#i just don't want there to be any record of me pre-transition at all

[juney-blues]

June Egbert is, and always has been incredibly fascinating to me because of just, how many factors have conspired to make Homestuck fans show their collective transmisogynistic asses.

The main character of Homestuck transitioning is a planned future plot point for the official continuation of homestuck, that was spoiled in advance by a fan making a joke about finding some toblerones Andrew Hussie the author of homestuck hid in a cave.

The current main writers of Homestuck: Beyond Canon have went on record in an AMA confirming that this was indeed always the plan, even before they took up the project.

In spite of these facts, the general consensus among certain homestuck fans seems to be that "June Egbert" is purely a headcanon for the original comic that was "made canon" by a "Toblerone Wish" (a concept that didn't even exist at the time)

For a variety of reasons, the "canonicity" of the postcanon official continuations of homestuck is a mattter of much debate, (though a debate that most homestuck fans seem to err on a side of "it's not canon at all in the slightest," something the writers have feelings on I'm sure.)

All of these factors combined leave the concept of "June Egbert" in a very nebulous place. It's assumed by most to just be an "ascended headcanon" that was shoehorned in, it's a spoiler so it hasn't happened yet in any official media, and the official media it will eventually happen in is regarded by some to be nothing more than glorified fanfic.

If someone is talking about June Egbert, and you don't like the concept of June Egbert, you have your pick of a million different excuses for why she's fake and gay and not worth discussing and bad writing and just the authors doing a gay dumbledore*, paying lip service to representation while actually doing nothing.

And of course, lots of people *don't* like June Egbert! Rather than being introduced as transfem from the start, she's in this nebulous position of discovery where people have to truly reckon with the idea of a "Pre-transition Trans Woman."

You can try to write off *some* of the backlash as transphobia, because obviously not everyone in this fandom is gonna be cool about trans people.

But there's no shortage of fans just dying to tell you about how much they like reading her as transmasc, or the idea of her being nonbinary or genderqueer or genderfluid, or literally anything besides a trans woman. And since they're fine with all those other interpretations, there's obviously no implicit biases driving their distaste for the concept! (if you want to try explaining the concept of "transmisogyny" to people like this you're braver than I.)

you can trust them when they say it's *just* a problem with whether or not it makes sense with the writing, or it just doesn't feel right somehow, or any of the thousands of excuses that this writing situation gives them to just Not Like It.

It's just, so interesting to me. There's not a lot of characters out there that get a trans arc in this way, that leaves room for open denialism and insistence that we have our trans cake and eat it too... Because Homestuck is a timeline spanning multiverse story, lots of people seem to want it to be an alternate timeline thing. Assuring us we can have this character share space with a non-transitioning version of herself and it won't be weird or imply gross things about trans people.

If you ask me it feels like a plotline that'd be really good for exploring some gender horror though, finding your true self and then being demoted to a footnote, an alternate version, because everyone around you likes your pre-transition self more....

Anyway I have no broader point beyond "hey look at this isn't this kinda weird. You don't get this kinda stuff often!"

*side note: it's a little ghoulish I think to compare "a future trans plot point that hasn't been given the chance to even happen yet, in an already famously queer piece of media, from a nonbinary author" to "some stupid shit done by the literal most famous transphobe of all time" but that's perhaps a discussion for later.

[drowfag]

i can't die with a pussy. i can't die with a cunt. i just refuse to. my parents will have to come to terms with the fact that when i die that i will have a cock and balls. the coroner should be forced to stare at my nuts and sign my legal death certificate as male. i'm making sure my sister puts my fucking name on my tombstone and the word son is fucking engraved in there so my parents are forced to acknowledge that i was their son.

[crossdressingdeath]

After reading that bit during the Tartarus flashback where (in classic Riordanverse fashion) they forgot the timeline and had Nico thinking about Jason as a close friend even though canonically they were only vaguely acquainted at that point I've been thinking... why weren't they friends before Nico's first trip to Tartarus?

I mean, both of them have very good reason to want to be on the other's good side: as praetor Jason would logically want to be on good terms with the direct ambassador of a god, and Nico would logically want to be on good terms with the leaders of the group he's lowkey spying on. And we know from canon that once they start actually interacting they get on super well! And it would help explain why Nico could just show up at camp with Hazel like "Hey so this is my sister don't mind how she has no records and acts like she's from the '30s she's one of you now 'kay bye" and that was just accepted if he was close to the praetors instead of canon's impression of him being vaguely tolerated in New Rome at most and only respected at all because fucking with Pluto's ambassador would be... unwise. It would just in general make more sense for them to be at least friendly acquaintances, and given Nico's canon relationships with both Jason and Reyna "friendly acquaintances" would absolutely quickly transition into full friendship.

And honestly Jason and Nico being friends pre-TLH would make the bit in MoA where the Seven argue about whether or not Nico can be trusted so much more interesting and so much less infuriating. As it is in canon it just feels super unfair, because the only evidence any of them give for him being untrustworthy is "Well he knew about both camps" when all the gods and Chiron and Lupa also knew about both camps and also said nothing despite them being at a much lower risk of being smote for blabbing than Nico would be, and it's confirmed that Chiron at least swore to keep the secret and there's no evidence that Nico didn't. The only character who actually has the right to feel at all betrayed on a personal level is Hazel, and she doesn't because she loves and trusts her brother and also seems to grasp that the secret wasn't actually Nico's to share; even with Percy (and Annabeth, although unless I'm forgetting something she never really comments on it), Nico's never actually willingly confided in him even about minor things so I don't see why he's getting so butthurt about Nico not telling him one of the biggest known secrets of the modern age that the gods have. Percy and Nico aren't actually friends, they're friendly acquaintances at best, I don't see why Percy gets so pissy that Nico didn't break what is clearly a pretty major rule (given even the gods follow it without any fuss until it becomes obvious that the secret's going to come out anyway) for him. But if Nico and Jason were friends that would open up a much more interesting angle for the argument than just "How dare he keep this secret that literally everyone else who knew about it has kept for over a century"! "I thought he was my friend and he was lying to me about who he was the whole time" is a much more understandable and interesting reason to question someone than just him not telling everyone something that he wasn't even supposed to know! Hazel knew that there was something up with Nico from the start and Percy and Annabeth at least knew he was a son of Hades rather than Pluto (and again were not his friends and so shouldn't have expected him to confide in them anyway), but if Nico had actual friends in Camp Jupiter who really did think he was an ambassador from Pluto they would have every right to feel at least a little betrayed and question what else he might have been hiding from them. Jason absolutely wanting to save Nico but also feeling betrayed that his close friend had been lying about who he was the entire time they'd known each other would be much stronger and more compelling than canon's "He did this thing that basically every immortal we're on speaking terms with also did but he is uniquely untrustworthy because of it".

Also it would open up some fun possibilities for scenes. For example, I love the idea of one of the Greek cast mentioning Nico after Jason regains his memories and Jason just going "Wait you mean Nico like our Nico?" and everyone else going "What do you mean your Nico?" It would also give Nico friends and a place where he felt reasonably welcome, which would be nice and could've been used as evidence for the "You pushed away people who wanted to be your friend" angle Rick went with from BoO onwards, since him having people who cared about him (who he initially was friendly with primarily because he kind of had to be, which would justify what made Jason and Reyna different from everyone else he interacts with) would show that yeah, Nico had proof people wanted to be around him which he very much does not in canon. Plus it would be an opportunity to get into what Nico was thinking and feeling re knowing this huge secret that he couldn't tell anyone and having to keep it from people he cared about and didn't want to lie to (side note, I am now wondering if Rick didn't go into that because there was really no way to interrogate a traumatized fourteen year old in terms of "Why didn't you share this huge secret that not even the gods breathed a word of in over a century" that would make the interrogators look good and none of the Seven show any interest in the matter outside of those terms).

...Also. y'know. a Jasico fic featuring them dating prior to TLH and Hera wiping Jason's memories of having a boyfriend and still giving Piper and Leo false memories of Piper and Jason dating would both be very fun and angsty as a concept and would play very nicely into the themes of comphet in Jason and Piper's relationship. And would fit the way Hera very openly thinks that Nico isn't part of "her family" in BotL! So there's that also.

