#I think there is a small possibility of extremely online people who will be like ‘she supports him still’ and call her an apologist

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

We’ve been so focused on how “Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)” will come across that we’ve not even begun to think about the emotional damage that “Innocent (Taylor’s Version)” will inflict.

[qqueenofhades]

I would like to... gently shake the people going 'Dick Cheney/Alberto Gonzalez/[insert neoconservative architect here] endorsing Harris is entirely and only a bad look for Harris' because that's not the point. And like, I get feeling weird about it (I've been unimpressed with Dick's backpedaling since Liz Cheney got primaried), but: Trump is proving too extreme for THE PEOPLE WHO MADE HIM POSSIBLE. This is their consequences. THAT'S the point.

Look, this is what I think about it: I fucking hate Dick Cheney and all the architects of the Bush Junior neoconservatism-early-aughts-War-on-Terror-Patriot-Act-No-Child-Left-Behinding Republican Party that laid the groundwork for the Tea Party and then for Trump. If there was any justice in the world, Dubya would be at the Hague for a war crimes tribunal and not allowed to sit in Texas painting dogs and enjoying a quiet retirement. But he was fortunate to be the president of the most powerful country in the world, and America doesn't obey international law unless it feels like it, so that's what we get. (And yes, someone asked Dubya if he was going to endorse in 2024, following Cheney, and was told, no doubt with much pious handwringing, that "President Bush retired from presidential politics many years ago." But he's still raising money for MAGA Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, evidently. Fuck you, George W. Bush. Kids these days don't say it enough.)

However, since literally the entire pre-Trump establishment Republican party is now deciding that Trump is too insane, fascist, and dangerous even for them, I'm not surprised but still annoyed that Online Leftist Logic (TM) has translated that to "Harris must secretly be an early-noughties hard-right neocon Republican and that's why they want to vote for her!!!" Most if not all of them have said that they openly disagree with her policies but are voting for her anyway because she is the only way to maintain American constitutional democracy. And yes, we're all shocked that DICK FUCKING CHENEY, architect of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, felt that there was in fact a line of fascist government overreach that he wasn't willing to cross, but if that's the case -- if even these completely terrible warmongering corporate assholes are like "uh Trump is too bad even for us to support," then you should, I don't know, maybe listen to that. But as ever, I search for logic in vain.

Likewise: Harris has made zero policy concessions to these Republicans and she never went fishing for Cheney's endorsement specifically. She didn't suddenly declare Iraq a totally okay and normal thing in order to get Cheney and his warhawks on board, and yes, Old Dickhead probably has no small amount of personal motive to get back at Trump considering what he did to Liz. But that's the thing where apparently political motives should only ever be pure, moral, and Perfect, and taking the right action for the "wrong" reasons is still disqualifying because you weren't thinking enough pure moral thoughts while you did it, or something. I don't give a fuck why Cheney decided to vote for Harris, because I don't respect his opinion and can't foresee myself ever doing so. But because we are in an unprecedented historical moment where even DICK GODDAMN CHENEY thinks that Donald Trump is too dangerous to ever have power again, I will thank him for doing that and that alone and then tell him to hit the f'n road if he thinks he deserves a scrap of credit or Democratic policy concessions for it. He doesn't. He sucks. But he's still making a choice that we need to see made at this moment, and people who don't get that, as usual, can STFU.

Basically: Cheney's endorsement is not directed at you, and it's not intended to move voters who already fit your profile and therefore think, like I do, that Cheney can eat shit. It's directed to all the career-Republican-politician types who can see him doing that and decide that they can do the same thing. Hell, we just had 17 former staffers of Ronald Reagan announcing their Harris endorsement (in addition to the 200+ Bush, McCain, Romney alumni who already signed on and all the ex-Trump officials at the DNC) and going so far as to insist that Ol' Ronnie Raygun himself would have supported Harris. Now look. I hate Ronald Reagan more than any other twentieth-century president. The degree to which he ALSO laid the groundwork for incredible damage to America cannot be overstated. But because I am not an idiot, I can see that this does not mean Harris has suddenly turned into Reagan in her policies. So. Yeah.

The other thing to note here is that Harris has seen the advantage in cultivating a bipartisan coalition and making a cross-party case for voting her to preserve American democracy. Now, a lot of the Republicans have said that they are going to stay Republicans and they want to purge their party of Trump and MAGAism, they are trying to buy time for that transition to happen by voting for Harris, and while I have never voted for or agreed with a Republican in my whole life, I actually think that's a good thing! I don't WANT to fear the end of American democracy every four years because the Republican Party has become a screaming shitgibboning insane vehicle of American Gilead while inciting stochastic terrorism against Springfield, Ohio and everyone else who doesn't bow down to Trumpist Dear Leader and his KKK alt-right Elon Muskified supporters! I don't WANT this howling fascist conspiracy-theory-puppet-of-Vladimir-Putin black hole of violence to be just what we have to accept as the center-right (except you know, now far-far-far-far-can't-see-it-with-a-telescope-right) party in America! I would prefer it if we had a functioning democracy again where both parties were engaging in fair competitiveness and good faith and had the basic premise of making people's lives better, even if they disagreed about how to do it! I would REALLY like it if we could go back to the days of disagreeing about taxes and foreign policy and social welfare -- you know, NORMAL THINGS -- instead of Commander Vance and the Project 2025 foot soldiers trying to install a theocratic fascist dictatorship! I WOULD LIKE THAT A WHOLE LOT!

That said: I have pretty much reached my limit with asking people to vote. I have done it for 8+ years (since before Trump was elected the first time) and I'm done. Either you know the stakes of this election at this point, or you're so blindly and stupidly committed to misunderstanding them that there's nothing I or anyone else can possibly do to convince you. I still see people posting a lot of stuff from the bad-faith anti-democratic leftist cranks and arguing with them endlessly and... why? Why? Why are you giving them the oxygen and exposure that they crave, and which is giving them more attention than anyone else is giving them? Block them. Mute them. STOP ENGAGING WITH EVERYTHING THEY SAY EVEN IF YOU'RE TRYING TO REFUTE IT. It's not going to work, and at this point, it's not remotely conducive to winning this election. The Great Myth of the Undecided Voter (TM) is another one that, I hope, can finally bite the dust, and the actual undecided voters who are out there are not the ones posting dirtbag leftist bullshit about Harris on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. This election is now completely down to a numbers game: who can make their identified voters turn out to vote. So please. Spend your time and energy on reaching those folks, who might want to or have said they will vote but need a push or extra help to make sure they do.

That being the case, if lifelong Republicans want to vote for Harris and help defeat a Trump dictatorship, they're actually being more helpful for the cause of American democracy than every single shrieking Online Leftist out there, and maybe they should think about that. I'm amused at how they still think they can make demands of the Democrats, because -- when your entire plan from the word go has been "I'm not voting for the Democrats and there's nothing you can do to make me!!!" -- why are you surprised that they don't take your thoughts and opinions into account? That's the basic simplest Democracy 101 version of how electoral politics works. If you have removed yourself from their voter pool and laugh and scoff at any suggestion that you should enter it, then they're not gonna listen to you or think that they should make policy to appease you (which is good, because most of these people are fucking nuts). That's why they're blowing a gasket disowning AOC, still one of the most left-wing members in the House, because she wants to actually win and make real changes in society and has reached a happy-ish marriage with the Democratic party, instead of virtuously losing her seat and becoming irrelevant like some other members of the Squad who got primaried out this year. And the Democrats have accepted many of AOC's views as mainstream policy! She didn't change, but she stayed in the party and worked with it, and the party as a whole is moving to where she was all along. But because any hint of compromise or working to get results, rather than just posting self-righteous screeds on the internet, is Bad, she had to go, I guess. Or something.

