Please help me get back on my feet

I have to swallow my pride and do this. I know many of you have approached me asking to help, but I have turned down all donations because I was taught this is deeply shameful.

I was always taught to earn things by myself through hard work, but I just cannot seem to catch a break. Everything just keeps getting worse. I cannot seem to stop the slide. The job I have taken that was to rescue me actually made things worse by not covering moving costs. I am literally working myself back onto the streets.


The last two years have been a nightmare I just cannot seem to wake up from.


To be honest I have tried to end my life several times under this pressure, out of shame, out of hopelessness. The situation looks impossible. My industry has shut down here, and being transgender makes getting work difficult overseas, plus I am loathe to leave my son behind- he lives in Canberra with my family. I had to move a nine hour drive away for work.


Last week, I gave up. It was too hard. I rang emergency services because I was suicidal, the police that came where, unfortunately, transphobic. Rather than helping me and getting me the attention I needed to save my life, they taunted me, inflamed the situation, and when I tried to end my life on the spot they drove me to the ground, hand cuffed me and, unbelievably, peppersprayed me: an unarmed woman begging for help. It isn't like in the films... pepperspray is an agonizing ordeal that lasts hours. After processing (for, get this, assaulting a police officer) I was finally dumped, blinded (no contact lenses left) outside the police station- still with no help. Having called for help to save my life, they made it immeasurably worse. This is the transphobia I had heard about, but only have just now encountered first hand. I don't have words to describe how horrible things have been.


So, with great shame I have come to a point where I have to admit that cannot survive without charity. I have the means and skills to get myself out of the hole but large ticket items are standing in my way and I just cannot get to a point where I can cover those costs. My PC's are dead and so I cannot freelance or get to my showreel to get a VFX job... however someone kindly donated a PC, so if I can ship them here to Melbourne from Sydney, I can switch the drives over and get back to business.


I need desperately to:

* Replace the contact lenses the police destroyed with the pepperspray. - I cannot afford to lose another contact lens. I need to see to work.

* Get my hormone levels checked and my estrogen implant replaced. It should have been removed months ago.

* Ship up my belongings to Melbourne, allowing me to transplant my HDDs to the old PC friends donated to me (♥), and get my ability to freelance and my showreel back online. This will also gives me kitchen utensils, bedding, art materials and restore me to a functioning household. Currently I have to eat out for every meal- it is killing me both financially and having to eat junk to keep costs down. Once I have my stuff and a pc I can ebay a lot of my collection off to raise funds.

* Cover my rent over the Xmas period when the industry shuts down and there are zero jobs (I am looking at retail jobs to cover myself but a 40 year old transgender woman is pretty unlikely to find one... still, fingers crossed).

And hopefully if I can raise enough...


* Travel to Canberra to see my son for X-Mas. I want to be there for his first Christmas.

* Fix a damaged tooth before it becomes a serious problem.

*Pay for proper therapy to manage the stress of my situation.

* Bring my credit card debt I ran up whilst I was sick and unemployed down as much as possible to stop the cycle of fees and interest charges eating my income. My moratorium ends in December.

* Pay upkeep on my business websites to keep my folio online. Get Darkling back up to where I can make sales again.

If you can donate, thank you from the bottom of my heart.


PAYPAL: delaneykingrox@gmail.com

GO FUND ME:  https://www.gofundme.com/e2aakrjv

Happier Times:  Me and one of my babies, The Skaarj from UT2004.

We can rebuild her- we have the technology (and $100 bucks)

Miniature painting is my idea of therapy.  Through dark times, those little inch high bastards have kept my mind from the maelstrom.  

I will just say that things have not gone well with my move.  It has been the darkest time of my, er, extremely interesting life.  I needed a lot of help this week.  My therapist said to find something I enjoy that can distact me from all the horrible things going on.  Something to calm my mind.  You know the first thing my mind went to?

Well, yeah, of course it was dirty, dirty sex... but after that, I could think of nothing better than losing myself in the craft of miniatures.

It's time to get back to doing what I love. So here it is... the next phase of my miniatures adventures.  Laney rebuilds.

