MICHAELS MAGAZINE SUDDENLY CHRONIC
How Cassandra Michaels ‘22 deals with her sudden Scoliosis and what comes with the chronic disease.
AUTHOR INTRODUCTION Heyo! My name's Cassandra Michaels, but most people call me Cassie, and I'm currently a 16-year-old sophomore and West High taking Foundations of Journalism. I enjoy writing, both journalistic writing and original fictional story writing. I often spend my free time watching YouTube or Twitch, writing, drawing, or playing my favorite video games. Some of my all-time favorite games are Minecraft, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, PokĂŠmon: Ultra Moon, VRChat, and Beat Saber. My favorite thing to draw recently has been humanoid creatures, especially creatures with similar body types to the mythical centaurs, but usually a mash-up of different animals. I also usually draw original human characters of mine, some of these OCs I've had for years now at this point. And of course, there's some fanart of my favorite shows here and there too. The idea for this mini-magazine was to try doing more of the things I enjoyed in FOJ and some things I didn't get to do such as original art to go along with my articles. I also missed out properly finishing my InDesign page properly as I was sick the final day of the project and forgot to save it so I could access it from home, so designing a mini-magazine is a great way to redeem myself.
My attempt at that trend where you take a photo and then draw hald of it.
A centaur-like design I drew inspired by my online friend Kat.
An alien OC of mine named Clumps
My cats, Smokey (top) and Tober (bottom) sleeping together on the couch.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A random character design inspired by the real world Rosy Maple Moth.
REVIEW 4 - PIXALATED FARMING FUN: A STARDEW VALLEY REVIEW COVER 6 - SUDDENLY CHRONIC OPINION 8 - WHY DON’T YOU GET A REAL JOB? INFOGRAPHIC 9 - MLM? DOESN’T THAT MEAN MULTI-LEVEL-MARKETING?
A mutant beast that I drew as a fan character for Callous Row, a show I like.
Playing modded Stardew Valley with my friend Logan. I forgot to install some of the mods so it got a bit glitchy. The start of a Creative Mode build in Minecraft I worked on.
A new original character of mine, Bells who is half-demon half-human. On a public Minecraft server, I spent way too long digging out this massive area.
PIXALATED FARMING FUN; A STARDEW VALLEY REVIEW Farming simulators, there’s probably lots of games with that concept, but one of the best farming simulators on the market has got to be Stardew Valley.
Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe online, is the sole developer of Stardew Valley. He makes all the music, all the sprites, programmed all the NPCs, every single thing for this game by himself, and released the game on Feb. 26, 2016. This doesn’t include the fact that the game is still being updated with new content with the most recent update, version 1.4 being released Nov. 26, 2019, and version 1.5 being confirmed by Barone to be in the works. While Stardew Valley was originally released only for Microsoft Windows, it’s slowly been ported to other systems such as; macOS, Linux, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita, iOS, and Android. The price is the same for most devices, $15 for PC, PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One, and Switch but is only $8 on the Apple App Store and Google Play. The only major difference between the versions for each device is that the PC receives the updates first and it slowly trickles into the other ports. Yes, you can pet the dog/cat that you get after the first week.
Three of the single males’ sprites. Sebastian, Shane, and Elliot
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REVIEW
MAY 26, 2020
A small early game farm with some (left) growing parsnips, (right) just planted potatos, and (bottom) just started green beans.
I first bought the game on the 29th, only a few days after release because I’d already heard great things about it online. As of May 7, I’ve almost got 300 hours in this game because it’s just so fun. I’ve played both singleplayer and multiplayer, tried all sorts of different ways of playing, and I still don’t feel like I’ve explored this game to the fullest. Some of the first things that caught my eye about the game might not seem all that big to some, but back in 2016, it was pretty big to little 11-year-old me it was very cool. No matter what gender you picked at the start of the game, you could date any of the 12 romanceable characters regardless of their gender. There’s actually
nothing in this game locked behind the gender options, not clothing options, hair options, accessory options, character interactions, nothing is inaccessible because you chose to be a guy or a girl at the start of the game. Another thing I really enjoy about this game is just how easy it is to play. Nothing is super complex to do and anytime something new comes up there’s a quick, non-obtrusive demo explaining what to do. If you’re starting a new farm but it’s not your first time playing, it’s not that hard to just ignore the demos, which can get really annoying in other games. The third big thing that really draws me to this game is that even though it looks like a simple pixel farming simulator, there’s so much story in almost
every inch of the game. Just starting out there’s not too much story that hits you in the face but as you continue to talk to characters every in-game day you slowly learn more and more about them and relations to some of the other characters. And it’s not just the NPCs that get a story, you the player get a bit of a story too. First in the intro cutscene where the character you created can be seen working at an office, eventually deciding that this life isn’t for them and getting their late grandpa’s farm. And then a week or so into the game the mayor, Lewis, asks you to investigate the ‘rats’ in the abandoned Town Center which actually end up looking a lot more like living apples. It then becomes your goal to investigate what these little creatures are and what they want.
