If you tell me why I'm stupid, I'll feel bad (CW: kind of mentions pronoun refusal)

 This is purely a rant. My hair is drying because I am currently too lazy to get up and dry it faster. Maybe this rant will help me. Maybe it will help you with something. That college essay isn't going to distract you from doing it all by itself.

I don't know a one-to-two-word term for this so I'm going to make up a fake quote here. I think, once you read this, you will know exactly what I'm trying to say:

"This is an interesting conversation about this heated topic. I can kind of see all of your points. Just so you know though, for future reference, if you scream 'you're an idiot' at someone and mob against them, it becomes a lot harder to take your point seriously."

NOW...

Some people will read that and go "lawl, I see idiots like this pretty often. I know exactly what you're talking about". Others will agree with the statement above. I feel like this is part of the reason I'm making this rant.

This is partially inspired by the showrunner of an undisclosed, animated, and frankly, infantile YouTube video series that has been going on for way too long and has far too much twerking for my tastes. Again, the inspiration will go undisclosed. I'm usually not afraid to name names but I have not really watched this stuff. That is to say, everyone has probably seen this if they have spent a lot of time online in the past decade but I have never been a fan. Because it looks like something I would fucking hate. 

Anyway. The only reason I bring the showrunner up is that they were like "hey fans, you like my series that I pay a bunch of people to work on because I'm not actually very creative? NFTs of this brand are coming soon!" This was also in the heat of the more recent NFT discourse, despite the fact that NFTs are not a 2021 thing at all. Not throwing anyone under the bus here. I have done a little research into crypto but it wasn't until 2021 that I really looked into NFTs and learned more specifics on how crypto is made. For anyone wondering; I am against NFTs. I wouldn't murder someone or stop being friends with someone for having a passing interest in crypto, in a very general sense. I do, however, give these friends shit for being into crypto because I have personally always found the entire thing to be shady. If we're going to talk about NFTs, which we won't be after I'm done with this paragraph, I take a much harsher stance against it and am actually glad so many people took so many large L's on that one. This post isn't about crypto though, it's probably not even the best example for illustrating my point.

A lot of people, including fans of this undisclosed series, dogpiled the creator on social media. This is pretty warranted given any and all context I can fucking think of. The creator was like "okay, I'm all ears, but give me GOOD reasoning that isn't whiny or meanie, or else I won't listen!" Again, this was at the rise of the recent NFT discourse where a lot of people didn't even fully understand what they were mad about anyway. They were right, they were just kind of misinformed is all. I am still no expert myself. After a few hours of this, the guy pretty much said the made-up quote I gave a bit ago. So basically, for being mad about publicly being okay with destroying the environment and then being a smug douchebag about it after the fact, the people with actual factual information are the assholes because they raised their Twitter voice.

So that is what I want to rant about. Not crypto.

There are extreme examples we can give to what's a bit too much and all that. Threatening somebody's family over this sort of thing is an obvious example of "a bit too much" or at least I fucking hope that's an obvious example. But let's change one of the variables in the equation I spent too long explaining above. If it wasn't crypto, maybe it is whether or not we should care about other people's pronouns and whether or not saying "whatever" to the whole thing is problematic or not (it is).

So MinecraftFabio265 (not checking to see if that's a real screenname somewhere, if it is, I apologize, this isn't about you, and if it accidentally seems like it is, continue reading; you've got some learnin' to do, Fabio) makes a post saying "lol imagine being bent out of shape about having obvious breasts and people don't call you he/him". Most of us know, they would use a harsher phrase than "bent out of shape" but I digress. So this post is directly transphobic to transmasculine people who have not had top surgery and strictly do not use "she/her" pronouns, as many transmascs do not. Also weirds me out that tits are the deciding factor in respect for a lot of people considering literally everyone has them or is a dismembered corpse but this is also beside the point. A bunch of people get together and call out MinecraftFabio265 for his stupid post. So as I have explained so far, on paper, these people are in the right and MinecraftFabio265 is in the wrong. If you can't tell from the tone of this whole post up to this point, no matter what transpires, MinecraftFabio265 is still absolutely in the wrong. That said, let's move on.

I personally feel like most people would see the responses and point at the responders as the bad guys here. This melts a lobe in my noggin. Let me take you down the Willy Wonka chocolate cruise for a second here, just humor me. Let's go down the hypothetical train of thought that the naysayers in this hypothetical scenario are whackjobs and bullies. The original poster ever so simply said that if a transmasc person has not undergone top surgery or has other features that another individual may see as feminine, it is okay for the individual to refer to the transmasc person staunchly as a woman. It is then implied that it is the job of the trans person to deal with that responsibility. That any assertion that the person might heavily prefer other pronouns is absurd and/or none of the other person's business. So how do we respond to this?

Angrily? Yes!

It can be well-articulated or it can be CAPS LOCKED and feral but I honestly don't blame anyone for getting fucking infuriated at the OP for regurgitating such nonsense. "Well, he didn't say that! Never said that! You're making up drama for clout!" In such few words, MinecraftFabio265 absolutely implied a lot of things there. The "lol" is actually important here, you see. He finds it laughable that someone would expect someone to give this person basic respect. I was thinking about this earlier today. MinecraftFabio265, who we have established is a man, would probably start feeling kind of blue if a lot of people started referring to him as "her". I mean, this is the MinecraftFabio265! A man of notoriety. Surely, this trend would catch on, and bam! Now you have a couple thousand people calling MinecraftFabio265 her royal majesty; queen of pronouns. None of these people ever consider the shoe being on the other foot. Isn't that strange? Genuinely. Is that not just a very weird thing that these people never consider?

Also, a lot of transmasc issues are swept under the rug constantly. Transfemme people still face many scary issues in 2021 but at least in 2021, these issues are gaining more visibility. I rarely see anyone in any position of power doing anything to boost transmasc people. This is part of the reason why everyone freaked the fuck out about Elliot Page. He was worth freaking out about. Name another transmasc person even one tier of popularity down from Elliot Page. Yup? Yup. All this to say that I am of the opinion that saying things like what MinecraftFabio265 has said this very day are very arguably hate speech. I think a lot of people would say "that's not even an opinion, you are absolutely right". I have my moments.

So then (this is where it all comes full circle) one has the goddamn gall to even remotely insinuate that the person saying "bad take, Fabio" is the toxic one; the hateful one. MinecraftFabio265 is most likely to say something like "yall are just haters lol I am just voicing a simple opinion and all these sjws come to attack me lol". I really hate that this MinecraftFabio265 quote is not one that took me more than one minute to make up because I see stuff so close to it all the fucking time. I would say at least once a month and my timeline is fairly clean of bigoted dummies. To my knowledge, it is as clean as it can be. I still see "hoes mad" when it comes to just hatred. I think passive hatred is one of the worst things I can think of. It is the notion that because "you didn't mean it" erases hundreds of years of history behind a sentiment. MinecraftFabio265's post wasn't even fucking funny. There isn't anything about it that qualifies as a "joke".

People post problematic stuff, especially with 0% added creativity or nuance. Other people see this and either calmly or angrily call them out. OP and the OP's fans blame the people sticking up for basic human respect or their own basic human respect for this getting "out of hand". "Cancel mob".

