#<- placeholder title idk what else to call it

[velichorus-k]

Ik someone probably already did this because that one tBoB page seems so obvious but-- AU where Fiddleford meets Bill in the 80s(???) instead of Ford :)

Here's the general idea, though it needs workshopping:

Fidds is stumped in his development of 'personal computers' and Bill tries to give tech a shot; Fiddleford doesn't like demons. Obviously. But Bill gets on his side by showing him the wonders of tech in the future-- and the horrors, too. He taps into Fiddleford's paranoia, saying that the knowledge that his technology would grant the world should only be available to the few people who know how to use it. Cue Fiddleford's cult, the 'Society of the Eye', which sells these trashy Bill computers worldwide through its members and monitors the users through their screens, wiping their memories when they've seen too much. People can only be protected and held accountable when they are seen and controlled!

This is giving Bill some good windows into this dimension, but isn't exactly bringing him closer to a portal. When Fiddleford mentions his old genius pal Stanford Pines, Bill suggests he go recruit him; it's not long before Fiddleford finds him in Gravity Falls. They get started on the portal with Fiddleford as the lead of the project, who keeps Ford 'safe' and away from the supernatural dangers of town, all while keeping his real intentions a secret; summoning Bill into their realm so that the Society can have complete, bubble-wrapped control over the world. Fiddleford only snaps out of it when he realizes Bill intends to bring world-ending chaos.

[fluffypotatey]

ooo for the wip thing: the witch & the knight~

thank you bestie!!! i am always down to gush about this wip <3

so did do a brief (liar) explanation about the wip in this post. it's a long list of short (another lie) descriptions of what my 10 wips are. this wip was listed #4

anyway, about this wip:

[edit: just gonna put my thoughts under the cut to not take up any space]

to summarize, the wip is an alternate medieval fantasy in France (because there's a lot of sources and research i can pull from medieval France also, their outfits and art were cool as shit). i'm planning on this to be a series just because the actual plot takes over the span of 10 years (bc war is long and i have relationships to build and break in that span of time).

in the story, we follow 4 characters who each represent a main theme that will be very prevalent in the wip (though there are many other themes that they'll be sharing as well). we have Tiffany (full name is Theophania), a witch from a small village who owns an apothecary shop and specializes in potions and defensive spells. Adina, Tiffany's little sister, who's also a witch who also specializes in potions but is more into magic associated with plant manipulation. then you have Sir Nathaniel (can go by Nathan or Nate) who is a knight with angelic patronage and has the "most sanctimonious stick up his ass" (Tiffany's words) when we first meet him, but is a cinnamon roll. and finallly, we have Xion, a Grim Reaper and is the leader of the of heroes' side of the war. despite being a physical embodiment of Death and it being their personal job to collect souls of the dead, Xion is fond of humanity and would rather humans live a full life for her to collect rather than have it be taken on such short notice.

ok, so bare with me, i know i have the wip listed as a "historical fantasy" but there will be a lot of creative liberties taken in this story (ya know, being that this is a fantasy first and history tour 2nd). it's historical mostly for worldbuilding purposes, which is why this wip is super research heavy T^T (the things i do for what i love)

however! i'm also using this wip for a project in one of my classes, so i now have this easy excuse to use for myself in order conduct research and flesh out this story more.

tbh a huge inspiration for this wip was when i was taking a european history class and we got into talking about high medieval France and i was just pulled in. also, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and all the books i read on her were a huge inspiration into crafting this world. tbh, i came up with this idea while researching for another mini-self project for international women's day in 2021 bc insta was being finicky and was blocking my post celebrating march 8th (i got very pissed that day lol). anyway, i as reading about badass medieval queens and then my brain went "i wish there was more medieval fantasies about badass women" so there.

another thing, here's a little snippet of the wip and what i've written so far (it's not a lot really lol, just a couple scenes in total):

She explored the empty chapel some more and found nothing to satisfy any of her questions. Not even the choir loft above held anything of importance. The chapel was a bust it seems. Figures. What a curious human. Tiffany tensed and looked around her, finding no one. She peered over the edge of the loft’s balcony and found the bottom empty like before.  Don’t be wary, dear human. Tiffany grew very wary.

but, uh, yeah, there you go!

[polutrope]

Just pure headcanons, what do you think happened during Maglor's reign as a king? I don't know if his reign was short or something but I remember it took some time before Fingon was able to save Maedhros and unite the noldor and there was still some division between the host of nolofinweans and feanorians. I wonder if he considered himself a placeholder until Maedhros returned or was he a reluctant king? Did the host respect him as a king, did his own brothers respect him as a king? I am so intrigued because, aside from Maedhros, I think Maglor deserved some shoutout lmao (No, this isn't a maglor-obsession-spree that I have been on, nu uh). Also, I feel like he would have some cordial relationship with Fingolfin, they could bond as the second sons having to take leadership because the eldest died/was abducted idk.

Oh no, starlitelwing. I hope you know the Pandora's Box you've just opened. King Maglor is one of my all-time favourite things to think about.

First of all: there's actually no canonical information on Maglor's position after the capture of Maedhros (in fact, we don't even know what Maedhros' title/position was after Feanor's death; all we know is that Feanor "claimed now the kingship of all the Noldor" in Tirion. Contested leadership is SO GOOD isn't it? anyway...).

The published Silmarillion glosses right over the question of who's in charge during the time between Feanor's death and Fingolfin's official assumption of the Kingship of the Noldor (which, if you ask me, Fingolfin effectively had been King since the time of Feanor's exile, and he was in any case Regent at the time of Finwe's death... he said he'd follow Feanor but the people following him were calling him Finwe Nolofinwe soooo... aiee, I digress again). The book gallops at such a breakneck speed that you don't really notice the gap in leadership. Or, I didn't.

But then you look at the Grey Annals (where Tolkien Gateway gets most of its First Age dates) and you see that there are 2-3 Tree Years and 5 Sun Years between Maedhros' capture and his rescue. Now, however you imagine time works in Tree Years when there are no Trees, that's still a long time. Maedhros was gone at a minimum 6-7 years, more likely closer to the equivalent of 30 "regular" years. (That's way longer, by the way, than the time between Feanor's death and Maedhros' capture, which was like, a day to a month, at most. Maedhros, if he even was King, was King for way less time than whoever followed him. And he sucked at the job, btw. But I digress. Again.)

So someone had to be in charge for those 6 to 30 years, but whomst? That the leadership would pass after Feanor's death to the eldest son is logical, and that it would then pass to the next eldest is also logical. I see no reason to refute that, but note: it would not be uncanonical to have someone other than Maedhros or Maglor in charge at this time. You can make King Celegorm a thing and still be canon-compliant!

This passage in the published Silm is basically the extent of the activities of the sons of Feanor during Maedhros' absence:

Then the brothers of Maedhros drew back, and fortified a great camp in Hithlum; but Morgoth held Maedhros as hostage, and sent word that he would not release him unless the Noldor would forsake their war, returning into the West, or else departing far from Beleriand into the South of the world. But the sons of Feanor knew that Morgoth would betray them, and would not release Maedhros, whatsoever they might do; and they were constrained also by their oath, and might not for any cause forsake the war against their Enemy.

The sense here is that all six sons acted as a unit. But in the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion, the text on which this passage is drawn:

Morgoth held [Maedhros] as hostage and sent word to Maglor that he would only release his brother if …

To Maglor! Excellent evidence that Tolkien was also making the logical conclusion that Maglor, the eldest, was in charge. (My best theory for why Christopher Tolkien took that out is Too Many Names, but it's an odd decision.)

All that was to say: We don't know, canonically, that Maglor was in charge at Mithrim. But it makes a lot of sense, and it's my headcanon that he was.

Now. More interesting headcanons.

I don't think Maglor was called King until it was politically necessary.

I see him as someone who is comfortable in command (one meaning of Cano is "commander", after all) but who likes to command collaboratively. Double-edged sword: he values the input of others (admirable quality) and he does not like being fully responsible for the outcomes of a decision (less admirable).

Unlike much fanon I've come across, I don't think Maglor was a particularly reluctant or incompetent leader or that he hated it. He was miserable, yes, because his father just died and his brother was just captured, and he wasn't thrilled to become a leader on top of that, but he keeps it together.

So how do I imagine it all went down?

The problem with Maglor being in command is that his "collaborative" style of leadership is not appropriate for a time of crisis or for his family. While the Silm often talks about "the sons of a Feanor" as a unit, I do not think they were of the same mind on everything. At all. They need a firm hand, and Maglor does not have that.

But who does have a firm hand? Who would be a more martial ruler, someone who could get people in order during a crisis? Celegorm. And he knows it.

So why did the Feanorians "get nothing done" during those 6-30 years (sidenote: I don't actually think they got nothing done, but it does seem they didn't get anything BIG done)? Well, for one, they were fighting amongst themselves.

Maglor could not get his brothers to agree on anything, and yet he did not know any other way of commanding, and over time he becomes more and more miserable as a leader.

Celegorm, meanwhile, is chomping at the bit to "relieve him" of the burden.

Around them, everyone else is picking sides.

Curufin is an interesting case. I headcanon he actually was fully behind Maglor at the beginning, because he respects the orderliness of succession. But as Maglor proves himself unsuitable for the role, he aligns with Celegorm.

Outside the family, I headcanon that the Mithrim Elves were actually quite taken with Maglor, the poet-king. Their alliance hinges on him. But the Noldor, especially the army, would rather follow Celegorm.

As everyone knows, a rival for leadership with the army's support is Bad News. And yet Maglor manages to hold on. He should definitely get credit for that.

But why hold on? If he is hating this ruler job, why not just let Celegorm have it? Couple reasons:

It's Celegorm. He may be able to perform well, but Maglor knows he's the most like Feanor in temperament and, well, Feanor's kingship didn't end well.

If Maglor gives up that crown, he will have admitted to himself that Maedhros is not coming back. This is the same reason he doesn't give it over to Fingolfin when Uncle Nolvo shows up. He is hanging onto that thing for dear life because, to him, it belongs to Maedhros and only Maedhros. He is the crown's custodian, never its rightful owner (this bleeds into my headcanon that Maglor does not "in his heart" agree with Maedhros' decision to cede the kingship — he'll never be as vocal about it as the others, though).

