“Address Me”, Says The Elephant

Hello Readers. 

You may have noticed an impeccable posting schedule. Regular content. Videos, blog posts, a return to form! You may be asking yourself a very simple question: “Oh, so now you’re back?” and I feel it’s time to address that. There’s been more hiatuses than I expected and this blog has evolved over the years in strange and mystifying ways. Let’s talk openly about that, why it’s been so hard for me to keep a schedule recently and what you can expect of me moving forward. 

Let’s address one thing immediately: I never fully recovered from being canceled. That influx of hateful comments, negative attention and bullying took this blog from a sacred place that I loved and felt safe and turned it into one of the most painful experiences in my adult life. So much of me struggles with “letting them win” that I shouldn’t give up; that’s what the “haters” want. But I need to be honest with myself and all of you: I have never emotionally recovered and it has truly taken something from me. 

I’d love to get that original spark back, the energy to post multiple times a month but I just don’t know if I can. Not with things as they stand. I’ve considered rebranding and that’s still something that may happen just so I can move forward with something more like a clean slate and not be attached to a literal guinea pig scandal. 

And if the guinea pig cancellation was the only factor against me, maybe I’d have an easier time coming back. On top of that, I am dealing with a myriad of chronic physical and mental illnesses that I have spoken about very openly on this blog. I’m more tired than I’ve ever been and despite all of that, I’m busier than I’ve ever been. I have multiple podcasts, a full time job, conventions and even less executive function than ever.

That all being said, I have missed having my own corner of the Internet. And I am entirely too stubborn to cede my place to a bunch of folks that remind us all of the dangers of parasocial relationships. So I want to come back. I hope I’ve shown you all that I am trying to come back. Will we ever return to 4 posts a month? Probably not. But I’m working on building up a little catalogue so we can have something at least once or twice a month.

If you really miss hearing me muse or rant: my podcasts are a fantastic place to check out. If you like classic literature, I highly recommend Unfortunately, Required Reading. We’ll be returning from hiatus later this fall and I can’t wait to return to it. The Yaoi Shelf is where I get to be a professional fangirl and it’s an absolute hoot if you’re into queer media, BL and yaoi.

I thank you all for your patience, for sticking with me, for finding something worth supporting in me.

This blog started off as a mandatory project in college, blossomed into a global showcase and was darkened by more scandal and controversy than I ever expected.

Here’s to the next phase. 

-A

The Trainer I Used to Be and Will Become Again

I’ve been playing Pokémon since I was a kid, bullying my parents into getting me all 3 Generation 1 titles so I didn’t miss out on a single opportunity to catch them all. There have been very few constants in my life but Pokémon has been one of them. But growing up means learning new things and sometimes that makes you long for a world that just doesn’t exist anymore…or at least, not without a little more thought than usual. 

To say the Pokémon anime didn’t color how I approached the games would be a dead lie. From a little kid, the goal was to be like Ash (or in my instance, to be like Gary: because look at him), and have a scrappy but excellent team that you grow up with and train up to take them from unwitting first stages to their powerful and self-actualized forms. It wasn’t about abilities, hell, it  barely involved skill: just love, patience and a desire to treat the game as much as a hero’s journey as possible. Becoming Pokémon League Champion became akin to the alchemical Magnum Opus: the goal is not just to transmute lead into gold but to remove the impure “lead” in our souls and turn ourselves into purer, better, gold. 

If you look at my Pokemon games, you can see team after team of Pokemon selected sometimes based on entirely vibes alone. There isn’t always a ton of originality but in the metadata you can see each Pokémon is loved, cared for, and has high friendship from all the baths, walks, and sweet treats. 

That approach for the most part has paid off with me being successful at a game for children multiple times and across multiple generations and devices: going for Pokémon I like, that I think are beautiful or that I see potential in. 

It even led me to what I’m arguably best known for in Pokémon: my love of ghost and dark types. I see their potential. I see that most are just misunderstood and they don’t deserve to be ignored for being a little spooky. Hence the incredibly spoiled Giratina I have in my box that I’ve had for years and has gotten fat and happy off of Pokémon treats and head rubs. 

But mindless hours of TikTok have forced me to come up against a world that I never much considered in Pokemon and particularly in the most recent games I’ve been playing: Pokémon GO and Pokémon Violet: IVs, EVs and stats. Basically, a lot about your Pokémon, much like us humans, is genetic. Pokémon gain traits from their parents, environment and how they are specially trained. That creates an interesting hierarchy where some Pokémon are considered less worthy than others with a particular focus on (at least in Pokémon GO) Shiny Hundos (Shiny 100 Stats) and perfect IV and EVs in the baseline games. 

