#that post con depression already hitting and i just got home (it's been two hours since i left 😭✌️)

[seaofashes]

Ben Starr is genuinely one of the kindest VA's I've met, he was a delight to talk to and nerd out over final fantasy with.

[zirkkun]

I can't sleep so I'm gonna ramble for a minute here about. uh. 2020 i guess lol everyone else is so might as well jump on the bandwagon.

Be aware this is really really fucking long so it's a commitment to read it lmao sorry i just cannot sleep and i guess i had more on my mind about this year than i thought. I also did not proofread this at all. I just started writing and didn't look back lol

This year was... Weird for me. It started out with me feeling my best in January, comfortable and positive as I did my nth playthrough of DBH with friends and finally having enough alts of my boy Alfonse in FEH to have a team of Just him to fight with. (Priorities, right?) February hit, and things were still going good. I met Ray Chase and had him sign a print I did of Roy and Alfonse in some casual outfits for a scrapped au I wrote years ago. (And I gave him one 😊). Hell, like, covid was just coming around when me and my friends went to the con that weekend and a breakout of it hit the city just south of where the con was like a week before, but I was genuinely so excited for it that like I was like "Yeah, if i die, i die. Whatever happens happens." God, at this point, the Alfonse gc I was in was still alive and I still didn't talk to anyone in the group outside of that gc. Lowkey miss it tbh. But oh well. Things move on.

But that con was like... Stressful. I usually have fair amounts of stress at cons, being around so many people, I fear theft, unwanted contact, y'know, the standard; but my friend group was so filled with tension that it was absolutely painful. We'd been split most of the weekend, and if the two groups came together, it was hell, because it just caused unwanted arguments. I felt really bad cause I didn't want them to be upset, yknow? But i also wanted to hang out with my friends all at once. So i swapped between the groups a bit over the weekend. And blew WAY more money than I should have and lowkey it kind of fucked me over for the rest of the year cause I haven't had a job all year outside of, like, a local church job that pays at a rare max of $100 a month ;w;

I'd been struggling in school the previous semester already, about halfway through having just stopped going to classes altogether, yet still somehow managed to pass everything with B's and A's. The next semester rolled around, and I thought at first the distraction and inability to do anything was because of the con, and as it persisted after, I thought it was just post-con depression. But, as it turned out, no, it's just been my biggest relapse of depression since the end of high school, and frankly, it's only gotten worse since. I can't sleep rn because I'm between not wanting to do anything because I have a lack of emotions and motivation and not feeling deserving of sleep lol. I checked out of school on February 28th, however, I was convinced I was merely demotivated by my surroundings -- at this point, I was studying Japanese, and one of my friends at the time was a (although probably unintentionally) complete braggart about how much he was studying and how he was improving... not to mention he was textbook example of "This is an Actual Weeaboo, don't Fucking Do this." (One of many reasons i said friend at the time lol) it was just... So draining being around him, and I had to see him in class every day of the week. I barely scraped together assignments last-minute and never studied under the idea of "What does it matter if I'm not putting in my 100%?" So I checked out, with plans of transferring for the following semester.

Well, then March hit. Y'all know how March went down lmao.

I pretty much locked myself in my room at all times during March, going between Animal Crossing and BOTW (which actually racked up like 200ish hours i think according to the nintendo year in review i had lmao). I started making a bit closer online friends at this point, notably @levitumbling who decided to take me in as his channel designer for YouTube and I've been ever since! But. Of course. My first task? A Sans meme. My payment? One Switch copy of Undertale because he considered it a disgrace that I'd never played the game before.

Now, let me tell you. I was fuckin scared to play this game. I held onto it for weeks between the fear of "My friend bought me this and i should play this" and "I told myself I'd never touch this game with a 20 mile pole because of how much it's been shoved down my throat over the years." So, one day, I don't remember when, early April, I said, fuck it, I'll play it for a little bit, just enough to say "hey i played it for a bit!" and then never go back.

The only thing that stopped me from beating the whole thing in one sitting was it was the crack of dawn when I passed out, extremely tired and extremely frustrated by the fact I couldn't beat Muffet. Yes, I got that far in one sitting I intended to play for 15 minutes tops.

Now. Let me fuckin tell you. About my first playthrough of Undertale. I haven't gone into a game knowing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about it like... I think ever. Usually I know what style of game it is, the genre, the main plot premise. I knew nothing other than the existence of Sans (and, as it turned out, I'd heard some of the soundtrack pieces before, notably Bonetrousle I heard this cover of it in a radio livestream a while back and never really looked it up, but was always excited when the radio looped back around to it being on; and I'd heard Dating Start! because that's Alpharad's go-to sponsorship ost lmao.) But anyway. I was completely in the dark. Do yall mind if i just go through some highlights of my favorite memories? This is supposed to be a summary of the year but I mean, I think this made a big enough impact on me to really like. Discuss it a bit.

I watched the whole opening cutscene, started a new game under my old screenname, "Yoru," since in naming the "Fallen Child," I assumed they were dead. Well, I was a little surprised to just be that child, alive, two seconds later, but whatever, I rolled with it.

I genuinely trusted Flowey right away. Like no shit. He told me run into the "friendliness pellets" and I didn't even fucking question it. And when Toriel came in? And she said to follow her? I straight up was like "Why the hell should I trust you?? That guy just tried to kill me what says you wont?" I followed only because the game made me but i was Wary the whole time. It took me a LONG time to warm up to Toriel.

Now. Let me tell you how stupid I am as well. The game says over and over right, "Don't fight. Spare. Have Mercy when names are Yellow." Well, I took this literally. I didn't understand the Act mechanic most of the time, and when something didn't work I just said, fuck it, and fought them. If their name didn't turn yellow, I just fought them. "They don't want Mercy if their name isn't yellow, right?" After a while, I'd started getting bored of fighting and would just run away, but like, I came to a point where I was like "I have a really low level, I'm really going to regret this later on if I don't grind for a while."

I don't know when I stopped but. I think I was only one or two kills away from a genocide run accidentally my first playthrough, based on how I think I was LV 3 and looking at genocide playthroughs, you're LV 3 or 4 when you fight Toriel. Like. Holy fuck. I can't imagine what I would have thought of this game if that happened lmao.

Speaking of Toriel, still didn't trust her, at all. When we got to Home, and after I did Every Single different phrase she says when you go downstairs before you talk to her reading about snails; I did not Hesitate to ask "cool uh when the fuck can I leave?" When we got to the Ruins exit I was like, ah, here it is. The betrayal from her I was expecting, where she tries to kill me. Well, nothing on the Act menu worked, right? So... I fought and killed her. I didn't really care, actually. I just kept going.

Then meeting Sans and Papyrus happened. I lost my fucking shit at this part, mostly when they were talking, because every time Sans made a pun it would zoom in on him and do a rimshot. The puns were not funny and I was definitely on Pap's side of "oh my GOD shut up." But that fucking zoom in and rimshot was just so fourth wall breaking and unexpected. Fuck, it still gets me. Anyway. Game continues. I again lose my shit at (insane spinning in random directions) "OH MY GOD! IS THAT A HUMAN?" "uh, i think that's a rock." "OH. WAIT! WHAT'S THAT IN FRONT OF THE ROCK?? (IS IT A HUMAN??)" "(yes.)" "OH MY GOD!!!" and still think these two moments in the game are Peak comedy. Oh, and let me tell you, I did not like either of these two at this point. Sans I was like, okay, hes kind of a dumbass in a funny way, but Papyrus is a dumbass in a way that just annoys me. Genuinely the archetype that misses social cues and therefore has miscommunication usually just annoys me to no end. (Mostly for the miscommunication. It's my least favorite trope and makes me unreasonably angry.) But yeah. Wasn't really a fan. But out of everyone so far? Definitely found Sans to be the most tolerable. But that's about all I thought of him lmao.

Getting to Snowdin, with the Papyrus battle, remember how I said I didn't like Papyrus? And yes, this was something I genuinely thought at one point, I genuinely hated Papyrus, imagine that. What a wild world that is. But anyway. You know how his Act menu has the "Flirt" option? I, for no reason, gunned it for the Flirt option, even though I did not want to. Then when he was like "WE'LL GO ON A DATE! LATER!!" i was like yea sure okay lmao. Again, couldn't figure out the Act menu to turn his name yellow, so I fought him, and he was one or two attacks from dying (miraculously) when he ended the battle. I spared him here cause, well, he spared me, it was only fair. Then this guy again is like "ILL BE AT MY HOUSE WHEN YOU WANT TO GO ON THAT DATE!" and i was like haha funny but still turned around to go on the date. Like why? I have no idea. I think I was more like "haha hes probably not gonna be there and its just cause i picked that option and lo and behold there was an actual fucking date. Oh my god. I have never in my life been on a video game date where one party was convinced I was infatuated with them and im here on the other side of the screen like "oh my god make this end i can't stand being around you.???" But still. The date was. Really fucking funny. I wish I could experience it for the first time again like holy shit. There are few playthroughs I did after this where I didn't go on the Pap date, even if I just spedrun through it.

So then you get to Waterfall and Sans is there like "hey wanna go to grillbys" and i was like sure why not so we go there and my choices were fries & ketchup (so i did not get the legendary scene where he chugged a bottle of ketchup, but i sure did my second playthrough, and let me tell you, i was disgusted). But like. This whole experience at grillby's like, the whoopee cushion, him using a comb on his bald ass skull, him just fuckin unapologetically scratching his ass for no reason?? Bro i was like "why the fuck is this guy part of the Tumblr Sexymen™ group ??? He's so ????? Gross???????" and like i still have this question tbh lmao. But like. Okay so he asks you "what do you think of my bro?" And my genuine answer was "uncool" and he was like "hey man sarcasm isnt funny" and can i just mention how like inheritly manipulative sans actually is like fuck he does things like this where he throws your answer the other way a few times and Every time it actually swayed me the other way. Because right here I went. "Oh. Maybe Papyrus is better than I thought." Like holy fuck maybe i should be more aware if something like that can sway my opinion so easily LMAO.

Anyway waterfall i genuinely was very bored of the whole time. I spent like a genuine 20 minutes figuring out the puzzle where you have to talk to a wall and I actually didn't realize you could move the telescope around. What helped me solve it is my friend's advice before I played it. "Inspect everything. Even talk to walls. Trust me." And literally thats how I solved it. But pretty much everything in Waterfall otherwise bored me. I did think it was pretty though, and did enjoy reading the lore, but when it started talking about monster biology my one fear had been realized: oh god, oh fuck. My original species for my own series also has physical Souls and die by turning to dust because they're made entirely of magic. God fuck. My luck, it has to be something popular, so now everyone's gonna think I'm a ripoff. But, at the same time, I do think it helped me understand monster biology (and it helped me come up with the ULR biology) better, because I've put in a lot of thought to existence of a species that exists only by magic and a Soul (which, mine only actually have half a Soul, as a full Soul makes a being immortal, which was also similar to the boss monsters in a way). It definitely made a lot more sense for like, the skeletons n stuff for me, because like my characters are wholly shapeshifters but usually take human form, and while they have "organs" in the places humans would have them, they don't operate. They're just placeholders, because they just live with their Soul. So I've always thought the same with UT monsters, since the skelebros can live without organs, that means so do the rest of the monsters, even if they have animal-like appearances.

Off topic lmao. Back to UT. So, the Undyne fight was kind of the turning point for me. She was pissing me off so much during this whole game and like I was like "if theres another fucking part where I have to run away from her im going to scream." Well, once again, her name wasn't yellow, so I wasn't going to spare her... and, actively, I made the decision to kill her, because I didn't want to deal with her still chasing me later on in the game. It took me a long time to beat her, and when I did, I texted my friend (@cheshiregrinnbuttoneyes ) in excitment like "YES I FINALLY KILLED UNDYNE" and she texted back like "YOU DID WHAT?????" and i was like "i.... Killed Undyne????" she replies, "YOU DONT HAVE TO OMFG WHY" and im like "I DIDN'T HAVE TO?? THERE'S OTHER OPTIONS?????" and shes like "YES OMFG THAT'S LITERALLY THE PREMISE OF THE GAME" and im "WHAT."

So then. I get that call from Papyrus like. "HEY! YOU ME AND UNDYNE SHOULD HANG OUT SOMETIME!"

oh my god the guilt i felt.

alphys on undernet being like "omfg i forgot to watch undyne fight the human. ah ill ask her about it later she never loses <3"

bro. i nearly fuckin cried. i was like. Not to mention I'd gotten the crush question right for Mettaton's quiz in answering Undyne (bc i was like "plz be gay plz be gay") so it fucking cut like a knife what I'd done.

I don't remember when I let myself get passed it. But I do know that the whole story arc between Alphys and Mettaton went way over my head. Like, i know im probs the minority on this, but I adore Alphys, I have since I first met her in game, and like, when Mettaton was like "ALPHYS HAS BEEN LYING TO YOU!" i just went "...nah."

Also, I didnt like mettaton at this point, cause I thought he was being really obnoxious, and then the turn around to betray Alphys really kinda pissed me off.

But like.

Oh my god.

Remember how I said I swapped my opinion on Pap earlier bc of Sans's comment? Yeah that was a pretty fast turnaround, but it still took me a few times.

But the second i saw mettaton ex

I was like

"HIM. HE. HE'S THE ONE I LOVE."

Like, full turnaround from Undyne, I actively refused to kill him. All times I thought he was an asshole? Forgotten. Me thinking he's a selfish prick? Gone. Nada. Nothing. Pure adoration. Suddenly every flaw he had was pushed aside purely from how hot I thought he was. Also, fuckin, im really glad i played this when no one in my house was awake, because I still didn't understand the Act mechanic here, and every time you attack mettaton he has this like moan he does and im like oh my god. stop. omfg.

At the end, too, when there was the calls and everything, when he had his big turnaround, I was just so happy for him I genuinely cried. Also, I had to do his battle probably the most out of everyone's in the game (not including genocide), so when it came around to his battle during the (glitchless) speedruns i did, i was more invested in how fast I could rack up points, cause you need 10k rating points to pass, and I actually did get that before he lost his legs, but apparently he needed to lose those too before you passed lol. Unfortunate.