Now we come to another piece. What did Maglor call himself? Like I said up top, I don't think he initially called himself King. He was "head of his House", or maybe, "Lord of Hithlum," or maybe King Regent, but never King. If one of the Mithrim got mixed up and called him that, he would always correct them.

That changes when Fingolfin shows up. Now there's another claimant to the title of King. Possibly a more legitimate one than even Maedhros (as Maedhros later says himself).

By that time, Maglor has been keeping that crown out of Celegorm's hands for years; he is not giving it up now. And Fingolfin is less likely to challenge his leadership if he offers no room for ambiguity. If he dons the mantle of kingship and pretends Maedhros is dead.

So that is what he does... Does Fingolfin accept it? Well: "Then there was peril of strife between the hosts."

For three years, on opposite sides of the Lake, they're at an impasse. Fingon doesn't go looking for Maedhros because he thinks Maedhros is dead (and other reasons: the mission is insane and desperate not the least, and contrary to popular opinion Fingon is not a rash idiot).

How does Fingon eventually learn the truth? You'll have to wait and read what @melestasflight and I are cooking up for Silm Epistolary Week ;)

ETA: Despite this, I do think you're right that Maglor and Fingolfin could have bonded over their similar experiences! There's the personal and there's the political, and I love the idea of the tension between these straining what could be an emotionally supportive familial friendship between Maglor and Fingolfin.

[golby-moon]

threw a mermaid!cas art piece into the pot that is the @reversefantasyspnbang and like magic a mermaid!cas fic appeared :00

here's the banner I made for this, (yes another) desk with stuff on it. idk why I draw so many desks as banners either. but yeah this one is pirate flavored and has a spyglass and compass on it as well as a phoenix feather and fancy pendant thing that was inspired by the one from Disney's 'Moana' with a spn-themed pentagram thrown on there, though the pendant kinda looks like a Tamagotchi and I can't get that image out of my brain. the fish in the drawer was supposed to be a placeholder for something else in the original sketch but it was silly so it stayed 🎉

the title is on a pirate map that's supposed to tell its own story or whatever. the dashed line explores all around the area with various scribbled-out x's marking various spots as well as a whirlpool type deathtrap around what would be the 'a' in 'dead'. the only un-scribbled 'x' is on a tiny island called Mermaid Rock (the thing around the giant tail-shaped 't' in 'tails'), but since the pirates go out of their way to avoid that area (as seen in the dashed line where they get sucked into the whirlpool instead) due to superstitions about mermaids being bad luck, they don't know whether there's actually anything there or not and therefore can't eliminate it

this was the original art piece I submitted, featuring Dean holding up Cas, who's tangled up in a net. looking at it now I can see that angle of the boat is...weird (especially that ladder staircase thing) but ehh. I spent a ton of time planning Dean's outfit to be a somewhat historically accurate pirate but didn't realize Cas would be covering the neat jacket and sword holster thing I gave him and everything uh

the goal with this was to have Dean not the pirate captain for once in a pirate Dean/mermaid Cas fic (which I like reading but doubt I can write, hence why I dumped it on somebody else via reverse bang I mean what). I wanted Cas to look like he came from deep within the ocean, so his eyes are slitted to take in more light (think of cats) and his skin is more of a grey to better blend in. ofc Cas can't resist checking out the human world and ended up getting caught in a net but luckily Dean was there to pull him out...only to get in trouble for it. this was the original art idea and I really like the way the author adapted it and made Dean more of a reluctant pirate and Cas even more in love with 'humanity'

I do not like drawing bunk beds. or furniture. but it at least looks like a bed so that's okay. but yeah Dean's singing to Cas here and is kinda embarrassed about it, hence why he's looking away, but Cas can't actually tell what he's saying either way so Dean's just being Paranoid. the marks on Cas are scars from the net, a reference to what actually happens to irl sea creatures who get tangled in nets, if they live at all. those lines are supposed to be ribs to indicate that Cas is pretty thin due to a lack of food (probably due to humans overfishing) but they kinda look like he had top surgery. which...ignore that that's unintentional or I would've made them that same pinkish color as his other scars. also ignore the nipple freckle I had to include it okay

water is really weird sorry it looks so weird. but here's Dean and Cas preparing for some boat kisses because they're Them. I really like how the boat and especially the words on the boat (Riverside Blue, a reference to Led Zeppelin's 'Traveling Riverside Blues,' one of Dean's favorite songs added as per the author's suggestion) came out. the boat was supposed to be blue with the characteristic white underside all boats seem to have but then it was just...too blue and what goes better with blue than green 🤡

there was an idea thing going around where the crew on the pirate ship weren't allowed to wear colors, hence why both of Dean's outfits in the other two pics are so drab (the dull backgrounds don't help). so in this final piece where they're off the ship, I wanted to make it as colorful as possible with that orange sky and brightly colored boat and then Dean's colorful outfit with his shirt being somewhere between blue and green. yay contrast

man I didn't mean to ramble so much sorry about that. just put a lot of thought into these even though it might not look like it

the fic this is made for is called "Dead men tell no tails" by @quicksilver-castiel for the spn reverse fantasy bang

(02/17/24)

[brain-empty]

does anybody else have placeholder fanfic titles. like. i just kinda write anr then see what title fits yknow? until then its probably called smth like uh. idk actually just. 💥

[mrfutureboy]

(bttf wip anon) what about talking about the ones with titles? Cute redhead, I waited up all night, jukebox heroes, and who is the man I see?

hi anon welcome back! i want to of course give the disclaimer that these are wips, so any snippets i share are very unlikely to be perfectly worked out haha. but thank you so much for the interest! ^_^

cute redhead:

yeahhh, so this one is definitely one of the crackiest of all the wips on my list. and it's a bttf: the game fic! basically, it's the part in the first episode (iirc) where doc's in jail and gives marty the idea to recruit doc's younger self to help him...except marty meets young emmett and is infatuated bc goddammit marty's got a weakness for red heads. honestly, i cant remember if that idea is based off something said in the games or if i read it in a fic and then was like "yep that tracks" lmfaoo.

anyway. it's so stupid but it's funny to me cuz marty says what he says and then doc goes into panic mode like "marty! you can't fuck my past self!" and starts going on and on about the ramifications to the spacetime continuum and marty's like "welp i dont really have much of a choice here do i". i haven't solidified how i want doc's rant to go so right now i have 2 versions of it. this is only like a 300 word fic (or at least it will be if i finish it)

here's a peek at the beginning, before doc has his rant i havent fully committed to yet:

“Psst, Doc!”

Doc popped up behind the bars of his jail cell. “Marty! Have you found my younger self yet?”

“Yeah, Doc, but ah, jeez,” Marty trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck. “You never told me you were a cute redhead.”

“If I had known I was one, I surely would’ve told you,” Doc assured him with a slight upturn of his lips.

Marty chuckled nervously. “I wish you had, because this poses a, uh, unforeseen problem.”

“I’m sure whatever it is, we can figure out how to bypass it!” Doc waved his hand around. “What is it, Marty?”

“I have to fuck you, Doc. Younger you, that is.”

i waited up all night but i never saw the light:

the title (bc this is likely to be the actual title: as you could tell from my wip list, i have a lot of placeholders lol) is a lyric from "spiralling" by keane. it's a very marty song imo!

the premise of the fic is that the marty we follow in the movie returns to 1985 an hour or so earlier and heads to his house to sneakily do...something, honestly i dunno yet, and in the process ends up accidentally waking up the version of himself thats asleep in bed. twin pine marty finds out that life is different for lone pine marty and he ends up asking a lot of questions. it's actually told form the perspective of lone pine marty atm but idk i've thought about making it the other way around.

originally, it was going to be a songfic of sorts, with direct quotations from the song. i could potentially still do that but as i worked on it i kinda got away from that. with that original idea, twin pine marty was going to be a bit of an egomaniac when he realized he could bend things to his will via time travel (even tho he totally did it on accident). here's a snippet of that part atm that quotes/slightly paraphrases the song lyrics (the "other Marty" is twin pine marty bc pov):

“I made you. Fashioned you from jewels and stone, as it were. Made you in the image of myself. I gave you…everything you wanted, so you’d never know anything else,” the other Marty [verb], hands reaching out towards Marty’s face. The teen recoiled from the gesture. “Tell me, Marty, did you wanna be a winner? An icon? You wanna be famous? The president? Hell, you wanna start a war? You wanna have a family? Did you wanna be in love?”

“Do I wanna be in love?”

“Did you wanna be in love!”

Also, as noted in the original wip masterlist, this wip has a companion called "i fashioned you from jewels and stone" (which you can see from the snippet above that it's also titled after a lyric from spiralling). At the moment, the only real difference is that it has some dialogue w twin pine marty asking about george and lorraine, while this wip hasn't really gotten past marty getting caught by lone pine marty. and then that bit of dialogue up there, and the very ending, which i will also share here:

“Don’t bother going back to sleep,” Marty chuffed, standing with one leg out of the window. “Doc’s about to call you. He forgot his camera.”

The other Marty blinked in confusion, and before he could say anything, the phone started to ring. Both Marties stared at each other as the one in bed slowly picked up the phone. “H-hello?”

“Marty!” Doc’s voice boomed in the receiver. “You didn’t fall asleep did you?”

“…No, of course not,” he answered, his eyes wide.

The Marty in the window climbed the rest of the way out. He stood and waited for his counterpart to finish up on the phone, then finally said, “I’ll just leave this open for you, then. See you in the future,” he said cheekily, offering a short wave before heading off.

jukebox heroes:

this is just a silly little thing that's not very fleshed out, but the idea is that doc and marty are just chillin at doc's place (post trilogy i guess or maybe post bttf1 but 2&3 didnt happen? post bttf game? doesn't matter; doc's there) and "johnny b. goode" comes on the jukebox and marty's like "oh hey this is the song i played at the enchantment under the sea dance" and doc's like "what u were on stage?" and then marty basically explains what happened bc i imagine doc doesnt actually know the story lol. i will share a little snippet as a treat even tho there's not much to share:

“After they kissed? Marty, you were supposed to get out of there as soon as they kissed and you and your siblings’ fates were sealed!”

“Doc, you gotta understand, they were begging for an encore! I couldn’t just leave em’ hanging!”

