#Because my parents every day keep telling me to stop taking hrt and also all medicines.

[fragglerockopinions]

.

[doberbutts]

Oh it's a year later but I've seen my sister's kids a few times last year and have an update.

Update one: boy am I bad at math and also remembering ages. My niece was born just *before* covid, not during.

I hadn't seen them since *just after* covid- it has been so long I wasn't sure if they'd remember me, and with HRT I look much different now.

In September I attended a family event in which the kids were present and they came running to me and gave me a big bear hug each. Again, that is fairly out of character for them both. They followed me around at the event and asked me many questions about the dogs and also asked if they could play with the dogs. When we sat down to eat they both briefly chose to scramble into my lap before deciding sitting in their own chairs was more comfortable. After dinner they asked to play with me- as many games as they could think of. Throwing a ball back and forth, "tennis" with a birdie and a couple toy rackets, chasing the dogs, dolls vs action figures, and more.

Notably, they did *not* interact with other extended family members, including the ones they live closer to and they see more often.

Tantrums were at an all time low because they were given many options for good behavior and then promptly rewarded for making good choices.

I'm not saying her kids are perfect, because they aren't. But I am saying that even years later it's such a visible difference. I gave them each a toy. They both- according to my sister- refused to let their toys out of their sight or even out of their hands for the next three weeks. My niece tried to sneak off with my chihuahua. My nephew told me as he sat on my lap that when he's an adult he wants to have a doberman just like my dog. Fenris licked all over his head and face and he laughed in delight and kept calling him back over to do it again. My niece has not stopped telling her mother that the only thing she wants for her birthday is a cute little white dog like Tater.

They see my aunt every day because she lives locally and helps take care of them. In fairness, yes, her personality is A Lot (so are theirs, they're just kids and don't understand that). But they remained at minimum 10 feet away from her and well out of her reach the entire event. My aunt means well- she has a big heart that is overflowing with affection and all she wants to do is pour love on "her babies". As a long time recipient of this love, it is also the way *I* show affection... and it is very grabby and very suffocating and the kids just aren't into it. I don't know that I've always liked her crushing hugs that just touch the "too tight kinda hurts" zone. I think I probably liked them less when I was a child myself. Being snagged into one as you're walking by isn't an uncommon occurance, and these kids aren't the world's biggest fans of physical affection they can see coming let alone that takes them by surprise.

I posted a few weeks ago when my would-be rapist died, killed by someone witnessing him attack yet another victim. Thankfully he never got far enough in the process to have done more than set off alarm bells- but it does make me wonder. All the times my consent was never even considered as a kid, and how reluctant I was to speak up when yet another adult was touching me in a way that made me uncomfortable and sort of miserable and kinda hurt. I wonder if 14 year old me would have kept my mouth shut for as long as I did, or if the first time his hand wandered from between my shoulder blades to something much lower I would have found the courage to say that I didn't like that.

What made me talk to my parents about it was when he was appearing in my bedroom without knocking, just staring at me as he caught me changing clothes after I got home from school. More than once. That, I knew, wasn't normal.

But I wonder if I would have known his hand drifting past my waist, his insistence on hugging me and pulling me into his lap, his constant need to hover in my personal space and keep his hands on me at all times, also wasn't normal. I wonder if I had been taught "it doesn't matter who they are, if you're uncomfortable you can tell them to stop and they should listen and if they don't they're a bad person and you should get away from them because they might hurt you".

I was a spanked child. I was forced to eat things that hurt my stomach and made me vomit. I would say I didn't like something and then be tricked into doing it anyway. I was shamed for refusing touch, and shamed for offering it. I had no control over anything I did until after I moved several states and chose homelessness over staying at my parents' house.

And I wonder if, had I had someone who advocated for me like I did for my niece, or if I had witnessed it like my nephew watching the exchange, if things could have been different. If my "almost" would have instead been "nipped in the bud and never occurred again".

I see a lot of posts saying "teach boys about consent".

While that is true, a lot of parents will do that and fail to see how their own actions are the problem.

If you've spanked him, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've forced him to sit on Santa's lap, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've forced him to give hugs and kisses to family members, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've grabbed him in order to force him to sit still, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've labeled him as "too sensitive" for not wanting to be touched, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've assumed he's okay with something because he technically allowed it even though he felt pressured, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you're only going to criticize his actions but not your own, it won't work.

[genderqueerdykes]

Hi I'm a trans man and I'm currently on HRT, and for the most part everyone is respectful of my name and pronouns and everything, but I keep noticing things. I live with my parents and they claim to be supportive, but I'll have conversations with them where I'll be encouraged not to correct people on my name or pronouns in public, or get told that I need to not let transphobic things I see or hear "ruin my day", we never really discuss when I'm feeling dysphoric or how that can affect my mood, sometimes even helping lead to autistic meltdowns that I have to deal with by myself. They get my name and pronouns right almost all the time now, but on multiple occasions when I've been in trouble or getting yelled at those things just stop carrying over and they never apologize for it. I feel like I get in a lot more trouble than them when I snap at or vent to them or try to call them out on things; I just...I feel like the general instruction I'm getting from them is that I'm not allowed to be upset.

I guess none of that was really a proper question so, am I allowed to be upset? Am I being too sensitive? Does being trans and autistic just inevitably mean I have to have thicker skin about this stuff?

im sorry that your parents are not giving you unconditional support in you being trans, that's very hard to deal with. it can be hard when people give you support sometimes and then withhold it other times. whenever someone shows you support and love when you are doing things "right" in their eyes but withholds it other times, or you feel as though you have to meet certain criteria in order to earn their love, support, attention, respect and affection, that is conditional love.

them telling you not to correct people in public is out of line- they are more concerned about how they think and feel than how you do. it is up to you to decide if you get to correct someone, not them. it is your identity, your safety, you are the one who chooses whether or not you deadname and fly stealth, or if you want to correct someone and be out. that is not their decision.

emotions do not occur in the logical forebrain, emotional thinking occurs in the back brain and is a survival mechanic that is completely outside of your rational (logical) thinking. you cannot control your emotions! you cannot react to something "too emotionally", emotions are not something you are under control of. you do not deserve to be made to feel like having emotions or being sensitive to people's mistreatment is a "bad" thing.

it sounds like your home environment is very confusing and i'm sorry to hear. that can cause a lot of cognitive dissonance, which is something that I struggle with, because my family also provides extremely conditional love. they say they support me being trans and will get my name and pronouns right once in a blue moon, but the way they behave is different.

i hope you're able to get some better support soon, and no, you are not out of line or being "too sensitive". you do not need to "grow a thicker skin". they are doing things that affect your mental health and you having the guts to stand up for yourself and say hey, i don't like this isn't you being "too sensitive". it's you being brave and them taking offense to you correcting their behavior. they are taking it personally and allowing that to affect their ego. that has nothing to do with you.

good luck, stay safe, try as hard as you can to remind yourself that you know who you are and you don't deserve to be told how to feel. you're allowed to feel whatever emotions crop up in you at any time. every person is entitled to their emotions. take care of yourself

[ablednt]

aren’t u that blog that constantly promotes self dx and bashes professional dx? like self dx is fine but it’s a last resort for people who can’t access prof dx.

I don't bash prof dx, first off. I fully understand and respect people who needed one for any reason.

However self diagnosis should never be treated like a backup for if you can't get a prof dx and here is why:

(Disclaimer: exact details vary by country making this not fully accurate in every country also I am not saying that treatment is bad or that therapists are inherently bad I am currently trying to seek therapy but any good therapist will treat you without a diagnosis if they are aware of the legal consequences of one)

You can and likely will lose your rights for your diagnoses. It's different by country but in the US if your diagnosed with things like DID, Autism, and probs a lot more you won't be allowed to go on HRT if you're trans. You may have your children taken away if you have any, you may be prevented from donating or receiving blood or organs, if you have abusive family members they may be able to put you under a conservatorship (what happened to Britney Spears) etc.

Literally the vast majority of psychologists do not study these disorders! Do you know what they do when they prof dx? THE SAME SHIT PPL WHO SELF DX DO. The dx process is exactly the same but with a professional dx you have someone who doesn't have that thing, who has no actual first hand experiences, listening to you talk about that thing and telling you whether or not they think you have it with literally no input from the community.

By saying every one has to try to be prof dxed before they're allowed to self dx you're saying that people of color should put up with blatant racism because there's so many documented biases.

Also the criteria that therapists use to diagnose is found in the dsm5, have you read it? I have, it says that autistic people cannot take care of themselves that they're prone to self harm bc of their autism and that they should have their needs ignored it uses all the labels that autistic people ask it doesn't. It says that even if an adult fits all the criteria of ADHD that if their parents arent available to say "yeah they sucked at school and were annoying" that you shouldn't diagnose them. The criteria for personality disorders, schizophrenia, and similar are all intentionally vague and/or exclusionary to one highly stereotyped set of symptoms. They literally admitted to trying to make the criteria for DID as specific and exclusive as possible because they wanted to remove it entirely because they believed people dxed with MPD before DID was coined did not deserve treatment.

The field of psychology started historically to abuse people, they were thrown into asylums and literally beaten and subjected to horrible conditions for any presumed mental illness. This actually has not changed very much at all, even in the last century a psychiatrist was caught physically abusing his patients and using the theory he made on DID to force them to keep coming to him for therapy. Psyche wards are notorious for mistreating patients there in every aspect and I've had psyche students tell me they believe that psychologists should have the right to physically harm patients. Children professionally dxed with autism are often physically harmed at school by their teachers, physical restraint is still used and it's killed multiple autistic students.

Children and teens in abusive homes have ableist parents often who may get violent or worsen the abuse or use a dx against them legally to trap them at home. Do you give them a pass for self dx? Except here's the thing you literally don't know who's being abused and who isn't and asking ppl that is really fucked up so you should be accepting all self dx to create a welcoming and safe space for them.

Physciatrists actually misdiagnose more than people mis-self-diagnose. Which isn't a reflection on the psychiatrist as much as the fact that people know their own experiences but they very often can't explain them. An example before I met someone who had OSDD1 and would explain it to me from first hand perspective no one would have ever suspected I had a dissociative disorder and was plural Because the only words I had for my experiences were "everything before a certain date literally wasn't me idk I'm just not the same person I was" "I'm a really good writer because I talk to characters in my head all day and they respond to things even when I'm not trying to think about them and they're real to me somehow idk lol" none of that sounds like DID but I was actually describing memory gaps from switches, internal communication and presence of fictives, etc. The best guest anyone had was depression and an overactive imagination. Self dxing is literally more accurate and accessible because people can look at the community and see the disorder explained from first hand experience.

Historically (but it's still happening in some cases) therapists would literally refuse treatment to anyone who talked to other people with their diagnosis. The case I'm thinking of is people with MPD (the dx that came before DID replaced it) would be refused therapy if they spoke to anyone else with MPD outside of therapy and even forbade them from going to support groups for survivors of incestual abuse because those groups advocated for the rights of people with MPD. To this day therapists often disrespect any and all ND/mentally ill communities because we happen to know our own literal lived experiences better than them.

Oh and prof dxes are often used against people legally so if anyone is in a minority group often targeted by police that potentially puts them in even more danger if they're arrested. Least we forget there's an entire field of study dedicated to criminalizing mental illness.

This isnt even half the reasons but I'm running out of spoons (I can source most of these things but I don't have the spoons so if anyone needs a source just ask)

I'm a firm believer that the need for prof dx not be pushed on everyone when it can have permanent and negative consequences and is no better than a self dx. If someone needs a diagnosis for access to medications, for financial support, or for any other legal reason then it very well may be worth the risk but they need to have the right to understand the consequences and make that decision. Imo it's professional dxes that should be not a last resort perse but it shouldn't even remotely be your first steps, your first steps are find the community and hear their actual lived experiences bc that will be so much clearer than anything a therapist who doesn't experience that thing can explain.

Also why do you care if people self dx? Why does their not having an Official Document saying they have their disorder bother you? I think it's deeply unsettling that you think everyone in the entire world needs YOUR approval to have something.

Jsyk the sentiment that self dx is lesser than prof dx is fostered by our capitalist nt society that's benefiting off of our abuse and systematic oppression so like you're literally helping us stay oppressed with this rhetoric.

If y'all really want to be progressive and anti-capitalist like most of this site does (and should) then that goes for disability justice too. Stop helping our own communities abuse and accept that not everyone has the luxury you apparently had to never be affected by your diagnosis ever.

[disaster-fruit]

could you tell us more about the brarg family au with the 3 babies and trans luci?

I definitely can! This au has been living rent free in my head since i started that drawing and I was actually sketching more stuff for the AU right before I got this ask so- I definitely can ramble more about it

This was supposed to be just a collection of a few hcs and now it’s a multi-pages word document the size of a fanfic so – Im really sorry.

I didn’t think a lot about their backstories tbh, though I have it in my mind that Luciano transition in his late teens and that he and martin either met after that or knew each other before luciano came out, lost all contact, and then met again after (and you can blame oxiosas fic for that yeah im not even subtle)

But I imagine them having some sort of meet cute and kinda progressing really fast in their relationship without realizing – yk, its just a fling, no big deal, yeah ive met his parents, yes I basically spend every weekend in his apartment, yeah I have a spare key now, ops I guess we’re adopting dogs and plants together- oh I think we’re married. Yeah. We’re married.

Ok but for real Luci does the proper proposal-with-a-ring-and-knelt-down-on-a-special-day thing and Martin is just bright red saying yes over and over again

It is Afonso (port) the first to be all WHERE ARE MY GRANDCHILDREN like… the night of their wedding.

They live in a house in a not too big city with two dogs, one cat, one parrot and all the birds that Luciano feeds and names that aren’t actually theirs. Still, they choose the house with two spare rooms because they always talked about having two kids.

In this AU they can buy a nice house and don’t have to worry about money and can raise kids like the world isn’t ending.

I think right after they got married they got in line for adoption. However, everything indicated that it would take a long long time so they started talking about the possibility of trying to have a biological kid. I think luci was the one to suggest it when he noticed martin had been thinking about it but not saying anything for a while.

Lots of boring doctor visits and confused doctors looking at luciano and trying to process it like the dumb cishets they are. Boring exams and all that, but everything is on track eventually, luci pauses his hrt and keeps his jockstrap on the drawer and they’re googling the best positions for fertility on those weird cishet sites and doing it like bunnies etc etc

Getting pregnant the natural way after years of testosterone is not the easiest thing in the world, so it takes a while. But eventually it works.

Both of them are kinda freaking out with this whole first pregnancy thing. Martin is the ultimate protective husband, and spends way too much time on the internet finding out what luciano can and can’t eat, what exercises he should do, and going to every single doctor visit. He’s very committed to it.

Luciano has to drink non-alcoholic beer and hates life. There’s a single teardrop shed every time he buys it. And drinks a lot of lemonade like it’s the same as caipirinha. Poor guy. Martin doesn’t help on that, life isn’t fair, he buys his own beer.

But he also has to drive absurd lengths to find the weirdest fruit or make the most hideous, blasphemous pizza toppings because Luciano is constantly craving absurd shit. But poor baby actually really NEEDS that chicken M&M pizza at 8am.

They’re super proud daddies though, and both their instagrams at this point are just baby belly pictures. Luci had top surgery on this au on my hc so also. Lots of shirtless pics. He looks like an old uncle with a beer belly and he’s PROUD. Just. Baby bellies all over.

Martin picks the entire baby layette. Because of course he does.

Their baby shower is a huge deal though. Their dads are there, Antonio brings an entire trunk filled with diapers and tells everyone how many tincho used to need when he was a baby, Afonso is cooking for everyone and talking about how he’s gonna be a grandfather (!!!). Iracema (pindorama) is scolding Luci about his bad habits while also quietly being a super proud grandma. Zola (angola) bought toys because she knows that’s what kids actually like, Samero (Mozão) keeps asking if they installed all the necessary security stuff in their house – we will, chill, we still have some months to go – Vera (Tomé) is teasing Simão (Timor) about him no longer being the family baby, Fatima (g.bissau) is another one who bought a huge amount of diapers, Rosinha (cabo verde) is taking pictures of everyone and everything, Sebas and Dani are discussing if the kid should speak Portuguese or Spanish, Maria brought a huge pink plushy as a gift, it’s quite a party.

Once they’re late in the pregnancy, Luciano mostly spends his time on Martin’s oversized t-shirts asking for foot rubs and not getting much sleep because the baby keeps moving. Martin on the other hand is a little nervous about being a dad, but absolutely loves feeling the little kicks and talking to the baby all the time, except when its 3am and he wants to sleep but Luci cant because of it so he just does his best to keep him company. He mostly ends up falling asleep on his chest though and doesn’t help much

I wrote all of this but I still don’t have a name for the girl lol Anyway, she’s finally born, and if martin was overprotective when Luciano was pregnant, he’s ten times more with his baby girl. Tbh theyre both kinda going crazy with this whole parenting thing, both are overprotective, tired, and have no idea what theyre doing.

Zola and Sebastian are the girl’s godparents. Sebastian isn’t very good with kids so when he takes care of his niece he either puts on a tv show and lets her eat whatever crap she wants, or relies on Daniel to do the actual taking care, since he is good with kids.

Luciano and Martin are very much neurotic first-timers and have all this schedule of what their girl can eat and when and when she has to sleep etc etc.

When Zola takes care of her, she just ignores it and does it her way. She helped raised Luci since he was a baby anyway, he survived just fine and even married and reproduced, she knows what to do better than both the dumbasses, and they never even find out.

Afonso on the other had follows everything when he’s with his granddaughter, determined to be a better grandfather than he was a father, and the baby loves him so he’s doing a good job.

They’re a very cute family yes yes

She grows up well and happy, a bit shy maybe but very smart and sweet, loves the dogs and her aunts and uncles and granddads (afonso more than antonio though)

By the way, Iracema is soft like butter with her granddaughter.

When she’s about four or five years old they start talking about having a second one, considering the age difference and all. So back to doctors, Luci stops the hrt again and they go back to trying, but again it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do it naturally after years of hrt.

