Sightless Scribbles

The Ray Reunion

2026-09-17T11:42:16Z

The call comes in completely unexpectedly, as, I'm sure, all great things do.

It’s Ray. He knows I wanted to come over to his house today, but he asks me if I want to have him come over here to my apartment complex, today.

Usually, I don't like for people to come here because my apartment isn't exactly the best thing for hosting guests, but his voice is so soft and so attractive that it coats me in a never-ending calm, and immediately quiets my nerves. It doesn’t so much speak as it does settle, a change in the atmosphere transmitted through the phone’s tiny speaker.

"Sure," I say, the word feeling small against the backdrop of his warmth. "Come over."

As Ray is driving over here, I take the most comfortable shower of my life. The hot water doesn’t last long, but I'm feeling so good about this meeting I can't even get mad at the landlords bullshit. The lukewarm spray feels like a clean slate.

Ray is a racialized light-skinned Black man—who has talked with me before—but We've fallen out of touch until recently. At first, I presumed there to be trepidation about seeing him again. Instead, there's an electric anticipation in the air. It's a wash of excited warmth and unabashed joy that a kind person will soon enter my space.

Finally, a vibration from my phone. He texts that he's in the lobby. I practically race down there, my cane tapping out a frantic, staccato rhythm against the linoleum, a stark contrast to the slow, steady beat of my own heart.

The hiss of the lobby’s sliding glass door announces someone's arrival. The air here is sterile, smelling of industrial cleaner. I hear the low murmur of the receptionist’s radio behind his desk, then a soft, feminine voice announces, "Floor one. Going up," from the elevator shaft.

The outer doors swish open again, and a different quality enters the air—a subtle shift in pressure, a scent of cool, clean air and something else, something warm and masculine that is uniquely his.

"Robert?" The voice. It’s even better in person. Not a sound, but a presence. A low and steady hum that quiets the hum of the frantic beating of my heart. It’s the feeling of a weighted blanket made of sound.

"Ray." I turn toward it, my hand outstretched.

His hand finds mine. It’s large, the palm soft but the grip firm, a gentle heat that radiates up my arm. He holds it just a second longer than necessary. "It’s good to finally meet you in person, baby boy."

The endearment, spoken in that deep timbre, makes the tension drain from my shoulders. It’s not patronizing. It’s… a placement. Like he’s carefully setting me down in a safe space.

"You too," I manage. He’s holding something in his other hand; I can hear the faint rustle of cardboard. "What’s that?"

"A little something for you," he says. The weight of it shifts as he walks with me in the elevator, then up to my floor.

"Just a little cake."

Just a little cake. People don’t just bring me cake. People want something, or they offer things with a tangle of strings attached. This box feels clean. Simple. An offering.

Upstairs, in my studio, the space feels small, made even smaller by a guest’s presence. The low hum of the kitchenette’s mini-fridge is a constant companion.

"Sorry it’s so cramped," I say, the apology instinct kicking in. "We can… sit on the bed?" It comes out as a question, highlighting my vulnerability.

"The bed is perfect," Ray says, and his voice makes it so. He moves with a quiet deliberation, the soft scuff of his shoes on the floor a comforting sound. I feel the mattress dip as he sits on the edge, his weight a solid, grounding presence. I sit beside him, the cardboard box between us.

My fingers find the tab on the box. The smell that rises is rich—chocolate and something else, a sweet, creamy frosting. My stomach gives a little flutter.

"Do you have silverware?" He asks. I nod, but then answer,

"I only have plastic forks," I confess, gesturing toward the kitchenette.

"A plastic fork will do the job just fine."

I retrieve one, and we eat sitting side-by-side on my bed. The arrangement is so intimate it feels like we’ve skipped three dates. The cake is decadent, melting on my tongue. I eat too fast, a habit born of scarcity, and a small dollop of icing lands on my index finger. I bring it to my mouth, licking the sweetness from my skin, and when I lower my hand, the silence in the room has a different texture. It’s charged. Heavy.

Ray clears his throat, a low, gentle rumble. "You got a little something… right there."

"Also, he says, with a laugh that makes my dick jump, "You got some chocolate on your finger."

I want him to say, finger again. Hell, I want him to record me the most dirty audio possible. I'm imagining this as I try and lick the chocolate off my finger, but when he says I didn't get it with a laugh, inside, I am screaming with comfort and calm and playfulness.

Regarding my face, My own fingers are useless. I don’t know where he means. Before I can get flustered, the air shifts. The warmth of him is suddenly closer, his scent enveloping me. A thumb, impossibly soft, brushes against the corner of my mouth, wiping away a stray bit of frosting. The touch is feather-light, but it lands in me like a meteor, a point of searing heat that radiates through my whole body.

He doesn’t pull away immediately. His thumb rests there, on my skin, for a single, thundering heartbeat.

His hand moves from my face, but only to settle on my shoulder, a warm, solid weight that anchors me. My own hands are trembling slightly where they rest on the mattress. The plastic fork feels flimsy, ridiculous.

"Thank you," I whisper.

"Any time," he murmurs, his voice a slow-moving river. The space between us is no longer empty; it’s filled with a humming energy that pulls me forward. I lean into it, just a fraction, because I am asking a question without words.

His hand slides from my shoulder, up the column of my neck, his fingers tangling gently in the short hairs at my nape. His other hand comes to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheek. It’s not a prelude to anything frantic or hungry. It’s an exploration. A form of listening with his hands.

And then his lips find mine.

They are as full and soft as I imagined, and warm. The kiss is like his voice—deliberate, unhurried, a slow settling. There is no demand, only an offering. He tastes of chocolate and something that is just him, a taste I feel I could spend a lifetime learning. My own lips part on a sigh, and the kiss deepens, a gentle, reciprocal escalation. It’s the kind of kiss that rewrites history, that erases the memory of every other mouth that was careless or cruel.

I can't help it, I keep kissing him. I want his lips to be fully locked on mine, forever.

It feels like hours pass, measured in the slow slide of his lips against mine, the gentle pressure of his hands holding my face like something precious. When he finally pulls back, the loss of contact is a physical ache. I chase it, pressing my forehead against his, my breath unsteady.

His scent, his warmth, the solid presence of him—it’s an entire world. I think, for a wild, fleeting moment, about his voice. About what it would be like to have a recording of it, a short, filthy message I could listen to in the dark, my hand wrapped around myself. A voice like that could unravel a man completely.

But the thought dissolves as soon as it forms, broken by a reality that is somehow more intense. He’s here. His care is not a fantasy; it’s a physical force field around me. It’s the softest hands I’ve ever felt moving from my face to my shoulders, then down my arms.

"You’re tense, baby boy," he says, his voice a low vibration against my skin. His hands find mine, turning them over, his thumbs pressing into my palms. The simple act feels revolutionary. It isn’t a prelude to sex; it feels like an act of service. Like he’s trying to knead the years of anxiety out of my very bones.

I want to respond that life's hostility has a habit of making one tense, but his hands halt the desire almost immediately as they nestle on me, grounding me to this moment in time and space.

Soon, I am being massaged, and it's the best feeling in the world. His hands feel as if they could cure all my disabilities. He massages me, and I am not a religious man, but I think I found my own heaven.

I feel him shift, moving to bring my leg up, with me on my back, and a miracle happens.

Then his warm, soft hands are on my feet. I flinch, not from aversion, but from the sheer, unexpected intimacy of it.

"Is this okay?" he asks, his voice not missing a beat from his position on the floor.

"Yes," I breathe. It’s more than okay. Nobody touches my feet. His thumbs work into the arch, firm but gentle, and a sound escapes my throat, something between a sigh and a sob. Every point of contact is a statement: You are safe. You are worthy of care. You can let go.

We fall back into a comfortable silence, punctuated only by our breathing and the gentle friction of his hands on my skin. After a while, a playful energy starts to bubble up inside me, a giddiness born of this impossible safety. I reach out, my hands finding the smooth, warm dome of his head. It’s shaved, perfectly smooth, and I can feel the low thrum of his being under my palms.

"I have a confession to make," I say, my voice slightly teasing, as I kiss the top of his head.

A small chuckle escapes his lips. "What's your confession, baby boy?"

"I'm a cereal killer," I say, and it comes out with the biggest, most adorable dorky snort ever.

He doesn’t miss a beat. His full lips engulf my eager mouth again, a quick, laughing kiss. I can feel the smile in it. "Oh really?" he says, his voice playful against my lips. "How do you kill people? Hmm?"

My brain short-circuits with pleasure and joy. "I… uh… I… shit. Ask me that tomorrow when you’re gone from here and so I can—"

"So you can think of a way to use weapons, right?" His mouth snakes up to my ear, his breath warm. "I have a secret too," he says, his voice low and everything captivating. It takes every ounce of mental energy I have to stay grounded, because I'm an absolute goner.

"I'm a cereal killer too."

We both laugh, a shared, genuine sound that fills the small apartment and makes it feel like a cathedral. The joke hangs in the air between us, a silly, perfect bridge connecting his world to mine. The next hour disappears. It doesn't pass; it dissolves into a seamless flow of touch and talk and quiet. He tells me about his week, about a meeting he’s proud of, his voice a slow-moving river, and I listen, truly listen, without the usual anxious buzz in my head that asks what I should say next. I am simply there, held in the warm current of his presence.

Hours pass by in a sea of naked bodies, skin on skin, flesh on flesh, with him jacking me off, and a part of me wishes he would deep throat me, but hours pass by in minutes.

All too soon, a soft alarm chimes from his direction. The sound is an intrusion, a crack in the perfect sphere of the afternoon.

"Ah, hell," Ray says, the sound a low rumble of regret. He shifts, the movement reluctant. "I’m sorry, baby boy. I’ve got a board meeting I have to get to."

The ache of his impending absence is immediate and sharp. "Oh. Okay." I try to keep my voice even, to not let the desperate whine I feel in my chest escape.

He stands, and the loss of his warmth beside me is like a sudden drop in temperature. He takes my hands and pulls me to my feet, holding me in a hug that feels like a promise of return. He’s solid, real, his arms a fortress.

"I had a really good time, Robert," he says into my hair.

"Me too," I say into his chest, the words muffled by his shirt.

The hug ends, and his hands linger on my shoulders before he steps back. I hear him gathering his things, the soft jingle of keys. I stand there, adrift in the middle of my own room. I should walk him to the door. I should say something clever or charming. But all I can do is listen to the sounds of him preparing to leave.

Then I hear a different sound. Not the sound of departure, but a soft rustling. A smooth, sweeping sound. The snap of a sheet being pulled taut from the corner of the mattress.

My mind struggles to place it. He’s not at the door. He’s by my bed. My bed, the centerpiece of my entire apartment, the place we just shared.

"What are you doing?" I ask, my voice small.

"Just tidying up a little," he says, his voice matter-of-fact, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He’s making my bed.

The thought is so stunning, so profoundly alien, that I can’t move. Men don’t do that. Men take what they want and leave a mess behind—emotional, physical, or both. They don’t smooth your sheets. They don’t plump your pillow. They don’t restore the one sanctuary you have in the world after they’ve shared it with you. Nobody has ever done that before. Ever.

The rustling stops. I hear his footsteps approach, feel the warmth of him in front of me one last time. A gentle kiss is pressed to my lips again.

"Sleep well tonight," he says. It is not a clipped farewell, but a long, resonant note that hangs in the air like the last chord of a lullaby.

I walk him down, but I want to hold him forever. I want to keep him in my apartment forever, I want to just sit in one spot and trace his palms with my fingers, reading a lifetime of experiences in them. I want to bask in his skin, his long beard again, his scent, everything.

He pulls away, and I forget what floor I am on. I make it back up to my apartment and close the door.

The door seems to shut with a knowing nudge. I stand by my bed, my impossibly made bed, Ray’s scent still permeating the room, bathing my apartment with a lingering memory that I never want to let go. I'm miles away, and yet, my whole world has stopped. It's stopped because, for one day, for one afternoon, one man has shown me more kindness than I've ever received from anybody. I touch the made bed, the blanket smooth and cool under my fingertips, unable to stop the single tear that slowly escapes my duct and slides down my face. I place a shocked hand to my mouth, realizing a bunch of things all at once.

The first thing is that I'm taken aback. I'm beyond cloud nine. I'm floating on a profound sense of joy and amazement; I don't know what's winning in the battlefield of my heart. I wonder if Ray can tell the impact he's had on me.

The other thing is that I desperately want to see him again. I am certain, as certain as I know the Sun will orbit the earth, that I desperately want to see him again. His absence is like I've lost a long-lost friend, one that I reconnected with after years of being away. The silence he left behind isn’t empty. It’s shaped like him. It’s warm. It feels, impossibly, like hope. I hope he likes me. I hope he thinks I'm worth seeing again, because he's changed my life, whether he knows it or not.

If you've enjoyed this story, you might enjoy Reckless Love by Willow Aster

How to Download Assets from GitHub using a screen reader.

2026-09-12T19:28:50Z

GitHub, and by extension, other git based websites are very popular because they all have version control.

I've decided to make this small guide on how to download things from GitHub just in case someone might need a resource somewhere for screen reader users.

This will not be a screen reader guide on how to authenticate with GitHub, upload to GitHub, or anything else related to GitHub.

Before proceeding with reading this guide, I suggest you brush up on working with GitHub via their desktop program or brush up on using GitHub via the command line interface.

Optional, but not required, Git documentation is here, and is kind of like the massive Git explainer

Now you are familiar with GitHub, let's talk downloading things from GitHub.

GitHub currently calls downloadable packages assets. The term "asset" is what is used to generically describe anything a project will allow you to download, be that an .EXE file, source code in a ZIP file, or anything else. GitHub is used to manage so many different projects that a term to describe "releases you can download" was needed, and "asset" is that term for now.

I've included graphical instructions but below the GUI instructions, I provide command line instructions.

To explain the GUI bits, I will showcase some GitHub projects I use.

Main example project pages:

YT-DLP, a tool to download audio and video from the web.

The Accessible Markdown editor fork I use.

And finally, Pandoc, which is utterly amazing.

Find the releases pages.

To download release packages from a repository, or project, you need to find the releases page. There are multiple ways to get to the releases page.

The easiest, and fastest, way to get to all releases page is to tack on the ending /releases at the end of any project URL. For example, Pandoc releases URL is this.

https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/

It's always best practice to add /latest to the end of all URLs so you can get to the latest release quickly. For example, Pandocs latest release URL can be found here

Over time, I am sure the interface will change, so the most evergreen way I can think of to find the releases is to go straight to the releases URL, but let's say you can't guess the releases URL or don't know that every releases page ends in a /releases ending. How do you get there?

After landing on a main project, or repo, page, Invoke your screen reader's find command. Type, releases, then press enter. The releases link will be immediately after the heading results for the moment.

After getting to the releases page.

Releases for any project are listed in reverse chronological order, most recent release first, and at the end of each release section are one of two things, depending on how the developer has chosen to present Assets:

An Asset button that announces as, ""Assets {number} button collapsed." If his is the case, you must activate the button to expand and have the actual list of assets presented.
The asset files list (e.g., the zips or EXEs or whatever is appropriate for the context) that you can download. The Assets button is set to "auto-expand" in some way. It's there, but already expanded and the list is visible.

Searching on the word "Assets" is the direct and fastest route to this location.

Most often, for projects with relatively few assets, you will simply have the list of assets showing at the end of each release's section. For projects with larger numbers of assets, the assets button is used.

Usually, for now, the release items will be in a list after you expand the assets button, so you can find whatever you want to download by navigating via list item.

So now you know how to download assets via the GUI, let's tackle downloading via CLI.

A brief intro to GitHub CLI.

If you love the command line the way I love a hunky man’s pecs, there is a way to download assets from the CLI as well. The CLI is my most preferred method of downloading.

In order to download via CLI, you do need the GitHub command line tool. GitHub CLI is a command-line tool that brings pull requests, issues, GitHub Actions, and other GitHub features to your terminal, so you can do all your work in one place.

The easiest way to get it, I've found, is to install GitHub CLI via Winget.

This getting started CLI guide for screen reader users should get you started but you can also Read the GitHub CLI manual to learn everything you can do.

I've provided a custom Windows terminal/command line/PowerShell command below that will download GitHub CLI, install it, then authenticate it after enabling some accessibility settings. I've never tried downloading something without an account, so your milage may wildly vary if you don't authenticate with a GitHub account using the CLI.

winget install --id Git.Git -e; winget install --id GitHub.cli -e; gh config set accessible_prompter enabled; gh config set accessible_colors enabled; gh config set spinner disabled; gh auth login

After you authenticated your GitHub CLI, now we can download assets!

Downloading assets via the CLI

Once you authenticated your Github the command to actually download assets is actually all in one command, unless you want to target kinds of files and or versions.

To download the latest of the project, you need to download the source code archive or fetch a particular extension package. There isn't one command to download everything. Because you need to use one or the other, an archive, or a targeted package file extension type, use a command similar to the below command, making sure to swap out the type of release you want to download.

gh release download --archive=EXTENSION, or, --pattern '*.EXTENSION' --repo <[HOST/]OWNER/REPO>

To break this command down a little bit... we're telling GitHub CLI what to download and where to get it.

gh release download tells GitHub CLI what to do.

--archive=EXTENSION, or, --pattern '*.EXTENSION' tell GitHub CLI what to download.

--repo <[HOST/]OWNER/REPO> tells GitHub Cli where to find the assets in question.

Example CLI download commands.

So, in the case of Pandoc, we would use the Pattern flag to find all Windows installers that are packaged. Pandoc calls its Windows binaries "MSI" extensions, so, the pattern command would look like,

gh release download --pattern '*.msi' --repo jgm/pandoc

If a message comes back saying it can't find any assets, try the below, swapping out, MSI, in the below commands, for any other file extension types. So for example, some alternate patterns to look for are,

--pattern '*.exe'

--pattern '*.msi'

--pattern '*.zip'

You can also download the source code if you use a command like this, making sure to include the --archive tag.

gh release download --archive=zip --repo jgm/pandoc

What if you wanted a different version?

To get a certain version, you would include the version number as well as the type of thing you are looking for, even if you want the source code. You must keep the --repo flag as before because that tells the client where to fetch. To demonstrate this with Pandoc again, we will include an older version but use the pattern flag to find an older MSI installer.

gh release download 3.9.0.2 --pattern '*.msi' --repo jgm/pandoc

And to demonstrate downloading an older source code archive, we would use a command like the below, keeping the --repo flag as before because that tells the client where to fetch.

gh release download 3.9.0.2 --archive=zip --repo jgm/pandoc

And that's all! There's one more thing before we go, but first, allow me to preach for a second. I know this is not the most intuitive via the CLI. Blame GitHub, not me. There's no one command to download all release assets, yet.

If you hate the web interface, like me, and wanna release stuff via the GitHub CLI, GitHub developers can use this releases command to upload assets via the CLI as well.

Thanks for reading! If you found this guide helpful, give me money so I can keep writing.

The Dream of Tomorrow

2026-09-08T18:30:13Z

Mood: Ferociously hopeful, buzzing like a perfectly tuned bass string.

Translations of The Dream of Tomorrow

French translation

Begin post.

Come. Sit. Take a walk with me as I imagine the world I wish to live in.

The rhythmic, oscillating thrum of rotors shears through the humid air. The scent of hot yeast and melted cheese arrives from the sky.

I position myself on the porch. I listen to the delivery drone land. The payment is a quiet, decentralized transaction pinging in my ear. It is a currency mined by the hum of wind turbines, stripped of the heavy, scraping gears of corporate banks. And the air is thick, and the cheese is hot, and the laughter of my neighbors vibrates through the floorboards, and the sheer weight of this peace settles and soothes my bones. They are navigating the gravel path right now. I hear the heavy tread of their boots alongside the high, rapid footsteps of their newly adopted son. He survived a shattered coastline. There are no more war refugees in this world.

We trade pizza for the dense, sticky weight of a glass jar. Their friend canned this grape jelly this morning. She works at the community clinic; she gives away her labor because her own needs are already met by the neighborhood. There is no state bureaucracy crushing her spine. She heals people because a healthy community is a structurally sound community.

We do not lose ourselves in digital environments governed by algorithms designed to farm our outrage. My screen reader chimes with the crisp, direct frequency of an RSS feed that broadcasts citizen journalism, hobbyist bloggers writing about their lives, and joys, and drama, Fantastical fiction that makes me smile, and journalism that's publicly funded. The web connects us. It is a network built by human hands: no billionaires harvesting our data, no manipulative feeds demanding our constant anxiety. (My chest tightens, a sudden influx of fierce hope.) We own our digital soil. We cultivate our own connections. The RSS protocol is a load-bearing pillar in our society, transferring truth without the corrosive friction of a corporate server.

Poverty is a ghost story we tell our children. Work is voluntary. We trade our skills, and disabled bodies are no longer weighed on the scales of profit. I offer my words to keep the community informed of something to celebrate, as well as pen an obituary for a man that passed away last Monday; the mechanic fixes my roof.

The automatic rifle mounted on my friends living room wall exists with the gritty, dormant texture of a fire extinguisher. It waits for absolute emergencies. There are no cops. We handle justice in the resonant quiet of a citizen circle. Violence is met with restitution or exile.

As my neighbors settle beside me, their shoulders pressing against mine, we talk about the history we left behind. We dismantle the past. Right now, marginalized people wrap themselves in the heavy armor of their specific cultures to survive the crushing gravity of white supremacy. But armor is exhausting to wear. In this world we are building, bigotry starves to death. And without the oppressor, the armor must melt. We throw the segregated scraps of our defensive cultures into a communal furnace, forging a new, indivisible alloy of human connection. The social construct of race seeps away like salt dissolving in warm broth.

Artists create without the intangible chains of digital restrictions. We innovate because our stomachs are full. We pray for machines to automate our industries so we can finally learn how to rest.

Fear dies. The borders collapse. The atmosphere settles. A hand finds mine. In its grasp, I forever feel at peace.

People tell me this utopia is impossible. They tell me it sounds foolish. Perhaps. But how can we move forward if our dreams do not terrify the present?

If you enjoyed this dream, you might enjoy Daydream by Hannah Grace

DIY Writers Retreat With a Travel Agent

2026-09-07T15:15:14Z

I’ve always been ineligible for residencies. Either I haven’t published enough, I don’t have enough professional contacts in the industry to give me letters of recommendation, or, well, I just don’t publish that often, which immediately disqualifies me for severely competitive residencies. I did attend a few writers retreats, but that was for like a weekend, and under a scholarship. I have always loved the appeal of residencies because they would, quite literally, give me space and time to write or touch up my many works in progress.

I’ve applied to several residencies, certainly. Many residencies don’t have the necessary accommodations for me, including the fact that most won’t even let a personal care assistant, PCA, in with me if I was accepted. Usually, these residencies are kind of out in the middle of nowhere, in an inaccessible structure, so I’d hunt for a residency that caters to disabled authors but they’d only dabble in poetry, or only be for pay with no scholarships or the residency would need to close/shut down because they didn’t get the necessary funding to keep it going among many other reasons why I just haven’t found a solid disability centric residency for me.

Recently I started looking into travel agents more and more to plan my own writing residency. Some, actually, almost everyone, says that travel agents are obsolete. They aren’t necessary for traveling domestically. They are a waste of money, and many people just don’t understand the point of using a travel agent when there are so many sites to find cheap hotels, and flights, and more.

A travel agent can do so much more for you than just find deals. There are a few things that travel agents can do for you as a disabled writer, especially if you’re a fiction writer that requires a lot of research for your manuscripts.

They do all the research for you. They scour deals, openings, attractions, and prices for you and then they just lay all of that information out in a single email, ready for you to make a decision. This includes activities or events. If you want to get some research done, you can actually use a travel agent to plan in person literary research while on your trip. They usually plan vacations, and they usually specialize in certain industries, so if your research involves traveling to an international country to experience culture, they will be your best guide. Their ability will be the best way to make sure you aren’t wandering another country without anything to do. This could be a part of your research, experiencing the culture.

The same works domestically as well. They can research domestically for you while you don’t have to spend hours doing research. I know I didn’t want to spend hours doing research on accessible hotels near me, so I went looking for a travel agent that specializes in disability travel.

They can ensure that check in, and otherwise, is all taken care of. They can even contact hotel managers to get you an accessible floor plan of the hotel, as was with my DIY writer’s residency.

They can keep exact records of client bookings, such as payments, travel dates, flight numbers, and hotel check-in and check-out dates as well as oversee any travel issues that arise, including flight or hotel cancellations, delays, conflicts, and refunds. For example, if the price drops after You’ve booked a room or experience, they will automatically apply that cheaper rate to your purchase, so you get a discount without you having to monitor everything.

In my case, I knew I was going to want to have a hotel stay for three weeks so I told my travel agent to also send me all the restaurant menus in the hotel. This way, I didn’t have to fumble around an inaccessible website. Because my agent specialized in disability travel, she manually transcribed any menus that weren’t accessible.

Travel agents can do so much more for disabled writers in general. Travel agents get paid via commission, mostly. Because my agent specializes in cruises, mostly, aside from disability travel, she gets a lot of cruise commission. There are agents that charge a planning fee, but I’ve found the ones that do are planning ongoing, luxury, experiences and daily activities. The agent I used didn’t have a planning fee when I used her but still, it’s always good to ask up front if they have a planning fee. Most don’t charge a planning fee.

I wanted to make a weekend DIY writers residency, so I told my agent to find hotels with Onsight restaurants and accessible rooms. I chose a hotel because I’d get housekeeping and so much more instead of just a rented house to stay in with nobody there.

Thanks to my ongoing financial supporters, I paid for my full stay up front, and then, I had a very epic weekend of writing, having food served to me, and I got some major writing accomplished. Even though I didn’t meet other writers on this DIY writers retreat/residency, I did find a travel agent that will certainly be my go to if I ever want to plan another one.

The travel agent I used was Katie White of Magical Moments Vacations.

Book a travel agent at Magical Moments Vacations here.

Investigating the IP Relay Shutdown

2026-09-04T22:36:25Z

Throwback updates.

I updated some links, and provided more context about rates.

I also changed Sprint to T-Mobile, to reflect the merging of Sprint and T-Mobile.

Since this is a throwback article, it probably will not receive updates beyond this point.

Original article.

For most Americans, the process of using the telephone isn't even considered. It's as natural as putting on clothes or jewelry. Most People don't have to worry about their speech or articulation, and don't think about the challenges of placing a phone call. For the estimated 10,511,400 Americans with impaired hearing or speech compiled from fact sheets produced by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, however, they have to rely on telephone relay services to make calls.

Text of the ADA defines relay services as telephone services that enable people who are deaf or hard of hearing, or who have a speech impairment, to communicate with a person who can hear in a manner that is "functionally equivalent" to the ability of an individual without a disability to communicate by telephone. The relay user dials 711, the national number, and is connected to a communications assistant, or CA. The CA then places the call and assists -- depending on the type of call. There are a vast array of relay methods, as can be seen below.

CAPTIONED TELEPHONE SERVICE (CTS)

For people with a special "captioned telephone" that enables them to communicate by speaking, listen to what they can hear, and read what the other person is saying through captions displayed on the "captioned telephone"

HEARING CARRY OVER (HCO)

For people with a speech disability who use a TTY or an internet-based relay service that type to the called party, but the called party speaks directly to the caller instead of the CA.

INTERNET PROTOCOL CAPTIONED TELEPHONE SERVICE(IP CTS)

An Internet-based system that enables people to communicate by speaking and listening to what they can hear over a telephone, and read what the other person is saying through captions displayed on a computer or other web-enabled device

INTERNET PROTOCOL RELAY

An Internet-based system for people with a computer or other web-enabled device who communicate using text

SPEECH TO SPEECH (STS)

Relay service for people with a speech disability who use a telephone

TTY RELAY SERVICES

The original and now traditional relay service, which can be reached by anyone by dialing 711 from a telephone or TTY

VIDEO RELAY SERVICE (VRS)

An Internet-based system for people with video conferencing equipment or videophones who communicate in Sign Language

VOICE CARRY OVER (VCO)

For people who are deaf or hard of hearing who communicate by speaking and their calls are transcribed for them to read or interpreted via Sign Language.

Non-English language relay services, such as Spanish-to-Spanish

Even though many are available, one type of relay service is shrinking in the USA, becoming less available to those who need it. IP Relay is becoming less available in the United States because many IP Relay providers are discontinuing their IP relay services. Just a few of these providers who have discontinued their IP relay services in the past ten years include Purple Communications, Hamilton Relay, Inc., Sorenson Communications, Inc., and AT&T.

IP Relay is very beneficial to people who are deaf, have a speech disability, or who are deaf blind. Jean Modry, a deaf user of IP Relay says that IP Relay can become very useful when there isn't enough light to use VRS.

"You need background light for the operator to see the deaf person signing. If you were outside or in the car at night, the lack of light was an issue. With the IP Relay, lack of environmental light was not an issue. The cell phone backscreen lit up and you could read the print easily in the dark," Modry said in an email.

Modry also illustrated how IP Relay was useful in other ways. "Last summer, I had an old cell phone that did not have enough juice to do video relay calls. I had enough power to type messages back and forth which is why on the road I could only use IP Relay Services."

Users who want to use the service still have one option left. At the time of this writing, T-Mobile is the only remaining IP Relay provider because they were able to work out a deal with the FCC.

In an email, Marci VerBrugge-Rhind in Corporate Communications of formerly Sprint wrote, "A few weeks ago, after several discussions with the FCC, we were able to agree to terms that would allow Sprint to continue offering IP Relay services. We knew how important it was that we remain in this business -- the outpouring of support we've received from the deaf community and the deaf and blind community asking that we stay is a testament to how critical this service is to many."

Andrew Phillips, the Policy Counsel at the National Association of the Deaf said, "IP Relay is a valuable service for many deaf and hard of hearing individuals. In fact, IP Relay is the only accessible relay service for many deaf-blind individuals as well as many who are unable to use VRS or IP CTS. IP Relay is also an important backup relay service for VRS users who due to poor network conditions, cannot connect to VRS."

The providers who are shutting down the service are doing so for reasons related to the FCC. According to a notice on the IP Relay website of Purple Communications, the reason they are shutting down their IP Relay services are because of actions by the FCC. They state "As a result of FCC action, IP Relay was forced to shut down the service effective November 14, 2014. We apologize for the inconvenience." The Purple team was unavailable to comment.

Sorenson Communications also states, in a video, and on their website, that the shutting down of IP Relay is in direct response to the new IP Relay compensation rates determined by the FCC. The website says, "The rates are too low to provide you with the high-quality IP Relay service you deserve."

The rates fluxuated in 2014 because so many providers left. On July 1, 2014: The FCC set the baseline IP Relay compensation rate at $1.0309 per minute for the 2014-2015 fund year.

But following the exit of Purple Communications from the market, the FCC raised the compensation rate to $1.37 per minute.

Sorenson regretted having to exit the IP Relay business, but explained in a July 8, 2013 letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that rates set by the FCC in its order of July 1, 2013, "left Sorenson no other alternative. Those rates are simply too low to sustain a high-quality service, and they are further scheduled to be reduced by 6% in each of the following years" said Ann Bardsley, Director of Public Relations at Sorenson. "For Sorenson to be able to again provide IP Relay service, the FCC would have to make substantial changes to its outmoded approach to rate making," Bardsley said in an interview. "The current rate-of-return methodology (used to compensate for IP Relay) is based only on "allowable costs," a subset of actual costs. The FCC's current model allows for no margin on expenses in the labor-intensive IP Relay industry and, since July 2013, consistently generates rates that are unsustainable. Simply put, the FCC would have to raise the compensation rates to the levels that they were prior to July 2013 for Sorenson to even consider re-entering the IP Relay market."

Mike Snyder, Deputy Chief of the Web and Print Publishing Division of the FCC says that the reason IP Relay is shutting down is because of all of the fraud that has been happening. "IP Relay service has been subject to significant fraud and abuse in recent years, totaling millions of dollars. The FCC's efforts to protect these services for all consumers by eliminating this fraud and abuse has resulted in several providers terminating their provision of this service." The fraud isn't new to the FCC or the providers, though. Cases date back to as early as 2004. Both parties are well aware of these types of frauds. In 2004, news outlets such as MSNBC and several newspapers including the Baltimore City Paper ran stories of reported abuse of the relay system, such as users from international locations calling businesses in the United States to fraudulently purchase goods.

In 2012 the FCC mandated that all people who wish to use the IP Relay services must sign up with a geographic 10-digit number. This process has been different depending on the providers but all required some form of identification such as a U.S.-issued ID and proof of address that needed to be faxed in or sent via email, where a team would verify the information.

T-Mobiles operation is no different. A user must submit proof of a U.S.-issued ID and proof of address. A customer service agent will manually verify identification. This may take several business days to complete because the team wants to be thorough.

Speaking of T-Mobile, To facilitate the migration of users to T-Mobile after Purple communications left operations, the FCC also established a tiered rate of $1.67 per minute for any monthly conversation minutes that exceeded 300,000.

In 2014, the overall financial pool for the broader Telecommunications Relay Services (TRS) fund reached $818 million, supporting approximately 249 million minutes of use. However, the exact revenue made exclusively by individual IP Relay operators like Sprint and Purple Communications was not publicly itemized by the FCC because providers filed their granular operational costs and revenues under strict confidentiality.

Going back to the claims of scams. Unsurprisingly, the general public is well aware of the IP Relay scams and have been for years. One such example, is a video on YouTube Uploaded on Oct 4, 2011 that shows the fraud in action and responses from AT&T and the FCC. In the video titled, Exposing the IP Relay Scam, AT&T says that they are aware that these scam calls are happening and they direct people to the FCC. They say in the video, that they report this to the FCC because the FCC makes the rules and regulations, not the providers.

The FCC responded in the video by saying that they couldn't tell who's calling from a different country but a year later, in 2012, providers had to verify registrations.

To voice concerns about the ending of this service from many providers, the National Association of the Deaf sent an email to Chairman Tom Wheeler and copied Maria Kirby of the Chairman's Office, Kris Monteith, and Karen Peltz Strauss of the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, as well as Gregory Hlibok of the Disability Rights Office, expressing concerns about the shutting down of Purple's IP Relay service, asking why the FCC would diminish the services to only one provider. In the letter, it says, "As you know, Purple Communications is leaving IP Relay and has informed the community that they are leaving because the Commission has required them to monitor the content of IP Relay calls. Consequently, many of our consumers are asking why the FCC would diminish their choice of IP relay service to only one provider and would require an invasion of their privacy during such calls."

In a response, Wheeler wrote in regards to fraudulent uses, "the value of this service for the consumers who truly need it has declined considerably in recent years because many businesses and individuals have come to routinely reject all IP Relay calls, even legitimate ones."

Wheeler writes later in the letter that "our efforts to provide a multi-vendor IP relay environment has been hindered by the failure of some providers to effectively verify the identities and eligibility of such fraudulent callers. In fact, several IP Relay companies have paid millions of dollars to settle investigations of their practices. Although there is only one Relay provider still offering these services, the departure of the other providers was not our choice.

It is unfortunate that most IP Relay providers have chosen to terminate their IP Relay service rather than work with the Commission to eliminate fraudulent calls.

This service is valuable to many, however, and the diminishing is a huge hindrance to those who need the service. Now, people have fewer phone options. As Modry succinctly puts it, choices are for the greater good. "I'm not happy about service providers eliminating IP Relay from their service array. It eliminates 'choices' for us, especially for those who do not know sign language."

How to talk about videogames (if you're blind)

2026-09-02T17:27:36Z

Throwback note.

I am fully blind now, so I listen to a lot of audio described Let's Plays so I can still enjoy the stories

Begin old piece.

One of the first things that people notice when they flip on their consoles are the catchy intro sequences; the flashy animations of the screen. Videogames have a quantified area around them that's visual. After all, so many game elements are conveyed through visual means, such as objective markers and collectables.

Usually, in a videogame review, these visual references will pop up. Pixels will be examined, judgments will be passed on art direction and the success of animated bodies. I, however, don't review visuals at all. I have to look to different aspects of a videogame to make up for this absence.

