#how the fuck are you an adult trans person and you wake up every morning and decide to parrot alt right transandrophobia

[roastedinmarch]

why do queer people hate trans men so much. every fucking tiktok i get is “trans women are really trans and really suffering and trans men are just stupid girls doing this for fun. *I* have to live like this” do you just not see us as people???

[ash-rigby]

Every Inch of You (Demon) [M/M] [Trans]

Featured Characters: Trans male human and a male demon. Both are adults.

Description: Miles' imp boyfriend Den wakes up incredibly horny, but they're out of condoms. Instead of leaving the demon to neediness, Miles proposes a solution.

Contains: Hot Dogging (Butt Humping), Cum Marking, Blowjobs.

Note for Trans Readers:  Specific words are not used to describe Miles’ anatomy aside from words for male genitals being used in reference to his bottom growth.

Content Warning: Miles’ ability to get pregnant is mentioned very briefly in two cases (once in the context of why condoms are extra important for them to use and another where it’s only implied as Miles reflects on why he would never ask Den to fuck him raw despite the fact that he’s slightly into the idea). This may be triggering to some trans readers, so please read at your own discretion.

If you would like to read a story of mine featuring a trans man where this aspect doesn’t occur, then I invite you to check out: You Can’t Have Just One

Completion Date: November 10th, 2020

Word Count: 2137

-

Miles lived for peaceful mornings. Gentle sunlight filtering in through the window, a quiet apartment, the distant sounds of the street by his building waking up. It was his favourite time to do his readings.

He was in the fourth year of his undergrad, aiming to continue beyond that into a Masters for Library Science. As such, it wasn’t at all uncommon for him to have to read at least three books, stage plays, or long academic essays for his classes each week. He was currently reading through Two Noble Kinsmen which would be discussed in the next class of his Shakespeare course.

Plays made for simple reads. If someone really committed to reading them in one sitting then it could be done in two to three hours. Hence why Miles typically reached for them in the sleepy half-light of morning as he enjoyed his coffee in bed.

It was nearing eight-thirty when a small noise drew Miles’ attention to the still-sleeping form beside him; Den, probably the least demonic imp in the world. His boyfriend wasn’t as much of a morning person, much preferring to sleep it away rather than face it.

Den was laying on top of the covers and buck naked. Not that it mattered at all. Miles’ roommates were both visiting home for the weekend, so it wasn’t like they could barge in and catch an eyeful of blue imp ass. He had his back to Miles who couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his boyfriend’s black, cat-like ear twitching in his sleep.

The imp shifted and made another noise; an unmistakable ‘happy’ noise so to say. As in, Miles didn’t have to guess what Den was dreaming about. His shorter, lithe body rolled over and cuddled into Miles’ side. The human allowed it, but his face warmed as he felt Den’s very obvious erection pressed against his thigh.

Den began to slowly grind his hips, rubbing his leaking cock on his boyfriend’s boxer briefs. Despite how hot it was, Miles decided to wake him up. It wasn’t cool to let someone do that in their sleep when it was possible that they didn’t actually want to be doing it. But just as Miles reached to shake Den’s shoulder, he paused. Two green eyes, tired yet glazed in arousal, were looking up at him.

“Oh—good morning, Den,” Miles said casually.

“Miles,” Den said, his voice a groggy near-whine. “M’horny.”

Miles chuckled. “Really? I didn’t notice.”

“Can we fuck?”

As much as Den’s humping and that suggestion were stirring a heat between Miles’ legs, he had to shake his head with a sympathetic smile.

“We blew through the last few condoms yesterday,” he said. “Remember?”

Miles had only been on T for a little over half a year. Even if it had been longer, he still wouldn’t risk it given that the possibility of him getting pregnant would really only be slightly lowered. The last thing he needed was to be having a kid on the way.

“Dammit,” Den hissed. “We did, didn’t we?”

Whatever dream he had been having had left him in a craving state. He was rock hard already and there was a desperate edge to his tone. It would suck if he had to stay like that without relief. But Den had a hard time getting off on blowjobs alone. They just couldn’t get him there, so that wouldn’t help. Miles felt bad for him, but then an idea struck.

“You’re getting pretty friendly with my leg there,” he said. His fingers briefly scratched behind his boyfriend’s ear before carding into thick, dark hair.

“Mhm, you know I love every inch of you,” Den said breathlessly.

“I do,” Miles affirmed. He purposely injected a suggestive inflection into his next words. “But I have some inches elsewhere that I think you’d find a lot more fun.” Den gave him a quizzical look. “Remember when we ran into this same problem in that motel on our trip up north last year?”

The imp shot up, his cat tail perking and twitching at the tip. “Oh, hell yeah! You want to—?”

“Sure. Hang on a sec.”

Miles rolled over to deposit his book onto the bedside table and swap it out for the bottle of lube that was still there from the previous night. He handed it to Den before laying back out on his stomach. His boyfriend was straddling him in an instant. Soft lips began littering his back with gentle kisses.

“Thank you,” Den said, theatrically reverent. “You’re the best.”

Miles let out a contented sigh, loving the feeling of the imp’s weight on top of him. “No problem…go as crazy as you like.”

Den’s affections moved down his spine until he broke away to sit up. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of Miles’ underwear and pulled it down to his thighs. Wasting no time, he opened the lube bottle with an audible pop.

Miles sucked in a breath as he felt the cool liquid dripping between the mounds of his ass and towards his tailbone. Warm hands spread it around, caressing and kneading until he was practically melting. He let out a long, slow breath and relaxed into the mattress.

Den chuckled, seemingly at Miles going near-boneless from just a butt massage. “That good for you, huh?”

Miles hummed favorably and said nothing, fully indulging in his boyfriend’s touches.

The leisurely atmosphere didn’t last long. Den’s hands paused and gave one last cheeky squeeze before retracting. His dick was pressing against Miles’ backside moments later, pulsing hard despite the lack of action. Miles shivered as the sensation of it sent a throb of excitement to his own.

Den groaned lowly at the first thrust. With his hands on Miles’ hips, he dragged his cock back and forth over slick, yielding skin. His pace was surprisingly slow for all the desperation exuding from him. But he was getting vocal, cursing and gasping as his body trembled through each pass of his burning shaft.

Miles had forgotten how deliciously filthy it felt having Den use his body this way. Not even properly fucking him, close to bursting just from humping against his ass. He could feel the fleshy barbs of the imp’s cock brushing over him as hot precum smeared and mixed with the lube.

“Mmm, fuck!” Den yelped suddenly.

He was then grasping either side of Miles’ ass, pushing the cheeks together and sandwiching his cock between them. Like a switch had been flipped, he worked up to faster thrusts. Sure, Den was shorter and weighed less than his boyfriend, but he had some definite power to him. The force of it began to rock Miles’ body, his hips colliding with resounding rhythmic slaps of meeting flesh.

The change of pace and vigor had Miles’ junk pressing into the comforter. Every forward thrust caused the sensitive head to be rubbed over the deeply plush fabric. But the too-soft surface only provided a tease, good but still falling oh-so tantalizingly short of being truly satisfying. For the first time, he wasn’t so in love with his nice, thick covers as the need to cum built inside him.

Miles’ wrists uncrossed and moved out from where his chin had been resting on them, his hands clenching the blanket. He turned his head to avoid smothering himself. His heartbeat thundered under his ear through the mattress; echoed in his pounding, needy member. Pleasure spiked and receded over and over, denying him release even as he moaned in yearning.

He was hyperaware of Den’s cock being inches from his now-twitching hole. A shot of arousal mixed with adrenaline went through him at the possibility of his boyfriend somehow accidentally slipping into him. He would never allow or even openly admit it but the thought of Den going at him raw and fucking him full of cum had been a longstanding fantasy. If he was less responsible then he would have been begging for it by then.

Just as the thread holding up Miles’ patience threatened to snap, Den started thrusting faster. The imp’s voice briefly cracked from his lower register to a slightly higher pitch as he moaned his mounting ecstasy. He was panting hard, his fingers digging into the meat of Miles’ ass.

“Fu—ahh!” he cried. A long, shuddering growl left him. “I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna cum!”

“Ngh! Make me drip with it!” Miles begged, his own tone a tad gravelly.

“Shit! I’m cu—ahh!”

Den groaned as he pressed his hips into Miles one last time, stilling and shaking as his cock unloaded. Throbbing hard between twin mounds, it very quickly painted his lover’s back with thick ropes of cum. Miles could feel it hitting as far as between his shoulder blades. He laid there as his dick twitched fervently against the blanket, desperate for attention as he found himself—as asked—dripping with countless loads of Den’s seed.