Doc shook his head fondly. “No wonder you were late for our rendezvous. You’re just lucky you weren’t too late!”

who is the man i see where i'm supposed to be:

this is that fic i would keep referring to as my "big project" two summers ago but is probably going to end up being fewer words than "deal with god" which i basically wrote the entirety of in one night. and ive been working on THIS fic for HOW long?? yikes

the title is from "crystal ball" by keane bc it is my #1 marty song. there is also a companion thing in my notes app called "FOR CRYSTAL BALL (maybe)" which is basically just some ideas of dialogue for this fic that i havent added in yet. also this fic used to be called crystal ball.

the premise is that it's been about a week since marty returned from 1885 and he's been having constant nightmares. it's another one of those nights, so he goes to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water and take some painkillers, but when he lifts his head, his reflection isn't himself, but stoltz!marty ! whoa! maybe it's just a figment of our poor kid's imagination but the reflection is talking to him about how marty stole his life and blah blah blah. ends with george and lorraine finding marty on the floor in the bathroom (ALIVE DONT WORRY) and marty incessantly apologizing. imma be honest that scene rips my cold little heart right out of my chest lmao i'd love to share it but i will refrain atm. just cuz ideally i want y'all to suffer through the whole of the fic before getting to that punch in the gut :D

the reason this fic has been taking me so long is that i have the WORST time trying to write the dialogue between marty and his reflection! the whole beginning and end are done but the middle, the MEAT, is just never up to my standards when i try to write it.

even tho it's not finished and at this point i'll never fucking finish it to my liking, this fic is my baby. here's marty first meeting the man in the mirror:

He thought to lift his head before he accidentally drowned himself in the sink. He blindly reached for the hand towel to pat his face dry, letting out a heaving sigh into the soft fabric. Much softer than the towels we used to have, he remarked to himself. Jesus Christ, was life really that disappointing before, if the damn towels are an improvement? The towel fell into the sink alongside the pill bottle, and he yelped in surprise when he looked back in the mirror.

The face that stared back at him wasn’t his own. The reflection towered over him, piercing blue eyes boring into Marty’s own. There was no life behind these eyes, and they stared down at him like they could see right through him. A sudden shiver racked him; he could feel the cold gaze piercing his body, turning all of his blood to ice. Its eyebrows suddenly knit together, and it frowned deeply in contempt, eyes flitting about as it took in the sight of Marty. Marty could feel himself trembling under the reflection’s scrutiny.

as much as i kinda want to, i don't just want to post the entire beginning of the fic, so here's some of their first bits of dialogue, cuz i like the thing with the pills:

“How did you…I didn’t say that out loud.”

“You didn’t have to. I’m in your head, Marty. I can hear everything you’re thinking.”

Marty’s hand trembled as he reached for the pill bottle in the sink. His internal monologue was running a mile a minute as he frantically searched for the expiration date. No, you can’t. You can’t hear what I’m thinking because you’re not real. I’m just having a bad reaction to the pills. They have to be expired; they just have to. Where’s the damn expiration date? Good ‘til 1988…What year is it now? No, there has to be a mistake. This isn’t real. You’re not real, you don’t know what I’m thinking, you don’t know my name—Wait. You know my name; how do you know my name?

The reflection cut off Marty’s train of thought. “It’s because I’m you, Marty. The you that doesn’t exist anymore.”

this got long as hell but thank you again SO MUCH, anon, for showing interest in my wips!! let me know if there's any others you'd like to hear about! i didnt want to overwhelm you in the first ask by talking about EVERYTHING lol but i'm very willing to talk about the others as well

[bluesunsdusk]

✏️ Any particular reason for the names you used for your ocs?

✏️ Any particular reason for the names you used for your ocs?

–// I have a lot of ocs, so I will pick some. It’s going to be long either way… ))

Overwatch

Najma (Najma Daher)

When Naj was first made, they had Prima as placeholder name and their kit was based around light, but I struggled to really place them in the universe. They were still based in Oasis, with sumerian aesthetic, and they were an AU for a fandomless oc. I was still trying to pick where the heck they were from. I added Najma as possible name because it means star and is Arabic. As they finally developed to suit the universe more and be an own character, the name stuck, because I like it and they are a warm person and the sun keeps us alive, and Naj was made to help keep someone alive. Dunia, their owner, was named to reflect her meaning in Naj’s life. Dunia was their whole reason for existing, their world, their life. 

Najma coincidentally also works for…other reasons.

Najma’s code name, Nazar, comes from that their abilities are most effective when looking into their lights and optics, which flare up when they use their ult as well. Their optics are also blue.The evil eye, which causes harm upon those who have been struck by it.

I think Daher meant clear. Najma does’t actually have a surname, as they are not a member of the family rather than just property of said family. However, I still wanted the surname to be something with a tiny bit of a fitting meaning. Rather than doing it by naming conventions used with Mamun, I went with them just having just a family name, much in Europe and the US. I also kept it to just two names this time.

Mamun Wasif Said

Mamun had a long list of names on his hero sheet. See, the given name is an aspiratory trait, the second the father’s name, and the third the grandfather’s name or family name. In Mamun’s case, Said is his grandfather’s name. So, that means Mamun’s dad is called Wasif. Gien names he could have been Majdi (commendable, praiseworthy), Marwan, Naseer, etc. His surname could have been Assaf, Kassar, Al-Mansur (the victorious), or Nasrallah (god’s victory). Now, I am not at all close to being an expert on arabic naming conventions, so I was like let’s keep it simple. 

Now, Mamun is supposed to be a tank hero and his character design was made to emphasise that he is a soft and huggable man who deserves the whole world. He needed to look sweet,warm, trustworthy, and dependable. Mamun is a name that feels like it has soft edges. It’s gentle. There’s no hard tones in it. Mamun means dependable, which is something he wants to be and his parents would have wanted him to be as well. A good son, brother, and eventually (if he so wished) husband. 

I forgot what Wasif meant… I think I just liked how it sounded with Mamun compared to the other names listed along with it. I matched several names that were listed on his hero sheet behind Mamun and they didn’t sound nearly as good with it as Wasif did. It means ‘one who praises’.

Said was just a good name to follow Mamun Wasif with. It just wraps it up nicely when I wanted three names in there. It means happy. 

Spigel

Spigel’s name is explained in his bio, I think. The name is given because he’s able to copy the appearance of a person and uses this after eliminating them to blend into a faction he’s trying to infiltrate or wipe out. It takes observation of mannerisms, appearance, speech patterns, etc. to do a convincing guise, and once that is done, it will be like looking into a mirror for the target.

He was always called Spigel because that’s Luxembourgish for mirror. Sure, it’s not smart for the assassin to take a nickname from his own personal origin, but…it’s fine if a guy from Luxembourg gave him that nickname rather than him giving himself said nickname.

Roland Marie Schroeder 

Roland is a pretty common name in Luxembourg, and Marie is a common middle name. I liked Roland as a name, because is seems warm and strong, and Roland is a quiet dude at times, but even though he’s pretty small as well, he can take up a lot of social space just by being a little… dramatic. He would have liked the name because it is, as Monty Python would say, woody. At least, I think it was Monty Python, I’m not sure anymore and can’t find it.

Michael Abatangelo 

Michael was the general of the archangels, and putting Michael together with Abatangelo makes it sound close to Michelangelo. Though, the latter was on accident and I was like yep that’s his name now. I went through several names I don’t really remember. Michael was a strong name that also sounded pleasant.

Fable

Aidan Fawkes

Aidan is an Irish name that means fire. I didn’t know quite what to call him. I didn’t want a name that was just big strong man large energy. It needed to sound not too thick, in a way, maybe a little light to suit his personality. He also had a lot of energy growing up and was a sweet guy. 

His father’s name is actually Mac Lochlainn. That’s a reference and not chosen for the meaning because it’s not used on Aidan. Also, it’s just really nice sounding surname. His grandma on his father’s side’s surname was Kelly. A very common surname where they were from. Anyway, Aidan’s dad didn’t want his kids to have the disadvantage of having a foreign surname. The given names, however, weren’t too odd, and both of his parents did want to give him a link with his father’s heritage in their names. Furthermore, he was born with red hair. 

As such, Aidan was given as his name, and he was bestowed with the surname of his mother, Fawkes. I picked Fawkes because 1) It sounds good with Aidan 2) it means falcon, making his name fire falcon 3) Guy Fawkes. 

Duncan Reynold 

I know the hero in Fable 2 is called Sparrow. However, that is a title/nickname, not a legit name. Surely, his parents, whom Sparrow canonically knew, gave him a real name. I wanted him to have a legit name. I wanted him to be of scottish-type origin. Now, Duncan has tanned skin from being out and stuff and dark hair. He’s also a brawny guy. He would have picked himself a pretty awesome name that feels strong, also… it has can in it, because he can do it. I jest. 

Duncan is a mix of two parts. Together, these parts form a name meaning dark-haired warrior or dark warrior. Of course, he doesn’t know that. He just thinks it’s an awesome name. 

Reynold is a carry over from trying to give king Logan a surname. It’s also a mix or two elements, advice and rule. English meaning is wise/powerful ruler (or something like that. It can also be advice from a ruler or king’s advisor, but let’s ignore that). While Duncan was that, Logan eventually proved not be.

Mass Effect

Medesa Adrestis

It’s actually from Medusa, because she’s a bit of a protector who gets spun into a villain because of the methods she uses to protect herself and others, which is often violent and rather fatal, since slave traders deserve no rights. I think there was something else, but I forgot… Oh, right! Her surname, Adrestis. I saved it in my drafts and idk if it’s still there…

I looked it up to jog my mind!

It’s from Adrestia and Adrasteia, and I didn’t want to name her exactly after that despite Asari names looking painfully ancient Greek inspired and very feminine. 

Adrestia is a figure from Greek mythology, she who cannot be escaped, venerated as a goddess of revolt and just retribution. Adrasteia, “inescapable”, was a nymph charged with taking care of a child Zeus. Medesa was charged with taking care of Toreg. 