Anyway. That's the that on that. If you want to win this election, target and talk to the people who have already identified themselves as likely or possible voters, they just need that extra push to become definite voters. I'm over the anti-democratic hypocritical leftist cranks as much as I am the screaming shitgibboning racist-mob-inciting fascists. If it takes some Republicans gritting their teeth and getting on board the "let's save American democracy" boat with me, then fine. They're actually willing to do the smallest tiny thing to make that outcome come about, and that means, for right now, they are the enemy of my enemy and I'll accept their help. After that, I would in fact like it if we had a sane center-right party again, once Trump is in jail and we can fumigate the MAGA rot. It's up to them.

[getosbigballsack]

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙

𝑃𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟 𝐺𝑜𝑗𝑜 𝑆𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑢 𝑥 𝐶𝑎𝑚 𝐺𝑖𝑟𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟

𝑆𝑦𝑛𝑜𝑝𝑠𝑖𝑠: 𝐻𝑒 𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑦 𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑧𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑦, 𝑝𝑙𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑓𝑓 ℎ𝑒'𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑗𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑛. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑, 𝑦𝑜𝑢'𝑟𝑒 #1 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑚-𝑔𝑖𝑟𝑙. 𝑆𝑜 𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐺𝑜𝑗𝑜 𝑆𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑢 ℎ𝑖𝑚𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓.

𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔: 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑎𝑚-𝑔𝑖𝑟𝑙, 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑, 𝑒𝑡𝑐

𝐴/𝑁: 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑑𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑐𝑖𝑟𝑐𝑢𝑚𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑏, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑒 𝑑𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑦 𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝ℎ𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑤. 𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑎𝑠 𝑦𝑒𝑡.

𝑊𝐶: 2.9𝑘

𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠. 𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦.

✯𝐺𝑜𝑗𝑜 𝑆𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑢'𝑠 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑃𝑒𝑛

𝐸𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦❤︎

Truthfully you were no stranger to this line of work. After all this how you were able to get through college, pay your bills and now living inside of a very nice apartment complex with your best friend. 

Even so, now you’re rated as the number one cam girl on that site, due to your physique. Being extremely short and tiny to you is an accomplishment, because if it wasn’t for those two main factors then it may be a possibility that someone else would’ve turned out to be number instead. 

So yeah, at this point you knew all the tricks and trade on the site. You knew what works best for you, you knew what the viewers loved, what they wanted from you. You also knew their dislike and so on. 

To add, you also know what to do or how to grab your viewers attention by doing stuff like feature collabs with other cam stars or pornstars. It helps to boost your ratings and gain more recognition. And you know what they say, the more people who watch and subscribe to your content, the more money you’re about to roll in. 

But funny enough, you’ve never once had a featured guest star on your livestreams, or even in the videos you’d post on OF. The thought had never crossed your mind, nor did you care enough to think about it. But today, you might actually consider working with a pornstar.

You almost choked on your water when you opened up your gmail and saw that you’ve received a letter from the owner of the biggest playboy magazine in Japan and he happened to be the number one hottest pornstar of 2023. 

You almost jumped out of the chair when you opened the email that was sent a half hour ago and began reading. 

Dear Y/N, 

I’ve seen a few of your videos online and I must say I’m impressed. I have to say, I was pretty shocked to see such a small girl like you perform so well in bed. You’re a star baby girl. Oh, just to let you know I’m also your biggest tipper on your live stream. 

Anyways, I want to make a proposal to you. You don’t have to accept but I’ll try my luck with you. Let’s do a big collaboration together at my place. It could be anything you like; like roleplaying, BDSM, or just simple vanilla sex. It doesn’t really matter to me, I’ll be fine with whatever you choose. I’ll just have to make sure that I inform my camera crew about the collaboration, and ensure that everything is alright and in place just so that you could feel comfortable. 

I think this would be a perfect opportunity for the both of us. You'll have an amazing stream to broadcast and I’ll have content to post on my private website. Your rating will also go up, and as an added bonus I’ll make you the face of the winter 2023 playboy magazine. 

So how about it, pretty girl? Do you wanna fuck me? Because I want to fuck you. Let’s talk this over at my place Friday, which is the day after tomorrow by the way. This is my address. I live at xxxxxxxxx in penthouse number two. I'll have a keycard at the front desk for you. Also call me whenever you are through with reading this email. My number is +81 xxxx xxxxx. I want to know what you think and if you’re up to the task. 

I’m waiting for your call. 

Sincerely, 

Gojo Satoru. 

You’ve never rushed to grab your phone so fast. But as soon as the device was in your hand, you quickly dialled up his number and after the second ring, he answered. 

Gojo:  Hello? Who is this?

You swallowed thickly, eyes almost popping out of your head the moment you heard his smooth voice through the speakers of your phone. 

Gojo: Hello? 

You: Uhm hello Mr. Gojo?

Gojo: Speaking?

You: Hi Mr. Gojo it’s Y/N, you said that I should give you a call immediately after reading your email. 

Gojo: give me a sec and let me call you right back. 

With that said, he hung up but immediately called you back. But instead of a voice call, he jumped the gun and went straight to facetime. You blinked a couple of times before answering, blinked a few more times the moment you saw his angelic face appeared on screen. “Hey,” he said and smiled at you with those perfect pearly whites as he stared at you with those cerulean eyes of his. 

“Hello,” you answered with a shy, but adorable smile gracing your lips. 

“You’re cute you know,” he complimented you which had your cheeks burning from being so embarrassed and shy at his compliment. 

“Thank you Mr. Gojo,” you said to him. 

“Please call me Satoru.” he suggested and you shook your head ok. “So, I guess it’s safe to say that you want to collaborate with me.” You shyly nodded your head at him and he chuckled. “That’s perfect, I’ll get in touch with my camera crew then and let them know that you and I are going to collaborate together.”

You said nothing, only stared and watched as he pulled out another phone from his pocket, you assume and began dialling a number. 

“You’re pretty shy, for a cam girl that is. Most cam girls that I’ve worked with in the past aren’t as shy as you,” he pointed out. 

“Well, that’s because I can’t believe that I’m on the phone with Gojo Satoru. I admire your work very much and to know that I have the opportunity to work with someone that I admire is making me feel a bit shy. I don’t know what to say or even how to act around you currently,” you answered truthfully. 

“I admire your honesty, but no need to feel shy with me.” 

“I’ll try not to be,” you replied and he laughed. 

“You’re adorable… ah hold on. Nanami,” he called out to the guy who was talking to him through his other phone. “Y/N called and she said that wants to collaborate with me. Yeah- so I guess we can set up the guest room tomorrow and prepare everything for her stream on Friday night. Your streams are on Friday night right pretty girl?” 

“Yeah I stream every Friday at 8,” you answered him. 

“Yeah, so like I said we’re setting up the guest room for her stream. I’ll run through everything later in the afternoon, Nanami. Alright, later then,” he bid his goodbyes to Nanami then hung up and turned his attention towards you. “I guess everything is settled then.” 

“I think so.” 

“You sure?” he asked. You thought about it for a while, wondering if there was anything else you’d like to say and you almost said no, but that is until you remember something that you think it’ll be important for him to know before progressing further with the planning and preparation. 

“Uhm, Mr… I mean Satoru. There is something that I’d like to say.” 

“Go on, I'm listening,” he said to you. 

You took a deep breath, closed your eyes and turned your head away from the phone and said. “You know I’ve never collaborated with anyone right?” He hummed in response to this. “Well part of the reason for this is because I wasn’t all that interested and the other reason is that I lack sexual experience.” 

That shocked him a bit, blinking a couple of times as he blurted out. “You’re a virgin.”

You quickly shook your head no as you responded, “No, I’m not. I’m saying that I don’t have that much experience in bed. I’ve had sex maybe two or three times, but that’s it so I don’t know if I’ll have any fun.” 

“Ah… doubting yourself already, pretty girl?” He asked while chuckled. You stayed silent and he never was really expecting you to respond anyways. “You don’t need to worry about having experience or not. You don’t need to worry about such silly things. All you have to do is trust me and trust that I’ll take absolute care of you and your squirting pussy.”

You gasped, “Mr. Gojo?”

