#this facecam lives in my head rent free

[theecloser]

220828 Losing Game @ Inkigayo Face Cam 1

[willczek-art]

they are not the same person~

[nethercomfies]

✨Streamer Albedo headcanons✨

I've still got some requests, ik, but I REALLY need to take my mind off that for once and post about Albedo cuz… I love this man so much and have many thoughts about him hehe

Content: This starts pretty general but I promise there’s x reader stuff down the line as well (I put a divider, so if you’re only interested in that, you can just look out for the divider ^^) This is mostly fluff or just general headcanons

Thank you to everyone who entertained these brainrots, streamer Albedo lives rent free in my head

He never expected to get far with this —  Originally he just joined one of Kaeya's streams for a co-op game

Albedo was a little nervous, but eventually just ignored the fact that there were hundreds of other people listening and fell into his usual relaxed banter with Kaeya

To his surprise, a lot of people seemed to really like him, so with a bit of encouragement from Kaeya he eventually started streaming by himself too

At first it was weird for him to just talk while playing games, sometimes forgetting to say anything for a few minutes altogether —  But eventually he gets used to it, just sharing random thoughts and theories he has while playing

He doesn’t use a facecam at first since he’s feeling shy, but eventually grows more comfortable and starts showing his face too (which most definitely sent a bunch of people into a frenzy because “oh no, he’s cute”)

There’s something relaxing and comforting about his streams —  His soft, smooth voice, lofi or game music quietly playing in the background, the dim LED lights in the back of his room

He mostly plays horror games of all kinds, no matter if it’s the latest popular game or some niche indie horror that no one has ever heard of before

Doesn’t overreact to the scary stuff —  He just takes the games seriously and offers his insights and theories on where the game could be headed/if there’s any hidden messages

This man is immune to jumpscares, doesn’t even flinch most of the time —  If Albedo gets scared by a horror game, you KNOW it’s gonna be good

Sometimes he’s not in the mood for that tho and would rather have a more chill stream, so he puts on some Stardew Valley (He’s getting married to Sebastian, sorry, I don’t make the rules) or maybe Animal Crossing

Shares an island with Klee, so it’s a bit chaotic —  Albedo went for a comfy cottagecore vibe, but Klee has spread random stuff all over the island so you’ll have like… A quiet little stargazing spot by the sea and next to it are a robot and a dinosaur toy “fighting”

This is getting awfully specific but their villagers are: Aurora, Fang, Vesta, Molly, Lucky, Olivia, Pecan, Ruby, Sherb and Genji

Anyways, he likes to spend these more chill streams just talking with people, asking about their day, telling the latest funny thing that happened with Klee, etc.

His favourite people to stream with are Kaeya and Mona, tho sometimes they’re also joined by Venti and Amber —  These streams can get a little chaotic and tend to awaken the snarky gremlin in Albedo who (lovingly) roasts the others every opportunity he gets

Sure, you thought their voices were somewhat similar and it was kinda weird how Kaeya would always just grin and nod when you talked about your favourite streamer again, but Albedo just really didn’t seem like the type to do this

As for you —  You knew Albedo before he started streaming, but never fully made the connection that the cute guy you shared a science class with was also your comfort streamer who you watched religiously

You had a small crush on irl Albedo, which only got worse when you eventually learned that he was, indeed, the same person whose streams you watched until you fell asleep

And Albedo… Well, he had a crush on you for a while as well, so when he eventually brings up the courage to ask you out on a date, you’re more than happy to agree

Once you start dating, you can be seen more and more frequently in his streams, usually just passing through the background or bringing him some of the hot chocolate you made, letting your hand linger on his shoulder for just a moment before you disappear again

Your appearances tend to be followed by a barrage of “Awww” “You guys are so cute!!!!!” “Look at the way he’s smiling, that man is WHIPPED”

And they’re not wrong, because Albedo is absolutely whipped for you

His chill talking streams now have a new favourite topic for him, aside from “Klee did this recently” and “Cool science facts” —  It’s “Guys, my significant other is so perfect!”

You watch these streams, hugging your pillow as you grin like an idiot upon hearing your boyfriend go on and on about how awesome you are

If you’re comfortable, he’ll even let you sit next to him while he streams, or even play games together with you

Either you guys play co-op games, or he’ll let you play his favourite (horror) game while watching your reaction with the widest grin on his face

Ngl, part of why he likes playing horror games with you next to him is cuz you’ll cling to him when you get scared, or bury your face in his shoulder after seeing a jumpscare —  He finds it absolutely adorable

Wanna join my taglist? You can find it right here!

More of my streamer series

Taglist: @yaeism @thelost-in-time @gravity-gacha @tinydiors @xxsweetdreamzxx @xiaoslxt @xialatvs @the-mourning-stars @evisnotok

[arabellaflynn]

Hello, all. It has been a rough pandemic.