Vicarius Hzzek and Lictor Kgrln

So, I won’t explain their names, because I assume Kett names are either just ID codes or can’t be easily changed into a more human tongue. I will go for their titles, though I believe I have explained it in a hc post before. Kett ranks seem based on Roman Empire influences, as is a part of their culture in general. They have Cardinals, Archons, Anointed, Ascendants. These seem religious. A Vicarius is a word that means substitute or deputy. It’s the root of the English word “vicar” as well and is used in things like vice-president. Anyway, Hzzek is a secondary to a Cardinal, making her vice-cardinal of an exaltation facility. 

As for Lictor, this comes from another Latin thing. A Lictor is a type of bodyguard to a magistrate. Kgrln is one of Hzzek’s Destined, who is also assigned with escorting and guarding her. He does this together with other Destined who would also be of the Lictor role/title. 

Dragon Age

Kata

Kata used to be an arvaarad and he considered himself the death of many a saarebas. That, and he is an assassin type, like a katari. He brings death to those who try to oppose him with violence, so basically he’s still death, just to other people now that he’s no longer in the qun. It’s sort of a method of intimidation. If a qunari is told they’re about to meet death, they might reconsider their current course. 

Kost

Kost had another name, aban, which probably means sea, when going by “Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun.” Which means “The tide rises, the tide falls, the sea is unchanged.” He chose it, because the sea is unchanging and also clam. He was the same after leaving the qun as he was when he left. 

Eventually, however, he changed his name to Kost, after staying with a group of Tal-Vashoth who helped him become less stuck in his qun ways and more able to see himself as a person. He came to be at peace with himself and took on the task of assisting some other new Tal-Vashoth in the process. As such, he took on the name Kost, “peace”, to reflect this. 

[buoyantsaturn]

3 for I'm in hell and 5 just for your general writing trends (like how much do things change from first draft / planning to real draft?)

3. Which part of [title] was hardest to write?

((uhhhh all of it))

probably the dinner date after they first get together bc 1. idk how to write a date and 2. them actually,, going out just the two of them is,, very unusual for this fic,, so i cut it shorter than i had intended to just bc i didnt really know how to write it

5. Did you make an outline for [title]? Did you stick to it?

i outline just about everything now (i think the only thing i havent outlined in the last like,, year,, was (after all this time) bc it was. 500 words.) and my outline ends up being what i call the “first draft” which means that i basically throw as many words onto the page as possible - who’s there, what’s happening, some placeholder dialogue that i keep half the time - and then rewrite it with like,, proper phrasing and real grammar. i do try to stick to the outline bc if i stray too far then it messes with. everything else, but sometimes i’ll have a part of my outline that’s like “will sleeps on piper’s couch for a few nights before he moves into his new apartment” and then end up writing 3 pages of just. will and piper hanging out even though i didnt plan for it

thanks for asking annabel!

send me a number

[pizsospa]

Schneeplestein ARG

So this blog @schneeplestein made by @crazions​ caught my attention some day and it looked very interesting and I decided to follow it. Since they there have been a bunch of posts in what looks to be like an ego ARG (Alternate Reality Game) which also involves 2 other blogs. (It might not really be that but I will call it that anyway)

I like code solving and I love ARGs so i took the time to read through all of the story and decode what I can to combine it all in one post for anyone interested... Note that this thing has ended

Also note that I’ll only really go about the “hidden” material, not story, and I don’t want to repost any logs so I highly encourage anyone interested to go take a look at the original blog first. Some great work has been put into it and it deserves to be appreciated!

NOTE!! After I finished this post I did find out someone else made something and I don’t want to change anything in what I solved and take credit for stuff I haven’t done so I will just leave BIG LINK to this doc file by @3ksal that contains a lot, some stuff which I would have never been able to do

(Its a bit long so... everything is under read more)

TO SET THINGS DOWN FIRST! I might have been a bit too late to investigate all of this since I started this basically few posts before it offically ended. Some stuff seems to have changed and I have missed it :( So we start off with Henrik’s blog posting a text post containing a nice big link.

This link leads to a Vimeo upload with a placeholder text title, black and white patter and seems to contain morse code and someone speaking, all distorted. (I don’t know if there is anything behind that speech, I’m not good at all with such stuff. I also tried to solve the morse code, really tried, downloaded the video to slow it down but I just really have trouble with making out audio so... sad but I gave up on it) Besides that there is one QR-code displayed 2 times! That code is a Imgur link which will lead to this

A nice edited hospital hallway gif with some text, one of which is a code and the other another Imgur link to that

(thanks for no double coding)So we have a key and a code which I put into AES 128bit decoder (I know the creators seems to like that) and got..

A blog @97-110-116-105 . Now I found this blog way before I saw this so it was kinda useless to solve and the blog already had some posts on it. From what it looks like it belongs to Anti, so I’ll just call it Anti’s blog.

The actual story starts of with Henrik telling us his blog has seem to got all posts deleted and he has memory problems. He finds out he has some logs laying around and starts posting them along with general text posts about his situation and answered asks. After the link the first suspicious post there is this one. Some zalgo and some binary which translates to: 

Someone clearly mocking Schneep On his post “a small update” is also the first time google doc links is added under the word “God”. More links like this are on some other posts later too

Some time later Schneep’s blog posts a second post similar to his very first one, it contains a Vimeo vid uploaded by the same user who uploaded the first one. It’s a glitched out distorted old ad for Camel cigarettes and wouldn’t you know? There is another QR-code in it! This time it links to a private page on Anti’s tumblr.

It shows us a morse code and a hexadecimal one.

First and foremost: I haven’t solved this. The hexadecimal code brings ”aGFwcGllc3RiaXJ0aGRheS5jYXJyZC5jw==“ which def looks like AES again but I can’t make out the key. I’m sure its in the morse code from the post plus from the video description and title but different decoders give me different answers and it just looks like a lot of random letters. Might be an anagram (that contains the word fun) but idk...

Sometime later regarding the story you might have noticed a 3rd blog from Chase that is also part of the story. It doesn’t have any hidden codes on it like the others. He interacts with some of Henrik’s posts and later even posts a convo between them!

But after some time we get a post of him on the floor along with a google doc that sounds like someone had shot him.

(Small post to note with a google doc link, I just like the writing)

Sort of hidden in some text posts throughout is a whole seperate website! (it is linked on 2 different posts) 

NOTE that there was a countdown! 

Taking a look at the header you can clearly tell it was counting down to Henrik’s birthday. I only found this on said date so i didn’t get to see this live, only when you click on the link it appears for half a second. And of corse... more aes code...

A sweet little message! Doesn’t mean much so back onto what the website showed after the countdown:

A german “welcome” greets us and you can have a dialogue with someone (sounds like Anti imo). 

You will reach an end and depending on if the one you’re talking to liked your answers or not you will be guided to a blank page or to a site on Schneep’s blog.

Sneaky little creator has changed the picture on this page and I wouldn’t doubt it didn’t change before I saw it too, I only got to see 2 images though. First time visting I got this

Probably a picture of infusion bags hanging? highly saturated with filters on top. Changing levels of the picture in the right top corner you can see some binary but...

The picture is small... and it was way too hard to read no matter how I changed filters so what/if that means anything is still out there and hopefully not too important.

The changed picture is this now:

This is all that was to the extra site if the picture doesn’t change again. (I checked the source code too but since it seems to be made with the help of a website tool i doubt you can even hide anything in there)

Anti’s blog starts off with this

I fairly simply Cipher that really doesn’t mean anything(or does it?). It translates to: I REMEMBER IT LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY

In general he laughs around at the other’s misery and mocks them.Here he links to some imgur post 

(”DO YOU WANT HIM TO DIE?”) Doesn’t look like there is something hidden in it, but I have to appreciate the work, it looks really cool imo

In another post he tags it something weird looking but the “?=“ definitely told me it should be a youtube video link. I have tried to solve this and the “https://youtube.com/watch?=v” is sure but the rest of the link is hard to do. I have put it through Caesar Cipher decoder and decoded it by hand a few times, but the link doesn’t seem to work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i73ddxye4c I don’t know if it’s on my part and I actually did do something wrong, the video was deleted or lil Anti just played a trick all along. 

Second post that links to another imgur site:

Looks like Henrik’s workplace with all these logs, a phone with broken screen, sticky notes and empty coffee cup and yet again!

Another code...There is one across all and then even damn morse code on the red one, really doesn’t make it easier to read with the 3d effect on top. I like to think I typed it off right and that “XILDM” was the key but it didn’t work. Plus the morse code is hard to read and I’m not sure in which order it should be so.... this is still open to be solved.

The last suspicious thing he posts is an audio post that sounds like an old clock ticking (?) getting louder. The name of it is yet another code and the picture a QR-code! The QR-code just leads to this, a google search for “does space have a sound” I thought for sure that would be the key to the code to solve it but no. I even thought ‘Maybe the key is the answer’ or the zalgo tag but no, don’t know what this one means.

All in all... I really enjoyed this!! I’m really sad to leave a bunch of things unsolved but I am not the brightest person for this. I haven’t seen anything like this in the community and outside it only a few that aren’t that interesting. While many will do a lot of code solving like this one, this also had more story and so much extra work put into it. Seriously, Google docs, the logs that were actual scanned papers, photographs, polaroids, The videos, A whole other website, The amazingly edited gifs and 3 whole blogs. A lot was put into this and I really like it, kudos to the creator, it was a really neat project! :)

[whileyoureinschoolidothisallday]

idk ANY of ur OCs, can I meet them? 1,2,42 (idk any characters in specific to go for, guess it's a tossup? :)

Of course you can!!!!! I have gotten quite a few followers in recent months so it might be time to reblog my masterpost. I’ll do that after and then if you find you have someone else you wanna ask about, feel free! I love talking about them lol

I’m gonna do Kendra, ShadowGrl, Terios, and the main character, Ariana!

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

Kendra Lillian Develia: Kendra’s middle name is just a shortened version of her mother’s name, Lilliana, and her last name is the best my 12-year-old ass could come up with for a relevant, alien sounding name lol. Her first name comes with lore though!!!!

