#I know like literally none of these ccs but this series has occupied my head rent free

[mossiishroom]

If I open a blog where like..people can send n theories and thoughts about whitepine would people like that?

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[nostalgic-pancakes]

one day (i know that you will be there)

Summary: Here, have some fluffy transbur :D

Pairings: gen everyone, with a specific focus on crimeboys

Read on AO3

Word count: 2070

Warnings: None? I guess? Tell me if there are any, but I don’t see them

Other notes: Part of @noorahqar‘s BANGER discord server Pride Event!

Please DO NOT send this to the CC’s or even imply that this exists because No, Thank you

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Sometimes, it feels like it's okay. Nothing's wrong at all and in fact, Wilbur is happy.

Other times it feels like he's stuck in his own skin, a place he can't get out of.

Wilbur doesn't really know what's going on with his gender. He's always been cis, it's all he knows we it's his comfort zone. Even while his life was being wholly upended by YouTube, and Twitch and life in general, Wilbur's gender was always a constant- the one thing he never worried about or spent too much time on. It was his gender, and it was just kind of...there.

Sometimes when gender is part of the conversation, people display confusion when Wilbur talks about his gender like something separate from him that was tied on and is just there now, like a bit of hair that can never stay in place, but isn't necessarily a bother, either. But isn't gender like that for everyone?

Well, according to the one and only Tommyinnit, no.

"Well… for me, my gender is pretty malleable. It's more of a fucking... fucking abstract concept than a feeling? I'm a little detached from mine, but not as much as that, Wilbs."

"Then what is your gender like?" Wilbur asks. It's late on a Friday night, and Wilbur had ended up visiting Tommy's flat out of mostly impulse, living just under a kilometre away from his sibling these days. They're in the living room, splayed out on the floor talking about anything and everything in the dark, too quiet to wake Tubbo and Ranboo.

Wilbur’s not agender- he has a gender that he keeps around, even if it stays reasonably sectioned away from the rest of him.

Tommy hums, an older tune that Wilbur can't place as he fiddles around with some wool scraps ("Cabbages!" Tommy insists indignantly) leftover from the cardigan they had just finished when Wilbur walked in. It's a burgundy colour that's probably going to be matched with one of Tommy's longer cream skirts to University Monday morning.

"My gender is a… a kind of vibe? I guess? To me it feels like skirts doing that cool swoosh thing in the wind around you while you walk or eating Tubbo's chicken soup and that feeling I always got after a Dream SMP stream. It's weird, but that's my gender I guess." And that is weird. It's weird as fuck, but Tommy's gender sounds really fucking cool so Wilbur tries anyways. Tries to imagine what his gender, the amorphous entity that it is, feels like to him.

It's hard, at first, but then Wilbur starts humming. He's always done better with auditory concepts than visual or tactile ones, strumming tunes together that tie in with his latest hyperfixation.

So Wilbur hums. He starts with 'White Wine in a Wetherspoons' and then 'Cause for Concern' with a little bit of 'Your new Boyfriend' thrown in for posterity as it all starts to come together. Tommy starts tapping his finger on the plywood floor, creating a small beat.

His gender feels nice, actually, and not just the neutral burden that the universe has him carry around. It begins to feel like the warmth in Wilbur's chest when someone says "Hey, don't stop. Tell me more, this is interesting" to even the most niche fixations that Wilbur has ever had, like the different types of bricks or the historical fashion one he had at the same time as Tommy and they made dozens of Pinterest boards together (1830’s hairstyles his beloved). It feels like Phil calling him 'Son' in that chamomile accent, like everything will be fine. It feels like the tipsy laughs he and Niki share when getting drunk together and it sounds like the quick, comforting 'bzzt bzzt bzzt' of Tommy's sewing machine running on the other side of the flat while Wilbur makes them breakfast because they and his flatmates are fundamentally incapable of looking after themselves.

It's really a pretty nice gender, actually. So when Wilbur closes its metaphorical pouch and clips it back onto his metaphorical backpack, he feels lighter, warmer inside than before. Is this how Tommy feels sometimes?

