#so i don't get paid time off. literally at all. i moved states to work here.

[meraxes-of-new-albion]

You work at a zoo????? 💛💛💛💛 do you like it??? Do you have any fun stories??

I do, yes! I like it a lot*, it's definitely a really cool thing that I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to do.

As far as fun stories, I've discovered that what I consider a fun story these days is horrifying to most people, and the things that are really awesome to most people are just. Tuesday to me.

I did get to name a secretary bird Anakin, though, that was a good time lmao (he came to us from a different zoo, and the incoming paperwork said he hated sand, crushed eggs on a regular basis, and didn't really like short people or women - so I made the obvious aotc reference and everyone liked it so much we renamed him when he came in).

[Image ID: a secretary bird laying in some grass]

^ I'm pretty sure that's Anakin, it might be Peggy though. (We tossed around renaming her to Padme but decided against it. I was very sad.)

[arthenaa]

ikaw at ikaw (only you) — mizu x f!reader

synopsis: 4 times your team lead chose you and 1 time you chose her.

content: modern!au, office romance, you and mizu are creatives, specifically in the character and concept design department in a very very famous gaming company (take a guess), she is your creative director and lead designer and you are the concept artist, 4+1 format, FLUFF, work relations, dynamic, and position might not be accurate, forgive me, this is basically just me projecting yet again.

a/n: this is requested by @andieperrie18 ! the answer shit isn't letting me edit my answer so ill be @-ing you here. TYSM FOR ENJOYING MY WORKS !! means a lot ... u also chose pasilyo 🥹🥹🥹🥹 sunkissed lola is the best

1.

Being part of the creatives team was a nightmare.

To tell you the truth, the position for a Concept Artist with a specialty in 2D design wasn't actually all that bad. The monthly benefits and wage were something you're quite lucky to receive considering the constant side eye other departments have with the admin's treatment of the artist employees. This was also your dream job—having had to play their games, specifically, VALORANT, left you in awe and gearing to apply once you were ready for an Internship. After your OJT course, you were accepted for a position in Character and Concept Design and are considered one of the team's most beloved artists (Your followers on Twitter reckon so).

In short, the work environment was great. A solid 15/10 experience—I mean how can you beat a company that caters not only to you as an artist but also as a player? Nothing can beat that feeling of satisfaction once you see your work displayed on various monitors all around the world.

It was more of ... the relationships and interactions with that work space environment that left you grasping at a chance to breathe.

People think you're overreacting but you think it's completely reasonable.

"Yes, you are overreacting."

Your face falls at Taigen's words—watching as he plays a round of unrated in the company's leisure space decked with state of the art PC builds that could definitely beat your poor touchscreen fridge with just a move of its mouse. You could hear the familiar voicelines of Jett from VALORANT as he uses the character's abilities to swiftly enter the site and take a hold of the defenders' positions.

Taigen is part of the Gaming Development Department in the VALORANT Team. He often does routine user gameplay checks and one of its perks is that you literally just have to play the game and get paid for it. You think its unfair but then again, its Taigen. He's always unfair.

"I think you're just saying that to be mean," You frowned, eyes trained on his face—the lights reflecting back on his stupid, stupid, clear-skinned face. Taigen rolls his eyes but not an ounce of his focus leaves the game.

"Being honest equals to being mean, got it." Taigen's voice comes out in a sarcastic tone. You kick a speck of dust on the cement floor, twirling in the gaming chair you're seated on.

"I just think its a reasonable thing to complain about!" You throw your hands in the air in an attempt to get him to look at your side of things. "You're completely unfazed because your team lead has the patience of a mother with 7 kids."

You hear the familiar cue of an ACE kill as Taigen hits a headshot on the last player. The game's interface shifts to the winner screen and finally, he turns to you, pulling his headphones off and giving his best deadpan stare.

"You're freaking out over Mizu sighing over your concept design proposal for Neon and overanalyzed even the way she drank her coffee because you're obsessed with her like that." Taigen arches his eyebrow to make the situation all the more ridiculous. Your mouth closes and opens like a fish out of water. "Am I right? Wait no, don't answer that. I know I am."

"What the fuck?" Your voice comes out in a desperate attempt of self-defence but it ultimately just sounds defeated. Taigen chuckles as he turns back to his monitor to take a look at the game stats.

"Look," Taigen tries to be empathetic but you're pretty sure this is just to get you off his back. The queue for competitive is already up and running. "As your friend, I say this with the love that I have for you and your works but please, Mizu is just one woman. If my mind process went like yours, I would've assumed Akemi hated my very existence and this is coming from someone who IS dating Akemi."

You purse your lips in thought as he raises his eyebrows in exaggeration. You're not exactly sure why you approached Taigen with this problem but he was the only familiar face that you saw after walking out of the meeting room in a hurry.

But then the question in this situation is who exactly is Mizu?

Well, there were a lot of things you could associate with the familiar blue-eyed director. Mizu is your boss—the creative director for Concept and Character design for the VALORANT team. She oversees character ideas, map visuals, detailing, and the final approval for character and asset ideation before it's sent for building in the 3D and VFX departments. She is your employer but you can also consider her your friend, albeit a highly respected one (she did the character design for Jett and Yoru).

It's not that you were obsessed—Taigen is wrong, he's always wrong—it was definitely because you respected her very much. Being a Riot Design Lead is basically fucking God. You create and give life to ideas. She's part of the original team that worked on the pre-release of VALORANT during its early stages and got to see the whole thing unfold. Something you wished to see back then but glad that you were able to become part of the journey despite being a few patches late.

You respected her enough to always want to be on her good side. I mean, who wouldn't? She's talented and very... youthful-looking and one of Riot's youngest leads, you honestly think that being worried over her approval like this is just a matter of respect and definitely NOT obsession.

"You're doing that thing where you space out and I have to assume that it's probably because of Mizu, yeah?" Taigen's voice intercepts your reprieve and suddenly, a curl of your eyebrows creates a look of annoyance on your face.

"I am not obssesed with Mizu," You reiterate, but this time with your mouth. "I just... respect her."

Taigen leans back on his gaming chair, nodding as if you just told him that he didn't need to double double-click everything.

"That's the most unbelievable shit I've heard today," Taigen finally replies with a scrunch of his nose. Your jaw falls open.

"I do not!"

"Do too."

"Do not."

"Do too!"

"Do fucking not—Stop it."

Taigen purses his lips, and makes a motion of zipping his mouth and shaking his head. You huff in anger. Taigen was never going to believe you.

Just as you were about to chastise him again for being mistaken, a knock on the glass doors notifies you of a new presence. You turn by instinct and your eyes widen in shock and probably, dread—who knows.

"There you are," Mizu's voice filters through your ears like classical music on a good Friday evening. You stammer slightly as she enters the area, eyes trained on you through those tinted orange specs. Mizu momentarily greets Taigen who only raises his hand in greeting before turning towards the screen (only you can see through your peripheral vision that this motherfucker is laughing). "I've been looking for you."

"You did?" Your voice comes off quiet. Mizu furrows her eyebrows.

"Uh, yeah?" She replies with a confused tone. "I had your concept design for Neon approved, it was more direct compared to Matt's. I wanted to tell you in person since you just bolted from the meeting room."

You fall silent at her words. She looks a bit concerned as you try to make sense of the information.

"You seem in shock—Are you okay?" Mizu asks, eyes glancing towards Taigen who looks at her before shrugging.

You feel your heart speed up. You momentarily calm yourself before finally responding. "Y-Yeah, sorry. Just didn't think that you'd approve it."

Mizu tilts her head like a fucking cat and you're quite sure you would drop dead then and there. "Why not? It's your work."

You're not sure what she means by that but a sudden shiver runs through your veins at her praise and suddenly your cheeks are flushing.

"Ah," You're voice fills in the silence, awkward and quiet. "Thank you?"

There's a pause of silence before Mizu chuckles. She heaves a breath before pulling the glass door open.

"I'll see you at my office, Y/N." She smiles. "Great work."

The silence further pushes you into the void as you and Taigen watch her exit and disappear into another hallway through the glass windows. Just as you were a few minutes ago, you lean forward to slouch over your knees, hands on your face as you meltdown from what just happened. You hear Taigen chuckle beside you.

"Give it a few more months and she'll give you a ring on your finger with a bent knee on the ground."

You sob into your hands as Taigen erupts in heaps of laughter.

Oh my fucking God.

2.

The release for Neon was a hit. An all-time new duelist originating from the Philippines, your concept design took off without a hitch. It's safe to say that your hard work paid off as you stood over the central common room—leisure areas decked with your coworkers trying out and celebrating the release. A sense of satisfaction fills you.

"I hear you spearheaded the design concept for Neon," A voice infiltrates your sense like a lure. You can't help but smile at its familiarity. Akemi wraps her arms around your waist, chin on your shoulder as she continues. "Marketing was thrilled with the positive response. Good job."

You turn around, her arms loosely accommodating you. "Akemi," you coo.

The girl grins wide and pulls you into a hug. You return the affection in a grander gesture of squeezing her tight against you.

Akemi's part of the Marketing Department for Riot. While she often creates publication material for VALORANT, she also has cross work with League of Legends for its various strategic releases (ie. KDA).

"I just want to say that I already predicted Neon would be a sure hit, it's your work after all," Akemi pulls away from the hug with a smug smile. She grabs your hands in hers, swinging them slowly. "Marketing it was like a breeze in the park."

You laugh softly at her enthusiasm. "You give me way too much credit."

Akemi rolls her eyes affectionately. "Humility is a disease—live a little."

You shake your head at her quips, opting to smile in response. A member of your team passes by, eyes widening in recognition of you before giving you a thumbs up. Akemi watches the interaction—eyes trained on that person's figure as they walked towards Mizu who was busy talking to other creative team leads. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion at her prolonged silence.

"Who are you—?" Your words trail off as you turn to look at what she's so focused on before turning back at the sight of Mizu. "Nevermind."

Akemi raises her eyebrow with an amused look on her face. "Taigen always has a penchant for exaggerating but I didn't think it was this bad?"

Your face falls at the information. "Taigen told you?"

Akemi gives you a 'duh' look—eyebrows raised and eyes half-lidded. "Taigen's a loose lock if you pry hard enough. He basically can never keep a secret."

You give her a deadpan stare before shifting in your position. Akemi crosses her arms over her chest as she eyes you up and down—filled to the brim with amusement. "I'm fine, stop making a big deal out of it."

"Uh huh," Akemi squints her eyes playfully. You could only glare back in response.

The loud cheering at the front catches your attention as resident workers, interns, and newbies alike begin to tune in at the commotion. Akemi and you move to the sidelines, eyebrows furrowed in confusion as you tried to find out what's happening.

"What's happening?" You ask the person to your front. He turns, eyes beaming with excitement.

"The creative director for C&C got pulled in a 1v1. They're playing against Beckham."

Your breath hitches at the information. Akemi nudges you with her elbow, overhearing the conversation. The two of you move to the side, finally getting a glimpse of the two team leads focused on a custom game of VALORANT. Your eyes zone in on familiar raven locks seated on the right monitor.

A live stream of their game is projected on the monitor up front and suddenly you feel sick from the amount of butterflies fluttering in your stomach.

She's playing Neon. The character you designed.

Oh God. You watched her take kill after kill, headshot after headshot as she sprinted across the map—zapping characters with Neon's electric abilities. You've never seen someone look so fucking hot playing an FPS game before. It's doing things to your brain.

Just as you expected, the winning banner appears on Mizu's screen and the C&C Team erupts in cheers. You become entranced at the sight—a few of your co-workers patting her on the back before she erupts in smiles and laughs. This is not healthy for your heart.

And just as you think the night couldn't get any better, one of the people from the Marketing departments begins stirring up an interview.

"What made you choose Neon on the character pick? You usually go for Sentinels, no?"

Your eyes meet and suddenly you could feel your heart skip a few beats. Mizu chuckles.

"Wanted to do a duelist around for a spin," Mizu replies. "The design and character visuals for Neon was amazing and I ought to pay the artist who did it a homage."

Suddenly all eyes are on you—some of them even "ooh-ing" for being praised by Mizu. You pale at the attention before doing a hesitant bow in gratitude.

Mizu pulls the headphones off her head and smiles. "Congrats, Y/N. Hope you liked the win."

You feel Akemi stir up beside you, chuckling at the interaction.

You're going to die. You can feel it and its all because of your boss.

3.

Okay, maybe admitting that you were a little bit obsessed and crushing over your employer was a bit overdue. You weren't exactly the type to parade your feelings around the office but if people were to zone in on you acting sheepish and awkward around Mizu, there was a 55% chance that you could tell based on that alone.

It wasn't like your admiration for Mizu started on a whim. As said countless and countless times, it had a foundation of respect until Mizu started trying to get to know and interact with you and those same feelings of admiration started to change. What else were you supposed to do? Mizu is a fucking all-in-one holiday basket—you didn't have it in you to resist the charms.

It also didn't help that over the past few days, Mizu seems to have her undivided attention on you. Showering you with praises, asking if you wanna spearhead a certain project, revel in your work—all that shit. It's messing with your productivity and mindset and that's not a good idea.

The Head Director for the VALORANT Team had decided to call a night out for drinking to reward the team for the positive feedback for the latest patch. You were quite thankful for the opportunity as this was a way for you to get a moment of rest from Mizu's constant attention. Not that you were complaining, it's just a little... too much.

You were seated at the far right booth of the restaurant, keeping to yourself as you watched Ringo and Taigen begin to have a debate about team composition. Akemi grumbles beside you, clearly not enjoying whatever the fuck these two were talking about.

"Look," Taigen holds his hands out in front of him, trying to make a point. "All I'm saying is if you keep putting DPS builds on your team comp, how in the hell will you be able to maximize their kit? Supports are there for a reason."

Ringo rolls his eyes. "It's called enjoying the game, Taigen. So what if I want to put dick 1, dick 2, and dick 3, together?"

Taigen's jaw drops. "Do you know how much skill point dependent they are? I'm even surprised you could bust a skill out." The raven haired man pauses before continuing with a face contorted in disgust. "And stop calling them dick 1,2,3? It's Dan Heng, Blade, and Jing Yuan."

"Of course you'd police that as well. You look like that fucking emoji." Ringo raises his prosthetic hand, imitating pushing up a pair of glasses. "Um, actually—"

"You are as annoying as my grandmother, do you know that?" Taigen snarls, eyes pulled into a glare. Your tall huggable co-worker only grins and bats his eyelashes.

You begin to tune out the two as Akemi excuses herself to take a cigarette break—already having enough of their banter. You eye the glass of beer in front of you, watching as the liquid sloshes around with each twirl of your wrist.

You had hoped to end the night with silence but alas, you can never get everything that you wanted. You feel a pair of eyes on you—direct and unashamed. Already having a feeling on who this was, you looked up and met the reflection of the ocean.

'You okay?' She mouths, concern overflowing her features. It's subtle enough for people to not notice her sudden shift of attention but enough for you to understand her. Your cheeks flush as you nod back with the same softness that she had thrown your way.

She nods in understanding, sending a soft smile your way before turning back towards her conversation with the Head. You hang your head down, wishing that the night would end faster so that you can finally have the moment of peace you have been wanting ever since this morning.

It was as if the world decided to cast hell upon you and revoked you of your rights to peace at the arrival of yet another problem.

"L/N!" The Head Director's voice encompassed the whole area—eyes turning towards him then at you in amusement. "You're one of the star employees and yet you haven't touched a single speck on that glass of yours!"

His hearty laughter follows—giggles and cheering from you co-workers following suite. You sweat drop, eyes darting to Taigen and Ringo who both looked away at your glare before turning towards the window where Akemi sends you a gracious thumbs up, a cigarette hanging from her lips. You groan.

"I-I'm fine," You wave your hand, laughing it off. Your eyes connect with Mizu, an unreadable look on her face as she takes a sip of her chosen beverage.

God decides to punish you more as the team lead beside Mizu chimes in. "Oh c'mon! You're a great asset to the company! I suggest drink up!"

One of your team members passes a full pint of beer as the others begin to urge you to drink up. You hadn't felt the intensity of peer pressure ever since your dance recital on 10th grade and that wasn't even as half bad as this. You weren't feeling on drinking yourself to death as well so trying to down a full pint of beer was a ticket for you to the afterlife (ie. you on your bed with puke all over the floors). The previous pint you had was enough.

You tried to decline as humbly as you could, afraid that this might be the instance that you could finally be fired off from Riot. You knew that if they kept pushing a 3rd more of their attempts that you'd probably give in for the sake of never doing this again but while the need hasn't yet arisen, you'll try fighting off the urge to be a people-pleaser.

