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Nathaniel292 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Hey! 

I'm genuinely happy that I made you smile; that was my main goal. I also understand your anxiety when it comes to other writers—or rather, I have low self-esteem, so I get anxiety in general, lol. But really, you don’t need to worry about it. I just mentioned it to emphasize how much I understand the difficulty behind writing, not to promote myself (especially since half of my work isn’t even in English). Don’t feel obligated to "return the favor" or anything :-) 

I also understand the difference with writing "papers and stuff" (here comes another unsolicited personal note...). After my master’s, I made the poor decision to stay in academia, and now I’m doing a PhD. The competitiveness in the field really requires you to do research with one hand and write articles with the other... So, I know very well how academic writing has nothing to do with writing fiction. Kudos to you for reaching this level of skill without previous experience in fiction writing, specifically! 

This brings me to a question I forgot to ask earlier; if it’s too personal to answer, don’t worry. The fact that you have the same academic background as the protagonist and use his avatar as your profile picture got me thinking. Is it an autobiographical story? How much of the story is based on your own experiences?

(I’m at the beginning of chapter five, so feel free to stay vague!)

Thanks again for your heartfelt response, I really appreciate it. 

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Aaryn292 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

heya, good luck on the PhD stuff. i was actually going to do mine but got talked out of it. in the psych world it's pointless unless you wanna teach or specifically be a psychologist-- which honest i wasn't interested in because i dont like testing stuff. otherwise, you can do all the same stuff with a masters and it's a waste of money. ton of writing and work though so i wish you luck-- and most importantly- sanity.

So Str8 isn't a true story. all of the characters are fictional and i quite literally make things up as i went. only had one original outline and it was a messy flow chart. i didn't plan much ahead because i liked the story and characters and i didn't wanna be spoiled either so i only outlined updates one at a time with only a couple benchmarks throughout the story i was interested in hitting. i wrote a pretty detailed post about this on my Patreon page that i can link here if you're interested in all the details. 

True Story?

Why and Adult Game?

Aaaaand, it hit ENTER too quickly. but thanks again for the kind words and holy crap, you said all those nice things before you got out of Chapter 5? you're not even to the good stuff yet. i think it starts to pick up in chapter 5. 6 was the game changer for a lot of people back in the day. i still get mail about that chapter and i was really intimidated and excited to get to it for the revamp

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Nathaniel292 days ago(+1)

Thank you for the links! Your reflection on how developing one's identity is at the core of self-acceptance was really interesting. I have to admit I also laughed quite a bit at the game being an "anxiety simulator" because... yeah, it's true.

I'm serious, I really appreciated everything even before starting chapter 5! If you tell me these things, then I can't wait to continue playing. In the meantime, I’m recommending it to people I know :-)

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