So, It's Done.*

*A recent engine update with Ren'Py is preventing me from compiling the game and I can't downgrade the SDK as it breaks the script but in a different way. I'll keep looking for solutions like seeing if it works on my laptop or my producer's computer and asking people who actually know how to program for help, but this frustrating as hell and I am going to bed in a few minutes even if it is 10:00 AM my time because I can only bang my head into a wall so much in a work session. If you know Python and why a program using it might suddenly be giving "PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\Documents and Settings'" in the traceback (as well as trying the same with the recycling bin), please hit me up.

**Actually ignore all of that shit. It's all good now.

It's been close to a full and very miserable year, but re:Dreamer 0.20.0 is finally done. The wholly rewritten Keisuke Day 2 morning is fully complete at 114,631 words and a bit over two hours of reading (at Ren'Py's default autoread speed) with two very different second halves depending on the choices from Keisuke Day 1, and all that is left is the final pass of the script for typos, a small handful of miscellaneous bug fixes on Britney's route, updating the flowchart, updating the changelog, diagnosing a very annoying "PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied" bug from Ren'Py 8.4.1 that crashes the SDK upon any script error (thus slowing that overall process of fixing bugs by a lot), and uploading the damned thing.

Anyways, previews! I'll try to keep these brief and focused on the themes of the content.

While Britney's route focuses more on Zach's gender than his sexuality, it somewhat conversely compartmentalizes that with how much better Zach can hide his changed body with Britney's expert help and exploring that has a much less public and even outright private stage where Zach can state he isn't the woman he appears to be and be not just believed but accepted for who he is (whoever that person might ultimately be).

On the other hand, Keisuke's route places more focus of Zach's (assumed) gender in a much larger and unavoidable social aspect. Zach can't hide Zoey behind a binder or find shelter as just one of many weird and vaguely queer kids in a theater club so progressive it's practically anarchistic. When Zach is socializing with anyone but solely Keisuke in his route, it'll be in a very different role that is ironically more of an act than in Britney's route. Zach being seen and treated as a woman is a very different type of story that will see them in different places, such as being adopted into a small female friend group he finds increasingly comfortable and even natural to be a part of, being treated in acutely different ways from people as a hot and clueless woman, and openly pretending to be Keisuke's girlfriend in ways that are at odds with two college-age guys who've known each other since they were little boys just being dudes, each of these coming with baggage and feelings of nagging guilt from feeling deceptive or not deserving of wherever he, she, or they currently are.

Ryouichi is the (pun intended) icebreaker for this social change as someone who forces Zach to answer hard questions about not just himself but what Keisuke means to him in ways he can't run away from.

And speaking of that lovable himbo:

God, it's almost like being a dumbass makes him hotter...

While this is one of the weaker examples, I like writing Keisuke in a way that contrasts his surprising wisdom with his unsurprising lack of intelligence or knowledge (at least as Zach sees it).

Keisuke can bring up a good point Zach hadn't considered, provide insight Zach couldn't have come to on his own, or say something truly profound that would deeply resonate with Zach if he let it, but despite both very deliberately being constructed by me as complimentary opposites, both treat their overall brains vs brawn relationship as an unequal partnership.

To once again contrast with Britney's route, Keisuke and Zach are people who have known each other for a long time. Zach coming back into Keisuke's life looking like a woman who is both of their types isn't simply a catalyst for both a change and escalation of a relationship between Zach and someone he trusts, but the elephant in the room both men try to pretend doesn't change anything even as it so clearly does more and more with each passing day. For better or worse, Zach's changed body (and changed social role out of both convenience and necessity) is a massive disruption to an old and outright tired status quo. Their personal growth is going to come from that on its own, but the way both choose to respond and adapt to it.

Personally, I find someone's personal evolution coming from a closely tied exploration of identity and attraction fascinating. Someone learning how to love and accept themselves as they figure out how to love and accept another person is a canvas of potential, and in some ways, it gives me another dimension to work with that I only partially have in Britney's route.

<It was at this point that CaptainCaption realized he wasn't exactly being brief and focused on the themes of the content.>

There's a reason my best friend asked mutual artist friend Cai for a pic of her giving me a flying elbow drop for excessively yapping.