Just as you finally begin to decline for the nth time, a hand emerges to your right—pushing the pint of beer in your co-worker's hands. The table falls silent. Your breath falters as the familiar scent of lavender and probably a hint of sunlight begins to seep in from behind you.

"Stop pressuring her like that," Mizu's voice sounds so close —your heart hammering off your chest. Your co-worker gives Mizu a sheepish smile.

"C'mon Mizu, let your team live a little!" The Head laughs once more before leaning forward with a smug smirk. "Unless you'll save this one yet again?"

There's a pause of silence as your co-workers darted between them—back and forth. You feel Mizu sigh behind you before her arms encase you against the table, one arm placed on the beside you each. Your breath hitches.

"Sorry," She mutters as she reaches for the pint. You stammer, turning towards her as you reach out to her wrist by instinct. Mizu blinks with her eyes wide open, suddenly surprised by your actions.

"Y-you don't have to!" You murmured, trying to keep your voice low. Mizu's eyes are unreadable. "You don't drink—!"

The woman chuckles before patting your hand and gently pulling herself off your grasp. "It's okay." She says.

You watch with stammering breath as she gulps the pint in one go, others cheering as she did. The Head claps.

"Didn't expect to see Mizu downing a beer today but here we are," The man bellows in laughter. Mizu chuckles, wiping the residue off her lips. You could only stare at her in shock.

Mizu glances down at you with a smile before patting your head then walking off. Your gaze trails on her and somehow the hammering within you becomes all the more intense.

Oh, Lord.

4.

It was supposed to just be a little game—a past time that the others decided to force you along. You really had no qualms joining games like this but if it concerns the people around you, especially in your work place, somehow you feel the risk of being outed for liking someone in you work space.

"If you guys wanted to date someone in the office, who'd you pick?" Ise leans forward, eyes squinted as she gives you and Akemi a smirk. The three of you were currently lounging in the cafeteria during you lunch break. There weren't many people present due an event going on in one of the building's sectors, so having a conversation like this somehow was less anxiety inducing.

"Taigen, unfortunately," Akemi deadpans. Ise rolls her eyes.

"I mean! Besides him," Ise whispers excitedly. "There's a newbie from marketing that looks cute but kinda quiet, maybe he's nice."

"You mean Takayoshi?" Akemi raises an eyebrow as she takes a sip of her tea. You glance back and forth between them.

"Is that his name?" Ise watches Akemi nod in response. "Well, I'll just have to go get his number then."

Akemi shakes her head at Ise's musings and you had hoped that the conversation would end there, but Ise suddenly turns to you with that mischievous look in her eye.

"What?" You whisper out, eyebrows furrowed in innocence. Akemi side glances you, the corners of her lips upturned in a smile. God, she was enjoying this too.

"What about you, Y/N?" Ise props her arm on the table, placing her cheek on her palm. "Got someone you're interested in?"

You avoid eye contact. "No."

Ise leans forward with a gasp. "You do!"

"I don't!" You reiterate with urgency. You turn to Akemi with a frantic stare. "Tell her I don't."

Ise turns to Akemi who smiles. "She doesn't."

"Bullshit." Ise deadpans. "The moment I'd believe Akemi with a smile on her face is the moment I'd die," Akemi flashes her middle finger at her to which Ise returns generously. Finally, the girl turns to you—chair scooted over to your right as she flashes you her doe eyes. "So? Who is it?"

You Akemi chuckle against her cup as you stammer in front of Ise. "I don't really like someone though?"

"Lies," Ise declares. "We might not be that close but you got that twitch in your eye that already tells me something. Who is it?"

"Ise," You plead, eyes darting around the space. Somehow, saying it out loud meant that you're solidifying the fact that you liked Mizu—an occurrence you'd like to keep to yourself as much as possible. You loved Ise, you really do. You worked with her hand in hand in bringing Neon to life (You worked on her design while she worked on the 3D build) and have become tremendously grateful for her critique and contributions to your work. But this, this was something else. You could feel your heart speed up as she started listing some names.

"Is it Beckham? That piece of shit always too full himself." Ise places a hand on her chin in thought. "Or Ringo? Nah, he's way too focused on content map-building."

There's a pause of silence before an 'aha!' look spreads through her face. You prayed that she would get it wrong but this is Ise we're talking about.

"Is it perhaps," Ise pauses, eyes darting all over your face. "Mizu—"

"What about me?"

The three of you tense, eyes darting behind you as you turn to find the familiar stance of your boss. She leans forward, a hand on the back of your chair as she gives the three of you a curious glance. You hadn't heard her at all, and something about Ise's frantic glance towards you says she didn't expect the same thing as well.

"W-we we're just listing people we found attractive," Ise laughs uncomfortably under Mizu's stare. The creative director glances at Akemi who raises an eyebrow at her. Somehow there was a silent conversation going on between the two that left you confused.

"Really?" Mizu asks, the ends of her words trailing off as she glances back at Ise. "Who said I was attractive?"

"It was Y/—"

"NO ONE!" You exclaimed, cutting Ise off with a jump. You flush under Mizu's wide gazed, surprised at your interference. Somehow, the way you said it implied that no one found her attractive at all, and that was way too wrong so you caught yourself before you delved into a pit of despair. "I mean, w-we haven't started and was just listing people off."

Mizu nods slowly in understanding, eyes examining your face for any slip-ups. You looked away from the intensity.

Ise finally saves your ass. "Yeah. What she said."

"What about you, Director?" Akemi chimes in from your left and both you and Ise turn to her with wide gazes. She simply smiles over her cup, face contorted in a mischievous look. You couldn't read Mizu at all. You had expected Akemi to drop it—after all, she wasn't even joining in on Ise's incessant need to know everything about everyone. "Who do you find the most attractive in this office, hm?"

You can feel Mizu shifting behind you before a chuckle pulls out from her lips. You turn towards her in curiosity as she flashes a smile towards you.

"I'd pick Y/N, of course,"

Huh?

Akemi rolls her eyes, somehow already expecting the answer. Your jaw drops at her response as Mizu turns to Ise who already has a knowing look on her face.

"She's just that reliable," Mizu looks back down towards you, those shades of blue peeking from her tinted glasses. She pinches your cheek in a flash before pulling away. "Cute too."

You turn away, afraid that the flush on your cheeks might've given you away.

"Anyways, I just dropped by to see what's happening outside the event," Mizu sighs, pushing her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. "I'll see you girls around."

Your interactions always end up one sided somehow. She gives and then leaves—resulting in you malfunctioning from whatever she's left for you to deal with.

Ise turns to you with a mischievous grin when Mizu finally turns the corner. "You and the Director huh?"

"Shut up, oh my God."

+1

"Why do you always do stuff like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like you're not leaving me any room to process the shit you do?"

Mizu lets out quiet laughs from beside you. 10:47 pm. Normally, work hours in the office end at about 9 but you've learned that staying late is where the good things happen.

"I literally just told you 'good job' the other day and you malfunctioned in front of me," Mizu giggles, leaning forward as she tapped you on the nose with the pen to her digital tablet. "And I heard everything by the way. Quite adorable of you to deny everything."

You flush under her affectionate gaze. "Everyone's so gossipy. You can't blame me."

Mizu turns her chair towards you, arms reach out to take a hold of your own before pulling them close to her side. You lean back at her sudden proximity.

"Well you can't blame me either when you're this adorable," Mizu grins. You furrow your eyebrows, finally leaning close as you cupped her cheeks within your palms.

"You even drank beer," You whisper, tone apologetic. "You don't even like alcohol."

Mizu leans into your touch. "And you don't like being pressured into something you don't want to do. I can sacrifice a little bit of something I don't like just for you."

You melt at her words, eyes darting over her softened features. "Thank you," You whisper, grateful.

"Anything for my girlfriend," Mizu teases. You roll your eyes before pulling her into a soft kiss. She kisses back instantly, hands gripping the arm chair as you take lead of the kiss. After a few pecks and chaste kisses here and there, you finally pull back—reveling in the soft flush across Mizu's cheeks.

"Also," You chime in. Mizu raises an eyebrow. "I was the one who pursued, not you. Correct that when they catch on."

Mizu chuckles at your words. "Right on. Akemi threatened me the other day, saying something like, 'I forbid you from dating Y/N Y/L/N, Mizu Tagawa!' Funniest shit, I've heard. If only she knew."

You pinch her cheeks, giggling at her words. "Of course, she's say that."

There's a pause of silence before Mizu turns to her work, a sketch of VALORANT's newest agent displayed on screen.

"Want to help me with the new guy?" She nudges towards the screen. "Heard he's French."

You turn to her monitor, dozens of details sketched on the edges with a version of her idea of the new agent. You grin, placing a kiss on her cheek.

"You could've just asked me to marry you." You tease. "Also, sure."

You turn towards the table and pulled her tablet towards you. Mizu scoffs as you take over her work.

"And if I actually did?"

"Sure, Mizu, sure."

"I'm serious!"

a/n: hey guys!!! this was so fun to write and honestly i was just inspired to do this request bc ive been drafting an office romance for mizu after the roommate thing. hope yall enjoyed ! if yall arent familiar with valorant, here are the agents mentioned or referenced (neon & chamber (french guy)). also mizu's last name is derived from master eiji's va! cary-hiroyuki tagawa!

[khaire-traveler]

Since it keeps coming up, I want to state that I do have my asks turned off currently. My inbox was getting flooded with lots of people all of a sudden, especially requests for Subtle Worship posts, and it was beginning to overwhelm me. I have a lot going on in my offline life right now, so I'm also trying to focus on that which is also why I haven't been posting much. I just (literally one week ago) moved across the US, so I've been pretty consumed by the stress of that.

To make it clear, I'm not deactivating my account or going on a hiatus or something. I'm just not going to post as much or answer any asks. I'm just stressed, overwhelmed, and burnt out. Exhausted or anxious have become my natural states of being lately, and Tumblr hasn't exactly been making that better for me. I'll be alright; I'm just tired.

I do plan to continue the Subtle Worship series, but I'm taking a break from those posts for the time being because it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort to make them. It can be quite an exhausting process over time, especially since, admittedly, it's not super rewarding, if I'm being honest. While I make those posts to spread information, I also am often taking requests and creating posts for deities I have no experience with. Although it's great to get the word out about lesser known deities and that is a good feeling, I'm not getting paid or compensated in any way for these requests. I'm giving it my all, trying my best to come up with helpful suggestions on simple worship of deities I have never interacted with, and it takes a lot out of me. Oftentimes, I am attempting to connect with the deity's energy in order to come up with ideas which is extremely tiring when repeating that process over and over again. I enjoy making these posts, but it has stopped being fun for me and has started feeling like an obligation or expectation. So I'm taking a break for now.

I love running this blog, but it's beginning to feel like more work than anything else. I keep doing things for people, going out of my way to attempt to answer questions and creating posts upon request, and yet, it never feels like enough. There's always more for me to do, more questions to answer, more posts to create. This is meant to be an experience that I enjoy, but I'm not enjoying this anymore. It feels like a job that I don't get paid for. I love helping people, don't get me wrong, but there comes a time when it starts to be too much. Some questions are also answered by things in my pinned post, and although I enjoy helping people, as I said, it does get tiring having to redirect them to posts they can find themselves if they look at the links I've provided past the "read more". I will say that I wish people utilized my pinned post more.

So thank you, everyone, for your support and concern. I just want to rest for now. I want to enjoy myself. I want to post things that I like posting and researching things I want to actively learn about. I'm happy to help, but the person who most needs my help right now is myself, so I'm gonna focus on them. Please take care, and have a good day/night. 🧡

[genericpuff]

The Kiss Bet Episode 172 - Hot Pot and Venting About How I Want My 70 Cents Back

Okay, look, this isn't a post I was expecting to make today but it's something that just happened and I have to fucking talk about, so let me preface this with some context.

I had to buy coins recently and because I switched to using my iPad for reading comics on, I got a "new reader" type deal from Webtoons for a coin bundle that got me like 100 coins for $5; because technically it was a 'new account' as Webtoons operates their in-game currency model on apps, not on actual emails (meaning if you use the app on an Android phone and then switch to an Apple iOS device, they're technically two separate accounts which you sync the reading data between via the account info linked via the email, therefore they have two separate coin wallets).

So with more coins than I knew what to do with, I decided to start FastPassing The Kiss Bet again, which I had recently stopped FP'ing around the S3 mark, as it's recently devolved back into the "will they won't they" trope, but instead of between Sara-Lin and Joe, it's between Sara-Lin and Joe's younger brother (the "true endgame") Oliver.

Now I don't mind the ship in essence. Joe was definitely not gonna be endgame, it was always gonna be Oliver, anyone who's read any amount of romance before - especially high school romances - knows how this shit tends to go, and The Kiss Bet isn't exactly trying to be groundbreaking or subversive in any way, it knows exactly what it's about and what it's trying to accomplish.

But it's almost become a little too good at this. Because in playing the "will they won't they" game for so long with a character that we know is endgame, it's basically been weeks and weeks and weeks of-

That said, after I caught up on the recent FP episodes, it seemed like stuff was finally moving a little bit. We were finally meeting Oliver's mom and his stepdad who he has a fractured relationship with, Joe was finally getting with his true endgame girl, Vicky (who's totally not an exact genderbent version of Joe lmao) and Sara-Lin was finally realizing she had feelings for Oliver.

And then the newest episode came out, Episode 172 - Hot Pot and Venting.

CAUTION: FASTPASS SPOILERS FOR THE KISS BET OFFICIALLY BEGIN HERE!

Already I was a little petty over the title like "lmao ok clunky title but whatever". I swept it off as not a genuine criticism, just me being a nitpicking asshole over what's essentially Fluff: The Comic.

The episode cost 7 coins, which is about roughly 70 cents, albeit closer to a dollar for Canadian readers (here's something they don't tell you about Canada - our Monopoly game currency is just as fucked as it looks) and that's where I'm gonna get into my second disclaimer that I need to be perfectly clear about (and it'll be what we get more into later on in this post).

I understand the principle of paying for art. I understand fully that many of these webtoons are being produced on tight deadlines by creators who often can only afford 1-2 assistants, if any at all. I understand and fully agree that creators deserve to be paid for their skills, time, and efforts, not just as creators working on the hellsite that is Webtoons, but as artists in general who deserve to make a living the same as anyone else. Anyone who follows my stuff here knows I'm an artist myself so I would never debate the ethical necessity of paying artists for their work.

However.

I can say that, and also agree with the people who have stated in discussion circles such as on /r/webtoons that a lot of the comics that have started charging 7 coins have been suspiciously delivering less comic since. And it's not even so much in the literal panel count, the liquid volume of these comics have remained the same, but the calorie count has dropped significantly. Food metaphors aside, what I mean is that despite many of these comics maintaining their 40-60 minimum panel count requirement, they have in fact reduced the actual amount of content that happens in them, and The Kiss Bet's newest episode is a stark example of what I mean.

I am going to start by posting only post three panels - three panels that literally sum up the entirety of Episode 172 and what it chooses to spend its time on.

That is it. That is literally all that's established in this episode. I'd tell you to go read it yourself, but honestly, this is genuinely one of those rare times I can honestly say that a 40+ panel episode is not worth 70 cents and you'd be better off, and that's saying a LOT when these episodes are only priced at the cost of a gumball. At least Lore Olympus has entertainment in how bad it is most of the time, Episode 172 of The Kiss Bet is just nothing. You will literally get more substance and flavor from an actual gumball.

Literally every other panel in this episode is either repeating the same dialogue (Sara-Lin saying the same thing multiple different times to express how Oliver is holding her hand or how his stepdad is a dick) and then Sara-Lin and Oliver staring at each other. Over. And over. Again.

I am not joking. I did not cut anything out in that sequence. That is where the episode ends. Complete nothingburger, seemingly cut off right as it was just getting started like Cait Corrain's career.

Out of the entire episode, there were 45 panels. So I can safely assume Ingrid's minimum panel requirement is at least 40 per episode, that's me assuming the best that she didn't exactly meet her panel minimum at 45 panels on the dot.

Out of those 45 panels, there were:

Two actual unique backgrounds that weren't gradients or just a single piece of furniture

4 separate panels of Sara-Lin freaking out over Oliver holding her hand and wondering if he even noticed

10 panels of Sara-Lin staring at Oliver either dumbfounded or asking him to repeat himself (or apologizing over nothing)

5 panels of the characters saying nothing

11 panels of Sara-Lin repeating information in different ways that could have been accomplished in half that time

Two separate occasions of Oliver getting Sara's attention from off-panel, literally formatted the exact same way both times (and both followed by reaction panels of Sara-Lin staring at him dumbfounded)

Way too many panels of Sara-Lin blushing in response to Oliver being an asshole tbh like literally this guy's a douchebag, Joe may have been the "out of her league" love interest but at least he was nice and didn't treat Sara-Lin like someone who just bought a Husky as a "starter pet" ???

