#jay avery

1. Pigs. Orderly, military, 10/10.

2. Sheep. Some stragglers, not true to proverb, but overall efficient. 8/10.

3. Chickens. Chaos. Disorder. Inaccurately identified anarchy. 🦆/10.

~

I just went looking in my Rosa tag and realised I hadn’t updated you on her progress much since her 12cm tumour was removed in 2015! Here she is, 4 years later (these pics are all from 2019), super grumpy all the time because she has arthritis in her back legs, but she’s still up to her usual adorability. I love her lots.

Rosa and moving house

Rosa sleeping in strange places and positions

Rosa meets @jay-avery​‘s rabbit, Toast (no one ate anyone else, we’re so proud!)

Rosa being Long

Rosa and jigsaws

And here’s some that wouldn’t fit into Tumblr’s 10-picture limit:

The rabbit cameo is part of a bigger story!

October 2013 - Me and Jay somehow bump into each other on Tumblr and start talking sometimes. My friend and Jay become closer, and I only really know Jay peripherally.

~ 2 years later ~

September 2015 - Me and Jay meet (with other friends involved also) for the first time in Bristol. It is a nice time! I also eat pizza with egg on it for the first time, so it’s a day for milestones generally.

~ 3 years later ~

September 2018 - I start testosterone, and Jay’s been on it for a little while already. I later work out that it’s shaking up a lot of things, physically and emotionally, but the emotional stuff is more subtle, so I don’t notice for a while.

November 2018 - Jay kindly hosts me for some overnight stays over a few months while I have gender-counselling in London. We go on lots of dates but neither of us realise they are dates, we are just enbys being frienbys.

January 2019 - Towards the end of the fortnightly GIC trips I start to think that maybe I might be catching Feelings, but it’s intermittent and anyway everything is fine as it is and Jay’s ace and aro, I’ll just leave it.

March 2019 - I go to Jay’s for they and their brother’s joint birthday party, which is small and familyish. We have a sofa cuddle, and I’m like “uh oh, I’m gay.” I proceed to not mention it at all for several months.

June 2019 - I tell Jay I might be feeling some kind of a way about them, and then a bit later they’re like, I don’t know if I do too but I like the idea of going on a date on purpose, so we do, and it's confusing but nice so we decide to do it some more. (Worst case scenario we spend 50 years going on nice dates to find out if we like each other, right?) When we tell people, it turns out they had all been shipping us for months (and in some cases, years).

July to September 2019 - Jay visits me in Wales at least once a month, and I often end up visiting them in Swindon for a couple of nights between times, too. The visits get gradually longer. Jay wants to move to my town, but houses to rent are like gold dust and I’m nervous about moving too fast. I ask Jay to wait until November before they seriously look for places to live around here, to give me time to adjust and feel less scared. I wonder about whether it’s gay.

October 2019 - Jay gets graduated, it’s a whole family affair, Jay concludes that they definitely want to spend more time with me and their family at the same time, absorbing me into their family like The Blob [YouTube link].

November 2019 - Jay wants to visit for longer but feels bad about leaving Toast 🐇 back in their flat in Swindon (being rabbit-sat by friends and family), also they miss him. I get hold of a cage and Jay sends supplies to my house, and then Jay brings Toast with them on the train, which is a 4.5-hour journey each way but it goes reasonably well. Toast and Rosa are not exactly best friends, but they seem somewhat okay with each other most of the time. Jay meets my mum (a few hours away on the train), and we all hang out in a cat café.

December 2019 - I spend a few days at Christmas with Jay and fam in Swindon, meet more family members etc, and it is a very nice time, 10/10, would do again.

January 2020 - The Present Day. We still live 4.5 hours from each other and spend most of our time long-distancing it, in part because I am a 🐢 to Jay’s 🐇, and in part because my town has about one house coming onto the rental market every 3-6 months or so.

This conversation between Jake and Rosa has the exact energy of many conversations between me and @jay-avery.

So.

Me and @jay-avery​ apparently have some mutual feelings and are sort of in the early stages of what we’re going to do about it. This is us we’re talking about so we could be in the early stages for a few... years...?

