My (Mental) Life and How It Is Falling Apart: a Rant and History

Let me start this by just saying that I really hate my mind… It's been a pain for many years now but it just gets worse and WORSE. (I really won't ever understand how someone's own mind is this self-destructive and unstoppable!)

Please read this, as it'll tell you the history of my frustrating mind and how it's nearly completely ruined my life mentally.

🫠 HISTORY OF THE ANNOYANCE 🫠

Back in “the Michael years”, my mind tried various methods to mess with me, whether it's trying to annoy or worry me. Though it tried many things (rendering scissors trying to cut my eyes, making me think that blinking and other automatic functions wouldn't happen, and even forcing me to see the weird, distorted faces of crying infants), it eventually settled on one method, somehow creating its own itches.

Again, somehow, it can rapidly “poke” at the same area of my skin, making it sensitive, then from there can somehow create a pulse that grabs my attention, for seemingly no good reason and for unknown gains. For proof these are not “the thousands of itches you naturally get a day”, they usually always appear wherever my mind forces me to focus on a split second before it happens. Also, they're suspiciously absent when initially waking up from any dream. If they were “natural”, wouldn't they be there immediately?

Anyways, let's get back to the history of this annoyance. After we made it out of those endless motels, we lived with other people for some time after that. With the daily worries of hotel life and possibly becoming homeless home, my mind reverted back to its annoying behavior.

I started fighting back at this point; I had enough of it endlessly poking at me instead of letting me be productive and concentrate like any other human being can. (Ah, the curse of having a “intelligent mind”…) The instant itch thoughts are basically impossible to prevent, being “out of reach” mentally, so while I initially kept quickly looking at something in whatever room I was in or trying to force my focus to shift, I later resorted to forcibly blocking my mind from thinking about ANYTHING by somehow pushing on my forehead mentally (but not physically), known as “fogging” my mind.

⚰️ THE DEATH OF MY BRAIN ⚰️

After moving into our camper for a couple months, I decided that enough was enough, and began aggressively trying to stop the itches using that method. I assumed that at worst, this would only cause a BIT of mental destruction, nothing major, so I began to fog the mind constantly, holding off the onslaught of itches.

Over time, I noticed the itches became a bit less of a frequent occurrence, and at times I could actually relax without that unnecessary constant poking. Sure, my mind was getting foggier, but the brief peace was more worth it to me.

On the other hand, things were also getting worse in my brain… I noticed my mind wouldn't automatically think of things anymore, instead only thinking about a lot of things if something that I heard or saw triggered an impulse that led to the next thought/bit of data in my head.

That alone is a massive downgrade, limiting my vocabulary and ideas to a minimum. This has also caused me to basically forget what memories remained in my mind of my younger better years and bits of knowledge, as now barely anything comes to mind automatically anymore!

Do you want to know the worst part about all of this? The itches are still surviving. Yep, that's right; Despite more important parts of my mind being so foggy that even a flood light wouldn't pierce it, it still knows how to make those annoying itches, the only reason why I did that risky crap in the first place. Also, even if I fog my mind and escape the itches for the night, they're back the next morning, but my increased fog remains! This world feels like it works in reverse from how it should in many ways, and let me say this is one of them; If I fog my mind to get rid of an annoyance, that problem should be the main thing that gets affected by it, not the only part that survives my counter-attack.

This and the next problem might not sound like much to you, but believe me, I feel these  mental problems are ruining my one life, and it's amazing that your own mind can destroy everything this easily.

🥱 RUINING SLEEP 🥱

For the longest time, I haven't been able to sleep like a normal human (though my ideas of an ideal human may be tainted by fictional media like games and cartoons that usually show people sleeping perfectly from night until morning). The first time that I would fall asleep, I'd sleep for like 3 hours or so, but any additional attempts to sleep would only give me an hour at a time.

That's already pretty messed up and inconvenient, but it's even worse when you realize that every single time that I wake up, I'm at the mercy of my stupidly annoying mind potentially creating itches to force me awake! (That happened this morning and I've been awake since 8:20AM because of it!)

Since the mental fogginess has gotten pretty thick, now it's even affecting my ability to sleep; Gone is the initial 3-hour sleep, as now seemingly every attempt at sleeping is merely an hour-long nap!