But god listens to the prayers of such good catholic family, and right after they start thinking about a second child, they receive the news they will finally get to adopt a baby.

Luciano is the one to receive the news, he’s working at home when the social worker comes to tell him they can finally adopt. He’s extremely happy, he hugs the poor lady and is barely able to concentrate as she explains the paperwork that is left and the details of it because he can’t stop smiling.

He immediately texts martin saying something like “CALL ME RIGHT NOW WE NEED TO TALK” and it’s in happy caps but martin understands it wrong and thinks someone is dying or dead but then his phone is what dies so he gets home as fast as he can thinking all the worst scenarios just to find luciano jumping on him with a smile for ear to ear. It’s such a shock he takes a while to react but when he does you have two idiots so happy they can’t function.

It’s another girl, she has big brown eyes like her sister and it’s a few months old.

They quickly reassemble the crib and paint the second room to get everything ready in time to take her home, and the next week or so it’s nothing but all the family visiting to meet their new baby.

Since they managed to adopt, they decided to stop trying to have another kid. Luciano goes back to the doctor do some routine exams so that he can go back to testosterone and the doctor just awkwardly explains that, well, that won’t be exactly possible. Not for the next eight months, at least.

He’s quite shocked at that, and takes him a while to tell martin. They just got a new baby and do they even have space to raise three kids? Eventually it just escapes from him and martin is shocked as well, but ultimately both of them are just worried about their place being too small, and once they relax about that they can’t shut up about having another baby on the way to anyone.

Still, it’s not easy to manage, martin is just as worried as he was with their eldest, except that this time he’s simultaneously worried about their new baby and about Luci’s pregnancy. Poor dude needs a break asap. So he’s trying to do most of the work of caring for a little baby to spare luciano from the stress, while also taking care of him as well as he did the other time.

Luci is more chill about being pregnant, he’s done this before, he’s fine. He’s even a little too chill about it, as shown in the art, he still wants to carry their kid on his shoulder and having a few sips of martin’s beer is no big deal and honestly he’s fine, he can help with the baby, and Tincho just needs to relax and it will all be fine.

Again, poor tincho needs a break.

Some things don’t change though. Them being super proud daddies who do nothing but take pictures of their kids and Luci’s belly every chance they get. And they’re really happy and excited to have their house full and this big family.

Just a good cute family AU where nothing bad ever happens thank you very much.  Yet it took me almost 2k words to say it. I have no self control and I’m very sorry. However, if anyone has their own hcs to add about this whole au, I will be more than happy to hear and talk about this AU even more than I’ve already done.

[transistus]

Coming Out and Transitioning: My Parents’ Response

[Trigger Warning: Death mention, self harm mention]

Coming out is always something that is met with a degree of anxiety, but it is also the first step in being able to publicly transition for many people. It is a deeply personal thing and there is no set timeframe in which you have to inform others about your identity. However, it is also worth asking yourself ‘is it safe’ to tell this person about your identity, as you should never put yourself in a potentially dangerous situation.

Many people choose to come out to their parents, and the reception you can receive varies from person to person. Some people are accepted as their new identity straight away, then there are others who are less fortunate and face an uphill struggle to be accepted if at all.

For me, coming out to my parents was an uphill struggle. You see, I had always been a ’tomboy’ in my early years (a common theme among transmen) which was no issue to my parents at the time, but as I got older they started insisting that I present myself in a more feminine way. The first time they pushed for me to be more feminine was in my last two years of secondary school and to keep them happy I went along with it. At this time in my life I was aware that I was ‘different’ but I was yet to define how I was different. I didn’t know anything about transgender people at the time, so initially I believed the discomfort I felt was simply down to being a teenager which is a strange and uncomfortable time in a person’s life anyway.

The first step in my then unofficial transition was getting a haircut. As the last day of my time in secondary school drew near, I told my parents that I wanted to cut my hair short - they were less than thrilled about the idea. Before my transition I had hair that went past my bum that my mother loved, though for me it was a pain to deal with and I loathed having such long hair. I did manage to convince them to let me do it as part of a ‘fresh start’ but even after I had cut my hair short they would make numerous complaints about my decision to cut it for a while, often asking when I’d grow it out again.

The discomfort I felt about my identity persisted into my first year as an undergraduate at university in 2013. During this time, I began to overcorrect and overcompensate for the discomfort I felt, I began presenting and dressing in a more feminine way than I did in my last years of school in the hope that how I felt about myself would go away.

It didn’t.

Come the second year of university, after a discussion with my now fiancé who was the first to say that ‘you’re like a guy in a girl’s body', I finally found the word that best described me: transgender. It ticked all the boxes on how I felt and perceived myself and I began looking into taking HRT in the next few years. I stopped trying to be overly feminine, began wearing men’s clothes, and, for the time being, kept this revelation about myself quiet from my parents.

I wouldn’t come out to my parents until early 2016. I spoke to them individually, explaining how I felt, what being transgender was, the steps I would have to take to transition, and how I wanted to be called ‘Alastair’.

I received a less than warm reception.

My father couldn’t understand ‘why I wanted to be a boy’ and would regularly say things such as ‘you can’t be a boy, you’re a girl’, or ‘it’s just a phase’, he’d even send me links to anti-transgender articles now and again. All in all, he would come to criticise my decisions every step of the way for a while.

As for my mother, she blamed herself for me being transgender, frequently asking ‘is it something I did wrong?’ or ‘I must be a terrible mother’, occasionally she’d criticise me for transitioning saying things along the lines of how ‘I’d ruin my body’, but it wasn’t to the same relentless extent my father did. I would repeatedly inform them that my decision to transition wasn’t the result of something they’d ‘done wrong’ it was just who I was. I did my best to discuss being transgender with them as well as point them towards useful resources to no avail.

This lack of understanding and acceptance would continue for the next year for my mother and the next two years for my father.

I started testosterone in September 2017 shortly after beginning my Masters in Psychology under my new name. This was when my mother’s attitude changed, she saw how happy and confident starting HRT had made me (in her words: ‘after seeing you depressed and self-harming for so many years it’s nice to have my happy child back’) she began to ask more questions and slowly began to understand me. She started trying to get to grips with my name, pronouns, and referring to me as her son and I still have the first birthday card she gave me where she used my new name. To this day she remains my biggest supporter alongside my fiancé.

My father would prove more reluctant to accept me. To my mother’s credit, she also started talking to my father about my transition, explaining how my happiness comes first and that I hadn’t decided to transition on a whim one day because I felt like it, but my father would remain obstinate in his opinions until 2018. 

The last time my father criticised me was a week before top surgery in May 2018 where he insisted that I would ‘regret having surgery in a few years’ among other comments. However, after my surgery he started to keep his opinions to himself, and although he didn’t overtly support me it was better than being criticised regularly.

The real change came that December on Christmas Day. The change in his attitude was unexpected and it began with a card addressed to my new name. After Christmas, he informed his friends that I was now his son and he even started referring to me by name along with male pronouns (he would make mistakes every now and again but he was trying). To this day I’m not too sure what sparked the change in his behaviour towards me, but I couldn’t have been happier. 

I was looking forward to starting 2019 with this new found father-son relationship, but the joy was short lived.

My father was killed in an accident in January 2019. I was distraught and suffered from a dreadful bout of PTSD due to the nature of his death, but the one thing that brought me some comfort despite the horror of it all was that we didn’t part on a bad note. He had come to accept me as his son and had made tremendous progress in trying to understand and support me before his tragic death.

On that sombre note it’s time to conclude this post with a few final thoughts on coming out to your parents and transitioning. 

I wanted to write about my experience as an example that, in some cases (sadly, not all), your parents can change their way of thinking, they can come to respect you for who you are when given enough time. 

Obviously, you can never really know for sure how your parents will react to being informed of your new identity. Some parents accept you without question. Some may reject you being transgender entirely, brushing it off as a phase or being openly hostile. Some may come to terms with your transition faster than others. Some need to be educated, and others just need to process the changes you’re going through in their own way.

Whether or not you decide to come out to your parents is ultimately your decision to make. If they do accept you, that’s fantastic, but know that even if they don’t accept you, you will find people in your life who will, and if they’re slow to come to terms with it like my parents were, that’s fine too.

[how-to-survive-a-factory-tour]

How To Survive A Factory Tour - Chapter 18

A Sanders Sides / Charlie and the Chocolate Factory FanFiction

PREVIOUS

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Okay. Okay! Oooookay, Roman, it’s going to be fine, everything is going to be fine! I mean, at least you won’t suffocate from a lack of oxygen now! And if you do end up dying, it’ll be in a possibly slightly faster way? Or at least slightly more painless?

Hopefully?

So, um, funny story. I was brought to this room, the Caramel Carving Room, I think Wonka called it, and some Oompa Loompas began to chisel me out. So good news! My eyes are now free to see my surroundings, and my nose is free so I can breathe. The bad news is my mouth is still covered though so I am unable to scream in abject terror, like I feel the need to.

That links to the next bit of bad news: all the Oompa Loompas who were in this room, either working or helping me escape my caramel prison, are now dead. I am surrounded by doll-sized corpses, and I won’t be surprised if I join them soon..

I have no idea where they came from, but a bunch of snakes just slithered out from the darkness and started to attack the Oompa Loompas! The venomous ones bit, the constrictors strangled, and left me the only living non-snake being in the room. They slithered back into the shadows, leaving me here, alone and terrified. Also close to puking, which is something I do not want to happen, given as the caramel in the way means it’ll just be reflected back into my mouth. Which is gross.

What do I do? I can’t cry out for help, I’m just stuck!

I feel close to crying, literally seconds away. I’m doomed to either dying in minutes, or being a living statue for all eternity…

“Roman!” 

I look up. Virgil! Virgil’s just run in the door! Oh, my knight in pitch black and purple armour!

And Patton! Patton’s alive, and just behind Virgil, limping on crutches with a bloody bandage around his ankle.

But thank goodness they’re here! They can break me out, and then we can flee to safety-

Oh no. No no no no…!

I try as hard as I can to cry out and warn them, but I can’t. I scream as loud as I possibly can, but my words are indistinguishable. They’re just muffled cries.

“It’s okay, Ro, we’re gonna break you out,” Virgil reassures as he reaches me. It’s not me who’s in danger! Look behind and around yourself for Christ's sake! Can’t you see the Oompa Loompa corpses?! “Okay, how do we do this…”

“There’s a chisel there!” Patton points out. Virgil picks it up and starts breaking at the caramel at my neck to free my whole head. And while that’s good for me, so I can speak again, it’s not for them! Death is fast approaching! The reaper is watching, ready to take them away!

I don’t care if this isn’t the time for metaphors! I’m panicking!

Oh goodness, they’re getting close, dangerously so… Oh shit, oh fuck.

Virgil, either hurry up freeing my mouth or actually look around!

“Okay, one more break and your head should be freed and… There!”

Oh, thank god, I can speak! “SNAKES!”

Virgil and Patton both freeze. They share a glance, before both turning around. They’re facing away from me, so I can’t see their faces, but I can only assume their plastered with terror.

They finally see the corpses of the dead Oompa Loompas. Patton wretches as the sight of them. They also finally see the snakes slithering closer and closer.

“Oh fucking shit…” Virgil mumbles. “We’re gonna die, we are going to die.”

They both shuffle closer to me, backing as far from the snakes as they can. But the deadly vipers and pythons and boa constrictors and cobras and such keep advancing, coming at us from every side. We’re completely surrounded and screwed.

Patton’s started sobbing. Between his cries, he calls out to the door of the room. “LOGAN! I-I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’RE AWAKE TO HEAR ME, BUT… I LOVE YOU SO SO MUCH, AND I ALWAYS WILL! NEVER FORGET THAT!”

Virgil bites his lip, before muttering. “You’re supposed to, like, confess things before you die, right?”

I nod. “Yeah. Well, um, I don’t actually know about real life, but, uh, that’s definitely what usually happens in movie-”

“For some weird reason, in my head, I called Roman handsome and dashing when he was fighting the dragon!”

I look away from the snakes to Virgil. “You what?!”

“Shut up, I panicking for you, adrenaline was pumping through my veins, I was thinking irrationally! Just like I am now for saying that because I probably have more important confessions!”

Before I can respond, I’m interrupted by a hiss. The snakes are a metre away from us. This is it. They’re getting ready to strike. We’re so fucked dead… Bye Dad, bye Pa, bye Valerie, bye Patton, bye Logan, bye Virg-

CRASH!  

A large vat of caramel suddenly tips over and the rim slams into the ground. Liquid caramel flows out and covers the floor, and covers the snakes. Every single one of them. In mere seconds it hardens, and the snakes become frozen statues.

There’s a moment of silence between the three of us, all coming to terms with the fact we skimmed extremely close to death, but are still here. Are still safe. Virgil is the first to speak. “Can everyone, like, forget my confession?”

There’s the sound of footsteps. “I’d ask you to thank me for saving your asses, but I have some questions first.”

Patton’s eyes sparkle and a grin appears on his face. “LoLo!” He sprints over to Logan (well ‘sprints’ on his crutches, so it isn’t overly fast), throwing one of his arms around him and - I can only assume they confessed their feelings to each other earlier - presses a kiss to his lips. Logan’s face flushes a darker, more bluish purple, and then Patton pulls away. “You saved us!”

I, like Logan, now also have several questions. “Logan, what the heck happened?! You’re fat! And you have breasts?”

Logan sighs, leaning against the now empty caramel vat. “Yes, the matter of my size was one of my questions, along with where my binder is, and what on earth happened to Roman, and why are snakes trying to kill us?”

Binder? “Ooooh, you’re transgender! That’s why you’re so small and have a baby face!”

Logan glares at me. “Not all people born biologically female are shorter and ‘younger looking’.” He pauses. “But in my case, yes… Anyway, back to my questions?”

“Well… Lo, since it took so long to get you juiced, you had started to ripen by the time it started,” Patton explains. “It meant not all the juice could be gotten out. And there’s no other way, so… you’re stuck with it.”

Logan frowns, looking down at his stomach. He presses into it, I guess trying to come to terms with the news that he’d just have to get used to it.

Patton continues. “As for your binder...” He looks to Virgil, who reaches into his hoodie pocket and holds up a ripped chest binder.

Logan looks like he’s just been told a beloved pet just died. Purple tears are welling in his eyes. “...What?”

“I’m so sorry, Lo… but it’s okay! We could try and fix it?”

“Even if we could, it wouldn’t fit me anymore… I’ve definitely gone up a few sizes now…”

“Well…  you can get another?”

“No, I can’t... “ He shakes his head, taking a deep breath. “I, um… When I was younger, my parents raised me and my brother to fit the stereotypes and expectations of our genders. My dad made sure my brother was a sports and fitness fanatic. My mum tried to live vicariously through me, and tried to make me obsessed with my appearance and femininity and all those things… Child beauty pageants aren’t a thing in Britain, so mum would take me on ‘holidays’ to America and force me to take part in them. Surprise surprise, I hated it. I wanted to focus on school and learning, I preferred blue and black to the pinks my mum would make me wear, and I eventually realised when I was six, I wasn’t even a girl but a boy. And that made my parents mad. I knew it would, so I didn’t tell them. I asked my parents to let me get my hair cut short, telling them I just wanted to try out a new look. They weren’t really happy about it, but let me. However, Joan accidentally called me my chosen name in front of my parents one day, and I was outed.

“My parents struck up a deal for me: I could be a boy if, like my brother, I pursued sport. I refused, wanting to focus on school. So, they refused to let me transition. They neglect and ignore me in every way except for when it comes to policing my gender identity. Ever since I got my first binder, they’ve monitored everything I order, so I haven’t been able to buy a second binder to wear when I’m washing mine, or buy a packer. They made sure I never went to the doctor for consultations about surgery or starting HRT. When I turned sixteen and no longer needed parental permission to change my name, I was ecstatic, since they couldn’t stop me.

“But anyway, in short, I can’t get another binder. My parents won’t let me.” He shrugs, wiping his eyes.

Patton doesn't waste time in pulling the berry boy into an embrace. Logan hesitates, before burying his face into Patton’s shoulder and hugging him in return.

“I have an idea,” I speak up. “Us three could, like, chip in some money to order you a couple new binders and send them to you? Then your parents won’t be able to stop you getting them because you weren’t the one to order them, and they won’t know they’re coming.”

Logan looks up, shaking his head. “No, you don’t need to do that…”

“I think it’s a great idea!” Patton smiles. “We should probably get you some new clothes too. I mean, they’re looking just a liiiittle small now…” He gestures to Logan’s exposed belly.

“Oh, no, I should be alright on the clothes stuff… One of the things I did when I was younger in protest of my parents was purposefully put on weight, since my mum was obsessed with keeping me ‘perfect’. When I changed my name and started to take more steps to transition, I started going to the gym and doing exercises which were supposed to give you a more masculine build and lessen curves, so I ended up working off all the weight. I still have all my old clothes tucked away somewhere in my closet, so I can just wear those until I pick up new things myself.”

“Oh, okay. But we’re still getting you those binders!”

“Well, you two will,” Virgil corrects, having gone back to chiselling me out the caramel. “I’m still broke. Sorry, guys, I won’t be able to pitch in.”

“That’s alright, Virge,” Patton reassures. “We understand.”

Logan, having calmed down substantially already, looks over at me puzzled. “So, can someone tell me what happened to Roman?”

“I valiantly fought a dangerous, caramel-breathing dragon!”

“More like made the most idiotic decision on your life,” Virgil mutters as he frees my legs, so the only part of me left encased are my feet.

I smirk down at him. “Idiotic? I thought you said earlier it was dashing and that I was handsome?”

His face burns and he glares at the ground. “Shut up…”

Logan turns to Patton. “Did I miss something?”

“Virgil decided to confess his feelings for Roman in his ‘final moments’.”

Virgil turns to them, glaring. “I don’t have feelings for him! It was just the adrenaline of the moment!”

“Oh, hush, Virge,” I grin. “Just accept it. No one can resist Roman Prince.”