I am not totally blind but I am still unable to see most visual data, no matter how close I may sit to the TV. I was born prematurely in 1989, and this lead to my lungs not developing properly. Weighing in at a mere six ounces, the medical team who helped deliver me had to make a stark decision: Place me in an incubator and save my life with possible after-effects, or let my life dwindle into a memory. They chose to save my life and put me in an incubator. I am assuming that's what caused the blindness. Ever since I was a month old, I have lived with one good eye that has a visual acuity of 20/200 even with corrective tools, and tunnel vision, which means I have to portray a new kind of bobblehead every time I want to talk to three different people standing near me. Because I'm legally blind, I consider the long red-and-white cane I carry around to be a necessity when going out of my apartment.

My vision can be an advantage, however. In the Halo games, I am often the best sniper among my party. The scope resembles how I see things every day, so I am able to strut around the arena, shooting people with prompt agility and precision (occasionally running into walls). My focus with scopes is stellar---hence, I find sniping to be a stroll in the park, as if birds were singing to my step.

In lieu of a game's visual tellings, in the reviews of videogames I write for various websites, I focus on other components more critically than others would, components that are elevated in their presence as they more wholly inform the experience for me. I specifically examine factors that can help tie up the strand that I am missing. The music, does it compliment the story? Can you increase the font sizes in menus? Do I have the option to enable a colorblind mode? Is the crosshair used to aim my weapon easily visible? All of these questions are separate elements that any applicable videogame should offer to players whether they have a disability or not. Yet this rarely happens.

Many bad examples of accessibility can be found throughout gaming history. Those that swing the other way are few in number and it's for that reason they are worth celebrating. For instance, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) on the original Xbox is among the best RPGs for disabled players due to a number of design aspects that would be unremarkable to most. There being an icon that hovers around any interactive element is one of these. Someone with a motor disability could move the cursor on the Xbox controller to a character across the room, hit A, and the character will walk over and interact with them, all using a single button. If a player has a visual impairment, like me, they can look up to the top-left corner of the screen to see a very readable description of whatever interactive element they are focused on. There are also a dozen combat styles to consider in the game. This is easily managed by having the game pause every round, letting you set attacks ahead of time. The pressure of urgent action is removed. Once your moves are set, you can then watch it all play out with a press of the X button, while also having the option to pause with the white button. It's small considerations like those that end up being so simple but can make a videogame inclusive to everyone. Not to mention that Knights of the Old Republic also has easy-to-read captions---blue text on a black background. That detail, especially, made me feel included in the game's audience.

It's true that videogames have tried to become more accessible over the years by providing more ways to customize their experience. But the reality is videogames still have too few accessibility options. And so while I want to tell people what games they might enjoy in my reviews, my primary concern always has to be with telling readers what's accessible and why it's accessible. This is made ever more harder as lots of games have promising accessibility features yet can still prove difficult to play for a number of people. An example of this type of game is the Call of Duty series. Infinity Ward has a controller layout for Call of Duty that helps me due to my cerebral palsy. It toggles aim rather than requiring continuously holding the trigger for aiming. Unfortunately, the crosshair is so small and indistinctive that it's very difficult for me to see, so I can't tell if I am aiming on target.

One of the many other problems I find in playing games is text being the size of an ant. It's an issue that baffles me especially with the prevalence of 60-inch TVs these days. You'd think that, by now, minuscule details such as menu text would be well-considered across all games. But take Forza Motorsport 5 (2013) as example. The text size varies quite a bit, with major heading text being fairly large and in all caps, and then the message boxes using a very small typeface. These types of oversights are frustrating discoveries every time I start a new game. Another example is the mini-map in Grand Theft Auto V (2013) which, for people with a significant visual impairment, can be very hard to see. It's small as it is, then it has even smaller indicators that aren't always clear, and then the final kick in the pants is not having the option to enlarge the icons or move the map to an easier-to-see location.

To combat the challenges that most videogames present me with I've developed different ways to experience them. Easiest of which is sitting close to the TV. I sometimes also use a rapid-fire PS4 controller when there are mandatory quick time events. Then there is sound. Sound is an element all on its own that I can judge without visuals. It's so wonderful. When I play, a headset has the effect of sitting me down in the world of Sora and his friends, or placing me behind the wheel of a dashing car, or maybe sucking me into the granular details of a BioShock (2007) landscape.

The easiest games for me to play are those with vibrant, clear, and bright areas, such as Kingdom Hearts (2002). Or those with one-button maneuvers so I am not struggling with my cerebral palsy to do a quick-time event---Star Wars: Republic Commando (2005) is good for this. Games that have a lot of spoken feedback, such as Portal (2007), or turn-based combat, such as Final Fantasy X (2001) also work well for me. All of this I have had to discover for myself over many years of experimenting.

But it's not always a lengthy process. Sometimes a game clicks with me as if it were made to cater to my abilities. BloodRayne (2002) is one I remember well for this reason. I was able to adapt to the Aura Sense (a vampire-enhanced vision) quicker than any of my full-sighted buddies. I usually inverted the visuals to a high contrast setting---white text on black---when looking at any digital display, if the option was available. But using Aura Sense, Rayne blitzed through Louisiana and the future locations without any fumbling around on my part. Shocked exclamations leapt from their lips as I creatively used a mix of Aura Vision and regular vision to find an unexpected space of mastery within this game. It was a thrill, especially when my friends were asking for me to aid them through the more difficult parts that their own sight simply could not grasp.

How to convert Markdown to Shun manuscript format Using Pandoc

2026-08-24T10:17:48Z

This has been updated with better links, better commands, and some extra optional advanced configuration tutorials.

Notes about writing manuscripts in Markdown are after the conversion tutorials.

You can also find other Shun Manuscript templates on this website

Introduction.

I love Markdown. I love it so much that I’ve adapted my whole workflow around it! From writing fiction podcast scripts to drafting blog posts, it’s just pure plain text, and I love it because it’s so portable and universal.

I wanted to write Markdown manuscripts and then convert them to Shun format industry standard documents. In short, I’ve figured out how to do it, but it’s a very involved process. If just opening up Word or otherwise works for you, do that. Seriously, don’t try to adopt this workflow unless you really, really, love writing in Markdown as much as I do.

Because I’m a Windows user, the below is going to be Windows focused.

I write all my stuff in Markdown and then convert it to other formats using Pandoc. This way, my work is very portable, and I don’t have to transfer every single Macro to new computers. Text files are much smaller than document files so they don’t take up space in my cloud drives.

Requirements.

The below, though, will definitely take some time to set up. It requires you knowing Markdown basics, being comfortable with using the command line and downloading things from the internet and installing programs, as well as working with styles and editing styles in Microsoft Word.

JAWS tutorials for Microsoft Office are here and NVDA tutorials for Word are here

A Microsoft Word Styles tutorial is here

Getting started with Powershell is a great basic tutorial, enough so you understand what we will be doing below.

For the command line, we’re going to use PowerShell for this because it’s more versatile.

If you’d rather use templates for Word instead of writing in Markdown, Shun made templates and I made modern versions of his templates for Word

Let’s get started!

Downloading Pandoc.

Before we do anything, download Pandoc for your operating system and install it.

Then, make your Pandoc data directory folder.

Alternatively, you can run this command in Windows Powershell to install Pandoc and make a data directory folder, something you will need.

winget install -e --id JohnMacFarlane.Pandoc; New-Item -Path "$env:APPDATA" -Name "pandoc" -ItemType Directory; CD CD $env:APPDATA\pandoc

If you use Chocolatey, the below command will install it for you.

choco install pandoc; New-Item -Path "$env:APPDATA" -Name "pandoc" -ItemType Directory; CD CD $env:APPDATA\pandoc

After you install Pandoc, restart your computer. Now, you should be good to go.

Use my Pandoc templates instead of making your own

Download my Pandoc reference templates here or make your own below.

If you want one command that will download all of my templates, use the below command to download Pandoc, make a Pandoc data folder, then download all the pre made templates into that folder.

winget install JohnMacFarlane.Pandoc; $d="$env:APPDATA\pandoc"; if(!(Test-Path $d)){New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $d | Out-Null}; @("https://github.com/rkingett/writertools/blob/8a7a4cda92ad337bb5efecb512643a681b179fa8/Pandoc%20templates/story.docx", "https://github.com/rkingett/writertools/blob/8a7a4cda92ad337bb5efecb512643a681b179fa8/Pandoc%20templates/novel.docx", "https://github.com/rkingett/writertools/blob/8a7a4cda92ad337bb5efecb512643a681b179fa8/Pandoc%20templates/ShunNewPagesLibreOfficeTemplate.odt") | ForEach-Object { Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$_`?raw=true" -OutFile (Join-Path $d ([System.Web.HttpUtility]::UrlDecode((Split-Path $_ -Leaf)))) }

You can also download my whole templates directory here and move them as you see fit, later.

After running the above command, all the templates are in your Pandoc data directory so you only need to convert stuff with commands like the below.

If you rename something, reference.docx, you won't need to specify the template when converting. You could just use a command like this command.

pandoc -s Draft.md -o Book.docx

To use a particular template in question, reference it directly in your convert command, like the below. The below automatically looks in your Pandoc data directory

pandoc -s Draft.md --reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx -o Book.docx

Otherwise, make the templates yourself below!

Creating your own Shun Manuscript templates.

The below sections will walk you through, step by step, on making your own Shun Manuscript Pandoc reference templates.

If you don't want to go through the process of making your own Shun reference templates, download all of my templates, here and then unzip them into your Pandoc data directory

This method requires a lot of setting up, but it’s going to be worth it in the end. You will only need to set this up once. After you set it up, you can just make copies of your reference document.

First, make sure your Pandoc data directory is created

then, get acquainted with Pandocs commands with this getting started page. All commands start with -Pandoc, and are usually one line for this tutorial.

Pandoc reference files.

The first thing we’re going to need to do is make a reference file for Microsoft Word. When exporting into a Word format, Pandoc references templates so it knows how to style your outputs.

It can’t reference any random template, though. It needs to reference a template based on its structure. This is why we need to make our own template.

Navigating to make your reference template.

In order for this to work, we need to make a Pandoc User Data directory folder. after the Pandoc installation.

Here is a Powershell command that makes a reference document after making a user data directory, the below command will first make a user data directory, then go into the directory, then make a reference file.

New-Item -Path "$env:APPDATA" -Name "pandoc" -ItemType Directory; CD CD $env:APPDATA\pandoc; pandoc -o reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx

You can also do this step by step below.

Making a user data directory in Windows, step-by-step GUI version.

Once Pandoc is installed, Open up, Run, by pressing, Windows key plus R.

After the Run dialog opens, put this.

%APPDATA%

Press enter.

Press, Control, Shift, N, to make a new folder inside of this AppData folder. Call it Pandoc

Now, open up Powershell and the below command will first navigate to your Pandoc directory you just created, then make a reference document, all with one command.

CD $env:APPDATA\pandoc; pandoc -o reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx

Or, open up Powershell in this user data directory with Windows Explorer.

Press your applications key or Shift F10 on the folder then go down to powershell, then open here as administrator.

Or you can select, copy as path, then open up powershell, type, CD, then hit paste.

After opening up powershell above or doing it first then navigate to where your Pandoc user data folder is or any directory where you want to store templates. To navigate to the Pandoc user data folder quickly, you’d do this,

CD $env:APPDATA\pandoc

CD in command line speak means, change directory. If you have an external hard drive, you’d first enter that external hard drive by typing,

CD DRIVELETTER, where DRIVELETTER is the letter of your actual drive.

If you keep everything on your computer, you need to enter the full path after the, CD, command. For example, to get to the desktop, you could use,

CD $home\Desktop

Alternatively, you can open up a powershell window at any location from Windows explorer.

To open powershell at any location, navigate to the folder you want to store your templates and manuscripts in. It works best if everything is in one folder, but we’ll worry about that later.

In the address bar, type,

Powershell

And hit enter. No spaces should be between power, and shell.

Now that powershell is open where you want to have it, Let’s make a reference document.

Generating a generic Pandoc reference document.

To make a reference document, you’d type,

pandoc -o reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx

To make a LibreOffice reference document,

pandoc -o reference.odt --print-default-data-file reference.odt

After your reference document is created, open up your reference document in Word or LibreOffice Writer.

Editing styles in Microsoft Word.

In the past, I had you edit one style at a time, but editing the, normal style, will be the fastest way, leaving us to only change some other things such as changing our heading styles.

Use this guide to get acquainted with styles and editing styles before continuing. so that the line spacing is double, first line is indented 0.5 inches, and the font is 12 PT, Times New Roman.

The easiest way to edit the styles with a keyboard is to do the following.

After your reference document is open in word,

Press control+alt+shift+s to open the "Styles" pane.
Press the up and or down arrow until you find, normal.
Press, either, your applications key, if you have one, or, Shift F10. A context menu should open up.
Arrow down to, Modify, then press enter.

If your cursor is on a style in the document, control+alt+shift+s to open the "Styles" pane should have you landing on that style in the styles pane.

Normal style attributes to change.

Once the Modify style dialog box is open, tab to the font ComboBox. Change it to Times New Roman.

Tab to change the size to size 12.

Press, Alt O, to open the format menu. Go down and select, paragraph.

Change the below attributes.

Font: Times New Roman, 12 pt.
Alignment: Left-aligned (do not justify Shunn manuscripts).
Spacing Before: 0 pt.
Spacing After: 0 pt.
Line Spacing: Double.
First Line Indent: 0.5 inches (Set via Alt + S to skip to the special combo box, then arrow down to select, first line. Tab and enter 0.5 in that edit field if it is empty.

Tab to the, okay, button. Press enter. You should land on another okay button. Remember, our modify dialog is still open, so we need to close this one too by pressing enter on, okay.

After editing the Normal Style, save your edited reference document before we move on to fixing the remaining styles.

Fixing our heading styles in our reference document.

Because we edited the, normal, style, now we need to fix our headings.

If you didn't close your document, press F6, to navigate to the styles. Arrow up and down until you get to, heading 1.

Press your applications key, or Shift F10, to open the context menu. Arrow down to the modify option and press enter to modify the style the same way we modified the normal style.

Heading 1 style attributes to change.

Font. Times new Roman.
Size. 12.
Alignment. Centered.
Spacing Before: 144 pt. This makes the chapter heading start a few inches down from the top, which looks nice.
Spacing After: 24 pt. This puts a clean break between the heading style and the text body.
Line spacing. Double.
Page Break Before: Checked (Found under the Line and Page Breaks tab). To switch tabs, press Control tab.

Heading level 2 values to change.

Font. Times new Roman.
Size. 12.
Alignment. Centered.
Space Before: 24 pt (Inserts exactly one blank double-spaced line above the sub-heading).
Space After: 24 pt (Inserts exactly one blank double-spaced line below the sub-heading).
Line Spacing: Double.

Changing the top headers on pages.

Having the page headers nicely done will help out editors and agents that read on electronic devices.

Before typing anything, you must tell Word to leave the first page blank.

Press Alt + N, then H, then E to open the header area. Your screen reader will announce that you are in the header.
Press Alt + J, to open the Header options ribbon menu.
Press, A, to enable, different first pages. Your screen reader will say, different first page on.
Press page down until you hear "header section, page 2, or "Header - Section 1" or "Header page 2"

Step 2: Set Right Alignment and Add Your Last Name

Shunn format requires the header to sit on the right side of the page.

Press Ctrl + R to right-align the paragraph. Your screen reader may say "Align Right" or confirm the change.
Type your Last Name followed by a forward slash and a space.

For example

Smith /

Step 3: Insert the Automated Title Property

Instead of typing your book title manually, insert a field that updates automatically when you convert from Markdown.

Press Alt + N to open the Insert tab.
Press Q, then A (or use your screen reader to search for Quick Parts in the Text group).
Press Arrow Down to highlight Document Property and press Right Arrow to expand the menu.
Arrow down until you hear Title and press Enter.
Word inserts a dynamic field block. Press Right Arrow once to move your cursor past this field box.
Type a space, a forward slash, and another space. (Your text line now should read: Last Name / [Title Field] / ).

Step 4: Insert the Automated Page Number Field

Why type page numbers manually when Word can automatically assign them. More than not, people will want page numbers so it is best to add them now.

Make sure you inserted a, space, then a, slash, after we inserted our title field.
Press Alt + Shift + P. This is the global Microsoft Word shortcut to insert a dynamic page number field instantly at your cursor location.
Your screen reader won't say anything but we can review it by pressing the left and right arrow keys. You should hear the current page number (which should be "2").

Step 5: Verify and Exit

Press Up Arrow or Home to read the line with your screen reader. It should read exactly like this: YourLastName / Your Book Title / 2
Press Page Up to check the first-page header. Ensure your screen reader says it is completely blank.
Press Escape to exit the header view and return to editing your main document template.

Conclusion.

Now be sure to save it! You are done! YAY!

You can name it, reference.docx, if you want Pandoc to use this template by default.

Commands to use the templates.

Regardless of which method you picked, downloading my templates or making your own via styles, now you need to use them.

If you haven't done so already, make your life a billion times easier by putting all the templates in your Pandoc data directory

After the templates are in the Pandoc data directory, now it's time to use them!

How to specify reference templates.

If you changed the name of your reference document, you will need to tell Pandoc what reference document to use every time.

We would do this by directing Pandoc to it with this addition.

--reference-doc=ChangeName.docx

Since I am on Windows, I always just specify the Pandoc data directory anyway, like this in Powershell.

--reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx

Conversion commands.

After you've written something in Markdown, open Powershell.

There's two ways to tell Pandoc what to convert, where to convert. The easiest way is to provide the full input file and output files along with paths.

Let's say you keep everything in your My Documents folder. The below command will tell Pandoc to go into your documents folder and convert the file.

pandoc -s "$home/documents/Draft.md" --reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx -o "$home/documents/Book.docx"

If you renamed a reference document as, reference.docx, the command doesn't need to tell Pandoc what reference document to use. Pandoc will use the 'reference.docx' template by default.

pandoc -s "$home/documents/Draft.md" -o "$home/documents/Book.docx"

But what if you wanted to navigate to the directory first.

We can change directories in Powershell with, CD.

The easiest way is to find your folder, hit your applications key, and then click, copy as path.

Then, now that path is copied to the clipboard, just type, CD, in Powershell, then hit paste, then enter.

Now we are in your directory, you would use a command like the below because we are already in our desired directory, so no need to specify the full file paths

pandoc -s Draft.md --reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx -o Book.docx

If you renamed your template file, reference.docx, you don't have to tell Pandoc what reference template to use. We can just use a command like the below, excluding the, reference doc = portion.

pandoc -s Draft.md -o Book.docx

Extra tutorials and optional enhancements.

Editing styles in LibreOffice Writer.

I am a Word user more than a LibreOffice user but the below should be a decent guide on editing the style in the reference document.

To edit your LibreOffice styles for writer, do the following with the keyboard.

Learn about styles in Writer here. the important style types are the paragraph styles.

After your ODT reference file is created, open the reference file in LibreOffice Writer.

Press, Alt, P, Papa, to open the edit style dialog box.

At the top, you should see tabs. Pressing Control Tab to cycle through these should work but if it doesn’t work for you, shift tab until your screen reader focus lands on the tab row at the top.

Switch to the, indents and spacing, tab.

tab until you hear, First line: 0.00″

Change the numeral to 0.50. It should now say, First line: 0.50″

Tab until you hear, line spacing option pane ComboBox. Change it to double.

Apply the changes, and then save your reference document.

The font style and font size are already where they should be, but if you wanted to edit other styles to match your newly edited style, you can edit all styles by pressing F11.

If editing other styles, I’d change the, first line, style to match the edited paragraph style. If you don’t want to edit other styles, you can save the reference document and close LibreOffice.

Creating new Chapter files.

I often times split longer projects up into separate files. I am a lazy person though so I always have the computer make me a batch of files at one time.

1..10 | ForEach-Object { New-Item ('Chapter{0:D2}.md' -f $_) }

Sorting and renaming multiple files for Pandoc.

If you made your files by hand, instead of having the PC make new files for you, sometimes they can get out of hand and if we try to convert stuff without the order correct, Pandoc won't know what chapter comes first in the sequence so we need to make it easier for Pandoc to know what comes before what.

The below command will sort all Markdown files.

Get-ChildItem *.md | Sort-Object CreationTime | ForEach-Object -Begin { $i = 1 } -Process { Rename-Item $_.FullName -NewName (("{0:D3} - {1}" -f $i, $_.Name)) ; $i++ }

The below will change all text documents to .MD files and then sort them.

Get-ChildItem *.txt | Sort-Object CreationTime | ForEach-Object -Begin { $i = 1 } -Process { $newName = "{0:D3} - {1}" -f $i, ($_.BaseName + ".md") ; Rename-Item $_.FullName -NewName $newName ; $i++ }

The below sorts your Markdown files if you did not use any numbering at all.

Get-ChildItem *.md | Sort-Object CreationTime | ForEach-Object -Begin { $i = 1 } -Process { $cleanName = $_.Name -replace '^\d+\s*-\s*\d+\s*-\s*|^\d+\s*-\s*', ''; $newName = "{0:D3} - {1}" -f $i, $cleanName; Rename-Item $_.FullName -NewName $newName; $i++ }

Merging multiple files into one book with your Shun template.

Before reading the below, make sure that nothing else is located in the chapter hub, the place where all your chapter files will go.

The easiest way I’ve found of merging multiple files into one book is to put your custom reference document in the User data directory so that Pandoc uses the document every time it converts to Docx.

If you want to split your chapters up into separate files, you need to specify each input file name, in order, so that it will merge all the files into one document in order.

The easiest way of making sure multiple files stays in order for Pandoc is to name all your files something like,

01Prologue.md

Make sure files start with a numbered sequence, like...

001

0001

00001

Let’s say you have a folder called Book. Inside of that folder, you have Markdown files. The below command works well if all files are in the same folder, named and sorted correctly.

pandoc -s (Get-ChildItem *.md).FullName --reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx -o Book.docx

If you have a directory of other file types that you want to merge into one Markdown file, use the below command.

pandoc (Get-ChildItem _._).FullName --wrap=none -o final.md

Alternatively, you can use the below command to rename all files in a directory sequentially by date, then concatenate, or merge, all the reorderd files in a directory. The below Powershell command will rename all files in a directory sequentially by date created and then merge them with Pandoc.

Get-ChildItem _._ | %{Rename-Item $ _-NewName ('{0}{1}' -f $_.LastWriteTime.toString("yyyyMMdd-hhmmss"), $_.Extension)}; pandoc (Get-ChildItem _._).FullName --reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx -o final.docx

The semicolon in the above is intentional. The above command performs two commands one after the other.

Finally, alternatively, you can also list them one at a time. To list them all one at a time, make sure you specify each text file in the command. For example,

pandoc -s -o Book.docx ch1.md ch2.md ch3.md ch4.md ch5.md

Using a manifest to convert multiple files.

I like manifests because if you have a lot of folders inside of a chapters folder, as an example, a manifest is the easiest way to keep all of that clean and in order.

I typically have a project folder, and then have characters in 1 folder, chapters in another, and notes in a notes folder inside of that project folder.

The below will check for all files in a Chapters folder, make the manifest, then compile based off that manifest.

To one command one at a time, run the command before the, &&

(Get-ChildItem -Path .\chapters -Recurse -File -Filter *.md | Sort-Object DirectoryName, Name).ForEach({ "/chapters/$($_.FullName -replace '^.*\\chapters\\', '' -replace '\\', '/')" }) | Out-File -FilePath .\manifest.txt -Encoding utf8 && pandoc @manifest.txt -s --file-scope --reference-doc=$env:APPDATA\pandoc\novel.docx -o "Book.docx"

Converting multiple DOCX files into Markdown.

Just in case you wanted to convert any directory of Docx files to Markdown, and the order doesn’t matter, use the below command after navigating to the directory containing the files in power shell.

gci -r -i *.docx |foreach{$md=$_.directoryname+"\"+$_.basename+".md";pandoc -f docx --wrap=none -s $_.name -o $md}

The above will make Markdown versions of your Docx files. It won’t merge all of them though, only make an MD version of your Docx files in the folder.

If you wanted to merge, or concatenate, all files in a directory with Powershell, make sure the files are named in sequential order.

If you want to rearrange and rename all files in a directory then merge them with Pandoc, use the below command, including the semicolon.

Get-ChildItem _._ | %{Rename-Item $ _-NewName ('{0}{1}' -f $_.LastWriteTime.toString("yyyyMMdd-hhmmss"), $_.Extension)} && pandoc (get-item _._).FullName --wrap=none -o final.md

I personally prefix all of mine like this, 00.

It reads like this.

001

002

003

After all files are where you need them to be, merge all files in powershell with this command.

pandoc (get-item _._).FullName --wrap=none -o final.md

Using prosegrinder's scripts on Windows.

This directory of prosegrinder's scripts does some extra things, such as splitting chapters and otherwise.

First, download the latest zipped script directory from this page.

Extract the folder to a folder where you’ll remember it.

Open up powershell and then navigate to this folder, the unzipped script folder.

Alternatively, you can navigate there using Windows Explorer. Navigate to the folder and then type, powershell, in the address bar.

Inside this folder, you can change the test folder to work, or BookDraft, all one word, or anything you want. The simplest thing to do is just use the test folder to store your manuscripts and short stories.

Inside the test folder, you’ll find a short folder and long folder.

Go into each folder, open up each first MD file in notepad, and edit the YAML data at the top. You’ll only need to do this once. Change all contact information to your own contact information.

After you change your contact information and delete the sample text below the YAML data, save the documents and then close the files after deleting all the sample text below the YAML data.

Now, all you need is the below commands. You can even split your book up into separate documents and merge them all with one command.

All of the below commands will output your output files to your desktop.

To convert single files, you’d use the command below, making sure to tell Pandoc where your manuscript file is.

If you wrote everything in one long file, use the below command, replacing name’s as needed.

.\bin\md2short.ps1 -overwrite -modern -output $env:USERPROFILE/Desktop/Book.docx './test/long/Book.md'

If you created a short story, use the below command, replacing name’s as needed.

.\bin\md2short.ps1 -overwrite -modern -output $env:USERPROFILE/Desktop/ShortStory.docx './test/short/story.md'

With this script, you can merge all files in a folder in order. When saving files to a folder, or renaming files, make sure to save the files with sequential numbers. Like this,

0010 intro.

0020 Start.

0030 END.

The important thing is to have the numbers at the beginning the same length, and make sure they are in sequential order.

For longer projects with multiple chapters, after all chapters have name’s in sequential order, use the below code.

.\bin\md2long.ps1 -overwrite -modern -output $env:USERPROFILE/Desktop/Book.docx './test/long/*.md'

Convert DOCX to Markdown.

If you wanted to convert a file to plain text and or markdown, use the below command. Even if you type Markdown syntax into a plain text file without the MD extension, Pandoc will still convert it correctly later.

pandoc -s draft.docx --output draft.md --wrap=none

Working with track changes in plain text.

There might be cases where you need to work with track changes but you want track changes to work in your text editor.

I explain in greater detail about this in my plain text workflow explanation but if you just want some commands to use, use the below.

pandoc -s draft.docx --output draft.md --wrap=none --track-changes=all

The above command prints all suggestions and comments, but does not accept or reject anything.

If I want to accept everything and just read the changed output as plain text, I use,

pandoc -s draft.docx --output draft.md --wrap=none --track-changes=accept

The above accept command doesn’t include comments in the output so if I want to read comments as plain text but exclude all the suggestions, I accept all suggested changes in Microsoft Word by pressing, accept all and stop tracking, in the document. I then save and close the document. With Pandoc, I then put,

pandoc -s draft.docx --output draft.md --wrap=none --track-changes=all

Other resources.

Some notes about writing manuscripts in Markdown.

Your chapters are going to be headings, so, if you want to make a new chapter heading, you’d just write, either of the below depending on your preference.

If you want to make all chapters a heading level 1, use one #

If you want chapters to be heading level 2, use two ##

For example, if you wanted all chapters to be level 1 headings, you’d write,

# Chapter 1.

If you wanted all chapters to be heading 2, you would write it like this,

## chapter 1.

To automatically convert "dumb" quotes into "smart" quotes, as well as turning fake em-dashes — the kind made with two hyphens — into real em-dashes (—), and turning three periods (…) into ellipse, add the below to any of the above commands for outputting books and other documents,

--smart

I hope this helped someone! It can take a lot to set up, but when you do get it set up, you can just write in plain text, and convert it to a beautiful, formatted, document in seconds!

A Thermodynamic Failure of the Soul

2026-08-18T17:49:39Z

Mood: Tired. Just tired of it all.

The air always tastes of exhausted ozone and venture capital these days. It's a cloying stench that's polluting the beautiful bedrock of society.

Tech Bros are currently engineering the loudest, most abrasive reality possible. They have enacted Techno-fascism in my country and other countries. They are building a surveillance state so privacy will become a privilage. They build massive data centers that vibrate the bedrock of quiet neighborhoods. They siphon water from Black and Brown throats to cool their servers. They shred the bindings of ancient, rare books to ingest the tactile history of our humanity into their algorithmic maws; and they genuinely believe they are doing us a favor. They preach disruption while they strip-mine the earth, and they exploit the worker, and they compress the rich, jagged friction of human culture into a sterilized, predictive slurry, and they have the audacity to sell it back to us as innovation.

I hate them. I hate the venture capitalists in their fleece vests who talk about disruption while they actively manufacture social rot. Their entire industry is a closed-loop thermodynamic failure: generating massive heat and noise to produce absolute nothingness.

Our society is so saturated with the slop that realities are being warped—twisted into something that won’t trust anything because we will no longer believe we can.

It's happening within my circles. Trust in skills is being eradicated. It's utterly terrifying.

A writer friend recently sent me an email dripping with praise. He gushed over my developmental edits on his fantasy manuscript. My feedback was funny. My feedback was honest. My feedback was developmental juice that didn't have any trouble asserting its flavor.

He praised the wit, and he praised the heavy, resonant impact of the feedback. Then he begged to know what Large Language Model I used to achieve such perfection.

Because he gave his manuscript to others that used an LLM, he assumed that I had outsourced his previous draft to algorithms. He was shocked to encounter the actual gravity of human effort.

My pulse hammered a heavy, syncopated rhythm against my collarbone, an ironic showing of human insult

Angered by his assumption, I replied instantly.

"I used my fucking brain!"

While many in the blind community use LLMs unapologetically and proudly, I know people who do not enjoy using these disability dongles but they continue to use these large language models out of sheer, grinding necessity. I know blind peers who code software through an LLM because ableist developers refuse to code structural accessibility into their applications. I know blind individuals who strap corporate hardware to their skulls to decode their environments independently. I know Deaf individuals who rely on machine learning to translate the kinetic poetry of ASL into a spoken frequency. I know neurodivergent folks who use algorithms to navigate the exhausting labyrinth of corporate communication.

The tech industry treats this disabled survival as free marketing. They frame themselves as saviors while exploiting the marginalized community they actively helped to disenfranchise. These systems are massive, energy-draining disability dongles. They are a shoddy bandage applied to a canyon that capitalism dug in the first place.

My war is not with the disabled individuals finding a way to survive the crushing weight of technoableism. We do what we must to navigate a hostile architecture.

But my skills are my own. My craft is a muscle I tore and rebuilt and tore again.

I sheared his assumption down to the bedrock. I did not use a machine to feel the rhythm of his story. I did not ask an algorithm to map the emotional topography of his characters. I engaged the raw, jagged, beautiful machinery of my own consciousness.

I will never apologize for celebrating humanity. I have said it before, and I will say it again, Tech Bros can fuck off.

Community will outlast their server farms. The resonant hum of human solidarity will persist long after their venture capital dries up. We hold the real power. We hold each other. Why? Because we fight for each other. We love. Because we care. That is something they will never be able to vanquish, no matter how hard they try.

If you enjoyed this rant, you might enjoy Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Audible Exclusives limit disabled audiobook fans like me

2026-08-11T11:25:00Z

Throwback notes.

This was previously published on the Libro FM blog. I've edited one word, and have chosen not to link to the audiobook I am mentioning because of what surfaced about this author in 2026.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I have a list of audiobooks for almost any reading taste. Comic books are a different story, though. Because I’m totally blind, and am just now learning grade-two Braille, I haven’t found many accessible comic books I can read offline.

Graphic Audio is a publisher that often adapts comic books into elaborate audio productions. ‘Movies in your mind,’ they call them, but Graphic Audio doesn’t have as many titles as I’d like, due to audio publishers turning to Exclusives. One in particular really vexed me. A sighted friend suggested I check out the recently released Audible Original The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. It’s narrated by a wide cast including Kat Dennings and James McAvoy. I didn’t know it was an Audible Original. Upon looking it up, though, I went through the four stages of Audible exclusivity: shock, disbelief, denial, and begrudging acceptance.

Audible is the largest audio bookstore on the internet at the time of this writing—and I’ve shopped there before—but that was before I discovered the joy of independent bookstores and the efficiency of local libraries. Sure, I have the National Library Service for the Blind, as well, but they don’t have the things I’m looking for half the time. I’m very partial to queer-friendly books, powerful books about Black lives, and intricate snippets found in asexual anthology collections. NLS doesn’t have a lot of these offbeat topics, so I usually download books from my local library. When that’s not an option, I often shop indie bookstores because I know my money is going back into the community, rather than a corporation that doesn’t truly value books or writers. When I shop at indie bookstores, I feel as if I’m doing real good in the world. Plus, I appreciate the work indie bookstores do that Amazon doesn’t—and probably will never do—such as showcasing new authors with book clubs, community readings, and literary events where people get together and connect.

Because I’ve stopped shopping at Audible unless I’m forced to—it really makes situations like being forced to purchase an Audible Exclusive even more apparent. Audible Exclusives all utilize DRM, which means the actual audiobook files cannot be downloaded. With Libro.fm, I can buy an audiobook and put it on any player of my choosing. Simply put: it’s mine. I bought it.

I not only enjoy shopping at Libro.fm because I currently do accessibility testing and consulting for them, but also because they are more socially aware. After the death of George Floyd, they featured many Black writers on their homepage and in their curated playlists section. I felt as if they were actively listening to the conversation and engaging with it. Plus, they feature a curated disability selection of audiobooks in their playlists section.

I’m sure The Sandman is a great adaptation. I bought it, but I didn’t really have a choice. I couldn’t check it out at the library. I couldn’t buy it at my local bookstore. I couldn’t giggle with other customers about how gorgeous some of the male voices are in this production. That community element is completely erased. To Amazon, and, by extension, Audible, I’m just another credit card. But to Libro.fm, I feel like I’m a valued customer who simply loves books.

The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and you.

2026-08-05T03:32:26Z

Mood: Wanting to throw a $30,000 prototype into a lake.

There is a feel-good genre of viral video that I call "The Inspiration Porn Industrial Complex." You know the one. It usually features a college engineering team, a dramatic piano soundtrack, and a disabled person strapped into a machine that looks like a Transformer having a panic attack.

The caption usually reads: “Students invent stair-climbing wheelchair! The future is here!”

I can't roll my eyes hard enough every time I see one of these vapid videos.

The machine—let’s call it the iClimb 3000—usually costs as much as a Honda Civic. It weighs three hundred pounds. It makes a sound like a blender digesting a brick. And watching the video, all I can feel is the phantom sensation of being strapped into that thing, suspended five feet in the air at a forty-five-degree angle, praying the gyroscope doesn't glitch and toss me down a flight of concrete steps like a sack of potatoes.

This is what we call a "Disability Dongle."

A Disability Dongle is a piece of technology that is flashy, expensive, and technically impressive, but utterly fails to solve the actual problem it claims to address. It is engineering designed for the abled gaze, not the disabled body. It is designed to win design awards, not to be used.

Silicon Valley loves these things. They love the idea of "solving" disability with hardware. It fits their narrative. If disability is just a bug in the human code, then surely they can patch it with enough servos and lithium-ion batteries.

But here is the reality they refuse to accept: My disability is not a tragedy of biology. It is a failure of infrastructure.

