#“she” in the manuscript is a trans girl

[sassypainterangel]

some smut ig. one shots? idk

the way her teeth scraped my lip.. god that made me melt. and how close our hips were, and when she pushed her lips against mine and i pulled her forwards me and my back just.. arched so our thighs were touching. something in me switched the first time she made me wet, i think. just by putting her leg across mine. fuck.

when our legs were staggered, and her thigh was between my legs. fuck, that made me so wet. I could feel her erection on my thigh. her hips flush against mine, her thigh pressing against my center. holy shit, that felt good.

when i dropped my hand to the small of her back, pulling her impossibly closer, and she did the same. my heart skipped a beat.

The first time we kissed, we were laying on my twin bed facing each other. she said if she wanted to win over her crush with a kiss, she’d need some practice. Is she implying what i think she is? I ask her, “do you want to kiss me?” she says “maybe” and looks away. i can’t remember what happened between then and the kiss. her lips were on mine, and fuck. not the kisses i’ve had before. different. and so sexy.

At dinner, she’s shaking. nervous. she didn’t do anything wrong.

after dinner, we play two rounds of a game before the others leave us alone. movies are more fun, apparently. either way, i’m not complaining. We kissed again, first sitting down. and shit, when her teeth snag my lip i know i’m fuckin soaked. she asks, “could we try it standing up?” and yes. yes a million times over. Our bodies pressed up against each other. she pulls away. “are we making out?” “i dunno.” “do you want it to be?” “i bet a dictionary would be helpful for this.” so she looks it up. no, according to the dictionary we did not make out. we’re sitting again. I’m tired. i lay back, and she lays next to me. we kiss, and i am hardly halfawake. but that’s okay. then she goes to her room, and i fall asleep.

the next day, she forgets to take her anxiety medication. I insist that she take it. so we go back up to the condo, and once that problem is solved, we stand in the hall. “are we going down?” i ask. i hope she says, “i don’t want to” and we go to my bed. i want her to kiss me, be on top of me, be beneath me, i don’t really care. i want. but she doesn’t say that, and that doesn’t happen. not like i’m complaining, because we end up kissing anyway. she says, “since we might not get a minute to ourselves before you leave, uh, can we…” she trails off. “yes.” I step towards her, and we find a rhythm easily. I step closer, our bodies so close. Her thigh is between my legs, pressing against my center. and fuck, i’m wet. again. She steps forward too, and there’s not room for a playing card between us, let alone jesus. Now our legs are staggered, and i can feel her erection on my thigh. She pulls away, and my heart skips a beat. she’s so fucking sexy.

at the beach, i can tell she’s thinking about something. “Your taste. it was salty.” “probably because i was in the ocean, genius.” my heart flutters. she is thinking about how i taste.

later after we get back from the beach, right before we leave, we are sitting on the balcony. there are two doors to the balcony, one from the living area and the other from her bedroom. She goes around to the door on the inside, since it’s locked from the balcony. She opens it for me, and I slip inside, shutting the glass door behind me. I step close to her and whisper, “can I?” she agrees, and my lips are on hers. fuck. I’m wet, and needy as hell. I want to back her up so her knees hit the bed, and straddle her. i want her hands in my hair, under my shirt, on my hips. I want my lips on her neck, leaving marks. I want.

but there’s not enough time, and i have enough logical thinking left that i register the door to the living room from the bedroom is open. and i have to leave soon. and if i left marks, her family would pester her. and if my shirt came off, so might my other clothes.

i want.

[otomegamesandme]

Otome/Amare Games for Pride 2024 Edition

Hey hey, I'm back with more pride rec games in the realm of otome/amare/dating sims! I haven't done a rec list in a hot minute, and I'm glad I finally have time to make another one! I have two other lists similar in theme, which I'll link in a reblog! With that said, here's some more recommendations!

Heart Fragment

Platform: PC [Steam and Itch.io]

Price: Book one is free, Book two is 2.99 USD

I know I posted this in my 'otome/amare games where you can get the girl' post, but I want to shout it out again because I love it a lot. This is a soft sci-fi/mystery/paranormal genre blend where you follow Xani (renamable and gender selectable) as they learn about themselves, their strange powers, and the mystery around their mother. I love this game so much, mostly because of how much I related to the main character as well as the love interests. It's a solid game, and one I replay often.

Obscura the Dark Descent Chapter 1

Platform: PC [Steam and Itch.io]

Price: Chapter 1 is free

This is still in development and pretty popular in the indie space, but I thought I'd shout it out just in case. I love the atmosphere of this game, and I like the concept of it. You're dying so you go into the mountain where everyone wears masks, searching for a cure. The feeling of it is so oppressive and all the love interests feel really unique. I also love the MC in this, they're so funny to me.

Pitstop in Purgatory

Platform: PC [Steam and Itch.io]

Price: 4.99 USD

A weirdly comforting game about death. You play as a young woman named Astrid who died, but has no memories of it. As you interact with those also stuck in purgatory, those memories start coming back to her. I think the art style in this really helps with the feeling of this, and it's one of those games to kickback to over the weekend.

Titan Arum

Platform: PC [Itch.io]

Price: Free

I was so obsessed with this when it first came out. You're a failed writing whose back in your childhood home trying to finish a manuscript. However, weird things keep happening, and you're sanity might just be slipping. The art, the atmosphere, the references to the King in Yellow? 10/10. The fact this was made in ten days just makes it all the more impressive and I highly recommend it.

Breathless Winds

Platform: PC [Steam and Itch.io]

Price: 12.00 USD

Poppy is a closeted trans woman who has just recovered from a boating accident. As she readjusts to life again, she has to find a way to save her home, and discover who she is and who she wants to be. The full game just came out a few days ago from posting this, so I've only played the demo but I loved it so much and I'm so excited to play the full game the second I get a chance. This is one of the only games where the main protagonist is a canon trans woman (if you know more dating sims like this please let me know lol), and the demo was lovely as well.

We're Women, After All

Platform: PC [Itch.io]

Price: Free

I'm cheating with this one because it's not in the realm of dating sims but shhh. I loved this game so much I had to shout it out. This is a sapphic horror game about a woman wanting to escape from an oppressive family and her conversation with the mermaid she loves. It's short, so I don't want to spoil it, but it was such a great experience. I enjoyed the characters and writing, and the art was stunning.

[milo-knight]

So I work with children at an afterschool program and one of the kids I have worked with is a young trans-girl (Age 11) - her family is SUPER supportive, they even helped her choose her name. Which is why she has an incredibly vintage old-lady name (not her actual name, but let's call her Agnes).

Agnes LOVES dungeons and dragons (emphasis on the dragons), creative writing, and platypodi (the plural for platypus as she has informed me).

She graduated to middle school this week and gave me a small stack of papers she wrote that she wanted me to have. One was a five page essay on platypodi (she only needed to write a page), one was a drawing of a dragon, and one was essentially a manuscript for her novel about dragons and prophecies (it's called Omen, if she ever publishes it I will be buying twenty billion copies).

And this is all me rambling but...

It genuinely makes me SO happy to see young trans-people who can just exist. Just live and enjoy life. Who don't need to spend their entire teenage years finding themselves and doubting themselves and frantically searching for support.

It makes me elated to see her so free and loved. All her classmates respect her (even on days she dresses more masculine, or after she cut her hair shorter than usual) and they'll even correct others on her pronouns. When they talk about her she's treated like anyone else- I was told about her birthday party where all her friends went, her trip to an environmental camp where she slept in a cabin with her friends and saw foxes, and it just...

As a trans person who spent his teenage years agonizing about being accepted and to this day STILL isn't respected by his family as the person he is- it makes me cry tears of joy to see her and others like her living so freely and happily.

And it brings me a deep sense of joy to know that I get to be out and proud around her. From the second we met we had so much in common, and I could see her excitement when I told her my pronouns and mentioned in passing my dead name. I don't know... something about trans joy and trans solidarity and trans youth being happy makes me sappy.