What’s that werid green “rat” in the corner? Lewis doesn’t seem to notice it... Three of the single females’ sprites. Leah, Maru, and Emily
The actual gameplay starts when you wake up in your grandpa’s old rundown house on the first day of spring and are greeted to a present of 15 parsnip seeds from Lewis. The game then quickly runs you through the basic controls as you learn how to hoe the ground, plant seeds, and water them. You can then take the 500 gold you start within your wallet and buy some other seeds from the local store Pierre’s, owned by none other than Pierre. He has plenty of seasonal seeds that you can plant alongside your starting parsnips. But before you can expand your farm even more you’re going to need to mine some of the rocks, cut down some of the trees, and clear some of the overgrown shrubbery using the other tools you were gifted. It’s best to keep at least some of the resources for crafting later on, but it will also help you gain more gold if you put some into the chest Lewis left for you to sell anything you get.
The first level of the mines.
While Stardew Valley is an amazing game, it’s not without its annoying flaws. The biggest flaw that comes to mind is that while you have a lot of diversity in your own character’s design the NPCs in this game are almost all white or pass as white. The only NPC’s who aren’t white are Demetrius and his daughter, Maru who’s mixed. For a game that's super diverse and when it comes to personality and characters stories they’ve physically fallen a bit flat.
The character customization you see when you start a new farm.
The alert that pops up when a fish finally bites
On your second you obtain a fishing rod and unlock the ability to go fishing in any body of water you can find. Lots of people find the fishing minigame infuriating as it's a lot of careful button mashing but personally I find it just takes practice. After a week or some in-game has passed you gain access to the caves however before you go in, a strange old man arrives to tell you it's dangerous and The click-spamming fishing gives you an old sword. minigame. When it comes to what to do in the game there's a journal that holds all the quests you can do, some are story-based, some are advancement based, and some are random times requests from the NPCs. Speaking of the NPCs there's a social meter easily located in your menu where When it rains, you don’t have to spend your morning watering all you can see how many "hearts" you have your crops. with each NPC. You can increase hearts by two gifts every week, but be careful as they only like certain gifts, gifting the wrong thing can either have no or a The NPC Marlon negative affect. You can also up the hearts giving you a Rusty simply by talking to an NPC until they Sword before you run out of dialog options for that day. start heading down Stardew Valley has very simple gameinto the mines, play, yet it doesn't get too repetitive or boring, you can keep playing for ages.
In the 1.3 update for the game, Barone added a long-requested feature, the ability to play on the same farm as your friends. It’s very easy to start a multiplayer farm, and even if you start a world singleplayer, you can later build the cabins needed for your friends. Playing with friends for me has been a very chaotically fun experience. Especially when you and your friends share the money but suddenly someone spends 10k and no ones owning up. You also all have to sleep at the same time for the game to save which can quickly become another fun game of 'alright, who's not in bed' before the game forces everyone to pass out and lose starting energy in the morning. It's also fun, everyone working together on what crops to grow from the season, trying to see who can get the best fish, what gift will the NPC like best, multiplayer has to be one of the best additions to this game.
When it comes to Stardew Valley I have to give it a 9.5 Junimos out of 10, the only issues I've ever had with this are minor and easy to ignore or have been fixed. It's a really fun game and I recommend picking it up if you need something time consuming to do during the quarantine.
Me with my friend Logan during the Egg Festival. He won the Egg Hunt.
The social menu which tells you how many hearts you have, how many gifts you’ve given, and if you click on the NPC’s name you can see the “Likes” and “Dislikes” for the gifts you’ve already given them. All screenshots were taken by me. The image under the title is the full image used on Stardew Valley’s box art. The sprites used were all created by Barone.
An older screenshot where during multiplayer, the baby my character had got glitched into the crib after my friend kept interacting with it.
The basic starting house if you choose the basic farm.
