Caelyn Sandel
patreon
a micrononfiction retrospective
🕑 Added 2020-01-01 17:01:14 +0000 UTC(originally told on twitter, edited and formatted for Patreon)
It's early 2010.
I'm dragging myself out of bed at 4 in the morning so I can take the T to Downtown Crossing and open the Starbucks where I work. I don't hate my job, but I hate being desperate and underpaid, playing the lottery with my health even after a dental hospitalization.
I'm dating one of my roommates, who suggests I apply to a QA opening at the music game company she works for. I'm skeptical that they'll have me but agree to interview.
A few months later, my tipsy coworkers and I, exhausted from crunch, celebrate the release of Dance Central.
It's 2012 and finally, FINALLY, Harmonix hires me full time for like $35k. It's the best news I've ever received—for the first time in my life, I have really good health insurance.
But then Dance Central 3 doesn't sell many copies and loads of people are laid off, which happens a lot. I'm spared this time, but each wave feels a bit closer.
As of November 2013, Dance Central Spotlight still doesn't have a name and an automated filter system means I have less to do than usual. I volunteer to write a cutscene script, and my supervisor is like "sure, go for it."
I write a cutscene scriptment, small and lean, taking inspiration from the fighting games that first influenced the first DC game's artists as they came up with the characters. It's light, it's fun, it's not really a fit for the project, they're scrapping plot entirely, ah well.
December 2013. Harmonix begins another wave of layoffs, people disappearing from their desks one by one, then returning to pack their desk stuff into a box. After a while, my anxious supervisor says, "they'd have come and got you by now" with no confidence.
We are both let go.
It's January of 2014 and I'm floating an idea to my soon-to-be fiancée. There's this new site called Patreon, and I think I could make stories and games with that and get another remote job.
Also, I'm floating an idea that I might maybe not be cisgender. My partner, who saw this coming, is not even slightly surprised.
It's July of 2014 and I'm a transgender woman who's like JUST about to go on hormones, I'm doing remote busy work for a mapping company, and I'm an interactive fiction author and experimental gamedev. Games about feelings are my JAM. I write 'em and play 'em and talk about 'em.
I go to a local gamedev event and watch a dev talk about their cool project, an intfic game called 'Depression Quest'. I talk to the dev and follow them on twitter and watch the game's reception as it comes out.
It's August of 2014, and the first wave hits, and that wave is called Gamergate.
It's September 2014 now and I'm hosting a digital game jam called #RuinJam, full of piss and vinegar and ready to defend my art but not notable enough to really get hit.
I do see several people get the worst of it, though. Some erode, wear away. I erode, too, just a little.
It's early 2015.
My parents arrange a Skype call with me and my fiancée and my brother so they can break the news: dad has Stage IV melanoma. He'll be undergoing aggressive treatment to skive a little more time for him from the dark, but... we count in months now.
It's August of 2015, and I'm looking for distractions. I idly mention that I might buy this interesting-looking roguelike, Caves of Qud. The lead developer, who was already following me on twitter, DMs me a steam key.
I play the game and fall in love immediately.
It's December of 2015 and I am marrying my spouse in a lovely ceremony with my mother presiding. Dad and my brother play a duet on guitar and fiddle. My new in-laws bless us, my new nieces run up and down the aisle.
It's small, it's earlier than planned, it's beautiful.
It's 2016 and I am fragile. Dad's health takes a turn, my work slows, the nightmares get worse. I travel to Maryland more and more as dad's treatments end and his health degrades. I leave for the last time. Dad's not lucid, and his goodbye is nonsense.
I wish I remembered the words he said, disjointed as they were.
It is October 19th, 2016.
The day before, Porter Robinson and Madeon, in collaboration with Crunchyroll and A-1 Pictures, release an anime music video for their new song, 'Shelter'. Today, my spouse and I take a call from mom at a vegan thai restaurant. There's a hollow relief in the news. He's not suffering any more.
It's November of 2016 and I've just gone on a date with an old friend, a date at a gastropub that has delicious tater tots and interesting cocktails and televisions playing at every angle.
The screens show things that defy our understanding, that we don't and can't react to at that time.
We go home and fall apart.
It's early 2017 and we're all still trucking, in spite of the state of our country.
I'm sitting at my desk at a fresh new gaming startup not far from my home. The startup has this game idea, and it's both extremely ambitious and sort of boring, but they've recruited some truly stellar people I know and I certainly have some good ideas and skills to lend, so I ignore the red flags as best I can, taking the steady paycheck and producing quality dialogue.
I do keep glancing over at the gap where a producer is supposed to be, the first ill omen of many.
It's late 2017 and I have started the process of jumping ship from the sinking startup, cursing my cowardice but unable to avoid the writing on the wall. Then I get this e-mail, and it's from the Caves of Qud devs, and suddenly I know I've done the right thing.
It's early 2018 and I'm writing. Stuff. For Caves of Qud. That's going IN the game. It's going in the game! The stuff I wrote!
It's mid 2018 and the stuff went in! My stuff! It's in the game, whaaaaaat
It's late 2018 and I'm doing more stuff??? for the game??
(actually it is mid 2018 and I am struggling with dysphoria and having trouble finding a surgeon for GRS, increasingly unable to manage my depression and anxiety in an environment of mounting hostility against trans people. I enter a partial hospitalization program, but am discharged early for bad reasons. I clench my teeth and crawl on, digging my proverbial claws into the proverbial dirt.)
It's November of 2018 and I've just co-written a light novel with my friend Talen. We submit it to a jam called #LightNovelber and people really seem to like it. I join the organizer's Discord and get to know the people there.
I start writing really weird stuff. I explore. I write more #microfiction. I stretch my creativity and hone my skills.
It's 2019 and I'm so tired. I'm so so tired. My spouse, perched at the frontlines of our government's abuses, is even more tired. But I have something to look toward. I have a team.
It's September of 2019, and I have another team. I'm picked up as a pinch hitter for Kitsune Games, assuming the new role of Lead Writer on their upcoming game Lore Finder. I am to write dialogue for a New England-based Private Investigator, so I am in fact uniquely suited to the gig. I won't see any pay at first, but I agree without hesitation.
My solo work has flagged, but not stalled. I've released a collection of my microfic to minimal engagement, I've started a new freeform RPG called metamorph.
I'm not failing. I'm still working, still making, still keeping my eyes on those unspecified points next year, the "what happens" before "what's next."
The struggle gets a bit harder every year.
But maybe next year will be better.
It's a refrain I've said over and over. The struggle gets a bit harder every year. Maybe next year will be better. The struggle gets harder.
But 2020 can be the year that things get better. That things happen. That anything changes. The hope that 2020 is the better year is only one of the many buttons I'm mashing as I careen wildly through life, but it's my favorite. I'm gonna hang onto that hope.
You, in reading this, are part of that hope. You have seen me through flush times and dry times, you've shown patience and support, you've seen me through some of the hardest and yet most productive times in my life.
I thank you for your PATIENCE. I thank you for your KINDNESS. I thank you for BELIEVING in me.
Look forward to new, good things. Happy New Year.