[eighthdoctor]

this is kinda a wordbuild-y question: do u think that elves would go for the long homeric epic-style poems? i think there is a compelling case for a long-lived race like elves to go for oral histories etc. and while maybe they transitioned away from that over time, I just think it'd be neat if jaina is reading the, like, elven Iliad reads aloud a bit like 'Muse, sing to me of the cataclysmic rage of Amisara' and about ten pages of gore in, sylvanas is like 'oh yeah that's my great-grandmother lol'. I just think that the elves would fucking love homeric similes. this is also a transparent ploy to smear my current hyperfixation on other interests sorry.

after some pondering i do not but that's ok bc i do have epic style poems for u in spades, just not from elfs.

the thing is, like, i think it's more likely that they'd rapidly move to externalize their memories, assuming that they don't have a radically different mental structure, there comes a point where you just do not want to remember any more things. you can use poetic structure all you want, but there are just too many things to remember.

the other point here is that oral history is 'uncivilized', which yes is a racist colonialist concept but this is the 'race war' planet. (PLEASE PLEASE note that oral history is just as reliable as any other form of record keeping, these are not MY opinions but. azeroth.) i firmly think elves (esp quel'dorei and shaldorei) would invent/adopt writing and run with it, disavowing oral history as Not Reliable Enough--both in terms of how their societies are structured and the real world references being made, we're not looking at cultures with a huge respect for spoken history.

however.

trolls.

especially outside zandalar, trolls have been displaced and overthrown and generally fucked around with so much that why write things down, you can lose a written text, you can't lose that long-form poem that contains the last thousand years of king names.

(also jungles Do Not like paper. and carving everything in stone is haarrrrdddd so only SOME things go in stone and everything else? oral.)

there are poems which are histories. there are poems which are family records. there are poems that are dramatizing that one time resk stole a bunch of goats from the shatterspear and spent 3 weeks hiding in the forests about it. there are poems that are tragedies to get everyone all weepy.

there are poetry improv contests that have very real social consequences, and a good poet can leverage her reputation into changing tribes or moving across continents if she so chooses.

quel'thalas has a poetry scene and for sure there are homeric epithets although i would need to shift my brain a bit to find sylvanas's, but i don't think epic poems/oral history weaves through their social fabric in the same way it did for archaic greece or pre-christian/early christian norse.

[yourmoonmomma]

Pinned Post

Updated pinned post information :3

~~~

ABOUT ME

I am 22. I live in Ontario, but am moving to Alberta at the end of the summer. You can expect to hear me talk about this a lot, as the mountains are home to me and I am extremely excited about this move. My ex-partner, whom I currently live with, will not be coming with me. I will also talk about this a lot.

I am a Cancer Sun, Pisces Moon, Sagittarius Rising. My younger sibling would describe me as the "most emotional Sagittarius" they know.

I work full time for a local water treatment business. In the evenings and weekends, I do both SW and tarot/astrology work. After my move, I will return to working on my 4th poetry book release, as well as a large fanfiction I have planned. My primary focus right now is saving for my move. After the move, I will be saving to return to university to get my bachelor of science in microbiology & molecular genetics.

I have been studying astrology since I was 7, and divination since I was 12. Somewhere around those ages, I got involved in other occult matters and begun to try and discover what the term "witch" or "witchcraft" meant for me. I do celebrate the Wheel of the Year.

I am queer, aromantic, and nonbinary. My gender identity will be reevaluated after my move. My current pronouns are he/they, and I am comfortable with gender neutral and masculine terms. The only exception is the term mom or momma!

~~~

FREE READINGS

Firstly, understand that readings are just for fun. Nothing I say determines the path of your life. You are the creator of your own destiny. I am just here to help offer pieces of guidance. Please don't ask about health, death, children, or weight. I have the right to refuse any ask I feel uncomfortable with answering, and I do not have to disclose why I have skipped it.