REVIEW
MAY 26, 2020
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SUDDENLY CHRONIC How Cassandra Michaels ‘22 is dealing with the fact that she has a chronic diease out of nowhere In February of 2018, I had to get surgery on my spine to correct a 63-degree curve in my lower spine to help lessen the pain caused by my scoliosis. My family and I were worried because we weren’t sure if I would be recovered enough for the beginning of freshman year. My surgeon reassured me I would be recovered after 6 months, just in time for school to start. Since the surgery was during the third trimester of my eighth-grade year, I actually ended up somewhat going back to school for the last two months, but only for four of my classes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon in which I would arrive to class before it started and left before it ended. I also used a rolling backpack and the elevator to move between floors as stairs were still hard to climb up and for the first sixth months I wasn’t supposed to lift anything, and especially not carry anything on my back. It went all right, my friends helped me as much as they could and students rarely asked for an explanation. The worst thing was when my Science teacher sat me on the other side of the room from the door and it was very awkward having to leave class in front of everyone watching. I was so ready to be recovered and not have to use a rolling backpack, to walk up the stairs like normal, to be in class the same amount as everyone else, so my recovery before my freshman year was something I was looking forward to. Now, you might be assuming, like I used to, that ‘recovered’ means no more pain, however, I quickly learned this wasn’t the case. Pretty much everything could and would hurt my back. Sometimes it was aching pain, sometimes sharp pain, and sometimes bruising pain. One of the worst things about this was it never showed externally, after my surgery the only off thing about my back was a scar that goes up 3/4th of my back and my still slightly uneven shoulders. Not being able to point to a cut or a bruise and go ‘That’s it, that’s what’s making me hurt’ sometimes makes me feel like I’m overreacting, and for the longest time
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COVER
MAY 26, 2020
I kept relatively quiet about it. Some days it hurts so much that I can’t focus in class, even sometimes I get close to tears, but I wouldn’t go to the nurses’ office because I felt like they would say stuff similar to what my surgeon told me, that “It would stop hurting if you just did a bit of exercise.” He probably didn’t say exactly that, it’s been almost a year now since I last had a checkup with him. But when he’d say this I just couldn’t because if sitting hurts, imagine how bad doing stretches or yoga, but that’s the only thing he’d ever say when I mentioned it still hurt. But then I went online and saw that scoliosis was considered chronic. If you look up chronic, you’ll find that most descriptions include words like ‘constant’, ‘long time’, ‘reoccurring’, and even ‘difficult to get rid of ’. When I explain what chronic means I usually say it means something that is treatable but isn’t curable. Everywhere scoliosis related I went said that it was normal and expected to continue feeling pain even years after surgery and hearing that was both heartbreaking and made me happy. It was like I was justified, I wasn’t an outlier, something hadn’t gone wrong during my surgery, this was expected. And it felt like a weight was lifted off of me. And it was great. My parents didn’t seem to realize I wasn’t aware the pain was forever, They seemed to feel really bad that I hadn’t realized it but after thinking about it they realized that no doctor or nurse had said anything like that.
“ IT WOU LD STOP H U RTI NG I F YOU J UST DI D A BIT OF EXE RCISE”
They didn’t know exactly how to deal with that, but like how we talked when I first was told I had scoliosis we talked about this realization we decided to start trying to do what we could do on our own to help me get through the day with minimal pain. First, my mom bought these ‘Biofreeze’ products, one was a box of somewhat large patches and the other was a spray. These products worked somewhat, the weird sensation of a weird mix of cold and hot on my back definitely distracted me from the pain but it also was too distracting in class. A bit after the Biofreeze products were a fail we tried going to a physical therapist recommended by the surgeon as my mom wanted me to at least try to do his suggestion of exercising. It went alright, the physical therapist was nice but even after her working through my back muscles and teaching me some simple exercises that were supposed to help lessen the pain after the seventh or so appointment she said that she felt like other than me doing a short routine of exercises every morning there wasn’t much else she could do to help me. I was honestly really upset by this, especially because when you think of physical therapy you think of a very long process and many months of appointments. I almost instantly stopped doing the exercises after that because they already didn’t seem to be doing anything, but now my physical therapist had told me there wasn’t anything else to do. The most recent attempt is a back brace. It’s not the kind you usually associate with scoliosis, its no plastic molded perfectly to keep my spine straight, it specifically holds my body in a way to help my spine. It’s just an elastic and fabric back brace from Walgreens. I started wearing it to school and it helped a bit, made my posture a bit better, not too many people asked questions because I’m not someone who tries to hide my scoliosis, mostly so people know when I’m complaining about my back, it’s a bit different from how most students would
complain about the back pain caused by hard wooden or plastic chairs and how low the desks were from where they were. It was a lot deeper than that. My scoliosis is going to be something I have to deal with for my whole life, it will never just magically go away. There’s even a chance that on the part of my spine without and metal that another curvature will appear, somedays I even think that must be what’s happening with how off my shoulders feel, or how hunched it feels like I’m walking. I was very emotional when I first was diagnosed, and then very emotional when I learned my curve was past the point of bracing and to the point of surgery. Somedays it gets bad enough that I can’t get out of bed, and it really sucks, but I’ve been learning what I can do to lessen the pain and will continue to learn as I get older and have these pieces of metal in my spine for even longer. It’s going to be hard somedays, but I think I’m ready to deal with whatever my spine decides to do from here on out.
