Hi, I’m Onyxicca. You can call me Ember.

I’m a gamer, creator, educator, writer and designer with a lifelong weakness for dark fantasy, vampires, RPGs, old libraries, strange little projects, and anything that gives me something interesting to think about after I’m done with it.

I did not set out to build a life around any of this. For a long time, I expected my life to follow a much more conventional path. I studied and worked in STEM, built skills, worked outside the home, and assumed that if I kept working hard enough, life would mostly keep moving in a straight line.

My body had other plans.

Years of chronic illness changed my mobility, my energy, the kind of work I can realistically do, and eventually the shape of my everyday life. I had to start thinking much more carefully about things most people barely notice until they lose some of them: energy, attention, independence, comfort, time, and the ability to do something simply because you feel like doing it.

That changed the way I looked at gaming too.

Games were already one of my favorite hobbies, but they became more important when parts of my real world became harder to access. They gave me somewhere to explore when exploring physically became difficult. They gave me systems to learn, problems to solve, things to practice, and failures that were allowed to be temporary.

A difficult boss can teach patience. A build can teach experimentation. A game that refuses to explain everything can reward paying attention. Starting over can remind you that losing progress is not the same thing as losing everything.

I do not think games need to be educational, therapeutic, productive or profound in order to justify enjoying them. Sometimes a game is just fun, and that is enough. But I also think we underestimate how useful gaming can be for keeping us curious, mentally engaged, creative, adaptable and connected to something outside the repetitive machinery of everyday life.

That is one of the reasons I care so much about gaming as I get older, and especially as someone whose physical limits have changed. I am interested in the ways games can exercise patience, problem-solving, memory, adaptability and persistence without turning every hobby into another productivity assignment.

Where your energy goes matters

Living with limited energy also made me notice how aggressively modern life competes for it.

Every platform wants your attention. Every outrage wants your reaction. Every stranger with a terrible opinion wants twenty minutes of your afternoon. Rage bait turns irritation into engagement, engagement into money, and somehow you are the one who ends up tired.

I have wasted enough of my life arguing with people who had no interest in understanding me. These days I try to ask myself a much more useful question: does this deserve my energy?

Sometimes the answer is yes. Some things are worth defending, discussing, learning about or changing. Other times, I would rather spend that same energy making something, helping someone, playing a game, baking, writing, drawing, taking photographs, wandering through a thrift store, reading in a library, or working on one of the approximately seventeen projects currently occupying my brain.

That idea sits underneath a lot of what I make. Our attention, time and energy are finite resources, and there will never be a shortage of people, platforms and obligations willing to spend them for us. I am interested in becoming more deliberate about where mine goes and reminding other people that they are allowed to do the same.

Between Battles

Between Battles is where I write.

The blog grew out of the overlap between gaming, disability, self-care, creativity, mindset, personal development, attention and energy. Sometimes I write directly about chronic illness. Sometimes I start with a game mechanic and end up somewhere completely different. Sometimes I am thinking about burnout, boundaries, recovery, learning to start smaller, or what happens when your capacity changes faster than your expectations do.

The name comes from the parts of games that rarely get celebrated as much as the fights themselves. Between battles, you repair your gear, change your build, recover your resources, figure out what went wrong and decide whether you are ready to go again.

Real life has a lot of those spaces too. I think they matter.

Emberosis

Emberosis is the larger creative home I am building around all of this.

It is my creator hub, shop, projects, writing, support pages and whatever else eventually escapes my brain and becomes real. I make and design things for gamers, spoonies and people whose lives do not always cooperate with productivity culture. Some things are practical, some are decorative, some are ridiculous, and ideally a few manage to be all three.

The name is tied to another idea I keep coming back to: a fire does not need to be roaring to still be alive.

Before modern ignition made fire easy to restart, people banked their fires overnight. They lowered the flame and protected the embers so enough heat survived until morning. The fire looked quieter, but it had not disappeared.

People can be like that too. Sometimes your life gets smaller. Sometimes your capacity drops. Sometimes you are rebuilding. Sometimes keeping one ember alive is the work.

That does not mean you are gone.

What I’m building now

My life does not fit neatly into one job title anymore, and I am becoming increasingly okay with that.

I create gaming content, write, teach, design, work on digital projects, build things for my shop, experiment with new ideas and stream when my health and internet cooperate. Some projects may eventually become substantial businesses or long-term bodies of work. Others may stay experiments.

I am trying to get better at letting good ideas exist without immediately demanding that every one of them become a full company.

My gaming interests lean heavily toward RPGs, Soulsbornes, Soulslikes, ARPGs, MMOs, dark fantasy, gothic worlds and vampires, but I wander outside that lane whenever something catches my attention. I also care about wellness, longevity, accessibility, creativity, books, learning, self-care and how people build meaningful lives under imperfect conditions.

The common thread is not really one genre or subject. It is curiosity, adaptation, and figuring out how to keep building a life you actually want to participate in.

If you want to support what I’m building

The easiest way to support me is simply to stick around.

Follow me. Read something. Watch a video. Join a stream. Share something that helped you, taught you something or made you laugh.

If you want to support more directly, you can shop Emberosis, join the membership, use Ko-fi, check out my wishlists or help fund one of the projects I am working toward. If you are a game developer, publisher, brand or creator looking for someone to work with, I am also open to game keys, sponsored content, affiliate campaigns, creator partnerships and other opportunities that genuinely fit my interests and audience.

I am trying to build something sustainable out of a life that stopped fitting the original plan. Every person who reads, follows, shares, buys something, sends a game, hires me or simply keeps showing up makes that a little more possible.

A note about health and medical information

I am not a doctor, therapist, dietitian, psychologist or other licensed medical or mental-health professional. Nothing I write on Between Battles, Emberosis or my social platforms should be treated as medical, psychological, nutritional or other professional advice.

When I talk about chronic illness, disability, symptoms, treatments, self-care or health-related topics, I am sharing my own experience, personal perspective, and sometimes general information from publicly available sources. My experiences may be very different from yours, and something that helped me may be inappropriate or unsafe for someone else.

My writing is meant for reflection, conversation and education, not diagnosis or treatment. It is not a substitute for care from a qualified professional who understands your individual circumstances. If something I write gives you an idea you want to act on medically, please bring it to your own healthcare provider or another appropriately licensed professional.

Your body, history and circumstances are your own. Treat them accordingly.

If you made it all the way down here, welcome. There is probably a vampire somewhere nearby, and I am probably working on something I have not told anyone about yet.

🦇