He laughed, “Don’t worry your pretty little head too much about it. Anyways I wished I could stay and chat with you for the remainder of the day, but I just got home from Okinawa and I’m extremely tired. So, I’ll text you when I’m all rested and tomorrow you and I can talk on the phone and get comfortable with each other.” 

“That would be lovely,” you said to him. 

“Alright I’ll text you later to talk more about the collaboration.” 

“OK Satoru, goodbye,” you said to him. 

He smiled and waved at you as he bid his goodbyes before hanging. 

Well then I guess you’ll be busy tomorrow and on Friday night. You were so excited. 

… 

The following night and throughout the next day, you’ve been texting with Gojo non-stop. You both shared funny memes, talked about your favourite food and such- you know just light innocent conversations to lighten the mood between you both until he started questioning you about your Journey towards becoming a successful cam girl. 

You felt quite a bit shy at first, but still you told him how much you struggled to get through college and you found out that being a cam girl was the easiest way to make money. You didn’t plan on doing it for too long, but somehow you got so caught up in the fun and the blood rushing thrill, filled with excitement from being watched by a thousand people got to your head; you just decided that this was going to be your career for a very long time. 

You even told him that at first you were so ashamed of yourself because you’ve never once thought that you would be in such a position to be showing your body off to the world. But overtime, you got over it and now, you could care less about what the public had to say about you and your career. He told you that he was happy to hear that you’re having so much fun with your job and he hoped to make the live stream just as fun. 

After that conversation you went on to talk about random things while pitching a few topics about sex along throughout the conversation. You were honestly starting to feel a bit comfortable with him, you know, being able to have such obscene conversations with him without being scorned or called a slut. You even decided to give him a free private show that night. You were a bit nervous but comfortable enough to spread your legs for him in front of your webcam while he sat in his office to watch you. 

He watched as you tossed your head back, your dainty hands gripping your breast, squeezing the mound as that tiny little booty of yours jiggled each time you slid up and down on that plastic dildo you use for your every stream. “Want me to tip you pretty girl?” he asked. But you shook your head no, too focused on feeling rubbery vein caressing your wet, gummy walls. He chuckled and licked his lips then he said, “Bend over for me… I want to see your pussy dripping all over that toy when you cum pretty girl.”

“Ugh… Ok,” you moaned and did as you were told. But not without looking back at the screen to see Gojo blue eyes staring dead at you. You could see him fighting against himself, trying his hardest not to pull his cock out on you while you gave him a show. He wanted you to have this moment for yourself, show him exactly how freely you’re able to express yourself when indulging in pleasure. So his cock will have to wait, blue balls would have to be his best friend tonight. 

“Mr. Gojo… I,” You stuttered through your moan. 

“It’s Satoru to you, Angel,” he said to you. “You wanna cum?”

“Yes, please may I cum Satoru? I really wanna… ahhh.”

“Go ahead,” he ordered before falling back against his chair to watch as you fell apart for him over the computer screen. Your pretty pussy was on display for him and only him. You bent your knees slightly to ride the dildo a bit faster, your thighs were trembling. He could see your pussy pulsing and creaming around his cock. 

“Ah… Ahh… mhm,” you cried and twitched as you cum around the plastic cock. Gojo could’ve sworn he dumped a heavy load in his pants, but he is not going to check, well not right at least, not when you started to ride that dildo once again. Oh boy was Gojo going to have so much fun filming with you tomorrow and see how much he can make that pretty pussy of yours squirt with his fingers, mouth and his cock.

After what happened with Gojo that night, all the worries you had about filming with him disappeared during the night, only to return the next day when you walked inside his apartment to see him getting his makeup done for the stream. He greeted you with a smile the moment he saw you stepped foot inside his home and wasted no time in calling you towards him to watch as he got his makeup done. 

He pulled you down onto his lap and pressed a kiss to your cheek, gripped your chin and slightly tilted your head upwards to meet his gaze. And just before you were able to utter a sound out of your mouth, he lightly pressed a kiss to your lips, then whispered, “There is a lot more where that came from pretty girl.” 

His words left you a flustered mess, he had you blushing like a teenager who just got kissed by their crush. You knew that he was a smoother talker, based upon the conversation you had with him over the phone and somehow you knew that he had some sneaking plan up his sleeves to get you all flustered up your stream. But what you didn’t expect him to do was to kiss you as soon as you entered his home. 

Dammit! He was dangerous. 

Anyways it didn’t take him much time to get his makeup done, not that he needed it anyways his skin is already perfect as it is. But you guess it's somewhat showbiz, or pornbiz. Anyways he offered for his makeup artist to do yours, and while you declined at first, you ended up agreeing because you realised that you left your makeup pouch at home. 

Anyways, as they did your makeup and so on, Gojo explained that his camera crew or lets say his friend Nanami would be inside of the room, filming the both of you while Geto sat in a private room and monitor your stream and thank the viewers for the tips, because you were going to be too busy getting fucked (basically) to be paying attention to stream. He went on to explain that there’s much to discuss with Nanami. He said that Geto is normally the one to explain what Nanami is about to tell you later, to new and upcoming Pornstars like you. 

But since he didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much manly presence, Nanami decided that he was going to take up the initiative to explain it to you instead. As he went on to explain other things, you just sat quietly and listened. There isn’t much for you to say anyways. 

After the conversation, he left you for a moment and came back with an envelope. 

“What is this?” you asked him as you reached out for the envelope that he stretched towards you. 

“A STD test results of course. It is important for me to provide you with this information. As you can see, I am clean. I don’t nor have I ever contracted an STD. With that said, I want you to trust me enough to have sex with you without using a condom. I don’t mind if you want to use it. At the end of the day, it’s your body and I want you to feel comfortable. That’s my goal here.” 

“Ok Satoru,” you said while smiling. 

“Great, now give me a kiss,” he said as he slotted himself between your legs. Your shyness kicked in once again. You tilted your head downwards a bit and peered at him through your lashes. He chuckled - how adorable you look he thought before resting his forehead against yours, his perfect pointy nose rubbing against you and you could feel his cool mint breath against yours lips as he whispered, “Better get used to kissing me now to avoid you tensing up in front of the camera.” 

And with that said, he gently pressed his lips against yours, sweetly capturing the taste of your strawberry flavoured breath before pulling away. “Sweet,” he whispered, his lips moving from your lips and pressed them against your cheeks a couple times before returning to your lips to kiss you deeper and more passionately than he had before. 

Your skin felt like it was on blaze - your heart hammering through your chest the moment you felt his tongue caress yours. “Satoru…” you whimpered against his lips. He chuckled before pecking your lips a couple of times.

To be continued…

𝐼 ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑒. 𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠. 𝑃𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑇𝑤𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑑𝑢𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼'𝑚 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑛 𝑎 𝑙𝑜𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑙𝑦. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔༼ つ ◕◡◕ ༽つ

@getosbigballsack 2024

[itsawritblr]

Holy shit, the New York Times is FINALLY interviewing and listening to detransistioners.

The tide is turning.

Opinion by Pamela Paul

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Feb. 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.

“But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.”

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.

“The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.

For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.”

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said.

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis.

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person.

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.”

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.

Pediatricians, psychologists and other clinicians who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise “severely unwell,” Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, “I was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that’s not conversion therapy, I don’t know what is.”

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women.

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies.

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?”

To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.”

“The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.”

Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022 study showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and another study that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children’s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.”

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

“It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.”

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.”

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.”

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.”

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published a thorough investigation into America’s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. “If you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,” Beddoes told Vanity Fair. “But here — in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right — if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can’t say anything.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, “it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.” When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan’s belief that he was not meant to be a man.

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.

“When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,” Garcia-Ryan told me.

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which surveys show many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda. Most Americans across the political spectrum can agree on the need for legal protections for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For those who want tor ead more by those fighting the cancellation forquestioning, read:

Graham Lineham, who's been fighting since the beginning and paid the price, but is not seeing things turn around.

The Glinner Update, Grahan Linehan's Substack.

Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker, who's been physically attacked for organizing events for women demanding women-only spaces.