So, back in the day, I had something called a Groovy Girl doll that I absolutely adored, and her name was Kendra. But I hated that name so I called her Destiny instead. Well, when it came to naming Kendra the character, I actually wanted something cooler and villain-sounding because I still didn’t like that name, but it literally would not leave my head--like she refused to be called anything else--so I just named her that as a placeholder until I could think of something better. Obviously that never came, and it turns out that Kendra means “Ultimate Warrior” and that couldn’t have been more accurate if I willfully picked it out lol

Angel “ShadowGrl” Stéphanie Glesile: ShadowGrl hates her name??? She always has preferred to be called by her nickname, so I knew that her real name had to be too pretty for a tomboy or something “uncool” for somebody with dark powers, so Angel was what I came up with. ShadowGrl is spelled weird because I thought that made it look cool, and I became so fond of my 12-year-old naivety that I made that the canon reason (since she herself is 10 and pretentious so it works lol). I always knew that I wanted her to be Latina, and unfortunately Garcia was the only Latin last name I knew of, so when I was older and actually got a clue that Latinx isn’t a catch-all-term for everybody, I had to decide what ethnicity she actually was and decided she was Haitian, so I found a more accurate last name.

Terios Steven Andrews: His last namE IS NOT BASED OFF MY BROTHER I SWEAR TO GOD LOL. I just thought it would sound like a decent white boy last name, and his middle name is just based off his dad. His first name however...

When I was a 12-year-old dweeb, I thought naming my boy characters after other badass boy characters would like establish how cool they were???? And instead of changing it like a sane person I just decided to embrace it and make it A Thing? So it’s a running gag with myself that all the boys in the series are purposefully named after video game/comic book boys.

Terios was the prototype name for Shadow the Hedgehog ^^;

(it’s also the name of a car now and he does like mechanics so if I ever wanted to be less embarrassing I could just say that lol)

Ariana Ilane Salem: Fun fact: Ria was very much a self insert when I first made her so when I converted her into book form I just picked an A name that “felt right”???? Ilane is just based off of her mom, and for once her last name is what comes with lore:

When I was 12, her last name was Serenity because Sailor Moon, and I wanted my COOL, AMAZING self-insert to have some ~~~~mystical, magical~~~ last name. Surprisingly, I didn’t change it until recently, because I really liked the irony of her last name being Serenity when her powers were death and destruction. But eventually my shame of publishing something with that attached to my main character won and I sought out Salem, which not only is relevant to the witchier aspects of the book but also means calm and peace.

2. Do they have any titles? How did they get them?

I think the only person that would have a real title would be Kendra, as she’s Queen of the Shadow Powers in her world. Everyone else is under 18 and would probably only have a title of Public Menace lol

I can’t tell you how she became Queen because spoilers!!!! Sorry!!!

42. What are their goals? What would they sacrifice anything for? What is their secret ambition?

Kendra: Kendra’s main goal, as of now, is to be done with this whole ‘attached to human children’ mess and get her and her clique back home immediately. She is 2000% done with Earth and is very homesick. She would sacrifice anything to make sure that her people--especially those few friends--were safe and thriving. As Queen, she’s actually very self-sacrificing and puts herself through a lot to be a good leader.

ShadowGrl: Most of the kids have the same overall goal that they Would Like to Live Freely lol. But ShadowGrl specifically is very motivated by her need for attention, being 10 and all. She puts a lot of pressure on herself for that sweet, sweet validation. It frustrates her to no end that she is technically the weakest link of the group without powers and her main goal is to prove to the group (and herself) that she belongs and she’s useful for more than just her human talents. Besides her friends, she’d probably sacrifice everything for powers or for All-Knowing Knowledge. Her secret ambition is to grow up and invent something no one can ignore.

Terios: His main goal is to convince Ariana to let him join the team. She refuses to let him help because she doesn’t want him to be dragged into war with her, but he wants nothing more than to fight for her and his friends and help burn Level 17 to the ground. He’d sacrifice absolutely anything for Cloud to the point of being a little worrisome.His secret ambition is to run away with Cloud back to the Chaos Realm, be adopted as a Chaos Power, and never come back to this shithole of a planet.

Ariana: Her main goal is to liberate herself and her friends from Level 17. She wants freedom more than anything. Murdering Eric with her bare hands is a close second goal. She’d sacrifice anything for any of the kids (except probably Sapphire), any of the Chaos Powers, they’re all her family and no one can have them. Her secret ambition is to be able to go back to Norm society when this is over. She still wants art school, she still wants to exist in society, she still wants a normal life after their free. She knows it’s not very likely but she can dream.

WOOOO! That took me so long omg. Thanks for asking and waiting! I’m always open for these asks ^^

[kivablog3]

Spring Repost of “Why I Am Not a Pagan”

March 2017 -- I’m reposting this since the Spring Equinox is coming up, along with the festival of the goddess Eostre, whence derives our word for it: Easter. Along with the eggs, and bunnies too, I think. Fertility, at any rate. In wicca it’s the winter solstice which starts the new year, but for me it was Spring when the light truly came back: Daylight Saving Magic. So I think of it as the start of my own year. Also, I attended an open Dianic Goddess circle for the first time in my life. So I may even have to change the title. Maybe put the predicate in the past tense. Idk, maybe nothing will come of it, but I want to try. Happy Eostre, everyone.

Fall 2016 -- I wrote this for an anthology, about trans wicca and paganism, which was triggered by a conflict between terfy witches who wanted to have a ceremony for “all women” at a large pagan conference on the West Coast, but for “women-born women” only, and everyone else was appalled, not just us, and a conflict resulted over whether this was right or even acceptable behavior anymore. At the time I was convinced this was a hopeless cause, transfolx and Dianic Wicca, and thus wasn’t sure there was any point in arguing about it. That may be changing too, there are a lot of changes I am still unaware of. 

So, I wasn’t even a pagan, and kind of relieved about that when I heard that this conflict was still going on in the pagan community, fifteen years after it helped convince me I had failed, because I was just born wrong, and that was that. The Goddess did not see me. It certainly helped convince me I wasn’t a pagan; I had less than no use for a binary divinity, a Goddess with a God. And I wasn’t allowed to just follow the Goddess, so that was that. It was a long time ago.

But I had a story to tell that might be interesting to a few other people, since this still seemed to be a raging conflict ffs. Somehow this conflict at the pagan conference on the Coast resulted in a trans pagan anthology being planned by way of response in the UK, which my friend in Boston tipped me off to; she’s written books which have actually been published, some of them on paganism, and is just generally networked with everyone fun, queer, kinky and/or just interesting in New England and a lot of other places. So I just started writing this, which I’d been trying to do for months. It’s about an important turning point in my life, but the ending is mushy and incomplete because I was afraid of writing my own truth and not caring if someone else was upset by it. This is why the ending is sort of abrupt. It has to be revised and extended and tied together with other stuff that happened then. (And is happening now. There’s a bad case of abrupt going around lately. Alyssa Harley told me I should just write from the heart, and not worry about who else might or might not read it and how they might react. That my writing is first of all for me, explaining myself to myself; and it turns out I learn a lot of things about myself that I wasn’t aware of. Like most advice she gives me, she’s right about this.) [note: This all helped me see that what I really love doing is writing and then editing what I wrote. Some effort will be involved in figuring out things like where to submit finished work and how to write brief, informative cover letters which might get the submission passed up to an editor. Where to do open-mic readings, and which six minutes and forty-five seconds of my work did I want to read? This may all turn out to be very interesting and unexpected things may happen. But I love writing now, I do it most nearly every day So that’s a start.]

After I wrote this piece, sort of all at once, I looked at the publisher’s site, and saw that their catalog runs toward books which have lots of footnotes and a scholarly approach toward the subject at hand, and I have a feeling they’re not going to use this because it so isn’t that. [Note: In the event, it didn’t even merit a rejection email. ] But it’s the most important part of What Happened to Me, how I was out for years, how in the end I couldn’t keep going after 2001, and hid again, in plain sight, for a long time. 

So I’m going to keep working on it. I have a printout of Parts 2-3 I want to mark up and then incorporate those changes into the new version. But right now I’m in maintenance mode, learning about myself and trying to love myself and waiting for it to get warm. I’m much happier then, and it’s easier to be out, somehow. Coming out publicly caused a rebound, and a few days’ worth of migraines (tension + pollen + dry air = M, where M is any migraine bad enough that you have to turn all the lights off and you throw up). It’s taking a while to get up off the canvas and clear my head enough to continue to fight back. I don’t feel like fixing the paragraph breaks right now, sorry for any confusion. Anyway, here it is:

