So, there’s pretty much no news on the game this week. I’m still in Steam approval limbo, but I expect there’ll be no reason for them to reject my latest submission. Hopefully I’ll be giving you a full release date, soon! 

Things in my personal life, however, have been… bad. See, when a dev mentions the bad crap in their life, they’re often accused of making up excuses. Since my game is complete, that’s obviously not any sort of reason for today’s exposition. 

Last week, my stepfather contacted me about my mother. She was “delirious”, and he needed help getting her to the hospital to figure out what was wrong with her. I wasn’t sure what I’d be walking into when I got to my parents’ house, but it was pretty jarring. My mother was telling me about how the DEA arrested my stepfather the day before because someone set him up with cocaine and fentanyl, and how embarrassing it was for all the neighbors to see the house surrounded with police tape. This happened shortly after my late-grandfather’s house was burned down by some kind of explosion. When I asked my mother when all this happened, she gave me an incredulous look and said “you’re the one who told me!”

None of this had happened.

I was beyond stunned, so I left my mother in her bedroom to relay what was said to my stepfather and Morgana. Thankfully, Morgana had more of her wits about her, and after a few hours of coercion and trickery, we managed to get my mother to the hospital.

As we sat in the Emergency Department waiting room, she was continually checking the doorbell camera back at her house. She would show us what she was seeing, as she was very adamant that people were coming to burn her house down. She was pointing at the screen, saying, “Look at this guy with the bat, breaking the windows out of our van!” The screen was showing none of this. We had to eventually take her phone away and physically restrain her from trying to call the police. 

It was a very scary time, and we were worried about all sorts of possible things. Was it early-onset dementia? A stroke? My mother is an alcoholic, so maybe this was some kind of withdrawal symptom?

Eventually (far too long, in my opinion), after she was finally taken back to a room, the doctor went over all the tests and discovered that this was all caused by a urinary tract infection. That was… surprising, to say the least, but at least it was something identifiable and treatable. She was admitted to the hospital.

So every day I’ve been going up to the hospital to spend all my free time with my mother. She doesn’t remember any of the wild tales she told last week. She’s cognizant again, but she’s extremely irritated whenever the topic of drinking comes up, because when she gets back home, we definitely need to intervene to prevent her daily binge-drinking. This “forced detox” is probably a hidden blessing. 

Sorry for all the downer stuff, but if you only cared about the game you’d have probably stopped reading past the second sentence… so thank you for that much, at least. Now it’s back to the hospital for me.

Keep the legends alive!
– Nine