Aug 10Revisiting History in Red Dead Redemption 2Exploring the South with power and agency — “They killed my husband,” a grief-stricken Sadie tells Dutch Van Der Linde and his protégé, Arthur Morgan. Fleeing from a heist gone wrong, the Van Der Linde gang has found themselves deep in a deadly blizzard, one crew member dying, the others not far behind if they can’t find food…Videogames11 min readVideogames11 min read
Published inHuman Parts·Jul 13In AI, My Gender LivesSeeing myself for the first time in an AI headshot generator — The ease with which friends and acquaintances label me “she” has always felt like a personal failure. How can they know my gender when it’s something I’m still coming to understand myself? Having always gravitated more toward masculinity and trying to outwardly appear masculine, when I hear “she,” I wonder…Gender Identity8 min readGender Identity8 min read
Jun 13Member-onlyDo You Really Need 197 Pieces of Meat?Healing Poverty Brain through Tears of the Kingdom — I realized poverty brain had invaded my time in video games when my partner stood in front of me holding the 164 Amiibo cards I’d amassed to get free resources in Tears of the Kingdom. “Do you really need 197 pieces of meat?” …Videogames6 min readVideogames6 min read
Jun 9Cooking in HyruleHow Breath of the Wild ignited a love of games for a 96 year old woman — Bess sat on my brightly colored couch with a neon pink throw pillow supporting her back as her eyes floated between my to-scale model flame thrower from Far Cry 6 and my seven foot long rainbow Pac-Man wall mural. Intimidated in the way anyone would be when meeting their significant…Videogames8 min readVideogames8 min read
Jun 4Accessible Meetings BlueprintGoing beyond accommodations for more valuable virtual meetings — “Let’s hop on a call!” Five dreaded words that D/deaf, hard of hearing (hoh), and people with other auditory disabilities have to navigate multiple times a day at work. You would be forgiven for thinking that you’re already having inclusive, accessible Zoom meetings if you’ve toggled captions on. That is…Accessibility3 min readAccessibility3 min read
Jun 1Member-onlyFor Grief, PelotonRebuilding myself and my life one Peloton class at a time — There are two types of people in the world: those who have a Peloton and never shut up about it, and those who don’t and wish we would. I am the former. I do not believe it’s a coincidence that I found the strength, the fortitude, to begin putting myself…Peloton9 min readPeloton9 min read
Jul 10, 2021Five More Ways Video Games Can Make You a Better WriterFor the last several months, I’ve been using Red Dead Redemption 2, a 2018 video game from Rockstar Games, to teach creative writing. Every week, students are assigned part of the game to play, along with a corresponding lesson and writing assignment to go with that game section. …Fiction Writing8 min readFiction Writing8 min read
Oct 11, 2020Pride and Resilience in a Rainbow MohawkFor nearly a decade, I’ve been walking my dog around my Chicago suburb donning a rainbow dyed mohawk. What began out of boredom and on a whim one day has, over the years, become something of a signature look. It’s how people know me, how people spot me from the…National Coming Out Day4 min readNational Coming Out Day4 min read
Aug 7, 2020Easy Captions for Content CreatorsOn any platform — You made a video! Maybe it’s your first, maybe it’s your 500th. Whatever the case, you have a video and now it needs captions. But…how do you get captions? And why do you need them? And if you’re uploading it to YouTube, surely the auto-captions provided by YouTube will suffice…Tutorial5 min readTutorial5 min read
Published inAge of Awareness·Jul 26, 2020How Educators Can Support AccessibilityEven When Their Schools Don’t — All three of my degrees — a BA in sociology, an MA in English and literature, and an MFA in fiction writing — were earned online, from the same university. Having had lupus since the age of four, traditional school has always been inaccessible to me and because of this…Accessibility6 min readAccessibility6 min read