This has been a strange journey for me, because usually I get into relationships with people I have met quite recently. I have known Jay for literal years online and AFK, and finding out that I had Feelings was a creeping realisation that I didn’t bring up with them for many months, in case I was imagining it. Jay, such a romantic, when I told them, said, “well, I’m not horrified!” The start of something beautiful~

Anyway, one of the questions that came up, for me at least, is: but is it GAY.

This is a somewhat more complicated question than it at first appears to be.

After some consideration I have concluded that our relationship is both gay AND straight.

Bear with me.

I am nonbinary (genus agender), and I am pretty much never into nonbinary people. I have met lots, most of my friends are nonbinary, I’ve known many nonbinary people AFK and online, mainly due to being a very loud nonbinary. Yet somehow I’ve only been with two nonbinary people - and both relationships fizzled *cough* early, due to *cough* clear lack of chemistry, and then they worked out they were nonbinary some time later. Some part of me registers that they’re nonbinary even when neither of us consciously knows it. The more androgynous someone is, the harder it is for me to think of someone in a sexual or romantic way.

However, I have been in many relationships of various (mostly sexual) natures with men and women.

I’ve always been kinda puzzled in a bereft kind of a way about what my relationship orientation even is. None of the relationship terms I’ve heard ever really clicked. When I found out what nonbinary was, that was an easy lightbulb moment. When I understood what it meant to be autistic and ADHD those caused a little this-explains-everything cascade, I feel quite at home with all of those. I’d say I’m pretty good at recognising who I am in pretty much every way except orientation.

I’m not gay, because I’m not into people who share my gender. I’m not pan, because there are some genders I’m not into. Many people have welcomed me under the bisexual umbrella because some people define it as “attracted to two or more genders”, and polysexual probably fits me the most clearly since it’s a fairly straightforward and inclusive definition, but the -sexual ending feels weird to me - I like sex, but I don’t choose people based on anything sexual as far as I can tell. The closest orientation term I’ve found that feels right and goes *ping* is asexual, but even that doesn’t quite gel for reasons unknown. Queer works very well, because it encompasses me very generally and it’s hard not to be queer when you’re not even binary, but it doesn’t really explain me to myself in the way that I long for. I can only conclude that, like the other identities, when I learn the identity word that fits I will recognise it in myself.

One day I sat in Jay’s living room, in The Cube, with a piece of paper, and wrote down a list of all the people I’d slept with, sorted by gender, with the goal of spotting a pattern.

To help you picture the above scene, this is The Cube, featuring Toast, Jay’s French lop. He is very good.

I was not expecting any surprises in this list, and I was surprised to find that there were indeed surprises. 🤔

There were those two people who didn’t know they were nonbinary at the time, and then a bunch of men and women. I was surprised to find that the list of women was a lot longer, because in my head I had given my relationships with men more legitimacy and dismissed a lot of the more casual relationships with women. (That started a little tangential investigation of my internalised queerphobia.)

The only pattern I really found was that most of my relationships so far have been with (cis and trans) binary people in an almost pansexual-like indiscriminacy, but despite having ample opportunity to connect with nonbinary people in the same way I had never actually really done so.

The definition of heterosexual is “attracted to people of the opposite gender”, and when you have no gender at all that’s... pretty much everyone...

So I joke with Jay and Elsie that my orientation is heterosexual.

Jay, however, is pretty masc and also pretty much very gay. They’re attracted to androgynous people exclusively, and usually masculine androgynous people too. The nature of their attraction is quite nebulous (same tbh), and often there are some gender-nonconforming queer cis binary people in the mix, but yeah. Very gay.

And yet somehow, me and Jay...?¿ I’m “””straight””” and they’re gay and yet somehow...?¿?

So, it’s gay, because Jay is nonbinary and into the androgyny in me.

But it’s also straight, because I am agender and drawn to the masculinity in Jay.

Ergo, our relationship is both gay and straight.

We’re so queer, the existing system of queer categorisation cannot hold us!!!!!! This is the future liberals want!