The second that the imp released him, Miles was turning onto his back. Den was kneeling before him; his blue skin blushing from his face down to his chest, sweat glistening and rolling off of him, lips parted as he fought to catch his breath. Miles gave in to the whine that bubbled up in his throat. He thumbed the base of his cock, gasping and meeting Den’s still slightly glazed eyes with his own.

“Den…I’m so…please—.”

Den straightened as if his boyfriend’s needy voice had physically slapped him. Spurred into action, he all but lunged forward and pulled Miles’ underwear the rest of the way off.

“I gotcha,” he assured softly, lowering his face between eagerly spread legs.

Den’s ghosting breath was nearly enough to finish things. He looked at the visibly throbbing, flushed cock ravenously, and then put it between the prongs of his forked tongue. The two sides of the split muscle laved in tandem, one end going up while the other went down. Heated green eyes held Miles, watching his face become awash with pleasure.

A smile came to Den’s parted lips as he leaned in and closed his mouth around Miles’ dick. His clever tongue swirled over it a few more times before he began to bob his head. A deep purr rumbled through him, adding mind-blowing vibrations to his sucking and licking.

Moans tumbled ceaselessly from Miles’ mouth. His hands went to Den’s hair, lightly gripping beside the twitching cat ears. He couldn’t stop his hips from starting to buck; nothing hard, but still humping against the imp’s face.

The earlier denial had not been intentional, so Miles’ body scrambled quickly for the edge before it could be pulled back. It wasn’t surprising that he didn’t last much longer. With a last, wavering cry, his back arched and his cock wildly pulsed in Den’s mouth. His boyfriend didn’t let up, sucking him through his release and wringing it for all it was worth.

Miles dropped heavily, still feeling minute trembles running through his legs. He felt Den take his mouth off of him and start crawling up. A dark head was resting over his heart moments later, the rest of Den’s body sprawling on top of him as well. That same, loud purr buzzed over him and warmed his chest. He started playing with the sleepy imp’s hair.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Wasn’t just gonna leave you like that,” Den said. “What do you take me for? An asshole?”

Miles hummed. “Well…” A fist gently bumped against his ribcage. “Kidding, kidding.”

“I know…I’m a delight.”

“You are,” Miles said. “Safe to say you enjoyed that?”

“Totally…not as good as being inside you though,” Den said, turning a little sheepish.

“Oh, trust me. That’s completely mutual,” Miles promised. There was nothing he wanted more after that than to be fully fucked later. “We’ll go shopping when you’re more awake, okay?”

“Yesss.”

“How about you get some more sleep? It’s still early for you to be up.”

‘Early’ of course being any time before noon, but Miles wasn’t about to comment on that.

“Dick’s fault,” Den mumbled sleepily.

“Completely,” Miles said. He slowly reached for his book again. “I still have to get through this, so go ahead and conk out.”

“Mmm, read it to me?”

“You sure? You never liked Shakespeare.”

“Yeah, but I love your voice.”

“All right, then. I’m into Act 3, so you’ll be pretty lost,” Miles said.

Den hummed, turning his face further into Miles’ chest. “Don’t care.”

He wouldn’t be awake much longer anyway. Miles happily conceded to reading aloud and held his boyfriend close, content in the vibrations of his comforting purr. As he fully relaxed, he began.

“About this hour my cousin gave his faith to visit me again, and with him bring two swords and two good armors—.”

End

Masterlist

[whentherewerebicycles]

wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you. 

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

[supercasey]

TF2 RED Headcanons by an idiot that can’t pay attention well enough to read the comics

Back on my bullshit, because I apparently can’t shut up tonight. This is gonna be a big, possibly in-cohesive mess, and will probably have more focus on Scout, Pyro, Sniper, and Spy since they’re my favs, but I still felt like writing down all my dumb headcanons/ideas regarding everyone’s favorite mercenaries (at the moment at least; I might make another post like this later on, hopefully after I’ve read the comics)! Sorry if any of these seem OOC, I’m just goofin’! (Putting this under a readmore because WOW this got LONG)

Every Sunday afternoon, Scout, Pyro, and eventually Sniper when he tells everyone that he's a trans guy, hold a makeshift “Trans Buddy Club” meeting, which mostly consists of Scout mindlessly rambling about drama on base, Pyro nodding along, and Sniper occasionally adding his two cents/spilling tea as well.

Scout can speak fluent French, on account of his mom making sure to teach it to him so he could have more of a connection to his dad, but no one found out until a little after Spy told Scout he was his dad. It wasn’t long after this that Scout revealed that this entire time, he’s known every single thing that Spy's ever said to him in French, but he didn't say anything because he thought it would be funny to keep the ruse going (also because he really liked being praised in secret). Cue Spy freaking tf out because oh no, now his kid knows that he's secretly a huge softie for not only his son, but his whole team.

Sometimes Spy and Scout talk shit in French right there in front of the team, but no one has any fucking idea what they’re saying and to be honest it’s pissing Soldier off the most, much to the father and son duo’s amusement.

Pyro secretly has a little black rabbit named Lucifer (Lucy for short) in their bedroom, which they only take out to get some fresh air and hop around very early in the morning, before anyone else is awake. The only people who know are Medic, Spy, and surprisingly enough Soldier, whose raccoons became friends with Lucy.

Sniper has a goldfish in his RV, but it died three months after he joined the team; he has no idea though because Miss Pauling replaces it every time one passes away, so now Sniper is convinced he has the world’s oldest goldfish.

Scout and Soldier both really want a dog, but they're not allowed to have one on-base. :(

((Heavy plans on sneaking a dog in next Christmas and no one can stop him. It’s gonna be a Border Collie named Bandit, and it gets the most attached to Scout and Heavy.))

Demo is no longer allowed to make mixed drinks for parties; the last time he did, he got everyone so shitfaced that they had to cancel work for three days in a row in order to recover from it.

Continuing off of that: drunk headcanons.

Demoman: Unassuming drunk. Acts like he usually does, unless he’s gotten particularly shitfaced for a party/event, in which case he’ll be slurring so bad that no one can understand him anymore.

Pyro: Giggly drunk. Is just laughing the whole fucking night at nothing in particular, which scares anyone who’s still sober. If they’re too far gone, they’ll start mumbling something that sounds like it’s in Spanish.

Spy: Party drunk. An absolute fucking mess, he’s trying to impress everyone and keep their attention on him, which usually leads to him standing on tables and dancing until he falls and passes out.

Sniper: Sleepy drunk. Out like a fucking light at the slighest bit of alcohol. If he wakes up and keeps drinking though, he’ll just be slurring like Demo, only with a lot more anger in his voice. Let him sleep, or he’ll fucking stab you to death.

Scout: Clumsy drunk. Bumps into anything and everything; eventually has to be given a sippy cup for his alcohol because he dropped three glasses in a row. Talks even faster than usual, until he accidentally fucking pukes on someone.

Soldier: Calm drunk. Instead of getting loud and aggressive like most would think/fear, he’s just… chillin'. Just watches the shitshow as it happens, not even laughing when people get hurt/fall down. Kinda terrifying if we’re being honest here.

Engineer: Depressed drunk. His depression goes through the roof if he has too much, so he doesn't drink more than a few beers if he can help it. If he does accidentally drink too much, he'll be sobbing his eyes out in no time flat.

Heavy: Cuddly drunk. It’s very, very hard to get him drunk, since he’s really good at holding his liquor, but if you do, he’s gonna be hugging and carrying everyone he can get his hands on; you can expect him to have Medic and/or Pyro on his lap once he’s drunk enough.

Medic: Angry drunk. He wants to start fights with fucking everyone, all his rage coming out once he’s had a few too many; god help anyone who tries to stop him. Luckily for all involved, Heavy is more than capable of holding him still until he tires himself out.

BONUS Miss Pauling: Dumbass drunk. With too many bottles in her, she’s gonna be the one shouting and encouraging Spy to act reckless, while also encouraging Engie to drink more because quitting is for losers. Will pass out within an hour or so of downing her first drink.

BONUS The Administrator: Stereotypical drunk. Slurring, stumbling, she’s got the whole nine yards, but she’ll be damned before she let’s anyone see her that messed up. Secretly sips wine at work.

Okay, back to my rambling.

My personal headcanon names and ages for Scout’s older brothers, going from oldest to youngest: Grant 34, Timothy 32, Jacob 31, Arthur 31, Patrick 30, Malcolm 27, Curtis 26, and Jeremy (Scout) 23.

((Also, I’mma go off on my headcanon personalities for them, which are based off of how I’ve tried portraying them in my "Jeremy" fic.))

