Time is moving weird.<\/p>\n
The first three months of the pandemic move in a weird blur. Logan comes home from college, makes some crochet, learns to draw an apple, makes some online friends, and then it’s suddenly 2021. The new year is celebrated and nothing really changes. People sort of start going out a little more, but it’s not a feeling of safety, it’s a feeling of a slow building blind spot to the issue.<\/p>\n
Michael’s parents get sick twice, and only start taking things seriously when one ends up in the ICU. They both live, but suddenly their Facebook posts are a lot less about overbearing government, and a lot more about wishing friends happy birthday. Other families aren’t so lucky. We know this song and dance.
\n<\/p>\n
Logan starts ‘going out’ with a girl in one of his Discord servers, but he doesn’t mention it to either of his parents. It’s nothing too weird, she’s not a lot older or younger than him, and she’s from a similar family background. She’s not a member of any religious organizations that would make them being together strained on either family. It’s just…he calls her Lots. Not ‘a lot’, but, Lots. A short form of her screen name, Lotsofcans. Her ‘real’ name is Elizabeth, but by the time he found out her proper name it was alien and strange to him. He tried switching to it, but they both admitted it was too weird.<\/p>\n
The username was from when she was a very young teen with her first email account. She picked the name because she used to drink a lot of Pepsi and when she picked her first screen name, her desk was covered in empty cans. She doesn’t drink Pepsi anymore, she’s ten years older than when she did that, and her palate has changed. On most platforms, ‘Lotsofcans’ is taken, but Discord doesn’t have unique usernames yet in 2021.<\/p>\n
Calling her Lots isn’t the worst of it though. To talk about Lots in any capacity, he’d have to also mention some other friends in the group just to give context. He doesn’t know how to tell his parents about ‘Slurs’ (Inventivenewslurs), ‘Captcha’ (Captchalater) and ‘Bobbert’ (Justbob).<\/p>\n
He’d also have to mention that Lots lives in Virginia, and her current side-hustles include driving Uber Eats, and having men (and women!) on the internet pay her to do ASMR of a scary clown saying various requested things. Those things are almost entirely funny and harmless, but some are strange and beg some questions. Logan is supportive of his maybe-girlfriend’s budding clown-related…content, but he has no idea how to even begin to tell his parents anything about her.<\/p>\n
They’re very early stages anyway, he doesn’t need to tell them about her until they’re really serious. Although, even if they do get serious, he’s not ever telling them the clown thing. Unless she wants him to, he’s not ashamed of her or anything, but if she did<\/em> want him to tell them about the clown thing, that might be a red flag? So, maybe there’s no universe where ‘telling his parents his girlfriend is a sexy scary clown’ needs to happen.<\/p>\n He’s spending too much time on the ‘AmITheAsshole’ subreddit, and it’s turning every interaction he’s part of or witnesses into a moral dilemma. Before the quarantine Logan was a really carefree and confident kid, now he’s spending way too much time online and getting more and more anxious. He’s becoming a habit mediator, for his parents, his friends, even total strangers. Every moment of every day for him is taken up with wondering if he made the ‘morally good’ choice in whatever his last interaction was. He’s playing real life like an EA RPG but he can’t see the stats for how moral his player character is, he just has to hope. Invisible stats you fixate on is bad enough in a video game where you can look up a guide and keep notes. In real life, no nerd on Fandom can ‘help’ you stay moral.<\/p>\n He struggles through the first squabbles of his new (and first!) relationship. Most of their first disagreements are because they’re both moderating on the same server, and Logan can be a people-pleaser. He wants to only ever boot people who the masses agree should be booted, accidentally giving in to herd mentality instead of using the leadership skills he already has.<\/em> He’s so focused on wanting everyone to like him, he is ignoring what has been up until this point one of his greatest strengths. Basically, Logan is experiencing being twenty-one years old. Sorry buddy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Time is moving weird. The first three months of the pandemic move in a weird blur. Logan comes home from college, makes some crochet, learns to draw an apple, makes some online friends, and then it’s suddenly 2021. The new year is celebrated and nothing really changes. People sort of start going out a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[639],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thesimsoverthinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56426"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56429,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56426\/revisions\/56429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}