John also told me he was partially involved with K/DA’s first skins, informally, because he knew a lot of the people on

[Since people will wonder about it anyway, the relationship’s end wasn’t particularly juicy: I had just ended a long relationship and was antsy about commitment, I cancelled plans to see him because I thought he was moving too fast and expressed that, then he ended things and blocked me. I don’t really have hard feelings about that part. I hope this explanation is enough to satisfy curiosity, but beyond these basics, I’d like to keep some things personal.]

http://live-stream.munich.es/exd/v-ideos-ZSC-Lions-HC-Ambri-Piotta-v-en-gb-tep-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/videos-porto-robur-costa-ravenna-v-gi-group-team-monza-v-it-it-1csb2-17.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/videos-porto-robur-costa-ravenna-v-gi-group-team-monza-v-it-it-1feb2-12.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-SC-Bern-HC-Davos-v-en-gb-gjw30122020-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/video-porto-robur-costa-ravenna-v-gi-group-team-monza-v-it-it-1aka2-21.php

http://live-stream.munich.es/exd/videos-SC-Bern-HC-Davos-v-en-gb-csf-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-SC-Bern-HC-Davos-v-en-gb-dsr30122020-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/v-ideos-Fenerbahce-KK-Crvena-zvezda-v-en-gb-1ska-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/videos-Fenerbahce-KK-Crvena-zvezda-v-en-gb-1msr30122020-14.php

http://live-stream.munich.es/exd/v-ideos-SC-Bern-HC-Davos-v-en-gb-jya-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/v-ideos-SC-Bern-HC-Davos-v-en-gb-dnn-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/videos-Fenerbahce-KK-Crvena-zvezda-v-en-gb-1kes-3.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/videos-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-gat-.php

http://live-stream.munich.es/exd/v-ideos-SC-Bern-HC-Davos-v-en-gb-ybj-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/Video-Porto-Robur-Costa-Ravenna-GI-Group-Team-Monza-v-en-gb-1fyt-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/Video-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-vqw-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-vec-.php

http://live-stream.munich.es/exd/Video-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-hai-.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/videos-Porto-Robur-Costa-Ravenna-GI-Group-Team-Monza-v-en-gb-1otw-19.php

http://live-stream.munich.es/exd/video-HC-Lugano-Geneve-Servette-HC-v-en-gb-vdz30122020-.php

Called my sister to ask her to come stay with the kids. Walked home and packed up a bag with a button-down shirt and granola bars, so we’d have something to snack on in the ER and he’d have a shirt to put over his sling, once his shoulder got popped back in. Painful, but no biggie.

It may sound kind of fun at first, to have a League champion that looks like you. But I don’t think I’ve even opened League, let alone played a game, since she came out. (One silver lining: I haven’t gotten demoted in a while?) I’ve felt really grossed-out about it, to the point that I can’t play one of my favorite videogames. Besides that, it’s been kind of horrid to have a League champion who looks like you, has so many of your characteristics, and has a NAME that’s almost identical to yours. People I’ve never met send her to me online and point out the similarities, there’s already immense amounts of porn of her, I see people arguing about her near-daily (take a wild guess as to whether I side with the people who think it’s kind of creepy or the people who insist she’s a ~*smol bean uwu*~), and while I do kind of agree that she’s an out of place character for the lore of the game, it does suck to see your features torn apart on a massive scale every time you open your Twitter feed.

I know this issue is all tied up with this guy that I briefly knew, but I’m not going to toss his name out publicly and throw him under the bus when I don’t even think he works there anymore. And honestly, I also really don’t know how I’d live with myself if this spiraled out of control and ruined his life somehow. I’m not happy about this character, but rather than repeating the harm that I feel was done to me — that is, dragging a person into something much bigger than them without giving them a choice in the matter — I’d honestly rather try to actually change things and shift the focus to Riot. They’re a giant company, can handle a bit of criticism, and, in the end, they’re ultimately responsible for the character existing. This isn’t a personal beef with this guy I briefly dated, this is an institutional issue.

I had no idea how she was made or how this even could’ve happened, but scrolling through this Twitter and remembering things John said or did, I started to realize that this character — whose very name, Seraphine, is so similar to Stephanie — could seriously be based off me.