Grant - 34 years old - Bisexual - Occupation: Veteran/Construction worker - Personality: the oldest of the bunch, he takes it upon himself to keep his little brothers in line/help Ma out as much as he can. Enlisted in the Air Force after he graduated high school, and still takes a lot of pride in his veteran status after serving overseas three separate times. The family peacemaker.

Timothy - 32 years old - Homosexual - Occuptaion: Cartoonist - Personality: the gentlest of his brothers, he often gets roped into helping Grant keep the pack from running too wild. Bit of a softie; loves his husband and loves his job. Closest relationship is with Scout. Doesn’t approve of Scout being a merc but is too scared to say so. The family heart.

Jacob - 31 years old - Heterosexual - Occupation: Freelance guitarist - Personality: the firstborn of the only set of twins, Jacob is a lot more abrasive and instigating than his twin brother. Can’t grow a beard for shit, which pisses him off. Doesn’t get along well with Timmy, despite them both being talented and devoted artists. The family sword.

Arthur - 31 years old - Pansexual - Occupation: Carpenter - Personality: the second born of the only set of twins, Arthur is far more outgoing and nonchalant than his twin brother. Has a beard and loves it more than life. Secretly has a boyfriend, but is too nervous to come out. Gets along better with Jacob after they’ve become adults. The family shield.

Patrick - 30 years old - Heterosexual - Occupation: Hairdresser - Personality: probably the least social of all of the brothers, he prefers staying out of sight and out of mind tbh. Used to practice cutting everyone’s hair when they were kids. Doesn’t talk to his brothers that much, mostly due to being busy/forgetting to call more. The family shadow.

Malcolm - 27 years old - Heteromantic Asexual - Occupation: Wrestler - Personality: the most aggressive and physically competitive of his brothers, there’s nothing he won’t do to win a fight, save for using weapons/lethal force. Hard to get along with, but he still loves his brothers to bits, and was overprotective of Scout when they were younger. The family instigator.

Curtis - 26 years old - Heterosexual - Occupation: Bartender - Personality: was a total fucking mama’s boy growing up, and constantly got in trouble with his brothers for tattling on them. Still argues with Scout every time they see each other. Wants to make Ma proud, but it’s hard for him to keep a job for very long. The family drifter.

Jeremy - 23 years old - Transmale Pansexual - Occupation: Mercenary - Personality: (This is mostly for how he was as a kid) was constantly following his brothers around (especially Malcolm) in hopes of getting in on the fun. Was always treated as the family baby, so everyone was a bit scared to wrestle/fight with him for fear of getting him hurt. Very close to Timmy and Ma. The family runt.

No one on RED team can fucking drive well, save for MAYBE Sniper, but even he hates doing it. Spy gets so goddamn mad within two seconds of driving, Pyro can't stop swerving, Scout drives like a 16 year old who hasn't realized their own mortality yet, Medic jumps at every little inconsistency on the road, Heavy shouts at other drivers for being too slow/fast, Demo's depth perception is shit, Engie drives like a 90 year old grandmother, and Soldier is fine except he will literally shoot at other drivers for tailgating him/cutting him off.

The whole team has designated “Team Bonding Days” thanks to Miss Pauling, which involves playing board games, card games, and video games (in a slightly more modernized AU) together… this, of course, goes badly sometimes. The worst incident they ever had was a bad game of Monopoly that almost ended Heavy and Medic's friendship.

Uno is forever banned from Team Bonding Days. No explanation is needed.

Off the battlefield and in the base, Miss Pauling had the team set up a chore wheel, which is only occasionally followed. Engie is the most dedicated to following it, while Demo and Sniper try everything in their power to avoid cleaning the base.

Spy sometimes disguises himself as other teammates in order to get out of doing his chores, which has led to a lot of shouting matches that ended in Spy being forced to admit it was his fault.

Spy's favorite teammates to disguise himself as are Engie and Scout. He likes being Engie because he gets to be more affectionate with people without being found out, and he can act as Scout incredibly easily due to knowing him so well (tbh he's so good at masquerading as Scout that it's scary).

For Halloween, everyone put their names in Soldier's hat, then proceeded to pull out other teammates’ names to dress up as for their Halloween party. I dunno exactly who would be who, except that Scout traded around to get Spy, steals one of Spy's suits, and just goes around the party bonking people with a plastic baguette he bought online and speaking in a purposefully bad accent.

Spy: Mon fils, you can speak perfect French and you fucking know it. Please stop making a fool of ton père.

Scout: Hohoho, wee wee, I am a fucking frog that gets pegged by baguettes, hoho!

((Spy is this fucking close to committing filicide.))

Everyone can actually cook pretty well, but only very specific things for each merc: Demo can mix and blend drinks (not just alcoholic ones) like it's nothing, Pyro and Heavy like baking, Medic can barbecue anything, Scout knows how to make a lot of shit from scratch (thanks, Ma), Spy and Engie can grill like the true dads they are, Soldier will deep fry every piece of food he eats, and Sniper makes the best soups and stews imaginable.

In order of least to most messy bedrooms: Spy, Heavy, Engie, Sniper, Pyro, Demoman, Medic, Scout, and Soldier. You'd think Scout's would be the worst, but Soldier's room looks like a literal fucking war-zone.

Even when they're not working but get injured in some way (namely from shenanigans/horseplay), people will straight up kill themselves in order to respawn without the injury. The pettiest thing anyone ever respawned off-duty for was Medic suiciding over a tiny ass paper cut.

Demoman is scarily competent at the weirdest of times. For instance, Engie was once trying to figure out how to fix an issue on one of his turrets, only for Demo to stumble over, completely shitfaced, and point out the problem as well as the solution, before passing out under Engie's worktable. Demo doesn't remember this at all.

The first time Engie swore in front of the team in excess (due to dropping a hammer on his foot while he was tinkering), everyone was absolutely horrified because they had only ever heard him say “fiddlesticks” and the like.

Medic's room may not be the messiest, but goddamn is his office a fucking bomb waiting to go off 90% of the time. No one but Medic can find anything in the mess, which is just fine by him.

Heavy likes to sing (mostly just to Sasha) when he's cleaning her in the locker room. The others try to be within hearing range when he does this, because holy fuck, Heavy is a very good singer! He mostly just sings soft songs/lullabies, so his singing is sometimes used by the team insomniacs to help them get some much needed rest.

Okay, another group one. The mercs during shopping trips together:

Demoman: Sneaks a shit ton of alcohol into the cart when no one's looking. Starts complaining if he has to be at the store for too long; will try and sneak away to go home at least once during the trip. Accidentally bumps into a display case and makes a huge fucking mess.

Pyro: Sits obediently in the cart the whole time, occasionally nabbing candy and stuffed animals off of nearby shelves. Will puppy-dog eyes their way into getting everything they grabbed, no matter how much it is.

Spy: Somehow managed to steal an employee uniform and he pretends to work at the store the whole trip; the other mercs keep accidentally falling for it and asking for his help. This all goes to shit when a Karen starts shouting at him over something he didn't do, and he straight up slaps her.

Sniper: King of forgetting wtf was on the list and just grabs shit on the grounds of “Doc said we needed milk, right?” and other such excuses. Knows where everything is despite never having come here before.

Scout: “Gimme the list, I can get everythin' in, like, ten minutes!” Wants to speedrun grocery shopping due to years of shopping with his mom and brothers. Will run loose if left unsupervised and accidentally bust ass on some spilled milk.

Soldier: The one who spilled the milk that Scout busts his ass on. Insists he knows where he's going, but doesn't. Gets into a fistfight with a soccer mom while everyone's waiting to check out; the soccer mom won.

Engineer: Has a full, printed list of everything the team needs, which is organized by aisle number. Is the one who gives into Pyro's begging. Team Dad; keeps an eye on everyone and stops the soccer mom from murdering Soldier.

Heavy: Pushes the cart the entire time. Spends way too money on stuff in the protein shake aisle. At one point runs the cart down the aisle and let's go because Pyro wanted him to, and it ends up crashing into Demo.

Medic: Argues with the pharmacists at the pharmacy counter. Got lost with Soldier until they found Scout unconscious, so he had to perform CPR in the dairy aisle and a fucking paramedic criticized him the whole time; the paramedic hasn't been seen since.

BONUS Miss Pauling: Tries to more or less chaperone this shitshow of a shopping trip. Starts out cheerful and happy, ends up threatening to put child leashes on every last one of these dumbasses.

After Spy taught him how to dance in Expiration Date, Scout goes to him occasionally for advice, such as how to change a tire, how to cook certain things, how tf to do laundry, etc. Spy secretly loves that Scout does this, and tries to help him as much as he can.

