*Update at the bottom of this post

So this isn't really meant for the people who are interested only in Tankmas or the other shenanigans I do here on NG, but I will say for you guys that I hope you enjoy what we're putting out this year! We've got a lot more coming on and it's only gonna get better from here.

Instead, this is mainly for the people that know me for Bob and Bosip. With everything going on, and with people taking time to share their thoughts, I want to just share with you guys about what's been going on, not behind the scenes, but with me. There's a bunch of other people that explain what's been going on behind the scenes online, but in terms of what I've been going through in that... it's just complicated.

Before I begin, I want to just mention that I am, in no way, inciting or asking for any witch hunts, callouts or cancellations towards any individual member of the team or the team entire; in fact, I ask that this post not be the reason for any of that. In the same vein, I will be mentioning no names except Amor's for the sake of the group anonymity, and I ask that you don't mention or attach names either. I have no hatred or vendettas against the team, and this isn't meant to turn them into villains - we have Twitter for that, thank you very much. Instead, I'm just giving my own recollection of my thoughts and what it's leading to with the team and my involvement. Also, there is a slight trigger warning for the mention of self-harm/suicide later on here, immediately following the second photo in the second section. Don't worry - I'm not taking my life, nor am I making any plans to anytime soon.

Basic backstory for the mod and update: I've mentioned a few times in previous news posts about the Bob and Bosip mod for Friday Night Funkin, which has currently become one of the largest mods in the game. Our last successful update, known as The Expansion Update, came out back in August 2021. Like what happened after the release of the main week, we wanted to go right into Week 2 following the release of the Expansion Update but got an idea to expand upon something already introduced in the mod.

This time, it was the EX difficulty. For those unaware of what that is, think of it as our take on the main FNF's planned Erect Difficulty, with remixed songs and charts more fit for veteran rhythm game players. When we released the Expansion Update, we had it for only the four main songs in the mod - the Tutorial, Jump In, Swing, and Split. People started looking for EX remixes of other songs so much that we decided, why not? So Week 2 was put on hold and we began work on the next update, known as the EX update.

Fast forward a few months, to November. We were working really well on the update, and our spirits were high. We had an EX remix planned for every other song currently in the mod, plus a few aces up our sleeves. Despite missing a few deadlines set earlier on, we weren't really taking it as a big deal, mainly because it wasn't a big deal.

Until it became a big deal.

On November 26 - or as us Americans know it, Black Friday 2021 - the word started to spread in our development server that the mod had gotten leaked. Not a video of Amor showing it off, not a clip of us showing snippets of the music, but a full-blown, most recent, unfinished build. And unfortunately, we weren't the only ones - the other bob mod, literally every FNF mod ever, also got their update, known as Bob's Trick or Treat, leaked to the public by an unknown source, and a handful of mods were getting leaks at around the same time ours was. The issue was, our mod was unique in that it had a large fanbase due to Amor's content creation - meaning people could see it and spread it easily. In fact, the most popular leak video has around 10k views at the time of typing this, from the last time I checked.

Now, at this point a normal person would just suggest we go up to the video, strike it for copyright violations, and go on with our day. And to be honest, I made a promise to do that. I knew the risk of going to court over it and was going to take it if it meant defending my work and the work of others being used without permission.

But here's the problem. If you press the fancy buttons to report a copyright strike on a YouTube video, you're first greeted by a page outlining everything about the copyright process with a link to the forum submission for copyright smack in the middle. On that page, below the forum link, is this piece that outlines what information you would have to provide and how it would be used:

I get everything except for the legal name. Read it again:

Your full legal name is required to complete a takedown request. It may be shared with the uploader of the video removed for copyright infringement.

Sharing your legal name with the person who used your assets without permission upfront and outside of a court? If you ask me, that is basically giving more bullets to someone who is shooting off their guns against an entire team. Let me reiterate this: they don't care about us. Don't believe me? Here's one of the comments from one of the leak videos:

Yeah, we're lazy. We're putting this whole update together for you the fans, we're making sure it doesn't have any bugs in it, and we're lazy.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that I also woke up earlier to another one of my friends cutting themselves in an attempt to take their own life? Because that was going on too, and I had to take up my time to help them and keep them alive because I cared about them. I spent the entire day telling them how much they mattered to me and to others, and all while the mod team was panicking and trying to figure out what to do in response to the leak, since it was the first time this had happened.

And I'm lazy.