Even worse than all that has been the wondering about whether or not she’s based off me. I waited a while to post anything (partially because I wanted a lawyer first) but also because it’s terrifying to wonder if this happened, but have no way to conclusively prove it. I actually spent a while with her account’s Tweet notifications on, worrying about what personal detail or similarity would be next — it was horrible to guess what part of her appearance could match mine next or what cutesy quirk she might have when it seemed like every Tweet and picture being released only contained more and more similarities.

The following year, I made the same mistake, and the same answer came out. Even since that double-whammy, I’ve sworn off asking about parents. If someone wants to talk to me about my parents then I’ll proceed in kind, but until that happens I avoid parental talk.

I looked into her Twitter account more, and found Seraphine’s art, sketches, and journals. I’m a hobby illustrator and artist, and I remembered I had actually sent John some art. My art is strikingly similar to art that Seraphine ‘makes’ of herself and is posted to her social media. Like, really similar.

All-in-all, this whole situation has been really violating. Every article about her makes my stomach turn. It’s both a personal point of frustration and also, I guess, it may be just another way a giant videogame company has screwed over a woman without a second thought— and massively profited off it.

Over a whole year passed, the pandemic took over headlines, and then sometime this year, Seraphine was released. I honestly hadn’t thought about John very much at all since then — I have a completely different life in the Bay Area now — but as soon as I saw what she looked like and realized she was going to be a League champion, I started scrolling through her accounts, completely freaked out. My worries only grew and my heart sank more and more with every post. While John never explicitly discussed anything concrete, he did mention a K/DA related ‘surprise’ of something that would release around my birthday, which is on September 19th.

Near the tail end of my brief friendship/relationship with John, I wrote an academic essay for a class about Piltover and Zaun that I shared with John and discussed with him extensively. He invited me to Los Angeles again and I accepted, touring Riot’s headquarters in May. When I arrived, he had printed out and framed that piece of writing inside Riot’s HQ. He even told me he had shared it internally. I was flattered, but a little self conscious that others had read my writing. I don’t even think he asked my permission. Another strange circumstance was when he gave me some gifts of posters and custom art of me as K/DA Ahri, which he told me Riot illustrators drew based on what he told/showed them about me. While I don’t blame the artists at all — I’m sure their intentions were pure — it was strange for how short of a time I’d known him. I flew home, and we stopped speaking entirely shortly after.

That academic writing I had showed John about Piltover and Zaun? Once her lore was released, I found out that’s exactly where Seraphine is from. She isn’t from Piltover or Zaun, when every other champion I can think of is from one or the other… she’s from both. Her poses with her cat are also eerily similar to pictures I would’ve sent to John in 2019. The timing was about right for his “voice acting” suggestions to have lined up with her development. The more I looked at her page, the worse it got.

On the one hand, this is an issue I care about, but I’m very much aware that there are bigger issues going on. Most days, I feel very Kim, there’s people that are dying — it feels very self-indulgent to worry about this at all, but especially nowadays. We’re all still in the middle of a pandemic, we’re discussing mass protests for racial justice, the election just was a mess, etc., etc. I’m always aware of that, and this post isn’t meant to detract from anything more important going on. On the other hand, when I privately shared what was going on in my life with some wonderful women who are more experienced and much wiser than me, I got the same message: This is creepy. I’d be horrified. This might not be life or death, but it seems weird and wrong and you should feel entitled to say something. And at the end of the day, I just couldn’t see any more think pieces or tweets about Seraphine without posting this.

I tend to not bring up parents and relationships with parents for at least several dates. I discovered to avoid this kind of questionnaire very early on in life. In the seventh grade, I had a major crush on this girl. Ever the shy early-teen boy, I had absolutely no idea how to approach a girl or what to talk to her about. It’s something I’ve only slightly grown better at. For whatever reason, the two of us were talking and I asked about her mom. She said her mom had died at an early age. The conversation ended right there, as did any kind of confidence in talking to her further.

That’s Stephanie’s art on the left, (I was deciding to dye my hair pink and drew the options) but I frequently draw myself in this style. Seraphine’s, of course, is on the right.