hello, bonjour, new fans and old, since itch.io decided to make me blow up over the past 3 days!

special delivery: steam version is out. go fetch!

just when you thought it couldn’t get steamier in here, parfum nostalgique: is now on steam. you can play it on steam. you should go download it on steam. but if you’re a cool kid, you know… you play it on itch.io. no shade to steam (full shade) but they’re not as cool as itch.io. but it helps me out if you go and download the steam version, because more people will see it.

to everyone who has supported me:

thank you. i can finally rest for while. and by a while, i mean… i don’t know, a week? please make me rest for more than that… val says he loves you and he is so happy that you have been here to support me while i expose his emotional breakdown to complete strangers on the internet <3

i am

so sad right now. there is a hole in my heart and i don’t know how to fill it. these past 4 years, i’ve spent working on this thing were such a blessing. i could have never done this without the enormous privilege of being supported by my friends and family. i can’t believe i’ve gotten to spend so much time making this thing, and i get to spend the rest of my life being proud of it. this goes for everything I make, but… there is never going to be another 4 years i spend discovering myself like this. i will never have that opportunity again in my life to learn who i am this way. i will never be as lost as i was before i made this thing, and while that’s a wonderful thing, i feel so much pain that i can’t do it all over again. it’s all hitting me now that the steam release is out, because i don’t have to prepare any more for releases. any time i open parfum nostalgique: full bloom edition, it’s not to work on it anymore, it’s not for any tests, it’s just this thing i have now. a thing that i refuse to shut up about. I told my mom, “i’m so sad,” and she kept trying to make me feel better, and i got really irritated with her, because i know i’m just gonna go make something fucking else. i have the next thing in my head almost fully conceptualized already. but there’s just never gonna be another parfum nostalgique, and i gotta let myself cry about that. i gotta let myself be sad about that. if i gotta spend a few days in bed crying, that’s what i gotta do.

i’ve been putting stuff in my shop recently that i’ve sewn. go check it out, it’s all hand dyed fabric and little wooden pins and stuff. i really need the money, so if you see something you like, pick it up. there’s usually only one of each item, because i just make what i feel like making every time.

okay, i stopped crying.

a lot of my feelings on this don’t just have to do with closing this chapter of my life, but closing this chapter of my life and opening a new one in a time of great uncertainty. being a trans person who makes this kind of art in an age of fascism and genocidal rhetoric, and being a disabled person in general is not fun right now. i had this project help me through thick and thin, and it was always something i could look to to keep me going. i had to keep living so i could finish it. i had to let myself be a little bit insane about it. but now, i don’t get to work on it anymore. sometimes i think, “what will happen to parfum nostalgique if they do everything they can to erase anything they deem ‘obscene’ from this country?” and i count all the friends i have in europe that will save it for me, and i remember that i did this to preserve myself, and because i have people that care about me, no harm will come to it.

this is definitely not the last time you’ll see these characters in my work. i’ve missed writing val so much, that i’m always writing something where he’s yapping on and on. a few short side stories will be released when i have the head to edit and release them. but i’m not going to announce anything, or make any promises, because ultimately, this is my time to have fun with my characters and writing after wearing the Game Dev hat for so long. what i’m doing to get myself back on the horse (the life horse. not just the game dev horse. game dev horse can wait a bit for the life horse) is writing things for fun with val, and starting a new visual novel project that i will be working on, hopefully with a team. i don’t have to do this stuff alone anymore with so many wonderful friends to help me. it is a story with many anecdotes from my italian family about 3 trans lunatics on their way from new york to san francisco to abduct a cat one of them inherited from their grandmother from their closeted gay christian rock star asshole cousin. i’m going to have fun with a different art style, a lighter workload, and some very beloved characters of mine.

well!

that’s it. i’m sure you’ll hear from me soon about some sort of post-mortem lore dump about the development process. if you don’t mind seeing this much of my heart, please stay with me for future projects.

<3