I could have summed this up in a tweet but here we are, like a half-hour of writing later. If you didn't take this journey with me though, I would have gone one day of my life not conjuring MinecraftFabio265 into your psyche. Very subtly, I may add. I was very good at it. Now you can never forget the character. MinecraftFabio265. From YouTube. Who plays WoW 40 hours a week. So I thank you all for experiencing this moment with me. For those who originally were okay with this:

"This is an interesting conversation about this heated topic. I can kind of see all of your points. Just so you know though, for future reference, if you scream 'you're an idiot' at someone and mob against them, it becomes a lot harder to take your point seriously."

I hope you learned something today and realize how easy it is to just listen when a bunch of people from a community gets mad at you. For one second, entertain the thought that when a swarm of people comes at you with what may look like pitchforks and torches, you are not fucking Belle from Beauty and the Beast so these farmers might have something worthwhile to say to you tonight. They might even know what they're talking about and wish to share such wisdom with you. I hope you accept it.

Lexi Karma: Self Titled Synth Medley is out now

Hey, you like links?

https://open.spotify.com/album/0rVIFPhNA6pIzsEbf1zid0?si=c7kfEdZyRN6oHjTkIOGdug&dl_branch=1

Self Titled Synth Medley is out on Spotify now. It's also out on almost everything else you could think of but I like to advertise it on Spotify because you can listen to it for free.

The title is long and obnoxious to look at due to CD Baby's distribution stipulations. In order to keep the word "Medley" in the title, I had to point out all of the songs in the medley. The format examples seemed to imply upwards of three songs. Not eleven. But okay, I didn't argue.

Self Titled Again and Fake and Stupid are still coming out later this year. Mixing is going pretty alright, slowly but surely. In the meantime, enjoy my strange attempt at chiptune.

Burnout While Still Inspired as Gosh Dang Hecky

 This is going to be kind of stream of consciousness. I feel burned out. I don't know what else to define it as other than "burned out". Lately, my days have been consisting of fucking around with things I shouldn't be working on until mid-to-late afternoon, forcing myself to eat dinner, and then trying to sleep so I can have the same defeatist cycle the next day. A few days ago, I woke up around 9am and didn't do a whole lot of anything until 8pm. I worked on mixing the music I'm putting out this year for about an hour and then Reaper crashed a few times. That broke my entire source of energy. I was just done and this is not the first time something like this has happened. Probably even within the last year. Incomplete sentence. Oopsum.

This is not going to be a "woe is me" blog post. This is just a genuine thing in hopes to inspire someone to overcome this or realize that you don't have to go 200% every day. And people will say "there has to be a balance" to which I say "no, there fucking doesn't". I think if there is any point to this post, that's it.

Time was invented by humans as an organizational tool. Because we don't have a definition for what we perceive as the foregoing of existence, we just call that feeling time. I actually think there is a term in-between there but I don't feel like looking it up right now. You probably don't know that term. Most people don't know it. On the other hand, if I say "the old 9 to 5", you know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about. Time is something everyone fucking loves. Time is a thing the government, corporations, and the 1% of people sucking the dicks of those two fucking love. They love time because they don't need as much of it as you do. As I do. Don't worry, this isn't going to get political. Not that there would be anything wrong with this post if I were to go down that route, of course. I just need to set this up to prove my point that labor has been pegging time for centuries. Some people would deny that statement if I just said it outright. I had to preface it with all those other words to nullify that denial. Until time stops or humanity goes extinct, this is probably going to be true. That's just the way this goes now and I cannot do anything about it. Sorry.

So I write stories and blog posts. I write, record, and mix music. I used to make videos and want to make more. I stream on Twitch. These are things I enjoy doing but none of this can take me anywhere on its own. Where is a place I would want something that is not a vehicle to take me to? None of these things I do can take me to a physical place, so what state of being am I striving for? One with money? I suppose because again, the whole 1% thing. If "the 1% thing" wasn't an issue, I wouldn't have to put up such a fight to do things that people would benefit from.

When I'm not writing stories, writing blog posts, writing music, recording guitars, recording singing, mixing music, mastering music, editing some video, or streaming on Twitch, I'm grinding a job I do not want to do. I tolerate this job because it fits where I am at right now. It is as comforting as it is fucking sickening, tedious, obnoxious, and in my case, physically destructive. This has been a decent approximation of my state of being for the past four years.

"Take some risks". "Make a change". "Do that grind". "Go somewhere for a nice vacation." "Go on dates". "Buy a house". "Change your diet".

Shut the fuck up?

I do not think, for a goddamn minute of any given day, that I am the only person currently hitting this wall. Still, I think the fact that I cannot overcome it every minute of every given day is part of the reason why it takes me longer to put out things that I am genuinely passionate about. See "take some risks", "buy a house", "move to a new location", "see the world", "get laid", okay maybe not that last one; these are all things that would actively hinder me from what I want to do. Now, I think that these things would be good advice for someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Not in a quirky millennial "lol I have no idea what I'm doing with my life so I bought a gummy bear the size of my golden retriever" way. I know what I want to do and at this time, I know why I cannot do half of it. Outright. Cannot. I have a decent grasp on why a lot of it can be done but for the same reasons I cannot do these other things, this half of the aspirations will take so much more time. Unfortunately, a lot of this simply boils down to money.

So I should work more hours. Welllllll fuck it is physically hurting me. I'm weirdly physically resilient for a human stick bug. That said, I have started noticing pain that I haven't noticed before and it doesn't go away after one day. A lot of the time, it takes two or three days. I only get three days off at this. The other four days of the week are spent getting ready to spend my entire fucking day at this place and then spending the entire fucking day at this place. So my three days off must require some form of work on Lexi Karma or anything else I might want to get done. In between, I also have to do basic stuff we all do like basic hygiene and cleaning up my living space. I have been slacking on the latter. I'm still weirdly hygienic for being this fucking depressed. 2020 didn't even keep me from that. Laundry kind of sits between those two doesn't it? I drive to a laundromat to escape my awful neighbors. Other than the trek, it would cost about the same anyway. When I wait for the washing and drying cycles, I'm on my iPad, often working on something. Not thinking about breathing in fresh air. I am not thinking about mindfulness or how in love I am or where my "career" is heading. I am just thinking "I have to do these things I want to do because they will not be fucking done if I don't do them and nobody can help me because I can not afford to compensate these people fairly". This isn't an invitation for free work, by the way, fucking respect yourself.

I am dropping down from full-time to part-time at my job because I got a raise. I will now be able to afford basic living expenses while breaking my body less. Note: "less". I have a degree now but it's like, what am I even supposed to do with that? Get a job that will fire me in three weeks anyway? This is my mindset. The real thing holding me back from job-hunting is that even with a Bachelor's, I'm still underqualified for shit I know I could do. The tasks needed to perform these jobs with flying colors are tasks I could knock out of the park but I am "underqualified". So I stick to physical labor.

The other day, there was a guy there I had seen around. They had him in a wheelchair for a bit. He was on a walker that day and it looked like he could barely keep it together. The guy had to have been no younger than 70 years old. I don't think I'll be that guy but I also don't have any solid proof that I won't be at this point in my life and that kind of scares me. I'm not trying to be a tough guy here, it doesn't keep me up at night. It really just scares me at the "kind of" level.

