Alora Fane

Some cathartic venting about fatigue, lack of motivation, mental barriers, Alora Fane, and MARDEK 4. And this thing from Sindrel Song, obviously.

I wanted to have achieved a whole lot more on Sindrel Song since the last post, but I've done essentially nothing this week. Well, mostly; I did redesign this character, Remedy, and I did some animations too, though I can't exactly show them in a screenshot and it's not worth making another video just yet.

Since she represents Feeling, which is essentially the Big Five trait of Agreeableness, she's supposed to look like a nurse, someone who'd nurture and look after another despite not being family or a friend. I liked that I was able to replace the stethoscope - which appears in lots of the stereotypical depictions of nurses - with a tuning fork, which is relevant to music, and a heart brooch thing, which adds to the Feeling/care motif, and that they're symbolically attached to one another. She's wearing a loincloth (well, an extension of her top, but it's meant to look like a loincloth) because I wanted to also give the sindrels a kind of tribal/uncivilised/tropical vibe, but maybe it just looks oddly like she's not wearing pants. Her pigtails were meant to resemble a heart too, together, but it doesn't really look as much like that as I intended. Oh well.

Her instrument is called a 'hearp', which I find amusing. I like how well combining the heart motif, a harp, and the light/dark dual modes thing worked out. It looks original, but not overly fancy or completely impractical.

I really need to do the models of the other characters, and it shouldn't even be that hard since I'm just deriving them from the bases I already have (which feels lazy, but I doubt anyone would really care). I've not managed to motivate myself to get around to that yet though. It's not that it takes very long at all, it's just getting started that seems to be the hardest part.

Mostly I've been unable to do anything at all - even play games - due to overwhelming fatigue... And also, it seems that lying and sitting around for weeks leads to the development of pressure sores on one's bum, which makes sitting distractingly painful. So even when I've gone to my computer to try to work, I can't focus. I keep having to stand, or lie down on my bed on my front. Lovely. It's one thing after another!

I get that I should be resting at this point, but it's still frustrating just because it's so much nicer to use a day productively than not. It's satisfying, to know I've made progress between waking and sleeping, and going several days without that is just, well, ugh. Hopefully it's a passing phase though, a part of the recovery process (which has already stretched on for so, so long...).

Since I've been unable to focus on that game, my mind has been focusing on other things instead. Negative memories, mostly, though I won't go into those here again. They're something that the demons seem to inflict on me - like PTSD - rather than something I choose to recall, and I'm trying to cope with them as best I can.

The main things I've been focusing on are what to do next, the extent of my mental illness slash personality disorder, and the intertwining of those things, specifically how the latter limits the former.

I've been quite excited about Sindrel Song, which is my immediate focus - and it doesn't make sense to look elsewhere while that's still in the works, really - but I suppose the lack of interest from others has been demotivating. I know that it's not as if nobody is interested; the few enthusiastic comments I've got really do make a difference and keep me going. But... Well, I suppose I feel needy for hoping for more. Most people who work on big creative projects alone likely toil away in obscurity; I imagine that even their friends (which most people are lucky to have) would show only superficial interest out of politeness rather than genuine enthusiasm, and even when they're finished and release their creation out into the world, it's entirely possible that nobody would really care. Yet they push on regardless, for the personal passion of the craft. That's what it was like for me making games in my teens - I made several that I just never showed to anyone really - but I suppose getting quite a bit of feedback in the past has spoiled me.

I should be grateful that people do read this blog, and that some of you really do seem to be interested in what I'm trying to produce, and I am, but... I suppose it's all relative. I'd bet that a YouTuber who's used to getting 300,000 views on their videos within 8 hours might be confused, disappointed, and really hurt when they release a video that 'only' gets 80,000 views in 24 hours. That's more people than the overwhelming majority of people in the world would ever get viewing anything they'd done or made, but it's not what that YouTuber is used to, so to them it's a source of agony.

I've noticed that the views on the posts on this blog - which have always been low because I've never promoted it, and it's not exactly a work of entertainment - have been going down, and I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it's circumstantial; maybe people had their attention redirected around Christmas time and never came back. Maybe people are just growing up, moving on with their lives, losing interest, and there's no real way for new people to find this place and keep checking on it. Or maybe it's based on content; I haven't widely released anything creative in years, and I've talked about some controversial topics like incels recently that might put some people off if they think in a certain way. Or maybe me going on about my gruelling brain cancer recovery and a different-from-what-people-are-used-to game I'm making just isn't interesting to people.

