I’ll be honest, this was a long time coming. If the increasingly inconsistent content over the past few years hadn’t made it abundantly clear, nor the functional hiatus since August, I haven’t been enjoying my work a lot. So it feels right to open with this picture, taken as I realized I’d just made it as far as I was being allowed to go.

I think part of it has been how hard I felt I’ve been working for little or no reward, often feeling like I lost viewers and supporters every time I tried something I actually enjoyed. As we head into what are likely to be much rougher seas ahead, I don’t think I can even pretend I’ll be coming back to creating the way I did before. That’s not to say I’m not coming back.

I think I’ve just accepted that if I’m going to keep trying to create for a living, no matter how little money I make, then I’d damn well like what I’m creating.

To that end, I will keep streaming, but I’m just going to play stuff I want to play, and given where my mind has been lately, that means probably a bunch of games I just want to talk about and over analyze. I want to talk about how silly Tactical Breach Wizards is from the ground up, but still tells a poignant story about choosing to stand up, take responsibility for your actions, and choosing to be better. I want to ask chat if they’re getting the same queer vibes from a character in Cassette Beasts I was getting before a cute reveal dozens of hours later that she was in fact hanging out with her wife every time you came to see her (and gush about how cool it was when they creamed you since they’re way harder than most fights… oh you all one shotted them… yeahhhhh I did too…)

I think at some point I slipped and instead of doing things I liked, I was doing things I was supposed to do, things that “made sense” for me to do.

So I’m not doing that. Hopefully by the time any of you are reading this I should have cleaned up my Patreon and Kofi properly for the first time, maybe ever. Hopefully the same goes for my twitch channel too, but, well, I know how much I hate writing bios and the like, and that one’s mostly up to date. Oh, though I’ll also probably try streaming on Joystick too. Sometimes a girl just enjoys being able to get high and play a game with her tits out on camera for fun.

Where Have You Been?

Kind of nowhere. Initially this hiatus was supposed to be a chance for me to get my head on straight, but frankly, 2024 was the worst year of my life. A large portion was due to interpersonal issues. They haven’t exactly been resolved, but they are actively being worked on. Though I am reticent to really throw myself back into this… thing I do with my life until they’re more handled, I also think if I let myself make that excuse, I’ll just keep making excuses for why I’ll do it tomorrow.

But let’s not beat around the bush, I also spent most of this year watching as people tried to litigate me out of public existence. I spent most of this year literally telling people “No, I won’t be going to the Digimon Nationals I qualified for, because it’s in Florida, and I legally can’t use the convention center bathrooms or risk being arrested” and told that I was making a fuss about nothing. Digimon Nationals took place in Florida last weekend, the same weekend a federal judge ruled trans prisoners can be forcibly detransitioned and denied their hormones.

I have notably, since been banned from the primary Digimon store in Denver, for as far as anyone has been able to explain to me, being a loud trans woman who was the only judge, apparently pissed off the store owner 3 years ago, and because I pointed out that the discord channel for our locals had repeated issues with specific users being openly racist and a few who were extremely free with sexual comments toward child characters, which I tried to moderate, with no support from the other moderators.

Good news is that while loosing out on essentially my only in person social group and watching as the few men I thought were my friends immediately sided with those who’d pushed me out, with the caveat that “I wish they’d handled it better” I was rather suddenly forced to revaluate my life and why this hurt so much.

I probably shouldn’t have called that good news either actually.

I mean having to realize that sometime between 2020 and 2024 I’d accepted one of the next big goals I had in life, just wasn’t going to be an option. In conjunction with the whole interpersonal issues bit from before, it kind of broke me. But in a way I’d handled before. It broke me the same way as the first time I came out as a trans girl at age 5 and was punished for it. I still knew how to set little goals, things to keep myself moving, back then it was finish all the homework, make it through second grade, get an acting gig this year.

This time, this time it was stream, make content, play Digimon well, go to nats, do well at locals, use that to make more content!

When I realized nats were in Florida, it started to come crashing down, the big goals, the one I’d hit 2 years in a row… I couldn’t do it, even if I did get my invite, I knew it wasn’t actually worth the risk.

And I did, by fucking accident I got my invite. I got a top 4 serialized Omnimon at GenCon wearing the WORST FUCKING OUTFIT! I’m not kidding when I say I dressed better for every single webcam regional than I did for this and I am pissed!