The tapping stops and Wilbur realises that Tommy's fallen asleep, surrounded by scraps of cabbage on a fairly cold plywood floor. This will not do. Thankfully, Wilbur has gained enough arm strength to reasonably carry the nineteen-year-old to his bedroom, carefully avoiding sewing pins that Tommy will clean up frantically in the morning. Tubbo and Ranboo are asleep as before, in the same place, huddled together on the lowest bunk covered in blankets, with just enough room for another person.

Tommy fits in perfectly, head on Ranboo's shoulder and the rest of him swathed in blankets to protect from the cold. It's started to show fairly heavily outside so going home is not possible. Therefore, Wilbur stays.

The guest room still has some of his shit from the last time he stayed over, around a week ago. Piling a thick-ish duvet on top of himself, Wilbur sleeps, more at peace than he's ever been.

-

Monday morning, Wilbur tries out pronouns. He was spending the weekend in a bit of a haze of filming and social interaction and talking to Elodie, his editor, in order to have most of this week free.

He's back at home with pronoun dressing rooms loaded on Firefox, a Geoguessur stream finished and a free day with spoons to spare. It is time.

First- she/her.

This is Wilbur, the site reads, She's 27 years old with a penchant for making songs. She also really likes hanging out with her sibling, Tommy and her best friends on the Dream SMP. She still ships DNF.

Oh. Oh wow. She/Her works pretty well actually. Wilbur likes that for herself.

Next- they/them. This is not as nice, but it's also not bad, necessarily.

Fae/Faer- this one is pleasant enough.

Everything else is okay, Wilbur supposes. She figures that just knowing that he/him isn't the only answer is good enough for herself.

The first person she tells is Tommy, on a phone call during one of his frees.

“Okay, so he, she and fae, right?” they ask, rolling the pronouns around like the colorful hard candies sold in packets of two hundred each, muttering small sentences, barely audible to the phone mic amongst the dozens of student voices around him, pitter-pattering like sleet on cars heard from a cozy living room.

“Yeah. pronouns change by the day. Please don’t interchange them.” Wilbur confirms, short and soft.

“Oh that’s really fucking cool. What are they today? Does anyone else know? Do you have names you want to be called instead?” Tommy asks, orange-sweet in his kind concern and slowed down questions as to not deflate the souffle in Wilbur’s brain.

“Uh, she/her, and no, not yet on the knowing and the name thing. I’m going to tell Phil and Niki, then Dream, probably. Wish me luck.” Wilbur answers, the ‘wish me luck’ thrown in more as a formality than anything, but she’s still nervous, thoughts spinning in popcorn-crunch circles, pop pop pop about how it could go wrong and even if Tommy and Ranboo were accepted, perhaps that courtesy won’t be extended to her. Tommy, the absolute fucking legend as always seems to have figured that much out.

“Wil. Wilbur. Wilby. Big Dubs- It’s going to be fucking fine, you’re popcorn-popping again and while that’s one of your idiosyncrasies and I fucking love those, you are also freaking the fuck out. Everything will be fine, alright?”

“Idiosyncrasies? Where did you learn that? Is ‘The Tommyinnit’ learning new big words?” Wilbur teases, to mask her affection just a little bit, even as it seeps out of her voice like honey in a sopapilla, warm and sticky and sweet.

“Don’t fucking patronize me.” Tommy retorts, instinctive as it’s been for the past few years now, no bite behind their words. “I’ve got South Asian Lit now- call us in the evening?” he asks, because Tommy, Tubbo and Ranboo are a single unit in the evening. Do not attempt separation till after midnight. Wilbur laughs, a small thing only audible to her sibling over the phone.

“Course. You can tell them yourself, if you want.”

“Okay. Now I need to walk like, three buildings or some shit, so I’m hanging the fuck up. See you later?” Tommy’s voice is softer towards the end, cotton candy and Wilbur melts, just a little bit.