I don't know. I can only speculate. And I do, because I suppose I'm quite alone in the world and faded away from relevance a long time ago. I really want to do something that makes people want to follow what I do again, but... well, I suppose all the messy emotions around this have been an ongoing thing for years now. Maybe it's just getting to me more lately because the effects of brain cancer recovery are exacerbating the depression, which they very irritatingly are.

I'm trapped in a bubble by my Avoidant Personality Disorder. I can't use social media because of it, and it means I keep to myself. I don't post or promote myself elsewhere (though I feel I don't have anything to promote at the moment; it'd be a different story if I had something finished and released that I could direct people to play). I've been using Twitter a bit since I started posting about the surgery process on there, but not much, and I don't follow anyone else, or comment on or even like anyone else's tweets; I wonder if that comes across as selfish, or like I don't care about anyone but myself. I do care, but I'm also 'scared' in a weird, mentally-abnormal way that isn't exactly like the fear most people would be used to. The demons 'protect' me from potential agony by preventing me from looking into others' lives, since jealousy is a potent thing... as is the worry of doing something wrong in some way that's embarrassing. Posting in the wrong place, saying something inappropriate, that kind of thing. It's different when it's my own space, like this - I surely overshare in these posts without the same worries (at least not to the same extent) - but it's a real barrier, since social connections are how we really get by in this world.

I've been thinking a lot, now that I've recovered a bit more, about how I really need to do something about this. Develop some way of coping. But I've thought that for years, without much luck. Well, sort of; I feel that much of my avoidance intensified after the whole Fig Hunter era, and before that I was much more willing to look into other peoples' lives and work. So if I was capable of that once, then surely it can be regained? I hope. Though it's as easy as an alcoholic giving up drinking, I suppose, so it's not something I can just flip a mental switch to do instantly overnight. This blog is called Taming the Mind though, and I do need to put more effort into doing that... Taming my mind, rather than letting it control me as it does now.

I've been checking Reddit a lot recently, which I suppose is a step in... a direction, if not the 'right' one necessarily. I don't have an account and I don't post there, but I don't feel anxiety browsing it either, as I would with social media. It's surely because it's largely impersonal, so there's not the same direct comparison to the lives of others, but people often comment about their lives - their friends, jobs, children, sexcapades - and it's notable that that doesn't wake up my demons. Also, I used to particularly dislike Reddit, since it seemed to appeal to a Type of person I don't see myself as (and can't easily explain), so that produced a strong feeling of Otherness and revulsion. Not the kind where I'd have anything directly against anyone for using it, but the kind that would prevent me from going near it myself. I used to dislike memes too, when I was younger, since I saw them as annoyingly unoriginal, so it's strange now that I'm using chunks of my time when I have no energy to do anything else browsing stupid memes on Reddit. It feels like a waste of time, and yet since it's something I would have been unable or unwilling to do in the past, it feels like a kind of growth?

Some people 'grow' to become parents, doctors, etc. Here I am 'growing' to the point where I can browse memes on Reddit. Ha.

I'm never sure how people feel when they read things like this. If they don't have the same species of demon living in their own minds, it must be difficult to understand the extent to which they constrain normal behaviour. I'm picturing a paraplegic huffing and puffing with triumph as they lie at the top of a staircase they just spent half an hour crawling up without assistance, and someone more 'normal' towering over them with a look of baffled, pitying disgust saying "why didn't you just walk??". Or something.

I've been thinking about my Alora Fane site, which I haven't checked in years. I've no idea what it's like now; whether everyone stopped posting long ago, or whether some digital squatters continue to use it as a place to gather. I'm reluctant to check in case I find something difficult I'd struggle to deal with in my infirmity... Avoidance coping, as usual. I feel I need to revive it though if I'm going to be releasing games again, especially if they're going to be in the Alora Fane world. I'd like to add some kind of encyclopaedia-like section to it, about Alora Fane's species, places, customs, etc. I don't know if there'd be any point, but it might be interesting for myself if nobody else if I am going to use this as a persistent setting. I'd also like to restore the community features, but make them a whole lot less strict than they once were. Let people be as they are rather than trying to enforce 'good' behaviour. I wonder if there'd be any point in having a joinable site, though, or whether people just use social media these days and would prefer that. I'd also like to start again with a fresh database, but I also don't want to do that because I don't want to erase history or annoy people who might have more of an attachment to their accounts and posts on their site than I do to mine.

Also, I got a message from someone recently asking me where I post these days, because they'd been checking places like Fig Hunter, Alora Fane, and my deviantART account, which makes me wonder how many other people are curious about what I'm up to but don't know about this blog. So at the very least I should post there linking here.

