#less anxiety less dysphoria both maybe?

[trifoliate-undergrowth]

*makes displeased skeletor noise when I get something sticky on my hands*

[andre-and-cal]

waiter give me caldre headcanons

Sigh I read Walter instead of waiter…

But bone apple teeth and eat up pookstah !! I hope that I did okay with these ones ‘cause I’m not trans but wanted these to feel realistic for my trans pookies,, so I did my best :3

I didn��t get to proofread that much so I’m sawry if there r mistakes…. 😿🙏

Caldre Headcanons

SFW

Transmasc Calvin !! Despite Andre’s curiosity toward him, he still accepts him for who he is, no matter his identity. It took Andre a little to get adjusted to referring to Cal as a male, and he did seem a little judgmental at first with the wording of his questions. Sometimes Andre can come off kinda rude when he doesn’t mean to. However, he wasn’t being judgmental, as he was trying to learn more so that Cal felt comfortable with him. And once Andre got the hang of it, he quickly realized that he doesn’t care about who Cal is— to elaborate, he doesn’t care about how Cal identifies, he cares about his presence. Not anyone else’s presence, just the Calvin Gabriel he met and quickly grew close to in middle school. After all, he feels like Cal is all he has left in the world, so the last thing he really cares about is Cal’s gender or orientation. Though, Cal struggles with dysphoria and a bit of discrimination— especially with it being the years 2000-2001. Kids were still a lot meaner and less accepting of queer people, so he faces issues with some bullying. Many of his peers shun him for being transgender, so as a result, Cal’s already quite low self-esteem plummeted. At times, he doesn’t really feel comfortable in his body. He feels like he just wants to crawl his way out of his skin in order to rid himself of the bothersome ruminating thoughts he deals with. But he tries to ignore the negativity and brush it off until it all bottles up— for which he seeks out that reassurance from Andre, wanting to be sure that the feminine features present on his body are okay. Which, they are, of course, and Andre tries to encourage him of this fact, even if briefly. Now, Cal isn’t as open about his dysphoria with Rachel, but he does talk about it with her sometimes.

Andre seems stern and stoic around other people, but he’s a lot different when it comes to Cal. With the promises they’d made to each other in the past, Andre’s constantly surveying Cal, especially when Brad or other dudes at school are being a dick to them both— but Andre often takes little to no notice of himself at times, frequently exhibiting intense defensiveness toward their bullies when they bother them because he just wants to make sure Cal is okay. His demeanor does impact how other people see him, with many of his peers seeing him as “having a short fuse” or “strange”. Andre knows Cal can very well handle himself. He’s not a baby, after all— he’s practically an adult now, and Andre tries to tell himself that, yet he can’t help but worry about him, even when he doesn’t need to worry. There’s just that little voice in the back of his head that prompts him to get a little bossy around Cal sometimes. Brad Huff calls Andre “Cal’s abusive boyfriend” in an insulting manner when Andre sticks up for him, which embarrasses and enrages him. Everybody thinks him and Cal aren’t dating, even though they are. Cal will kinda stay quiet, maybe mutter something sharp-tongued in response, but he doesn’t want to get Andre’s ass beaten. Andre’s own anxiety for Calvin causes Andre to kind of project onto him with irritability and frustration, even though he doesn’t truly mean it— he just wants to know Calvin is safe, that’s all. But he doesn’t know how to express that care healthily at times because he struggles with communicating his feelings.

Cal helps Andre with his homework sometimes, and Andre does the same. Andre tends to get annoyed when Cal doesn’t understand something after he explained it multiple times, or when he gets distracted and loses focus frequently due to his ADHD. Telling him to “get his head out of his ass”. He also organizes his folders and throws out loose papers for him since Cal is definitely an unorganized guy. But Andre doesn’t realize how much help he is for Cal, ‘cause he tends to do well on his quiz, test, or exam within a few weeks, even though Andre has to organize his shit for him once every few weeks. Now, Calvin’s approach when he helps Andre with his homework is a little different, but just as effective. He explains things for a while ‘cause he kind of gets into the whole “teaching” thing, and Andre tends to get bored, but still somehow taking in some of the information. But this is mainly because Cal helps Andre chunk his notes. Cal initially suggested that Andre be a tutor, but Andre brushed off his suggestion, not wanting to have to work with younger kids or potentially his peers at school. But since Andre already has his job at the pizza parlor, Cal decided to become a tutor instead. He makes some good money with it, but gets a little impatient with his tutees, like how he does with Andre.

Andre lightly baby talks Mel. Cal makes fun of him for it, sarcastically saying it’s not very “soldierly” of him to express his fondness toward his cat, as if he doesn’t do the same to Mel. Cal knows he’s a hypocrite but doesn’t dare admit it, he’ll just silently sink down to the floor beside Mel to play with her and give her attention. Andre has no shame in showing Mel love and attention, because he’s seen Cal get all wrapped up in cat heaven when Mel lays on him and makes biscuits on his lap. Even before Cal and Andre started dating, Andre casually referred to Cal as Mel’s “daddy” sometimes, and then himself as “papa”. Andre’s crush was well-hidden, but not covered up completely. He still does this, but now the confirmation that Cal is Mel’s second “father” remains unspoken yet understood by both boys, so Andre constantly calls him and Cal her “dads”.

In their gym class, some boys intentionally target Andre and Cal— especially if they’re playing an outdoor activity. When playing soccer, they’ll kick soccer balls toward the two of them— Cal has good reflexes, so he can usually can dodge the ball when he sees it coming— but Andre will get hit in the face and fall on his ass. He feels embarrassed and enraged when it happens, and one time he even got a bloody nose— so Cal took him to the clinic and cleaned it up for him, though he effectively hid his internal rage toward the boys for doing that. However, Cal usually gets hit in the chest when they’re playing football or basketball, and it knocks the wind out of his lungs. Andre doesn’t really say anything, knowing that doing so will just get him further taunted or pushed around, so he just shuts his mouth and helps Cal up— even though he’s seething inside.

Andre gets cold at night, while Cal gets hot. Andre gets real whiny when he’s half-asleep and when Cal pulls away from him at night, since Cal is kind of like a little heater for him while he sleeps. But Calvin gets sweaty, and pulling the sheets off is uncomfortable for him, so he tries to untangle himself from Andre— though Andre subconsciously tightens his arms around Cal to pull him a little closer to his chest. In the morning, Cal’s drenched in sweat, with his blond locks sticking to his face, so he has to blow his fan right on himself. He doesn’t really get all that hot during the cold winter months of the year 2000.

Cal likes to cuddle. Andre does, too, but he pretends it doesn’t really bother him that much. Cal likes to lie on Andre’s chest while Andre holds him. Other times, when Andre is spooning him, but they both wake up in the most uncomfortable positions, so they have to rub each other’s necks and backs after LMAO.

Andre always says “C’mere” before he kisses Cal. He also lets out small, content sighs when they’re in bed together or cuddling on the couch. Cal likes hearing Andre’s grunts and noises. It kind of gives him cuteness aggression, so he has to squish his cheeks.

Despite the good moments they do have together, though, they’re both extremely unstable, demented teenage boys. They argue a lot, and their fights get real heated, sometimes leading to physical altercations between them. Neither Andre nor Cal see domestic violence as a bad thing. Andre sees it as a way to get his anger out, and Cal sees it as a way to “teach Andre a lesson”. They bicker and grow hostile toward one another when they’re alone together, and their more worse arguments tend to be about upcoming Zero Day, among various other stupid shit. Andre and Cal get angry easily, and hold equal amounts of rage toward their peers at Iroquois, but it comes out differently for both of them. Yet even though they think they’re alone when they set each other off and become aggressive, Mel— Andre’s cat— is often sitting off to the side, like on Andre’s windowsill, watching the two. She doesn’t really understand what’s going on, with her being a small animal and all, but she does sense negative energy.

Adding on previously, Cal is a gaslighter. Whenever Andre tries to be civil with him and tell him about the things he does that piss him off, Cal doesn’t want to admit when he’s wrong. He asks Andre things like, “When?” Or “I didn’t do that,”. Sometimes it honestly makes Andre question himself, even when he knows he’s right deep down.