My free readings include pendulum, tarot, oracle, and shufflemancy readings. As well, I'd be happy to give a short answer on any astrology or witchcraft related questions you may have!

~~~

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Please always ask for the reading you want, before paying for it. You can ask through my DMs, asks, or over email. My email is alexplotnikoff366@gmail.com. As well, I can accept payment via tips through my blog, Ko-Fi, or PayPal.

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Please let me know if you're interested in anything NOT listed here, and I'll let you know if it's possible or not! I have a folder linked below on Google which gives you access to all my example readings.

[uncanny-tranny]

Alas, you're experiencing the unfortunate stigma of "maleness=inherent aggression" that the cis love to peddle. As an AMAB nb person, i see you, and i assure you you're no more "aggressive" than you ever were "bc testosterone".

The frustrating reality is, if a cis person (often, in my personal experience, cis white women) see you as male, and they don't like what you're doing or how you're doing it, a lot of them will accuse you of being "aggressive" in order to force compliance.

It's a sickening behavior that takes advantage of the increased accountability we as a society hold toward shitty men nowadays, and twists it to simultaneously manipulate others, and mask the behavior of shitty people that aren't men or amab.

I'm not trying to imply that everyone's trying to manipulate you, and some people might genuinely be working off of trauma/survival instincts to come to a conclusion. Unfortunately it can be difficult to tell if you haven't dealt with such before.

I will say, be wary of misogynists masking their hatred for women in a supposed "concern for men". As I'm sure you probably know, anyone making broad claims about "women are lying snakes that want to ruin men's lives" are not your friends, and just want to create likeminded mobs of shitheads for their echo chambers.

Please do your best not to take any claims of aggression personally unless it turns out that the worst is true. And if so, please stay strong and be safe if you decide to confront over it. Keeping records and screenshots of arguments/disagreements will be your best friend in situations like those.

I'm sorry that this has started for you now, but know you aren't alone. There are many people with these same experiences, and are more than willing to help.

-A Friendly AMAB Enby

(apologies if ive jumped the gun, i saw your post in my recommended and ive got strong feelings about situations like that so i wanted to throw my hat in the ring with advice and commisseration as someone with lived experience)

This was definitely something I was prepared for before transition - that people would interpret me in different ways because of their baggage. Honestly, though, it was really weird to see the same people who knew me pre-medical transition and post-medical transition interpreted me wildly differently than just a few months ago. I think that's why I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't because I had become a violent, aggressive Male™ in the span of a bit over a year.

I will say that many people have a ton of gender-based baggage that they may or may not apply to you based on their interpretation of you. That has nothing to do with you, like, ninety percent of the time, and while it can be annoying and you deserve the space to voice that, just know that you are likely not what instigated that. The idea that "men are inherently violent" is a gender essentialist idea I really hope we can move on from precisely because I've seen it used too often for abuse apologia. It does nobody a service to do this, it certainly doesn't prevent abuse because it doesn't tell you what abuse is in the first place, and how to be alert for instances of it.

Gender essentialism doesn't help anybody, least of all trans people who often have a very different relationship with gender and imposed gender than many people (which is also why sex essentialism doesn't work for most of us). It's really weird to impose one's biases onto a completely seperate person, though I do realize that's something most people do unconsciously. Be critical of the idea that any gender has essentialist, intrinsic characteristics that Define Every Experience and Every Action They Do. Be weary of the idea that only one gender can be abusers and aggressive. Those rhetorical devices are often used to cover up abuse in itself.

[flintsdragon]

it started out with a song!!!

I've yet to see the broadway revival of merrily we roll along (although I desperately need to) but I have watched the first production of the show that Maria Friedman directed in the west end several times (shoutout @dolorianpolymath for insisting that I do like five years ago now??) I am still manifesting a New York trip where I see this show before it closes, but in lieu of that, the announcement of the revival cast recording was the most exciting news I've heard in a while. this is the first time I've had a chance to really sit down and listen (with my copy of Finishing The Hat by my side) so im going to ramble about how I feel about the whole thing now:

overture

like the rest of the show, this has been a profoundly overlooked. overture, its jazzy, it sets you so perfectly in the eras of the show, it makes me cry, needless to say it could've kept on going! gimme just the orchestrations of the entire show and I would enjoy it just as much <3

HEY WHERE THE FUCK IS THE HILLS OF TOMORROW

since when is "may we come to trust the dreams we must fulfill" irrelevant to the show???

merrily we roll along

this narrative device that is literally directly lifted from the ancient greeks that people decided was too confusing in the 80's. sounds like they're looking us directly in the eyes saying "I guess it made sense the whole fucking time, didn't it?"

that frank

feels like an audio play more than a modern cast recording. much more interested in carrying you through the show than being like "Hey guys look Lindsay Mendez is here! There's Jonathan Groff!" character/plot centric over celebrity boasting.

old friends-- like it was

old friends is a top tier Sondheim song of all time. on top of being really fun, it perfectly canonizes this relationship dynamic in a way you can apply to any story. Case in point, I made a letterboxd list about it earlier this year!

Trouble is Charlie, that's what everyone does, blames the way it is on the way it was. on the way it never, ever was.

and like it was really fucking gets to me, it gets to me more and more every year. the brutal underbelly of nostalgia, amirite ladies?!!

Franklin shephard inc.

"Listen- Frank does the money thing very well, but you know what, other people do it better. And Frank does the music thing very well, and you know what, no one does it better."

tour du force from Radcliffe, fucking good for him! what else is there to say! its like the realest song ever. the whole money refrain is really interesting coming from Daniel, because like he's part of a unique group of actors that had their breakout in massively successful franchises and now choose to use their clout to get fun, interesting indie projects made (ie. Kristen Stewart, Elijah Wood, Robert Pattinson post-Twilight, pre-The Batman) Give him a Tony (and give me the video of him in the recording studio)

old friends

its really interesting to see where old friends falls in the plotting of the show, because unlike not a day goes by, we aren't heartbroken by this not reprise reprise because we are starting to understand these characters but we don't fully love them like we will in an hour. so this gets to mainly be fun.

Halfway through listening to the song and trying to formulate an opinion on it I realized that I was literally listening to fucking Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez sing Old Friends in a Merrily cast recording and got so happy I could cry. what a gift!!!!

growing up

secret good thing going reprise. capitalism ruins everything! they all want the same thing and they still end up where they end up I can't handle it :(((((( I can't help but feel we don't really need the Gussie stuff. I guess that seeing someone who has no dog in the fight in terms of Frank's soul is an important foil to Charlie and Mary.

third transition

the harmony is so pretty

omg not a day goes by

lets GO Katie Rose Clarke! I've been truly obsessed with this song since I first heard it. It just grabs you by the shoulders and stares in your soul and shakes you around a bit and then it lets you go and you're like holy the fuck where am I. no shade to Katie Rose Clarke (who kills) but Bernadette's version is the only version.

Now You Know

wow this show really moves. we're already at now you know. I guess I have bootleg brain. fun story I saw Lindsay Mendez in Godspell at Circle in the Square like 12 years ago and she scared me when she was running through the audience and high fived me. I'll never ever forget it. Legend behavior always.

every "right" from Groff is iconic lololol

Gussie's opening number

oh Gussie. I don't think she's a horrible character but she's a narrative device. a two and a half dimensional character, to use Sondheim's term. cannot over-emphasize how good Krystal Joy Brown sounds though

It's a Hit!

"If it only even runs a minute, at least it's a wedge"

it's a bop! the most meta-song of the whole show. you love to see it!

fourth transition- the blob part 1

the transition slide is so fucking gorgeous I could listen to it all day.

I initially feel compelled to say the blob is prescient but I know it's not meant to be. It was written by Steven Sondheim in 1980 about the 60s, and it's reflective of how this sect of society has always been and always will be. It feels diminutive and inaccurate to call it prescient.

growing up (reprise)

Gussie's power is that she takes control of the pace of the show. its manic time-traveling nature has to stand still and listen to her every word.

good thing going

"it could've kept on growing, instead of just kept on"

makes me cry before it even starts *bangs my head on the table* the pain in Radcliffe's voice is killing me.

"we want to hear it again"

I truly feel like I'm in a horror film every time I hear this line. It is so fucking brilliant it feels like it must've come from lived experience because how do you even think of something so subtle that feels like such a direct attack on our characters emotional evolution. give in to the encore and you'll never keep on growing.

the blob- part II

the interruptions during the encore are fucking perfect- because its like yeah of course they didn't really want to hear it again- the blob can't know what it really wants that's the whole point! its the blob!

Frank and Charlie singing louder hurts me personally because they don't just want to be heard they want to keep singing together.

fifth transition

the tonal & rhythmic shifts are thrilling- I think it would be fun to sing this at an audition or something lol

Bobby and Jackie and Jack

the Irish jig music is so fucking funny

Both Beth and Gussie are undersung but it's nice that Beth gets to be funny and not just the stereotypical long suffering wife. two and a half dimensional!

not a day goes by (reprise)

I think Mary being literally in love with Frank is realistic but doesn't provide much to the story in the grand scheme of things.

Groff just has one of the most lovely voices on planet earth. they all sound so lovely together.

sixth transition

how did you ever get to be here?

more mournful the more we move backward. real. devastating

Opening Doors

"Russian Tea Room" feels dated without feeling actively offensive? a smart change.

groff's "I saw My Fair Lady/ I sort of enjoyed it" is so fucking funny! I love when line deliveries prove that actors get what lines are fun!