Anyway after Alphys talked to you and everything, i genuinely went to see if Mettaton was still there, but he wasn't :( so i just went to New Home. I was very ill prepared for the fight against Asgore and the only reason I struggled with it so much was because my only healing items were like. Something that healed like 10 or 12 hp and the snowman piece. I was LV 9 when i finished the game, so like, my HP was pretty high, but i didnt have the G to buy items, so i was pretty much fucked. Yes. I had to eat the snowman to win.

Oh speaking of terrifying shit though. Photoshop flowey? My god. I haven't been afraid of a video game boss so much since I was a little kid. It was like 3 am and i was not prepared for him to just delete my save file and then kill me on repeat, glitching and breaking everything as he pleased. Bruh i was genuinely scared. Like, not even just, "oh yikes :(" or something. Like, crying scared. Lmao im an emotional bitch by nature.

I of course had to restart from the beginning again to get the True Pacifist ending. I was very careful to never touch the Fight button literally ever. And, it actually took me a while to reset, because I hate erasing my original save files, yknow? But, well, as it turned out? While technically New Game+ by naming, resetting doesn't erase everything you did. It wasn't a new file. I was a little confused at first to be honest. Toriel saying things were familiar, remembering things I said, Papyrus and Undyne both recognizing me, like. It was unnerving.

When I got to the end, i had to look up how to get Alphys's date (since my friend told me the way to unlock TP was to go on all the dates, but Alphys's was definitely designed in mind of you turning around from New Home and going back to talk to people rather than a new reset. So after unlocking it, getting through Alphys's date (i still remember being like, verbally, "omg alphys you look so nice??" When she came out with the dress on and then had a thought to myself like... since when do i care about what people look like? since when do i compliment people? At that point, while I didn't consider myself to be a rude person, I definitely wasn't exactly all that concerned about others for anything. Sure, I cared about others' lives, but I tended to be a bit more judgemental internally, and just. Didn't really give a fuck about what people did in the most negative sense possible, unless it involved me. Yet, it rolled off my tongue like it was something id say normally to anyone. I really wonder if this is the true turning point for me this year.)

Getting to the end, with everyone cheering me on. Hoo boy. This was the start of many tears to come. Papyrus's "DO WHAT I WOULD DO! BELIEVE IN YOU!!" sticks with me the most. I wasn't surprised by Flowey's actions, but what fucking threw me for a loop was like. When Flowey was revealed as Asriel, I was genuinely jaw-drop shocked. I was like. Holy fuck. I thought he was dead. What the hell. To this day, though, i still think Hopes and Dreams hits me the hardest out of all the boss battle themes. It doesn't super bother me, bc like, difference in opinion is whatever, but like. Whenever I see Megalovania at the top of someone's ost list for Undertale I'm just... Why? Maybe it's because I'd overheard it meme'd to much before I played the game, but like, i dunno, it's not a bad song, but it's not the most emotional provoking piece for me, so it's pretty far down my list. Hopes and Dreams will still remain my #1.

I really did feel determined during this battle. I really felt a lot of emotion. I felt excited. I felt frightened. I felt ambitious. Asriel's battle is probably still the hardest for me, and yes, I'm counting genocide this time. I can't grasp his magic patterns at all, and I more so played it as a "okay, how much damage can i take? Whats his next move?" As i healed every other turn. It took me a very long time to beat him (though no 11 hours like Sans, this was more like, 2 or 3 max) and when I got to the part with the Lost Souls, most of the characters just said their "we hate you" piece and i was like "nope you're controlled" right.

But then there's Sans's "just give up. i did."

I genuinely had to stop. I set down my controller and just sat for a minute. I'd mentioned before how much I've been struggling with depression for years now, and it's at the worst it's been since high school. Maybe you'd think when I saw that, I was like "sure, maybe I should give up." But... It's really the "i did." that hit me like a rock to the stomach. While I do know a couple other people with depression, the most discussion we have with it is "haha i wanna die" kinda jokes yknow? Nothing really serious. And, well, I've always been the type to lean to fictional characters for support more than real people, since I've just been so disconnected from a lot of friends growing up and was too scared to talk about anything with my family.

So seeing someone else say "just give up. i did." hit me so fucking hard that I just started crying. I had already been in a real sappy mood cause the whole scene was so emotional as it was, even if merely the cliche of friendship will save all, y'know what? Its a good ass fuckin trope and makes me emotional lmao.

So, naturally, I was more hyperaware of Sans's implied depression from here onward. The conversations with everyone post-battle left me crying. God, so did the hug with Asriel. I was just fucking bawling.

Oh god. I didn't even mention. "Despite everything, it's still you." Another line that just hit me and I had to pause.

So admist my crying mess, I was telling my friend I'd beat Undertale again. He asks me "so... you gonna play the genocide route?" And I already had from the beginning. I always want to play every available route in a game. I see no point in paying for something and then not playing it all. I'd consider myself a completionist who doesn't ever actually finish anything lmao.

I definitely put my emotions aside for genocide. The absolute hardest kill for me was Papyrus, though. And i was absolutely fucking heartbroken when he said he still believed me as his last words. But I forced it aside. I didn't want to reset. I wanted to beat it to have it under my belt that I had. I was pretty sure the Sans battle would be here, since I hadn't heard Megalovania in the game yet, and I was aware of how hard the battle was, despite never seeing it.

Undyne's battle I'm more emotional about in retrospect than I was at the time. At the time, I didn't care, didn't like the theme much, and the dings gave me a headache. Undyne isn't exactly my favorite character (though definitely not my least favorite, that role is given to Frisk with Toriel not close behind ahdhsb im sorry), so I really wasn't concerned about it. Not to mention, I don't know why, but all of the battles I struggled with EXCEPT Undyne's I ended up liking the character more as a result. Maybe it was the dinging lmao.

Bro you shoulda seen how prepared I was for Mettaton NEO's battle to be hard as fuck. I was like sitting upright, took deep breaths before hitting fight, then when he died in one shot i just kind of "wh...what." Still very disappointed lol but I guess that's kind of the point of the genocide route.

Then came the Sans fight. As I said, I spent 11 hours on this. I genuinely didn't pay attention to what he said after a while, but I do remember the first time I read it, I was fucking terrified. Usually, sarcasm, hatred, and sass is very hard to convey through pure text, especially when it's said in the same tone as his usual talking. But the absolute harshness, the coldness, and the lack of any fucks given Sans had at that point was so plainly transparent through everything he said that it fucking scared me. Toby Fox's writing here was fantastic. I can only dream of being able to write like that. Frankly, I love his writing in general. Actually, fuck it, I love all of the artistic takes of this game. This is gonna sound weird but... The "childishness" of it just is so good. Like, there's no rules. Every socially accepted rule of art, writing, character design, speech patterns, and even basic grammar are thrown aside. He didn't just think outside of the box, there literally was no box. I call it childish only because like, children also create with no rules. They have no rules to restrict their creativity. And seeing that embraced in Undertale in every form possible just blows me away.

Anyway. The battle. It. Was hard. Thats a given. I spent about two weeks playing it on and off, and it's probably the most healthily I've treated myself in recent memory, because when it became too much for me to handle, I set it down and took a break. I would retain what I memorized and use it for the next time I picked it up. Frankly, it came to a point where every time I opened up Undertale to play, it was more just cause I wanted to see him lmao. The guy hated my existence at this point and it's not like i disacknowledged that. But it just felt like every time i opened the game... Idk. I don't know what I felt. I can tell you for sure this isn't the time when Sans started slipping into my favorite character spot over Mettaton, that didn't come until the development of Act to Flirt's first demo, which was a month or so later lmao.

I was very excited when I beat Sans.

But then, after it was over, I felt very empty.

I didn't feel good about beating genocide. I still don't. I want to play the boss battles again, cause they were really fun, despite how hard they were, but I can't bring myself to.

When I got to Chara, and everything went to black, I just wiped my save and started fresh. I think this was the first time I used the name "Willo" for anything. I just picked a random name to use, and Willo was the first thing that came to mind.

I beat neutral again many times, trying to unlock as many secrets as I could. I accidentally spent like, way too long trying to get Sans's room, because I couldn't figure out how to do it... which is when I started speedrunning the game, because I was just so used to going through it all. I timed myself once, and I got somewhere around 1:20:00 ish, which puts me at the very bottom of the NG+ Glitchless runs by like 30 minutes, but hey, it's still not too bad all things considered.

I'd started working on Act to Flirt sometime in between the speedruns. I was playing Papyrus's date again, and I had this thought of. What if Undertale... but all boss fights are instead like Papyrus's date?? I pitched the idea to my friend who was like "thats definitely been done before lol" and immediately I almost shut down the idea. But then I still had that glimmer of hope that, maybe, since I haven't made it yet, people would like my game because it was by me. Besides, quarantine was getting to me. I needed some way to spend my time. So on May 6th to May 7th, I spent the whole 24 hour period making the first proof of concept for the game, which was UI setup and Flowey's tutorial date. I hadn't made any of the art yet, so it was a black background with Flowey's undertale sprite. I originally was going to make everything more visual novel like in the sense that, so like on Papyrus's date, you could make choices like "unwrap the present" "dont unwrap the present" or "you look great" "you look terrible" and getting the ending would involve pretty much just saying the right things at the right times. But this alone was... Yknow, already done before, and part of what makes Undertale so great is that it's, despite its many outside influences, very unique in its gameplay. So I decided to make the dates more like puzzle-solving RPG's, and frankly, since doing that, I dont know if I want to go back to making other visual novels lmao.

After making the first demo and releasing it, I hit a creative funk. I wanted to make the next demo right away, but I forced myself to stop (since i was working 16+ hour days to finish it in exactly a week. I didn't eat much and i slept very little during this time too. Dont do this lmao). I didn't know if the game would be received, and frankly, I'd had many failed projects in the past due to lack of support. I lost a lot of support in the past due to the dropped projects I kept starting and quitting because I had such a small audience, and that made me lose a lot of interest and motivation to work on them. So I posted the first demo and waited. I was very shocked to have a YouTuber with over a million subs play it that weekend. Dantekris I think was her channel name. She speaks Russian, and I never understood a word she said, but I've still watched her let's plays because I enjoy seeing her reactions. I hate that YouTube keeps deleting my responses on her videos, probably because they're long and in English so it's marked as spam on a comments section full of purely Russian comments yknow. But it makes me feel like such an ass ;w;

Mairusu is the next large YouTuber who played it and my god I love seeing when he uploads a new update for my game because I genuinely have no idea what to expect from him. I don't know what it is but he's just so absolutely funny to me. He also seems to be the most common breaker of my game though. Stop making your own bugs!! I try to testplay to find the bugs he gets and it's like.... what did you do.... how did you skip that whole date im so confused thats not supposed to happen..... He accidentally skipped all of Muffet's date because of this too and hers is supposed to be the hardest in the game right now so I'm very upset by it;; i dont know how it happened, it never happens for me.

But like. I was definitely struggling a bit with the direction I wanted to take AtF. I wanted there to be a core message, like with Undertale and many other of my favorite things. When there's a core theme to write about, it makes things a lot easier to compose than if you have a plot with no meaning to it. It ties it all together for a common purpose. But, as I started diving more into the fandom around this time, finding not only it being still alive but still enormous and filled with passion.

Passion. Hm. That's familiar. That's the trait I gave the player character, rather than determination. While it was intended for giggles "haha dating game u have passion wink wonk," it started becoming more than that. It started becoming a manifestation of what I really felt upon finally soaking myself into the deep end of this pool I'd once been too afraid to step into. Passion. Everyone here is so driven by their passion for this game, the characters, its story. Everyone is so inspired and creative. That's it. That's what I wanted Act to Flirt to be.

A game made for those who have already dived deep into Undertale. A game made for those who have the same level if passion I've wittnessed. A game that someone might stumble upon, merely wanting any Undertale content they can find, and a dating sim leaves them grasping at straws, only to find it's a game instead deeply rooted in how much they care about this world and its people. You have a Soul of Passion, because your passion for Undertale brought you to this game. That's what the core message is. Every ending is supposed to depict different kinds of empathy, and True Passion shows you truly cared the most you could for all of these characters. Sans is so blocked from it because, well, how can he really believe it? "if we're really friends, you won't come back," right? But here you are. Again and again.

And Heartbreak. Whose heart is really the one breaking here? Taking the Hopes and Dreams of every single character you've grown to care for and crushing it beneath your feet... who is the one suffering in the end?

I just... I'm very excited. I've written that game with the player as the main character. Not Willo. Not Frisk. Not anybody else. You, the player, are the main character. I've honestly done a lot of looking around in the DDLC code to make this game as 4th wall breaking as I can (without like. Disrupting it as a game experience like ddlc is, with monika deleting things and stuff). Just enough to leave the player unsettled and confused. Like. "Me? Are you talking to me?" Yes. You. Directly to you.

I started sketching out designs and ideas for ULR around July. I genuinely loved Underlust after finding out about it, even though it was posed to me as an insult about the contents of Act to Flirt. I was both like "uh... Act to Flirt is nothing like this. Maybe in reversed roles at best but..." and also "okay but this? This shit is good. Thank you." But finding out it was discontinued and wanting more, well, that's when I decided to make ULR. I presented the idea to my friends, who were like "please stop making aus," and then continued onward. I told myself I wasn't going to work on it though until after I finished Act to Flirt... Then after the next demo came out... Then it turned out I was working on it too much and it resulted in me rushing my release of the 3rd demo of AtF because I'd been so distracted I was going to miss my release deadline of the end of August, before school. I... Still kinda regret that a lot. It's still very buggy. Though I hope I got them all for the next demo...

