Greetings everyone. Happy (late) New Year! With the start of every new year comes introspection of the previous year. 2024 was a very hectic and impactful year for me, not because of any large-scale events (for the most part) but because of a lot of personal events that really changed my worldview and perspective on things. You'll probably see how I've changed this year as I'll be trying out a few things that are new to me. To be honest, I'm afraid of how this change will affect my life and my mental state moving forward, but I can't go back. I'm not going to talk about how the year has affected others because honestly I think speaking for others without their permission is just tacky. Instead, I'll say that if you had a bad 2024, just be glad it's over. We got another year ahead of us, and more years to come. Sappy words of "wisdom" aside, I want to take a look back at my projects as that's what most of you guys care about.

By Your Hands

It's been over two years since the first build of By Your Hands was released to the public! It's been a wonderful journey so far, and I'm loving it so far. During 2024, we finished the Act 1s of both Kamil and Owen, although Owen's Day 6 has yet to go public yet. One thing I realized last year was that By Your Hands was that project that I tried to distance myself from last year, but I couldn't really escape it. I tried to distance myself not because I hated the project, but because I didn't want to be known for one project. I'm a creative, which means I want to explore as many ideas as possible. Not to mention working exclusively on one project for so long can burn you out if unchecked. 

I've written down so many ideas that I want to make into VNs, but there's only so many hours in the day, and I'm simply one man who just got out of college. There was this one project I was working on that kept running into difficulties and ended up getting scrapped, which soured my mood for a bit. People want to see By Your Hands get finished, and starting new projects is going to get in the way, which is going to annoy my audience if I keep side-lining projects.

Initially, when I was working on Owen's route, I wasn't the most enthusiastic about working on it when I wanted to work on other projects. By the time I was working on Vlad's route, I was really pumped up, and now I haven't felt this motivated to work on the VN since I worked on the very first build. I will still work on other projects on the side, but By Your Hands is still my main priority right now. Hopefully you guys look forward to what we have in store. 

I'll talk more about development of Owen's route when Vlad's Day 2 is public, but I had my doubts on how well it would be received before working on it. I knew it was going to be good, but Nemo's writing frankly blew me away with how he handled Owen's route, and the positive attention the game was getting was quite favorable. I'm now optimistic about how the rest of the route will turn out. As for Vlad's route, I think I'll wait before I talk more about it.

Again, thank you to everyone who has supported the project. Without you guys, we wouldn't have come this far. We'll make sure this VN will get completed eventually.

Every Date Has Its Progs And Cons

Oh boy, this VN. Initially, I was going to make this section its own devlog, but I figured I might as well put this into a large devlog. I guess I should provide some background to this VN. The idea for this VN came from watching a HealthyGamer video where he was discussing a story about how a middle aged man from the South had issues with erectile dysfunction. The cause of this was because he was having sex with the wrong gender, but his upbringing made it so that he just denied that part of him. I thought the story was funny so I decided to expand it into an entire VN. Internalized homophobes and gay conservatives are quite the taboo for gay men to be attracted to, which makes them even more desirable. I also recently got more into political videos, and so I wanted to involve some of the discussion from those videos into the story. I didn't talk about some of the more controversial topics though as I thought that would be too spicy for most FVN readers. So I didn't talk about gun rights, healthcare, abortion rights, or AI within the VN. Call this a test run.

I based part of the story on nanoff's Boomer's Big Date, particularly some of the story beats, as it's the comic that made me into a furry essentially and the premise was artificially similar. The main difference was that it's the older man who's more into the relationship in this story, while the younger man who is hesitant about it. I'm not sure if anyone noticed the influence, but there are certainly fingerprints from that comic in this VN. Originally, I planned to make this VN as a submission for May Wolf 2025 and Benjamin was originally a wolf. I changed him to be a bear when Novembear was announced. Unagi was searching for a project to work on for the jam as he couldn't make his own project for personal reasons. I proposed my project to him, to which he said he'll consider it before politely declining the offer, which I understood. Later on, he came back to me and told me that he wanted to work on the project for various reasons that I'm not going to get into. I accepted it, and that's how he helped with the development of the VN.

Now onto responding to the reception of the VN. First there's the positive reactions. Among those who liked it, a lot agreed that Benjamin is a great love interest. Even those who were on the fence on the VN warmed up to it after viewing the sex scene. It's good to see people enjoying a bear DILF. I'm also glad that even the people who didn't exactly enjoy the VN said that the prose and other technical aspects were competent, as I'm pretty insecure about my prose and dialogue writing. It was nice seeing people on the left who normally have a very negative opinion of the right still enjoy the VN. I think that's the great thing about fiction is that people can immerse themselves into a story and like characters who you'd not get along with in real life. I think the people who say that you can't write "problematic" content don't understand this fact.