As you may have figured, since I am in the performing arts, I have been completely out of work since this shitshow began. The earliest venues will open up here in MA is September, which is not helpful for me, because I need to be out of my current place by 8/31. No one will rent to me on my Patreon income, so I've been trying to figure out how to supplement that with other online work.

My first thought, frankly, was camming. I'm attractive and I know that, and I don't care about being naked in "public". I have a lot of opinions on the legitimacy and legalization of sex work, but making a statement would be a convenient bonus; I'd be in it for the tips. As the appliance menagerie on the Flintstones used to say, "Eh. It's a living."

The best camera I currently have is attached to the slightly-less ancient laptop. You know, the one with the broken hinge that won't hold the screen up on the right. Only the wifi on that computer has quit working. The onboard chip was always kind of flaky, but for some reason it has chosen now to deteriorate to the point where it no longer acknowledges a router on the other side of the goddamn wall. Shooting in the living room with an ethernet cable is not an option, because another housemate is already doing that.

I bought a dual-band USB wifi adapter with antenna. It's a Realtek chip -- not gold-plated, but also not total junk. I specifically checked to make sure it worked with Ubuntu Bionic before I ordered. I have now installed three separate sets of drivers in three completely different ways, read everything ever written about this on AskUbuntu, and still the computer refuses to acknowledge its existence. Not even if I blacklist the onboard chip to keep it from falling back into previous bad habits.

The other elderly laptop (with the working wifi) has a cam that tops out at 640 x 480, which I suppose might squeak by as a tiny facecam on Twitch, or for tutoring where no one cares about pixelization. The microphone, however, is crap. It's a tinny omni on the screen bezel that likes room noise more than my voice. I don't have an external microphone, and there's no onboard Bluetooth for my wireless headset. So I bought a USB Bluetooth adapter, which this computer is ignoring as hard as the other one is the wifi dongle. I have a wired headset with a mic, but because this computer is probably mere months too old to know what to do with an inline mic on the same jack as the output signal, it doesn't register at all.

The camera on my phone is potato quality, because that is honestly about how much the phone cost. Ditto the refurb Kindle. Neither is smart enough to keep up with streaming video, which I found out when I tried to do a video rehearsal for something months ago. 

I have no place to do any kind of professional non-entertainment streaming work (e.g., tutoring) with my terrible equipment in any event. I don't own a desk. If a free desk appeared on my doorstep tomorrow, I would have nowhere to put it. My bedroom is small enough to contravene the Geneva Convention requirements for POW cells and I'm basically stuck in here, for reasons of both air conditioning and not having to interact with a house full of people who very much want me gone.

What I do have is a set of working emulators and some free video editing software, so I decided to take a stab at a subtitled Let's Play. I can certainly ramble on for 30 or so hours of Final Fantasy II. At the very least it'll give me something scheduled to do. So I pulled everything out and set it up, only to find that my controller was "pining for the fjords" -- no lights, no acknowledgement from RetroArch, no response to any button presses.

...

...okay, well, at least we're down to a level of equipment I can afford to replace. So I am waiting for the mail carrier to bring me another $10 gamepad, whilst stuck in bureaucratic hell. I'm down to emergency public assistance, which keeps asking me to send them random documents, inconveniently one at a time. Even when I can submit them online I'm required to wait a minimum of 2-3 business days before a human can look at them. I'm trying to not be mad -- they are clearly horribly overworked -- but it also leaves me with a lot of time to do nothing but busy-wait. They've finally decided I'm destitute enough for food stamps, so now I have to sit on my hands until the card arrives in the mail.

The chronic, crushing lack of resources is not helped by (or helping) the fact that I'm just not functioning very well. I was already on the edge of disintegration when the lockdown orders hit anyway; I was taking every piece of work I could find in an effort to scrape together enough for first/last/deposit on a new apartment, and honestly that's more than I can handle. I can consistently get to about 20 hours of "stuff that can't be done while in bed, wearing pajamas" per week, with occasional spikes up to about 30, before I start losing the ability to take care of myself. I skip showers, let my living space become a complete disaster area, and go to bed without dinner because the whole process of choosing something to eat, preparing it, eating it, and cleaning up after myself is so overwhelming that I just burst into tears and don't do it. I fed the rats twice a day and cleaned their cage once or twice a week, but couldn't manage to do the same for myself.

It's difficult to explain to people the state of being physically and mentally exhausted without also being sweaty and shaky from muscle fatigue. Perhaps the single most salient example I can give is lying in bed at night and realizing I kind of vaguely needed to pee. Not like urgently -- just enough that I knew if I didn't, I'd wake up the next day with an uncomfortably full bladder. Then just lying there anyway, not because I thought suffering was noble or I deserved it or anything idiotic like that, but just because taking care of it would involve standing up, walking into another room, and initiating a new task, and I did not have the capacity to do any of those things.