they all have so much chemistry its unreal. this feels like their polygraph test video.

the horns!!! the horns are incredible!

I love "up a tone" it showcases their chemistry instantly

can you imagine being in the room when Lindsay, Jonathan, and Daniel sang together for the first time??? I think I would pass out

seventh transition

a child??????

our time

the decrescendo at the end truly almost killed me. this song makes me so emo already and groff was born to sing it. it got me so bad!

final thoughts

I'm really hoping they're filming a pro-shot because they clearly marketing.the shit. out of it. so why not? its star studded and historical and I would like to see it!!!!

[tryst-art-archive]

This is an archive of work made by @tryskits from 2000 to 2020.

It's an art and writing archive, but it's also a record of how I grew up online, blemishes and all, and of who I was before I transitioned.

Before I was TrysKits, I was Refkins, and before I was Refkins, I was Rhawen. Getting from one me to the next was nonlinear and involved a lot of cringe-inducing moments, but I think acknowledging how growth is uncomfortable and messy is important, especially when so much of our lives are made public. I also, personally, like being able to look back at who I used to be. Reflecting on where we came from helps contextualize where we are, and I find I need that kind of perspective a lot of the time.

Below the cut, you'll find a timeline of my personal history for context, as well as guidance on navigating the archive's tags.

If you'd like to see what I'm making in the present day, you can follow @tryskits (or @tryskits-art if you want just the art w/o the reblogs), or you can find me at any of the links here.

History

The following is intended to give you a reference point for the works contained in this archive.

[Rhawen] Neopets was my entry point to the World Wide Web, and I joined it when I was still in elementary school. The 2000 - 2003 period of this archive covers this span.

[Rhawen > Refkins] I moved to deviantArt in 2004, when I was 13, and I proceeded to hang out there until I went to college in 2009, whereupon I disappeared from online creative spaces for nearly a decade.

[Refkins] During high school (2005 - 2009), I was one of the art kids and misfits, and I took some summer art classes. I also was drawn to writing and webcomics, but I never managed to get any of the latter off the ground.

[Refkins] In college, I studied Writing, Literature and Publishing and I had a minor in Photography. I was still making lots of stuff during this period of time, but most of it didn't make its way online until much later, and I was doing very little drawing.

In 2014, I began working QA in the game industry. I keep my game dev and creative identities separate on purpose, so that's all I'll say about it here, but it's worth knowing that my career and experience in game dev impacted how I made and thought about my own projects going forward.

[Refkins] In 2017 (age 26) and 2018 (age 27), I got hit with the drawing bug in a big way and made some overtures at returning to deviantArt. I uploaded the things I'd made over the previous 8-9 years. Unfortunately, it didn't stick.

[Refkins] From 2018 to 2020 I spent a lot of time writing, having finally moved past the burnout college induced.

[Refkins > TrysKits] In 2019, I got struck with the idea for Tarot Town, which you can learn more about via my main. TT proved to be the means through which I figured out that I am a trans man.

[TrysKits] In 2021, I socially transitioned, becoming Trystan (or Tryst for short). It was also the year I turned 30.

This archive ends with the conclusion of 2020 and the end of a major phase of my life--the pre-transition years and everything they contained.

Tag Guide

Content Type

The media type is pretty much always tagged, e.g., #sketch #illustration #prose , etc.

All visual works are tagged with #art archive

All written works are tagged with #writing archive

Anything that documents my years on deviantArt is tagged #deviantArt archive

While I've rarely done fanart, you can differentiate between that and original works with #fanart #fanfic #oc art #oc writing

#NSFW is used to denote works that explicitly depict sex, even when said depictions are censored.

#suggestive is used to denote works that imply sexual content but which don't outright depict it.

Furry works are tagged with both #furry and #anthro

Works depicting other peoples' IP are tagged with "others' OCs" and any other salient information about the character/creature/etc.

#mild nudity indicates that a character is in the buff but no detail is shown (e.g., no nips, genitalia, butt)

#nudity indicates that a character is naked and there's some amount of detail.

TrysKits IP

You can find work related to the stories set in Khra under #Khra-nicles

Work related to the roleplay my best friend and I used to do as teens is under #The RP

Work relating to my (defunct) first attempt to develop a webcomic is under #Redux/Project SE

Work relating to my (defunct) second attempt to develop a webcomic is under #A Practical Guide to Good vs Evil

Work relating to my (possibly zombified) third and fourth attempts to develop a webcomic are under #EC/WC

[I'll add more as they come up.]

Characters are tagged with their first and last name (assuming they have one of the latter). Middle names are left out if a character has one.

^ With exceptions: #Unge S. Chickt #Rhawen Evergreen Fox

Regardless of what they were called at the time of a work's creation, depictions of my primary fursona are tagged with #Refs

Not every OC is tagged. I focused on ones I felt were significant.

Temporal Organization

Each piece is tagged with my age at the time of its creation. Ex: #Age 14

Each piece is tagged with the decade it was created in. Ex: 00s

Each piece is tagged with the specific year it was created in. Ex: 2005

[nathank77]

3/27/24

4:04 a.m

Look at me, I'm attractive. Yea I do wear glasses but I make them look good. I look better with them. Why don't girls like me? I start taking photos or I record a video of myself and I'm like, damn I'm good looking but I'm also like yea I'm a fucking nerd.

The glasses make me a nerd. A total nerd yet I don't want to be anyone else. I'm glad I'm me. I don't want to kill myself, why? Cause there will never be another Nathan... not this Nathan. And I love being Nathan.

Idk what to do. I love being me but people don't like me with my glasses. Why? I don't get it. Like women come to your senses. I may not be covered in tattoos or have a single one. I may not have piercings. I may not be edgy.

I may be a nerd cause of my dorky big glasses and my likes and interests but what's wrong with the general population of single women right now? How do I not attract any of them? I have all my teeth. They are white. I take care of myself and sure I'm visually challenged but I'm cute af. I mean I'm bald.. or balding but I'm also in my 30s...

Idk why people don't like me for me... I mean everyone says you got to love yourself, well I do otherwise I would never fight this pointless battle with psychosis. I'd never deal with my own shitty brain saying my deadname every time my mental picture pops. I wouldn't have dealt with seeing myself pre transition in my brain as a vivid mental image that killed me for months. Thank God that image is almost entirely gone and erased....

I mean I LOVE myself, I do see a fucking nerd but what's wrong with being a nerd? I may not be a rich nerd but I'm good with kids. I'm attractive and I pull off the bald look and glasses. I even like older women. I prefer them, why? Well they know what they want. They are attractive physically to me and I mentally.. I look for 35-55 year old women. They shouldn't have an issue with bald men. I get that women in their 20s do.

I only have one guess, glasses. I like my glasses. Why don't other people? I'm so attractive. If I met myself I'd date myself even though I don't like bald men or glasses.

I just don't get it. I mean all I can surmise is I look nerdy and I'm not an architect. I don't get it. I'm a nice guy too. I don't have kids and I can dedicate all my time to their children. Having kids isn't a bad thing, it's actually my type at this point. I want to be a dad. I look at mothers as an opportunity to be a real family. I look at them as loyal, and attractive. I bring up me not having kids cause I can be there 1000% for their kids soccer practice, for dinner, I can be there 24/7 I have no responsibility and I want all the responsibility.

I want to slip into a comfortable family life and raise children. I am available I am handsome even though I'm nerdy. They don't know I'm broke. I'm not racist, sexist, I'm not phobic of gay or trans people. No one even knows I'm trans. I'm intelligent.

What is wrong with people? I don't get it. Do I really have to cover myself with tattoos and be a poser to get women's attention at this point in time? I mean I say poser cause tattoos are not me. I'd be changing a core value about myself.

I got a handsome dad bod. I diet. I take care of my teeth. Yet I wear glasses. Why are my only choices women from fucking Kenya or the Philippines???

[jackstingy]

# JACKSTINGY – an independent, mutuals only, 18+ roleplay blog following the semipiternal woes of a) some nerdy english kid waffling between uni and an internship at the local retirement home and b) the maleficent spirit of a machiavellian drunkard now attempting to permanently possess the body of said nerdy english kid. triggering content such as religious theming + imagery, references to alcohol use + physical violence, and dissociation will make frequent appearances. rules below the read more, though saint peter and satan have one little thing in common and that’s knowing quite thoroughly that the spirit of old stingy jack isn’t reading through shite. 

(you probably should, though. shutting up isn’t quite a part of either of their personal dictionaries, and neither is using parentheses in the manner they were meant to be used.)

THE PLAYER'S HANDBOOK – THE RECORDS IN THE BASEMENT – THE CEALLACH SCRAPBOOK – THE CAT RANDOMIZER

INTERACTING. will not be open to bigots, white-washers, or fetishisers. it will, however, be open to any and all mutuals (which is a status reserved for anyone and everyone who is a cool, respectful, talented writer – id est, you!), regardless of plotting status and whether or not we’ve talked ooc. feel free treat memes as starters, reblog memes and prompts from me instead of the source without sending anything in, delete anything from me that you’re too busy to answer; i’m really just here to have fun and find new people to write with, so as long as you respect my rules and i respect yours, we’re cool.

WRITING. will be tagged with applicable triggers as “trigger tw”, posted using beta editor, and mainly occur in two modes: anxious third person rambling from j.d. and atrocious first person misanthropy from jack with an italicised and bolded transition between them. while my writing may look lengthy, you are in no way obligated to match word count or force replies out quicker than you can handle. basic etiquette applies: no godmodding, no metagaming, and no powerplaying without discussing the parameters of any of these acts beforehand. all this being said, roleplaying is a hobby, and if you ever want to drop a thread or get something a little shorter in your notifications, i am more than willing to oblige you.

SHIPPING. in terms of romance will happen selectively and exclusively with j.d for the foreseeable future, be based on chemistry after a substantial amount of threads and plotting, and in no way be forced on you. i love pre-established relationships of the platonic or hostile kind with reckless disregard for my characters’ established timelines, though, so i’m always open to editing plot points in and out as development happens and stories are made. i’d rather not write smut on this blog, but suggestive content will be tagged as such and fade to blacks may happen.

