Not as calamitous as it sounds. The whole game is backed up to GitHub, and none of it was touched. But after mistakenly importing the entire folder to DaVinci Resolve, I pressed "Ctrl Z", which then deleted about half of the folder. I don't know the specifics of why that happened. I don't think I want to learn them, specifically — all I know is that when I googled the problem, a forum post from 2022 just had a response that was "Wow 🫨".
I tried disk recovery but I didn't realize the issue 'till well after the files were overwritten. So recovery mostly failed. Most of what was lost was uploaded online somewhere, either via Discord or Google Drive — and, mercifully, the blender folder remains untouched. But all of my personal concept art is gone. I'm gonna have to trawl through my direct messages with Lambchopper to see what I sent to them.
I feel a lasting emptiness. I put on Microphones in 2020 because it's the only thing I could think of playing. Fuck, y'know. A bunch of shit is gone permanently, randomly, for no good reason. I guess it happens.