Again, I don't usually like being a dick about the coin costs, and I definitely don't like being a hypocrite in telling people they should pay artists for their work while simultaneously posting their paywalled content like this, but I think there does come a point where it feels more irresponsible for people to not be aware of what they're about to pay for and how little they're going to be getting. This episode is literally one of the best - and worst - examples of how far the romance genre has fallen on the platform - when it's not being overtaken and oversaturated by problematic series that romanticize abuse and sexual assault, it's being dragged to death with the most boring executions of tropes that everyone has seen before and is only exciting for anyone who's never read a book or watched a romance movie, period.

And here's the thing where I do approach a bit more "hot take" territory, but every time I see this argument come up about episodes not being worth the coin cost, I see others who rightfully argue that 70 cents isn't that much to pay for what you're getting - weekly episodes of work that are usually always delivered on time, with more panels than you would ever typically see in a free to read comic.

But here's where I take issue with that argument, as much as the principle of it is sound, it misses the overall point: readers are paying for entertainment first and foremost, so can anyone who's actually paying for regular refills on their app currency step away from this and truly call it "entertainment"? Nothing was gained. The comic had 45 panels to say something, anything, and managed to not even squeak out so much of a word. Even the silent moments have no substance, they just reiterate information that we already know.

Do we really need another panel of Sara-Lin blushing at Oliver? We've known for weeks now that she has a crush on him. Do we really need another panel of Oliver getting Sara-Lin's attention? What is this actually showing of their chemistry? What is being shown here that hasn't been shown numerous times - with and without dialogue - for weeks now? What does the comic have to show for itself after four seasons?

Another point of the "it's just 70 cents, don't be an asshole" argument that people seem to miss is it's not 70 cents. It's $1. Because if you want to buy a single episode of the Kiss Bet, you can't just pay for the individual episode in isolation, you have to pay for the coins first, and $1 is the absolute bare minimum you have to pay to get 10 coins, which will only pay for one episode of a 7 coin series - of which there are many now, basically any series that's 40 panels or more will cost 7 coins and, shocker, those are the series that WT will tend to promote most, you'll rarely see the 5 coins series in the banner ads, and that's not even getting into how there are more and more series cropping up that have 5+ episodes behind FP rather than the traditional three.

So if you're someone who's (almost definitely) keeping up with more than one series? You can't just pay the $1, you have to pay at least $5 for 50 coins, and that will NOT go far anymore or cut as evenly as it used to when just about every series is now 7 coins. Webtoons knows fully well what kind of game they're playing by making the new coin cost an uneven number while still offering increments of 5/10 in their coin bundles. They undoubtedly want you to be left with an uneven number so that you'll be easily lured into buying more coins so you don't 'waste' the uneven amount you have left that isn't enough to buy the episodes for the series you want to read. Obviously this is more speculation and not fact, but it's a common business model and with the series that have adopted the 7 coin count model (rather than starting off with 7 coins outright) such as The Kiss Bet and Lore Olympus, it's becoming abundantly clear that either the creators or the platform itself is encouraging these series to meet their panel minimums with as little content as possible in order to get more money out of readers who are barely even being drip fed actual entertainment and narrative progression, let alone spoon fed.

And then there's the waiting. The goddamn waiting. So many of these series guilty of siphoning their content off through a hose that they're deliberately standing on are designed intentionally with the most egregious cliffhangers in mind to keep their audience hooked so they'll undoubtedly FP next week. Do you know what that amount of waiting does to a comic? To its readers? First off, it artificially extends the actual pacing of the comic to make it feel longer than it is, when in reality, many of these plotlines are happening in a vacuum of very short bursts of time. Case in point, Lore Olympus is commonly confused for having a plotline that takes place over the course of months, when actually when laid end to end in order of cause and effect, many of its subplots - including the romance of Hades and Persephone - takes place over the course of days. This over-inflates the plotline's actual depth and, even worse so, it makes it harder for readers to keep up with information that's being delivered, as it often takes weeks for that information to actually go anywhere - so by the time it does, many readers have straight up forgotten about it.

It's absolutely not okay that so many of these kinds of series are normalizing literal slow burning for an audience who's paying to be entertained. It's not a "slow burn". It's just slow, and deliberately so. It's absolutely NOT FUN to follow a comic that does not go anywhere week after week. It's frustrating. And before long, it starts to feel like gambler's fallacy, where readers have to essentially gaslight themselves into paying into it more and more convinced that it has to pay off eventually, based on a promise that was never actually made, only assumed in good faith. And readers should not have to fill in the bulk of the content that isn't happening with their own imaginations, which is something that happens a LOT in these series that spend so much time on the characters just staring at each other and saying nothing. It's not 'plot' to just draw characters blushing and have your audience fill in the rest of it entirely on their own. This is certainly a technique in writing, but in the case of The Kiss Bet and other comics like it, it's much less of a valid technique and more just flat out manipulating your audience into falling so hard into the sunk cost fallacy trap that they don't notice they're being robbed blind by the plot that hasn't actually happened - and they've been paying for that financial and emotional robbery out of their own pockets and brains every step of the way.

Again, I do not care about the coin cost in and of itself, seventy cents IS still an incredibly cheap price for weekly updates of a series that has to put out so many panels each week. But as a reader and a customer, I should not be leaving these updates with less information than what I started with. And I'm someone who's incredibly old school by webcomic standards, there are comics that I follow that have updated 1-2 pages a week for over a decade that manage to do more with their limited pages than Lore Olympus and The Kiss Bet manage to do after entire hiatuses filled with pre-production time.

Why does this page of Alfie manage to move both the intrinsic plot of the titular character as well as the external plot that's going on around her in one page made up of 5 panels better than what The Kiss Bet can do in 45?

Why does this page of Tamberlane manage to convey more information about the world's lore and the people in it in a way that's emotionally driven and clearly affecting the characters without outright info-dumping than what Lore Olympus has managed to spit out onto its plate since S3 started over a year ago?

How does Tales from Alderwood manage to be more entertaining and convey more meaningful storytelling through its characters in a single page consisting of zero dialogue than what The Kiss Bet can convey in its silent panels of staring, blushing, and repetitive stuttering?

Why are the creators who are relying entirely on their own efforts, resources, and ability to generate income through community interaction and support putting out better work with less panels and on slower schedules for FREE than what we're seeing from professional creators on a professional publishing platform who are being paid to do this as their job?

There's this saying in the tattooing industry: good work isn't cheap and cheap work isn't good.

At this point, 70 cents is not a 'bargain' as many people like to argue in defense of the creators. And while I do want to have good faith in the creators who don't pull this shit, the creators who clearly go above and beyond to do what they do in the pursuit of storytelling and polishing their craft to be the best piece of work that it can be - the comics that are worth paying 70 cents and beyond for - are not the comics that Webtoons is promoting to people. The creators of the works that genuinely deserve more than 70 cents per update are being left to fend for themselves without support from the platform, while those that aren't worth the price of even a flavorless gumball are consistently winning the Wonka Golden Ticket lottery.

The cost of 70 cents is relative. For some works it's a genuine bargain. For others like the The Kiss Bet and Lore Olympus, 70 cents is not a "bargain", it's not a "good deal", it's exactly the value of what you're paying for - cheap work that isn't good.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I think people believe that those who likely won't vote for Biden despite opposing Trump in November are just doing so out of political purity demands are failing to internalize something really important.

People only have so many resources to spare beyond survival. And they will make reasonable assessments based on what an action demands of them versus what it will do to benefit them/improve overall quality of life whether or not to do a thing. Anything.

I've noticed this thing where people are like "voting is the LEAST you can do, it's just one thing, and it barely takes up any valued resources (e.g. time, money, energy, skill, learning/adjustment periods, etc), how can you NOT do it?"

And. Well. Maybe because that equation isn't the same for everyone?

Let me go ahead and lay out for you the process that would all have to take place BEFORE I was able to "just go vote" if that was an action I felt would be valuable.

1) identify/confirm my state's voter identification policies for the coming election to confirm that I fully understand them and that they haven't been altered since my last complete understanding of it

2) save the money (in cash) for the fees involved in attending an id appt at a state office to get the necessary documents which I may or may not have (I have moved about every other year for a long time now, and have not been able to consistently maintain useable paperwork across my residential transitions because many were across state lines)

3) schedule the state office appt for id paperwork. Keep cash fees and necessary evidentiary paperwork on hand (or add an additional set of steps to obtain/reobtain them such as when the move damaged my court paperwork for my name change). Then wait for the appt to arrive, and hope I have enough time in my day and gas in my car to keep it.

4) once I have my appropriate id, register as a regional voter and identify my nearest polling station (by the way, the ONLY available polling stations in my literal entire county are Baptist or Methodist churches. If those spaces are - for some reason, maybe I don't know being actively mid-medical transition of gender, visibly queer, and fucking Jewish - are not accessible to me well then I guess I'm shit out of luck)

5) obtain time off on election day to go vote. You might think this is easy. And maybe for you it is. But the vast majority of election voting lines I have waited in since going with my mom as a kid to waiting to place my own vote as an adult, have been at minimum of 4 hours waiting in line outside the building let alone getting thru identity confirmation with the polling station volunteers once inside. I work on Tuesdays. So taking unpaid time off for a 4+ hour errand is a big deal. And yeah, my supervisor does actively encourage us to and support us in doing it, but given how we are paid (by the completed appt hour) there is a huge financial barrier to taking a day off to vote. The owner of my practice does her best to help, including offering us our paid documentation hours if it helps, but like. That's not going to be enough for a lot of people's checkbooks, and there are not outside resources she can call on to support her in supporting us. We may make the choice to do it when we feel financially able to, but we may not always be in that position.

6) actually vote. Hey remember those 4hr lines? I'm physically disabled and mobility limited. So if I need to anticipate more than a maximum of 15min of standing or walking, I may need to consider going in my wheelchair. How many of those churches serving as polling stations in my poor, 60% black county are able to be wheelchair accessible? My state voter polling station map supposedly offers a listing of accessible polling stations! But when I click it, it actually just takes me to a webpage describing my legal right to accommodation. Did you know that the only caregiver I could have help accommodate me is my wife or a professional one? I can't (for example) have a friend take me while my wife is working or otherwise unavailable. Or, you know, if a polling station volunteer decides to get up in arms about my marriage for being queer/interracial (this has happened, yes I know it's illegal what the actual fuck do you think that means for the reality of enforcing that though???? Something being a crime doesn't stop it from happening, and being able to "hold someone accountable" won't necessarily mean getting my fucking vote back.)

7) monitor my vote for rejection and supply any necessary corrective measures to confirm my vote (I realize this may be something lots of people go a lifetime never running into, but it has and does and will happen)

8) monitor my voter registration to ensure I stay on the roles up through the next merry go round through these steps (i once had to re-register 3 times in one year without having changed addresses or documentation in any way. Just getting flat out bumped from the roles. When I did voter canvassing in 2020 I took a peek at my own name in the registry and I had a HALF DOZEN different registrations that had been done in the 4 years I'd been living in my house at the time.)

It is REALLY highly likely that none of these things, or AT MOST 1-2 of them are also your (general) concerns/priorities/needs around voting. Mine are like this through a combination of circumstances, location, chaotic lifestyle, and a general inability to stay organized. But that is nonetheless the reality of my effort ro vote every election.

Increasingly, this has simply not been worth my time and money. My vote's presence or absence simply is not impactful enough in the systems and levers of power to justify putting myself through that process and it's impact on my quality of life. My energy is more effectively used in ways that can A) not cost me financial resources I simply do not have, B) do not require me to prove who I am in order to interact with it, thus removing the burden and expense of maintaining paperwork for that purpose beyond what I already posess (passport card without any documentation of residence but with documentation of citizenship), and C) can be performed using only or mostly physical actions that are not inherently medically dangerous for me.

So that's what I've started redirecting my energy towards. There are truly so many options, and I keep myself busy with many different little pieces of that puzzle.

I could not do those things if I also tried to maintain consistent access to voting. I simply couldn't. But those things are so much more immediately impactful, not just on my quality of life, but on the QoL of the rest of my community. I value the ability to spend my resources there more than I value my ability to brute force my way through in interaction with a system that throws up increasingly harmful barriers at every step.

If that math ever changes for me, I probably will try to vote more. It's not like I think voting is bad. But I simply do not see it as more valuable for me and my community given my combination of needs, resources, and capacities.

I really need people to understand that yelling at someone and trivializing their reasons for making the choice that they are making will not increase your voter turnout. Because it means you are inherently rejecting their valid concerns as worth addressing. And yeah! A lot of people are right now specifically talking about this as if their decision is at least in part because of the concern that the Trump years and Biden years have not been different enough or have been different in ways that are harmful to them, because a lot of us made a point of saying in 2020 "damn the consequences, we'll just do it"

But then there wasn't enough change to justify how much we harmed ourselves or invited harm into our lives by doing so. Or at least there is little enough that we are asking ourselves the question of its worth. So now we must also ask "can we make that sacrific again, knowing what we know now?"

For some of us, unless interventions to lower the barrier to entry of voting or to raise the motivation to trust Biden will improve our qualities of life are employed, it is very likely that the answer may be (or may be becoming) no. We can't make the sacrifice again. It took too much and returned too little and we may LITERALLY not have enough to give this time around.

We'll see I guess.

It doesn't escape me that I'm not hearing anything about voter accessability this year. It can sometimes start to feel a little like hedging yalls bets to me, as someone on whom those barriers are deeply impactful and restrictive.

Because if you (general) can point to how we (the vote-alienated) were blocked from the polls after, you can combine that with complaints of "leftists" abstaining for "political purity/perfectionism" to justify to yourselves (general) why Biden lost without reconciling just how much of a void his campaign has in terms of what it's offering people. If they were at least returning to their roots and using the Democratic party base to establish voter support resources and access alternatives, that would probably increase turnout by an order of 10 or so entirely on its own.

But that's being left to communities themselves, despite the gamechanger that would be facilitating such programs with the resources of a multi-billion dollar national political party. Overnight, millions might suddenly see voting as a real possibility, and it's not like the party is spending that money elsewhere in the campaign either. I'm not seeing his ads very often on tv/radio, i haven't seen hardly any online, no one is calling or canvassing, and only Bernie Sanders' team still texts or emails me anything other than requests for money even tho I've been signed up to party and candidate mailing list sets for decades at this point.

I don't know how to help you understand that I was actively EMPLOYED as campaign staff for a democratic presidential primary candidate in 2020 running volunteer events, canvassing shifts, GOTV events, etc. I personally canvassed half of the district I lived in and spoke to so many voters.

Do you want to take a wild guess how many candidates reached out to my community (besides the one I was on staff with) during primary season? One. Out of that entire stage of candidates, only 2 even had campaign staff on the ground in my district. And we were a battleground district in our state. We had the power to swing the entire state. But only like 15% of the candidates gave a fuck.

That hasn't gotten better, it's gotten worse, because now the only one of those two left with any access to an on-site campaign crew is Bernie Sanders, and while he is valiently trying to wrangle it into a GOTV program, he simply cannot do that by himself, especially as alienated as he is from the rest of the dominant wing of the party.

I need people to understand that the work on the ground looks so much different than online political ontological discussion and debate. It MATTERS how you interact with these systems and community needs. We're all doing what we can. What makes sense for us to do. It is REALLY easy to sink into the feeling of "everyone is just too stupid/uninformed to see things my way, or they're voting against they're best interests for some malicious reason" but I promise you that is simply not the reality of how politics happens in communities. Yes, even when someone is 100% objectively being a bigot. People have reasons for what they do, and those reasons mattered to act on to them, even if you don't understand why. If you want to get someone's buy in to change their behavior/beliefs on something, you need to first treat their reasons as a consistent internal logic, even if that means looking past what specific words someone is using towards the underlying values or needs they reflect.

[helenaheissner]

Love During Robot Fighting Time: Chapter 14

Hello, lovelies! Hope y'all are doing well :)

Don't forget you can read three chapters ahead on this story, twenty chapters ahead on "A Dream of Summer Rain", and two chapters ahead on "Magical Girl Exorcist Squad", by becoming a paid subscriber on my Substack or my Patreon!