But speaking of school .... ha... Remember when i said i was going to transfer to another school? Well, I did, and for the first few weeks it was fine! Then I started skipping assignments I didn't want to do. Then I started panicking about my low grades. Then I started getting behind on assignments. Then I stopped going to classes. Then I lost all motivation to work on anything at all. I just locked myself in my room and did next to nothing with the occasional drawing here and there, for weeks. It came to the point where I was like "I just have to get through this semester, then I'll drop out." But if I ever wanted to go back to school, having all F's on my last report card would not bode well for my acceptance. Which lead to more stress. I didn't want to fail, but I also didn't have any motivation to work. I would do one assignment here or there, feel good about myself, then realize I was still months behind on work and suddenly oh god oh fuck finals are next week. And my solution? I just. Fuckin dropped out. Oh my god. It was such a relief to just get that weight off my shoulders that I'd been carrying for months on end, preventing me to do anything I wanted to work on.

Well. Then my car tires died. So that's a thing. But good news! Between commissions and gifts, I have enough money to get them replaced! I don't think I've ever like... Been so excited about that before.

And, well. Now I'm here, pretty much. God, I just went through my entire year summary, and it feels like it was both forever long but also not long at all. I don't get it. 2021 still feels like a far off future, despite the fact I'm now 5 hours into it. Yes, I spent 4 hours writing this. Whoops. Oh well. I couldn't sleep anyway, so it's not that big of a deal.

All in all though... Despite being locked inside, away from my friends, unable to talk to anyone about the things i was enjoying, and living in fear of getting sick at all ever with anything, 2020 definitely fuckin changed me for the better. It was a hellhole of a year and I'd never do it again or wish it upon my worst enemy, but I came out a better person... I think. I hope.

It seems cliche to bring back but fuck it. Undertale? My friend insists its core message was that anyone can be a good person if they just try, which I mean, it definitely probably was intended that way. But that never was the message I felt while playing it.

What lesson I took from it was "things aren't always as they seem."

Flowey betrays you immediately, but then you find out he's just the remnants of a boy who died years ago and is still grieving over the loss of his best friend, whomst, despite how much he cares for them, recognizes they weren't good to him and he'd been manipulated and used by them.

Toriel is a kind and caring woman, a still grieving mother over the loss of her children, who seems to have kindness to no end, but is actually filled with such hatred and depression that she regularly gets drunk, swears, and still, without resilience, hates her ex husband.

Sans is a playful character who is full of puns, a gross atmosphere, and decided to break physics just because he can. He's the embodiment of a comic relief character. But at the same time, he's suffering, struggling, in constant pain and worry. He's lazy, but quick on his feet. He's harmless but will kill without hesitation if need be. He's both caring and the least caring of them all.

Papyrus is like... a self-centered asshole in a way, when you first meet him. He prides himself and everything he does. Yet still, he's actually quite open and accepting and loves everyone. He loves talking with and being with other people, even if maybe sometimes he has a different interpretation of social interaction from the "norm."

Undyne comes off as cruel and deadly, such even being emphasized in many points. But, deep down, she's extremely caring for those who are close to her, and her only cruelty is dealt to those who have wronged her in some way.

Alphys is a sweet and nervous wreck who comes off as helpful and lacking a filter due to her tendency to ramble. She seems to be merely anxious due to likely social anxiety... But you eventually find out that she's a liar who merely wants to create a world to be a better place, and by doing so, she pretends all the bads do not exist.

Mettaton comes off as an absolute self-centered asshole. Like. There's no way around that. He seemingly has no regard for other people with only full intentions of helping himself. But, deep down, he actually cares a lot for other people, especially his family and friends, and just tends to get caught up in things while he's in the moment.

Muffet seems to be greedy with how much money she begs people to give her for the spiders, but, as it turns out, she's flat broke and drops no G when you beat or kill her. She merely needs the money to help the spiders.

Asgore, too, is built up to be this ruthless killer throughout the whole game, and when you finally meet him, he's an incredibly sweet guy who's only filled with regret, and because of his past decisions, has decided to put aside his hopes for the sake of his people.

I...

Didn't see any of these characters for who they really were right away. Why would I? Few of these archetypes are explored much in a lot of fiction lately, or at least what I've been consuming; and is more focused around how someone can change their flaws into something positive... Not how to accept someone for who they are, despite the wrongs they may have committed or the lives they lead. Everyone's different. Everyone's grown up differently. Everyone has a reason for what they do.

And it took me playing this game to realize such a simple concept that I probably should have learned years ago.

That's why I really think 2020 changed me for the better. I made a realization that I should have had many years ago, and it's made me a lot more confident in expressing myself, accepting people for what they do, and seeing the brighter side to everything. I say that, sitting here filled with nothing and void of all emotion whatsoever... But it's a conscious thought i have. My emotions are so weird... They're either on full blast or I feel nothing at all. But yet I have... Thoughts of what i should feel? It's weird. Idk. This is why I'm getting therapy LMAO

But yea. 2020? Fuck you. But also thank you. But mostly fuck you and good riddance lmao

[helenarasmussen87]

Writing Asks

This the post where I know no one is going to ask me anyway.

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

Something that is like a “Oh hey, what happens if we do THIS!” and go from there. Usually ends up having loads of emotions, comfort, angst, introspection, loads of kitchen sink dialogues, not too much action. Families, happy endings.

2. Is there a trope you’ve yet to try your hand at, but really want to?

Fluffy stuff and humourous stuff. I am a little too serious for either one and my humour is drier than the desert and very odd. So no.

3. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?

Teacher and Student relationships. Necrophilia, abuse of all sorts, underage. Just not my thing. I’ve gotten unable to stomach a lot of grimdark and super dark stuff as I get older so I won’t write it. But go ahead if that’s your thing.

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Two, since I can’t have more than two on the burner. Learned THAT early on and they’re Terror AU’s One is a fixit, but with health complications and angst. The other is a Modern Day AU which has two professors falling in love after one gets injured and the other worked as an EMT and helps to take care of him and they fall in love.

5. Share one of your strengths.

I can offer insights on what flows and what doesn’t. I can also happily shred my own drafts if they don’t work. 

6. Share one of your weaknesses.

Action. I work at it, but it’s not my favourite. Or war writing. 

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

“Danny had to turn his head away to hide his smile, because he knew that it was a legitimate concern for Jose. Most of the time, he had jumped into bed with his partners first and then did the mating dance. 

Although extremely smart in other aspects, dating and social interactions were always a bit skewed, because he was always second-guessing himself and nervous as hell.

“That’s actually how things work out in these situations. At least it did for me and my ex and for me and Claude.” Danny explained calmly, making Jose nod and take another pull of his slurpee.

“So what do I do? Like is there a time when I bring up the possibility of us sleeping together?” Jose asked, the words slightly mumbled as he chewed on the straw.

“You don’t bring it up. You’ll just know when the time is right for it to happen. Sex isn’t what a relationship should be built on. Yes, it’s nice and it’s part of it, but it’s not the end all to be all. Trust me on this. It will happen if it’s meant to happen.” Danny explained, hoping that he had put it all in the plainest and simplest terms he could for his friend.

I am proud of this because it was majorly borrowing from life and I can see the difference from earlier writing. 

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

“Sergio laughed shortly. “I’ve already done enough of that, and look at where it’s gotten you. Yeah, legally I hold claim over you. I could make the club buy out your contract and sit at home all day, having litter after litter.”

Iker’s blood froze at that and he turned to look at Sergio to see if he really meant it, but Sergio’s face gave nothing away.

“Or I could sign your rights to the club and let them sell you wherever or to whomever. Take you out of Spain, or sell you to Getafe or Malaga. All of these things I could do. The club actually did bring it up at that meeting you didn’t show up for.”

Iker blinked, his hands going numb as Sergio’s wickedly honed words hit home.

“I’m not telling you this to hurt you. Or make you feel indebted. I’m telling this to you because you’re this close to losing your spot and that’s the last thing I want for you. But there’s only so much I can do for you.”

He sighed and looked at Iker dead in the eyes.

“I miss him too, Iker. I miss Antonio every fucking day. And I miss you.”

Iker swallowed hard as Sergio abruptly turned and left, slamming the front door and freeing him from the command so suddenly that Iker fell onto the couch and curled up in it.

He had no energy to do anything else. Not when he was all too aware he’d fucked up and fucked up big and needed to fix it.

Borrowed from life again and it was more of a dialogue that needed to be had when you finally realize how much you fucked up and how much you need to stop coasting and make it right. 

9. Which fic has been the hardest to write?

ALL OF THEM! Kidding. I want to say the one I’m working on right now. I was lucky enough I got a ton of help fleshing it out. I can see the end of the 1st chapter and I am having a hell of a time writing Goodsir’s chunk. He’s turned out more emo and romantic than I was expecting. 

10. Which fic has been the easiest to write?

The QuiObi prompts for the prompt week. Took me like two hours to knock them off and post. 

11. Is writing your passion or just a fun hobby?

Its a passion and a hobby. It helped me through a lot of rough patches and keeps me sane. 

12. Is there an episode above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?

Mostly music or a change in life. I tend to write when everything is in flux with me.

13. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Just write. Worry about editing later. Once you have something on the paper, fixing it up becomes easier. 

14. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

Edit as you write. You don’t get anything done.

15. If you could choose one of your fics to be filmed, which would you choose?

Oooh. I think it’s a toss up between my Qui-Gon/Jango fic in a pastoral setting where they have put their pasts behind and are farmers on Concord Dawn. Or the Werewolf fic I wrote during my RPF phase.

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

Bloody hard. I would have to say Fitzier (Commander Fitzjames/Captain Crozier)

17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

Depends. Sometimes I go straight from beginning to end and sometimes I end up writing the middle and not figuring it out until later.

18. Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

Outlines. I have notebooks I jot down point form notes about the characters and the plot.

18. Stephen King once said that his muse is a man who lives in the basement. Do you have a muse?

Mine is a librarian or an alchemist trying to figure out answers and how things fit in.

19. Describe your perfect writing conditions.

A good playlist. Alone, in my room.

20. How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

I revise it along the way when I sit down to write. Then before I post, I give it a once over to make sure it flows and makes sense. 

21. Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style. (Person sending the ask is free to make suggestions).

All my old fics are honestly gone so I’m skipping this one. 

22. If you were to revise one of your older fics from start to finish, which would it be and why?

Honestly? The Duo and Heero one I wrote about them being in an abusive relationship where they split up, then got back together again. I was again writing from life, and I have seen couples who did overcome it, but looking back, I think I should have written it that they separated and went their own ways. 

Keep in mind I was very young when I wrote this, and I was in an abusive relationship myself and didn’t realise it at the time. He hit me once, apologised and never did it again. But he did end up manipulating me, gaslighting me, and emotionally abusing me until I finally had enough and left. 

23. Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

Yes. Loads of them due to me not wanting to finish them. Or the hosting sites going under. 

24. What do you look for in a beta?

Someone who is honest, someone who knows the way I write, and has suggestions to fix those said things. But someone who is themselves is the best. Because they know what they want. Same here. 

25. Do you beta yourself? If so, what kind of beta are you?

I do, simply due to lack of steady betas. Flow and story telling, but I also look for syntax and formatting as well as grammar. I will miss typos, so I run spell-check too. I mostly use a mental rubric. Teacher training.

26. How do you feel about collaborations?

I haven’t had a successful one due to the second person always deciding that they can’t follow through or up and disappearing. So I don’t do them.

27. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

Oh my God! I read so much and so many different people that I can’t pinpoint three. I usually end up reading a fic or two, so I can’t say why I read the author.

28. If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?

I haven’t done that. I do admit to having inspired by fics. I wouldn’t ever presume to do that. It just feels like a snub.

29. Do you accept prompts?

Not really. I can’t tailor write stuff consistently. 

30. Do you take liberties with canon or are you very strict about your fic being canon compliant?

Oh always! I end up liking the characters that somehow never make it until the end. And in the Terror, unless you want to write angst all the time, you HAVE to ignore canon. And I mean BOTH the book and the show, since the book is nasty. The show is amazing, but oh my god is it depressing.

31. How do you feel about smut?

Yes damned please!

32. How do you feel about crack?

Depends on how well it’s done. Sometimes it is needed. Sometimes it’s like “Why?”

33. What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

A bit tricky. I don’t mind non-con, but it has to be handled well. Dub-con, especially in A/B/O happens within context and it is usually dealt with. So I can tolerate that more than the first. Outright abuse, no.

34. Would you ever kill off a canon character?

Yes. Not often thought. But yes. I usually try and keep as many alive as I can though.

35. Which is your favorite site to post fic?

AO3, its a wild place and I love it for that reason.

36. Talk about your current wips.

It’s an AU where two professors that live in the same building and work in different faculties get thrown together and start to get to know each other. Due to circumstance, one gets injured and the other kind of volunteers to help take care of him, where they fall in love. The others in the vicinity do also. There’s Canadian shenanigans and baking. 

37. Talk about a review that made your day.

That they really liked how I wrote Frank Randall and would like to see more with his son, an OC I created for the story.

38. Do you ever get rude reviews and how do you deal with them?

I either delete, or give a generic reply and leave it. I’ve got stuff to do.

40. Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).

Nope. It just doesn’t work for me.

*somewhere I fucked up on the number but here you are*

Whoever wants to do this.

[disease-danger-darkness-silence]

Update

So, general life update, as promised here.

(Links: The ongoing fundraiser, the Needs Wishlist, and the Wants Wishlist.)

Long post to follow.

The financial:

I was able to pay 2 weeks of insurance so that I won't get my registration revoked. I'm working on selling the Toyota back to the original owner (he wants it back for sentimental reasons) so that I can pay six months of insurance on the RV. I don't have a car to replace it, but for the moment that's the best I can do. If anyone in the Carson City area has a vehicle that's shit but works, hella hit me up.

I have money set aside to pay the past due on my phone bill. If I can sell the Toyota I'll be able to pay a chunk of this month's bill as well.

My mom's stress is slowly going down. My sister got her food stamps/welfare shit sorted, and Raven and I are trying to help with babysitting, cleaning, cooking, etc. I need to get my shit sorted as well, because after paying the insurance and the phone I have about $8 left to my name. I'll go tomorrow if I can.