Or, How to Land in a World that is Only Deep Lukewarm Ocean and Die Repeatedly Looking for a Door

~

22nd September 2019

~

Me and Jay like Minecraft, and we specifically like the survival bit at the beginning. We also like challenges that make us think around corners a little bit. We have in the past enjoyed Skyblock, and also this cute game where you’re in an ordinary land biome but you are a tree and you start with one sapling and you’re only allowed to walk on logs of your tree.

In a hunt for a new way to make Minecraft harder and more interesting, me and @jay-avery hatched a plan.

We would make a Minecraft world that is only ocean.

~

THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

It turned out that making a plugin to remove biomes isn’t as easy as making one that adds them, but you can make it so that a world contains only one biome.

Jay (codemonkey) did some research on the features and downsides of various biomes, and found that “deep lukewarm ocean” has lots of the pros and very few of the cons. It has ocean monuments and shipwrecks, as well as caves and abandoned mines (deep ones). All ocean mobs can spawn in them. Most importantly, it has NO LAND WHATSOEVER. >:D

There are some items etc. that are unavailable in that biome, but fewer than you’d think.

Saplings, sugarcane, coral, ice and flowers can be traded from wandering traders (the ones with llamas), who can spawn anywhere except in water.

Sugar can be obtained from witches.

Paper is often in shipwreck chests.

Edible crops can be found in chests (seeds) and zombie drops (carrots and potatoes).

If you can get stuff for potions and you find some golden apples in chests, you can convert and cure zombie villagers and start a floating (or cave) village.

However, that leaves animals, of which many can only spawn in land biomes (so dirt platforms in the sea won’t work), and coral, which only grows in warm ocean biomes. Also the small matter of… grass.

So here’s what Jay made.

~

THE ACTUAL THING

It’s a surprisingly simple change to get your head around.

The only biome for the entire world is “deep lukewarm ocean”. The Nether and the End stay the same (strongholds can generate in the ocean and at bedrock).

In single player it’d just be a buffet type setting, but it’s more tricky with servers. Shipwreckers can be used with single player and on a server, and will make sure you also occasionally find in treasure chests the items and animals that would otherwise be completely unattainable in deep lukewarm ocean.

There are special loot tables that you have to include (provided), to make it possible to obtain anything (as far as we can remember) that would otherwise be unavailable in an all-ocean world. Every loot chest (shipwrecks, abandoned mineshafts, ruins, etc) will contain one stack from a new pool of possibilities:

a single spawn egg for any passive land animal (farm animals are more likely)

a single grass block

a single mycelium block

a single sea pickle

a single sweet berry

~

SETTING IT UP

It’s not a typical plugin installation situation. You have to create the world and then add the data pack and then delete and regenerate the world.

Here’s Jay’s instructions. For the purposes of this tutorial, [worldname] will probably be “world” (or “New World”, that’s the default for single player).

1. Create new world (in vanilla 1.14) > choose buffet world type > choose deep lukewarm ocean biome > save and quit immediately once created

2. Add the special loot tables: put this ‘shipwreckers’ folder into the saved game’s data packs folder (at minecraft/saves/[worldname]/datapacks).

3. Regenerate the world to make sure the new loot is added: delete the 'region’ folder (minecraft/saves/[worldname]/region).

Now it’s ready to play single player.

If you want to play with friends you can upload the whole save folder to a server for multiplayer, and players won’t need to do anything except connect. (We can’t help you here - methods will vary depending on what kind of server set-up you’ve got.)

~

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO PLAY

Starting out SUCKS. :D To begin with, we tried harvesting fish to eat, but they are not very nourishing, and the problem is… there are water zombies everywhere, and they will attack you and the fish won’t heal you fast enough, so you’re just going to die and drop all the fish and get sent back to spawn anyway.

When you find a shipwreck (of which there are many), there’s no way to swim all the way down and “harvest” some wood to make tools or a door, there’s just no time and you drown. Your only hope is to by chance find a shipwreck that happens to contain a door (which makes an air pocket), and even then there will probably be water zombies and maybe even trident guys down there who will kill you.

So you just have to… swim around looking at shipwrecks in the hope of finding a door, dying repeatedly and being sent back to spawn. And then when you find a door, cling onto it and turn your shipwreck into a minibase by harvesting lots of wood and turning it into doors.

