in the interest of making this post easier to read i gotta put on my big boy pants & capitalize and use punctuation and whatnot i didnt get possessed or anything dw. tl;dr at the bottom.
SO. Anyone who knows me and actively talks to me about literally anything probably knows by now how absolutely, soul-crushingly, mind-numbingly difficult the entire DA4 process was for me. The only, the only, the ONLY part that wasn’t hard was reading the apps and forming the rosters. I can sit here and yap about how everything went downhill from there but honestly, I feel like it didn’t. Okay, maybe for my me-being-a-GM position it felt that way a clean majority of the time, but looking back... It wasn’t too bad.
DA4 came at a strange time for me, and for a lot of others, too, it seemed. I was going through a rough time, mostly with school. Me and Dazy had our ideas, and we got things together, but we were way too ambitious with what we wanted to do. Trying to balance a whole slew of new game mechanics with getting da4 out there quickly enough to be settled into a routine come school time was basically an impossible task. Maybe if we stayed up, like, three days straight doing LITERALLY nothing but DA4 stuff, but c’mon...
So right from the get go, I was extremely, EXTREMELY nervous about DA4. I’m not actually sure I ever articulated just how nervous I was. I felt like everything was very quickly crashing down on top of me. This extended to out of DA4 stuff, too. Surprise, college is tough. Cue nobody being surprised.
The game itself did finish. I was extremely relieved - Dazy and I managed to get CC and Shai onboard to help ride it out the rest of the way, and for that I will literally be eternally grateful. Well, okay, maybe for a while and then I’ll realize that this is the internet, but whatever. They pretty much allowed me to actually regain some semblance of a life outside of just going through the motions and doing nothing else, something that exacerbated my mental illnesses a lot. Sure, I felt incredibly guilty taking a backseat role through the rest of DA4. But it was basically over, right?
Endgame. Endgame, endgame, endgame. No, it wasn’t over, and this was pretty much something Dazy and I had to do to at least get the ball rolling. Once again, I feel like I really dropped the ball. Dazy was going through tough times, too, and our windows of opportunity to do things never seemed to match up even though that was what needed to happen. Eventually, Dazy put in a Herculean effort and I was at least emotionally present enough to help out where I could, and ta-da, we put out an endgame. And it’s one I’m happy with! I can’t say the parts that I did I find particularly dazzling, but I would say that no matter what they were like. That point’s moot.
But in the end, you have to take lessons from things, right? Well, I learned I really can’t do it all. I have limits, too. Twenty one years old now and in college, just now I’m still learning limits. I have a feeling learning limits never turns into learned limits, if you know what I mean, but it’s still a bit... Humbling? I don’t know. But I learned I can count on reliable, amazing people to help me out when I’m so down I quite literally can’t pull myself back up. The first thing I was taught about many psychological disorders is that social support is one of the absolute best things to have in order to get better. In the end, I can say that I have. During DA4, I didn’t like doing anything. Telltale sign of worsening depression in me (which isn’t the same as everyone, but losing pleasure in activities that used to give pleasure is a warning sign for depression; probably amongst other things, too, but I’m no psychologist yet.)
Now, though, I’m starting to like things again, which is weird to think that I have to ease back into enjoyment. I’m actually RPing. Once CC and Shai took over writing, I literally stopped writing for, like, I don’t know, two months, maybe? I just stopped. No RPing, no independent writing, no anything. It all reminded me of the fact that I have DA4 that I’m supposed to have under control, and I don’t. I was supposed to have endgame under control, but I didn’t. Now, all that is behind me. I’m slowly starting up again. I’m playing video games and I actually enjoy them now. I talk to friends and I feel good instead of feeling worried that they’d bring up DA4 stuff.
I don’t want to imply at all that DA4 was a negative experience for me. It was at the time, that I can say for sure. But looking back I’m immensely happy with it. I think the group of people we accepted were all amazing and fantastic. The team we assembled to get things under control was amazing. I made even more friendships, which is weird, because I thought I wouldn’t. Will I ever GM a game again? In all honesty, no. I’m not ever going to do it again (though if you want someone else to read some apps and help make rosters, hit me up, I live for that.) But can I look back at all of what DA4 was and smile? Yes. While I do have limits, I’m capable of much more than I thought. I’m not some helpless child in a sea of adults. I got a 3.8 GPA this semester. Three point fucking eight. That’s the best GPA I’ve had in my life, including high school. If I were to plot a graph of how down I felt, it would steadily be going up (indicating that I’m feeling better on average than I was when I started DA4.)
To all the players, I’m sorry I wasn’t a great GM. To Katie in particular, I’m sorry for not putting as much work into Nao’s mastermindship as I should have. To Dazy, CC, and Shai, I’m sorry I had to more or less bail.
But to everyone, thank you for all of your kind words and encouragement throughout. Katie, I thank you for your immense patience. CC, Shai, I thank you for your dedication and your friendship when I needed it most. Dazy, I thank you for being my best friend, and you know how immensely much I appreciate and cherish you. Kat, Drea, Katie (HarukaKatie), Rhy, Lu, Ollie, Maho, J, thank you all for being such amazing friends of mine, and know that I couldn’t have done this without any of you, either. To everyone else, thank you for making DA4 the best worst experience of my life. That’s a good thing, I swear! I really do promise everyone that I can look back on DA4 fondly!!!
tl;dr thanks 4 putting up w/ me lol
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