I don’t need a stair-climbing wheelchair that costs $30,000 and requires a maintenance crew. I need better doorknobs and or a ramp.

But a ramp is boring. You can't make investors have a hard on for a ramp that doesn't connect to the cloud. You can’t give a TED Talk about a ramp. You can’t get venture capital funding for a slightly wider doorframe. Concrete is not "disruptive." But a ramp works. It doesn’t run out of battery. It doesn’t require a software update. And crucially, it works for the parent with a stroller, the delivery guy with a hand truck, and the old man with bad knees. It is a universal solution.

The iClimb 3000 is an individualist fantasy. It says, "We don't need to change the world to fit you; we will turn you into a tank so you can conquer the hostile world."

Maybe, though, just maybe, I don't want to be a tank. I just want to go to the library.

I feel this disconnect every time a "Tech Bro" tries to sell me on the latest smart-glasses or haptic-feedback belts. I pick these things up, and they always feel the same. Cheap, clammy plastic. zero buttons except for the power button. They get hot against the skin after ten minutes. They hum with that constant electronic whine that gives you a migraine by noon.

These solutions are nothing other than costumes, the height of "performative engineering"

And while they are building these exoskeletons, the actual digital world—the one I live in—is rotting by the minute.

I use a screen reader. It is a vital tool. It is my literacy. But half the websites I visit are built with such bloated, sloppy code that my screen reader chokes on them. I try to order groceries, and the "Checkout" button is labeled "Button_Graphic_v2_Final." I try to read a news article, and an unlabelled pop-up ad traps my cursor in a loop.

Silicon Valley will spend millions developing a glove that translates sign language into speech (badly), but they won't spend ten minutes adding Alt-Text to their images. They will build a headset that describes the room to me (poorly), but they won't use semantic HTML headings so I can actually navigate a webpage.

Why? Because semantic HTML isn't sexy. You can't put "Used H1 Tags Correctly" on a pitch deck.

There is a profound arrogance in this. It assumes that the only reason I am excluded from society is because I am blind, rather than because society has made a choice to exclude me. The Disability Dongle promises that if I just buy enough gear, if I just encase myself in enough sensors and plastic, I can finally "pass." I can finally participate.

It’s a lie.

The most advanced piece of accessibility technology I own is my white cane. It costs, at the time of this writing anyway, before inflation, forty dollars. It has no batteries. It never crashes. It is a stick that extends my sensory range. It is elegant, simple, and honest.

The second most advanced piece of technology I want is a society that gives a damn.

Keep your exosuits. Keep your ultrasonic echolocation visors. Keep your prototypes that feel like wearing a toaster oven on my face.

Just fix your fucking code. Pour some concrete. And stop trying to upgrade my body when the problem is your design.

If you liked this rant, you might enjoy Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

Reject a Hit. A Series of Unfortunate Events

2026-07-31T18:26:30Z

This was previously published on Writer's Digest. The column instructed us to be a clueless literary agent. This was accepted, and I was so happy my satire was accepted, I bragged about it to the grass and to gravity itself.

The rejection letter.

Dear Mr. Snicket,

I am writing to you from the comfort of my office that isn’t tied with any secret organizations or any dastardly deeds such as littering. I have read your manuscript, The Bad Beginning, about Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, the gifted unlucky orphans. after finishing this woeful tale I have decided to reject, a word which here means, screamingly cast away your captivating prose, for the safety of households.

My associates, also not part of a secret organization and who don’t litter, and I, have mulled over this book in between stages of fright and we just don’t see how the general public would be interested in a tale of a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal the Baudelaire fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast, no matter how desperately the story needs to be told or how delightful the orphans are.

Even though the witty banter of words diverted our attentions from keeping this secret, non organization, hidden, we fear that this book, the first in a series, will be as terrifyingly common in households as unrefrigerated butter.

Imagine, if you will, the continuation of this series. This chronicle will contain horrifically witty, a phrase which here means delightedly dark, tales so indelibly horrid that the New York Times bestseller list will be unable to rid itself of them for seven years. We can't have that.

Like a bad date or the Roman Empire, all things must come to an end, as does this letter. Even though I have chosen to decline, a word which here means, ban books that may encourage critical thinking, I encourage you to seek representation elsewhere, perhaps at an agency without a secret afiliation that’s trying to hide something.

Sincerely,

the Handsomely Frightened Editor

On the Attack Helicopter story by Isabel Fall

2026-07-31T12:01:23Z

Read the story here

Read the backlash background on this Wikipedia page here

I’m sitting here remembering a short story published before the pandemic this year, in 2020. My god, that seems so long ago, but the story is still in the back of my mind, even if it feels like I’m the only one that read it sometimes.

Let’s back up, though. Clarkesworld Magazine, a very tough market to break into, published a short story by a trans writer, Isabel Fall. It should still be available in the back issue, but, if not, read the archived version here. The Wikipedia article on it sums it up okay, but it’s definitely not the same as reading it.

It was nominated for a Hugo in 2021.

The title of the story was a direct quote reclaiming a very transphobic meme. The title was called, I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter. This is important to remember. People online refuse to understand gender and gender dysphoria. They still believe that sex and gender are the same thing, which is bogus. The author wanted to reclaim that transphobia and hold a mirror up for us cis people to see.

For what it’s worth, I thought the story was very transgressive and subversive. I was extremely interested in how the military weaponized the concept of gender in the story to meet some US militaristic motive. It felt very authentic to me. Then again, I’m not trans, so can’t really say anything that can accurately speak for trans people. I’m just an ally. An imperfect one, but an ally, nonetheless.

What drew my attention, though, was the fact the author pulled the story from the magazine because of bullying and harassment, with people, who most likely didn’t read the story, going as far to say her birth year, 1988, was proof that they were a Nazi signaling Hitler.

Let’s be clear, though. Many people had different reactions to the story. Some trans people loved the story. Some trans people hated the story. I’m not here to say who’s right and who’s wrong, as that’s not my place. I do, however, wish the story had not been taken down.

I guess what I mean to say is, I wish the author didn’t remove the story. It, in its own way, was very progressive art. It’s how art should be handled, with sensitivity readers, as Neal did with the story. The sensitivity care is just the icing on top of a very controversial but thought-provoking cake.

My problem with its removal is the fact that this story had a lot of care devoted to it. I’m well aware meticulous creations can be used as a weapon, as well. Even though I know craft can be used as a weapon to hurt fellow minorities, I’d still want the offensive art to remain up so we can point at it, articulate how it’s harmful, and then create something better. I want to learn from the conversation the art provokes, not necessarily the controversial art itself.

I do have my limits, though. I object to lazy art that aims to exploit. American Dirt comes to mind. Then again, the very concept of laziness is subjective. Just because I think American Dirt was a lazy cash grab, there are genuine people that liked the book.

I think a lot about learning and how people learn. How do I learn about trans people, as a cis person? I learn from beautiful art and ugly art. I learn about the trans experience from media that makes trans people angry. I’m not learning about trans people because of this poorly designed media, for example, but I’m learning from actual trans people responding to the trashy portrayals and from the better art they produce. I’m actively listening. Art makes us listen to each other, even if the art is too woke for the masses.

Critique of lazy art is the most valuable lesson anybody can give. Even though Fall’s particular story wasn’t lazy, it still sparked a, rightfully, furious discussion about Own voices work. The debates allowed me to learn about the complex world that trans people have to navigate on a daily basis.

The story didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know. I do think there are things that shouldn’t be debated, period. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary people are valid, as well. Because the story was controversial, though, it allowed me to get a three-dimensional glimpse into the struggles and celebrations of trans people. It helped to solidify that there’s no one way to be a minority.

In the blindness community, by contrast, we love to point fingers at each other. Our community is so immature we believe a singular person speaks for the whole community. If a person doesn’t know Braille, for example, many others in the community lay in bed at night wishing this lazy blind person would just hurry up and die because, after their death, we can look better in the eyes of a society that wants us to stop existing. We don’t nearly have the political Strength as the PoC community has. We don’t treat each other like family like the LGBT+ community. In the blindness community, there’s only one way to be visually impaired and that’s a way that makes us look good. Or else. We haven’t learned there’s many ways to be a visually impaired person.

The reason why I continue to celebrate art, especially visually impaired creators, is because I know that, eventually, those brilliant visually impaired creators will show us how to be blind a different way. I consume art because I, like others, forget sometimes that there’s more than one way to be Black. There’s more than one way to be gay. There’s more than one way to be disabled. Like I said, I’m an imperfect ally.

Even though the author has appeared to stop writing, I’m happy I read it. I hope to continue learning, as, I believe education is the most powerful weapon to combat fascism and hatred.

Thank you, Isabel Fall. You’ve helped me continue to grow. I hope you write again, someday, so you can teach others to do the same.

One Letter at a Time

2026-07-29T09:53:08Z

The thought of changing the world comes to me quite often, when my friends and I are deep in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign and we’re playfully bantering about what direction we should head, as I’m quietly munching on a yummy chocolate chip cookie. The thought of making the world better has risen to my mind more than once. More so, ever since I began my journey of writing letters to prisoners all around the world.

I started writing to prisoners in 2020. 2020 taught many people a bunch of things. For one thing, it taught us that power, and the rush to keep it, kills millions of people as the result of ignoring experts in your ranks who are warning you that a deadly pandemic is coming. It taught us that while there are bread lines a mile long, corporations will make trillions of dollars and pretend to understand what people are going through. 2020 was also the year we learned the value of human beings, not material items, or capital. It may seem like that’s not the case, as materialism has since become an even more destructive force, but it’s true. Many of us learned it, me included.

When I was growing up, I heard people say, “I value men that are tough and resilient against obstacles.” I didn’t even know where to begin with comprehending that because I knew I didn’t fit that mold. I cried when dogs died in movies. I hugged everybody and told them I loved them. I sobbed with joy when others finally got their well-deserved happy ending. In society’s eyes, I was, and still am, the weak one.

I’ve since learned that there are many different kinds of strength and power in the world. Humans have all kinds of strengths and power, both visible and invisible. It’s not about just lifting weights; humans have the ability to listen and learn.

Everybody can learn something. Anything. It may just take some people longer because of a disability or similar. Still, the fault isn’t with the individual, it’s with society because society refuses to give people a second chance; or, in a more microscopic example, society doesn’t willingly let differences flourish, as with Disabled and other marginalized people all around the globe.

My own journey is constantly in flux. Just as I’m sure a lot of people are, I’m just trying to figure it all out. I’ll think I have all the answers, and then, just like magic, I’ll learn something new.

I’ve learned that true strength and grit is the ability to understand and do better. If people can understand why they did something wrong and what they can do in the future to eclipse the pain they’ve caused, I don’t see any reason to keep the death penalty alive.

Recently, I took a chance on people society is more than eager to toss away. Prisoners. I figured that we were in the same boat, actively shunned by society at large. I started writing to prisoners because I assumed they would be far more understanding and empathetic than any corporation or entity.

I was right. It started out with a few one-page letters back and forth, with me telling them about my blindness, cerebral palsy, and stutter. They’d tell me about their favorite TV shows and hobbies and what makes them laugh throughout the day. Soon, introductory letters grew to multiple pages of detailed experiences and thoughts and feelings about our two different worlds. Without fail, we all found common ground, somewhere, without apps begging us to try this new promotion.

I get more than just a companion through my letters to incarcerated people. I’m learning just how ruthless the industrial prison complex is. How the system loves to, once again, punish people, especially those with dark or brown skin, a foreign accent, or a nontraditional body. Day by day, I’m getting a glimpse of what it’s like inside. It’s a carefully crafted machine of punishment rather than rehabilitation.

There are people in prison that have fully come to terms with what they’ve done. I read it in their letters. They are not shy about any of it. They also want to become better people. They want to keep up their education.

I’ve connected with extremely open-minded people. My disabilities never get in the way of us talking about books, politics, love, and more. Our letters are candid discussions, tears, and even laughter. Many I converse with are on death row or have life without parole.

Every federal killing makes me really take a good hard look at people and their strengths and weaknesses. Even though these people have done wrong, I believe they are some of the strongest people I know and shouldn’t be killed because a powerful man of the state wants to uphold a semblance of law and order.

Taking someone’s life never changes anything. Empathy and thoughts change things. Taking someone’s life away doesn’t teach people how to be good citizens. It just teaches people to be afraid of the collective good so much that they only think about the individual and nothing more.

There was a brief period wherein I had doubts. How could my mere words change someone’s life? What could the meandering thoughts and feelings of a person from America—a country so engrained into cultures that people beg to come here—bring to the table? As it turns out, my stories provide hope to people in solitary confinement. My words quench that need for escape when a prisoner reads a lengthy letter about what having a fantastic night out with friends is like for me as a blind gay man. They are swept up in a night of drama, bliss, laughter, and even tears, and by all of these feelings bubbling to the surface, they’re also understanding, day by day, my own life and experiences. With each feeling, they’re empathizing.

One day, one of my inmate friends asked if he could read one of my letters to a group. I said yes, thinking nothing would come of it. It didn’t really hit me how important my words were to people until I received a letter back from him. In part, it reads, “I decided to take you up on your offer. I took some of your letters and made a group activity out of them. We all gather around, and read them in a group, together. You touched a lot of people the other day, and you weren’t even here. We all want to say, thank you, and we love you.”

Sometimes, as I’m munching on a cookie, I’m reflective about how others perceive my words. I went back and read the letter that explained in great detail how a whole group of people jumped for joy when I got a strike in bowling the other day. I marvel at how outcasts like me are able to find their solace through letters and my stories and, yes, sometimes drama.

We all have flaws. Some are visible. Others are hidden, buried deep because our society can’t handle our needs. Even though our flaws are paramount, our strength and resilience will keep us living and loving one another for a lifetime, regardless of the crimes we’ve committed.

Nobody should have to end their life prematurely because of a bad decision. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my letter writing journey, it’s that incarcerated people do something taboo. They have the grit and bravery to open up their minds and hearts to someone on the outside. They allow me to love them and they show me that love comes in all ethnicities, genders, and orientations. They demonstrate that love truly is a kind of magic that keeps people striving for better, even if they’ve made mistakes.

I’ve come to realize that, even though I might never be in the history books, or I might never become famous, none of that is necessary to change the world. I think to change the world, we have to understand each other, and this understanding can take many forms and shapes. Through arts and crafts. Through hugs and kisses. Through hands clasping in love even when worlds are so vastly different. Everybody changes the world in small ways. You do, and I do. We all have a part to play. Maybe you feed the hungry. Maybe you make art. For the longest time, I was lost, and I didn’t know how to contribute to society. I didn’t know how to contribute to changing the world. Now, I know that my letters are doing their part. I know now that my letters give people strength to feel and love, something society claims isn’t possible if you’re incarcerated. Now, I don’t worry about how much I’m changing the world. I just change it, with one letter at a time.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy Monster by Walter Dean Myers

How Keyboard Shortcuts are my Superpower

2026-07-27T02:32:39Z

Mood: Functioning at 1000% efficiency.

I often feel a deep, confusing pity for sighted computer users.

I know, I know. You have your high-definition monitors and your colorful icons and your wallpapers of tropical beaches you’d rather be sitting on. But I have listened to you work. And frankly? It sounds exhausting.

It sounds like this: Scrape. Scrape. Drag. Lift. Scrape. Click. Pause. Scrape. Scrape. Double-click.

To me, that doesn’t sound like navigation. It sounds like trudging. You are pushing a plastic rock around a table to hunt for a specific pixel on a screen. You are playing a never-ending game of "Where’s Waldo" with your own productivity. You have to visually locate the "File" menu, drag the cursor over to it, wait for the menu to drop, scan the list, find "Save," and click it.

It takes you three seconds.

It takes me zero-point-one seconds.

Ctrl + S. Done.

When I sit down at my computer, It obeys me. I do not bow down to it. My interface is a piano of infinite keys. I don't navigate by sight; I navigate by syntax and muscle memory. And when I am in the zone, my hands are a blur of kinetic efficiency that feels less like office work and more like a concert performance.

There is a holy, tactile ecstasy in the "Keyboard Shortcut."

It starts with the home row. My index fingers find the raised bumps on the F and J keys. From there, my hands dance with the keys by executing complex chords of command that bypass the clumsy, graphical interface entirely.

Alt + Tab. My left thumb and ring finger rock together in a rhythmic seesaw. Swish. I’m in the browser.

Ctrl + L. My fingers snap down. Snap. I’m in the address bar.

Ctrl + T. New tab.

Win + R. Run command.

Sighted people need to look where they are going among the binary code, but I do not. While a sighted user is still dragging their mouse across the vast, empty desert of their desktop wallpaper to find the recycling bin, I have already emptied it, opened three documents, checked my email, and started an internet radio station of kick-ass Hip Hop beats.

My screen reader, NVDA, is the vocalist in this band. I keep his speaking rate set to a speed that most people describe as "a chipmunk having a panic attack." To me, it is just efficiency. He reads the screen at 450 words per minute. He doesn't waste time with pauses or breaths. We are a team of pure data entering my ears, syncing perfectly with the staccato clatter of my mechanical keyboard.

Clack-clack-thwack. (the thwack is the Enter key. The period at the end of the sentence.)

There is a feeling of god-like power in this. I don't have to "search" for things. I summon them. I press a combination of keys, and the application appears. I don't scroll through a webpage looking for the main article; I press H to jump through the headers until the main title rings out in my headphones. I strip away the ads, the sidebars, the visual clutter, and I consume the raw skeleton of the internet.

Sometimes, when I'm writing code or managing files, I feel like I'm in one of those hacker movies from the 90s. You know the ones—where the guy in sunglasses types furiously and says, "I'm in," while 3D shapes fly around him.

Except I’m not hacking the Pentagon. I’m usually just organizing my recipe folder or downloading a new audiobook. But the feeling is the same. The feeling is mastery.

The mouse is a leash. It tethers you to the physical limitations of the screen’s geography. The keyboard is freedom. It is a direct line from my brain to the machine’s core logic.

You can keep your 4K monitors and your ergonomic mice. I’ll be over here, eyes closed, headphones on, fingers flying across the keys, moving at the speed of thought.

If you enjoyed this flex, you might enjoy The Hacker Chronicles

Hexodius [Xbox 360 Review]

2026-07-17T04:21:01Z

The website that hosted this review is no longer online so I would like to keep it here.

The below review was written when I was sighted. I am fully blind now.

Side note, nearly 15 years later, this game seems like some serious fun now! I’d gladly go back and time and tell my younger year old self, hey, trust me, when AAA games get flooded with AI junk in the future, a game like this will be very welcome!

Game details

Version tested: Xbox 360

Also available on: PC

Developer: Brain Slap Studio

Publisher: Namco Bandai Games

Genre: Arena Shooter

The Review

Sometimes taking a trip back in time to the days of leaderboards, powerups, and an incentive to show off as you wield weapons is the breath of fresh air that the game industry needs among all the moral dilemmas, side quests, sharing buttons, and effects that cause studios to go completely bankrupt. Even though these old style games were simple in design, they had to be designed with an equal amount of care as today’s blockbuster titles.

Simple is all well and good but it’s when the simple aspects of creation feel as if they were designed just to have a finished product flaws start popping up faster than half baked cookies. Namco Bandai Games must have had a unique new year’s resolution this year when they designed Hexodius because the game plays like a half assembled arcade game.

With its blend of twin-stick shooting, exploration, and customization, Hexodius invites players to explore the vast complex, equip their drone with powerful items and upgrades, and ultimately escape the clutches of the deadly enemy droids in a blaze of laser fire but the invitation is more tantalizing then the actual party inside.

This arena style shooter tries hard to be the next Geometry Wars remake and begs the game for the foundation and salvation, but just fails on many levels. Hexodius misses almost everything it was going for. There’s a campaign nestled in here somewhere with a story to match, somewhere. I wasn’t able to learn what the story was because, I’m guessing, the story was told via the scrolling text that popped up between the stages but due to the size of the text I might as well have been reading a cuisine menu in Klingon.

The campaign opens up to a large hex-grid map — the first of six such worlds in the game that soon look so familiar the level design team could have used them in court to claim copyright infringement on each other. Despite the twiddled down content of the gameplay, this is a somewhat accessible game to the physically disabled and the colorblind. The left analog stick is used to move and the right is used to shoot. The game is not accessible to anyone with a substantial visual impairment however. It was extremely hard for me to tell the difference between myself and the enemies that came rushing at me from every which direction, showing my cackling friends just how outmatched I was even on the simplest difficulty.

There are a few minutes of fun here but the game places a huge emphasis on some things and leaves the rest of the design to wilt like dead flowers. The ship upgrading is expansive, but the level designs could make their own cases for plagiarism, and, coupled with very little enemy verity, it ultimately leaves the wonderment why so much emphasis is placed into the epic customization system.

Hexodius is an invite back to the olden days where leaderboards dominated lunch table conversations, but that’s all it is — an invite that makes your tolerance drop quicker than IQ points after watching daytime TV. Despite its ease of playability for the physically disabled, there isn’t even enough verity and content to warrant Hexodius to be a game — especially for the price it touts on Xbox Live. Gamers with significant visual impairments will have new reasons to question their eyesight, and the true nostalgia hungry fans will be vastly disappointed at the lack of content compared to other games such as Stargate and Geometry Wars

3/10.

Nihilumbra Review (PC)

2026-07-14T01:12:43Z

Sadly, the review hosting this isn’t online anymore so I decided to publish it here, on my own website.

This was back when I had vision. I’m fully blind now.

Game details

Version tested: PC

Also available on: iOS

Developer: BeautiFun Games

Publisher: BeautiFun Games

Genre: Puzzle platformer

The review.

When I’d wake up from a terrible nightmare ranging from Stephen King to Donatello from the Ninja Turtles yodeling in my shower, two questions would spring to my mind before I get my wits back. The questions would be "who am I" and "what the heck am I doing here?" as I’d lay back recovering from the shock I would begin to think that the concept of an unknown being would make an epic video game. It seemed as though no one was listening because games with shaky camera angles dominated franchises.

To my shock though, a developer has tapped into my frontal cortex and developed a game that takes familiar titles and bounces off of their foundation to make a succulent new puzzle platformer that many will underestimate because explosions don’t riddle the screen like excessive confetti. This fresh fun title is Nihilumbra.

Upon playing Nihilumbra one factor will become very apparent quicker than the horrors of global warming. The team at BeautiFun Games has played a few video games in their lifetime and they love the video game world. Evidence is splattered all throughout this graphical holiness because all the aspects that make video games tedious as tax returns are not in Nihilumbra. There are no scavenger hunts repeatedly going back and forth mind-numbingly talking to NPCs. There aren’t any extremely difficult quick time events and there isn’t an online lobby filled with people that the dictionary could use as definitions under "ill-advised".

It is hard to judge the game based off of screenshots and video previews because it’s a different kind of game that sucks the player into the void of excitement. Unlike other games taking on the role of interactive movies, you are a being in this world called Born.

As Born, I was created by a mystical dark entity called the void that was chasing me, bent on capturing me and killing me as I raced through the environments. I, also known as Born, somehow escaped the clutches of the void and now I was to embark on a quest to learn who I was, why was I created, and what my destiny held in store for me.

Throughout the game a voice that could rival any commercial voiceover relayed hints about whom I was and other things about my being and soul as well as provided hints on puzzles. It was an interesting concept that soon had me playing just to learn every facet of my being and purpose.

The story is an unexpected psychological mind warp that will immediately snatch up attention and hog it, teasing with intriguing misnomers that will soon give way to desires to learn what truth is and what sort of lies hide in this brain bath.

Traveling through the five puzzle inducing levels was the icing on top of the very gripping story. As I traversed through icy mountains, forests, caves, deserts, and a city, I was met with a barrage of challenges that would make an IQ test weep. Using the keyboard and mouse I was to paint my way through this side-scroller using colors to interact with my environment and enemies.

Each stage introduces a new color, and they are all imbued with specific properties. For example, painting blue on a surface makes it slippery. The slick ground is perfect for making running jumps go further. Once you have gained access to a color, it remains available to use.

Creativity is encouraged since there were more ways than one to take down enemies using my environment or get through puzzles to find out the Bain of my existence. The will and determination to learn so many unknown aspects about my past, present, and future stretched my creativity to new heights. This game doesn’t have any mind-blowing special effects to gawk at so the desire to play will be solely through the story — a feat that is rare in today’s gaming warehouse. The added Void mode will test creativity even further with no story voiceover, new puzzles, and tougher familiar puzzles daring for a stimulating mental challenge.

The controls are simple and this allowed me to play with minimal problems. I did die an awful lot due to the precision. For disabled gamers the boss sections, where The Void is in hot pursuit and the objective is to escape, as the Void swallows up the left side of the screen, will be the toughest parts. Along with the need for speed disabled gamers will have to quickly paint and quickly switch to needed colors to manipulate objects and this isn’t easy since the game doesn’t pause when you’re switching colors. With my cerebral palsy, I had to modify steam in order to finish the game. To overcome my particular accessibility challenges I used a USB Xbox controller to make painting a bit easier so I didn’t have to rely on friends.

The game does not have a colorblind mode so colorblind gamers will not be able to play the game independently. Even though colors can be chosen on a fixed selection by clicking on a tree branch that’s always at the top right of the screen it will be hard to memorize the colors and see where they have painted.

The accessibility solution I had to implement made it all that much more rewarding when I finished the game and had my mind blown so vehemently I immediately wanted to play the game again just to try and boost my creativity power.

With a story that will leave thought waves pulsating to the tune of the excellent writing, intriguing gameplay that breaches boundaries of immersion, and with a Wii U version coming soon that will be much more accessible for those with physical disabilities because the controller will replace a mouse, Nihilumbra is a demonstration of how video games that immerse the player in telling stories, gameplay that challenges the forefront of perception, and having puzzles that will be remembrances at lunch can never be beaten by mainstream titles — no matter how unique the fire particles get.

9/10.

On Access Trauma

2026-07-11T10:56:56Z

I experienced a trauma that my fellow disabled people encounter on a daily basis.

It was early in the morning, and I was checking my email. I got an email from someone that wanted me to consider writing about their disabled business or whatever it was. They weren’t important, so I was just about to dismiss it, but something got the better of me and I opened the email and skimmed the first line out of curiosity.

The first thing I heard was,

"75655356878796656432190.JPG."

I immediately reeled back like I’ve just been slapped across the face. I skimmed the email some more. They wanted me to look at their website. Links were displayed all throughout the email, insisting I check out this page or that page or this other page.

I had no drive to click on any of them, at all, thanks to the unlabeled image at the top of the email. If they couldn’t be bothered to make sure an image was labeled, I didn’t want to experience their attempt at an accessible website.

I deleted the email. The next email was an email from a friend. It contained an attachment to their book they wanted me to read and enjoy, but I didn’t know what format the book was going to be in because they didn’t ask me, so I sat there, pondering the gravity of converting a, most likely, untagged PDF into something I could easier navigate through with my Braille display and screen reader. How much work was it going to be to convert this PDF? I navigated to the attachments section in question and opened it. Sure enough, it was a PDF. Reacting before opening it, because I didn’t want to be disappointed, I just immediately wrote back to the friend and said,

"Can you send this to me in Microsoft Word format or plain text?"

I sat there after sending the reply wondering if I should even try to convert this or not. I went to the next email.

It was an email from my publisher, sending me my royalty statement for one of my books. This was a PDF, but, at once, flashes plagued my mind of trying to convert the previous inaccessible PDF into something that could be easily navigated. I was terrified. I didn’t want to go through that again!

I didn’t even want to deal with this now, even the sending of the inevitable reply and telling the publisher, again, that I was blind and used a Braille display and screen reader so could they send it in a different format? I knew I was retreating, and retreating fast, and the day hadn’t even started yet. As I was navigating through my other emails, I just kept having visions of a few days ago wherein I was trying to convert an untagged royalty statement holding tables and untagged charts and no headings into something readable. That one task took me the whole day and I didn’t want to go through that again. I didn’t want to spend my whole morning trying a method that previously worked in order for the conversion attempt to fail, leaving me to send it to a friend and schedule a Zoom meeting just so my royalty statement could be read. I didn’t have anybody that lived with me that could read this, and I didn’t want to schedule a video call just yet with someone, so I just tried to focus on other emails.

As I skimmed the subject lines of emails, one singular thought kept percolating, like a restaurant that always serves burnt toast or a city that never fixes its hostile pavement designs. I don’t want to open these because I don’t want to deal with the inaccessibility of the content today.

The email subjects soon became a repeating question. What access hell would I need to endure in order to read this email? Is it worth opening just to be confronted with an inaccessible email? Probably not, so why should I even bother with this one when I already experienced three inaccessible emails today?

Thankfully, my phone rings, shaking me out of my recrimination. it’s an offline friend, and he wants to know if I’d like to go to an open mic tonight. I would, but how loud would the venue be? Would there be a lot of chairs? Was the venue going to be so small that I’d end up knocking things over like last time? I didn’t want to experience that again. So, retreating into safety, into a world where I knew things were going to be accessible because I was going to make it so, even if I was going to be at home, alone, I said, not tonight.

I was retreating into access, and he knew it because he suggested we could watch an audio described movie at his place instead of going to another unfamiliar place. I knew the layout of his house, I wouldn’t need to plan ahead, or to try to save up energy for tonight. I knew I’d be in a supportive environment with the movie and dinner at his place. I knew what access I was going to encounter and the limitations of the environment. I knew the access I was going to get, and this made things far easier for me to agree to. As I said yes, though, I was trying to pinpoint my visceral refusal of the open mic earlier. What feeling was that? Why did I have such a visceral reaction when I unequivocally love open mics and open mic style events?

As I smiled to a grateful exclamation of my company tonight, filled with an audio described movie and a place where food would be cut up for me so I wouldn’t have to worry about taking to long or holding others up, I examined this feeling I was having all morning. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but I could describe it.

A visceral reaction to a hostile environment. Knowingly or unknowingly.

Flashbacks of a previously inaccessible experience, putting me back into that feeling of ache and emotional pain.

Assessing an environment long before even dipping my toe into the environment based off earlier harm with the intent of avoiding a hostile environment.

I wrestled with this feeling all morning before finally going to a search engine and typing in something I’d thought I’d never type. What are the symptoms of PTSD?

PTSD came to mind because previous encounters were shaping my current feelings. While I didn’t experience all of the symptoms or causes, still, some jumped out at me starkly.

Re-experiencing

Avoidance and emotional numbing.

Hyperarousal (feeling "on edge")

These described what I was going through, but nothing tied it to being disabled in a world that was never designed for me. Some academic papers, like this one, identified this exclusion but didn’t put a succinct word or phrase onto this. On some days, I was willing to tolerate it, to even push past it, but today, I just wasn’t having it. While spoon theory didn’t quite match up with my feeling, it was tangential. I had absolutely no more energy to fight with an inaccessible world.

At that moment, I was extremely grateful for my offline friend that immediately suggested a safe space. I guess he could hear the utter exhaustion and frustration in my voice so wanted to do his part. I wished more of my friends did that.

I then began looking up something strictly related to accessibility. Accessibility trauma. Disability related PTSD? Spoon exhaustion. I didn’t have a good word for this feeling, and none seemed to exist. After contemplation, I think I have a phrase for this feeling.

This was the opposite of Access Intimacy.

I tried on a phrase, like I was tasting the words.

Access trauma.

In truth, I think it fits perfectly. While I have a different kind of access trauma than, say, my Deaf friends, I think we can all appreciate and understand the feeling of the world constantly reminding us that the world we’re forced to participate in wasn’t designed for us.

The important thing about access trauma is that it isn’t a thing I can leap over because it will creep up again or ram smack dab into me again when I least expect it. It will be relentless, unforgiving, and not at all surprising. Throughout my whole life, I’ll be forced to confront access trauma daily, even with friends that are temporarily abled. Access trauma, or accessibility PTSD, or whatever term ends up defining this feeling, isn’t something we’ll be able to just brush off like a pernicious crumb. It’s going to remind me, over and over again, that I’m adapting to a world that isn’t designed for me and it’s going to remind me that my tricks for skirting around barriers won’t always work the next time I try a trick to get around an inaccessible world and it fails.

I don’t have a solution other than to surround myself with people that understand inadequate access and who just understand that community care can help ease the pain. Will it be perfect? Of course not! Nothing is perfect. At least, though, with community care, and interdependence care, we’re building off other’s knowledge and resources and skills. Temporarily abled people can help strengthen community and interdependence care. In fact, I wish more would, even if they’re not perfect at it. Even if they mess up the first time, they’ve got my support even if they don’t always get it right.

I haven’t figured out a good way to combat access trauma because it’s embedded into society, and I know there will be days where I don’t have the spoons to leap over the inadequate and inaccessible society I must battle every day. As of right now, I’m taking small steps that will cultivate spaces where I don’t have to battle access trauma. I don’t expect everybody to understand my hesitation when they invite me to an unfamiliar location, but I am making them listen and pay attention.

I think, when it comes right down to it, that’s the best way I can think of to really combat access trauma. Professional, personal, or sexual. While I can’t battle every inequity that comes my way, I can stop and make people understand why I’m refusing to experience access trauma again. I think that’s a form of self-care we all should take. My true friends will listen and act. I don’t know what I’ll do with the friends that refuse to hear or listen to my pain.

If you enjoyed this blog post, you might enjoy the fiction podcast Tales After Dark: Erotic Audio Dramas

Finally, there’s a comic book store for the blind

2026-07-10T19:53:27Z

This was published on Vice. It was a good journalism piece, I feel, even though I am no longer a journalist. Still, this was great because I got paid well above what I was expecting. It was my first publication where I negotiated my salary so it will always hold a special place in my career.

Now that Vice is no more, enjoy this snapshot in time.

Finally, there’s a comic book store for the blind.

by Robert Kingett.

August 9, 2016, 6:33am

Comics Empower sells and makes in-house audio adaptations of comic books for the blind and visually impaired.

I’ve been blind since birth. Growing up, I devoured novels translated into braille and adapted into audio books, but there was never an equivalent for comic books. While my sighted friends were enjoying Batman and Spider-Man comics, I became complacent with hearing about them secondhand but never experiencing the stories for myself.

Later, I would discover companies like Audio Comics and Graphic Audio, which have produced audio versions of comics. But browsing the websites that sell their audio comics can be challenging when you’re blind.

Which is exactly why Guy Hasson created Comics Empower, an online comic book store for the blind.

The Comics Empower website was designed to put blind and visually impaired customers first by providing original and adapted audio comics produced in-house, plus audio comics produced by other companies. The store is completely accessible to the blind or visually impaired using a high-contrast display or a screen reader. On the contrary, sighted people who visit the store will need to use adaptive tools and techniques to navigate or ask a visually impaired person for assistance.

I reached out to Hasson to ask him about why he created the store and what he envisions as the future of comics for the blind.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VICE: Tell me about how you got into comics.

Guy Hasson: I grew up in Israel. We didn’t really have any comics—not Spider-Man, not Superman. We just had two comics, which were both in black-and-white. One was Tarzan. I don’t remember the other’s name, but it was kind of a Tarzan rip-off, with adventures in Africa.

When I got to the United States at age 11, the first thing I bought was a Spider-Man comic book. And that’s it, I was hooked. Three years later, I was in high school, and I’d go to the used comic book store two minutes away from the school at the end of every day, where I would pick up some kind of old, cheap comic book with my lunch money.

Vice: How did you come up with the idea of making a comic store for the blind?

I was running an indie comic book company called New Worlds Comics for a year and a half, when suddenly a thought came to me: Why are there no comics for the blind? And then I figured out how to do it, how to translate everything to audio, how to build the website, how to create the store, and so on. In a month and a half, the website was up with a few comic books, just to see if they were done right. Once people reacted well to them, we were off to the races.

Vice: But you’re not blind or visually impaired, right?

No, and there was no one blind or visually impaired in my family or friends at the time who could have triggered this thought. There was no real reason for me to think of it. But once I had figured out how to do it, it was just a crime not to do it.

There are literally tens of thousands of kids, teens, and adults out there who would love to read the same comic books their sighted friends are reading and to talk to them about it, without waiting for the friends or family to read the comics to them. By accident, it turned out to be one of the most important things I’ve done in my life.