Why I Am Not a Pagan by Kiva Offenholley (The section letters/numbers are placeholders and not meant to be consecutive or even logical.) Part One A. So how do I tell this story? Where do I start? When I was poring over books on lesbian feminism in the library? [note: upon reflection, this is probably the point at which I lost the attention of the editor of the anthology. I assume it will get published at some point.] In the 1970s while I was in high school, reading everything I could find at the branch library and then becoming a page at the central library, when did I first run across witches? Who first mentioned the Goddess? I remember how powerful that particular idea felt when I first ran across it: that God was a woman, that there was another way. She wasn’t constantly promising punishment as well as or instead of love (so she wasn’t my mother, or G. the Father). She wasn’t scary—well, She wasn’t male, for one thing, and males scared me to death. I was supposed to be one, and I was really, really, really bad at it, and in Texas that still matters even now, a lot more than it should. It was worse then. I read some books that involved witches, even though I didn’t believe in magic per se (my sister kept trying spells and nothing much seemed to happen), which I understood then to be witchcraft. It wasn’t clear to me why belief in the Goddess necessitated not just ritual activities for their own sake, but ones which enable or prevent the use of invisible forces (the existence of which I have yet to be convinced of) to cause or prevent change in the real world, summoning spirits (see above) or even magic defined as creating change inside yourself using a Jungian approach to archetypes and ritual actions to focus intentionality and release energy. Maybe it’s because I was never in a Dianic coven, or any other kind, and I probably would’ve changed as I learned more. But possibly not. As it was, I just wanted to experience rituals because they are beautiful, and they are for Her. Ritual for its own sake. I may not believe in a deity—that’s Southern for “I’m an atheist”—but I have loved Her instinctively and completely, from the moment I learned of Her, and the idea of Her. And I hoped that maybe I could learn why I was made this way, why in my soul I felt like a girl. And it seemed to me that, if I tried, I could feel loved. Because I love the Goddess. B. It was clear even to me that one thing I definitely could not be was a lesbian separatist, which was a shame because I needed that too: I had nothing but rage and fear from men and for them, and wanted to live in or at least envision a world where we were in women’s space. I had only ever felt safe when I was with other women, or some of them at least. Most of them. Someone once called it “swimming in the safe sea of women.” I just wanted to count as a “woman” of some sort, maybe not fully female yet, if it was a problem, but I’d sit in the back and not get in anyone’s way…. They had somehow gotten undisputed custody of the real-world carrying into concrete action of the idea of the Goddess, and despite having read histories like The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, or Starhawk or Merlin Stone, of course, anything I could find, my only connection to the other universe, I wasn’t supposed to feel like I belonged. Avidly reading, and thinking and feeling all this stuff that made me feel like I not only belonged inside the circle, that it was the place I would be safe, but that it was the only place outside a classroom that I could ever discuss Gerda Lerner with someone else. I just kept reading, and tried to understand why some radical feminists hated us so much. We were less than or other than women, according to the women who hated us; we were less than or other than human. We were used for ideological target practice. It was like the inverse of being hated by Southern Baptists, the result was the same. It was a part of why I finally skidded to a halt, and detransitioned in 2001, after the period described here. It seemed that Goddess-centered religion was destined to be controlled by those unknown women, like the music festival in Michigan: my spouse, having attended once, assured me that I would consider it close to hell on Earth, between the mud and the rain and the bugs and the heat and the mud, given that my idea of roughing it is a hotel room with no minifridge. But I would’ve liked to have had the option. Around that same time, 1999-2000, I had a nasty encounter in a local institutional setting which I can’t or won’t really identify here. It was with two of the people we now call TERFs: an angry ideological one, who’d just joined the institution, to attack me viciously—none of my friends, no one, ever told me what she’d said while I was out of the room, so it must’ve been awful—and a reflexively 70s-grounded person in a position of authority to unthinkingly and unknowingly privilege TERF 1’s painful past, which was bad, over mine, which was pretty goddamn awful but which never really came up since it still wasn’t really clear to TERF 2 what the hell exactly I was, anyway, even though I had been around for nearly ten years. For a long time it seemed like she could barely greet me civilly when we on occasion ran into her on the street. But she never turned up at parties, which was what mattered, and so it really didn’t seem to matter, at the time. Years of work, living out as a woman among women who loved women in our wonderful little neighborhood: making and deepening friendships, learning to love our little world especially after our son was born, since we still had large lunches on Saturdays then, and he was so darned cute, and everyone loved him. And then I began the estrogen, and it was like I’d had my finger in a light socket for decades, had sort of learned to put up with it, like chronic pain, but it felt so good when I got to take my finger out finally, I felt so relieved when it stopped. All this time I’d been preparing myself, learning to not be afraid, not afraid to let myself Be. To do what someone has described as the most difficult thing you’ll ever do. But that was apart from this story, and it all started just as the getting-TERFed part (for which we then still didn’t have a term) was getting truly awful, so I truly needed something good to happen. And I thought I could finally use all this learning, all that reading I’d done for decades. And I was looking for a spiritual guide, too, it turned out. B. I took a class called Women & Religion in 1987, at Hunter College (from Dr. Serinity Young, who is now at Queens College CUNY and is still a wonderful teacher and human being), and one day while I was enthusiastically talking with the professor after class—it was the only way I talked with her, enthusiastically; I think she even taught me the origins of the word “enthused”—I casually let drop that not only did I want to major in Women’s Studies, I actually would really kind of like to become one someday. Like, medically, you know? And so she had the sad duty of letting me down as gently as humanly possible, but clearly someone had to tell me, I think she must’ve thought, and so: not only would I not be welcomed by a Dianic coven, any of them, she explained, I would face open hostility from radical feminists in general. That what I really wanted wasn’t feasible after all. That the team I wanted to join didn’t want someone like me as a member. That it was genuinely impossible, apparently; some of them hated us. At least I learned this from one of the gentlest souls I have ever known, it hurt less that way. I used to read a lot of those expensive little scholarly/theoretical radical feminist quarterlies they sold in the 80s for like $7, in the newsstand in the Pan Am Building back in the day. I had run across this hatred toward trans folks before; I just didn’t realize that it was so prevalent. That it was widespread, for some people it was an ideological litmus test. What Serinity told me did not completely surprise me, but the extent of what she described did. My best friend back then, who was from Long Island—think “where suburbs were invented”—said of course she was “a feminist, but not the kind that goes to demonstrations.” She may have even used that old saw about being in favor of equal pay, everyone said that back then if you asked if they were feminists. Her girlfriend at the time said that she wasn’t one, and that moreover she didn’t date feminists because she didn’t like women who don’t shave their underarms. (I do. I’m Old School. But I have to admit I was confused by all this.) So this idea and ideal, “Feminism,” had given me hope of a kind for years, feminist thealogy providing a Great Mother figure which I really needed when my own mother was beating me, sometimes unconscious, but never quite killing me; and I never quite killed myself either. I wrote stories and drew sketches and imagined a science-fiction future where there was a Lesbian Nation, a refuge for women of any orientation and a force in the world fighting for women. I had this belief that the world could be different or we could build a new one even, a better one, this escape hatch from the hatred of a world full of men, and most of them had hated me practically since I was born, it seemed to me. Because I wasn’t nearly enough like them, and far too much like a woman—the escape hatch was useless, it wouldn’t work for me because under the rules I could never ever be a woman. I would have to live the remainder of my life as a man because there was no such thing as “transsexual lesbians.” I might as well have spent years studying a dead language. Because the women who spoke it apparently wouldn’t talk to me. I tried to not care, but it involved a lot of nights of crying, and after that one class I gave up on Women’s Studies, on the idea of finishing my degree, and on the idea that I could even possibly not be male. I must be some kind of a gay man, then, I thought yet again, dejectedly, struggling with the limited rôles “permitted” in the old order. I guess I’m gay, I’m just not sexually attracted to men…I spent years in painful solitude, rarely dating (and always women) because I didn’t fit anyone’s pattern. I was born in the Friend Zone and apparently would die there. I just kept wishing I’d been born a girl, not a boy, like always: the existential mistake that felt like grief, that I wore like a suit of armor you can never take off, like walking in sunlight in a darkness that would never lift. Again, I didn’t quite kill myself. I wrote some simple performance art pieces, just monologues really, about how much I hated it all, and delivered them on open mic night at the old Dixon Place, Ellie Covan’s apartment on First Street. Maybe I could express this misery through art, squeeze some of the pain out onstage, writing monologues I wouldn’t have been able to sit through if I hadn’t written them myself. And then, in 1991, when I was 33, I met my future spouse. I invited her to come see my performance at Dixon, and we suddenly fell for each other, and everything changed. C. When I officially finally came out as trans—or “transsexual” as we used to say—it surprised absolutely no one. My wife identified as lesbian when we first got together in 1991, and being part of the lesbian/bi women’s community in the Slope in the 90s gave me a context and a place to want to be, since unlike most trans folks I was “transitioning in place.” Meaning that coming out as trans didn’t automatically destroy my personal relationships, as happens to so many of us then and now, and so I didn’t have to start over somewhere else, creating a new identity as if you’re in a Gender Relocation Program. It also meant (and now it means, again) that people who knew me as male before, not friends but deli clerks, auto mechanics, the bagel store staff, everyone, will have to adjust. It was the hardest thing I’d ever try to do. But it finally seemed doable. It seemed perfect, not just doable. We lived in Park Slope, in Brooklyn, which was a wonderfully diverse and welcoming lesbian community in the 1990s, and the Slope was still a place young lesbians starting a career in New York could move to and find an apartment at a reasonable price. All that new energy kept the neighborhood interesting. The lesbian social universe was arrayed around the karate school, and my wife had been at the school since before we met. I saw people I knew every day, just walking down Seventh Avenue. We had a baby, then I started taking estrogen. We were so happy. Then, as it happened, in the Spring of 2000 I met a cis woman who was already a witch and we tried to start what she assured me was indeed the First Trans-Friendly Dianic Goddess Circle, which ended up being the Last Trans-Friendly Dianic Goddess Circle, sort of. There are others now, I am told, who don’t even care what gender you are or aren’t, but this was the turn of the century, and it was still well-nigh unheard of.

Part Two A. The Center—once upon a time, a long, long time ago, it was the Gay Community Center, hence the venerable web address: gaycenter.org, then the Gay and Lesbian Etc., then the Lesbian and Gay But Not Bi, Definitely Not Bi Center, then the Lesbian, Gay & Alright, Already, Bi Center, then they finally went to LGBT, this was along about when they—whoever “they” were, the ones who ran The Center, and whoever they were, they seemed to arrive a tad tardily to each of these transformations. And as I recall they were still coming to terms with the whole adding-the-T part, and it hadn’t happened yet, or maybe it had already happened but I sincerely didn’t notice, I was busy: the spring of 2000, a beautiful warm spring with a lot of sunny days, at least as I remember it. The Center was in the Swing Space, the temporary building that they were operating out of around the turn of the century, so that the old school building could be turned into, in time, the space station command center-&-caffeine bar-fronted miracle of architecture and fundraising you find there now, over at 218 W. 13th Street. But this was the between-time, somewhere out near where the old “The Vault” S&M club had once been, around the corner of this triangular wedge of real estate just below 14th Street, around Ninth Avenue. I am told that there were rather a lot of directions given then that began, “You remember where The Vault used to be? You walk a block down past it, hang a right….” So I was on my way out of the Swing Space one day, after trying to do some kind of transgender networking, and I passed a woman with beautiful eyes, in warm fuzzy hippie clothes and interesting jewelry, with Tori Amos-like long wavy red hair and some kind of energy or sense of purpose about her. She had some kind of small bag or satchel with her. We passed, she smiled, I smiled. She saw the “Trans Dyke” button I had on—possibly the only such button extant at the time in the US if not all North America, unless the inspired artist/buttonmaker had made more of them. It was drawn by hand, in colored pencil, with TRANS DYKE written across it in large, friendly letters. I’d found it quite by accident among an assortment of handmade radical buttons in a cigar box, at an alternative bookstore in Montréal when I’d visited with K. the previous winter. I couldn’t quite believe my luck: I was still hesitant to say what I was aloud, but buttons were no problem. [K. had very supportively agreed to come with me to freaking Canada during hockey season so I could see a Canadiens game at the Centre Molson (now Centre Bell). I was clearly out of my mind. We lost a set of keys and came back two days later to the same parking spot on a hunch, and we found them in the snowbank, two feet down, where they’d landed. It was cold. I love Québec, but go in the summer.] That button was just perfect at the time for me, still a novel idea a decade after Kate Bornstein came out as lesbian and trans in OutWeek magazine. That was the first time I asked myself that ages-old queer question, “So you mean I’m not the only one?” So just wearing the fucking button around the Center felt somewhat defiant, improvising a sort of pronoun-sticker years before they existed, saying who I was. It mattered. I was wearing it on my jacket, all the time since it wouldn’t stay on my backpack, and she turned around and asked me one of those life-changing questions: “Hey! Would you like to come help me with a transsexual-friendly Goddess circle? I’m going to hold one upstairs!”