***

Zeke

12 months earlier

I squatted in the Pits, putting the finishing touches on our minibot, Gurren, in preparation for our fight with Team Bottle Rocket in twenty minutes. I was so zoned in on getting all the screws extra tight that I almost missed my phone blaring out a Kendrick Lamar song. I groaned when I saw the caller ID. “Hi, Mom,” I said, attempting to keep the stress and frustration out of my voice. It was better to get whatever ‘conversation’ this was out of the way now- if I tried to put it off and ignore her, she’d just be even more cantankerous about it when we actually got around to it. 

“Hellllo, Ezeekielll,” she slurred, her words blending together at the borders of the syllables. Oh, good. “How are you this evening?”

“Uh, a little busy to be honest, Mom,” I said. 

“Busy? Busy with what? It’s not like you have a job.”

I breathed in a sharp sigh through my nose. “I do have a job, Mom. It’s just seasonal.”

“Those obnoxious shows you go on don’t count as a-”

“Mom, was there a specific reason you called?” I asked, focusing on keeping the screws tight. “Like I said, I’m a little busy.”

“Too busy to talk to your dear ol’ mum,” she said, her accent starting to slip out. She’d been training herself not to have one ever since she’d moved to the States back when she was a teenager, but sometimes it still flared up. Usually when she’d indulged in one too many Screwdrivers. “That’s a problem, you know- you’ll never get a girlfriend if you hate your own mother.”

“I don’t hate you, Mom,” I said monotone. 

“Love the exact phrasing there, Ezekiel. Very gentlemanly.”

The screwdriver, my screwdriver, a literal one, slipped out of my hands. And as I reached down for it, I noticed my breathing- sharp, fast, all inhale and holding my breath, only exhaling when I absolutely needed to. “Thank you, Mother, I try.”

“Don’t you get sarcastic with me, young man- that’s hardly a trait that will do you any favors with the ladies either.”

I reached for the screwdriver on the ground, but my hand trembled when I tried to grip it. It slipped out of my grasp and hit the floor once again. “Look, Mom, my match starts in a few minutes, I really need to finish these repairs on Dai Guren-”

“Oh God, I forgot you gave that stupid thing a name. How asinine.”

Cold, soggy shame dripped off of me, and I let myself inhale and exhale through my mouth. 

And of course she kept going: “And that’s another thing- why is it just you doing this? Don’t you have teammates for this nonsense? They don’t appreciate you. If they did, they wouldn’t force you to do all the work-”

“They don’t force me to do all the work, Mom!” I snapped. “And I’m doing these repairs because I’m good at them. They had to go handle other stuff for the match. It’s not actually that complicated, but you refuse to understand!”

A few moments of deafening silence poured out from the other end of the line. “This is clearly not going to be a productive conversation. I think I’m done with you for the evening. I’ll call you back when you’re in a more reasonable headspace.”

“Mom-”

She ended the call before I could get another word out. 

It wasn’t quiet in the pits- people were using saws to carve up metal, flames were welding parts together, drills were digging into machinery. All the high-pitched screeches coalesced into a singular plaintive wail. 

A tear fell off my chin and shattered on the ground. I tore off my work gloves and wiped my eyes, hoping nobody would see me. I wasn’t much of a crier. No reason to ruin that reputation now, when I had other things to focus on. The bot was ready for the fight, and that was what I had to focus on, not the hollow pit in my chest rapidly filling with anger and resentment and freaking exhaustion-

“Hey, what’s wrong?” 

My fingers parted across my visage. I hadn’t even realized my face was buried in my hands. I looked through the gaps to find Calloway there, standing across the narrow middle walkway that ran down the white room. He was standing there in jeans and a black hoodie drawn up over his head, but he pulled it back and shaked out his shaggy brown hair. His eyes always looked… Harsh, angry, aggressive. But not now, not at this moment. Now they looked… Softer. Concerned. And… Genuine, in their concern. I’d gotten pretty good at spotting the difference between genuine concern and artificial; having parents like mine forces you to learn as fast as possible. But right now, here, he… 

“I… Just a difficult phone call with my mom,” I said, pulling my hands away from my face entirely, directing my gaze at the floor. 

Calloway stepped forward and gave me a hug. I flinched- the guy really had no sense of personal space, but honestly… I needed it, then, so I hugged him back. “Thanks.”

“Of course.”

I mumbled, “I guess I just…”

“What?” Calloway asked.

“It’s nothing, it’s…”

“What?” Calloway said, pulling out of the hug and looking me directly in the face, furrowing his brow. 

“I’m… Just surprised that you care,” I said. 

He gulped and took a step backward, along with a slight bite to his lower lip that ended as soon as it began. “I, uh… Yeah, yeah that’s fair.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“No, you did,” he said, turning his head so he didn’t have to look me in the eyes anymore. “It’s fine. Really, it is. I just… I really must come off like I’m a lot, all the time, huh?”

“I… What do you want me to say here, dude?” I said, taking a step towards him. 

He took another step back. “Just the truth. Just… How you really feel.”

I drew in another deep breath. “Yes. You… You do.”

He gulped again. “That… That explains a buncha stuff. I kinda figured people knew I… But I guess they wouldn’t. Fair enough.”

“Look, Calloway-”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a playful wave of his hand, plastering a bogus smile onto his face. “Just means I sell the heel routine well. That’s not a bad thing. And this isn’t really about me- I was asking you what’s wrong. Um… Do you… Do you wanna talk about it?”

My phone alarm hollered inside my pants’ pocket. Ten minutes till the fight. They’d be starting the introductory monologues soon. “I dunno if I have time right now, but… I appreciate it. I really, sincerely do. Maybe… Maybe next time?”

“Next time I catch you crying, tough guy?” he said, the smile edging just a little closer to genuine. 

I forced out a little chuckle. “Yeah, I guess so. For now… Can I just get another hug?”

He nodded rapidly. “Of course.”

Then he went in for it and wrapped his arms around my back. And it felt… Good. Supportive. Strong, but not aggressive.

Maybe there was more to Keith Calloway than I thought.

***

NOW

I sprayed some breath spray into my mouth while I paced up and down the hallway of my apartment, my hands wringing together as I tried to keep my mind clear and focused. 

I liked Kate. That much was hard to deny. She was bright and funny and passionate, just radiated warmth and empathy, and I felt like I could let my guard down around her in a way I couldn’t around other people. Including Faith.

But I liked Faith. I had for a while now. She was chill and focused and creative, a freaking dancing ray of light that always brightened up my day, who I desperately wanted to protect and take care of. 

And they were both incredibly pretty. 

Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit what is wrong with me? Just like my jackass of a father, can’t keep it in my pants, can’t be happy with what I have, like a real man is supposed to. 

But that didn’t matter. I was going on a date with Katie tonight. I was moving on from Faith, because that was the right thing to do, because she didn’t like me back, because she didn’t swing that way and just wasn’t physically attracted to me. And Kate… She made it really easy to want to move on, and she seemed to really want to be with me, for some unfathomable reason. Holding her in my arms made me feel like the strongest person in the world; the way she’d just slid up to me and put herself there like it was the most natural fit possible… It felt really good. I felt really good around her. 

My phone buzzed, and I saw from the caller ID that it was my mom. 

My finger loomed over the ‘accept call’ button for a solid minute before the phone simply stopped ringing altogether. Then it immediately started ringing again, because my mom was physically incapable of taking no for an answer. 

A spark of anger caught in my chest, burning my insides and sending proverbial smoke out of my ears. Goddammit, I was twenty-three years old, financially self-sufficient, and living in my own place. She did NOT get to keep pulling this crap. She hadn’t reached out to me in months and now, when I had something legitimately important to do, she decided it was the perfect time to interrupt. Couldn’t even be bothered to text first, asking if now was a good time. 

I thought about a year ago, and the mess I’d become when my mom called before that match, and Kate, back before I’d known she was Kate, before she’d known she was Kate, before she and I could even call ourselves friends, let alone whatever we were now, had held me and comforted me. Didn’t have to be asked, just offered and did her best to make good on that offer. That was when it had started to dawn on me that underneath it all, she really was a kind person with a big heart. 

It was also when it really started to dawn on me that my mom was an absolute bitch. Maybe she wasn’t as unbearable as my dad, but it would be a truly Herculean feat to be anywhere near as unpleasant as that selfish asshole. 

I hit ‘ignore.’ 

I breathed out, slowly and carefully, leaning against the wall. I was emphatically not going to cry right now, because I didn’t want Kate to feel like she had to take care of me tonight. I wanted to take care of her, to show her that yes, she really was the cute, sweet, wonderful girl she was trying to be. 

The tumblers of our lock shifted as the front door opened. Faith stepped through, a sad smile on her face. “Heyo,” she said. “Your hot date is downstairs waiting for you. Show her a good time tonight, yeah?”

“Of course,” I nodded, double checking my pockets to make sure I had my phone and wallet. Good to go. “You gonna be okay by yourself tonight?”

She gave an errant wave of her hand and said, “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I can get caught up on my soaps.”

“You watch soap operas?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, old ones from the 1960s, mostly,” she said. “They’re really funny when you’re stoned.”

“Fair enough,” I said. I gave her a quick hug, which she happily accepted. “Don’t wait up for me!”

“Will do!” she said as I made my way out the door. 

I headed down the stairs and out front, where Kate’s pickup truck sat in the thin driveway that led into the parking garage below my building. I did a double-take when I saw her, leaning against the front of her truck. She wore a red dress that covered her chest wholesale, but beneath, what looked like boobs protruded from the dress in question. Falsies, presumably- Faith must have loaned her old ones out. Still, it couldn’t be denied that they looked real good on Kate, bringing the whole look together. Her dress had a slit going up the side, showing off her long, smooth legs well up her thick thighs. Bright red lipstick was painted across her mouth, and my whole body was screaming at me to cup her face in my hands and shove my tongue down her throat. So, of course, in my infinite intelligence and articulation, all I managed to choke out was, “Whoa.”

She smiled the kind of smile you want to protect with every fiber of your being. “Like what you see?” Her voice was high and breathy, each syllable enunciated slowly and carefully. She’d only been out for a few days and she’d already come so far. It was astonishing. It was… She was… 

“Absolutely beautiful,” I said, unable to blink. 

Her jaw dropped, and she stared at me.

Then a car pulled up behind her and honked at us- I recognized one of my neighbors behind the wheel, an older, heavyset woman named Nina. 

“C’mon, let’s get going,” Kate said. She gestured me into the truck and then we pulled out of the driveway. “So, where are we going?” she asked. 

“Uh, Indian place on Lincoln Boulevard. It’s over by my old college,” I said, trying not to stare at her too much and venture into the dubious territory of ‘creepy weirdo.’

“Sounds good, I love Indian food,” she smiled again. 

Kiss her, you idiot, my brain hollered. Wait, no, she’s driving. Bad idea. But kiss her before the end of the night! “How’d the appointment go?”

“Fantastic! I’ll be able to start hormones hopefully by the end of the week!”

“That’s fantastic!” I said. “How’d the other one go?”

She spat out a petulant sigh. “Less good. My sponsor is…”

���Is?”

“Let’s be charitable and go with ‘pragmatic,’” she said, her voice dropping low. She grunted with frustration and her eyes peeled wide as she heard her own words. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, trying my best to sound reassuring. “I don’t mind if you use your… Other voice.” I managed to stop myself from saying ‘boy voice’ or ‘normal voice.’ Thank God.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “It’s… It’s not that I don’t want you to hear it, it’s that I don’t like hearing it.”

“That’s fair,” I said. 

“But yeah, if I want to keep Gaines as my sponsor, I may or may not have to lean into this whole trans thing as part of my ‘brand.’ Ugh, I hate that word. Gag me.”

“Is that a request?” I smirked. 

She blushed redder than the Red Comet. “What if it is?”

“Then I’d be happy to accommodate.” What the hell, when did I get this bold?! It must have been my dick talking for me. Made sense- I’d spent… Several years not listening to it. How long had it been since I’d last had sex, anyway? Two years? Three? 

Getting ahead of yourself, Underhill. “Do you think you’re gonna stick with Gaines?” I asked. 

“Don’t see what choice I have,” she replied as she turned onto Lincoln and started driving west. “I don’t exactly have the capital to self-fund. How do you and Faith raise money, anyway?”

“Uh, a couple ways. Grant from our old college, a loan from Faith’s parents, and the money she and I raise doing temporary engineering jobs during the off-season. Usually like…, four, five months full time work with one of the aerospace companies in the city, then we spend the rest of the year working on the fun stuff.”

“I should probably look into something like that,” Kate said. “I don’t dislike working for my parents, but I’m never gonna make the kind of money I need to keep going in the ‘bot battle circuit working twenty hours a week at an indie retail outlet.”

“I have some contacts at a few places that I can send your way,” I offered. “Might be able to help you get a foot in the door, do some interviews.”

“That… Would be amazing,” she beamed. “You’d really do that for me?”

“‘Course I would,” I said. I want you to keep smiling that smile. “I just… Want you to be happy.”

“Thanks,” she said. “For… Everything.”

“No problem, Katie,” I said. 

She giggled. God, her laugh was adorable. So, I said that out loud. 

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You have a cute laugh,” I said simply.

“It’s not cute… I’m not…”

“If you’re about to say you’re not cute, just know that there’s nothing cuter than a cute girl insisting she’s not cute.”

“... Dammit. You’re right.”

 “Gotcha,” I said, snapping my fingers. 

We carried on like that until we got to the restaurant, where, to my astonishment, we were seated immediately. I ordered a lamb vindaloo with a side of garlic naan, and she ordered butter chicken with onion naan. We split an order of vegetable samosas as well, and we were seated by the window looking out into the street. A pair of candles sat between us on our glass table, casting a bit of glow in the darkened dining area. 

“So, you went to that school over there, then?” Kate asked. “LMU?”

“Yeah, all four years.”

“How’d you wind up there?” she asked. 

“Uh, well, I applied to UCLA and didn’t get in,” I said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Which is true of, uh, most of the school, actually.”

“They couldn’t get into UCLA?” Kate chuckled. 

“Or USC. Or Harvey Mudd. Or Cal Poly.”

“Ahhh, gotcha. You said you grew up around here, right?”

“For a given value,” I said. “I was raised in Riverside.”

“Inland Empire, I see,” she said. “That place as horrifying as David Lynch makes it look?”

I chuckled. “Only when it’s on fire.”

“So, like, all Summer?”

“Pfft, basically.” 

“It’s funny, you know, we grew up in the same neck of the woods but never met till we started doing what we do,” Kate said, resting her chin on her hands while her elbows were propped up on the table. “I know that Venice and Riverside aren’t actually that close together-”

“Especially with the traffic in this town making it a longer trek,” I said. 

“Still,” she said. “It’s cool, knowing that someone like you was relatively close this whole time.” 

Her eyes… 

“Zeke?” she asked. “You okay?”

“Hm? Yeah, why?”

“You went quiet and started staring at me,” she said, raising her head, putting her hands flat on the table, concern exuding from her frown. “Did I lay it on too thick?”

I shook my head. “Not at all.” I reached for her hand. “Honestly, I’m worried about doing the same, so why don’t we just be ourselves tonight, and see how that works for us?”

“I’d like that,” she smiled again. That smile… 

The server, a middle-aged Indian man with pot-belly and an impressive beard, brought our samosas and a few different sauces over and set them between us. And with him came, very unexpectedly, some familiar faces. 

“Zeke?” Olivia asked. She was flanked by her new teammates, Tom, a medium-height black man in his late twenties with a shaved head and massive hands, and Winston, a white boy with a wild mane of brown hair who looked like he was still in college. And standing next to them were Team Forest Fire and Team Sparky-Sparky-Boom. Forest Fire was three guys all in their thirties, each of them shredded and rocking full beards. Their captain, Lance Masterson, was a behemoth of a white man with a shaved head and some burn marks on his arms and neck; his teammates were Jake George, a tall black man with long dreads and nose ring, and Evan Hernandez, a shorter Mexican-American man built like a powerlifter. Team Spark-Sparky-Boom, meanwhile, was two people, a husband and wife team called David and Eileen Portman. David was comfortably in his early forties, hair more salt than pepper, clean shaven and thin as a rail; Eileen looked like she was in her late thirties, and was shorter and thicker, with long brown hair beginning to spark with silver. 

A low-pitched groan escaped my throat, and I was surprised at how loud it was, only to look over and see that Kate was making roughly the same mouth-noise. 

“H-h-hey,” I eventually choked out. “How y’all doing?”

“Not bad,” Masterson said. 

“Not bad at all!” Hernandez said, snapping his fingers and pointing at Kate.

She blushed, then looked down at her food. 

“So, this must be Kate,” Olivia said. 