Virgil glares at me, while Logan mutters. “I certainly can,” causing Patton to chuckle. “Anyway, my last, and probably the most important question: why on earth are snakes trying to kill us all?!”

Patton looks to Virgil. “Virge said he had a hunch as to why…”

Virgil doesn’t respond, but his expression darkens. He continues to chip away at the last of the caramel while the rest of us wait for him to answer. He doesn’t until I’m fully free. He stands and straightens up.

“I think Ethan sent them. I think Ethan set up all the ‘accidents’ to kill you.”

I blink at him, stretching my legs and trying to pick off small leftover chunks of caramel stuck to my clothes. “Ethan? Seriously? Wouldn’t it make more sense if it was, like, Mr Wonka’s fault? I mean, this is his factory. How would Ethan set up accidents for us in a factory he’s never been in before?”

“I don’t know… But it can’t be Wonka. I mean, why would he kill a bunch of his own workers?” He gestures to the Oompa Loompa corpses around us again. “Not to mention, Ethan’s just… weird! I mean, Ethan - a guy with half a snake face and patches of scales all over his body - we caught whispering into some bushes in a language with a lot of sibilance, almost like parseltongue in Harry Potter, and then it just so happens that you are almost murdered by, of all things, snakes? It has to be connected!”

Logan raises an eyebrow. “We have no evidence. Even if this is somehow true, we have no way to prove so.”

“We don’t necessarily need it. If we confront him, he might panic and admit to it. It’s our best shot. I mean, I’d rather we expose him now before whatever murder plot he has worked up for me happens.”

“But what if it wasn’t him?” Patton asks. “He might get mad or upset at us for accusing him.”

“In all honesty, Pat, I don’t particularly give a shit about his feelings.” Virgil starts walking towards the door. “Come on. We have a snake to expose.”

I share a glance with Patton and Logan, before we all follow him. Virgil is looking between two buttons in the lift. After a moment, he mumbles “fuck it” before pressing one of them.

The doors close, and there’s a pause, before we zoom off, Patton and Logan leaning against each other, neither of them used to the ride yet.

“Okay, so, do we have any idea what Ethan’s motive could be? Just why he’s doing this to us?” I ask. “There’s gotta be a reason. Like, if it were my brother who did this, I’d just let it slide as ‘oh, no motive, he tries to cause chaos and attempt murder almost everywhere he goes’-”

“He what?”

“But Ethan seems different. He seems like a man with a plan. He doesn’t seem like he’d do this without a reason.”

“True…” Logan nods. “Has he said anything to any of you that could drop hints? Because I only really had one conversation between just the two of us, and there was nothing suspicious there.”

“We just talked about musicals,” I shrug.

“I didn’t really have a conversation with him,” Patton says.

“Me neither. I went to the bathroom right after Roman got taken away, so I wasn’t really alone with him to talk to him,” Virgil adds.

“So we have no clue what the motive is…” Logan sighs. “Awesome…”

There’s a jolt as the lift stops, and apparently I’m the only prepared for it as Patton and Logan almost fall into each other again - even though they’ve both confessed, they still get awkward and flustered about it. However, I’m immediately distracted from them by Virgil, who was also knocked over by the force of the abrupt stop, falling backwards. My reflexes kick in and I grab his hand, catching him before his hits the floor, and then pull him back up.

Which in turn means that we’re stood facing each other, faces millimetres apart.

I grin. “Did you just fall for me, Virgil Sanders?”

His face is burning red and sours, refusing to look me in the eyes. “Is this really the time for joke flirting?”

“Who said it was a joke?”

And now his face is burning even more. Then the lift ‘bing!’s, and he shoves me away, straightens his hoodie, and steps out of the lift. The rest of us regain our composure, before following him.

Time to put my affections aside and get the snake to confess his sins.

--------

Roman is now available for asks

NEXT

Taglist: @clone-number-1, @pumpkinminette, @i-have-n0-idea-what-im-d0ing, @jessicakennedy957, @why-should-i-tell-youu2, @dont-lose-urhead

[dekuinthelake]

Happy Birthday Bloodborne

Seeing as it’s the 5th year Bloodborne has graced this mess of a planet with it’s omnipotent light I figured write a little thing about how much the game means to me. I’m going to get fairly personal so if you don’t like that kinda thing feel free to skip.

The first time I beat BB I didn’t think much of it, honestly. I’d had a rather basic playthrough where I didn’t see pretty much any of the optional bosses or do any of the story. I did as Gehrman suggested and just hunted some beasts. I took a break from it for a while and didn’t return to it until my life started getting... Difficult. 

My parents a year prior had gone through a rather turbulent divorce. In the wake of this, my sister and her boyfriend moved in so we could all help my dad pay for his house if only just barely. At the time we all knew even with four of us we didn’t make the type of money to help make payments and the inevitability of him loosing the house was a constant and looming stress. Worse still, my sister only agreed to move in if she was added to the mortgage, meaning she could threaten to sell on a whim, a privilege which she started using to strong arm me and my dad in to behaving a certain way. Her boyfriend was verbally abusive towards everyone, but especially condescending to her. Tension grew between all four of us, but especially between me and the boyfriend. I could ask my sister if she wanted to go out to lunch and catch up and she’d respond, “Let me ask my BF”. His control over her became apparent and the wedges he was intentionally drawing between her and our family was impossible to ignore.

All the while I was working a 4AM shift at a Zoo in the winter and barely getting any daylight or human contact since I had to be in bed so early to wake up for the drive. I cleaned a mile of glass in the dark every day non stop, only to have it be dirtied the moment the park opened. No matter how hard I worked to keep the park as clean as I could, even to the point of putting on dust masks to knock down spider, the higher ups weren’t happy with our companies work. As our contract was rapidly coming to an end, rumors began to circulate that we might not have it renewed if things didn’t improve. Worse still, someone had been stealing from the supply closet. Supposedly only the managers knew the code, and this sparked massive distrust in the Zoo staff towards our department to the point keys were taken away and our lives were made harder by no longer having access to vital shortcuts around the park which made getting from place to place take even longer in the miles long local. 

This futility and rage sparked the most obsessive play through of a game I’ve had to date. Undeniably, these situations were hopeless and lonely, and Bloodborne is a game that understood exactly how I was feeling. The Hunt is, after all, an eternal nightmare. No matter how many beasts, kin, or humans you kill, it’s an unending loop of uncertainty and oppressive danger. The tenuous state of things in Yharnam was uncomfortably familiar. Only in the game, it was far easier to focus on the things I could control.

The weapon I wielded. The stats I chose to upgrade. Which path I wanted to explore. The fluid combat enabled more split second choices every second, helped in large part by a generous stamina bar. More so than Dark Souls, Bloodborne expects you, the player, to take charge. You either commit to an aggressive plan and kill the beasts, or you die. 

When I first started, I played extremely cautiously and likewise did not have a lot of success. On new game +1, however, I began to realize that vital element. Hesitate and you die. Commit entirely and live. The more I played, the more I meditated on the very nature of what this game was communicating to me. 

In my actual life, I hadn’t come out as trans yet and it was something I was viciously debating internally. Earlier that year I tried to commit suicide. I half came out in the hospital, telling the ICU nurses my name was Mike. But even in the psych ward I was terrified to speak to social workers and groups about those feelings... Being that I had 6 hours completely alone and in the dark, it gave me time to listen to a lot of media by trans people. I distinctly remember one video where a trans woman was describing what dysphoria feels like and openly sobbing. I was starting to understand the core of why I hated myself, my body, and my current situation so much. 

But I was afraid. Even after the epiphany that I wanted to come out, I had a lot of doubt on if I could afford HRT, if I could commit to it, and what people would think. I worried starting T and in turn second puberty would bring back my horrible temper that I had going through it the first time. When I say I had rage problem, that’s putting it mildly. I’ve punched people before just for touching me when I was younger, and with the situation between me and my sister’s boyfriend getting more tense by the day I was rightfully concerned it might erupt in to actual physical violence. 

And so... I continued to come home from being alone all to spend most of my time alone playing Bloodborne. It was a great game to keep my mind off of things because of how much focus it demands to play. Funny enough, once you get good at it, the beasts are also a great punching bag.

A lot can be said about how Blood Vials aren’t the best method of healing. Having to stop boss attempts because you need to go farm some red Estus isn’t great design. However, running around that first part of Yharnam with the beast claws just shredding through citizens like a wild animal is possibly the most cathartic thing in my life at the time. It made me feel powerful, unstoppable, and like I was in complete control. I knew exactly how to handle the big pats one by one, and eventually I got skilled enough to just run into that big mob by the tree and stop people anyway because of how good the audio queues are at letting you know when you gotta dodge. I spent hours in both this location AND Chalice Dungeons farming for Echoes and consumables to the point that controlling my character in Bloodborne feels as natural as walking. 

I started beating the game faster and faster. I was on +5 difficulty and working on the DLC by myself when things escalated... 

At this point, I knew staying at my dad’s house wouldn’t be possible. The verbal fights between me and my sister were getting more and more prevalent. More than that, I knew it was time to come out and I didn’t feel secure doing that in an environment that was actively hostile. The plan was to save up, move out with two friends... But moving out came far faster than I had anticipated. 

A few days after my birthday, we had a family meeting. I don’t remember what sparked it, but we all sat around and voiced our complaints with each other. When it was my turn to speak, I brought up the fact my sister’s boyfriend had been intentionally isolating her on top of in general just being a jackass to her. He’d make her get things for him, call her stupid when they played games... The works. I don’t remember what he said that sparked it, but I remember the feeling... A really familiar feeling I hadn’t had in years. My pulse thundered in my neck so hard I couldn’t hear anyone over it. I started yelling incoherent shit. My sister stood in front of him because I was aggressively stepping forward. It was that temper I thought I’d knocked coming back. If she hadn’t gotten in the way, I’m absolutely sure I would have pummeled that man. I hadn’t felt that way since I strangled a kid in school to the point he nearly passed out.

 It was then I knew I had to leave. By nature, I’m violent. I hate it. But the decisiveness which I’d slowly been building helped me find the courage to admit this.

I took off in my car and just hauled ass to the highway. I had a bloodborne CD I’d been playing on my way to and from work. It sounds silly, but larping I was just a hunter during those crushing morning shifts was helping me keep going. Sure it was hopeless, but I felt bad ass to keep trying. I needed to have an unbreaking will to deal with this dilemma. Having so recently made a second attempt to kill myself, I had this powerful urge that no matter what I couldn’t end up there again. So, I decided not to beat myself up about it and just accept that I had to move on and away from what little family I had left.   I remember not really thinking words. I listened to Gehrman’s music on repeat with the windows rolled down going 78 miles an hour and just... Screaming. Literally screaming as loud as I could in to the night. Over and over again until it hurt just to breathe. 

Even though I felt betrayed by the people I thought were closest to me there wasn’t anything I could do but endure. 

Eventually I arrived my current roommate’s parent’s place where they were living at the time. I told her and her husband what happened. We went to the store for something. I got a call from my dad saying my sister was threatening to move out and apparently had yelled at him for not keeping me in line despite the fact at one point he’d physically gotten up and started yelling in my face to calm down. That was it. I asked my friend’s parents if I could move in temporarily and... That was that. 

The next day we gathered up all my things. I had to leave my dogs which was possibly the most agonizing part. 

But that night? I beat the orphan of Kos by myself on +5 on my computer monitor plugged in the wall and set on a box. Doing that was this weird extreme elation. It’s like I’d defeated two massively difficult, seemingly impossible tasks in one day. I’m glad I had help with the moving, though. Unlike Kos, that would have been impossible alone haha.

That weekend passed and I went back to work at the Zoo as normal. After I finished my shift, however, every employee in my company was called to a meeting. This was it. We all knew what was coming. We were to be laid off in December, giving us 3 months to find new work or apply to the company that was taking over the contract. 

In the wake of this news, moral plummeted. No one really tried that hard. I was coming in high to work every day and drinking with a coworker during our shift while we tired our best to continue work. That last month I worked there was a weird drug addled haze of extreme emotions mixed with ignoring them in favor of listening to VaatiVidya lore breakdowns of Bloodborne. 

I was going home and spending hours on art inspired by the general vibe of the game and my impossible to digest feelings. I’d lost my job, home, and family. I don’t know if I would have survived without both Bloodborne and my art as an outlet.

In the following months, I had gotten to New Game +7 and started recording myself trying to kill bosses without healing. Even though to this day no one watches these attempts but me, making them was frankly vital to keeping me distracted and focused on something I could control. 

There was a time where I didn’t think Ludwig +1 was beatable but... Here I am two years later happily having 100% Bloodborne and beaten every boss on +7, most of them without even needing to heal. 

The biggest lesson I took away from this game was persistence and decisiveness. The Souls series in general made me realize something huge that to this day has helped me fight my depression back. I’m a stubborn fuck who will grind and grind and grind until I finally achieve victory.

Fight for the progress you want to make. Things seem hopeless a lot, but you have to keep going. With effort, you can change anything you want to in your life.

Two years later, I’ve been doing HRT for 1 year and 3 months. I just had top surgery done. I’m working a job I like that’s got normal daytime hours and pays more than any work I’ve ever had with benefits. I don’t think I would have had the tenacity to stick to these things without realizing a fundamental aspect about my personality thanks to the help of Bloodborne specifically. 

I can endure, learn, grow, adapt. 

Thank you, Fromsoft. I hope this conveys a shred of what this dumb little game means to me. I needed Bloodborne so much when I moved out. I’m so glad it exists.

[loghainmactir]

hewwo! i was wondering if u could pls give me some advice on starting my transition? ive been so scared to start bc of family and costs but ive decided to just. do it. yknow? like if i don't ill probably die lol. u look amazing and rly confident in yourself in all ur selfies and one day i wanna be Like That ✌️❤️

hi! ok, so first of all: yeah, i absolutely can give u advice, and second of all: i remember feeling exactly like you did. it literally wasn’t that long ago, either, it was like. 2013/14/15 (i can’t remember, time is fake, whatever lmao!). third of all: bless u yr so sweet. i still have a lotta issues with confidence (i doubt myself, my talent and what i can do literally hourly), but honestly? i love my body right now. it’s a good, genderless body, goddamnit.

long, long post ahead bc i’m trying to think of things i did and good god please take it with a grain of salt because a lot of this is just me ranting about things i wish I’D done in my own position. i’m also coming from a place where HRT and surgeries AREN’T free, so that’s also A Thing. everyone’s experience is different.

transitioning (particularly medically) really super fuckin varies country by country (and honestly probably even state by state, age by age and fuckin gender by gender because cis people won’t let us fucking BE goddamn): i don’t know where you are, so my only tips there r: find a trans friendly doctor/endo (i was kinda forced to go through a hospital bc That Was How It Was here in good ol’ Australia), and one people wholeheartedly recommend, if you wanna go that route.

my first point is make sure you find safe spaces in every goddamn aspect of your transition. medically, socially, physically. if you think your doctor is refusing you treatment or is discriminating against you, you NEED to ditch that doctor. if your friends and family are really verbally or physically violent against LGBT folks, you NEED to leave that space if you can (or not come out and wait until you can leave. seriously. i’m kinda lucky– my grandma was verbally violent against LGBT folks, and initially my mum was skepitcal, but i convinced them both to go to a group for LGBT+ parents and friends and they slowly turned around). get yourself friends, get yourself allies.

i cannot stress that enough. my first doctor refused to send my referral letter to the royal children’s hospital gender clinic because even tho he presented as a “nice” guy, he believed that because this was “”””out of the blue”””” for me, he figured he’d just Not Send It (and tried to tell me that a lotta kids there didn’t actually helpo, lol). so there i was, a young 15-16 year old alister, waiting like 2-3 months for something that didn’t even get fucking sent.

join trans groups on facebook and in real life. seriously, they’re a godsend; there’s buy-and-sells, advice posts, encouragement posts. ESPECIALLY local ones. most of them on facebook are private, meaning no one can see if you’re posting/in the group, and it’s easy to check if they’re not. these fb pages + local groups are good ways to find trans friendly spaces and doctors. i found my current doctor, who’s actually one of the very few doctors who knows what the fuck he’s on about re: trans people, through a real life trans group. they were like “oh, you should see x”, and even though he’s about 30-40 minutes away from me, he’s brilliant and honestly saved my life.

along those lines: figure out what you want from your transition, and then realize & accept that this may change (and it also may not change!). very early on, i was super insistent that i wanted phalloplasty and to wear packers, and now i couldn’t care less. at first, i identified as agender, and then as a trans guy/ftm, and now i identify as a Black Hole (i’m kidding, don’t @ me). like, a lotta people DON’T change their minds. but i did, some people do, and it shouldn’t be anyone’s business but your own what you want to do with your body 

(sidenote: this also goes for detransitioning or stopping medical transition but continuing to socially transition/present differently. literally, it’s fine. it’s your body. fuck anyone who says otherwise.)

again: FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE.

your body is literally your body. do NOT let anyone tell you what to do with it or who you are. i had people very early on scream at me (legitimately scream and throw me out of home, thanks grandma), tell me i wasn’t actually trans, and harrass me for this shit: but frankly, if i’d put myself back in the closet, i wouldn’t be alive right now. i would’ve killed myself years ago, and i wish i wasn’t kidding. if it’s safe, you need to stand up for your own body and your rights and put yourself somewhere that will allow you to follow through. you need to keep going and keep living.

my only other two pieces of advice are “patience, baby”– like, for real, every single part of transition takes time. this varies from where you are and who’s supporting you, but it’s generally true. it takes time for people to accept new names and pronouns 

(lotta people get furious about this, and i used to be one of those people, but hindsight’s a bitch and you gotta realize that… like, it’s hard for some cis people. you gotta give them a little bit of wiggle room, especially if they’ve never ever met a trans person before. it’s about reminders, reminders, reminders: which is SO hard if you’re not safe/don’t have the confidence. there IS a flip side to this though: if chad and stacey have known your new pronouns for months, now, and they keep “””slipping””” up, they’re not slipping up, honey. they’re doing it on purpose. kick their teeth in i’m kidding please don’t do this you know what i mean.)

it takes time for HRT to kick in. it takes time to gather a Look™ of your own you like, it takes time to build confidence to even tell people, it takes time to save up money for surgeries and it just… takes time. sometimes because it’s a naturally slow process, sometimes because cis people are Cis People and like to gatekeep. i remember being very young in my transition, sitting in the car after one of my appointments with the afformentioned shithead doctor bawling my eyes out because he’d told me i wouldn’t be able to access t for x amount of time and it was bullshit. this year i’ll be 2 years on t. wild, huh? there’s a lot of us and not equal amounts of resources (ESPECIALLY in public systems) depending on where you are, so you gotta be prepared to WAIT.

i’ll tell you what super helped me through those years: hyping myself up for other things! i still have the ticket from my first twenty one pilots show. that show meant SO much to me. i cried all through it, because waiting for that show kept my mind off of the wait for my royal children’s appointments (and even waiting to go up to melbourne bc my mum and i would go and get kebabs was a good thing to focus on!). keep things that aren’t trans related on hand (seriously i struggled with this because dysphoria and shit is fucking hard!! it’s easy to say but really fucking hard to put into practice).