It's almost $2,000 with shut-off fees, pay-off fees, and other assorted fees to get my sister's phones turned back on (they have to pay off all of the phones, plus my niece that got kicked out still technically has a line that they won’t shut off until the bill is paid). That's my mom, sister, and nephew's phones, so Raven and I are the only people in the "household" that have phones. We currently are caught up on the Internet so they can use TextNow and Discord while they're at home or somewhere with Internet. I get about $60 on Friday, from Gamestop. In two weeks, I'll have a little more than that as a paycheck because my bosses gave me some extra hours in light of me losing my other job, but it's still not a lot.

Working on Raven's military disability is hard. Sometimes it feels impossible and we're both tempted to give up. This is why so many people die while waiting for disability, civilian or otherwise: it's daunting and scary and depressing and honestly suicide is easier. But we're trying really hard to not give in.

I need a car, to fix the RV (I think it's the alternator that's screwing with the battery, plus I need to drop, drain, flush, replace, and FILL the fuel tank, as well as replace the fuel filter again), and probably money towards my mom's electric bill. Between all of that, the whole household (five adults and one kid) needs (at minimum) $5,000 just to get caught up on bills, and for all of the adults with drivers' licenses to have a means to get to and from work.

The bad:

I have no idea how to get all of this.

I'm scared a lot of the time because of this.

I can't keep living parked on my mom and sister's stretch of street. It's technically illegal. The only place that will take my RV costs $750 a month (admittedly, that's everything except for my phone, unless I want to get better Internet, so it’s a pretty good deal), and doesn't have a monthly space until January.

I keep applying to jobs and either not getting callbacks, or getting interviews and then never hearing from anyone again.

Raven has applied to everywhere that won't set off her PTSD. One callback, no jobs.

My sister has been applying everywhere too but, nothing. Despite seasonal hires being needed.

I posted the fundraiser to Reddit and I'm getting a lot of "helpful" comments about searching for jobs/relocating that just aren't something we can do right now, or are things we're already doing. It's like people don't believe me when I say that I am looking, flat-out, for jobs right now, and it's really disheartening.

I don't know that I'll be kept on the Gamestop payroll after the seasonal period ends mid-January.

I'm not sure my good computer works anymore. It got physically damaged at SNAFU Con and I'm afraid to try and start it up (plus I don't really have the room to set it up) and see how bad everything is. Replacing it would be incredibly expensive.

The good:

Raven and I are doing good emotionally. Which is a first. This is, terrifyingly enough, possibly the most healthy romantic relationship either of us has ever had.

The RV is slowly becoming a home and not just a place with all of our shit shoved into it. Plus, while we have no propane for the heater/water heater, we DO have electric heaters, electricity from mom's house, and access to their shower. Small things!

I fixed most of the plumbing issues, so we may not have hot water, but we do have working sinks and a full water tank! I need a new toilet and new toilet fixtures, but the one there is usable for the most part.

Someone gave us a tiny, awesome vacuum so we can actually vacuum the nasty carpet in here! We hope to eventually replace all of the flooring with the laminate we put in the bathroom. We have a good chunk of laminate already for this particular situation, but right now the carpet keeps it warmer in here so we'll wait until spring.

A friend got me a used Switch Lite! I have no games for it (I did install Warframe because that's free and it'll help me get used to the system), and I'm hoping to DoorDash with mom’s car a bit over the next few weeks to save up, so I can get Pokemon Shield (maybe, depending on how much $60 would screw me), but for now Raven and I will be playing Warframe on the Switch. Exciting! If you happen to have any Switch games that don't require the detachable joy cons and a big screen, feel free to hit me up if you want to get rid of them for cheap or free.

I used the last of my bleach powder and blue dye and I have blue hair again. I appeased the mental health gods and I feel great for it.

Also I look pretty hot because of the awesome dye job mentioned above.

The cats are both being cuddly and loving and happy, and I got to see Ziva recently and that was awesome. I missed her a lot!

I get a lot of awesome swag from Gamestop.

SNAFU Con was exhausting for everyone this year, and Raven was sick during a lot of it, but it was, IMO, probably one of the best cons we've ever put on. Year 10 was a success!

We kind of have enough to eat. Between all of us, we're surviving and pretty okay? As far as nutrition goes.

TLDR: Everything is awful but I am trying really hard to focus on the good and not the bad over the next few days.

This isn't specifically to coincide with Thanksgiving (because I know what that holiday means to the native population here in the US and it ain't good - so I try to really kinda be aware of that during this week, and do things for the native population, even if it's just signal-boosting businesses and such), it's just that I historically don't do well during the winter and I'm trying to hype shit in my brain. So, you know, the depression doesn't win.

Anyway, in case anyone was wondering how I’m doing outside of reblogs and shit.

[catalystrpg]

“the kid”

name: aaron mandelbaum

age: 22

fc: logan lerman

and tryin’ to chase the light, the time arrives, the time that leads back home, it’s not hard to let go

Aaron Mandelbaum was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to a family of middle class aspirations in a middle class neighborhood. Father: officer worker, failed playwright, played bingo unironically. Mother: manicurist, drove a baby blue secondhand Chevrolet, a Long Island émigré under mysterious circumstances. His mother always used to wave away death. “Look at me,” she’d demand, gesturing with red talons, “do I look like the kind of person who gets sick?” Spoiler alert: she did, and she was. Stage whatever ovarian cancer. The kicker is they’d known about it for years. Aaron spent half his childhood with his face pressed to the car window, watching his father help her across the parking lot to the clinic, where they’d sit for hours in air conditioned boredom, waiting patiently for more bad news.

Of course, it might not have been like that at all. Actually, now that he thinks about it, wasn’t this the plot to that movie he saw the weekend before the world ended?

His great uncle never told him the details. Shlomo was old even when Aaron was a child. He wore a neatly trimmed grey beard, and wore horn-rimmed glasses that might have been cool fifty years ago. What Aaron did know to be true was the bingo thing. Every Friday evening, even when Aaron was in high school, he and his uncle drove downtown and went to the JCC to socialize with the newly retired and divorcees. Aaron used to flit from table to table for gossip (”Like a damn fruit fly,” Shlomo growled), which he’d avidly recount once they were in the car driving home, his uncle feigning disinterest (”Don’t tell me, don’t tell me! …Wait, so Cynthia is doing what now? That dumb hack.”). Shlomo, incidentally, was a sports reporter for the local news, and he was keen on greyhound racing. For a long time growing up Aaron wanted to do something similar. Next to comic books, and terrible cult horror films, Aaron had one other passion: baseball.

Baseball was what got him into college. He couldn’t wait to leave the block he’d spent his whole life on; he’d already shed his high school friends with little more than a shrug and a wave. Ideally he wanted out of Louisville: he told his uncle to close his eyes and stick a pin in the map, and wherever it ended up, he’d attend. Shlomo, the bastard, peeked, so Aaron ended up going to Kentucky State, which was predictably awful. Aaron made little effort. Back home his eccentricity was cute, even trademarked, but in college it only stamped him out as a social outlier. It didn’t help that he engaged with any debate in any class; wore Adidas slideseverywhere; and once vomited so energetically at a campus party that, rumor had it, he stained the frat house carpet. The sport was what saved him, really. Aaron didn’t care that people put up with him for the games he brought home - he didn’t even care that the only guys interested in him had seen some online footage of his top ten home runs. Popularity was a con, Aaron wasn’t an idiot, and besides, he liked the attention. Had always liked the attention, actually.

Attention is what he brought to the disease when it first broke out. In the beginning it was little more than the common cold, or so the story went. But half of Aaron’s team was struck down in a few days, and then the lecture crowds thinned, and then he looked up while studying late in the library one evening to find himself entirely alone - and it was finals week. Aaron doesn’t really do panic. But he did immediately jump on the forums to see what was happening. And some of the posts that were trending prompted him to drop everything, and drive home to Louisville immediately.

What happened next is… well, kind of morally bankrupt. The thing is, Aaron actually had quite a large following online. This was gained partly through his sportsmanship, but then he got into streaming games, and then participated in a couple of infamous flame wars, and then he had a cool half a million hanging onto his every post, Tweet, anything you can think of. When he returned to Louisville, Aaron knew Shlomo was sick. He’d seen sick people before, after all. Unlike his mother, Shlomo didn’t deny a thing. He refused to go to the local clinics popping up, and forbade Aaron from leaving their house. The only channel Aaron had to the outside world was an online one. Thus began his live-blogging of his uncle’s slow, painful death.

In times of disaster, the internet is a force to be reckoned with. Aaron was glued to the forums, scanning feverishly for any new information. He fought down his mounting excitement and concentrated on the imminent reality: that sooner or later, he’d have to leave town, probably Kentucky, and he needed to be ready. Shlomo died on a Monday afternoon not two weeks into the national emergency - it took that long for his body to finally stop battling the inevitable. Aaron didn’t waste any time. He bundled their dog into his uncle’s old rattling car, packed a bag, grabbed his bat, and hit the road. Driving was one way to drown out the mounting panic that pressed against the inside of his skull. Because being outside, in the real world, was so much fucking worse than any game, or show, or comic, or forum. He’d almost dismissed some of the posts online, thinking them to be blowing things out of proportion. And the news reports on television had to be exaggerated for viewing appeal… right? He was wrong. So fucking wrong.

Stumbling upon the group was a major turning point for Aaron, primarily because without them, he has no doubt he would have died. Driving with no plan was not a smart idea; nor was avoiding all quarantine safe zones. Sure, those places ended up being overrun, but it might have bought him some time. Instead he had to run on the sniff of an oily rag, relying on his quick-thinking… and his six hundred hours logged on The Last of Us (shut up, leave him alone). It’s safer, Aaron thinks, to pretend like this is a game: an open-world post-apocalyptic MMO. Despite his posturing and casual bravado, that fantasy is so much easier than the reality. Because the world is actually gone. And in a comic reversal of his parents’ death, he has no estranged family figure to swoop in and rescue him.

He’s alone.

“the leader”: it could be the lack of a father figure in his life or just the need to keep on the man’s good side, but he’s finding himself asking the leader more and more questions. wanting to learn more, wanting to be better. when things go wrong, he’s the only one he trusts. he knows the man is struggling and doesn’t want to be friends, but, he could really use a friend right now.

“the dead weight”: he sees her and in turn, sees himself. sees what the others think of him. weak, a burden. too innocent, too naive. but in fact, he knows the truth about himself and her. they’re learning to adapt, learning to grow, that has to be a form of strength - right? shes scared and he doesn’t blame her. it’s nice to have her around, though. she’s one of the few that he can actually relate to and not feel like a kid around.

“the liar”: the others don’t trust him, but he does. he’s the only one he can joke around with and relax. they share a similar dry humor and that, is so much more important then anyone could’ve ever known. he tries to take things lightly, which he enjoys. the world is so fucking shitty and depressing now, it’s nice to have someone who can still separate the serious situations and light hearted ones.

[kido-swagomi]

this is one of those posts that I really shouldn’t make but am just absolutely out of shits to give and the bridges are burned anyway. So fuck it. 

I wanted to talk to my therapist about this today but we ended up talking about a different issue instead, so I’m just going to vent on Tumblr because I’m sure that’s healthy. If you’re actually reading this expect no actual structure or purpose to this post. This is like the definition of a vent post.

So Aiareck. That blue dude in my icon. He’s my fursona. But he didn’t start off that way, he was originally a DnD character, made for a phenomenal campaign run by one of my closest friends. Past tense. That game took a lot of my energy, and it was by my choice. I was enraptured with the world the DM had created. Obsessed, really. My personality tends to lead to that. I had a massive backstory for Aiareck - dude was 42 at the time of the game so he had plenty of life behind him to write about. Fantastic adventures. Tragedy. Romance. The whole nine yards. I spent hours dreaming up characters and stories for Aiareck to interact with. My intent was to actually write this backstory out as a short story/novella/thing (spoiler, I never did because I’m so bad at actually writing things, I just have a bunch of character bios that tell the story through those). 

Cut to about 5 months after the campaign started. One soft-restart after the OG party was a nightmare and we paused the campaign to focus on a different one before removing someone from our current group and bringing a new person in. I made the mistake of dating another player in the game. They flew out to visit me and meet in person for the first time since we started dating. Visit didn’t go well. They went home early. We broke up the day after.

Day after that, the DM ends the campaign.

Three weeks later, them, and most of that group, cut off all contact with me. Me specifically. I know they’re still in touch with one-another. Just me.

These people were some of my best friends. I had known the DM for six years. The rest I met with the campaign, but we became fast friends. And they just. Cut me out. No explanation. No arguments. No reason. Just shut me out.

My ex and I didn’t have an angry breakup. We agreed it wasn’t gonna work. We wanted to still be friends - or at least that’s what they told me. I know I did. We hadn’t even been dating two months, I could get over it. Wanted to just take a few weeks off from the game or something to deal with the grief, then get back into it and just be friends again. Easy.

But no. Instead I get shut completely out. No connection left. It was complete and total. Every single social network under the sun that we were mutual friends/followers on. Gone. A huge aspect of my life was just swept out from under me. A dear friend, whom I had already given a second chance after they did some pretty fucked up shit and shut me out before, did it all over again (fool me twice, eh?), the first relationship I had been in in 7 years, the campaign I had sunk so many hours into as a player, gone. Just like that. 

Queue major depression spell. Went hard on painting Warhammer models to pass the time. Ended up getting burnt out on that and have barely painted since April. Started my own campaign with a different party in May in some desperate attempt to get back what I had before, and I’m rapidly losing motivation to continue that endeavor. Work continues to blow ass. And my self-esteem is basically shot and at this point I’m just convinced I’m going to be single for the rest of my life because of my own social awkwardness and anxieties.

But hey, at least I’m getting a bird in a few weeks, eh?

But what does this have to do with Aiareck? The blue boy from the start of the post. Well, even before all of this shit happened I had decided that after years of not having one, he was gonna be my fursona outside of the campaign. I love this boy. I got a really great badge commissioned of him to wear to cons. If by some miracle I ever acquire the money to pay for it I’d love to get at least a partial suit based off of him.

And now he’s got all these bad memories associated with him. I told myself after this all went down that I was still going to finish writing his story. I was too invested in it not to. Spoiler: I didn’t. Because every time I’d try to I’d find myself infuriated. He reminded me of what I had lost. This stupid blue bird had suddenly become a symbol for the shit that drove what had started as a pretty okay year for me into the fucking ground. 

