting to be able to throw around painful and unfair takes. man, fuck this.

i liked cohost a lot as a website and i'm sad to see it go. i did want to write a little about that.

i intend to use floraverse itself to make more posts about my actual thoughts regarding updates. i usually don't, and it's been a while, but i feel like i want to again.

i have a lot of stories i've barely shared. i've been privileged to be able to focus on my setting and the RP stuff to establish things, and now the world feels very alive to me.

thank you to everyone who's been a part of that, even if i ended up removing your character. which i did. to many people. who ended up sucking the life out of things. >:|

but that's also fine. that's to be expected. the two main events AP and Althar were full of a lot of strife.

And that's just how it goes sometimes but i don't really want to do another event before working out the pain that accumulated during the events. i've been getting a good understanding of the kinds of flags to look out for for people not being able to acknowledge others well during RP, but learning how to like address this in caring ways has been such a... process. and trying to help people be more empathetic about the effects they're having others... while also trying hard to learn, myself... this is a lot to handle. i need a break from it because taking the characters people play, seriously, is actually very hard work. it takes being as caring about the people as the characters and that's not something that comes naturally to everyone, as people have their own things going on and you might not know their context for why they're acting painful in certain ways. that can get real hard.

anyway i'll wrap this up. i wish everyone to have a good rest of this year, no matter how it goes. thanks everyone who gets this far.

here's the discord