(one day i’m gonna tell tyler and josh just how much they saved my goddamn life. i know they hear it weekly, but i will.)

my other thing is that uh. it won’t solve all your problems especially if you’ve got mental illnesses. this is a really fuckin depressing thing i had to drill into my brain, but it really helped. transitioning solved SO many of my issues. i no longer have back issues (thanks, like, literal kilo titties, lmao), i no longer have sore ribs and i can breathe and wear shirts. i lost so much weight (and am kinda gaining it back, but whatever). i no longer have anxiety about whether people can tell i’m binding– which is WILD because i used to stress the fuck out about it to the point where i never went out anywhere. i used to sit on the bus wondering if the person next to me could tell i had titties. now it literally doesn’t even register.

my issues now stem from PTSD, depression, BPD and ADHD. how do you fix this? you don’t. but what HAS helped is finding a therapist who won’t pressure you into talking about trans shit. lemme tell you: this shit gets exhausting after the fifth time of “oh i googled ‘can you become a boy’ when i was, like, nine” (this is my go to story because this memory is so vivid). of course, there’s gonna be moments where you HAVE to: my therapist recently actively asked me to briefly run through it for my PTSD report. but otherwise we literally haven’t talked about it and that is a GODSEND (because i don’t need it. if you need it, that’s good, too!). having a therapist that you can just wordvomit at wrt anything is literally the best thing and can be super helpful– seriously, there were a few trans-related sessions where i just snarled about the bullshit gatekeeping and the bastard i had to see for my therapist letter (oooh, every time i think abt the fact that it was something like $400-500 for two fucking sessions i get so mad lol), but outta 14 it’s really only like 2-3 of them.

but yeah. that’s it. i dunno, these are things that i’ve learnt and sorta… like to think as helpful for myself. of course, this could be different for you: you’re not me, you’re entirely different, in no doubt an entirely different country, social, financial, mental state. i was FUCKED UP when i first came out. i didn’t know that then, but i do now. i spent a lotta time by myself and that’s not healthy, so i really encourage you to reach out to our community, local and worldly, because oh my god, we’re here for you. we are SO here for you.

[prouddly-me]

My Name Is Gavin: My Full Pre-Transition Story

So, My story begins as a 11/12 year old. That’s when I can remember the most, so that’s what I’ll talk about. I remember that I went to the boys and girls club every day with my little brother in the summer. I had a little group of friends, and they were all boys. This was one of the first distinct times I can remember the feeling of not really being...  a girl, the way I was “supposed” to be. I never aligned myself with feminine things. And no, gender roles are something I no longer care about or really adhere to, but as a child like that, it was my first indicator. I had long hair down to the small of my back and it was one of the biggest sources of my insecurities. At the time I still hadn’t developed mammary tissue so I wasn’t uncomfortable because of that yet. 

As I got a little older, into the 7th grade, I had been begging my parents to let me cut my hair, but my mother was adamant that I keep growing mine. She always cited that she had been traumatized by being forced to cut all of her hair off once as a child. I did later learn that she had gotten lice and their family was too poor to afford treatment for her long hair so they cut it off. While I understand how it could be upsetting, she should not have projected that onto me. Finally though, fate struck and I got lice myself, funnily enough, and I was finally allowed to cut my hair off. By this time I had more body dysphoria that I did not understand, so I had been wearing baggy clothes and long sleeves constantly to try and hide my increasingly feminine body.

It wasn’t much but it was anything. It wasn’t as bad and was more manageable and easier to ignore. While of course it was still upsettingly long, I could live with it. As I grew more, in the 8th grade I started to try and force myself to be more feminine to no avail. I still hated it and still revolted against it as much as I could. I kept my hair as short as my mother would allow me to keep it, and I tried my hardest to keep my clothing androgynous. I never ever wore skirts or dresses because they made me feel abhorrent. I hated it more than anything so I avoided it. My mother hated this. Any time I was forced to wear a dress (easter, other big things) my mother would always emphasize how much she loved it when I wore those things and how beautiful I was. I never felt the same. I felt ugly and disgusting and wrong moreover. 

But my parents pushed for me to be feminine. My mother wanted me to wear makeup, which did develop into something I enjoy greatly, and now, I am a cosmetologist and I actually have a client I regularly do makeup on, including pride makeup. But this push by my parents to pursue more feminine interests didn’t really pan out other than me starting to like makeup. I have a hard time wearing it because I don’t feel like I pass when I wear makeup, but I love it deeply to this day. 

My first distinctly short haircut came when my dad’s friend who happened to be a hair stylist told him he wanted to color and cut my hair. It was the first step in a long line of getting myself to where I wanted to be. He gave me some blonde highlights and cut it shorter. Now, I’m not such a fan of the cut on me, but back then it was a huge victory for me. Something felt better. Something was better. By this time I believe I was a freshman in high school, and I had begun using a binder that was unsafe, similar to what’s pictured below. It hurt a lot to wear but it made me feel better when I wore it. I was not binding every day due to fear that my parents would be angry at me. At this time I identified as genderfluid and had not yet chosen a new name. 

With that haircut and my first binder though I started to feel more comfortable. By the beginning of my sophomore year, I now realized who I was and began identifying as a transgender male instead of genderfluid. Now, I don’t mean to say that genderfluid people just don’t know, just so that no one feels that way. In my personal journey, I misidentified myself because I didn’t really understand the way I felt yet. And that’s not bad. people question their identities all the time, and if that’s how you feel as well, I hope you become more secure. However, at this time, my parents actually pushed me to grow my hair back out. They didn’t say it outright but they would never take me to get my hair cut, so it was getting... out of control and my image was all wrong to me. At this time, I finally settled on a name that I would later change. I was Chase Jason. I changed it to Elliott in my senior year of high school to keep my original initials.

Finally, it took my mother telling me she hated my ugly combover and starting an argument with me to get a really, really good haircut that I loved and that made me feel more like me again. We went to my dad’s friend, and I told him exactly what I wanted. Sadly.. he went a little longer, because he wanted to avoid upsetting my parents. I understand the sentiment but now that I myself am a hair stylist, I do think that I was more than old enough to decide my own haircut. It was enough though. I liked it and I kept it a similar style for a long time.

When I started to really be happy with my appearance it wasn’t until my junior year when I went to see a friend of mine at her beauty school, which I now attend as well and will be graduating from in october. I told her my identity and that I wanted an androgynous look that my parents couldn’t object to, but while preserving my masculinity. She colored it how I wanted it and cut it so that I looked amazing. I hate to really focus on the way my hair looked through the years but I feel like that really marked my progress in my transition. By this time I was binding semi regularly with yet another unsafe binder but by the middle of this year I would get my first safe binder. 

At the end of my junior year I had silver hair, bound safely, and I felt so much happier with myself. I was out to my friends and had been for quite some time, and I didn’t question myself anymore. It felt so good to understand myself and be happy about it. Of course, I wasn’t out to my parents yet, and I was terrified to come out to them. That fact to this day is saddening, but is by no means my fault. My senior year was fantastic though, I got my first tattoos and I finally felt comfortable and happy and empowered in my body. The summer after I graduated, I felt like I looked the most masculine I ever could. While I was visiting my best friend to see a concert with them, They and I took this picture and to this day the way I looked makes me feel so, so happy.

From there it was easy going, appearance wise. The big struggle for me now was to get onto HRT and figure out my top surgery. However when I started college it was back to unsafe binding when I shrunk my underworks binder during a period of dysphoria where I really just hated my body and needed to change it. Though I do feel like college was the time for my absolute best looks that made me feel the most confident, I was stuck in a pretty eternal pit of... I don’t think I’ll ever make it and transition, and it got really, really hard for me.

I even took on a more masculine job as an auto tech at an oil change place to make myself feel more valid. I didn’t feel good. It was really rough. Around this time was when I started to bind less and less. I tried to wear sports bras or wear baggy clothes instead because I was starting to hurt my ribs. Like I mentioned in my introduction post to this blog, I capped off at a 38D, so I have a good bit to bind. I also... had a lot of issues with people, including a friend of mine I no longer speak to as of three year ago, who would comment on my chest. They would tell me that it was a shame I wanted to cut them off because they were so big and nice. It made me hate myself so much. It made me feel disgusting and like a freak and like I would never pass in a million years. I switched back to my really unsafe binder because it felt like I passed much more in it. Once I switched back to safe binding near the time I dropped out of college though, I realized it was a better option the entire time. Around this time was when I picked my current name, which is the name I plan to legally change my name to: Gavin Alexander.

 Now we bring ourselves to last year, when I stopped binding regularly because of the pain I was in because of it. However, last year was also when I came out to my parents. Technically I came out in 2016. I did it on new years eve, because I knew my parents would be drinking and they were both milder people when they drank. So, I came out. My father has... tried. He offered to help me, and he told me that he accepts and loves me. He does not call me by my chosen name and refers to me as his daughter, but I do not hold it against him because I know he tries. My mother however, maliciously calls me the wrong name, because she feels like “I’m your mother, I get to pick your name.” so she refers to me as James when she really feels like it. But rarely. She calls me my dead name more often. My brother however, when I came out to him this most recent winter after my parent’s divorce, when he and I started to get along better, told me he had known, and that he was waiting for me to tell him. He told me he had never called me by my name and that calling me anything but the nickname he’d called me since he learned to talk would be hard. He still calls me “sis” however, he told me now he wants it to be a play on “cis” to make me feel better. I like the effort and how much he’s trying, so I like it. He also calls me bro a lot, and it’s great. Last year was also when I began to embrace more “feminine” things like makeup and the color pink again, and when I began beauty school.

And this brings us to close to present day and present day. In school I have been met with a lot of support by my classmates and friends, and I don’t have a single friend that refuses to call me Gavin. It feels amazing. I’m happier and calmer now, and last year was also when I began to seriously research and pursue HRT on my own. I struggled a lot of last and this year because I was trying to figure out a way to go through my doctor. However, my family doctor is through a catholic organization so I was trying to figure out how to switch healthcare providers. This never panned out. I even tried asking my psychiatrist to help me and give me a referral but a specialist can’t refer to a specialist. She wanted to help me more but she couldn’t. I don’t hold it against her. 

This year, I’ve been working on taking care of myself better, and I haven’t been binding in order to let my ribs heal from the damage of years of unsafe binding to make sure that later when I work towards top surgery I don’t have complications. Now though I have my initial appointment for HRT at Planned Parenthood. I’ll be updating you all and doing voice and facial comparisons as well as documenting other changes and my experience with PP. Moving forward I can tell myself that It’s been me who had my own back and me who got me through this. I can’t wait to see what the future holds, and how much better things will get. 

[rejectedusername-trashfics]

One Shot Everything’s Going to be Alright

Summary: Ryan wasn’t born what he wanted to be. But he has a wonderful boyfriend with the Fake AH Crew to support him. Then, he’s not careful and he and his boyfriend have to deal with the consequence for the rest their lives. Maybe, the consequence won’t turn out to be bad at all.

Word Count: 9,064

Pairing: Gavin/Ryan

AO3

The Vagabond was the most terrifying man in Los Santos. He had a lot of pent up anger and distaste for the world, and he thought being a killer for hire, a mercenary, would be a productive way to get it out of his system. He was very angry with the world mostly because he was not born into the right body. The Vagabond, James Ryan Haywood, had actually been born Jane Ryley Haywood.

When he had tried to come out to his parents as a boy, they brushed him off, claiming that it was just a tomboy phase. He ran away from his home in Georgia and off to Los Santos after that. He had partnered up with another girl he met in Los Santos, who went by Dollface, and worked with her for quite a few years. A time went on, Ryan’s name as the Vagabond grew. Eventually, the girl joined an all-girl gang, called the Los Santos Sirens, and Ryan and his partner separated. The two still kept in touch, anyway.

Even with the Vagabond working solo, the notoriety and fear that came with the reputation he’d built continued to grow. Eventually, jobs offered by the infamous Fake AH Crew landed on his desk. He was honored to be getting bigger jobs like this. After about three jobs with the crew, he was asked to join them full time. He gladly accepted, he thought maybe this crew could be the family he always should have had. Though, he never planned to come out as trans to them, hoping they would only ever know him as Ryan.

Th crew offered him a room in their penthouse, which he gladly accepted. He sold off his apartment so he could start HRT. He had begun to grow more facial hair and have more muscle definition. His more defined masculine looks caught the attention of the Golden Boy, Gavin Free. Gavin had no idea what Ryan spent his heist money on, so he began to treat Ryan. That led to the two of them having feeling for each other

The two of them eventually started dating and there was a sense of harmony throughout the penthouse, considering everyone saw it coming. The only thing that was slightly confusing about the relationship to Gavin was that Ryan refused to get physically intimate with him nor would he ever let him see him naked. Gavin assumed that was because Ryan was asexual or something. Gavin learned the real reason when he walked in on Ryan changing.

He saw Ryan with a binder on. Ryan saw Gavin and quickly put his shirt back on and tried to run. Gavin locked the door, not allowing him run. He quickly assured him that his physical parts don’t change the fact that he still sees him as Ryan. Ryan blinked in surprise, smiled, and the encounter finally turned intimate, after that. Thus, the two of them began to have a very active sex life.

Gavin was with Ryan for every step of his transition after that, as well. He would go pick up his HRT and feminine supplies, until Ryan stopped needing them. He took care of him when he was recovering from Top surgery. He had even started looking into who the best surgeon for Bottom surgery in the country was, for Ryan. Everything was going well, until the crew got super busy and Ryan missed his monthly HRT shot…

 8 WEEKS

 After Ryan had missed his HRT, he decided to wait until after he got his period again before he started it back up. When it didn’t come, at first, he assumed it was because of leftover hormones in his system. Then, he started to constantly feel nauseous. This caused irrational paranoia to set in. One May afternoon, Ryan decided to test if his irrational paranoia was actually correct.

He sat patiently on the toilet, waiting for the results of his third pregnancy test. The first two had come back positive, be he wasn’t going to believe them until he had three tests to tell him that he actually was pregnant.

The third one finally gave him a positive result. He gasped, he didn’t think that something like this would ever happen to him. He dropped his head in his hands and sighed, he wasn’t quite sure what to do. He had always wanted kids one day, but had had given up on that when he decided to become a mercenary and started HRT.

Suddenly, he heard a knocking on the bathroom door. “RYAN,” Lindsay’s voice called out. “YOU ALMOST DONE IN THERE? CAUSE I HAVE TO PEE.”

Ryan quickly grabbed the pregnancy tests and shoved them in his pocket. He got up and unlocked the bathroom door. “Sorry,” he apologized.

“It’s okay, but can you not block the bathroom so I can use it?”

Ryan nodded and began to shuffle out of the way. “Do you know where Gavin is?”

“Lads are playing Hitman in the living room,” Lindsay quickly replied as she slammed the bathroom door shut.

Ryan took a deep breath and sighed, he knew what he had to do next. He walked over to the living room to see the lads trying to outdo each other with creative assassinations in the game. He tapped Gavin in the shoulder. “Gavin, we need to talk,” he started.

“Not right now,” Gavin quickly replied, not looking up from the TV screen.

“Or you could do it right now,” Michael popped in.

“Distracting Gavin would make things easier for us,” Jeremy added.

“I think I found out why I’ve been nauseous lately,” Ryan continued, ignoring everyone.

“Yeah, Gavin’s ugly face,” Michael joked.

“Oh, come off it,” Gavin retorted. “What actually is it, love?”

“It’s something I need to tell you in private,” Ryan finished, emphasizing the need to do this privately.

“Can it wait until after this?”

Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed. “No,” he answered as he picked Gavin up off of the couch, slung him over his shoulder, and marched out and to their room. Once he got there, he set Gavin down and closed the door.

“RYAN, WHAT THE HELL?!” Gavin angrily demanded.

Ryan sighed, this was the moment of truth. “You know I missed my HRT back in February, right?” he asked.

“Yah, and you were gonna wait until you got your period again. I know this, already!”

“But, it never came.”

“Probably cause leftover hormones.

“I think I know what my nausea is,” Ryan said, to get back to the point.

“Right, but I don’t see what that has to do with,”

“It’s morning sickness!” he finally spat out.

Gavin raised eyebrows. “Ryan, you’re being irrationally paranoi-,” Ryan grabbed the positive pregnancy tests out of his jacket and threw them at Gavin. One of them hit him in the face and fell into his lap. He saw that it was a pregnancy test and gagged, “Oh my god, you hit me with sticks you peed on!”

“Look closer at them,”’ Ryan demanded.

Gavin forced himself to stop gagging so he could take a closer look. He looked closer at the one that fell on his lap and saw that it was positive. “Ryan,” then he looked back up at him, “oh Ryan, what are you going to do?” he asked.

“What am I going to do? What are we going to do?! Cause I sure as fuck ain’t going through this, alone.”

Gavin looked down and sighed. “Right.”

“So, what do you think, Gavin?”