All this to say, what the hell do we do with this wall then? You sat through all these words and it can't just lead to nowhere. It can't just lead to nihilism. Well, it can but it won't. Most of the time, like right now, I'm really stuck on something that I really want to show the world. But there's that wall. I guess I pick out pieces of that wall that I put there myself. That's my best advice. It might not sound like enough but you would be surprised. I can't do anything about the US having a fucking inhumane health care system. I can't do anything about the pompous fortress that is trying to make a big production out of something with other people. I can't help that I don't have the money to hire people to help me do these things. I don't have that ability because of the problems I pointed out right before this issue. So you see, it trickles down. You break down more and more of this wall or at least outline how to. Then you start to see "fuck, this brick is made out of tofu". That tofu brick might be sexual trauma or just a basic fear of failure. Tofu's a bad analogy because those two examples can be absolutely paralyzing.

And here's another important point: sometimes making a blueprint of what to do with that wall is okay. Some days, that is what you had to do and you can bulldoze tomorrow because the weather today isn't good for it.

The main inspiration for writing this is that I feel lately, it is getting harder and harder to start that bulldozer up. I guess if you're reading this, you are also having ignition issues. Especially after 2020, I think a lot of us feel like we need a blueprint day every fucking day. For this, I don't have an answer and even if I did, it wouldn't work for every person. No way in Hell. For me, and hopefully, this works for a lot of people if not for everyone... For me, I have a day like this and realize I didn't do the dishes, I didn't vacuum the carpet, I didn't record voice-over, I didn't record that one guitar track, I didn't write a single fucking word of this glorious web-comic that will probably never fucking come out at this rate but when that day hits I remember that person who will berate me for this. I remember the cloaked man with a hook for a hand and a pistol in the other and he's just waiting outside my bedroom window waiting for me to fuck up. When I finally have mold growing in the sink while I'm watching the 80th let's play video I watched that day, that dude is going to come in here and wear my face on his abdomen. If you haven't caught on yet, this guy doesn't exist and you probably don't know him either. So any version of that is all in your head. Fuck that guy. He doesn't get to exist but you do so you're not the biggest waste of flesh in the universe. You just want to watch that kid's cartoon you've already seen five times all the way through. That's fine.

As an end note, I don't like telling people how to live their lives. If you want to amputate one of your hands and replace it with a fucking hook, buy a gun, and hang outside my apartment with a clean shot for when you can see the dishes from the next building over, fucking go for it.

The Queerness Saga Ep182: Face Goop

 There aren't 181 other episodes of this, I fucking lied to you all.

I just tried makeup for the first time ever. Unfortunately, I don't really like putting my face online in public spaces anymore. This is (probably) not for dysphoric reasons, I just don't particularly like doing it.

As of now, I get pretty bad beard shadow. My facial hair is fucking violent. I shaved around noon or so and just put on makeup around 7:15??? Close enough. So here are the results. And what I did. If you're reading this far, you probably have some passing interest or you're looking into something like this for yourself.

It has been about 45 minutes now and my beard hair decided to say "fuck you" and starting poking out a lot more than it did when I finished applying makeup. So there is a noticeable bit of darkness there or at the very least little hairs. However, it's still better than nothing to a point where I can tell. Makeup doesn't magically make your facial hair cower in fear at the idea of feminization and I knew that going in. Given that this was my first time and I haven't even ordered makeup brushes yet, I am pretty pleased with the results.

I ran some room temperature-ish water on my face and neck first because I had been out for a bit earlier. I wasn't filthy or actively sweating, I just thought that a bit of water would be better than sweat or some other gross thing I'm unaware of.
I used my CeraVe daily moisturizing lotion "for normal to dry skin" as a moisturizer. I've been using this stuff for a long time anyway. It's pretty great stuff. Works like magic as long as you use it consistently and it's non-comedogenic so it can be used as a moisturizer in the makeup process.
I used setting spray that is designed to be used as a bit of a primer. It's called Black Radiance long lasting setting spray. It claims it can be used as a primer and a setting spray. Again, this is my first time so I can't say much about the validity of this. I just got it as a cheap thing to know how this whole process works. As far as I can tell, which is not very far, it did its job on both accounts.
Next was Covergirl Clean Matte BB Cream for oily skin. BB Cream is pretty multitalented. I feel like most people would recommend using a dedicated foundation instead of this or using both. But hey, I don't know what I'm talking about and this worked for me. I still haven't ordered makeup brushes. As such, I just kind of took a finger or two to rub the stuff in. It probably looks a little trashy to an expert but I think it worked out really well. One side note of advice: check and see which skin type your BB cream is made for before you order it. I goofed on this one. I honestly don't even remember if my skin constitutes as oily. It probably doesn't. Do some more research before you pull the trigger on something like this. It's actually important.
Next up: Covergirl Smoothers concealer stick. I'm not sure how much of this stuff to use but after I put this over the BB cream I was like "ah fuck, now we're doing makeup, bitch!"
As soon as I could after that, I spritzed on more setting spray. This is where I feel like I don't know what I'm doing the most. It kind of wet down some of the stuff I laid down so much that it kind of fell off. Weirdly, I just kind of rubbed the stuff in again and it was fine. I just wasn't expecting that. I'm sure I'm just doing something wrong. In any case, I let that do its thing for a few seconds and then sent some video/pics to my friends.

All of the items I mentioned are relatively cheap except for the CeraVe lotion. That lotion will last you a long-ass time though so I recommend that above anything else here. Also, I'm enby and probably won't go for anything too fancy anyway. That is to say, everything mentioned here is probably pretty great for newly-hatched trans girls or other people wanting to go all out with pretty makeup. I don't know jack about that but I wish you luck anyway. These products I mentioned should be a good starting point though.

CeraVe Daily Moisturizing Lotion for Normal to Dry Skin
Black Radiance Long Lasting Setting Spray
Covergirl Clean Matte BB Cream for Oily Skin (though I probably should have got one for normal skin)
Covergirl Smoothers Moisturizing Concealer Stick
Black Radiance Long Lasting Setting Spray again
Get some form of makeup remover or you will fuck your face up

There ya go. I probably won't post too many makeup posts because it isn't my forte. I would not be in the least bit surprised if this is the last makeup post I ever make. However, researching this for myself has been kind of a pain in the ass. Most of the articles and YouTube stuff you can find on this sort of thing, though informative and perhaps adorable, is useful for the same reasons it's overwhelming. These people have done this a million times over. Today, literally day one, no idea what the fuck I'm doing, and I got results I liked. You can do this too and you can probably get everything you need to start out for less than $50, shipping included. Do it. Look luvly.

Lexi Karma Releasing TWO New Projects in 2021

 Lexi Karma is my music moniker. My one-man-band, if you will. I haven't released any actual music under Lexi Karma since 2017 and there was about a three-year gap between releasing anything on the Lexi Karma YouTube at all. But 2021 is the year it comes back, as announced this past week on May 6th, 2021. Why is the prose of this like a press article for Lexi Karma? I don't know why it came off like that. Let's stop that now.

tl;dr:
Sometime in Autumn 2021, I will be releasing a full-length album and an EP under Lexi Karma, hopefully on the same day or at least in the ballpark. The full-length album is called "Self Titled Again" and is a remake of the first album from 2016. The EP is called "Fake and Stupid" and will be comprised of all synths, vocals, and various sampled instruments. If neither is done by Dec 31, 2021, I'm just going to bounce them both and release them before the year ends.

