Hi, hello, hi once again! It’s been a while, but it’s your girl, Tabbie! It feels a little strange to be writing a postmortem for Cuscuta. For the past year and change, Cuscuta has been the driving force pushing me forward in my life. I thought that I’d feel a little more aimless than I do afterwards, which is primarily what I’d love to talk about: what I’ve learned about creation in general. 

Keen eyed readers of the postmortem of my previous VN (Hi, you! Yes, you! You know who you are and I am pinging you with my postmortem!) may remember that Cuscuta was my main project that I was in the process of making until I decided to join the Toxic Yuri VN Jam with RIDE HOME. When I started Cuscuta, I thought that it could be a fun little hobby that I could throw a Saturday at every once in a while. But once I really threw myself into creating something for others to see with RIDE HOME, I learned just how good creating something for the public felt. For better and for worse. 

For the good: it feels good for your work to be seen and enjoyed! The bad? It feels really good for your work to be seen and enjoyed. Since this is the first time I've shared any kind of art publicly, I found myself refreshing the itch dashboard more times than I’d like to admit, always hoping for another comment and another hit of validation. I’m someone that tended to yap about ideas and leave Google Docs suspiciously unopened as just that initial reaction of “oh, that’d be so cool!” used to be enough for me. But now I was seen, especially after being selected in the TYVNJ. I got a really fat head, haha! I took that attitude into Cuscuta, which I really considered to be my baby, and that turned out to be a near fatal error. 

I felt a little bit like Denji hiding out with Kishibe and Kobeni; toast with any kind of jam I wanted was nice, but now I wanted five, no, ten girlfriends. I had gone from having a very legitimate fear of an old stalker seeing my public work to starving to be seen again and more than last time. And that, reader, is a complete betrayal of what I wanted when I started making VNs. 

When I set out to create VNs, I did want a hobby and I did want to refine my writing so that I could be useful to my wife when she created games. But more than that, I wanted to make food for myself since I’m very very picky. That’s not to say I compromised on my vision with Cuscuta; on the contrary, I really put it all out there. I stayed true to my vision for the actual VN. I forgot that I was making art for myself rather than for other people to enjoy. As such, I hounded the itch dashboard again, hoping for a ton of people to see it and to validate my belief in it. And people did see it! People I admire a lot! And that was awesome! But my expectations were wholly unrealistic. 

Time passed and I’d love to say that that’s what fixed me, but it was working on another visual novel that allowed me to gain some more perspective on the situation I found myself in. I was really afraid of letting Cuscuta go, but as I continued to work on the Undecided Title Knight VN, I found myself falling in love with those characters just as much as my Cuscuta girls. That’s what really saved me; a skill I didn’t know I had. I’m a huge fan of my own characters and that energizes me like nothing else. It was such a relief to know that this pride and love I had for Cuscuta wasn't unique. It was something I could derive from creation itself.

I found myself really unconcerned with metrics and checked them every few days to indulge a passing curiosity (y’all still really like RIDE HOME, huh?). Once I was able to free myself of this thirst for validation, I found myself really touched by the response Cuscuta got. It feels like I was really able to connect with people, which is what I truly wished for when I fired up Ren'py for the first time. For that, I’m truly grateful. 

Okay! Boo-hoo time over! Time to talk about what I loved about Cuscuta!

• THE ARTTTTTTT OMGGGGG BLAZEMALEFICA IS MY GOAT!!! Their art is incredible. Breathtaking. The greatest of all time. They were so patient with me and understanding and I’m so so so excited to see the end result of the knight VN I’m making with them!
• MY GIRLSSSSS ALFALFA GOLDTHREAD MY BABIESSSS. These two will always be my babies. I love them to death. Enough said. I ship them forever and ever and ever and ever. 
• The framing device! I feel that intimate interviews really helped to immerse the reader in not only their position as “interviewer”, but the girls themselves. There’s a part where Goldthread is directly appealing to the Orator, demanding that she answer her. I really loved that because I think visual novels are such a neat medium to deny the player choice or the ability to respond in. I like instilling a feeling of helplessness in the player, but even more than that, a feeling of wanting to reach through the screen to comfort someone. 
• The backgrounds! My darling wife did an amazing job with the cabin renders. I love her so much it makes me stupid. I have to stop thinking about her or else I’m gonna be too stupid to continue writing this aaaaaaaaaaaaa
• I learned a lot about how sound effects and ambience can immerse the reader in a VN from RIDE HOME, so I was glad I could take that experience into Cuscuta.
• On a personal note, I really like that I was able to tell a story about (seemingly, looking at you, Alfalfa) cis women that people could connect to. In case you didn’t know, I am a transgender woman. Shocking, I know. I was worried that I’d pigeon-hole myself into writing about being transfemme, so it was honestly very affirming that I could write well enough about femininity for people to connect to it. 

Now for what I didn't love:

• Look. I know lots of games use the default Ren'Py UI and it's fine! But one day I'm going to have to actually figure out some kind of graphical design. It's a must for me. I feel like at least one person must have got turned off by the ugly ass main menu in Cuscuta. They are visual novels, after all. 
• Genuinely, that's it! I'm still very much in love with this one. 

Overall, I'm extremely grateful for how things turned out with Cuscuta. It was definitely what I needed to be a stronger writer and a stronger creator in general. Thought if I were to do it all over again, I wouldn't upload a separate smut file to the game page hours after release because it turns out itch doesn't like that hahahaha. 

So, what comes next? I'll be submitting a Knight VN with Blazemalefica to the Once Upon a Time Jam! After that I'll be taking a break (three VNs in like 6 months seems like a monstrous pace) and then coming back in the Spring or Summer! I'd love to make an anthology VN for all the little ideas I have or short stories I wrote that don't quite warrant full projects. Further in the future, I want to make a sequel to Cuscuta! I'm definitely not done with my favorite couple, so expect to see a Kino no Tabi-like from me eventually. 

I chatted with some people in a dev discord server and I offhandedly mentioned that it felt good to update my bsky bio from “I guess I'm technically making a visual novel” to “I make visual novels”. Now I can be sure that I love making visual novels! I think I've got out everything that I wanted to say, so… I'll just say that if you made it this far, I want to thank you in particular! There's always been a gnawing desire inside of me to be understood and having visual novels as a medium to finally express myself fully and freely has been…. well, freeing! That's possible because of readers like yourself. Thank you so, so much! I promise I won't be so weird about the next one's release! I double prommy! Thank you so much again and see you next time!!!!