Words by: Shaura Naeem
Art by:  Angela Jessica

The first time I held a Dungeon Master’s (DM) hand-painted miniature, my fingers trembled, and not because he’d just told me it was worth more than my weekly grocery budget, but because it struck me how carefully he’d crafted this tiny warrior. 

My father builds things too, though his creations are less fantastical: towers of packing crates in a warehouse in Malaysia, stacks of invoices for car rentals, shipping manifests, or a new lease agreement for someone moving into a rental property in the Maldives. Every single creation is a building block of income stacked on top of the loans he took out to send me to Melbourne.

I press record and the DM describes how his purple-haired tiefling warlock got him through his darkest moments. There’s the clatter of dice and neon lights humming in this hole-in-the-wall restaurant out in Footscray. The place smells like beer, battered fries and a healthy dose of imagination. My discounted rate laptop, from a supplier my dad previously worked with, sits propped up next to me, filled with all the questions I have yet to ask. 

Across the ocean, I’m sure my mom is up to her elbows in garlic, tuna and ginger, working on prepping for the day’s orders. With each dish helping pay my fees and life here. 

Like clockwork, a WhatsApp notification flashes on my screen, it’s another forwarded job posting from my mother. This time, it’s for a marketing position at a Maldivian resort. 

“Good salary,” she writes. 

And you can live at home. The silent part of that sentence lingers. 

I minimise the chat and go back to shooting a B-roll of the restaurant.

I certainly didn’t expect to find myself later that night, at 2am, tracing Ticketek Marketplace conspiracies through fan forums, fuelled only by my stockpile of dark chocolates and the memory of being scammed out of a concert ticket I’d saved for weeks to afford. Yet there I was. 

Truthfully, I don’t have much in the way of published pieces to show for myself, more so a myriad collection of almosts and not-quites.

When I chose journalism over what is considered the more practical degrees, I saw the calculations flash across my father’s face. This was the reaction I expected from the man who measures success in cubic meters of exported goods and rental car turnovers. His first thought must have been; who the heck needs to study storytelling? Coming from a family of teachers, accountants and business folks, this was clearly something left-field.

I’m still unsure if what I’ve done was the right choice. 

When it’s dark out when all the sounds of the city have died down, I curl up in bed: my face hot, vision blurry and heart racing. My cousin just saved up to buy a car and I’m stuck worrying about whether I can find work when I graduate.

But then I think about moments that make the doubts feel minuscule. Like when the DM with those amazing miniatures, thanked me for making his community feel heard and celebrated, even if it was never published and just an assignment for uni. Or when my ticketing industry research connected me with a group of Swifties who used bots to fight scalpers and I saw firsthand just how strong a fandom community could be. It makes it all worthwhile.

The loan documents that sit in a folder on my laptop next to Pitch Ideas are still unpaid. My mother continues to send job postings for marketing positions, while also sending me photos of her latest catering spreads. “Good salary,” she notes consistently. But she’s started adding, “Unless you find something better in Melbourne.” It’s not much, but it’s progress.

And when my father video calls from between shipping containers, he doesn’t ask about my job prospects – just if Australians would be interested in Maldivian short eats if he were to export some, or if I could use my journalistic skills to help write an Instagram post for his business. 

“Maybe you could write it,” he suggests casually as if we hadn’t spent two years arguing about the practicality of journalism degrees.

And yeah, maybe I could.