A Real Story

I downloaded Kippo mostly out of spite, honestly, after a regular dating app match asked me to ‘explain what an MMO even is’ three messages in. My bio just said ‘WHM main, will heal your damage but not your ego,’ and Dorian’s opening line was ‘I’m a tank, I can take it.’ We didn’t even do the normal small talk — we spent the first two nights on a voice call theorycrafting gear sets for a raid tier that had come out that week, and I remember thinking, this man knows what a Bis list is, I might actually marry him.

Our first date wasn’t dinner, it was a duty finder run that went spectacularly wrong. He pulled too much trash on purpose, I want to say to impress me, and we wiped twice in front of three strangers before I healed us through it out of pure stubbornness. Afterward he Venmo-requested me exactly one cent labeled ‘for carrying you’ and I knew right then I was in trouble. We met in person three weeks later at a con neither of us had planned to go to together, and he brought me a keychain of my character’s weapon that he’d 3D printed himself, which is either the most romantic or most unhinged gesture I’ve ever received, still not sure which.

We’re engaged now, and yes, he still mains tank and I still main healer, and yes, we still argue about optimal rotations more than we argue about anything real. What actually surprised me wasn’t finding someone who liked the same game — it’s that liking the same game meant we already knew how to be patient with each other during something stressful, which turned out to matter a lot more than I expected once real life got hard too.