02/21/2026

Defense Scheduled

My thesis defense is scheduled. My committee read my thesis and agreed we are past major revisions. As of now, I am scheduled to defend noon on April 3rd. It's been three long years of working on my thesis and I'm finally at the finish line. They think I should go back for the PhD but I'm uncertain because it would mean delaying a adopting a child.

Vanderbuilt has stopped offering surgeries for transgender adults. I was supposed to have a consult with them next month. Since that's dead in the water, the next closest surgeon is in Cleveland. The goal of what is happening is to exterminate transgender people. I'm terrified. Sometimes I break down and cry or scream. I'm doing my best to pretend to be brave in front of others. I've got almost 20 transgender people coming to our Unitarian Universalist church. The people there are willing to protect us. I don't know what to do. It's taking everything I have just to keep others in the city alive.

I'm getting better and better at pixel art. A lot of what I'm doing is still tracing, but tracing in pixel art is complicated and still requires skill because often doing 1 to 1 with the reference image will look off. I mocked up an Aralise in RPGmaker MV character creator and then made her in a 100 by 100 image, posted above. I also made escutcheon templates and am contemplating launching a pixel club soon. Check out the Aralise pages to check out the escutcheons I made for each of the houses.

Aralise has sorta been on hold because I've gotten a lot of inspiration from medieval Bohemia, particularly the Hussites and Jan Zizka. He never lost a battle despite being outnumbered and against forces with more training and funding. The Hussites also were the first army to utilize artillery in 14th century Europe. Since they were a religious group, it gave me ideas for the theocratic elements in Aralise.