i kneel into a dream where i am good & loved.
i am good. i am loved.
my hands have made some good mistakes.
they can always make better ones.

hi i'm riley(?) • she/they • 34yo • F31.81 & 301.83 • demigirl • bi-ace • happily married.

these are my hyperfocuses — one day warcraft will shut down, and i will lose all sense of self.

"hyper funk zone"?

• Bluesky
• User
• World of Warcraft

—assorted hobbies—

— mcu / scu —

— anime —

— vidya —

— targets of affection —

warcraft [mg-a, wra-h]

a quiet (assistant-junior) kenku graveyard keeper sent to strixhaven to master the fine art of necromancy. accompanied by a floating, talking skull - his only Real friend.

— we talk about tome for a sec —

you've found your way to this section of my carrd likely because you were interested in why the part about 'tome' in particular was highlighted [or, you were, you know, linked here.]if you were, or still are, a fan of christopher niosi (kirbopher)'s flash series/indie game 'tome' (terrain of magical expertise), and you had the misfortune of interacting with 2010s era 'writer assistant' liz, allow me to give my most heartfelt apology for having to tolerate my bullshit and shed some backstory as to why i was an insufferable, ego-driven monster.

• never mind, fuck this
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see, at the time, I was honeymoon-phase-dating kirbopher and i took his 'work' very seriously. we had originally bonded over rewatching old episodes of his flash series 'tv tome adventures' while beginning a relationship, so the 'franchise' was meaningful to both of us outside of nostalgia.

to no surprise, it was me who prodded kirb into revisiting the series and revamping it as 'tome' [his name, not mine] for the 2010s, and me who helped polish the treatments for a lot of the characters' initial motivations, actions and dialogues. i even picked out the fonts for each character's 'chat boxes' [which was, in itself, a horrible design choice, but to my credit i nagged him about the visuals for years thereafter to no change. oh well].

he even designed both 'seasons' of flamegirl's designs to look exactly like me at the time.

kirb relied on my input as a source of 'internet gaming realism' to inject into tome as I had many more years of mmos under my belt than he ever would, but at the same time, he would chastise me for wanting to actually play world of warcraft instead of working solely on his projects. see, kirb always had this holier-than-thou complex about never wanting to play any games with our friend group, and had a track record for getting mad at friends who enjoyed mmos in group skype calls he was part of (because he was too busy working on his cartoons all the time).

neat, huh?

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either way, this roiled up to a big fat boiling point that galvanized my then-held belief that 'if you don't enjoy our work the way it's on the screen, you're disrespecting not only my relationship, but my writing and my time and energy on this series'

(by shipping kirb and alpha??? in hindsight through what was a very queerbaited script???)

2010s liz was not in a good spot mentally.

and so — i attacked fans of both tome and the original tv-tome who didn't 'respect this belief' by treating my show as word of god. i would lurk message boards and make snarky remarks or deride people in tumblr tags, twitter mentions and responses. i would tear apart fan art, interpretations of the storyline, shit on [better written] theories and gloat about having behind-the-scenes knowledge.

but you can't ban me! ha ha!! i'm kirbopher's girlfriend!!

i even egotistically tried my own (awful) take on making sense of tome's "lore" at one point
— while the original show was still in production!!

proudly i carried the mantle i'd established as 'the bitch' from superpsyguy's projects into kirbopher's, and i rabidly defended our my vision of the show because it was 'my work' this time.

... obviously, it wasn't my work, and never was.

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if you got caught in the napalm of that lashing-out 'phase':
please allow me to impart to you my sincerest apology.

i've been very grateful to earn chances to learn and grow over the last decade, and the coolest thing about fandoms is that people can see characters how they like; whether it's for comfort, for interpretation, or for representation, their expression of that view doesn't detract from the source material, and, if anything, it enriches and encourages growth of that source thing!!

—

i dipped out of anything hardcore tome-related following my 2014ish breakup with chris; we remained sporadic ""friends"", and on occasions we were speaking, he would seek my opinion about little things on the show's shorts, specials and the eventual script for the indie game.

but, due to the constant in-fighting we had over the series over actual years, i was pretty scorched-earth on anything with his avatar's face plastered onto it, so my replies to chris's messages were always either non-responsive, detached, or politely lukewarm at best.

—

i had no official input on anything following season two and continually rejected credit listings and offers by chris to be named as anything influencing the show or the game; i turned down cameos of my characters, appearing in retrospective blogs on anniversaries, or even voicing bit game parts.

my presence to the fans of the series was radioactive, and i had the cognizance to realize that inexplicably reappearing years later wasn't fair to those who had to tolerate my acidity.

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all of that notwithstanding, we are in an age where more people can share their creations and their reactions to such than ever, ever before. gate's open. come the fuck on in.

it is human nature to intake properties of any kind or popularity and enjoy their facets how they want to, despite what should amount to screams into the void to the contrary about how someone 'shouldn't like that thing I like that way'.

please learn from me, and just let people enjoy things. life's a lot easier that way.

if you were affected in this way by my behavior, i truly appreciate you reading this, and hope these words carry some meaning and catharsis to you. please continue creating and loving creating things.

if you'd like to reach out to me directly about this, my twitter is currently @owlhearthian.

—

^{_{kirb and i are not on speaking terms. he has not credited me or my work in the latest re-rererererepackaging of a ten+ year old series,
which i'm eternally grateful for. please do not approach him about me.}}

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