Our love story began in the theater department at NMSU. William was tall and reserved, Claire was a nerd with a love of Shakespeare. We did a few shows together before becoming close friends, bonding over the fact that we both went to acting school because of the Lord of the Rings special features. Eventually, William was no longer dating his high school girlfriend, and then Claire was no longer dating her high school boyfriend. We got together six hours later and have been inseperable since.

We've had a lot of great memories in our nearly thirteen years together, but some highlights for us include studying abroad in London in 2013, producing Hamlet in 2014 and Royals (William's original play) in 2016, adopting our cat Yara, getting married at our college theater in 2017, discovering our favorite bar Bait Shop in 2022, producing Claire's solo show about Polish folklore in 2023, geting drunk at an Irish wedding, attending Comic Con, and publishing William's fantasy book this year!

With the $20,000- we'd put some of that money towards marketing William's book that's coming out this year, and use the rest to fund our passion projects- we're working on a big cosplay project for Emerald City Comic Con in 2026 based on Warhammer characters and have been thrifting/engineering a lot of the builds but the extra funds would help us and our friends be able to make the costumes of our dreams! We'd also buy our elderly cat some churu tube treats- they're her favorite.