Feb. 16, 2018 Outside of my recovery room in a wheelchair.
Feb. 17, 2018 Ready to head back home to continue to recover there.
Feb. 28, 2018. Recovering in bed with my cat Tober. My spine before surgery 63-degree curve
My spine after surgery 2 rods and 14 screws
Jan. 14, 2019. For my art project I drew a vent piece. It’s about how it was right where the curve hurt the most back then.
Feb. 16, 2018. Selfie with my parents while in a wheelchair
Mar. 1, 2018. Out of bed for the first time playing some Splatoon 2 from the desk set up for me in the Living Room.
Feb. 13, 2018. I text on my phone while taking a break from attempting to draw before the medicine knocked me out for surgery.
Most photos taken by my mom, Annette Michaels
COVER
MAY 26, 2020
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WHY DON’T YOU GET A REAL JOB?
Have you ever been watching a Twitch Live Streamer who only gets paid from Twitch and wondered ‘how are they managing to make a living off of this? Shouldn’t they have a real job?’ Because I know I used too until I became friends with a Twitch Streamer. In case you don’t know what Twitch or a Twitch Streamer is I’ll explain it real quick. Twitch is a live streaming website that was originally just for gaming live streams but has evolved to also include ‘Just Chatting’, ‘Music’, and ‘Art’, live streams as well. A Twitch Streamer is someone who streams on Twitch, some of them have reached the point where they can get checks from Twitch and some haven’t, but if you stream on Twitch, you’re a Twitch Live Streamer. Early on in my freshman year, my friend Logan introduced me to the Twitch Streamer TFMJonny who mostly streams himself singing in a game called VRChat. He streams five out of seven days a week for four hours every stream, usually rather late at night. Then, during sophomore year, I took a class called Futures, for the final project you do a job shadow, and I job shadowed Jonny and ended up learning a lot about Twitch Streaming and online content creation in general and I want to share what I learned with the people who think online content creation isn’t a real job. First off, it’s not just playing video games or doing your makeup for a couple of hours, posting it, and making loads of cash. Content creators often spend almost all their time every day working on their content. Editing videos, marketing themselves, putting together collabs, setting up for streams, writing scripts, getting access to things before the actual release, getting sponsorships. These things can take ages to put together before the actual content is created for public viewing. While job shadowing Jonny I learned that he spends a lot of time working on marketing himself on other social media sites. Trying to decide what stream name will get people to join, what clips from the streams he should put together into a Youtube video to get people to tune into him live. He also spends time communi-
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OPINION MAY 26, 2020
cating with other VRChat streamers to set up collabs where they both stream on their own and hopefully share their viewers with the other streamer, causing both streamers to get more attention which can lead to more follows, more subscriptions, more donations, and more people to create a bigger community in general. Another thing that makes content creators choose jobs in online content creation is that it creates a community where people can make new friends and find people who have similar interests with them. Within Jonny’s community, I’ve made more friends than I ever had on any other online media before, I’ve met people who want to read my original stories, people who enjoy my art, and people who also play the same games as I do. When talking to Jonny, I found out that one of his favorite things about streaming was seeing all the people in his chat and how everyone gets along and the community that’s formed from watching him. When it comes to making money off of Twitch and other forms of online content creation, there’s always a couple of ways to make money. Youtube is the most well known as Youtubers talk about monetization, or the lack therefore of, plenty and how fickle it is to get a video monetized, most Youtubers then turning to sponsorships. On other sites like Twitter or Instagram, it usually has to be sponsorships as those websites don’t have any built-in way to make money. On Twitch there’s a couple of ways to make money, through subscriptions, running ads, getting donations, getting bits, and like the other sites, sponsorships. You can only make money once you get either Affiliate or Partner on Twitch, Affiliate gets you access to things like people being able to subscribe, send in donations, give bits, and watch ads. Subscriptions are how most Streamers