With my studio packed up in a storage unit nine hours drive from me, this meant starting again from scratch.

So, I went to Mind Games today and with a budget of $100, I set about picking the best paints for my style.

 I put together this kit.

•Black.

•White.

•Steel.

•German blackbrown by Vallejo (for me, it's a no brainier.  It's one of the most replaced paints in my collection.  Infact, I find anything vallejo with the word 'german' in it extremely handy.)

•Cryx bane base.  Shading up grey looks dull, but the green tinge this gives is super pleasing.  It works for stubble glazes too.

•'flesh' (I say scowling at the racism) i.e a warm caucasian skin color that has enough titanium in to be a great base to glaze over.

•warm leather (which is skin colored for many I might add)- a great punchy highlight to the cool german black brown.

•turquoise- a great accent color, good for aging metals, eyes, magic, clothes.

•hot magenta- which will really pop flesh when glazed and be a bold accent color on pouches and stripes.  My drunken noses need it.

•Lahmian medium was a must too.  I am a glazy bitch.  I glaze into the abyss.

•0 and 000 brushes:  I prefer windsor and newton watercolor brushes but time was short.  These expensive ones will do for starters.

Finally something to clean off flash and add battle damage.  It's a new fangled thing called a craft knife.

So, something to paint.  Hmmm... The bones range at Mind Games isn't huge- it irks me that I had no money when at PAX so couldn't buy any of the thousands of Reaper minis there.  So, I just grabbed some bugbears because they where cheap and frankly just badass cool.  It also interested me to try to color them with just those paints.  I would have gotten more sandy colors and rusts had I planned it.  This is a fun challenge.

So here I am... Once again armed and dangerous!  And yes, I am starting to look a lot like my Darkling games logo character- apparently I was subconsciously drawing my true self all along- how's meta is that?

[edit] aaaand first one done.  No lamp, not much light, bad camera, and I suck, but so nice to be back on the lead horse.

It occurred to me that the paints I would buy would vary hugely to what you lot would get.  So, if you had to start off all over again, what would you pick?

Melbourne. I am in you.

I am alive and well and living in Melbourne.  Nice place you have here.  According to the Maslow hierarchy of needs I need...

1) A geek/queer friendly house

2) A geek/queer friendly girlfriend.  Or several.

3) A chicken parmigiana with a side of poutine.

4) Somewhere to ship up all my miniatures and paints (and furniture and other less important stuff).

5) To not be severely allergic to poutine.

6) More miniatures.  Naturally.

The universe is providing.  Good little universe.  I have a cute date tonight in a place that sells parmigiana.  You would think that a 39 year old polyamorous transgender lesbian who makes her living making monsters for video games and collects miniatures obsessively wouldn't get dates.  But actually I would say I am far, far more successful now than when I was pissing around with living as a straight male.  Go figure.  Now, I am not saying that it is a great strategy for you if you happen to be a white, straight male who desperately wants a date, but it has worked for me nonetheless.

This is a weird, weird world.

I also have visited and firmly approve of Melbourne's Mind Games store, where I spent what little spare cash I had on a single Reaper Assassin as a little reminder that I am now an solo female adventurer, and that if I stop eating poutine and parmigiana and get my ass to yoga that I can have legs like Bobby Jackson sculpted them.  She has my haircut too.

02643: Diedra Dark Willow
Bobby Jackson

So PAX wasn't the great experience I hoped, mainly because I was exhausted from packing for a week, mentally strung out from the whole ordeal and broke.  With trade shows, you bring with you a certain energy that is magnified by the place.  In my case it was not the great, cathartic experience I had hoped for.  A big hi to Turelio and the folks at the Reaper stall.

I did get to meet all my games friends, who are now quickly forming into a dangerous drinking posse.  This is good news for my creativity and happiness.  Not so crash hot for my liver.

Hopefully next year will be a bit more grounded for me, and I will have had the opportunity to bring Darkling games back to life and have a test game running at PAX.  Limbo is nice and all, but I wouldn't wanna live here.

How the flying fucklesticks is everyone else here going?