UNFOLLOWING. will be done with a heads-up through private messages and a softblock on my end unless you’ve stated prior that you’d rather be hard blocked. of course, i don't expect a heads-up from anyone who wishes to unfollow or block me; do what you need to do to keep your corner of the internet comfortable!

FORMATTING. will be minimal, with small text, single spacing, italicised words, and 100x100 static icons. if there is anything you’d like me to change about how i format my posts, please let me know via tumblr ims or discord.

OOC. talk will be attempted! i’m seb, 23, he/him, now kicking it in gmt+11, with ‘it’ being the metaphorical bucket that is writing. i love commenting on posts (i know most of tumblr hates it, but i truly do believe that the reply function was made for me and me alone), sending in asks, and falling to my digital knees at the sheer quality of writing and emotion to be found in this community. i am slightly terrified of returning to indie roleplaying after a long stint in just group rp sectors, but hopefully j.d. and jack can bring some existential fear and festive cheer to you all!

[basicgrayson]

I'm one year on T today! I will make a longer post eventually about changes and stuff, but I just wanted to acknowledge the milestone with a short post just in case I don't get to it for a few days.

It's been a heck of a year and I'm so much happier in my body now. I never thought I'd be here, but here I am.

The only regret that comes to mind is that I have hardly any recordings of my voice pre-T. I've been looking for an extended sample so I can include it in a comparison, but I guess I hated my voice so much that I never made any!

So yeah, if you think you might like to go on T one day, make sure you get some decent recordings of your pre-T voice, because you're probably going to want to compare them someday lol

Anyway, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been along this journey with me so far. Your support and words of encouragement have been so helpful to me over the past year. I never really intended for this to become a transition blog, but it kinda happened anyway lol I hope it's been helpful to someone out there.

I'll end this with a comparison between day one and today:

Sending love and good vibes to all of you!

[glassfullofsass]

Here's the thing. I don't usually feel like a Healthcare Worker. My job is possibly one of the safest jobs I could have while still directly dealing with the virus. Short of taking off my PPE and drinking the samples, it would be pretty hard for me to actually contact covid from my work. (I mean, not all my coworkers are vaccinated and jfc, i could kill them, but at least everyone wears a mask correctly). But right now it feels like it. Every time I walk past the lab there's another entire bakers tray of specimens. We get more specimens in in one shift that we can process in a day. Sunday i worked an extra shift and did my regular job and covid and stayed forty-five minutes longer than I meant to because my boss' boss made a decision and called it in and I was the only one there to transition to second shift. I was supposed to only do covid, but the regular work is two days behind and Sunday is usually the day we get to catch up with any carryover.

People don't stop getting or having HIV, or hepatitis, or HPV, or what have you just because the rest of the community has covid. We still have to tell doctors if the anti-virals are working on the hep b, or if the drugs are going to be rejected because of a mutation.

Healthcare is so fucking twisted and red-tapped in this country, and now we're back to testing levels that i haven't seen since the vaccines started rolling out.

Right now, i do feel like a healthcare worker. I feel wrung out. I feel like every day is more difficult than the last. I feel like a 40% positivity rate would be a good sign, because it's less than half. I feel like the little bit i get done is a drop in the bucket and it's wasted anyway because the public it still the public. Schools are open, stores are busy, vaccine rates are plateaued.

And I know I have it so much better than so many of my peers. I'm not public-facing. I'm fully vax'd and boostered. I'm getting compensated fairly for my overtime, and it's on a volunteer basis. I don't have kids or other high risk people to come home to, or someone likely to bring covid home to me.

But I'm still tired. I'm still scared. I'm still screaming uselessly into the void and trying to fill the emptiness with fiction until I can't keep my eyes open, just to distract myself from reality.

I called in a prescription for my cat, and I kept apologizing to the pharmacist for asking. He sounded so tired. He sounded so defeated. He said 'we aren't behind but there's just so many...' and I said 'i know, i know i work at (testing)'. My cat has a chronic breathing condition and all i can do is apologize to the pharmacist for adding another compound to the list. The automated answering machine for the pharmacy says they have at-home tests, but they'll be sold out by mid day. PCR by appointment only, and they're already booked through the week. The message was recorded on Sunday.

I'll probably process some of those tests. I'll probably process some of the tests my book club is sending in. There's so many names. Some people have the same first name as me. Some share my last name. Which one of my coworkers ran my test last summer when I was passingly exposed to a pre-symptomatic vaccinated person? That distance seems so laughable now. There wouldn't be a test to spare for me.

There's a woman I know. Pregnant. Works in NICU. Got COVID in October. Got a religious exemption from the vaccine. They can't fire her, because who would replace her? There's not enough nurses.

There's more information now. More treatment options. Another vaccine. This one isn't patented. Maybe that will make the difference. Get to people who want it but haven't had access. I want to burn the world for withholding the vaccines. The components. The process. Omicron didn't need to happen. Maybe it's the last one. I don't really believe that, though.

[greaterlandscapes]

My Dean Blunt Rotation aka High Fidelity Left A Bad Taste in My Mouth

For the past 2 to 3 months, my listening habits were teetering to an end; mostly via burnout by spontaneously listening to local artists daily and less likely of a musical discovery drought, whereas my interests of a certain artist or genre hasn't found its, sort of, "eureka", moment per se. I've been feeling less enthusiastic over the things i listen to since my friends have gradually lost their flare when it comes to discovering/exploring untapped parts of the music realm. Thus, in return, my enthusiasm not being reciprocated. It leaves an empty feeling from someone who has been yearning social interaction, may it be media being latched on the topic - it's a feeling that's been guilt-tripping me ever since I was stranded in the other end of the metro. I feel closed off, exposed to the crippling loneliness the lockdown has punished us: a defacto solitary confinement in a national level. Our act of staying online is also an act of staying alive outside.

To be fair though, it's a valid move to not boomerang compliments/gripes over an art you haven't consumed due to someone's autonomy. Your able body being to consume the art you wish to finish with free time is a luxury in of itself. The art is then failed to serve its purpose to reach its goal: You have squiggly lines heading straight to oblivion rather than swirling in the earlobes of a wandering cyber nomad. We, eventually, need to find something that could help us exit, rather than escape, from capital. We, in return, do not shut ourselves from the outside. Instead, we then tend to avoid the stress of protocols and outdoor fascism; Not avoid the indoor liberalism that is eating us alive and online. It's a capital punishment we never knew we signed up for ever since the onslaught of the virus and the state. Art for art's sake is nonexistent now, always has been, it seizes to ever since we went inside. Feeding off of a holographic meatloaf coming from a glowing screen. We have a real-life Karen acting as a nightlight in our rooms.

The COVID lockdown made us listen to music — both for better, for worse. For one, it made us pass most days. You could say the same for any sort of media: film, mixed media art, or whatever pre-Covid activity that sprung up during our time in isolation. For music, however, there was an uptick of new listeners that made others Wheel-of-Fortune the fuck out of their music discoveries in sites like RateYourMusic, Bandcamp, or even Sophie's Floorboard. We've continued to expand and became more open change of opinions and be less of a jackass towards someone else's opinions. On second thought, our opinions have been catalogued, leaving more notes than actual footprints of our previous listens. Our new discoveries made new bands and re-emerging bands, bands who faded to obscurity, crawl back in the surface with newfound interest from younger listeners (ie Panchiko, Jai Paul, and Dean Blunt) and this glowing, previously unseen and unexpected overwhelming support from fans of departed artists (ie SOPHIE, MF DOOM)

For the other, we've hogged gratuitous amounts of media, resulting into losing our primary direction as to how we want to consume our media based on the preconceived notions of what we want in our art. There is goodness in becoming directionless when you think about it, but there comes a cost to our identity as music listeners. Instead, we end up widening our tangents, falling in endless rabbit holes, having zero chances to emerge from the surface. In fact, i refuse to call it a "rabbit hole" instead i'd rather call it a "pipeline" of sorts — transitioning casual music fans into a full on, different, unique versions of themselves that would define them when laws and protocols have eased in the outside world. Our act of staying online has either made most of us break our character or enliven our past selves. The music pipeline is now more apparent, stretching the norms of what was once alienated by a silent majority, but now accepted as an acceptable form of expression. The more music we are exposed to has made casual listeners stranged out or react in ways that our personality have betrayed us or deemed not as acceptable to them. Still, not changing anything that was prominent pre-pandemic. Liberal cop behavior is stronger, now more dangerous than it ever was once perceived by the outside world.

HIGH FIDELITY? NO, THANK YOU.

Imagine a situation inside of a record, pre-pandemic of course, where you do not feel like lifting a record out from the shelf, instead, you window shop just for the sake of windowshopping. Capital and media made us think that going to record shops is a semi-productive activity. The age of discovery has died ever since High Fidelity romanticized and normalized the incelage of horny record diggers. Does this movie age well, yeah sure it does, for old 90s nerds at least. But did it translate well over in the past 20 or more years of events and tragedies that unfolded in pre-9/11 America? No it didn't. It was an age of free expression, only liberals would dream of whenever they take a sip of Guinness beer in their favorite dive bar.

Mind you, over a couple of months ago, it was my only chance in seeing why this movie was the talk of the town back when it was released. There's music, yeah, and attractive leading leadies, yeah, it has everything a 90s kid would love to salivate and drop their gonads over while they watch this movie. I obviously did not live to see the movie on opening day but i could imagine the scent that came out of that movie theater with attendees donning windbreakers and The Who shirts with popcorn dressing stains on their plastic cups. If there was a Filipino counterpart to this movie, i'd bet corporate champions Eraserheads and Rivermaya would soundtrack their music over and have either Tado or have Boy 2 Quizon, but i sense it to age like milk more than it could age like fine wine due to the senseless jokes one can execute in a Cubao or Cartimar record store.