“Um, how do you know about-”

“Faith told me.”

“Faith told you what?” I said, my eyes narrow. 

“Oh, just that you’d finally found a girl for you… Wait a sec. Wait wait wait a second. Calloway? Is that you under all that makeup?”

My eyes bulged with panic, and I saw Kate’s lips trembling and her hands wringing together. Oh, this was bad- she wasn’t ready to come out to everyone at work yet, she’d said as much to me in the car ride. She’d been planning to come out in two weeks when she had her next fight, with the same kind of surprise announcement that Faith had been afforded. 

And now… Now she was having to come out to her work rivals by accident. For the third time in two weeks.

Goddammit.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice dropping low. Then, in her higher, breathier voice, she said, “Yes. It’s me. My preferred name is Kate, pronouns are she/her.”

Olivia’s eyebrows shot up. 

“Oh, so you’re a trans too?” Mrs. Portman said. 

I died inside a little bit. 

“I, uh, yeah. I’m a trans woman,” Kate said.

“Wow, two of you in the tournament this year, huh? What are the odds?” Mrs. Portman said. “And this isn’t a publicity stunt?”  

“Dear, hush, that’s rude,” Mr. Portman said, playfully swatting his wife on the arm, blissfully unaware of the psychic damage he and his wife had just inflicted on Kate. 

“No,” Kate said, eyes dropping low, fingers drumming nervously on the table. Oooohhhh dear. “I’m just… I’m a woman.”

“Hey, listen, it’s nice to see you all, but Kate and I were just trying to have a nice, quiet dinner,” I said. “Alone. As in just the two of us-”

“That’s fine, broseph,” Masterson said, “We can all take that big table outside, leave you two to your date.”

“I’d appreciate that a lot,” I nodded, putting a metric ton of emphasis behind each syllable. 

“As would I,” Kate said. Practically squeaked. Must… Protect… At all costs. 

“No problem, brosephine,” Masterson said. “You look great, bee-tea-dubs.”

They all cleared out and headed for the massive rectangular longtable outside… Except Olivia, who remained standing exactly where she was in front of us with her brow creased and her hands on her hips and her jaw slack. 

“Uh, Olivia, you coming with?” Tom asked while standing in the doorway, with an ‘aw shit here we go again’ expression on his face.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there,” Olivia said. 

Tom sighed and let the door close as he stepped outside. You tried, Tom. You tried. 

“Can, uh, I help you with something?” I said, trying not to get too distressed by Kate’s thousand-yard stare. Given that she’d only a few days prior called out and challenged Olivia in front of a screaming crowd while on camera and then immediately proceeded to have a massive panic attack… I didn’t like what this was almost certainly doing to her brain. 

“I just… When Faith said you’d found someone, this wasn’t what I expected,” Olivia said. “Does she… She knows who Kate really is, right?”

“Yeah, she does,” I said, creasing my own brow, “Why do you ask?”

“I just… I really just… Calloway? Seriously?! Calloway?!” Olivia said. “Of all freaking people, you choose Calloway over Faith?!”

“I’m sitting right here, you know,” Kate said. 

“R-right. Sorry, I… You look nice,” Olivia said. 

“Thanks,” Kate said. “Just, uh, quick question: why do you care?”

“Because I care about Faith,” Olivia said. 

“Right, sure you do,” Kate said. “You care so much about the girl you brutally dumped in the most vulnerable moment of her life. Right. Definitely. Absolutely.”

“Also, why would Faith care?” I said, attempting to navigate the conversation away from Kate’s (admittedly accurate) criticism of Olivia. “She and Kate have patched things up- they’re friends now.”

“Really?” Olivia said. 

“Yes, really,” Kate said. “She and I hung out literally all day today. She helped me pick out this dress, helped me with my voice. She and I are fine. And she’s fine with this.”

“Oh, honey,” Olivia said. “You don’t… Really believe that. Do you?”

Kate blinked, and her eyes went low again. 

“What does that mean?” I asked. 

“It means-”

“Don’t,” Kate said, slamming her hand against the table. 

Olivia took a step back. “Right. Sorry. It’s… Look, Zeke, I know you and I were never super close, but I gotta ask- is Faith really completely on board with all this?”

“Yes! Why wouldn’t she be?” Did someone slip me a crazy-pill? What the hell was going on?!

“I just… Can’t believe you would choose Ke… Kate over Faith,” Olivia said. 

“It’s not a choice,” I said, grabbing Kate’s hand and squeezing it tightly, a fire lighting inside my head. “I like Kate. She’s a beautiful woman, inside and out.”

“Phrasing,” Kate said in a thirsty whisper, eyebrows raised. 

“Babe, not now,” I said. 

“Babe?” she said with a bright smile.

“Babe? Wow,” Olivia said. “This is… A lot to accept, tbh.”

“And why, exactly, do you get a say?” I said. 

“I-”

“That was a rhetorical question,” I said. “You don’t. At all.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll back off,” Olivia said, holding up her hands, palms flat. “I just… Can’t help but think you’re making a mistake. You and Faith would be cute together, that’s all I’m saying.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growled. 

“You would be,” Kate whispered. 

“What?” I said. Seriously, WHAT?!

“Backing away now,” Olivia said. “I’m sorry for saying anything- you’re right, it’s really none of my business. But, uh, Calloway? I still remember what you said last Friday. I’ll see you in the battle box.”

And with that, she walked away. My head spun with confusion and anger at the implications of what she said, the insinuations, the freaking hubris. And on top of it all, Kate looked ready to cry again. 

Our waiter finally came over with our food on a tray and set it down, but looked at us with a worried expression. “Would you two like this to go, by any chance?”

“Yes, please,” Kate and I said simultaneously. 

We waited till the food was put in takeaway boxes, and we made a hasty departure. I was pretty sure I heard Mrs. Portman shouting something at us as we walked out the front door, but I wasn’t sure what. “Where should we take all this?” Kate asked. 

“I have one idea, if you’re up for it,” I said, with a grin I hoped would be the first step to salvaging this evening. 

We headed for Dockweiler Beach, only a few miles from the restaurant, basically deserted in the waning hours of the evening before it was closed to the public. Waves lapped against the sand in a steady, drawling rhythm, and the rich, relaxing scent of seawater filled the air. We sat on a blanket Kate kept in her truck, eating our food while watching the tide crashing into the shore and the setting sun casting an orange-gold glow over everything. Kate had tied her hair back while we ate, but loose strands kept blowing about from the seabreeze and colliding with her face.

I reached over and brushed a strand back, and she smiled at me. “Thank you.”

“Of course. I’m, uh, sorry about what happened.”

“Don’t be, it isn’t your fault,” she said. “Honestly, you handled it really well. Way better than I would have in your position.”

“And what position is that?”

“The guy’s. You’re… You’re a really good guy, Zeke Underhill,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. 

I laughed in spite of myself. “That’s nice of you to say. I… I’m not really used to hearing it,” I admitted, slumping my shoulders. 

“I find that hard to believe. You’re such a gentleman.”

“I… The thing is,” I started. Oh boy, I was about to admit this to her. This was big. I rarely talked about this. Not even with Faith. “... My parents… Are not the types to give out praise often, and a lot of it had to do with them thinking I wasn’t living up to their expectations of what a man was supposed to be. My Mom… Well, she’s English, she’s got all these old-fashioned, old-world ideas about men and women. She sent me to my room when I cried at a movie once when I was seven. My dad wasn’t much better- kind of a rough and tumble man’s man type. When I didn’t make my high school’s basketball team in ninth grade, he reamed me out for half an hour straight. Never mind the fact that I was short and fat back then. Which they both reminded me of constantly.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry,” Kate said, putting down her food and placing her hand on my shoulder. I gave it a squeeze. She continued, “My parents have always been so chill and supportive. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to… To grow up with that instead of what I had.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Honestly, I’m mostly over it at this point. I moved out for college when I was eighteen and never looked back. The only thing that really still gets to me is how hypocritical they were about everything. My dad… He’s a total pig, cheats on my mom constantly, and Mom just drinks to forget it every time the proof is thrown in her face. They’re both so full of shit, but I still… I still have this fear sometimes, that they’re right, that I’m not good enough, that there’s something I’m doing wrong, that…”

“That?”

“... That I’ll be a cheater like my dad, constantly balancing multiple girls, stringing along someone I’m supposed to be committed to. I think… I think that’s what bugged me about what Olivia was insinuating, like I was somehow being disloyal to Faith. Which is ridiculous, because… I… And she doesn’t even… And I’m not-”

“Not what?” Kate said, wrapping her arms around me. 

“I’m not with her. I probably won’t ever be with her,” I said.

“... You really like her, don’t you?”

“... I’m not sure you want me to answer that question, Katie.”

“You already have,” she said. “It’s kinda obvious.”

“I… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Kate said, nuzzling my shoulder. “You’re allowed to like more than one person at the same time. And you’ve liked her for a while, I’m not surprised I’m…”

“You’re what?”

“... Second prize.”

 “You’re not,” I said, turning around and putting my hands on her cheeks. “Listen to me, Kate Calloway. I recognize we’ve only just started really getting to know each other, but in that time, you’ve shown yourself to be… Amazing. Caring. Funny and thoughtful. Beautiful. I… I don’t know if I deserve you, but I’d like… To keep seeing you like this. To get to know you better, and to hold your hand while you go on this journey.”

Tears streamed out her eyes, and she bit her lower lip before saying, “Would you… Would you still say that if Faith liked you back?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed. “Faith is gay.”

“...”

I blinked. “Faith is gay, right?”

“I…,” Kate stammered, pulling out of my hands. “I’ve said too much.”

I blinked one long, sustained blink as the gears turned in my head. Faith… Wasn’t gay? And she… It… This made it seem like… 

Like she… 

No. 

Just, just… No.

There was a beautiful girl who I liked in front of me, and I wasn’t gonna let her slip away. “You’re fine. And even if she did, it wouldn’t matter.”

“You… You really mean that?”

“She’s not here with me right now, on this beach, sharing this meal, this evening,” I said. “Life moves forward, not back. If Faith really liked me, she should have said something. You, though, you said something. You made the first move, and… God, I’ve had to do that myself so many times, only for it to fall apart. Do you have any idea how good it makes me feel, that you like me enough to be the one to push things forward? How special that makes me feel? Because it’s amazing… You make me feel… Amazing, Kate.”

She looked at me with those big blue eyes, shining in the multicolored light of dusk as the sun set over the horizon, her red lips spread wide, hope and astonishment and joy radiating out of every inch of her. She gulped, and then she grabbed my lapel and said, “I’m gonna push things forward again now. Is that okay?” 

I didn’t answer. I just went for it, pressing her lips against mine, melting into her as we made out on the beach while the sun finished setting. My heart was alight with ecstasy, my lust burning at maximum temperature. I didn’t know for sure if I liked her more than I liked Faith. I just knew that in that moment, there was nobody I’d rather be with, nobody I’d rather be kissing, nobody I’d rather be getting to know.

For just one moment, everything was crystal clear. 

“You really had to ask?” I said as I pressed my forehead against hers, reveling in her aftertaste.

She smiled. Oh, Lord, that smile. “I just had to make sure.”

We carried on like that for a while longer, her hands touching mine, my lips touching hers, our bodies interlocking.

[bottlecaprabbitgames]

The Coming Future! (A Massive Life Update)(Raffles coming soon!)

So, hi guys! There are a lot of reasons I've been away, but some of them are ones many of you are aware of already.

I have a toxic, abusive home life. Between trying to appease my mom's husband to let me live with them as I don't have anywhere else to go, having to get a lot of medical shit taken care of, and dealing with my mental health, I have not had the funds to move out. To be honest, Mississippi is just not... poor-friendly. The state is one of the most poverty stricken ones and it is for a reason.

I've also had relationship issues that has not helped. I now have two diagnosed chronic illnesses (fibromyalgia from my hypermobile joints, a combination of illnesses leading to an autoimmune skin illness), and I am recovering from having to stop a medication that did so, so much harm to my mental health. And, if that wasn't bad enough, my coworker went on vacation and I was expected to work 23 days straight. Three 11-14 hour shifts a week, the others at 7 hours. My only reprieve was I got four days off till yesterday so I could try to mentally process a lot of shit going on, but honestly, more shit just piled up yesterday while I was at work. I do not have have another off day till September 2nd.

I say all of this, because there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. A friend of mine from my childhood and I reconnected back in February, and have quite literally talked every single day since. We are both in incredibly toxic households, we both have mental health issues, and we're both LGBTQIA+. We want to move in together in a city he's lived in before, and a city I have actually wanted to live in myself: New Orleans. Or, more specifically, a small surburb outside of greater New Orleans, so it'll be cheaper but we'll still be able to go and just... live for once.

I bring this up because over the next few months, we'll be holding raffles. Paid entries ($1 = 1 entry for MOST physical items) as well as free entries, where we'll have prizes from my crocheted works to his KPOP memorabilia to me writing scenarios with 500-1k word minimums. All of this, to help us raise money to move out and actually have a life for once. Moving out will also mean I can actually go to part-time work again, and get back to what I ACTUALLY enjoy: writing! I just need the time to do so, and given I've been working 6-7 day weeks for over a month now... I just. Have not had the time.

So! Keep a look out if you're interested in helping a couple of queers or want some neato beato scarves/shawls/scrunchies/cat ear coasters/etc or kpop memorabilia! The first raffle will be out before the end of August!

[thatswhatsushesaid]

personal/professional anecdote related to my last reblog:

I remember when I was first starting out in my masters program back in 2014 and approached my advisor with my thoughts about how to affordably approach digital preservation of records, I received the most skeptical and condescending of responses, and it took the wind right out of my sails for the next two years.

my advisor: how interesting, can you demonstrate how this would work

me: well, no, but I can show you the website of a distributed digital preservation network in my home state that spreads the costs of maintaining the network across all participating member institutions, which lowers the barriers of access to small community archives and libraries

him: cool, can you bring up the website now?

me, getting out a pen and a notepad: no, I don't have a laptop, but I can write down the URL for you--

him, cutting me off: you don't have a laptop? you've enroled in a masters program here at [prestigious canadian university] and you don't have a laptop? you are going to struggle in my courses. you'll struggle in the whole program.

me, totally thrown off-balance and humiliated but trying not to show it: um, I have a desktop computer at my apartment. the graduate studies office said we could rent laptops from the faculty for completing coursework, and I've always taken my notes by hand--

him: if you are serious about this field, you really need to get a laptop.

me, wondering what any of this has to do with my ideas: I can't afford a laptop.

him, smiling and shrugging his shoulders: (:

it really bears mentioning that this guy's background and CV were why I applied to this program, put myself nearly $70K into student loan debt, and moved myself literally a cross a continent in the first place. (don't fret about the money; I have nearly paid it all off by now, but the me of 2014 certainly had no way of knowing that was going to happen.)

I just remember sitting across from this titan in the field while he smiled at me with this expression of pleasant condescension on his face, and I remember trying desperately to understand why my inability to be able to afford a laptop as new immigrant graduate student with barely enough money in the bank to buy groceries or cat food or make that month's rent had any bearing on the value of my ideas. (ideas which were, you'll note, about how to make digital preservation work when you don't have any fucking money.) what I can't remember is how I ended the conversation; I just know that I went home and shamefully begged my dad for help buying a laptop that neither of us could really afford to spend money on at the time.

it's been nearly ten years since I had that conversation with my advisor, and I am now what just about anyone would consider 'professionally successful' in my field, but that field is not digital preservation. because I was so shamed by this conversation, and I so completely internalized my advisor's attitude that my inability to afford this one piece of technology meant I was not 'serious' about the field. which is stupid, and I have the experience and self-confidence and success to my name now to know just how stupid that is.

anyway if I bump into him at an alumni reunion sometime, I think I'll tell him exactly how much his words undermined my self-confidence and changed my professional trajectory, and politely ask him to never say that to another poor, first year graduate student ever again.

[moonlight-tmd]

Prowlbee dancing based off this scene?

Hmm that's very interesting.

I suppose they would do something like a competitive tango or something similar where they'll both try to be the better dancer. I had just the right idea a while back where I found a very cool tune on youtube- a soundtrack named "Angelica" from "Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides".

The before dating shenanigans with these 2 are just too good to resist so this is yet again the setting for this- i guess Sari, Bee and Bulkhead were having yet another fun time either dancing to Just Dance game or just casually dancing to the music they played and Prowl started complaining about the sound.