NSFW

Handling guns are awfully romantic. Sometimes Calvin and Andre will fuck in Andre’s car, after going out and shooting guns in the woods— excluding Chris, obviously. Chris is the one who has the guns, so Andre uses his dad’s guns when Chris isn’t available for Andre and Calvin to use his guns. When it’s just him and Cal, Andre likes to find a way to show his appreciation for Cal— since he doesn’t really say it that much, besides on Zero Day during their little intimate exchange, of course. But uhHh, sometimes Andre gets a sick sense of arousal when he sees Cal shoot. The way his hands clench around the grip, the way his eyebrows are knitted together in concentration— Cal isn’t normally one to wear tank tops, especially when he’s experiencing symptoms of his dysphoria, but he knows Andre won’t judge him, so he wears tanks when it’s them alone, since it does show off a little bit of his body. He wears these kinds of shirts most notably when they’re out in the woods shooting guns. Andre doesn’t have any shame in subtly checking Cal out, but he gets embarrassed and defensive when he catches him doing so. Moving forward with my point, all of this combined kind of— no, really turns Andre on. Andre doesn’t prefer having sex out in the woods, with the excuse that “the birds are watching them”; he prefers the privacy of his car. Cal really enjoys riding Andre, ‘cause he can feel the head of Andre’s cock grinding up against his folds, and then Andre can feel how wet he is for him.

Andre is a sucker for Cal’s little clit. He calls it a “button” because that was the first thing he thought of when he first saw Cal’s vagina. Cal found it cute, ‘cause he’d never really seen it that way— and it made him feel a little better about himself, therefore Andre continued calling Cal’s clit a “button”. Andre likes to lap at Cal’s pussy and suck on his button— he loves the taste of him, and plus, it essentially serves as a lubricant, which helps Andre when he gets to have his “alone time” with Cal. When Andre first started eating Calvin out, he was a bit sloppy and clumsy with his technique— after all, he’d never dated anyone before, so he was just as inexperienced as Cal was. They both learned along the way, and eventually Andre was able to get Cal to scream his name— after all, one of Cal’s favorite things is the feeling of Andre’s mouth on his pussy.

Cal essentially taught Andre how to eat pussy; Andre essentially taught Cal how to suck dick. Calvin helped Andre find his sweetest spots whenever he went down on him, and once he found those areas by tonguing his cunt alone, Cal cried out in pleasure. Now, with Andre, he helped guide Cal’s mouth down onto his member— the first time Cal blew Andre, of course. The mere sensation alone nearly made Andre spill his seed into Cal’s mouth, and Cal couldn’t even take him that deep down his throat yet. But after more practice— Cal thinks this is embarrassing, and he never wanted to admit it to Andre, but he tried to “reduce” his gag reflex by sticking popsicles and bananas down his throat when he was alone— he was able to take Andre nearly to his tonsils.

Andre likes to squish and knead Cal’s breasts when he isn’t wearing bandages around his chest. Cal frequently wraps bandages around his chest to conceal and flatten his breasts. He never told anyone besides Andre and Rachel, but even with Rachel he was hesitant, anxious about her reaction— yet when she responded in an accepting, caring manner, he felt better. Anyhow, Cal takes them off when he’s alone or when him and Andre are about to get intimate together. When Andre gets to see Cal’s breasts, he’s like a mutt in heat. His hormones affect him a lot, and seeing Cal’s body is kind of like eye candy. He doesn’t really show it much, but he truly admires Calvin’s body, and sometimes when Cal’s changing, he’ll let Andre touch his breasts, even though he was initially repulsed at the idea. Not at Andre, but to his own body. Andre didn’t see his fears as that big of a deal, admittedly he’d never really known why Cal was so self-conscious. But he’d seen Cal’s body in Cal’s own eyes; he doesn’t understand his dysphoria all that well. Nonetheless, Cal is now more open to the idea of Andre touching his chest, because he likes how it makes him feel. He likes how Andre makes him feel, and it honestly makes him wet when he feels his rough thumb pads gently rubbing his nipples, hands squeezing and rubbing his mounds. Andre had heard that breasts were sensitive, so he tried to be as gentle as possible. Cal’s nipples are quite erogenous and stimulating.

When Cal sits on Andre’s lap, it’s kind of a 50/50 chance of Andre getting hard LMAO. The first time this happened— Cal was trying to watch Andre play DOOM on his computer, and so he went and sat down on his lap, but accidentally sat down right on Andre’s dick. Andre tried to ignore the feeling of Cal’s ass against his growing bulge, but eventually Calvin found out. He didn’t know what to do at first, but since Andre wasn’t mentioning his… predicament, Cal decided to test it out by intentionally shifting around on his lap. And Andre’s erection only grew more painful, so he subtly placed his hand on Cal’s inner thigh and squeezed, trying to tell him to stop without actually saying anything. Unfortunately, though, Cal didn’t fucking listen. So Andre had mumbled in his ear, “Fucking stop that, you spiteful bastard,”. That made Cal stop for a moment, but then he’d replied, “Control yourself, then,” but his words held no malice— and he had a shit-eating grin on his face; he knew what he was doing. This really pushed Andre’s buttons, so he hissed out in his ear, “It’s not my fault you sat on it!” Which— essentially is true, but Cal still ended up responding with, “Aim your game, man,”. And then, right after Andre retorted, “I’ll aim it into you,” things got pretty heated between them. Andre wanted to touch Cal so fucking badly. He wanted those pink lips wrapped around his shaft. He wanted to hear Cal whimper. He wanted to hear him cry. He wanted to hear him suffocate. He’d never felt this way about anyone before, at least not this intensely— and his parents had always told him in the past that he’d find the right person for him. Which, he did, back in the sixth grade when he’d met Calvin. Before Andre started liking Cal, he was convinced he’d never find anyone and that he’d fuck everything up even if he tried. But he didn’t. Not this time. Going back to my point, though, Andre had stuck his hand down Cal’s pants, roughly rubbing him through his panties ‘till he got all wet for him— though, Andre wasn’t really all that great with masturbating Cal for him, either. So he was kind of fumbling until he was able to shove his hand inside his panties and start rubbing his slick folds… pinching his little clit between his fingers, too. With his free hand, he let go of his mouse and moved it up, slapping his palm over Cal’s mouth while grinding up into his ass. Their pleasured pants and grunts combined delightfully, and Andre leaned down to whimper against Cal’s ear. With all of that alone, Andre was able to get himself off even by dry humping Cal— and Cal, of course, came all over his fingers.

Andre likes to squeeze Cal’s ass when he’s facing away from him. Not necessarily in a playful way, or even in a suggestive manner, but instead as a silent way to show his appreciation for him. Like mentioned previously, Andre isn’t good with words, and he doesn’t like to be all sappy and shit like a normal guy would be— and Cal knows that. He isn’t really sappy either, but he is a bit more affectionate than Andre generally is. It kind of startles Cal when Andre caresses his ass cheek, but he doesn’t complain. He likes having Andre’s hands all over him.

Cal enjoys getting kissed on the neck. Not due to sexual stimulation, but because of how warm and giddy it makes him feel inside— mainly because Andre isn’t overly affectionate, especially not in public. It makes him feel genuinely happy— which is kind of a rare thing for him— when Andre gives him little neck and jaw kisses, or when he feels Andre snake his arms around him. Cal does like to spoon Andre as well, though, but he doesn’t return the neck kisses because he knows Andre does get quite aroused due to some areas on his neck. When Cal wants to have a rather nice, tender moment with Andre, he doesn’t kiss or suck at his neck. Instead, he nuzzles him. During sex, though, he likes to bite Andre and litter his neck in kisses and hickeys.

Andre never knew how much he liked to see Cal bloody until he walked in on him cutting himself. One night, at Calvin’s house, him and Andre were arguing, so Cal stormed off in what Andre could assume was an act out of pettiness or spite, so Andre just lingered in Cal’s room instead of going after him. He kind of snooped around and messed with his stuff out of curiosity until he heard some faint cries coming from down the hall. Which, Andre followed the noises and saw that the bathroom door was shut, and he saw the light on. Without knocking, he barged into the bathroom and saw that Cal had been cutting himself and reopening small, past scars. Andre wanted to feel horrible— well, believe me, he did, but in a different way. He got hard at the sight of Cal’s bloodied forearms and upper arms, and he felt extremely guilty as a result. He wanted to feel sick, to genuinely comfort him in the best way he could… the only way he knew how to. But he couldn’t, he liked it. But he forced himself to ignore his erection, no matter how distracting it was, and he ended up just helping him patch up his arms, scolding him for his actions.