Now, I’ve always known about natures and hidden abilities and even 3 star Pokémon but that was just the least interesting part of them to me for years. To me, the excitement of Pokémon was more rooted in the basics: interesting design, interesting story or just personal connection. I didn’t care that they were perfect; with love and training and spamming the move Scald I could make them perfect. 

But the worm crawled into my ear and now I sort and look at every Pokémon I encounter with much more scrutiny. I’ve been releasing lower stat Pokémon in Pokémon GO and harvesting candy from their departure. I’ve been uninterested in anything that isn’t shiny, isn’t perfect and isn’t shiny or perfect. 

And guess what? It made me care much less about the game. Shiny odds are rare and getting a shiny that is perfect is even rarer. If everything else is trash then that leaves a lot of Pokémon on the cutting room floor and ignored in the search of something rare. The joy of Pokémon had always been The Great Work, transmuting from lead to gold. But being in constant search of gold, there are many opportunities to accept a challenge left behind and devalued in the process. 

It didn’t take long to figure out that searching for perpetual perfection wasn’t going to work for me. It was against my style as a trainer, collector and person. The fun of Pokémon has always been in seeing the super potential in everything. That even Pokémon with low IVs and EVs can and deserve to be champion through hard work and dedication. 

I stopped caring as much about perfection and focused on more cumulative aspects of each team member. In Pokémon GO, it’s easier to be picky with quickly dwindling box space but in the main series games: letting imperfection be a core aspect of my team isn’t going anywhere. And while I do still get disappointed when a shiny hunt doesn’t go my way; it makes the ones I have managed to catch even more special. 

The Death of Hobbies and How to Get Back Your Free Time – ColossalCon 2026

Hello! I’m back with a brand new panel video! This topic is near and dear to my heart and my audience was absolutely fantastic at ColossalCon! Stay tuned. I have lots of content planned and an overall strategy to bring this blog back to its former glory!

Thank you for sticking with me and enjoy the panel!

Don’t Wanna Be An American Idiot

One of my favorite albums turned 20 last year. The album that I wrote extensive fanfic about, the one I analyzed like any other great work of fiction, one that despite its age feels right at home today in 2025 as it did in 2004. 

Same shit, new regime. 

American Idiot in so many ways felt like it was an album crafted just for my teenage brain. Perfectly edgy, self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing as well as incredibly pointed towards a particular moment in political history. To anyone who dared to say music isn’t political, I’d dare them to say that after listening to American Idiot (or after literally reading a book). 

Protest music is why all of my hoodies are black. Protest music is what kept me going through those difficult Bush years when I was just an exhausted teenager barely understanding the depths of oppression but still feeling its weight. I was mad at my family, mad at the government, mad at America and American Idiot was the soundtrack for all of my dispassionate rage. 

It’s amazing that 21 years later, after several re-listens while doing a lot of the exact same things I was doing at 14 (writing fanfic, talking to my friends online, planning our costumes and conventions) that outside of some of the less than PC language used (really, the f-slur was not needed twice on a single album), the feelings are all the same. The rage is the same. The displeasure, the ennui, the hopelessness that turns in your stomach to and fuels something greater within you: rebellion. 

While a lot has changed in 21 years, a lot is still painfully the same. But so is that fire in me that used to burn to impotent ash as a teenager. I’m not powerless anymore. I can vote with ballots, dollars, attention and time. I can protest by existing, supporting my communities and moving forward. 

I don’t want to be an American Idiot. 

And luckily, I don’t have to be. 

Criminal Minds: The Misrepresentation of Goths and Nerds

I’ve been rewatching Criminal Minds because my personal Chinese spy on TikTok told me to. While the show certainly lacks the subtlety I once thought it had (cue the episode where a man is determined to bring his dead big brother back from the dead by murdering young men, sewing their body parts together and trying to use the ‘magic’ of tornados to bring him back). But one thing that has been a huge surprise in a more recent re-watch was a theme I’m familiar with when it comes to media but I didn’t notice in Criminal Minds: the fear of goths and nerds with special interests. 

Now, let’s get one thing straight. Goths and nerds that have intense special interests especially in history and fantasy have been a low hanging fruit for society and media to crap on for years. We had a whole Satanic Panic over it and the ugly tendrils of the movement rear up every few years or so when the kids inevitably find a new thing for the status quo to be outraged over. But wearing all black and liking Dante’s Divine Comedy a serial killer does not make. Which leads us into why I care so much about this dogpiling happening on Criminal Minds. 

The early 2000s cop dramas like CSI and Law and Order: SVU were full of 90s and 80s bigotry and hatred. You can see it in the shows’ blatant transphobia, homophobia, racism and sexism. There is zero shock at all that a show directed by that bootlicker, Dick Wolf, would use the easiest of tropes and signifiers to show his black and white morality. “Normal” sports playing kids are good, all-black wearing “weird” kids are bad. But some of Criminal Minds’ best episodes and with the darkest themes are directed by series regular Matthew Gray Gubler. And if you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Gubler, I’m happy to provide some sources. But suffice to say, he’s one black t-shirt away from being a guy I would have drooled over in college. Some of the series most disturbing episodes: Mr. Scratch, Heathridge Manor, The Lesson; all of those were directed by Gubler.