“Okay, bye Tommy.”

“Bye Wil. Good luck.” Tommy hangs up a few seconds later, the last thing on the line that Wilbur can hear being Ranboo’s steadily louder voice as end catches up to Tommy, and Wilbur keeps the phone to her ear for a few seconds more, before putting it on charge and loading up Discord, to find Phil and Dream on VC 3 together, Tubbo and Purpled occupying the beloved VC 2.

Wilbur joins the call, taking in a deep breath and letting it out, and taking a sip of lukewarm tea. Earl Grey, probably taken from the tea box Phil gifted her on Christmas and prepares herself.

“Ay, H’lo, son.”

“Hey, Wilbur!” Dream’s voice, chirpy and crisp as a freshly-picked apple registers first, just before Phil’s comforting chamomile and Wilbur is at ease very quickly, because it’s Dream and Phil. It is literally impossible for things to go wrong.

“Hi! I just came on here to tell you something.” Wilbur starts. After hearing noises of agreement, like popping candy, Wilbur starts.

“Um, so on Friday, Tommy and I did some soul-searching. Well, I did most of the searching. And uh, I figured out that I’m technically genderfluid, but my gender is a series of abstracts and I use he, she and fae pronouns.” It’s quiet for a second, before Phil responds.

“Hey, that’s pogchamp, mate. What pronouns are you using right now? Are they interchangeable?” Dream makes a noise in agreement, in questioning.

“Thanks, and uh, she/her, and no. not interchangeable. I use certain pronouns until I don’t.”

“Oh, that’s cool! Should I update your pronoun role in the Discord to ‘ask for pronouns’?” Dream finally says, and in typical Dream fashion, it’s by getting straight to business. It’s ridiculously endearing, even five years on, knowing everyone’s little quirks and idiosyncrasies (thanks Tommy for reminding her that the word exists) that it’s still possible to be endeared by them, and that they’re all still endeared to her.

“Yes please, Dream. Thank you. I’ll make a small announcement on the server myself, but thanks.”

“No problem, Wilbur! We’re glad you’re happy.”

“What the green-bitch said, mate.” Phil responds, and Dream turns on his camera for that only, just to show that he isn’t actually wearing green- he’s wearing a blue T-shirt, blonde hair mussed about enough to show that he did not comb it when he woke up. His face still has some sleep leftovers, but he’s awake enough to pay attention, and he’s smiling at Wilbur, mouse clicking very fast to change her discord role, and it shows up a few seconds later with a purple dot. ‘ask for my pronouns’. Wilbur is smiling like an idiot, and she turns on her camera, Phil following suit as she starts laughing a little wetly and all of this sinks in.

Wilbur is gender-fluid. She loves herself, her family and the little pouch still strapped to her backpack. Phil is whispering things into the mic soothingly and Dream is grinning at her, and it just feels so good. The bad feeling in Wilbur’s skin just isn’t here today, and it feels like it won’t be around for a while yet.

With slightly blurry eyes trying to see through her glasses, Wilbur makes an announcement with the @everyone turned on.

Bitchbur (she/her today): @everyone I’m here to announce that I’m genderfluid! You can either ask me my pronouns or I’ll just change my nick. The name’s still Wilbur. That’s about it.

Replies start coming in, nothing but messages of support and thumbs-up emoticons, and Wilber closes her eyes, leaning back in her chair, laughing a bit more. She’s so happy that she managed to accept herself, and find acceptance in everyone else on this server. She probably won’t come out to the internet for a while, or even to some of her real-life friends but that’s okay.

She’s got everything she needs right here.

[contradictoryenigmas]

2019 Postmortem: 10 Questions

2019 is coming to a close and it’s time to look back via ten questions. If you’re new to this series, I recommend checking out the ones I did in 2017 and 2018. While 2019 had its ups and downs, this was the first year where I can say it worked out quite well.

What made up your body of work this year? Which parts are you most proud of?