That’s where my obsessive compulsive tendencies rolled their ugly fucking head. My brain wasn’t done obsessing over him and his story - it’s still not done. I pace the floor on slow days at work thinking about his story. About his adoptive mother. About how he ended an attempted coup on his homeland by eliminating the perpetrator, who was his own mentor. About how lost his parents at a young age and made his way after that carrying on his father’s love of music and dance, and spent his teenage years as a busker in his home city. 

I think about how in the campaign, his home was under siege by the big bad, and now he’ll never get to save it. He’ll never figure out what the big secret that pirate captain was keeping from him was, or get back the Super Legendary Awesome Pistol™ from her that was stolen from his home years ago. And I can’t even ask anyone what the possible outcomes were. The only person who knows decided I’m some kind of bastard that should be shut out at any cost for reasons that I’ll probably never know.

I wanted to be able to detach Aiareck from those memories. To compartmentalize them and eliminate the negative associations so I could still enjoy developing this character that I’ve spent so much time on and want to literally represent me in online space. And eventually (still working on this one) have him redesigned with a more ‘modern’ appearance to detach him from his roots as a DnD character (at least outwardly). I intended the commission I got of him recently to be a kind of “last hurrah” for Aiareck the DnD character, and then I’d get a new character sheet done up with the “new” Aiareck.

Of course I’d still have his DnD story and if I ever get the opportunity I would absolutely play as him in a new campaign. I loved him too much not to. 

But despite my efforts, I’ve utterly failed to detach him. Those memories still come back. That anger is still there. The absolutely un-fucking-shakable feeling that I’ve done something horrible to wrong these people I considered friends to warrant the treatment I’ve gotten and I don’t even fucking know what it is I could have done. And I don’t even mean that from a stupid, arrogant “I can do no wrong” stance. I mean I’ve seriously tried to look back at my behavior and my actions and I can find absolutely nothing that explains this response. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m a perfect person. Let’s be real, I’m an asshole. I know I can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes. I make plenty of damn mistakes. I made mistakes in the group setting of this DnD campaign. I made mistakes while my now-ex visited. I made mistakes in that relationship before they visited.

Yet, evidently, I did do something horrible. And I’m either too stupid or too full of myself to begin to have even the faintest idea of what it is. 

There’s another hit to the ol’ self-esteem. ‘Cause I really needed another one of those. 

I don’t even really know where I’m going with this anymore. Just... I just want to love my bird boi. I just want to be able to move on. But I’m so fucking incapable of doing that. It’s infuriating. It’s something about myself I fucking hate. I just can’t get over shit. 

Seems like a lot of emotion over a stupid anthropomorphic bird. If only I could shed that emotion. 

[easyfoodnetwork]

Eric Rivera Is Playing the Game 

Selling pantry items, like spices, has helped keep Addo afloat.

Despite everything, the Seattle chef has found a way to successfully run his restaurant Addo — and he has some advice for the rest of the industry

Eric Rivera does not run a traditional kitchen. At his Seattle restaurant, Addo, the menu, cuisine, and concept change constantly. So when Seattle restaurants began to close in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, Rivera was already ahead of the game.

Rivera was 4,000 miles away giving a culinary tour in Puerto Rico when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency due to rising COVID-19 cases. In between staging meals and teaching his guests about the island’s culinary history, he set up his phone as a hotspot and began emailing clients and staff to rearrange the coming weeks of planned dining events and promotions, determining which could be salvaged as takeout and which needed to be completely restructured or worse, canceled.

On March 11, Rivera returned to Seattle and a calendar with reservations booked well into the next year. Addo used the Tock app for dinner reservations, but soon began using it to schedule carryout instead. Addo’s lunch catering, which amounted to about 30 percent of his business, was no longer feasible since all the high-end tech offices in the area closed, so Rivera began to make easy-to-reheat take-home meals to accommodate those newly working from home. He made and sold pantry items, like CSA boxes, yeast kits, and fresh-made pasta. He even hired his own delivery drivers to avoid working with gig-economy food delivery apps, which he believes take too much from both restaurants and drivers.

Adjusting to changes at the drop of a hat is common in most kitchens, but it’s something Rivera was used to well before he started working in restaurants. In the late aughts, Rivera ran his own mortgage insurance and financial services business when the Great Recession hit. He was an early success by most American standards, running his own offices in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. “There’s this game-of-life kind of thing — you’re raised to believe that you need the nice house with the picket fence, the car. Checkmark, checkmark, checkmark. I had that when I was 24.”

Rivera recalls being at Costco picking up office supplies in 2008 when he got a call from an employee; they wanted him back in the office immediately. Rivera was surprised by the urgency. “No man, leave that shit there. We’re done,” his employee said.

“What? What do you mean?”

“We’re done. Everything’s closed, all the lines of credit. Everything’s done.”

Rivera felt he had to “learn to play the game.”

Rivera’s customers vanished almost immediately, and his business dwindled. He was forced to shift primarily to insurance. He was depressed. To save some money, he started cooking all of his meals at home and blogging about his successes and failures in the kitchen, mostly posting pictures of his process. He quickly amassed a bit of an audience and built a dialogue with some of the followers who were curious about the recipes he shared. “So then it became like more of a serious infatuation that I started to have,” he says. “It’s sort of what started to get me out of that spot.” Motivated by how quickly his skills had developed, he began to consider a career in food, and in 2010 he attended culinary school at the Art Institute in Seattle.

Acclimating to unfamiliar surroundings was nothing new to Rivera. His father was in the military for 30 years, and, as is common with that profession, the family moved around a lot. In order to build a bit of stability, when Rivera was 7 his parents chose to settle in Olympia, Washington — just over 60 miles south of Seattle — for a few years, and his grandparents left Puerto Rico for the Pacific Northwest to help with the kids. Growing up in Olympia, which was 82.5 percent white in the most recent census and more than 90 percent white in 1990, was challenging for Rivera’s Puerto Rican family. Fellow transplants to the Cascade region will tell you about the Seattle Freeze — if they haven’t already adopted it themselves. “In Seattle, in Washington, being passive aggressive, it’s an art form here,” Rivera says. “However, in my culture, if you have a fucking problem with somebody, you tell them in two seconds. You tell them to go fuck themselves. It’s over, it’s done with.” Rivera remembers the move to Washington as an uncomfortable transition. He recalls going to school and quickly realizing he and his family stood out from his predominately white classmates.

Rivera felt he had to “learn to play the game,” as he puts it. Beyond the regular curriculum of a student, he remembers playing the part of a young anthropologist, trying to learn about his peers’ preferred music, movies, food, and anything else that would allow him to fit in. “My grandpa would sit me in front of the TV and be like, ‘Sound like them, not like us!’ Meaning get rid of the accent, learn their shit.” However, while adapting to his surroundings, Rivera learned to embrace his own culture more fully. His grandfather taught him to cook at an early age. It wasn’t always easy to get the right ingredients, but he still managed to make Puerto Rican food, even in Olympia. When his grandparents eventually moved back to Puerto Rico, Rivera spent summers on the island and learned to move between the two worlds.

Rivera is selling rice, beans, and other Puero Rican pantry staples online.

The Addo space has transformed from restaurant to storage facility.

After culinary school, Rivera started working in restaurants, spending three years in Chicago as the director of culinary research operations with the Alinea Group. Early on, he began to see cracks in the way the industry was run. After an injury, Rivera was forced out of the kitchen and went without pay for months; again and again, he had to fight for meager raises. “The games you have to play are bullshit,” he says. “You have to go to the kitchens and stage for free. Dude, people that are younger and that come from different cultures and backgrounds can’t afford that — are you kidding me?”

After seven years in the industry, Rivera was ready to do his own thing, on his own terms. In the summer of 2017, he started running a chef’s table out of his Seattle apartment. He was unsure if diners would be interested in such a stripped-down eating experience, in which Rivera covered all aspects of service, but he was confident in himself. At the same time, he was running pop-ups out of any space he could get in town, cooking on panini grills in the back of coffee shops if need be. The hustle and desire to expand eventually led him to seek out his own space in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. He called it Addo.

Addo was an unconventional restaurant from the start. Although the chef’s table still existed in the new space, and you could still reserve space for a birthday party as you would at a more traditional restaurant, Addo relied on themed dinners booked months in advance. The menu changed based on current events, trends, and whatever popped into his head: He served a Pacific Northwest meal based on the grade-school computer game The Oregon Trail and multi-course dinners themed around Harry Potter. In an Instagram Live interview with Tom Colicchio in June, he described his process: “It’s truly head on a swivel. There were nights when we were a dine-in restaurant that we were doing three to five things a night because we had to. Here’s steak night, here’s a 20-course tasting menu, here’s Puerto Rican food, here’s a pasta thing we’re doing and there’s another thing.”

Puerto Rican food became a more significant part of Rivera’s professional life when, months after launching Addo, he expanded with Lechoncito, a side business that specializes in perfectly crispy and moist lechon, chicharron de pollo, and the famous jibarito inspired by his time in Chicago. Like Addo, Lechoncito also started as a pop-up, with a brief stint inside a whiskey distillery, but now Lechoncito food is sold through Addo a few times a month.

Although Rivera has mulled over the idea of making Puerto Rican food his primary focus, he appreciates that by having it as just one of the things he does, he’s not beholden to fickle food trends that could celebrate the cuisine one day and forget it the next. “[Puerto Rican cuisine] doesn’t stand out, because it’s just me talking about it or yelling about it, telling people how cool it is. That can only go so far,” he says. “There’s not enough people representing it or [who] know what they’re talking about ... thats why I have to be this fucking guy, that has to operate at this really high level to get that badge that says, ‘He knows what he’s talking about, he’s worked at a place with three Michelin stars.’”

Still, there’s a loyal clientele for Lechoncito. On a recent Sunday, Rivera greeted regulars and fawned over their dogs as they arrived to pick up orders of a sold-out whole-roasted pig, big-as-your-head chicharrones, and arroz con garbanzos. And since mid-July, Puerto Rican food has become an even bigger business for Rivera.

On July 9, at a roundtable for Hispanic business leaders, Goya CEO Robert Unanue praised President Donald Trump, quickly leading many, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to call for a Goya boycott. Rivera saw an opportunity.

Rivera has a knack for social media, which he uses to create content for events, speak out about problems in the restaurant industry, or just post pictures of delicious food and cute dogs. As the Goya news and the hashtag #GoyaBoycott spread, he tweeted about his ability to ship pantry staples like sofrito, sazon, and adobo across the United States. Within hours, these tweets had been retweeted thousands of times, and Rivera made around 1,000 sales in the days following. These days, Addo resembles a warehouse space, with Rivera and a couple staff packing up spices, dry goods, and even house plants while Bad Bunny plays and the Puerto Rican flag hangs visibly from the front door. Online, Rivera jokingly calls himself “Amazing Primo,” a play on Amazon Prime.

“We’re punching above our weight class now,” Rivera says of Addo’s pandemic operation.

Despite the struggles restaurants across the country are facing as they adjust to pandemic restrictions, Addo is busy. Rivera credits his staff, who went from cooking and serving to packing boxes and printing shipping labels, for Addo’s survival. “Is it what I want to be doing? Absolutely not. But I don’t think you have a choice sometimes, and I’m just really grateful we have an option to keep this going ... if anyone was set up to be able to be pivoted, it was us,” says Ingrid Lyublinsky, Addo’s director of operations. “We’ve been doing it since the get-go.”

Addo chef John McGoldrick likens the constantly changing circumstances to the animated show Rick and Morty: “We’re just like a bunch of Mortys and chef Eric is Rick, sending us down a new portal every day.”

Although operating as a makeshift bodega may not be ideal for every kitchen, Rivera believes this is where restaurants are headed if they want to compete as major changes in the industry loom. He has even offered free Zoom classes to chefs about how to widen the scope of their restaurants, including tips on social media and running their own delivery or shipping. “We have less than seven employees, but we’re punching above our weight class right now with scaling things out and being more accessible to more people,” he says.

Rivera has grown increasingly frustrated by the response to the pandemic from many industry leaders. He believes big names and owners of chain restaurants will bounce back, leaving many smaller restaurants behind, as well as restaurant staff and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), who will have to find new avenues of work or face deepening pay discrepancies. “There are people who are getting stimulus, getting enhanced unemployment, but you have undocumented workers who aren’t getting anything,” he says. “And they’re being pushed back into the fire immediately without any help.”

On Twitter, Rivera has called out well-known Seattle restaurateurs like Tom Douglas and Ethan Stowell, who shut down restaurants permanently and laid off hundreds of staff. More recently, Rivera criticized pushes to open restaurants as COVID-19 cases are rising once again. Rivera tweeted on June 11: “There are other options for dining but the consumer will drive things back and greedy owners will compromise their staff to serve them. There are no leaders in this industry. There are no voices that can make these points stick.”

“If I was a dude with an accent that made jibaritos and chicharrones on the side of the street, no one would give a fuck.”

While recent months have brought the cracks in the industry to the forefront, the pandemic is not the direct cause of many of them. Rivera takes issue with an industry built on what he believes is an antiquated system of constant investment and expansion. “A lot of chefs, who are frankly losing their asses right now, are going to realize it’s not wise to seek so much investment, those deals with the devil, in order to push themselves into the stratosphere of the industry,” he says. This system, Rivera says, perpetuates the problems within the restaurant industry and benefits only “old, rich white men.”

Rivera’s tweets have earned the attention of the famous chefs he’s called out; some have even reached out to him. Colicchio invited him to an Instagram Live conversation about his experiences in the restaurant industry. And in an episode of the Dave Chang Show podcast, Chang said of Rivera, “Everything he’s saying is not something I always agree with, but I respect his viewpoints on a lot of things. If you look at what he’s doing it’s anything and everything, that’s what you have to see cause we have no idea what’s going to work. You got to try it all and make mistakes and adapt, make mistakes and adapt.”