REDUXX, Feminst news & opinion.

Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs, A nonprofit of gay people and others within the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of "LGBTQIA+"

[genderqueerdykes]

i understand they're not for everyone, but i do think a lot of people who are primarily exposed to queerness through online discourse would benefit from going to a queer bar and experiencing other queers having fun with each other in a distinctly queer way. i had been looking to attend a kink night at a queer bar for a while, and I finally got to go to one last night, and i'm very glad that i did. I was fortunate that the bar I went to had CBD drinks, so I could enjoy myself despite not being able to drink alcohol

there was an old woman with a rollator who set up at a table right next to the stage with free candy and snacks for everyone, but especially for the drag performers. I found that a lot of people there ended up calling her mom. she gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me to get home safe as I was leaving. she told me she'd see me next weekend, see was there every week.

there were adults of all ages there it was an underwear & animal play night, and the house was busy. drag queens and kings, bears, pups, bunnies, cats, leather people and all kinds of vanilla folks showed up. people in collars and harnesses, in jockstraps and leather briefs, on leashes, being lead around on their hands and knees. there were drag performances all throughout the nights and some of the queens included BDSM elements into their performances

i spent the night dancing with the leather puppy boys including an FTM pup who became my friend, some extremely cute old men with white hair and glittery shorts, a middle aged asian man in tiny black undies who really got into the music, an older man who looked like Freddie Mercury who was wearing tiny undies with pink straps and tall pink pumps, a lesbian couple who were fiercely making out most of the night, and a very tall person wearing a shirt that said "stay queer as fuck" with glittery rhinestoned shoes.

i saw a lot of people who were unafraid to be themselves. a lot of people who were willing to show this small slice of the world who they are, their authentic self, no matter what that meant. no one did anything that invaded my boundaries by being their authentic selves. others being loud and proud about themselves didn't drown me out. i felt more like it was okay to be who i was, too. dancing with the pups helped me realize that i'm ready to get into pup play, after questioning if it was for me for years. the exposure was healthy, it's hard to know certain things for sure until you actually put yourself out there

it's not an environment for everyone, i get that. but in whatever ways you can find it exposure to other queers in person is lifesaving, especially when you are having fun. sitting and meeting with each other and discussing what it means to be queer is important, but having fun together in a queer way is literally vital to our health and well being. just talking about being queer all the time won't nourish your soul. experiencing queer fun is necessary, especially when it comes to adults. we're need to and are allowed to have fun with each other in a distinctly queer way. it's important to embrace it when and where possible, in whatever ways make sense for you.

you'll feel a lot less self conscious when you see other people happily flying their freak flag, too

[river-neurodivergent-willow]

I do not like how people now think "becoming" nonspeaking is not rare and will happen if you just unmask or burnout and it is frustrating when people say to me like there is a good chance they will. :(

Most people who "become" (loose the ability to speak fully and cannot speak at all times, even alone for a very long time or forever lots more than a few weeks) ) nonspeaking already have had a history of issues with speech and are normally not LSN first.

It feels upsetting when people talk to me and say about how they might become nonspeaking because they are being burnt out!!! Most of the nonspeaking people I have heard about who have become nonspeaking late in life (age 10+) I have heard through my mum in her parents groups for parents of autistic people, because most do not have the ability like me to communicate online very well.

I could speak before and was not semi verbal but I did have some small speech challenges growing up such as a small speech delay and some words I could not say correctly (for example I said "gymnastics" like "ginastics" and ambulance like "amboolance") and I often spoke extremely loud and could not control how loud I spoke to the point my mum considered I could be hearing impaired. But still it is very rare for someone who could speak as well as I could to completely fully loose the ability to speak. I did not even know that being nonspeaking and "becoming" nonspeaking is a thing when my regression happened!!!!

It just frustrates me because some people treat it like this thing that is very not rare and common and very possible for them even if they have LSN and are fully verbal with no speech issues at all

[stravacious]

i was thinking about fionna and cake’s version of jermaine, and drew her this morning!! i posted her to r/adventuretime and she didn’t do too bad there, so i started writing stuff for fionna and cake world lol more headcanons below the cut :)

i originally posted her under the name “jasmeen” but i think corrine would be better suited for the sibling alliteration with cake :) huge thanks to some of the users in the reddit comments who helped brainstorm some of this!! lemme know what u think lol

fionna was adopted at birth by a (human) couple, cynthia and marlowe. cynthia works in the city’s forensics department and they both own a funeral home/cemetery. they have big hearts, and have a hard time charging folks for caskets and burials. they owned two cats, corrine and cake, and fionna took cake with her when she moved out, leaving corrine at her (now elderly and retired) parents place. if corrine could walk and talk like cake in this world, she’d be running the funeral home and going after people for the money they owe her elderly parents. it’s shitty work and they aren’t hurting for money, but things in this life aren’t free, right? her true passion is sculpture, and eventually she learns to let the debts go and focus on her work.

fionna’s biological parents, milton campbell and mallory mertins, had a nice relationship in the beginning. but when mallory gave birth to fionna, she disappeared from the city with her. having always struggled with her mental health, mallory’s post-partum depression became post-partum psychosis and she left fionna at a safe surrender site in her daze. her psychosis spiraled and she was sent to prison before escaping into homelessness. milton died not long after their disappearance, after serving as a nurse for his entire career and saving thousands of lives. he even had a newly built hospital named after him after his death.

gary prince was on his own at a very early age, leaving the abusive home of his aunt georgia, uncle larry, and cousin chantal. georgia goes on and on about all the wonderful things she was meant to accomplish if she didn’t have to take in gary and his sister, and chantal goes along with it all. larry at least is sympathetic and sends money to them when he can. as a result, most of the money gary makes goes towards taking care of his special needs sister, nadine.

marshall lee was extremely close with his father, elijah, before he died. elijah wanted nothing to do with hana’s money or work, and raised their son in a small home in the forest. marshall grew up knowing how to rough it in the outdoors, before his mother took him away from that life and into a stuffy, proper one. she sold the house he grew up in and he never forgave her.

flora never knew where she came from. her favorite activity is catfishing dudes online. she hates her appearance, and feels like she’ll never truly know who she really is. after the events of the show fionna and cake, she learns all she can about fionna by stalking her online. she adopts fionna’s backstory as her own, and even commits a few instances of identity theft against her. this torments her and she hates doing it, but feels like she has no other choice. her and fionna look strikingly similar, and it has made her actually start to appreciate her own appearance and feel whole for once.

phoenix fleming hates his mother, she’s a big preacher in the local church and raised him as strictly as possible. he was barely allowed to leave the house until he moved out as soon as possible, and discovered his love for raves and DJing. he now devotes all his time to being dj flame, and his mother refuses to let him be. his next door neighbor, miss bundy, is kinder to him than his own mother ever was, and brings him treats every day.

jermaine > corrine

joshua > cynthia

margaret > marlowe

minerva > milton

martin > mallory

gumbald > georgia

lolly > larry

chicle > chantel

neddy > nadine

elise > elijah

fern > flora

phoebe/flame princess > phoenix

cinnamon bun > miss bundy

[schizopositivity]

So I was searching for a new psychiatrist online, and every website filter, every description they have, for individual providers and medical groups will include a whole bunch of different mental illnesses and life situations that they specialize in. Basically every mental illness and stressful life situation you could think of. But I didn't see schizophrenia or psychosis on any list. They had mental illnesses that can have psychotic symptoms (like bipolar disorder or PTSD) and mental illnesses that have overlapping symptoms with schizophrenia (like ASD and ADHD) but didn't have psychosis or schizophrenia anywhere.

And this is so frustrating, because I'm used to therapists not knowing how to treat schizophrenia/psychosis at all, that's been every therapist I've ever had and I've sadly learned to deal with that. But for psychiatrists, I'd really love to be able to be prescribed high doses of antipsychotics by someone who knows how that affects people. Someone who has enough experience to list that as a specialty. I live in a small city with a long list of psychiatrists, I even checked ones farther away that could do online sessions. Still after hours of combing through websites I found nothing. I was even told by my therapist that normal primary care providers regularly hesitate or refuse to prescribe antipsychotics because it's a "liability".