And then, I came home, and was temporarily banned from the store due to complaints and “repeated warnings” both of which I still haven’t been shown proof of. I only found out that my two “friends” didn’t tell anyone where I was, including our mutual teammates, when someone dm’ed me while I was working PAX West because they’ were wondering where I’d been for a month. I returned from my temporary banning to play in, or judge the store regional I’d helped push for and had initially been vocal about making content for. Only to discover that they had failed to hire the required two certified judges. They’d found one, and assigned a knowledgeable player as a floor judge. I begged them to give me a reason to not make it an issue, so in round 2 they announced that they’d found another certified judge! I personally doubt that they checked his certification as I’ve had to explain mechanics to him regularly, but sure… and they had him answering judge calls while playing in the regional.

So I was done, I dropped my comment about the discord being functionally unmoderated directly under a person who’d posted a Diddy meme, with some bit about telling to people to stop using the damn pepe emotes and why since I figured I’d be banned soon anyway.

I was banned from the store the next Monday. By text. By someone I’d thought of as an extremely close friend. Who saw the look of terror I gave them the last time I saw them, and interpreted it as hatred. Suffice to say, I think I understand their trouble with women now. It was fun to be told that once my first punishment was enacted more people came forward with complaints, I mean, I still haven’t seen any proof of complaints or warnings, and everyone I’ve talked to has said they had no idea I was being punished, they just thought I was busy.

I’d turned this into my life. And it took a month for ANYONE to reach out and make sure I wasn’t dead.

It was almost worse than the obvious lie that everyone hated me, I just mattered so little to them they didn’t even notice I was gone.

Twice!

I watched the friends and teammates who weren’t directly responsible go right back to hanging out with the teammates who’d forced me out. In a discord server I owned. Planning an event that was originally proposed by me, to be hosted in my home, for all of them. I don’t think I’ve felt so much like scum before that moment, and damn have I had some low points. There’s an extremely impactful piece by Ana Valens I’ll link here that I happened to read while realizing how othered I’d felt in that community even before I was ejected from it that really helped me put words to how I’d been feeling in the space.

But it did make me realize, I always make myself small. I let other people take up space, because I get hurt(they hurt me) when I take up space. But if I get just as hurt no matter how small I make myself… then why bother making myself small?

So started The Hiatus. I needed to figure out what I actually want out of my life. And it turns out the answers are actually pretty simple.

What Do I Want Out of Life?

I want to create. (Thank goodness simple doesn’t mean succinct, I’d probably explode if I just left that answer)

I’ve always wanted to create, I love streaming, at least partially because of the utterly ephemeral nature of it. To that end, I will stop saving the VoD’s and may in-fact actually delete my archive. I feel no great attachment to them, partially because the entire idea was that they be live. I also am admittedly toying with the idea of doing something more intentional with youtube, but only if I can find the right drive.

More than anything else, more than streaming, more than making videos, I want to write. I’ve always loved writing, and in truth, the only reason I ever stopped was because in some misguided attempt to keep me from following me in his foot steps, it was one of only two things my father ever directly discouraged me from pursuing. The worst part was, I can see it was done out of love. Twisted, but love nonetheless.

I asked him one day in middle school what he thought about me going out for the school paper. He told me that I shouldn’t compare myself to him or try to do something just because he’d done it. Now, I think he was trying to get me to decide for myself if I wanted to, but I don’t think he realized that was the same way he answered questions I brought to him about homework I wasn’t understanding. It was the tone he’d used to teach me to never bring him questions. Best case I’d get a dismissive answer, worst case no answer and he’d use that tone to make me feel like an idiot for even needing to ask.

Yeah, nigh on 20 years later I can see he probably ment well, but at the time all I got was, you’re an idiot for asking.

Now I’m doing this for me. I’ve always loved words. They’re terrible, utterly incapable of truly communicating the chemical squirts and electrical impulses that are our emotions, experiences, and memories, but it’s that exact imperfection I love, and loathe. So much of my life I’ve been misunderstood or ignored. I kept thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I can say something the right way, people will actually understand. I think I’ve finally accepted that some people, just don’t want to listen. So screw it, I won’t write for them. I won’t worry that they’ll misunderstand my words, they’re going to draw their own meaning no matter what some tranny tells them, because no matter what, that’s all they’re going to see me as.