If you suggest I start making a to-do list, I will sit down right now and invent a brand new Blunt Object Transfer Protocol (botp://) expressly for the purpose of punching you, personally, in the face over the goddamn internet. I will even credit you in the patent application. I will not share the licensing profits, which judging from social media right now, would be approximately all of the money on the face of the Earth. I do not need "life hacks". 

What I really need is a case worker, or possibly a babysitter, or just to have shown up at the ER about two months ago, because that is the only way I have ever found to get people to pay attention when I ask for help. Otherwise I get triaged out of sight and out of mind -- they ask if I'm suicidal, I tell them no, they tell me 'okay, here's a prescription for six Xanax and a packet of resources, go home and fix it yourself'. I'm just like, you sons of bitches, do you think I don't know how to Google things? If I could fix this on my own, I wouldn't be talking to you. Except I can't right now, because plague.

Everyone wants to fob me off on someone else. I was referred to an SSDI attorney by a friend, because frankly that's where I'm at right now. I wrote to them, specifically mentioning his name and the associate who helped him, and explained that I was basically a vegetable and I needed help applying for disability. I'm a college-educated suburban white girl, who grew up hearing her parents make rude jokes about welfare queens -- I have no idea how any of this works and I'm so broken I kept losing my place in a blanket whose pattern was literally "knit-purl-knit-purl to end of row; turn work over; repeat". Their response was "Sounds like you need some help applying for SSDI/SSI disability. Here's the website for the Boston Bar Association, good luck!" Crisis lines of both the psychiatric and financial varieties keep directing me to one of two national clearinghouse sites for social support services, both of which direct me to each other, because neither has any programs in my area.

I am trying really, really hard not to resent the ever-loving fuck out of anyone who has any sort of support system right now. One housemate has almost the exact same list of medical problems that I do, and is also completely out of work right now. She is married to the one who has a grown-up salaried WFH IT job, and will never have to worry about having a roof over her head or food in the cabinets. The single housemate has supportive family literally a five minute walk down the street; if she ever gets her feet kicked out from under her, she can stay with them temporarily while she scrambles back up. Another friend yote out to California right before lockdown to stay with his family. A local offered to help me with paperwork, then ghosted me intermittently before explaining that he was having a hard time himself right now and barely had the capacity for his own life. I have an elderly rat, no more savings, and no options.

I don't even know how I'm going to move the little I own. How do you even ask people to do that in the middle of a pandemic? If I don't have the money to move, I definitely don't have the money for a moving company, and I'm envisioning all of my community-minded friends pursing their lips in judgement and declining because like all the good people they are diligently social distancing.

I have also discovered, while hauling an empty suitcase out to Watertown and a full one back home again, that I do not cope well with face masks. It's fine if I'm not doing much, especially if I'm in a climate-controlled space like a store or the T, but as soon as I exert myself at all, I see spots. And no, it is not a matter of "just get used to it"; I have tested this by trying to wear a mask during my home workouts. It is just stuffy enough under there, and there is just enough reduction in air flow, that the world keeps going all film-grainy and dark on the sides, which I know from experience is the first step on a very short path to the Magical Land of Syncope. I had to stop during the outdoor trek and sit on the suitcase about twice a block through the commercial district, where it stayed on because there were people. This was when it was 72 whole degrees out (and the AC is generally on 74°F inside) which doesn't bode well for moving my heavy shit around in late August. 

I'm normally good at catching things at the weird-vision stage, although enough random strangers and T employees have asked me if I'm okay that I have to assume I look as ill as I feel at that point. And I have an absolutely tragic talent for talking people out of calling emergency services when I do actually keel over, but everyone is so health-panicked that I don't think it would work right now. I know what's happened and why, but I can't exactly communicate that to bystanders when I'm unconscious. As nice as EMS is, I don't feel like waking up to a round of Twenty Questions ("How many fingers am I holding up? Who's the President? Do you have a seizure disorder?"). So I just don't go out.

Alison over at Ask A Manager got a question about this the other day that suggests this is considered legitimate can't-(always-)wear-a-mask territory, and I am able to wear a mask where required in MA, which is indoors/during interactions with other people when it's actually useful, so I don't have any qualms on the scientific or legal front. I have just never been a good judge of how much potential peril/damage it's "reasonable" to put up with, and I don't have the capacity to explain myself over and over again a million times a day. 

I'm fucking tired. I'm tired of covid, I'm tired of living in a big glitzy continent-spanning banana republic, I'm tired of anxiety, I'm tired of other people carping at me to do things I can't in order to fix their anxiety for them, I'm tired of not having the space to dance, I'm tired of asking for help before things fall apart and being told 'well, come back when it is an emergency', and most of all I'm tired of this cycle where I tell myself "I'm going to stop being lazy! I'm going to put on my big-girl pants and wake up early and work 40 hours a week and support myself like an adult!" and then fail at it again because I just do not have the capacity to do that. I do not know how to make the system understand that I need some kind of support right now. 

Sorry for yet another depressing update, but that's where I am right now.

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