John Cusack is obviously the incel in question here: a damaged, vengeful ex who constantly fails to live his partner's expectations and weaponizes his personality over the situations that has nothing to do with his interests. I spent the entire time being absolutely disgusted over the spineless responses of John Cusack's leading character. The movie then treads on flashbacks with John Cusack's failed relationships and what he could do to move on from each and one of them. If i could stand a SONA for 3 hours then I can't stand John Cusack being the dull entry point to incel, making more reasons why you should hate record store clerks who don't give an iota of shits to someone's inviting rapport. High Fidelity is opium for massive music circle jerks who can't take a single breathe of fresh air or a single quota of touching grass. There's more targeting weak and inferior guys and hot women who dump dumb overconfident dudebros more than the actual "music recs" in the entire movie. The more I think about this movie, the more I realize how our personality is in line towards Dick, the record store being unmercifully dunked on by the movie's two leading characters. He's an angel in the world of cynical bastards, witnessing both demons pitchforking record store customers in the ass while they're purchasing the latest Sonic Youth album.

I believe that Jack Black, the dark horse of High Fidelity, has a pleasing personality more than an irritating demeanor due to this behavior in the record store. In fact, outside of the record store, Jack Black doesn't seem to take the business is your pleasure act pretty seriously. Unlike John Cusack's character he brought his obsession over involving a record in an important memory/point of his life. There is so much stuff that has happened outside of the record store, so much for Rolling Stone and NME being the bible of music at the time, endlessly christening and shilling artists that believe to become the second coming of the Beatles. The music references here however are treated as fluff than it is a mechanism that would drive the senseless plot forward. If anything, there are events pointed out in the event that doesn't have anything to do with the life of the characters.

If anything, this movie did a great job at capturing the feeling of music bros being dumped on the wayside by a mature set of characters and how their current conditions aren't perfumed by the studios' liking of having to Cinderella story the shit out of a bunch of normal record store owners. The reality is in the reaction of one's social capital being invaded and we're here to witness how those reactions panned out in 2021. This is a villainous depiction of music nerds being the salt of the earth, the bane of all media discussion, still reflective of the insufferable salt of cyberspace found in music forums like 4chan and RYM. High Fidelity is a pipeline of 90s musicology, a dreaded fever dream of an owner waiting for the decade to end, trends ossifying and re-emerged by the hands of nostalgia-savvy individuals. It was, at its time, every music-movie nerd's excuse equivalent of Scott Pilgrim VS. The World. There are memories worth remembering and cherishing, and this movie isn't one of them.

DEAN BLUNT, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

In the past two weeks I've been fancying myself into sitting down and listening to different projects from the ever elusive, UK-based sound artist Dean Blunt. The first time i chanced upon his music wasn't too long ago - albeit a recent one in the time of COVID - was when I randomly stumbled upon his records at a Spotify recommendations section under John Maus (yeah lol i know the implications whenever his name is mentioned) - but then i was enamored by his online presence so quickly I put everything down and dedicated an hour or two researching about this man's music.

Other than the fact that his album "The Redeemer" wasn't the best record to start off in journeying through his discography: ending up disgusted and borderline bored even and I was more likely to lambast this record's aimless, pretentious art-pop inflections. By the end of the day, it was a preference long solidified by his undying fanbase. According to his hardcore fans, the music isn't really music, evaluating it as a free form of sound art, rather than sticking to a structured and conventional cues; the genre is nullified by most analysts of the arts. The growing interest of the general public towards Dean Blunt's pranks and antics have long appealed to my tastes as a chaotic neutral individual. Pranks that are well executed to piss off UK gallery connoisseurs and entertain ironic attendees who'd shit on the art piece rather than participate in it.

More of the resources I've found about Dean Blunt online: numerous aliases and collaborations that lasted around almost 2 decades. The most notable of all them, at least for my money, are either Hype Williams, a duo consisting of Dean and frequent collaborator Inga Copeland, and Babyfather, an art performance parodizing the pirate radio culture in the UK. I have not delved enough in Blunt's body of work to evaluate everything and what i could synthesize from it. For now, I enjoyed it as a form of entertainment. Well, color me impressed because Dean Blunt isn't clowning around, he, in fact, makes blissful and transcendental music from left to right.

Dean Blunt was the only few artists that made me want to binge on their discography. His movements in his music has attracted this pesky listener who thinks that being mysterious is a plus. I mean, look at me who thinks The Paul Institute, Panchiko, and Burial are the greatest artists that have walked the face of the earth.

The most I've enjoyed from Dean Blunt's discography are his mixtapes and collaborations: preferably his Soul Fire and ZUSHI, both of which were packaged as B-sides or supplemental releases rather than major releases such as the Babyfather project or the Black Metal releases. His knack for blurring the lines between genres still fascinate me as of this writing, and it continues to amaze me how he doesn't seize to compromise his art, he's here to prove a point and it sells quite well despite the lack of direction in his music. Blunt's music has more aggressive and hazy texture than the hollow, wide, soulless structure of art-pop/hypnagogic pop released today. He creates terrains from the rubble of his country's current shortcomings. The music overlaps the actual intentions with abstract concepts, becoming deconstructed down the line. In Babyfather, noise music coincides with Blunt's amateurish rapping. In Black Metal, Blunt isolates himself along with the assisted skeletal guitar playing. Both projects throwing all tropes in a vaccum alongside Blunt, who he himself would sought to become a personification of a musical void.

--

(Excerpt from the Babyfather album review in TinyMixtapes)

--

Dean Blunt is an entity that wishes to become one person, but no, this isn't a figure in a specific art form; this isn't Banksy, this isn't Bob Ong, this is made by one person, clearly it is if you listen closely, and it's been entrancing me ever since his presence was felt on the horizons of the internet. Dean Blunt, what the actual fuck.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hi Steph! I hope it's okay if I ask you, but I've got this thing on my mind and I don't know who else I should ask. I've just recently found out about Ben's interview about Chelsea Manning (with the Guradian, I think), and I was utterly shocked how blatantly Ben misgenders her there. I'm a trans person myself, which is probably why I'm even more hurt by it. I always thought Ben rather open minded and intelligent. Do you know if someone ever called him out on that or if he apologised?

Hey Nonny!

First of all, I want to give you a HUGE hug *HUG* I totally understand why you are upset about this, and I do not blame you for being sad that Ben seemingly purposely misgendered Chelsea Manning, and he absolutely should be called on it if it was in fact malicious. Like you, I too also thought Ben usually corrects his errs in language so I thought this was a bit weird.

So! Let’s figure this out. I did a bit of basic Googling and read a few articles and Wikis to brush up on this; I completely somehow missed the whole debacle that The Fifth Estate caused and how poorly Ben was received for his role in it (which I found out because I also didn’t know Manning was also part of that whole thing). Anyway, so I think I found the original article you are referring to:

The peculiar charm of Benedict Cumberbatch by Decca Aitkenhead (The Guardian, 14 Sept. 2013) – Sherlock Holmes made him an unlikely superstar. Now Benedict Cumberbatch is taking on Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. He talks about email warnings from the WikiLeaks founder, his ‘crush’ on Matt Damon and why Chelsea Manning broke an oath.

Which was then followed up with this “correction” a couple days later since Ben felt that The Guardian misconstrued his words:

Benedict Cumberbatch: Chelsea Manning and civil liberties – interview transcript by Guardian Staff (The Guardian, 16 Sept 2013) – Decca Aitkenhead’s interview with Benedict Cumberbatch – an unedited transcript of the actor’s comments on Chelsea Manning.

In both of these interviews, both Ben and the original journalist, Aitkenhead, refer to Chelsea by her dead name, Bradley; we know they misgendered her because these are transcripts of the audio recording of the interview for the story. Take note of the dates on these articles, because they’ll be important in a moment.

Thinking this odd from Ben at least (I’m not sure politically where The Guardian stands so I’m not going to comment; I’ve read mixed opinions), I decided to figure out a bit more about Chelsea Manning, from Wikipedia, which cites sources that were helpful to my research:

[…] A trans woman, Manning released a statement in 2013 explaining she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning. She also expressed a desire to begin hormone replacement therapy.[7]

Here is what Source 7 says:

Manning, Chelsea E. (August 22, 2013). “The Next Stage of My Life”. Press release. Archived from the original on August 22, 2013. As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. …I also request that…you refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun…. Thank you, Chelsea E. Manning

Now, let’s go back to the original print date of the first article: 14 September, 2013. Chelsea publicly came out as a transwoman on 22 August, 2013, less than a month apart. Now, I tried to do some research online, as well as my own personal experience from having to work in the newspaper industry, as to how long it is for them to write and publish articles. While I couldn’t find any DEFINITIVE answer on how long of a timeframe The Guardian does between interviews and publishing of said interviews, I know with the newspaper I worked for, at least, it was anywhere between days and months from interview to writing to editing to publication. The Fifth Estate came out on October 18, 2013, and Ben was assumedly doing his press junket for the film when this interview came out in September… which is the perfect time for The Guardian to release the article as people began searching for info about the movie. The first trailer starting the press junket was released in July 2013. Some guesstimation, then is that Ben did the interview sometime between 01 July and… let’s say it takes at BARE MINIMUM 5 days to interview, write, and edit the article, so 9 September.