[rose-of-oz]

begging you to tell me about your btr oc ideas!! who are their ships(if they have them), why are they at palm woods, what are their dynamics w the boys??

Of course, thank you so much for this!! I’ll just give you a basic rundown of the three I’ve got so far:

Ezra Caulder, he/him, Carlos ship, Justice Smith FC. Lives at the Palm Woods with his parents and eleven-year-old sister, Destiny, who’s a child actress mainly seen in commercials (not in an exploitive way, though, she really loves acting and their parents are very good and would let her stop whenever she wanted to). Incredibly shy and awkward and doesn’t really have many friends, and prefers more academic pursuits rather than any attempt to get into the arts, so he doesn’t really interact with the boys or anyone at the Palm Woods at first until he winds up getting roped into one of their schemes. Kind of has an insta-crush on Carlos, but doesn’t ever think it could be reciprocated until he literally becomes the other boy’s bi awakening. Out of the rest of the boys, he winds up becoming closest to Logan, since they’re both more academically-minded, and also develops an odd opposites-attract friendship with Katie.

Nicki Wainwright, she/her, James ship, Hunter Schafer FC. An aspiring actress who’s lived in the Palm Woods with her single dad for over a year before the show starts, but often has a hard time getting rolls once the casting directors know she’s trans. Has also been burned from a lot of guys she’s been interested in because of this fact, so she’s developed a strong disdain for guys with big egos. As a result, she and James do not get along from the moment Big Time Rush arrives in LA, but she still winds up interacting with the guys a lot since she’s friends with Camille, and they wind up clashing and bickering a lot, although of course eventually they become friends and, finally, start dating. Nicki is confident but not arrogant, bold and not afraid to speak her mind, very talented and she knows it, but also has a layer on insecurity underneath due to what she’s been through that’s hard to break through to. Becomes really good friends with all of the guys as well as Camille and Jo, but she’s ultimately closest to Carlos because they egg each other’s chaos on.

Amara Castro, she/her, Kendall ship, Isabela Merced FC. As an aspiring writer, Amara is kind of a rarity among the Palm Woods crowd of actors and singers. She’s been working on a fantasy-slash-mystery novel since she was thirteen but hasn’t ever had anything published, so the only way she’s able to stay at the Palm Woods is because her older brother and sibling are minor celebrity actors. Initially meets the band after she loses a printed chapter of her manuscript and they find it and return it to her, and though she prefers to stay isolated they wind up working their ways into her heart. She’s a lot like Pippa from A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, very intense and driven and focused, but she also has an unexpected sense of humour and a very kind heart. Initially bonds with Kendall over having not-so-good parent relationships (Kendall with his dad and Amara with both of hers) and wanting to take care of the people they care about, and then eventually they become a super cute couple. Winds up becoming the closest to James out of the rest of the boys, which no one expects but everyone agrees makes a weird kind of sense, and also winds up basically adopted by Mrs. Knight and a big sister figure to Katie.

And that’s all I’ve got for now!! I do intend to create a Logan ship and potentially one or two more OCs besides, but for right now have these babies. I am planning on making proper intro posts for them, but in the meantime anyone can feel free to send any asks they want for them!! Thanks again for asking!! <3

Tagging the BTR moots: @partiallypearl, @dancingsunflowers-ocs, @manyfandomocs.

[quarkscooljacket]

9 books i plan to read in 2025

tagged by @softest-punk ! as always i have one million books that i'd like to read but here are some I plan on reading soon and my thoughts below:

Praiseworthy (Alexis Wright) has been on my TBR ever since it came out. I was working and unboxed this and was just immediately entranced by it as a physical object. I quit that job and bought this book on my last shift there but have only got 20 or so pages in because it demands a lot of attention. This yr I will do it!

The Sunforge (Sascha Stronach) is the sequel to The Dawnhounds, which is one of my favourite fantasy books. I did get about halfway through this but then was attacked by evil ghosts in my mind (was depressed) and then had to start reading to judge a prize and so this was put aside. Gonna start fresh this year (and perhap use this as an opportunity to re-read the Dawnhounds again).

Dusk (Robbie Arnott) is set in tassie and is about one of the mythical australian panthers. I mean. C'mon. Also apparently he's a brilliant writer but I've read none of his work and I'd like to get to it and this seemed like the perfect entry point.

Brainwyrms (Alison Rumfitt) I got the same time as Tell Me I'm Worthless, which I really enjoyed. It was a gamble to buy them both without knowing if I'd even like her writing, but I'm v glad I did. There is a nice swathe of trans horror out lately and fortunately I'm not too much of a scaredy cat to read it!!!

This is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature (edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton) I saw on the first shift at my current job and after looking at it for a year I finally bought it for myself for chrissy. I've heard a bit about PalFest and think this will be really insightful.

Only the Animals (Ceridwen Dovey) because I loved Only the Astronauts and I love short stories, aand I love stories about animals.

Finch (Jeff VanderMeer) is the last in the Ambergris trilogy and I liked the other two and how different they all are to each other, and Jeff is one of my favourite authors.

Sunny at the End of the World (Steph Bowe) is the last book we will get by Steph Bowe because she passed away in 2020. Her mum and sister found this manuscript on her computer and it's being published in March. I loved her previous book, and she was a lovely person and I miss her. I never read the end of Girl Saves Boy because I thought well, if I don't finish it then I will always have more of her writing to read.

A Song to Drown Rivers (Ann Liang) is one my book club is reading and looks really fun tho I have heard is a bit devastating! Plus we love when an australian gets a nice big audience for the SFF work and so gotta support.

tagging @tideoftrash @gamling @briarrolfe @tegan-ew @nessie-nosebleed @so-boop-tac-u-lar :> but also everyone. please tell me about books!!!!!!!!

[akraphe]

workshop #1

1.

Nobody dies intelligently, I used to think. To forfeit time whether by exhaustion of the body or the mind, In exchange for a thirsty gravedigger, a few black suits, and some plot of land ; to choose the anti-future, forced by any hand, hers or yours, and disintegrate deep into the great nothing, knowing very well nobody knows themselves unalive ; why, except by ignorance or incompetence, would grief, like a perpetually moving ocean, be allowed to crash, overpower and overwhelm the mind ? Why else would we want to learn that our pain gets to live forever, while joy eventually dies ?

2.

"Now I am alone" she thought mere seconds ago, familiar wind swaying around her, carrying the smell of paintings lost to flames And corrupt manuscripts of medieval flesh. Waiting for the leap of faith from calm violence to violent calm. It's not her first try. The choice of a personal funeral Lingers frequently on her mind. Now fear and desire pale Next to the question "Will it be my last ? Will the ocean under these hills be Where finally I pass ?"

Suddenly There are no more footsteps on the grass.

3.

People's smell or respect. Her voice telling anecdotes And turning heads. Happy birthday wishes from friends. Detecting irony. The idea of touch and touch itself. Flying business class, And other similar stuff Like dignity or rights. Nicknames. Correct blood Flow. Her friends Interest. Peace, ataraxia, Rest, whatever its name. Ah yes, and long hair, Ready to break bread, And wind's eulogy for her.

It's the inventory of all the things She's lost.

Shooting privilege.

Something's missing. Rage, all the rage, Enough to fill an infinite canvas, Infinite pages or magna cartas.

4.

Who is she ?

I don't know her Any more than you.

Is she a free bird, a departing plane, A falling spit, an empty plastic thread, Like the tears of a cis dude who can't get Erect ? courageous woman, passionate tran, forgotten dog or insect in a box ? Mirza ? Jules ? Léontine ? guerrilla girl or sad Fantine ? lonely weirdo or speaker at the pride ? is she the one that cries or the one that fights ?

She's a master of treason.

5.

