#press_start

It feels weird. Especially after having well over a year of time where I looked at it as The Project. Y'know, that Thing, where you always start working on it when you're not doing anything else. It became one of the central pillars of work to do when I'm not doing anything else, it was basically on my mind 24/7.

It became how I got closer with a few people, it became how I gained a lot more confidence in my ability to dress a story and characters. I got a lot of practice with it, I managed to feel like I could actually make something. Set a goal, a long-term goal, and meet it.

I'd always dreaded actually setting pen to paper, and press_start was basically my first dart-throw at trying to make something bigger than vignettes, or quick one-shots. Something with a thread, with stories to tell, with lives lived.

There's a lot of things I think I could've done better, or differently. I think there's a lot of stuff that don't think I did great at, and a lot of the story was me riding by the seat of my pants and throwing things in the air faster than I could really tone everything perfectly. There's a number of unanswered questions, vague hooks, theoretical openings for another story to be told.

I'm not sure if I want to tell another story, there, though, for a lot of reasons that are both personal and informed by...I dunno. The story was, at the end, one about exploring very specific questions, and those questions got answered.

When it feels like there's no reason to go on, you go on not only for yourself but the people you love. It's easy to hurt yourself, but you will hurt others because of it, even if you only ever try to direct it inwards. Fixing yourself isn't trying to hurt yourself the "right way". Acceptance is the only real path forward. Things might be different, but they can still be good. Connection and community, trust and love, are things that you can find.

I went through a lot of changes during the brainstorming, making-of, actual writing, and finalizing of the story. Moved something like three, almost four times, further into my transition, left my bio family behind, entered a poly relationship, got married...

Weird as it is, press_start became a cornerstone for us. A marker by which we addressed change and time.

If I return to it, it'll probably be with little things to say, rather than another narrative. Stories of people, in the aftermath.