But eventually, out of the blue, Cal asked if Andre could cut him. Andre didn’t want to, initially, for the shame practically ate him up at the idea. However, eventually, he gave in— and after he’d chopped up the skin on Cal’s arms, he scooped up some of his thin blood on his fingertips and shoved it into Cal’s mouth, forcing him to taste himself. The other hand went to his cock, and he palmed himself as he watched Cal suck on his fingers. Afterward, he’d stuck his hand down into Cal’s jeans, and he penetrated his pussy with his bloodstained fingertips. Then, Cal— with his hands rather bloody, undid Andre’s pants and jerked him off for him, then wrapped his lips around his cock, so that when Andre came, his lips had traces of both his own blood, and also Andre’s cum.

[dreambunnynotes]

daily reflection: nov. 16th ❤︎

good morning lovely friends! here is what i accomplished and what i could have improved today, to hold myself accountable. it was really effective for me to know that i had posted my goals list on tumblr yesterday where others could see it; whenever i felt like giving in to my adhd brain that tells me that tasks are to be feared, i would simply remember that i had kind folks online who were interested in seeing me succeed hehe, it helped me so much! here is my first day ❤︎

accomplishments:

i completed all of my cleaning goals and more! it turned into a deeper clean than i thought it would be which felt really nice (and is usually how it goes once i get cleaning). it's so lovely to be able to start fresh with a clean working and sleeping space; it's so much easier to feel inspired, be productive, and take care of yourself when your environment is as ready for you as you are for it!

i wasn't going to complete all of my texting and calling tasks, BUT I DID! these types of tasks are the hardest for me to get done because i have pretty intense social anxiety and rejection sensitive dysphoria, and communicating with others both online and offline takes a lot of mental preparation and energy for me. but i did it, and i am so, so proud of myself! in fact...

self-compassion:

not only did i accomplish my original communication goals, i also ended up replying to two friends i hadn't seen in a long time, even though i was anxious! both of them were at my sister's show last night and i was so surprised to see them and a couple of other friends that i had to go have a bathroom cry from the anxiety lol. i had so many emotions coming up; the first was sadness and shame seeing that they had all come in a group together and that i wasn't with them. i joined them two seconds after i saw everyone, but the sadness was still there because i was positive they would have invited me into the group earlier if i had been less isolated this last year, which is where the guilt came in. i realized i had been isolating from my friends for so long out of fear that i wasn't wanted, didn't provide anything to them, and that maybe i didn't have people i liked being around after all, but that is so, so far from the truth; i do have friends who love me and who i love, and all of them were so loving, so kind, and actually sent me messages after the show telling me how much they loved me and how happy they were to see me! it made me cryyyy and feel so many feelings. i have plans to see them next week, and i actually feel like i'm overcoming my isolation era at long last; i'm really proud of myself for having self-compassion and using tools i've learned in therapy to better my life! :')

my next step is to learn more about and overcome this shame i have around letting my friends love me for who i am; the only way to learn more about it is to actually make plans to see friends and be vulnerable; wish me luck 😭💗

improvements to make:

as for my other tasks; i cleaned out one of my emails, but i have so many email accounts that it felt a little bit lacklustre to call that an accomplishment. today i'd like to break down how big the task of consolidating my digital life will actually be so that i can take measurable and consistent steps towards completing my goal (writing that sentence is baffling me right now - bunny from a few days ago never would have realized how much writing out her goals could help her in being less afraid of them! this feels like a huge accomplishment for my adhd brain!)

today felt like a really successful day, and i'm super proud of myself! this was only the beginning of what i actually want to accomplish in a day, but it was such a great way to try it out. i'm excited to see where this journey takes me and how these daily checklists and reflections will affect my productivity; they already have helped so much! if you've made it to the end of this, thank you for taking the time to read about my day, it means so much to me! lets try our best to have another successful day! ❤︎

[softhairedhotch]

Do you have any Trans!Aaron headcanons?

yesss lemme give you some <3

when he was younger and first realised he felt like a boy, he definitely pushed away those thoughts because he figured he didn't have time for it with all the things he had to do in the future (care for his mom and brother, working a shitty job, getting into law school) and he assumed no one would understand or care

i feel like he worked a few jobs as a teen so he could save up enough for testosterone/top surgery/bottom surgery if he wanted that too because he wanted to get them all as soon as possible

he used to bind unsafely bc he had no proper way of doing it :( so it took a while for his ribs/chest to feel okay again after that. he sometimes still gets pains because of how long he did it for when he was a teen/young adult

him being trans is the reason he wears a lot of suits, especially tailored ones, because it makes him look and feel a lot more masculine <3 but as he gets older and has been on t for years, he feels a lot more comfortable wearing casual clothing around his coworkers and in general

he's not out to people, only the ones he's closest too. so haley knew, jessica also knew but that's because they grew up together, and so does sean. jack probably knows, but might not understand properly until he's older, and maybe dave knows too. the rest of the team doesn't.

he's insecure about his top surgery scars which is why he's never seen shirtless or always leaves to change elsewhere and alone. i feel like after foyet stabs him a few times in the stomach, he feels a lil bit less insecure about his top surgery scars because it's not the only scars on his front anymore. but now he's insecure about all the scars because of the memories they hold and he hates the idea of people asking questions or acting like they know what he's been through </3

when there's a case that includes transphobia, he gets really really angry about it. just like jj does when the case involves kids. but the team can't figure out why it affects him so much and why it has him overworking them without even meaning to. he hardly sleeps when he's on those cases, too focused on solving it and getting the asshole in jail, and dave or whoever knows has to prompt him to take care of himself or tell him to take a breather :(

he hates having to tell people. his biggest worry is them seeing and treating him differently. that's why he never wants the team to find out; it keeps him awake some nights when his dysphoria is at its worst and his anxiety about others finding out terrifies him

if penelope found out, probably accidently by looking at his file or maybe walking in on him shirtless, she'd be sooo supportive and promise not to tell anyone and make sure that he knows she's always there for him if he needs someone to talk about it <3

he likes to work out and stay in shape because it makes him feel both healthier and appear more masculine and he likes the way it feels

he likes his hair really short. having it too long makes him dysphoric as hell and he feels nauseous. that's why it's so short sometimes bc he can't handle having it past his ears or long enough to reach his eyebrows

i think that's all i have rn <3 thanks for asking!

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

I keep reading about other trans guys' experiences and feeling like... Oh man... I need to get back on testosterone.

More and more I'm realizing that, while I wasn't ready to go further on HRT when I started it, I do ultimately need to transition more. I need the puberty I never got.

I'm realizing more and more that I have a lot of internalized... androphobia, I suppose, would be the word. My mother understandably taught me to be more wary of men than women, and my emotionally distant father has been the only man in my life since forever. (It's been nice to get to know him for real over the last year or so.) I've internalized the particularly transandrophobic fear that, if I went "too far" with HRT, I would become something I've been taught to fear. If I go "too far," I'll have betrayed something.

Learning that I was trans has also brought me into online spaces with more transfemmes than transmascs, and learning about feminism through these spaces also brought up a lot of anti-man rhetoric that I'm trying to unlearn in a feminist way—rhetoric that came from understandable places, largely either from radfem ideas separated from transphobia or from externalized dysphoria in discussions by trans women in largely feminine spaces. All very understandable, most of it not even hateful so much as vaguely resentful toward the idea of "being a man", but ultimately a harmful environment for me to explore my gender in.

When I got top surgery, I was filled with anxiety because I had little to no positive examples of what my body should or could look like after the fact. Not with my body type, anyway, and largely not without the effects of testosterone beforehand. I knew I wanted to be rid of my breasts, so I went through with it with... probably less information about what to expect at the end than I should have. (Though it was thoroughly necessary, and I don't regret it.)