Look, coffee fugue states aren't exactly ideal even when I manage to avoid the more stereotypical trappings of an author's not merely misplaced but crippled results, but they are a strict universal upgrade to the crippling fatigue and I'm getting a bit better at noticing when I am in the coffee high (or ranting like I love the sound of my keyboard and my own voice).

I've got an album with few more preview screenshots, but I should move on before I get tempted to rant about topics like how Keisuke and Zach are oblivious that both ended up loosely emulating each of Zach's parents or how each guy's biggest grievance with the other is a manifestation of uncomfortable projection of their own worst traits.

There is going to be a transparency post coming in the coming days about why this took a year, but it's honestly as simple and boring as "the cat scratch fever I got from my apartment's flea infestation in early October 2024 had a shorter incubation period than the mononucleosis I also got from the same infection vector, so my heavily weakened immune system meant the mono virus dug much deeper into my body than it normally would have and combined with my other health issues it took a major toll on me."

There are a few other miscellaneous factors that are more interesting than months of being stuck in bed with severe memory issues, but I need to stop treating development like blogging and I'll be limiting what I share to these three things:

• What has, is, or will hinder me from working on this visual novel (primarily my health, but there are more minor considerations).

• My own gender identity.

• My own sexuality.

Whether anyone likes it or not, what my overall and current gender are and who/what I am attracted to will have profound affects on how I write an adult gender bender visual novel, but I'll do my best to limit the scope of that to only the relevant parts (and I want you, the person reading this, to call me out if I fail to do so) and I'll hold off until that post is up outside of one tidbit that, while accurate, amuses me when shared without context: "I have realized I have a gender bender paraphilia."

Anyways, this post is meant to be three things: the heads up that all that I have left for release are small tasks secondary to the writing and giving a few previews of what that release adds as a pitch to draw interest, the (hopefully obvious) understanding that a delay of close to a year means I have to be transparent with sharing why it happened, and a question.

Usually, when I am late for a release, I just shunt it straight into being public as an apology for a delay. I generally treat this game's revenue as a tip jar for a game I hope will always stay ultimately free, and while I plan for that tip jar turning into donation links toward a choice of a LGBT charity, Alzheimer's research, or Parkinson's disease research once development stops one way or another, I am still kicking despite feeling like I lost a year of my life to limbo.

I don't want to sob story this. I still feel like a piece of shit for how tone-deaf and just manipulative I was in closing the post where I (misguidedly) came out as a transgender woman by begging for money. I regret doing that more than I regretted the painful misfire of not realizing I was genderfluid which blew up in my face and hurt myself and other people, because it came with an air of entitlement for who I was instead of what I was doing.

I don't feel as if I have earned patience even if I've made the best case I could make to give understanding to my chaotic situation and let people come to their own conclusions, and I feel I've been public enough as-is about my poor health, my poor luck, my poor choices (seriously, don't let me forget about them, and hold me accountable if or when I make others), and my escape from my abusively violent parents who quite literally almost killed me to an apartment that it's teetering on the fulcrum point from being explanations to being excuses.

But the blunt truth of it is that when I moved out , it was on the hopes that not living under the fear and stress of my parents would see me getting back to my prior output, but the exact opposite happened, and that was not the budget I was expecting.

From this page's Graphtreon, it makes $700 less than it did a year ago and $2,000 less than it did two years ago, and it's not because interest in the genre fizzled out in the wake of some social rudder changing the course of how gender must be talked about. Amaty, the dev of A Mirror's Curse (which I am plugging here because it's an excellent gender bender game that deserves more attention and has earned my recommendation), currently makes $8,110 a month from its Patreon, which is twice as much than re:Dreamer's highest-ever peak. Sure, that is a bit of a bitter pill of something that could be uncharitably framed as jealously to swallow, but I am elated another solo queer game developer with some unexpected similarities is thriving even if I feel like I've been watching the other kids have the time of their lives playing baseball as I look down at them from my hospital window and hate how my health stops me from joining them. I'll cheer for every hit, but it's hard to not think about how I should be next in the lineup wearing a similar pair of shoes.