Most of the work that made up this year was with my new day job as a car specifications researcher. You may think that researching car specs would be easy, but I wasn’t fully prepared for how in-depth it would go. For example, I have to look up both the liters and cc’s of an engine to input into the system. Nevertheless, a lot of knowledge I had from writing reviews and previews has come in handy when trying to decipher what a company names a certain piece of tech or figuring out where to find that one piece of information.

As for my writing, I haven’t done much. Towards the end of last year and beginning of this year, I was feeling less enthusiastic about writing anything - feeling like I was phoning it in to get something up. When I started my new job back in mid-February, I took a break to try and give my brain a break from it. I have slowly dipped my toes back in it during the spring and summer, but started to do more towards the end of the year - a combination of writing for an internal news service my company offers and finishing a backlog of reviews. Writing is still a bit of struggle as my creative side of the brain is still running on fumes and I only get about a quarter to half-way on a piece before setting it aside, most likely not coming back to it.

There were a couple of pieces that did make their way out over the year and I’m quite proud of them.

Afterthoughts: The Sad Trombone of the 2019 Detroit Auto Show (Cheers & Gears): Some passing thoughts on what would be the final Detroit Auto Show held in January. It would be memorable for all of the wrong reasons and made me wonder what the future will hold as the show moves to the summer for 2020.

Three Years On, A Brain Dump (Contradictory Enigmas): Looking back at three years of this site, what has come, and what I had hoped to do in the coming year - sadly none of those items came to fruition.

What were your top 5 moments of the year?

Finally achieving a major goal of getting a job

Turing 30 years old

Beginning to make some progress on other major goals

Reducing my hermit tendencies and going to a small number of events

Continue working on giving me more space to relax

What are you really glad is over?

Uncertainty reared its ugly head again throughout the year. It ranged from whether I was the right person for the new job I had accepted to worrying about whether or not I would have enough money to cover unexpected expenses. Luckily, I remembered that if I took it slow and worked it out - whether through thought or writing it down - the uncertainty would begin to wither away.

How are you different today than you were 365 days ago?

The most difficult part of this year is trying not to feel like I need to constantly work. Being a full-time freelance writer for the past seven years left me with a routine of constantly being busy to try and keep myself afloat. Drew Magary on Vice sums it up quite well.

When you freelance, you know that every job is temporary. You might get paid well, but you can’t assume that will always be the case. I remember being pathologically incapable of turning down work when I freelanced. Every assignment I didn’t do was money lost. I felt as if I already HAD the money and was giving it away by not doing the work.

That meant I gleefully accepted multiple gigs at once, and on weekends, and over holidays. I can’t speak for other freelancers out there, but a kind of PTSD sets in if you do this long enough, where you always fear the faucet will be shut off with a cursory email from a temp boss or, worse, no emails of any sort. There’s such a short distance between “I freelance” and “I’m unemployed” that the two statements often feel indistinguishable.

Emphasis mine.

This feeling still resides in my head and constantly tells me that I should be doing some sort of work, even though I know that giving myself some breathing space is good. This wasn’t helped by my growing amount of work throughout the year as new hires that were brought in around the same time as me either decided to go with another career or were let go. Getting some of their workloads on top of mine meant the feeling of “when will I find the time” started to creep in. Only setting some ground rules did this alleviate this feeling somewhat. I’m hoping this feeling goes away as time goes on.

I mentioned last year that I was re-diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). At the time, I was seeing a psychiatrist and was on medication to help me control some of the various issues I’ve been dealing with. But a combination of the new job, not having the time to make the hour-long trek to see the psychiatrist, and the expensive cost of the medication meant I had to put a stop to this for the time being. This has meant a return of the various symptoms (being able to focus on one task, having my mind wander, forgetting various things, etc). It has also meant that it is hard for me to relax with anything for a few moments because it doesn’t provide my brain enough stimuli to keep me occupied. Oddly, doing work of some sort seems to provide stimuli. But it comes at the cost of me not being to relax.

