itch.io

Totally fine. Thanks for chatting with me and giving me some additional perspective. I'm also disabled, so I know the struggle (disability payment arriving pretty soon, so, that's cool). I feel like we could go on talking for a lot longer, but this topic can get contentious and I feel like we've reached a good stopping point.

I appreciate your kind words and perspective, and I'm glad you've found something to enjoy in the stuff I create. Hope you have a good day, eat well, and are merry.

I'm mainly saying that on the internet attention is the fuel on which everything on the internet runs. Sites that farm drama like Youtube, Reddit, and Twitter have been around for years at this point earning billions through clicks from dramas and controversies while the 'nicer' sites are always struggling unless they basically operate for free or have an 'enemy' that people can 'defeat' by giving them donations, like upcoming eviction, a mean person/group trying to cancel them, or something more abstract, and the same applies to content creators and influencers. Of course, there is a sphere of the internet that is drama-free and successful, but it's worth noting that it seems like the drama stuff is subsidising the normal stuff made by talented people. Basically, would someone wholesome like Markiplier be able to earn as much without guys like Logan Paul generating huge traffic on Youtube, or MatPat getting into arguments on with the creator of Five Nights At Freddys over his theories?

But, more relevantly, why is it that people like me are 'defended' from receiving attention from Cancel Culture? I get that warning all the time that I need to be defended from Cancel Culture, which is why developers won't signal-boost me on Twitter or video creators won't talk about me or my stuff, to protect me from internet trolls that would say mean things about me and apparently ruin my life. The thing is, I'm sure it isn't all fun and games, but, this is what I signed up for. I expect criticism, I expect that when I post Pokemon porn (for lack of a better word) or even just content where characters die (Adore The Doll) or characters pee on other characters (Crossing A Line) or even just weird stuff happens (Miltank Dating Simulator) that there will be controversy, that people will be confused or upset by it, that people will use my stuff for clickbait. It's partially why I do what I do, aside from finding it entertaining and enjoying being experimental, and it does bother me that I'm always being 'protected' from success because "There are bad things about success." 

I'm sure there are bad things about being successful and I'd have to deal with a-holes. But, most days at my actual IRL job suck and I have to deal with a-holes at least once a week. If I want this to be a job, or to treat it like a job, I'm perfectly fine with dealing with bad stuff, and I find it kind of insulting to be told that I need to be insulated from the bad stuff.

If things get too bad, I'm perfectly capable of turning off my computer and going for a long walk to clear my head, or at least smoking some weed to chill out. Though, if I do lash out to the a-holes online or argue, I don't think that's a bad thing. I argue with my sister and my friends as well, and after we've cooled off we might not apologise because we did nothing wrong, but we don't take it too personally. That's what being an adult and having relationships is. By protecting people from Cancel Culture and demonising arguments and conversations, we're kinda denying people the opportunity to grow and mature.

I feel like Cancel Culture is mostly fueled by the elites.

Think about it. They encourage people to 'cancel' rich and powerful people by basically saying: "Oh no, don't you dare be mean to me online, otherwise I'll give you validation by complaining about you in a very public way," which gets them a boost in every way that matters to them, from  being given opportunities like appearing on podcasts, having articles written about the drama that paints them in a good light, and a flood of positive comments from white knights online.

But, it only works on the people with money and influence, of course. We're not supposed to 'harass' the poor people who don't have many followers, and you certainly wouldn't want to signal-boost them because it might attract the meanies that will say mean things to them. Only the elite can handle the tremendous burden of having mean comments directed at them.

Personally, if someone's being mean to me and sending me death threats, legal threats, or even just being annoying, I could absolutely make a big spectacle of it for fun because I find arguing with people, or just sensibly debating people, to be fun, but also... I could just block them, and I could report death threats. I dunno, I've always found it sus how people are always posting publicly like "OMG, I got so many death threats," because, like, death threats, specifically, are like the greatest gift a hater can give you because then you can get the police involved.

Like, I wish that I had people leaving comments being like "This is a piece of shit, and you suck," or "This is so cringe, lol," because it does give me the opportunity to change their minds if they're open to it, or just give me a morality boner as I can be like "It's okay, I forgive you for being mean to me." I'd obviously prefer to receive positive comments, but it's not like I'm going to cry if I receive a negative comment. What bothers me is mainly that if I release a project and the only comment it ever gets, or the only rating it ever gets, is negative that really hurts the project and  getting a single positive comment/rating a month later doesn't really do anything to help. But, it's hard to explain why that's upsetting to other people without it coming across as "I'm butthurt because of a single mean comment and a 1-star rating."

