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. 

My Year in Bloodwork

I’ve always known I’m chronically ill. I knew there were ghosts in the machine that made life more difficult for me than it did for others. And I pressed on through sheer spite and the resilience that only comes with being raised black and hypercompetent. But I always knew that I was sick even when I didn’t have names for the conditions that made me tired, caused me pain, and left scars both physical and emotional. 

This year has been a year where I returned to focusing on health. After years of neglect and living up to the African-American “stereotype” of not seeing doctors, I finally was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and went back to my primary care doctor. That one appointment opened up Pandora’s Box and one appointment turned into two referrals, two referrals became three specialists and new conditions to add to my list and to treat. 

When I was a kid, I was pretty fearless, but the one thing that scared the ever loving shit was needles. I hated needles ever since I had a flu shot from a church volunteer that felt more like being stabbed than a small pinprick in my early childhood. Even the post-vaccination church nachos didn’t stop my whimpering and growing resentment and dislike of needles. The older I got, the more I did my best to avoid the use of large needles in the medical sense but I was dutiful with my vaccinations. I just had to look away or crack jokes to keep my attention away from the literal steel object piercing my skin. 

But having sick parents, sick grandparents, sick aunts and sick uncles put you at a statistically high risk of being sick yourself and it all started with routine blood work. 

So far, the most vials of blood I’ve had to give at one time to be tested was 15. I had already given 14 vials of blood and right at the end of the appointment I was told I needed to have one more vial collected. I think my veins are still mad at me for the abuse. 

But in all the blood I’ve seen being taken from my body and siphoned into vials, I’ve learned things about my body that have helped me feel stronger and better in spite of my many illnesses. 

My severe anemia is now being properly taken care of with iron and lifestyle changes. The kidney disease that has lurked in my bloodline for decades is being treated after noticing my levels were abnormal especially for someone of my age. My mood and outlook have improved because I am no longer severely deficient in Vitamin D. 

I still have a long road ahead of me and being chronically ill is less about achieving one big goal but small victories that turn into better days. 

I have things that I want to do. Places I want to see. Things to be deeply nerdy about. 

And I need to be around to do it all. 

After the Election 2024

I wanted to write this days ago. I wanted to write something when the feelings were still fresh and raw. 

I spent the day immediately after the election talking friends and loved ones down from metaphorical and literal ledges. 

I spent that day crying, bitter, angry, hurt and confused. 

I spent the day trying to be strong and optimistic in a situation that is deeply pessimistic. 

The election happened. The Fascist won. 

But after several therapy sessions with both me receiving therapy and me providing unofficial therapy to those close to me: I’ve been focusing on what brings me peace and makes me happy. Not to selfishly ignore the looming crisis, but to be better prepared mentally, spiritually, and physically for the fight ahead. 

Here are some of the things I’ve been doing to keep myself sane during the calm before the storm. 

Comfort Shows and Videos: 

This is not the time for my love of dense, complex and deeply existential documentaries. This is the time for a “guilty” pleasure of mine, Monster Factory. This is the time for only season 9 of ER. This is the time for shows that are exciting but predictable. No surprises, no plot twists, no crying in the middle of a new movie. 

Uptempo Music

While I am known to wallow in the soothing embrace of sad songs, I am plenty sad enough. I did enjoy The Saddest Song (I’ve Got) thanks to aforementioned ER re-watch but for the most part it’s been my gym hardstyle playlist, a whole lot of Joost Klein and that catchy little K-Pop tune Bruno Mars did. It’s been nice to hear music with a fast beat and lyrics that aren’t about the sad feelings associated with a bad ex. 

Comfort Food (In Moderation) 

I’ve been on a bit of a “health” journey but I’ve also made big strides not to demonize or moralize food. Food isn’t bad, it’s fuel, even if the fuel is pizza. The night of the election I ordered pizza, watched some shows that I like, turned my phone off and went to bed. Since then, I’ve eaten at Chili’s of all places, enjoyed some lovely pastries and worked hard to find an alternative to soda because my love of Dr. Pepper is likely to put me in an early grave. I picked up this delicious brown sugar and maple syrup butter from my local Trader Joe’s and I’ve been obsessed with it. It’s perfect on sourdough toast and makes everything taste like a warm fall hug. 

Going to the Gym 

Never thought I’d become the worst possible gym rat. But I’ve been pretty steadily going to the gym at least twice a week since August and while I can’t say I find the gym particularly fun or exciting, it is great that my friends and family motivate me through it. My friends have been amazing at hyping me up as I walk and try the stairmaster all while listening to either the most gym bro hardstyle phonk or Unsolved Mysteries (there is no in between). 

Tiktok

As scary as it is, the Tiktok algorithm adapts quickly. The moment I stopped paying attention to political content, my FYP became full of cute animals, delicious food, Japan travel tips, neat birds and memes. Sure, some of the content is still very much political but it’s mostly from the perspective of women, queer people and women of color; all voices I’m happy to hear. It isn’t the endless doom of what’s ahead but rather the delicious schadenfreude that comes with conservatives realizing that their “victory” is short-sighted and that their privilege will not save them. 

The next four years are going to be a lot. Even if we don’t take the liar at face value, his cabinet full of absolute buffons and his xenophobic and sexist grand ideas are going to test this country. But during that time I promise to maintain an open and safe space for LGBTQ+ people. I will continue to be an outspoken feminist. I will continue to talk about being black, being a woman, and being queer. 

The next four years are going to ask a lot from us. And I’m going to need to be ready to stand with those that face oppression. For now, I’m taking it easy, but it’s all in preparation for what’s ahead.