She translates texts for the sad few: Poems, essays, secret recipes, fanzines on sex and trans bodies, political manifestos for her beloved lefties.

Care or be cared. Think or be thought of. Be the cure others need.

She shaves heads and slaps backs; sleeps early when we all still dance; knows her way around syringes, needles, comic relief and desperate people.

Arrogantly move on. Unloose your own void. Laugh yourself to sleep.

[bee-barnes-author]

ISO Beta Readers for a first time novelist!

Hello all!

My name is James, I'm a queer trans man and I'm working on my first manuscript. I'm looking for beta readers that can provide in-depth feedback. I'm pretty terrible at summaries, so I hope what I put here is enticing for y'all LOL

Princess Elida was a lonely girl, until she met her new best friend, Naurcia. In the years following their meeting, the girls end up falling in love. When tragedy strikes Elida decides to become whatever she has to in order to get the love of her life back.

Currently, the novel is at 74k words, with an end goal of somewhere between 80k and 100k words. If you'd like to volunteer please DM me here! I'll provide you with a sample of the novel and if you want to read further I'll add you to the google doc with commenter permissions.

[thetransversespectator]

Praetor went to a brown-shingled house on a suburban street to see a performance with a large group of people. There was quite a crowd there. At some point he saw Akelbeth and Jizrael speaking broken Korean to each other and made fun of them. Tarquin was very disturbed at their presence and quickly disappeared.

While they were waiting for the performance to start, someone came in from outside -- an older man Praetor identified as the leader of their group -- and said that everyone had to go home. "Show's cancelled, something happened," he said shakily, and Praetor asked "is it personal, medical, or a natural disaster?" "It's personal,' he said.

Praetor can't find Tarquin. He goes outside and everyone is looking up at the sky. There's an incredible display of light, but it all looks fake. Obviously fake. Everyone runs out to look at it. UFO's, comets, little twinkly things. Lisa Frank on DMT, but obviously fake. Several degrees off.

Everyone checks their phones. They can't access social media anymore, everything stutters and redirects. The content is already there, and it's endless, but it means nothing, and everything. He watches what seems like hours of it, gasping in astonishment. The content is impossible to describe.

There are messages every once in a while from a "trans-conscious medium consortium," and then a blue logo with a black lattice appears. It's a triangle, the goddamn illuminati triangle, like this is all a joke.

Planes are falling from the sky, but they don't look real, either. It was engineered to look like 90's CGI, but the method of manufacture is far beyond what humans are capable of today.

They talk about who could have done this. It can't be the Chinese, unless their AI tech is already several generations more advanced than ours. "There's too much content," Praetor says. "It's not human."

Praetor finds Tarquin in the bathroom getting fucked by a grey-haired daddy. They both have no idea what is happening. He's furious, not because of the daddy, but rather because he now has to explain this all to him. Tarquin doesn't believe, even after Praetor shows him his phone, and then disappears into a puff of black smoke.

Those who don't believe disappear. Praetor and Akelbeth feel around the room they were in and find a warm spot on the walls. It's moving, slowly. "We got him," she says without thinking. "He must be standing here."

Before disappearing, Tarquin had given him an outfit handed to him by a small girl he didn't know, who then quickly disappeared. It is simple: green shirt, grey boxer briefs, and tan pants. He changes into it and heads back outside to the line of white buses he arrived in. Traffic has slowed to a halt; everyone is trying to go home, or leave home, or perhaps just escape from the lights. Some of them have thrown their smartphones out their car windows.

A message beaned directly to his mind: Arabius Publishing in Manhattan. Someone there died, and they had this whole thing where they drank Gin Malo at the funeral and rubbed cotton on their eyes to produce tears. "Send your manuscript there as it is, after checking for mistakes. It needs to be published by next Fall because something like this is going to happen, and you're the only one who can stop it."

And he thinks to himself before waking, this is all part of the same schtick, it's a joke encased in profundity, on the border of the absurd, but there is a real threat there and it's coming from someone, or something, with a deeply twisted sense of humor. Something almost human, just about human, but not quite all there.

And the next thing he does, of course, is Google Arabius Publishing, incessantly, with vigor. It doesn't exist.

[kiloueka]

One time in my creative writing class I submitted a short story about a trans girl but didn't explicitly say it. She was attacked and cast out of her village and went to go join her harpy gf in harpy village and become one too. The end was basically the harpy goddess turning her into one too and was like 'yeah you're a woman, here's some wings'.

Anyway on critique day one of the speakers said something like "I really like how you never explained why she was exiled" with another guy saying something similar. Then someone who Knew started gushing about how much she loved it. Idr her exact words but she did explicitly say 'transgender' and then the two guys picked up their manuscripts and started looking through them with the most confused looks in their faces.

Then when I got the critiqued manuscripts back one of them had written on that i needed to make the "tansgenderedness" more obvious. And another guy had noted early in the manuscript something like "if they hadn't figured she was trans out before then this should be the most obvious"

trying to hit that exact sweetspot where I get exactly as many comments that go "i have no idea what this is about" as "this is too obvious and I don't see the point"

[acertainmoshke]

Happy Storyteller Saturday!!

What inspired Cold Iron and how did it develop to what it is today?

So this is a long story but thank you so much for this ask because I really want to talk about it!

When I was 15 (an age ago now), I discovered a few things: (1) I had a special interest in Fae lore, (2) I was autistic, and (3) I identified with the legends of changeling children from another realm. And what I needed then was a power fantasy, which in my life meant 2 things: being an outcast but strong instead of pathetic like I saw my real self, and being an imperfect person but cherished anyway.

So I came up with Shakatra, who when I was 15 was 17 and a girl. She and her brother were the secret children of a Seelie prince and Unseelie princess, raised in the human realm for their own safety but abused by their human caretaker. At 17, her 15-year-old brother Richard died in a tragic accident and she, grief-stricken, accidentally found herself falling into the Fae realm. There was a romance subplot, but most of the story revolved around her leading young Fae in a rebellion, living in the Fae wild—which then was just a basic fantasy forest. This was long before Frozen, but because of my own preferences and sensitivities her magic was always ice-based. I actually finished this manuscript at 17 in colorful composition books that I later transcribed into Word, but never got through the editing part. Mostly I liked to daydream about her fighting skill, especially with a dagger, or how much her friends loved her even when she lashed out. This version ended with her beating the Unseelie Queen and taking over as ruler, plus the twist of her brother being alive and him being the crown prince of the Seelie.

When I was 19, I was still planning on more or less using this version, ending the trilogy with her becoming Queen at 26. But then I got bored. I stopped writing it for a long time, though I kept the daydreams and did roleplay as Shaka with my author friends.

I was bored with the story but couldn’t let go of the character, so eventually I decided to revamp it by making it modern urban fantasy set mostly in the real world except with a secret subculture of sorcerers, and Fae exist. In this version, I made Shakatra nonbinary, made them half-human (I actually changed the name from The Faerie Warrior Trilogy to Halfling), made their love interest a husband who had died, made them almost 2 decades older, and made their best friend Kristoffer a Wild Fae they met as a kid and their main support system. I kept their brother Richard but he wasn’t as important to the story. The big backstory thing was they ran away at 17 and joined the Veil Guard, essentially a sorcerer army against the Fae, where they were successful but not accepted except by Jacob, who they married and took in an abandoned Halfling daughter, Anna, with. Eventually Jacob died, they had a year-long breakdown and then went back to existing and fighting random Wild Fae at night. At which point they met Lynn and her adoptive sister Tatiana, who were in the original as Fae nobility and bullies-turned-allies but were human here. They were running their own rogue operation outside the oppressive bounds of the sorcerers’ government, which eventually Shaka and Kris joined. The idea was Shakatra would live for a few hundred years but was currently only in their 30���s.