Vice: Comics Empower has created its own in-house audio adaptations of comic books. What’s the difference between those and, say, Audio Comics or Graphic Audio adaptations?

Those are really good productions. We actually sell Audio Comics productions at Comics Empower, and I hope that Graphic Audio will allow us to sell its comics as well. We’re a comic book store, not a comic book publisher—so anyone who creates great comic books can be sold at Comics Empower.

Having said that, Comics Empower does create a lot of audio productions for comics, and we do it differently from Graphic Audio or Audio Comics. They have great productions with a big cast and music and they create, as they say, "a movie in your head." Comics Empower, on the other hand, creates comic books with one actor per comic, and no music. We give the comic book experience, rather than a movie experience, going page by page, panel by panel, to give you the entire experience of reading a comic book in a way that keeps your interest going, start to finish.

We did a little poll after releasing Audio Comics, and it turned out that though people like both types, there was a large preference to the comic book experience rather than the movie experience. That actually surprised me.

Vice: How did you decide to have panel descriptions and a single narrator?

That’s how you read a comic book. There’s only one voice: the voice in your head. And you go page by page, and you go down each page from one panel to another, following the story, reading the speech bubbles, the captions, and so on. That’s the comic book experience I have, that everyone has, and that is the experience that’s inaccessible to so many people.

Vice: What is your future outlook for blind comic book writers, and why do you think that way?

We’ve had two winners for the writing competition for a blind or visually impaired comic book writer. After all, now that you can read comics, there is no reason in the world you can’t write comics. And, indeed, there are two first-place winners because their writing was really good.

One comic, Bakasura, is about a mysterious demon haunting a town in India. And the other, Unseen, is about a blind assassin. Both are very different from each other, and both are very good. There is no reason that the writers, Pranav Lal and Chad Allen, can’t sell their comics to Marvel or DC, and maybe in the future get TV or movie deals. And there’s no reason other blind or visually impaired writers can’t do the same.

Plain Language Books Help You Get More Readers

2026-07-10T19:32:24Z

A type of access in the publishing industry began swimming around my brain for the past week and I wanted to highlight why there should be more of it.

It began when I was recommending a book to a sighted friend. They wanted some book recommendations. I recommended some books, they tried the books, then they reported back,

“These were hard for me to read because of my reading struggles.”

I suggested audio books, but the words used were still too complex. I began looking for a plain language version of the book but couldn’t find any.

Plain language writing is a writing practice that broadens readership. When content creators write in plain language, a variety of ages, education levels, and disabilities can understand your writing.

People that are also learning English as a second language can benefit from a plain language version of your books.

Even though there are children’s books that are already in plain language by default, making a plain language version of your adult book will allow a broader readership to enjoy your work.

Plain language can also help in time crunches. In some cases, people might be working all day and might not have the mental strength to process your writing.

People might not have the time to read lengthy sentences or define hard words.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to find a lot of plain language versions of books. The Late Alice Wong, a fellow disabled writer, was the only writer I could find offering plain language versions of books.

Audio books are not for everybody. People could have auditory processing troubles. People could have other disabilities that prevent them from listening to books.

Publishers can drastically increase readership if they offer plain language versions of their titles.

If you’re a traditionally published author and you want publishers to consider making a plain language version of your book, talk to your agent about putting that in the contract. Access is love!

If you’re a self-published author or hybrid author, you’d have to hire a freelance plain language writer. I wasn’t able to find any for creative writing.

Below, you can find examples of plain language versions of books.

Plain language books.

Thomas Was Alone PS3 review

2026-07-07T09:40:24Z

Sadly, the website that hosted this review is no longer online, so I am posting it here.

This was also back when I had some vision. I am fully blind now.

Game Details

Version tested: PS3Also available on: PC, PS Vita

Developer: Mike Bithell

Publisher: Mike Bithell

Genre: Puzzle Platformer

The Review

Review April 4th 2014 Robert Kingett

There’s a definition to many different words tucked away in a video game dictionary somewhere. The definition is overlooked because it’s an indie title developed by one man with a mission to bring so many workable elements into a puzzle platformer that it makes some blockbuster titles begging for the same gripping emersion. The definition lies beneath the words, "accessible, rich, engaging, unforgettable, and even ambitious." Thomas Was Alone.

Thomas Was Alone is a beautifully designed game because everything about the game is really playable to disabled gamers and non-disabled gamers alike, even one-handed gamers.

Many different types of gamers will instantly enjoy the characters that are different quadrilaterals on a quest for greatness as well as discovery as they jump with whimsical observations, empowering heroic thoughts, amiable love, and a chic sense of pride with a wild mesh of beliefs, emotions, and characters narrated splendidly by Danny Wallace.

The game mechanic is very simple. The gameplay premise could hardly be simpler: each level tasks you with getting one or more colored quadrilaterals to the portal (a basic white outline) which matches its shape.) This is achieved by navigating a surplus array of mind warping puzzles, jumping from platform to platform as well as switching characters in order to get them where they should be. By jumping with the jump button, in this case, X, and switching characters with the shoulder buttons, the puzzles will soon be just as memorable as the story, even to disabled gamers because emphasis is placed on brain function rather than limb function. This makes the game far more accessible to the physically disabled than most blockbuster titles.

The visuals are easy for the visually impaired to see, with all surfaces being a black outline and the character’s stark colors and shapes, making them very distinguishable visually alongside from their personalities.\
The game is subtitled, though deaf gamers may get annoyed because the subtitles are not static. They move with the character being controlled, and this could make it hard to read the subtitles. The text, however, can be placed onto any environmental background and that will help work around that factor.

The game is memorable because Danny Wallace injects the player with many different emotions, narrative fervor, and character depth into syllables and sentences crafted with obviously careful word choice.

Players will meet Thomas, an average block that can do everything averagely with the added bonus of hilarious observation, and uncanny wisdom that sometimes annoys the rest of his friends. Chris, the block who struggles with identity and purpose more so than any other character because his weight inhibits his jumping, and who needs an endless supply of hugs to boost his tormented dormant spirit. Laura, a thin pink flat block that can bounce the other’s to new heights while dealing with the love in her heart for Chris. Claire, a blue superhero with the misleading power to float on water and have an extreme sense of resolution to aid. James, a green block that navigates the puzzles in a unique way where he sticks to the roof rather than the ground, wondering why differences are so differently viewed among the world with musings of hope and acceptance. Jon, a thin yellow stick that soars as high as his boisterous ego, and finally, Sarah, the double jumping mystical vat of weird declarations of intensions laced with power behind each thought.

Each character has their own purpose and will need to be utilized, sometimes all at once in a puzzle that utilizes all of their abilities, sometimes with only one of the many wonderful personalities.

Disabled gamers won’t have a problem with the game at all because everything is very streamlined and plain, making for vast customization types, such as using the analog stick instead of the D pad to move characters. Even people who use one-handed controllers could play this game without assistance because the challenge lies within tacking new challenges onto the brain and not the limbs with a variety of jumping puzzles. The most complicated aspect of the game is making staircases with the characters in order to progress certain characters, but those scenarios happen sporadically and don’t hinder gameplay for very long. The more it’s required the more comfortable and natural it is to do.

Thomas Was Alone gives an all-encompassing experience that’s nestled inside a marvelously crafted world of stories, friends, and jumping. Disabled and non-disabled alike will easily remember the dashing characters and elegant level designs nestled inside of a very solid framework that stands tall and strong amongst bigger titles. The numerous memorabilia sprinkled throughout this game definitely show how even the simplest of implementations can be crafted with vivid vision into something that’s both mind blowing, and inclusive for the disabled.

10/10.

My Low Vision BearBlog theme

2026-07-03T11:54:04Z

Another small update from me today. I have news! It's small news, but still, I hope the Bear Blog community can take this and use it.

I finally have a theme based on my blog in Bear Blog's theme directory!

It's called Low Vision Reader. Of course, it was made with low vision readers in mind by having large text by default, a relatively high contrast base, and more accessibility goodies.

Herman, the creator of Bear, had to make some tweaks to it so it would work best with Bear Blog, but it's up there!

I wanted to give the Bear community something since I read their discovery feed daily.

Unfortunately, I've lost the link to the initial Repository and I lost the link to the person that worked with me to make this possible but it was a team effort.

I do like the changes Bear is making, though! Bear is making Blogging and hosting static sites easy and accessible to so many people that I point new people there often when they tell me they want to blog.

None of us that worked on the theme are Bear community bloggers. I like my little space on the web, here. I do have blogs on Bear but those are not blogs. They are more like directories that can live online but wouldn't be right for the Sightless Scribbles blog. I don't blog there like others over there but still, I love the community, and the discovery feed keeps me reading daily!

I especially enjoy finding the diamonds in the Most Recent portion of the Discovery feed.

Back to bed.

Until next time, everyone.

How to make portable Passkeys

2026-05-15T13:36:26Z

The first time I heard about Passkeys I was about to email one of my dashingly swoon worthy friends. In this case it was Sean Crisden. I was about to detail the intricate specific joy of crunching down on a slice of freshly baked Apple Pie when my phone dinged.

"Hey," my friend said, "since you're a tech person, explain Passkeys to me."

And so, here I am.

Think about passwords. I mean, really think about them. The password is something that works, but you can't deny that most of the time it is a rusty bolt in a door that never quite fits its frame. It is a string of characters we bury in our gray matter like copper coins in a garden, hoping the soil doesn't shift before we need to buy our way back into our own lives.

Enter the Tech Bro. He arrives with the smell of overpriced espresso and the unearned confidence of a man who thinks "interoperability" is a dirty word. He wants to sell you a "Passwordless Future," but he wants to keep the keys in his velvet-lined, proprietary pocket. He talks about "Asymmetric Cryptography" to make you feel small, like a child being lectured on the physics of a toy he isn't allowed to break.

What they don't tell you is that Passkeys are just a better way of digital handshakes. A Passkey isn't a string of data. It's a resonance.

Imagine a cat---one of those awesome, heavy-furred creatures that knows its own worth. A Passkey is the way that cat leans its weight into your palm when you reach out in the quiet of the evening. You know what your cat feels like. Your cat knows what your soul feels like. Your device and the website perform a secret, silent handshake that tastes like cookies and smells like a fresh-pressed book. They don't exchange the "secret"; they simply verify that the rhythm of the soul matches the make of the door.

The Tech Bros want you to keep this cat in their hostile, gilded cage---Apple's garden, Google's locked room, Microsoft's sterile hallway. They want you to believe that the key must live on their servers, tethered to their whims, and subject to their "Terms of Service" (which is just a fancy way of saying "I can evict your identity whenever the shareholders get bored").

There is a better way.

To maximize the use of Passkeys, you must go against every tech advice about Passkeys ever devised. You must put passkeys into a portable database---something like a .kdbx file and place that .kdbx file in multiple places, even across multiple machines.

I love the .kdbx file, a sovereign territory that doesn't care about "Platforms" or "Ecosystems." When a site asks for the handshake, my database provides the resonance through a bridge I maintain myself. My heart does a little percussive dance whenever I hear the screen reader announce a successful login without a single corporate server being invited to the party.

Tech, and by extension, Tech Bros, hate portable things such as my trusty .kdbx file. It is independent of their servers. It is not a service they can hold hostage from me. It is a salvation of portability I control, and this drives them bananas.

The best way to utilize Passkeys on a .kdbx file is to find password managers that work with .kdbx files and support Passkeys.

It's about the democratization of the "Yes."

You don't need a degree in computer engineering to own your digital breath. You just need to realize that the Tech Bro is just a landlord trying to charge you rent for the air between your fingers. A Passkey is your air. Don't let them bottle it. Carry your keys in your own pocket, learn the rhythm of the handshake, and leave the landlords knocking on a door they no longer control.

Find out what websites support Passkeys here.

If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy the fiction podcast Un(con)Trolled

We Need Diverse Disability Fiction

2026-05-05T12:49:59Z

This was previously published in the Artificial Divide anthology

I remember the first out-and-proud fiction book I read that included an openly gay character. Actually, this book had gone above and beyond. It was a gay utopia for me because some of the characters are also openly trans and proud of who they are. What made this book so special to me was the fact it was a safe space before I knew what a safe space was. The book is Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan.

Growing up in Florida, I don't remember anyone encouraging me to read books with openly gay or bi or trans people in it. People loved the fact I loved to read, but I was never actively shown any books with LGBT+ characters and themes. I had to find those books on my own. Even after I’d found them, I had to keep them in the closet with me because I knew society didn't see them as “normal.”

I just can't shake those early years of thinking I wasn't wired the way the rest of society seemed to be, just because I am not at all sexually attracted to women. I didn't understand how a book such as The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot was only for girls, and why I shouldn’t be reading it.

I didn't understand publishing’s desire to keep telling stories about non-disabled, straight white men. I thought, If everybody has a story, then where are the stories about people who are Black or trans or gay or disabled?

If I take a minute to try to think of fictional characters with disabilities in books, my brain comes up with few options. I've read many great memoirs by Disabled people, ones where I felt seen and heard because they shared my struggles, but I can't say the same thing about fiction.

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan was special to me because it was a story involving LGBT+ characters. Nobody was overcoming their gender identity the way Disabled memoirists seemed to “beat” their disabilities on every page. I was hungry for some fun stories that just happened to have Blind or visually impaired characters telling us their fictional tale of adventure or mystery.

Even in the non-fiction I've read by Blind people, they all seemed to be about overcoming the world, not just living in it while experiencing drama and or romance. The protagonist always had to overcome blindness or learn how to be blind. The characters always saw the Blind protagonist as either strange, scary, helpless, super gifted, flawless, ignorant, clumsy, or unable to function. The memoirist would have no choice but to prove them wrong about their blindness. It made me exhausted trying to find books by Disabled authors where the visually impaired protagonist just had to deal with the plot of the story, not their blindness and the plot at the same time.

As an openly gay man, I'm witnessing in real time the progress publishing is making towards telling LGBT+ stories. LGBT+ is moving away from a genre label and characters are just LGBT+, which is great. I feel honored watching that growth. As a Blind man though, I'm afraid I'm not seeing the same progress with Disabled stories.

More times than I’d like to admit, I've googled fiction books with Blind characters. The results are not promising, every time. I go to page four or five of the Google search results, hoping I’d find a golden egg somewhere, but the results are disappointing.

For one thing, a lot of books featuring visually impaired characters are written by sighted authors. While I don't necessarily have a problem with this, I keep running into stories that are inauthentically told because a sighted writer always shows a visually impaired character dictating to their phone without using a screen reader, for example.

One exception I can remember is a book called WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. In that book, the protagonist uses a cane properly, uses a screen reader with the keyboard for a long time on the page, and is just a smart Blind girl who is dealing with the plot.

Even though I still go back and read WWW: Wake occasionally, I'm hungry for more modern fiction featuring visually impaired characters. I know there are others out there just like me who are eagerly seeking books that have people like them on the page. That's where this anthology comes into play.

This anthology features blind and visually impaired authors telling their own stories. Some authors are emerging authors. Some are more established, but they all have something to show you about being low vision.

There's a wide range of writing styles, genres, and even character archetypes in this anthology. Not every story will have a happy ending. Not every protagonist will be nice. That's the point, though. This anthology compiles snapshots of blindness to show that Blind people can be witty. Blind people can be crude. Blind people can be whimsical. Blind people can be clever or brash.

Visually impaired people have to educate the sighted daily on what it's like to be visually impaired. This even happens, sometimes, because sighted people expect us to be teachers. This book might not be an instruction manual on how Blind and visually impaired people use a computer, but it will open your eyes to characters who have flaws, outsmart bullies, learn to trust their skills, and are mischievous to get what they want.

The authors in this collection are just a snippet of the talent that's cast aside for established sighted people, who really should step aside and let Disabled voices take the publishing contracts.

I hope that you, dear reader or listener, go through this anthology with the understanding that Artificial Divide isn't meant to take away from sighted authors trying to be allies. We desperately need allies, but we also need people willing to listen when Blind people want to tell the stories they want to tell—with grit and grace.

It might be difficult to empathize with some of these characters. You may love every story in this collection. That's okay. It's your journey through this book. I’d like you to ponder how you feel after reading this collection. I think you'll find that even though you may be sighted or visually impaired, and even though this character would never be your friend in real life, you do have things in common, and that maybe we're not so divided after all.

Robert Kingett.

The Hostage Negotiation of the Front-Facing Camera

2026-04-10T20:15:08Z

There is a comforting, tactile safety in the old fashioned way of using a phone. You press the phone to your ear, the device emitting a heat signature that's instantly grounding. This heated device creates a seal of warmth and assurance. It is an act of self preservation. No one is staring at you. No one is gauging how your looks contrast with their put together appearance. The voice on the other end vibrates against your skull. It is intimate. It is not awkward. It is, though, apparently extinct.

I was settled in my bed yesterday, the pillows arranged in the perfect architectural way to decompress my spine. I was ready, and eager, to talk to an older Black man we will call Shane. Shane is an older talkative man, a man in his early sixties. He is highly intelligent. One of his unsung skills is schooling anybody in a mathematical confrontation. Shane, though, like so many sighted people, possess the baffling inability to understand that I still exist if they are not actively perceiving me with their eyes.

It happened thirty seconds into the conversation.

The interruption was a sharp chirp from VoiceOver that sounded like an intrusion. "Video call engaged."

I didn’t accept a video invitation. I never do, but he switched it on from his end, and suddenly, my audio sanctity was breached.

"I can't see you," Shane complained immediately. His southern Mississippi accent, which was rich, heavenly, and blessedly close to my ear, was now a tinny distant approximation of a voice that didn’t even have enough weight to make my apartment echo.

"I know you can't," I say, refusing to participate in the madness. "My lights are off."

"Well," he says, like I'm depriving him of a vital organ, "Turn the lights on. Its pitch black!"

"Shane," I said, summoning a patience I did not feel, "I am blind. Why would I have the lights on?"

This is the first hurtle in the obstacle course that is the video call. Sighted people think that lights, and by extension, visual perception, is a moral imperative. They always forget that, for me, lights and light switches are a vestigial organ. They do not have functions in my apartment. They are only there for the sighted people that come into my apartment. I do not need them. I never needed them.

But lets say, for the sake of argument, I surrender, just for a minute. Lets say I get up and turn the lights on for a visual interpreter service to identify a specific can of soup, or maybe I wanted to triple check to see if I wasn’t about to brush my teeth with hydrocortisone cream.

The lights are on. We have cleared the lighting hurtle.

Now we enter the seventh circle of hell—the make the sighted man comfortable phase.

"I still can't see you!" he says, panic in his voice like I'm about to walk off a cliff. "I still can't see you right. Move the camera up. No, to the leff. You're cuttin' off your face. Its only your forehead. I can only see your forehead."

Now, I have to remove my phone from its comfortable spot—a space where I could actually hear his rich tone—and I must participate in unnatural arm movements so that I position the front facing camera just so, like I'm offering a sacrifice to a deity I do not believe in.

This is pure fucking hell. To satisfy the video requirement, I must hold the phone out in front of me at an awkward, uncomfortable, and an impossibly rigid angle out in front of me, where the party also now has to raise their voice in order to be heard because of the distance, turning this phone call—once a beacon of calming intellectual conversation into a painful posture. My deltoid starts to burn. I am no longer a participant in the conversation. I am an unwilling cameraman, shooting an obscure documentary about my own face.

"That's perfect," he says, "Hold it right there!"

Except it isn't perfect. This is terrible. The sound is atrocious because I have to hold the phone two inches away from my face. I am unable to make this sound better because I do not have earbuds for phone calls. The earbud microphone is never sustainable enough for a lasting phone conversation. I cannot wear my Bluetooth headset that would solve my audio problem because it does not have a microphone. My Bluetooth headset is only for listening to books and silencing the outside world.

I do not have a standing microphone because I still believe in the sanctity of an audio call. I am physically capable of holding the phone up to my ear. I do not need an external microphone.

I have to work twenty times as hard to parse his words through the airy distortion of the speakerphone.

And God forbid I move.

If I shift my weight to get even a little bit comfortable and relieve the cramp in my shoulder, the video on his end instantly gets distorted because I am not a robot. If I reach for my water bottle, my face tilts out of frame and the panic instantly settles in.

"Oh, You're gone! I can't see you no more! Where did you go?"

"Shane, I didn’t go anywhere. I am right here. I did not teleport. I am still in the same spot I was just a few seconds ago."

But for sighted people, object permanence seems to rely entirely on a video feed. Sighted people cannot have a conversation with me unless they are watching my pixelated mouth moving. If sighted people cannot track my pixelated mouth moving, then I have vanished into the ether. I no longer exist in time and space if sighted people cannot watch my pixelated mouth formulate syllables and sentences.

I try to explain this. I try to argue for the efficiency of the audio channel. "I don’t want to do video," I say, my voice tender, trying to appeal to reason. "Let's just talk audibly. We can still talk. Put the phone back up to your ear."

But its always as if I hadn’t uttered a single vowel.

"But I want to see you," they protest, utterly baffled that a sensory experience is actively being denied to the sighted person.

I do not understand video calls. I honestly don’t. What are you getting out of a video call and watching someone's mouth move? Do you really need to see my hair remain stationary to grasp the joy in my voice as I gush about a TV show I enjoyed last week? Are you incapable of understanding me without staring at my sightless eyes? blue eyes that are never looking at you, by the way.

Do you need to see the pores of my white skin to grasp the gushing over a book I listened to yesterday narrated by the fabulously dashing Gabriel Michael or equally enchanting, Utterly engrossingly delectable Sean Crisden?

Are you checking to see if I've wiped my face after dinner? Because if that's the case, tell me I have crumbs on my chin and then let me go back to the dark. Tell me I have cream cheese in my beard and then let me go back to the darkness.

But this obsession with video isn't just social, its systemic. Its why sighted people can't listen to podcasts or an audiobook without visual invasion.

This is the same baffling logic corporate executives use when they wanna demand that people keep their cameras on during meetings. They can't just trust their employees, so they must surveillance them. They claim its about engagement, but we all know better. Its about tracking. Its about surveillance that monitors eye contact so they can have data that says we are engaged and that we are listening.

I know—I know—there are a billion other people like me. People that could pay attention and work infinitely better if they were allowed to exist in their own bodies comfortably.

I listen best when I'm horizontal, body and limbs relaxed, with a comfortable pair of noise headphones on, perhaps typing amazingly fast on a Bluetooth keyboard—my auditory sense attuned to everything happening across digital wires. That doesn’t look like engagement to a sighted person though, because they’ve never tried to understand bodies other than their own. Its why, even today, sighted people still think we dictate to our computers instead of using complex keyboard commands to control a powerful screen reader.

Sighted managers don’t understand why I do not need to have video on to pay attention, so they force me, and so many millions of others like me, to sit upright in a chair, staring at pixelated heads I cannot see, performing attentiveness but actually absorbing less.

Video calls are an assault on my autonomy. They transform a conversation into a staged performance. They demand I stage manage my environment, my lighting, my posture, all for a medium that I cannot access. It is a demand that is not equal. It is not an equal playing field. It is a demand that I perform sightedness for your comfort.

And the real tragedy is, we are sacrificing something better.

There is a purity to audio that sighted people ignore. When you and I are having an audio call, ear to receiver, I am listening to everything. I'm paying attention to the micro tremors in your voice. I am appreciating your radiant smile without ever having to visually perceive it. I am understanding the hesitation—the small breath you take before you admit to me that you're scared. I am listening to you instead of judging your lighting or the aesthetic qualities of your furniture.

Actually, you know what I love more than an audio phone call? Audio messages.

I love receiving audio messages. Audio messages, especially ones where people are recording as they are participants in the world, allow me to be with you in a way an audio phone call can never replicate because of a phone calls subpar quality.

Audio messages are the perfect medium. I love them. They aren’t in real time, so there's no pressure to perform. I can listen to your mood—that glorious rant about your boss, and I can understand your frustration in crisp stereo sound quality. I can enjoy how you sound when you are comforted by weighted blankets on your bed. I can play the message over again so that I don’t forget what we were talking about before life gets in the way. I can play your audio message to help me fall asleep—appreciating the fabrics of your vocal registers, your tone, the way your diction elongates vowels when you're feeling safe from the world. I can hold those audio expressions in my memory forever.

So, this is a plea.

Audio call me without video.

Better yet? Send me audio messages. Send me long, rambly, audio messages with soundscapes and audible expressions of love and joy. Remain in the dark by continuing that audio phone call rather than switching to video. Resist the urge to enable video. Bathe in the intimacy of my tone, rather than trying to observe a pixelated mouth form syllables.

The next time you want to enable video, stop and ask yourself, is Robert's voice enough?"

Because in my vast audio world, I do not need to see you. I have you, and I have your voice. That, to me, will never be lacking. Your voice will always be enough. I do not need video, and I never will need video.

If you enjoyed this rant, you might enjoy the fiction podcast Seen And Not Heard by Caroline Mincks

He Learned the Gestures

2026-04-08T02:02:16Z

Mood: Melted. There is no other word for it.

There is a practiced but familiar rhythm to my life that usually only I can hear. It is the rapid-fire thwip-thwip-click of a screen reader, the frantic, synthetic heartbeat of my phone as I navigate the world at five hundred words per minute. To anyone else, it sounds like a droid having a panic attack. To me, it is just the sound of access.

I know this rhythm so intimately that when someone is using a screen reader for the first time, desktop or mobile, it’s a kind of signal before I even say hello.

Usually, when a sighted person wants to help me with my phone, when an app updates and breaks its own accessibility labels, turning a useful tool into a minefield of "Button, Button, Unlabeled Button"—they take away the thing they don't know how to use.

It usually happens like this. They sigh, they take the device from my hand, and they then silence the voice, reverting to the world of the sighted. Of course, they fix the problem with their eyes before handing it back.

I am grateful for their help, certainly. But it is also a reminder that I live in a world that requires a translation layer they can simply peel away when it becomes inconvenient for them. Them turning off the screen reader reminds me that my world is something they'd rather get rid of, rather than ask me how to use the device with the screen reader enabled.

But there are those people that stun and amaze me. Not for what they say, but what they choose to do.

Tonight, I witnessed something that gave the word, love, a new dimension.

I was sitting on his couch, half-listening to a podcast, when I heard the distinct, robotic cadence of VoiceOver coming from the other end of the cushion. But it wasn't my phone chattering, and the rhythm was wrong. It wasn't the lightning-fast blur I use. It was slow. Deliberate. And extremely clumsy.

Swipe. Pause. Swipe. Pause. Double-tap... silence.

Then, the frustrated, rumbling baritone of his voice, muttering a soft curse.

"“The hell is that gesture again? You finna be thrown ‘cross the room if you don't behave.”

I froze. Anthony, a gay Black man I recently met, only had a passing interest in my world. He’d ask questions. I’d answer them. he seemed to be content never going beyond what I provided. this was unexpected and earth shattering.

I shifted, sliding my hand across the plushness of the couch until my fingers brushed his knee. He was tense, his leg muscle rigid.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Trying to order that Pizza," he grumbled. "The app updated. You said you couldn't find the checkout button yesterday."

"I know," I said. "But usually you just... look at it."

"Yeah, I'm not looking at it," he said, and I could hear the stubborn set of his jaw in his tone. "I turned the screen curtain on."

My chest did a strange, tight flip. Screen curtain is a feature that turns the display off entirely for privacy, forcing you to rely 100% on the audio. He was simulating blindness and not for a few minutes, only to be grateful he never has to be trapped in my world again. Anthony, who's moderately tech savvy, willingly plunged himself into my world. Given his tense muscles and tight voice, he’d been at this for a while. Nobody ever does this for their own understanding, at least, not in my universe. Still, I had to ask.

"Why?"

He paused. I heard his thumb drag across the glass again. “Unlabeled button,” the synth voice deadpanned.

"Because you were frustrated," he said, his voice sincere and vibrating with that chest-deep resonance that always grounds me. "You were frustrated yesterday, and I told you it was 'easy,' and you got quiet. I realized... I didn't know what I was talking about. I didn't know what you was goin' through every day. I wanted to feel what you feel when something ain't accessible."

He tapped the glass again. Thump-thump. A hollow sound. The gesture didn't take.

"How do you do the... the thing to go back?" he asked, sounding defeated. "I'm doing the Z-scrub gesture but my fingers are too big."

I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. Nobody ever did this long enough to understand. Here Anthony was, asking me how to navigate in my world instead of going back into his familiar sighted world.

I reached out, covering his large, warm hand with mine. I could feel the heat of his frustration, the tension in his fingers as they hovered over the glass. He was struggling. He was failing. He was experiencing the exact, maddening friction that defines so much of my digital life.

And it was the most romantic thing I have ever witnessed.

He wasn't trying to save me. He wasn't trying to be the hero who fixes the broken thing. He was trying to be with me in the brokenness. He wanted the empathy of shared frustration. He wanted to understand why I was tired, not just that I was tired.

"It's a two-finger scrub," I whispered, my voice emotional. "Like you're scratching a lottery ticket."

He tried it. Scrub-scrub.

“Back,” the phone announced.

"Got it," he breathed, and the relief in his voice was pure triumph.

I leaned my head against his shoulder, listening to the slow, stumbling rhythm of his fingers learning my language. It sounded like a child learning piano. It was the best sound in the world.

He never did find the checkout button. We ended up calling the restaurant. But as he sat there, struggling with a piece of glass in the dark, refusing to open his eyes to the easy way out, I realized that he hadn't just learned a gesture. He had learned me.

And that's what real love is all about.

If you enjoyed this show of care, you might like Daydream by Hannah Grace

The 'Paperwork Flood': How I Drowned a Bureaucrat before dinner.

2026-03-25T01:18:43Z

Mood: Maliciously compliant.

I can't express how much I utterly hate the "Continuing Disability Review."

It is a letter that arrives every few years from the government, asking a question that is medically absurd and philosophically insulting: "Are you still disabled?"

As if my blindness were a seasonal allergy. As if I might have woken up last Tuesday, blinked, and realized that my optic nerves had decided to regenerate spontaneously.

This week, I received The Letter. It demanded "updated medical evidence" to prove that I—a man who has been blind since birth—am, in fact, still blind.

I called the number. I navigated the phone tree hellscape. I finally reached a human being. Let’s call her "Karen from Compliance."

"I have the documents in PDF format," I told her, using my polite, I haven't had my morning tea so make this easy on me, voice. "I can email them to you right now. You’ll have them in ten seconds."

"We cannot accept email," Karen said. Her voice was flat, dry, and sounded like stale coffee and rigid adherence to a rulebook written in 1994. "It is a security risk. You must mail physical copies, or you can fax them."

"Fax them?" I asked. "You want me to fax you medical records when you could just delete the email after saving the attachments?"

"Those are the options, sir. If we don't receive them by Friday, your benefits will be suspended."

I didn't understand why they couldn't just look back in my file, noticed nothing had changed in decades, and update it based on past data.

She said it with a challenge in her tone. She knew who she was talking to. She was talking to a blind man living below the poverty line. She assumed that "fax it" was an impossible hurdle. She assumed I would have to find a ride to a library, pay twenty cents a page, and struggle with a physical machine I couldn't read. She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up.

She forgot one thing.

I am a nerd. And I have an internet connection.

"Okay," I said, my voice dropping into the cool, smooth, ‘Let’s systemically tango,’ tone of a man with a plan. "I will fax them. What is the number?"

I hung up. And then, I went to work.

She wanted evidence? Oh boy, I would give her evidence.

I didn't just pull the recent files. I went into the archives. I dug into the deep, digital bedrock of my hard drive. I pulled records from when I was five. I pulled the surgical notes from my cerebral palsy treatments. I pulled the intake forms from every specialist, every therapist, every social worker who has ever written a note about my "deficits."

I compiled a single, monolithic PDF. It was a monument to medical trauma. It was a library of diagnosis.

It was five hundred and twelve pages long.

Single-spaced.

I opened my preferred internet faxing service. This is a tool that allows me to send a fax purely through digital data. It would cost $20, exactly the amount someone had donated to the blog last week, but if I didn't do this, I would lose all my benefits. It costs me zero paper. It costs me zero toner.

By the way, your tips keep me writing.

But for the recipient?

For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time.

I imagined Karen’s fax machine. It was probably an old, beige beast sitting in the corner of a gray office. It was likely low on paper. It was almost certainly low on patience.

I uploaded the file. The file size was massive. The progress bar on my screen reader ticked up. Uploading... 20%... 50%... 80%...

I hit "Send."

And then, I sat back and listened to the most beautiful sound in the world.

"Your fax has been sent," my screen reader announced.

I grinned.

I imagined the scene in that office.

At first, it would just be a single page. Whirrr. Chunk. A standard medical form. Karen would ignore it.

Then, page two. Whirrr. Chunk.

Page three. Whirrr. Chunk.

By page fifty, the machine would be heating up. The smell of hot toner would start to fill the cubicle. The rhythmic chunk-chunk-chunk of the printing would become a drone, a mechanical chant of malicious compliance.

By page one hundred, the paper tray would run out. The machine would start beeping. That high-pitched, insistent beep-beep-beep that demands attention. Karen would have to get up. She would have to find a ream of paper. She would have to feed the beast.

And the beast would not stop.

Because I had set the retry limit to "Infinity." If the line busied out? It would call back. If the paper ran out? It would wait. It was a digital siege engine.

I sent them everything. I sent them the eye charts that prove I can’t read eye charts. I sent them the physical therapy logs. I sent them the blurry scans of notes written by doctors who are long since dead.

I sent them the Tsunami of Truth.

I wanted them to hold the weight of it. I wanted them to physically feel the burden of proof they place on disabled bodies. They want us to document our existence? Fine. Here is my existence, one sheet of hot, curled paper at a time.

Two hours later, my phone rang.

"Mr. Kingett?"

It was Karen. She sounded breathless. She sounded like she was standing next to a machine that was hyperventilating. In the background, I could hear a rhythmic whir-chunk, whir-chunk.

"Yes?" I answered, my voice the picture of innocent helpfulness.

"Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner."

"Oh, you're out of toner? It's jammed? Oh my! Oh, I’m so sorry," I said, putting exactly zero percent sincerity into the apology. "But you said you couldn't accept email. You said I had to provide complete documentation. I’m just following the rules, Karen. I wouldn't want my benefits to be suspended because I missed documentation, so here's documentation all the way back to when I'm five years old."

"Jesus Christ, We have it!" she snapped. "We have enough! Please, just… cancel the rest."

"I’m afraid I can’t do that," I lied. "It’s an automated process. Once it starts, it has to finish. Security protocols, you understand."

There was a long, strangled silence on the line. Then, a defeated sigh.

"Fine! Fine," she snapped. "We will mark your file as updated."

"Thank you," I said. "Have a wonderful day."

I hung up.

I sat there in my quiet apartment, eating a cookie. I imagined the pile of paper in that office, a physical mountain of evidence testifying to the fact that yes, I am blind, and yes, I am smarter than your bureaucracy.

If you enjoyed this tiny victory in a hostile world, you might enjoy, Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

Grieving Alongside Water

2026-03-16T22:23:19Z

Listen to the audio version of Grieving Alongside Water

You think you know what crying is. You think it's water from your eyes, a tremor in your voice, a hitch in your breath. That's not crying. That’s a leak. That’s a controlled demolition. I'm talking about the flood. I'm talking about the architectural failure of the whole damn building.

It happened in the shower. The shower is a good place for it. The sound of the water is a roar that promises to swallow any other sound you might make. It’s a temporary privacy cloak woven from white noise.

The water was hot, a sheet of tiny, stinging impacts against my back and shoulders. At first, it was just water. And then, it wasn't. Each drop became a point of pressure. A tiny, insistent finger tapping on a bruise. Tap. You are alone. Tap. You are a failure. Tap. No one is coming. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The feeling started not in my head, but in my chest. A physical object. A cold, heavy stone being lowered into my ribcage. It was dense, a knot of old ice and compressed gravity. The hot water sluiced over my skin, but it couldn't touch the coldness of that stone. It was a geological cold. A cold from the planet’s core.