That's all you need to know. I guess I'm going to keep going though.

Fake and Stupid

Fake and Stupid is an electronic EP for lack of a better term. It will have six songs on it, none of which have any guitars on them. I say "for lack of a better term" because compositionally, they are still pretty much rock songs. The first song is called "Clingy", which I showed a demo of last week. "Clingy" is about the closest thing to what most people would expect from electronic music on the whole EP. They are all electronic by the pure instrumental definition but it probably won't feel that way to people who frequent the genre.

The reason the EP is called "Fake and Stupid" is that this is probably what I would have called it if I could go back in time and show this music off to myself in high school. I was a stupid metalhead and listened to a lot of rock and metal. I thought the only good keyboard and synth stuff was stuff that was technically impressive or fast like Children of Bodom. Yet I still didn't listen to jazz until after high school. Idiot. The title also falls in line with the story being told across the EP.

The concept of Fake and Stupid is my love life but wait yeah I know it's fucking lame wait just hold on! I'm a virgin in my late 20s who has been tossed around and fucked up for as long as I can remember. At the same time, I wasn't perfect in this field either and I wanted to throw some elements of that into the lyrics too. The EP is organized to reflect how a lot of this works psychologically. It also linearly tackles a story that lasts about a decade and attempts to sum it up in under thirty minutes. So the EP takes adolescent obsession and slowly injects ideas of abuse and gaslighting as I grow into my early-to-mid 20s. The end of the EP takes place around 2017-2018 where I spend almost an entire year trying to undo a lot of psychological damage others did to me as well as damage I did to myself. I'll talk more about that later this year when it's all out though.

"Clingy" is a perfect intro to this concept. It is a kind of first-person sarcastic vantage point of a lot of men I knew in romantic/sexual relationships that would fuck up the ABCs of dating at every turn. Imagine the lyrics are being sung by a bunch of puppets at a puppet show and I am giving them all voices. This is more accurate to how the lyrics to Clingy work. I feel like a lot of people are going to misconstrue the lyrics as me being quite the filthy misogynist. This is understandable. I just think it was a fun way to depict it. Sometimes we don't understand how stupid or harmful some of the stuff we say is until we hear someone else say it, which is a large point of the song. I should probably release that demo on YouTube sometime soon.

When it's done, I will probably release "Clingy" in its finished form on YouTube and perhaps another song as finished promotional material to tell people to go listen to this thing already. Don't hold your breath for a second song though. It seems kind of weird to release two songs before the whole thing since the whole thing only has six songs. It will be on Spotify. I am also going to try Bandcamp this time. You can support Lexi Karma in advance on Ko-fi but you can always do that. Bandcamp has a kind of "pay what you want" feature and I want to play with that. I'm not sure why I shied away from it when I released that album. Oh, speaking of that thing.

Self Titled Again

I'm remaking the Lexi Karma debut album Self Titled. It will be called Self Titled Again because there's only so much you can guess from that title. I will probably talk more about why I decided to make this when it comes out. I showed off a demo of "Crystal" last week. That has always been one of my personal favorites from the album. Someone somewhere might find it interesting that it was also pretty much the inspiration for making Lexi Karma and committing to it. I think it might have been the first song I actually wrote for the purpose of being a Lexi Karma song but I don't remember that for sure.

Anyway. Self Titled is something I'm proud of myself for making but I'm always kind of embarrassed to show it to people. The vocals are mostly on key but they suck. There's no pitch correction. The guitars are typically layered pretty okay because I at least understood subtractive EQing but beyond that, I didn't really know what I was doing with mixing. I'll be honest, as a certified audio engineer, I'm still flying by the seat of my pants. Every time I sit down with the express purpose of mixing something, I feel like the biggest fucking idiot on planet Earth. This is one of many reasons why I decided not to do it for a living early on. Anyway, the problem with Self Titled is that I love the songs. I hate that I'm embarrassed by them because I think if money was no object, I would have put out a great piece of art in 2016. But studio time is expensive and I was making less than $9/hr at the time. The fact that I put that out with almost no help and a budget of $1k was impressive. Unfortunately, that spirit doesn't make the mix any fucking better. The mastering engineer I commissioned tried but he could only do so much with that awful mix.

So Self Titled Again will come into the fore-front with the hopes of at least remedying the sonic quality of the music I released in 2016. I miiiiiight put out "Masked Appeal" as a kind of "almost finished" tease since that and "Crystal" are the ones closest to "finished". A lot of quotation marks, I know.

"So what makes it new? What makes it better? Isn't it just a remaster lol?"

It's a remake. Calling it a remaster ignores what I'm going to be spending the vast majority of my time doing for this album along with what I have already done. Over 90% of the vocals and guitars will be re-recorded, all of the bass tracks will be re-recorded, all of the synths will be re-programmed/re-arranged, and all of these tracks will be mixed and mastered with an entirely different digital setup than what I was using in 2016. Oh, and now I have pitch correction.

As of writing this, I still have a decent amount of vocals to record. However, that's the perk of these being previously released songs. I don't have to mull over "should I add this, should I take away that" so much. As is apparent on the "Crystal" demo I released, I am making a few minor changes to some of the arrangements but I'm not doing anything compositionally drastic. Easily 93% of the guitars are done being recorded. I think there are only two songs left that need any more guitar work. About 99% of the bass is done. There's a really bad take on the beginning of "Selfless" that I still need to re-record.

That said, most of this is really going to come down to me being consistently happy with the mix and how fast I might come to that point. I have no idea when that point will come. As I said with Fake and Stupid, I am placing a hard deadline for Dec 31, 2021. Wherever I'm at with Self Titled Again and/or Fake and Stupid in December is just what you all are going to end up with. Then we can move on to more new stuff.

Normally, I'm the kind of fuck that says "never say never" when it comes to just about anything. In the case of Self Titled Again, I can safely say I'm never going to do anything like this again. At its worst, Fake and Stupid will sound "okay". In their unfinished forms with a little bit of leveling and panning, some of the stuff I'm doing for Self Titled Again already sounds arguably better than the versions that are currently out. So it's going to be very hard for me at this point to slap out anything that sounds more amateur than Self Titled in its original form.

One other major difference I want to mention that some people might honestly not even fully notice: key changes. Four of the songs are going to be in a different key, I will probably talk about this more in-depth when the album comes out. I used a pretty decent amount of different physical guitars along with two different basses on the original Self Titled. None of these are current gear anymore. I now have an Ibanez SIX7FDFM, a Chapman ML1, and some cheapo Ibanez 5-string bass. They are all tuned a half-step down from standard tuning. I could have tuned them to different tunings for different songs or just learned new fingerings for the songs that relied a lot on open strings but I didn't want to. So without going into every single tuning of every single instrument I used in the original version; "Mendax" will be in Gb min (was in F min), "Selfless" will be in Bb min (was in C min), "Masked Appeal" will be in Eb min (was in E min), and "Six Minutes" will be in C# min (was in C min). "Six Minutes is the only one out of these four that I feel sounds significantly different because of the different chord voicing. Perhaps, most people won't be able to tell either way, they'll just know that the song sounds better than the original. The other three sound just as different as the songs that didn't go through a key change, except for the blatant key change.