And that idea was fine but I really, really struggled with which part of their life to turn into books. I evolved small pieces like making Anna a trans boy named Aaron and giving Kris multiple love interests who had evolved from part of their original army into a human sorcerer from an isolationist cult and a pretty young magicless werewolf. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to capture it as a story in itself that would translate into a book rather than endless lists, and yet this was my story I desperately wanted to share.

So, this year I redid it again. I kept Kris’ love interests but got rid of the weird cult background for Doug and decided I don’t want werewolves OR vampires so Beth became a selkie. Aaron is not only not trans but human, the biological child of Shakatra’s dead husband. I finally came up with actual RULES for Fae aging in our world, and made them a changeling instead of half-human, one who since the age of 15 has aged 1 year for every 5 that pass—so though they’re still in their 30’s, they’ve lived over a hundred years. Kris too is a changeling, but one who ages a bit faster because Reasons. This gives them a nice long backstory, and prequel potential, though the main plot is happening in modern years. I added an angsty subplot involving the human child they replaced.

Also, having them fight the Fae just because was too basic, so I remade the plot entirely, including an existential threat to humanity that isn’t as it seems and them being possibly the only one both willing and able to change the course of the world—or maybe not. I had to rename it since they were not in fact a Halfling anymore, but there are already good books called Changeling, so I went for Cold Iron—a beautiful, poisonous weapon that if its user is Fae will kill them as surely as their enemies.

[annihilate-this-week]

A scene I’m most likely cutting from the novel I’m editing.

I like it a lot, but my manuscript is over 150k words, and hey, kill your darlings. This doesn’t really advance the plot at all -- more in here so I can have two transfemme characters, one freshly out, one a few years into hormone therapy, talk about how transition works on a social level, and a bunch of other things I wanted to say.

I’ve done a fair amount of writing for this novel that turns out to be basically me making statements about life as a trans person -- especially life as a trans person after you get all the basics like hormone therapy and changing your legal identity taken care of, and ESPECIALLY if you’re a trans person who can barely keep your head above water financially (and maybe emotionally). I make them in dialogue form so that they aren’t so fucking clunky or whatever, but sometimes that takes up a lot of space. It’s fun to write, it’s maybe fun to read? But I can’t keep ‘em all or I’ll never get this thing published. So again, here’s something I probably can’t keep. I was working on editing it when I made the decision, so there are some track-changes artifacts in here, for which I apologize.

Putting it behind a cut in case you’d rather not be bothered.

Two hours later, she and Sam sat in a small cafe that was mostly full of hipster kids, withplus a smattering of older, traditional white Southern types mixed in. Tanya was feeling much better about how she looked after shaving, showering, and putting on makeup. She wore a black-and-white checkered skirt, a red White Stripes t-shirt, and cheap black tennis shoes. Across from her, Sam was had a more straightforward punk look, wearing black denim shorts and a black sleeveless t-shirt, the only hint of her femininity being the hint of a sports bra showing under her shirt. Tanya wondered if she'd had the chance to buy any clothes since transitioning.

She didn't have to ask. Sam started talking about it almost as soon as they sat down. "I love your outfit, by the way," she said. "I really want to be able to... I dunno, 'girl-ify' my fashion sense, but I have no idea where to begin."

Tanya shrugged. "I know a lot of crust girls who dress pretty much like you're dressed today," she said. "I think the question is whether you want to go for a more conventionally cute look. I try to do so while also remaining somewhat punk, but let's be real -- that gets lost a lot of the time. When I show up at a basement show in a frilly red dress, that might make a pretty strong impression on the punks, but when I walk down the street like that... Well, I guess in my frilly red dress, they think I'm goth, which is something. But still." She gestured at what she was wearing. "I look like an aging hipster dressed like this, which isn't nearly as punk as your vibe. But I think when I used to look more punk pre-transition, the main reason was because I didn't feelhavve any realistic hope to look any better than I did." SAfter a moment, she paused.said, "I hated how I looked."

"I know what you mean," Sam said. "I still kinda hate how I look. Wearing lipstick and makeup helps, but it's such a pain in the ass. And my clothes... I mean, I just decided a few weeks ago I was gonna transition fully. And now I'm stuck with all these boy-coded clothes."

"So you weren't like me? All collecting clothes in secret that you put on when no one was around?" Tanya grinned. "I was so ashamed and embarrassed of it at the time. Then when I started going out in women's clothes, people were like 'Where'd you get these outfits?' and I was like, 'I've been ordering stuff off the internet for years, y'all.'" 

Sam laughed. "Nah, can't say I ever did that. I think I was running from it all. I never really even started to face up to my gender issues until like... two years ago?"

"How old are you?" Tanya asked. Just then, a waiter showed up to take their drink orders. Neither of them had even looked at the menu. Tanya ordered a Diet Coke. Sam asked for a mimosa. Tanya nodded silently to herself.

"We're gonna need a few minutes to figure out what we want," she told the waiter. "Or at least, I am." The waiter walked away. As Tanya studied her menu, Sam set hers down at the empty chair to her right. Tanya figured she ate here regularly and knew what she wanted.

"I'm 23," Sam said. "All of us are. Me, Chris, and Tammy, that is. I think Ginger's a year or two older. She didn't go to school with us. I'm honestly not sure how Tammy met her."

"Maybe I'll ask," Tanya said. "Anyway, the reason I asked how old you are is to try and figure out how old you were when you really started questioning your gender identity."

"Yeah, I guess I was maybe 20," Sam said. "But it's like... when I was younger, I was trying to be a normal dude or whatever. I still liked girls, I looked like a normal male. I mean, I guess I did. I gotwas into punk starting when I was around 12 or so. I found Tammy and Chris in high school because of punk. We were like... the three kids our age who were into it."

"Are y'all from here in Mobile?" Tanya asked. She was pretty sure she was going to order the breakfast burrito. Which was predictable, in hindsight. She set her menu on top of Sam's.

"Yeah, I mean, the suburbs, but still, greater Mobile, for sure," Sam said. "But our school was full of shitkickers. Everybody out there's into like... Taylor Swift and Blake Shelton or whatever. It was so backwards that most kids didn't even like pop music, they liked country."

Tanya laughed. "I grew up in Nashville in the 80s and 90s," she said. "I know exactly what you're talking about."

Sam laughed too, then paused. "Wait, the 80s? How old are you?"

Tanya made a wry face. "I'm 39. Didn't start my transition til I was 35. Didn't get on hormones until I was 36."

"Whoa!" Sam looked shocked. "I would never have guessed you were that old. I mean, not that--"

"I know, I know." Tanya held up her hand. "It's not a bad thing, but it's weird. Believe me, I agree. I still don't know how I got past 25 at some point." She grinned. "I'd like to make a joke about how I only look this good because the spiro keeps me young, but..."

"Spiro?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Spironolactone. The anti-androgen. You're on it, right?"

"Oh! Yeah, for the past day," she said, and laughed. "I took it before I came out to meet you. But I've never heard anyone use a nickname for it before. That threw me a little."

Tanya chuckled. "You're a babe in the woods!" she declared. "But seriously, I'm so excited for you to see what's coming."

"Me too," Sam said. "I'm really hoping it makes me a bit less hairy."

"It does!" Tanya said. "I thought I'd just have to shave huge portions of my body forever, but at this point I've lost 80% of my body hair. I thought that was all hype, but it's real."

"Oh thank god," Sam said, and at that point their waiter arrived to take their food orders. They both started self-consciously. 

"I'll have the breakfast burrito, with chicken, hash browns on the side," Tanya said. 

"Very good, ma'am. And for you, sir?" The waiter turned to Sam. She didn't react, but Tanya immediately slapped her hand to her forehead, and held it there. Seeing friends misgendered was the worst.

"I'll have the huevos rancheros, with avocado. Beans and rice on the side," Sam said. 

"Sounds good! I'll get these right in to the kitchen." With that, the waiter disappeared. Tanya, who'd been watching the interaction between her fingers, finally took her hand away from her face.

