#im rambling the short version is I have adhd | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

razrrgames · 8 months

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tomorrow is the 7th anniversary of when i first released after the bell.

a lot has happened in the past 7 years.

i have/had an entire update planned, i wanted to rebuild the game from the ground up, especially since porting it to the steam version of 2003 fucked up the fade transitions.

but i never did.

i’ve tried starting many times, and failed every time.

i don’t think i’ve talked about it here, but im very open about this: i have ADHD and autism. the ADHD is what applies the most here.

the ADHD prevents me from doing what i want, and the RSD makes me overcomplicate things.

back when i made ATB, i was in a hyper focus state on RPGMaker. i had four ongoing projects at once: after i finished the first version of ATB, i was drafting the update, file:blue was added during a horror game jam, riitami, and one other project i literally cannot even remember the name of off the top of my head. i focused hard on these projects, mainly riitami, and then the novelty wore off. this is one of the worst parts of my ADHD. i get really into doing something for a short burst and then i get bored and can’t force myself to do it anymore.

i felt horrible for so long. why can’t i just DO things like everyone else? i need to remake ATB, i need to fix it, i need to take out the stair scene because it was in poor taste, i need to expand on the lore so i stop seeing people asking why ghosts can’t just go through the wall, i need to expand on these characters, etc etc etc. and i just couldn’t do it. i forced myself to come up with a logistical reason for not passing through walls, i rewrote and scrapped and rewrote and scrapped over and over again.

don’t get me wrong. i still do want to update after the bell. i want to remake it. i want to make it better. better maps, better art, better jokes, better characters, etc. but i can’t give you an estimate on when that will happen.

as for the lore of the game,,, i don’t want to put any more thought into it.

i didn’t go into that project with a real plot or world in mind. i just drew a little ghost girl and decided i wanted to make a game about her. then i made her a girlfriend and some classmates. i thought of a very simple fetch quest: getting her name. that’s all it was. nothing more, nothing less.

that said, i have new answers to things.

why can’t she go through walls?

who cares? i’m not gonna make transition events on every wall tile just to satisfy some people who can’t put their suspension of disbelief on hold for a silly ten minute game.

why are all these girls dead?

i don’t know. i just thought one character would be too lonely, so i added some more. i thought more ghosts would be better than filling the space with living characters and then dealing with whatever allows them to communicate.

and there was one person that once said in a comment that it was weird that protag’s parents had the same last name. that has always been a strange thought to me. they’re married? one took the other’s last name?

i don’t really know what i’m rambling about at this point.

in the past seven years (in no particular order), i have moved out, got my drivers license, lost my job, got another job, was ghosted out of that job, gotten a new job that destroyed my soul, fell into a deep depression at the start of the lockdown, went back to the soul crushing job once it resumed, fell out with my roommate, moved back in with my parents, quit my old job and got another job that i now love, adopted a hamster, had her until she passed away earlier this year from health complications, made friends, lost friends, started and ended therapy, got a psychiatrist, got on anxiety medication, started (trying) ADHD meds, started dating my girlfriend, saw her in person twice, was briefly hospitalized to get my first surgery (gall bladder removal), had ANOTHER surgery (septoplasty + removing polyps), went to new york to meet old friends twice, went thru multiple medications trying to find something to help me sleep at night, came out to my mother as a lesbian (she still does not know my gender identity), met some of the people who would become some of the most important people in my life, cried over dnd (positive), started writing stories again, tabled at a lot of conventions…

it’s been a long and wild road. and in those seven years, i have thought about the ATB cast. i know the game got a little traction when it was first released, and i’m a little shocked that it seems to get a lot more attention in spanish speaking communities! that’s a lil crazy to me! not in a bad way of course. i think that’s really cool. sharing our creations and experiences across different language communities is one of the coolest things in the world.

i’ve seen praise and criticism that have helped me think about my work as an artist, and some that have hindered me a bit. nevertheless, i’ve grown a lot since then. at least i hope so.

im rambling about a lot of things. sorry. my train of thought is more like a spaghetti junction, lol

at the end of the day, these silly little ghost girls were my first real journey into RPGmaker. i’d loved playing games for a long time and had made one shoddy little thing before, but ATB was my first real release. i’ve thought about these girls a lot. i don’t think too hard about their world, the lore doesn’t really matter to me; it was just a silly little game i made with no real forethought.

one day i will deliver that remake to you. i don’t know when. i love these characters, simple as they are, and i want to do right by them. im even thinking of asking for help, as i clearly have a lot of trouble moving forward; help with setting up maps and transitions is the most important thing, as i’m not very good at layouts or mapping, but i can handle all the artwork and writing dialogue myself. i also want to commission someone for custom music, as the original music used in the game was generated via online programs because i am also, shockingly (/sarcasm), terrible at music composition. or more like i have no experience with it. i’m tone deaf as all hell.