Everyone on the team has called Engie “Dad” at least once, even Spy and Medic. No one comments on it.

Medic has been known to go on hour long tirades about anti-vaxxers, with Engie sometimes joining in.

Heavy buys Pyro stuffed animals during his trips to visit his family, which has started a tradition of everyone buying Pyro stuffed animals/toys when they go somewhere without them. Pyro's room is starting to look like a preschooler’s dream bedroom.

Scout calls his mom every other Friday, and he’ll occasionally let his teammates talk to her. Soldier always goes on and on about how good a soldier Scout has been (Scout cries like a baby), Medic tells her about Scout’s latest injuries (Scout damn near chokes him over it), Sniper is just glad to talk to a mom who won’t scold him for the whole phone call, Pyro hums music while Scout’s Ma sings the lyrics for them, Heavy talks about living in huge families with her, Demo asks her how she’s doing and if he can help her out at all, Engie is polite and also praises Scout, and Spy just tells her he’ll call her later before hanging up (Scout punches him for being rude to his mama).

Spy calls Scout's mom on the Fridays that Scout doesn't, mostly to check on her and sometimes to get into some, uh, “steamy” conversations over the phone. Sniper overheard a conversation between them once and now he can't look Scout or Spy in the eyes anymore.

And that's all I've got for right now! I hope you all liked my stupid headcanons!

[monzterzack]

Talk about Noah!!! I wanna know more!!

AAaaaawwwww heck yeah!!!!

Its morning and i got some energy!!!

Imma talk a bit about noah! Just.... let me get comfy, ill give u 3 of his core traits!!

1. His powers

Ok so .... SOME CONTEXT IS NEEDED

in this universe there are certain people that come from certain tribes that have inmense power, this people used to all share the same power but due to different circumstances (be colonialism, dead, or tribes separating) the marks end up appearing in the last remaining members alive and passing down said powers to their kids

You can diferentiate them from the tattoos that appear in their body, this tattoos are based on animals (noah is a lion, hudson haves a wolf)

SO IN NOAH'S CASE! he has a lion marking and his powers are mainly lighting and speed, he can creste lighting on his body and it can go from just a lil snap to a full blown lighting hit

He has worked his abilities to the best, but his fighting style is usually go FUCKING HAM and kicking and hitting till he lands a blow and obliterates you with his lighting

He is also know and has gotten a reputation for frying people up (which is why a lot of people think he is an evil bastard)

This powers however come as a double sword, they keep noah alive, practically unvincible since they work as a defense mechanism by healing him up as quick as possible, but in the case of mortal danger the powers will take over his body and he will go berserk

2. His alcoholism

Noah started drinking at a fairly young age (he was around 10) out of some misguided toxic masculinity, he was teased that he couldnt possibly be a man if he couldnt even take a sip out of a beer bottle, which is really stupid but also the adults around him that convince him of this were just messing up with him cause he constantly threw anger fits

Unfortunately noah in order to prove he was a man continue drinking and saw it as a personal challenge

After years tho this got mixed with his ptsd and bad mental health, so he stsrted to drink in order to shut the inner voices in his mind that kept telling him to kill himself

Noah spents most of his waking hours getting drunk so he cant think about how lonely and sad he feels constantly

He also drinks to easy the pain from his injuries after working cause he hates taking medication (he always chokes on pills and he haves a phobia around them)

And he also drinks to repress his feelings of attraction towards men, cause YOU GUESS IT, since he is soaked in toxic masculinity he also haves some heavy internalized homophobia and dysphoria around his attraction to man

When he is drunk he usually mellows down a lot around people he trusts, he is also more prown to fights, usually if he sees people mistreating others or if they come pick a fight

He likes been drunk cause then he can be himself a bit more easily, but he is also incredibly vulnerable, so his friends decided that he cant be alone and unsupervised when he gets hammered cause he is .... really a mess

His alcoholism has gotten so out of hand that he neglects any other need, he forgets all his other needs, specially eating, and his friends had tried to help him out of it, but due to lack of proper mental health services and his syndrome disorder making his life a living hell, they had decided to take it easy and first make sure he meets his basic needs and slowly try to get him sober first

3. The syndrome disorder

Noah haves some heavy ptsd, he has had a really REALLY SAD LIFE

Most of the parental figures he knew died.... and .... not very peacefully, so he kinda blames himself about it

He also is trans, and due to like.... the environment he was raised in, haves a very bad case of dysphoria, which is why he so desperately wants to stick to the terrible guidelines he learned

He is really really weird, he doesnt really have hobbies, and after he decided to live alone (at age 15), he hasnt had friends so his social skills are on the ground

He habes rejection sensitive dysphoria which makes social interactions twice as hard

Due to this he has develop several unhealthy defense mechanism, his first responses to been rejected or hurt are to either hurt them back or to isolate and avoid any social interaction from that point on

His self esteem is on the ground so he is very sensitive about what others think of him, he desperately wants to connect to others but also he is scared of abandonment, abuse or people making fun of him so he has made his personality as abresive and hurtful as he cans in order to make others get away from him, which in return make him get more emotionally starved and more emotionally fragile so he is stuck in this cycle

He wants out of this situation but he has messed himself up so much that all his mechanism lock him inside this machine of misery he created in his mind

He has tried therapy before, and he is still going but he goes once every month due to lack of funding, so ... it really isnt helping that much

He haves also insomnia, which only adds up to his issues, and haves many deep phobias that he cant seem to resolve

He's fears go from existential crisis (why am i alive? What if i end up dying alone?) To really childish ones (what if there are demons or ghost in my room? What if something bad happens when i turn off the lights?)

And most of them get worse at night, making it almost impossible for him to sleep

So that just.... makes this whole situation worse

He is also very neglectful of any aspect of his health, be mental, phisical or emotional

He works as a mercenary for two reasons, the first one been that he really doesnt know anything else, he has grown as a mercenary, its all he knows how to do right

And also because he kinda operates in a self destructive manner, where he goes ham and doesnt really takes precautions to avoid injuries

ALL IN ALL HE IS VERY SAD AND ANGSTY AND HE PROBS NEEDS SOME HELP

But do not worry!! Things get better once he starts making friends!!!!

[feraldavestrider]

i never check my mentions apparently @alpacalmond and @uiyutrentasei tagged me in a GTKM thing so im gonna do it oh uhhhh 2 weeks later LOL because i cant sleep and i hate myself

i tag @hal-strider if they didnt do it? and @noctiilucent, @kiyumiarashi, @whimsicmimic and @ataliaf uwu and anyone else who wants to do it!!

how tall are you: this is a cryptid question. i get a different result every time i try to measure myself and ive never asked anyone else to do it for me. some people tell me im very short, others have told me im average height for someone who is afab. im gonna hazard a guess at 5′5 tho.

what colour are your eyes: very dark brown

do you wear contacts and/or glasses: glasses. i literally CANNOT see without them. i mean like 2 inches from my glasses-less face is so blurry its unbelievable. i get super triggered by eye stuff tho so contacts are a no go ALSO i look weird w/o glasses anyway.

do you wear braces: no my teeth r p good actually. one is a bit wonky but thats life

what is your fashion style: i mean 90% panties and a sweaty 4 day tshirt because i just spend all day in my room like a goblin. BUT when i actually go out im ur basic ass post-emo trans dude with skinny jeans, converse and a too-big graphic tee. sometimes i spice it up with a plaid shirt because im fuckin GAY.

when were you born: october 12th 1999, babey

how old are you: 18 motherfucker flashes my titties and gulps a bottle of vodka im an ADULT

do you have any siblings: yes. a younger brother and hes a cunt

what school/college do you go to: im at sixth form rn (last yr of highschool technically if ur american but im not and hs finishes at 16 yrs old here deal with it). im going uni next yr tho and this years almost over for me academically since we go on study leave soon for our final exams. uwu overshares

what kind of student are you: the asshole who never studies for tests and does homework at 5am the morning before and still manages to pull straight As to everyones anger. im also the adhd class clown who makes random noises and cant concentrate half the time. ik i hate myself too im so annoying irl even more so than online.

what are your favorite subjects: in terms of actual content of the subject, english lit fs. in terms of classmates/teachers/general atmosphere DEFFO drama we spend half of our time eating cake, singing random shit and just losing our minds while filming it on snapchat which shouldnt at all be allowed.

what are your favorite movies: god idek. um. fuck. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA i cant think of a single movie. ok ok ok i got it: white chicks, premium rush, scott pilgrim vs the world, the cornetto triology too i just love edgar hes such a great director. i like a lot of the marvel movies esp the spiderman hc and thor ragnorok and both gotg were p good. i love a lot of movies my brains just a void that sucks memories up into its fat gob and steals them from me forever.

what are your pastimes: sleeping, crying, used to be rping but i gave up on that, playing overwatch way too much and getting tilted because im shit, reading fanfictions did i say sleeping

do you have many regrets: dude. my guy. come in close. let me whisper in ur ear. are you close? no, closer. ok. 