"Do you think he heard what we were talking about?" Sam stage-whispered to Tanya.

"No, but I know he misgendered you," Tanya said. "He was totally oblivious."

"Really?" Sam pulled back in surprise. "I didn't even notice! I wondered why you put your hand over your eyes."

"Yeah, that's why," Tanya said. "Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. That kind of thing always made me feel like I was gonna die."

"It sucks that I didn't notice, though," Sam said. "I need to get better about thinking of myself as a woman."

"That's an adjustment, for sure," Tanya said. "It took me about a year before I was a woman in my dreams on any kind of consistent basis."

Sam thought for a second. "I'm definitely still dreaming of myself as the confused non-binary person I spent the last year or so identifying as." She shrugged. "That's better than dreaming of myself as a man, though."

"Fuck yeah it is," said Tanya.

"So tell me about this tour you and Tammy are booking. What's the plan?"

Tanya shrugged. "A month or so. I guess I'll end back up in Nashville after. I haven't really planned all that out though. The real point is to get me away from places where I need a fixed address. At least for a little while."

"Wow. I don't think I've ever heard of that before." Sam grimaced. "It doesn't sound good."

"No, I suppose it's not. I'm going back on tour to avoid homelessness. That's a hell of a thing. But at the same time... I mean, there's not much left for me in Nashville. I have this long history there, but it's in a punk rock scene where I'm pretty much universally known as a guy. There are people who've completely turned on me since I came out. People I never knew were TERFs showed their true colors as soon as I made it public. But that's the kind of thing... it wasn't anyone I'm particularly close to or anything, you know?" Tanya sighed. "It's more the way a whole bunch of my friends were just completely unable to shift their mindsets. Like, I get it, I've fucked up on pronouns with other friends who've transitioned. It's tough to relearn things like that when you've known someone for a while. But it mattered to me to try and get it right, you know? I cared about these people. And I always respected trans identities, going back to the 90s when I was 14 and saw trans girls on Donahue or whatever. It seemed valid to me in a way that most people didn't seem to think it was. So I tried! And when people don't try, when people I care about and who supposedly care about me don't try, it makes me feel like they don't see me as valid. Which is tough to get past, even if they clearly still like me and I like them too."

Sam nodded. "I've honestly got a little bit of experience with what you're talking about, even having only been identifying as non-binary and not fully transitioning. I suppose there are people out there who were using he/him pronouns for me this whole time and I wasn't paying that much attention. But now I'm gonna have to start paying attention."

"Well, it's not even that," said Tanya. "People can handle non-binary identities because it generally doesn't require full recontextualization of a person. People who identify as non-binary often don't go through an actual change in their presentation, and I've found it's pretty rare for enby-identifying people to engage in medical transition of any sort as well." She shrugged. "Of course, that could be because the medical industry makes it hard to get what you want to do done if you deviate from their script. Thank god, things have at least gotten past that whole bullshit Harry Benjamin 'I was born in the wrong body' narrative. But there are still things that you can say about your desired gender or whatever that'll get you shut down as pathological when really, the truth is that there are just a lot of potential ways people might want to express their gender, and ALL of them are valid!"

Sam was nodding as she finished speaking. "I've already been looking at stuff online about transitioning -- since a while before I fully came out, if I'm entirely honest -- and I've already noticed this. People will tell you 'I said this to my doctor and it caused six months of problems' or 'my first doctor didn't understand at all and I had to move to a different city before I got the care I needed' or whatever. I went into my intake conversation at Planned Parenthood with all this stuff I could say, and lo and behold, they didn't really care that much. I told them about my history of gender feelings and they just kind of nodded and said, pretty much, 'Sounds legit,' and had me sign some papers."

Tanya nodded. "Informed consent's been a godsend for me too. I can tell you one story, though. I had to go to my doctor and get three months of prescriptions taken care of in advance so I could go on tour. And she was like, 'Why are you doing this?' and I totally did not tell her that it was better than being homeless, so why not? I knew that would be an issue. So now my doctor at Planned Parenthood Nashville thinks I'm in a touring band that plays to 500 people a night." She shook her head and laughed at the memory. 

Sam laughed as well. "Normal people have no idea that reasonably big bands that they've heard of can't necessarily draw 500 people in most of the country."

Tanya nodded, thinking of the time she saw Kings Of Leon play for 50 people at a sparsely attended promotional show. That was years before they'd gotten big, though. These days she didn't even like them.

At that moment, their food arrived. 

Tanya was pretty hungry, and dug right into her breakfast burrito. Sam seemed to be in the same position -- which was no surprise, after her escapades the previous evening -- and very little was said for a few minutes as both of them chowed down. Tanya came up for air after she'd gotten about halfway through her burrito. After a big swig of her water, she looked over at Sam. 

"I've been thinking," she said. "I know you're just starting out, and I've been doing this for a while. So if there's anything I can help with by talking about it or whatever, you're welcome to ask. I want to do whatever I can to make this whole process easier on you."

Sam set her Diet Coke down. Once she'd finished the mimosa, she'd switched to non-alcoholic drinks, a move Tanya had appreciated. "Yeah, there is something," she said. "This is a weird question but I'm just gonna ask."

Tanya nodded, hoping to encourage her.

"Can you explain to me how the heck you figured clothes out? I just have no idea about sizes and all that." Sam gestured at her body. "I don't have much of any definition, curve-wise, at this point, but I want to find stuff I can wear that makes me feel more, you know, girly." She held up her hands in an at-a-loss gesture. "What should I do?"

"Well, it's tough," Tanya said. "I was and am built a bit different from you. I mean, to be honest, this is the thinnest I've been as an adult, and I'm still a bit overweight if you ask the BMI or whatever. But like, I started wearing women's clothes full time months before I took my first hormone pills. So I started out by working with what I had, and I had a bit of extra weight up top." She gestured to her breasts. "They developed more once the hormones took effect, which was lovely, but even at the beginning I had a sense of what was up. You don't have that. Which isn't good or bad at this point, it just... is."

Sam nodded. "True. So you at least understand the problem."

"Oh, for sure," Tanya said, nodding. "One thing I can tell you is that you will develop, not just in your breasts but in your hips, your butt, the backs of your thighs... It'll take a few months, but changes will start to happen. And you won't know the full extent of them for years. So I would say to start out with stuff that you feel good about, and the only way to really find that stuff is to try things on. I used to go to thrift stores, spend half an hour collecting a double armload of potential stuff, step into a fitting room with it, and find that 90% of it didn't fit me or looked terrible. I'd go in with 40 things and buy two. But that's the way it has to go."

Sam nodded. "That makes sense. Doing the thrift store thing makes me nervous as hell, but I guess I've got to take the plunge."

"If you need a partner for thrift store runs, I'm in town for a couple of weeks," Tanya said. "I'm always glad to help."

Sam smiled. "I will take you up on that. Let's swap numbers before we leave here."

"What are you doing today?" Tanya asked. "You seem to have money... want to hit up some places later?"

Sam's smile grew even wider. "That would be awesome, honestly. You sure you're up for that?"

"It's always fun to hit thrift stores," Tanya said. "Who knows? I might find something I want too. I mean, I probably shouldn't buy anything, it'll just be more stuff to wash while I'm on tour... but I'm not saying I won't anyway." Sam laughed as Tanya picked up her breakfast burrito.

[our-queer-experience]

source: trust me, bro

first of all, we don’t know what causes someone to be trans. we know it’s vaguely biological and 60% of trans people report understanding that they werent cis before they were ten(see the 2015 usts report, which had nearly 3,000 participants)

and we’re discussing rapid onset gender dysphoria here, right? here’s an article debunking it, and i’ll go through it point by point.

