🌙☀️🌠 Hear ye, hear ye! To all our faithful supporters, followers and friends of the crown:
TWIST OF FATE: ANATHEMA WILL BE GOING ON AN INDEFINITE HIATUS.
While the project is not perfectly abandoned, various circumstances have made me, Meishali, decide it was time for a change. There will be a future in which I’ll return to finish what I have started: Anathema deserves its place in the world, and I shall find it.
If you wish to read a more transparent why/how, please follow the link under the cut.
BEGINNINGS AND ENDS
For those who follow the blog and have read our entries, many know that Anathema is a love project, and many, many hours went into Anathema’s writing, code, visual designs, and overall conceptualization since 2016. It was something we did ontop of our IRL jobs, commission work, and other things.
While working on it was its own reward, Merriweather got somewhat swarmed by life’s imperatives; and if it was something we discussed, I planned and even braced myself for, I failed to keep myself steady when I was left to my own devices.
Things moved slowly on my own, and true motivation never came. I considered hiring assistance in writing and corrections to keep this burden off of my shoulders while I tended to the game’s visual assets, unfortunately, these plans fell through due to an absence of communication or true interest from the interested parties.
INTEREST DWINDLING
Needless to say, this was just a bummer. Nothing seemed to work. I am not one for group projects, but I considered Anathema as a way to keep each other in check; both through the competitive aspect of group work and the fact that I knew that, no matter what, I was not alone.
I wanted to try, before I gave into any personal project. It didn’t work. Anathema didn’t feel like something I would write, or design, or direct, or produce anymore. It felt as though it wasn’t mine, at all, and I came to loathe the idea of even having my name associated with it.
CUT THE LIMB
To stick by Anathema in this state was a chore. To draw assets, to read pages and pages of python and Ren’py documentation. To write chapters in the background, juggling with commission work and hobbies. It didn’t provide the satisfaction production typically offers me.
I also felt shame: this is not the first time I’ve started up a project only to see it fail because of my own shortcomings. Friends and family are supportive, but they want “tangible results”, and most are unable to understand how most artistic processes work.
This added a layer of stress I didn’t, or couldn’t explain to anyone, as my actual entourage know I’m not one to bend to other people’s whims. I forced myself to keep up with the production because of other people’s expectations, namely those who struggle to understand why I do what I do. To them, it seems to amount to nothing but pretty characters posing on blogs, for nerds and geeks to consume and enjoy.
I realized I started to resent its characters, its concepts, its story, and more: when I felt that growing inside, I wasn’t proud of it at all. Thankfully, a moment of clarity allowed me to cut the limb and stop forcing myself, lest it influences the work. And it was already starting to. Quality can never be achieved if love isn’t present, and I found myself realizing I didn’t love Anathema anymore.
In the end, it’s not unlike a bad breakup. You feel it coming, and it can not be prevented whatsoever. I was saddened by own attitude and decided it was best to take some genuine distance with it and come back with hindsight, and only when I get the (internal) firepower needed to battle this project.
I still have a lot of affection for its main character, the Runereader, and I hope to do them justice some day.
WHAT’S NEXT IN STORE
My webcomic project: CAUSE. A thing I planned on doing the year Anathema was conceptualized: this is something I can do now and on my own. Something I will do, something I have absolute love for, and something I will write in good faith. It is mine, it is something I would write, it is something I would design, and it is something I would direct and produce. I can see the Runereader passing the baton my own protagonist, and I am thankful for the gesture.
A MILLION THANK YOUS
We’ve had a couple hundreds of followers, and I want to thank you for making this journey enlightening, and a wonderful learning opportunity. Your likes, asks, and reblogs have been seen and provided additional energy I needed then.
You can find my art and other projects on tumblr and on twitter, and do a little extra-support gesture by checking out my patreon.
See you soon, hopefully somewhere in As-Surim,
Thank you.
