My breathing changed. I was no longer pulling in air. The stone was taking up too much room. I was getting whatever was left over, thin, useless sips. Then the first sob hit.

It was not a sound. It was a physical event. A violent, involuntary contraction of my diaphragm, a seismic lurch that shook my entire frame. My knees buckled. I braced myself against the tile wall. The tile was slick and cool, a shocking contrast to the heat of the water. My hand slid. My body followed. I ended up sitting on the floor of the tub, my back against the wall, the spray hammering down on my head and shoulders.

And now the tears came. But in the deluge of the shower, they had no meaning. They were just more water, joining the flood. I couldn't tell the difference between the hot water from the showerhead and the hot, salty water pouring from my own eyes. I was leaking from the inside out. My body’s boundary was dissolving.

The sobs were coming faster now, full-body spasms. They were ugly, guttural things, dredged up from the bottom of me. The sound was ripped from my throat, a raw, ragged noise like tearing fabric. It was the sound of a structure coming apart at the seams. I curled in on myself, my arms wrapped around my knees, trying to hold myself together as I was breaking apart.

The water was a constant, indifferent weight. It flattened my hair to my skull. It streamed into my open, sobbing mouth, and I tasted the salt of my own grief mixed with the flat, metallic taste of the city water supply. I was drowning and hydrating at the same time.

There are no thoughts in a moment like that. There is no 'why'. The 'why' is a luxury for later, for the quiet analysis in a dry room. In the flood, there is only the overwhelming sensory data of your own destruction. The roar of the water. The hammering pressure on your skull. The cold, unyielding tile beneath you. The stone in your chest. The raw, scraped feeling in your throat. The taste of salt and metal.

I don't know how long I sat there, a collapsed building in a rainstorm. But eventually, the sobs subsided into shudders. The stone in my chest didn't disappear, but it settled. The roar of the water slowly separated itself from the roar in my own head.

I was still a ruin. But the flood was receding. And I was left sitting in the wreckage, shivering, waterlogged, and terribly, terribly quiet.

Listen to the audio version of Grieving Alongside Water

Dead Skyrim Fan Lives on Through Mod

2026-03-16T18:09:12Z

The gaming website that had this article is no longer online anymore so I wanted to add it here, to my website. The below was penned in 2012, way back when I was a young journalist!

Everybody has memories that we all cherish and hold dearly to our hearts. Some people have voicemails from years ago. Others have artifacts belonging to the deceased.

Lastrogu3, a user on Reddit, has a different way of remembering his brother Taylor, a frequent Skyrim player who drowned in 2013 less than a month after his marriage. His brothers memory is preserved in a Skyrim shrine thanks to a mod created by Sjogga.

"It was a tragic accident where he was hanging onto a rope and using a wake board to ride the waves that were created by the river under a tree." he wrote in a blog post. "He had used another rope that comes with the board to attach it to his ankle to prevent him from loosing it if he was washed downstream. Unfortunately that rope caused the accident and got caught in the roots of the tree under the water holding him down."

Lastrogu3 and his brother had always been avid gamers. They would scour yard sales for games since they got games primarily, for birthdays and Christmas.

The siblings gamed on the SNES and many other platforms, including Xbox 360, Sega Genesis, and PC. It was a pastime they both enjoyed together, even the little things such as trading off as being Sonic or Tails

Taylor was a bigger fan of Skyrim but that didn't stop the siblings from playing together and maintaining a bond. After Taylor's death, his brother logs onto his Skyrim account, never moving the character, never saving, but always preserving.

" I never move his character, save, or do anything since it wouldn't be his character anymore. He is frozen in time just like my young brother was."

Taylor's character, Bear, stands near Solitude, just outside of Riften just past the watchtower with his sidekick who watches over him in the afterlife.

"if anything ever happened to his followers, he would always load back from a save point to make sure they made it." Lastrogu3 remembers.

The modding community of Skyrim have created something that will, not only preserve Taylor's memory, but his spirit. Skyrim modder, Sjogga, made a mod to commemorate the life of Taylor, called Bear: In Memory of Taylor for his brother in mourning.

This mod adds a small shrine where Bear's last save was. According to the description, "The ghost of Bear and his sidekick still visits the place from time to time. Bear also appears in Sovngarde."

the mod is currently at version 1.1 with 662 Endorsements.

Many players visit the shrine to pray, or leave flowers for Bear. For those who linger, who visit the shrine regularly on travels, Bear is not completely gone. His ghost looks after all of the players, bringing them all together in harmony as one in the world of Skyrim.

LOADING CARTRIDGE: THE_PURR_PARADOX.EXE

2026-03-10T12:25:14Z

Mood: System Overload (Cute Variation).

> BRIEFING

You are ROBERT. You are a white Level 30 Mage of the Written Word with a constitution score of "Fragile" and a charisma score of "Weaponized Adorableness."

Your QUEST is to survive Saturday Morning without dissolving into a puddle of emotional goo.

> LOOK

You are in THE KITCHEN.

The air pressure is heavy and humid, implying a high-temperature event.

The atmosphere is saturated with the scent of YEAST, MELTED BUTTER, and dangerously expensive COCOA POWDER.

To the NORTH is the HALLWAY.

To the SOUTH is the OVEN (Source of Heat).

Occupying the center of the room is THE BAKER.

> EXAMINE THE BAKER

THE BAKER is a Boss-Level dark-skinned NPC named Kevin.

Kevin only has one ear and is a White Hat Hacker. He is massive. His gravitational pull is a tracter Beam for hugs.

He smells like Chocolate Chips, server coolant, and rising dough.

He is currently humming a low-frequency bass note that is vibrating your ribcage from three feet away.

> TALK TO THE BAKER

You say, "It smells like diabetes and heaven in here."

The Baker turns. You hear the heavy, rhythmic thud-thud of his boots on the tile.

Kevin says (in a voice like warm Tea), "Sit down, cutie. You hoverin' and you make me nervous when you hover."

> SIT

You sit at the island counter.

The surface is cool marble.

Your knees bump against the cabinet.

> LISTEN

You hear the aggressive whirrrrrrrr of a KitchenAid mixer. It sounds like a jet engine trying to knead bread.

Suddenly, a new sound emerges from the HALLWAY.

It is a high-pitched, frantic mew-mew-mew-SCREAM-mew.

It sounds like a siren made of fur.

> IDENTIFY SOUND

It is THE ASSET.

Kevin adopted THE ASSET three days ago.

THE ASSET is a blind cat.

THE ASSET has no eyes, much like you have no functioning optic nerves.

THE ASSET is currently navigating the hallway by screaming at the walls to see if they scream back.

> WAIT

Time passes.

The screaming gets closer.

Scrabble-scrabble-thump.

The Asset has collided with your leg.

> EXAMINE THE ASSET

It is small.

It is sharp.

It is vibrating at a frequency that suggests its internal motor is working overtime.

It is climbing your jeans.

> INVENTORY

You are carrying:

A heart full of overwhelming affection.
Zero defenses against small, fuzzy things.
A distinct lack of pants thick enough to stop claws.

> PICK UP CAT

You reach down. You encounter fur that feels like static electricity given physical form.

You lift the cat.

It smells like dust bunnies and Kevin’s expensive laundry detergent.

You place the cat on your lap.

> KEVIN ACTIONS

The mixer stops.

The silence is sudden and heavy.

Kevin says, "Oh, so he finna be your buddy now instead of my buddy?"

> DETECT SARCASM

Sarcasm detected. Purity level: 98%.

Jealousy detected. Adorableness level: Critical.

Kevin continues, "I fed him. I bought him the little bed with the memory foam. I gave him his favorite toy. And he screams at me. But you? You just sit there looking cute and he climbs you like a tree."

> TAUNT KEVIN

You say, "It’s a disability solidarity thing, Kevin. You wouldn't understand. We communicate via the shared frequency of running into doorframes."

> PET CAT

You run your hand down the cat’s spine.

The cat arches into your hand.

The cat emits a sound: PRRRRRT-chirp.

The vibration travels through your thighs and grounds you to the chair.

> KEVIN APPROACHES

The air pressure shifts. An intense, warm shadow falls over you.

You feel Kevin’s massive hand cover your entire cheek. His palm is rough, warm, and smells like flour. He is sweet.

He leans down. His beard brushes your ear.

He whispers, "You stole my cat, Robert. I’m going to have to steal him back. Or I’ll just keep you both."

> SWOON

You cannot SWOON. You are currently immobilised by a cat.

> EXAMINE CAT BEHAVIOR

The cat is kneading your thigh with the intensity of a union worker trying to meet a quota.

The cat is also screaming again. MROW? MROW!

It is loud. It is demanding. It is absolutely unconcerned with being "polite."

> ANALYZE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS

[SYSTEM PAUSE FOR REFLECTION]

Let’s pause the game for a second.

This cat—Kevin named him 'Echo,' because Kevin is a nerd—is a menace. He is loud. He bumps into the table legs with a hollow thud, shakes his head, and keeps moving. He cries out constantly to locate us, to locate the food, to locate the vibe.

And I love him with a violence that scares me.

But here is the thing about Echo: If he were a human, the world would tell him to hush.

Society, built by the sighted and the able-bodied, operates on a harsh, cruel algorithm: Compliance + Silence = Value.

We are taught that to be a "good" disabled person, you must be low-maintenance. You must be the text adventure that runs quietly in the background, not the one that crashes the system. We are taught to memorize the room so we don't bump into the furniture, because bumping into the furniture makes the sighted people uncomfortable. It reminds them that the room wasn't built for us.

Echo doesn't care. Echo bumps into the chair leg and immediately yells at the chair leg for being in his way. He navigates by impact. He asserts his presence through collision.

And I can't get enough of both of them.

His dependence isn't a bug. It's a feature.

Independence is a scam sold to us to keep us buying individual subscriptions to survival. Interdependence—the messy, loud, claw-filled reliance on other living things—is the only way any of us survive the dungeon.

[RESUME GAME]

> KISS KEVIN

You tilt your head back.

You cannot reach Kevin’s face. He is too tall. This is a design flaw in the simulation.

> COMMAND KEVIN

You say, "Come here."

Kevin chuckles. The sound rumbles in his chest, vibrating against your shoulder.

"You demanding today, huh? Must be the cat’s influence."

> KEVIN COMPLIES

Kevin descends.

His lips press against your forehead first. A lingering, warm seal of approval.

Then he kisses your mouth.

It tastes like Mint chocolate candy and patience.

It is a slow kiss. An intense transfer of safety.

> RECEIVE ITEM

Kevin pulls back.

"Open up," he says.

He presses something into your hand.

It is warm. It has a rough, craggy texture.

It is a cookie. But not just a cookie.

It is a Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookie fresh from the oven.

> EAT COOKIE

You take a bite.

Sensory Input:

Texture: Holy yum! A Religious experience! The edges are crisp and shatter against your teeth. The center is a molten, gooey surrender.
Taste: The bitterness of the dark chocolate fights the sharp sting of the Macadanian Nuts, and the sugar bridges the gap. It tastes like a hug feels.

> FEED CAT

You break off a tiny, non-chocolate crumb of the plain dough edge.

You offer it to Echo.

Echo sniffs it.

Echo bites your finger.

> OUCH

You take 1 HP of damage.

You gain 500 XP in "Love."

> LISTEN

Echo settles back down. The purr revs up again like a tiny engine.

Kevin leans against the counter, chewing another Dark Chocolate candy, humming softly because he knows you like his humming.

The mixer is silent.

The oven ticks as it cools.

> STATUS REPORT

You are blind.

The cat is blind.

The baker is scarred.

The system is broken.

> SCORE

Your score is: PERFECT.

> SAVE GAME

Game saved.

(Though really, you don't need to save. This memory? The smell of chocolate, the weight of the cat, the heat of the man? This is written to the hard drive of your bones. You couldn't delete it if you tried.)

> QUIT? Y/N?

If you enjoyed this text adventure game, you might enjoy Beta Test BY Annabeth Albert with the audiobook also narrated by Sean Crisden

Where Home is Not Safe

2026-03-06T17:22:19Z

Where Home is Not Safe. writings on Domestic Verbal, Emotional and Physical Abuse Edited by Judith Skillman and Linera Lucas

ISBN: 9781476683928

Description

Even if you haven’t been hurt by domestic violence, someone you know has and wishes they could tell you about it. Perhaps you are a therapist, teacher, academic, or social worker who wants to help those who are suffering. Or maybe you are in an abusive relationship and need to know that you are not alone. The poetry, memoirs, and creative nonfiction pieces collected here tell of real incidents of abuse, as well as of those who left destructive and unsalvageable relationships. The beauty and truth of the language, as well as the honesty and courage, set this anthology apart from self-help manuals and academic treatises on domestic violence. This book offers a path forward to healing, health and fulfillment, using the power of art to give voice where voice has been stifled, forgotten, overlooked or denied.

Buy it.

The Braille Menu Conspiracy

2026-03-01T15:21:31Z

Mood: Feeling like an archaeologist of breakfast foods. Also, smug.

If a wealthy racialized friend asks me to dinner—I say yes because I am poor and I need all the luxuries I can get. My country hates artists more than cockroaches, so I have no poverty pride at all when someone far wealthier than I says he will pay for me to go out with him and eat with him.

It began like this. A wealthy porn star/sex worker was in town and he was very tired of me eating sludge. The invitation arrived as I was browsing Libro FM because someone—one of my readers—mysteriously gifted me audiobook codes. I was trying to hunt for a hefty sized digital bundle or one of my favorites narrated by one of my audiobook lifelines, Sean Crisden. Coincidentally, the very same person you’re hearing through this audio file.

I read the invitation five times before it sank in. “I'm tired of you eating junk, so let me take you out to dinner. Get you some real food.”

We walked into a place that smelled of polished wood and expensive acoustics. The air conditioning hummed with a confident, wealthy silence.

And then, I caused hell.

There is a specific, terrified cadence that enters a hostess’s footsteps when you ask the Forbidden Question.

"Do you," I asked, unleashing the chaos, "have a Braille menu?"

The air pressure in the room dropped. I heard the hostess stop moving. There was a pause, a volley of frantic arguing whispers, a rustle of fabric as she likely looked at her manager, and then the sound of a key turning in a lock that hadn't been opened since the Bush administration.

"Yes!" she chirped, her voice pitching up an octave into that particular tone people use for puppies and Disabled people out in public. "We do! Let me go get it!"

She vanished. My Dominican friend and I sat there. We waited. We aged. I grew a beard. Civilizations rose and fell in the distance. I heard the clatter of plates and the murmur of diners enjoying food I was technically not yet allowed to know existed.

When she returned, she was breathing hard, as if she had just unearthed the Ark of the Covenant from a basement storage locker beneath a pile of folding chairs.

"Here you go!" she announced, the pride in her voice so thick it was practically a solid object. She handed me The Tome.

It was heavy. That was the first warning. But the weight wasn't the problem. The problem was the texture.

This Braille menu in a sighted restaurant was not a menu. It was a biological archive. The Braille menus are always biological archives because it is a petri dish bound in plastic. Because nobody ever uses them, and nobody ever cleans them, they collect a sensory strata of the restaurant's history.

I laid my hands on the cover and immediately regretted having nerve endings. It was tacky. Not metaphorical tackiness, but literal, adhesive tackiness. My fingers stuck to the plastic with a faint, wet shhh-luck sound when I tried to move them. It felt like the floor of a movie theater distilled into a book.

I opened it. The spine cracked with the dry, popping sound of a gunshot.

"This is our latest menu," the hostess audibly beamed, hovering over me, waiting for her medal. "We want to make sure everyone is welcome."

I ran my fingers over the first page. The Braille dots were there, technically. But they were flattened, worn smooth by the weight of other objects stacked on top of them for a decade. Worse, there were mystery substances interfering with the data. I traced a line of text that I’m pretty sure said Appetizers, but my reading finger hit a patch of something hardened and crusty. Was it dried ketchup? Ancient syrup? A fossilized sneeze?

I navigated the sticky minefield.

Page 1: Chicken Sandwich - $6.95.
Page 2: The Soup of the Day is Potato Leek.

"I'll have the potato leek soup," I said, testing the waters.

"Oh, honey," the waitress cut in, her voice dropping to a tragic whisper. "We haven't served that in twelve years. This menu is from the old location."

Of course it is.

This was not a Braille menu. It was a conspiracy. It was a prop. I've come to understand, though, that Braille menus almost never are for the Blind Braille readers. Braille menus are almost always props. It exists so the owner can check a box on a compliance form and feel warm inside, while I am left holding a sticky binder of lies that tells me I can buy a steak for eight dollars. It is accessibility performed for the sighted, not built for the blind.

I closed the Book of Sticky Lies. I wiped my hands discreetly on my jeans, trying to scrub away the sensation of a 30 year rot.

"That's fine," I said, turning my face toward the kitchen. I began sniffing, using the reliable olfactory sensors.

I ignored the noise of the room and focused on the air currents drifting from the swinging doors. I caught the heavy, iron-rich scent of charred fat. Beneath it, the sharp, woody spike of fresh rosemary. And wrapping around it all, the undeniable, luxurious density of truffle oil.

"I won't need the menu," I said, handing the biohazard back to the hostess with a beatific smile. "I'll have the ribeye, medium-rare, with the truffle fries. And a glass of the Merlot I can smell breathing on the table to my left."

My friend laughed, stunned. "You just ordered the most expensive thing in the building."

"I can't help it," I said, listening to the hostess retreat with her sticky artifact. "The menu told me nothing. The air told me everything. And besides," I added, leaning in, "you're paying."

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy At first Smile by Melissa Whitney

The Bookstore Hope

2026-02-22T20:42:57Z

The world always has a unique way of slapping me when I least expect it. Things go really well, and then, SMACK. The universe has plans for me. I can't decide if spirits read Sightless Scribbles and my life is a tragic vat of content they love to consume, or if they have joyous fun making sure things happen to me when I least expect them. It happens at Jarvis’s bookstore.

The floorboards of Jarvis’s bookstore sing in B-flat.

It is a comforting, resonant note, a deep, woody hum that travels up through the soles of my shoes and settles into my bones. It’s not a creak of age, but of settlement—the sound of heavy, sturdy ebony and mahogany adjusting to the weight of stories. Here, the air is scrubbed clean of the city’s exhaust and anxiety. It smells of steeping chamomile, the rich, oily scent of cocoa butter, and the faint, dusty vanilla of old paper.

I am safe here. I love it here. I write in here when I can make it down here.

Today, I sit at my usual table. My mechanical keyboard clatters rhythmically, a rapid-fire percussion that usually blends perfectly with the hushed murmurs of the other patrons.

"Robert," a familiar voice rumbles from above me.

Jarvis. His voice is a physical event. It doesn't just reach my ears; it vibrates in my chest cavity. It is a massive, resonant instrument, shaped by a thick Nigerian accent that wraps around vowels like a warm blanket, yet possessing the crisp, razor-sharp diction of a professional audiobook narrator.

"Yes, Jarvis?" I stop typing, smiling instinctively.

He places a mug on the table. The heat radiates against my cheek before I even reach for it. "Peppermint and honey. And I emailed you a code for that new queer romance on Libro.fm. The narrator has a rasp you will appreciate."

"You’re enabling my addiction," I say, finding the handle by the heat signature alone.

"Not addiction. Joy," he corrects, and I can hear the smile in his voice. He smells of vanilla today, and something sharper… pomegranate, maybe? It’s a warm, expansive scent that makes the space feel smaller, safer.

"You’re too good to me," I whisper.

"You are the resident writer," he says, his large hand briefly squeezing my shoulder. His hand is heavy, the size of a basketball, radiating a furnace-like heat that seeps through my flannel shirt. "And you are the only one who appreciates the sound of the loose board in the non-fiction section. I must be good to you so you will defend that loose board."

The shop is full today. I can hear the rustle of coats, the soft turning of pages, the low, melodic baritone of Black and brown men discussing politics and poetry in the corner. I am one of a very small few white people here, as usual, but the atmosphere isn't hostile. It’s a protective embrace. I am the quiet, blind guy in the corner who writes about love and kissing. Ever since stumbling into this bookstore months ago after the bus dropped me off on the wrong street, everyone has accepted me. Many customers even ask Jarvis if I am doing okay if they don't see me for a while, especially in the winter time.

I run my fingertips along the edge of the table. It’s solid—ebony or mahogany, I’m never sure which, but it feels expensive. Smooth, polished, and sturdy enough to hold the weight of the world, or at least the weight of my laptop humming under my hands. It’s a safe space I love, and yet, never deserve.

I soon return to my Romance fiction.

I’m in the flow. My fingers are dancing over the keys, the rhythmic clatter of the mechanical switches syncing with the jazz humming low in the background. I’m writing a scene about a first kiss, trying to capture the taste of hesitation, when the space is invaded. I can tell it's an invasion by the way the person enters the space of quiet and imagination.

The bell above the door doesn’t just jingle; it screams. It’s followed immediately by a rush of cold air and a scent that hits the back of my throat like a chemical burn—acrid ozone, expensive synthetic cologne, and the distinct, metallic smell of entitlement.

Footsteps. Hard, rapid, leather-soled shoes striking the floor with no rhythm, just destination.

The air pressure shifts. A new scent invades the quiet among the already invading out of place scents—the distinct, dusty heat of overheating electronics.

I try to ignore it, but I can't ignore it for long, because a voice slices through the air.

"Hey! You! Yeah, you, my man!" The voice is nasal, rapid-fire, projecting from the throat rather than the diaphragm. It cuts through the low hum of the shop like a chainsaw in a library. "You gotta try these. Seriously. Total disruption of the reading paradigm."

The quiet rustling stops.

"Excuse me?" The voice of a regular—Mr. Henderson, I think—sounds confused.

"It’s my newest creation," the nasal voice continues, pitching up. "Immersive reading. You put these on, bam. AI-generated soundscapes. Visual definitions. It tracks your iris to Project an AI generated world so you don't have to struggle with the concept. It’s the future of literacy, bro."

I pause my typing. The room stiffens. I can feel the shift in air pressure as heads turn.

"I’m not interested, brother," another deep baritone says from the sci-fi aisle. One of the regulars.

He tries another person.

"You there, with the SciFi book. Reading can be challenging so I've got something that will solve all your problems. The Immersive Lens," the intruder says, the plastic clatter of a hard case hitting a wooden table. "We’re beta testing in 'high-friction literary environments.' It uses LLM API's to hook into all the LLMs to generate real-time visual context for the text. You’re reading... what is this? Dune? Okay, so imagine, you read the word 'sandworm,' and boom—4K resolution overlay right on the page. Definitions, lore wikis, AI-generated soundscapes. It smooths out the friction of imagination. Total cognitive offloading."

I feel a muscle in my jaw jump.

"I ain't interested, man." A voice says, but the intruder won't take the hint.

"You don't get it," the nasal voice presses. "It’s the Ocular-Flow. We just closed our Series B. It’s immersive reading. You put the headset on, load the PDF, and it uses Generative AI to visualize the scene in real-time. It highlights definitions. It plays soundscapes. It takes the friction out of reading."

Oh for fucks sake.

Friction. The word grates against my eardrums.

Then I hear it. A faint, high-pitched whine. A cooling fan. Small, struggling, spinning too fast. He’s wearing a computer on his face.

"So, look," the Tech Bro continues, pressing in on someone I do not know by name, only by voice. "It also links to the cloud. You hit a word you don’t know? Boom. Definition floats in your retina. No need to pause. No cognitive load. It’s optimizing the imagination."

"Sir," Jarvis’s voice booms. It’s calm, but it carries the weight of an approaching thunderstorm. "We are reading here. Please lower your voice."

God, I love that voice. It’s a geological event. He doesn’t shout—he never has to—but his diaphragm pushes the air with enough force to rattle the books on the shelves.

"Whoa, big guy, relax," the intruder says, and I hear the unmistakable squeak of rubber soles pivoting. "I’m just doing some market research. This is a bookstore, right? Prime demographic for disruption. You work here? You should stock these. I can cut you in on the affiliate tier. Could you get the owner, though? I have a unique—"

"I do not allow soliciting in here," Jarvis says. "This is a space for reading. Quiet reading."

Jesus Christ.

He thinks Jarvis is an employee. He walked into a Black-owned business, looked at the man who radiates authority and ownership, and saw a clerk.

"Just a sec, chief," the Tech Bro says. He doesn't even stop his pitch. "So look, the AI analyzes the sentiment of the text and projects a corresponding color palette onto your retina..."

"I am asking you to lower your voice or leave," Jarvis says. The warmth that usually radiates from him—that furnace-like heat I can feel when he passes my table—is gone. His voice is cold iron.

"Is the manager around?" the intruder asks. "I want to talk about a partnership. We can digitize this whole inventory, get you guys on the blockchain, maybe pivot to a coffee-and-VR model. This silence? It’s wasted bandwidth."

"I told you, I do not allow things to be sold in MY store. I own this store," Jarvis says, sounding as if he's going to deck the Tech Bro. "And I am asking you to leave my customers alone."

"You? Own it? Nice. Good for you, man. That’s… inspiring. But look, seriously, just let me demo this for your guy here. He looks like he reads slow, this will fix that latency."

The silence in the room stretches, tight and vibrating. I can hear Mr. Henderson’s breathing hitch. This intruder isn't just rude; he’s a colonizer. He walked into a quiet space of reading and calm and decided it was a testing lab for his plastic garbage.

That's it! I'm. So. Sick. Of people like him.

The anger starts in my stomach, hot and sharp. It’s not just the rudeness. It’s the arrogance. It’s the "move fast and break things" mentality walking into a quiet peaceful room and trying to sell them a subscription to a worse reality.

I am tired.

I am so profoundly tired. I deal with this online every day. My inbox is a graveyard of "accessibility solutions" pitched by people who have never met a disabled person. I navigate a web that is broken by LLM-generated slop, alt-text written by hallucinations, and "innovations" that break my screen reader. I came here to write. I came here for the peaceful offline silence.

And he just has to invade my offline life, too!

I push my keyboard away. My cane is hooked on the edge of the table. I grab it, the grip familiar, helping me calm myself before I act.

I stand up.

I pick up my cane. I unfold it. Snap. Snap. Snap.

But he doesn't hear me.

I lift it two inches and bring the tip down hard on the wooden floor.

CRACK.

The sound is sharp, violent, and intentional. It snaps the tension in the room.

"You," I say.

The nasal voice stops. "Oh. Hey. Didn't see you back there. Whoa, wait. The cane. You’re blind? Dude! You are the perfect use case! This has text-to-speech integration that—"

"Shut up," I say.

"Buddy, try this, we just added a brand new AI model that wi—"

"I. Said. Shut. The. Fuck. UP!"

My voice surprises even me. It’s not the soft, 'cute' voice I use to navigate the world. It’s the voice of someone who has had to shout to be heard over bus engines and bureaucratic hold music for my whole life.

The room freezes.

Usually, I am the quiet, white blind guy that writes in the corner but today, the quiet boy is far from quiet, and everyone has stopped what they were doing to pay attention.

"You walked in here," I say, taking a step to the side, "and you used the word 'disrupt.' You think that's a compliment. You think you’re bringing fire to the cavemen."

"I'm offering a tool," he says, defensive now. I hear the shift in his stance, the squeak of a sneaker pivoting. "It optimizes the reading experience. It—"

"No," I say, stepping out from behind the table. I sweep my cane in a sharp arc, clearing the space in front of me. I track him by the whine of a cooling fan. "You aren't ‘just’ anything. You are polluting this room."

I take a step toward the whine. I feel a massive heat source move behind me—Jarvis. He doesn't stop me. He stands at my back, a thermal wall of protection, letting me take the lead.

"You’re talking about disrupting reading?" I ask, keeping my voice level but razor-sharp. "With what? I can hear that headset from here. It’s running a cooling fan the size of a dime at three thousand RPM. Which means you’re running a processor that’s too hot for the chassis."

"It’s a high-performance—"

"Bullshit! It’s a bloatware machine," I interrupt, tilting my head to lock onto him. "Let me guess. You couldn't get the licensing for a proper kernel, so you’re running a forked version of Android, aren't you? Probably a sloppy Linux distro buried under three layers of proprietary UI. What is it? A bastardized Ubuntu?"

"Look, DareDevil. It’s a custom OS," he snaps, defensive now.

"It’s trash," I snap. "I can hear the latency in your voice commands. You’re using Snap packages, aren't you? Or maybe you’re struggling with the Wayland compositor because you prioritized your flashy VR graphics over the actual input stability. You’re asking people to strap a kernel panic to their face and call it literacy."

A low chuckle ripples through the room. I feel Jarvis’s chest rumble against my back.

"bangin’," Someone says close by, but I am so mad my hands are shaking on my cane.

"You’re blind," the Tech Bro sneers. "What would you know about VR visuals?"

"I know that you’re selling data, not books," I counter, stepping closer. "You can’t open-source that code, can you? Because if we looked at the root, we’d see the telemetry. You aren't tracking eyes to help people read; you’re tracking people to sell ad impressions. You’re harvesting the cognitive struggle of a reader and packaging it as a user metric."

"It helps people imagine!" he shouts. "It generates images so you don't have to!"

"NO! Look, Detective Dipshit, That is the exact opposite of reading!" I slam my cane tip against the floor, the sound cracking like a gunshot. "Reading happens in the silence! It happens in the Default Mode Network of the brain, where we build the world ourselves! You are forcing the brain into a Task Positive state, jamming it with visual noise so it can’t dream! You are colonizing the imagination because you can’t stand the idea of a quiet moment that you haven't monetized!"

The room is deadly quiet. Even the B-flat floorboard is holding its breath.

He’s breathing hard now. I can smell the sour spike of his sweat. I'm not finished, though. Far from it.

"It enhances the experience! It visualizes the scene!"

"Hey Detective Dipshit, the book is the visualization!" I shout. The volume fueling me even more. "Do you even know what reading is? Reading is not passive. It is an active act of co-creation between the author and the reader. When I read a sentence, I build the world. I taste the air. I hear the voice. You want to strip-mine that. You want to colonize the reader's head space with your slop because you can’t monetize silence!"

I'm not at all finished, though. I continue,

"You wanna tell everyone what you arent saying about that technology inside? It tracks eye movements to gauge engagement. It sells that biometric data to advertisers to predict sentiment. It overlays LLM-generated images over text because you think the human brain is too stupid to visualize a sandworm on its own."

"It's not about stupid, it's about efficiency!" he argues. "Why force the brain to do work when the processor can do it?"

"Because, Detective Dipshit, the work is the point!"

I stop three feet from him. I can smell the stale coffee on his breath beneath the ozone cologne.

"You don't understand reading at all! Reading isn't a passive consumption of data," I say, my voice projecting expansively throughout the quiet space in a way I never thought possible. "It is an act of co-creation. The author builds the frame, and the reader builds the castle inside it. It is a private act. It is the last private place on earth. When I read, it happens in the quiet of my own mind. And you? You want to break into that room. You want to plaster billboards on the walls of my imagination when I. Don't. Need. You. My imagination works just fine. I, for one, didn't need to invent a machine to imagine shit for me."

"You're overreacting," he scoffs. "It's just VR. It helps people."

"Bullshit. It helps you," I correct him. "It helps you scrape data. You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Nobody needs this. The book is a perfect technology. It doesn't need a battery. It doesn't need an update. It doesn't track my retina. It waits for me. It offers friction, and friction is where thinking happens. You want to smooth it all out until it’s just a slip-n-slide into ignorance."

"Okay, look," he laughs, a nervous, dismissive sound. "I get it. You're blind, you're bitter, you can't see the UI, so you think it's useless. But for the sighted population—"

But I am so done with these Tech Bros. I am so tired of Tech Bros, and others like them, invading spaces.

The silence in the room is heavy now. I can feel the eyes of every man in the shop on us. This only fires me up.

"You know what?" I continue, stepping closer, until I can hear the fabric of his jacket rustle. "Every. Day. Every, day, online, I have to deal with your kind of tech people every day. I can't try some open-source software because some lazy hack vibe coded a broken worthless idea of code. I can't check my email because I get ninety pitches from stupid tech evangelists, and because nobody can take 'no, leave me the hell alone' as an answer."

I take a breath, letting the rage coalesce into a diamond-hard point.

"You saw a quiet little bookstore, just here, just being a bookstore, and thought, 'Hmm! I can innovate them! I can innovate those poor, primitive folk,' right? Why? Because they read better than you? Is it because they—we—can actually imagine things without the aid of some generation technology? Are you pissed off that people around you actually engage with the author and make a connection to the writer instead of engaging with you or your useless technology? Are you mad because people aren't treating your tech like it's necessary?"

"By the way, who the hell invited you?" I ask, leaning in. "Nobody. I sure as shit didn't hear anyone invite you in. You just stomped in here without a care in the world that maybe this space can just be left alone. But that's what you people do, isn't it? You just love to colonize spaces. You can't just leave people alone! You have to invade spaces."

"You're being—" he starts.

"Maybe people just want to sit," I interrupt, "read a book, drink some tea or hot chocolate without some poorly scripted operating system glitch on their face. Maybe the real innovation is community, rather than a broken operating system."

I point my cane toward the door. I don't need to see it to know exactly where it is. The draft from the entryway tells me.

"Get out. You are boring. You are so pothetically, profoundly, devastatingly boring. You have no inner life, so you have to buy a headset to fake one. Nobody wants you here so. Get. The. Fuck. Out. And maybe before you invent a new technology, try learning how to read a book."

"You can't talk to me like that," the Tech Bro sputters. "I'm a potential investor. This is... you're just some blind guy."

Jarvis speaks up.

"He asked you to leave. Leave or I am calling the police."

The silence that follows is absolute. Even the cooling fan on his stupid glasses seems to hold its breath.

Then, I hear the shuffle of rubber soles. The heavy, retreating thud of boots. The bell jingles—a retreating, defeated sound.

He’s gone.

"Damn, Robert," Mr. Henderson whispers from the corner. "Tell ‘em."

"That was… vigorous," another voice adds, rich with approval.

I stand there, gripping my cane until my knuckles ache. The adrenaline that fueled the fight suddenly vanishes, leaving a hollow, freezing void in my chest. I won. I beat him.

But he’ll just go to the next store. He’ll just go online. There are millions of them, and only one of me.

My hands are vibrating. It’s a subtle tremor at first, starting in the tips of my fingers where they grip the handle of my cane, but it travels fast. Up my wrists, seizing my elbows, rattling the cage of my ribs. The adrenaline that had turned me into a scalpel just moments ago has evaporated, and now I am just a man standing in the dark, cold and hollowed out.

I try to reach for my laptop bag on the table. I just want to pack up. I just want to find my headphones and disappear into a podcast where the world makes sense.

My fingers fumble with the zipper. I miss the pull tab. I try again, my coordination glitching, my fine motor skills dismantled by the crash. My knuckles brush the side of my ceramic mug—now cold—and it tips.

It doesn’t break, but it rattles loudly against the saucer. A harsh, ceramic clatter that sounds like a gunshot in the quiet room.

That noise breaks me.

It’s the final straw. The dam behind my eyes, which I had reinforced with intellect and rage, shatters. A sob rips out of my throat—ugly, guttural, and wet. It’s not a dignified cry. It’s the sound of a child who realizes that no matter how hard they fight, the monsters keep coming back.

"they won't stop," I gasp, the words tumbling out into the open air, unbidden. "Why won't they just stop and leave us the hell alone?"

I cover my face with my hands, dropping my cane. It clatters to the floor. I am shaking so hard my teeth are clicking together. I feel small. I feel like I am back in a house that didn't want me, apologizing for existing, apologizing for needing love.

I am so, so, so tired.

Part 2.

The sob that rips through my chest isn't polite. It isn't the single, cinematic tear of a martyr in a movie. It is a jagged, ugly, guttural sound that scrapes against my throat like broken glass.

The adrenaline that had held my spine straight during the confrontation evaporates in a single heartbeat, leaving behind a hollow, trembling ruin. My knees buckle. I clutch the edge of the mahogany table, my cane clattering to the floor with a sound that echoes too loudly in the sudden silence. I feel small. I feel terrifyingly exposed. I had stood up. I had fought. I had won the argument, technically. But the sheer weight of the war—the endless, grinding attrition of having to defend my right to simply exist, to read, to imagine without being monetized—crashes down on me.