Bee took charge in arguing with him per usual and at some point he accused Prowl of being a horrible dancer in such a way that made Prowl want to prove otherwise. Bee challaged Prowl to dance with him and the fool accepted. He expected bee to throw on some pop music to sync dance to like always but he didn't expect a latino tango music to start playing

"With all the flips and twirls you do in combat surely you'll know how to dance to this, don't you?" Bee was far too cocky and Prowl bit the bait without thinking. They started dancing.

At first it was calm, some occasional twirls and transitions between poses but then the rythm quickened. And let me tell ya, they were going at it. One moment Prowl was leading the next he was trying to catch up to Bee and vice versa. Some of the moves didn't even look like tango but well synced combat. Unltimately tho, Bee took the lead for good and brought Prowl on a fast paced adventure- they were close then far then close again, Prowl's pedes has trouble keeping up with Bee's, the way he pulled him aroudn almsot made him look like he glided. As the song neared its climax Bee spun him around so fast and did a astonishing dip pose just as the final note played from the speaker.

Everyone clapped, even Optimus and Ratched who came out to see what the commotion was about. Prowl was... wow. He honestly did not expect Bee to be such a good dancer. The passion and the way Bee held him- looked at him during the dance clouded his mind. He was snapped from the dazed state when he heard Bee say something to him.

" I- uhh-" Prowl tried to come up with something to reply to whatever Bee said but Bee seemed to take that as an answer. "I take it you're impressed by me, heheheh.~" He teased in such a tone Prowl could barely get his thoughts together.

Theeeeen he went straight into continuing their little dance party with some obnoxious pop and electronica music and just like that, the charm poofed into thin air. Prowl, annoyed yet again, decided to just go back into his room and try to block the sound out with his earmuffs that Sari got him.

Bulkhead knew what Bee was onto and so did everyone else,... except Bee himself it seemed. Prowl was also very clueless despite obvious signs. They watched them dance around each other metaphorically for so long and now they were doing it literally and still didn't get the memo! At this point someone would just have to tell them...

Well, they were pretty much right about everything. One thing is that Bee actually knew what he was doing and somehow persuaded/paid Blitzwing to teach him how to dance good. The 'con might be a bad guy but he sure knows how to move the frame to impress someone. He might not be aware of being in love with Prowl but he sure as hell wants him to like him and be impressed. And Prowl did think about their dance whenever he heard similar music so I suppose it worked just fine!

[sodacansculptures]

I started following you on Facebook some years ago, and then apparently forgot all about your stuff. It just popped into my head randomly and I wanted to see if you're still active and if you're still making soda can sculptures?

Hi, I apologize, I have no idea when you sent this since Tumblr (at least mobile) doesn't have time stamps, and for whatever reason, I don't get notifications about messages. You're the first person I've heard who has migrated from my Facebook page to my Tumblr, so thank you for joining the blog! Way more commentary here than there where my mom can see.

To answer your question succinctly: I am alive, and that's about the best I can say I've been since covid. 

(I have donation links at the bottom, if you feel moved to want to help me.)

The extended director's cut answer:

After I made the Eevee sculpture, grad school ramped up and I figured I'd return to sculpting after I got my degree and settled into a job. However, I graduated in Spring of 2020, so the job I had lined up was withdrawn, and with all the budget cuts and layoffs in my field, I was competing for jobs with people who were trying to reenter the field and had decades more experience than me. 

I did 100+ applications (I lost count at 120-something), dozens of interviews (including getting to the final round of all that had such a format--which is a stupid format. You don't need to meet me in a formal pretense 3 times, ask me riddles, have me take multiple hour-long aptitude tests, plus make me travel on my own dime just to tell me "no" and not even send like a "2nd Place Loser" gift basket or accept my LinkedIn request or anything). I got super stressed and super depressed. 

I was so busy with trying to find a job and trying to deal with the breakdowns of not finding one. I tried applying in all the fields I was capable of at all levels: executive, mid, and gruntwork. I was turned down from entry level, no-talent-necessary jobs because I was overqualified. I was turned away from the others because of the lack of experience and unprecedented level and caliber of competition.

I was (still am) unable to pay my bills and, when not having breakdowns, I was calling, emailing, filling out applications, etc. for any and all financial aid. It was very arduous work and tedious with all the documentation they wanted from me, hold times on the phone, etc. 

I had a non-profit (ADVOCAP) laugh at me when I asked for rent help because apparently they were overwhelmed and I wasn't going to get anything as I didn't have a job or kids and was considered a non-priority. Later when I was working with the ADRC, I asked if my case manager (I applied for disability, but I'll explain in a bit) if she knew of any rent help. She basically scolded me for asking and told me that it was unethical of me to seek that because "that's for people who actually have a chance." People who have jobs, she means. She explained that that money wasn't meant for me, and that was a whole unexpected slap in the face with a bag of dogshit. Didn't realize we had devolved into a utilitarian society quite that quickly.

I started working with FSET (my state's employment training and search help program. I was literally trying everything. Like I had also called my college and emailed all my professors asking for job help, and they had no answers other than like, "look online"). After months of no luck, FSET eventually convinced me to sign with a temp agency.

I worked 2 temp jobs that treated me like garbage (worsening my depression) and also paid me as such. I had lost all my savings to trying to stay afloat and my free time was non-existent, unless you count the hours I'd spend in the middle of the night just walking around my neighborhood listening to music--in an attempt to stop what seemed like endless crying--while I cried.

I tried selling plasma but they rejected me because I couldn't ever get my heart rate low enough, as my antidepressants increase heart rate. I tried going off of them, but I was on them for a reason, so I need to go back on.

When I graduated, I had bought myself a PS4 as a graduation gift to myself. I could afford it and thought I earned it. All the atmosphere of rejection and failure the pandemic created for me and my link to survival (employment should not be tied to survival. I was doing everything right and the system was failing me direly while virtually no one else who shared my experiences understood why I couldn't get a job when "everywhere is hiring" and "nobody wants to work anymore") and I started to hate myself for stuff like gifting myself the PS4. I felt undeserving, like a waste of resources, etc. because those were the messages I was constantly receiving directly and indirectly.

I eventually landed a job in my field and was hired on the spot. I felt like I had hit the jackpot and finally was going to be okay. Surprisingly to everyone in my life, the job made my life even worse.

I signed an NDA due to being horribly abused for the 10 months I was there, so I can't say much more than I just barely paid off my credit card, still had no free time as I was salary and worked nights and weekends in addition to my scheduled hours because the real reason they hired me instantly was not because I impressed them but rather because they were collapsing and desperate for anyone with some level of responsibility and capability. I hated that job, was bullied and abused extremely badly by coworkers and bosses and HR was no help, and when my performance review came back with negative impressions of me when I was sacrificing so much to keep the employment entity alive and functional, I completely broke.

I ended up hospitalized for months for suicide, and part of the NDA included resigning. I never fully recovered and don't think I ever will. I think I've seen and experienced too much to return to the idea that I could be the trailblazer my professors projected me to be (I now think professors don't actually provide an accurate representation of the field and encourage with no basis for their optimism). 

The human mind is very easy to manipulate with propaganda, and I didn't catch myself being in a sort of “main character syndrome” and thinking that because I was Valedictorian of my graduating class and that I had so many national and international recognitions, awards, accolades, and qualifications that I was, for lack of a better term, pulling myself up by the bootstraps and going to be rewarded with a promising future where success is not just viable but imminent. I knew the world wasn't fair and that some people could do all the prescribed “right” steps and fail, but the operating paradigm (that had been ingrained in me since childhood from teachers who saw me as bright) I had held told me that I was far too talented and hard-working to fail. I had very little doubt that I wouldn't be successful. I was an ideal, hypothetical model of a pre-successful American worker.

So anyway, I didn't expect to have all the trouble that I faced finding a good job. At the end of the first summer of covid with nothing but rejections and employers affirming to me that there was nothing I could have improved on to get the job other than have prior experience, I was a discouraged worker who didn't even try anymore. 

That's when FSET convinced me to do the temp agencies (who dropped me because one employer who was inhumanely abusive and ironically an HR department) gave a bullshit reason about me violating a protocol so they wouldn't have to make good on their promise to hire me after the temp period. 

(I had allergies and it was literally the exact week in September when allergies were at their worst. A coworker, who hated me for some reason I never figured out and can only assume was jealousy, reported me for having a runny nose and I was immediately escorted out for bringing covid symptoms into the building. If I didn't go to work any day I had a runny nose, I wouldn't go any day. I take allergy meds literally every day of my life. My parents kept me too clean as a baby or something and didn't let me eat enough dirt, so an allergy panel showed I was allergic to every single common indoor and outdoor allergen).

Back to my suicidal hospitalization: I could say so much on the inpatient part. Suffice it to say I was never given my meds and there were no groups because they were understaffed and constantly wound up/pissed because of the uncooperative patients, so it was like prison where you had to argue with staff to get your basic needs met, and no soft surface existed and the water was always freezing, so it genuinely felt like being locked in a concrete box with no sunlight, no one on your side (they lied and said they called my psychiatrist and therapist. They never did. They also lied about ordering my meds), and no contact with the outside world. It was like a cruelly-designed Mr. Beast challenge with no reward in the end. 

My friends said I was messed up for 2 weeks after and scary af because I was in survival-fight mode that would not turn off. I also was too overwhelmed by the outside world when I got out and could only eat pre-packaged snacks for a while because that was all I was used to/comfortable with.

Part of the agreement to let me leave inpatient was to do an intensive all-day outpatient program. I was actually dropped from that by insurance because I had undiagnosed ADHD among all my other issues and couldn't show up on time or sometimes at all. I still don't have my ADHD figured out because I had to convince my psychiatrist to refer me to a neuropsych who booked out for months to test me. I did it and got “Yes, much ADHD. All of the ADHD. Very wow.” So my psychiatrist finally believed me and agreed to start me on ADHD meds.

My psychiatrist and I are still working to find an ADHD med that would work for me. Vyvanse helped for a time, but my body metabolized it too quickly, leaving me with only around 6 functional hours in the day. I'm currently on extended-release Adderall, but so far not much help and there are too many other variables that could be fucking with it, like that my sleep-wake cycle is extremely unpredictable and I have a million appointments every day, so I am constantly sleep-deprived and am actually busier now than I was in grad school or any 8-hour job I worked.

The breakdown I had triggered me to develop fibromyalgia, so that has been a whole ordeal. I'm constantly in pain, it again took many months to see any doctor about it, and the meds take so long to start taking effect that we've been trying since June to find something that works.

The crucible that was my pandemic experience didn't refine me like fire refines gold or whatever the saying is but rather left me burnt, and not in the way that you can scrape the charred parts off of toast but like BURNT burnt (I can't think of an example. Maybe a popsicle. You're not getting that back once you take a flamethrower to it. Plus the stick would crumble into ash. RIP popsicle).

My life lately is a lot of appointments I often miss and have to reschedule, arguments with various agencies and even my doctors, breakdowns, and driving for Uber Eats because no one can fire me (but it pays beans and I get flack from restaurants and customers AND Uber because somehow the driver is the scapegoat for any issue that arises. I was so proud of my delivery aptitude and quality service until the tip-baiters and people being assholes for no reason started hitting me as common and daily occurrences). 

A lot of people don't understand how UberEats works, but Uber doesn't even pay their driver enough to cover gas or depreciation on their vehicle for the mileage, much less the value of the driver's time and physical efforts. Tips are literally ⅔ of my income and my income does not cover my bills despite all the time I put in and algorithm I set up for myself that determines which trips to accept/reject for the most profit. It's a very toxic and unprotected form of employment. A lot of people lie that I didn't give them their food so that they can get a refund, but that comes back on me and risks my account being deactivated. It's virtually a fear-based system with some tricky artificial competition that Uber likes to throw in from time to time to convince us to drive for less and less pay. 

I've looked into all the alternatives like GrubHub, Spark, DoorDash, etc. but I've been on their waiting lists for years, including GrubHub booting me off their list even though I was always quick to respond to their periodic question of if I still wanted to be on the list.

Between depression and ADHD, I can't work a normal job. I no longer have the capacity to keep a routine and can't show up to things with any level of reliability despite how badly I want to. I also don't have the spoons to deal with working with others or being accountable for tasks that feel--idk how to articulate it, but like--stupid to my autism. If something seems inefficient or not progressive (like not helpful to humanity) to me, I can't get my brain to do it. And with ADHD, if it's not interesting to me/something I am passionate about (I was extremely lucky that learning and receiving the praise from teachers I never got from my parents was my passion that got me so far and through multiple degrees), I can't get my brain to let me do it. Sometimes I just can't do anything, including things I want to do, and simply end up stuck. I wouldn't last in any job that wasn't self-directed and only happening when I have the spoons to be available. My options are very limited. And Uber can be slow. I've had times where I've waited 13 hours and not gotten a single request that wasn't going to cost me money to run.

Uber has some personal difficulties for me. In the summer, I found it a little bit fun, but now that it's cold, my Raynaud's is painful and I don't enjoy having to watch out for people who got their licenses from cereal boxes and don't know how to drive in the snow. It's an unpleasant sensory experience for me to work and honestly risky safety-wise. People don't turn on their porch lights for some reason (I have a headlamp now) and don't salt their walkways, and I'm uncoordinated because my dad didn't throw a ball at me enough as a kid probably, so there's ice, the treads on my boots are shot (and I can't afford to replace them), and I get banged up from falling on concrete. 

I have a chiropractor and physical therapist, and they each said even before this that they could see me every day and still have something to work on with me. It's affirming, at least, to hear that professionals can physically feel how in pain my body is and that it's not just me being a baby. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I have PTSD (including from the traumas of my various pandemic experiences) and have horrible nightmares every night where I jerk around a lot in my sleep. I wake up every day feeling like I got hit by a bus, which is also partially why I don't get places on time. 

On my own time, I'll spend 2 hours trying to get out of bed both overcoming the pain to move and convincing myself to get the willpower to. It's so much easier to just lie there and accept it, especially when I don't look forward to having to do another day. I don't feel rested because I spent the night working my body and brain, so I'm not sure I ever am rested. I need so much more sleep now, too, with fibromyalgia. This adds to my stress of outpacing my bills and just keeping up with the maintenance of myself and my apartment because that's less time I have to get things done.

I have 4 alarms (phone vibrating plus noise, an earthquake pillow one, my Fitbit vibrating on my wrist, and a Pavlok going all out screaming, vibrating, and shocking me with electricity), and it's still possible for me to sleep through all of them or somehow turn them off while half-asleep and go back to sleep. There are also times where I will be like, “Okay, getting up now,” and then I black out and it's 4 hours later and I missed 3 appointments that will take weeks to reschedule, if the clinic hasn't dropped me for the tardiness and absence. I'm running out of clinics to go to.

On a mental level, I am in a near-constant state of overwhelm that holds me inches from a full-blown, all-day breakdown at any given moment. Something about being so stressed with no relief for years on end has rewired my brain, I think, to make the adrenaline pathway so reinforced and the stress part of the brain overlit/overactive. I don't know how to relax. Doctors keep telling me I need to, especially with fibromyalgia, but I physically cannot seem to do it. I can't focus on anything like movies. Nothing is fun when I have always-present and terrorizing (by threatening my survival) pressure from all these stressors (mainly money. I'm in a constant race against my monthly bills, and each month, they creep closer and closer to outpacing me). I'm never happy to wake up and I'm always low-key scared. I'm desperate for security in any form.

I was so unable to do tasks after my suicidal breakdown that even though my psychiatrist, therapist, and general physician were begging me to apply for disability. I had hoped I just needed a few months of R&R and would be right back to being willing and able to work. That never happened, and it was extremely difficult for me to accept the fact that I was disabled. When I finally did, I begged for months for people to help me fill out all the forms (they were overwhelming me, which is, y'know, kind of a key feature of my disability) and no one did, so I lost months of time there. I eventually just had a moment of conviction or indignation or something that I was able to force myself to do them. I'm still kind of mad at everyone who didn't help.

My therapist actually did her best to help and, when the outpatient hospital ousted me because insurance refused to pay for it anymore, referred me to the county's CCS (Community Care Something-or-other) program. They gave me a worker who allegedly had some psychology- or human services-related degree who would help me function for 1 hour a week. I think the whole program is a farce and despite spending hours on this program, we accomplished absolutely nothing.

The first CCS worker I had was supposed to come over to my place (which had become a mess. I was a messy person before, as my apartment was a graveyard of unfinished projects due to my ADHD), but with my extended burnout, I wasn't cleaning and organizing on the level I used to. So I texted my CCS person a warning that my kitchen table was cluttered. I mean it to mean, “It will take me a minute to clear the table once you get here for your laptop for you to finish the unreasonably long entry paperwork on me, and I haven't gotten the energy to declutter it yet and won't until you get here because my ADHD needs a body double right now. She, for reasons I still don't understand, canceled the visit and never came. When I confronted her about what I meant, she was like…embarrassed to the point of not being willing to work with me anymore. There was a communication breakdown that I couldn't get her to communicate with me and she was somehow scared of how much and how articulated or something I communicated that she shut down. 