So I’ll do it for me, because I know some people will take meaning from something I say. Maybe not the meaning I wanted to imbue, but that’s the entire point of creating isn’t it? To put something out into the world and hope that it will matter to someone else.

I want to do more than just write and stream, I want to work with my hands, physically make things. I’ll admit, this one is harder for me. I’ll blame it on the ADHD and that whole gifted kid damage, because, yeah, I have hated everything I’ve ever tried to crochet, sew, knit, or forge, because it didn’t turn out the way I know it could have if I was better. But damn it, I was a chef, I have made beautiful sugar pieces, silly chocolate designs, elegant cakes, I can crochet a damn plushie!

So What’s All This?

More than anything, I think this is me committing to myself. I’m writing this on January 9th.

The still democrat controlled senate voted 84 to 9 in favor of S. 5 the Laken Riley Bill, which directs ICE to throw migrants accused of any flavor of theft, not guilty, accused, into detention facilities. Biden signed in the first anti queer legislation in 30 years.

Lawmakers in multiple states are pushing for legislation that would designate this pity-party of a blog post as porn because a trans woman wrote it and didn’t pretend she was cis, and of course half the states in this country are trying to ban “porn.”

We have a full blown global fascist uprising, the center of the country is currently under inches of snow and ice they didn’t see even 10 years ago, Texas is starting it’s rolling winter power failures as it’s leaders once again flee the state and leave their constituents to freeze now, and pay exorbitant “surge” rates if they survive, Los Angeles is burning, and prisoner indenture slave laborers who will never be allowed to work as fire fighters once they’ve “paid their debt to society” are risking their lives to save what they can. I’ll also remind you that in November, California, by a wide margin, voted to keep prisoner slave labor constitutional, for exactly this reason.

And since writing all that yesterday, I also “get” to throw in, and Trump was just sentenced to “Unconditional Discharge” for his multiple felony convictions this morning. If you don’t know what that means, it’s because he was sentenced to no penalties, not even time served, as one would need to have served time for that to be an option.

So that’s it. That’s why I have to do this for me. That fucking poem;

First they came for the trans women

And you didn’t speak out

Because, they’re just asking questions, they want trans people and women safe

Then they came for the sex workers

And you didn’t speak out

Because, they’re being exploited against their will, no matter what they say for themselves

Then they came for the immigrants

And you didn’t speak out

Because those are American jobs, you deserve them, well, someone else does, they sound hard

I hope you see a happier ending than I do, but then, I am a trans woman

Poems

Oh yeah, did I mention that one of the things I’ve been working on are some free-verse poems? I’ve actually set a goal for myself of writing at least one a week… which hey I guess I wrote on this week! Trans and queer art is already being actively censored by some, and forgotten, or untaught to our younger generations. And maybe my contributions will be as disappointing and wasteful as pissing into the ocean expecting to raise the tide. But if nothing else, I’ve realized I owe it to myself to let the words out.

It feels conceited (Look at this monster I wrote mostly for and about myself, are you really surprised?) but yeah, I’d like to think some of things I’ve written might be meaningful to others. I know sharing my experiences as a trans woman on Twitch cracked multiple eggs. So I guess I’d like to think that maybe I can do the same or more with a medium I’ve missed for so long.

(Yeah, I picked this title subsection just to be screwy if you saw it without context)

Additions

I have a few minor things to add here at the end, mostly just little things, like hey I have a girlfriend, and my twitter and instagram accounts are officially abandoned but not deleted so their handles can’t be just grabbed. I have a new url, well, a second url. I’m liking going to be changing the site on some fundamental level as I don’t think I can trust Squarespace with what I want to use my website for, much less trust them to let even it’s current version exist given the way this country and the world is actively heading. Not necessarily a bad thing, I mean the swapping hosting services and such, since the global fascist wave is objectively terrible.

So if you’re not in my discord server or following me on BlueSky I highly recommend doing one or both in case something happens here before I migrate. Hopefully I’m being overly cautious, but I’d rather that than the alternative.

I’d also like to thank the patrons and ko-fi supporters who kept supporting me while I’ve been extra mega gone.

So thank you to April, Yalc, Fragile Paper, Pinballwitch, Pimento, Poet, Raur, Steve, Aaron, and Mim.

I personally don’t feel I’ve earned your continued support while I tried to put my self-back together, but thank you so much for it.