"I'm sorry," I gasp, the words fracturing. "I'm s-sorry."

I expect silence. I expect the awkward shuffling of people trying to ignore the blind guy having a breakdown in the middle of the store.

Instead, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s firm, heavy, and grounding. I instantly lean into the warmph.

"Breathe, brother," a deep baritone voice murmurs from my left. "You let it out. You let that shit out."

"He needed hearing," another voice adds from the right, accompanied by a gentle pat on my back. "You stood tall, man. You stood ten feet tall."

The air around me, usually so open, suddenly feels dense with protection. The scent of old paper and coffee is overlaid with the warmth of bodies moving closer. These men, strangers mostly, patrons of the shop, are not backing away. They are closing ranks.

Then, the atmosphere shifts again. A massive heat source moves through the crowd, parting the air like the bow of a ship.

"Robert."

Jarvis.

He doesn't ask if I'm okay. He doesn't offer a tissue from a distance. He steps into my personal space and collapses the distance between us. His arms, thick and solid as tree limbs, wrap around me, pulling me into the vast, radiating furnace of his chest.

I let go.

I bury my face in the rough cotton of his flannel shirt, smelling the deep, complex makeup of him—vanilla bean, the sharp tang of pomegranate, and the underlying, earthy scent of safety. He holds me tight enough to keep my shattered pieces from drifting apart. He rocks me, a slow, rhythmic sway that matches the cadence of his breathing.

I cling to him. I grab handfuls of his shirt, my fingers twisting into the fabric, holding on as if gravity has failed and he is the only thing tethering me to the earth. I cry into his chest, soaking his shirt.

He just holds me. He starts to rock. A slow, rhythmic sway. Back and forth.

Sway. Breathe. Sway. Breathe.

I am so glad he isn't shushing me. He is rocking me like a child, like a precious thing that has been broken and brought to him for repair.

"That was brilliant," he whispers into my hair. "You eviscerated him. You cut him down to the bone, Robert. I have never seen anything like that."

"Jarvis, I’m just... I’m just tired," I whimper.

"I know. I know you are. Rest now. Just rest."

We stay like that for a long time. The bookstore fades away. There is only the heat of his skin, the smell of vanilla, and the rock-solid rhythm of his heart. I feel the tension slowly leaking out of my muscles, replaced by a heavy, syrupy warmth.

Eventually, the tears slow to hiccups. I pull back slightly, suddenly aware of where I am. The shame spikes.

"I... I got snot on your shirt," I whisper, horrified.

Jarvis laughs. It’s a low, gentle sound. "It washes out, little lion. Shirts are replaceable. You are not."

He keeps one arm around me, stabilizing me. He reaches into his pocket and produces a handkerchief—actual cloth, smelling of lavender laundry detergent. He wipes my face intimately. He is not grossed out. He is thorough, gentle, wiping my eyes, my nose, his large hand cupping my jaw to hold me steady.

After a while, he guides me to my chair.

"Sit," he commands gently.

I sit. I hear him move away, but only for a moment. The sound of water pouring. The clink of a spoon sturring. He returns, and the smell of rich, dark cocoa and peppermint fills the air between us.

"Drink," he says, pressing a warm mug into my hands. "It is my own blend. Good for the shock."

I take a sip. It’s sweet, hot, and thick. It tastes like comfort.

Then, I feel a touch on my face. Jarvis’s thumb. It is rough from moving boxes and shelving books, but the pressure is incredibly gentle. He wipes the wetness from under my left eye, then my right.

"You were magnificent," he says. The thick Nigerian accent wraps around the vowels, making the word magnificent sound like a castle being built. "You dismantled him. You took him apart like a clock."

I sniff, wiping my nose with my sleeve. "I lost my temper. I made a scene in your shop. I'm sorry, Jarvis."

"You drove away a parasite," Jarvis corrects me. "He was not a customer. He was a colonizer. And you..." I hear the smile in his voice, the sound of it softening the timbre of his words. "You protected this little store. I can never repay you. You did my job for me."

"I just... I-I hate them," I whisper. "I hate that they think everything is for them."

"I know," Jarvis says. He rests a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Come. The shop is quiet. Marvin is closing up the register for me. I am walking you home."

"You don't have to—"

"I am walking you home." He says with a tone that tells me clear as a blue sky that the decision is final.

The winter wind is biting when we step outside, but I barely feel it. Jarvis is walking on my left side, blocking the wind.

I am holding his arm. It is solid, unyielding muscle beneath the flannel. He doesn't pull me along; he moves at my pace, his stride shortened to match mine. He is the best unintentional sighted guide. He is a tactile map of the sidewalk. When he steps down, I feel the dip in his shoulder and know a curb is coming. When he pauses, I know to stop.

We walk for blocks in silence, but it’s a companionable silence now. The City sounds—the distant siren, the rumble of the L train, the hiss of bus brakes—fade into the background.

"You need to read Jemisin," Jarvis says suddenly, breaking the quiet. "Her popular one. The City We Became. I have an audio copy code for Libro.fm. I will text it to you."

"I can't afford—"

"It is a code, Robert. It is free. I get them from the publisher." He squeezes my arm against his side. "It is about a city that comes alive to fight an enemy that tries to make everything the same. Tries to make everything white and sterile and efficient. It made me think of you today."

"Me? No way. Me?" I ask.

"Yes. The Avatar of my bookstore." He chuckles, a deep, resonant sound. "Fighting the enemy with a cane and a sharp tongue."

When we make it to my complex, we navigate the lobby. The air here is different—sterile, smelling of industrial cleaner and floor wax. The acoustics change from the warm, wood-lined resonance of the bookstore to the sharp, slapping echo of bland tile.

We reach my hallway. It’s quiet here, the kind of heavy silence that emphasizes my loneliness.

I fumble for my keys, my hands still shaking slightly. "Thank you, Jarvis. Really. You didn't have to..."

As I fumble with my keys, I await Jarvis's reply. Jarvis doesn't answer me at first. He gently takes the keys from my hand and unlocks the door. After the door opens, he gives me back my keys, but his massive hand remains in contact with mine. He takes the back of my hand into his other one and squeezes before replying,

"Robert?" Jarvis asks.

I freeze. His voice has dropped. It’s no longer the commanding voice of the bookstore owner. It’s soft, intimate, and his Nigerian accent sounds like it's lulling me to sleep, rounding the edges of my name.

"May I hold you again?"

I nod, and suddenly, the world narrows.

His hands come up. They are warm, dry, and impossibly large. He cups my face. His palms cover my cheeks, his fingers stretching back into my hair, his thumbs resting gently on my cheekbones. It is heaven.

Instantly, the sterile hallway vanishes. The smell of floor wax vanishes. The echo of the day vanishes. All that exists is the heat of his skin, the smell of vanilla, and the absolute stability of his grip. He creates a home out of nothing but touch.

I suddenly realize I'm crying again. It’s a quiet weeping this time, born of a terrifying vulnerability.

Before I can wipe tears away, strong thumbs swish swish over my skin, catching each tear as it falls. The friction of his calloused skin against mine is electric. It’s a texture I want to memorize. It feels like reverence.

"I feel…" I begin, my voice cracking. "Jarvis…"

"I'm right here, my little lion," he says.

Now that things have calmed down, the nickname hits me in the center of my chest. Little Lion.

It makes me cry all over again. I am not a lion. I am a small, trembling thing with a broken nervous system and a white cane. I am a man who spent his teenage years saying stupid, ignorant things because I was hurting and didn't know any better. I am a man who feels the crushing weight of a trillion-dollar industry hating empathy and trying to automate the human soul, and I feel like I am suffocating under it.

"But—but, but! I'm no lion! I'm no lion!" I stammer, the words tumbling out. "I won today, but… but… you really think I'm a lion?"

"Yes," he says. He makes his voice and accent sharpen, shedding the lullaby softness for a moment so I hear it clear as a bell, ringing with the precision of a narrator reading a truth that cannot be edited. "Yes! You are special. You are amazing, okay? Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

I shake my head inside the cradle of his hands.

"I'm not a lion. Not like activists like Malcolm X," I babble, fueled by anxiety. "Activists are lions. I am not. I'm not Martin Luther King Jr. I don't have that kind of wisdom. I'm not brave like the Panthers. They changed the world. They moved mountains. I just... I yelled at a guy in a bookstore because he pissed me off."

"Robert," Jarvis warns, his tone dropping.

"No, really," I insist, the tears threatening to return. "I'm just a guy who writes romance novels and complains about PDFs and finds joy in cookies and cries when someone holds my hand. Lions roar and that's not roaring."

His hands don't let up, though. they still hold my face, as if we're the only two people in the world. His thumbs rub soothing strokes on my cheeks. It's as if he is rocking me to sleep with his thumbs. The feeling is so comforting I almost forget that I am standing in the hallway, not laying on my bed.

"That is roaring, Robert! Listen, Robert," he says, and his tone is firm but still gentle, "listen to me."

"I'm listening," I say,

"no you’re not," Jarvis says a bit playful. "C’mon, breathe with me. In. Out. In. Out."

After doing this a few times, I hear him smile again.

"That's better. Your eyes have calmed down. Now, listen to me, okay?

I nod, signaling he has the floor.

"I read Sightless Scribbles. Every post. I check that Dropbox folder to see if Sean narrated a new post of yours. And I see a lion! I see a brilliant soul that needs to know he is loved, and that he is special, and his words mean something deeply to a lot of people. Robert, people ask how you are when you do not come to the bookstore. They want to know you are okay. I am not the only one that loves your smile and your wit and your typing. It's music to others. The way you are so kind to everyone. The way you love. The way you hurt. The way you feel. That is why you are special."

I open my mouth to protest but he continues,

"you are not the civil rights activists you mentioned. You are something just as special, but very different. You don't have to be them in order to change lives, to make lives special. You don't need to change policy to change the world, to touch everyone you meet in profound ways."

I am so stunned by his words, I do not have a comeback.

"Thank you," I say, meaning every word, "Can I... Can I tell you something?" I ask.

"Of course," he says, still holding onto my face, but he moves closer, his face inches from mine.

"I’m terrified. I’m so terrified, Jarvis."

"Of what?"

"That I'll stop," I whisper. The truth bleeds out of me, the fear burning hot and painful. "I see it online every day. Writers, friends... people I respected. Leo almost lost his soul to it. They start just doing things that make them money. They start using tech to benefit themselves, to enrich themselves. They get greedy. They get tired. It's so much easier to just let everyone else suffer while you walk away. Stop caring. Stop feeling. It’s so exhausting to care this much, all the time and have everyone call you an idiot. To be the one pointing out the harm when everyone else is saying, 'It's fine, it benefits me now.' I'm scared I'm going to wake up one morning and I'll be too tired to fight. I'm scared I'll become one of those shrugging people. I don't want to be a shrugging person, Jarvis. I don't want to become soulless."

"You, my little lion, will never become that." He says.

"I don't deserve that nickname," I say, "I've said stupid things in the past. I've said racist things, even. I was an idiot. I didn't know things. I'll mess up again in the future. I'll say something stupid in the future… and... And... I'm just so imperfect."

I take a shuddering breath. I choke on the confession.

"It's so easy to stop caring about others," I whisper, fresh tears flowing faster now, his thumbs working overtime to catch them. "Everyone is doing it. Writers I respected. Friends. They just... surrender. They take the easy path to make sure they get what they need and they just stop caring about others, or about solidarity, or hell, about morals. And I'm so tired, Jarvis. I'm scared that one morning I'll just be too tired to fight, and I'll let capitalism take away the love that builds me up, and I'll lose my soul. I'll become hollow."

Jarvis goes still. His thumbs stop moving for a second, pressing firmly into my skin, grounding me.

"And that," he says with finality, his hands never leaving my face, tightening his grip just enough to demand my absolute attention, "is why you are a revolutionary!"

"Because you are terrified," he continues, his voice low and fierce. "Because you care so much that the thought of not caring breaks your heart. That is the revolution, Robert. The machine wants you numb. The capitalists want you efficient. You are messy. You are weeping in a hallway because you love art and people too much. Do you understand? Your grief is your weapon. Your refusal to be numb is what makes you dangerous to them."

He leans in closer. I can feel his breath, warm and smelling of mint tea, against my lips.

"You are a golden light," he whispers. "You punch up. You learn. You grow. You are not the boy who said stupid things; you are the man who learned why they were stupid. That is not weakness. That is strength."

The space between us is charged, thick with the unsaid. I can feel the vibration of his heart through the air, or maybe it's just my own, beating in sync with his.

He leans down and kisses me.

It isn't a devouring kiss. It isn't frantic. It is slow, deep, and tastes of salt and peppermint. His lips are soft, full, and deliberate. He kisses me like he is sealing a promise. He kisses me like he is transferring his own strength into my lungs.

God, this feels so good, so real.

I cling to his wrists, my fingers digging into the thick warmth of his forearms, leaning into this pocket of assurance and tenderness.

When he pulls back, he doesn't go far. His forehead rests against mine.

"One day," Jarvis says, his voice vibrating through my skull. "One day, you will win an award. A big one. I will see you on a stage, holding a trophy, and you will be smiling. I will say, loudly, I gave that man free hot chocolate for life!"

I let out a wet, shaky laugh. "You're crazy."

"I am inevitable," he counters, the smile evident in his tone. "I do not predict, Robert. I narrate. I have seen the end of the book, and it is good. Speaking of,"

"Yes?" I ask, curious.

"Free tea, free hot chocolate. All day, every day. When you want it, just come to my store. You may write in there for free, forever, because you are a golden person."

I am stunned, and tired, but I don't want him to go. Every cell in my body screams at the thought of the door closing between us.

"Stay?" I whisper, though I know he won't. I know the reality of the night.

"Sweet thing. I have to go," he says, and I hear the regret heavy in his throat. "But the store is yours. Tomorrow. Forever. You write for free. You drink my tea. Drink all my hot chocolate. You are the resident lion."

He kisses my forehead, a lingering pressure that stays long after he pulls away.

"Tomorrow, Check your email," he says, stepping back, the cool air of the hallway rushing into the space he vacated. "I will send you The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. Listen to it. It’s about a city that fights back. It’s about you."

"Thank you," I whisper.

"Goodnight, my cute lion."

I listen to his heavy footsteps retreat down the hall. I listen until the outer door clicks shut, sealing the silence back in. But the silence doesn't feel as heavy now. It feels charged.

I unlock my door and step into my small, quiet apartment. I strip off my clothes, which smell of the day's battle, and crawl into bed. The sheets are cool, but my skin still hums with the phantom warmth of Jarvis's hands.

My phone dings.

I double-tap the screen. A voice message.

I hold the phone to my ear and press play.

"Sleep well, my little lion," Jarvis's voice says, recorded in the quiet of his car, the acoustic isolation perfect. "You did good today. You protected me and my bookstore. Now let me protect you. Close your eyes. I'll see you tomorrow."

It is the sound of something I haven't heard in ages. It is the sound of someone that can't wait to see me again. It is the sound of someone watching over me, even if he is not here beside me.

I curl onto my side, clutching the phone to my chest like a talisman. For the first time in months, the noise in my head stops. The fear of the future recedes.

Protected, loved, and looked after, I close my eyes, and I sleep, deeply, for the first time in years.

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The Ballot is a Doorstop, Not a Love Letter

2026-02-19T23:39:48Z

Mood: Tired. Ranty. In need of a hunk of a man to bake me cookies so I can stress eat.

There is a specific, suffocating hell to a conversation with a leftist who has decided that voting is a moral failing.

It feels like trying to explain the concept of "drowning" to someone who is standing on dry land, criticizing the aesthetic quality of the life raft. They talk about "purity" and "burning it all down," and their voices have the smooth, frictionless quality of people who have never had their survival threatened by a change in bureaucratic font size.

They tell me that nobody is progressive enough. They tell me the system is broken.

I know. I feel the broken edges of this system against my skin every single day. I know the machinery is rusted and hostile because I am the one getting caught in the gears.

But here is the difference between us: To them, voting is an identity. It is a mood board. It is a public statement of the soul. If the candidate doesn't align perfectly with their spirit, they withhold their vote like it’s a precious jewel that cannot be sullied.

To me, voting is not an identity. It is a mechanic. It is a piece of duct tape. It is a shim.

And I always, always use the shim.

I do not talk to these people about strategy because they do not understand the difference between morality and logistics. They think refusing to vote is a "statement." I think refusing to vote is a surrender. It is a way of telling me you are comfortable enough to survive fascism, so you don't mind letting it in the front door just to teach the Democrats a lesson.

When you are disabled, when you are poor, "harm reduction" isn't a buzzword. It is the difference between a bruise and a broken bone. It is the difference between losing a program that feeds you and keeping it for one more agonizing, underfunded year.

So, I vote.

Local elections. National elections. School boards. Judges. I vote in every single one.

I do the research. I listen to the candidates. I find the person who is the most progressive, or, frankly, the person who is the least likely to actively hunt my community for sport. I know they will never do everything I want. I know they are beholden to corporate donors. I know the Democratic party is a disappointment engine running on fumes and nostalgia.

But I am not voting for a savior. I am voting for an opponent I can negotiate with.

This is the part that the online purists miss. They view politics as a romance—they want to fall in love with a leader. I view politics as physics. I am looking for leverage.

When I cast a ballot for a corporate Democrat over a fascist, I am not endorsing their soul. I am choosing the terrain of the battlefield. I am choosing to fight on a field where I might be ignored, rather than on a field where I will be liquidated.

I vote to buy time. That’s it. That is the strategy.

We need time to build community. We need time to establish mutual aid networks. We need time to organize, to feed each other, to build the structures that will actually save us.

If a Republican wins, that time evaporates. The atmosphere changes. The pressure drops. The noise of survival becomes so deafening that we cannot hear each other to organize. We spend 100% of our energy just trying not to die, trying to protect our friends from deportation, from institutionalization, from violence. We stop building; we start hiding.

A Democrat—even a mediocre, frustrating one—acts as a buffer. They are a doorstop. They keep the door cracked open just an inch, just enough for us to breathe, just enough for us to do the real work.

I have a Republican acquaintance. We are not friends—the friction between our worldviews is too abrasive for friendship—but we talk. He likes me more than I like him, mostly because he thinks my disability makes me a tragedy he can be kind to.

He told me something once, his voice heavy with a terrifying, calm confidence. He said, "I don't worry about Republicans losing. The leftists, the ones who really hate us? They don't vote. They stay home because they're mad at their own side. We count on that."

He wasn't gloating. He was stating a fact of engineering. He knows the math. He knows that his side views voting as a weapon, while my side views voting as a valentine. As long as the left treats the ballot box like a purity test, the right will win by default.

I hear the slogan constantly: "If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal."

It rings in my ears like a tinnitus of bad logic.

Do you not hear the gears grinding? They are trying to make it illegal. Every single day. They are closing polling places in Black neighborhoods. They are purging voter rolls. They are creating ID laws that specifically target the poor and the disabled.

Why would they spend millions of dollars and decades of effort trying to stop you from doing something if it didn't matter?

They are building walls around the ballot box because they know it is a point of failure for their power. They know that if we actually used the leverage we have, the machine would jam.

When I vote, I am not "blindly checking a box." I am engaging in a quiet, boring, essential act of strategy and self-defense.

I am using the system's own bureaucracy to clog its worst impulses. I am finding the person who will speak to—or at least not actively silence—my disability needs. I am looking for the candidate who acknowledges that the Americans with Disabilities Act exists, even if they don't fund it enough.

Is it exhausting?

God, yes.

I am so tired. I am tired of choosing between "active malice" and "benevolent neglect." I am tired of the lesser of two evils. My muscles ache from holding the door open.

But I do not have the luxury of fatigue.

Voting is not the work. Voting is the chore we do so that we can do the work.

The real work is building the coalition. It is the mutual aid. It is feeding your neighbors. It is creating a community that is so tightly woven that we can catch each other when the state fails.

But you cannot build that community effectively when you are constantly under siege. You cannot plant a garden during a bombing run.

There will always be people who disappear when things get "easy." There are fairweather allies who only care about politics when it's trending, who engage in mutual aid for the aesthetic and then vanish when the crisis creates a little friction.

But for those of us who stay? For those of us who know that "easy" is just a pause in the violence? We need every inch of ground we can get.

We defend the people who stay. We defend the people who build. And we do that by being strategic, not morally righteous.

I don't care if you feel "dirty" voting for a centrist. I don't care if it ruins your vibe. Wash your hands afterward.

I care about strategy. I care about the fact that my healthcare, my housing, and my physical safety are on the line.

If you refuse to vote because the candidate isn't perfect, you aren't a revolutionary. You are a roadblock. You are standing in the doorway, blocking the only exit, complaining about the paint color while the rest of us are choking on the smoke.

Get out of the way. Or better yet—pick up a bucket and help us hold the line.

If you enjoyed this rant, you might enjoy Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed.

The Kiss

2026-02-15T13:08:19Z

Authors note. This little something was supposed to bloom into something else, but it never did. Still though, I think it captures a moment, which is equally as smashing!

We slowly draw closer in the enveloping blackness. My porch light illuminates his questioning, but oh so eager, face as we draw closer, collapsing the distance of our feelings. Crickets cheer us on in this game of chance. The warm air places a heavy blanket of absolute around us; our breathing becomes one breath as we clash lips. Our lips rest lightly on clouds, no longer rooting us. A new kind of fire erupts between our locked passions, igniting our experience with a feverish fervor. We burn down any doubt in our minds with this towering flame of refuge. The sounds around us conduct the perfect beat for this pleasant song. My small lips gently continue to communicate urge with his. His fiery candles instantly kindle my soul. The sounds around us stop abruptly to give us privacy. Way off in the distance, violins play in both of our fantasies, never wanting this testament of love to end. We both are blankets rapping up our adoration for the past, present, and future. We pull away, letting the flame dwindle slowly. We gaze at each other knowing the imperative message that we just told each other. The fire crackles and pops but it never fizzles out, even years later.

If you enjoyed this bit of flash fiction, you might enjoy the fiction podcast 100 Words of Astounding Beauty

How Fanfiction is Literary Resistance

2026-01-20T11:56:29Z

Mood: Firery, cozy, and currently plotting the overthrow of capitalism via Romance tropes and cookies.

I have a confession to make. A secret that sits in the center of my chest like a warm, purring cat.

I write Fanfiction. I also read Fanfiction too.

I have been doing it for years, under a handle that has absolutely no connection to my government name, building a quiet little kingdom on the servers of Archive of Our Own. And no, before the whispers start, I am not the author of My Immortal. I lack that specific, chaotic genius. I cannot weave a spell of spelling errors that potent. Though, if you haven’t listened to the dramatic readings of it, you are denying your ears a specific kind of jagged, confusing joy. Go find them. Treat yourself to the auditory chaos.

But I want to talk about the silence. Specifically, the difference between the noise of my "professional" life and the beautiful, heavy silence of my secret one.

If you read my polished work, the stuff with ISBNs and price tags, you are reading Robert Kingett: The Brand publishers demand I become. You are reading a version of me that has been sanded down, edited, and packaged to fit on a shelf. But if you stumble across my work on AO3, you are reading something else entirely. You are touching the raw wire.

And frankly? I think the raw wire is better because it is imperfect.

We live in an era of "Marketing Sludge." You can feel it, can’t you? The texture of the internet has changed. It used to feel like a chaotic, open field; now it feels like a shopping mall where the air conditioning is broken and everyone is screaming at you to buy a solution to a problem you didn't know you had. Publishing—and I say this with all the exhausted love of a career writer—is an industry built on stripping away agency.

They tell us we aren't just writers anymore. We are "content creators." We are "brands." We are expected to flatten our complex, jagged souls into a smooth, marketable surface.

That is why publishing, if you were to take the Sightless Scribbles archive and try to sell it, would never have a clue how to market it. Because, it's not content. Publishers don't know how to package a soul.

To be an author is to be a constant brand for publishers and never ourselves. We have to post on social media, we have to hustle, we have to perform our trauma for clicks. It is a system designed to turn Art into Product, and the Artist into a Vending Machine.

And that is why Fanfiction is the last radical act left to us.

Think about the economics of it. It is, perhaps, the only truly functioning internet socialist utopia I have ever lived in. It is a digital gift economy. I spend hours—labor that capitalism tells me should be billed by the word—creating a world. I pour my grief, my lust, my rage into it. And then I release it. For free.

There are no paywalls. There are no ads interrupting the smut to sell you car insurance. There is no algorithm punishing me because I didn't post at 10:00 AM on a Tuesday. There is only the work, and the people who need it. It is anti-capitalist by its very definition because it refuses to commodify the connection between the storyteller and the listener. It says that joy does not need a transaction fee.

And the community? It’s not a "network." Networking is just a fancy word for people using each other to climb a ladder. Fandom is a potluck. Everyone brings a dish. Some people bring audio adaptations of Fanfiction, Some people bring art, some bring beta-reading labor, some bring comments that feel like a warm hand on your shoulder after a day of crying. We feed each other. We build these massive, sprawling architectures of support without a single dollar changing hands. It proves that we don't need profit motive to build something beautiful. We just need each other, and a shared obsession with a world or characters that deserve exploration or a diverse story.

There is also the matter of the "Rules."

If you take enough creative writing classes, or listen to enough "gurus," you start to realize that 90% of writing advice is just gatekeeping wearing a monocle. It’s classist, it’s often ableist, and it is obsessed with "restraint." Kill your darlings. Show, don't tell. Trim the fat.

Fanfiction teaches you to burn the rulebook. It teaches you that "indulgence" is actually a rigorous study of emotional resonance. It allows you to sprawl. It allows you to write 50,000 words of pure angst just to explore the specific texture of grief, or an entire chapter dedicated to the domestic intimacy of two people sharing a bed, focusing on nothing but the warmth of skin and the sound of breathing.

Traditional publishing calls that "pacing issues." Fanfiction calls it "what we actually came here for." It is a better teacher because it prioritizes impact over propriety. It taught me how to write not for a critic in a tweed jacket, but for a person alone in their room at 3 AM who desperately needs to feel like they aren't the only broken thing in the universe.

And yes, I am thin-skinned. I am the person who reads a bad review of a book I loved and immediately constructs an elaborate fantasy where the reviewer is buried under an avalanche of ice cream. Just mountains of Rocky Road, suffocating them in marshmallows and chocolate, a sweet, cold, sticky justice for their bad take.

But on AO3? The dynamic is different. Because I am not a brand there. I am just a voice in the dark. If someone hates the story, they hate the story, not the "Robert Kingett Brand." They can’t demand things of me. They can’t insist I owe them something because they bought my book. The transaction was emotional, not financial, so the entitlement—while it still exists in fandom drama—feels different. It feels less like a customer complaint and more like a disagreement at a dinner party.

I love reading "Self-Inserts" and "Author Avatars" in fanfic for this very reason. I love seeing how another disabled person navigates a fantasy world. I want to feel the weight of a sword in a hand that trembles like mine. I want to know how a blind mage navigates the corridors of a magic school using echolocation and their cane skills. Traditional publishing often scrubs those details out to make the character "relatable" to a general audience. Fanfic lets us be specific. It lets us be weird.

So, no. I won’t tell you my handle. I won’t merge the streams.

I need that space. I need a place where I can take off the "Author" costume, hang it in the closet, and just be a gremlin at a keyboard, typing out fantasies about bodies and magic and systems that actually work.

I will keep publishing professionally because there are certain parts of it that are fun. I get to meet an audience that will never read Fanfiction and I like seeing my name on covers. But my heart? My heart lives in the tags. It lives in the comments section at midnight. It lives in the unpolished, un-marketable, glorious mess of the Archive.

You should try it. Come play in the sandbox where the money doesn't matter. It’s the best writing class you’ll ever take, and the tuition is zero. Just bring your own shovel.

If you enjoyed this rant, you might enjoy Unapologetically Me by Danesha Little

Why "Happy Ever After" is Radical Restorative Justice

2026-01-11T11:31:38Z

Mood: Intellectually combative but wishing I could have a masculine man hold my face.

I was listening to a literary podcast the other day—a mistake, usually, as they tend to discuss books that don't have an audiobook version written by people who wouldn't look at me on the street—and the host let out a long, beleaguered sigh.

"I just can’t do Romance," he said, his voice dripping with that specific, curdled disdain reserved for things women and queer people enjoy. "It’s so… prescriptive. You know exactly what’s going to happen. Where is the tension? Where is the realism? It’s just a fairy tale for people who can’t handle the complexity of the real world."

I paused the track. I felt the familiar heat of annoyance rise up the back of my neck, a prickling sensation like a wool sweater in July.

This criticism—that Romance is "unrealistic" or "formulaic" because it guarantees a Happily Ever After (HEA)—is the laziest intellectual take in the modern canon. It is also, fundamentally, a defense of the status quo.

Of course Romance isn't "realism." Have you looked at reality lately?

Realism is a landlord keeping your deposit because he knows you can’t afford a lawyer. Realism is working a sixty-hour week and still having to choose between the good insulin and the rent. Realism is a world where kindness is often treated as a weakness to be exploited, and where the "bad guy"—the billionaire, the abuser, the system—usually wins, gets a tax break, and dies peacefully in his sleep while still hoarding money even after death.

"Realism" is just a polite word for the unmitigated chaos of capitalism.

I don't need a paperback for realism. I can get that by answering my door or picking up my phone or inviting a stranger into my space, wherein they take what they want from my body and then just leave.

When critics mock the Happily Ever After, they are mocking the concept of justice. They are suggesting that ambiguity is the only mark of intelligence, and that suffering is the only valid currency of art. They want the landing gear to fail because they think a crash is more "complex" than a safe landing.

I reject that.

For me, and for millions of other marginalized readers, the Romance novel is not a flight from reality. It is a simulation of a just world. It is a restorative justice hearing where the verdict is finally, for once, in our favor.

Think about the economics of a Romance novel. In the real world, "Care"—the act of listening, holding, supporting, remembering, and loving—is an inefficiency. It is labor that goes unpaid and unnoticed. If you spend an hour comforting a coworker, the market calls that "time theft." If you spend years supporting a partner who refuses to communicate and never hugs you or tells you, "you look nice today,", society calls that "standing by your man."

But in a Romance novel? Care is the gold standard.

In these books, emotional labor is the primary driver of the plot. The narrative arc is obsessed with it. The characters are forced to communicate. They are forced to apologize. They are forced to demonstrate, through action, that they are worthy of the space they take up in someone else’s life.

And the HEA? The HEA is the paycheck.

It is the moment the universe balances the ledger. It says: You put in the work. You were vulnerable. You were brave. You survived the trauma. And therefore, you are owed joy.

This is why the genre feels so radical to me. It is the only place in literature where the "System" (the plot) actively punishes greed and selfishness, and actively rewards vulnerability and interdependence.

When I read a Happily Ever After, I am not escaping. I am calibrating my proprioception.

You know that feeling when you miss a step in the dark? That lurch in your stomach, the sudden vertigo when the floor isn't where your body expected it to be? That is what living as a disabled, queer, poor person feels like most days. The world is constantly pulling the rug out. You are always braced. Your muscles are always tense, waiting for the fall.

The HEA is the feeling of your foot finding solid ground.

It is a physical sensation of balance being restored. It is the click of a lock tumbling into place. It is a resolved chord at the end of a chaotic symphony. It allows my body to exhale. It allows me to experience, for three hundred pages, a reality where the "other shoe" never drops. Or, if it does drop, it turns out to be a glass slipper that fits perfectly.

This isn't just comforting; it's training.

If we constantly consume media that tells us suffering is inevitable and justice is a myth, we will start to believe it. We will accept the scraps we are thrown. But if we immerse ourselves in stories where joy is non-negotiable—where the queer kid gets the guy, where the disabled woman gets to be the hero, where the billionaire grovels and redistributes his wealth (okay, that last one is fantasy, but let me have it)—we start to develop a taste for it.

We start to ask: Why shouldn't I have this?

Why shouldn't my labor be valued? Why shouldn't my boundaries be respected? Why shouldn't I be held with reverence?

Romance teaches us that we are not broken things waiting to be discarded. It teaches us that we are protagonists. It frames accommodation not as a burden, but as an act of devotion. It frames consent not as a legal contract, but as a love language.

So, to the podcast host who thinks the HEA is "prescriptive": You’re damn right it is.

A prescription is medicine.

I read Romance because I am sick of a world that does not know how to communicate and then ignores the answer. I need the medicine of a narrative that insists people are triumphs and details how we are allowed agency. I need the restorative justice of a book that looks at scars and says, "These do not disqualify you from love. They are the map of how you survived to reach it."

The Happily Ever After isn't a fairy tale. It’s a blueprint. And I’m going to keep studying it until we figure out how to build it out here, on the gritty, uneven pavement of the real world.

If you enjoyed this rant, you might enjoy Beach Read by Emily Henry

The Acoustic Signature of Weather

2026-01-06T14:41:45Z

Listen to The Acoustic Signature of Weather.

Sighted people have a casual, almost dismissive relationship with the weather. They glance out a window or check an app. The weather is a visual fact, a piece of data. For me, the weather isn't data. It’s a symphony. Or, more accurately, it's a language I've learned to interpret, spoken in a dialect of sound and pressure.

Every weather system has a unique acoustic signature.

Rain is the most versatile vocalist. It’s not one sound; it’s a whole choir. A light, misty drizzle is a soft, static hiss, the sound of the air itself being gently abraded. A steady, all-day rain is a drummer with an infinitely varied set of brushes, playing a continuous, soothing rhythm on the roof, the windows, the pavement. A torrential downpour is something else entirely. It’s a roar. The individual drops merge into a single, percussive entity, a sound so dense it feels like a physical weight. I can tell the difference between rain hitting asphalt (a sharp, flat splat), grass (a soft, absorptive thud), and leaves (a delicate, papery pitter-pat).

Snow is the master of subtraction. Its arrival is heralded not by a sound, but by the death of it. As the flakes begin to fall in earnest, the world goes quiet. The snow acts as a global acoustic dampener, absorbing ambient sound, erasing echoes, and muffling the sharp edges of the city. The rumble of a distant truck becomes a low hum. A car passing by doesn’t whoosh; it slushes. The predominant sound of a heavy snowfall is a profound, hollow silence, a quiet so deep you can feel it in your bones. It’s the sound of the world holding its breath.

Wind is the most expressive of all. It’s a musician that plays the landscape. I can tell the difference between the high, mournful whistle of wind through the tight gap between two buildings and the deep, resonant whoosh of it moving through the full branches of a pine tree. The sound of wind in bare winter branches is a frantic, rattling clatter, like a skeleton applauding. A steady, powerful wind has a low, oceanic roar. A gusty wind is conversational, full of sudden shouts and abrupt silences.

Even the sun has a sound, in a way. On a clear, hot, sunny day, sounds become sharper, more brittle. There are no clouds to absorb them, so they travel further and with more clarity. There’s a distinct feeling of openness, an expansion of the acoustic space around me.

I don’t look out the window to see what the day is like. I stand still and I listen. I listen to the language the world is speaking. And sometimes, in the middle of a rainstorm, with that complex percussion playing on every surface around me, I feel like I understand it more clearly than anyone.

Listen to The Acoustic Signature of Weather.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy reading, The Misfits by James Howe.

A Field Guide to the Personal Space Violations of Public Transit

2026-01-06T14:27:41Z

Listen to A Field Guide to the Personal Space Violations of Public Transit

Public transit is a marvel of modern engineering and a complete failure of human social design. It is a rolling testament to our species’ profound inability to be aware of anyone but ourselves. As a daily commuter, I have become an unwilling naturalist, documenting the various species of sensory offenders in their native habitat.

Welcome to my field guide.

Species 1: The Headphone Bleeder (Tinnitus percussivus)

This specimen believes that sharing is caring, especially when it comes to their terrible taste in music. They are identifiable by the inescapable, high-frequency tss-tss-tss of a synthesized hi-hat that leaks from their earbuds at a volume capable of sterilizing small mammals. This sound burrows into your skull and takes up residence, leaving you with a phantom beat that will haunt you for hours.