Again, I can’t seem to find when Aitkenhead actually DID the audio interview with Benedict; I am willing to bet on the odds that it was before Manning’s announcement of her gender identity in August, because, like you said, it’s highly unusual for Ben to purposely be malicious about that sort of thing (especially since JUST TWO MONTHS BEFORE he was the officiant at his two gay friends’ wedding).

I did a bit more digging, and found this Buzzfeed (I KNOW) article regarding her sentencing: 

Benedict Cumberbatch Calls Chelsea Manning Sentence “Devastating” by Jordan Zakarin (Buzzfeed News, 6 Sep 2013) – The actor, who plays WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate, spoke to BuzzFeed about the controversial case.

He was asked about Manning’s sentence while on the carpet at TIFF that year, meaning it was an on-the-spot and not-pre-recorded or pre-planned interview and at that time, he was referring to Manning by her pronouns.

There are some other articles post 16 September that also refer to Manning by her dead name and dead pronoun, also all pre-recorded interviews. So from this, I can glean the more likely scenario, given that Ben, BEFORE that interview in The Guardian was published, was referring to Manning by her pronouns just a couple weeks after the public announcement, I am really honestly suspecting that the 15th’s interview was done in late July or early August, probably just days before Manning’s announcement. As I said before, it’s common practice for newspapers to withhold interviews until “prime publishing” dates, and I suspect this is EXACTLY what happened here.

While I know Ben isn’t perfect, I think this is honestly a case of “an interview was held onto for so long between the interview and publishing and a big revelation happened in between it all”. Should The Guardian have corrected the pronouns? Probably, but it’s not my newspaper.

In this case, Lovely, I think we can say that this was not malicious on Ben’s part. I hope my bit of research (and some deductive reasoning) helped you feel a bit better. It’s still no excuse, absolutely not, that Manning was misgendered in the paper… the media seems to always be the last to correct their own errors, despite being hungry to call out everyone else for theirs for views. Sadly that’s the world of print and digital media, my lovely. 

I genuinely don’t think Ben intentionally called her a “he”, given how close this interview was released to her public announcement. I’m not making excuses at all for him, but seeing that in an on-the-spot interview he did a week beforehand he referred to Chelsea properly, I think this was a pre-recorded and pre-written interview that they literally had just scheduled for publication and moved onto the next item on the docket. It’s a common practice in print media.

[betterbinderproject]

Hi, when you say that you understand completely the reasons why people don't like the better binder project you're being very presumptuous. It's not the same as well-meaning but ignorant abled people attempting to solve highly complex and expensive problems of access for disabled people. And furthermore, the way you talk about this is really condescending and frankly just...you make assumptions that you understand the intimacies of how people think and feel that are just not true or analogous.

Like I mean this in the nicest possible way, but cisgender people’s relation to trans people is just not the same, and it would be a lot less patronizing and transphobic of you to *not* characterize every possible negative and/or critical reaction to this blog as being a reflexive anger and automatic rejection instead of being a justified and/or reasonable wariness. Like I absolutely hope this project succeeds, but there’s no reason to think that you’re qualified to make it succeed.

I’m going to use this also as a way to respond to your post, which didn’t show up on my Acitivity, so I’m glad someone pointed me to it.

1. My ability to listen to criticism

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been monitoring the activity of my posts, especially looking for people saying things like, “This will never work”, “this is a bad idea”, “won’t work for me” and so forth. Then a lot of the time I’ve messaged them to say, “Hi, I want to hear about your thoughts and experiences, do you have time to talk?”. I’m in a little bit of a backlog with this because some really smart and informed people have been commenting on it but I’ve been busy. For example, if I got the chance to listen to @the-scottish-costume-guy at greater length and in greater detail in the next couple days, I’d be really happy.

So while some criticisms have been reflexive rage or despair, others have been completely on point and I’ve already integrated them into my design (for example, recommendations to slope the boning diagonally down and to the outside). And others have been logical on the surface, but don’t apply to the specific thing I am trying to do (eg. “corsets are expensive”)

2. My credentials

I’ve been sewing seriously for the last 20 years. In some of that time, I’ve been paid for my work. For much of it, I’ve both been reading academic sources on the topic, and sewing in the workshops of vastly more experienced sewists. Over and above all my other sewing experience, I’ve made and worn numerous corsets. There is no set certification for a “professional tailor” but yes, if I wanted to do that as a job, I do have the resume and portfolio for it.

Tailoring isn’t actually the field you want here, though. Since beginning this project, I’ve located and contacted several researchers in the fields of human ecology, mechanical engineering, and biomedical engineering, who have relevant expertise. None have yet gotten back to me, probably partly because it’s summer. If someone more qualified than me wants to work on this project, I am 100% willing to collaborate with them, or hand the project off to them.

3. My profiting from this project

I’ve already made some very particular and pointed decisions about this. If I wanted to significantly profit from this project, I would:

Keep my R&D process secret

Patent and license the design

Sell patterns of the design I made for individuals wanting to make their own, individual, copy

Sell binders I myself made, or possibly outsource their production and then sell the result

Send cease&desist letters threatening to sue anyone selling copies of my binder, or any other binder on similar design principles, or any pattern for such a binder

Demand that anyone wanting to profit from the use of my design principles pay me a licensing fee.

Meanwhile, my plan right now includes:

Publicizing my concepts and progress in a way freely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection

Maintaining a record of my progress to keep anyone else from claiming to be its inventor and licensing it in exploitative ways

Encouraging feedback from as many people as possible and seeking out trans, nb, and genderqueer perspectives 

Coming soon: Creating a survey about wearer experiences and health outcomes, asking anyone involved in this project to report back so the data can be disseminated and analyzed. If this project and my design are a failure, I will say so.

Making design concepts, and in the future, patterns and tutorials, freely available to anyone with an internet connection, and agreeing to their republication to reach other audiences

Only receiving donations from people who understand that this is an experimental venture, posed as the question, “What if I tried this thing,” and only profiting from items that I have ensured people could get for themselves some other way. (eg “Here’s a free tutorial on making this binder using items from the dollar store. However, if you want to buy a $20 kit of high-quality items pre-cut for your convenience, here’s my Etsy”)

Providing prototypes to their intended wearers for free in return for feedback about the wearers’ experiences, instead of selling half-baked designs for a profit

Openly encouraging other sewists to suggest design improvements, make their own versions, or make binders for other people without paying me

In the future, I’m very open to stepping back in my own role in this project, and handing it off to trans people who have taken the idea and run with it.

From a legal perspective, I have probably already ruined my chances of making big bucks from this project, and I did that on purpose. From the beginning, I realized that it is very possible for me to be exploitative in how I handle this project. 

I honestly asked for money because I can’t pay for medications, groceries and utilities right now. I got about $300, which was enough to cover most of my monthly medical expenses. Most of the clients I see as a psychotherapist are disabled, living on extremely limited incomes, and cannot pay me much more than the cost I pay to rent the room we meet in. I’m trying to survive and find a better job. If I had a full-time job and made a decent income, I would be funding this project out of my own pocket. I know how to market and monetize a project like this, and have, from the first, deliberately chosen not to, in large part because I’m cis and this isn’t my issue.

4. Binders over top surgery

This project has largely been inspired by a trans person with whom I have worked, whose parents were involved in a custody dispute beginning when they were 14. At 14 they realized they were trans, but they required the consent of both parents for medical procedures until the age of 18. One parent was extremely transphobic and would not consent to top surgery, although they didn’t see their child on a regular basis and didn’t know how they dressed and presented. During those 4 years, they used a binder as a way of dealing with the dysphoria that made them suicidal. Despite its negative physical health effects (pain, trouble breathing, rashes, etc) the binder was an essential aid to their mental health.

Yes, binding is a “stopgap” method compared to top surgery. However, one of my major areas of work is as a mental health therapist with LGBTQ people, especially teenagers. Not everyone can get top surgery, and not always as quickly as it is needed. Sometimes there is a gap you need to stop.

5. Why do we need better binders at all?

I didn’t go into this because I, frankly, had considered the need for improvements in binder technology so well-documented as to be completely obvious. Just today someone tagged this blog talking about how much they want it to work because “binding gives me rashes, makes my already shitty lungs hurt, makes my back hurt, and doesn’t actually work for me“ Would you like me to curate the research and accounts of people who have problems with the current models of binder available? Is that proof you in fact need?

7. Corsets are unsuitable/super gendered

Yep! That’s why I’m not making corsets. I’m trying to use the engineering elements from corsetry that would make the binder better, and make everything else as un-corset-like as possible. 

How possible this is is an open question right now. For example, corsets need to be fitted so precisely because they go from the bust to the hips, and therefore need the correct bust, waist, and hip measurement, and the correct height, and the correct ratio of all things to each other, and to have the correct vertical profile. My current hypothesis is that by making a binder that covers only the bust, I can eliminate many of these complexities. However, many informed observers of the project have told me that they think I’m wrong, and that the binder will need to extend to the waist to more evenly distribute the load of compression, and a garment that only goes around the chest will cause too much back pain over the long term. This is a question I think can honestly only be answered when I ship my prototypes to my genderqueer friend in Georgia, who shares my measurements and is eager to try each model out for hours/days/weeks and report back.

