Our theme for the month of June is “snapshots.” Writers were asked to submit a piece with a cover photo that they took or created.

As the ancients say, graphic design is not my passion. My least favorite part of teaching Web Design is when I get to the design part. I tout essential elements of design—unity! balance! whitespace is not the boogeyman under your bed!—but how they all come together to make beautiful things stupify my mind.

So when the game that I’ve been obsessively playing for over a year added a feature to customize your in-game profile, I was not as thrilled as the rest of the community. People were not content to make jaw-dropping slideshows but used rudimentary shapes to draw characters, song cover art, and more (there are many average ones as well; see this reddit thread). I, on the other hand, forced my phone into my artistic sister’s hands and said, “Go nuts.”

I’ve gotten a little bit better over the months. A part of the draw of these profiles is that you can use the art of the characters you collect in game to show them off, and I enjoy having a showcase of all the achievements I (obsessively) grind out. Turns out I do better at repurposing existing material—maybe scrapbooking is my true calling. However, I still scroll through the top ranking players, my friends list, and Discord channels where people post their creations and stare wistfully.

On one of these trips during the friend list, however, I was gobsmacked with not an artful shrine to a particular character but a white background full of text. (The PowerPoint teacher in me recoiled.) To put it bluntly, it was a romantic fanfic about two anthropomorphized songs. Two friends had written two different pairings, both stories front and center on their profiles. I cracked up, sent a few messages on Discord, and went on my merry way.

But a month ago, one of those friends decided to add another slide afterwards. “<– [Alex] wrote that. Ty [Alex]!” with various cards of my favorite character (you can guess who that is, based on the cover image). The gauntlet was thrown. I decided, well, if they were going to accuse me of writing a fanfic, let’s see what I can do?

I will spare you all the details, but I emerged from a half an hour of drafting and another half an hour arranging fragments of sentences on this game slide with two paragraphs describing a study session between two songs—kind of angry desire vibes. After reading the slide, my friend decided to make it their mission to spread this slide to as many people as possible (it has gotten to thirty-plus people at least—it’s a smidge embarrassing).

A week or so later, another friend said “I keep getting jumpscared by [Alex’s] profile,” and I decided to cover it up. I couldn’t bear to delete all the sentences, and I have plenty of layers to work with.

I’ve decided not to share most of my profile here, as it is prime doxxing material, but after months of iterations, of hating how I displayed rankings that I earned, of struggling to fit all the titles I want on a page without it looking crammed, of thinking my designs look elementary and basic, I’m finally starting to be proud of my profile. My proudest work is now a toss-up: the fanfic, which isn’t exactly the profile’s intended use, my chaotic slide where I just pile titles in a big heap, the slides where my friends are represented by their favorite characters, or the fake title I created to as a gift to a friend.

I will never have the aesthetic profile that is screenshotted and reposted on Reddit. I’m already nervous about the profile I’ll have in August when I try to get into the top 100, whose custom profiles are regularly checked by 200,000+ active players. But this profile, including the fanfic mostly motivated by spite, is an artistic piece that I’m proud of, against all odds. Call it collaging with weeb images, call it a waste of time, call it baby’s first artistic playground where they learn that the art teacher’s weren’t lying, everything is made out of shapes—I call it nudging outside my comfort zone.

I fear the fanfic may not be content to stay as it is. But rather than continuing my masterpiece in its birthplace, I may end up finally making a long put-off Ao3 account.

Alex Johnson

Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.