YES

what is your dream job: whoo boy. im do indecisive and i think a LOT of jobs seem super cool that id never do i.e. be an actor or be in a band. my dream job since i was like 8 was to be a writer which is unlikely since i cant even finish a pwp oneshot. but thatd be cool. id also like to write plays and direct them but thats also wild and v dream > reality. 

would you like to get married: honestly. marriage as an institution? angers me. i dont like a lot of things about it. BUT. part of the reason i hate it is honestly if ur in a long long term relationship with someone ur better off married than not in terms of the benefits so. id happily get married if the other person wanted and/or we felt like it was the right thing to do, i just dont really care about being married or having a wedding tbh.

do you want kids? how many if so: no. hard pass. i might adopt if im long-term with someone who SUPER wants kids but that likely wont happen because i dont want to get into a long-term relationship with someone so desperate for kids since i dont have that same enthusiasm. sorry. ill be ur uncle gabe but im not having my own children im just not well equipped to literally have a full time job of making sure little idiots (meant affectionately) who dont know fuck from shit dont just straight up die. i can barely do that for myself.

how many countries have you visited: shit dude actually ive only visited like... uh... 4??? a lot of my holidays tend to be to the same countries (portugal/america) so i dont have that much experience like i feel like i do.

what was your scariest dream: hmmmm. when i was a kid i had these recurring dreams where i worked at this like. “zoo” where these MASSIVE, i mean ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE string rays that were also pancakes were like. hooked up to make electricity? anyway i hated the job because we all abused the rays super bad to make them generate the power and it sucked and it was all dystopian. there was stuff where like we had to kill the baby rays and stuff. anyway one day it went all planet of the apes and they broke out somehow and could fly and they killed loads of people and i had to go into hiding because they were super clever and could id who had worked at the zoo plant and wanted revenge. its super weird ik but this is pretty tame for my dreams they go HARD and BIZARRE and this one always made me wake up feeling super sick and scared idk. ur welcome.

do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other: no im lonely but its ok because i need to work on me 

put your playlist on shuffle and without skipping the first 15 songs: ok so i dont really have a “playlist” per se so im just gonna use my top 100 2017 songs on spotify which ignores a lot of my non-spotify non-2017 bangers but whatever.

1) ‘My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark’ by FOB

2) ‘Tuxford Fall’ - Vasudeva

3) ‘Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued’ - FOB

4) ‘Fried Noodles: Getter Remix’ - Pink Guy, Getter (listen ive never watched any filthy frank he weirds me out but this is a banger)

5) ‘Brick By Boring Brick’ - Paramore

6) ‘Thnks Fr Th Mmrs’ - FOB (i really dont listen to this much fob this is crazy)

7) ‘Death Note L’s Theme Goes Metal’ - Charlie Parra del Riego (theres no defence for this)

8) ‘Turnstile’ - Vasudeva

9) ‘Idle Worship’ - Paramore

10) ‘Monster’ - Paramore

11) ‘Miss Missing You’ - FOB

12) ‘The City’ - Madeon

13) ‘Far Too Young To Die’ - P!ATD

14) ‘Don’t Stop’ - Nothing More (really this is the band i listen to much smh these results are so skewed)

15) ‘Smile Like You Mean It’ - The Killers

[fxngsfxgarty]

youth, ever fading youth

so I wrote my first ever riverdale fic. it’s about nonbinary/trans jughead, obviously.

Jughead Jones has been Jughead Jones, or some similar variation on the name, for as long as they can remember knowing how to talk.

Also on AO3 here.

Jughead Jones has been Jughead Jones, or some similar variation on the name, for as long as they can remember knowing how to talk.

At seven, they are JJ. Elementary school for JJ seems to be a constant loop of days where the teacher would say “Florence” on roll call, and they’d say “JJ, Ma’am,” and expect the mistake to be corrected. The teachers always seem to ask “JJ? How does JJ come from Florence?” and JJ just says “It came from my head, Ma’am.”

And that has to be an acceptable answer. For a seven year old, there isn’t another one. Because when you’re seven, if something is in your head then it has to be real. Everything you’ve imagined or dreamed up in your life up to that point is met with adults saying “really? Is that right? What happened to you after that?” even if it’s just you in your pajamas with sleepy eyes and tousled curls, talking about hearing Father Christmas and the reindeer on the roof of the trailer in the night, or telling your Mom and Dad that you and your sister fought a dragon when they sent you out to play.

You win the fight, of course. You and your sister always slay the dragons when you’re together.

When eleven rolls around, the adults stop believing so much in the stories and spells you dream up. Jay is in middle school and their mom doesn’t drive them to the gates any more. Mom takes Jellybean to elementary and leaves them to take the bus with the bigger kids. The older kids think it’s fun to snatch hats and toss them around, and it becomes routine for Jay to not unwrap the granola bar Mom leaves them on the counter until they’re safely sitting down, because it ends up on the ground in the aisle more than once, trodden into the mud-stains and footprints and crumbled into oaty dust. The hat ends up back on Jay’s head by the end of the ride most days, and if it doesn’t, it’s in the lost property box by the end of the day and they get a lecture from the receptionist about taking care of their belongings.

“Your parents don’t buy you things for you to lose them,” she says, and doesn’t pay attention when Jay says that the kids on the bus take it and play catch every morning. “You should be careful about the tales you tell on others, Florence. Making up stories won’t do you any good as you get older. It’s time to leave the fairy tales to the younger ones.”

Jay’s sister is still one of the younger ones, and at night, they hide under the blanket together with a torch and a big hardback book of stories about frogs and peas and princesses, and Jay reads in one of Jellybean’s ears and covers the other with a small hand, nails bitten almost down to the quick. Jellybean’s silky dark hair is soft beneath their touch, not yet curling like Jay’s does. Jay wonders whether, if they’d stayed young forever, they wouldn’t have had to do this. Because outside the safety of the blanket cocoon, Dad is drunk and Mom is crying, “get out, get away from me and my kids,” and Dad spits back with “you get out”, except laden with cuss words that kids aren’t allowed to say, and Mom says “maybe I will, FP, maybe I will.”

Jughead is almost fourteen when the sex ed classes come true, the ones where the teachers split the class up, “boys on the left line, girls on the right” and Jughead almost hesitated before following the girls’ line, because they always got grouped with them and their long hair and glossy lips and eyelashes painted in black gunk from pink and green tubes that only flakes off when you rub your eyes, even though it makes them itch and then you look like you’ve been crying. Jughead wants to cry at the stains they don’t know how to get out, at the pain clawing low in their stomach, at the apparent confirmation that they’ve been one of those girls all along. Because by now, by nearly fourteen, they know they don’t want to be, they’ve never been, despite the name on all the roll calls and the ugly, defiant F on official papers and test results where something else should be. They almost shout out into the small trailer for Mom, but then, Mom isn’t here. Mom is gone, and so is Jellybean. This is Jughead and Dad, and Dad isn’t here right now. Dad’s hanging out in the bar with the other guys with snake tattoos and motorcycles, so Jughead may just be on their own.

They’re still on their own at one in the morning, sitting in the shower tray, but the water ran cold a while ago so they turned it off and stayed sitting there in their wet clothes, shaking, not from the cold or the pain but with fear, with silent tears because all the sobbing seems to have faded away. Perhaps the noise has trickled down the drain with the icy water, and perhaps if they could hold a hand steady, they’d be able to peel off their skin and send it away with all the other parts they didn’t need. Maybe then everyone would see Jughead, as the person they see themself, not what someone’s always trying to tell them they are. The thought makes it tempting to break that skin apart, to see what it’s hiding underneath. To see if things can really get any worse than this.

Jug is seventeen and skinnier than ever, wears a snake-embroidered jacket and endless faded, ancient bracelets, from festivals in days gone by, bought on eBay or found in FP’s closet when they tried to clean it out with him, adorning their arms. The bracelets are good at hiding their skin when the jacket doesn’t, and if they can hide their skin from themself, they can almost believe it isn’t there at all. The leather jacket and the hat they still wear, jaw-length curls dyed inkier than ever and mostly shoved up inside it, make a sort of second skin, and if they feel like the snake, due to shed any moment, at least other people don’t know they feel that way. Other people see the snake, see danger and venom and most of them stay away. It feels good, to feel like they’re making an impact, but by god, in a crowded room that falls silent when you first walk in, before everyone picks up their conversation in groups and pairs again, it feels lonelier than they’ve perhaps ever been.