At present, I am experimenting with adaptations to sports bras, which I also know can be too gendered and induce dysphoria. I’m using them because my current project is aimed at people who have very little experience sewing, and therefore would benefit from only having to add a few elements to an already-constructed garment. After this, I want to see if I can transition those adaptations to something less gendered, like a tank top. After that, I can begin work on drafting a binder entirely from scratch, which, one hopes, I can make as ungendered as possible.

My askbox is open!

[lilacskyent-blog]

Breakfast with Alex Wex

People have a million opinions and false facts about the digital world we live in today, and even more about social media. For a lot of people, they use platforms like Instagram and Twitter to follow celebrities, and some use it to bully celebrities. Most forget that that connection can also be used for good. We live in a world of amazing accessibility and, when used properly, could foster a wonderful connection between people. A prime example of this is the Will Smith Jump event that took the internet by storm, that all started with a video message. It’s incredible what can happen when you reach out to people. That was the main thought in my mind before sitting down with Alex Wex yesterday. Alex Wex is an amazing Twitch streamer, and until recently, was a producer for FBE and REACT on Youtube. As of this interview, Alex Wex has fostered a wonderful community through Twitch and Discord known as the Jank Squad, and recently broke his view count record at 210 viewers for his birthday stream, also hitting close to 600 subscribers. Given that I was in Atlanta and he was in LA we couldn’t actually meet for breakfast like I usually do so we had an amazing video chat instead.

So for starters, I just want to thank you for sitting down with me. I’ve been following your work since I first saw you on FBE and I think you’re an awesome dude so thanks. I wanna start at the very beginning because I’m really interested in your story. So, I know you went to high school in Atlanta, GA. What can you tell me about that?

I was actually born in Manhattan, my family moved to Atlanta around pre-K and I lived there up until I graduated from Riverwood High School. All my friends wanted to go to UGA or Georgia Tech but I was really interested in traveling and branching out, so I went to Ohio for college, and now I live in L.A. I made some truly amazing friends in Atlanta, and having this kind of east coast, south culture mixture has made life pretty interesting.

When did you know you wanted to work in entertainment, and what led to you becoming a producer?

When I was a kid, my family liked to record family videos, and I always wanted to see the recording. I had the eye for production pretty early. Once I started high school I got involved in performing, did Grease, The Wiz, and a few other school plays that got me interested in the performance aspect as well. In college, I majored in video production with a minor in film and sociology so I gained real knowledge of the art that happens behind the camera.

How does one go from school in Atlanta to working at FBE?

As I mentioned before I went to college at Ohio University, what got me was their video production department. I actually still work with the head of the department and speak to the alumni when they come here, advising them on some dos and don'ts. As a graduation gift, my Dad gave me an all expense paid trip to anywhere I wanted to go in the U.S for a few days and I chose L.A. So I was here, hanging out with my current roommate Johnny and we just decided to come out here permanently and live the dream. So I packed up my car and drove from Atlanta to LA and started looking for internships while working at Chipotle.I first joined FBE as an intern, then got hired as a PA and eventually was a writer for some of their scripted shows, and I worked my way up until I was offered the producer position. I loved producing because that involved every aspect of working behind the camera, from writing to filming to editing and seeing the baby from birth to fully grown. Being in front of the camera came back when FBE launched the community team and started streaming on Twitch.

Watching Alex grow on YouTube, putting reactors in hilarious challenges, eat crazy concoctions and brave some insane hot sauces that would make Sean Evans proud, his personality radiates through the screen. His passion for both sides of the camera is clear in the quality of every video he makes. However, taking part in one of his Twitch streams gives you an even more full experience. It’s like the difference between a teaser trailer and a full film.

Freddy or Jason?

Freddy is my favorite in Dead By Daylight but I love Jason, in fact, Friday the 13th was the first game I ever streamed. I’d have to say, Jason.

So, we were in high school in the baby years of YouTube, I mostly used it for music videos and anime, I think back then I only followed Phil Defranco and Timothy Delaghetto consistently. Back then, did you ever look at YouTube and think “this is going to revolutionize the world and turn traditional media on its head?”

Yeah, it’s changed everything. Almost every network has a YouTube channel now. Late night shows and things like SNL upload segments that get massive amounts of views. YouTube is still growing, testing out its premium service and channel enrollment and things like that, but it’s exciting to see where it’s going to end up.

It’s even crazier when you think about how much Twitch has already changed the game.

Definitely, I mean we’ve seen what happens when some of the top YouTube creators come over to Twitch and realize that it’s completely different from what they’re used to. It’s more like an improv radio show, you have to be on for two or three hours and avoid dead air, rather than being able to edit something together. It’s hard to be constantly entertaining when you're used to delivering a finished edit rather than a live audience. For example, Logan Paul had over 100,000 people in his first stream but after that, the numbers dropped just cause that’s not his world. Live Streaming is a constant conversation. It’s the opposite of YouTube.

I remember seeing YouTubers flood to Twitch after the adpocalypse and feeling like it made no sense. A lot of vloggers and creators who never expressed any interest in video games were all suddenly obsessed with Fortnite. However, when people like Alex Wex came to Twitch they brought genuine love of gaming, skill, and a great sense of community.

What insight can you give into the world of a producer? Especially on the internet, how to figure out what videos are gonna get views or go viral?

It’s a case by case basis depending on what you make. With Challenge Chalice, we made it during the high point of internet challenges and we had consistent challenges to make content with constantly, but this past year challenges have kinda quieted down so that got more difficult. We revisited and revised a lot of earlier challenges to make them more interesting, and that has to do with being present during every step of the process. You can’t slack off on anything, from script to editing. Being organized is key, and definitely take on the ideas and criticisms of the people working with you. Be flexible and open-minded. It’s not about balance, it’s about harmony.

3 Breakfast must haves?

Bacon

Grits

Belgian Waffles are incredible

Hack-n-slash? RPG? Or FPS? And why?

That’s complicated. Overwatch is one of my favorite games but it doesn’t play exactly like an FPS. For me, hack-n-slash for games like Dead Cells, Rogue Lights, I love games with massive replay value. I’m playing Diablo 3 on switch right now and I love it.

What games are best for streaming? Does the game you play matter?

A little, but it shouldn’t be everything. You want your audience to gravitate towards your personality. Never play something you don’t enjoy playing. I love Overwatch and it’s not one of the current hot stream games but I love playing it. Story games are complicated. If people miss parts of story mode games they tune it out cause they won’t know what’s going on. More than anything put your own spin on what you’re doing. For example, when I do Dead By Daylight I do stream vs chat where my chat helps the survivors escape if I’m playing the killer. In fact, chatting streams are starting to really blow up. It’s more about the person playing than the game they play.

What game has you hype for 2019?

That’s tough, but probably Kingdom Hearts 3. I’m excited for Smash Bros for my last game of 2018 too.

What led you to Twitch?

I’d seen some of it, but Tom had been doing it for 6 months and kept suggesting it until one day I finally did. I had a decent setup with an ultra-wide monitor and Tom’s old video capture device and I started streaming Dead by Daylight. We actually came into the name Jank Squad because of how janky the streams were in the beginning.

What led you to leave FBE and what are you working on now?

I wanted to focus more on my Twitch, and it was exhausting streaming at work on the days when I’m also streaming at home. I wanted to give my audience the most energy I could and be more involved with them as a community. I’m creating new ways to interact with my audience, more active in my Discord, and after working there for 5 years I felt stuck. There wasn’t any new learning experience and things felt a little sour and monotonous with the new direction things were going in. I’m actually getting a new camera and a green screen to upgrade the stream quality. I’d love to make partner with Twitch.

What’s the dream?

I take things to step by step. I’m definitely in a transition right now. I’m looking for another good full-time job at the moment. I’d love to be a full-time streamer but I’d also love to produce my own stuff and then stream after work. Streaming is probably one of the most consistent things I’ve ever done. Funny enough, that’s part of what got me into it cause Tom knew my leisure activity was video games, and streaming just takes that to another level. It definitely takes work, but the community you foster on this platform is unlike any other with the rating system and how everything is set up.

Alright so the zombie apocalypse is upon us and you can have 1 mortal character, one god tier video game character, and one Reactor in your survival squad, who you got?

Kratos from God of War 2 causes his chain blades would tear through everything, my regular would be Leon from Resident Evil 4 cause his aim is amazing and he’s used to zombies, and my Reactor would be Chelsea cause she knows so much about The Walking Dead. That’s my squad.

East Coast or West Coast

East, it’s where I was born and bred.

Top 10 songs or artists on your playlist right now?

Meek Mill- Intro with the amazing Phil Collins sample

Tyler the Creator’s Grinch is great for the holidays

The Cool-Lupe Fiasco

Chance The Rapper’s new songs

Paramore- Ain’t It Fun

You come from the same city I did with only a two year age difference, and you’re the first brown face I saw in relation to FBE and now you’re killing it on Twitch. Do you know how dope you are?

I appreciate that. I like to think I’m dope in some ways but I also do my best to keep it real, keep myself humble, and not letting the numbers get to my head. I hope everyone thinks they’re fucking awesome, cause they are. I have my good and bad days but I like to look at what has been built and keep grinding. Everyone is on a different time stream. I don’t want to rush things, I’m on my own path, and right now I just wanna build this community.

I for one, am excited to see what comes next from Alex Wex, including his stream later this week. You can find him @ItsMrWex

-Strawberry Smirk of Lilac Sky Entertainment