ukothon 2018 fu ck

ukothon 2018 yaaaaay lol

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my situation
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back in march, after i achieved the world record in earthbound's glitched category, i re-examined my reasons for streaming and exactly how much of a passion of mine it was. after mulling it over, i decided to impulsively drop likeeee $3000 on just. stream upgrades. like an idiot.

- PC: $2000 (over my college laptop, since my previous PC broke and I dropped out of college and had no use left for the laptop)
- OSSC, SNES RGB SCART cable: $300 (I'm estimating here since this was so long ago)
- Startech capture card: $220 (over my gv-usb2)
- Old school cow box monitor: $150 (over my fucking RINGING TV!!!)
- Other misc stuff prolly adds up to at least a couple more hundred, microphone accessories, hdmi cables and splitters, converters

i made all these purchases and as a result had to STOP streaming for literally over a month due to just complications regarding setting it all up. i had not just one but a couple phases where i was just gonna give up, and due to anxiety just say fuck it and let everyone i paid for all the shit just keep the money. it was probably some of the most infuriating, hair-pulling-out shit i've ever experienced, and on top of that i'd just been hitting a huge wall in earthbound glitchless because of the stupid fucking twoson manip. after taking such a long break and finally getting most things figured out, i had to relearn all the manipulation which in turn took at least another month of just grinding.

it became harder and harder to find the will to even stream at all, because the point of all these upgrades was to solve the problems of not having enough processing power to not have gross artifacting ruin the video quality (and restrict me to 30 fps when running a 60 fps game), having internet too unstable to not have ridiculous amounts of frame drops as well as stream drops, ruining the viewing experience for anyone watching, being stuck with blurry s-video quality and unreadable splits, all that shit that was ever a turn-off. on top of my job sometimes being a stream inhibitor; on days when i was in the mood to stream, i had a shift. on my days off, i just wanted to sleep.

even after i had everything set up, streams were looking more beautiful, but my internet's stability slowly started to deteriorate. (i stream wirelessly, because i live at home and i'm a room away from the router.) i'd have to lower the bitrate, and spend an hour before every stream finding an ingest server to stream off of, and even then i'd still have mid-stream issues. thank goodness i finally found a wlan adapter with a huuuuuge-ass antenna this month, which essentially eliminated the problem, and now my streams are beautiful!!!

i was finally able to just. hit a button and go. starting up a stream became effortless, as did maintaining them. i finally got twoson manipulation solid, and i've seen my numbers increase. and after working really really hard for all this time, i finally got not only a PB of dreams, but a stream of dreams. everyone was so generous because i half-jokingly set a streamlabs donation goal to maybe help me out with gas to make it to sgdq and back (i'll be driving 19 hours there and back!!!), and that shit got met in one stream!!!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/274890970

so now comes the embarrassing part.

i genuinely, truly thought dropping such a significant portion of my savings i had at the time wouldn't not result in me being able to make it back up in a few months, but i've really been struggling at my job lately and, honestly, LB and SGDQ are gonna leave me flat broke. last night, between 2 and 6 am, i had one table. i fell asleep, and had to wake up to those customers standing at the front staring at me, and the dishwasher yelling "CHICA!!!" to wake me up. it really was a straw that broke the camel's back kind of moment, and i did a lot of thinking.

i usually refuse to admit i'm ever struggling, and i absolutely refuse to ever admit when i'm in pain, or if i'm sick, or if i'm angry. my mom says i'm a fighter and i try to keep that face at all times. and i guess now is one of those moments where lying to keep that face is doing more harm than good. nothing *specific* is happening right now, thank the lord, to make my situation bad, in fact i'm overwhelmed by the amount of support in my twitter/twitch/youtube circle that i've had ever since coming out as transgender, and even before that. but like, especially lately now that i'm able to consistently pump out more and more entertaining and visually appealing streams. this isn't just a hobby of mine, it's a ridiculous passion. and it's something i wanna pursue forever, almost to the point where it's my whole damn livelihood. it's the reason i'm still alive, really.
i just need, hopefully one time only, a boost to help me catch back up. because if i'm making $2.13/hr sitting on my butt drinking coffee and eating my one free meal a shift, and walking out with not nearly as much as i've made in previous months, and i *still* have some bills that'll be coming out *while i'm on vacation not receiving any income*, i dunno. i guess i've really fucked up, lmao.