When Jug is seventeen, they meet Archie at a basement party (Kevin insists it’s not a party, it’s just a get together that just so happens to coincide with the fact that it’s Christmas soon), and Archie has chocolate eyes and cinnamon hair and doesn't say "Jug? Weird name for a girl. Weird name in general." Instead, he says, "Jug? Like... Awesome. That's totally cool. Wanna sit?" And Jug does. Archie’s clutching a beer bottle like his life depends on it, and his face reads a mix of admiration and mild horror when Jug offers him the shitty vodka they’re drinking neat from the bottle. The rejection doesn’t phase them - they just take another gulp, barely a shudder, and jam it between their thigh and the couch cushion as they settle in to talk to Archie. Archie Andrews, who likes dogs and plays guitar and apparently didn’t learn to drink at his dad’s knee like Jug did, because after a couple of bottles his eyes have become wide and remind Jug of coffee the way they drink it, black and sweet. And Archie is sweet, even when the alcohol hits and he gets fixated on the slowly blinking lights on the Christmas tree. He’s so entranced that when he gets up for water he trips.

Jug catches him automatically even through their tipsy haze, pulls him close so he can right his dizzy head, and Archie’s hands somehow find the edges of the binder holding their chest flat and in place, and he feels, and the change in his face means he knows, fuck, he knows, and that’s nearly too much for Jug to bear. They push him away into the hands of someone else, someone equally drunk, mumbling something about a smoke, and their hood is over their head before they’ve even made it out into the night.

They’re not sure what happens between that moment and the next one they know, when Kevin is outside, picking them up from the snowy ground - when did it start snowing? It’s still snowing - and taking the cigarette they’re smoking away. The ground around them is littered with butts, and they mumble out an apology with near-frozen lips, not knowing how long they’ve been out there, not knowing how much they’ve smoked or how they still aren’t sober from the bitter chill to the air. Blacking out is scary, but a memory blackout when you’ve been conscious all along is even more so. Kevin shushes them, says “shut up, Jug” and “it’s okay, everyone’s gone home” and “you’re gonna be okay, sleep here” but Kevin neglects to mention that, inside, Archie is passed out asleep on the very couch they’d talked the evening away on.

Jug can’t sleep in a binder. You’re not supposed to, it’s dangerous, it restricts your breathing and can crush your ribs if you wear it too long. But they’ll be damned if they’re telling Kevin the thing even exists, as he’s coaxing them onto the admittedly inviting warmth of the other couch, near the fireplace where the last embers are still giving off a little heat, and wrapping a soft blanket around their shaking shoulders. They’re too tired, too cold, too drunk to fight this, to fight the wave of exhaustion washing over them. It feels like the warmth and the threat of sleep is a tsunami, and Jug is paralysed on the sand of the beach where the water is going to fall. To drown them.

When they wake up, it sure as hell feels like drowning. The blanket is over their face and their head is spinning and they can’t fucking breathe, and they sit up coughing and gasping for air and somewhere along the lines the coughing brings tears to their eyes and then, of course, of course they’re crying too. Painful, choking crying, the kind that sounds like you can’t get enough air into your lungs because they can’t, it’s too tight, it hurts. It’d be humiliating to die like this.

But then there’s someone there, a hand on their shoulder, pulling the suffocating blanket away, talking in a voice Jug can’t quite place. “Easy, Jug. Shh, you’re gonna be alright. Breathe in, slowly.” They’re panicking, coughing. “I can’t!”

“You can. I know you can. I got you.”

Through the fear, the voice gets in, centres itself in Jug’s terrified mind and sits there. I got you. They don’t remember ever having anyone say that before. It’s always been them, saying that to a scared kid sister or a heartbroken Kevin or a wasted father, carrying him home. The tears dry without any further input from them, and they finally muster up the control to open their eyes. Then, of course, they nearly bolt again.

Archie.

His hand tightens on their shoulder, the other curling in their hair - the hat is gone, again, they don’t remember whether they had it when they fell asleep or not. “Steady,” Archie murmurs. “Breathe. You’re gonna be okay.” Jug takes a shaky breath in, and the pain is sharp, and their hand has to press against their ribs to try and will it away. “I know,” Archie adds in a whisper, thumb brushing the edge of the binder where it sits on Jug’s shoulder/ If they hadn’t already been feeling like they were about to pass out, they’d be feeling it now anyway. “I know. You gotta get it off… Will you trust me?” They don’t have any choice but to do that now, so a shaky nod is all the reply he gets.

And Archie gets the binder off, taking Jug’s loose black tee with it, instinctively covering their exposed skin with the blanket, but being sure to keep it away from their face. Jug inhales deeply, and it rattles and aches, but they can worry about that later. For now, their gaze is on Archie, all the panic revolves around Archie and whatever the hell just happened as they try their best to get the air back into their lungs. A couple more coughs, and Jug feels like they might be able to say something. What comes out is “don’t you say a fucking word to anyone”, and they think that maybe a thank you or an apology for waking Archie up with their drowning in air would have been more appropriate, but the words are hanging in the air now and there’s nothing they can do about them.  They cough again, and Archie’s hand is once again there, now holding them steady through the blanket, making sure the shaking doesn’t knock Jug over, or at least that’s what it seems like. They’re breathing better when they say “I’m sorry.”

“You’re what?” Archie seems genuinely surprised at the words. “Jug… god, no. You don’t have to be sorry… I get it. It’s okay, so long as you’re okay.” He squeezes their shoulder in a way that’s surprisingly comforting. “Just keep breathing a little longer. I don’t wanna get blamed for you being dead when it’s actually morning.” “Time is it?” It feels like Jug’s been asleep for days.

“‘Bout five, five thirty.”

“I woke you… I’m sorry.” That gets an eye roll from Archie. “Told you, you don’t have to say that. Just be okay. I know you will be, but try to be okay soon, so I can stop freaking out… Here. I’ll turn away… if you want me to.” He’s holding out Jug’s tee, and they take it, waiting until his back is turned before pulling it on, then deciding to stay wrapped in the blanket anyway. It’s thicker, more covering, hides them just a little more. Whispering “ready” gets an “okay” in an equally quiet reply, and Archie comes back. He looks down at the couch space beside Jug and waits for a nod, like permission, before he sits. And then sits closer.

Jug closes the gap.

They’re quiet for a while, silence broken only by Jug’s still rasping breathing. They’ll deal with it, or it’ll deal with itself, in time. For now, it’s the last thing on their mind. “You said you knew,” they finally tell Archie quietly. “What did you mean? What do you know about me?”

“Probably more than you expect,” Archie replies, running a hand through his hair. Somehow, the arm ends up around Jug’s shoulders instead of back down by his side. They don’t mind as much as they probably should. “I know what a binder does. And everyone calls you ‘they’, not ‘he’ or ‘she’. It’s more obvious if you know what the puzzle pieces mean.”

Jug snorts, but it turns into a cough. “You’re being mysterious. Nobody told you that’s my job?”

“Nope. I think you say enough with your attitude. Thinking you’re unique.” A pause. Archie clears his throat, and then sighs, and then his head drops sideways to rest against Jug’s, which has at some point fallen to the redhead’s shoulder. “You’re not the only one.”

The words hang in the room like cigarette smoke, which Jug has just realised is probably clinging to their hair and skin and jeans. It must be pretty gross, but Archie’s body is curled up towards them, open, inviting and warm in a hoodie maybe three sizes too big, and he doesn’t seem to want to move away. Jug watches his face, the long eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. Wide brown eyes, a smudge of what could be makeup left on the corners of each eyelid. His lips look chapped, yet somehow still soft, and his cheekbones are strong and up this close, Jug can see that they’re peppered with freckles. It dawns on them, lights up the realisation like the sun casts gold over the rooftops as it rises.

“You too?”

Archie nods, closes his eyes, bites his lip and grits his teeth. Jug knows that look. It’s a look of fighting back tears.

“S’okay, Archie. We’re gonna be okay. That’s what you told me,” they murmur. “If I am, you’re gonna be too.” Archie curls up more, and then he moves and buries his face in the crook of Jug’s neck.

Jug brings a hand around to stroke at his hair. It’s sticky and stiff with day-old gel, but the residue brushes away with fingertips, and it’s soft underneath. “Gonna be okay,” Jug repeats, in their rasped whisper. Archie hums almost inaudibly in response.