And it feels so unfair. Seeing psychiatrists say "mental health is so important! I can help you find your best self!" while ignoring all of us who rely on antipsychotics to function. For me my antipsychotics are the biggest reason I'm alive today, that I have a job, that I have a long term relationship, that I have friends, that I can even function. Going off of antipsychotics is not a safe option for me.

The pharmacy requires refill approval from a psychiatrist or Dr. so that I can have access to my meds. And I shouldn't have to keep settling for mental health care workers who don't understand my illness, don't want to prescribe my meds, and don't care to try.

I don't understand how there can be such a major gap in mental health care that's never even talked about. For a lot of us with schizophrenia, antipsychotics are extremely important, and going off of them can have major consequences. The fact that medication can dramatically improve our lives is incredible, but the fact that so many mental health care workers don't understand it, don't want to prescribe it, or just guess when prescribing it is horrendous, and has life-changing consequences for us.

It feels so isolating to not even be on a long list of mental health problems, and to speak to countless people who've dedicated their life to the mental health field, yet don't even consider you as an option. I just got rejected by a group of 6 psychiatrists working in an office together. In a quick email they said they wouldn't be able to provide care for me. Apparently all of them, who are available and licensed to care for people with mental illnesses, don't even think it's possible that any one of them could help me. All I need is medication refill approval, but apparently they can't do that. It feels so defeating but I'm going to keep trying because I have to.

I am not an anomaly, I am one small part of a large group of people with my same diagnosis. And we all need care at the bare minimum, but we deserve care that has us in mind for once. One day, I'd like to think, that a profession centered around helping people with various mental illnesses and struggles, would add us to the list. Because we are here regardless.

[unknowinglydeceasedlol]

idk who needs to hear this but you *can* relate to someone’s struggles with a specific disorder without having said disorders

it’s honestly one of my biggest frustrations when you’re venting about a disorder you have or see people talking about it online and then you see people chime in “omg I didn’t think I had this but I relate to this so I have it!” and i don’t mean those people who have genuine concerns about having a specific disorder. (fyi, if you have genuine concerns regarding a specific disorder you may have, this isn’t about you!! it’s perfectly valid to stumble upon a disorder you didn’t know existed that explains your situation perfectly and have questions about it <3)

i’ll use this as an example but if someone is currently struggling through cancer and they vent to you about extreme exhaustion and fatigue, most people wouldn’t be like “omg I feel exhausted and fatigued too!! i must have cancer!” but would probably say something along the lines of “ive struggled through exhaustion and fatigue myself due to other reasons so i can understand what you’re going through and how you feel.” it’s okay to have questions about disorders and want to know more to maybe better situations you’re going through/ are in but just seeing one thing you relate to and claiming a whole disorder because of it can be very damaging to the people who have said disorders.

as someone with a cluster b personality disorder, there’s already so much stigma around them and that’s excluding all my other disorders/ problems. i’ve seen people who have no idea what BPD is, relate to a small portion of it, claim it as something they have with no research into it or professional advice, and then unknowingly play into stereotypes or spread more stigma about it. there’s so much more to a disorder than one or two things you see someone posting about. there’s also a lot of other things someone could have that also change how disorders present themselves in different people.

a person can have disorder A and vent about it but what you don’t know is that they also have disorder B, C, D, and E. although their main post is about disorder A, disorder C, D and E can also be big factors in it without you knowing. you might be relating more to the disorder C and E aspect of it over the “main” disorder A part of it than you really realize.

the purpose of me saying all this is not to be hateful, “gatekeep”, discourage people who genuinely have concerns, want to participate in genuine conversations about these topics, or for any other malicious reason. im just coming at this as a person to who’s genuinely really exhausted. it’s already so hard living with certain disorders and then you see people online who glorify, romanticize, or even fetishize certain disorders while cause harm to those people who genuinely suffer from it.

i stumbled upon someone’s post on a different platform and her whole shtick was “i have BPD but I’m uber normal abt it and not bat shit insane like literally everyone else who has it + having FPs is totally amazing and not super draining and exhausting” and it was honestly heartbreaking. her whole reasoning for having bpd was that she got obsessive over people she was in love with so therefore it was her FPs and got depressed if they didn’t spend time with her.

if you’re genuinely curious and have real concerns, please do your hardest to research it and/ or seek professional advice if possible. don’t put others who have the disorder down when they don’t meet or work with your agenda. thank you.

[near-er]

The Stellaron Hunters as your lover

Hc of the stellaron hunters if they were your lover

 ... FEATURING; Blade, Kafka, Silver Wolf CW/TW; romantic talk, over-protectiveness, manipulation, hints yandere, toxicity

Notes: GOSH, I haven't posted in forever. ngl i completely forgot that I had tmblr BUT I've been writing a lot more recently and wanted to post some drafts before my new works! pls enjoy this! <3

･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･･ ⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･ ⠄⠂⋆ ･

Blade

 ➤ Practically the whole fandom assumes that Blade would be extremely possessive and jealous,,, I 100% agree. You can’t go anywhere without his “mark” with you, even then he has Silver Wolf send one of her holograms to follow you (much to her dismay). Yk, just to keep you safe of course! If Blade goes anywhere with you everyone knows you two are together, whether it's because of his deathly glare towards anyone looking at you or the way he constantly has a hold on you. Whether it’s your waist, hand or bag (he’s slightly touch-starved). Blade is the type of s/o who would threaten to dismember someone just for asking if you want a large or small drink, god forbid you ever get hit on. The person would go “missing” within the next few hours. Confronting him about it would end up with him saying something along the lines of, “I’m not jealous doll. What’s mine is mine.” 

Kafka

 ➤ Anyone who doesn’t agree that Kafka is the most romantic among the stellaron hunters, can take their leave. Many think that her manipulative nature on the battlefield slips into your relationship but it’s far from that. She does her best to show that her emotions and intentions are pure. Kafka is the type of lover who will wake up before you just to admire the way that the sun shines on you while you’re sleeping, you’d wake up to her gently moving your hair out of your face while already teasing you “Like what you see darling?”  If that doesn’t get her feelings across then maybe all of her acts of service will; You want a hot bath? Kafka is already in the tub waiting for you. Had a hard day? She’s sitting on the bed ready to listen. (and possibly remove the problem) Kafka is downright smitten for you and isn’t afraid to let people know about your spell on her. 

Silver Wolf

➤ Although all the stellaron hunters are protective of their lovers, the most over-protective lover in the galaxy is without a doubt; Silver Wolf. You can NOT do anything without her, if she isn’t with you in person, she’ll still be watching over you through holograms. Her job requires her to stay in headquarters most hours of the day, and constantly online. This is why her love language mainly consists of playing video games with you and physical touch. A lot of your dates are just the both of you playing games and the winner gets any ‘reward’ they want. (silver wolf will demand a kiss for each win) While she may not be the most expressive lover, she gives subtle hints, and her small smiles and softening eyes, become a lot more noticeable.

[drdemonprince]

This is prompted by your most recent substack about fame, because my point is extremely tangential, I'm putting it here.

It's interesting to have seen the internet go through many stages. From the newsgroups/BBS era, to internet forums, to blogs, to social media, and how the respective environments shaped things.

In the early days, it's very much a group thing, some people became Big Name posters, pseudonymous, but still a group thing. The blog era was more personal, but still something made by someone who's just a person, even if not literally pseudonymous. Also, still text based, a lot of it even often. Social media changed that, with it's focus on follower counts on one hand and to snippets of text (twitter) or images (insta), and even though it's social media-ness is debatable, video (insta, youtube). The semi-anonymous nature however, was completely lost by now.