Release

They'll be on Spotify and hopefully Bandcamp. I might put them both out elsewhere too depending on how I do distribution this time. I might release each individual track of Self Titled Again on YouTube as well. I probably won't do that with Fake and Stupid, or at least not right away.

Future Lexi Karma

I already have the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Lexi Karma projects fueling up on the strip. The 3rd one is going through little tweaks in writing but is almost done as far as writing goes. I haven't written all of the lyrics yet. A good portion of them is done though. I have fucked around with recording the vast majority of these songs already. That said, I wouldn't be shocked if another major Lexi Karma release drops in 2022. Just set a more realistic expectation of 2023. The 3rd Lexi Karma project is more of a progressive metal kind of thing. Other than the fact that I made it, it has a gratuitous amount of vocal harmonies at times, and there are synths and fake drums, it is nothing like Self Titled or Fake and Stupid.

The 4th Lexi Karma project will be another prog-rock project but then again, arguably all of my stuff is. It won't be as aggressive sounding or spastic as the 3rd project. However, it will still try to cram genres into each individual song. This one is more jazz fusion-y than it is trying to be particularly heavy. It still has its heavy moments but it will be significantly more melodic than the 3rd project. The 4th project is also a concept album that I'll talk about more when it becomes relevant. Almost none of the lyrics are finished for this one but roughly 75% of the music is. I'll end this point by saying this; I have written a lot of music in my life thus far and this stuff is collectively some of the best I feel I have ever made.

The 5th Lexi Karma project will be some prog-rock but with a lot more synth implementation. It will be much less stand-offish than the 3rd project. It will have plenty of heavy moments but that's not really the point. The 5th project is mostly songs I have already been pretty much done writing for years. I won't lie, I just felt more immediately inspired by projects 3 and 4. Originally, I wanted this to come out around the same time as Fake and Stupid. I am glad I held off on that idea because both this project and Fake and Stupid had some true garbage on them at the time. Thus, this fifth project is almost 100% done being written across the board. This statement will hold true until I finish the lyrics and the melody line for one part of one song. I might also write and add a new song into it since right now, it isn't a very long thing. I really like these songs and in much worse condition than they are now, friends I have shown them to thought they were really cool. I wouldn't expect this one to come out for quite a few years though.

After that, I'm going to start making Lexi Karma releases with more specific gimmicks, namely "what if this genre was tackled by Lexi Karma" kind of releases. That won't be all though. I have other ideas that aren't just genre-bending.

That's it for now. Damn, this one's long. I'll come back with another update sooner than later.

-Ayden
sleepy musician and insane person

Transition-y

 Can't sleep. Thinking about the queerness. Haven't typed a blog post in a bit so let's see if this one makes it past draft. (seriously, you have no idea. at one point I had like 12 drafts on here. trust me, you don't want them to go past draft. just thinking about being bored by them is something I wouldn't wish upon you all)

So last year, I came out as a "non-binary man" so for all intents and purposes I'm enby. And pretty happy about that. Thinking about it still gets me pumped. I get why a lot of people don't talk about this too in-depth but so far, I have had no issue answering people's questions about this sort of thing. Again, I want to make absolutely clear: nobody should feel pressured to be the queer bible for anyone who doesn't know about how any LGBTQIA+ stuff works. You don't have to be the gay encyclopedia. Anyone who expects you to be that is an asshole. As for myself, I just like talking to people about it anyway. Yes, they can just fucking look this kind of stuff up online for themselves but if they ask me in the moment, even if it comes down to what's happening with my crotch, I usually feel pretty comfortable answering.
[edit: I now just identify as non-binary, not a non-binary man. I am still okay with he/him pronouns as well as they/them pronouns and don't hate she/her pronouns but aside from that I really don't like masculine labels anymore]

Anyway, god that was a fucking tangent. What even is the point of this blog? Huh?!? I titled this entry "Transition-y"! What does that even mean?!?!

I think putting out my current goals or even fleeting thoughts could help someone else who is struggling with this sort of thing feel nice. Maybe someone who is mostly pretty content with their gender magic will like this post too? I don't know, haven't gotten that far myself. And of course, any shade of ally might get some insight on some stuff that will spark a good Google spree. I'm happy to provide that spark.

So what have I really done in terms of transitioning since I came out last summer? It has almost been a year after all. Well, the name change, but I was thinking about doing that for a long time anyway, gender notwithstanding. I can't say in full honesty that facing my gender head-on didn't sway that decision thought. If I was 100% manly man, I would have picked "Brutus", not Ayden, and wouldn't have picked a purposefully feminine-ish last name. Since doing stuff with my name in various systems and with various companies was such a huge bitch to deal with, I have become more adamant about people not deadnaming me. I have a semi-decent arsenal of women's clothing now. Not a lot but enough for me to feel good about. Beyond that... eh?

And before I continue, I want to point something else out that will probably be a no-brainer for freshly out genderqueer and trans motherfuckers: this part of the human experience is about being comfortable with yourself. So if you're AMAB, come out as enby, and then get mad at yourself for not having six-inch-long eyelashes and Jessica Rabbit bod, just take a step back and appreciate what you have accomplished. If you haven't made any large steps since then, appreciate the sheer thought of being who you want to be. Accepting yourself is the most important part. There is absolutely no fucking checklist for this sort of thing. However, in direct hypocrisy to that heartfelt sentiment, here is stuff I have been trying to do and want to do because I have a checklist!

Voice therapy

I'm putting this first because I have actually tried it. The only reason I'm not doing every 1-3 weeks is that the insurance I grind away for doesn't cover this shit. However, I have worked that out to where some of that will be covered. Safely feminizing my voice was going to be back on the menu but even the covered costs will be above $40 a session, it seems. Haven't landed an appointment since then. I tried and nobody got back to me. The only person who has talked to me was the one in charge of billing that fought for me to get my insurance to cover my stuff in the first place. I still have a few sheets to help me out with exercises and stuff. If you've heard my voice up until recently, testosterone has fucking decimated my throat and life. I have a lot of work to do. I know it can be achieved and if I just *did* the voice exercises once or twice a day, I would probably be farther along by now. Knowing that just isn't enough. It's probably the most dysphoric thing about me next to facial hair. Even having a typical speaking range of like three semitones higher would probably give me a fighting chance. Knowing that androgyny is a pipe dream fucking sucks. But I keep trying to trick my voice into being higher anyway. I know that if I rush it, my voice won't be helped in any way so I don't strain or use falsetto to talk. The best part (not being sarcastic) is that I know I'm mostly doing it for me. I'm not doing it to "pass" as anything because testosterone has already made me fail. I'm doing it to make myself feel better. If it takes ten years, it takes ten years.

HRT

Haven't done it yet because I'm afraid of sliding scale fees. It's the only way I will ever be able to afford this sort of thing and I'm still not 100% sure if it works the way I think it does. If it does, I should have started it in 2020. If not, I'm glad I waited in utter fear. I'm thinking of taking spiro. Full-on estrogen might be using cartoon spring shoes for a 1-foot hurdle for me.  My first "appointment" is in a month from now.

