Contents
Memoirs
These are all personal stories from my life! The first three were creative writing assignments, and any more I add are for fun :)
Joining the Basil Cult
It was late 2020, I was on Zoom listening to my technology teacher talk about pixel art while I was getting message after message from another classmate. I recognized the name, but didn’t trust it. They were Clover, an old friend from sixth grade, but a month before lockdown, I had been told they were not a great person by their ex. I ignored them for a week before finally responding to them trying to catch up, and I’ll always regret ignoring them and never regret talking to them. It turned out their ex was pretty nasty, as most eleven and twelve year olds are, and Clover hadn’t really done anything at all, and I had actually fallen prey to the same thing they had, getting pulled away from friends and isolated. Sixth graders are awful. Anyway, Clover and I exchanged Discords and started talking more, finding out we had a ton more in common than I thought.
They introduced me to an online My Little Pony game we made characters in, none of them were ponies, majority of them cats, and I introduced them to my younger cousin, Amelia. This started what I’ve called the Creative Era. We wrote stories on Minecraft servers, made awful skins to roleplay as them, and I started drawing more and more. At this time, my writing and art skills were hot garbage, but this time made me who I am now, really. Yes, I was always into creative things, but this time with Clover and Amelia really kicked creating stories off. In April of 2021, they invited me to the Basil Cult, a Discord server surrounded by the OMORI character Basil. They had introduced me to the game quite early on in our friendship, and even though it terrified me, I loved it. This server was a roleplay server where the group of some 20 pre-teens made OMORI OCs and messed around, but eventually non-OMORI OCs arose. Clover and I’s were some of the first, our personas, Sam and Cat. Sam was a crow-human hybrid, and was Clover’s, and Cat was a cat-person hybrid, mine. Sam adopted Cat, and eventually many many more of our OCs. In the end, Sam had adopted 34 kids. This will be a reoccuring thing. Eventually a few others joined the server, more OCs came up, and this small roleplay server became pretty big with stories being improvised constantly. Rarely did we ever plan anything, it was always on the spot.
This server was definitely the most important thing in my development and progress as a writer. Writing out each thing and learning my style without having any of the pressure that a book might, with having so many people seeing it and expecting it to be good, as well as just having fun writing with my friends, really helped me figure out what it was that I loved about being creative. I love getting to make and share stories with friends, watching their reactions as I take them through all sorts of twists and turns. Giving them that last bit of lore they need to piece everything together is like giving a child either a whole cake, or a convincingly real looking plastic cake. Their eyes light up when you hand it to them, and either they cry tears of joy or tears of despair as they find out what happened to their favorite character.
Without Clover, Amelia, and the Chaos Cult, I wouldn’t have ever considered writing and creating as something you can do with friends in the way I do. I’ve found I live to tell stories that make people feel, and I don’t want to do anything but that.
Beginning of Florida Racing
It was August of 2022, in-person school had just started after Covid and I knew nobody. There were some faces I recognized from elementary school and sixth grade, but my best friend Clover wasn’t there. They were staying in an online school this year, and I had begged my parents to keep me online too, but they refused. I didn’t have any friends, or any social interactions for that matter, besides Clover and the friends I had made in the Chaos Cult. I was alone at this school, and it weighed heavily on me. The first month of eighth grade was just sitting alone at my desk and lunch, sulking. I used to be so extroverted and happy, but after Covid, I developed all kinds of horrible anxieties, and couldn’t talk to anyone. I tried talking to assigned partners, but I either couldn’t find anything to say, or couldn’t get anything out.
I continued begging my parents to let me switch to online school. I was tired of being alone. My dad made me a deal, I might get to switch, but only if I didn’t make any friends. I had considered just completely giving up on the search, closing myself off completely so I could get what I wanted, but I was also so desperate for friends I could actually see.
The following week, at some point in mid-September, I brought a little orange kazoo to school. I had an emotional tie to this kazoo, his name was Kevin, and he was my son. I cannot tell you why, because I’m not sure either. It was fourth hour English class, just before lunch, and I was bored out of my mind. I was watching the kid a few seats from me drawing in their sketchbook. I had had a huge friend crush on this person for weeks, they seemed cool, and they drew just like I did. I tried doing the same thing, drawing instead of paying attention to class so that they might see my sketchbook and try talking to me, but it never worked because he sat in front of me.
While I was spaced out thinking about how lonely I was, another kid walked up to me. He saw Kevin on my desk, and thought it was hilarious. He loved kazoos, and thought it was so cool I had brought it to school, he wasn’t making fun of me like I thought he was for a moment. His name was Westley, and he invited me over to hang out with his friends during the last few minutes of class and lunch, and I happily agreed. After getting packed up, he came over to me and brought me to his friends. One of them, among the three, was the kid I had been watching. His name was Ryan, and then there was Conrad and Hannah, and eventually Ash joined us later. Ryan and I got to talking pretty quickly, and I was enamored with his characters and his story. As soon as the bell rang, he took my hand and we ran to lunch. Ryan and I were now inseparable, I was happy with friends, and my dad didn’t have to deal with me switching to an online school.
