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28/6/2025

Shit, been a while since I've done one of these.

I'm gonna be less formal here, not only have i (gracefully) done a pirouette from my Toby fox era before doing a triple backflip onto a Karbonic fixation...

But I have questioned an entire gender. (maybe two...)

I'm gonna regurgitate some thoughts swirling in my head over the next few weeks into seperate blog posts, so I don't sit here for an hour writing this one.

Creation Anxiety

For a while now, I've noticed this really disgusting jealousy I feel whenever I enjoy good art. Like I failed by not making it. It's a strange one that I can't really attribute the source to. Growing up I was always inspired indie giant Toby Fox, so that kid brain congealed into an adult who's self worth is all about surpassing the guy who redefined meta storytelling.

I suppose I always looked at it as a science too hard, and I patted myself on the back for "research". Just watching formative video essay after formative video essay on why blank is good or why meegle is sploingy, and that kind of outlook poisons the way you view things. It's easy to forget nowadays that art is literally the product of some basement or attic dweller being so mad about shit they decide their impact on the world is the stories they tell with their little guys.

When you get used to picking apart media, while simultaneously projecting a lot of your experiences as extrapolations into the reason a developer Put That Thing There (tm) an inferiority complex arises quite easily. In my mind, writing being drawn from traumas meant that I had been through enough to be a good writer but it just so happens that everyone else had already expressed a similar trauma in their own way.

But all that has changed as I watched my friend play through this game called Dashbored. It's not a perfect game, it wears it's LISA inspirations on it's sleeve, and it's rough around the edges in all the ways you can imagine. But being around someone who is able to ignore that and love it is genuinely transformative for my mind.

When i initially saw dashbored i was focused on it's flaws but over time i learned to understand why she loved it so much, and it's kind of given me a tiny epiphany about why creating things that sometimes suck a little is fine actually like its really easy to see what's wrong with something and dropping it but persisting and learning to love those flaws and understand what they represent about the artist was a real paradigm shift for me as someone who wants to create things myself.

I even find the ending speech with Nicolas (the main character) a little hamfisted but that in of itself is heartwarming, cause that's just a guy telling me how he overcame his depression and that's really touching for someone like me who struggles with such a thing. I dont HAVE to make it an amazing multi game metanarrative masterpiece with everything at top form, there will be a kind person who sees it for what it is, and me for what I am. Maybe even learn to live life a little better.

As long as my work makes someone feel seen, heard, and like they can discover something about themself, then I will work as hard as I can, and I will show that ugly work, because the world needs to learn to love ugly things more than ever.

anyway it's like 3 am i have to hit the hay see you around I love you thanks for reading i promise i'll return soon. I lifted like half the paragraphs here from a really nice conversation I had on discord so that's why it's a little strangely written.
also website updates soon