What It Actually Feels Like To Be Helped In Crisis

Trystan's illustration for the first episode of The Last Threshold

When my partner (Lou) and I were evicted from our Montréal rental home in December 2025, we thought we were going to be out on the streets. While each fighting life-threatening infections. We didn’t know how we were going to survive.

After a two-year battle to get necessary repairs to the rental for defects causing toxic mold, the local housing tribunal allowed our absentee landlord to evict us instead, without ever hearing our case. This was also a battle against language exclusion, discrimination and non-functioning infrastructure— and it cost us both our health and our livelihoods as remote workers.
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After this harrowing two years, fighting not only that landlord but moving immigration goalposts and dental malpractice, the creative work I’ve built a life around became impossible. The nexus of the mold issue was in the basement, which had been my studio office. (We chose the house entirely because of that space, by the way.) If that didn’t keep me from working, the severe infection from defective dental work spreading to my face certainly did.

I couldn’t make videos about crafts without a workspace, or characters and stories while fighting facial infections, so with no other option, Lou and I began to record what we were going through. We pivoted, hoping to at least raise awareness around the unnecessary hardships imposed on us.

That may sound like its own saga, (and you can certainly watch the ongoing docu-series that chronicles it below: The Last Threshold) but it’s actually where our story begins.

This year marks a decade of my journey as an online creator.
​ Ten years of crafting, roleplaying, and creating fictional worlds with a growing online community of fellow whimsy-minded people. Besides some of the best friends anyone could have, this life has given me the gift of a modest-but-steadfast following, with whom I share a lot of good will. I’ve always felt that I’ve been extremely lucky in the people who choose to follow my work. They (you?) are thoughtful, spiritually generous, incredibly passionate and creative, hilarious and inventive.

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I am spending this ten-year anniversary in a state Lou and I call “Fancy Homeless,” moving from Airbnb to Airbnb, as we do everything in our power to afford a safe, secure home to work and plan our future from.

It is not an easy task when you must pay for short-stay housing, malpractice and immigration lawyers, and uninsured medical bills, while legally barred from working for Canadian clients during prolonged immigration delays.

​What we didn’t count on was being able to share that immense burden with the people we’ve touched through our art. People who believe us when we say we need this help. Who believe that we can build something bigger than ourselves- and pay that community spirit forward in the future.

I’ve learned that mutual aid activates a lot of things in people. Including fear, comparison, or anxiety about getting close to people in crisis- almost as if the crisis were contagious. Money is an especially loaded topic, quickly evoking worries about extraction, obligation, boundaries and manipulation. Even the most generous, grounded people can feel flooded and unsettled in these conversations. And I understand why.

But for us, and people like us, financial aid is solidarity. As people who want everyone to have access to basic necessities, we understand that money is simultaneously arbitrary, able to vanish or appear for no good reason, while being one of the single largest determining factors in a person’s quality of life. Everyone needs it, but whether it is simple or soul-crushing to obtain seems completely up to chance. A matter of when, and where, and to whom you were born.

We understand, as queer, disabled immigrants, that it’s an important form of allyship, as we have drastically fewer fallbacks and financial lifelines than other people. Fewer housing options, limited job opportunities, no parents we can stay with, no healthcare to rely on, no church (or local) community, and no opportunity to form contacts in the business world we can leverage. (Yet.)

As artists, we understand that in reality we do not create our "best art" when we are starving- we just starve. And everything we could have influenced, fostered, and grown in the future starves with us.

And so, we understand collective aid as collective belief. It’s a group of people saying not that we simply deserve money, but that we deserve to live.

Not only us, but our work. Our vision for what our future could be. And we understand what giving money means between people who rarely have much of it.

In a time when there are so many reasons to give up hope, I wanted to share what it feels like to be believed in by some people who have restored mine.

The very week we were evicted, Smash Or Cast, a group who livestreams performed tabletop roleplaying games, ran a charity event for us. They raised hundreds of dollars during a desperate time when being able to rent a storage unit is the only reason Lou and I didn’t lose everything we own. We were able to keep our most precious belongings because of them and the donors who supported us.

Before that, a supporter named Harly watched our docu-series and donated $3,000.00 to our GoFundMe at once. Because of Harly, we were able to pay for major medical and legal breakthroughs that will have a huge positive impact on our future. (Without giving too much away, that $3,000.00 could become tens of thousands.) I am still floored by this person and their generosity.

Edi was one of the first people to donate to our GoFundMe, and has donated repeatedly since it was launched. She showed us and everybody who came after that this cause was worth other people’s time and care.

Rosei Quartz, a professional SFX makeup artist and streamer, created a social media campaign on our behalf to encourage resource sharing and donations. She told me, very graciously, that my work helped inspire her to get her SFX makeup degree. That connection with her widened my perspective on the unseen effect of creating in community- even a remote, online community. She showed us, inadvertently, the concrete possibility of a local community in the future, and we'll be honored if she is one of our first local creative collaborators once we're legally allowed to work with Canadians. 

​Most recently (as of this writing) Nox Leigh, a fellow artist and streamer, ran a charity stream during which they and their viewers raised over $1300 CAD so that we could book our next temporary housing stay. Because of them, we have somewhere to go in two weeks when our current stay is up. (A few days ago, we didn’t.) This stream ran for around 10 hours, and represents an amount of care and trust in us that almost breaks my heart. (The theme was also incredibly cute and funny.)

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Nox Leigh's pizza-party themed twitch stream showing Nox in a red chef hat and black curly mustache.

Then there are people like Hog and Dice, F1restart3rr, Quinton Cornell, Kaza Marie, The Rose Cleric (Amihan), and JasperZephyr who offer their time, artistic skill, and energy in sharing resources. Or simply being true friends who can look a crisis in the eye and see the human being at the heart of it. And everyone who has helped our story gain traction on social media.

To say that this is humbling isn’t quite right- though that is one piece of the feeling. Being given this aid is being given life, and a responsibility. It’s hyper-accountability, even moreso because our communities are marginalized ones. It is a relief, but one that makes you sharper. It makes you work harder. It makes you feel like you cannot waste a single day of the life that someone helped you keep. It’s both pressure and freedom. And it’s vulnerable to publish the most materially difficult chapter of your life with all its (literally) gory details. To air your dreams, ask for help, and hope that others will act.

But when they do, when the helpers and the allies show up, it feels like a return to something fundamental about humanity; the way human beings are supposed to interact with each other. You feel something bigger and more powerful than the money hoarded away by billionaires. You feel that this is why we, we artists and progressives and bleeding hearts, will outlast whatever tries to bury us.

And it’s a glimpse into a life where your dreams are achievable, if we can only wedge that door open a little more, and a little more, and a little more. Because when someone helps you survive, they aren’t just feeding you in the present. Everything you might influence, foster, and grow in the future is fed with you.

A concept illustration of the Storybook Inn.

Lou and I made long-term plans, years ago, to one day host a community creative space. A cross between a local venue for themed events, an arts center, and a creative co-op. We call the prototype ‘The Storybook Inn.’ Though it’s had many iterations before that, and will likely have many after, one feature we will include in every form is the names of the people who helped it grow. Supporters choose “founders runes” that we will sculpt, burn, carve and craft into the physical space, like a giant spell that spans the whole property- wherever it is. That’s how deeply engrained we want this idea to be in our future.

We hope to heal some of this pain we’ve experienced in ourselves and in our communities. Our future is still miles up in the air, but we know that our dream is achievable, and it is achievable together. These have been some of the people, along with every single donor, supporter and follower, who made me believe that.

I may never be able to thank you enough, but I will spend my life trying to find out.

-Trystan