I Don't Usually Give My Depression Enough Credit For How Much It Affects Me, But This Week It's Kicking

i don't usually give my depression enough credit for how much it affects me, but this week it's kicking me in the teeth. couldn't even get through a game night with bae without collapsing into a crying heap like an hour in.

objectively speaking, my life is better than it's been in at least the last ten years, possibly ever. yet, i'm struggling to appreciate it, because depression sucks the life out of me.

i just want to enjoy things again!!!

this depressive episode will probably let go of me in a few days, as they usually do, but it's always a background process in the back of my head. i need to give it the attention and care it deserves, instead of constantly forgetting it exists.

Here's a belated treat for Mario's 35th anniversary: an isometric maze built atop Mario's running animation from SMB1! Use the pipes to travel between the different layers and make your way to the finish.

This maze is a full overhaul of one that I drew on graph paper for Mario's 25th anniversary, a whole decade ago! Once I came up with the idea for the pipes, I just *knew* I had to digitize this one, heh ✨

today's Gender Realization: as a kid i was teased when i acted like a girl AND when i acted like a boy. teased when my hair got long, teased for playing in the sand, teased for going down the "wrong" toy aisle, teased for going down the RIGHT toy aisle, what do you want from me??

as i grew older it only got more complicated: i had very few role models in my life outside of TV, which often depicted men as violent, women as temptresses, and positive qualities as punchlines.

and, ugh, my parents explained NOTHING about puberty. it was all just more teasing!

multiply all that by autism and is it any wonder that my gender identity was so repressed? that i started at nonbinary because i was so confused by everything and everyone?? that even now i worry my boy feelings are """toxic""" and my girl feelings are """lustful"""???

it's only as an adult that i've seen positive reflections, depictions, and discussions of gender in my life… and they're all queer.

every. single. one.

(i could say the same for relationships, honestly…)

new stream archive! in which i return to monke... i mean streaming. yeah, i think i'm finally back!

Here is a Vine I wanted to make way back when Vine was still relevant, but I couldn't quite edit it down to 6.5 seconds. Enjoy

if you missed last night's stream, these innovative watercolor paintings are in fact still frames of the video quality from the new stream setup. it wasn't always this bad, but it was often enough to be really distracting. (luckily, most of us were playing, not watching~)

this quality reminds me of back when i used to stream from my laptop, and that probably means it's being encoded on my laptop after all (while streaming); the whole point of the new setup was to offload the encoding to the capture card itself, so this is pretty disappointing.

i need to look into alternatives to make this setup work, but it might not be feasible outside of getting a new computer.

in the meantime i've still got my old desktop, so i can stream as long as i don't mind filling the room with hot air (and i don't just mean my commentary...)