I understand I “overcommunicate” from the perspective of allistics and neurotypicals [I had a bad childhood and was invalidated and wrongly blamed for things a lot, so I give as much explanation as possible to avoid any misunderstanding and articulate to the point that there won't be any ambiguities and thus can't be twisted into reason to punish me when I've done nothing to earn punishment. My caretakers as a child had their own mental issues that led them to being unreliable/unsafe to me and didn't offer me any feelings of security in relationships, perspective of reality (them taking their anger out on me and telling me everything, including their personal problems, was my fault), and ultimately everyone seems to say they want transparency and communication, but from my experiences and perspective, they don't want that. I have no idea what they really want. I give the level of communication I would want someone to give me and hope that they will just discard the parts they don't need/want, and apparently that's me being a burden or something and a “bad” quality. 

Meanwhile, I WISH people would communicate and be transparent with me more. I think I am an understanding person who has done enough work on themselves to not repeat toxic patterns and be a healthy relationship to others. I don't listen to judge but to understand so I can work with the other person to fix any problems and work with what we got, not devalue them and distance myself or abandon them. Everyone on dating apps says they want this, but I've yet to meet someone who does. I think it's that people see this as an ideal but are unskilled at the time to play their role in the situation–both in offering and responding. I think I've put so many years of therapy and introspection into working on myself that others just haven't, so we're simply on different levels. I know I'm not alone in my experiences, but it's very isolating when you don't meet people who have done the same work.

Anyway, I got assigned a new CCS worker and she did not do all that work I described. When I was told I would be assigned to someone else, I specifically asked for one who has seen some shit and that nothing I do or say will move them. They did at least give me someone older with more experience, but she either over- or under-estimated me (I can't discern which). She, working in the same building as my therapist and being basically in at least a good bit of communication with her when I wasn't around, knew that I had a lot of crap going on that I needed more therapy/support/help unraveling and making sense of and peace with than the 45 min/week I got with my current therapist. So she offered to be like a second therapist and said I could tell her absolutely anything.

As the pattern of this narrative likely already cues, it turned out I could not tell her absolutely anything. I was a few months into my transition and no one prepares you for some of the changes. My endocrinologist had only told me, “You might go bald.” I thought my years of research and consulting with transmen in my life had encompassed all I needed to know. However, we sometimes do not know what we don't know and thus don't think to ask the questions we need to ask. As probably an autistic/abused person trait of mine, I speak very clinically and technically. At the time, I had recently been speaking with my therapist about anatomical changes that triggered emotions I was not prepared for. I attempted the same sort of conversation with my new CCS worker, but she yelled me for being inappropriate. Not just scolded but legit yelled, as if I wasn't a full grown adult capable of reason and discussion.

I was confused on what I did wrong, since I thought I was just taking her up on what she willingly offered. I am also a firm believer in the Mister Rogers quote about how anything that is mentionable is manageable (which goes back to why I don't listen to judge but rather to collaborate and also why I see disagreements as us vs. the problem rather than me vs. them. I do not feel the need to yell at someone unless it's like an emergency of some sort and there's a threat that yelling can somehow address and be beneficial to the situation). 

From my perspective, I was being shut down and punished/shamed for asking for help with a problem that legit scared me and that I was willing to be vulnerable enough to share. I consider that sort of thing sacred and not something that can be trusted in everyone's hands. But the way she responded, to me, reinforced that I was a person unworthy of help: a message received from my childhood caretakers and all the people who were supposedly there to help me during my pandemic crises. 

I couldn't bring myself to trust her anymore or even want to see her again. I'll admit that's a bit of my Emotional Dysregulation Disorder weighing in, but I didn't want her in any intimate spaces I'd need to let her into in order to serve me in her CCS capacity. I had had too many things go wrong lately in that time to not shut myself down to prevent more hurt by simply refusing any future opportunity for more hurt to occur. I was well beyond my limit and it took much convincing from my therapist for me to even give CCS a chance to help me.

Still, I asked to be reassigned to another CCS worker, this time knowing that I could not trust what they claim to offer and just keep the things we work on surface-level functioning--like cleaning my oven or going through the pile of mail I hadn't opened in weeks because their potential contents paralyzed me with fear.

I was denied my request and let go from the program as they felt I had burned through 2 workers and thus proven that I am not a good candidate for the program. I still don't agree with this and argued, but after weeks of (a reasonable number of) periodic emails and voicemails, I never got an email or call back. In hindsight, I maybe should have reported to the county what happened, but it's been like a year.

That mostly brings us back to the present. I have been back in FSET since Spring but just focusing on staying afloat with Uber/working on whatever I can handle. I had a whole researched and designed pitch asking them to fund the several hundred dollars it would be for me to become a mobile notary, but they denied my request as they lack the funds. They also denied my request for new boots for the Uber hazards because they felt it was a fashion thing and not a need. Agencies, or honestly anyone with any power over me, not understanding me even with my articulate, crystal-clear explanations isn't surprising to me anymore. And counterintuitively, more explanation (even from different approaches) does not help and just makes me think I'm weird, which somehow is taken as more cause to not grant whatever request it is I am making in the first place.

So I Uber, I argue with doctors and agencies to try to get my needs met, and I have breakdowns despite my efforts to not. I have always had a massive list of more sculptures I want to make. I do want to get to a point where I can make them someday. I've been waiting on disability for an answer for nearly a year and done all I can to bolster my case with getting doctor testimonies, giving my testimony, noting clinic visits so the person assigned to my case can view the findings of them, getting an ADRC contact to guide me (though looking back, she didn't help at all and it was me searching out and discovering everything on my own while all she did was forward what documentation I had to the state for me)... All I can do is try to survive until they say “yes,” but they usually say “no” first (which is why an alarming number of people file bankruptcy and/or die waiting for a disability decision), especially since mental health reasons are the hardest ones to get approved, and my ADRC contact has been using language such as, “This will make it easier for next time,” and I'm not prepared to hear her tell me she thinks we'll have to file another claim and wait another year, so I don't ask 

I feel terrible that I've not been sculpting or posting. I miss engaging the Tumblr community and sharing my art with people who appreciate it (and not tell me it's garbage. Wtf, Grandma). 

The fact that I couldn't actually bring myself to commit suicide and still don't even though the extremely-difficult-to-survive--particularly with multiple debilitating ailments--and high cost I incur daily to myself trying to keep my head above water as long as I can, tells me that there is a life better than this that I want to live. I can't fathom for myself anything other than what is current, and I am putting all my chips into believing that I could be wrong and there's a chance all my striving will eventually meet stable ground to rest upon, where I can return to myself and make art again. I hate to think this wreck is who I really am and want to believe this is just who I am under a stupid-amount of pressure that no human should ever have to endure. A lot of people have been quick to point out all the resources, but I guarantee I've pursued all of them hard and received some help but not nearly enough. It's hard to wrestle with the feelings of not being enough to live or not being worthy of living because it's such a struggle for me to throw enough money at bills/expenses to allow me to live. It shouldn't cost someone all of themselves to try (and imminently fail) to earn the allowance to live.

Things like the ACP and student loan freeze (I owe $80,000+ because college is an overpromising, commercialized thing that is more gamble than guarantee) are ending soon (or maybe have ended and I just haven't opened my mail to know), and I'm deathly afraid. Uber isn't enough and on down-times with them and when my various ailments aren't being debilitating, I work on selling things to try to make enough for the month. Obviously I'm eventually going to run out of things to sell. 

I'm also fearful that my estimated disability check, if I get one, is only going to be $900/month, because I didn't get enough work experience to be allowed more. I genuinely don't know that that's going to be enough, especially since the price of everything like rent is inflating. I don't know how long I can financially sustain my means of survival. But I'm still doing everything I can. It's jarring to go from decorated Valedictorian to…whatever exhausted mess this is. 

My parents stopped asking me months ago how things are going because they know it's never good. They don't have the means to help me as my mom got laid off of work, my dad has dementia and doesn't work, and if I have to live with them again, I would essentially be signing off on my own death certificate because even spending a few hours in that home, with those people, is enough to completely drain me, trigger so much PTSD, grind my mental health down even more with whatever new dynamics and energies they decide to inject in our interactions. I wasn't free to fight the battles I needed to until I moved out into my own private space, and since it is the cheapest option in the entire city and so necessary of a component to my mental health, my therapist identified keeping my apartment as my number one priority. With my mental health, I wouldn't do well at all or be able to get back on my feet if I was homeless.

This turned into a lot more than I intended, but I'm really satisfied that it explains my situation and makes it known that you can do everything right and still lose. The system will cannibalize you if you don't have money to start with and don't have the means to keep it coming. Poverty charges interest and there are no days off, especially if you're disabled. There are no real safetynets and the ones that exist are overwhelmed, underfunded, underpowered, and essentially only serve to make the ones who don't need them feel satisfied (and aren't outraged and pushing for changes) being sold the lie that those who need help have it available to them. Having an inside view of what the experience is, I am apalled at how little systemic support or consideration there is for the disabled, especially since it is the largest minority group that anyone can join at any time.

Some days suck worse than others, like when the weather is so bad that I cannot Uber or when my pain or mental state has been aggravated and I haven't made enough time for self-care so it has decided for me when self-care must be attended to. I wish I could give myself the self-care my mind and body need so I can be healthier, more resilient to setbacks, and feel less pain, but honestly some nights I don't even go to bed because there isn't enough time/I can't afford to not be working or selling things. Society likes to frame self-care as a luxury and only recently (since covid attacked everyone's mental health) did self-care start to be widely accepted as a need. It's just too bad all that rhetoric amounted to is awareness without action. Capitalism still demands and glorifies the nonstop grind, even if it kills us.

Obviously some days are better than others and it feels incredible when I feel a genuine smile spread across my face. I wish it wasn't so foreign of a feeling, but the fact that it is makes it more impactful. I try to give my attention to hope, even if I have no practical basis to believe it exists. 

Receiving this ask did ultimately bring a smile to my face because it means I'm still cared for in a world that kicks me to the ground daily and says I don't deserve care. It is so hard for me to even care about myself a lot of the time, with all the negative messages I've internalized from my dominatingly high ratio of experiences that are rejection or failure in some form. Ultimately, we all just want to be loved. Thank you so much for reminding me that pain isn't all there is for me (it's easy to get sucked into that mindset after years of nearly everything gutting me. I often fail to even notice myself falling into it and being consumed by it). 

I know I don't owe anyone an explanation for my absence and that no one is mad at me or blaming me for it that I would need to provide some sort of justification. But I wanted to communicate with you all because I love you. I genuinely mean that. 

I still think about this from time to time and I still want come back to making and sharing sculptures and just having fun hearing all the things you have to say about them and how delighting, inspiring, or entertaining you find them. I consider the ability to do that and this Tumblr page to be one of my greatest things I've made. I don't care about money and despise that money dictates virtually every aspect of my life in the worst way. Community, creativity, and self-improvement motivated by joy/love rather than profit/fear are of infinitely more value to me. I'm still pursuing that dynamic in the end through all of this.

By no means is anyone obligated to donate to me, but if you can afford to and want to, I'll post my payment platform things below (some may still have my birth name attached). Any amount helps and Lord knows I dove for a penny on the ground last week.

If you can't donate but still want to help, reblogging can help no matter how little reach you feel your blog has, and I also would appreciate words of encouragement or support. I also just want you to know that if you've been reading this far, I really appreciate that you care enough about me to do that.

All of my love,

Stan 

(They/Them)

PayPal:

@Stanwagner09

Venmo:

@asclw7643

Zelle:

Stan.wagner09@gmail.com

[apomaro-mellow]

alright, i'm going to go ahead and made a rant post about this car situation just so i can get it out and put it to bed. I don't mind if yall wanna comment or whatever but after this I'm just done.

So we need to go back almost a year. My car at the time seemed to be on its last legs. There was a repair it needed that was going to cost like $1200 and I had already paid close to that amount just a few months prior for another repair. I didn't want to pay that again but was willing to save up until it was suggested that I start looking for another car.

I will give my dad props for this one and only thing. He held my hand during this process bc it was my first time. Every other car I had, had been gifted by my grandparents. This was my first time shopping for one. Now it gets interesting bc instead of just getting rid of my old car, my grandparents were going to foot the $1200 bill anyway so that my brother could get it.

I felt iffy about that situation but figured it was for the best since I'd be getting a vehicle with no problems. The problem came about when he decided to drive it around and rack up tickets while MY name was still on the title (this cause my insurance premium to shoot thru the roof but thankfully i got it fixed). I literally had to escort my brother to the DMV to sort out all the paperwork and even THEN he took forever to actually change the plates so I was STILL getting tickets on my record and I had to be the one to go and take what were still my license plates off the car.

This could have potentially been an asshole move, bc I had no idea where his new plates were, but that's not my responsibility. Lucky for him, the new plates were where? In the car, bc he never did anything with them after our DMV appointment. This all occurred in summer/fall 2023.

Then in December, he starts having problems with that car. It even stops on him a couple of times. There is talks of him getting another one. Just like me, all of his (many) previous cars were gifts from our grandparents. I should have probably said earlier but these are all USED cars. We're not getting brand new ones, but still, good condition that we've never had to pay a cent for.

It's also worth mentioning that in the like....six months my brother has had my old car he got hundreds of dollars worth of tickets. Not a single one he paid on his own. Either I took care of it bc they were in my name and he's literally gone to court for not paying, or my dad has paid. But I feel like I'm digressing.

About last week, he curses out my mom because she asks him to *checks notes* receive his infant child when his baby mama drops her off. Apparently that was disagreeable and he cursed her out on the phone, then later to her face when she got home. The part that stuck out in his rant to me was that no one in our family had ever done anything for him. I think just from what I've stated above, it's pretty obvious to see that's false.

So whyyyyyyy

Why why why

After that breakdown, my dad and grandparents thought "Let's just give him another car"?

It is exhausting to see the same thing happen again and again. But this time kind of burned me bad because he got the exact same car that I have. The one I had to shop for. The one I had to visit sellers for. The one I am currently on the hook for a $10,000 loan with like 15% interest. My mother told me this was the case but I didn't actually see the car until this morning.

Here's where I give my dad the benefit of the doubt a single time: It's a common car, dealers have a ton of them, it's probably still an attractive price range. And that's the end of it.

But what I see, is that I can do everything I was told to do: do well in school, get a degree, get a job, start building my career. And it gets me virtually the same as if I did none of those things and on top of it disrespected my parents to their faces.

Like really, why am I working so hard? If doing what I do gets me the same as a foul mouthed, lazy ass, ungrateful son who's shackin up with the most frustrating baby mama in the world then what the hell is this all for anyway?

[it-begins-with-rain]

Hello lovely,

I have a question for you about American (work)culture.

What the fuck are sick days and how can you run out of them? How manny days do you get? What if your out of days and still sick? What happens when you don't use them all up? Do you need a doctors note? Or can you use them to go on a litlle vacation?

That was more then one question, but i'm very confusse about the concept. You are the only American I know, so you get my questions ;)

I'm going to post this openly, just to see if others can help answer. I'm a contract worker (technically part-time at one job, but they treat us as contractors), so I actually don't get any sick time at all, ever. That's something that only salary workers- to my knowledge- can have. So most of my answer is just what I'm aware the policies are at places I have worked for those on staff.

Because contract workers don't get paid if they don't work, you end up having a lot of very sick people working when they shouldn't. During COVID the policy at work was *literally* "If we like you and you get COVID, you'll still be paid for what you would have worked. Don't tell anyone else about this policy because if we don't like them, we don't want them thinking they'll get paid." (three of us were on the 'we like you' list, and it was literally just who the department director liked, not based on quality of work or what you do).

I do know that where I work, the people on staff don't get specifically sick-days, they get "paid time off", which in other companies is usually a wholly separate thing (but where I am, they're lumped together). In other places it's usually like, if you work overtime and they don't want to pay you for that, they turn those hours into extra time you can take off. So if you work 3 hours overtime, you can leave 3 hours early another day.

Typically if you run out of sick days, I think you're just SOL (shit out of luck), unless your company has a separate thing you can kind of apply for. A lot of companies straight up don't care, and after a certain amount of time, they'll fire you. That happens a lot where I live.