I think my hesitancy to transition also comes from having managed to internalize transmisogyny—the idea that I could never properly express my womanhood as a genderfluid person if I went "too far" with testosterone. I don't believe this about anyone else, but I suppose the harmful bias is in there. Even as I've wished before that I'd been through an AMAB puberty, as I've wanted to be feminine in ways that celebrate the effects of testosterone, I've still thought... "What if, by the end of it, I feel like those trans women who say they were 'ruined' by it?"

Which I think leads me into the next realization I've had, which is that I've also internalized the (false) idea that trans people who were AFAB are privileged. That, if I made myself appear AMAB to onlookers, maybe I would lose that "privilege." I'm realizing here that I'm scared of losing the "privilege" that being uncomfortable in my own skin has supposedly lent me. But I know that I would never put that on others; of course I'd never say that a trans woman shouldn't risk the "privilege" she'd lose by rejecting the manhood society places on her. But that's how internalizing things works, I suppose. It can make you very hypocritical.

All this, and then sometimes I'll watch a short film about a transmasculine experience, or I'll read an article about a trans man's life, or I'll actually seek out the thoughts and words of guys like me, and... It's triggering, honestly. It makes me yearn. It makes me want but it doesn't eliminate these feelings of fear and self-disgust.

I stopped taking HRT because my arms started looking like my grandfather's arms. The grandfather who brazenly, proudly supports Trump, who went out more often during the peak of COVID, who knows that my sister and I are both trans and sent an envelope with $20 checks "for the girls" for Christmas that included me and excluded her. (I gave her my check out of spite for him.) I stopped taking testosterone because my body started to remind me of the man who had encouraged my sister to join the military, which traumatized her, and who disaproved of my mother's second marriage because she fell in love with a black man.

It is... very hard to accept yourself as a trans man who needs testosterone to be comfortable in your own body when the people your body starts to resemble are hateful and horrible, and when some of the people at the forefront of the movement for your rights project that onto you too, even unintentionally.

But with every story I hear about a trans guy sharing my struggles and doing what they need to, what they want to, and being supported by those they choose to surround themselves with... I feel more emboldened. Sure of myself and what I need.

Keep sharing stories of love and success, and of struggles and fights, and pride.

[xiao-lantern]

“i could never choose to love another” and “maybe one day i can learn to love you too” is 100% leoyujin.

and both lines suit both of them :)

both of them couldn’t ever fathom falling in love with someone else. but both of them struggle with accepting that they’re loved truly, wholly, and unconditionally by the other.

they feel like their love is inadequate/not enough, mostly due to their poor mental health + past traumas. they feel like the other deserves better, but feel hurt at the thought of seeing each other leave. (more under the cut)

yujin has always struggled with feeling loved, accepted, and prioritized. she also (more recently) struggles with body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria. she believes, as a femme nblm/toric, that nobody would like her as a nonbinary person, because they see her as a woman. but when she loves, she loves with her whole heart. it’ll shatter into pieces upon being broken, and she fears picking up the pieces.

leona also struggled with feeling prioritized + accepted for who he is, regardless of his status. my own personal headcanon for him is that people would approach him and pretend to be friendly, because they want to use Leona (either for his status as prince, regardless of order, or to get to Falena/inside the palace). so he’s come to distrust people unless there’s a mutual benefit that can be made from their partnership (ie: Ruggie). but as a boyfriend, i see leona as the type who’d want to give his heart in its entirety to his person. he’d only ever attempt to get close with someone he truly loves and sees a future with.

that being said, they both struggle with depression. leona’s developed the habit of sleeping away, ignoring his “duties” (schoolwork) because a somewhat pessimistic side of him figures that work will never get him what he wants (the throne). and this mentality is somewhat projected into his love life. and he hates it, and he wishes it weren’t so when it comes to yujin, but he struggles with breaking this habit. he’s afraid that he’ll scare her away because he could not prioritize her/their relationship.

meanwhile yujin’s depression stems more so from lack of stability. change spikes her anxiety, and she’s often confused with her emotions. she’s scared that her feelings aren’t legitimate/are insincere, and that she’ll end up hurting leona. she is also incredibly sensitive to rejection, a fear she’s trying to confront and a flaw she’s trying to correct (it’s a flaw because her reactions to rejection are not always controlled, so to speak). so she’s afraid of the possibility of breaking up. and again, her self confidence is shit, so she can’t see herself being catching the affection of someone else, much less a powerful, intelligent and handsome prince.

their relationship (both as friends/crushes and as lovers) is very much built on learning how to trust, how to open up, how to love themselves, and learning to let go of things beyond their control. it’s a rough road, but with the help of some friends, they’re sure to make it <3

[elvenbeard]

Call

Cyberpunk 2077 Fanfic Summary: V finally opens up about his newest post-Mikoshi symptoms weighing him down. Kerry suggests a "bring-your-merc-to-work"-day to distract them both from the doom and gloom and the anxiety about an outstanding phone call. (Post-Sun-Ending, mostly canon-compliant, Chapter 6/?, 6790 words, Kerry Eurodyne/V, mentions of drug use, smoking, body dysphoria) - notes at the end!

>> Previous Chapter >> Read from the Beginning

Kerry nearly dropped his guitar at the faint sound of V’s ringtone upstairs. At first, he hadn’t even fully registered it as the phone, himself on the sofa downstairs as he strummed away, trying to figure out a good bridge for a song that had been giving him trouble. He’d had this guitar, an old-fashioned acoustic one, since the early 2000s, and he only just caught himself from tossing it as he jumped to his feet. Nibbles perked up, ears folding back and eyes wide as he stormed past her towards the stairs, taking two steps at once. By the time he reached the upper floor, the phone had gone silent already. V sat at the edge of their bed, their eyes met. V was startled for a moment, pupils glowing golden from accepting the holocall. Kerry froze. He took a few deep breaths in a futile attempt to calm his racing heart somehow, hand clinging to the stair-rail still. But V’s posture was surprisingly relaxed, and Kerry’s tension as well dissolved when he began to speak.

“Hey, River,” V said, smiling.

“Fuck…” Kerry exhaled, shoulders dropping. Then he slowly trotted over to sit on the bed beside V.

“Yeah, no, I’d been meanin’ to call you back,” V continued, “No, I’m alright just… Been a couple of crazy busy days. I’ll tell you the details next time we meet in person.”

Kerry put his hand on V’s thigh and listened to the conversation quietly in thought. The sandstorm had almost passed by now, but it was getting dark outside – well, dark for Night City standards at least. They’d both dozed off earlier after their shower quickie, but Kerry was woken up again soon after by a nightmare he thankfully didn’t remember. Glad to not have stirred V as well he had then decided to let him sleep and snuck downstairs. Still, V looked awfully tired, dark circles under his eyes just not fading at all anymore. He soon wouldn’t even need his beloved smudged eyeliner…

“Sure yes, I’ll do,” V said to River on the holo, then turned to look at Kerry with a gentle smile, “River says hi.”

“Hi back at him. And at Joss and the kids,” Kerry nodded, and V delivered the greetings promptly.

“Okay,” he then said, “Yes, take care, too. See ya!”

The call ended and V sighed, tossing his phone back on the nightstand, and in the same movement grabbed his pill bottles. One with the painkillers prescribed by the hospital, one from Vik to help alleviate his post-relic symptoms.

“Forgot to put the fuckin’ thing on mute,” V muttered struggling to open the bottles with one hand. Kerry gently took the pill bottles without a word, opened them, and handed V one pill each. He swallowed them both at once before taking the bottles again from Kerry to set them back down.

“Sleep well at least?” Kerry made sure.

“Sorta,” V groaned hoarsely, stretching very slowly and carefully, “My head is killing me. Can barely move either. But I’m a little less tired than before at least.”

“Small mercies,” Kerry just said, gently rubbing V’s back, “Do you… wanna rest some more? Or are you hungry? I could go for a bite actually, order somethin’ real quick. Or… I think maybe there’s still pizza in the freezer, too…”

V looked away, gaze drifting out of the window and across the dust-covered cityscape.

“I’m not really hungry, no,” he said after a couple of moments.

“Doubt that sorry excuse for a breakfast was so filling…” Kerry frowned.