my long term plan is to not take any more vacations for the rest of 2018, and just keep grinding at my job, saving. (i don't have any more large purchases to make any time soon, thank goodness. took care of those already.) in addition, i want to find a secondary part-time day job, one where i can be more comfortable expressing myself and having just a tad bit more creative freedom than ihop (er, excuse me, ihob) can offer, to make use of some of my extra time during the day that i'm spending not doing much. i really think this will help boost my self-esteem, and make me more of a productive human being. and my rate of saving can go up as well!!!
i started taking antidepressants in may, and i am starting to see some type of results, i just need to stay on them consistently until i find myself no longer in need of them, even if it takes a few years of figuring things out. that anxiety and depression combo makes it really difficult to pursue things and accomplish things, and i'm doing everything in my power that i know how to hopefully mitigate that.
eventually i wanna start medically transitioning, i think that'll help me just feel better about myself as well, and maybe let out some fucking tears for once in my life.
i won't lie, the path to twitch partner is in the back of my mind too. i wanna figure out how to make that a reality, because i wanna pursue as much creative freedom as possible to just. make stuff. i dunno, i'm weird. i also wanna continue cultivating this weird, chill, happy community of people who love each other and can feel safe at all times. it's a passion of mine.

but yeah, like i said, ultimately i just need a boost. i'm literally not at all the type of person to sell out, or ask for help, or anything of the sort, but after the generosity and love and support that i experienced yesterday vs the thankless bullshit customer service i deal with at my night job, i dunno. i just wanna bring out everything i've got and see what i can pull out.

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24 hour strim details
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BTW IT'S TOMORROW!!!!!

so here's the idea!!!
i'm gonna keep the same streamlabs goal bar, because y'all are awesome and i don't wanna throw away that progress, but i'm gonna raise the goal cap to $1000. THAT'S JUST A NUMBER THOUGH AND I DON'T EXPECT TO ACTUALLY HIT THAT MARK IN ONE DAY, OH MY GOSH I REALLY DON'T WANNA BE THAT PERSON ;n; but yeah that's what i'm gonna try.

i also wanna pull out all the stops. i don't just wanna do EB the whole time, as much as i'd love to have that much energy to do 24 hours of glitchless wr attempts (ooh i can finally put that in my title!), but i've got some other ideas.

- EarthBound Glitchless is by far what brings in the most attention to my stream, so there'll be plenty of that I promise.
- EarthBound Glitched needs to be improved, so I wanna at least try for a few hours to relearn the manipulation and try to PB off of it.
- I can also stream my switch!!! Depending on who's around at what times I wanna try some interactive multiplayer shit, maybe some splatoon 2 or mk8 or jackbox things??? We can have fun together!!!
- I also wanna continue my Golf Story playthrough so I can eventually learn that speedrun as well, and I also wanna continue Runner3 because I love it so much so far!
- If I have enough time I could probably try an EB ancient cave seed or somethin, I haven't played the newest version of the rando yet so that could be interesting.
- I'll probably get bored of video games once or twice and take some mario paint breaks to fiddle around and make some music. Maybe a donation incentive to do some small requests? Who knows!!!
- BUT OKAY, DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!!!! HERE'S MY BIG IDEAAAAA
- I wanna learn Super Metroid!!!!! And I'm gonna be really tired while doing it! But the goal is gonna be to learn the whooooole run and try to get a really cool PB or somethin!!! So I can do more SM streams in the future after I get done getting my soul crushed by EarthBound!!! YEAH THAT'S RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!!!!
- I'm also a person of spontaneity, so if we or I come up with more ideas during the stream to try and do I'm never opposed to that either. Omg so exciting!

But yeah basically all those bullet points are everything I know how to just be myself and be a cool person and try to provide quality entertainment and memes for you guys. I hope we can all have fun doing stuffs and things.

As far as exactly when it'll start, I have a shift tonight so I wanna get as much sleep as I can afterward, and then I'll start when I wake up. Probably no later than tomorrow at noon central? I also have no plan for a particular order of stuff or what time I'll be doing any of it, this is all really kind of spontaneous and I think that'll be the fun of it.

But yeah, love you guys. And no matter how much I raise I'm gonna be a silly stupid thankful little shit and literally all I'm gonna buy with anything I raise is gonna be like. Rent. Phone bill. PC financing payments. Car payments??? An oil change???? SGDQ room and board?????? Medication?????? Like literally I just wanna survive rofl. But yeah love you guys. <3333333333