Well. I had sort of been waiting 25 years or so for someone to ask me that. So sure, yeah, I’d love to, I may even have said something like, “I’ve waited years for someone to ask me that!” and I headed back with her into the Swing Space elevator, and up. I helped her set up the altar furnishings. Candles (couldn’t actually light them because of building regs plus sprinklers going off) and statues, I think, pretty scarves and cloths and jewelry. It wasn’t anything complicated, but it was amazing to me just to be there, suddenly, seemingly by chance. Friends of hers came, a trans couple from New Jersey showed up, and we held our ceremony, greeting the Spring Equinox and thanking the Goddess for the new season. I forget details from there, just that I helped her clear up afterwards and the two of us talked. What sort of thing are you into, she asked. Going way back, really, I said, I’ve read about the Sumerians and their religion. “Inanna.” “Right. The earliest written records we have of Mesopotamian religion. And they mention servants of Inanna, they’re like two-spirited, I mean, both-gendered or something…” She knew the word for them. We talked some more, about sort of Jungian stuff, like what images spoke most powerfully to me? The Great Mother, primarily, “possibly since my own mother was, um, she was nuts.…” She nodded to let me know she “got it,” as far as survivor stuff, then I went on: “I hope you don’t think this is weird, but I’ve always been fascinated by the temple prostitutes in Sumeria. The service of the Goddess, through the celebration of sex itself.” She gave me one of those dazzling smiles. “No,” she reassured me, “I don’t think it’s weird at all. In fact, it’s also sort of what I had in mind….” Wow. “What’s your name?” I asked, finally. “Yana.” “I’m Kiva,” I said. And so it began. B. She had come to New York a few years before, and with her fascination with the Goddess already intertwined with the Marian devotion she had learned growing up in the Roman Church. She was Catholic, but not Christian, I think she said, Catholic to the extent of the Marian practices which she’d been taught and had read about. Then she became a Dianic witch and studied all sorts of other women-focussed practices across denominations that all fed into Goddess history. She felt the church was the people who turned up, all of us flawed, but it wasn’t her primary interest. The Black Madonnas, devotions related to marriage and a safe delivery, “churching” women after a birth, implying they were impure afterwards; different beliefs from Eastern Europe, the Orthodox, from all over, but mostly she’d read a lot of what I had, particularly European and Middle Eastern religious history and especially the odd or neglected corners of it, the backwaters like the three villages in Syria that still used Aramaic in their services, the witches of the mountains in their different forms, Babayaga, all this off-the-beaten-path stuff. Ishtar, Istar, Ester. Enna, Enana, Innana. Timelines, conjectures about periods without written or archaeological records, or ambiguous sites like Çatal Hüyük. It was more or less pre-Google, so any kind of conjecture could possibly be true, depending on how late at night it was. We talked about labryses, and Crete. We talked about goddesses, and witches, and magic, none of which, I explained, I really believed in, I was just sort of fascinated by it all, you see. I was just stubbornly atheistic as a default setting, since I was a recovering Southern Baptist. We touched on Bokononism when I brought it up; I don’t remember if we got around to the Cathars. I’d never met anyone before her, outside of that class at Hunter in 1987, who’d even heard of Çatal Hüyük. We talked and talked, for hours, for days and days, about all of these things, and all of them at once, it seemed like. Everything was connected. We’d read the same books. A lot of the same books. We talked about who we were, how we identified, how we got to where we were. She talked about how she got involved so deeply in trans women’s activism (and, “no,” she replied when I asked, “I’m not transgendered;” it was clearly a question she got sooner or later from each of us.) We didn’t have the words “cis” and “trans” as such then, “cis” still dwelled quietly as a prefix in old Latin and French dictionaries. At the time we called cis women “GGs,” genetic girls, or “biogirls,” both of which were self-deprecating, self-devaluing, and inferiority-reinforcing terms we came up with all on our own, as a community; as for ourselves, I learned soon that to save time and avoid arguments over changing terminology such as “transsexual” (“ss,” not “s”, dammit) and “transgender,” and who was and wasn’t really a whatever, we called each other by this diminutive term no one outside our little world seemed to have heard of: “trannies”…. She’d been homeless not all that long before, and it was trans women, sex workers out working the street in Manhattan, who kept her from starving, let her sleep on couches, nursed her to health, and I gathered that somewhere in there she’d fallen in love, too, and by that point she’d come to love us as we were. And so she was an ardent lesbian trans ally at a time when we didn’t have many (we didn’t have the term “trans ally” yet, for example) and a lover of other trans women when few cis women openly were—for a while she and K. wanted to start a support group but I think they’d have been the only ones there. Like K., she was was a gem cut in a distinct pattern. She was unique and unafraid. And she loved us. Yeah, I had sort of a crush on her. She was magical. She asked me to help her start a pagan meeting circle, a stable, ongoing Goddess-focussed Dianic circle. A Dianic circle like any other, except this one would welcome trans women. It was dedicated to lifting up trans women spiritually, meeting what in Yana’s eyes was an obvious need. I said okay, and set to work. We were going to call it Two Spirit Moon Circle but I wondered if it might be appropriating a Native American term outside its cultural context. So I kept accidentally calling it Two Moon Spirit Circle, as if we were on Mars or something, and eventually we decided to call it that. Yana had a phone list of people who were supposed to be either interested or potentially interested. It was a handful of names and numbers, some of them names you weren’t supposed to use to ask for them with because they were still closeted, as transgender or as pagan or as both even, and in the (as it transpired, extremely unlikely) event that someone answered the phone, I said something vague, some preset phrase like, “I’m calling on behalf of Yana.” Several of them had no surname, just a name and a phone number. Some of them never did answer, a couple of numbers proved to have gone out of service, two or three of them didn’t need to be called because they were close to Yana. I still have the list around here somewhere, I saw it recently stuck in a book, and I was amazed by how much of it was blank space. There was no social media, no smartphones, and the Web was still in its toddler stage. It was all we had to work with. Somehow Yana had talked the NYC Metropolitan Community Church into letting us use their basement room after their services were over on Sunday afternoons. The MCC was originally organized as a gay-friendly church because there weren’t any other ones, except the Unitarians. Yana attended services there, which may have helped. And for a few months, we held circles nearly every Sunday. Yana tried to find more members; she knew the folks at what we shall refer to here as “T-House” on 16th Street in Brooklyn, which turned out to be three blocks up from me (the Slope was like that then). It’s gone down in history as “Transy House.” We never did get many people from T-House to attend our circle, or if we did it wasn’t more than once. The circle didn’t grow. C. I happily took on the task of writing up a ritual we could use for a special occasion, like the solstice. As it happened, I was enrolled at the New School for one semester, taking some class on religious symbols. So I had access to their library, and way back on the bottom shelf, full of the dusty volumes of history which no one used for research and which hadn’t been opened in decades, there was a really old series of books with the translated Sumerian scriptures in them. It looked ancient, so I checked the indicia and it was published in 1912 or something like that. In the 1900s, but before 1914. I forget now what they were called, and don’t particularly want to try googling for 20 minutes looking for it, but they were special messengers of Inanna, and they were both female and male together in one. There was a passage where Inanna made a promise to them—and we argued, by extension, you could include us, trans people, and gender-variance of all kinds too, I believe, although we didn’t quite have the freedom to imagine all that at the time. Inanna made a promise to Her two-gendered beings, who were special to Her, that she would protect them. Nothing complicated, nothing that other divinities wouldn’t subsequently promise to their special peoples, except that it’s hard to find one where the Goddess says she will protect us. But Yana and I both knew how far back you had to go to find a strong Inanna figure: as far as possible, in early Sumerian theology, some of the first written records of a religious belief system. I think it was from reading The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner that I learned the story of how Inanna had gradually been weakened and eventually subordinated or sidelined in later Sumerian and then Akkadian theology; this weakening and subordination reflected the same thing happening to Sumerian women in reality, losing rights to buy and hold property, rights in inheritance, independent social existence gradually subordinated to the control of the father: patriarchy. This wasn’t the only society and time when this happened, but the Sumerians had left detailed real estate and inheritance records. I remember how exhaustively she went over and cited her source material, all those footnotes. My copy is still in the basement. I just brought up the laundry and I forgot to bring it up with me, but I guess the point is it touched on the area of ancient religions. So I looked in it for a reference which would help me find the huge old rebound-in-green volume of forgotten Sumerian scriptures that I needed: the story about Inanna trapped in the underworld. But I think in the end I just went down to the New School library, and pulled out a volume. It was one of those old-school, 2000-large-pages volumes that voluminous scriptures used to end up in. Bound volumes of Theravada Buddhist scriptures are about the same size and weight, you can probably find them in the 200s section of your public library, depending on how large it is. They have a very nice set at the Brooklyn Central Library. So I opened up the book, spine on my knee, and it more or less opened to the place I needed, the story of Inanna in the underworld and the transgender messengers she sent, and the promise she made. I took it to a table and started to make notes. Yana maintained that this was a small example of divine intervention, that She guided my hand, helped me pick the right volume, open it to the right chapter. I said I thought it was a coincidence, although I wasn’t too sure at the time. It’s possible also, I argued, that I wasn’t the first person to ever go looking for that particular story, and so the book opened to that page, more or less. Because the spine, mostly unspoiled through the decades by the routine damage inflicted by readers of books, probably had a single crack left in it from before. It’s possible that the volume, if it had been used before, was reshelved by the user sticking out slightly instead of flush with the other books, and so I unconsciously chose it (I used to be a library page—a minion—long ago). I recount this to illustrate what a stubborn subject I was and am when it comes to faith and belief. Yana knew about Jungian archetypes and self-actualization and so on, but I think deep in her heart she totally and sincerely believed in Her, that She exists, that She loves us, and that She had agency in the mundane world which she used to help us, if we but asked her. I was just never able to let go, to trust in someone I didn’t think existed. Archetypes, schmarchetypes: I needed Her to *exist*. I needed proof. 5. I read online a couple of years ago that there was some kind of all-pagan conference on the West Coast, where a group of Dianic witches held an “all women-born women welcome” Goddess ritual from which trans women were of course angrily and ostentatiously excluded. It was instructive to me, when I read about it, of something I’m trying to learn over and over until I believe it: apparently nearly everyone else had the decency to be appalled and regarded it as bigoted and ignorant of who we actually are. This book is itself one consequence of this conflict, I am told. In some parallel universe, maybe even nearby, where radical feminists and lesbian separatists of every kind had welcomed trans women into the community from the beginning, valued us, maybe even cherished us for our unique critique of masculinity, our courage in crossing the river of fire, I might be some kind of elder by now, possibly even considered wise. That, along with having transitioned, successfully, long ago. They do feel like they should go together, at least for me. It always felt logical. But I can’t claim a pagan identity now, retroactively, and have it become something that provided comfort and joy over the years, because it isn’t. It didn’t. It never happened. Just like I was never really a Christian after the Southern Baptists chewed me up and spit me out. Past age eight, I never really had the feeling that when I said my prayers, there was someone on the other end listening. By adolescence I knew that they hated people like me, even if whatever the hell it was that I was had not become clear yet. They hated just about anything related to sex that had happened after 1960. The various kinds of baptist churches were gradually taken over in the 1980s by fundamentalists, who had been kept at bay by conservatives for decades (sound familiar?) but now overran the Baptists and other evangelical churches. They voted for Reagan and gave birth to the generation which is now smitten by Trump. They are the real reason I left Texas. I tried for years to make Christianity work for me somehow—you don’t read Tillich on a whim, I spent months checking out everything I could from the library on theology. Fascinating subject, but to me it is fascinating largely as history and supposition. Yana used to say that it didn’t matter if I didn’t believe, it wasn’t a matter of belief; it was a matter of trusting in Her even though you don’t believe it will help. I tried to take the rituals into me, let out that little spark inside, let out the little kid in me. She’s still there, and she’s still scared to come outside, afraid of being slapped again. And for a while it was better. I even tried to meditate. I can’t meditate for shit, but I tried. Our little circle met until it didn’t. It wasn’t like herding cats so much as trying to teach kittens to march down Broadway in lockstep and chanting, “The kittens/United/Will never be defeated!” Only you can’t find enough kittens. And around then, Yana began to vanish into what became an opaque relationship: a glom-on girlfriend who would never give her messages or call her to the phone, she was always “not here,” who eventually closed her off from everyone, or at least everyone at T-House, which was, like, everyone, but apparently the girlfriend thought it included me for some reason; and, long story short, after a couple more times I never saw Yana again. What really kills me is, I introduced them. For political purposes; Glom-on was trans and in a position to help. But the next thing I knew, Yana was telling me the old, old story: “well, you know, we worked all those late nights together on the protest, and next thing you know….” It was the greatest unforeseeable mistake I have ever made, to this day. 3. The Goddess lives in my heart, of course, some kind of small (yet apparently inextinguishable) light, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the strength to survive growing up and getting beaten, a few times nearly to death, by my mother the psycho vodka-swilling pillhead, or to survive living in New York for years with nothing but my sheer uncrushableness and a talent for proofreading. Without Her I could never have embraced my trans identity, then somehow detransition yet not fall apart completely, in a time when it seemed impossible after all to make it through transition as an out lesbian who didn’t pass (2001), and to survive until a time when it does seem sort of possible (2016). Without Her I wouldn’t be able to come back and embrace my trans identity, a choice which saved my life. But that light mostly doesn’t sustain me or reassure me or whatever; it just is me, it feels pain, too. It feels like She put it there, subjectively; like She made me, somehow. She lives in each of us, that light is the You that you hope to find if you look inwards far enough. Maybe that’s what the argument is really about, whether She lives in us, made us the way we are, whether that light is inside us and she really did make us women. Instead of monsters. I’ve met some boring trans people, but I’ve never a monster who wanted to destroy womenspace by demanding admission even though it has a penis. Mostly, we’re just kind of reticent, afraid of sounding too femme, or not enough, or just reminding people we’re different. Like clearing my throat, always comes out sounding deep. It’s like the current bathroom nonsense: as has been true already for decades, we’re just looking for a place to pee. Only now, everyone knows we exist. Maybe it’s the estrogen-wash theory, that high E levels plus maybe really wanting a girl can prevent a fetus with a Y chromosome from fully changing into a male, at least in the brain. I read a study that suggests there are genetic signatures of some kind in some sort of brain cell, and ours differ from men’s, they’re longer yet there aren’t very many testosterone receptors. (Sorry, I don’t have a footer for that.) I have enough material from age five up for another book or two. It took them years, until around age eight, to convince me that not only was I not a girl, but I wouldn’t turn into one later, it didn’t work that way, and when I grew up I wouldn’t be a woman. I’d wear one of those suits, like Dad, not a dress. I hated those suits. I thought this would be an essay about an attempt at forming a circle in the intersection of Goddess religion and trans women’s culture, because you want academic papers with footnotes and everything. But it turns out it’s as much about Yana as about the Goddess or Dianic wicca or other stuff you’d research and footnote and make a biblio out of. It’s all just from me; it’s my story, and what it is, too. My close encounter with having a pagan religious identity, my pagan identity, the one I wanted to at least try, before that identity zoomed past me, then looped around the Sun and shot back out into space, probably all the way to the Oort Cloud. It should be back in a few thousand years. It was Yana who embodied Her for me, and made Her seem real; so once Yana was gone from my life, that sense of the numinous, of spirit in everything, went away too, leaving behind a fondness for a hill with a circle of trees on it in Prospect Park where we used to go to talk and be. I don’t believe that in any of this I was in point of fact a pagan; I was an acolyte of Yana. I trusted her, I learned from her, I believed her, I miss her.