And then we get into the negative reactions, because there were a lot of people who didn't like this VN. The biggest gripe people seemed to have was that Billy was a lot worse at arguing his points compared to Benjamin and this made it seem like the game was taking Benjamin's side. This complaint seems to come from the expectation that the game would depict both sides as equally good/bad. But like, real life doesn't work like that? Even if two debaters are good at debating, more often than not, one side will inevitably have the upper hand in the long run. And that's in a controlled environment. Here, we have a relatively young and asocial man arguing on the spot with a man a lot more experienced than him. Of course, it's going to be a bit one sided. And well, the point of the VN isn't to show that both sides are equal, but rather to show that some leftist young adults are unwilling to interact with people on the center and right and assume they're all racist, fascist bigots when some (but not all) of them are perfectly reasonable people. And this goes both ways, although it's not as obvious with Benjamin. They both have their own positions that slowly shift slightly more to the center by the end of the game and they're able to see eye to eye by the end. 

Also, just because a character can't argue their points hyper-competently doesn't mean those points are somehow wrong. There was one review that said that I was promoting right-winged values, which… have you read my other work? I'm clearly a leftist. It's funny how many people complained about how Billy is incompetent at arguing when there have been exactly one person who actually made any valid counterarguments to any of the points in the VN. You can argue that this imbalance doesn't make for an enjoyable experience, which I can understand, this type of story is definitely not for everyone. This is the first project that focused primarily on politics and so I wasn't quite equipped with integrating into the story naturally. That is something I'll keep in mind for later projects.

Another complaint about the game is that the protagonist is too unlikeable, and I'll admit that he could have been written better. A protagonist who is stuck up and haughty but then slowly grows into a likeable person can work in a story. The problem with Billy is that he's written as if the story is 5 times longer than it actually is, so the VN ends right when he starts to become more sympathetic. I like writing asshole-ish characters, but I have to remember that I have to make the audience want to read about them, especially considering how long it took for Billy to show his softer side. I should have probably made his growth happen faster. That being said, it was a bit amusing seeing people complain about how unlikeable the protagonist is when they are even more aggressive on the whole "the right are all evil racist, fascist bigots" schtick than Billy ever is.

There were some other complaints about the VN. For example, at one point, Benjamin used the word, "tankie", which makes more sense for Billy to use as it's usually used by online liberals rather than old conservative men. It would have made a lot more sense if he used the word "commie" or "communist". I thought the word "tankie" was used by the online right because I haven't heard any leftist use that word. The explanation on why he knows that word is because he learned it through his son, but that's not explained within the game. I did screw up at that part. I also realized that I can't tell a joke to save my life. I played three rounds of RiffTrax with four other people the other day and I got last place in two of them. It says something that the funniest joke I've ever made involved the f slur. Hopefully, I'll be able to improve my sense of humor someday, but until then, I'll probably focus on other aspects of my writing.

Overall, while I'm grateful that there are people that enjoyed it, I definitely could have done a better job. It certainly ruffled a couple people's feathers. It's a shame, because I really did want to get to people's heads that this whole left-right dichotomy isn't helping anyone and I think it's hurting us in the long run. That there are problems with the left that we can't afford to ignore, especially considering the left is currently losing this culture war and they haven't figured out why. Instead, I ended up creating a VN that's simultaneously woke and anti-woke at the same time somehow. I would have liked to have continue the story of Billy and Benjamin, but it seems like fate has different plans. Ah well, there are always other projects I can work on.

I do plan on making on final update to the VN, but it probably won't be out for a while. It also wouldn't add a lot of content, although I would like to add an epilogue. I would like to polish the art assets and as well as improve some of the dialogue, however. Don't worry, it will be coming someday.

Barachoda Bloom

Oh yeah, wasn't there a project that I have that's not furry and that's currently on hiatus? What was it called? Cocksucker Flower? Jokes aside, unfortunately, I have barely worked on Barachoda Bloom in the past two years. The reasons why I have already stated: it's because I don't feel inspired to work on it and it would require a significant rehaul before I could work on it again. I swear it's not dead, just give it some time.

In Conclusion

I have several plans for the year. I do want to do more blogs and maybe even some video essays if I have the opportunity. As I said, I do want to work on some other projects when I have the chance, but of course By Your Hands takes the highest priority. I don't know what the future holds, but I hope I'll be able to accomplish a lot of things this year. Only time will tell, though.

Until then, see you later and have a good day!