After a week or so of friendship, we exchanged Discords. I introduced him to Clover, and Ryan, Clover, Ash, and I all became a tight group. I introduced him to roleplaying on Discord, and he loved it. We made quite a few servers the first couple months, but nothing really stuck. Eventually we thought of a Q&A server, where we or our characters could ask other characters questions. It didn’t take long for this to turn into a huge project. Maybe four questions were asked before it turned into roleplay, and the world of Florida Racing: 10 Years Later had begun.
This was in Florida, just if Florida also had Japan’s mountains featured in the street racing anime Initial D and was its own country. The 10 Years Later part was because it was set 10 years after the Chaos Cult, so I also got to bring back a ton of old characters. Clover and Ash eventually joined the server and started writing with us, but for the majority of the time, it was Ryan and I. I started streaming us playing games, making art, and talking about our characters. I became a Twitch affiliate and started making a very small amount of money, so I was making a profit just playing with my friends and creating. People started seeing us, and I was so excited. I continued creating because it brought us and others joy.
Ryan and I grew apart and don’t talk anymore, but I still write in Florida Racing with our mutual friend, Umber. It’s now a new server, since plotlines split and it was just easier to do a new server, but for now, we’re on the fifth iteration of the series, Florida Racing: New Beginnings. There were troubles, but I will never regret any of them. Ryan and Florida Racing shaped who I am and exactly what I create now, and I will be forever thankful for it.
The Mushroom Dress
My dreams are always extremely vivid and give me new ideas pretty much every night. Many characters and projects I have are based off dreams, like my book/webcomic. A couple months ago, I had a dream about a giant mushroom satyr in the forest. They had fluffy white hooves like a clydesdale, and a big round mushroom dress and hat. I woke up and just knew that had to be my next Halloween costume. My grandparents had just visited Utah and brought me lots of sewing supplies, and my late great aunt gave me her sewing machine. I had a very vague yet specific idea of what I needed, hooves, the dress, and the hat. I had already made a mushroom hat two Halloweens ago for pretty much the same costume, but I had bought the dress that time. This time, I wanted to make it. I definitely spent not enough time researching, settling on a lolita style dress with mainly red fabric, white accents and lace, and white fluffy hooves. I went to the craft store and got everything I needed, the fabric, interfacing, ribbon and lace, fur, and the pattern. I planned to make the hooves myself with EVA foam I already had and use a pattern I had found online, so I just bought the dress pattern.
Starting was definitely the hardest part. I had been struggling with my physical health quite a bit and wasn’t able to sit at my sewing machine and work for long, and had to take a day on and then a day off, but then time was running out. It was a week before halloween and all I had sewn was the shirt that went under the dress. I had to hurry up and get to work or I would have spent so much time and money on this for nothing. Despite what you’ve probably been told forever, sewing clothes yourself is NOT cheaper. Altering pre-existing clothes to fit? Sure. Making it all yourself? No. Fabric is stupid expensive and the pain from being hunched over your sewing machine for days is excruciating. I spent every hour I could on that dress, making sure everything was as perfect as my first thing I’ve ever sewn could be. I knew it wouldn’t be amazing because I had barely any experience, but I held myself to a high standard anyway. Every night that last week I nearly fell asleep at that desk. Every milestone I hit, from finishing the front of the bodice, to the whole thing, to having the whole skirt gathered, to finally having it sewn on, was another thing done and another thing that kept me going.
The day before Halloween was the worst, though. The skirt was still not sewn on, there were still the big white spots to sew onto the skirt, and I hadn’t even started on the hooves. I knew I’d have to sacrifice something, and decided it might just have to be the structure of the hooves and the spots on the dress. I’d make the hooves into just fluffy leg warmers that would still give a very similar effect with boots, and maybe I’d get a ring of spots or at least something to make the dress mushroom-like. I set an alarm for 5 AM Halloween morning. My plan was to do as much as I could until 3 AM, sleep two hours, and then get up early to do my makeup, get dressed, get my hair done by my mom, and have just enough time to get to school. That happened, except I never slept. I got the skirt sewn on by 1:30 AM and thought I had plenty of time to do the spots and leg warmers. By 3 AM, I had the first ring of spots on. It took me another hour and a half for the second ring. Around 4:30 I downed a protein shake and started the leg warmers. My alarm rang half way through the first stitch I had to do by hand because of the fur, and by then I was tired and done with it. I decided I’d finish sewing it after school, since I had no more time to spare before. I never finished sewing the casing for the top end’s elastic on. I still haven’t. With it or without, I had to go to school and show off what I had made. Just before I left, at 7:30, I grabbed a Monster Energy out of the fridge and had it gone by the time school started. I was glowing all day, won every costume contest, and trick or treated two neighborhoods. It was worth everything. Maybe I should have just given myself more time.
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