And a persistent theme across many Criminal Minds episodes is that “Oh, that weird kid? Probably a serial killer.” Garcia was famously “bad” and “The Black Queen” when she was a goth hacker who lost her parents and was rebelling against society. The episode where there’s an epidemic of teenagers dying in what turns out to be some kind of internet choking game and the main suspect for most of the episode is the one obvious goth kid who turns out was being abused and choked by his dad and the dad was the actual serial killer! In the famous cannibal episode of season 3, the killer’s obsessed with Goya’s Black Paintings. Another episode features a serial killer who is super into Greece and Greek Mythology and has to do a murder about it. 

Now, are there serial killers with niche obsessions? Absolutely. Too many to cover in this post about a fictional crime procedural. What’s damaging is that there are plenty of relatively chill people that like wearing all black, Goya paintings and Greek mythology and Dante’s Divine Comedy. I’m a person that wears all black, likes Goya’s paintings and mythology and The Divine Comedy. And still seeing the tired ass trope of being goth or having a particular interest that’s important to you is just plain exhausting: especially from a show that brings me so much neurodiverse comfort. 

May Angels Keep Me Through the Night

I grew up in a Dallas suburb in the 1990s. While looking back at the 90s now, it feels like there was crime everywhere but at the time, the 90s felt like a welcomed balm in comparison to the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. Clinton was in office. The suburbs were quiet and life was peaceful. But two landmark cases rocked the very foundation of my childhood. And as anniversaries for these deaths and events creep up, I think it’s worth discussing. 

I was an exceptionally cute kid. That isn’t even a vain comment, I was just a very cute little kid. All wide eyes, bright smile and smooth complexion. My parents, in all of their 90s glory, decided that I should be a pageant child. Entering me in hair shows to start, A hair show is basically what it sounds like. Fashion show but for hair styling. But something happened that shook the nation and any hopes I ever had at being a 90s pageant sensation. JonBenét Ramsey was a little girl that was a just month younger than me, born in the same year. She was a pageant star. She was loved and adored. 

But one day, she was killed. Now, if I’m allowed to indulge in some true crime history: the prevailing theory for many years was that JonBenét was killed by a deranged and probably pedophilic crazed fan. That theory held up for a few years and further dives into the case have shown that JonBenét was most likely killed in her home by a member of her family or in a tragic “accident”. But for most of the 1990s, JonBenét’s death was clearly done by some horrible shadowy figure who wishes to do harm to this poor innocent little girl. But the fear of me being paraded around in little sparkly outfits, all dolled up and becoming a recognizable figure was scary enough for my parents to squash my budding career as a pageant star. 

Even with the power of hindsight and knowing that the evil that preyed on JonBenét was likely hiding in her own home, Stranger Danger was big business in the 90s. The 1970s and 1980s both had far too many stories of child abduction, all of them ending in either tragedy or mystery. By the time the country made it into the false security promised by the 90s, there was a strong desire to teach kids about how to be safe. As a child, it felt like paranoia. Having to always look around and be alert and be aware. 

Oh, to be that sweet innocent child again. 

But JonBenét’s passing was not the only tragedy that defined my childhood. The world simply isn’t that kind. 

Amber Haggerman was a little older than me. She was a girl who lived in my city. We could have been neighbors. But one day, Amber was taken while she was out riding her bike. She was found naked and slashed up days later. We still don’t know who assaulted and murdered Amber Hagerman. 

Amber’s abduction and murder shocked not only the state but the entire nation. There was a very present understanding that what happened to Amber could happen to anyone’s child. Did it help that Amber was a little white child? Yes. I’m not here to argue that point. 

But Amber’s death did give us something that protects children all across the nation now: The Amber Alert, named after Amber Hagerman, now signals us to stay on the lookout and speak up because there is a child missing. 

Amber Hagerman is buried in the same cemetery as my mother and maternal grandparents and each time I visit them, I am sure to bring extra flowers for Amber Hagerman. 

My family took the loss of these two girls very seriously. I got the usual dose of 90s Stranger Danger at school and at home we extensively practiced what to do if I saw someone I didn’t recognize or someone came to the door asking for my family. We had a family password, one I still have committed to memory that I was to ask any adult that came to the door to ensure I only opened that door for family. I was closely guarded by neighbors and extended family. 

It was the premature loss of these two angels that guided my family to make better choices and preserve the relative innocence of my childhood. And for that, I am forever grateful.