The doing it because you enjoyed it, or whatever, also recedes into the background because this is where monetization really takes off. The deleterious effects of the interaction between monetization and follower counts (notability) need no introduction, but painting with broad strokes, make something appeal as broad as possible deepens the flattening effect a medium like video already has, the visual aspects often being more important than the messages. It also has a much higher barrier to entry. Spinning up your own blog is cheap, text takes only a tiny amount data. Video is not. It's expensive to make (especially if you want slick videos), expensive to serve, so it's predisposed to big, single platforms that can leverage economies of scale.

The natural result is that you have a few people with big audiences, instead of many people with small audiences. If audiences is even the right word for that. If I'm talking about say, some TV show on my blog, and someone responds, it's a fairly equal conversation. More between peers, of sorts, just two people talking about something they share. As opposed to a Youtuber who makes a video about it with 100,000s of viewers. Because there are so many fewer voices, you lose the breadth of conversation too, narrowing to a small range of popular topics, and the distinction between You, and You as Your Brand gets eroded.

It's kinda notable in the autism sphere. Blogs where people talk about their experiences, how they dealt or didn't deal with things, have fallen off. Twitter came and went, and now there's Youtube and insta, where everything gets simplified down to a few slides or a 10 minute video about only the most basic aspects. Which is just... sad. I wouldn't have known that autistic burnout is a Thing many people struggle with if not for a blog post a friend came across and shared one day.

There was a comment from someone, a while ago, about how they used to have ASMR videos on, until they were able to get out into nature, and their desire for those videos completely disappeared. We're all very deprived. Of social contact, foremost. The pandemic poured gasoline on an already smoldering fire I feel. Latching onto someone 'famous' in a surrogate of social contact & context, like that person with their ASMR videos, feels like an understandable (though not good) outcome of that, which brings with it very regrettable excesses.

I think this is all pretty much a correct analysis, thank you! Though I would qualify that we have shifted away from the period of the Youtube mega content creator a social media ecosystem of intimate-seeming connections with smaller influencers, these days. Think of your Twitch streamers with a dedicated base of like 50-200 viewers per stream (and a Discord and a Patreon that supports them), the fitness Instagrams that sell meal plans online, the tarot witches and activist influencers offering one on one sessions, etc. Those communities can be more niche, but they still offer the illusion of a connection -- and if anything, that illusion is more strong because the creator is a "micro" famous person, and can take time to interact closely with fans here and there. We might already be heading out of that period of social media, though, especially with the disintegration of Twitter and the slow death of Meta's apps, too. I don't know what comes next but I hope we are due for a reappraisal of all of this, and the norms surrounding it.

[thenhlteaissuperhot]

nykki (martin necas' girlfriend) just posted some sort of q&a on her youtube channel and from the translation of the title, she should be talking about the nhl too, could you perhaps watch it and translate the interesting bits for us since its in czech?

This video was actually really interesting.

I have said it in the past already, but Nykki is genuinely one of the most sensible, down-to-earth, and level-headed WAGs I have seen on social media, so her answers were impressive and definitely worth hearing:

She answered the question about how she and Martin met:

Said that it is the most-asked question she gets - "My theory is that some of the people, who are asking me that, probably want to date a hockey player and they don't know how to do that. Personally, I wouldn't go for a hockey player." (she is so real laughing her ass off during that last part)

She would really want to have some sort of romantic story, but they literally started dating because he was constantly liking her photos, then DMed her on Instagram, they started texting and FaceTiming for several months before they actually saw each other in real life and started dating like two months after.

Talked about what it is like living as a (European) WAG, who moved to the US because of her boyfriend:

The players are away for half of the month during the season, so they don't see each other as often as people may think.

It was really hard for her to make friends among the other WAGs in the first year.

Overall, she expressed that she really struggled the first year and even thought that she wouldn't be able to live like that, wanting to go back home.

She also found it really hard to understand the "NHL lifestyle" (said that the term alone seems silly to her to this day) - "It is an extremely particular group of people. Even among the girls, in the room where we meet during the games, there are so many unspoken rules. I am an open book, I like to share my thoughts, and I hate small shallow talks, but I understood quite quickly that it doesn't work like that here and you can't trust everyone. It is everywhere like that - when you come to a room where there are twenty-five girls, at the end of the day, you only get along with a few of them, and I didn't understand that in the beginning. I kinda burned myself."

She can't have a work permit in the US and neither can all the European WAGs because their visas are officially under their partners - said that it is extremely hard for everyone to get a work permit in the US, but for them, it is practically impossible. A lot of other WAGs have tried, they poured a lot of money into the lawyers, and no one, she knows, has so far succeeded.

Where it is possible for the WAGs to obtain work permits, is in Canada - during this part, she also joked that Martin doesn't have a contract for the next year, so maybe they could move there.

Because of this whole work permit issue, she started doing social media, producing music, and writing scripts for some sort of company (the last two I understood are jobs in the Czech Republic, which she does online), making her own money.

She also said that life in Raleigh, North Carolina is quite uneventful compared to Prague, where she is from - however, she is also aware of the fact, that Raleigh is a quite safe place to live and that she can be glad for it because it's not like that everywhere in the States (as she knows from the experiences of other WAGs).

She also answered money-related questions as many people think that her boyfriend pays for everything in her life:

It is crazy for her that some people think that she is dating him only for the money - said that she didn't move across the Atlantic, away from her family and friends, and the established life she had in the Czech Republic, because of designer bags.

Said that all the WAGs (not just hockey ones) always showcase their life on social media to people who follow them in a manner that makes it seem better than it actually is - posting how they go to the games, how they all have their hair done, designer handbags...

She emphasized that they do have it really easy in a lot of things, and that it actually bothers her (personally she wouldn't be able to bear being financially dependent on her boyfriend - at least that's what I think she meant), but that there are also a lot of disadvantages, for example, if she is going to have kids one day in the States, their grandparents aren't going to see them because they are on the other side of the Atlantic.

At the end of the NHL-related segment, she brought up the question "what would you do if you broke up?"

She emphasized that she is one of the lucky ones because she has managed to find a way how to make a living on her own so this question doesn't really worry her because her life would simply continue, just back in Prague, not in the USA, but that many of the girls are studying in the States or just living there with their boyfriends and solely because of their boyfriends, and that once they break up, it is extremely difficult for them.

[sirfrogsworth]

I have two best friends.

Which is not an apt description.

Best friends is too small a term to describe what they are to me.

Chosen family. Ride or die. People I would drop everything for if they needed me. People I would protect with my last breath. People who know embarrassing details they will take to the grave.

Now that my mom and dad are gone, they are my lifelong companions. I trust them with my life.

I talk about Katrina all the time. But I tend to keep my friendship with Delling a little more private. I don't love either of them any more or less. There is no ranking system for my besties. But Katrina and I are basically like an old school comedy duo, so we have a lot more shenanigans to share. Shenanigans are easy content for a blog.

Delling is disabled like me. We have a lot of the same consequences from our health issues. Extreme fatigue most of all. Delling was unable to get disability benefits though, so they have to work a 9 to 5 job. And it exhausts them to the limit. They often will work and go straight to bed. If it were possible, I would talk to Delling every single day like I do with Katrina, but circumstances don't always allow for that.

So we have less shenanigans, but the same amount of love.

I'm also a little more protective of Delling at the moment. They are trans and for some reason a large portion of the "very online" people have decided to hate my best friend. And sometimes I worry about drawing attention towards Delling from the few trolls who still hate follow me.

Delling is almost always in my thoughts when I write about trans issues or argue with transphobes on Twitter. But I refuse to invoke "I HAVE A TRANS FRIEND" most of the time. For one, I don't advocate for trans people just because I have a trans friend. Though it does make the emotions I feel very intense sometimes. A lot of tears and anger. But I also don't want to sound like those conservatives who justify everything they say because they have a friend from a marginalized group.

There are certainly times people will be like, "Why would you mutilate someone and cut off healthy breasts??" and I wanna be like "Delling is much happier without boobies and I can see a huge difference since their surgery and you don't know what the fuck you are talking about with that mutilation nonsense. FIGHT ME!"