“No, I’m just… ah, I dunno.”

He sat slightly slumped forward, kind of cute with his fresh-out-of-bed hair, naked apart from their towel and blanket loosely wrapped around his hips still… but it was pretty obvious that something was bothering him.

“Talk to me, V,” Kerry said calmly, his hand still on V’s back, expecting to be urged to launch their next investigation of the penthouse for Mr. B’s tech.

V slowly turned his head back to look at him.

“Even if it’s Mikoshi again?”

Kerry was surprised, not only about the topic, but at how carefully V asked… almost as if he feared to be rejected.

“Especially then,” Kerry said firmly.

True… it was always Mikoshi. Or at least V’s worries and troubles often boiled down to what had happened there. No wonder. Kerry knew the rough rundown of the night, and that it hurt V to talk about certain details, about what Alt had had to do him and Johnny in particular. Kerry never dared to ask for clarification on some specifics despite not quite understanding them, because he didn’t want to poke around in an open wound.

Ironically, Johnny and V had never even gotten along that well. It had been a constant back and forth, a love-hate relationship if Kerry had ever seen one. It hadn’t been much different between Johnny and Kerry himself, Johnny and everyone else, really... It’s just how he had been like, self-absorbed, confrontational sometimes purely out of spite and in ignorance of his own feelings (and fuck, if that wasn’t something Kerry could only understand too well by now). V and Kerry had talked about what Alt’s plan had entailed before he’d even decided to follow through with it, before there was even any mention of “we’ll storm Arasaka Tower in an improvised suicide mission”. At the time, due to their difficult relationship, V had been fully on board with getting Johnny out of his head, whatever it would take, still waiting for an offer from the Arasakas themselves.

Despite Silverhand’s asshole behavior though, all his faults… he’d left a lasting impact on both their lives. It had taken Kerry half a century to mourn and get over his loss for a reason, but despite their decades-long friendship, he and Johnny had never been as close as what V and Johnny had developed over the course of just a few months. V wouldn’t admit it, but he missed the annoying voice of unreason in his head a lot. His words when Kerry found him on Corpo Plaza that night still echoed through Kerry’s head, full of fear and despair and regret…

“He’s gone… and it was all for nothing.”

In a way, even now still, Kerry somewhat envied Johnny for the connection he’d had with V, wished sometimes he could just read V’s mind and see what was going on in his head when V struggled to find the words, like so often lately... Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary this time around with V breaking the silence.

“Ever since I walked out of Mikoshi, I’ve felt this… disconnect. It’s hard to describe,” V began slowly.

Kerry hesitated.

“You said you… didn’t recognize yourself in the mirror sometimes? As in, literally?”

Anxiety began to slowly drive its claws into his chest.

“Yes and no…” V looked at his hands resting in his lap, “It’s like… logically I know this is my body. Has always been, and hell, haven’t I battled with it before... I guess what comes closest is some sort of body dysphoria… but also not?”

He paused, looked up at Kerry briefly, then out the window again.

“Like, before I figured out I was trans, it was similar, but not quite the same... Fuck, it’s like, somethin’ small is off, I just can’t put my finger on it. Like an itch on the inside of your skull you can impossibly scratch.”

Kerry didn’t know what to say that he hadn’t already said before; that doctors hadn’t told them yet either. All he felt he could do was sit here and listen. V continued.

“I’m wondering if this is what Alt meant when she said Soulkiller would… kill my soul. Leave me nothing but a cluster of memories and thoughts… A blurry copy of myself, trapped in a body so adjusted to Johnny already that it would’ve been smarter to just – …”

He choked on his words, and Kerry’s own throat grew tight at the sight of V slumping forward again and covering his face with his hands. He didn’t cry. In fact, it was dead silent between them, but that was almost worse. Kerry still had his hand on V’s back, gently caressing in circles.

“What can I do, V?” he asked hoarsely after a while, cause hell, if there was anything... V sighed and shrugged, but kept his face covered.

“I don’t know,” he then mumbled, “I’m no longer fighting the Relic, but my own body is fighting me now. I wonder if this is what it was like for Johnny. For him it got better over time but for me… it’s slowly gonna get worse.”

“What… is getting worse, exactly?” Kerry almost didn’t dare to ask. This was the most they’d spoken about V’s health in such detail in… forever, probably. Not surrounded by doctors flinging around medical terms, both of them relatively calm and not too overwhelmed by stress and emotion, in the safety of their home... if they truly weren’t secretly spied on by Blue-Eyes.

V slowly lowered his hands and sat up straight again.

“It’s like… I’m growing number to my own feelings, little by little,” he then said, staring out the window, the orange glow outside reflected in his hazel eyes like embers.

“Johnny described it once as this sort of delay... I’d, dunno, bump my toe somewhere, but he’d only feel the pain five seconds later. But what I’m feeling now is not quite that, even though it sometimes comes close. I’m not really hungry anymore, not how I used to be, unless I’m actually starving. I’m not as scared of physical dangers anymore, not how I used to be… It’s like someone dulled down my sense of self-preservation. I’m like an addict that needs a larger dose, a bigger kick, to be able to feel the effects of the drugs still… but make the drugs all the little things that make you human.”

Kerry pondered this for a couple of moments, let it sink in.

“And it’s like that… with everything?” he carefully asked. V shook his head briefly, flinching sightly, his healthy hand shooting up to the back of his hurting neck.

“Not with everything, no. Physical pain, for some reason,” he said with a smirk, “Cause I’m lucky like that. It’s also not affecting my feelings for you, they haven’t changed or dulled…”

He hesitated.

“But I’m scared shitless that if this… progresses, I will grow numb for you, too. For everyone and everything I care about… I’m scared that maybe it’s already begun, with what you said earlier that I… just went through with Mr. B’s plan without many second thoughts, without telling you. Not because he manipulated me, but because I’m becoming numb to the possible consequences of my actions...”

“V, no, that… yeah, I was mad at you earlier but, that’s not what I meant,” Kerry tried to relativize.

“No, no, it’s okay,” V said with a sad smile, “I’m glad you said it, because if you hadn’t... Maybe I’m just doing all this shit because it still makes me feel alive when I’m already dead inside. Resting and positive thinking alone don’t really do the trick when it comes to trying to feel something still.”

There was a long heavy pause.

“Ah, fuck…” V then just sighed, “I hate all of this so much.”

He rubbed his eyes and then leaned against Kerry’s shoulder, and Kerry held him close.

“I know… me too.”

They ended up ordering food after all that evening, something nice and spicy from their favorite Mexican restaurant, real high-quality, ‘ganic comfort food… But it was still a rather gloomy, quiet night beyond that.

By the time the sun began to rise the next morning, Kerry had already been lying awake for an hour or so and watched V in his sleep. At least when he slept, he seemed at peace still – it was enough that he had been living one nightmare after the other for the better part of six months now, since that first fateful heist.

When they sat in the kitchen together for breakfast over their first cups of coffee later, Kerry kept catching himself anxiously staring at V’s phone, ready for it to go off any moment again. He wasn’t even sure whether he wanted Blue-Eyes to call or not. He worried that whatever he’d promised V to save his life would turn out to be yet another dead end, be attached to countless strings – or maybe turn out to be a lie altogether. But if he didn’t call… he was scared that that would finally break V, having risked so much, wasted so much time for empty promises… Had himself be used again without any payoff whatsoever, led on by the dangling carrot on a stick called “miracle cure”, “more time with your loved ones”, “a chance at life as such” and all the other things he and Kerry both were so desperately hoping for.

Not only to distract himself from his depressing thought-spiral, but also in hopes of cheering V up at least a little bit, he made a suggestion.

“Since you’re basically on sick leave now, would ya wanna come to the studio with me later?” he asked.

Finally, V’s smile returned.

“Think Lee is gonna survive me showing up there unannounced?”

Kerry chuckled.

“He better gets used to it, ‘cause I’m not planning on bringing anyone else anytime soon,” he said.

“What’re you working on today?” V asked, drinking from his mug and setting it back down between them.

“Mostly fine-tuning some stuff with ‘Shivers’… the transition from the chorus to the second verse kinda sucks still. We gotta work something out.”

“So, they still wanna go with that as the first single?” V asked frowning, and Kerry sighed.