Rivera recognizes that his own privilege has contributed to some of this success. “I knew what I had to do in order to play the game for people to listen to me,” he says. “If I was a dude with an accent that made jibaritos and chicharrones on the side of the street, no one would give a fuck.” However, he wants that game to change. “First, they need to get the fuck out of the way. They need to just get out of the way,” he says, referring to the old guard of primarily white men. “I don’t want to see another white dude traveling around the world discovering food. I’m tired of the Christopher Columbus shit.”

Rivera isn’t convinced that a return to some level of “normal” after the pandemic will solve many of his issues with the industry, including the financial barriers for BIPOC-run restaurants and the treatment of back-of-house staff in big-name restaurants. However, he’s inspired by younger generations of cooks and writers, like Alicia Kennedy and Illyanna Maisonet, for speaking out about the changes that need to happen, and credits them with “[helping] me establish how to be a voice, if you will, without just saying ‘fuck you’ every two seconds.” And six months into the pandemic, Rivera is still playing it day to day, ready to pivot once again whenever the need should arise. As he packs up spices, thinks up new to-go meals, and updates his website, he hopes that, at the very least, what he has done in his kitchen resonates in a food world that’s in dire need of a drastic pivot of its own.

Alberto Perez is a freelance writer currently based out of Seattle, but he’d rather be back in Texas eating tacos. Suzi Pratt is a photographer based in Seattle.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/36lJt39 https://ift.tt/30qG27w

Selling pantry items, like spices, has helped keep Addo afloat.

Despite everything, the Seattle chef has found a way to successfully run his restaurant Addo — and he has some advice for the rest of the industry

Eric Rivera does not run a traditional kitchen. At his Seattle restaurant, Addo, the menu, cuisine, and concept change constantly. So when Seattle restaurants began to close in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, Rivera was already ahead of the game.

Rivera was 4,000 miles away giving a culinary tour in Puerto Rico when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency due to rising COVID-19 cases. In between staging meals and teaching his guests about the island’s culinary history, he set up his phone as a hotspot and began emailing clients and staff to rearrange the coming weeks of planned dining events and promotions, determining which could be salvaged as takeout and which needed to be completely restructured or worse, canceled.

On March 11, Rivera returned to Seattle and a calendar with reservations booked well into the next year. Addo used the Tock app for dinner reservations, but soon began using it to schedule carryout instead. Addo’s lunch catering, which amounted to about 30 percent of his business, was no longer feasible since all the high-end tech offices in the area closed, so Rivera began to make easy-to-reheat take-home meals to accommodate those newly working from home. He made and sold pantry items, like CSA boxes, yeast kits, and fresh-made pasta. He even hired his own delivery drivers to avoid working with gig-economy food delivery apps, which he believes take too much from both restaurants and drivers.

Adjusting to changes at the drop of a hat is common in most kitchens, but it’s something Rivera was used to well before he started working in restaurants. In the late aughts, Rivera ran his own mortgage insurance and financial services business when the Great Recession hit. He was an early success by most American standards, running his own offices in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. “There’s this game-of-life kind of thing — you’re raised to believe that you need the nice house with the picket fence, the car. Checkmark, checkmark, checkmark. I had that when I was 24.”

Rivera recalls being at Costco picking up office supplies in 2008 when he got a call from an employee; they wanted him back in the office immediately. Rivera was surprised by the urgency. “No man, leave that shit there. We’re done,” his employee said.

“What? What do you mean?”

“We’re done. Everything’s closed, all the lines of credit. Everything’s done.”

Rivera felt he had to “learn to play the game.”

Rivera’s customers vanished almost immediately, and his business dwindled. He was forced to shift primarily to insurance. He was depressed. To save some money, he started cooking all of his meals at home and blogging about his successes and failures in the kitchen, mostly posting pictures of his process. He quickly amassed a bit of an audience and built a dialogue with some of the followers who were curious about the recipes he shared. “So then it became like more of a serious infatuation that I started to have,” he says. “It’s sort of what started to get me out of that spot.” Motivated by how quickly his skills had developed, he began to consider a career in food, and in 2010 he attended culinary school at the Art Institute in Seattle.

Acclimating to unfamiliar surroundings was nothing new to Rivera. His father was in the military for 30 years, and, as is common with that profession, the family moved around a lot. In order to build a bit of stability, when Rivera was 7 his parents chose to settle in Olympia, Washington — just over 60 miles south of Seattle — for a few years, and his grandparents left Puerto Rico for the Pacific Northwest to help with the kids. Growing up in Olympia, which was 82.5 percent white in the most recent census and more than 90 percent white in 1990, was challenging for Rivera’s Puerto Rican family. Fellow transplants to the Cascade region will tell you about the Seattle Freeze — if they haven’t already adopted it themselves. “In Seattle, in Washington, being passive aggressive, it’s an art form here,” Rivera says. “However, in my culture, if you have a fucking problem with somebody, you tell them in two seconds. You tell them to go fuck themselves. It’s over, it’s done with.” Rivera remembers the move to Washington as an uncomfortable transition. He recalls going to school and quickly realizing he and his family stood out from his predominately white classmates.

Rivera felt he had to “learn to play the game,” as he puts it. Beyond the regular curriculum of a student, he remembers playing the part of a young anthropologist, trying to learn about his peers’ preferred music, movies, food, and anything else that would allow him to fit in. “My grandpa would sit me in front of the TV and be like, ‘Sound like them, not like us!’ Meaning get rid of the accent, learn their shit.” However, while adapting to his surroundings, Rivera learned to embrace his own culture more fully. His grandfather taught him to cook at an early age. It wasn’t always easy to get the right ingredients, but he still managed to make Puerto Rican food, even in Olympia. When his grandparents eventually moved back to Puerto Rico, Rivera spent summers on the island and learned to move between the two worlds.

Rivera is selling rice, beans, and other Puero Rican pantry staples online.

The Addo space has transformed from restaurant to storage facility.

After culinary school, Rivera started working in restaurants, spending three years in Chicago as the director of culinary research operations with the Alinea Group. Early on, he began to see cracks in the way the industry was run. After an injury, Rivera was forced out of the kitchen and went without pay for months; again and again, he had to fight for meager raises. “The games you have to play are bullshit,” he says. “You have to go to the kitchens and stage for free. Dude, people that are younger and that come from different cultures and backgrounds can’t afford that — are you kidding me?”

After seven years in the industry, Rivera was ready to do his own thing, on his own terms. In the summer of 2017, he started running a chef’s table out of his Seattle apartment. He was unsure if diners would be interested in such a stripped-down eating experience, in which Rivera covered all aspects of service, but he was confident in himself. At the same time, he was running pop-ups out of any space he could get in town, cooking on panini grills in the back of coffee shops if need be. The hustle and desire to expand eventually led him to seek out his own space in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. He called it Addo.

Addo was an unconventional restaurant from the start. Although the chef’s table still existed in the new space, and you could still reserve space for a birthday party as you would at a more traditional restaurant, Addo relied on themed dinners booked months in advance. The menu changed based on current events, trends, and whatever popped into his head: He served a Pacific Northwest meal based on the grade-school computer game The Oregon Trail and multi-course dinners themed around Harry Potter. In an Instagram Live interview with Tom Colicchio in June, he described his process: “It’s truly head on a swivel. There were nights when we were a dine-in restaurant that we were doing three to five things a night because we had to. Here’s steak night, here’s a 20-course tasting menu, here’s Puerto Rican food, here’s a pasta thing we’re doing and there’s another thing.”

Puerto Rican food became a more significant part of Rivera’s professional life when, months after launching Addo, he expanded with Lechoncito, a side business that specializes in perfectly crispy and moist lechon, chicharron de pollo, and the famous jibarito inspired by his time in Chicago. Like Addo, Lechoncito also started as a pop-up, with a brief stint inside a whiskey distillery, but now Lechoncito food is sold through Addo a few times a month.

Although Rivera has mulled over the idea of making Puerto Rican food his primary focus, he appreciates that by having it as just one of the things he does, he’s not beholden to fickle food trends that could celebrate the cuisine one day and forget it the next. “[Puerto Rican cuisine] doesn’t stand out, because it’s just me talking about it or yelling about it, telling people how cool it is. That can only go so far,” he says. “There’s not enough people representing it or [who] know what they’re talking about ... thats why I have to be this fucking guy, that has to operate at this really high level to get that badge that says, ‘He knows what he’s talking about, he’s worked at a place with three Michelin stars.’”

Still, there’s a loyal clientele for Lechoncito. On a recent Sunday, Rivera greeted regulars and fawned over their dogs as they arrived to pick up orders of a sold-out whole-roasted pig, big-as-your-head chicharrones, and arroz con garbanzos. And since mid-July, Puerto Rican food has become an even bigger business for Rivera.

On July 9, at a roundtable for Hispanic business leaders, Goya CEO Robert Unanue praised President Donald Trump, quickly leading many, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to call for a Goya boycott. Rivera saw an opportunity.

Rivera has a knack for social media, which he uses to create content for events, speak out about problems in the restaurant industry, or just post pictures of delicious food and cute dogs. As the Goya news and the hashtag #GoyaBoycott spread, he tweeted about his ability to ship pantry staples like sofrito, sazon, and adobo across the United States. Within hours, these tweets had been retweeted thousands of times, and Rivera made around 1,000 sales in the days following. These days, Addo resembles a warehouse space, with Rivera and a couple staff packing up spices, dry goods, and even house plants while Bad Bunny plays and the Puerto Rican flag hangs visibly from the front door. Online, Rivera jokingly calls himself “Amazing Primo,” a play on Amazon Prime.

“We’re punching above our weight class now,” Rivera says of Addo’s pandemic operation.

Despite the struggles restaurants across the country are facing as they adjust to pandemic restrictions, Addo is busy. Rivera credits his staff, who went from cooking and serving to packing boxes and printing shipping labels, for Addo’s survival. “Is it what I want to be doing? Absolutely not. But I don’t think you have a choice sometimes, and I’m just really grateful we have an option to keep this going ... if anyone was set up to be able to be pivoted, it was us,” says Ingrid Lyublinsky, Addo’s director of operations. “We’ve been doing it since the get-go.”

Addo chef John McGoldrick likens the constantly changing circumstances to the animated show Rick and Morty: “We’re just like a bunch of Mortys and chef Eric is Rick, sending us down a new portal every day.”

Although operating as a makeshift bodega may not be ideal for every kitchen, Rivera believes this is where restaurants are headed if they want to compete as major changes in the industry loom. He has even offered free Zoom classes to chefs about how to widen the scope of their restaurants, including tips on social media and running their own delivery or shipping. “We have less than seven employees, but we’re punching above our weight class right now with scaling things out and being more accessible to more people,” he says.

Rivera has grown increasingly frustrated by the response to the pandemic from many industry leaders. He believes big names and owners of chain restaurants will bounce back, leaving many smaller restaurants behind, as well as restaurant staff and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), who will have to find new avenues of work or face deepening pay discrepancies. “There are people who are getting stimulus, getting enhanced unemployment, but you have undocumented workers who aren’t getting anything,” he says. “And they’re being pushed back into the fire immediately without any help.”

On Twitter, Rivera has called out well-known Seattle restaurateurs like Tom Douglas and Ethan Stowell, who shut down restaurants permanently and laid off hundreds of staff. More recently, Rivera criticized pushes to open restaurants as COVID-19 cases are rising once again. Rivera tweeted on June 11: “There are other options for dining but the consumer will drive things back and greedy owners will compromise their staff to serve them. There are no leaders in this industry. There are no voices that can make these points stick.”

“If I was a dude with an accent that made jibaritos and chicharrones on the side of the street, no one would give a fuck.”

While recent months have brought the cracks in the industry to the forefront, the pandemic is not the direct cause of many of them. Rivera takes issue with an industry built on what he believes is an antiquated system of constant investment and expansion. “A lot of chefs, who are frankly losing their asses right now, are going to realize it’s not wise to seek so much investment, those deals with the devil, in order to push themselves into the stratosphere of the industry,” he says. This system, Rivera says, perpetuates the problems within the restaurant industry and benefits only “old, rich white men.”

Rivera’s tweets have earned the attention of the famous chefs he’s called out; some have even reached out to him. Colicchio invited him to an Instagram Live conversation about his experiences in the restaurant industry. And in an episode of the Dave Chang Show podcast, Chang said of Rivera, “Everything he’s saying is not something I always agree with, but I respect his viewpoints on a lot of things. If you look at what he’s doing it’s anything and everything, that’s what you have to see cause we have no idea what’s going to work. You got to try it all and make mistakes and adapt, make mistakes and adapt.”

Rivera recognizes that his own privilege has contributed to some of this success. “I knew what I had to do in order to play the game for people to listen to me,” he says. “If I was a dude with an accent that made jibaritos and chicharrones on the side of the street, no one would give a fuck.” However, he wants that game to change. “First, they need to get the fuck out of the way. They need to just get out of the way,” he says, referring to the old guard of primarily white men. “I don’t want to see another white dude traveling around the world discovering food. I’m tired of the Christopher Columbus shit.”

Rivera isn’t convinced that a return to some level of “normal” after the pandemic will solve many of his issues with the industry, including the financial barriers for BIPOC-run restaurants and the treatment of back-of-house staff in big-name restaurants. However, he’s inspired by younger generations of cooks and writers, like Alicia Kennedy and Illyanna Maisonet, for speaking out about the changes that need to happen, and credits them with “[helping] me establish how to be a voice, if you will, without just saying ‘fuck you’ every two seconds.” And six months into the pandemic, Rivera is still playing it day to day, ready to pivot once again whenever the need should arise. As he packs up spices, thinks up new to-go meals, and updates his website, he hopes that, at the very least, what he has done in his kitchen resonates in a food world that’s in dire need of a drastic pivot of its own.