that is not financially viable for me right now, unfortunately (i owe my parents like $800 for insurance + some assistance from when bebbie passed away) and i do not want to just. not pay people for their work. as an artist i understand the value of the work that goes into these things, and i’m not about to run around asking for free help with a silly little ghost game. i want to be able to pay my help appropriately for their time and effort. that said, if you’d be interested in helping out when that time comes (paid of course, i can’t tell you when that’ll be bc as much as i love my job i don’t make a lot of money) please let me know.

i should bring this rambling to a close.

thank you for seven years of silly ghost girls. it’s been a long time, but i hope that these girls pop into your thoughts from time to time to say hello, as they do for me. i want to do them better, even if they are just a couple of silly middle school lesbian ghosts.

thank you for your patience and support. i’m sorry i haven’t lived up to be the person or developer that i wanted to be. i’m sorry i failed to bring you something to play so many times and for so long. i hope you can forgive me.

thank you, thank you, thank you.

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logically-asexual · 1 year

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im just so intrigued by the fact that i wasn’t able to understand a single movie or book i watched or read as a kid. i could never keep track of the story or the characters.

ramble got long putting it under a read more

i always felt like when you tap on the first episode of a show on netflix but for some reason it starts playing the first episode of their latest season and you’re super confused about everything because there’s three seasons of lore you’re missing.

i don’t remember the story of a single book we read in school. i remember short scenes here and there that surprised me or made me feel emotional for some reason but that’s it. i never knew the context. i never understood the whole story. i don’t know how i ever passed spanish or english class.

for a while we used to go to the library and they would read to us a chapter of a book each week and i could never pay attention. i just remember zoning out staring at my nails or the table or anything. we read the hobbit that way i think and i always felt like i had missed a class and very important info with it but no. i hadn’t.

silent reading time was also torture. i couldn’t read i also just stared at nothing for twenty minutes and it was excruciating.

and i also cant remember any movies i watched at the cinema. i remember when we got together to watch the hunger games (and i had allegedly read the book) and everyone was talking about what the movie adaptation did or didn’t include and i was so absolutely lost. no idea what anyone was talking about.

the only thing about my childhood i remember understanding and processing alright was tv shows. i perfectly remember nick sitcoms and cartoons. i think it has to do with the fact that i could watch those over and over again before a new season aired, so i got enough time and repetition to seal stuff in my memory.

i don’t know. i think that wasn’t normal probably. then one day some time after eight grade maybe i was just randomly granted the gift Understanding Media. well. mostly movies, i still struggled with reading in high school. i remember i never read things fall apart, but a children version of the book i had for some reason, and i passed somehow. i still don’t know what the book was about.

i remember my piano teacher saying when i was fourteen that i was at an age when i should read so much because teens are so emotional (in a good way) and full of wonder so romantic (as in romanticism, not romance) stories were great for letting all that bloom or whatever. but that only made me feel bad because i felt how time was slipping away from me and i was missing my chance at enjoying a big chunk of literature.

i don’t think i have adhd or some kind of disorder that could cause that level of inattentiveness but who knows. if i did then why can i suddenly understand movies and stuff? did my brain just develop too late in that aspect?

i usually attribute apparent adhd symptoms from my childhood to anxiety and burnout. because it’s way more likely since i’ve always been anxious and the executive dysfunction and lack of memory can easily be explained by anxiety too. but this thing about the movies and books remains unexplained and i don’t know if i will ever truly know what happened there. and also adhd seems to come with this “hyperfixations and obsessive consumption of media” thing that is exactly the opposite of my entire life experience. that’s the main reason i steer away from the term.

i am trying to actually read now. i know it’s an insane thing for a 22 year old to say but i don’t know when the last time i read something that wasn’t a textbook was before dracula daily. now that it’s over i’ve proved that my brain can keep track of a written story, at least when it is serialized and i have time to process its parts like with the kids tv shows.

i want to read more to get out of this hole. but i also want to know why the hell i am in this hole in the first place. i have almost nothing to look back on nostalgically like people who loved star wars as kids and made their own halloween costumes and had a toy collection and more. i just watched sitcoms and cartoons to laugh and escape from the world, not to understand any themes or messages. i feel like something was stolen from me and i’ll never get it back.

#anyway i signed up for the substack that will send you moby dick over the course of two years #i don’t think i’ll make it but one can dream right #vent

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