It also doesn't help that on a site like Itch there are developers that just give 1-stars on everything they can to hurt the competition, but that's another issue.

Appreciate the comment after all the spam I've had to deal with the past few weeks. I'm working on an update at the moment, but, my job is taking up a lot of my time because of staffing issues which keeps delaying the update.

I do feel like the quality of the tech is objectively better than what we had in the 2000s, but the passion isn't there in the same way as it was back then. I could have a big discussion on why I think that's the case, but I do think part of it is that people live in a constant state of paranoia online where they believe that at any point if they express an opinion or share something they've made someone will step out of the shadows and say a mean thing to them. Everywhere online are the shadowy and sinister 'haters' that we need to be mindful of at all times. I feel like so much of modern internet culture makes a lot of sense if you look at it from that lens.

As for this project in particular, it definitely showcases my influences, which tends to be the weirder side of ComDotGames with stuff like Bunny Farm. I like to go into projects with the mindset that Grant Morrison said makes outsider art appealing, which is that there should be a 'whoa' factor in at least some of the work. Basically, I try to make certain things that make people say 'whoa' while going through the visual novel. As one comment pointed out, Jirachi and the Vaporeon are an example of a 'whoa' moment.

Thanks for the support and comment, it means a lot and I hope you have fun with this visual novel. I'd also probably recommend Adore The Doll since it's the Halloween month and people seem to really like that one, mainly for the TITular main character.

Thank you. It's nice to see your brutal honesty paired alongside your optimism.

I have some plans for this moving forward, but at the moment I'm probably going to work on the next Learning To Love A Pokemon update. I have an idea in my head involving Dialga.

I'm glad to be back, thank you.

I'm glad to be back, thank you.

I'm glad to be back, thank you.

Tell your friends. It'd be nice if this update got more than 20 downloads.

Really needed to read this today. I was honestly considering abandoning this thing altogether.

It's fine. I hope things get better for me in the future, but I kinda feel like the things that I want might have been reasonable in the past but aren't reasonable now. Like, what I'd like is for, say, a blog that talks about weird things online to discover one of my projects and write an article about it, then it would spread online like in the late 2000s/early-2010s. That's the culture I grew up in with stuff like Kanye Quest 3030. But, nowadays that culture is kinda dead.

I feel like the problem is that a lot of content creators are just lazy mainly because the culture on most websites encourages laziness, like Youtube rewarding creators for producing very similar content on a daily schedule and Twitch rewarding streamers for doing very little. I'm not expecting content creators to search for my games specifically to make videos about them necessarily, but I feel like in the past content creators used to search for Pokemon fan games to play for a quick video because they could say "This fan game has a PREGNANT PIKACHU," and that doesn't happen much anymore. I think there are a lot of reasons for it, but one that stuck out to me is a content creator saying: "Fan games don't matter, they're not official games," and that feels unintentionally revealing on a lot of levels, such as an admittance that apparently it's fine to make videos trashing Game Freak and the official Pokemon games because they're official, but it's not okay to do the same to a game like this because it's not official. I find it more offensive that my games aren't worth any time spent discussing outside of my own comment section than anything negative that someone might say about them in a video. Like "The story is crap, the art is garbage, and the creator is a loser," is far less offensive than "This game isn't even worth mentioning, and neither is the creator."

Anyways, thanks for your comments. Watch the space for my comic, which is nearly completed. I think it turned out pretty well, art-wise. The text is a bit rough, but I'll try to fix it.

Thank you. I actually started working on the next update a while ago, but I kinda stopped doing that and decided to try working on a comic instead. It's a whole thing, but the gist is that my plan was to post The Week She Tried To Live, then work on the next update for this, then the next update for that, and so on. But, that visual novel didn't do well, I got into an argument with someone in the devlog for it and, well, I just thought I needed to do something other than visual novels for a bit, hence the comic idea. But, at the moment, I have 2-3 scenes done for the next update for this thing. Without spoiling too much, Arceus makes an appearance,

Yeah, I do tend to refresh my page a lot because I like seeing my analytics and my numbers go up. Usually my notifications here are just for new followers, not comments, I guess because this site doesn't really encourage people to be very social. I don't really feel very appreciated on this site, honestly, and this game is a sore spot for me because the site itself, not the trolls or the haters, this site f*cked this game's performance for months, made me look stupid, and I never even got an apology for it. Maybe if I got a bunch of positive comments or felt like there was an actual supportive community on here I'd feel better about it, but now it's like "This site treats me like sh*t, and the community feels pretty much non-existent. Why the f*ck am I even here?"