I've also been thinking about MARDEK 4 quite a bit recently, with frustrated reluctance. It keeps coming up, and I don't want to make it. That much is clear. Or rather, I wouldn't mind if it existed, but the sheer amount of time and effort involved in creating it would be immense, and the reward at the end very much wouldn't be. I mean, it's easy for people to say they'd like some nostalgia fix, to spend a few hours returning to something that made them happy in the distant past, but some of those people aren't even willing to pay money for that, I'd bet, or at least they've no idea of the toil that goes on behind the scenes when bringing something like that to fruition.

If MARDEK told a story I was still proud of and interested in, I wouldn't hesitate; I'd probably be on chapter 7 or something by now. But it's all just so... so sketchy, rough, a product of my developing mind and self and understanding of the world; it doesn't say anything that I feel is truly interesting or valuable. There's no mental hook for me. It's a fun enough distraction, but it's hardly ~art~. Which sounds pretentious, I know. Most entertainment isn't art. Is Infinity War art? Technically, in the sense that a Snickers wrapper is art, but I'd probably class all those superhero films as mindless distractions. Even superficially more 'sophisticated' things like Lord of the Rings are just stories for stories' sake. And they're all about Fighting Evil and Goodies and Baddies in a way that just seems so... lacking to me now. Superficial. Not bad at all - I watch all these things myself and enjoy them when I do - but just... not what I personally want to spend my time making. Even if they do make more profit than most other things in human history.

(I've spent a lot of time during this recovery period playing, enjoying, and greatly appreciating games like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, which are like gorgeous iridescent oil puddles in terms of apparent beauty and actual depth... I like them a lot, but they don't inspire me to make something like them, just as I like my computer but don't want to build computers. Maybe.)

It's not like Sindrel Song is high art or anything, obviously. I'm not completely delusional! It'd just be a drop in the river of entertainment to anyone who bothers to play it, at best. Maybe it'd mostly appeal to children, though that's not my intention at all. But I suppose in my personal journey, the abstract concepts I'm exploring mean more to me, feel more like a step in my development, whereas a return to MARDEK 4 would just feel like avoiding that journey completely, going backwards. Or something. Like... I don't want to just make elaborate toys, I want to explore the experience of existence through art of some kind, and have chosen video games as a medium because of the way I can intertwine various skills like writing, music, and visuals... This wasn't how I started making games, and I'm not sure why I developed in this direction, mentally. It probably had a lot to do with having my life effectively ruined by mental illness, and hoping that by exploring related topics creatively I might overcome it, or at least find peace with it. Or maybe it's just the same motivation behind any ~artiste~ who plonks a taxidermied dung beetle on a rotting cake and calls it The Tragedy of Hope or whatever. In the middle of a cavernous, stately gallery, of course. They want to communicate some profound, arcane ~message~, because they're just so important like that. Hmm.

It's hard to explain, and I feel like I'm putting way too much value into any of this. Way more value than it deserves. I am - was? - just some clueless indie games developer, at the end of the day, so who am I to think that I have anything valuable to say with anything that I make? Or so I think. I don't know. There's a lot of internal conflict.

It'd definitely be a different story if I collaborated with skilled friends I happened to have met, settled down with a nice girlfriend, wasn't trapped in some pit of psychological Sorrow I was trying to use Creation to get out of (that's the sentiments!!)...

I noticed the other day that David Firth had made another Salad Fingers; a continuation of a series he started around the time I produced MARDEK. That's interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm not going to watch it, because I'd be creeped out... but back then, I did watch the ones on Newgrounds (and was creeped out, but still). So much for personal progress. But also, I wonder why he's doing that, if he enjoys it or just wants the fan reaction, whether he's been doing it for a while. It's episode 11, and there were only like 5 or 6 (or less?) back in the day, so this can't just be a one-off return. I haven't been following his work - or the work of any of the Flash animators and developers from back then - so I don't know. I only know this one exists because it came up as recommended on YouTube. I remember that Charlie Brooker, the guy who I suppose is most well-known these days for Black Mirror, had a programme called Screen Wipe a while back, and that included some of David Firth's cartoons that Charlie Brooker personally introduced with a kind of enthusiasm that suggested he genuinely saw the talent behind them. So it's interesting that David Firth would return to - or continue with - this series from way back despite successes like that in the interim. Peaks and valleys rather than a mountain climb; I suppose that's the journey of a creator, as compared to the more linear, ever-upwards path of someone in a salary career.

I'm going off scraps of information observed incidentally from afar here. If you aren't restricted by mental issues that prevent you from following the lives and work of others, you probably know more about these things than I do, and I'm probably coming across as naive or wrong or something.