Additionally, even THAT is worse now, as very often, I can only stay asleep for less than an hour, like 30 minutes at a time! This leaves me vulnerable to those dumb itches even more often, and can lead to be being forced to stay awake earlier; Once I've slept enough times, my mind becomes aware of it and starts trying to wake me up. (I'm starting to wish I could take prescriptions that forcibly knock me out with no option to stay awake; That's how hard it is to return to sleep!)

😔 CONCLUSION 😔

I worried about a lot of things in my earliest Facebook posts but those were child's play when compared to this mind-threatening problem that's taking over me… At last back then I had more brain cells left, and could think of ideas reliably, even with the small amount of natural mental fog that I already had before the fight began.

I took it all for granted, and somehow didn't think it would get this bad. Let this be a warning to you, the person reading this; Don't think that you can escape your mental annoyances by trying to block all thoughts, through self-fogging or another method; It may screw you over for life like me, and once you make the mistake, you'll never get back the intelligence that this will take from you.

I think I deserve a second chance, and should have my former mental health come back to me, with my acknowledgement that I made a terrible mistake and shouldn't attempt that again; Sure, my mind won't let me work or concentrate like I should be allowed to, but at least then I would be able to think again instead of fearing that I'm getting amnesia at least and at worst that I'm gradually forgetting everything like an elder, and I'm only 27!

My Recent Controversial Fears

Oh, this is going to be a strange post. Back in 2012, I wrote a post on my old Typepad blog stating I really didn't like dark-skinned people and wished I could talk bad about them without being potentially banned from websites, which you can read here. Things have changed since then, as I'm now okay with them, and in some cases actually wish there were more of them (especially in anime)... I even added a dark-skinned girl to my game, Princess Peppermint! (Before then, the only dark-skinned person I made was Michael North from Shushybye, so this was my first OC "of color"!)

Now, however, with things changing in the world about sexual orientation and gender, new fears have come to mind, and no, they aren't about men trying to fall in love with me. That was an old fear. Read on, if you can, but please respect my opinions on this stuff. I know how touchy people are on the internet now, not being willing to acknowledge that other people have different opinions than them.

These flags... They've been around for many years,but I've recently thought about how people on the internet behave, and how they have a weird tendency to come up with beliefs about characters' orientations and/or genders, or how they can associate characters with said things just by seeing them wear those flag color schemes.

Sylveon proves boys can be cuties too...

I think I first saw this with Sylveon in Pokemon X & Y. This really cute Eeveelution looks very girly, but technically is male most of the time. It also has a pink and blue color scheme, like a certain flag. These two things lead to it being linked to transgender, though in this case, I can't blame them for thinking this. I suspicion whether Game Freak did that on purpose. The other case that comes to mind is one of Speeps Highway's pictures, showing Amy Rose wearing the trans flag colors. That isn't as big as the Sylveon example, though.

Now, why am I worried about this? Well, my mind tends to come up with "what if" scenarios, making me worry about the possibility of anything happening in the future, like these:

• "What if Mary accidentally wears that color scheme, leading to people thinking she supports trans rights?"
• "What if people see that color scheme in a building and think I did that on purpose, supporting it as a creator?" (I'm in the middle about that, to clarify.)
• "What if people notice the logo uses purple and yellow just like the non-binary flag and start assuming my game has anything to do with not being male or female?"
• (And the most random,) "What if people see adult characters in my game's world and start making their own LGBT head-canon about them, leading to the community accepting that non-canon claim?"

Those seem like random, nonsensical worries, but I've seen how people who are fans of a series can be like. They could come up with their own theories and the like, but I wouldn't be able to tell them the truth. When someone isn't in full support of something, like LGBTQ, non-binary, or even common moral stuff (especially relating to children for some reason), they will dislike you at best, and go out of their way to hate you at every chance they get at worst, even when, no matter how bad it is, it's their beliefs, and they should still be respected, no matter how disgusting it may be thought of.

With that said, I bet if I got into one of these situations, I would be basically in trouble. I'm from the mid-90's, back when things like this weren't on the front lines. They still existed, as I knew someone that swapped genders. However, due to it not being that big back then, I'm just used to straightness, loving the opposite gender, staying yourself, being 100% male/female, etc. However, now people are bending lines, breaking boundaries.

Due to how I've been all my life, I prefer to stay that way, so my game is made with straightness only. If I ever told someone in my game's fan-base that none of the game's meant to be LGBTQ, and that I'm not in full support, just neutral, they could go against me and cause unnecessary drama, at worst causing everyone to go against my game, refuse to support me financially, stop giving money monthly (if I ever open that Patreon), and cause me to hit rock bottom with nowhere to go.