Alberto Perez is a freelance writer currently based out of Seattle, but he’d rather be back in Texas eating tacos. Suzi Pratt is a photographer based in Seattle.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/36lJt39 via Blogger https://ift.tt/30orTHX

[whirlwindflux]

Looking back at TrotCon 2017

For me, deciding which conventions to attend each year is always a challenge. Many times, my decisions are based on distance from home, when I can take my vacation time at work and a combination of community guests, musicians and VIPs. I’ve never been to TrotCon before, and ironically, it’s not the typical things that sold me on this event. Living in Southern Ontario doesn’t give me any local options, but TrotCon happens to be the closest event to where I live. I’m not sure who came up with the witty comment on the website about changing your license plate to TROT-CON, but as soon as I read that, I was sold. With every region of Bronies being a little different, reading that was when I figured of all the Bronies I have met these ones are my kind of people! I purchased an Earth tier sponsor badge, booked my hotel room and waited patiently for the weekend of the event.

Initial Thoughts

Let’s just say this wait wouldn’t be the easiest in the world. Being a new attendee, having only the website to base my decision, I wasn’t sure how things would go or what type of atmosphere to expect. I followed along with the convention on Social Media, the sponsor online streams and group chats like the one on Discord, and I almost had second guessed my decision to go. While funny and entertaining, the TrotCon Twitter account can be somewhat daunting to someone who wasn’t familiar with the event. I thought, well… if nothing else, after the weekend I’d be an expert and I could turn the experience into a meme?

Let’s get this out of way right now. If you attended or followed along online you know what’s coming next. Yes, the schedule changed, and access to spaces at the convention didn’t go as planned. When I first read the post about this, my reaction was of somewhat disappointment. As I thought about it more, and let it sink in, I realized something refreshing! TrotCon was honest and upfront with their attendees. I’ve been to other Brony conventions who kept big changes like this a secret until attendees stumbled upon the changes, didn’t see guests, VIPs or didn’t have promised sponsor rewards ready. This catastrophe was handled properly, tactfully, and actually reassured me that the con staff had this under control and knew how to respect their attendees.

Pre-Con Thoughts

After braving torrential downpour, flash flooding and learning that my car makes a decent boat, I made it to TrotCon only 9 hours after I left home! Travel was more challenging and time consuming than I had anticipated, but, I made it! I was there and ready for everything to begin. As I entered the hotel I was surprised with how many other attendees were already there, just hanging out in the lobby as if this was a normal occurrence. I could already tell this was going to be a great weekend! Sometimes it’s about getting the big things right, other times it’s about getting the little things right. Put a check beside check-in, I totally loved the inclusion of custom room key cards.

It didn’t take long for it to be time for pre-reg badge pickup to begin. As I waited in line, I saw people walking away with tiny boxes. I didn’t know why, but thought it was cool. As it became my turn to pick-up, they handed me a tiny box too! Branded Stable Dweller and with my name on it, I took the box back to my room to look at my loot. If you were a sponsor, you know it was filled with all sorts of cool stuff, including the expected sponsor perks! It also included bonus items like a toaster pin! Oh so clever!

Taking care of your sponsors

Sponsors and Pre-registration are what make a convention possible. They offer funds upfront to the event organizers which allows them to have more community guests and VIPs. As a personal note, I will generally purchase a sponsor badge to any Brony convention I go to. I end up buying most of the things they include at the convention anyway, so why not give them the money upfront? I haven’t always had great experiences with being a sponsor as some perks just don’t get delivered or happen. TrotCon delivered and then some! Not only were the perks unique, like a Nerf blaster, and the t-shirt design stellar, but the presentation to the sponsors, in the tiny box (which fit with the theme), made collecting our perks easy! Honestly, all cons should be doing something like this - not handing over a bunch of stuff with no way to carry it. Just know you knocked it out of the park. Other cons should be taking notes!

Standard Convention Activities

Every convention has panels run by different members of the community, staff and VIPs. TrotCon was no exception here. What I will say is this, I enjoyed the depth, variety and insight of many of the options on the schedule. Many of these things I have never seen before and quite enjoyed. I am not sure if an un-moderated voice actors panel was intended, but it let Peter New and Lee Tockar fly off the rails. I’ve never had so much fun at one these panels before!

The VIP autograph process was fairly standard. Like most conventions, it required attendees to purchase a voucher from the convention to get an autograph. I am not entirely sure why this is the practice (and VIP’s don’t just take cash) but not knowing where to get additional autograph vouchers was a bit of a miss. I did eventually find them at the info desk, of all places.

One of my favourite places at a convention is the Vendor Hall. Many of my favourite vendors were in attendance and I had a great time catching up with many of them since the last time I saw them. I loved the variety of primarily pony-centric items for sale, but the inclusion of many other fandoms was positive and didn’t detract from the experience. Further to that point, as it seems to be a strongly contested one online right now, it didn’t overtake the pony experience, but allowed the artists and vendors to show off some of their other interests. Booths were large enough for most vendors to show off their goods and there was still plenty of room for people to walk around without creating too much congestion. I happened to be in the vendor hall during the fire drill. It was handled in an orderly fashion and as an attendee it wasn’t a huge disruption.

Every great Brony convention has a concert and this one didn’t disappoint! With tons of space to dance and enough seating to take a break, the concert area was well setup. A thank you to all the performers who put on an awesome evening of music! A shout-out to the AV team who put it all together, made sure it worked before the performers got on stage and made transitioning between musicians painless and quick. Not every convention gets the sound or audio balances right - but TrotCon did! Also, not sure who was responsible for this, but, the collection of different animations that evolved through the night was a cool addition!

Unique Events

Conventions have been working hard to create experiences that set them apart from the others.  It’s exciting to have this competition because at the end of the day, you need to attract attendees to make the event happen! With the Fallout Equestria theme, let’s talk about the two most unique events I have ever seen at a convention - Battle for Bottlecap Canyon and Little Pip’s Minefield.

Battle for Bottlecap Canyon was a very cool concept. At it’s basic level it was a Nerf blaster war. Everyone came in, picked up a blaster, was assigned a side and went to war. The backstory to the event which tied it to the theme was well done. The original concept, which was to leave your home base (decided by your faction at registration), enter the middle ground (also known as the wasteland) and attempt to collect things (bags of caps and ammunition) which were hoarded at your base until the end of the round. Sadly, the schedule crunch and high popularity caused this concept to be cast aside for full on war. Getting hit meant you returned to your base, waited for a predetermined amount of time and then continued playing. Although changes were made on the fly, and it was different than advertised, I feel the event was still a success and will hopefully return next year, tweaked and improved!

Little Pip’s Minefield was a real life rendition of the classic computer game Minesweeper. With Minesweeper being one of my personal favourites (sad, I know, but true!) I knew I had to make time for it! In this real life version of the game, a grid of tiles was placed on the ground. Flip a tile to find out how many adjacent tiles had a mine. The twist that tied it to the Fallout Equestria theme was multiple people started at different places. As you progressed, you collected bottle caps, and if you found a mine, you dropped the caps and let the next person carry on solving the grid. The one with the most caps at the end won. I guess I spent far too much time as a kid playing minesweeper - I didn’t hit any mines! However, I think I may have played it too safe - I didn’t recover the most caps either.  Attendance to this event felt light to me, however, I feel this was due to nobody knowing exactly what it was. Ironically the only reason I knew was because I followed the TrotCon Twitter. I enjoyed this event too! Hopefully it will reappear next year bigger and better with the new theme!

Not that I expect or would imagine that anyone who runs TrotCon to ever read this in it’s entirety or beyond the first few lines, I do have ideas with regards to these special events for streamlining the attendee experience and enhancing them in the future! If you want to discuss any of these ideas, come find me on Discord (I am on the TrotCon server) since I have no idea how to find you. I am registered as WhirlwindFlux.

Post-Con Thoughts

When a convention concludes, generally there is sadness and the dreaded post-con depression starts to set in. As I wandered out of closing ceremonies and back to my room I was saddened that the event was over, but as the night progressed, the sadness dissipated leaving a positive happiness in it’s place. Maybe it was the fact that, for my first visit to TrotCon, it was exceptionally positive. Maybe it’s the fact that they just did things right from start to finish. Maybe it was the upfront honesty and integrity. I’m not entirely sure what differentiated this con. I’ve traveled farther distances and met with many different groups of Bronies who have put on their own conventions over the past 4 and half years. Coming back to a comment I made at the very beginning of this review; although I live in Ontario I would, without a doubt, say the Bronies of Ohio and the attendees of TrotCon are my kind of people! If I was only able to go to one convention a year, it would be TrotCon!

TrotCon has a very dedicated staff - they go out of their way to put on a fantastic event! So, to each staff member, organizer and the con-chair, thank you for all of your hard work, dedication, and continued belief in the Brony community! TrotCon was the convention I didn’t know I needed until now. So, if reading this hasn’t convinced you, and not that I wrote this to convince anyone of anything, come to TrotCon - you will not regret it! It surprised me in all the right ways, and with that said, I can’t wait for the next evolution of the event in 2018.

[theclacks]

In which I break with tradition and post some personal shit...

So, no secret but I started marathoning Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Angel) for the first time back in March. I just hit its 6th season and the infamous musical episode this past week. And I’ve already lost count of the number of times I’ve replayed the song below -- Going Through the Motions:

Because holy shit, do I mentally sync with it.

My life right now is good. And I have nothing to complain about. But it’s just ‘blah’. And it’s not exactly depressing ‘blah’ because I do have a plan. I have a dream, which is to publish my books. And I’ve been working at that. I mean, REALLY working at that, writing every single day and all.

And I’m better off than I’ve been years ago. Better off than I was when I was in college. That is, I got almost no writing done when I was in college. I spent my years making gifs and macros and participating in landcomms, which was fun, and I started getting a reputation, BNFs reposted my stuff, etc. But if people had asked me what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be known for and what expressed who I was the most... that answer would’ve been fanfic, and at that point I’d only written a handful of drabbles and two-chapter WIPs. I had so many ideas bursting from my head that I never had the time and patience to outwardly express. And THAT used to make me sad.

Of course, that’s changing now. I’ve finished one 90k fanfic, and I’m on the way to finishing another 150k-ish one this summer, and that’s not including my 130k original fic I’ve written that I’m editing down into 110k-120k before I send it off to agents...

...but a part of me feels like I’ve traded my internet socialness for that progress. Like I get home, and instead of comments and participating in my old communities, I write. (And honestly, a huge part of that is the demise of LJ and the rise of tumblr and its non-community aspects, but then there IS the fact I drifted away from fandomsecrets nearly two years ago and I still feel guilty for that but a large reason was because I felt we’d been starting to talk about the same topics over and over and over again and I’d already made the friends who I was friends with mainly through stream and I thought stream would be enough but even that died and honestly I just miss you all. There’s this kind of ~blah~ hole sometimes in my Saturday nights where our bad/good/cult movie watching used to be.)

But anyway. So much of my life is on hold right now, but it’s not on HOLD hold, because really it’s like a domino of interconnected things, with the starting domino being this condo that I’m buying because I’m AN adult and I’ve managed to save a ridiculous amount of money being one of the penniest-pinching fucks there is. But yeah, since I can only handle one major thing at a time, my “thing” for the past couple months has been this condo and I’m just so tired of it being THE “thing” in my life and I just want to sign papers and move in and magically be in the next chapter of my life but part of me feels like I can’t even complain about that because I’m so privileged at my age to be in the buying process in the first place.

But it’s like... even when I move, I know I won’t magically be the “next stage.” I’ll still be going to my well-paying, soul-draining job every single day. And for normal people, the good advice would be “okay, well turn your attentions to finding a new job then” but I don’t know if another job in my same field would be any better because the problem is I don’t want to work in my field. At least not full time. My progress with my writing IS my way out. And temporarily switching any other non-writing career would leave me with more hours (to not write) and a lot less pay. And it’s really hard to fake enthusiasm for coding in interviews and interviewers inevitably ask for github portfolios and projects you’ve done on your own time which I don’t have because all that time goes into writing. Like 1-2 hours every single day. Writing.

And I don’t regret that, because I know I AM getting closer to my goals. I’m getting these ideas out of my head. But it’s lonely. And so many weeks it feels like I’m not going fast enough, even though I don’t know how I’d ever go faster. 

I’ve put dating on hold again because every single time I’m out on a date, I think about the 3+ hours I’m wasting that could’ve been spent writing. Plus I’m the kind of person who knows within the first 20 minutes whether there’s a “spark” or not, which actually makes first dates super exhausting because I know within the first 1/4 beer glass whether I’m game or not (and 90% of the time, it’s not) but it’s super hard to just stop someone in mid-sentence and be like “look, sorry. i don’t think this is going to work out. it’s me, not you, so let me stop you and let us both go home before we waste more of our evening”... which is what I know I should do, but... yeah.

I just want to get a new crush and all the great agony that comes with it. It’s been over a year since my last one. Even if I get chewed up and spit out like I have in the past, it’s better than the emotional blahness I have right now.

I want my first book done already. I want it sent to agents. I want to be published. I want to be enthusiastic about the thing that I’m doing for money. (Did I mention I hate career talk? So many people love career talk and I’m just over in the corner, responding to questions like, “It’s a job. That I do for money. And the hours are good. And I don’t hate it. Next topic please.”)

I want to connect to friends again. Both internet and real life friends. I have the occasional “hey, let’s catch a movie” or “hey, let’s meet up at con”, but I miss the hanging out until 3am, chatting about whatever, and general chilling. And I don’t know if part of losing that is growing older and the expectation that you do those things with a romantic partner instead of friend group, but I miss it. I miss it so much.

So yeah. Until then, this has been my extremely personal life-update.

This is me. Going through the motions.

[annericanstudy-blog]

20.08.21 12:40 AM

Wow...long time no see (?) haha not sure if that’s appropriate tho. Apparently, it’s been 2-3 years since I opened my tumblr account. I was still a tired, meek nursing student back then. One thing I really owe from this tumblr account is I got to know about Quizlet here! Man, Quizlet literally saved my college life. I owe 90% of my grades to that app. Anyway now, I have already graduated from college, successfully passed the licensure exam, and now a licensed (yet unemployed) nurse! Wow, time sure flies fast. What felt like eternity somehow still ended. So I guess this corona pandemic will too, right?