I think a lot though about how creators end up bound to old work that was a relative hit, and which their followers - however many there might be - just want more of, rather than new stuff. I know I've talked about it multiple times before, and TVTropes comes to mind whenever I mention it, though I don't know what they call it; ∞ Old Shame ∞ comes to mind and seems related, though I thought there was some specific trope for exactly this. It makes sense though; if you fall in love with, say, a heavy metal band for their heavy metal music, chances are you're going to be against the idea of them producing a mellow New Age jazz fusion album. We want more of what we like. There are a few YouTubers I occasionally watch, and if they produce videos different to the ones I followed them for, chances are I'm not going to bother watching them. And I notice that the view count is significantly lower on those videos for this reason, and feel sad about that... but still don't watch them myself. A few months ago, I talked about how there were new installments in the Homestar Runner body of work, which I was quite giddy about at the time because I remembered that fondly. If they'd rebooted it or gone in another direction, I would have been disappointed. I do understand the mindset of the fan, the deep interest in the resurrection of something once loved.

So it's not as if I expect people who liked MARDEK 1-3 to like anything new and different that I might make. I know they probably won't, and that they'd prefer it if I repeated what I did years ago, and I know why. It's just hard personally being stuck in that position of the creator, having to produce work you feel you've evolved beyond, and I don't have the mental energy to do it. Maybe if my life were more stable, maybe if I were less physically and mentally unwell, I'd go down that path since there'd definitely be at least some profit there, rather than trying to forge a new, uncertain path that might lead me absolutely nowhere, or worse. I suppose it's because I feel so detached that the gamble seems like the better option.

I do still want to make Taming Dreams - my more recent take on the MARDEK story - as a 'talky thing' (like ∞ this ∞), as I've talked about a few times before, but I've no idea if people would be open to that (I assume it'd be perceived as sacrilege by many long-time MARDEK fans, though surprisingly I didn't get that reaction when I was working on it as an app a few years ago). A few people have told me over the years that they loved MARDEK even though they couldn't read English, because the gameplay appealed to them. But then others have said they want more because they want to find out what happens next. A few people have sent me drafts of a possible story for chapter 4, with no mention of gameplay features. It's darkly amusing that someone in the comments of the previous post said that Sindrel Song seemed 'unoriginal', but MARDEK wasn't, even though I've never seen anything exactly like Sindrel Song before, and MARDEK was blatantly a clone of a genre of games I'd grown up with, in mechanics, setting, and story. Our perceptions of these things are very much clouded by nostalgia, and how we feel when we first discover them.

The main reason I'd prefer to do Taming Dreams in this 'talky' format is practicality. I could release new 'episodes' regularly, whereas making a MARDEK 4 - or Taming Dreams as a game, like I tried to before - would take literally years. And it's already been many, many years since MARDEK. I've talked before about issues getting this 'talking thing' (which I really need a better name for!) working in browsers, but I wonder whether it'd be possible to release it as an app, even if the only interaction in the app was clicking through the dialogue. It wouldn't be a game, or a tool. Just a kind of interactive comic, almost. The app would change its icon whenever a new episode was released to make it clear it'd been updated, so you wouldn't have to go anywhere other than on the phone you already had to see what happened next. I've no idea if that'd appeal to people. I know there are tons of issues with it as a format, that it diverges from what people are used to and already like. But I can't exactly make voice-acted high-quality animations by myself, or long and immersive games, or a webcomic, or anything like that, but I could do this, so I'd be curious to see the response to it if I were to seriously try.

...Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point, and I feel I'm becoming increasingly incoherent. I've got so much on my mind and nowhere to really spill it all out, so I'm using this blog for that purpose. Catharsis. I get that some people don't like these long posts, but they help me, so... here this is. I do feel a deep sense of relief or release after getting it all out. Like you get after vomiting. Or arse vomiting. Yes, exactly that. That's what this is. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I enjoyed the process. Like with those things. Yes.

Oh, one other thing. I notice that a lack of structure in my life is probably largely responsible for me not getting much done. This has been an issue for the entire time I've been making things myself, without an employer or team to establish a schedule with deadlines, and I've looked into all kinds of productivity aids, timetables, etc over the years, with limited success. I remember before university, I had good success with such a thing while making the Taming Dreams app, so I know it can work, and I'm going to be trying that again starting tomorrow (Monday). I've planned to write blog posts only on Sundays, so I suppose my next post should be in a week.

Hopefully I'll have something more tangible to show in that post... and less of a tangle in my mind. My aim is to have at least one more level of Sindrel Song ready for show, which is something I should be able to do in less than a day if I focus... but it seems I have to take things slow at the moment, so I suppose I should set just small goals.

While I do write these personal posts mostly for my own benefit, hopefully you got something out of reading this too, if you did!

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