They must fall asleep again, because when they wake up, all the lights are on and there’s an unexpected touch on their cheek. Their eyes open to Archie’s, hazel now it’s brighter, and close again against the sudden onslaught of a headache. Archie laughs, makes a sympathetic noise, and cups Jug’s cheek so he can kiss the other one. His lips don’t really feel all that chapped once they’re on skin, they realise with a faint smile.

Archie leans in once again and whispers, close to their ear. “Kevin’s making coffee upstairs. Said we could have some. Come with me… S’gonna be okay, Juggie.”

[antifatalism]

i’m so terrified of my life. This morning I thought, “decaf season”. I also thought, “there is too much red and green. that’s it. if there was more blue then it would be more easy and comfortable. There’s already a lot of blue, but it’s less intense than all the reds and greens, so it’s relatively little in effect. If there was more yellow it would be more terrifying or crazy in some way.” 

I also thought, “i wished i was less manic and paranoid in high school, and that i’d focused more on art and gone to art school and had a personal-production-oriented community.” 

People talk so much about gender dysphoria these days and I get it, i really do, there hasn’t been a day in my life i felt comfortable with my assigned gender, and the “anatomical” and otherwise prescriptive ideas of body-sex have only ever made me feel more confused and alienated from my body. and alternatively, being separated from the sisters i grew up with, by gender, was disorienting, and sexually trained with ideas of what I was supposed to, or will eventually, be into, only ever made me feel terrible and disbelieving. i’m substantially happier now, as an adult, with popular leftish politics re trans/gender issues being what they are, to be able to dress as i like, and feel like i can release myself from any residual genderings i had to adopt to survive, and speak openly about the bullshit of it all. 

but dysphoria about other stuff. p much every facet of identity. all the rewards in gamified society people have to seek in order to feel satisfied enough with their ideas of themselves and other people to stay engaged and, maybe, not want to die?

there’s not been a day in my life i’ve felt comfortable with “making achievements” to “gain rewards” of status or identity-attributes

i think playing video games when i was really young made me more critical of game-aspects of /real life

how do people do things like be in groups of friends in which they are aware of a role they play in some kind of micro-status-economy, or go to college and be forced to accept the relative adjustment in social respect and probably some kind of assigned reward of status like a degree or credential, or basically, how can people do anything social at all and keep their head?

--

I’ve been thinking a lot about agoraphobia for many years. About “agora” meaning market, market meaning big open place, but not just that, big open place that attracts a lot of people and is generally open to the public, but not just that, big open public people-attracting place where the mode of social activity is a GAME (rewards/punishments, capital achievement measurement, total abstraction) of resource and status exchange? and then yeah, your society drives you through that market every day of your life, you’re to some extent born in that market, you’re sexualized through that market? And you’re tagged in every stupid way, and even when people do their best to recognize the alienating, abusing game of it all, of how your body is abstracted and commodified, they still have the nerve to believe in “sex” as concretely typical (in the sense of type-d)? They still have positivistic ideas that use science words like “biology” to refer to the material which that field of science studies, rather than the science itself, as if biology is the nature of bodies, not the artifices of studies of those bodies that serve only as means to get closer to understanding them, understanding being a matter of object relationship, not consumption and definition? What is that, a metonymous misidentification? 

Anyway, it carries on. And we have homes to hide in. Beds to hide in, in the homes. Sleep to hide in, in the beds, or zoning out when we can’t quite sleep. Dreams to stop hiding in, in the sleep, where we can’t hide from the released mind, our self expanded over as context, contracted internally as an identity-fluid viewer. And all the fears and confusions continue to elaborate, but it least here it’s less of /the market. And however scary and unsettling dreams might be, waking up and remembering the dreams are smaller, less complicated, albeit more tangled, but otherwise small projections of the woken world, is fucking terrifying sometimes. 

hence we need to make communism yada yada yada --

-

and then, to look back on a bunch of shit i wrote days ago when i felt panicked, worthless and vaguely guilty, and to see what read now a view of the alienation of capitalism, not having mentioned WHY the gamification of economy is alienating: because the real basis of it all is Slavery and Starvation. These are the real fuels to the semiotic value of money, to the worship of abstract value. To feel totally crazy, without remembering the years of, mostly able-bodied, not being able to find or adapt to working conditions, therefore not having to resources to buy food or my own space. And to realize, just as billions are in or below that position, I can very easily lose part of the physical or mental functionality I currently have which is crucial to my success under capitalism. Like, i could get injured, or the stress and chaos of shit could break me for a while, and then I would even more fucked than I am now. I could fall from my access to sub-living-wage work, and not be able to help pay for the room I share. I could lose control over my behavior, fuck up my relationships and get criminalized. And same for everyone I care about. And I might not have the resources to help them, or they to help me.

I only hope that the veins of sentiment and cooperation that exist in Capitalism, as the anemic, farmed-to-scarcity life-blood that enables a workforce the petty health in needs to work, will surprise me with their power, and that everyone will manage to keep themselves alive and together, and at the same time, to resist and rob their oppressors and support themselves without the economy of legalism, in with they currently are mollified and threatened out of resistance.

[a425app]

Interview 07

Interview Questions

How are you?

Pretty good! It’s been a nice morning so far. Woke up at my leisure, had some coffee, conducted an interview with my father-in-law, and now I’m here

What is your name?

Cory Timmons

What is your age?

31

What gender do you identify as?

Female. I’m a transwoman, and I make that distinction. I can’t deny that I lived as a man for most of my life, although, that’s not how I felt inside. Many transwoman do not like to make the distinction between being a woman and being a transwoman, but I think it’s the most accurate way to describe me. I’m still very early in my transition, and expect to change a lot in the next 2-5 years.

What are the things that have been on your mind today?

Getting my interviews done is really stressing me out. I’m very nervous that I don’t know enough people to properly conduct the required number of interviews.

What's been the most enjoyable part of you of your day so far?

My coffee and chat with my husband this morning. I love him so much.

Is there something your looking forward too?

I’m looking forward to checking some things off my list today so I can reduce my stress. I know what I have to do, I took some time before bed to make a list of things for the weekend, so now I just have to GSD- get shit done!

What is the most important thing that matters to you at the moment?

Completing my degree.

Do you work? If so how many hours a week and what sort of job is it? / do you work on site or at home (or alternate location)

Yes. It varies. I work between 5 and 20 hours a week. I make posters for the music department, and occasionally do administrative work for an occupation/physical therapy company who helps kids with special needs in SF. I work at home for both jobs.

What are some things you like to do on the weekends?

Lately, working on homework. My husband and I like to have morning dates.. so we go out thrift shopping and have a nice lunch together. I like to just be cozy, so I immediately put my pjs on after we get home. If I have time, I clean the house, organize/work on little projects to make the house a little easier to live in. Every few weeks, we get brunch with my mom. If I perform in drag, I usually do so on the weekends.

What is your living situation like?

We live in a spacious house surrounded by trees with our pets. We’re very near a park, and near to amenities in town. I’m very very lucky.

is your living space organized to help you accomplish your tasks or goals, whatever they may be?

I think so. I have a dressing room/private lounge that’s just for me. It’s my own little haven in the house. We also have a nice art studio that’s set up for physical and digital arts. The rest of the house has a great flow, lots of pocket doors and things so we can close off parts as we need to. I love this house. It’s very well-designed.

What kinds of chores did you do during childhood/adolescents?

Very few. Basically just cleaning my room to the point it wasn’t a fire hazard, but even then, my parents were incredibly lenient about my chores. My mom did all of it, and I still feel immense guilt about it. That’s probably the most “male” part of my up-bringing—I was waited on hand-and-foot by my mom. I ultimately suffered for it. I had none of these skills, yet I was often in the position of being asked to do those tasks because of the dynamics of my relationships. I basically taught myself housekeeping from martha stewart, and then tried to come back down to earth to a more practical style of keeping house.

Would you say you actively seek out new things to try?

Oh totally

What are some of your goals for your daily life?

I’d like to walk the dog more consistently. I’d like to get in the habit of writing for thirty minutes every single day. I would like to be better about my makeup removal/getting ready for bed routine.

What are some of your goals in general?

I want to make Salem more comfortable fore queer/trans folks. Our city can be very hostile and cruel toward people with deviant genders and sexualities, and we don’t really have a ton of resources considering our city’s size. So that’s a big focus of my life. In fact, I’d say it’s what I’d identify as my purpose for the time. Besides that, more short term, I want to graduate and get a good job making a difference in the world. I’d like to work for a non-profit or some other kind of business/entity that improves peoples lives. I want to keep my art-making practice outside of school—it’s changed my life for the better and I don’t want to lose this power and passion I’ve developed.