But, those are my issues, not yours. You seem like a cool dude and I appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. Hope you have a good day/night, and I'm going to bed.

Thanks for your truth and honesty.

Two things:

1. You do realise that this devlog is for an actual project published on Itch, right? It isn't a random blog, it's me saying "I was working on writing a Lion King project, but people kept saying that I should make something like this, so instead I made this visual novel called The Week She Tried To Live," and no one is playing it. If anything, the fact that you didn't even notice that the visual novel I did publish is called The Week She Tried To Live, which is a horror game, but clicked on this for The Lion King is a sign that, yes, I should have just made that Lion King thing. Like, that's what those pictures attached to this are for. Did you really have absolutely no idea? 

2. Awesome. You think my writing is crap. So much for "Do what you want to do and don't care what others think." I guess I was right that all you were saying before was just empty platitudes.

Like, what I said in this devlog was "People will say whatever they think makes them look best instead of what they actually think, which steers me in the wrong direction," and you basically proved my point. I should have just made the stupid Lion King visual novel for cynical reasons instead of doing what people said, which was this original indie horror project that people said would be the better thing to make but didn't play.

Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it.

Maybe I'll finish the Vitani thing one of these days. I've been pretty depressed the last couple days and really lacking motivation. It's just one of those times when I don't want to do anything at all. Depression sucks.

"However I like to expose my ideas. Sometimes praised. Sometimes hated but there it is."

I feel like that statement implies that what you want is validation and acknowledgement in either a positive or negative direction. Anger is an energy, and positivity is encouraging. Most people think that when they release a project anywhere they'll either get hate or positive feedback, so they brace themselves to accept both.

What people don't think about is, well, nothing happening at all, not getting any comments at all on the project, and if they do think about that, they think "Well, how can nothing affect me mentally?"

I mean, that kinda hurts more than anything else. It's not that people 'hate' my stuff or like them, so "you can't expect that by developing a product everyone will like it, it is possible that some of them will leave, but that can also attract more people," isn't the reality. The 'hate' that I get is mostly just passive-aggressiveness that all developers have to deal with unless they're in positions of actual influence, which is similar to what you likely see at work, where everyone has an idea on how to do their jobs and are at least somewhat judgmental of how the people they work with do their jobs, but likely won't outright say it, like "Oh, that's how you write your code, huh? I do it differently because I think it's easier and better, but, you do what works for you, buddy," and not "Your code sucks, and you smell bad. Get the f*ck out of this building right now and shower."

I mean, you read my concerns and you haven't said anything about the actual project it's attached to. You don't even know if it's good or bad, and the advice you're giving is very generic "Believe in yourself, and live your best life," which is, honestly, completely useless. It's just empty platitudes that you're likely just saying to make yourself feel good if you're not going to back it up with something that actually applies to the project. Like, if you said something about how I could improve the presentation to make it more appealing to people, or gave me a name of someone that enjoys signal-boosting small-time p*rn games, that would be infinitely more meaningful, validating, and beneficial than a platitude. I'm not a 19-year-old publishing for the first time here, I've been publishing consistently here for 4 years and I'm feeling very burnt-out because it doesn't feel like it has resulted in any appreciation from the site, which Itch demonstrated by screwing me over for months and not even apologizing for doing so.

That's what bothers me, and the point of this post. It's all just pointless if I'm getting nothing meaningful from this site and the userbase except watching my follower count go up. No meaningful discussions, no possibility of turning this into a career, I get nothing from it, and it feels like when people say "Dude, don't worry about what people say, just do what you want to do," what they actually mean is "Hey, uh, you should do all the work to make yourself feel like what you're doing is meaningful, and also do the work to make yourself feel validated, because I don't want to, unless it benefits me in some way."

Basically, I was going to make a kinetic visual novel about The Lion King, but people kept saying that I should make a more interactive porn game. So, I did that instead, and people aren't playing it, which is annoying.

It's frustrating because people will tell you what they think makes them look the best, not what they actually want. They'll say they hate McDonald's and want to eat at local mom and pop restaurants or cook for themselves at home, but they'll eat at McDonald's.