(As a tangent I am making even as I realize it and the rest of this is something I will have to repeat in that pending transparency post, it's honestly really nice to have A Mirror's Curse and Thread: A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College (the Patreon of which I am also plugging as it looks amazing and I feel awful about not getting around to playing it yet because it was hard to justify that over working) as gender bender projects I can point to with my easy recommendations. No "well, its dev is kind of an asshole" or "it's actually almost entirely body swap and possession with only hints of transformative gender bender" caveats, no having to supply a flowchart and telling people to trust me in saying it gets good if eventually and if you make the right non-intuitive choices. Just plain wholehearted endorsements to people who I can confidently say are making something the people who like what I make will also like.)

Okay, I swear I'll actually get to the point now:

I predict the 0.20.0 update to re:Dreamer to be out within 24 hours as I write this at 6 AM on August 1st, 2025 (unless something stupid happens like the Ren'Py engine update preventing the game from compiling).

Actually, make that 48 hours! That exact bullshit is happening and I am going insane trying to fix it!† I want to fucking scream aaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!*

Source: kiiyodex on pixiv

†Actually I fixed it. Turns out that commenting out lines with "os." in the project until something starts working was just enough for the right monkey with the right typewriter to find a solution! We are back on track for a release in the early GMT-4 AM of August 2nd, but for future reference, do not mistake this as me having any competency with coding.

I am planning the next update being either about updating the Keisuke Day 2 mall writing with better polish and the new CGs (NSFW link to an imgur album with previews and the plan for their use, but you might need to make an imgur account to see them) or the Keisuke Day 9 swimming pool scenes with their HCGs (NSFW link to an imgur album with previews and the plan for their use, but as before you might need to make an imgur account to see them) ((I probably need to figure out how to do this with a service that doesn't autoflag NSFW content)).

I will make a poll after 0.20.0 goes live and put the preferred option to a vote, but both of these will be large updates which could take even longer to finish than the two months I have until this game's sixth anniversary update on October 7, and I am not particularly interested in instead giving myself a smaller chunk of writing such as the rest of the Day 4 campus writing of Zach's first day of classes with hiding his female body or writing the rest of the Britney route's first theater club meeting despite having clear outlines for both.

Given that promised delay past the month I have tried to give myself for each update (even with my recent history of egregiously extreme delays), should this pending re:Dreamer 0.20.0 release that is almost a year late be Patron-only with the Sustainer tier, Patron-only with the Sustainer and Backer tiers, or public immediately (with the features of the patron passwords)?

And given that each previous anniversary release (besides the fifth anniversary's which was skipped due to my health) has been public immediately with all Patron password settings unlocked, should this next planned sixth anniversary update be Patron-only with the Sustainer tier (moving the 0.20.0 release to then become available to the Backer tier), Patron-only with the Sustainer and Backer tiers (moving the 0.20.0 release to become available to the public), or public immediately (independent of the answer to the first question and with the password rewards unlocked)?

Patreon can't let me have two polls in the same post, so I am going to have to do this in one poll with two choices each. I ask you to please only pick one of the first three and one of the last three, and if you are a Patron, please log in as you make your votes so I can tally your votes with triple their usual weight based on your tier (so 3x for Supporter, 12x for Backer, and 30x for Sustainer). This might be a bit to heavily skewed against public votes, but this is a decision that also affects those who have loyally stuck around for this drought and I want to make sure those voices are properly heard and rewarded. Things could change with that second poll as that anniversary update gets close to release, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it even though I doubt I will.

Anyways uh please go here because Patreon and I both messed up the poll that was in this post god I am so fucking tired and I am sorry for this.

I plan for a poll about the entire Patreon password system soon as I have started to think it might be an obstacle to a more simplified and less confusing incentive of having access to releases earlier without the fiddliness of having to find that password each release and removing it would give more people access to the features of this visual novel that I see as making it unique and stand out: the C.H.E.A.T.S. system (and being able to fiddle with it), a full route jump menu to see the variants, and developer commentary.

You can say what you will about my attention to detail and passion even if my opinion is still that I am the Hideo Kojima or George Lucas of gender bender visual novels (not because I am a visionary auteur or a singular voice with a singular vision, but because I desperately need someone around to bounce ideas around with, reign me in, and tell me "no" with a finality of overriding authority), but only 100 out of the 56,276 visual novels tracked on VNDB are tagged as having staff commentary (with only 19 having author commentary), and I've never even heard of another visual novel with a personality matrix you can manipulate on-the-fly (probably because it's antithetical to timely production).

I'll see you all soon, and take care.