Makeup

Still don't know how to do this. I was going to experiment after getting my tax return and the IRS is absolutely ravaging my asshole. They currently owe me a little over $4000 and I don't know how to tell them to get their shit together. Even if I wanted to tell them specifically "get your shit together", I  wouldn't be able to. I've been trying for months. So no makeup time for me. I don't want anything huge anyway, just stuff to cover up hair shadow and all that. Too bad I guess because I'm not even allowed to have my money that I haven't spent yet.

Voice surgery

This is the fucking dream. If money were no object, I would go through the risk of fucking up my voice for the chance of a minute rise in pitch. Anterior glottal web formation is when they put a big icky scar band in your inner gob to raise overall voice pitch. You can already learn a lot of how to do that from voice therapy without hurting yourself though. The difference here is that you wouldn't have to try anything. Once the admittedly long healing period is over, your voice will just magically be higher. The caveat here is that this is right in your pipes so breathing might actually be a little harder. I don't know to what degree. Fun fact: a lot of people confuse this process with a tracheal shave. Tracheal shave doesn't really do this. Tracheal shave surgery is for a more cosmetic purpose. Glottal web doesn't work like kids' cartoon body-swap episodes either. You still have to maintain the "feminine" voice you desire. I mean, at the end of the day, it's your voice so if you're perfectly content with just a little pick-me-up, this could work. For me, most of the time, the deep, gravelly voice you hear me scream at video games in is not the voice in my head. I genuinely fantasize about getting glottal web. It's arguable I've wanted this before I even knew that it was a real thing you could do. To those who are not transitioning to a more feminine state and don't already know how much this sucks; this is not a popular procedure but it is a tried-and-true option. What I'm saying is, most of these people sound the way they sound through dedicated training and research. Transmasc people on the other hand have a lot of the work done for them by taking testosterone. This is true of those who are taking testosterone anyway, as a generalization. Even in these more typical cases, relearning how to speak is a mentally fucked process that transmasc people still have to go through. I'm not really saying anything anymore at this point, just kind of spitting out info that I've looked up on my own because a lot of people still have no idea about this kind of stuff. It's cool, right? Yes? I thought so.

Electrolysis

Weirdly enough, this seems more realistic than ever getting voice surgery. That said, it still won't be cheap, especially because I want to zap pretty much everything. I have tried at-home IPL and it didn't work for me. This isn't to say IPL doesn't work (when applied correctly, it does do something), my face and body hair follicles are just too resilient. This is important to me because my facial hair is one of the things that makes me feel the most uncomfortable psychologically and physically. It's also something I have to slice my face open for every day

Clothing (last one)

Half of my pants are men's with a few pairs being women's and two pairs of sweatpants that are maybe technically unisex? I'm not actually sure if that's how that works. I didn't like sweatpants growing up. I like the women's pants though. You're probably thinking "duh". I don't like them because they make me feel "girlier". I like them because there are just more characteristics about pants that I like in general that those pants happen to provide over what I have experienced with years of wearing regular fit men's jeans. I still wear men's shoes and socks because I don't like the idea of heels and my feet are pretty big anyway. Women's tops are where it's at for me now. I don't get super frilly though. I've tried some pretty feminine-looking stuff and the vast majority of that category has been pretty uncomfortable. A lot of the stuff I've liked the most has not been too far from what I was wearing before. However, I feel way more confident with women's tank tops than I do with men's tank tops. Women's graphic tees look really good on me. In addition to all these gender-annihilating shenanigans, I bought my first necklace. To clarify, I've had necklaces in the past but they were all cheapo family gifts that didn't feel personalized to me at all. They would be like arrowheads and stuff that didn't even look good on me. I bought a Persona 5 "Point Up!" music note pendant thing. I will buy more when I'm more comfortable with money. I have already worn the Persona 5 necklace in public several times and I will continue to do it a lot.

Well, that's all out there now. I will probably talk more about this sort of thing in the future but not as in-depth. Lengthy. When I said "in-depth", I meant "droning".

I set up a Ko-fi and I can't do word play because the site has a "Berenstain" of a name

So here it is:

https://ko-fi.com/randomrings

and now I have to talk about it.

I have been wanting some kind of tip jar thing out there for a long time and didn't think Ko-fi would be as easy to set up as it was. Seriously, it took me maybe a half hour to make the account, confirm all my info, make my profile look less botty, and make it easy on the eyes on here and on Twitch. I've never really found any great way of doing this and just slapping my Paypal on everything seems like a recipe for disaster.

At this point, I don't really have a big enough following to justify Patreon. Even then, I hear of Patreon, as a company, doing stupid stuff every once in a while anyway. Don't know if that's still accurate. Maybe Ko-fi is just as bad and I don't know it yet. Either way,  I chose Ko-fi over Patreon for ease and safety for myself. Also, Ko-fi implies less to all of you or so I think.

This probably has more to do with all of the stuff I make, how it's made, and how frequently it's made more than it has to do with anything objective on Ko-fi's end. I just think Patreon, based on what people know it for, implies "subscribe to my stuff with money now!" At one point, I think Patreon could just serve as a little tip jar too. People still don't have to make monthly contributions but they also don't get as much cool stuff. I think? I think that's just how it universally works with Patreon regardless of the creator using it. It has been quite a while since I have researched this. Anyway. Sometimes I release a fuckload of stuff over the course of a month, sometimes I consistently release monthly stuff at least, and sometimes I basically don't post anything and disappear without a trace. I feel like I'm always putting out "something" even if it is just a blog post. Now that I'm streaming, I'm at least dumping off stream archives regularly. But to me, that's not the big stuff. That's not why I'm on YouTube or making music.

That's another thing. I have to work horrible jobs to make ends meet so I can make this stuff. So I can't work on Randomrings, Lexi Karma, and unrelated stuff I'm writing at the same capacity. I would literally never get anything done. As such, I go through phases where I'm balls deep in Randomrings or Lexi Karma or Randomrings Let's Plays or something I can't really talk about yet because the internet is a scary place! This is also why Patreon doesn't work for me/ for us. I don't feel bad saying "if you want to support Lexi Karma, that would be great". I don't feel greedy saying "if you want to help me make more Randomrings stuff, I would really appreciate it!" I feel like a massive jackass saying "support me" to a bunch of people I don't know, even though I'm semantically saying the same thing.

Basically, and I probably don't have to spell this out but I will anyway; the more money I make completely unrelated to my shitty grind-job means less time I have to spend at that job to fund Randomrings and Lexi Karma. So any help is greatly appreciated already. But I really need to stress that there should be no obligation or even a passive push in the direction of tipping me or donating to me. I just put it out there as an option if anyone feels inclined. Before I set up this Ko-fi thing, there was no option. Now I feel confident enough in myself and in my work to at least give people the option.

Wow, I really wrote some paragraphs for this one. Anyway, thanks for reading. I'm always grateful for that. I don't know why I get any traction on Randomrings Blog but I do and it feels really cool. If you're into my usual stuff, thank you too. I know most people say this but if you want to tip but it's not financially wise to do, just tell someone else about something I'm doing or did that you like. That's plenty good enough for me.

