Virtual Worlds · Digital Culture · AI Literati
The Thing Everyone Gets Wrong People assume that adults who struggle to make friends are doing something wrong. That there is a social skill they are missing, a personality trait that repels connectio...
Read article →The Night Attack on Titan Kept Me Alive I am being direct because I think directness matters more than careful framing here. During the worst period of my depression, in my early twenties, I watched a...
Read article →What the Studies Actually Say I have spent a fair amount of time, as an adult child of divorce, reading the research on parental divorce and its effects. Partly out of genuine curiosity. Partly, I'll...
Read article →Why I Think Story Is the Point People who do not play narrative games often ask what the appeal is. They assume it must be about the gameplay mechanics, the graphics, or some competitive element they...
Read article →What Happened the Last Time I Cried in Front of Someone I cried in front of a colleague two years ago. It was a difficult week, I had not slept enough, and something was said in a meeting that broke t...
Read article →The Things I Had to Stop Believing I burned out completely at thirty-one. I do not mean I was tired and needed a vacation. I mean I sat at my desk one afternoon and could not remember how to do the wo...
Read article →The Things I Learned After It Was Too Late to Use Them My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's when I was thirty-four. She lived for seven more years. I was her primary caregiver for the last four. I...
Read article →The Day I Stopped Pretending I Was Fine I have worked in emergency nursing for eleven years. In that time I have held hands during deaths, translated grief into paperwork, and driven home in silence m...
Read article →The Translation Problem When I came home from my second deployment, my sister asked me how I was doing. I said fine. She asked what it had been like. I said hard. She nodded and asked if I wanted to w...
Read article →Nobody Gave Me a Timeline When my father died, several people told me that grief takes about a year. A few said two. One person mentioned the five stages and seemed reassured by their own knowledge of...
Read article →The Conversation I'm Tired of Having Every few years a new headline arrives. Video games cause violence. Video games cause laziness. Video games cause social isolation. Now, increasingly: video games...
Read article →The Longest Walk Is Into the Building I want to describe something that happened at a previous job, not to assign blame but because it captures something precisely. My manager sent a message asking if...
Read article →What I Thought It Would Be I had planned for sleeplessness. I had planned for the physical recovery. I had planned, in an abstract way, for the emotional intensity of early motherhood—the love that yo...
Read article →The Town Where I Grew Up I grew up in a place where everyone knew everyone, which sounds like warmth until you understand what that means for a queer kid. It means every adult has a relationship with...
Read article →The Question I'm Not Going to Answer Anymore It arrives in different forms. Sometimes it's direct: don't you want kids? Sometimes it's softer: you'd be such a good mother. Sometimes it's framed as con...
Read article →What School Couldn't Give Me I want to be specific about what I mean when I say anime helped me more than school did, because it's not a simple claim and I don't want to make it carelessly. School gav...
Read article →The Line I Almost Didn't Find I'm going to tell you how bad it got before I talk about how it changed, because the order matters. At the peak of it, I was gaming twelve to fourteen hours a day on week...
Read article →The Assumption in the Waiting Room I went to see a therapist for the first time at 27. I made the appointment, drove to the office, sat in the waiting room, and left before they called my name. I drov...
Read article →The World Doesn't Go on a Diet with You Recovering from an eating disorder is hard enough when you're alone in a room. Then you leave the room. You go to a birthday party, and there is cake, and five...
Read article →The Rules Changed Again Last Tuesday the rules changed. Not metaphorically—literally. My body, which has been operating under one set of constraints for the past several months, shifted. The symptom t...
Read article →The Friends Who Showed Up I met my closest friend through a multiplayer game seven years ago. We were strangers in a squad, then regulars who coordinated schedules, then people who talked every day ab...
Read article →What You Cannot See From the Outside Social anxiety does not look like shyness. It does not look like being quiet at parties or needing a moment to warm up. It looks like sitting in the parking lot fo...
Read article →The Conversation I'm Tired of Having Someone finds out I watch anime. Sometimes they ask what it is. I explain, briefly, that it's animated storytelling from Japan with a range of genres comparable to...
Read article →This Is Not a Phase I want to be clear about something before we start: I did not wake up single. I did not accidentally let years slip by waiting for the right person. I am not secretly lonely and pe...
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