“Yeah… I mean, it’s a fuckin’ good song. It’s gonna be a hit for sure,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic, “Still would’ve liked ‘Vision of your Memories’ better as the first release. But they say the title’s too long, it’s too calm, too different from what the fans are used from me. As if that’s not the point of the whole damn album…”

He made a throwaway gesture and then also downed the rest of his coffee.

“No point arguing, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do anyway.”

“And Lee can’t put in a word for you?” V asked and Kerry couldn’t help but laugh.

“No, seriously,” V insisted, “He’s your fuckin’ manager, apparently, and yet…”

“… and yet, he only works for the label, still,” Kerry finished the thought, “Managers that actually fight on the side of the artists they sign are wishful thinkin’... But he’s still better than Kovachek.”

“Anyone would’ve been better than Kovachek,” V laughed dryly as they then got up from the counter to get dressed for the day.

V had been to the studio that belonged to MSM Records a handful of times before, usually just briefly stopping by with “real” coffee, between gigs that led him into the area anyway. The building sat right at the district border between Charter Hill and Japantown, only just part of the former, and not far away from Dark Matter. All in all, it was as well ridiculously close to the corporate apartments at Grant Avenue that V had grown up in. Both him and Kerry still waited for some old photo or video to surface in which they’d both been caught in at the same time, completely unaware of the other’s existence.

Kerry took the lead as they entered the building from the underground parking garage, through the security scanner, past the reception desk and towards the elevators. It wasn’t particularly busy this morning, the only person really that noted their existence was the perpetually smiling receptionist greeting them. Both the entrance hall as well as the floor they were headed to screamed generic corpo-chic. Clean, sleek, not quite as dark as Arasaka had been, but just as imposing. The floor on the level with the recording booths featured light carpet with a golden, geometric pattern, interrupted by the MSM logo every couple of yards. The tall, dark-grey walls were indirectly lit with embedded, golden neon stripes creating triangular shapes and showcased the label’s most successful album and single releases of recent years. In passing V spotted “Second Conflict” and both Kerry’s and Us Cracks’ versions of “User Friendly”. The hallway split after about 30 feet and Kerry turned left, headed towards the recording booth booked for him today. V followed closely.

“Urgh, could be that halfway through some marketing gonks show up with merch mockups,” Kerry grumbled and pulled out his phone, “Lee just updated my schedule.”

“Oh, so I can get an exclusive sneak peek of all the stuff I can buy with your name on it in a couple of weeks?”

“My name and my face even, if they get their will,” Kerry sighed, “Never been much a fan of slappin’ my mug on t-shirts.”

“’s a pretty mug though. Wouldn’t mind seeing it all around me all the time,” V tried to console him, fearing he would remain correct about the label people doing whatever they wanted anyway. Marketing liked to give you the illusion of being an active participant in the decision-making process while in the background the higher ups had long made all their choices.

Kerry threw him a brief smile as they entered the recording booth.

It was one of the smaller booths V had been to so far, used predominantly for recording vocals. There were bigger ones that fit entire bands, and a level below them were several for recording whole orchestras even, according to Kerry. The room was separated into two areas. There was the actual booth, behind soundproof glass, with sound-insulated walls, and all the technical equipment to actually record music. In the front area, which was almost three times the size of the booth, there was the mixer console, computers, and all the other tech needed to modify the raw sound, as well as a little lounge area with sofas, a coffee maker, and some shelves storing additional equipment and showcasing some more famous albums the label had produced.

On a big white office chair by the console sat Vicki, one of the producers V had met before, and he could feel some of Kerry’s tension drop. Vicki was around 60 years old and had worked with Kerry pretty much since the first day of her internship at MSM and all the way through her ascension in ranks to producer. So, there was at least someone here today that knew what she was doing, in Kerry’s words. Engaged in a conversation with her and seated on one of the two large beige leather sofas in the corner were two sound engineers that worked as Vicki’s assistants. V had met them before, but only in passing, so he didn’t know their names. They probably were somewhere between himself and Vicki in age.

Vicki’s pale green eyes lit up when Kerry entered the room, and she got up from her chair to give him a brief hug.

“Hi, Kerry, so glad you could make it, I know it’s early today, but I thought better get this done sooner rather than later, right?” she said, words like rapid-fire.

“If I had my way, we’d just fuckin’ leave ‘Shivers’ on the backburner for a bit until I figure out what I wanna do with it,” Kerry grumbled, “But you know how it is.”

Vicki stepped back and patted Kerry on the shoulder.

“I know, I know… Let’s make the best out of it, right?”

 Then she turned to V, flinging a long strand of her hair, dyed pitch-black, over her shoulder.

“V, right?” she asked, smiling brightly as she extended a hand with similarly long black nails.

“Vicki, nice to see you again,” V said and reciprocated her handshake.

“Dang it, Kerry, you gotta tell me sometime how you two met, such a gentleman! Do you have an older brother, or a sister maybe, V?” Vicki laughed, voice raspy and loud. She was quite the character, in her all-black leather gear with beige faux-fur collar and sparkly studs all over, but most people in Kerry’s world seemed to be. Unlike most of them though, Vicki also really knew what she was doing. As soon as she sat down behind the mixing console all the extravagant loudness faded and was replaced by cool professionalism and long-honed skill.

“Make yourself comfortable, I gotta feeling we’ll be here for a while today,” Vicki said gesturing towards the sofas before turning back to Kerry, “And you siddown and jack in so we can go through the parts that have been bothering you, alright?”

Both V and Kerry did what they were told, as Vicki truly would be the one holding the reigns here today. The two sound engineers got up and joined Vicki and Kerry by the mixing console and followed her instructions closely as she listened to the demo of the song with Kerry, pausing now and then when they got to a part that bothered him. V watched this all closely and with great interest. He’d learned to play the piano as a kid, mostly because his father wanted him to, but he was far from calling himself a musician. Still, he was fascinated by Kerry’s knowledge and passion for his craft, only understanding little of what he referred to (probably also given the fact that only he and Vicki and the engineers were able to hear the music while V wasn’t). Still, he was deeply impressed and… yeah, very proud, however weird that may have sounded spoken out loud. He was proud of Kerry being so damn good at making awesome music with a message and deeper meaning. V wouldn’t even know where to start, even if he wanted to.

“Okay, okay, okay, I think the problem here is not the melody as such,” Vicki said after about 10 minutes of intense revision, “I think we’re missing a beat or two… you kinda expect there to be something here that then never happens, listen again… Throws you off. Make sense?”

“Yeah… yeah it does,” Kerry nodded after a few seconds of pondering, “So, change the lyrics?”

“We could just drop the ‘gives you’, it’s an easy fix, no need to re-record, just edit it out.”

“Ah, I dunno,” Kerry was unimpressed by the suggestion, crossed his arms.

The discussion continued a little while longer, the two old musicians beginning to get lost in the details, each change they suggested leading to adjustments that then led to further disagreements from the other or new problems as a whole. V could only imagine how this would have gone down during Samurai times, with not two but five people with wildly different opinions clashing like this – Kerry and Johnny alone would have probably caused enough disagreements on their own. And yet, their success at the time spoke for itself – maybe a little bit of fighting over melody and rhythm was necessary to make a great song. Watching these two now go back and forth was a welcome distraction to V as well, seated on the sofa still, elbows resting on his thighs… but his phone clutched expectantly in his right hand.

“Okay, y’know what… Let’s just re-record this bit. We’re runnin’ round in circles,” Kerry then said with annoyance, jacked out of the mixing console and got up from his chair.

“The whole chorus?” Vicki asked frowning.

“Can also do the whole fuckin’ song if you wanna,” Kerry shrugged.

“Let’s start with the chorus, show me what you mean,” she said calmly, and Kerry was halfway through the door into the recording booth already, “Don’t you wanna do some warm-up first?”

“What, I’ve been warming up the past hour with you already,” Kerry teased and closed the door behind himself. Vicki made a disapproving noise and turned to look at V, pointing at Kerry with her thumb.

“Is he like that at home, too?”

V smiled and motioned that his lips were sealed when it came to their private life, and Vicki just nodded understandingly.

