Rev. Andy 🐺 🌿 🪱 @andy@mentalhealth.social

My #introduction toot!

I'm Andy and I'm the admin of mentalhealth.social.

My interests are covered in my profile. On #mentalhealth I've briefly known the Black Dog in the past and work hard to keep him on a leash. My wife lives with #BPD bundled with #anxiety and #depression (though has a grip on all of them) and her illnesses are one of the things that drive me to be so passionate about #MH support and care. Which is why I set up this Masto instance; a safe place to socialise and chat. 👍

Crikey. Got to "The Sound Of Her Wings" in The Sandman series on Netflix and I'm choked with tears. I should have seen that coming. It is also one of my favourite issues and Death is quintessentially my favourite character in comics of all time. It's a beautiful episode, very true to the comic and Her first appearance, and far too close to the bone. But hey, catharsis!

...and done. The full character creation rules + art + setting material for Perihelion, my cyberpunks-in-space, hard sci-fi RPG.

An 85-page protected FREE PDF that has everything you need to make a bad-assed eco-warrior, hacktivist, influencer, pilot or anarchist intent on bringing social justice to an unjust society.

Now breathe...and then on with the core rulebook!

https://dozywolf.itch.io/perihelion/devlog/421055/perihelion-characters-v10

#RPG #Roleplaying #GameDesign #GameDev #AmWriting #HaveWritten

Boosts welcomed! Go make characters!

...and published! That was a lot of fun to write and playtest.

https://dozywolf.itch.io/spells-starbucks-candles

Inspired by a silly meme I saw on r/WitchesVsPatriarchy I decided I needed a weekend off from chores and to do something fun.

So I wrote a short, collaborative (or solo) storytelling #RPG. Which is totally out of my comfort zone. But I've enjoyed doing it immensely. Just finishing playtesting at the moment then I'll shove it on my Itch page.

Think Buffy and The Craft meets Stranger Things.

#GameDesign #GameDev #Writing

Guess which muppet spent the morning weeding and gardening at his Mum's, then the afternoon at his mate's mixing concrete by hand and laying slabs? In this heat. Thank goodness for ibuprofen and paracetamol.

One of the better pieces DALL-E 2 spat out when working on faction logos for Perihelion this evening. In this case, Obsidian Dragon, a loose affiliation of spacers and ex-Khalasi working with other rogue and insurgent factions against the Commonwealth and the Orbitals. #RPG #GameDesign #AIArt

Sat out in the garden reading and refreshing my memory about redox potentials, cytochromes and ATP. Slightly regretting being such a slacker at university thirty years ago. Ah well. #science #biology

Long day pottering and getting little jobs done in the garden, followed by a hot bath and trying on my new (sustainably sourced!) yoga shorts. I have comfortable, happy tackle. 😂⚽⚽

I've also been reading "Eating The Sun" by Oliver Morton and I'm pleased at how much plant biochemistry my old brain remembers from 30 years ago. The sheer elegance of the Calvin-Benson Cycle, without which we'd all be, well, dead.

Plants, you beautiful, beautiful things. 🌱

The Sandman e1 down. Very, very impressed. I started collecting the comics in '89 (still missing a few, need to sort that out), and I've been both excited by the trailers and quietly apprehensive. I'm not disappointed.

Fantastic programme on WaterBear tonight about clinical use of psilocybin to treat depression and trauma. So good to see this sort of thing becoming more and more mainstream.

Trying to re-up my Plant Science knowledge (a subject I started a degree in and dropped out of after two years, some three decades ago). A bit of biochemistry, plant physiology and environmental science before I start buying more academically focused texts. #books #biology #biosciences

Note: if you do this search as a straight male, you may not be 100% straight afterwards.

Do an image search for "Aiden Quinn Poldark scythe" and you'll have a rough idea of what my morning has been like working in my Dad's garden. Obviously, Quinn has nothing on me. #beefcake #gardening #harvest

Onion and garlic harvest is done. I'll let them dry out for a week or so and then plait them. Should do for a while! And now we have space for the winter brassicas. House is also now vampire-safe. #gardening #subsistence #harvest

Now I've got into the DALL-E 2 beta, I've been working on some more art for my #RPG rulebook. It's coming along pretty well, and I'm pleased with the results.

Plus, there's something cyberpunk and disturbingly meta about a hard sci-fi RPG that addresses concepts such as AI rights and includes art generated by an AI that I'm not paying. Hey, at least it made the credits page! #GameDev

Menacing rain coming in from South Wales on a collision course with my garden. Better get all my outside jobs done ASAP.

Well, I had a fuck-awful day yesterday, with the expectation that I will still have to deal with some of the fallout from said fuck-awfulness in the coming days. Angrily. The situation also seriously triggered old sensations of trauma and jumped me right into a hypervigilant state.

So focusing on what I can do NOW. Rather than what I MIGHT have to do in the future. Still pissed off. Still angry. But managing those feelings. And accepting that they're okay feelings to have.

#MentalHealth

Thank fuck the last two days are gone and done. At least until the next time. I'm definitely moving to Scotland or Scandinavia or summat ASAP.

Harvested my vermicompost. Learnt a few lessons on better managing the wormery in the process, but overall I'm pretty pleased. Around 5kg of compost from nine months of food waste. Go worms!

Hello Mastodon Administrator of mentalhealth.social,

I've sent this survey to a decent sample size of other instance administrators to try and get some decent data to present to the Mastodon developers on our behalf. (I am not part of the Mastodon Core Team)
Please complete the survey here

[REDACTED LINK]

You can add a contact email if you wish, or be anonymous.

Regards,

Ashley Hull