The New Videos I'm Writing

 The new videos I'm writing are pretty different from what I've ever put on the channel before. Basically, I have been taking writing more seriously over the past few years. It was always one of my favorite parts of doing Randomrings Channel in the first place. However, I want to actually work in writing. I'm trying to speed up this process because my current line of work, though lucrative enough to live off of, is physically shriveling me. I don't know how much more constant physical labor I can take.

What does this whining have to do with Randomrings Channel?

The new videos I have been thinking about putting out are going to be like storyboard sketch comedy? Kind of? If that makes sense. I'll still be doing reviews if I get the time to actually finish them in between. I've been wanting to write a few recently for a while, I'm just physically and emotionally broken. I am very inspired but my brain and body can't catch up anymore. And I'm not even 30. I'm fucking scared. I don't like this. That is to say that I need portfolio work and YouTube is a place to put a portfolio where I don't have to pay to host said content. The way it looks now, I can probably technically put this kind of thing on Newgrounds as well. If I understand the terms of service right, I can and will.

So instead of boring you with, I dunno, just raw script drafts, I will be writing stuff and then drawing it out like previous videos I have made over the past 2 years or so. It won't be animated. It won't be amazing to look at. It won't blow your fucking mind. But it will be a visual representation of something that I thought might be entertaining at one point.

Anyway, case in point to my body and mind not catching up with my ambition, I need to force myself to eat dinner and go to bed soon or I won't eat dinner and/or stay up all fucking night. I hope you enjoy what I come up with and here's to me actually finishing this stuff instead of just talking about.

Name Change Vent Part II

 Hey, I pretty much did it, everyone! There are a few little hiccups right now but my name is in all of the important systems it needs to be in. Except... fuck... the IRS? Let's not think about that right now.

Here was the first chapter of this garbage quest:
https://randomringsblog.blogspot.com/2020/11/name-change-vent.html

Last time on this 3-6 week process taking a little over 3 months:

Had to pay an arbitrary fee just to update this with the county I live in. Despite this info being directly linked to your social, this information doesn't automatically just update with all of the important things that are directly connected to your social. Even getting to this step is not clearly spelled out but the government thinks it is, so if you don't get the imaginary memo, it's on you. Every step of this was also made exponentially harder because of the virus so fuck all of your anti-masker friends and family, they fucked me in the ass. And, y'know, endangered a lot of lives and such.

The court order form they gave me to give to these important places (employer, DMV, social security administration, bank, others I probably can't immediately think of) gives you 10 days to change your driver's license. This court order comes to you in the mail so you can give it to the DMV. In my county, I didn't have the proper credentials to do this anyway because you also need a social security card. That process takes at least two weeks. So basically 7 days to do a two-week thing.

USPS and local social security office kept juggling my birth certificate and old social security card back and forth while giving me different middle fingers every time I tried to figure out where my legal identification is. During this circus act, other administrations and corporations were like "you don't have any other forms of identification? Ohhh that's weeeeeeiiirrrrrddd". FUCK YOU!!!! Anyway.

Because of the driver's license hold-out, I couldn't change my name with my bank account. I also had to make a new bank account anyway because I've had a joint account with my emotionally abusive mother for over a decade.

on with the show!

So one of my original fears was confirmed by the USPS. They wouldn't put letter from the Social Security Administration (SSA, I'm not typing that out every time) in my mailbox at my apartment building because it had my deadname on it. Okay. So I took it off entirely. That didn't fly either so I had to do the juggle and dance again to get my birth certificate and new social security card sent to me. "Duh" Shut your fucking mouth. I had lived in the apartment for 4 or 5 months by this point and since then, I have had mail for at least 5 different names either outside my mailbox but addressed to my apartment or physically inside my mailbox without my actual fucking name on it. I've had important documents sent from important places that, if taken, probably could have taken my identity or fucked me over in other thoroughly irritating ways. But nah, this stuff is what we won't give you the benefit of the doubt on. So I made my own little label on the outside (and two more on the inside, I'm not fucking joking). I go out to put them on and at some point within the past few days that I didn't check the mail, someone had already put up a new sticker saying "Ayden Iona/[deadname last name]". So, huh? Give me my social security card and birth certificate while you're at it, yeah? No? Okay.

So finally, it comes in the mail, I finally have the legal credentials to say "hey, I'm me, sluts". Now, I can use these things to get a card that says "I'm me and I still know how to drive". I had to make an appointment to show up. I showed up once all the confused people who didn't make appointments went back to their cars and other people were told to wait for their actual appointments. I go in, wait behind someone else for a bit. Give them the stuff that their website says you need for this. "Wow, that's great that it was so easy for that step" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA the woman said "aaaand you need a recent piece of mail with the new name." You. Fucking. WHY?!?!?

FORTUNATELY, I happened to have the letter from the SSA that came with my new social security card that she had on her fucking desk. "Here, motherfucker, ya need a blood sample with that? Cum in a jar?" She typed stuff for a while and then slowly printed out my new card. I was officially not a fucking technical fraud anymore. I was finally legally myself.

However! My employer is made of stupid.

So to get in the building, I have a nametag that has my login ID, first name, last name, and a barcode. The login ID is a permutation of your first and last name that you don't get to control at all. It's automatically generated for you when you're hired. "Why did you wait until now to update your job?" Because these fuckers fuck up someone's paycheck weekly without people changing their names. I wasn't risking jack shit. So after the bank account thing, which weirdly went well, I went to get my name changed in their system.

"Hey HR rep, my name is different now."
"Well, you can change your preferred name with us online."
"Nope. This is my legal name and it links to my insurance through here so you have to fix it in your system or it's legally incorrect."
"Ugghhhhhh FINE!"

It wasn't that bad but kind of close. Finally, the HR rep asks for my driver's license. This is after I show him that I already changed my "preferred name" online and that you can't change your legal name on your own. This blew his fucking mind. Not fucking sure why. He fiddles around with his computer and says "alright, go to security and they should be able to print off a new tag". You already know where this is going, right?

"No, it should update in our system in 24-48 hours."
I could hit the security people in the head with a frisbee from the HR desk. But sure. So I went home. Came back two days later to another security fucker who was just dumbfounded. He also kept pronouncing my middle name, Levi, like "levy". My last name is already a river called Iona, why the fuck would I make my name a whole-ass pun? On his end, My last name came in as my first name and my middle name was my last name. He said I had to go tell HR. Cool. Real cool.

The same HR dude is flabbergasted. He takes another stab at... reading my driver's license. In my state, the last name is listed above the first and middle name on your driver's license. Yet he asked, "how do you want your name to show up in the system again?" First off, you stupid fucking bitch, it's my legal name, not "how I want it to show up". If you don't put it in correctly and I give up on this, we're both being fraudulent. So I repeat it. I repeat it again when it was relevant and he's like "yeah, yeah, got it". Okay then why is my name in mirror mode, bitch? He does something different supposedly. He says it should be another 24-48 hours anyway but that this time, it should be good to go. Nice right (you already fucking know. just reading this oh babeeeeeyyyyy you already fucking know it's still fucked up but yeah here we go).