It's a scary thought, but it shows how much power consumers have. I hope you didn't get offended by this blog post, but I felt all of this had to be said, in case any of it would happen in the future. Remember, I'm not against it, but I'm not with any of it, either. I might not understand it all, and I'm not putting it into my game's canonical world, either, but again, I'm not going to say I'm against it...

This answer on jelloapocalypse's Tumblr blog sums part of this post up, just not the parts about color association:

That’s not to say that headcanons are never a good call, but when it comes to character sexuality and gender, I always think it’s weird to mentally assign someone a sexuality or gender that they canonically aren’t. It feels weird and regressive to me. You don’t get to decide what you want a character’s gender or sexuality. The character does. I’ve gotten flak for this stance before, but  I think “headcanoning” any character as any sexuality they aren’t is equally weird, no matter which way you do it. It’s weird to think of a straight character as bi, a bi character as gay, a gay character as ace, an ace character as straight, etc. All bad.

With this "rant" out of the way, all I can say is, regardless of your orientations and stuff, look forward to Mary's Magical Adventure!

Development Worries and Updates

This post is pretty negative compared to my usual post, so read only if you wish to see the bad side of game development.

Whoa, how long has it been? Sorry, but sometimes, I forget to update this blog. I believe I'm becoming too lazy to even write a blog post lately, even though that's easier than other work I haven't been doing, working on Mary's Magical Adventure. Anyways, let's get to the updates about the game! It's been a long enough wait for this!

Indie Game Troubles

Work, Work, Work...

 Let's just start this blog post with the negative, as I have to get it off my chest. If you want to develop your own indie game, take it from me: It's way harder than photography and, "music theory" aside, even harder than playing music on an instrument you aren't familiar with! You'll start off with many ideas, things you can't wait to put into the game. Sure, at first it's easy because there's barely anything in your game to keep track of, plus it's easier to take it easy at that point.

However, as you start really developing things, you start raising your standards, like improving the game's textures, lighting, and overall look. Problem is, doing this only increases the amount of work you have to do from then on to put something in the game, as placeholder art and basic shapes would look very out-of-place beside finished assets. This is one thing that affects me, as I've done just that over the years, adding and improving textures, even redesigning Mary. This isn't even mentioning the music, which initially improved with song after song, beginning with The Nightlife for Rooftop to Rooftop. However, since the music is so high-quality, like the textures, this presents me with a bit of work that I have to look forward to doing, which I rarely do.

All of this has made me too lazy to add much before hitting the invisible walls that an artist hits when in an "artist block". As a result, not much new is here for those who have been checking the Xane's Development group on Facebook or kept up to date with the Facebook and Google+ pages. For readers of this blog, it will seem like I've done more than I've really done, due to these blocks and laziness. Hopefully this can be bypassed and work can resume going full speed, but with how I'm a single developer with no team members, this will be way slower to finish, and will probably take a big chunk of my life to finish, to earn barely any money to make up for it.

Legal Potential

No, don't worry, no companies were dumb and threw a cease & desist letter at my face, thankfully, but, you see, I read /r/gamedev on Reddit and people on there mention that any indie game developer should get two things before releasing their game, an accountant and a lawyer (and said lawyers sometimes make posts there). The first, I assume, is just to make sure your money is all in order. However, the second one made me really start thinking: I have no lawyer. This would be a big problem, should Mary's Magical Adventure get released then have legal trouble for whatever reason. Additionally, lawyers can handle getting trademarks registered, so things like "Mary's Magical Adventure®" can be used, like Intel®'s legal symbol obsession! There's a third thing lawyers can help me with, and with how lazy I've become, I'll probably need it...

Work-for-Hire Contracts

Yes, they can write legal contracts in that confusing Legalese English variant that somehow is more legally-binding than actually-understandable English! Since I barely seem to feel like doing work lately, I'd like to pay others to make things like character art, animated parts of cutscenes, and even music for me. It sounds straightforward, but trust me, reading that subreddit reminded me that even if the commissioned person gave me their finished work, they still own the legal rights to it, so they could backstab me after the game is released and cause a lot of trouble and wasted effort from me. With a contract, this is eliminated, as their legal rights are forcibly transferred to me, so I can use them in my game with no problems, the way it should be by default (but isn't, unfortunately)!

