#this ask is weirdly topical considering the art im about to post.....

[aita-blorbos]

(tma oc ask content warning for canon typical levels of buried fuckery)

am i the asshole for driving away my friend?

hey reddit . im posting from a throwaway bc i dont want people connecting this to my work (though i doubt youve heard of me anyways) but i think i messed up terribly and i want to know if this is something i can still fix

also sidenote sorry if my grammar or punctuation or word choice or anything of that sort are poor. i have not been sleeping well for some time

i (19m) am a video game developer. its been my passion for years now and i am currently in uni studying computer games development and programming and level design . although i have considered dropping out but thats a point for later . i post on itch io and such and sometimes i make flash games but idk if anyone reading this has played a single one

its been a bit of a hard time for me, if im being honest. i really like games and i really liked making them but i dont think im very good at programming or art or level design or any of the other things that go into the process of making a game . at least a profitable and fun one .

so i ended up coming to this computer science study group in the hopes maybe someone could teach me to be better at programming. and i met this girl. i dont know exactly how old she is, but i want to say she was maybe two or three years ahead of me in her schooling, so probably about 22. anyways lets call her E

E was studying pure computer science and wanted to do it at a high level . so of course she was pretty good at helping me with my really rudimentary programming stuff . and she was friendly and funny and we liked hanging out so we ended up being good friends . she actually complimented my games, once i got them to function, and said my pixel art was cute . my point is we were close . maybe we wouldn’t have been so close if we had anyone else, but i was still new and she was pretty lonely .

really shortly after i met her though i started having fucked up dreams. ok that’s not entirely accurate because i had been having fucked up dreams on occasion for a while . but they got worse and she showed up in them. it was all me locking her in stairwells hitting her over the head and piling earth over her body filling her mouth with mud and cement. terrible things

so i stopped sleeping. i tried not to at least. im pretty sure most uni kids pull all nighters. i know i did even when i was younger. but i wasnt studying for exams or whatever. i was just trying and trying to force myself awake and i started to lose it a bit. my grip on things. it felt like i was sleepwalking through classes and even like i was dreaming when i was awake. id nod off for a moment in a lecture and id feel dirt caked on my hands under my fingernails. and no matter how much i scrubbed and how much i knew with my eyes it wasnt there it just. refused to come off . and it felt like her blood

i don’t remember how we got on the topic but i remember she told me how she always worried a little bit about being trapped . like claustrophobia of a flavor that shows itself in locked doors and thick walls and collapsing underground stations. that made me feel even more odd about the whole thing . of course i felt awful about hurting her but that part of it was like a joke i didn’t get

and then weirdly enough i got really into nineties 3D games. they have these skyboxes that make it really obvious they’re not actually infinite . and i thought that was kind of interesting in context. like the whole world is a box you’re in so why worry so much about if the stairwell door will lock behind you

i kind of started thinking that was something i would like to replicate with my art . like if i put all my issues into one game they would be out of my brain and gone . maybe it could even be pleasant without the whole preying on my friends terror thing

so now we get to the part of the story where i fear i really really messed up . i made this game . and honestly i dont remember the development very well . sleep deprivation is a dreadful thing . i remember again and again while i was making it kind of coming to my senses not knowing where i was and finding massive parts of the game that i didnt remember making at all.

it was set in a stairwell but i dont remember buying or making the models for the door . there was a really weird kind of way the game functioned with an infinite path going up but how that functioned i couldnt tell you . and i dont remember composing the audio or where i might have downloaded it from except that i never liked to listen to it for very long . i dont know why i kept it in the game

i always showed my games to E but i really wanted her to see this one in particular. so she came by my flat and played it and then i remember she just glared at me . there was something to the look she gave me . it was like she was completely horrified and was trying to pretend she was just angry instead

she hasnt spoken to me since . and i think i fucked up . i knew it was playing at her issues and i think maybe i even made it at least subconsciously to pry at them. like the same part of me with dirt under my fingernails was also sitting there typing away on that keyboard .

but at the same time its just a game . and im better at programming now too . like something just clicked there

honestly though development lately has been weird. its been hard trying to go back to the old sort of pixel art platformers and shoot em ups and that kind of thing i used to make. every time i open any program its like im just staring at it and imagining skyboxes. putting it all in a box imprisoning every world i make that kind of thing. like i said earlier ive been considering dropping out. but i dont know. i think id need to sleep on it

i still have weird fucked up dreams but E isnt in them anymore . i dont know where shes gone . i think maybe my idea worked somehow and i did transfer all that shit to my art . and then that just all went right to her . but i dont know if i like that idea or hate it

anyways reddit am i the asshole?