But I don't think I need to announce my bestie's private top surgery details just to win an argument on Twitter.

I'm just really happy for them and I am glad it helped. They struggled to get the surgery for so long and fought like hell to make it happen. People acting like it is this horrible thing make me so angry. When it finally happened it was... a relief. A weight lifted off their shoulders... err... chest.

After my dad died, Katrina was unable to get away from Florida to help me out. She was dealing with her disabled dog, Lucy, and her end-of-life care. That just isn't something you can ask someone else to look after for a few days. So Delling got permission to do remote work and drove down from the top of the country to help me. They came on the weekend of my dad's service and stayed a few days after to help me get the house sorted.

I'm honestly not sure I could have made it through that experience on my own. During the service, Delling just clung to my side as I tried to act normal when long-lost relatives offered similar grief platitudes over and over. And I kept introducing Delling and saying they were from the wrong state for some reason. I do actually know where Delling lives, but I guess my brain was not functioning in that situation.

Delling also helped me finish my eulogy literally hours before I gave it. And they helped me print out a bunch of photos of my dad that almost no one looked at. I'm so glad we spent all morning frantically doing that. *sigh* Though I'm hoping the photos will come in handy when I do an online memorial for my parents, so it was not all for naught.

There was a moment when a certain someone gave an impromptu speech at the end of the service about how she let my dad see his granddaughter for a couple of hours a year ago and how special that was, and Delling tightly squeezed my hand to help channel away my anger.

Ya know, those totally normal *yearly* visits all grandpas get to have.

Sometimes friends just know, ya know?

Delling and I also revamped the kitchen for my needs, which I have already turned into absolute chaos. And we had a fun shopping trip to Sam's where I bought tender beef jerky that was the toughest to chew jerky I've ever experienced. I guess the "tender" on the label was sarcastic.

All I know is that casually shopping with my friend was this beautiful bonding adventure where we just got to hang out and be together. It's weird the experiences that stick with you. Trying to pick out wholesale sushi with my bestie will be a treasured memory for the rest of my days. And I think that is kinda perfect in its simplicity.

There are not enough thank yous in the world for what Delling did for me. I wish they could have stayed a few months instead of a few days. I miss having them here in person. But they had a foster bunny to take care of and a job and a family. So I had to give Delling back to the top of the country.

I just wanted to write this in appreciation of my other best bestie. I love them more than anything. And I can't tell you all how special it feels to have someone who will drop everything, drive across the country (through tornado weather, no less), and keep you company during a very lonely time.

[glacierbash]

Y'know, any time I start to talk about this game, I feel obligated to lead with the funniest fact I have: I absolutely hated Final Fantasy, for myriad reasons both personal and amusing. I hated, for example, the way Elezen were shaped. I hated that Lalafell looked so young. I hated that everybody acted like it was so great, and by sheer contrarian nature I decided I would simply never play this game. And for quite some time, that worked! I'd bombard my partner with whatever media algorithms recommended me involving FFXIV, just to make fun of it. I detested this MMO, without having ever tried it. And yet, deep down, I knew I wanted a community. I wanted to be around people, even if through an online medium. When I worked at the library, my coworker set up a WoW private server that I spent some time fucking around in, but deep down I wanted people. Try as I might, I couldn't deny some part of me wanted to see what the game was all about.

So, I tried it. I spent 30 minutes exactly between opening the character creator to first posting a name that, genuinely, would define more than 2 years of my life: Iverelle Vauvenelle.

I spend about 2 days playing the game, one being chased around by strangers who my partner swore were good people, and one just questing on my own--and it was fine. I got to MSQ level 24, quite literally one quest away from being able to travel to other city states, and I stopped. I played my fair share, I played 5 hours, and I decided the game wasn't for me. I put it down for several months, when I was approached by somebody who I am no longer friends with. He said I should play the game again, keep going just long enough to travel to Gridania, so that I could see one of his alts--and maybe, we could play together! I didn't want to upset him, so I said "fine," and gave it another try.

By the end of the week, I was finishing up ARR, and moving into post patch, and something just... Changed for me. I'm not sure what it was, honestly. It's not like the game magically changed for me then, or if Iverelle had become perhaps my most meaningful character ever, but something shifted, and I found myself enjoying the game. It didn't even make sense to me then when I bought a subscription to the game, but I knew that something here was special. I just... Had to.

Post patch took me about a month, with multiple days spent stressing out over queuing into Good King Mogglemog out of fear and anxiety, because the trial was labeled as hard and my disorder was, frankly, at its worst. But, I managed to do so anyways. The victory was meaningless for most people, but for me? It was beyond words, just how important it was that I did content with other people, especially considering I went through all of ARR solo.

I made it to the end of ARR, to the infamous cutscene, when I realized I was sick with covid. In VC with two of my friends, I said the infamous line: "I think I have a fever." What a way to enter Heavensward, huh? I think it is in no small part due to Covid that Heavensward ended up being my favorite expansion of all time, and why Ysayle Dangoulain ended up being my favorite character of all time. Sickness and quarantine gave me all the time in the world, and being far too sick to be anxious, I sped through the story. One week later, I was done with Heavensward.

And of course, by now, I am finished with Endwalker and awaiting Dawntrail. For 2 years of my life now, I have been playing this game nigh daily. I stay up late playing it, I finish my daily responsibilities as soon as possible to play it, and I find myself enjoying it. I never thought that would happen, truth be told. More importantly than enjoying the game itself, though, is the friends I met.

I have lived a very isolated life. Partially due to my anxiety making me extremely averse to interacting with people, and partially due to how I've been raised, I struggle a lot with people. Autism, anxiety, and having not been properly socialized made me terrible. I longed for new friends, but I hated the effort that went into it. Imagine my surprise when one day, I found myself driving out to meet people who I play this game with, to spend time with them? When I found myself wanting to meet them?

And yet, here I was. I was driving out to meet these people who I play this game with--and more importantly, they wanted to meet me. Even as I think back on that day, I start to tear up. It was one of the most important days of my life. Were it not for this game, for playing it daily, for being dragged into a Free Company and for sitting in calls with people because of this game, I would not have known these people. They are some of the most important people in my life.

I think of the late nights playing Mahjong, or doing PVP, or treasure maps, or just sitting around talking. I think of those nights and then having to wake up early for work, waking up exhausted but so happy. I think of staying up until damn near 5 in the morning talking about whatever it is that comes to mind. I think about stupid inside jokes, and shared experiences, and the stories that I'll tell for years to come.

It's just a game. Final Fantasy XIV is, at the end of the day, just a game--and yet, that game has served as a way for me to grow as a person in ways I've never thought possible. My anxiety has not magically been cured, mind; but, when I'm able to talk to strangers and my heartrate doesn't skyrocket, when I'm able to do things in this game that once terrified me, when I'm able to exist comfortably not just in this game but in the outside world, I realize that it's done more for me than I'll ever be able to say. Yes, it is just a game, but people play a game due to a shared interest, no? And through that shared interest, friendships can blossom. To say that I love my friends, the people I met ultimately because of this game, would be an understatement, and I fear I do not make that clear enough.

Stupid as it is to say, Final Fantasy XIV has changed my life, for the better. Dawntrail is coming in just a few short hours, and though I am a whirlwind of emotions, the predominant one is excitement. I was there for the end of an era, and now I am here for the start of a new one.

So thank you. If you read all the way through this, thank you. If you skimmed just to the end, thank you. Thank you to my friends, especially. I would not be here as I am now were it not for you all.

Here's to a new adventure, friends :^] (Second screenshot featuring: @gailiag, the best viera on hydaelyn)

[auschizm]

Hello! I would like to vent about something that’s been causing me a lot of stress/paranoia for the past 2-3 years.

I had to get my phone fixed after it fell down my apartment steps. I set up an appointment, and my sister said that she could take it in for me. Everything was fine until they asked her/me for my PIN code + then factory reset my phone - something that really wasn’t necessary in my opinion, but my sister told me that they said it needed to be done. It really bothered me at the time, but I was just happy to get my phone back.