It is SO DIFFICULT compared to vanilla or even Skyblock! So frustrating!!! AHHHHHHH

Anyway, from there you can build up to make a platform for mobs (pray for a wandering trader, get creepers) or dig down to start a mine. Even though the world is one uniform biome, it's still interesting to explore because there's variation in the plants and mobs and also the generated structures.

The first few hours were great, because when we’d find a shipwreck there would be much excitement over the animal eggs and other rare goodies we’d find in the chests, and then getting it all home safely in order to stash it was really fun, along with getting excited when you find a second animal egg so you can breed them (except chickens, which are conveniently parthenogenetic). Until you have really good armour the trident dudes are always a significant threat. Jay says, “I am repeatedly amazed and horrified by how powerful trident guys are, and because they are ranged attack they knock you back and you can't swim towards them fast enough to hit them before they throw at you again aaahhhhh”

The main limiting factor we’ve had so far is lack of trees. If we need wood we get in a boat and go and find a shipwreck, and just totally dismantle it. We’ve got a tidy collection of farm animals and crops going on, but no trees or flowers. We’ve had one wandering trader spawn, but he wasn’t selling sugarcane or saplings. We’ve got some enchanting stuff going on (books and paper from shipwrecks), and we’ve got potions stuff since we found some blazes in the Nether, but we’ve not made it to the End yet because endermen don’t spawn much due to all the water.

We haven’t yet made water-breathing potions, nor have we managed to enchant a hat with some kind of water-breathing charm, but we’re not unduly hampered by this because we take doors everywhere we go for emergency underwater air pockets.

Here’s a Dynmap screenshot of where we’re at so far. It’s fun to note that when you’re boating about you can always tell when you’re nearly home because the kelp is all really tall. :D (You can also use it as a fuel source! It’s just incredibly slow!)

Behold, me fishing under the mob spawner XP farm thing I just made:

(The texture pack is not included, but it’s made by Jay and can be found here.)

~

NB: Me and Jay aren’t available for tech support, and if this thing stops working with future versions we’re not available to update it. Sorry about that! However, it has some kind of free software license that means you can edit and share it, so you are welcome to update it yourself and republish it.

~

Monday 19th August 2019 ~ last updated Saturday 14th September 2019

So, I love Good Omens (the book and also the TV show), and lately I have been just doing heart-eyes at all the awesome fanart and fanfic out there about them, and I think that’s partly because a lot of it feels very relatable to me!

Basically me and @jay-avery are in the early stages of exploring some kind of something, and we have concluded that we’re probably Crowley and Aziraphale. Here are some reasons.

Jay is Crowley

Changed their name to be named after a bird

Plants

Super cool

Dangerous at driving

Would be in Slytherin, but in a borderline way

Varying lengths of hair (accurate fanart is accurate)

Sunglasses

90% elbows

Those gay hip muscles

Goes a bit faster than Aziraphale in relationship things

Aloof (as opposed to nervous)

Tight clothes

I am Aziraphale

Weirdly possessive about books

Sock obsession

Short hair

Stimmy with the hands, especially while talking

Knitting

Dancing

A bit more squishy than Crowley physically

Doesn’t swear, says things like “gosh” instead, also much more likely than Jay/Crowley to say things like “tickety-boo”

Nervous (as opposed to aloof)

Looser clothes

Together

Canonically nonbinary, oozing queer, but overall basically approximately masc-presenting, super gay somehow

Been close for 6,000 years, didn’t notice they were basically a Romance for ages, still feel like going on a date might be a bit much

Canonically ace with each other (so far??) - “Angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”

Everyone knew they were together before they did (me and Jay have a list, it’s at 15 people so far)

Live far apart but meet up sometimes for ***practical*** reasons

Rescue each other occasionally

When eating out, Aziraphale eats and Crowley orders a coffee and just watches and accompanies

Recently, on iNaturalist~

An A6, 24-page zine commemorating Jay's award! Good if you like knitting, Star Trek, Sense8, X-Men, disability issues, and/or cheap hotel breakfast.