get their money because while it just takes $5USD for a Tier One subscription, the more people who subscribe and resubscribe every month builds up, even when the Streamer only gets 50% of that five dollars. For donations, they rely completely on people being generous and when it comes to donations it all goes to the streamer, some streamers will put up specific donations goals to encourage people to send in donations. Sometimes these goals will be direct and say exactly why the streamer is trying to get the money (Ex. Better computer, pay bills, etc.) but sometimes they will make the goal something funnier (Ex. Eat cereal with water, wear a maid costume for a whole stream, etc.), it honestly depends more so on the streamer and their community. The other two ways, bits, and running ads are a bit simpler compared to subscriptions and donations. One bit is one cent, meaning if you give a streamer 100 bits you give them a dollar, this all goes straight to the streamer as bits are something you purchase in bulk and then give to streamers whenever you want. For running ads, they either can be run every time a non-sub starts watching the stream, or the streamer can choose when they run ads and for how long the ads will go. Streamers get $250USD for every 100 subs each month, but when it comes to basing the amount just off of the views they get on the ads it’s between $0.25 to $1.50 for every 1,000 views. Unlike what a lot of people believe, doing Twitch or other online content creation can be a real and sustainable job, it just takes a lot of work and actual care to become successful. And content creation isn’t just about the money people can make off of it, it’s also about the amazing people you can meet along the way.
MLM? DOESN’T THAT MEAN MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING? Have you ever looked at someone’s Instagram bio and saw a word you don’t recognize like; WLW, MLM, Enbie, Ace, but you’re way too lazy to go to the good ol’ Google to find out what it really means? Me too, so I put together a little handy guide for some of the lesser-known terms you might find in the LGBTQ+ Community. WLW and MLM - These acronyms stand for Woman Loving Woman and Men Loving Men. These are often used as umbrella terms to include lesbians, bi women, pan women, and other WLW within one sentence without having to disclude any certain identities. The same goes for how MLM is used. However, some people might just identify as MLM if they’re sure that they’re a guy into guys but are unsure about their attractions to non-males and don’t want to put a solid label on themselves quite yet. Sapphic and Achillean - These two are functionally the same as WLW and MLM, but have a bit more of history behind them. Sapphic originates from the Greek poet Sappho, a poet who is known for sometimes writing about her romantic love for women alongside her poems about men. The island she lived on, Lesbos, is also where the term lesbian comes from. Achillean also comes from another famous Greek bit of literature, but Achilles wasn’t a real person, just another character in “The Iliad.” The reason Achilles is used for this is because of how he treated his ‘friend’ Patroclus to the point of requesting his ashes be mixed with Patroclus’ once he dies. NB and Enby - NB is the abbreviation of nonbinary, someone who doesn’t identify with the gender binary, it can also be used in NBLW, NBLM, or NBLNB in the same was WLW is used. Enbie is similar to the words girl or boy, a way to refer to a young nonbinary person. Some older people also use it but a majority view it just for younger NB folks. Cis - This is short for Cisgender which means you identify as the gender you were assigned at birth. Some people will claim it is a slur against people who aren’t trans but that just stems from ignorance and a lack of ability to look up information.
Ace, Aro, and AroAce - Ace is a short was to say, Asexual, someone who isn’t sexually attracted to anyone. Aro is the same as Ace but specifically for Aromantic which is someone who feels no romantic attraction to anyone. AroAce is the two put together to clarify that someone isn’t a Biromantic Ace, or a Hetrosexual Aro, or anything along those lines.
INFOGRAPHIC MAY 26, 2020
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FEAUTURED PHOTO
A photo Cassandra Michaels ‘22 took of the Pink Bleeding Hearts that have blossomed in her backyard.
FUN FACTS
- These flowers get their name from the cartoon heart shape along with the inner petal that looks like a drop of blood.
SYMBOLISM
Like most flowers, Bleeding Hearts have widely agreed upon “meanings” behind them. Some of the Bleeding Hearts symbolism includes; Talking about your emotions, passionate love, rejected love, sensitivity, and unconditional love. Often, the color of the flower also plays into the symbolism. For the Bleeding Heart the different colors mean; Red - Love and romance. Pink - Love, romance, subtly, and kindness. White - Innocence and purity.
- These unique flowers are native to moist woodlands in Asia and North America. - They can come in 3 natural colors; Pink (pictured above) white, and red.