Anyways, hopefully you understand the problems in my head now, knowing I have a lot of work ahead of me if I want this game to be released but I don't feel like working enough anymore... How about we move on to updates?

The Many Minor Updates

Compare Rooftop to Rooftop (1-2) and City Street Run (1-3) in both of these videos. The top one is the first video on the newly-created Mary's Magical Adventure YouTube channel while the bottom is the last gameplay video on my personal channel. You may notice most of it is the same, but there are some small differences...

There's really too much changed to be explained in a blog post, but I'll show comparisons of a couple things here, anyways. It's up to you to find the other differences between the videos.

v1.95 - Did someone paint the ceiling black? Nice try, whoever owns this place.

v2.0 - Now this looks more believable! Want to follow the coin arrow up there?

One subtle difference between v1.95 and the upcoming first demo is this secret room found in Rooftop to Rooftop, hidden in the room down the hallway with the three trolls. In the older version, the holes in the ceiling where panels are missing were just pure black ceiling parts, raised slightly above the panels that didn't go missing. Nowadays with how much more detail I put into levels, this seemed too simple, so I converted the ceiling into 3D floors then added an extra "floor" above, hiding a Powerup Coin and upgrade!

You can get up there with Mary's upgraded Air Dash, Xane's multiple jumps, and Mary's Hammer Jump upgrade, the latter used in the newer video. In case the player couldn't see this obvious secret, an arrow of coins was also added below the "ceiling" to encourage players to try going up there. Yes, in a way, this is now a secret within a secret.

v1.95 - A Gex tile texture was used for many floors in the third level.

v2.0 - Not only is this more legally-safe, but it's high-res and has nice reflections!

The second change to point out is...well, new textures. You see, like the legal stuff mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, using assets from other games could cause problems for Mary's Magical Adventure, so I've replaced some textures since the old video. For example, the checkerboard tiles seen around City Street Run, most obvious in HCPD HQ. Notice how nice and shiny that floor is! If you play MMA and want reflections like those, get the Materials Mod, which adds realistic PBR reflections to some surfaces around the levels.

v1.95 - Most textures here come from SRB2. Also, note the background.

v2.0 - This dimension is more realistic now! Goodbye, trippy rock sky!

This particular change goes even further than just replacing level textures; All Special Stage textures were also replaced, just in case Sonic Robo Blast 2's developers could legally do a thing when their game's not an official Sonic game.

v1.95 - Who cares about soap? We've got a meeting, guys!

v2.0 - Soap's on the table, in Mary's inventory, and more! Don't underestimate soap!

Returning to the video, there's another obvious difference that can be seen when Mary goes to the HCPD HQ: When she visits the meeting room, there isn't a Soap Box on the table! Out in the hallway around each corner? Same thing, no soap in sight! Soap Boxes were a recent addition, added to represent my fear of soap. In Mary's Magical Adventure, soap is harmless unless there's enough of it, in which case it becomes deadly! Soap Boxes are this game's equivalent of explosive barrels, but you can push these boxes around before hitting them.

You can also purchase soap boxes to carry around. This can be seen in the new version's inventory, which shows the Soap Box as the first item. Additionally, magic was added as both a form of ammo and a timer for Mary/Xane's transformation. Collect at least 25 magic and you can transform, but you will lose the magic gradually over time.

Well, there's more to talk about, but due to that intro section, this is already pretty long, so more development-related stuff will be included in a second blog post. See you then!

The Devil of File Sharing

You may have heard of the many iffy file sharing websites from years ago, such as Rapidshare, and may have thought they sucked, but I've been personally dealing with the worst one...and unlike other websites, they haven't changed one bit. That place is called 4shared.

Yes, during that first paragraph, you may have thought of them, as they had silly restrictions that make you question who would support their company, but as of recently, I've seen they are worse on the inside than the outside.

The frustrations of forced e-mail subscriptions

It's time for a rant! Well, sorta, as there isn't much to say about this problem, but it's something that needs to be improved! Hopefully, you already have the general idea in mind, but I'll talk about it anyways. Unfortunately, I've written this after I've unsubscribed from some of the newsletters, so there will only be one picture.

Y'know websites like EFF and DemandProgress? Well, you may see petitions on there to sign, and it seems easy enough! That is, until you see the first part of the problem, that you have to enter your information. Sure, that may help with indicating what part of the United States you're within, for when the government hopefully sees them, and that's fine, but look closer, near the "sign" button...