Species 2: The Olfactory Offender (Aroma aggressivus)

Your nose will identify this individual long before your ears do. They travel in a dense, personal cloud of either A) cologne so aggressive it feels like a chemical weapon, or B) the greasy, pungent ghost of a recent fast-food meal. Their presence fundamentally alters the bus's ecosystem, creating a "no-breath zone" with a radius of at least three feet.

Species 3: The Pole Monopolizer (Brachium obstructus)

This is my personal nemesis. You know the central poles on the bus or train? They are meant for multiple humans to use for balance. The Monopolizer, however, sees it as their own personal property. They don't just hold the pole; they embrace it. They wrap their entire arm around it in a full-body hug, creating an impassable barrier of human flesh and entitlement. For someone navigating by touch, this presents a unique challenge: either give up on stability or commit to an act of unwelcome intimacy with a stranger’s unwashed armpit.

Navigating this ecosystem is a daily exercise in sensory warfare. My only comfort is in quiet classification, turning my frustration into a silent, internal documentary narrated by a very tired David Attenborough. It’s that, or start screaming. The documentary is quieter.

Listen to A Field Guide to the Personal Space Violations of Public Transit

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy If I Were You, I'd Kill Myself by Imani Barbarin

The Cartography of an Open Palm

2026-01-06T14:15:44Z

Listen to The Cartography of an Open Palm

I have written about hands before. I’ve written about them as weapons, as tools, as instruments of casual violence and clinical detachment. My memory is a museum of the hands that have done me harm, a collection curated by pain. The clenched fist that taught me the sound of bone meeting cartilage. The proprietary grip that dug bruises into my arm like angry purple thumbprints. The hand that held a lit cigarette. Those were hands that were closed, stories with the covers slammed shut, their intent hidden until the moment of impact.

But a fist is a hand that is hiding something. A hand that grips is a hand that is afraid of losing control. And lately, I find myself dreaming not of avoiding hands, but of finally being able to read one. I find myself dreaming of the opposite of a fist.

I dream of a man's open palm.

I long to know what it would feel like to explore another person’s soul through the geography of their hand. To have a man trust me enough to place his hand, palm up, into my own. Not for a handshake, not as a prelude to sex, but as an offering. An invitation. A silent agreement to let me read.

I would start by tracing the lines, not as a fortune-teller predicting a future, but as a cartographer mapping a past. The life line, the heart line—not as prophecy, but as the rivers of his experience, worn into his skin over time. I would feel their depth, their texture. Are they smooth or are they interrupted by the little tributaries of scars and callouses?

The story is in the texture. I want to feel the landscape of his work and his life. The calloused pads at the base of his fingers would speak of effort, of lifting heavy things, of resilience. They are not roughness; they are a record. They are the story of a man who has held on, who has built things, who has worked. And I would want to feel the contrast: the softer, more vulnerable skin of the palm itself, the parts protected from the world. The story of his strength would be written in the callouses; the story of his tenderness would be in the skin between them.

I would learn the temperature of his honesty. A hand that is warm and dry, radiating a steady, living heat—that is the hand of a man who is comfortable in his own skin, who has nothing to hide. A cold, clammy hand is a hand full of secrets and anxiety.

This exploration would be the most profound form of intimacy I can imagine. It is an act of radical vulnerability to let someone read you this way. To offer up your hand, palm open and unguarded, is to offer up your history. Your work. Your softness. Your scars. It is to say, “This is me. This is the map of where I have been. Read it. Know me.”

I ache for that. I ache to find a man who is not afraid to let me read his story. A man whose hands I could learn until I knew their geography better than my own apartment. A man whose hands have a history of building and holding and caring, not a history of breaking things.

I want to trace the map of a man’s life in his palm, and in doing so, trust that this is the same hand that will never be raised against me. A hand that will not be used to bruise me, or break me, or leave me hospitalized like so many other hands have done. It is a terrifying, beautiful hope. To find a hand that offers its map instead of its fist. A hand that has absolutely nothing to hide.

Listen to The Cartography of an Open Palm

A Map of My Scars, Read by Your Fingertips

2026-01-06T14:12:38Z

Listen to A Map of My Scars, Read by Your Fingertips.

My body is a secret atlas. Beneath my clothes, my skin is a map of a war I survived, with its topography etched in scars. There are small, circular burns, like angry, faded constellations. There are thin, silvery lines from the edges of things that were sharper than they should have been. They are a hidden geography of pain, a record of another man’s rage written on my flesh. I have spent my life keeping this atlas closed, hidden away, terrified of anyone ever seeing it. Because to see it is to ask questions, and the answers have always been too heavy to speak.

I have a recurring waking nightmare about it. The moment of discovery. A man’s hand, moving across my back or my arm in a moment of intimacy, and then stopping. The sudden stillness. The change in the texture of his touch as his fingertips find a ridge of raised, unnatural skin.

I can imagine the reaction that would follow. The sharp intake of breath. The recoil of disgust. Or worse, the clinical, morbid curiosity, a kind of detached fascination with another person's damage. Or worst of all, the heavy, suffocating blanket of avoidence. All of these reactions are violations. They turn my body back into a specimen, an object of study. They are a reminder that I am damaged goods.

But there is another fantasy. A hopeful fantasy so fragile and so potent it almost hurts to think about. It is the fantasy of a different kind of discovery. The fantasy of a man whose touch could heal, not re-injure.

I imagine a moment of quiet intimacy. His hand would be on my skin, and it would find a scar. And it would not stop. It would not recoil. Instead, it would pause, and then the nature of the touch would change. It would become something else.

I imagine a single, gentle fingertip, tracing the outline of a scar with an infinite, reverent slowness. The touch would not be one of pity or horror. It would be a touch of pure, unadulterated curiosity. It would be a touch that listens. It would be a question, asked without a single word: “What is this story? I'm listening.”

And in the absolute safety of that gentle, questioning touch, for the first time in my life, I would find the breath to answer.

As his finger traces the thin, white line on my ribs, I would whisper, “This was the corner of a table.”

As it circles the faint, round mark on my shoulder, I would say, “This was his cigarette.”

The act of being touched and the act of telling would become one. His gentle contact would be the permission my body has always needed to let my voice release the story. He would be reading the map with his fingertips, and I would be providing the annotations. He would not be healing the scars themselves—they are a part of me now. He would be healing the silence and the shame that surrounds them.

With every scar he would trace and every story I'd tell, the geography would change. They would cease to be just monuments to The perpetrator's cruelty. They would become markers of my own survival. And his touch, his quiet, unwavering, non-judgmental presence, would make them something more. They would become the place where his love and my history finally met. A map of a brutal war, finally being read by a gentle peace.

Listen to A Map of My Scars, Read by Your Fingertips.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan

Third Grade Letter to Santa

2025-12-08T04:12:30Z

Listen to Third Grade Letter to Santa

Hi everyone. Some context before we begin. This was a writing assignment by my then third grade teacher. Obviously, I took the assignment a tad too seriously. All the same, even if you don't celibrate Christmas, never snuff out a child's imagination. Besides, that imagination could give way to empathy in the future.

One other small note before we begin. I did actually get that stuffed Wishbone Dog after all, but as an adult.

Dear Santa,

Mrs. Amanda told us to write to you so I am writing to you. Tylor says that you don't exist, but how can someone not exist if everyone tells the same story about you every year? Besides, if you didn't exist, I'd read it in the news or watch it on TV so I think he doesn't know what he's talking about. Besides, Reading Rainbow tells your story! Why tell it on TV if it's fake? Doesn't that cost money?

I have a weird request. I know that you operate a very popular business in the North Pole but have you ever thought about expanding your business? Instead of just selling toys to kids, you could start doing clothes and books and cookies and stuff.

Think about it, Santa. I like audiobooks, but Tylor doesn't like audio books. It's wrong to force him to think of a toy he may or may not want? Besides, I can't see well, anyway, so why not get me something I can hear? You've been selling toys to my house for years, but, can I tell you a secret? I can't see well so step on them or break them. If you sell other things to other kids that are not toys, they get to use their product longer and they don't need to write to you next year! Do you see how that makes sense?

Let's take girls into account as well. Alice wrote to you asking for a movie. What use would she have with a video game or an army toy? I think that if you try my idea, maybe sit down in your office with your elves and talk it over, you all can make a new and improved shop!

If Alice has been good all year, then she should get what she wants. I don't think she should get a toy she won't enjoy.

Now, me! I've been extra good, so I want cookies. I also want that stuffed Wishbone dog I never got. I think you misplaced that file in your office. He's going to sleep with me, and he's also going to eat lunch with me too! No one is going to have him except me. Because I've been extra good this year, it's logical that I get extra stuff, if I understand your business correctly. I want a PlayStation game. I want cookies, and I want that wishbone dog! Seriously, he's so cute! Please Santa? I will love him forever and ever!

I hope you like my idea. I thought about it for many days! Consider it, please. If you do decide to adopt my new business, can you write to me or Mrs. Amanda? You have my address, and you know where my school is, so let me know? Okay? It's just being nice to let me know, yes, or no. I have a question. Why do you never write back? Even to hear my side when I do something naughty?

Robert Kingett.

If you enjoyed this very opinionated snapshot in time, you might enjoy the fiction podcast, A Gift. Produced by AudioImagination77 Productions with Matthew P. Woerner.

The Colonization of Confidence.

2025-12-07T16:00:47Z

There's a texture to grief very few examine. People talk about the loud grief—the kind of grief that shatters your soul and rattles your cage of will—but there's another kind of grief that's rarely explored. Watching and listening to your friends losing who they are.

I think the climate is foreshadowing for my life. The bitter cold of the winter is a warning sign I don't pay attention to as I sip hot herbal tea at my writing desk, vanquishing my writers block and attempting to put some literary order back into the chaotic rhythm of my thoughts.

A phone notification shakes me out of my thoughts about how I can stretch out two men taking their clothes off for about five hundred words. It's Leo. He's texted me.

"Hey Rob," he says, "Did you forget about the writing group today?"

I did, but I can't tell him that.

"Nope! Just getting ready!"

When he makes it to my apartment, there's an email notification from my phone. I don't have time to read it at the moment, and oh, I am a fool for not stopping to check what that email is.

The air in the conference space where our "Writers of the Future" group meets always smells of harsh cologne and performative productivity. It is a sensory assault of laptop fans and the frantic tapping of laptop keys. I sit in the corner, my cane hooked over the back of my chair, listening to the room.

I hate the name. Writers of the Future sounds like a corporate slogan for a pesticide company, but the name is less important than the people within it, and that's why I'm here.

Leo sits next to me. I can hear the nervous rhythm of his breathing. Leo is a Black writer with a voice that sounds like jazz—unpredictable, syncopated, full of unexpected dissonances that resolve into heartbreaking chords. He writes about his life, the specific, humid weight of a Texas summer, the way joy can taste like a cheap freeze-pop on a Tuesday.

"I have something new," Leo says. His voice is tight. "But... it's rough. It's really messy."

"Messy is good," I say, leaning in. "Messy is where the blood is."

Leo is a writer of immense, jagged power. He is a powerful man with a voice that sounds like gravel crunching under heavy tires, deep and resonant and full of a history that refuses to be smoothed over. When he reads his work aloud, the air in the room changes pressure. His prose is not "clean." It does not flow like water; it flows like molasses, thick and sweet and slow, or sometimes like lava, burning everything it touches. He tells more than he shows, a stylistic choice that critics hate but which I find profoundly honest. He doesn't invite you to watch; he commands you to listen.

And I love everything he writes.

Today, the writers in this group aren't buzzing with typing. They're listening to Chad, a white tech bro that sounds like his larynx is constantly massaging his speech for a pamphlet instead of talking to people.

Chad isn't a writer. He's a content generator. He's published 400 generated books on Amazon and won't stop—not to mention—the insessant bragging he does about how he's a better writer because of whatever LLM he's using today. He is the kind of person who listens to podcasts at 2.5x speed because he believes silence is an inefficiency to be eliminated. He works in "Prompt Engineering," a job title that sounds to me like "Assembly Line Foreman for the Dream Factory."

Chad's voice is smooth, frictionless, possessing the terrifying cheerfulness of a customer service bot that cannot be turned off. "Claude just released an update. It's incredible for unblocking. It really smooths out the edges."

He's explaining to the group how to get the most out of large language models. Leo, beside me, is fidgeting with as much annoyance as I am. We're both immensely relieved when Brad finally claps his hands together, as if he's about to announce a press release.

"Okay," says Brad. Brad is the organizer. His voice is a rich, polished baritone that vibrates in his throat but never seems to reach his chest. It's the voice of a podcast host who sells mattresses between segments on mindfulness. "Leo, you're up. Did you bring the revision of The Asphalt Hymn?"

"Yeah," Leo says,

"Great! Alright, creators," Brad announces. The word 'creators' sounds slippery in his mouth, like he's selling a subscription service. "Let's synergize the workflow tonight. Go on, Leo."

I have to suppress the urge to violently groan about his word choice. Instead, I turn my head towards Leo. I can't wait to hear this.

Leo reads. It's a piece about his grandmother's kitchen. He describes the smell of collard greens as a heavy, green blanket that wrestled the air into submission. He describes her laugh as a rusted hinge that still worked perfectly.

It is beautiful. It is imperfect. It stops me cold.

When he finishes, there is a silence. Not the reverent silence of a shared emotional impact, but the uncomfortable, shifting silence of a boardroom that has just been shown a graph with a downward trend.

"It's... interesting," Chad says. "But the pacing is a little weird. And that metaphor about the hinge? It kind of pulls you out of the immersion. It's not very smooth."

"It's not supposed to be smooth," I snap. "It's supposed to be true."

"Leo," Chad says, choosing to ignore me entirely—he hates me just as much as I hate him—and addresses Leo directly. "Leo, did you read what I sent before this meeting? I took your last draft and ran it through Claud."

The fuck? I roar internally.

"I asked it to optimize for flow and readability. Listen to this."

Chad clears his throat. The sound is grating. It sounds as if he's optimizing how to speak to humans. He reads from his screen.

"Her laugh was a joyous sound, ringing through the house like a silver bell. The kitchen always smelled delicious, the aroma of greens filling the air like a warm hug."

The words hang in the air like dead flies. They are perfectly grammatical. They are perfectly structured. And they are completely, utterly stripped of everything that is Leo. A silver bell? A warm hug? It is the language of a Hallmark card Leo would never write written by a sociopath.

"See?" Chad says, triumphant. "It just flows better. It's more... accessible. You should maybe use that as a base, Leo. Clean up your edges."

I wait for the room to revolt. I wait for the other writers to laugh Chad out of the shop. But they don't.

"Actually," says Amber, a poet who used to write searing verse about heartbreak, "that does sound a lot more professional, Leo. The 'silver bell' image is really classic."

"Yeah," says Mike. "It's less... abrasive."

I feel Leo shrink beside me. I can sense the physical collapse of his posture, the way he folds in on himself.

"I guess," Leo whispers. "I guess I was trying too hard with the hinge."

"No," I say, and my voice is the low growl of a guard dog. "The hinge was perfect. The bell is a lie. Leo, that machine didn't improve your writing. It erased your grandmother."

"You're just resistant to the tools, Robert," Chad sighs. "It's the future. Adapt or die."

"Oh, go power down somewhere. This isn't adaptation," I say, gripping the edge of the table until my knuckles ache. "It's lobotomy."

Nobody agrees with me, though. I am an outcast in a gaggle of readers and writers that seem to prefer LLM writing to the jagged edges.

"And this is why," Chad practically yells, "why you don't listen to Luddites! Work smarter, not harder," Chad beams. The smile in his voice is audible, a smile I want to deck. "That's the future. Why churn butter when you can buy margarine, right?"

I sit there, gripping my cane until my knuckles pop, feeling the beginning of a horror story that has nothing to do with ghosts and everything to do with the slow, methodical erasure of a human soul.

Part 2.

I walk home, my cane tapping a furious rhythm against the concrete.

I fucking hate them.

I fucking hate the Tech Bros. I hate the hype. I hate the Bros wrongly claiming LLM's will turn us all into toast. I hate their never-ending quest to make their investments have a return. I hate the venture capitalists in their Patagonia vests who talk about "disruption" while they burn down the library of human experience and fuck over workers. I hate them with the specific, intricate hatred of a survivor who knows exactly how the grift works.

I hate LLMs. My hatred knows no bounds. I love the small web, the clean web. I hate tech bloat.

And LLMs are the ultimate bloat.

They didn't build these things to help us. I know this.

Why do LLMs exist? They exist to harm workers. They say it's to "democratize creativity." Bullshit. You don't democratize creativity by automating the act of creation. You democratize it by funding arts education, by supporting libraries, by paying writers a living wage.

No, they created LLMs to solve a supply chain problem.

The "problem" was that creating art—real, human, meaningful writing—is slow. It is expensive. It is unpredictable. And it is diverse. It requires dealing with people. People with traumas, people with political opinions, people with voices that don't fit into a corporate style guide. Minority writers, specifically, are "high friction." We talk about queerness and transphobia and racism, and We talk about disability. We make the advertisers uncomfortable.

So the Tech Bros, in their infinite mediocrity, decided to bypass the human element entirely. They built a machine that scrapes our work—our pain, our joy, our very souls—without consent, grinds it into a mathematical slurry, and extrudes it as a flavorless, inoffensive paste that can be sold by the bucket.

They built a machine to gentrify the English language.

And the horror of watching my friend lose his soul almost eats me alive.

The next week, Leo brings a draft that was written 90% by him. The justifications are quiet, unsure of his own skill.

The week after, he brings a piece that's written 50% by him. The shame is palpable, but it hurts me even more when readers and writers say the LLM versions are always better than his old drafts.

This week, he stuns us all.

"I don't—I don't have a draft," he admits. I immediately take his hand among the gaping and gawking of the room. His skin feels like it's a hallow shell of his soul. His voice is strained, broken, like there's something that's fundamentally shattering inside him nobody can see.

"I just—I just—I haven't written in a while," he says. Claude has been down. I tried to write something… and, and… it just… I can't write. I ain't got nothin'."

Chad chooses that exact moment to colonize the conversation.

"Leo sent me his last draft," Chad announces.

I freeze. NO! Not. Fucking. Again!

"And," Chad continues, "I ran it through the new 'Literary Fiction' AI I've been working on. Listen to the difference."

He reads Leo's original sentence. I know it is Leo's because it has teeth.

and then, he gets to the LLM version.

The group murmurs. "Oh, that flows so much better," someone says. "It's more... universal."

"Universal means average," I snap, wishing I could get away with prompt engineering Chad's stupid LLM to self destruct. "It means it touches no one because it tries to touch everyone."

"Robert," Chad sighs. "Always the contrarian. Look, the metrics don't lie. Readers prefer the second one. We did A/B testing on Wattpad. The second one had a 40% higher retention rate."

"You are feeding them sludge," I say, my voice rising. "And because they are starving, they eat it. And then you tell them sludge is what food tastes like."

"It's just writing, Rob," Chad says, his voice hardening. "Why do you have to make it a crusade? Leo likes it. Don't you, Leo?"

We all turn to Leo. Even though I can't see his face, I feel the weight of the room pivot toward him.

"I..." Leo's voice cracks. A dry, brittle sound. "I don't know."

"Leo," I say gently. "Tell him you are a good writer that doesn't need fixing."

"It's better," Leo whispers.

The words hit me like a physical blow. A kick to the shin.

"What?" I ask.

"It's better," Leo says, louder this time, but with a hysterical edge, a vibration of pure panic. "He's right, Rob. My metaphors... they're confusing. People don't get them. The machine... it makes me sound smart. It makes me sound like a real writer."

"You don't need an LLM to write for you. You're a good writer," I say, but his voice cracks as he stands up, snatches his coat, and practically bolts out of the room.

"I can't write anymore. I can't write anymore. I just—I can't."

I chase after him but it's too late. He's already out of the building.

The unraveling doesn't happen all at once. It is a slow rot, a decomposition of confidence that the Germans call Zersetzung. Psychological decomposition. It was the method the Stasi used to break dissidents not with torture, but with gaslighting, with subtle alterations of reality until the subject lost faith in their own mind.

The Tech Bros haven't invented the term, but they have automated the process. They have built a machine that weaponizes mediocrity and sells it as perfection.

Two weeks later, I sit in Leo's apartment. The air is heavy with the smell of stale laundry and despair. I have brought cookies—oatmeal raisin, heavy on the cinnamon, baked until the edges are crisp and the centers are dense and chewy. Food is a language of gravity; it pulls you back to earth.

"Eat," I say, pushing the container across the table.

Leo doesn't move. "I got into Fiction Magazine," he says softly.

"Leo! That's huge!" I reach out, finding his forearm. His muscle is tense, rigid as wood. "Why do you sound like you're at a funeral?"

"Because I didn't write it, Rob."

"You used the LLM again?"

"I used it for the whole thing," he whispers. "I fed it my draft. My messy, ugly draft. And it spit out... it spit out this smooth, perfect thing. And the editors loved it. They said it was 'refreshing.' They said the prose was 'elegant.'"

He pulls his arm away from me. I hear the frantic clicking of keys.

"Listen to this email," he says. His voice sounds like he's chewing glass as he reads it to me.

"Dear Leo, we were impressed by the fluidity of your metaphors. Usually, your work feels a bit... disjointed. But this piece sang. The line about the 'tapestry of fate' was particularly moving."

"Tapestry of fate," Leo spits. The words sound like poison in his mouth. "I hate that phrase. I would never write that phrase. It's a cliché. It's slop. But they liked it better, Rob. They liked the machine better than me."

"They liked the conditioning," I say, my voice sharp. "They liked the familiarity. It's the linguistic equivalent of McDonald's fries. It's chemically engineered to be palatable, but there's no nutrition in it. It passes through the brain without leaving a mark."

"Maybe I'm just bad," Leo says. The sentence hangs in the air, heavy and wet.

"You are not bad. You are a jazz musician in a world trying to sell ringtones."

"But Robert, I can't do it anymore," Leo says, and then he breaks. It isn't a loud sob. It is a continuous intake of breath, a collapse of the chest. "Fuck, I tried to write this morning. Just me. Just a blank document. And I stared at the blinking cursor, and every sentence I thought of felt... weak. It felt amateur. I wrote, 'The rain hit the roof like gravel.' And then I thought, no, the AI would say something better. And I deleted it. I deleted it all."

I'm about to say something when he continues,

"I feel so stupid, Rob," he chokes out, the words drowning in his tears. "I feel so stupid. I let it into my head and now I can't get it out. I look at my own thoughts and they look wrong. They look like errors."

I stand up and walk around the table, navigating by the sound of his breathing. I find his shoulder and pull him into an embrace. He clings to me for dear life, his hands clutching my body as if I'm his only life raft at sea.

"That is the trap, Leo. That is the psychological warfare. They are selling you a solution to a problem they created. They want you to feel insecure. If you feel insecure, you pay the subscription. They are strip-mining your confidence to sell you back a synthetic version of it."

"I'm losing money!" he wails. "I'm losing money, I can't write anymore—and readers—readers love my LLM writing! I don't know what to do, Rob! Readers like it. Editors like it. Editors. Editors of Magazines. I can't write anymore! I just—what the hell is happening to me—why do readers like it?"

"I don't know," I answer honestly, rocking him, trying to comfort his soul with my words. "But just because people want to eat McDonalds, that doesn't mean we need to stop home cooking. But I don't know what to do. I'm just one person, but Leo, I love you, okay? I'll always be here if you need me. If you need me to look over a draft or—"

"It's not just the subscription," he weeps. "It's the readers. They're getting used to the slop, Rob. They're getting used to the smooth edges. My writing... my real writing... it feels like it has too much friction now. Even the editors. Even the people who are supposed to know better."

"Friction is where the heat comes from," I say fiercely. "Friction is where the life is."

But he can't hear me. The Zersetzung is working. He is taking himself apart, piece by piece, and replacing the parts with synthetic fillers because the world has told him his own parts are defective.

Days later, it's my turn. we're back at that fucking writers' group. Although, today, it feels like it's a uniquely crafted torture chamber.

I decided to read something. I usually don't. I keep my work for my blog, for the people who understand that a screen reader isn't a constraint but an instrument. But I needed to show Leo that imperfection was power. I needed to prove that raw writing hits harder than processed data.

I read a piece about my mother. It is raw. It is angry. It describes the sound of her voice as "a serrated knife cutting through warm butter." It describes the smell of the trailer park as "wet cardboard and ambition gone sour." It is disjointed. It has no tapestries. It has no symphonies. It is a piece of writing that demands you look at the ugly thing and call it by its name. It's imperfect, but it's everything me.

When I finish, the room is silent.

"Interesting," Chad says. The word is a dismissal. "Very... visceral. But Rob, my guy, it's a little hard to follow. The sentence structure is all over the place. And 'wet cardboard'? It's a bit gross, isn't it?"

"It's the truth," I say.

"Truth doesn't scale," Chad says. He taps on his keyboard. "Just for fun, I ran your first paragraph through the new GPT-fiction-Plus wrapper I'm beta testing. Just to see what it could do with the core idea. I prompted it to 'elevate the tone' and 'smooth the syntax.'"

"Don't," I warn. My voice drops—calm, dangerous, flat. "Do not run my life through your blender."

"Too late," Chad says. "Listen to this improvement."

He clears his throat, loving this. I feel like I'm being punctured by a thousand arrows through the heart.

When he finishes, Chad beams. I can hear the smile in his voice. "See? Same info, but now it's palatable. Now it's content. It took out the aggression. It leveled the tone. It's objectively better writing."

A woman in the front row murmurs, "Oh, that is much nicer. It feels more... literary."

"Exactly!" Chad says. "I fixed it."

"Chad," I say, my voice calm, the voice of a teacher correcting an unwilling student. "Why did it choose 'stone' for the throat metaphor?"

"What? Because it's intelligent. It's smart. It knows. Because it fits."

"No," I say. "It chose 'stone' because statistically, in the petabytes of training data scraped without consent from the internet, the word 'stone' appears in proximity to 'lump in throat' with a probability of 0.04 percent, which is higher than 'wet creature.' It isn't a choice. It's a math problem. It is a predictive text algorithm on steroids. It doesn't know what a throat is. It doesn't know what fear feels like. It is predicting the next token based on mediocrity."

"It's still better writing," Chad insists, but his voice vibrates with the anger that someone who he thinks is a technophobe knows this tech better than he knows the tech.

"It is a hallucination of competence," I say. "Chad, asking that machine to improve writing is like asking a blender to improve a salad. You don't get a better salad. You get sludge. And you," I turn my head to sweep the room, "you are all cheering for the sludge because it's easy to swallow. You are letting this tech bro convince you that your own distinct flavors are defects."

I hear a sound next to me.

It is Leo. He is making a sound like a wounded animal trying to stay quiet. A high, thin whine in the back of his throat.

"You… fixed it," Leo whispers.

"See?" Chad says to me. "Even Leo gets it."

"No," I say. I stand up, unfolding my cane with a snap that sounds like a gunshot in the quiet room. "You didn't fix it. You lobotomized it. You took a scream and turned it into elevator music. You took the specific, painful texture of my life and turned it into a generic stock photo."

"Whoa, calm down, Luddite," Chad laughs. "You're just jealous the machine has better flow than you."

"I am not a fucking technophobe!" I shout, and the room flinches. "I built my own website stack from scratch! I code in raw HTML! I know more about the architecture of the internet than you and your wrapper-scripting ass ever will! I love technology! I love tools that expand human capacity! This?" I point my cane at his laptop. "This isn't a tool. This is a replacement. This is a parasite. It doesn't expand us; it eats us. It eats our confidence. It eats our specificity. It eats our struggle."

I turn to Leo. "I'm a better writer than this—any LLM. So are you, Leo! You're a better writer."

Leo doesn't move. He stands up, sad, resigned. He grabs his coat and walks out. I quickly tap my way out to follow him.

"Rob," he says, stopping to turn back, facing my fury. "Rob, I wish I was as good of a writer as you. I'm a shit—"

"Leo, no. You're a good writer—"

"I can't write, Rob!" Leo screams. It is a terrifying sound, a man ripping his own throat open. "I feel so stupid! I look at my words and they look like trash! I can't do it! I'm done! I hate everything I do without the AI!"

I have no idea what to say. Leo comes closer, his hands grasping mine. The force of his grip breaks my heart.

"Rob," he says, and his voice shakes with tears. "I hate this. I hate this."

"I know, buddy. I know! I'm here."

As I let go for now, I don't know what to do to help him since my writing exercises didn't work. I told him to write fun Fanfiction. I told him to just write something bad. It's okay. I told him he didn't have to be marketable, but nothing is working, and he hates his own writing more as the days pass.

I know Leo can still write without an LLM. He just needs encouragement. This is the thought that plants another seed as I leave the building. I can't go home yet.

Part 3.

I take a bus to the other side of the city, to a neighborhood that smells of pupusas, exhaust fumes, and resilience. I walk three blocks, absently counting the cracks in the sidewalk through the tip of my cane, until the acoustic landscape changes. The echo of the street vanishes, absorbed by walls of paper.

I eventually make it to The Cat's Shelf. The bell above the door doesn't ding; it clatters, a sound of heavy brass against wood. The air inside is cool and smells of vanilla (from the degrading lignin in old paper), binding glue, and peppermint tea.

Entering it is a sensory baptism. The floorboards groan under my feet—a specific, B-flat groan that tells me exactly where I am in the room. There is no ultrasonic hum of cooling fans here. There is the rustle of pages and the hushed murmuring of conspiracy.

"Rob?" Sarah's voice comes from behind the counter. Sarah sounds like she looks—sturdy, worn, and warm. She is a trans woman who built this bookstore with her bare hands and a lot of crowdfunding. She understands the politics of space.

"I need a favor," I say. "A big one."

"For you? Always. Do you need an audiobook or a body buried?"

"I need a router," I say. "And I need a space."

I explain it all. The Tech Bros. Chad. The Zersetzung. Leo's disintegration. The horror of watching a friend scrub the humanity out of his work because a machine told him he was inefficient. I tell her about the magazine editors who preferred the lie.

Sarah listens. She pours me tea. It's an act of love I didn't know I needed.

"you're not being hysterical, Robbie. They're colonizing the imagination," Sarah says softly. "That's what it is. Gentrification of the mind. They price you out of your own creativity."

"Yeah. That's why I want to make a space, a space where that can't happen. I want to start a new group," I say. "Here. After hours. But I have rules. No LLMs. Not just discouraged—blocked. I want to configure your router to sinkhole every request to OpenAI, Claude, Anthropic, all of them. If they try to connect, I want the browser to redirect to an HTML page that has a very judgmental cat purring at you."

"I love it," Sarah says. "When do we start?"

"Tonight," I say. "I can't go home. I need to bring my friend back."

We call it "The Drafty writer's group." It's not the best name I've ever invented, but I don't care.

The first meeting is small. Just me, Sarah, and a non-binary poet named Ash who writes sestinas about urban decay. We sit in a circle on mismatched chairs. I bring cookies—chocolate chip with sea salt, the contrast of sweet and sharp designed to wake up the palate.

I don't invite Leo yet. He isn't ready.

But word spreads. I don't use social media with an algorithm. I use the vast power of word of mouth. We print physical zines—little folded pieces of paper that smell of toner—and leave them in coffee shops, record stores, and community centers. Any place that will let us talk about the space.

Tired of the Slop? Come write poorly with us.

Recovering Prompters Welcome.

We don't want your polished draft. We want your mess.

By the third week, we have seven people.

One of them is Adam. Adam is a Trans Black man with a voice that is soft, almost a whisper. He sits in the corner for the first hour, just listening to the sound of pens scratching on paper and keys clattering, phone keyboards clicking, the rhythmic clacking of my mechanical keyboard.

"I... I used to use it too," Adam says suddenly during the break.

The room goes still. Not the hostile silence of Chad's group. A holding silence. A waiting silence.

"I wrote a story about my transition," Adam says. "And I showed it to a friend, and he said it was 'too angry.' So I put it in ChatGPT. I told it to make it 'more universal.' And it did. It took out the anger. It took out the specific smell of fear. It took out the things that made me, me. It made it... nice. And I hated it. But I couldn't stop. Because every time I tried to write the anger back in, I felt like I was doing it wrong. I felt like the machine knew better how to be human than I did."

"You weren't doing it wrong," I say. "You were doing it human. The machine averages out humanity until it's just a beige paste."

"I want to write the anger back," Adam whispers. "But I'm scared. I'm scared it's going to be bad."

"Let it be bad," Sarah says from the counter. "Be bad. Be furious. Be unintelligible. Just don't be artificial."

"We call that being a Recovering Prompter," I say. "There's no shame in it here. We know the pressure. We know the addiction of the easy fix. But we're here to do the hard work."

Adam picks up his pen. I hear the scratch, hesitant at first, then harder, faster, digging into the paper until I think it might tear. Encouragement and love flood the space.

There's still one person missing, though.

I send Leo an email and a text message, and yes, an actual letter.

Leo,

I made a writing garden. It's full of weeds. It's messy. Nothing is polished. It's not perfect.

We have cookies.

I miss your voice. Not the LLM one. The one that shakes the floor.

Come home. You are always welcome. I miss you. Come to one group, just one. We need you.

- Rob

He shows up twenty minutes late. I hear the bell clatter. I hear his heavy, hesitant steps. He smells of old sweat and that specific, acrid scent of anxiety.

"I didn't bring anything," he says, standing in the doorway. "I haven't written a word in two months, Rob. I'm empty. The well is dry."

"You're not empty," I say. "You're just quiet. Come sit."

He sits next to Adam.

"This is Leo," I tell the group. "He's the best writer I know. He's just forgetting how the instrument works."

"I'm not the best," Leo mutters. "I'm a fraud. I sent a story to a magazine that a robot wrote, and they paid me for it. I cashed the check, Rob. I spent the money."

"And you're here now," Adam says. "That's the work."

That night, Leo doesn't write. But he eats a cookie. And he listens. He listens to Ash read a poem that doesn't rhyme and has a stanza that is just a scream. He listens to Adam read a paragraph that is so angry it feels like heat radiating from a furnace.

And for the first time in months, I hear Leo breathe. A real breath. Deep into the diaphragm.

The resistance grows.

It isn't a war fought with DDOS attacks or angry tweets or furious posts about how AI sucks. It is fought with vulnerability. It is fought by local businesses putting our flyer in their windows. It is fought by people telling their friends, "Hey, there's a place where you don't have to be perfect."

Weeks bleed into a month. We start talking of putting on a live literature event. None of us have money, but none of us care. We want to do this.

As we plan, people come to just listen. readers arrive to just enjoy writers being messy on the page. Other writers that are recovering prompt engineers come to our space. They all write poorly while they eat and drink, laughing at lines, embracing hugs, feeling far less alone than when they walked in the door.

As the night of our first live reading is under way, just before the event, three people walk in who smell of expensive leather jackets and throat lozenges.

"Is this the place?" a woman asks. Her voice is incredible—rich, trained, with perfect diction but a warmth that feels like velvet. It's a voice that knows how to hold a listener.

"Who's asking?" Sarah says.

"My name is Britany," the woman says. "I'm an audiobook narrator. This is David and Sam. We... we heard about what you're doing from the guy who runs the falafel stand down the street. We would love to read for anyone with disabilities or social anxiety or who just don't want to read work themselves."

"that's incredible!" I say, unable to hide my joyous shock, "but we can't pay you. We have a lot of cookies and anger but that doesn't translate into cash, and we didn't get enough donations to pay you all."

Brittany laughs. It is a musical sound, telling me everything is fine with the world. "Honey, I don't want your money. Do you know what I've been reading for the last six months? AI-generated litRPG novels. Thousands of pages of slop. I am dying of thirst. I am drowning in slop. I sit in my booth, and I read sentences that mean nothing, written by nobody, for an algorithm."

"We never seen a space for recovering prompt writers. This is such a cool idea. We want to lend our skills. We want to help. We heard there was grit here," David says. His voice is a deep baritone. "We heard there were unpolished artists. We want to read them. For free. Just let us chew on something real. Let us narrate something that's growing into itself."