It’s only for the past couple of months that it’s been causing me to be extremely paranoid. And I kind of know where it stems from:

1) My mom going through my things as a kid-teen,

2) Men suddenly starting to perceive me (#ew), and

3) paranoia of being watched/on camera unknowingly.

I know this is all interconnected, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling noxiously paranoid everyday. I can’t go 2 hours without thinking about it - and I’ve tried telling myself how unreasonable it is; reverse-image searching pictures and videos of myself online, looking at reviews for the business, saying that even if videos/pictures of me are out there, there’s nothing I can do now - and if they are out there, not everyone I interact with has seen them.

But none of it helps. No matter how reasonable I get, the paranoia mutates and I just start thinking about it again.

(I don’t understand why men are paying attention to me; I wish no one ever looked at me. I’m thinking it has to be because a video of me got out.)

——————————————————————————

Also, I was fired from my first “real” job last year - small business with manipulative, idiot boss that only hired me because he was firing someone that was more capable and that he couldn’t afford to pay anymore. He went to my mom’s church and only hired me because - in his words - “I was slow”.

Not too slow to realize that he wasn’t paying me enough, that he wasn’t paying vendors, and that his business model was literally ordering things online and pricing it up 100%. I only took the job because I desperately needed some experience, but he spent the whole time treating me as if he got one over on me: looking at me like a toddler/dog whenever I successfully completed a task, ogling me when he thought I didn’t notice - or possibly because he didn’t think I noticed - and telling everyone he knew that I was his “goddaughter” (I hate forced proximity like this; you don’t know me).

Anyway, when I confronted him about not paying me enough I knew he was probably just going to fire me, but I didn’t really care at that point. And that did happen a month later. But he (and his wife, who kinda operated the business) said that they had fired me because ‘I was going to college’, and also, they ‘saw something on camera’.”

Now, as far as I know, there was only one camera in the entire store. But considering how paranoid and manipulative he was, I wouldn’t put it past him to put a camera somewhere else - no matter how cheap he was. I’m thinking he just said that so I couldn’t sue/get unemployment, but if he wanted to fire me why not just give an actual reason - of which there were a few. But it’s still making me incredibly paranoid, because although he is a piece of shit, he knows more people than I do. If he wanted to ruin my reputation by being a petty liar, he could (something he did to the woman that he fired - who I’m pretty sure was autistic as well; we got along pretty well.)

(I also feel disgustingly guilty for taking the woman who was fired’s job. But I really needed to work at the time, and the job was offered to me as if we would be working together, not that I would be replacing her. It literally makes me feel so sick. We talked a bit after she left, and she didn’t seem to mind, and was still very nice. But still, like, would you tell somebody you hated their guts to their face?)

——————————————————————————

Okay, that’s all. I didn’t mean for this to get so long, but if I’m paranoid about one, I’m usually paranoid about the other.

Thank you for reading! I hope you’re doing well <3<3<3<3

I can't tell you how to effectively work through your paranoia, but I can say that it makes sense to be paranoid about these things if you besides having a tendency towards paranoia have a history with surveillance and mistreatment. So you really shouldn't beat yourself up for struggling with all of this.

[satellitedarling]

hello this is going to be venting,nothing extreme but honestly everyone should have the independence to decide whether to read or interact with this shit so I'd rather say it upfront rather than shove it down people's throats, mentions of prescription drug abuse,you've been warned, with love

Despite my current medication helping me tremendously, I still feel like there's an overwhelming amount to unpack. I feel like an onion, tear off a layer and there's just more and more shit underneath and it seems never ending lol. that's not to say my meds aren't helping me,they definitely are, but they're also bringing to light issues that I had unknowingly "put to the side" while I was suffering a lot more before these meds. I feel so lonely and yet I can't get close to anyone, no matter how hard I try, how many new people I meet, I just can't help but want to run away and distance myself from everyone because I start to think that they hate me or because I feel scared of them, unable to bring myself to talk to them. I don't even know what would help me at this point, I have one friend who I love being around, that I can be comfortable and 100% open with, but they're always busy,always unavailable, it's not their fault in any way of course, but I can't stand that the only person I feel a genuinely deep bond with is someone I see very rarely. I have tried so hard to meet people online and irl, and despite going through the motions, being as open as possible, being as kind as possible, I simply can't feel the same way around them as I do with him, there's just something different about him, we get along so well, he's a sweetheart, an angel who wouldn't hurt a fly, he's the person who makes me laugh the most in the world, the one person I'm not uncomfortable around irl, I fucking love him, platonically that is. I have tried so hard to broaden my horizons, meet new people, but it's like nothing can replace him, I'm tired of meeting new people irl or online, I don't want a large group of friends, I want one or two close ones, that's it, just people that care about me as much as I care about them, a lifelong friendship, marnie and me style, bridge to terrabithia style and many others I can't bring to mind.

I just want to feel as loved as the people I give my love to, they're such wonderful people, I try so hard to please them in any way I can, to be as kind and generous as I can be, respect every one of their boundaries, I'm trying to become the perfect friend but its clearly not working, and it's obviously not their fault but I feel lile I have no one else to turn to, I want a best friend, I want someone with whom I can discuss anything and everything, I want them to be happy to see me just as much as I'm happy to see them, I want to give my all to make them happy, I want to receive the love and care that I'm trying so hard to give. When these rare people I get close to aren't receptive, take distance from me then there's no one to blame but I feel like I'm in an impasse socially: Now what? try to meet new people? it won't feel the same, I'm way too picky about this shit, I feel the urge to run away as soon as I see one small thing that scares me within them.

The people I say this to often make the justified remark that the exclusivity and mutual care for one-another is often a motivator for others when trying to find a romantic partner but I don't want a romantic partner, friends are so much more important to me, being in a relationship was hard because of my asexuality and my huge fear of abandonment, I always need to run away,keep a distance. I need to find a friend, I don't know where, but one that considers me an important part of their life at least, I want a best friend, a lifelong brother/sister that I can always reach in times of need or when I want to simply talk with them, I'm just so tired of not being emotionally available unless with certain people, I'm tired of feeling like everyone hates,avoids, and will abandon me, I try so hard to be a good person in my daily life, I try to make people smile at my work, to cheer them up, to be a ray of sunshine, it makes me feel good but as soon as I'm not working or serving people, that I'm now alone or have free time, I just feel such a crippling loneliness and boredom, I have lots of people to talk to but it simply *never* feels the same as him, no matter how hard i try to form meaningful bonds, the issue comes from within me. fuck this brain.

and then there's the whole aspect of gender envy, disliking my masculine characteristics but not exactly wanting 100% feminine characteristics, I'm tired of my body, only part I like is my face, that's a good start I suppose. just so tired of growing up with the fear of losing my effeminate qualities.

I'm gonna end this here because I'm too woozy and tired to keep writing, I'm so tired, absolutely not suicidal but heavily lonely, this isn't a cry for help per se, but I just can't stand living like this anymore. the only times I feel happy are when I'm working because it stops me from overthinking for a while, ignore my loneliness, feel like a good person

look,im tired, I won't keep writing, I might pass out any second but fuck I can't stand my mind working like this

sorry for this, I just needed to write it down, I can't talk about it with anyone around me irl, it's so tiring, I've made so many efforts and steps and yet the empty feeling won't subside, feels like I'll never find someone like Yann ever again and that we keep getting more and more distant because he's so busy and anxious, I love him so much, platonically, but I could give my life for him if it came to it, I just adore him so much

ok I'll stop now sorry, I'm not 100% conscious right now because of Xanax so if none of this makes sense ,hen I come back to reread this post I wouldn't be surprised

peace, love and happiness, to whoever is reading this, be a force of good in the world, even on a small scale, make a cashier smile, help the old people that can't carry their belongings, lend an ear to those who need one, etcetera

goodnight