Gavin looked back up and sighed. “Well, ever since Michael and Lindsay had their little Sophie, I had been wanting a little sprog of my own. But since you started your,”

“Then we keep it,” Ryan interrupted.

“Ryan,”

“Look, I always wanted a biological kid, myself. I gave up on that idea for the same reasons as you. Now, this could be our only shot at this, so I’m not giving it up. I can go back to my transition afterwards.”

Gavin’s face lit up with excitement. “Ryan, we’re going to be parents!” he exclaimed as he got up and rushed over to Ryan to give him a kiss. He stopped as he pulled Ryan into an embrace, “wait, but this means you’re gonna have to come out to the crew,” he pointed out.

“We’ll,” Ryan stopped and sighed, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Gavin nodded. “Oh, Ryan,” he cooed as he pulled Ryan into a deep kiss. This was going to be an interesting rest of the year, but they knew it was going to be alright.

 14 WEEKS

 Things had begun to change for Ryan in ways. Raging hormones had made Ryan much more irritable. Gavin was afraid at first, but mood swings immediately flipped the emotion switch and Ryan would apologize for his poor behavior. Ryan had also become constantly tired. Constant exhaustion and irritability made the interrogations Ryan conducted much more sinister and hostile.

A more noticeable change was Ryan’s cravings. He had desired odd combinations such as pickles and ice cream. Ryan had hated pickles before the pregnancy, but couldn’t get enough of them, now. Though even with all the other changes, he still had his thing for diet coke. Gavin had to step in after reading that caffeine was bad during pregnancy. Ryan reluctantly agreed to switch to caffeine-free diet coke for the time being.

The most noticeable change was that Ryan started to gain some pudge around his stomach. When Gavin pointed this out and went to pat Ryan’s belly, his hand got smacked away. He was self-conscious about anyone recognizing his pregnancy. He already wore looser shirts so he could hide it, he still wasn’t ready for the crew to know about it.

The only other crew member who knew about Ryan’s pregnancy was Lindsay. Ryan had already come out to Lindsay as FTM trans a while ago, and the only reason he told her that he was pregnant, was because she had found empty pregnancy test boxes in the bathroom that weren’t hers. She promised Ryan that she wouldn’t tell anyone.

An afternoon in early June, was when Ryan suggested that he and Gavin go out to meet his old friend, his first partner in crime in Los Santos. They planned on asking her to be their child’s godparent since Ryan wasn’t comfortable sharing his pregnancy with Geoff. He and Gavin were walking to the door when Ryan stopped and took a whiff of the air and smelled something divine.

“Love?” Gavin asked to try and get Ryan’s attention.

“What is that?” Ryan asked as he turned towards the smell. He saw Michael and Jeremy eating something at the kitchen table.

“Fried pickles, dude,” Michael answered as he shoved one in his mouth.

Ryan quickly walked over to the table, “May I have one?” he asked, gingerly, as he got to the table.

“Sure,” Jeremy answered.

He picked one of and took a bite. His eyes blew up, wide at the taste. He moaned in pleasure at the taste. “Oh, deese ah orgammic,” he gushed with his mouth full of pickle.

“Ryan, we’re going to be late for lunch. And I’m sure the place we’re going has fried pickles,” Gavin called out in an attempt to get Ryan’s attention again.

Ryan quickly turned back to Gavin, “Right,” he acknowledged as ha ran back over to Gavin. The two of them exited the penthouse.

20 minutes later they arrived at a diner, Last Train in Los Santos. Gavin scanned the front patio for any possible hostiles, when he spotted a familiar purple haired woman in glasses looking over the menu. Gavin began to shake as Ryan spotted her, as well. “MEG!” Ryan called out to get her attention and started to wave.

The woman looked up from her menu and smiled, wide, as she saw Ryan. “RYAN!” she cheered as she got up to give him a huge hug.

Gavin began to shake more violently. “You’re… you’re…”

Ryan started to rub Gavin’s back. “Gavin, this is Meg, my best friend outside of the crew.”

“And you’re Gavin. I’ve heard all about you from what Ryan’s told me. And seeing you in person is only proving that Ryan has good taste in men,” Meg compliment.

“You’re Dollface?” Gavin asked this time.

“Yep,” she confirmed.

Gavin grabbed Ryan’s hand and shook harder. “Ryan, she’s Dollface!”

“Breath sweetheart, I know that,” he instructed. “We’ve known each other since long before the names, Dollface or Vagabond, meant anything.”

“Yeah, and it’s been Ryan’s persuasive reasoning that stops the Los Santos Sirens from starting anything with the Fakes,” Meg added in an attempt to calm Gavin down. Gavin’s eye’s widened in surprise that Ryan had been preventing crew conflict.  He took a deep breath and sighed. “Right then, do we want to go back and sit down? I already have a table for us,” she finished as she began to walk back to her table.

“Sitting down sounds like a dream right now. Come on, Gavin,” he commented as he took Gavin’s hand and followed Meg.

Gavin looked at how honest, caring, and cheerful Dollface was right now. He could see why Ryan had remained friends with Dollface, no, Meg, for so long. “Right, so what’s good on the menu?” he asked as he and Ryan sat down.

“Quick question though, does this place have fried pickles,” Ryan quickly asked.

“They do, but I thought you hated pickles,” Meg commented.

“Normally, I do hate them, but I’m actually rather fond of them at the moment.”

“Ha! You wouldn’t like pickles unless you were pregnant,” she joked.

“Well…” Ryan trailed off as he began to rub his arm, nervously. Gavin grabbed his hand and be began to rub circles in it to comfort him.

Meg looked up and saw the affection. Her eyes widened. “Oh my god, you are. Oh my god, Ryan!” she cheered as she quickly got up and gave Ryan a hug. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” he replied, graciously.

“You have to tell me all the details,” Meg demanded as she sat back down.

“Well, the little one is due in December,” Gavin started.

“And before you ask, no, we haven’t told the crew.” Ryan clarified.

“Oh,” Meg replied, sadly.

“But, Ryan, here, wanted us to ask you something,” Gavin filled back in.

“What is it?” Meg asked Ryan.

“Well, I wanted to do more than just tell you, I’m pregnant,” Ryan started.

“Well, what else is there?”

“I wanted Gavin, here, to meet you because I wanted him to know the person we were gonna be asking to be the godparent.”

Meg’s mouth dropped in shock, “Me?”

“Yes, you. If… you’d be okay with that.”

“Holy shit, I would love to be Mini Meg’s godmother!”

Gavin twisted his head in confusion and Ryan snorted. “Mini Meg, really?” Ryan asked with a smirk.

“That has to be its name now.”

Ryan sighed and smiled. He looked over at Gavin, and Gavin smiled in return. They both knew everything was going to be alright.

 18 WEEKS

 As expected with pregnancy, Ryan’s body continued to change. He continued to grow sleepier, and he couldn’t tell if it was psychosomatic of not, but he swore we was starting to feel movement in his lower abdomen. Gavin began to grow uneasy about Ryan going out to do missions for the crew, even offering to teach Ryan some hacking techniques. Ryan refused at first, claiming that he was still fit to do his work as crew muscle. Gavin finally demanded that Ryan take a break from missions after he got grazed by a bullet in the shoulder.

Ryan said he still needed to exercise, though. He asked Gavin to go weightlifting with him at the gym, saying that maybe they could try to switch roles in the crew. Ryan would be the lead hacker while Gavin could get to be the crew muscle. Gavin happily agreed to those terms.

Ryan’s stomach continued to expand, beginning to look more like a baby belly, rather than a pot belly. Gavin had a greater desire to pet Ryan’s stomach, and would ask permission before he tried anything. Ryan was very reluctant to agree, seeing as he was very self-conscious about his pregnancy and still hiding it from the rest of the crew.

In mid/late July, Gavin had stepped out to work out a negotiation. Ryan waited on the couch, patiently, for him back at the penthouse. As the hours passed, Ryan dozed off. He had been fast asleep, so he didn’t hear footsteps approaching the couch. “Ryan?” a voice asked. Ryan continued to snore. “RYAN!” the voice yelled to wake him up.

“GGGAAAAHHHH!” Ryan yelped as he jumped. He looked to see who had woken him up, to see it was Geoff. “Yes?” he asked, with a yawn.

“So, Gavin asked me not to put you on any missions,” Geoff started.

“I know,” he replied, groggily.

“And, I was wondering if everything is okay with the two of you. I mean, is he trying to be too controlling or something? Cause I’ve seen him try to control your actions, even seen him trying to control your diet.”

Ryan blinked and sat up. “Everything’s fine between us. He just wants me to be healthy.”

“Well, I’m not sure it’s working ‘cause it looks to me like you’ve been eating a bit on the side with that beer belly you started rockin’ there,” Geoff commented as he went to go poke Ryan’s stomach.

Ryan quickly swatted Geoff’s hand away. “DON’T TOUCH THAT!!!! I CAN’T DRINK ALCOHOL ANYWAY! CAN’T AND WON’T!!!” then he got up. “I’m going back to my room, don’t follow me,” he demanded as he shuffled away. Geoff just sighed.

20 minutes later Gavin came back. “RYAN, I’M BACK!” then he looked around and saw Geoff sitting on the couch, alone. “Where’s Ryan, I thought he’d be waiting there for me,” he asked as he walked over to Geoff.

“I asked him what you were doing to make him stress eat so much, on the side, and he wouldn’t tell me,” Geoff started.

“Oh no…”

“And when I went to poke his beer belly, he swatted my hand away and ran off. So, tell me, Gavin, what are you doing to him that’s making him do this to himself?”

“I…” then Gavin sighed, “I can’t tell you.”

“Seriously!?”

“I want to bloody tell you!” he cried, “but, I promised Ryan I wouldn’t tell a soul. This whole ordeal is a lot bigger that it may seem on the surface!”

“Well if it that big of a deal, you better tell me before Ryan gets any bigger!”

Gavin sighed again, “I know,” he said to himself. “Listen, I’ll go talk to Ryan, but you have to get the whole crew together. We’re gonna need to fill the whole crew in.”

“Got it,” Geoff confirmed with a thumb up.

Gavin found Ryan in his room sitting in his bed with his face in a pillow. “Rye?” he asked as he walked in.

Ryan lifted his head to reveal a damp face and red eyes. “Gav?” he choked.

“Oh, Rye-bread,” he replied softly as he walked over to the bed and got on to hold Ryan. Ryan smiled softly at the nickname. “What happened, love?”

Ryan frowned again. “Geoff called me fat, then tried to poke our little one.”

“Oh love, it will be okay,” Gavin comforted. Ryan snorted mucus back into his nose, in response. “But, the little one is starting to grow big.”

Ryan sighed glumly, “I know.”

“I think it might be time we tell everyone about the little guy.”

“But, but, that would mean,” Ryan began to shake in fear.

“I know what it means love. But, we prepared for this.”

“Hey,” a voice, Michael’s, came from the other side of the door, “are you guys coming? We heard you had an announcement.”

“Well, it looks like this is it. You ready?” Ryan nodded, sadly. “BE THERE IN A MINUTE!” Gavin called back as he rolled off of the bed. “Need help getting up?” Ryan shook his head and slid off the bed. “Do you want me to grab your senior yearbook?”

“I got it,” Ryan answered as he walked over to his desk, sighed, and grabbed his yearbook.

Then Gavin held out his hand. “You ready, love?” he asked again.

Ryan sighed one more time, “as ready as I’ll ever be,” he finished as he took Gavin’s hand. The two of them walked out of the room.

They entered the crew meeting room to find the main crew sitting around the table. “So, you have a big announcement, I hear,” Jack stated.

Ryan looked nervously at Gavin and he gave him reassuring look to let him know that it would be okay. Ryan gulped. “I uh, wanted to show you my senior yearbook photo,” he announced as he began flipping through the yearbook to find his photo.

“Ugh, lame!” Jeremy groaned.

Ryan rolled his eyes at that and put the book, opened to the page with his senior portrait, down on the table and pointed to his photo. The crew gathered around to look.

“Jane Ryley Haywood?” Michael read, “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“It’s interesting to see your sister’s portrait, but where’s yours?” Jack asked.

Ryan took a deep breath and sighed, this was finally it. “I, I don’t have a sister.”

“Then who’s,” Michael began to ask.

“It’s my portrait. Jane Ryley is me, who I used to be,” Ryan took another deep breath. “My whole life, I thought I was born in the wrong body. I wanted to fix that when I moved to Los Santos,”

“So, you’re trans?” Jeremy asked. Ryan nodded gingerly to answer. “You know, that’s actually pretty cool.”

Geoff’s eyebrows furrowed, “and know you’re leaving the crew,” he guessed.

Ryan’s head shot up and his eyes looked like they were beginning to water. “What?” he asked as he begun to shake with fear.  

Gavin tried to hold Ryan, “Geoff, please don’t kick him out of the crew,” he pleaded.

“I’m not,” Geoff started. “Kdin left the crew the day after she came out to the crew as a woman, I can only assume Ryan’s doing the same thing.”

Ryan sighed in relieve at the fact that he wasn’t being kicked out. “Geoff, no. I was already in my true, male, identity when I joined the crew. And Kdin left because the Los Santos Sirens offered her a job to do exactly what she wanted to be doing. It was nothing against you,” he informed Geoff.

“So, you’re not planning on leaving the crew?”

“I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me.”

“Alright then.”

“Congrats on coming out,” Jeremy cheered in support. The rest of the crew clapped along as well.

Ryan smiled and Gavin rubbed his back, “You did it love,” he congratulated.

“Ha, now that you have the stress of hiding in the closet gone, you can work on losing that stress weight,” Geoff commented.

Ryan’s eye’s widened again and he looked back to Gavin for reassurance. “It’s alright, love. You did the hard part, so this part should be easy in comparison.”

Ryan nodded and took a deep breath. “I… can’t lose this weight right now…”

“Why not?”

“I uh… can’t lose it till December.”

“Wait, let me guess,” Jeremy started, “you have a stomach tumor and you’re getting it removed in December.”

Ryan did a double face palm and Gavin sighed. “Don’t call ‘em a tumor,” he whined

“I just came out as FTM transsexual, and you think I came out because I have stomach cancer?!” Ryan demanded.

“Then, what is it?”

“Take a wild guess!”

Jeremy looked at Ryan confused. Then, Michael looked Ryan up and down, “Ryan, are you… pregnant?” he asked.

Ryan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Ryan and I are having a baby! We’re gonna be parents!” Gavin cheerfully announced.

The rest of the crew began clapping wildly. “Congratulations!”  Jack congratulated.

“I guess that means I’m a granddad, now,” Geoff laughed.

“Sophie’s gonna have a buddy on the crew!” Michael cheered as he ran over to Gavin and gave him a noogie, “I can’t believe Golden Boy knocked the Vagabond up,” he teased as he gave him the noogie.

“Micool!” Gavin complained.

Ryan looked over and chuckled. Gavin’s eyes met his and they both smiled, they knew everything was going to be alright.

 20 WEEKS

 Coming out to the crew was a huge weight off of Ryan’s shoulders. He was a lot more eager to learn Gavin’s hacking techniques, and Gavin was happy to teach. Ryan was also happy to help Gavin train to become more adept at intimidating people during interrogations, even teaching him how to throw knives. He even helped Gavin train at the gym until his stomach rounded, had grown a bit too large, and he no longer has the energy to teach or do intense work outs. He asked Michael to step in as a trainer and he happily obliged.

As Ryan’s stomach continued to grow, Ryan had to find even larger shirts and switch to sweatpants. He wasn’t as self-conscious about it after he came out, but he still wasn’t a fan of anyone touching his stomach. This was why Ryan had postponed his ultrasound. He knew he was pregnant, but the thought of another living being growing inside of him was a bit to freaky for him. He didn’t want a photo reminder of the fact that he was pregnant.

Since the only doctor Ryan saw outside of Andy, the crew doctor, was his OB/GYN. Ryan was pretty reluctant to visit his gynecologist, but he knew that he still had to go see her to check up on the baby and so he and Gavin could figure out the sex of their child. So, Gavin scheduled Ryan’s appointment for an ultrasound, the first week of August.

Gavin opened the door to the doctor’s office, and held it open for Ryan. When Ryan wasn’t moving towards the door, he got worried. “You alright, love? Can you not walk?” he asked, concerned.

Ryan groaned, “I can walk, I just don’t want to be here.”

Gavin old his eyes, “oh, come off it.” He then went to go grab Ryan’s wrist and drag him into the office. “We should have done this at 18 weeks, but we were too busy coming out to the crew, yah.”   Ryan groaned, once more. The two of them walked to the receptionist’s desk. “Excuse us, we’re here for Mr. Haywood’s 1:30 appointment for an ultrasound,” he informed her.

The receptionist looked at her computer to check Ryan in. “I have you down,” she started. Then she looked him up and down, “though, I don’t understand why a man would go to a gynecologist’s office for an ultrasound.”

Ryan gave a small smile at her obliviousness. “It’s a, uh, small exception.”

She raised her eyebrow, “alright. Just have a seat and the doctor will come get you when she’s ready for you.”

“Come on, love,” Gavin directed Ryan to one of the seats in the waiting room. Ryan grumbled as he walked over to the seats. Gavin rubbed Ryan’s back as he joined him. “Aren’t you excited to find out what we’re having, though?”

“We’re having a baby, we already know that.”

“No, I mean whether we’re having a boy or a girl.”

Ryan scowled. “We won’t know whether they’re a boy or a girl until they know whether they’re a boy or a girl or something else.”

Gavin shook his head, “no, no, I didn’t mean gender,” he clarified. Ryan jut sighed in response.

15 minutes later, a woman doctor with long, blonde hair stepped out. “Mr. Haywood?” she called out.

“Over here,” Gavin called out.

She nodded, “Come on back, the room’s all set up,” she informed them as she motioned for them to follow her. Gavin stood up and grabbed Ryan’s hand. Ryan sighed and stood up, as well. the two of them followed the doctor. “How are you feeling?” she asked Ryan.

“I hate what pregnancy is doing to me,” he admitted.

“And why’s that?”