“Thought so,” she said and turned back around to switch on a few more screens of the truly massive mixing console in front of her. V got up from the sofa now to be able to watch Kerry still, as he was barely visible anymore in the booth from his seated position. Kerry had put on headphones, even though he wouldn’t even need to with his implants. He’d told V once he preferred them still for old times’ sake. He was pacing around the booth now in a small circle, stretching and, by the looks of it, doing some vocal exercises after all. V couldn’t hear him, but the sight alone made his heart beat faster, Kerry so in his element, so full of passion for something that was not in a way self-destructive. V was still lowkey mad that he didn’t have any clear memories of the Samurai reunion gig, but then again… maybe it was for the best.

After a couple of minutes of warmup Kerry positioned himself by his microphone. His bright eyes met with V’s across the pop filter and Kerry grinned. It was infectious. Then he turned to Vicki, saying something only she could hear via the intercom.

“Oh! Yeah, can do,” she said and turned around to V, “Wanna listen in, too?”

“Would I be allowed to?” V asked, still vividly remembering the hissy fit about signing NDAs Lee threw the first time he had stopped by here. But at the same time, he jumped at every opportunity to hear Kerry sing.

“Hey, I’m in charge here today,” Vicki grinned, “Francine, go and fetch him some headphones… Or do you have an audio implant?”

“’fraid not,” V shook his head, then one of the audio engineers jumped from her seat to look through the equipment shelf, handing V a pair of high-end studio headphones.

“I’ll sync you up in a moment,” she said.

“Thanks,” V replied and put them on. Kerry had begun pacing around the booth again while Vicki finalized some settings on her console.

“Yeah, yeah, they’ll surely approve of that,” she muttered in an amused tone. In the next second there was a slight crackling on V’s ears and finally he heard Kerry quietly singing, so up-close and clear that it gave him goosebumps... Then he realized he was improvising all sorts of profanities directed at the label bosses to the melody of “Archangel”. V couldn’t help but laugh, and Kerry spun around to look at V.

“Whaddaya think, this would make a good bonus track, right?”

“I love it,” V snickered.

“See! It’s a preem idea,” Kerry shrugged.

“C’mon now, let’s get started,” Vicki chuckled and gave the okay to start recording.

V kept himself in the background, but listening to Kerry sing like this was certainly a treat he hadn’t expected to ever get. He was very particular about who would be allowed to hear songs that were still in progress – not out of some artistic superiority complex, V was certain. Kerry wouldn’t admit it, but he was sure it was plain old self-consciousness about his works in progress. V respected his decision to keep everything a secret until it was polished enough, even though he would love to hear what he’d been working on so hard these past few months. But maybe him being here for this today was a first step in the right direction at least.

They recorded three or four new versions of the chorus, all with minor differences between them. Kerry and Vicki were in the middle of deciding which one to choose to move forward with. Then an incoming holocall tore V out of the so far slow and peaceful morning.

“Oh fuck, now?” he muttered at the sight of “Unknown Caller ID” in the corner of his interface. He took off is headphones and handed them back to Francine, only just overhearing Kerry ask, “What’s wrong?”

V pulled out his phone.

“I’ll be right back, important call!” he said and slipped into the hallway.

Reception was bad within the building, so V quickly walked to the nearby stairs that would lead him to the rooftop lounge. He’d been up there with Kerry a handful of times for a coffee or smoke break. His phone kept ringing, but V’s hurting legs weren’t really cooperating with him as he tried to climb up all the way to the roof in a timely manner. His chest burned just from breathing and his head was pounding despite the painkillers, the cascading echo of his steps in the mostly metal stairwell not helping. Halfway up he decided to just accept the call, hoping that no one would be waiting for him at the top or hear him on the levels below.

“Yes, hello?” he said, out of breath and full of anticipation and anxiety.

“Yes, hello, stranger,” was the reply that V had not expected at all. Neither the voice. He froze and couldn’t speak until all that still reverberated around him was his own heartbeat.

“Judy?” he then asked, in disbelief.

“Oh, so you do still know who I am, good!” she said, tone not entirely serious, “Hope I’m interrupting an important Fixer meeting? Client talks? A secret gig?”

Yup, definitely not Mr. Blue-Eyes.

“Why’s your caller ID blocked?” V decided to ask once he’d accepted that this would become an entirely different conversation than he had expected.

“’Cause I was worried you wouldn’t pick up otherwise. You didn’t the last couple of times.”

“Ugh… sorry, I… I’d been meaning to call you back, but…”

“It’s been a horribly busy couple o’ days, I know,” she then said slightly mockingly, and V couldn’t help but laugh at his own predictability.

The sun greeted him as he finally opened the door to the lounge, as did the wind and a breathtaking view across Charter Hill. Not quite as impressive as from the Dark Matter, but still a sight to behold. A couple of lounge chairs were arranged around a whirlpool and bar area currently closed off, and fake bamboo framed the whole space, giving it some privacy. The label occasionally threw wild parties here, or so Kerry had told him. V grabbed one of the smaller lounge chairs and moved it closer to the railing overlooking the city.

“Everything good? You sound a bit… winded,” Judy asked.

“Yeah, I…” V tried to come up with an excuse… but what was the point, really?

“I had a car accident, two days ago,” he decided to tell her.

“Fuck, V, shit… Really? Fuck… You okay?”

“All things considered, yeah. Was lucky for once,” he said and carefully sat down, “I’m a bit bruised up all over, but I’ve been a lot worse. Nothin’ I won’t recover from.”

Then he turned on his holo display to finally be able to see Judy. It appeared she was sitting on the roof of her van, tall red rock formations behind her. It was quite windy there, too, her hair blowing across her face as she kept trying to tuck it behind her ear without success.

“Hello again, properly now,” he said, and she grinned. She did seem so much happier, at ease, far away from Night City, a little more every time they spoke… regardless, he really missed their late-night in-person chats on the rooftop of her apartment building. Having her around and close by to knock some sense into him now and then would really make a difference right about now.

“Damn, buddy, you look like shit,” she said, still smiling, but not without the faintest frown appearing on her forehead.

“Thanks. Likewise.”

“Aww,” Judy chuckled, “Didn’t your parents teach you not to lie?”

“No,” V said nonchalantly, “They encouraged it, actually.”

She laughed.

“But for real, V, you look tired as hell. That can’t be just from the accident. What’s goin’ on?”

V wouldn’t even know where to begin. He’d been keeping Judy somewhat up to date, whenever she asked and actually wanted to know… but obviously also not on anything concerning Blue-Eyes and the Crystal Palace gig.

“Same old story, Judy,” he eventually settled on, “I’m dying and trying to figure out a way not to. Yet, at least.”

Judy’s expression grew slightly darker again, and she pulled her legs closer, shifting in her seat slightly.

“So, even Kerry’s doctors couldn’t do anything? What about Panam, I thought she was trying to think of something, too? Find someone that could help down in Arizona?”

“Last I heard from Panam was they’d have to go radio silent for a little while,” V said, “Trouble with the Raffen, again. Last time we spoke though there was nothing new on her end either.”

“Fuuuck…” Judy cursed under her breath.

Even though they were hundreds of miles apart, for a moment it felt like they were back together on that rooftop, the same wind tugging on their clothes and hair, the same sun shining down on them.

“Don’t get mad if I suggest something,” Judy then said quietly.

“I’m too tired to get mad,” V said without thinking, but really, it was true.

Judy hesitated a few more moments, looking over her shoulder, and V believed to see glistening water behind her, the Pacific probably. Then she turned back to look at him.

“What if… you’d just let it happen,” she said, voice quiet and slightly shaky, “And shit, I’m not saying this lightly but… You’re destroying yourself over this. I hate watching you run into dead ends over and over again, with no progress.”

“You mean, my time was borrowed anyway, and I should just accept it’s time to give it back?” V asked, trying his best not to sound too judgmental.

Judy said no word, just nodded. V looked to his feet, then back up at the sky. He took a deep breath.

“Not like it hasn’t crossed my mind yet,” he admitted then, “I have… one more option available right now, but if that also leads to nothing… I’m running out of time as is.”

“That’s what I mean,” Judy said, “You’re running and running… but maybe you just can’t outrun this. You’re just exhausting yourself. Chasing something that might not exist. You and me both know Night City’s great promises….”