"We have plenty of unpolished artists," I say. "Welcome to the writer's garden."

The Live Lit event was meant to be a small showcase. It turns into a riot of joy. We didn't shy away from the fact that recovering LLM prompters were going to be performing tonight.

Live readings by recovering humans. Show starts at eight PM.

The flyers catch the most attention. Sarah can't even fit everybody in the bookstore.

The alleyway is packed. I can feel the body heat, a wall of humidity and anticipation. It smells of rain, cheap beer, and electricity. There are people here from the neighborhood, people from the university, people who just sound tired of being sold things.

I walk up to the microphone. I tap my cane against the stand to gauge the distance. The hum of the PA system is dirty, crackling with interference. I love it. It sounds like potential.

The microphone hums and pops before me. None of us are audio technicians, and it shows. It's the most goddamn beautiful thing in the world. It's the sound of electricity trying to speak.

"Thank, uh, thank you all for coming," I say, and the microphone squeaks with a high-pitched feedback whine that makes a few people wince. I smile. I love that whine.

"You might notice our manifesto on the door," I say, my voice booming through the cheap PA system. "These writers... some of them have used LLMs before. Or what the venture capitalists call 'AI.' I think we can all agree, fuck AI, right?"

A cheer goes up. It's ragged and loud.

"But," I continue, lowering my voice, leaning in until my lips almost brush the metal grille, "I believe there should be a space for people that have been broken by the system. There will always be people that love whatever slop the LLM makes. There will always be those readers—and God help them, the editors—that prefer the LLM versions, the slop, the generated works that slide down your throat without you ever having to care about the artist behind it."

I pause. I listen to the silence. It is a deep, attentive silence. The kind of silence you find in a forest, not a packed room.

"Tonight, you'll hear grit," I say. "You'll hear mess. You'll hear first drafts. You'll hear bleeding onto the page. Nothing will be polished. Nothing will be sanitized. I admit, some things won't make a lick of fucking sense. But you all are here because you love the mess. You love artists. You love art. You love the chaos of a human mind trying to explain itself to another human mind."

I can feel the energy in the room shifting. It is a wave of warmth washing over me.

"We didn't tell you which writers are recovering LLM users," I say, my voice thickening with emotion. "Because they deserve better than to be hated. Psychological harm and warfare isn't easy to recover from. When a machine tells you your soul is inefficient, it takes a long time to stop believing it. But none of the pieces were generated by an LLM tonight. Not one word."

I grip the mic stand harder.

"So enjoy the recovering writers. Have some cookies—Sarah made them, and I can confirm by tactile inspection they are excellent. Be a part of the readers and listeners that listen to and appreciate art instead of just consume it like content pigs at a trough."

Laughter ripples through the room.

"If you don't want to support any of these writers for fear all of them used an LLM at some point, I understand. Trauma leaves scars. But there's information on how to donate to these writers in the front, and on the bookstore's website. Thank you for giving everyone a chance. Thank you for saying fuck you to the way others want you to be. Thank you for taking a chance on artists."

I take a breath. I can smell the ozone of the amp and the sugar of the cookies.

"Now... let's have some fucking fun!"

I step back. The applause is deafening. It isn't polite golf claps. It is stomping feet. It is whistles. It is the sound of a community knitting itself back together.

With every artist, the applause increases in volume. The audience participation is utterly stellar. There's whoops. There's cheers. There's exclamations of shock and wracked sobs and guttural laughter that spills out into the open space.

Nobody leaves. Everyone stays. Finally, it's time.

"and our final artist for tonight," Sarah announces, "is Leo."

The stomping grows louder.

I hear Leo walk to the mic. His footsteps are heavy. Solid. The footsteps of a man who remembers he has weight.

He clears his throat. It is a wet, nervous sound.

"This is... this is a first draft," Leo says. His voice shakes, just a little. "It has typos. I didn't run it through a spellchecker. I definitely didn't run it through Claude. And... for a while, I thought I couldn't write without it. I thought my voice was broken. But my friends told me broken things still make sound."

Laughter. Warm, supportive laughter.

"It's called The Taste of Love."

He begins to read.

It's the best thing I've ever heard. It's about his momma cooking for him in her kitchen. There are stumbling blocks. Some metaphors swerve a little. Everything is Leo again. It's the best story I've heard from him in months, even with its imperfections.

Britany, the audiobook narrator, is standing next to me. I hear her inhale sharply, a sound of pure appreciation as the scene unfolds before our mind's eye. His words grow in confidence as he dives deeper into his work. Everyone is engrossed.

"He's good," she whispers.

"He's real," I whisper back.

Leo continues reading. He describes the sound of a screen door slamming in the wind. He describes the texture of his grandmother's hands—"rough as unfinished pine." He doesn't try to hide his tears when he speaks of her clothes. He doesn't hold back. He doesn't try to change any part of his mess.

He builds a world out of friction.

When he finishes, there is a second of silence—that profound, heavy silence that happens when a truth has landed in the room.

Then, the world explodes.

The applause isn't just hands clapping. It's yells. It's people roaring. It's whistles. People stomp their feet. I swear, I think the sound rips a hole through time and space. The wooden floor vibrates so hard it travels up my cane and into my marrow.

The applause is a physical assault of love. I hear Leo sob, just once, a sharp intake of breath over the microphone, before he is drowned out by the noise.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is Sarah.

"We did it, Rob," she shouts over the roar. "We built this—this night—we did it!"

I lean back against the brick wall, feeling the rough texture snag against my jacket. I listen to the chaotic, unpolished, beautiful noise of human beings screaming for a story that has jagged edges.

The Tech Bros can keep their tokens. They can keep their scale. They can keep their LLM modules.

We have the love. We have the care. And we have the voices.

And that, I realize as the tears unapologetically spill onto my cheeks, is something they can never code.

If you enjoyed this story, support artists and art. But for real, if you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy Frindle by Andrew Clements

The Home of a New Name

2025-11-25T06:00:07Z

Mood: Like finding a bird that can finally sing.

The morning felt like a bruise. Not the sharp, immediate kind, but the dull and aching throb that settles into your bones and makes the air feel smothering.

I canceled all my accessibility meetings for the morning. I didn't have the bandwidth to explain-for the millionth time-why you should label a button or why you should make your menu navicable by keyboard or use HTML instead of a DIV. I just wanted the safety of my own noise.

The phone rang, shaking me out of my recrimination.

The synthesized voice of my screen reader announced her name. Her old name. For a heart stopping second, I almost let it go to voicemail. I didn't think I had anything to give. I answered.

Her voice was tight, like a wound violin string about to snap. She told me she had something very important to tell me.

I gave her my full attention. "I'm listening," I said.

I meant every word. I put down everything I was holding, sat on my bed, and became an ear.

"you're the only person I feel safe telling this to," she said, and that washed away the lingering knots of a harsh and brutal morning.

"Robert. I'm a woman."

and then, we cried together.

We cried for the sheer, terrifying, bravery of it. We cried for our hearts constantly trying to find a beacon of light in a world that wants to grind down our souls until we're echoes of lives. We cried for laws written by people that never had to fight to live in a society in their own skin. We cried for the harshness of the media, the world, and bigots that want to see us snuffed out because they're afraid of lives that aren't like them.

But then, the tone of the conversation changed. The tension left our souls.

"So," I said, wiping my face, my voice thick. "Does this mean I have to come out as pansexual now? Since, you know, we dated?"

There was a beat of silence, and then she laughed. It was a wet, shaky sound at first, but it grew into a real, chest-deep laugh. "I guess so," she said. "Surprise."

We spent the next hour reconstructing the world. We talked about name's. We spent the hour trying on names like coats, testing the weight and warmth of them. She wanted a name that sounded distinctive, a name that felt like her at long last.

Eventually, I tried one. "How about Coco?"

"Coco," she whispered.

I repeated it. Coco. It has a rhythm to it. Two hard, crisp beats followed by round, open vowels. It tastes like hot chocolate-warm, sweet, and comforting. It sounds like a heartbeat.

"It sounds like you," I said.

She loved it. For now, she is Coco.

We told each other "I love you" before hanging up, changing both our lives.

When we hung up, the headache was gone. The apartment didn't feel heavy anymore. It felt like a home where a new truth had just been spoken for the first time. The world outside is still loud, and it is still sharp, but in here, I know the sound of her real name. And that is enough to keep going.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy, Glitch Girl! by Rainie Oet

Into A Memory

2025-11-25T04:27:13Z

This essay was published in the local college newspaper when I attended-- what was then known-- as TCC. Tallahassee Community College. I can vehemently say—given some slight word changes perhaps—I am, overall, still proud of this essay. I hope you enjoy this snapshot in time.

When I was little, I did not wander as a cloud. I floated on one.

I have to admit, when the assignment was given to me, a blind college student, to write about a poem I did not think I would find one that would capture my interest or my memory. For days, my ears would burn the table of contents of my textbook as my fingers struck down page numbers in a hopeless search to find something that I could connect with, for something that I could write about and have it be genuine.

I was lost and my hopes for finding a poem that would even hold my interest long enough to allow me to write about it seemed to be an impossible reach. I was a bibliophile at heart, but I did not like writing about poetry. I enjoyed reading it, but writing about it was a different kind of circle of hell. On my fifth haphazard hunt through the table of contents, my ears caught something that I had not noticed. I was instantly drawn because it sounded familiar. "I wandered lonely as a cloud." By William Wordsworth. I wanted to see why the poem sounded familiar. I had an odd sense that it would be significant to my life, but I did not know why it would be or even how.

I wanted to explore the kind of emotional journey that this poem would take me through, and so I did.

After listening to the first line, I was instantly transported to a memory that I did not even know I had.

It is late at night, and I am six. I remember feeling the Braille calendar poised in my lap, my finger tracing the soft indentations of the moons among the days. A sound erupts from the living room and I look up, my ears picking up every shift of the air just a few rooms from me. Shouting soon breaks out as if I am in a pep rally. The shouting grows louder and more obscene with each passing word. My mother has made her appearance on stage yet again, and I start to sob. I am guessing that Grandma and Grandpa are out in the fray as well, but I do not want to be in here all alone. The shouting reaches a volume that I do not even know exists, and my fright and anger mesh into one emotion as the stupidity of the situation finally reaches me. As my mother and her husband continue to scream at each other while mixing in some sounds of hitting and smacking, and manage to produce sounds of someone hitting the table, Grandma comes into the room. I know it is she because I can smell the peach scented perfume that I always smell when she is within a few feet from me. It is as if the smell alone is a blanket, about to wrap me up. My bedroom door softly clicks shut, and tender shoes thud over to me. She takes my small hand in hers.

"Are you ready for bed?" she asks me. I smile and nod, while all the while trying to hide my anger at my stupid mother.

"Well, I'm sorry. I do not have a story for you tonight. All I have is this book of poems your grandfather gave to me." I groan at the mention of poetry. Even at that young age, I much rather prefer it when she read me something GOOD such as Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys. I do not want to stay here any longer. Moreover, I like it when Grandma reads to me. Outside of my bubble of safety, my mother starts to cry as grandpa yells at her about how stupid she is acting. I hear pages slowly open. Grandma leans to read and instantly I am taken to the place of golden daffodils, leaving the screaming behind me.

I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.

I am soon floating on that cloud looking at dancing yellow flowers. As Grandma continues to read the poem to me, I feel a sense of peace. I am flying, and the newly developed sounds of clashing in the kitchen are just a faint whisper. I am swept away by Grandma's reading. We both are wandering as a cloud, but not lonely. I listen with eagerness as she finishes the poem, allowing me to ignore the stupid smashing sounds in the next room. Once she is all done, she tucks me in and kisses me goodnight. She tells me she loves me and then leaves the room. I soon drift on my own cloud of safety, finally able to feel calm and happy enough to go to sleep. I am comfortable and soon floating on my own cloud that is floating across vales and hills far from the treachery of the world. I am safe.

That was when I was six. That memory of Grandma sprang to mind when I first listened to the poem. I reread the poem after that, repeatedly, making it my comfort poem. While I was reading the poem at that young age, I had a literal visual interpretation of the poem. It seemed pretty logical and obvious to me that that was what the poem meant, that the speaker was looking down at golden flowers swaying in the wind. I believed it so strongly that I vividly imagined this. Back then, I pictured vibrantly the golden tendrils swaying gently in the breeze, and some shadow sitting up high on a pink cloud looking down at this dancing show. For a long time that is how I interpreted the poem. I do not know where my interpretation changed, but it did.

I presume that it changed just after my grandmother died and I had no way of escaping the abuse and domestic violence I had to endure. I would always wish that Grandma would come softly into my room, click my door shut and take me with her on a cloud high above the bad things in my life. With the passing of years, I never saw or heard the poem again. Now, when I heard the poem again, I was instantly six again, feeling a sense of love. I replayed the poem, wearing out the skip back button on my CD player in order to keep hold of the memory that this poem helped to bring back from the dead. I loved this rare opportunity to smell Grandma's peach scented perfume again. I loved the chance to hear her powerful delicately articulate voice read me a poem to take away all the bad things in my life. Listening to the poem now, I soon realized that I had a different interpretation.

Perhaps this interpretation came from her death when I was seven. I believe that the loss of my grandmother, physically and mentally, has helped me to make this interpretation once I reclaimed her in my memory after so long of an absence.

This poem helped me regain a memory that I did not even know existed within me. The speaker talks about how he is happy to watch "golden daffodils" dance. My grandmother was always like that, happy to see, create, and experience pure happiness. This poem, I believe, is what my grandmother sees and saw. Because of this realization about my grandmother, I no longer have the same image when I listen to the poem. I picture someone looking down on people, but not just any people, I picture someone looking down at me, and a few other people, some wealthy, some poor, some old, some young, some black, some white, some Asian, and some of everything. All of us are dancing with an airy display for our spectator. We all twirl and giggle as we all choreograph a perfect rhythm. I no longer picture the shadow on top of the cloud as having no face or figure. It now has a form and a shape to it. It is someone I know.

I picture the wrinkly old woman looking down at us softly smiling. She is comfortable on the pink cloud, basking in her glory and her peace. I am sure, if we were closer, we would smell the peach scented perfume. I picture the old woman slowly bringing her wrinkled hands together, clapping and shedding silent tears as she watches the spectacle. I would like to think that she would be smiling at this point; glad to finally have the opportunity to watch the best show in the world-the show of a host of golden daffodils tossing our heads up in a sprightly dance.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy, Unseen. How I Lost my Vision But Found my Voice. by Molly Burke.

Learning to Read Again

2025-11-20T14:59:13Z

This was previously published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Making me Time.

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.

~Jim Rohn

"I noticed something," my friend Ashley said. "Your bookshelf is empty."

I nodded absently, listening to the various park sounds around us. Kids were running and laughing, the wind was blowing, and the sun was keeping a warm day bright. I could feel the sun on my face just as much as I could feel my best friend staring at me with concern.

"I'm looking at your online bookshelf right now. It's clear of books this year. Why?" she asked.

"I wish I could read, but I just don't have enough time," I replied, thinking about the many hours I'd spent, in the past month alone, helping someone with their computer or browsing online news articles instead of reading novels.

"But, like, who's going to recommend fun books to me?" Ashley asked, sounding shocked. "You always were my book buddy. What happened?"

"I don't know," I said. As if to reveal all my secrets, my iPhone emitted a high-pitched ding and then started reading off my next calendar event.

"Help Tom with his computer. Two hours."

"Well, there's your problem!" Ashley said excitedly. "Try to slot in some reading time."

When I got home that day, I deleted a calendar event that was supposed to happen at 9:00 that night and typed into the description box, "Read a novel."

When the event arrived, I felt so guilty that I hesitated to turn on the audiobook. With resolve, though, I pressed Play and sank into a cozy young-adult novel. I soon relaxed and noticed that I was genuinely enjoying myself.

The next morning, I woke up a lot happier than usual. I usually woke up feeling like I didn't get enough sleep, like I'd never get enough sleep. That morning was different. My movements felt a lot smoother. I caught myself smiling as I ate cereal. I realized I was eager to get back into the story I was reading the night before.

I had forgotten the excitement I used to have when I read on a regular basis. Throughout that day, a feeling of happiness came over me. I wanted to experience this feeling again in the future, so I called Tom at lunch.

"Hey, Tom," I said. "I know I'm supposed to come over today, but I wanna stay home and read tonight. Is that okay?"

"Of course," Tom replied. "Have a good time tonight."

"You, too," I said.

I spent the rest of the day doing something I hadn't done in years: clear my calendar for myself. Each time I put "personal time" in my calendar, I felt really happy.

When it came time to read for the second night in a row, it was easier than the previous night. I even turned off my phone and sank into bed with headphones on.

Then I turned my phone back on and called Ashley to tell her that I had canceled a lot of upcoming appointments. She was excited. "That's really great. My bookshelf is dwindling. I'm glad to have my book buddy back."

"I'm glad to be back," I said. "Now I have to go. I need to finish this chapter."

— Robert Kingett.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy Wasted Words By: Staci Hart

The First Snowfall

2025-11-10T09:14:47Z

Listen to the First Snowfall here.

At this time of the year, my world always begins to lose its voice. Not because the crushing weight of bureaucracy muffles it, but because the elements are putting the acoustics of my soundscape to sleep for a little while. At least, until the summer.

It does not happen instantaneously. It happens gradually, like a weary mother that wants to put her young ones to bed. It's a kind of magic that's a subtle erasure. Every year, I have no idea what will change first.

This year— it was the car horns.

When I step outside, it takes me minutes to discover that the percussive bark of a car horn three miles away has been dulled to a puff of buffeted air. The once bustling distant freeway quiets into a low, continuous, whisper, as if the roads themselves are closing their eyes, ready for a deep and intense sleep.

This is always the first sign that snow has arrived. It's a spell, cast on the soundscapes of the world, a great, and profound, silencing.

I pull on my coat and step outside. The air is the first thing I notice. It doesn't have a lingering smell of exhaust or the ghosts of other bodies before me. It is a metallic, all encompassing, cold that strips all nuances of the city's textures and scents. For a moment, the cold is the magic that encompasses the entire world.

Then comes the movement.

My foot leaves the safety of my apartment door. It moves forward. It sinks into a feeling that can't be described any other way than magic. My shoe comes to meet a soft, yielding, give. A sensation that feels like sinking into air. Air with an unexpected blend of solid structure to it.

My foot descends deeper into the softness. Then, comes the sound.

There's a percussively high pitched crunch that's the lovely sound of a million tiny crystals, each a perfectly frozen star, breaking and scattering underneath my sole. It's a kind of worldly music.

After gaining my balance, I take a tentative step, then another, then another. It's a two-part chord. First, the descent. Then, that satisfying CRUNCH.

I am no longer walking. I am composing a rhythm against the most profound silence I will hear all year.

This rhythm against silence helps to appreciate the miracle.

Silence is the heart of the miracle. It isn't an absence. It is the presence of something else. It is the percussive sensation of mother nature putting the city under her blanket for the winter that creates a holy quiet.

I stop walking, and then just stand still in the middle of the sidewalk. I tilt my head up, listening and feeling. I let individual flakes land on my skin, my lips radiating a smile of joyous wonder. I can almost feel each individual flake landing on me, kissing me gently with its presence before melting.

Sighted people always say seeing is believing, as if there is no other truth. There's an alternative truth. You don't need to see to feel the magic landing on your skin. You don't need to see to witness the world being redecorated, one flake at a time. You don't need to see to listen to the world hold its breath.

The only thing that's required is your patience and willingness to perceive. You just have to stand in the remade world and let it transform you.

Listen to the First Snowfall here

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy American Christmas by Adriana Herrera.

A Bridge Made of Ableism.

2025-11-01T10:24:22Z

Listen to A Bridge Made of Ableism

The air in the bank was thick with the scent of old money and new anxiety. It's a smell I know well. But today, another element was added to the mix: fear. It wasn't my fear. It was coming from the teller's window, and it was pointed, like a weapon, at a man whose only crime was his refusal to be invisible.

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. He was a presence. A tall, solid man, I guessed, from the way his sounds filled the space. He was Deaf and he was trying, with every fiber of his being, to communicate a problem. His sounds were not words. They were a raw, powerful, and deeply human expression of frustration—a series of sharp, guttural noises from deep in his chest. They were the sound of a man trying to tear a hole in the wall of silence that stood between him and the world.

To me, the sounds were a language of pure, unfiltered emotion. They were eloquent.

To the bank teller, they were a threat.

"Sir, you need to calm down," she said, her voice a thin, reedy thing, tight with a fear born of ignorance. "I can't understand you if you're going to be aggressive."

The man's frustrated noises grew louder, a feedback loop of misunderstanding. And then,

A Black security guard I knew well spoke into something.

"We got an agressive Black man here. I'm going to handle this."

I could hear the soft, squeaking soles of his security guard's shoes moving closer. They were going to escalate. They were going to take this man's righteous frustration and label it as violence. They were going to break him rather than try to understand him.

And my own history, the muscle memory of being misunderstood and dismissed, roared to life inside me. Not today. Not on my watch.

I pulled out my phone, my fingers flying across the glass screen with a speed born of long practice. I opened the Notes app. I typed. I maxed out the font size.

Then I stepped forward, into the current of fear.

"Excuse me," I said to the security guard, my voice calm and steady, projecting just enough to cut through the tension. "Give us a minute, would you?"

I tapped the Deaf man on the arm. When he looked towards me, I held my phone up, its screen a silent declaration.

I couldn't see the man's face, but I felt the shift in the room. The angry, frustrated sounds stopped abruptly. There was a pause. A moment of pure, suspended silence. I felt him move closer, felt the warmth of his body as he leaned in to read the screen.

The screen said: I can help. What do you need? I'm blind but we can type back and forth.

And then, huge warm hands extracted the phone from my grasp. a new sound. The soft, rapid tapping of his finger on the glass of my phone. He was typing. A bridge had been built between my world of sound and his world of sight. A bridge made of light and text.

His fingers flew, his message appearing beneath mine. They froze my account. Said fraud. My rent is due today. They won't listen.

I typed back. They're scared because they don't understand. Let me be your voice. I can interpret if you type. My ASL is basic and not fluent. I'll type what they say.

He tapped a single word. Okay.

The second security guard had arrived, a heavy presence smelling of starched cotton and authority. "Sir, is there a problem here?"

I turned my head toward the sound of his voice, keeping my phone held high. "There is no problem," I said calmly. "There is a communication barrier. This gentleman's name is Andre, and the bank has frozen his account in error on the day his rent is due. He has been trying to explain this. Now, if you could please get the bank manager, Andre and I will explain it to her together."

The authority in my own voice, amplified by the silent, typed words of my new comrade, changed the equation. The guard hesitated, then nodded.

The manager arrived, her heels clicking with importance. We stood before her, a strange and sudden team. Andre would type his frustration and his facts onto my phone with a speed and precision that was breathtaking. I would then read his words aloud, my voice lending an unwavering, calm weight to his righteous anger. I'd type back what they said, word for word.

I was not his savior. I was his amplifier. I was a human conduit for a voice that was already there, a voice they had refused to hear.

Faced with the undeniable, typed evidence and the calm, clear narration, the manager’s condescension melted into panicked efficiency. There were apologies. Profuse, stammering apologies. The account was unfrozen. The error was "deeply regretted."

As the manager scurried away, Andre took my phone one last time.

Thank you, he typed. They never listen.

I typed back. I know. But today, we made them.

Want to get some food with me? He typed. I couldn't resist. Why not!

That'd be amazing! Let's go. You guide me.

Even though Orientation and Mobility training always says, grab the elbow, lately, I've been tossing out all social norms and just doing what feels right in the moment. I didn't grab his elbow. I took his hand, then, his large hand enveloping mine in a brief, powerful squeeze. It was a gesture of solidarity, a pact forged in a moment of shared frustration and mutual respect.

We walked out of the bank together, two men who moved through the world in profoundly different ways. But for a few crucial moments, in a cold place that was built to misunderstand us, we had spoken the same language. And our solidarity, together, had been a crescendo of comradery that was a testimony all by itself.

Listen to A Bridge Made of Ableism

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy, The Silence Between Us by Alison Gervais

An Open Letter to the Future Man Who Will Hold My Face

2025-10-25T05:15:04Z

Listen to An Open Letter to the Future Man Who Will Hold My Face

Mood: Daring to hope that a man will read this and heed it like a religious text.

To You,

I don't know your name yet. I don't know the specific music of your voice. But I know that one day, you might perform an act of profound and sacred intimacy. You might hold my face in your hands.

I need you to know what this means.

For a face that's bled from knife wounds, from masculine fists punching it, from furious smacks of hatred, This is not a casual gesture. It is an act of care. When your hands, warm and steady, cup my jaw and your palms rest against my cheeks, you are not just touching me. You are building a sanctuary around my mind. You are creating a safe space where the world cannot harm me again.

And I am letting you do this. I am trusting you to build this pocket of safety and to maintain it.

You are building a wall against the chaos of the world. Your flesh becomes a filter, softening the sharp edges of the auditory world, muffling the noise. My entire universe shrinks to the small, safe, warm space between your two hands.

I need you to know that the prolonged pressure of your touch is a language. A firm, steady pressure says, "You are safe. I am here. I will not let anything harm you again." A gentle, exploratory touch says, "I am learning you. I am paying attention."

And I need you to know that I will learn you, too. I will learn the texture of your palms, the length of your fingers, the specific, unique warmth that your soul radiates. And I will trust it.

So when the day comes, and you feel the impulse to do this, I beg you to do it with intention. Do it with reverence. Because you are not just holding my head. You are holding my trust. You are holding my hope. You are holding all the fragile, broken pieces of me, and telling them they have found a safe place to rest. And I promise, I will do my best to be worthy of the shelter you build.

Listen to An Open Letter to the Future Man Who Will Hold My Face

If you enjoyed this open letter, you might enjoy, The Trouble with Love and Coaches by Harriet Ashford.

The Cruelty of Many, The Grace of One

2025-10-04T15:39:13Z

Listen to The Cruelty of Many, The Grace of One

Mood: Like a found object, after being lost for a very long time.

Some days, the world is a conspiracy of sharp edges. Today was one of those days.

It started with my two hours of sleep. I didn't get sleep last night because my neighbor decided she would blast country music at such a loud volume until this morning, I couldn't sleep, even when I put headphones on to quiet the music. Today, the coffee maker chose this morning to die a sudden, silent death. It continued with an automated phone call informing me of a "service interruption" that felt more like a threat. Then came the symphony of construction noise outside my window, a percussive, head-splitting assault that made it impossible to write. By the time I left my apartment, my armor was already full of cracks. I felt brittle, a thing made of thin glass, navigating a world of stone.

Every sound on the street was an attack. The city was shouting, and my anxiety was screaming back, a silent, high-pitched keen in the back of my skull. I was holding on by a single, frayed thread.

And then, the thread snapped.

My hand, clumsy with stress, fumbled as I reached for my pocket. I heard the soft thud of my wallet hitting the pavement, followed by a sound that made my stomach clench: the thin, sharp skitter of a plastic card sliding free and dancing away into the river of footsteps.

"NO!" My mind screamed, "NO NO NO NO!"

The humiliation was a hot, sudden flood. I dropped to my hands and knees on the grimy, public sidewalk, sweeping my hands through the filth in a desperate search. The cold grit of the pavement scraped against my palms. The river of anonymous feet flowed around me, inches from my head. A shoe clipped my searching hand. A shoulder caught my back, sending a jolt through me. No apology. Just the steady, indifferent rhythm of a city that did not have time for a man on the ground.

The card was gone. The simple, awful truth landed in my chest like a stone. Someone had likely scooped it up as they passed. The finality of it, the casual cruelty of the people who saw and did nothing, was too much. The noise in my head crescendoed into a pure, white static. A single, hot tear slid down my cheek.

"Are you alright, mate?"

The voice was warm and deep, a British accent that felt like a soft blanket in a cold room.

"No. I'm not. It's gone," I whispered to the pavement. "My card."

"I saw," he said, his voice closer now. "I was watching. Some people are just rubbish, aren't they?" He was quiet for a moment. "I don't think it's here."

And that was it. The confirmation of the loss, the acknowledgment of the injustice. The first sob was a violent, ugly thing that tore its way out of my chest without my permission. My face crumpled, the careful mask of "I'm fine" shattering into a thousand pieces.

And then, a hand was on my shoulder. Gently, he helped me to my feet. Before I could even think to pull away, to hide my face, he did something utterly revolutionary. He pulled me into a hug.

It was not a tentative, awkward thing. It was a solid, encompassing embrace. One of his arms went around my back, the other hand came up to rest gently on the back of my head, and he just held me as I wept. My face was pressed against the fabric of his shirt, which smelled faintly of soap and something warm, like tea.

The world went quiet. The sharp edges of the city were muffled by the solid wall of his chest. He was an anchor in the rushing, indifferent river. He didn't offer a solution. He didn't offer empty platitudes. He simply stood with me, a human shield against the city, and let me break.

When the storm passed, he loosened his hold. "Right then," he said, his voice a low, kind rumble. "This is no place for you. The public library is just 'round the corner. It's quiet in there. Properly quiet. Let me take you?"

After I said yes, he found my free hand, his fingers closing around mine, a warm, solid weight that felt like a promise. It wasn’t a solution to my lost card. It was something far more valuable. It was sanctuary.

The world is full of people who will walk right past a man on his knees. But sometimes, if you are very, very lucky, you find the one who will stop, who will hold you, and who will offer you a quiet place to put yourself back together.

Listen to The Cruelty of Many, The Grace of One

If you enjoyed this tale, you might enjoy, Bittersweet: The Sweet Series, Book 2

The Gift Horse's Mouth is Full of Terrible Braille

2025-09-24T11:50:54Z

Listen to The Gift Horse's Mouth is Full of Terrible Braille

There is a special kind of terror reserved for the moment a well-meaning, sighted friend says, with a voice beaming with pride, “I got you something! I saw it and thought of you.”

My friend, Lorenzo, is one of the kindest people I know. His heart is a vast, open territory of good intentions. So when he placed a large, shrink-wrapped box in my hands, my face assembled itself into an expression of genuine gratitude.

“Lorenzo, wow,” I said, my voice warm. “You really didn’t have to.”

“I know! But it’s so cool. It’s a board game… for us!”

Us. The word hung in the air. My internal monologue, a cynical old man who lives in my chest, immediately sat up and narrowed his eyes. Here we go.

The box was smooth and cool. My fingers, doing their work, found the title. It was embossed in large print, and below it, a line of Jumbo Braille. This was the first sign that something was deeply, cosmically wrong. Braille is small. It is precise. The bumps on this box were large, rounded, and spaced with the kind of random abandon a child might use to decorate a cupcake with sprinkles. My fingers traced the line. It was not a language. It was a tactile lie. It was the physical equivalent of someone shouting a string of random vowels at you and calling it French. When my fingers finally deciphered the giant wall of poorly spaced dots, I nearly burst out laughing. Instead of saying the name of the game, the Braille read, “Tactician’s waterfalls bananas.”

Okay, my inner cynic grumbled. So the box was designed by a well-meaning baboon. Let’s see what’s inside.

Externally, I smiled. “This is so thoughtful, man. Let’s open it.”

I tore off the plastic. Inside, there was a bag of game pieces. I poured them onto the table. They made a light, plastic clatter. I picked one up. It was a smooth, simple cone shape. I picked up another. Also a cone. A third. A fourth. They were all cones. They were identical in size, shape, and texture. They were as distinct from one another as grains of sand.

Lorenzo’s voice, bless his heart, was full of excitement. “So, there are four colors! You’re the blue ones.”

My external voice was a masterpiece of calm appreciation. “Ah, cool. Blue.”

My internal voice was screaming into a pillow. BLUE? Lorenzo, MY DEAR AND CHERISHED FRIEND, IN WHAT TACTILE UNIVERSE DOES A CONE FEEL ‘BLUE’? ARE THE OTHER CONES FEELING PARTICULARLY RED OR YELLOW TODAY? IS THIS A GAME OF SYNESTHESIA-BASED GUESSWORK?

The final nail in the coffin was the board itself. It was a folding square of cardboard with raised lines indicating a path. So far, so good. But then Lorenzo began to read the rules.

“Okay, so you start on the purple square,” he began. My fingers found no purple square. There were no textural differences between the squares at all. “And if you land on a ‘Warp Zone,’ you get to jump to the matching ‘Warp Zone’ on the other side of the board.”

I felt a wave of profound existential despair wash over me. The game was not inaccessible. It was anti-accessible. It was a stunning monument to an idea of accessibility, constructed without a single thought for its actual use. It was a gift that said, “I thought about your blindness for the thirty seconds it took me to add this to my online shopping cart.”

“And the best part,” Lorenzo said, his voice reaching a fever pitch of genuine delight, “is that we can play it right now!”

This was the checkmate. I was cornered by the sheer, overwhelming force of his kindness. I couldn’t tell him his thoughtful gift was a useless piece of condescending plastic.

So I did what any of us would do. I placed my hand on the board, tracing one of the meaningless raised lines. “You know what,” I said, my voice full of soft, calculated regret, “I’m actually a little wiped today. Can we play it next time? I really want to be able to give it my full attention.”

“Oh, yeah, of course, man!” he said, completely understanding.

The game now sits on my shelf. I have not touched it since. It is my own personal museum exhibit, a shrine dedicated to the heavy, awkward, and often hilarious burden of a gift horse whose mouth, upon closer inspection, is full of absolute nonsense.

Listen to The Gift Horse's Mouth is Full of Terrible Braille

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy, The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.

Sightless Scribbles

The Ray Reunion

How to Download Assets from GitHub using a screen reader.

Main example project pages:

Find the releases pages.

After getting to the releases page.

A brief intro to GitHub CLI.

Downloading assets via the CLI

Example CLI download commands.

What if you wanted a different version?

The Dream of Tomorrow

Translations of The Dream of Tomorrow

Begin post.

DIY Writers Retreat With a Travel Agent

Investigating the IP Relay Shutdown

Throwback updates.

Original article.

How to talk about videogames (if you're blind)

Throwback note.

Begin old piece.

How to convert Markdown to Shun manuscript format Using Pandoc

Introduction.

Requirements.

Downloading Pandoc.

Use my Pandoc templates instead of making your own

Creating your own Shun Manuscript templates.

Pandoc reference files.

Navigating to make your reference template.

Making a user data directory in Windows, step-by-step GUI version.

Generating a generic Pandoc reference document.

Editing styles in Microsoft Word.

Normal style attributes to change.

Fixing our heading styles in our reference document.

Heading 1 style attributes to change.

Heading level 2 values to change.

Changing the top headers on pages.

Step 1: Isolate the First Page Header

Step 2: Set Right Alignment and Add Your Last Name

Step 3: Insert the Automated Title Property

Step 4: Insert the Automated Page Number Field

Step 5: Verify and Exit

Conclusion.

Commands to use the templates.

How to specify reference templates.

Conversion commands.

Extra tutorials and optional enhancements.

Editing styles in LibreOffice Writer.

Creating new Chapter files.

Sorting and renaming multiple files for Pandoc.

Merging multiple files into one book with your Shun template.

Using a manifest to convert multiple files.

Converting multiple DOCX files into Markdown.

Using prosegrinder's scripts on Windows.

Convert DOCX to Markdown.

Working with track changes in plain text.

Other resources.

Some notes about writing manuscripts in Markdown.

A Thermodynamic Failure of the Soul

Audible Exclusives limit disabled audiobook fans like me

Throwback notes.

The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and you.

Reject a Hit. A Series of Unfortunate Events

The rejection letter.

On the Attack Helicopter story by Isabel Fall

One Letter at a Time

How Keyboard Shortcuts are my Superpower

Hexodius [Xbox 360 Review]

Game details

The Review

Nihilumbra Review (PC)

Game details

The review.

On Access Trauma

Finally, there’s a comic book store for the blind

Plain Language Books Help You Get More Readers

Plain language books.

Thomas Was Alone PS3 review

Game Details

The Review

My Low Vision BearBlog theme