“I’m not allowed to do my job, and even if I was, I’d be too tired to do anything. I’m an emotional train-wreck. I’m fatter than I’ve ever been. I wouldn’t hate the cravings if thy weren’t making me even fatter. I pass gas a lot more than I used to, and that’s just embarrassing.”

“It’s not really that bad, Rye,” Gavin reassured him.

“You won’t let me be the little spoon because you don’t want me to fart on you! And it’s starting to get difficult for me to be the big spoon,” Ryan complained.

“Well…” Gavin’ face went red with embarrassment.

The group arrived at the room for the ultrasound. “Alright, here we are,” she informed the group, “Ryan, you lay down on the exam table,” she instructed. Ryan sighed and followed directions. Gavin went in to follow him, but the doctor stopped him. “Can I assume that you’re the baby’s father?” she asked him.

“Yeah, I’m Gavin, the baby’s, uh, other father,” he corrected her.

“Right, I should have known that. My apologizes. I’m Dr. Atkinson,” she introduced herself, at the end.

“Pleasure,” Gavin greeted back, offering a hand to shake. The two of them walked into the room.

Dr. Atkinson walked over to Ryan and grabbed the ultrasound gel. “Can you lift up your shirt, for me?” she asked him.

He whined and looked at Gavin. “I promise not to look at your tummy,” Gavin promised. Ryan sighed and lifted his shirt.

The doctor squirted lubricating jelly onto Ryan’s stomach. “Jesus! Why is that so cold?!” he demanded.

“Just relax,” she assured him as she began to rub the ultrasound transducer on the lubricated area. Images of the fetus began to appear on the television screen beside her. Ryan’s eyes were transfixed on his stomach.

Gavin’s eyes skipped over Ryan and looked at the screen. His eyes lit up as soon as he saw the fetus. His smile grew wide as he began to wave at the screen. “Hi, little guy. Can’t wait to meet you,” he told the image.

“Gavin, I thought you said you wouldn’t look at my stomach!” Ryan growled.

“I’m not looking at you, you dunce! I’m looking at our baby, through the ultrasound,” Gavin quickly fired back. “Why aren’t you looking, too? It’s quite extraordinary, getting to see our baby.”

“I…,” then Ryan took a deep breath and finally looked at the screen, as well. His serious expression melted the second, he saw his baby. “I… wow!” he breathed out with a smiled. “You’re going to be my world,” he told the screen.

Gavin looked at Ryan and smirked. “That’s a big title you put on the baby,” he commented.

Ryan rolled his eyes, then looked back at Gavin. “Our world,” he corrected himself.

Gavin sighed and shook his head, “right.”

Dr. Atkinson, who had been looking at the television screen, look at Ryan and Gavin. “Well, everything seems to be looking normal with the baby. Everything’s right on track for their December due date. Would you like to know the sex of the baby?” she asked.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Ryan told her.

“Well, I’d like to know,” Gavin commented.

Ryan shook his head and sighed, “then, let’s hear it,” he relented.

Sex and gender were touchy subjects for Ryan. He didn’t see the importance of know which set of genitals his child had, seeing as his gender identity may not end up matching them. Or the child could end up normal, nobody really knew for sure. He was just glad he got to see his baby as best he could. It only took one look at the child for him to know that everything was going to be alright.

 25 WEEKS

 As the little baby grew within Ryan larger, the child became very active. The kid would constantly be moving around, wiggling and kicking Ryan’s organs around. Ryan had to pee a lot more because his bladder was constant target for kicking practice. The child’s constant movement was starting to keep Ryan awake more, but he still didn’t mind any of it. The beginning of September came, and Ryan was spending most of his time either in the tech room, the bathroom peeing, or snoozing in his room.

Fakehaus members, Bruce and James were visiting the crew one day in mid-September. They were hoping to work out some territory disputes. They decided not to make this a formal meeting, opting to have it in the living room to make it more casual.

Geoff and Bruce sat in chairs facing each other, while Gavin and James sat on the couch in the middle.

“Look, your crew has control over South Los Santos, what more do you want?” Geoff asked.

“South Los Santos is predominantly African American, and we’re kinda a crew of white guys,” James pointed out as he played with his knife.

“How about East Los Santos, then?” Gavin proposed.

“We were actually thinking a bit of upper class stuff. Like maybe parts of Rockford Hills?” Bruce requested.

“I’m not sure that,” Geoff was cut off.

“Ryan, what are you doing!?” Gavin quietly demanded at the larger man quietly walking out and toward the kitchen.

“Sprog’s being rowdy. Figured diet coke might calm him down,” Ryan yawned.    

“Wait, Is that you, Vagabond?” Bruce asked, surprise.

Ryan’s eyes widened as soon as he realized he was being called out. “I…”

“Holy shit Vagabond, you’re huge! what made you blow up like a balloon?” James commented, next.

Ryan took a deep breath. “Don’t worry about it,” he breathed out.

“No seriously, what happened to you?” Bruce pressed.

Ryan scowled. “It’s none of your goddamn business what happened,” he stated firmly.

“If it wasn’t impossible, I’d say you looked preg,”

Before Bruce could finish his statement, Gavin snatched James’s knife away from him and threw it at the wall, getting everyone’s attention. Everyone’s eye grew wide as it embedded itself in the wall. “ENOUGH!” Gavin screeched. Everyone turned to face Gavin. “Vagabond, run back to your room. I will get your diet coke,” he instructed as he stood up. Ryan nodded and did as he was told. “And I believe everyone ELSE was negotiating territory. So, get back to it, yah.” Everyone nodded, nervously, “good.”

He grabbed the diet coke from the kitchen and walked back to Ryan’s room. Ryan was rubbing his stomach, “Ow,” he yelped quietly as the baby continued to kick his insides around.

“Love,” he cooed as he walked over to Ryan. “I brought your diet coke,” he said as he handed Ryan the can. Ryan tried to sit up enough that he could drink. He brought the can to his lips and took a few big gulps. The baby continued to move around and Ryan winced. “Still rambunctious?” he asked. Ryan nodded. Gavin quickly thought of an idea. “I have an idea of something else that might help. May I rub your tummy?” he asked.

“Baby, after a knife throw like that, you can do whatever the fuck you want to me,” Ryan answered in a raspy, attempted sexy, voice. Gavin began to rub Ryan’s stomach and the baby calmed down. “Ooh, yeah.”

Gavin raised an eyebrow as he rubbed Ryan’s stomach, “Ryan are you turned on?”

“Mm, yeah. To tired and fat to act on it. I missed the days when we fucked like savage animals.”

Gavin sighed, “I miss them too.”

“Can’t wait till I have a massive cock for you to bounce on,” Ryan lazily smirked.

“Ryan, you tease,” then, Gavin realized what Ryan had just said and he tilted his head in curiosity. “Wait, you’re still planning on that sex change?”

“Absolutely. This pregnancy is a onetime thing. If we actually want more kids after this one, I gonna have ta freeze my eggs,” he mumbled.

Gavin’s eyes grew wide. “Wait, you can do that!?”

“Yah, did… research…,” Ryan told him as he fell asleep.

Gavin continued to pet Ryan’s baby belly. The door to the room suddenly reopened. “Yo Gav, you coming back or,” Geoff started.

“SSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” Gavin shushed Geoff and motioned to a sleeping Ryan.

“So, I take that as a no, then?” Geoff asked more quietly this time.

Gavin scowled and grabbed the knife that was sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. He chucked it at the door and Geoff quickly dodged out of the way and slammed the door close. Ryan, who wasn’t completely asleep anymore, smirked. With a partner who was willing to protect him like that, he knew everything was going to be alright.

 34 WEEKS

 Ryan was reaching the point where he tired of what pregnancy was doing to him. First of all, he was tired of being tired all the time. The odd cravings normally wouldn’t have bothered him, but he wasn’t looking forward to all of the excess weight he was going to need to lose.  He was huge because he was pregnant; his stomach protruded a good seven/seven-and-a half inches and could barely walk straight anymore. His bust had grown back to an A-cup and he absolutely hated it. He hated the constant reminder that he was biologically female and he thought he couldn’t wait for this kid to be out of him.

But, there were still a few things he was thankful for about his situation. He was thankful he had a wonderful crew to back him up. Michael was able to offer legitimate fatherly advice, helping his boi on his transition into fatherhood. Geoff wept tears of joy when they showed him ultrasound pic of the little one, saying how proud he was to be a grandfather, no matter how unofficial it was. He was thankful for Gavin, a loving boyfriend and amazing father to be. He waited on Ryan, hand and foot, and comforted Ryan in his hormonal, emotional needs. Not a day passed where Ryan wasn’t given a reason not to be madly in love with him. And as annoying as they were, Ryan was thankful for the child they were going to have. The constant activity was only proof the Ryan that the kid was clearly his and Gavin’s.

At the beginning of November, the crew planned to throw Ryan a baby shower. Gavin thought Ryan would hate the idea at first, but Ryan thought it would be a good excuse to introduce the crew to their child’s godmother. Geoff was slightly bitter about not being named the kid’s godfather, but he was willing to accept it.

The baby shower was being held at a safehouse in Morningwood. Ryan and Gavin were frosting the baby shower cake in the kitchen with Ryan sneaking little tastes of the frosting in between, Michael and Jeremy were tying balloons around the living room, Jack was setting up snacks on a table to the side, and Geoff was turning the cushioned chair in the living room into a thrown fit for a king who happened to be pregnant, complete with a ripped paper crown.

“Ooh,” Ryan whined in pain.

“Oh my gosh, what’s wrong?” Gavin quickly asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” Ryan quickly reassured, “Just a rather painful kick to the bladder. I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” he clarified.

“Need help?”

“I think I can still make it. I still have some use in me,” Ryan replied with a smile. He started to waddle away towards the bathroom.  Gavin smiled fondly as he finished icing the cake on his own.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rang. “Is that an intruder?” Geoff asked, panicked.

“No, no. it’s probably Meg,” Gavin announced as he rushed over to the front door. He checked the front window, then opened the front door with glee. “Meg!” he greeted, happily, as he went in for a hug.

“How are you, Gavy?” she asked as she hugged back.

“Top.”

“Is Ryan inside?”

“Yah. The sprog’s playing kickball with his bladder, again.”

“Daw.”

“Well, would you like to come in or,” Gavin was interrupted be the sounds of guns, cocking. He turned around to see everyone has their guns pointed at the front door. “Guys,” he whined in disappointment.

“Get out of the way, Gavin!” Geoff demanded in anger.

“What are you on about? Why do you have your guns out? Why do you even have them with you!? Ryan told you not to bring them!”

“Don’t you dare let that siren in here,” he instructed, ignoring Gavin.

“She’s not gonna do any harm, she’s just here for the baby shower.”

“Do you really expect us to believe that,” Jack questioned with a scowl on his face.

Meg shrugged, “well, they have me beat because I didn’t bring a gun,” she announced, sheepishly.

“Oh yeah, then what’s in the bag!?” Michael asked, furiously.

“A present… for Mini Meg…”

“Guys, what’s going on? I thought I heard guns cocking and,” Ryan started to ask as he left the bathroom. Then he noticed that everyone had their guns pointed at Gavin and Meg. “OH, COME THE FUCK ON!!! I TOLD YOU PEOPLE NO GUNS!!!!!!!” Ryan shouted angrily.

“But, she’s Dollface and your boyfriend has an apparent hard on for her,” Geoff argued back.

“No, I don’t!” Gavin squawked.

“I have a girlfriend,” Meg added.

“MEG TURNEY IS THE GODMOTHER OF MY CHILD!” Ryan screamed.

“YOU CHOSE A SIREN TO BE YOUR KID’S GODPARENT OVER ME!?” Geoff yelled back.

“THAT’S BECAUSE I’VE KNOWN HER LONGER THAN I’VE KNOWN ANY OF YOU!!!!!”

Gavin ran over to Ryan and started petting his head and rubbing his back. “Calm down, love. High heart rate’s not good for the baby.”

Ryan took a few deep breaths, “sorry, sorry, that was all unnecessary. Meg, please come in.”

“Whatever,” Geoff grumbled.

Meg happily skipped in the room and over to hug Ryan as best she could. “How are you, Rye?”

“Tired, fat, but pretty overall happy,” he answered with a smile.

Then, she placed he hands on both sides of Ryan’s belly, “and how’s Mini Meg?”

“Actually, the name Gavin and I decided on is,” Ryan lowered his voice to make sure only Meg could hear him, “Henry.”

“Henry!” Meg exclaimed. Everyone around the room looked at her in confusion.

Gavin frowned, “Ryan, we were gonna wait to reveal the name until after the ‘sex reveal cake’.”

Ryan shrugged, “sorry,” he apologized, sheepishly.

“You’re having a boy?” Jeremy asked.

“Yah. We were gonna wait until the cake to reveal all that. But after this whole ordeal, we could all use some sweets right about now,” Gavin joked.

The room lit up with laughter. In an instant, all unnecessary conflicts seemed to be forgotten. They could all get back to the fun baby show day they had planned. In that moment, it seemed like everything was going to be alright.

 39 WEEKS

 They were in the home stretch. As excited for having a kid as he was, Ryan could not wait for the kid to be out of him. The pregnancy was becoming very annoying, at this point. His body had been tricking him with Braxton-Hicks contractions since he was seven months along. Of course, he had dealt with the pain of being shot on multiple occasions, so the false contractions were nothing more than an annoying inconvenience.  

As time moved closer to his due date on December 18th, the baby shifted lower on his hips in preparation for birth.  His belly was already the size of a basketball, and this made walking steady even harder for Ryan. Gavin helped Ryan get from point A to point B when he’d let him. Ryan had nearly bit his head off though, when he suggested that Ryan be confined to bed-rest.

On December 11th, the crew had planned on going out for a heist. This heist would be Gavin’s first big heist as crew muscle. Of course, Ryan would be staying back at the penthouse helping with tech. That morning, Gavin helped Ryan to the kitchen. Jack and Jeremy were already sitting at the kitchen eating breakfast.

“Are you sure you want to help with this, today? Because you could go back to bed to rest and nobody would blame you or anythin’,” Gavin attempted to persuade Ryan as he led him to his chair.

“Gav, we got a week left before I’m truly out of commission,” Ryan argued.

“I could stay in,” he started.

“Sweetheart, this may or may not be your only chance at being real crew muscle. I want you to take it, show me how big and strong my boyfriend can be,” Ryan argued, further. Gavin just sighed in response.

Jeremy looked up from his food to see Gavin and Ryan. “Morning, Gav and Rye,” he greeted the two of them. “And you’re looking festively plump today, Ryan,” he joked.

“Jeremy!” Jack scolded as he swatted Jeremy’s arm.

“Ha, jokes on you,” Ryan retorted as he slowly sat down, “I won’t be like this anymore by the time Christmas rolls around.”

Gavin rolled his eyes at the exchange, he was still very excited about the fact that he would be a father soon. “Right, what do you want for breakfast then?” Gavin asked Ryan.

“I’m feeling like… cheesy scrambled eggs.”

Gavin quickly went to the fridge to grab the supplies he needed to make the dish. “Gavin, you can’t cook, you’re going to burn the kitchen down,” Jack pointed out.

“Learned,” Gavin quickly informed him as he cracked two eggs into a pan.

As the rest of the day went by, Ryan felt a contraction every few hours. He was too busy doing tech work on the crew’s heist at Pacific Standard Deposit Bank to notice that the time between each contraction growing shorter. He was directing the crew when another one, a strong one, hit. “You got the money,” he asked.

“Yeah,” Geoff confirmed.

“There’s an exit on the Alta street side that would be a good,” he stopped when the contraction hit and he whined, quietly.

Lindsay looked up when she heard Ryan’s whine, “you alright?” she asked.

“Yeah, strong Braxton-Hicks. Tell Axial to take tech lead for a bit, I’m gonna go splash some water on my face to get my head back in the game,” he replied as he used the table to push himself out of the chair. He waddled to the bathroom and turned on the sink. He splashed water on his face, “get it together, Haywood. You can do this,” he told himself He turned off the sink and started to back to the room went get noticed his pants were all wet from his crotch. He hadn’t thought he’d somehow spilled any water on his crotch, and it quickly dawned on him that he actually hadn’t spilled any sink water. “LINDSAY!!!” he screeched in hopes of getting her attention.

“What?” she asked as she ran in the bathroom. She looked Ryan up and down, and frowned, “did you really just call me in here to show me that you peed yourself when you were three feet away from the toilet?”

“Didn’t… pee myself,” he gritted out.

Lindsay’s eyes met Ryan’s, “Wait, did your water break?” Ryan gave a slight nod to answer her question. “Oh my god, your water broke. Holy shit, you’re going into labor!” Lindsay then ran back to the tech room. Ryan attempted to follow behind her, hoping to make use of the time between contractions. She got into the coms and tapped in so she would only be talking to Gavin. “Goldie, I need you to get out of there,” she informed him.

“Why? Everything’s going fine here,” Gavin asked over the com.

Ryan quickly yanked the com mic away from Lindsay. “YOU WERE RIGHT! YOU WERE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING RIGHT, YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED HERE WITH ME! CAUSE I NEED YOU HERE WITH ME RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!” Ryan screeched.

“Rye,”

“HENRY’S COMING!!!!!!” he finished yelling as another contraction hit.

Gavin dropped everything that he was doing and ran out of the bank. “Where the hell do you think you’re going!?” Geoff yelled after him.

Michael had a feeling he knew why Gavin was running away. “Don’t get caught, Ryan needs you right now!”

Gavin drove back to the penthouse and ran in the front door. “Ryan, I’m here!” he called as he ran in.

Ryan waddled out, clutching his stomach, with Lindsay following behind. “How did you get here?” Ryan asked.

“Drove.”

Ryan groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. “Idiot,” he gritted out.

Gavin smiled, “but, I’m your idiot, love.” And Ryan smiled back sweetly, then, he groaned in pain as another contraction hit.

“Alright, I’ll drive you two to the hospital. Gavin, get changed out of your heist clothes while I get Ryan down to the car,” Lindsay instructed. Gavin quickly nodded and ran to his room.