BOSTON, March 20, 2023—A study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that a substantial proportion of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) adults realized that their gender identity is different from their sex assigned at birth during adolescence or later. It also found that TGD people typically waited many years before sharing this realization with another person. The study adds important new knowledge to clinical and popular understanding of the timing of TGD people’s awareness, understanding, and sharing of their gender identity. It also undercuts a core component of the “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) hypothesis, which posits that TGD identities realized in adolescence are transient and will not continue into adulthood.

“The ROGD hypothesis suggests that transgender and gender diverse identities that become clear after puberty don’t last beyond one’s adolescent years,” said lead study author Dr. Jack Turban, Director, Gender Psychiatry Program and Assistant Professor, Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. “With over 40 percent of transgender and gender diverse adults reporting that they first realized that their gender identity differed from their sex assigned at birth during adolescence, that theory clearly does not hold.”

aright so, in case that was too many letters for you- we have no other evidence that suports shrier’s claims. shrier ALSO got her participants from groups which already didn’t support their children’s transition, and she didn’t interview the children themselves. some of these ‘children’ were also trans adults whom had transitioned happily and their parents were purely bitter.

The ROGD hypothesis, first published in 2018, immediately gained influence in public policy debates with coverage by publications ranging from The Economist to Science. A correction was issued shortly after publication of the initial ROGD manuscript stating that “ROGD is not a formal mental health diagnosis at this time. This report did not collect data from the adolescents and young adults or clinicians and therefore does not validate the phenomenon.” Despite this, elements of the ROGD hypothesis continue to be prominently featured in influential mainstream media discourse, including the New York Times. The hypothesis is also used by numerous governmental agencies, lawmakers, and policy analysts to justify legislative and regulatory measures prohibiting adolescents from accessing gender-affirming medical care, despite opposition from all major medical organizations.

ok, so let me get this correct. those who support the rapid onset gender dysphoria theory are- going against the advice of all medical organizations, not affirming trans identities which we know can lead to suicide in children, and isn’t even a real diagnosis anyway. it’s one study compared to hundreds that disagree with it.

“Problem is, they can't can't control which hormones they produce either, so sometimes a boy will have too much estrogen which will make him question his gender, and sometimes a girl will have too much testosterone which ends up making her feel like a boy.”

wrong in so many directions. i assume you’re talking about intersex people, or people with differences of sex development(dsd) with hormone imbalances. hormone imbalances don’t make people trans whatsoever, otherwise we’d have studies showing that.

this is a wikipedia article, but it’ll have to suffice.

“Studies conducted on twins suggest that there are likely genetic causes of gender incongruence, although the precise genes involved are not known or fully understood.[3][4] One study published in the International Journal of Transgender Health found that in 20% of identical twin pairs, if one twin was trans, the other was as well, compared to only 2.6% of non-identical twins where this was the case; researchers attribute this to their shared genetics.[4]”

so… nothing about hormone imbalances there? and if we’re dealing with twin studies that support a primarily genetic cause, that means transness is immutable and(most of the time) caused in the womb. i believe transgenderism is partially genetic and partially developmental, which you can’t really reverse.

the go over some more studies- one that compared trans women to cis men, finding trans women had… well, to dumb it down, a more difficult time synthesizing testosterone.

“Most notably, transmasculine subjects not only had the variant genotype more frequently, but had an allele distribution equivalent to cisgender male controls, unlike the cisgender female controls. The paper concluded that the loss of a female-specific CYP17 T -34C allele distribution pattern is associated with transmasculinity”

that’s gibberish to me and you, but this is on biological causes.

Several studies have found a correlation between gender identity and brain structure.[9] A first-of-its-kind study by Zhou et al. (1995) found that in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis(BSTc), a region of the brain known for sex and anxiety responses (and which is affected by prenatal androgens),[10] cadavers of six trans women had female-normal BSTc size, similar to the study's cadavers of cisgender women. While the trans women had undergone hormone therapy, and all but one had undergone sex reassignment surgery, this was accounted for by including cadavers of non-trans female and male controls who, for a variety of medical reasons, had experienced hormone reversal. The controls still had sizes typical for their sex. No relationship to sexual orientation was found.[11]

some people like to discount this- the trans women were on estrogen, of course it changed their brain structure! but in a follow up study, “one transfeminine subject who had never received hormone therapy was also included, and nonetheless matched up with the female neuron counts.” interesting. so… our brain structures really are different, most of the time.

A 2009 MRI study by Luders et al. found that among 24 trans women not treated with hormone therapy, regional gray matterconcentrations were more similar to those of cisgender men than of cisgender women, but there was a significantly greater volume of gray matter in the right putamen compared to cisgender men.

wow, even MORE information to back up my claims!

now, i could go through the rest of this article with more studies. im tired. i have things to do. you can read it yourself.

but if you think that gender is simply determined by what hormones we put in out bodies, then why didn’t alan turning identify as female when they tried to treat his homosexuality with estrogen? he developed female secondary sex characteristics, but he didn’t ever claim to have started feeling like a woman. in fact, being put on hormones that were incongruent with his identity led him to suicide, just like many trans people who are forced to go through a puberty they don’t feel is right.

or we could take my friend who started testosterone when he turned 16 after 4 years of extensive counseling and evaluations. he had identified as male for 6 years at that point, and so they put him on a combo of puberty blockers and testosterone. before this, his estrogen levels were the same as any female person. now he’s living happily as male. the only thing that changed was his physical body, and perhaps a big of his brain structure, but the only psychological differences or behavioral differences i’ve noticed in him was that he was happier, more confident, ext.

basically, your theory is bunk. from what we can tell, most trans identities solidify before the age of 15, the vast majority being before ten. MOST OF THESE IDENTITIES SOLIDIFY BEFORE ANY PUBERTY HORMONES ARE PRESENT IN THE BODY.

i, for example, knew i was a trans man when i was 9 years old and someone asked me if i was a boy or not- my glasses were pink but i dressed male with a short haircut. i’d cried because that was the first time i felt like i was seen. i hadnt started puberty at that point, not one bit. so it could not have been the hormones. i was able to surpress and hide these feelings for 3 more years before my dysphoria was so bad that i was suicidal, so i came out at 12 years old. when i was 11, i was forced to confront it- feeling like a boy and wishing i was a boy, since i was old enough to recognize gender, wasn’t the feelings of a cis girl. puberty forced me to confront that.

also, “puberty makes people irrational so they can’t understand themselves” is bullshit. pubescent children can have depression, right? bipolar disorder? they can receive treatment for that, medications and therapy. they’re old enough to have those feelings and understand what’s going on with them. your blanket statement is true, but it has nothing to do with childrens and teens ability to know their identity and their ability to consent or not to those changes. your statement also makes it easy to discredit anyone you disagree with, science aside. no one will listen to someone deemed crazy and hormonal and untrustworthy. if you want to hear the sources on trans children, i have studies on them as well. low desist/detrans rates, how hrt often reduces depression, anxiety, and suicidality, and how letting a child live in the gender they feel they are lets them develop without a mental health problem. so.

theres a reason lots of kids develop gender dysphoria around 10-14 and its not because its a social contagion but its because puberty is really fucking distressing when you’re trans, and thats when it becomes too much to handle.

[oleanderblume]

I don't know how else to put this, so here goes.

From one indie author to another, you have a long road ahead of you. I can't tell if you're serious about your publishing career, considering that your blog is full of average Tumblr blog reblogs in-between the sparse posts about your book and other author-ly posts.

First, your marketing could use some work. Most readers will want a summary of the book they are being presented instead of being spoon-fed tropes and other weird Tumblr lingo.

Second, I would suggest getting a new book cover. The one you have now is an eyesore, to be quite frank. The rainbow barrage of colors is just not a good look, and it is very poor graphic design.

Third, you could use a new blurb. Blurbs are very important to sell your novel, and the one you have now left a lot to be desired. Not only is it a massive infodump in the first sentence alone, but it also leaves the genre unclear and is overall worded very confusingly. Blurbs are hard to write, I get it, so I recommend hiring someone else to write one for you.

