last year i wrote up a recap of how 2022 went for me, so i wanted to do the same for 2023.
here goes! (it’s long!)
game release overdrive
i worked on a ton of games this year!!!!!!!!!!!! back in 2016 i released like 7 games which was amazing (most of those were treat lol) but i thought i’d never be able to get back to that level… until now!??!?? i’m really happy i could do so many smaller scale projects including a bunch of collabs with friends!!
when i tried writing about everything individually it got way too long, so i’m just gonna list all the things and make general comments after:
- 3 ludum dare jams (Greenfinger!, Rain on Their Parade, and Packed to the Gills)
- the final installment of DATE TREAT
- Sex Advice Succubus (two sessions!)
- Charm Studies
- Princess Poffin and the Spider Invasion
- another piece of candy volume 1 books (not a game but significant enough to mention)
- character art for Kyanite Heart’s yuri jam game (I Think I Need Your Help)
- Trick Comes Home, Part 1
last year i thought that my name was so poisoned i would never be able to do collab projects ever again, so i feel super grateful that this wasn’t the case… all the ludum dares throughout the year felt especially healing to me, because they were so much fun. it really got to the core of what i love about making games—thinking of something cute and silly and making it real so it can be shared with others. what a thrill!
SAS, charm studies, and poffin’s game were all made for jams too. i really missed having the freedom to do game jams whenever i wanted!!!!! back when i was working for a studio i was lucky if i happened to have the bandwidth and an idea by the time a jam rolled around. this year i was free to make anything i wanted ;o; and since i don’t plan on going back to having a day job, i just get to live like this now!!!! it’s a great feeling having the energy to do this kind of stuff… wow… anyway that’s why i released so many things this year, i got addicted to doing game jams for like 6 months.
it was all really really fun, BUT... since 2022 i’ve had this fear that like… each thing i release is an opportunity for someone to get mad at me, whether it’s just in general or finding something about the content that’s disagreeable. i don’t think this fear is ever fully going to go away, but by the time i released poffin’s game i was barely worried at all. i’m still terrified of big releases (treat on steam impending) but putting out so many small games helped prove in my mind that usually nothing bad will happen and in fact many good things will happen? like people enjoying the games?? who would’ve thought.
i also started my online shop this year (just selling books so far!) and i’m really proud of myself for that… it felt like a lot to learn, but it’s really rewarding to be able to send out physical goods that fans can cherish (the same way i cherish my collection of disgaea merch…) so i want to keep expanding my shop in the future and make lots of cute things (although games will always come first for me!)
online harassment, round 2
i wanna open this section by saying i don’t think i have it that bad. there’s really only one avenue that people have sent hateful messages to me directly this year, and that’s through anonymous asks here on cohost. there are comments here and there in the wild spreading rumors about me, but i don’t see 99% of those, and people are free to have opinions. my point is i’m not living in constant fear and it’s not ruining my life! it’s just triggering to read and hard to talk about because drawing attention to it always has the potential of making it worse.
i burnt out in july/august after doing all those game jams—this coincided with the makeship plush campaign for underling, and when cohost first implemented asks. i mention the plush campaign because it gave me heightened visibility, meaning people outside my usual sphere realized i was still around and doing things/getting attention they didn’t think i deserved. thus, negative reaction. that’s how i look at it, but i might be assuming too much… i was nervous going into it, so maybe i was just looking for anything to confirm my fear: if i draw too much attention, people will show up to harass me.
i was excited for asks because i’ve always (generally) had fun with them previously (on tumblr). so even though i expected i’d get some anon hate, i thought that it’d sort of be like exposure therapy and i could kinda weather the storm. as it turns out… there’s a little more to exposure therapy than just triggering yourself!!!!!! i didn’t really have the tools to deal with how it was making me feel (and this is something i’m still actively struggling with) so i ended up in nightmare thought loops and kept having anxiety attacks over things that felt objectively silly to read as actual danger.
after trying various methods to prevent anon hate (blocking, turning off anon, only opening asks for short periods, etc) it became clear that i was making my anxiety over this a lot worse, and i stopped being able to function online normally. looking at social media at all, even if it was just cohost (which felt the safest), made me think too much about posting and having to guard my image and make sure i never said anything that would prompt someone to send me something hurtful. even though that’s not something anyone can control. it just happens.
it felt hard to work on games and get anything done because i was too anxious/sad to focus, so i went back into hermit mode in hopes i’d be able to work normally again. because sharing my art is where i find the most fulfillment in life, and i didn’t want to be getting in the way of reaching my own goals. but again, the avoidance was just making my fear stronger! it was telling my brain that i was right to be afraid and hide myself away, because it was protecting me… when in actuality, it was just making me more fragile.
i still feel super vulnerable writing all this out, so it’s been hard to finish writing this post. this level of harassment is objectively not that bad! i knew and accepted from the beginning that i will be harassed for the rest of my online life, and there’s nothing i can do about it. i feel weak and stupid for letting it affect me so deeply. it’s painful wanting to tell people they’re wrong about who they think you are, knowing they will never listen precisely BECAUSE of who they think you are.
idk, i guess that’s why i wanted to talk about all this in general. i want to fight back against that a little, just by expressing my feelings somewhere.
so, i tried therapy again
in august, i ended up reading a lot about OCD. there was enough there that i decided to talk to someone with experience treating OCD and other anxiety-related issues. after spending months on a waiting list with little to no response, and STILL wondering whether i had OCD, i reached out to a new therapist who actually had openings right away.
i mentioned my first experience with therapy last year being quite awful. it’s even more awful in retrospect, knowing that talk therapy in particular is ineffective at best for OCD, and only exacerbates it at worst. i’m really angry at the kind of people who just shout “go to therapy, it’ll fix you!!!” when you can really fuck yourself up if you go in to any random clinician and blindly trust them to understand and intuit your needs. i could’ve wasted a lot of time and energy if i kept relying on that first therapist from last year.
anyway, i found my CURRENT therapist through a directory on the international OCD foundation, because i figured if anyone could tell me whether i actually have OCD and teach me what to do about it, it’d be a specialist who was specifically trained in that!!!
once i gave a vague summary of what i’d been going through, she said it sounded a lot like real event OCD. i’ve been doing weekly sessions with her the past couple months, and i feel like it’s helped me a lot. she recommended this youtube channel so i could get a baseline understanding of how OCD works, and general strategies for dealing with it... namely that the best thing you can do is just face your fear (responsibly) so that it doesn’t continue to rule over your life.
so i started posting my art on tumblr again, a site that previously felt too dangerous to even look at. i’m trying to open asks on cohost regularly, and write more posts just for fun. i’m talking about disgaea again, something i’ve been on-and-off too afraid to do in case someone from my past sees it and gets mad at me. maybe they will, maybe they won’t! i’m allowed to post things that make me happy.
looking forward to 2024!
i’m glad i can end the year on an uplifting note… i hit such a dang low point with my mental health (including a bunch of family stuff that i’m not going to talk about), it’s nice that i don’t feel like those things define what 2023 was like in my mind.
i’m happy i could make lots of games and express myself online again. i’m sure i’ll still have to withdraw every now and then, but i think i’ll be okay overall.
if you played any of my games this year, thank you! i’ll make more soon <3
