The school district actually opened their doors around here. Their rationale for opening back up a week before the slated date that they would allow parents and guardians to choose the “option” of sending their student(s) in for face-to-face instruction was their own negligence in not procuring enough laptops and wireless hotspots to meet the need of the actual student population who would need them, even though they had all summer to prepare for this. So their literal response, in the midst of a global pandemic, was to open school doors back up a week early. Some people’s motives, other than seeing the financial reasoning behind this because this district has never truly been about anything other than retaining access to federal funds to the most maximal amount possible, I will never understand… and as I get older, I get increasingly more fine with that because it’s not something that I can control, even if this has the potential to affect lives.

This district is still allowing parents and guardians to elect that their student(s) continue virtual schooling as though they are giving them a pittance, dangling a carrot in front of them, going, “See how nice we are!”.

I know people who are happy to have sent their children back to school… in the midst of a global pandemic.

I know people who are happy to “be able to go back to work” in the midst of a global pandemic.

The United States has dropped the ball handling this pandemic in every way imaginable and it really shows.

One of the things that “girl gamers”, simultaneously used as both a term of endearment and a pejorative (and sometimes by the same person) depending on the conversation, take a lot of flack for in 2020 — of all the years — is “being too feminine” while playing video games. You get criticized for having and wearing too much makeup, or for liking “girly things” like dresses or the color pink. God forbid you like more than one of those things and are honest about it. That’s almost literally the kiss of death “being taken seriously” by guy gamers, which should simultaneously be used as a term of endearment and a pejorative, even though you realize that no one’s opinion should matter to you but your own… although you shouldn’t need to feel the need to be validated in the first place. There are, after all, things like Gamergate, and being scared into submission for being a gamer girl that’s “too loud” about certain things, so one has to exercise caution…

If you’re disabled or a single parent, or disabled and a single parent, they don’t know what to do with you.

People should be free to like what they like in the combinations that they like them in without feeling as though they have to measure up to someone else’s standards. There is no right, or wrong, way to be a “girl gamer”: if you identify as a girl, and you like to game, congratulations! You are literally a girl gamer! 100%!