I guess if you want to be successful you have to accept that most people want cynically-produced cheap trash that treats them like idiots, but they'll tell you that they want high-quality stuff made with love that respects their intelligence.

Google translate is your friend. I used it for your comment.

I think it's standard on Android phones now. I also use it as a Chrome extension.

Sure. Here's my server link: https://discord.gg/Ev6r7bYsTF

My name in the server is the same as on Itch.

I'd be down for  adding something like that. Just PM me on Discord with some more details.

Hmm. How would you feel about something to how in Super Mario 3D World there's hidden Luigis throughout the game? I think it might be cool to have hidden Pokemon sprites in the trees and the sky.

I totally get it and I understand the need to vent about something like that. RPG groups can be so annoying when someone tries to control a group like that, from what I've heard. I also know that for the Pokemon fandom (all fandoms, really) there's a tendency to want to gatekeep others from participating in groups if they show an interest in 'shipping' or NSFW stuff because it's a common thing to see "Shippings RUINED this fandom!" Now, personally, I think it's more an issue of writers in general just not knowing how to make committed relationships interesting without making the characters a-holes, but that's a different discussion.

My take tends to be that you don't fight parts of culture that you don't like by screaming at those people and ostracising them, you fight it by making other parts more appealing. I mean, if you don't want people drawing fanart of Gardevoir, don't ban Gardevoir art or make people feel bad for making that kind of art, give them incentives to do other things, otherwise you end up with a paranoid group whose identity is "WE'RE THE NORMAL ONES," while the weirdos will start their own group and likely become the face of the fandom because, well, they're just more interesting than the 'normal' group.

It's an issue with internet platforms in general that should be addressed that it's just easier to get rid of people than it is to try to guide them down a better or more socially-acceptable path. I get it since if you're a mod and you see someone making everyone uncomfortable and you message them privately they'll be like "What?! No, I'm not doing anything wrong," so you need to either be tactful and be prepared to deal with a disagreeable person who thinks they're in the right, or... just click a button, ban them, and never have to deal with them again, hopefully. I don't know for sure what you did or didn't do, but I do hope that things eventually start going better for you and you find something that makes you smile.

Thank you for the comment. As for the SFW stuff, like I said I am pretty emotional because this thing with Itch is something that I feel is going to be hard for me to move past mainly because I know Itch isn't going to, like, apologise for it or anything despite it hurting the visibility of all of my projects and making me look stupid/shady for being like "This is my project," and it leading to "WARNING: THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN QUARANTINED DUE TO THE DEVELOPER'S SHADY BEHAVIOUR," with me being blissfully unaware.

Even without that, I have been feeling incredibly jaded and bored with my projects since at least November. I don't know if it's come across that way, but throughout the development of Adore The Doll, Crossing A Line, and Learning To Love A Pokemon, I was feeling pretty bitter while working on those projects. It's a big part of why I launched Patreon and I'm waiting to be approved for Subscribestar, not just because I'm in need of money but because I've been developing my projects for years at this point and it really would be nice to feel like there's been some progression, if that makes sense, so having a community on Discord or people donating through Patreon and Subscribestar might give me that sense of progression.

It's something I said before that before I had 100 followers it felt like such a big milestone to get those 100 followers, but once you reach that goal and nothing changes, the follower count feels pretty meaningless. It'd be nice if, like on other websites, I got an email being like "Congrats on the 100 followers," or a sticker on my profile or something. It really feels like Itch just doesn't care and, while I do want to continue making NSFW projects, if Itch is the only viable legitimate platform for those kinds of projects, it might be a good idea to pivot to SFW projects where there are more 'legitimate' platforms that I can post them to.

Though, as I said in my devlog, I'll take requests for this in exchange for paying for my lunch.

It'll probably be about two weeks for the next update since I want Crossing A Line to be the next one (I want to repost it since, honestly, it hasn't gotten any traction, the last update wasn't downloaded at all or played, and I feel like it deserves better and might get it now that the quarantine BS is apparently dealt with), and I'm currently working on adding some more stuff to Robot Kitty City that I've been meaning to add for a while now.

Sorry for the rambling, I'm just bitter today. That email from Itch that I got basically saying "Sorry we made you deal with this for months, and took weeks to respond to you. It was our AI's fault," really made me feel bitter towards this site, or more bitter than I felt already. I want to go somewhere else, but there really aren't other options available for the stuff I make, so, I might just start making different stuff that I can post elsewhere if things don't get better for me here.