That's all I have to say. Wishing you the best of luck in your writing endeavors.

Thank you, I'm self pub and honestly don't have any intention of turning my work into a typical run of the mill sort of book marketing scheme, or a full time job. I write because I like to, and I market when I want to. (This being my actual first attempt)

The design and color scheme being loud is intentional, along with the title and the general premise. It's *supposed* to be jarring because how can a story about interdimensional space clowns not be? It's targeted toward people who would be drawn to a book about interdimensional space clowns lol.

My entire marketing is the concept of "this is sounds weird as fuck, wanna read it?"

Idk if you followed the link but the actual blurb is:

Oliver Tarsul is a mostly average 14-year-old kid; aside from being the unwilling roommate to an interdimensional space clown his step-father solicited to rebuild a portal designed by his recently deceased mother. Things are more than a little complicated. Regardless, dealing with a gelatinous slime monster in the shape of a clown girl named Dindet, while also trying to stay under the radar as the only trans kid in school, proves to be significantly harder than he imagined. But the fallout of his mother's supposed death didn't just bring into question what she was working on and who she was working with. It also brought along with it a part of Oliver's past that he'd rather just forget. His biological father.

"Interdimensional space clown" and "portal" pretty clearly state that it's a science fiction, and the inclusion of the MC's personal history denotes a level of reality to the absurd premise.

It's not perfect, obviously, I can recognize that for sure. But I have plenty of time to improve lol.

My blazed post isn't trying to sound like an advertisement because I'm shit at it and that's the point. I don't want to be that platformed, weirdly separated, perfectly curated author. I'm a person first and this is my personal social media, so I will use it personally.

Also...I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but largely what I have seen as successful marketing for books in today's internetty age, *is* utilizing tropes. Like entire manuscripts get picked up by agents based purely off tropes and incredibly brief pitches. There are entire events on social media created to facilitate these sort of pitches for agents and traditional publishers because it's proven to be somewhat successful. (Its also recognizable to the fic community, who I feel would likely be interested in au and original content that fits their favorite tropes)

But...I mean, I've had several notes of people reblogging and saving the blazed post in their tags and thats proof enough to me that my half assed attempt worked.

So, I appreciate the constructive criticism, but I'm not trying to do stuff the normal people way, and definitely not on the single website where doing things the normal people way would work more likely to my detriment lol.

[chicago-geniza]

thinking about Gender Presentation this fine morning & how, in my brief but blazing High Femme phase before transition, a number of people expressed that something felt 'off' about my appearance and my personality, like a video feed ever so slightly out of sync with its soundtrack, but they couldn't articulate why. anyway over the summer my friend (a trans woman) & i were showing each other the pre-transition photos where we most looked like "the ghost of a girl possessing a boy" & vice versa & she said "you look like someone pretending to be a woman but who doesn't really know what a woman is supposed to look like. like those medieval manuscripts where someone who's never seen an animal will draw the closest approximation of what they imagine that animal looks like from written descriptions & available referents & the result is a kind of chimera that doesn't resemble any living creature on earth." which. you know what.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah

[themollyjay]

I’m Not An Imposter (But I Sure Feel Like One).

CW: Homophobia, Transphobia, Trans-misogyny

Two days ago, I started work on a new novel called ‘The Defective Paragons’.  It took me a little over a day to write the first chapter, because I wanted to get it right.  Actually, I wanted to get it perfect.  I wanted to capture a specific feeling, but I struggled with it a lot and I want to talk about why.

‘The Defective Paragons’ is not the novel I had planned to write after I finished Transistor.  I thought I would finish Transistor, do revisions on The Master of Puppets, circle back around and do revisions on Transistor, and then move on to my first Fantasy novel, The Long Way Home.

Instead, I finished Transistor, did revisions on The Master of Puppets, did revisions on Transistor, then I pulled out an old manuscript I had started back in 2015 called ‘The Caster of Shadows’.  I retitled it ‘The Inevitable Singularity’ because it was a better thematic fit for the story, then I went through, made a bunch of revisions, adjusted some character dynamics, cut a subplot that just didn’t need to be in the book, and banged out the last five chapters or so of the novel.

It’s a good novel, and I’m happy with the way it turned out.  In fact, I’m really proud of it.  I think there are a lot of deep, interesting things said about free will verses determinism, about the primacy of the individual verse the primacy of the state, about the ethics of child soldiers, religious indoctrination, the ways love can become a toxic force in your life and how hanging on to an unhealthy relationship can be a form of self-harm, as well as how religious doctrine can poison family relationships.  I also think the series that the novel will eventually be part of has a lot more to say on some very deep topics, and I am really looking forward to writing the rest of the books.

But there was something missing when I was writing it.  It was a work that was conceived, and mostly created at a very different time in my life, when the things I wanted to examine in my writing were different.  In the books I’ve been writing lately, Mail Order Bride, Scatter, The Master of Puppets, and Transistor, gender has been a theme.  Scatter is more subtle about it than the others, though it is there if you look closely enough.  Coming off of The Inevitable Singularity, I found myself very much wanting to step back into a universe where I could talk about gender and The Long Way Round just wasn’t that book.

Instead, I decided to jump into The Defective Paragons.  I’m not go through the full elevator pitch, but the basic idea is that aliens came in and recruited a bunch of teams of teenagers to be superheroes.  They ran around in costume, drove giant robots, and fought off invading alien pirates and bandits.  Then, when the time came, the aliens who recruited the teenagers used them as an army to annex Earth.  Except one team fought back.  They lost, but the novel picks up ten years later when they get a second chance to fight back.

Now, you’re probably asking how this relates to gender, and that’s a fair question.  The thing is, the team that fought back has been separated for a decade, and during that decade, the team leader transitioned from male to female, so when someone comes looking for the Team Leader, they spend the first chapter of the novel talking to said team leader without realizing who she is until the very end of the chapter.  Through the course of the novel, this woman is going to have to meet up with four other people she used to be incredibly close with before.

I’m not going to lie. I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs the whole way through the first chapter, and those nerves haven’t gone away.  But why am I nervous about writing this?  This is literally a part of my life.  This is something I’ve lived through, something I’ve experienced firsthand, more than once.  That experience of meeting someone you knew before, or having to introduce yourself after… That’s my reality, but I still hesitate to write it, because of something that affects a lot of queer people, and trans people I think most of all.

Imposter syndrome. Queer people have our identities invalidated all the time.  “Are you really gay?”, “Why don’t you pick a side already?”, “It’s just a phase.”, “The homosexual lifestyle.”, “Transgender Ideology.”, “Sex not gender”, “Adult human female.”, “Trans trender,”.  It’s hard to keep track of all the ways people question our identity, and when you can’t go a single day without having your identity questioned, you start to doubt yourself.

I doubt myself every day. I was fourteen years old when I figured out I was transgender.  All the signs were there before that, but I didn’t really have that ‘I want to be a girl’ moment until I was fourteen years old.  Why did it take me so long?  You hear about trans kids who seem to know from birth.  Trans girls who want to wear dresses and play with dolls and scream and make a fuss about it from the time they are old enough to talk.  If I’m really trans, why wasn’t I like that?  Is my body dysmorphia really part of my gender dysphoria, or is my gender dysphoria a result of body dysmorphia caused by my weight issues and my eating disorder?

It is so, so easy to get lost inside your head, to doubt who you are, when the whole world is telling you that you’re wrong, that you don’t know yourself, that you can’t be who you claim to be.  Some nights, I lay awake, lost in that place.  Some nights, I lay awake feeling like a fake, a fraud, an imposter.

I know the truth.  I do.  I know that cis gendered men don’t dream about waking up as a woman.  They don’t sit around daydreaming about how if they ever got three wishes, the first wish would be to be a woman.  They don’t have elaborate fantasies about the life they would live if they were a woman.  They don’t cry with joy and relief the first time they see themselves in a dress and makeup. I know I’m a trans woman.  But doubt is a hell of a thing, and so is cis-heteronormativity.