**I should say at some point, I work in a state that is ranked as one of the most employee-hostile in the country. The laws will be different state to state.**

Some require doctor's notes if you use sick days, some don't.

If you don't use sick days or paid time off by the end of the year, some places let you roll them into the next year. Other places will figure out what your average daily pay is and give you that as a "bonus" for not using your sick/leave time. Sometimes you can roll it over up to a certain number of days (like, you get 6 sick days a year, maximum of 12 if you aren't sick and those days keep collecting year to year).

My father was in the military for 20 years and only took sick days if he absolutely could not function (I don't remember him taking them more than like one the day of a surgery, he was even back at work the next day). That was because the military rolled over sick days year after year, no expiration or maximum. So when he left the military, we moved away, and he was still paid as a full-time soldier for 4 months, he'd built up so much sick time.

Again, I work in one of the absolute worst states it is possible to work in. Someone literally died at an Amazon facility and the governor had people from the labor board go and help the people at Amazon fill out the reports to file so they wouldn't be penalized.

I work in a state that literally prioritizes companies over dead employees.

**I should also say that rules around sick days and such- if there is a Union protecting an employee, that kind of stuff will be included in the contract, so it isn't even necessarily a matter of state law at that point, it's a matter of what the Union has secured for people.

If anyone has anything to add, go for it!

[elderemorune]

Dad of Light/My Dad

So I just found out about Dad of Light.

For those unfamiliar, let me set a baseline for you. I'm a big fan of Final Fantasy 14, as mentioned previously. I get really into being a part of a community, and love playing the role of tank. Carrying my party through a dungeon and taking the hits as we fight back the forces of darkness suits me perfectly.

The game's been around a long time. The first version came out in 2010 with A Realm Reborn relaunching the game in 2013.

You may have heard some stories, about how fans of Kentaro Miura all dressed up as Dark Knights and formed a line in the major cities in the game to mourn his tragic passing.

And that's but a single facet of this lovely game.

Dad of Light is a Netflix project that came out in 2017, following the tale of a young man (Akio) who bonded with his dad (Hirotaro) over Final Fantasy when he was a kid.

Years down the line, Hirotaro suddenly quits his job without telling his family. Akio is concerned and decides to try to reconnect with his father by purchasing a PlayStation 4 and Final Fantasy XIV for him. With the help of his Free Company and friends, Aru and Kirin, Akio plans to use his character Maidy to befriend his father and discover why he quit his job.

Now, I haven't watched this yet. I literally just started, and it got me thinking about how much I love Eorzea, and how much I love MY dad.

See, stories about fathers and sons ALWAYS fuck me up. For a lot of reasons, but I think chiefly because I wish my dad was like any of these dramatized men. That he could apologize, mean it, and change his behaviour.

He's done part of the work. He apologized for being a rage monster when I was a child. For holding me to impossible standards that even he would have struggled to meet. He meant it when he took me aside in June of 2021 and told me he was sorry.

And the behaviour DID change, for awhile. We worked together at his tech startup (which is still just he and I), and we were doing amazing work. I was learning web design and constantly improving my own skills, because I wanted to be able to help him more.

Then his therapist retired, and he stopped doing the work to be better.

Then he put my wife and I in an incredibly uncomfortable living situation with my sister and her husband that mostly entailed her being entitled to everything, and when we'd put boundaries in place she'd just lose her shit. Then dad would step in, say something like "Don't make me choose between my kids" and fuck off like that would fix a damn thing when she was breaking the lease, up to and including bringing her then boyfriend in without even asking us if he could move in.

Then when we left that situation, he said he couldn't afford to pay Seattle wages.

So I left the company (under the impression that I had been let go), and I lived off savings for a few months after we got here. I scrounged for work, and had recruiters telling me I was worth way more than I was looking for, but that they couldn't find me work that paid the figures they were telling me I deserved.

It took awhile for us to even get things sorted here. We'd moved across the state to escape from my sister, and so that my wife could finally go to college. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find a job that fit me. I worked for a temp agency for a bit, did a job for a big company answering emails. I figured it'd be fine, it's just emails. Turns out the customer service culture at the company was something along the lines of "All of our customers are literally the worst, we wish they'd just go away, but also we have to pay attention to super fine details when doing our emails so..."

I lasted ten days. Then I asked for my job back with Dad. Things have been better between us since he no longer owns our home or our car. But the condescension is still there. The frustration when I don't get topics he sees as simple.

He may have meant the apology, but a lot of the behaviour didn't change.

It makes me wonder what it would be like, if it started snowing in hell and I convinced the man to take up the mantle of Warrior of Light with me. Would he even let me tank for him? Or would he just run ahead and get mad when he died? Would he make fun of me for playing cross-gender? (Slicks M'Harbeck is the coolest, fucking fight me.) Or would he let me take the center stage and just let me help him for once?

I dunno.

I often say I love my dad, but I wouldn't wish him on anyone. None of my friends like him. My wife doesn't like him. But I love him. I know who he is, how he can be. He raised me, after all. It's hard to care for him because of his judgmental perspective, the way he was raised, all of it. I know some of his trauma, and it's not like I blame him for it.

But if I can be better, why can't he?

And stay that way?

I miss my dad.

Update: Just finished the first episode. I spent the entire time crying. I'm so incredibly jealous of the relationship that Akio and Hirotaro had. And so happy they could have it.

[nightofnyx8]

I don't usually post life updates, but I thought I'd share just a small portion of what's been going on!

I graduated college! I can't express how happy I am to finally be done with my undergrad! Especially since I didn't get paid for what was essentially a full-time position as a student teacher, I'm more than ready to start filling my bank account rather than draining it every semester.

I loved my student teaching. I got really lucky to have such an incredible mentor teacher, who not only was the head of All-State Choir but taught six top-tier choirs of her own. I loved her students! Seriously, I literally taught 400 of the most amazing high school students you'll ever meet. I will miss them dearly 💕

My husband and I are also finally moving to a non-university apartment (with our own washer and dryer! I get teary-eyed just thinking about it!) It's also a lot newer, which means we finally have actual windows and a stove that doesn't set off the fire alarm every five minutes. It's nothing overly luxurious, of course, but we're happy just to start the next chapter of our lives somewhere that isn't right next to the football stadium 🙃

Right now my husband just accepted a full-time position at his work, and I'm subbing until I can (hopefully) find a teaching job in the fall. I'm a little nervous since choir teachers are such a niche job position in school districts that it can be competitive, especially when surrounded by three colleges with massive music programs. But we're also looking to move across the country in a year or two, so the prospects may change. In the meantime, I'll keep teaching piano and voice lessons.

Been trying not to let my anxiety consume me on the "what-ifs" of a post-college life. If it were up to me, I would have everything sharpied out on the cutest little notebook you ever saw. But seeing as that's unrealistic, I'm just trying to enjoy each day as it is :) The third-grade class I'm subbing for is like teaching twenty Anyas, I'm having a lot of fun writing fanfiction, and I finally have time to actually cook instead of heating up ramen for the sixth time in a row.

Until next time!

PS. Also @firewoodfigs gave me the CUTEST kalimba for Christmas and I LOVE IT 💕 Seriously one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I'll make it on a plane someday and squeeze your eyes out!

[sharlalincoln]

Lessons From Dad

Today we set out to enjoy a beach day while on vacation at the river. The forecast called for rain at Atlantic Beach until 12 or 1, then cloudy for the afternoon. Determined to get just *ONE* day at the beach before heading back to work, I said "let's just do it. If the rain doesn't stop, we can just go to the aquarium". Halfway there, the rain was coming down fast and hard. Passing through Newport, I thought to myself "do we just need to turn around and go home? This isn't looking good." You know that saying "a rainy day at the beach is better than a sunny day at work"? Nope, I totally disagree. I'd much rather work in the sunshine than be at the beach in the rain. But at that moment, I flashed back to my teenage years, sitting in the back seat of the station wagon as our family traveled to Emerald Isle for one of our typical day trips during the summer. We only lived 90 minutes from the beach, so this was a regular occurrence and one I always looked forward to. Sometimes it would start to sprinkle and even pour on the drive there. I and whichever siblings were along for the ride would start our bellyachin'..."let's just go home! It's raining! It's gonna be nasty at the beach" etc. But Dad, the eternal optimist would retort "Now listen, this is just a little summer shower. It's probably sunny at the beach!" In all those years of daytrips to the beach, I don't remember a single time that we got rained out. So today, I heard his words and felt his optimism and it paid off. We waited out the rain under a picnic shelter at Fort Macon State Park, and it quickly dissipated, making way for an absolutely perfect day. There was a soothing sea breeze, cloud cover to tame the sun's scorching heat, and the water was amazingly calm with gently rolling waves, but big enough to catch with a boogie board or just bob over/through. While lazing in my chair, I watched a man showing his youngsters how to "catch a wave" with his body (bodysurfing). I immediately flashed back to that day in July 1987, one month before I was leaving home to begin my freshman year at NC State University. On that day, my family was at Emerald Isle on one of our typical daytrips, hanging out near the Bogue Inlet Pier as Mom always liked, to make it easier to find her as we came out of the water. Dad LOVED to bodysurf. He also had incredible lung capacity, so much so, that whenever he had to have lung xrays, it took 2 pictures to image both his lungs! And he LOVED to do the "dead man's float", meaning after he caught a wave, he would coast face-down, arms outstretched in front of him, until his body literally washed up on the shore. Us kids couldn't believe he could hold his breath that long. On this particular day, Dad caught a doozy of a wave. One with such power that he was not able to get his arms out in front of him and basically dumped him on his face. He did the dead man's float all the way to shore, but he didn't move when he "landed". My younger brother Brandon recognized something was badly wrong and pulled him out of the water. The details are foggy, but I remember Dad lying on his back (maybe Brandon rolled him over?) and Mom standing over him saying "honey, are you ok?" to which he responded "Doll, (short for Dolly, his pet name for her) I think I broke my neck." He could not move from his neck down, but had lung function. Miraculously, his incredible lung capacity had saved his life as he held his breath and prayed "Lord, I hope I'm ready, because I think this is it". He had suffered a C3-C7 spinal cord "bruising" which he mostly recovered from over the next 3-4 months, leaving him with a slight limp. As I watched the man today catch a wave or 2, I found myself unable to look in his direction any longer, as the memory of that fateful day in 1987 had overwhelmed me. I still love the beach, and even played in the water today, diving into the waves, jumping over them, and just floating in the calm between each swell, but the impact of watching Dad push through his recovery will always be a reminder of his amazing determination and optimism.

[incarnateirony]

Mm, one thing I am not looking forward to with the other GM, as much as I love him as a typist, is the inevitable backhanded BTS measure of trying to override 900 pages of story by wandering in and declaring something, and I fully expect that to happen. He is Very Proud Of Playing God, and when he realized that the way he set up Becoming God off of another character's work was being undone by the very campaign he asked me to run, because that's why he used the character's work to do it, it became WELL ACTUALLY--HE DID IT HIMSELF BEFORE THAT. AND SOMETHING ETERNAL ANNOYING LA MULANA DUNGEON.

And like, bro. You are literally not going to be able to bitch the players into hailing Lord Rando As The Supreme when they witnessed the beginning of existence and FUCK ALL, YOU WEREN'T THERE, you were just some dude in the way to get there a few times. Yeah, the moral is, as Kion said, they are all their own lords, and we together, all for one, and one as the All, creation is what we make of it. That was always the goddamn point of the device he implied made his dude god. And like. Nobody cares about your guy, guy.

It's a delivery thing he still hasn't understood, you can't just wander in and throw things and demand people care, as per the whole idea of his past "hints" that he wants people to break down to extremes as if they are by default expected to know how god "should" act and care deeply about his state, and like, fuck all no he was being an annoying douche the whole time the like. 3 times he showed up being the opposite of helpful.

Randomly declaring things once a month to assert power is not even GM attitude, it's just obnoxious player attitude. They just spent 3 months rearranging creation itself in SPITE of your dude to make the world in the image of their own dreams and learn how to build better things when they get back to ~reality, they have climbed the world trees, stood at the edge of the void, they have faced life, and death, and cosmic soup, and whatever the fuck. Why the fuck will they want to find him for any other reason than to beat his ass?

Like right now everyone's saying their tearful goodbyes to a character they helped mold over these months, and teach each other together, and hope they might meet again, or at least be allowed to not forget what happened and who they knew and what they did together. Nobody cares if your dude comes in squawking IM GOD. No the fuck you aren't, you're a pain in the ass with no establishment that keeps cropping up at bad times doing stupid shit that hampers them. They're god, or at worst, their dead friend is god, because on him the world will turn, forever, self born by his own design for everything. You're. A guy who pushed a button then tried to change the backstory three times.

Neither plots nor people work like that dude.

And he gets real proud like, LOOK HOW MUCH JALIM LEARNED FROM ZENTO while even making the bad guy blink at, how the fuck did you take it like that. ok whatever easier for me I guess. And like. Character growth is great and all, but at best that's still a player path sticking on a GM badge and calling itself god. I don't know if I'd agree with the growth since the last act he did could have severely fucked the heroes in another arrangement. Luckily they moved too fast for god's fuckup to backfire on them. But the whole "I say a speech I think sounds good, pound my chest and fuck off to the wind after making everyone's lives around me hell but swearing up and down I helped" is a player brain, not a GM.

There was even a time like, he shook a defeated enemy awake not realizing what he was doing because he hadn't paid attention to the plot for real for shit (which I understand now he didn't the first time either), and like, no your dead friend is this monster they just put down. I kept trying to deflect you doing it but you insisted and it woke up so all the heroes responded and heard your argument and realized you fucking woke Death back up. Like. Six hours after they had defeated him, no less. "Well he destroyed the pillar that had to be done" bro it was already destroyed, River destroyed it in the fight, it reconstituted as the reflection of his presence when you forced it back up. You're patting yourself on the back for making a problem then fixing it. I'm not letting you take that from the heroes or the one that actually destroyed it. That's just spinning your wheels to try to reinforce your godness.

The irony is, he swears he gets this, plays his weird version of the collective, vaguely cites the theology, but then insists on trying to come in, alone, and change everything. When literally the ending is no, you are all your own lords, the soul is supreme and in this moment, we are One. Facing the call to destruction or search for emptiness, the conflict of how everything came from the nothing. It literally required EXTENSIVE planning IC and OOC both, players coordinating deeply against seemingly impossible odds. You have said many times your character refuses to enter the city because of XYZ excuse. You insisted on trying to do this alone, against the plot morals, which is why it went bad every time, because you weren't listening or paying attention. So there's just. Twenty levels of irony.

"Well my job keeps me busy and I can't read all-" Shhh. sh sh sh stop right there. No. Almost every player has a job. One has three jobs. They manage to connect, coordinate, read along, or ask questions when they get lost, they work with everybody. So if you got the time to build the world's most retarded La Mulana knockoff to send people through, you had the time to read. The matter is, you didn't care and you thought you knew better. Now this would make an excellent narrative about demiurges/pankrators like Chuck if it was on purpose but instead you're making it a commentary on humanity because the point is sailing over your head and you keep trying to retroact him into things he literally Does Not Fit.

The whole. Oh my character was just a griffin that died and got found by a god to become powerful but a slave and met Kion and became friends and Hit The Button To Save Him In Error And Became God except SURPRISE now I"m saying it was something different vs

Developed campaign that existed before this one and before the dude hit the button on a multiplanar journey across the cosmos and ancient memory showing that the person who created The Button and the city built on his pure willpower was, in fact, always created and trained for this role (and its opposite), he fits every bill on the mythology you try to use, you don't. You played some dude that kept falling in holes to become a bigger god and are trying to claim yourself the All and Void both. And yeah the moral is the soul is always an oxymoron like that but so is everyone's. You didn't come from the void, you weren't self born, you are not The Great Dragon or The Great Teacher, you are not the Workman, or the Master Builder, you are none of the things, but saying I Am All sounds hella neat and powerful, but you're not grokking what you're even trying to fucking present while kicking in the door with a funny song to melt down five planes because YOU WEREN'T LISTENING.

Like, this be mine, and the campaign is a success because everyone, the players, AS the collective shaped it correctly. He pays lipservice to the ideas but throws out randos doing nonsense actions and calls it the collective, or insists he is The One or The All while simultaneously refusing to join the others, and so on and it's like. bro. give it up. you said you wanted the campaign, you were clearly aware of at least the base potential implied in Xorv, you don't just cling to a godtitle. And no don't say it's for GM purposes if you're only NOW thinking up a knockoff dungeon with no real form, history or purpose that will at best be highly obnoxious. Just admit you had no plan. You had 3 months while I ran this to come up with more than "my current favorite game to clone is--"