Pic Credit: Pina ADHD_Alien

On the plus side, starting this new job has brought something that I wanted for some time - separate spaces. What I mean by this is having one space for my work (the office) and then another to relax (the house). Previously, I would be working on stuff in the same room where I would sleep, causing all sorts of anxiety and feelings that I should be working on. Having that separation allows me some breathing space, despite that being somewhat difficult.

It’s also nice having a steady income and not one that is a roller coaster of sorts. Various amounts of money coming in at different times gave me a lot of stress. Moving to something that follows a regular pattern not only gives me a bit of breathing room for anything unexpected but also allows me to plan out new ideas and trips,

To cap off this section, I’m glad that I’m still involved in covering the automotive industry. I have dialed it back by a large amount, but I think this may be for the better as it means I can take more time and produce higher-quality pieces.

Is there anything you achieved that you forgot to celebrate?

Nothing that I can think of.

What have you changed your perspective on this year?

Talking about my mental health in public. I’ve been slowly talking about how I have both ADHD and clinical depression on various forums after seeing a number for friends and people who admire talk about it. I’m still in a grey area of how much I should reveal and whether it is worth it. I can see there is a lot of good as you see other people come out of the woodwork and reveal some of the issues they’re dealing with. But some don’t believe mental illness is a thing or will go out of their way to make it worse. This is a balancing act that I’m trying to figure out.

Who are the people that really came through for you this year?  

A lot of the people that I work with at my job. Whether it be the various supervisors that would take time to answer a question I’m sure they have been asked countless times, to the other researchers who I might help with a quick issue or chit-chat about whatever, they have all played a part in making me feel welcomed.

What were some pieces of media that defined your year?

The Heavy, Sons: It has been a long time coming for the group’s latest album and it is very much worth it. All of the traits that I like about their previous albums such as the gritty sound and soulful lyrics are present. Heavy for You, their first single off this album has been on constant repeat.

Choom, Progger: I can’t explain why this dark jazz-funk-rock hybrid song just clicked with me. Maybe its how all of the instruments are arranged to provide a dark mood in one part, and then rise with something lighter later on. All I know is this song helped out in some bleak times during this year.

Nintendo Switch: An early Christmas gift to myself, I’m surprised at how much I have been playing. It is cool to play something on the TV and then undock it to continue playing while on the move. This has captured the magic and fun that I had been missing on playing video games throughout the year. So far, I have beaten Super Mario Odyssey and will be checking out Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

What will you be leaving behind in 2019?

The feelings of not being able to fully plan out stuff. Since starting the new job, I have been able to make slightly more concrete plans to ideas or items that I want to do soon. Some of these have come fruition, while others are still in the planning stages. This may not seem like a big accomplishment, but considering that the past few years where it mostly treading water and putting off various items because of one thing or another, it is a huge weight off my back.

What do you hope to accomplish in 2020?

There are two items that I want to work on writing and photography. I’ve been feeling either drained or hit a wall in terms of knowledge and want to expand it more.

For my writing, I want to try and recapture some of the fun and creativeness that I had when I first started many moons ago. I have some books including The Writer’s Way that has been recommended by a few people to help rekindle this. I’m also wanting to do other writings such as doing some history pieces, and more stuff on this blog. But of course, trying to find the time to do this will be one of the challenges.

As for the photography, I’m planning on doing some sort of online course and some reading to help me understand basic photography ideas, along with exploring various settings on my DSLR. I tend to shoot mostly in Auto without the flash and while it does deliver decent photos, I know that it is capable of more. I’m also wanting a new camera, a prosumer point-and-shoot to expand the possibility of taking more photos.

There are some long-term goals sprinkled in here such as working towards moving out of my parent’s house into my place. I have started saving up a fair amount of cash to cover a security deposit and a month’s rent, but I’m trying to aim for at least two to three months of rent to give a bit of a cushion. Also taking some sort of vacation is in the cards. Not sure where I want to go, but I do know it will be out of state.

That’s a wrap for this year’s postmortem. 2019 wasn’t a complete mess and hoping 2020 continues that trend.