So since we were in a stalemate with the leak video, we had only one option: push for the mod to get done. Pretty much everything was done except coding, and the big issue we had was that we had one coder pushing hard while the other had broken communication with us, basically talking with us every so often. As you can probably tell, we had a lot of stress on our hands, and the community where the lunkhead above resided in was laughing and prodding us. It wasn't the entire community, but enough to stress us out.

Worst part is, we still haven't found the one responsible for the leak as of typing this. It was mentioned that there were a large amount of people in the server, but it was because they were people who the team was planning to collaborate with for a number of reasons. For example, one set of people we had in our development server was the people behind the Imposter Mod, who we were planning to collaborate with for a crossover between their mod and Bob & Bosip. We also had people who were content creators and special guests that were trusted individuals - UniqueGeese, JerTheMusicBear, Mepedrop, just to name a few. While that list expanded because of the artist we brought on for loading screens, most of the people in the server were either trusted friends of Amor, people we were collaborating with, or people working on the mod. We didn't bring just anybody into that server, but having that amount of people made finding the leaker similar to looking for a needle in a haystack.

Fast forward another week. We had set a date for release - December 4th/5th. This was also the date that the build needed to be done at, and... you can see the issue here. It also happened that one of the coders got sick on the day of the 5th, and the update's work fell on the shoulders of the other coder, who had somewhat fixed their communication issue.

But for me... I was mentally breaking. After a moment where Amor fell under stress in a VC I wasn't present in but saw unfold in the text chat (nothing bad happened to my knowledge), I felt like I was suffocating and did what I could to wash myself off of the mod for the time. I moved everything related to B&B, including Amor's public server known as The Bob Lounge, into a part of my Discord that I reserved for Nitro emotes and never looked at, and I muted Amor's DMs. The only communication I kept was with a single member of the team, which I won't name, but it was only in the case that I needed to get something off of my chest.

I saw my own mentality taking a skydive in terms of the mod. Despite me doing everything to turn every notification off and keep my conversations down, I basically couldn't stop myself from looking at the server, and when I eventually brought it up to that member I was talking with, they suggested I talked with Amor. Realizing my mentality was dropping out, I took a walk on the cold morning of December 6th for errands and to just breathe, then I came back and asked Amor if I could talk to him. My intention was to speak with him in a call, but when both of us were ready on the morning of the 7th, I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I talked with him in text and let him know everything on my mind, being open to the fact that I knew I wasn't alone in my stress, and asked the question "how are things getting better?".

The conversation went better than expected, with Amor understanding and apologizing for what was going on and saying that he wished things didn't turn out this way and that a lot of it was outside of our control. The communication was the issue with why things were taking a turn for the worst according to him, and I also realized that was a large issue at play here. At the end, when I mentioned that the happiness I had for the mod was becoming stress extremely quickly, he told me:

Then that's fine, you need a break. We all do.

The next day, I had joined a group that was much smaller for bugfixing the update. I had already unmuted Amor and was starting to feel a bit better, just still immensely under the weather when it came to the mod. When it came to the group of the nine of us, we put all hands on deck for playtesting and bugfixing hoping to still push the mod out really soon. I did my share and I continuously asked what needed to be done.

Afterwards, while the momentum was going I took the weekend to go and just unplug from pretty much everything, including Tankmas. I felt legitimately happy and I enjoyed my time, to the point where I didn't feel stressed checking in on the team as they prepared for an update despite having no emotion.

But when Sunday the 12th hit, it hit hard.

My mental health basically found the floor pulled out from underneath. My real life was getting so bad that day that I basically slept for over 12 hours and I didn't eat for almost 24. Tankmas was running into issues because of a late publish from the people I was working with and it led to panic to try and fix it up from both my fellow programmers and the others involved. And the mod... was trying. I didn't pay attention to anything, and I simply sent this message near the end of my day to the group:

Good luck with the release. I'm done with today.

I was going back into the ditch I was trying so desperately to get out of for the past week.

The release was to include a full playthrough of the update, and its premiere went off without a hitch. But when the actual update got released, it was plagued with problems on the coding side.

Twitter exploded.

My home feed got filled with more people saying what Amor's problems were instead of saying "let's give thanks to the team" messages. I get it, the mod wasn't perfect, but to see more people saying the mod's problems was... hurtful.

The issue I had the entire time was something I consider as "runoff stress". Basically, the direct stress was going on with the programmers and the team entire to try and get the mod in as good of a position to release as possible. None of it was directed to me, yet by seeing the stress going on it got onto me. I don't know how or why it does, but... it did.