Lindsay and Ryan got down to the car. Two minutes later, Gavin met them at the car in civilian clothes and they all drove to the hospital. Ryan and Gavin were admitted into a hospital room while Lindsay had to wait in the waiting room. Ryan wailed in pain all night long, yelling that that baby better take his uterus out with him. By the morning of December 12th, Henry Daniel Haywood-Free was born.

Ryan sat up, cradling his baby in his arms, while Gavin leaned up against the bed. Gavin gave his finger to the baby to grab onto and the baby latched onto it. “He’s gorgeous, a right handsome baby,” Gavin cooed.

“Yeah, he sure it,” Ryan agreed, lazily. “He got your nose,” he giggled.

Gavin shook his head and smiled, “sorry, Hen,” he apologized.

“Don’t be sorry. Your big ole’ nose is pretty cute, just like the rest of ya,” Ryan complimented as he began to shut his eyes.

“Daw,” Gavin smiled. “‘e prolly got your gorgeous eyes.”

“He’s… perfect,” Ryan said as he drifted to sleep. Gavin quickly picked up Henry and began to cradle him so Ryan could sleep.

His son yawned in his arms, he was going to be the perfect baby for him and Ryan. Sure, this kid was born into a life of crime, but none of that mattered. Their little family was now complete, and he knew for a fact that everything was going to be alright.

 15 Months Later

 Henry’s first year of life was kinda interesting. Ryan had chosen to go by the name Papa for Henry, while Gavin chose to be called, Dada. He was just as rambunctious as he was when he was in the womb, and that caused a lot of trouble for his parents, but that were still happy that they had him. He had criminals coming from all over the city to care for him, but he was too young to know what being a criminal meant. His godmother would make the finest clothes for him, despite his Dada buying him all the posh baby clothes a baby could ever want. Little Sophie Jones was eager to play with him, even though she was a year and a half older than him. Michael and Gavin joked that it was the next generation of ‘Team Nice Dynamite.’ The world was a big, bright place for Henry.

Ten months after Henry was born, Ryan took Gavin out on a date to La Spada, a nice Italian seafood restaurant. In between dinner and dessert, Ryan got down on one knee and proposed to Gavin. Gavin ecstatically said yes and passionately kissed Ryan. After a hot and heavy, intimate night of more “dessert,” Ryan asked when they should have their wedding, and Gavin said he didn’t want the wedding until Ryan was done recovering from his sex change. Ryan said he hadn’t scheduled one yet, and Gavin handed him a pamphlet for a cosmetic clinic in Liberty City and a note for an appointment reminder. Gavin had found the best clinic for Ryan’s sex change and scheduled the surgery for him. Ryan couldn’t be more in love with Gavin after he did that for him.

Five months after that, Ryan, Gavin, and Henry few up to Liberty City. Ryan was taken into surgery, with Gavin and Henry waiting in the waiting room. After ten hours, Ryan was released from surgery. They went to go check on him and he was fast asleep. They retired to their hotel by the clinic for the night and went back to visit Ryan the next day. The nurses warned Gavin that Ryan may be high from the pain killers. Gavin took Henry up to Ryan room and they saw Ryan blinking, groggily.

“Hey, ya pretty cute,” Ryan complimented Gavin.

“Thank you, Rye,” Gavin smiled back. Henry cooed as if to compliment his Papa.

“Now that I have a dick, I’d fuck ya with it,” he slurred.

Gavin covered Henry’s ears. “Ryan, don’t use that type of language around the baby.”

“Sorry sweetheart, but right now, I’m hiiiiiiiiiigh as balls,” he giggled and reached his arm to point up.

Gavin quickly rushed over to push his arm back down. “No, no. You don’t wat to rip your IV out.”

Ryan’s eye’s drooped as he smiled, fondly. “An ya care ‘bout me too? Think I migh be in love wich ya.”

Gavin snorted. “I should hope so,” he replied with a smile.

“Buh cha can’t tell mah fiancé dat.”

“Ryan, I am your fiancé.

Ryan’s eyes widened in surprise, “Really?”

“Yah, and Henry, here, is your son.”

“He’s beautiful,” Ryan cooed, “An you’re drop dead gorgeous.”

Henry babbled happily, as if to thank his papa for the compliment. “Daw, thank you, Rye-bread,” Gavin thanked as well.

“Love it when ya… call me that…” Ryan mentioned as he fell back asleep.

Gavin and Ryan’s lives were in no way considered normal. They were a gay couple living in a big city. Ryan was an FTM transsexual who had inexplicably gotten knocked up. And on top of all that, they were members of one of the most dangerous criminal crews in Los Santos. Some might assume that life might be hard for the two of them, but for Gavin and Ryan, their life was more than alright. It was perfect.

[adventures-in-transmania]

Let’s talk about misgendering. I know I’ve addressed this before. It used to be a constant sore spot from the time I came out to the time I started passing as male.

High school was a joke. I knew I was trans at that point. I was reluctant to talk about it with the cisgender male friends I had, seeing as they weren’t exactly supportive about the name I preferred to go by. Online was a welcome reprieve, I didn’t have to show my face, I could talk to people. I felt bad about ‘lying’ for some time to some pretty decent friends, however, once I actually talked to them about /why/ I did it, they became the most supportive people in my life at that time. I’m not quite sure what would have happened without them. My family wasn’t the best, I’m sure I’ve gone over that repeatedly.

I got to college where a classmate brought me into their circle of friends, most of which happened to be queer. Even those who weren’t were super supportive (or certainly knew how to pretend to be-again, another sore spot that I’ve gone over repeatedly). It was nice. I didn’t realize that initially and introduced myself as my deadname by wrong pronouns. I had to reintroduce myself and while some people didn’t understand why I didn’t just do that in the first place, they went right along with it, just like they did with the several other people who did the same. I was so used to going by my legal name, by my legal pronouns, I didn’t think I could do anything else. The name thing was something to get used to, not only for those around me but for myself as well. The pronouns, people kept apologizing. They still do sometimes. A quick apology is okay. Ideally, just the correction is necessary. I misgendered myself and deadnamed myself so often at first. I have talked to trans people who had the same issue, I’ve talked to trans people who said they’d known for as long as they can remember and didn’t have this issue. It depends on the person.

In high school and for the first part of college, I wasn’t really all that dysphoric about the lack of facial hair, my body shape, my voice, etc, etc. Hell, I was okay with never starting hormone therapy. It wasn’t a sore spot. I was still all for top surgery; breasts just get in the way, tbh. But it was expensive and I didn’t have the necessary support.

However, after going to counseling, talking to some other trans people (one trans woman in particular, tbh), a switch got flipped and suddenly I was aware in a way that was much more painful. I wanted the flat chest, I wanted everything that would make people think I passed as male without question. A peer referred to me as ‘he’ for the first time without saying ‘she’ first and things just /clicked/. I felt relief and anxiety. I felt gender euphoria. By that point, I believe I was in the process of legally changing my name. The university had quite the time with it, but the professors seemed to not remember me from the first two years I spent being quiet, so they seemed to have an easy time adjusting. My advisor, I’m pretty sure didn’t even come to know me as my deadname.

I realized I wasn’t genderfluid or non-binary. I was a transgender man. I invested in a binder. The first time I put it on, I’m pretty sure I cried or came very close to it. I was still hiding this stuff from my parent, because of a lack of support. I would bind occasionally to start with, it wasn’t a necessity. Everyone around me knew I had breasts, it was kind of hard to hide DD boobs. I wasn’t supposed to start HRT while living with my parent and grandmother, so I got a bit depressed, believing there was no hope of ever achieving that goal. It wasn’t a big deal before, but now it was. It was becoming a chore to explain to people around me that just because I appeared to be a woman, I wasn’t. I wasn’t good at confrontation. My friends were great (well, except for some instances, but again, beating a dead, traumatized horse). I relied heavily on their support, their attempts at not misgendering me, at not deadnaming me. I had a classmate that graduated with me from high school that I thought would pose a problem, but he was fantastic. I know it was harder on him than the rest, considering he’d known me from such a young age, since before we had a concept of gender, part of living in a small town, and he lived probably 2000 ft away from me for the majority of our lives, not that we were close.

At work, I had several older women who tried their hardest. My department manager wasn’t the best, but the effort was made and I could not ask anything more. She was infamous for the long apology, the one I’ve come to hate. It’s nothing personal, I promise, but every trans person knows it takes time and effort. You do not need to go into the whole speech. We’ve heard it before. Hell, most of us have said it before, whether it be to ourselves or others. We understand it takes time. We understand that you met us under different circumstances and that it’s hard to change your perception of us. But the more you do it, the less you have to think about it. Whether it be name or pronouns, the more you make the effort to refer to someone with the correct pronouns, even if it doesn’t match your perception of us, it will come more naturally and eventually you won’t even have to try! How do I know? Because I looked in the mirror, compared myself to every other cisgender male I saw, pointed out all of the areas people would consider feminine or masculine. I analyzed every move, every thought I had. I categorized things as masculine or feminine (in a very binary way of thinking, which is harmful in of itself). I nitpicked myself. I practiced and practiced. No matter what I did though, I couldn’t change my voice, my breasts, my first impressions on people. They perceived me as a woman and I could not change that, no matter how I acted. I could see how trans men fall into the toxic masculinity thing, and I did myself on some instances. I’m trying my best to be better now, but it’s easier when you pass.

I worked in customer service. I didn’t correct customers because they saw me once and that was it. It was pointless. So I got misgendered a fuckton. It hurt, sure. But I forgot about it, most of the time. I tried talking to my transgender parent about it and got indifference or the argument “they couldn’t possibly know,” as if I didn’t already know that. I was looking to them for support, not for them to defend everyone else. I knew logically it made sense, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt any less. It didn’t mean I didn’t deserve support from someone who I thought would get it.

The rare instances I’d get gendered correctly would make my fuckin’ week. I’d be happy the rest of the day. Getting misgendered was just another ‘eh, whatever’ moment, especially at work, or for anyone just meeting me for the first time. I had classes I was out in and my peers were rather great with discussion. I particularly remember touching on trans issues in sociology and having great discussions with a variety of people. They corrected their pronoun usage once they realized I may have looked like a woman, but I outed myself as a trans man.

In my experience, women had a much easier time with the acceptance. I had a handful of men who also accepted me, but women seemed to have less of an issue. I felt more comfortable around men in middle and high school, just because I got along better with them. But after that, women felt safer. Whether they perceived me as a woman or as a transgender man, I felt safer in their presence rather than men.

In the same vein as the legal name and pronouns, I had issues with restrooms. I felt uncomfortable using women’s public restrooms and I felt forbidden to use men’s rooms. The incident with my cisgender men who called themselves friends and who I considered supportive certainly destroyed any progress I’d made. There were times, I’d either put it off or walk across campus just to use the one single stall restroom. I felt uncomfortable having to use a stall every time. It was bad. I left college in June of 2018. I stopped talking to pretty much everyone from college at that point. I stopped counseling.

Before that, however, I left my job with some supportive coworkers. I talked so openly about being trans, those who weren’t supportive were surrounded by people who were. I was terrified. I left this job to take one with my aunt, who didn’t know I was trans, who didn’t really keep in contact with me.

I started in August of 2018. By the end of October, I walked into an appointment I had with specialty care and got my first shot of T, unbeknownst to my parent, my grandmother, my aunt, my current workplace, which I’d only been at for a few months. I wanted to come out before that. I needed to. I was so tired of being misgendered and just broken down. It hurt and I had nowhere to go with that hurt, no one to talk to, no one who got it. My conservative aunt didn’t know, I worked with many older people, older men especially. I was terrified. I couldn’t talk to my transgender parent about it because I’d get the whole speech “you have to understand...” I understood! They didn’t know any better. When I tried to talk to them about anything regarding trans issues, it was them making excuses for cis people. Like, I get it, cis people can’t be expected to suddenly ‘get’ it, but I sought out to complain to another trans person who I thought <i>would</i> get it. The fact I didn’t even have that outlet, it was discouraging, to say the least. If another trans person, if my <i>parent</i> didn’t ‘get’ it, what chance was someone else going to?

I started HRT and suddenly it wasn’t an option anymore. They’d notice. I needed to be out. I should have told my aunt first, I shouldn’t have taken the job without telling her, I shouldn’t have taken the job without telling /them/, them being my three male managers. I was terrified.

I talked to my parent about it. They offered no advice. They left the option up to me. To be fair, I didn’t give them an option with the HRT. I wasn’t supposed to start it while living with them and I did. They were disappointed I didn’t tell them prior, but I think I would have made the same decision given the circumstances. Their condition was that I shave if necessary and keep my voice high for my grandmother (the second of which I did not do, but it didn’t seem to make a difference, she didn’t notice that).

I wore a button at first that said “ask me about my pronouns” or “use male pronouns.” It was a big store that day. At the end of the day, I came out to my aunt, who said “niece, nephew, it doesn’t matter,” which was nice at the time. It was definitely a response I didn’t expect to get, but was happy about. I wasn’t really someone the managers were keeping tabs on, so it flew under the radar for quite some time. In November of 2018, probably a month or two after I came out to my aunt, I was a passenger to a travel store with another coworker (a team leader) who I apparently felt comfortable enough to address the issue with. He’d helped me more than any other person at this job and seemed like a decent guy. I figured he’d at least understand the dilemma I had, given other circumstances. I either didn’t use the women’s restroom and avoided the men’s room, or got over my anxiety (thanks “friends”) and insisted I use the men’s room. It wouldn’t have been bad, but I worked with so many different people in so many different places. A lot of the places didn’t have gender neutral options and I didn’t want to make my coworkers uncomfortable. However, after starting HRT, it was clear I would eventually pass to our clients and it would become unsafe to use the women’s restroom, if that was what they agreed upon. Luckily, I live in NY where the state law is people are able to use the restroom of their gender identity, thank you NYC. Unfortunately NYC doesn’t offer protection up in our very conservative area. When you pass several Trump 2020 signs in small towns, you feel a little unsafe as a transgender individual.

This coworker offered what I would  have considered unconditional support. He even offered to talk to our managers on my behalf. While I asked him not to, as I thought I should be the one to talk to them about it, he did anyways and it made it somewhat less awkward. He was sooo god damned supportive, more so than any other cisgender man in my life offline had ever been. I went into our office probably a week later to talk to the three managers about it, only to have the wind taken out of my sails when they said he had already brought it to their attention and it shouldn’t pose an issue. I had spent an entire week planning what I would say in my defense, because that’s how I thought. In my last job, my manager offered to put a lock on the men’s room so I’d feel comfortable, which I never took her up on. This wasn’t exactly an option in this job and my managers didn’t seem to have ever worked with other trans individuals, so they wouldn’t have really had the forethought or sensitivity training like my last manager to have thought of something like that.

It still wasn’t exactly that easy. I didn’t want to cause issues so I would keep an eye out to make sure no one else from our company would be in there before using the restroom. It was torturous at times, it was unfair, to be completely honest. I hated that I had to do it, I hated that I felt the need to do it, I hated that one person who made me feel so uncomfortable in male spaces that I still, despite passing quite well (I haven’t gotten misgendered by a stranger in <i>months</i>) STILL have minor anxiety about using men’s restrooms. I’m getting better, but I still brace myself for the confrontation that may occur. I’ve had several male workers who have either seen me exit the men’s room or been in there with me but haven’t caused an issue. I have a handful of circumstances I remember in particular. One being an older gentleman having no issue seeing me come out of the men’s room. I don’t think I ever came out to him, but he didn’t even hesitate. I was terrified he’d have an issue with it, but he just treated me as he usually did, nice as could be. I’m pretty sure he stopped referring to me with she/her after that. Another instance I waited to make sure another male coworker wasn’t going in on break because he would always refer to me as she or her. That supervisor, the one who’d shown “unconditional acceptance,” followed me in not thirty seconds later. I had a slight panic attack. I wasn’t exactly ‘passing’ at that time, and it was certainly another coworker, not a stranger. I couldn’t help but think back to that time with ‘friends’ where they were okay with it until suddenly they were faced with the reality that they would be sharing ‘male spaces’ with me and suddenly they weren’t okay with it. I didn’t want to, I couldn’t go through that again, not with the one person at this job who seemed to not only accept me but was able to talk about serious stuff like that, while somehow making it seem a lot less serious. I waited as long as I felt socially acceptable before exiting the stall and proceeded to wash my hands and leave.

Skipping ahead to probably a couple months ago, that same supportive coworker (ally, if anyone deserves that title) got excited over someone gendering me correctly. This, after months of people gendering me correctly. It was still super validating and kind of him. It was nice to see someone else excited over a source of gender euphoria for me. I may have brushed it off at the time because of course others who hadn’t met me before were calling me by male pronouns, I passed well enough. But I think it’s harder for those who met me with their perception of being a woman. I don’t think they’re able to see past that perception as easily as people who didn’t have that perception to begin with. That’s why I don’t mind too much if my coworkers misgender me occasionally, as long as it’s followed by a correction, no apology necessary. I get it, you met me and thought I was a woman, and I didn’t correct you then. However, if you don’t correct yourself, you will get me correcting you. I’m done being misgendered mercilessly in front of clients, ESPECIALLY when I’m the one running the inventory.  I know I pass well enough to clients, I haven’t been misgendered by clients in probably ~8 months, unless they hear one of my coworkers say something.