I think I have a Ninetails model and a Lucario model on my computer already, not sure about the Fennekin line, though.

Yep, I know, now. It wasn't shown to me as the creator, but some people on my Discord showed me the screenshot.

I did multiple virus scans just to be safe and my computer is clean. I know that I didn't add anything malicious into my projects, so, what I think happened is that there's an Itch admin (or mod, I don't know) doesn't like me because of the way that I upload projects, which is short updates on a weekly basis alternating between projects. It's something that I actually do get crap for behind-the-scenes since the standard way of operating is a big update once a month due to how things like Patreon work.

The way I handle updates actually equals out to about the same, or more, content in my projects than a lot of similar visual novel projects, but it doesn't feel that way if the reader is only getting 100 more images (around 200 now, but 100 is the minimum I set for myself) and 1-2 NSFW scenes every week (sometimes 3-4), so I've had other creators be really snobby towards my projects, until they see the amount of images and it dawns on them how much effort I put into them, even without the fact that I make my own music for them.

But, for this Itch admin, this way of handling updates makes the site look bad and they have tried to get my stuff removed in the past, as well as harassed me to change. From what I've seen of the quarantine thing it seems like a fairly recent thing. So, what I think happened is that this Itch admin who's been a pain to me throughout my time here found a way to successfully block people from accessing my projects, or at least delay the momentum every new project gets, and is doing that, which sucks because there's nothing I can do about it.

Another possibility is that someone, probably the person who downvoted all of my comments one day, reported me and Itch basically was like "Well, we got a report, so this guy must be suspicious. Let's just put him on the list and manually approve or deny his projects being visible on this site."

So, either Itch is being malicious against me, or they're being apathetic in how they handle things on this site, which both suck for me. When I found this out I was hurt that my community didn't bring it up to me, and hurt by it being done at all. If there were other viable options for posting my stuff out there that aren't piracy sites I'd probably leave Itch, and the fact that I can't really leave Itch despite this is a pretty bitter pill to swallow. Though, I feel like if they genuinely think a quarantine is necessary my other projects would also be quarantined, which they aren't, so I think it's malicious on whoever ensured that this is happening, and apathy on Itch's part.

On the plus side, despite the quarantine, just being able to tell people that this project exists through devlogs is enough to get some momentum, which I can't say for Crossing A Line, so it feels nice knowing that people are interested in this particular project.

https://discord.gg/Ev6r7bYsTF

This is my Discord server. You can see me on there and send me a PM if you don't feel comfortable posting publicly.

Would downloading the Android version work?

If not, join the Discord and I can send the build for the browser version to download it yourself.

The file size is too big. 

There's two sequels to this. Pet Foxes 3: Dark Against Dark contains pregnancy.

Sorry, what kind of warning are you getting?

It is definitely safe, just pictures. I definitely wouldn't upload a virus or anything in my projects.

I don't know what to tell you. I thought that I forgot to add screenshots but, nope, just checked and I uploaded around 10 screenshots, they just aren't being shown.

I feel like Itch is being odd towards my stuff lately. Learning To Love A Pokemon seems to be shadowbanned, and the screenshots aren't showing up here.

The visuals on this are intended to look rough since I took inspiration from the aesthetic of late-90s/early-2000s games and websites, with the NSFW scene being done in my typical style (there's four NSFW scenes, one being pretty well-hidden near the start).  The writing actually takes influence from Concord and Dustborn since during the writing process I got into arguments with people about the kinds of games I make and basically told to try being more 'woke', so I tried to make a visual novel that was 'woke' to try to make it work as my way of saying "There. I made a visual novel about a vampire with gender dysphoria and her girlfriend. Are you happy now or are you gonna lecture me again about how terrible I am?"

If any of that interests you, try playing through this. The ending features a pretty satisfying animation.

Edit: I shared too much, sorry. The 'woke' stuff is because a guy I was dating broke up with me when he found out that I make NSFW visual novels and the last thing he said was to call me "Mean," and said that I should be more woke. That really stuck with me. I'm also going through some sh*t right now so not in my right mind. My apologies.

Yeah, I'm excited to keep working on this one.

Why not?

Are you saying that being a mother and feeding your kids isn't wholesome?

Lesbians do like their beans.