And it affected what was happening in every step of my experience.

When I went back on the next day, Monday the 13th, my mental health was reset for everything except the mod. In fact, while everything was getting better for me mentally, the mod was getting worse. It had gotten to the point where I typed a message in the group chat (note that this is paraphrased to the best of my knowledge):

Honestly, if the people that are complaining are the majority, then I say we just cancel the update. So what if we please a small group of people? When the general masses are complaining about what you've done, who cares about the small group of people? After four months of work and stress, I don't. If the people are complaining about the mod, and we give them what they want, what are we doing to them? Giving them more to complain about? Telling them that complaining gets them what they want? If it's me, and I really think it is, then I need to leave the team, but... I just don't see it.

I went mad from the stress, and knowing that I said that is just... hurtful to me. No, I didn't mean to direct this at everyone who supported the mod, but that doesn't make it any less worse. I think the others, who were telling me that we shouldn't cancel the mod over a bunch of people causing a stink, took to the situation better than I did. I think everyone else had a better reaction to the situation than I did.

Later that day, Amor held a space on Twitter to clear up what was going on. While others were going on to say their thoughts, I chose not to enter the space, left the group, and turned Amor's DMs, as well as the DMs of many of the other people on the team, completely silent. The only server I have hanging on to say I am still a developer is the main dev server.

Following that space, Amor sent me a DM saying that he apologized for what was going on and assumed that I didn't want to be involved. He was being legitimately hurt from the situation and letting me know he cared about me, and what did I say in response?

In basic terms, I told him to go shove it. In more specifics, I told him that I was balanced between leaving and staying on the team, that I would come to him when I was ready with my decision, and to tell the others not to come to me until my decision was made.

He responded saying:

Ok, you have a good one splatter.

That brings me to now. As I mentioned last night, I'm still unsure whether to stay or leave the B&B team. But the issue I'm facing isn't with or involving Amor or anyone else on the team - the issue is me. I've tried weighing the pros and cons of leaving, tried considering everything with the past present and future, and... I can't make a decision. I still can't mentally accept people around me asking about how I am and what they can do, because I'm worried that I'm hurting them in this state. And the issue is that this is the only place that I'm having this mental instability - Tankmas has been a joy to work on and amazing to see growing, the other mods not associated with the team have been good to look at and help with, but... it's this specific mod that just has this poison on it that I can always taste.

Is it because of the team or Amor? Pretty unlikely, since they weren't abusing me or treating me wrong at all, whether directly or indirectly, intentional or not. Is it because of the leak? Potentially, since it was the leak that started this whole issue in the first place.

But... maybe it's really me. Maybe I shouldn't have this opportunity since I'm being a sourpuss and a negative person as of late when it comes to the mod. Maybe I should take my leave and fix myself mentally or get myself out of the spotlight. Or maybe all I need is a break when this update comes out to just breathe and celebrate the holidays.

It's one of those times right now where I'm just... lost.

UPDATE (12/15/21)

So I came to a decision that I let Amor know about, but I might as well forward it here. I'm gonna stay with the team.

Like I mentioned, this isn't something that happened with just our team, and I ended up seeing it in a new light when taking a step further back. I think I could take this situation and turn it into a learning opportunity for me to deal with this kind of extreme stress both now and in the future. While what I said isn't right, and I knew that pretty much from the time I began writing this and apologized for it, it's nothing I can change and instead something I can learn from. I'm hoping that this update can get its way out, for the better of both myself and the team.

One thing that I don't know if people were wondering or not as well was why I wrote this to begin with. I don't want to look for pity or for remorse, but rather I wanna just be open and check in with myself. As much as I hate getting involved with the drama of different communities, I also realized that I couldn't keep everything on my chest. Sometimes, talking about a situation that's going on is the best way to start getting your mind cleared up instead of bottling it up and chewing on it. Plus, if things went the other way I didn't want the reason to immediately go to "well, it's the team's fault" when they weren't the problem I was facing. Now if it was just that, could this whole post have waited until I made the decision to step down? Of course, and it might have been better to hold it off until then if it was only that reason; because there was the issue of keeping it to myself, though, I chose to simply talk about it now.

Still, I'm hopeful and thankful for the team. I looked back at the development server and things are beginning to look up for both the future and the update. We don't have a release point yet since we still have things to do, but we're looking forward to what's after the update.

Thanks again for being here guys. Make sure you look out for yourselves every day. <3