What are some things that make you feel proud of yourself?

When I complete an art work that accomplishes my content and formal goals I feel very proud of myself. I feel proud of myself when I survive harsh and cruel situations and still keep my head up. I feel proud of myself when I speak my truth, not fearing the reprisal or consequences.

What activities give you the most satisfaction?

At home, DIY projects and gardening are probably the most satisfying. I get to see it change from A to B and it lasts—something that I can continue to witness over time.

What kinds of things do you to relieve stress?

I listen to guided imagery. I find it helps immensely with my anxiety and PTSD symptoms. I used to self medicate much more with alcohol and marijuana, but I’ve cut back a lot on both of those things, but still use. Not the best way to relieve stress, so I’m trying to be more mindful about it and use healthier options. Meh. No one’s perfect.

What is something you wish you had more time to do?

Making art, particularly digital art. I dream of making a video game. Some kind of RPG, like Final Fantasy or even action-adventure like Zelda. I’d love to have more time to devote to that.

What kinds of things take up most of your time?

Homework right now, and miscellaneous administrative tasks. Honestly, my schedule is so tight right now that it’s all kind of a blur.

How do you feel after you have completed a task.

Great!

How do you reward yourself?

This is a step a rarely do. I only really reward myself for BIG things. When I quit smoking cigarettes, I saved the money I had been spending on that and bought myself a game console.

How much time do you take just for yourself?

I spend a good hour and a half each morning waking up, drinking coffee, listening to podcasts and doing my shower/makeup/dressing routine. At night, I spend about an hour listening to music/podcasts, playing video games, or reading.

What are the most frustrating aspects of your daily activities/ day?

Driving. I love it and hate it. I like the ability to drive, but I hate commuting. So it’s a a weird dynamic! I would love to have the ability to ride a bus or trolley or something to work so I don’t have to think about it. But I’d still want a car because I enjoy driving. Weird, huh? I guess it just feels like I’m losing about an hour of productive time each day.

What time of day do you tend to do your work/chores/ homework

Any time I have, I spend it on that. So, usually 4-9 MWF, 12-9 T/R. All day on the weekend.

Do you feel like you have a good balance between work and personal life?

Not at all, but this period of my life is not about that at all. I’m doing all this work so I can have a personal life again. I absolutely do not intend to keep this pace. It will destroy me and my marriage if I do. I intend to be a more normal “adult” when I’m done with school.

How consistent is your schedule?

Parts are very consistent, other parts are variable. School obviously doesn’t change, but I have counseling/therapy appointments at various times of the week/alternating weeks, evening events, etc.

Can you describe a typical day for you from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed?

7:15 wake up, glass of water, take pills

7:30 coffee, read news, listen to podcasts, homework if needed

8:30 Shower

9:00 Makeup/dress

9:25 Leave for school

9:30 McDonalds

9:55 Arrive at school

10-4 classes

4:00 leave for home

4:25 get home. Drink water, take dogs out

4:45 use the bathroom

5:00 start dinner

5:30 hug mike when he gets home (our main ritual), then feed the dogs

6:00 eat dinner

6:30 dishes

6:45 watch tv/chit chat catch up with mike

8:00 Homework

9:00 alone time in my lounge: video games, music podcasts, drawing, etc.

9:30 remove contacts/makeup, night cream, take night pills

9:45 alone time again

10:15 – 10:45 slip into bed. Read in bed until I pass out.

What time of day do you feel the most alert/happy

Mid-day, 2-6

What do you think having a routine means?

Doing stuff without really thinking about it.

Do you have a daily/weekly routine(s) If so, What are some of your daily/weekly routines?

My days are pretty routine in the way I describe it. Not a lot deviates from that. The main consistent routine centers around school and caring for my dogs.

What tools do you use to plan or remind yourself of activities or a routine if any?

I have a family calendar  mike and I share to keep aware of our day-to-day. We have a chore chart for those kinds of things. Other than that, not realy.

Do you think having a daily routine would/does benefit you? Why or why not?

I think some of the things that’d be good for my skin/body would definitely benefit me. I’m pretty inconsistent about makeup removal, and I’d like to be better about caring for my skin in that way.

Have you done any research / read articles about having a routine?

No.

How often would you say you search for things involving lifestyle: blogs, articles, magazines etc.

Rarely.

Would you be interesting in learning how to best establish and stick to a routine?

What would that look like to you?

Yes. I think it would be positively encouraging and would try to keep me going if I fuck up. I think a lot of times it feels like “all is lost” if I miss a day or don’t do something quite right. So I’d want something to hold me accountable but still keep my interest? Maybe some funny content, connections with others. Tricks on how to get your brain to re-wire.

Do you use technology for planning and/or reminders? If so, what are your favorite tools/programs.

Why are those your favorite?

Yes. I use the apple calendar, and mike and I share it. It’s pretty intuitive, it’s native on the phone, and I can share with hubby.

What are some of your favorite apps to use? Why those? How do you use them? How often do you use them?

I don’t use a ton of apps, but I like the adobe apps for iPad a lot. I think they have the right amount of features for me to draw or do whatever. It’s like JUST what I need… no bloat. It doesn’t feel hard to learn. You just kind of open it and it’s obvious what to do.  I use them to make vector drawing sketches that I pull into illustrator and refine. I use adobe capture a ton to make cool shapes and illustrations, too. I use these almost daily.

If you could make a app for keeping track of a routine what would be some of the features you would want?

I would want to sync up with others doing it too. Social really helps for me. I’d want it to keep track of what I’m doing, maybe remind me of the benefits of what I’m doing. That was something that really helped me when I quit smoking… your lungs are x better and your risk of x is x or whatever really helped me to see the benefit of continuing something that was fucking sooooo hard I wanted to quit a million times day. Six years later it’s hard to imagine that, like it really worked for me. So, I guess getting through the shittiness of starting and then reinforcing after I’ve picked up the habit.

Have you ever failed to stick to a routine? If so, why do you think that was?

Yeah, I can’t tell you how many diet and exercise routines I used to try. I think I always wanted to go whole hog instead of just accepting that a little bit at a time over time is better than a quick burst all at once. I think it has to be something that will fit into my normal life..,. I shouldn’t have to plan my whole fucking day around a routine just to stick to it. I don’t do well with anything regimented or with negative punshiment. Fuck that. So it has to feel good, be easy, and feel positive.

Do you have any medical conditions that you think might affect your ability to stick to a regular schedule or routine?

Not really. Allergies maybe.

Do you think your profession has an impact on your routine?

Yes. I think being a student puts me in a position of forcing myself into a certain structure of time. In my old job, I had a very consistent schedule and no work to take home. My husbands job is not like that. We have different routines. SO I dunno, maybe it’s profession, maybe it’s the level of job, maybe it’s personality.

To what degree do you think other people impact your routine?

A lot routines and things need support, and I think if someone else is against the change, it can make the change very hard to deal with. I think everyone in a household kind of has to be on board.

Would you be more likely to do something if someone else was holding you accountable?

Maybe, but not in like an authoritarian sense. Like not like a directive, but more collaborative, like we’re in it together. Like… my bestie and I like to walk, so we often encourage each other in that way, but the same is true… she’s my bestie so it’s just as easy to say “fuck it” because we know neither of us REALLY wants to do it, ya know?? So maybe it’d need to be someone I was less close to so the social pressure to maintain the habit was a little higher.

If we came back in [x number of] years to have this conversation again, what would you like to be different?

I think I will have a pretty routinized daily life that is hitting all the boxes of things I want to work on and accomplish. Ithink I will have built more “down time” into my schedule because right now I’m working way too fucking hard and I know I can’t keep this up.

Is there anything I’ve missed?

Maybe what inspires a change. So I want to walk more for the main reason of my health: I’m very sedentary and I’m worried that as I get older I will miss my “easy” chance at starting to exercise and incorporate something health related into my lifestyle. To be honest, my disconnection from my body is not surprising. It never felt like home to me. It felt inhospitable and like someone else’s body. Now that I’m on the path of having the body I want (through hormone replacement) I’m feeling a much deeper connection to my body and the way that it cares and provides for me. So, in many ways I regret the apathy and neglect I demonstrated toward my body during my youth. It’s hard to know that I did so much damage to my body in my younger years and that I can’t take that time back. So maybe some motivation for wanting to change. I’m starting a new life, and I need to think about what the life means and what I want out of it, if that makes sense. And the health of my body is central to my ability to live the life I want. So that’s why I want a better routine.

Is there anything you want to tell me?

Thank you for being a good friend. : )

Any questions?