I wrote a chapter, and I felt afraid.  I felt like I was stealing someone else’s story, even though this was my own lived experience.

If you run into the same thing while you’re writing, I wish I could tell you that there’s a magic fix. That the imposter syndrome will eventually go away, and that you’ll get to the point where the voices don’t whisper fear and doubt into your ears, but I can’t.  If there’s a magic fix, I haven’t found it yet.  When I’m writing stuff that deals with being trans, I show it to other trans people, and I sit there, waiting for them to read it, afraid the whole time they’ll tell me I got it wrong.

Someday, I hope we live in a world where no one feels this way, but until then, all I can do is fight through the fear and the doubt, to tell myself that what I feel is real and valid, and to tell the stories I want to tell and hope that people will read them and know that they aren’t alone.

[gayregis]

what's a witcher headcanon you have but has literally nothing to back it up?

like i know eskel would be scary good at estimating times for a microwave and milva would be a god at jenga. why/how do i know this? who's to say

i can actually somewhat explain both of those headcanons. eskel either can cook (correct, wholesome headcanon) or can’t (wrong, stereotypical canon) and both of these possibilities mean he has to know how to use a microwave really really well. as for milva, butches love construction, jenga is practically the science of building houses but as a game.

as for my own... hm kind of difficult because a lot of my headcanons are based in canon so... some of these are more connected to canon than others, but they’re closer to my own uniqueness rather than sapkowski’s work:

dandelion

dandelion’s family (the de lettenhoves) paid for his college education in exchange that he would never use his true name and titles when he published his works, because they are a family largely involved in governmental appointments, and did not want any horrible saucy love poetry (most of what he wrote when he was nineteen) being linked back to them. to this day they’ve disowned him, he lost his lands, and he is forbidden from coming back to any of their estates if not undercover. it’s all very hush-hush. they tricked him into thinking that it was for his own good, telling him that his real name was far too famous, even more famous that he would be soon...

dandelion’s father died when he was young, which led his mother to guide his childhood (basically instructing the servants to raise him) in a strict and masculine direction... this obviously did not work out as planned. but it’s largely why dandelion is regarded as a disappointment by his family, because he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps to stay at the estates (ha!) and marry (ha!) to create an alliance with another noble family.

dandelion and essi’s entire backstory that i’ve planned out: essi enrolled as a student at oxenfurt and as a first year she was appointed by the department to be under dandelion’s guidance. they hit it off on the wrong foot at first (essi thought dandelion was lazy and slovenly, dandelion thought she was prissy and stuckup). but dandelion quickly recognized that essi was extremely talented and had a gift for music, so he asked her why in hell was she directed for further guidance? she admitted that she had stage fright... horrible stage fright. he laughed, thinking she was joking. she wasn’t. the story that follows then is that essi’s stage fright was symbolized by her iconic hair which fell over one eye, which was mocked by her peers - dandelion advised her to own it instead and turn it into a persona - much like what he did when he was her age, his peers called him dandelion (buttercup) on account of his blonde hair that has a tendancy to fan out like petals, and he adopted it as his persona.

on a similar note, what dandelion’s office at oxenfurt looks like: it’s basically treated as a walk-in closet for outfits he’s purchased but doesn’t have a permanent space elsewhere for. other valuables that can’t be kept on his person or in his saddlebags are kept here too. it’s much less of an office to do work and way more of a storage room. the desk has many finished bottles of alcoholic drinks and a lot of manuscripts stored inside (his own, because of the works he admires, he can recall from memory precisely what was written in them)

milva (sorry all of them are about her being a lesbian)

the dryads of brokilon adore milva more than they would ever let on. they find her very interesting because she’s a human, but she’s also one of them, but she also works with the scoia’tel. when milva comes back to brokilon after a journey, she finds herself crowded by dryads asking her how she is doing and what happened on her trip. because of this, milva’s quite good at storytelling, in her own colloquialisms and manners of speech. the dryads are captured by her stories of the world beyond brokilon, and very much enjoy her company, though milva was unaware of exactly how much they enjoyed it (if you get what i’m saying). 

milva realizes she’s a lesbian in toussaint because of her encounter with the baron de trastamara, in which she rebuked his marriage proposal and cried at the kitchen table and in the stables. she appreciated the baron’s friendship more than his romantic advances, and she was crying because she was upset that she couldn’t find true romance in her heart for him. angouleme states at the kitchen table that the hunting trip was overnight, suggesting that the baron asked milva for sex. i headcanon that he did, and milva couldn’t find it in herself to say yes. when the baron became upset at this and pestered her a little to find out why she refused his advances, she had an emotional outburst at him and left at once, for she herself didn’t really know.

additionally, many of the women shopkeepers in toussaint flirted with milva but she didn’t understand their advances. particularly a fishmonger and a fletcher, both of which are OCs... it wasn’t until angouleme (not giving milva an option on whether to accept her company or not) followed milva around on errands one day that she witnessed their interactions and then (in a very annoying little sister manner) bugged milva about how cute of a couple they would be, to which milva took shock and offense. but this got milva thinking about the subject.

regis

regis took on a variety of ridiculous titles when he was younger. “the prince of darkness” and things like this. it added to his already quite-long name. it sounded as stupid as it does with me explaining it.

regis has never paid rent or taxes. he acquired the house and shop in dilingen because he came to the city after he had rehabilitated himself, and found it in a state of disrepair and abandonment. he fixed it up very nicely (perhaps much like as he did with himself... symbolism!) and grew flowers in the windowsills. when city officials came to investigate, accusing him of taking up residence illegally, he simply placed them under a vampire’s spell and told them: “nonsense, i’ve always lived here!” to which they replied, “oh, of course you have, master barber-surgeon! apologies for bothering you!”

in his house and shop in dilingen, the layout is like this: the first floor is the shop, which carries a variety of medicaments, herbal remedies, and also has a setup for surgery. behind a hidden door is the stash of mandrake brew that only select customers know to request (regis only tells them about it if he has vetted them beforehand - i.e., known them well and known them well enough that he knows he will not start an addiction for them, i.e., he doesn’t sell to the young and stupid, or horribly depressed and afraid, but just those looking to enjoy life). the second floor is his house, which is decorated sparsely much like his cottage nearby fen carn. it’s nicer, with furnishings sourced from around the city, but is still humble. the attic is the setup for barber-surgery, but for birds - mostly corvids but other urban birds as well, that have injured themselves or are having other troubles. he welcomes them to roost and come to him with any problems they may be having.

angouleme

angouleme’s biological mother was young(ish) when she had her, which also pressured her into giving her up to relatives - she was an unmarried maiden, and being a noble, that is significant for making political alliances with other noble families. they pretended she was a virgin so she could remarry and bear children in marriage; however, because she and the other nobility of cintra were slaughtered, caught right in the crossfire of the nilfgaardian massacre of cintra, she didn’t survive into her first pregnancy, so angouleme has no bioligical half-siblings.

angouleme is trans and likes dressing femininely, but on account of her situation was never able to on the road, until she got to toussaint and had not only the safety but the finances to do so. somewhat based on canon that she was happy to get out of riding pants in lady of the lake, the narration calls her a “pretty girl”... it’s just nice to imagine her happy and with gender euphoria instead of dysphoria

regis is a good mentor and guardian to her in toussaint. it started as them both being up late in the kitchen and regis (as he does) giving advice, without suggesting any shame or judgement. after a while, angouleme trusted him enough to ask him for help when she got into trouble with local banditry. thens he invited him to help her on heists. he was hesitant at first but agreed, citing that she needed supervision for such activities. he brings a book to read while she does whatever she needs to do, but perhaps is more involved than he would admit - pointing out hidden safes and such in the darkness with his vision.

i didn’t do any for cahir or geralt because i feel like canon’s already gotten them enough?