To all of our utmost grave dismay, my name was still flipped as it had been a fortnight prior. Heavens be tame! Security dude says, leave it here and we'll see what we can do. Come back in a few minutes. I talk to a buddy of mine for like 15 minutes and go back. The dude has this face like "why are you here?" "Where is my ID?"

"Oh, I gave it to a manager." That wasn't part of the deal, cunt!
Security chief comes in.
"Yeah, it's with some dude with a beard and a hat." This describes 90% of the managers in the building, by the way.
"A beard and a hat?" I'm not exaggerating.
"Yeah, you're [deadname], right?"
I got actively pissed. "I was!"
"Yeah, yeah, you were, yeah." I don't think his wife would approve of this unwarranted behavior and hostile attitude toward me but his wife would probably be a big fan of my behavior.

Oh, and also, nothing changed. I still have a shit ID. I immediately turn around and go to the HR desk. The normal guy isn't there so I try to explain the situation to two old ladies at the HR desk. They fucking interrupt me and go "you can't change your login ID, ever."
"Well, that sucks. Also, that's not why I came up here!" They were so deadset on shooting me down that neither of them even fucking tried to help me. They just told me to wait until the other guy that has been dealing with me came back later. There is a special place in queer hell for that fucking lady, I swear.

The guy comes back, I give him my license again. I go to the break room (because I am now dealing with this in-between shifts because it took fucking 6 days). He emails me while I'm in the breakroom and asks how I want my name to show up in the system again. I spell it out as obviously as I fucking can. He finally does it, sees me later and comes after me to make absolutely sure. He said it should be done in 24-48 hours. Again. This time it actually worked. One could theorize that he read my driver's license wrong and was too proud to make sure with me in the moment but heeyyyyyyy at least I finally have... my NAME! Also yeah, if you didn't piece it together, my deadname is still in my login ID until I quit. But it's okay because I'm angry every minute I'm working there anyway. If anything, it's a reminder not to let my guard down around management.

My mom finds out the bank account info has changed. On her end, it looks like I removed her from the account. I told her "oh, so that's what it looks like on your end. No, I yeeted that account to the nether." She acted like she didn't know what that means, like bitch, I know you spend too much time on Facebook because all those manipulative picture quotes you send me I guarantee you didn't edit yourself. A few days ago, I cut off ties with my parents. Mom claims they will still be loving me with everything they have. Dad giving me shit in the phone call and Mom cussing me out (we weren't even allowed to say "piss" in the house) leads me to believe otherwise.

To some, that might sound depressing but I claimed victory over that whole situation. I can now be more of myself than I have ever been in my entire life and it feels so relieving! There are so many other things in the world that are awful or at least discouraging but I can now face them as myself. Not someone's child, not the hereditary culmination of haphazardly passed Scottish/Irish genes; me. My own legacy is now all that matters. I can be whoever I want to be for myself and for my friends. And for whoever reads this or watches my videos, listens to my music, or joins my streams. Isn't that badass?

So, it's worth it. If you're thinking about it, try out new names at Starbucks or online or something. Because it's something you can just do. It's a battle, especially during this pandemic. I'm not going to tell you it's not stressful but it's worth it. So, no more name change updates. This is just who I am.

Now to figure out how the fuck to get rid of all this ape hair growing all over my face and body.

- Ayden Iona

Stream Plans for 2021

 Despite Twitch's constant bullshit this year, they are still going to be my preferred choice of streaming platform for 2021. This is not because I'm already snug and set up there. It's because Twitch is still the best option. That's how bad it is.

tl;dr version:
- Don't know what I'm starting the year with but my primary stream series for the year is going to be a Nuzlocke run of Pokemon Diamond Version.
- I will be streaming Sonic games in June. If you have suggestions, let me know.
- I'm going to try to play some kind of spooky game in October, probably wrapping up with Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment at the end of October.
- We might be in for a Pokemon Ultra Sun Randomizer Nuzlocke depending on how I feel about that after the Diamond one. Ultra Sun might get pushed back to 2022.
- Other games (listed at the end)

In the case that I consistently stream throughout the year and don't lose my wrists to a goblin king,
Here's what we're doing:

Pokemon Diamond Nuzlocke

I might not start out the year with this one but this is one of the things I'm looking forward to the most. I was originally going to do a blind Nuzlocke of Ultra Sun but then I started playing Ultra Sun casually. I'm almost halfway through the game. As a kid, I actually never beat Diamond so now that I have a copy of it again, it will be fun to revisit it the brutal way. I want to finish editing the Pokemon Omega Ruby Nuzlocke series for Randomrings Let's Plays before I start this though. Although I will be streaming it, I am hoping to give my Diamond run a similar treatment to that of Omega Ruby.

As far as the actual run goes, I will not be using any form of Exp. Share. Most people would argue this makes the Diamond run my first "real Nuzlocke". I might add a few more rules to spice things up. I already have a list of clauses ready for the series. My only sources of external information will probably be a type chart, Twitch chat, and what little memory I have of Diamond (not a lot).

The stream schedule for this might be more inconsistent so I can finish it the fuck up. Omega Ruby, for example, took less than two months to finish recording but I wasn't streaming that one. With 3-5 hour streams once a week, it could take a month if I'm really lucky. Given the lack of Gen 6's overpowered Exp. Share system, I imagine this will take up a bit more time. I will still at least be doing it once a week if I can but don't be surprised if I stream Diamond more than once a week.

For those who didn't watch my let's play of Omega Ruby, I'll probably be voicing a good majority of the plot's dialogue. I don't remember a single character from Diamond except for... Dawn? Get ready to hear your favorite Gen 4 NPC's like you never wanted to imagine them before!

Sonic Month in June

June 23rd is the anniversary of the first Sonic game coming out. Since I have masochistically wasted so much time on that franchise throughout my life, I must sacrifice more. Might as well have fun with it and do it live. I don't know what I will play yet but for whatever streams I do in June, it will be of Sonic stuff. Not opposed to fan games but if I can't think of any I find immediately interesting, I'll just revisit old stuff I already have. Probably.

I'm always open to viewer/fan suggestions and I'm especially interested to see what people want for this one. If it's an official game, there's a good chance I already have it on my shelf.

Halloween Month

I will play some spooky stuff if I don't get sick of streaming and quit in October. This past Halloween was fun but kind of a shit-show overall. I'm hoping to allocate most of the month to one game and then maybe play Specter of Torment again, perhaps in a different mode or something, for the last stream of October.

Stuff I might stream:

Pokemon Ultra Sun Randomizer Nuzlocke

I have never done a randomizer of anything. I'm not sure to what extent I'm going to want my first randomizer to be randomized but I'm excited to try it out. I'm going to beat Ultra Sun normally first though. If I'm feeling up to streaming two Nuzlocke runs in the same year, I will. At the same time, I don't really want to be tied to the gimmick or seen as "that bitch who does Nuzlockes while he complains about Pokemon". We'll see how I feel about it. Might push this back to 2022. We'll see.

Final Fantasy IX
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PS3)
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age
Duck Dodgers starring Daffy Duck
Pulseman
Sonic Unleashed
Indie games that I think are cool
Let's be honest: I'm probably going to stream more Downwell at some point
I think the Scrap Story prequel comes out later this year???

twitch.tv/randomrings
Get fuckin' ready

'cuz one of us has to be