That leads me to today. Since 2020 started, I’ve been rather aggressive in correcting people about pronoun usage. I was quiet before, to the point that people may not have heard me. However, I now have facial hair and a pretty deep voice. I’ve been passing for at least 6 months now. They’ve had time. If you do not correct yourself, I will loudly do so for you. So, I’ve had rather very little sleep in the last week or so, working and all. I was a bit manic this morning. An older gentleman misgendered me (not the first time, probably won’t be the last) and I corrected him rather publicly (”I’m not a girl, thank you!”) in front of several coworkers. The supervisor, that ally I mentioned earlier, came up to me probably 30-60 minutes later, apologizing for that guy. I had no clue what he was talking about originally. I was over it after two minutes. After being misgendered for 6-8 years, it’s not something you hold close to your heart. He asked if I wanted to know, I, of course, said yes. After he informed me, I felt the need to explain some things. I’ve never had someone apologize for someone else. Especially a cisgender man apologize for some other cisgender man. I’ve talked to this supervisor about some personal things, too, and I like to think he gets it to the extent that he can, just like I can sympathize, but not entirely understand the things he’s got going on. It’s an understanding that I don’t have with many other people. It’s nice in that environment. I’m not sure why he felt the need to apologize, maybe the fact I was so loud about it, but I wasn’t exactly “upset” by it. Rather, I want the correction to be made, because then hopefully he’ll correct himself next time, and the time after that, there may not even need to be a correction. He seemed to think I took it to heart that this person misgendered me when 1. this person misgenders me a lot, 2. I expect this person to misgender me a lot, and 3. I take it to heart <i>every</i> time a person misgenders me. I mean, sure, if certain people were to begin to misgender me, yeah, it would hurt, especially after all the time they put into not misgendering me. But this guy is not and will not be one of them. It was such an insignificant event but I guess my response went above what was expected? Despite being told that my response was completely valid? It was just an odd exchange, although I still appreciated that thought and the fact he listened to my reasoning. That person had no reason to apologize on behalf of someone else, though. I’m rather sorry he felt the need to.

[farklelucas]

Hey! Please can you do a jaylos fic where Carlos tells jay he used to be a girl? Carlos thinks jay won't be happy but jay is really supportive. Thank you cxxxx

of course!! so… unfortunately isle of the lost would not work at all like american/european legal systems and they probably wouldn’t be the kind of place to just give kids meds or honestly any help at all. but i wanted to fit it into the canon universe bc there are trans people everywhere so carlos could def be trans in that story. so, for background purposes, i would think carlos would go to the library, read every book ever written on trans heroes/villains and on a book that one of them DEF wrote on gender therapy/hrt/etc., and then steal what he needs starting with puberty blockers and probably start on t right before getting sent to auradon when he was fifteen (ish?). also in this au they didn’t meet until they were like thirteen, just to make things work, & jay never met cruella bc… carlos is def not out to cruella. she isn’t the best parent ever ya feel. and bc carlos is clever af, he emailed auradon prep posing as his mother pre-arrival and let them know that he is trans and should be registered as a male/called by his chosen name and pronouns/etc and auradon, way more accepting/accommodating of this kind of stuff, helps him out. anyway, various mentions of ftm transition, trans characters, and discussion of gender and the importance of gender.

always taking fic prompts

Carlos hasn’t been this nervous since the day he left the Isle. His whole body is buzzing with anxiety; he can feel the nerves in his fingertips singing with it. He’s terrified.

He’s always had a very set mindset about the subject. It’s nobody’s business but his own; he controls his gender and who gets to know anything about it. Not his mom, not anyone else. As long as 

But he thinks that Jay should know.

He texts Jay and asks him to meet him by the Enchanted River after school. Jay agrees easily, cheerfully even. His good mood makes Carlos’s stomach turn even worse; he doesn’t know how Jay is going to react. He just hopes it doesn’t completely ruin their relationship altogether.

Carlos packs up some sandwiches and drinks and hightails it to the Enchanted River. He arrives a full twenty minutes before he and Jay agreed to be there, so he paces up and down the riverbank. He feels sick to his stomach.

Eventually, he hears a shout and sees Jay heading down the path towards the lake. He feels his entire chest clench, but he shakes himself and walks back towards the gazebo. If Jay knew about the problem, he would tell Carlos to be brave and hold his head high. But unfortunately, Jay can’t know, because he is the problem.

Carlos meets Jay on the picnic blanket and sits with him. Jay is smiling, and smiling, and God, Carlos can only hope it stays that way. “So, what’s up?” he asks, reaching out to take Carlos by the hand. “You said you wanted to talk.”

Unfortunately, Carlos can’t muster up a level of enthusiasm. So he just gives him a half-smile and says, “Yeah.” The smile slips from Jay’s face a little, and he shifts closer so that their knees are touching. Carlos feels, at once, better and even more nervous at the touch. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Well, this doesn’t sound good,” Jay murmurs.

Oh, God, if only you knew. Carlos swallows. He is completely prepared for Jay to run for the hills. Well, he’s not prepared. Honestly, over the past few months they’ve been dating, and the entire five years they’ve been friends, Jay has become a complete lifeline. He seems himself completely falling for him and if Jay leaves now, it could crush him. Not to mention, the four of them - Jay, Mal, Evie, and himself - have always been together. What happens if they split? What happens to their friends?

But he can’t keep this to himself. It’s a huge part of him, and if Jay isn’t comfortable with it… maybe it’s better off. He can’t help but feel like that it won’t be, that it’ll hurt like hell.

He shakes his head. “I just… we’ve been together for a couple months now, and I don’t really tell a lot of people this, but I can’t just keep it from you because it’s such a huge part of my life.”

Jay squeezes his hand. “Carlos, you’re starting to scare me,” he murmurs softly. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. I want you to always be comfortable with me and with us and I would never want you to feel obligated to tell me anything.”

That makes Carlos raise an eyebrow. “I thought we don’t have secrets?”

“There’s a difference between secrets and our own personal business,” Jay says.

Carlos shakes his head. “It’s a secret. And couples definitely don’t keep secrets this big.”

Jay shifts so that they’re sitting across from him, eyebrows furrowed looking him in the eyes. “You didn’t kill anyone, did you?”

“No!” Jay breathes a sigh of relief, and Carlos begs himself off of laughing. “No, I just - I’m…” He takes a deep breath. “I’m transgender.” Jay blinks, confused. “I was born, biologically, as a girl. But I transitioned to a boy. It’s pretty common, there have been a lot of examples of it throughout history, a lot of famous villains and heroes were rumored to be trans. Little Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin, and Snow White’s first husband, Ferdinand. It’s really pretty interesting…”

He hangs his head and sighs. He can feel himself blabbering, but he’s so nervous and he can’t stop. Suddenly, he feels hands reach out and gently touch his face. “This is what you were so worried about?” Jay asks, gently.

Carlos looks up at Jay, whose brows are furrowed but he’s still smiling, gently. Meanwhile, Carlos feels like he’s about to burst into tears, but instead he just nods miserably. “Babe, I don’t care about your gender.” Jay winces at his own wording, shakes his head and starts again. “No, that’s not right. I do care about your gender, because obviously it means a lot to you. It’s a big part of who you are as a person, a whole chunk of your identity, and that’s amazing. But it’s not the determining factor of how much I like you.”

Carlos frowns. “Really?”

“Of course,” Jay says, immediately. “Like… you really, really love dogs. You like video games. You can be a slob. You’re kind and loyal. You’re beautiful.” Carlos feels his cheeks go warm. “These are all parts of you, but I like you because you’re… you. Does that make sense? Like, the sum of the parts equals the whole - you’re the whole, and that’s all that really matters.”

All the sudden, Carlos feels his face get wet with tears. Before Jay can really say anything else and before Carlos’s crying gets out of hand, he reaches out and throws his arm around Jay’s shoulders, burying his face into Jay’s hair. “You have no idea how much this means to me,” he murmurs, feeling Jay’s arms come and wrap around him. “I love you.”

Jay pauses a moment, then holds him even tighter. “I love you,” he says. “So damn much.”

[iamthestrangerinmoscow]

[gender stuff... yeah guys you know I don't have a gender therapist] I've been thinking about testosterone again. I know I have been adamant about not taking it in the past, mostly because I was hella scared of getting facial hair and male pattern baldness, but now I kinda changed my mind. I'm still not sure if I'd ever want to be on HRT for the rest of my life, but I have read a ton of nonbinary transition stories and now I'm pretty sure that going on then off once won't mess you up. You can do it, and your body will readjust eventually. The main reason why I'm considering going on T then stopping is my voice. It gives me so much dysphoria that I'd do anything to change it. The nice thing about voice changes on T is that they are permanent, so once your voice drops, it stays that way forever. And judging by all the videos I have seen, as much as 3 months can be enough for a significant change. Typically the voice drop happens before facial hair, but tbh I have reconsidered my opinion about facial hair. I still don't want it but I don't think it would be a problem if it happened. So I can see myself taking testosterone for long enough to get the voice drop and then stopping and not taking it ever again. There is also a possibility that I will like the other changes so much, I won't want to stop it. The idea of being dependent on it all my life is not nice but if I'll start passing as male and realize that it actually makes a difference, hell I'm not going back. There are two issues. First, I'm not sure anyone in Poland, even in a private clinic, will allow me to do this. They expect the textbook trans person story and if I tell them "well I'm male-aligned genderqueer and I wanna be on T for like 3-5 months" they'll just laugh and tell me no. I guess I could lie about it, but then what will happen after I stop? Can I just... stop showing up for the shots, or stop using androgel? Will the doctor get in trouble for it? And the second issue is keeping this a secret from my extended family. If I stop taking T before I get facial hair and stuff, they probably won't suspect anything. However they will obviously notice the voice drop and... how... do I explain it? There is of course the bigger problem in persuading my parents cause if they won't be on board with it, it won't happen. Previously my mum said "you can't transition as long as your grandparents are alive" and she was generally pretty nasty about it. I'm waiting for her to accept me but how long will I have to wait? Now I don't question my actual gender anymore, I just jump from "I wanna fully transition" to "I won't do anything apart from top surgery" multiple times a day. It's fun. Not really. I wish I knew a doctor who I trusted and who I could discuss this with. I wish I had anyone in my family who was on my side about this! My dad is like "you can do whatever you want if it makes you happy" but it doesn't really change the opinion of other family members, does it? So anyway I'm a bit stressed out about this because I feel like living with dysphoria gets harder every day and I *need* to do something. If you have any thoughts, advice, experience, words of encouragement, etc, please share it.

[adventures-in-transmania]

It’s been one year since I’ve started HRT and I’m feeling nostalgic. Let’s talk about the last year.

Last year about this time, I was three months into a new job I thought I had hella potential for. I was enjoying the job. I had come out to my aunt who I worked with and thought would have issues with this facet of my life. I accepted the job without telling her this information and it caused me a good amount of stress. To have her accept it so easily, I couldn’t be more grateful, considering the environment.

When I accepted that job in August of last year, I had no /idea/ that I would start HRT just a few months later. When it became a thing, I realized I had to tell those I worked with, at least the ones I worked with often enough and the ones I felt comfortable outing myself to. You’d think after outing myself so much over the years, I’d be better at it. I’m fucking terrible at it. I hate confrontation and I hate outing myself even to people I know will be accepting. However, once I know they’re accepting, I word vomit because there aren’t many people who listen/understand.

I started HRT in a house (a trailer, tbh) that I lived in for my entire life, with my grandmother who didn’t know and my parent who didn’t want to tell her, who didn’t accept me for six years, who I was terrified to tell that I’d started HRT because of them telling me not to. I didn’t tell them until after the first shot. They were disappointed I didn’t tell them before that shot, but understood ultimately why I did what I did. It’s difficult living with a transgender parent. I feel bad that I was able to start HRT before them and feel bad talking about the changes, but this is my life. They’ve dictated enough of it, it’s my turn now. I’m glad I made the right choice in my perspective of not putting HRT off any more than I already had.

A year ago, I thought I’d be dead within 5 years at the maximum. I thought I was stuck where I was. I had just graduated college a few months before and wasn’t sure where I was going.

In the last year, I have started HRT. I moved out of that God forsaken trailer. I moved my family out of that God forsaken trailer (I FUCKING DID THAT and I’m proud as fuck to have had to adult so much in so little time). I have come out to more people than I had to before. I have talked more openly about being trans in many circumstances than I ever thought possible and to people who are cis/het. I have gotten acceptance from people who I thought would cause so many issues. I have made so much progress on things I thought I would never be able to overcome. I have changed so much more than I thought ever possible.

I read up on HRT before I started, because what trans person doesn’t? I knew what I was in for. I knew what I was dysphoric about. I knew my hopes and expectations.

My expectations were merely about my voice. I knew about the other changes, the muscle tone, the fat redistribution, the hair (facial, leg), the mood changes. I knew about things that wouldn’t change (height, Adam’s apple wasn’t a definite change that could occur). I mostly wanted my voice to change just so I could pass as a man. The binding was an issue between school/work at my last job, but I didn’t have to bind past 7pm, unless I went out with friends, which may have occurred maybe once every six months. I only worked until 7pm at my last job (occasionally I’d cash until 10pm, but more than not I’d be done at 7pm), but if I started binding at 6am, it wasn’t ideal, but manageable. My new position (while I may not have been in school, thank fuck) meant I could work at all hours of the day, meant I may be binding for more than 24 hours, it was not good. Considering I didn’t pass well enough to feel comfortable not binding, I binded as long as I was out and it wasn’t good. I enjoyed this job, though, so I dealt with it. Well, I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed my last two jobs. I also make more at this current job than I would getting a job in my field at this current point in time.

I didn’t pass in the workplace the first few months on HRT. There were people I knew would have issues working with a transgender man. I also realized I had things set on “easy” being a transgender man rather than a transgender woman. I was never afraid of being fired for being trans and for that, I know I’m lucky/privileged. Using the men’s room meant maybe getting a few weird looks if I wasn’t passing. I don’t think I would have felt safe using the women’s room if I was a trans woman in some of these towns. It was bad enough I didn’t feel safe just existing in the small towns we went to to inventory small grocery stores. When you pass at least five (one that was massive) signs supporting Trump in 2020, with not one minority race in sight, you feel a little unsafe. I grew up in a small town, albeit it was considered a “middle/high class” small town, but it was full of white people (with the exception of one family) and you were made fun of for being queer. You get used to that kind of mentality.

Anyway, the first few changes on HRT I noticed where more personal. For one, my menstrual cycle stopped in November of last year and hasn’t come back. I can’t tell you how fucking thrilled I was about that. They say it may take 6+ months for a menstrual cycle to stop and I hoped for the best but expected the worst. Mine stopped after the first month after my first shot. I did not expect this. I hoped, but I didn’t expect. I had cramping that would keep me in bed whenever I was home. It was consistent, though. I’d get cramps up to a week before actually bleeding and then for day 1-3, paired with heavy bleeding. It was also consistent in timing. It would often occur from about 12pm to up to 6pm. I distinctly remember always being in trig in high school when it hit. I’d cry often just from the pain of the cramps, paired with dysphoria in college, it was a bad time altogether. I thought I might have some issues in months to come, some unexpected bleeding, but I didn’t. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I had some cramping (at least it felt like uterine cramping) maybe 9 months later, but no bleeding. I never wanted biological children (or any children, tbh, which was something the medical field tends to put a heavy voice on before starting HRT, with good reason), so it was a nonissue. In the first few weeks, there was some growth and sensitivity in regions I did not expect. I have to say after the sensitivity went away, I wasn’t disappointed by this change. After a year, I’ve actually come to like that certain change.

I started getting facial hair probably three months in. It was super light and blonde. Six months in, it darkened on my cheeks, jawline, and my chin. This wasn’t something I ‘wanted’ exactly. It made me feel gender euphoria, getting this facial hair. I shaved it, because my parent had issues with it, had issues with what my grandmother would think. I kept the blonde hair above my lip. I shaved that only twice since starting HRT. I keep the facial hair long enough to be euphoric at times before shaving it. It feels nice to have, but ultimately I shave it off.

More personally, I have chest hair. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this, as someone, as a biologist, who has looked into male puberty more often than one should. This didn’t start until probably month nine. It looked weird coming in on a chest of DD boobs. It still does, but it feels right. I like stroking the middle of my chest and feeling hair there, like it belongs. But the stray hairs on the breast part of my chest looks odd.

I’m about six months into passing as male. Work is still hard to traverse. I pass well enough to strangers, the people we work with, but not so much to my coworkers, not so much to the people I work with every day. There are people who know, people who met me as a woman but who know I’m not a woman. There are people who still don’t know and don’t see it.

There were people who I thought would have issues working with a trans individual, (males mostly), but have been better than expected and have even respected my pronouns as a trans man, even before actually passing as male.

Another year after starting HRT and I’m still traumatized by a ‘friend’ having issues with me using a male locker room at a progressive Vincentian, Catholic university. There isn’t a day that goes by, even days that I pass enough to get “sir,” or “buddy,” or “mister,” that I don’t hesitate. HE had the issue, not me, not anyone else around me, it was HIM.

I recently had a coworker who has showed an endless amount of support follow me into a men’s restroom. I had a panic attack. I knew he wouldn’t say anything, I knew he wouldn’t attack me, and yet, I thought about how I didn’t belong, how he could hurt me. It wasn’t fair to me, it wasn’t fair to him.

I use gender neutral restrooms when I can, but that isn’t often a thing when I’m at work. It’s usually small stores with only men/women restrooms. I’m trying so Gods damn hard to get over HIS issue with me, but three/four years later, here I am, thinking “do I pass well enough to use the men’s room?” The other hard part is going into a men’s room and finding the only stall occupied. The only thing you can do is wash your hands and leave, because what else do you do? I know this happens to other cis men, but it feels odd knowing that other cis men can use the urinal but I cannot. It’s like another stab in the chest. i know cis men who are unable to use a urinal with other people in the room with them, yet it still makes me just as dysphoric. It also sucks when you’ve gone in there multiple times when you really have to pee because every other coworker has left and you’re able to now and you aren’t able to because the one stall is occupied.

I hate that I have to be this aware. I shouldn’t be, I shouldn’t have to be. I know my manager(s) are supportive. But I’m noncomfrontational and I really really don’t want to cause issues. I can’t get it out of my head that if my “friends” have issues with it, certain people would, too. I hate it, I hate what he’s done to me. I’m trying so fucking hard to undo it, but it’s fucking hard. It’s a process and it’s a process I can’t explain to anyone else.

I talked to another trans man recently about it and his take on it was “I just decided to use the men’s room. If they had an issue with it, so what?” Honestly, I aspire, but I can’t imagine ever being like that unless I’m in a room full of strangers.