Part Three A. I am 58 now. I used to care so very intensely about this, I was so proud to be co-organizing a Goddess circle for women like us. That was 2000, and so much else was going wrong in my personal life that year, so this was special, something I tried harder to keep hold of even as it slipped further out of my grasp. When I was forced by events to detransition in April of 2001, it hurt like I was dying. I had to cut loose a lot of things to survive, and caring so intensely about this, since I was spiritually on my own once again, became one of them. Like with anything transgender, I didn’t want to know, I turned away, shamed by what felt like my epic failure, and I didn’t want to hear about it anymore. If I couldn’t have it, I couldn’t bear to look at others who could. Because they’d learned to go out dressed without trembling. Because they were living. I felt like the kid with her nose pressed against the glass again, looking in, like before, and it started to seem normal again to feel like I was permanently wrong, or at least I was too emotionally exhausted to fight. I suspended my transition, for 15 years it turns out. A lot of things have gotten better in the meantime, a lot more than I could’ve imagined. Like marriage equality isn’t a Thing, it’s the law. Hating on trans folks of all stripes on modern gay/bi women’s sites, like Autostraddle.com, isn’t acceptable behavior anymore, or at least TERFy posts draw multiple posts from allies. This is the generation we gave birth to, and they mostly as a rule just don’t believe in hate; and there isn’t an exception made to that rule for trans people. Yet it turns out this, the reason I’m a cynical atheist instead of a somewhat less cynical witch, is still a Thing in 2016. So many awful Things, Things that seemed unchangeable for queers for so very long, have changed in the last fifteen years, but this isn’t one of them. And we do this to ourselves. Queers who obsessively hate certain other queers. It seems so wrong now, when I think about it like that. So a friend of mine who is a writer and a witch told me about the call for papers. I intended to write something more like I might have written for an academic paper, and if I were still taking college courses I probably would have, MLA format and all. This is not that story, this is the story that wanted to be told. So I have I decided to try and tell the Tale of Yana and Kiva. I would’ve made a lousy pagan anyway. There’s the indifference to magic. I can’t meditate for shit. I feel antagonistic toward religion in general. I’m hopelessly cynical. I’m an atheist, for Chrissakes. B. Last week my wife K. and I went to Massachusetts to visit old friends. We stopped at my favorite used bookstore in the world, the Raven Used Books in Northampton, on Old South Street. Most of what I found in LGBT or Women’s Studies was from the 80s or 90s, when I was reading some of the same books I found there. I asked about transgender theory—I murmured “trans” and she thought I said “trains”, so I said, “transgender” in this slightly apologetic way I still do. She thought for a second and said they are largely a used book store (“academic” being a given) and that since the field has started growing so recently and so quickly, they didn’t have them in great numbers, yet, but when they did it would be shelved in LGBT. Which makes sense to me, really, since the oldest of the new wave of major works I have read are from about 2005 on. They haven’t had time to finish the cycle: first migrate in signifigant numbers onto syllabii at Smith, Holyoke, Hampshire, Amherst and UMass, to wax and wane in popularity and utility, and thence in time make their way to Happy Valley’s used bookstores, particularly to Raven. Where people like me buy them. Maybe they’re still waxing in popularity. I hope so. But this visit I wasn’t into languages or mediæval history or Buddhism, I was back where I began, at LGBT and Women’s Studies. And the future is so new here that the books I was hoping to find are still being used, rather than having been used. They have some mugs and bags for hardcore fans like me. But I already have two mugs. So I bought a nice copy of Carol Christ’s Laughter of Aphrodite, since I haven’t read it and thealogy is really sort of timeless, even if some of the people she was discussing and critiquing advocated then-current arguments which have become dim with the passage of time. (Remember, everyone: if you have a used book you haven’t read before, it’s new.) Laughter of Aphrodite came out around the time Christ (pronounced “krist”, with a short i) was co-editing the now-classic anthology which we used as our principal textbook for the Women & Religion course at Hunter College in 1987: Womanspirit Rising. I’m looking forward to reading it.

But, like I said, I’m not a pagan. Go figure.