I’m here writing at dawn because I have so many thoughts in my mind. Firstly, I’m really really getting depressed day by day of the effects of this pandemic. Not just in myself, or my sister, or my relatives and friends, but looking at my own country suffering so much when it was already suffering enough, just breaks my heart. This country may have been lacking in so many ways for so long now but I’ve always had hope and only thought of it getting better in the future. I never knew I’d witness my country get so beaten up like how I only just read about it in history books such as during the war and the like. It’s really saddening.

Secondly, I’m sad of its effect in my life. I know for sure every single one in this world is also struggling because of this pandemic. Some may even have it way worse. But I don’t know, I still keep feeling this way. Maybe it’s because I have already planned so so much for this year? Well, yea, I accept, it’s because of that. The year 2020 was supposed to be an examination year for me. It should’ve been the year of post studying hahaha. Me and my parents have planned about this for so long already. I was scheduled to take the NCLEX in the first half of the year and maybe the NMAT or other foreign nursing exams after. My ATT for the NCLEX has even been approved already and I was starting the review. But you know what’s fascinating? I’ve already felt uneasy when I was starting reviewing for the NCLEX. When I was in college, there were times where I’d get an uneasy feeling when I was studying or doing a requirement. Whenever I get this uneasy feeling, I tend to half ass what I’m doing. The next thing I know, the exam or deadline of the requirement has been moved to a later date! There has always been something about my gut feeling or instinct. Fast forward to early 2020 when I was reviewing for the NCLEX, I also kept getting the uneasy feeling while reviewing, which resulted to me not being as serious as when I studied for the PNLE. Mind you, the NCLEX is actually harder & a whole lot more expensive than the PNLE which means I have to pass it one time or I’d be guilty to face my parents. Which is why I was so anxious and kept wondering why I don’t feel serious about the NCLEX. I was too relaxed, I didn’t attend the day lectures, just took notes while doing the UWorld, and not even studying at home. I only studied for 2 hours a day which is a huge gap for my effort for the PNLE. And when this corona thing happened halting my NCLEX preparation, my actions made sense. I’d like to give props to my insticts tho! hahaha.

But still, I would’ve 100% preferred it if this corona thing didn’t happen and the NCLEX still pushed through. A huge burden would’ve been lifted by now. As I really prefer to do things immediately, just thinking about this unfinished NCLEX business stresses me out. Since we already paid half for the exam and also to the review academy, I can’t not take it in the future, as it’d be such a waste of money. Also, what bothers me the most is if I can still retain the knowledge. I stopped studying for months now because I only like to study with a deadline lol. I know it’s a bad mindset but I just can’t help it at the moment. Even though my ATT has already been approved, my parents won’t let me travel as long as there’s still coronavirus, and I agree with them. It’s too dangerous to travel. And since I’m guessing this pandemic would last at least a year, I’m now even considering working, which I’m not so happy about truthfully. My parents and I planned that I take all the examinations I can take prior to me working so that the information from nursing school would still be fresh. I liked the arrangement as well as I also still feel I’m not ready to work yet. Man, who really would’ve thought it wouldn’t go as planned. The verse Isaiah 55:8 really hit hard on me. I know that everything has a purpose, but as I’ve said, I just can’t stop feeling this way...

All this coronavirus thing and quarantine made me a think a lot, enough to keep me awake at night. I’ve been thinking so much about what career to pursue... aside from being a nurse or a doctor, I also came across the thought of being a flight attendant (lol!). I just can’t pick a career to choose among the three... I’m gonna write my pros and cons for each career. If I will be a nurse, I’d have to pursue it abroad, likely in New York, & I’d probably get a lot of money. Plus wow, to live in NY, what a dream. It’s also my dream to possess a US passport (lol! the little things) hahaha. Next, being a flight attendant, wow, the thought itself seems impossible as I don’t have enough of the physical qualities, but since I love travelling, I’m pretty sure I will enjoy the job for the rest of my life. It’s the career I can imagine doing for the rest of my life, the career I’m sure will make me happy. But I know that if I pursue either of these two careers, I will eventually regret not pursuing medicine. Becoming a doctor, getting that MD after my name has always been a dream to me as well. Having the license and capacity to treat other people, wow I really want to do it. I also want to bring honor to my family and also, so I can fully treat them whenever they have an illness. There’s just something about being a doctor to me. I’d say it’s the profession I respect and look up to the most. But also, if I become a doctor, I’m also scared that I will regret not taking the opportunity to live a better life abroad or travel around the world. Man, I really don’t know. But for now, given the circumstances that we can’t freely go around, I kind of want to study medicine at the moment. However, one issue for me is the financial aid as we’re not rich. Because of that, I keep getting thoughts of how medicine students in UST and other private medicine schools don’t realize how lucky they are. If we were just well off, I’d never hesitate about studying medicine. Wow, to study medicine in UST or ADMU or St. Lukes, what a dream. But still, I love my parents and I’m thankful still. Also, I now tell myself that if I won’t study medicine just because of my family’s financial capacity, then all the more I should do it! Because I know I will just regret it in the future if it’s because of money. I refuse to be a slave to money!

Anyway, it’s already been an hour since I’m writing. It’s already 1:48 AM. I was never the diary or journal type but it really felt so goooood to write down my thoughts while listening to my favorite playlist! Wish I do this for a long time. Good night ~

-anne, ph

[ilbvilbv]

2016 Year in Review

Another year has come to an end and I saw a that ty_desoto made kind of like a Year in Review journal and made special mentions to people who impacted his life and I was really inspired to do the same thing!

This time last year I wrote a Happy New Year 2016 Journal: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7282733/ I was excited for the year and everything was going to be great! Though for some reason I went downhill really hard, really fast. By January 8th, I was having a really hard time accepting who I’ve turned out to be. Struggling with my real and fantasy lives, my sexual attractions verses my desires to get married and have a family one day. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7298765/ I still struggle with it, but it’s less of a crippling pain now. I am living each day as it goes by really. Outside of who already knows that I am “struggling” I’m still not telling anyone else in my real life what I like, because it’s really none of their business. I also don’t really like to mention it at all, maybe out of some desire if I don’t talk about the problem it will go away. Then I started to cheer myself up, along with the support of my incredible friends. I began to read more and understand my moods and how to squash a depressive state of mind. I posted an article I read, 30 Ways to be Happier http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7331441/ and just started to think and do those things. I was feeling good about my existence again, not letting the trivial things bother me. I did have highs and lows all year of course, I had epic dreams about Dragons, I had several bad job interviews, and took bit work where I could find it. Volunteered a lot of time, out of my own wallet to things I was passionate about, both to help the cause and selfishly hoping someone in power noticed me and had me stay on to do more work and be paid. End of the day I am reminded that I'm just a piece in a game for all the higher-ups and my efforts put money in their pockets. Working class, low-income, unemployed. We are the base that North America runs on. It was a silly hope, but I went for it every time I got a shift or was asked if I was interested in coming out to help again. I learned to not have high expectations, so that if nothing happened I wouldn’t have set myself up for disappointment. Then if surprises ever came along they would be all the more exciting. As the beginning of 2016 went on, I made journals about Presence, the clutter of my life, and my desire to be more grateful, because I felt like I was not enjoying all of the things I did have. Someone always has it worse than me, so why am I complaining? Yet when someone needs to vent, its apparently healthy and cathartic, or can be viewed as whiny and attention-seeking. There is such a clash and double-standard in that area. Depending on how someone else feels will determine how they react to what you are expressing. A literal grab-bag of reaction and the possibility of sympathy or scorn. Those events may have been the reason I wrote this journal about how you are important and matter and are cared about: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7416646/ . My birthday came around, March 4, and I had bought myself a present with my Dino Grim, and we enjoyed that together. Also Zootopia had come out and the fandom was exploding with joy and pervish lusting. It took me three Tuesdays to finally be able to see it because every show was always sold out, even the 3D ones.  Finally saw it, enjoyed it, and that was that. I wrote two reviews a non-spoiler: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7463351/ and a regular spoiler: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7463347/ . I’ve got no desire to get naughty with any of the characters, but I do agree that Chief Bogo and those Dancing Tigers got me feeling hot and bothered. Vore with them is…desirable. On with the year, I began to feel inadequate again talking with people I looked up to and worrying if I was more of a pest than a fan. I started to feel ashamed of wanting to talk with mated people because I was afraid that individuals would be mad at me for talking to their mates. I was scared and alone again, feeling surrounded by the dark, which I also discovered this year, I am really afraid of. It was a brief period of uncertainty. I purged my Skype of baggage and people I didn’t really talk with, it helped a bit. That was the first time I ever cleaned out my Skype. I just don’t like to disappoint people, and then I get so overwhelmed at the idea of failing that I crumble and fall apart in my heart and spirit. I was an unconfident lump – to which I wrote a journal titled that, but don’t see the need to link you to. If you're that curious feel free to find it. Something that blew my mind in 2016 was learning that the number of favorites that are in the top right corner of your Furaffinity profile page are in fact the number of favorites all your own posted artwork has, not the number of favorites you have in your favorites gallery! Then I got a nice big job that would keep me busy for two and a half weeks! I made money!!! I felt so alive despite the brutal transit to and from work and the egregiously long hours. When I look back on it, I was sadly and sorely underpaid, which was super depressing to learn and reflect on the heart and soul I put into that job and damn, I was actually once again used. I'm still happy and grateful I had the opportunity though because I did meet and make lots of good friends. The FA changed their Icon limit and I had to scale back on who I had featured on my profile. It killed me to cut out so many, but lead me to make a rough directory by species and artists I liked so I could quickly access their pages. My ipad broke this year and that was a blow because I could not afford to get a new one. But the biggest blow was learning I wasn’t needed to go to France this year, and I was crushed because it’s the only vacation I really get and I was so excited to go. Then FA had its huge attack, and I was worried for a while if I’d get it back. All the password resets and the drama of it all, the huge exodus and literally everything about FA changed. It felt lost and new. Just when I was feeling like I could make something of myself there, everyone was leaving. But I am staying loyal to that site forever. Then I had a nice change of events and some good things were happening! I had the opportunity to travel somewhere else instead and I went to Madrid, Spain for the first time! I reached 1000 watchers in 2016, after being in the fandom since 2009, it was a big achievement for me! I came back from my trip alive and on fire, then slowly tried to integrate myself back into FA. It felt like people had moved on without me and I had to catch up or be left in the dust. I did have a date though, but it was terrible and that’s when I again hit a low point. Being unhappy with how I looked, how I spoke, how I tried to convince people to like me. It was my “white crayon moment”. I reached out to my watchers; I wanted to know what they wanted to see. How could I be better? How could I make something of myself? How could I be important and desirable? I talked about how I am intimidated by Artists http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7811583/ and again, inadequacy, worthiness, fear and anxiety. So I went to see Pete’s Dragon and was rejuvenated with love of Dragons and Monsters and all things magical, fantastical and guardians. I suddenly became very, very self-accepting. Meeting people who were afraid to talk to me, and being open and generous with them. I offered them advice and as I was writing it out being totally surprised by what I was saying. I condensed the good meaty part of my advice here: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7831109/ Then I got to go to Cuba with a friend and his family, and that was much enjoyed vacation I would have otherwise never had. While there we survived a possible Hurricane Attack, what a rush! I came back home and expressed how much I care about everyone: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7869568/ and how much I freaking love Dragons http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7882423/ Then I talked about how not everyone I meet I have the desire to chat with, its common and normal, but I’ve been on the receiving end of someone who had no desire to talk with me and just wanted me to go away but didn’t actually say it. It feels like to someone ignoring you, that eventually you will just go away and get the message. It be so much nicer if a person was honest and just said they didn’t want to chat. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7891586/ http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7930422/ I also wrote about the 5 Love Languages and what core things make people feel like they matter to someone: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7891588/  I touched upon leaving comments for people to read on their submissions and journals http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7956092/ One of the biggest things I did in 2016 that was out of my usual life was go to my first ever Con in real life! I went to MFF 2016 in Rosemont and I got to meet a lot of friends in real life for the first time too, and that was kind of awesome. I wrote nice big journal about that too: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7962656/ When I got back home I reflected on myself and some of my characters, how I need to give them some more life and love. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7963053/ Then I had a whim idea which turned out to me my most successful journal of the year I think, asking all my friends to let me here them roar!!! http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7974714/ It was such fun and I was so honored to have had such a reaction and fun time with it. I love all you guys! Right near the end of the year while I was making Christmas Presents I got into a controversy. I used a picture as a reference and I heavily derived from it. I asked the artist of the picture if I could post it and emailed them a copy, they liked it and approved my posting of this picture, even said thank you for asking first. The problem was, out of a kind gesture I also asked the commissioner of the artwork who’s character I replaced in my drawing with the friend I was giving this too. They were not too happy I used this picture and didn’t want me to post it. They claimed I traced the image. Granted I did heavily rely on certain lines and shapes of the pose, so I can see how it looks that way. I tried to debate my case with this commissioner, who would not budge on the issue. They said if I re-drew the image in my own hand then it would be fine. So I relented, I said I wouldn’t post the picture.

I still gave the picture to my friend anyway, who happens to also be an artist and heavily advocated for me to post the picture in the facts that I have the artist’s permission to post it, and the artist is the one who owns the copyright of the original picture. The commissioner has absolutely no say. I technically didn’t need to ask them at all, I didn’t draw or copy their character in any way. There is a fine line between who owns what in an image and this was sticky gray area.

In the end I have adjusted and redrawn sections of the image, to make it less of a copy and more a reference as is allowed in any artistic situation. My friend helped guide me with suggestions on edits and how to make it more acceptable. So in the future I will post this new image and remind all that I have the artist’s permission to post it and that it is now a derivative of their work, and not a blatant copy. As the ordeal was going on I wrote a journal explaining my views on copyright, I am not sure if I am correct or wrong about what I have written so if I am in need of informing, please let me know. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7979622/ I ended the year on a more positive note, I am considering going back to school within the next few years. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7983118/ and I had a good Christmas and time with family. I finished 2016 off with a journal about how it is intimidating to ask artists for trades, especially if their skills are better than yours, but not to be discouraged. http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7999147/ So that’s my year in review with a heck tone of journal links if you are interested in reading more about my time in 2016. I shall write a separate journal making special mentions to those who made my year so great.