“I know…” V said quietly.

“Why not spend the time you have left actually living,” she added after a moment, “Instead of running yourself into the ground even faster…”

They sat in silence for a few moments, just listening to the wind, and V was sure now to hear the crashing ocean waves on Judy’s end. She’d invited him to tag along a handful of times already, even if only for a while… but even though he sometimes wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to leave Night City. Not yet at least… and not without Kerry.

“Easier said than done,” he said eventually, “You know me.”

“Yeah, I do,” Judy laughed weakly, “Hell-bent on getting your way, whatever it takes.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t say whatever it takes…” V tried to reason but Judy shook her head vehemently.

“Nope, we’re not having this discussion again,” she laughed, then paused briefly once more, “But anyway, let’s drop the doom and gloom… I called not only to check in on you. Wanted to ask if you have time around the… 15th?”

“Around the 15th, or on the 15th?”

“Oh, shut up!” Judy grumbled, but was smiling again, “Block off the whole week if you gotta, Mr. Important. But… yeah, I’ll pass through NC. And I thought, if you have time, we could hang. Rooftop pizza and all included.”

“Really?” V smiled, “Yeah, of course, would be awesome!”

“Nova,” Judy said, “Then hang in there until I’m back at least to punch you in the shoulder one more time for being a gonk.”

“Wouldn’t wanna pass that up,” V said.

Judy nodded.

“Alright… V, I gotta go now if I wanna make it to my destination before sunset. But it was really good to see you again.”

“Likewise, Judy,” V said, “Next time in person. Lemme know when you actually get here.”

“I will keep you posted,” she said, “Take care, and – damn who am I tellin’ this – but still: be careful who you put your trust in.”

With a little wave and wink she ended the call.

V sighed, lowered his phone and his head and closed his eyes. Just letting it happen, let madness and death come take him… In the end it would boil down to exactly this most likely, no matter what he did to postpone it. But that was it… All he wanted was a little more time. Not even necessarily for his own sake at this point, but for Kerry… give him a little more time to adjust, gain some more stability back in his life so he would be able to better cope with inevitably losing him to this mess. And give himself the time to cope with the fact that he’d leave the love of his life behind at 28, all the unlikely friends he’d made, that he’d achieved so much and yet so little that truly mattered in the grand scheme of things…

As if he’d summoned him by thinking this the door to the stairwell swung open and Kerry appeared from the shadows.

“Heeeey… was it… him?” he asked slowly as he stepped closer, carefully almost.

“Judy,” V grinned, waving his phone briefly before sliding it into his back pocket.

“Ah, fuck,” Kerry sighed, but again seemed somewhat relieved. He stopped right next to V, leaned against the railing overlooking the city as well, and then pulled out his cigarettes.

“You gotta start calling people back, I can’t take these jump scares anymore.”

“I really gotta,” V smiled quietly and got up from his chair to hug Kerry from behind, resting his chin on his left shoulder to follow his gaze.

“What’d she want?” Kerry asked with a cigarette in his mouth, needing a couple of attempts to light it in the strong winds up here. V reached around to help shield the lighter’s tiny flame with his hands.

“Check in on me,” V said, “Aaand… she’s gonna come to Night City sometime next week.”

Kerry made a surprised humming noise, then wriggled to turn around, trying not to blow the smoke of his first drag into V’s face in his excitement, which proved to be rather difficult. V suppressed a cough and leaned back a little until Kerry had figured out how he wanted to position himself now.

“Sorry, babe,” he said sheepishly, lowering the cigarette, “But… you’re meanin’ I’ll finally get to meet the famous Judy? My man’s best friend that skipped town before I even knew he existed?”

“I’d hope so, yeah,” V smiled, but at the same time his heart was heavy still from the topic of their conversation.

“Preem,” Kerry said and took another drag, this time a bit more mindful of how closely they stood, leaning back against the rail now, “Somethin’ to look forward to, right?”

“Yeah, it is,” V nodded.

Kerry breathed out another plume of smoke, looking up to the sky, exposing his neck and shimmering implants to V… and V couldn’t resist and placed a quick kiss right where Kerry’s Adams apple would have been, eliciting a raspy chuckle from somewhere beneath the warm, smooth, black metal.

“Sneaky. Stealin’ kisses, too, now, huh?” Kerry asked and leaned in to capture V’s lips, his tongue tasting of bitter smoke and coffee, soft and raw at the same time. V clung to Kerry’s jacket for a moment, then let his hands slide underneath it and along his slim waist, annoyed by the barrier his t-shirt created between his skin and V’s fingertips.

“Been told I’m the best when it comes to stealin’ all manners of things,” he whispered against Kerry’s mouth.

“Can confirm,” Kerry chuckled, “Stole my heart, too. Didn’t even notice ‘til it was too late.”

He leaned in again, deepened their kiss, and V closed his eyes and tried to just enjoy the moment – live his life for once, instead of worrying about the future. The taste of Kerry’s lips, his hot breath, his hand on his waist trailing down to the small of his back pulling V snugly against him, warm and soft and strong, holding him as they were both embraced by the sun and wind… and of course, right then and there, V’s phone started ringing again.

Unknown Caller ID.

*****************

>> Next Chapter

*****************

Notes:

Thanks so much for reading! I know this was a long one (and I was half tempted to split it into two chapters where the POV changed, but ended up keeping it all in one because it's all about the uncertainty and aaahhh! So yeah XD)

Also, this really was an excuse to write some Kerry in the studio fluff, which I'd wanted to do for a long time :3 Also, there's so many drawing ideas in this chapter hhhhhh... The day needs more hours for all the stuff I wanna draw with them xD

Next time there's gonna be some more action again!

Requested Fic Update Tags:

@humberg @r3d-f0x-blog @thatinternetwanderer @localtranspigeon @projectdanse @kharonion @genocidalfetus

If you'd also like to get tagged when I post a new chapter for this fic, leave a reply on [this post] or send me a DM!

If you do not want to receive further tags, shoot me a quick DM and I'll take you off the list again!

[noblest-roman-of-them-all]

Happy appreciation day, Logan! I feel like both a lot has happened since I last wrote to you and also that I'm starting to settle into some of those changes. One of those changes being that I stopped going to church, and since I'm not obligated to wear dresses or skirts every Sunday I've had less of those super obvious days of discomfort that I had entitled "Logan Days".

Doing that type of subtle cosplay really got me through some rough days, it made me feel a little less Obligatory Femme. And sure, there is a conversation to be had about identity vs presentations and clothing not having a gender, but at the time I was going through it, those clothes very much did. That very first skirt look in particular was something of an anchor for me because it reminded me that I could be masc and still wear my skirts.

I still have days where I feel weird about my body, but now I can openly wear a binder and jeans about it, though I do still wear a space themed shirt that reminds me of you on those days. And I can even admit that, I don't always have the posture I should because of feeling weird about my body. And maybe it's weird to say, but all the shitposts and jokes around the fandom have kinda helped too. Having a noticeable chest isn't going to make me any less of a guy.

(Being genderfluid is wild, I literally told Remus he was helping me become more comfortable with my "latina-stache" as it has been dubbed as a femme person and here I am telling you how emulating your style helps me combat dysphoria and feel more masc and at home in my own body.)

Another change I've made is I am watching so many more astronomy videos. A few years ago, I might have seen an article on tumblr about the Clipper being sent to Europa and thought it was cool, but that's as far as I would have gotten. Now I can actually tell you stuff about Europa and why they chose that moon specifically. I'm rediscovering my love of space. There are other things that I feel like I can be curious about and even question. I'm letting myself be curious and explore things again, I'm working on learning not setting off my fight or flight. A few years ago opening a text book was sending me into panicked attacks. It's marginally better now that I'm not doing actual classes, unfortunately, the idea of learning is still activating my Sympathetic Nervous System, but it is getting better. I'm trying to do better at working with my anxiety rather than against it. I think you'd be proud of me for that and that helps.

There are a lot of little lessons and things I have learned from you over the years that have helped me grow as a person and have gotten me through some rough patches and I so deeply appreciate that. It's meant a lot to me. Even the things that start out from a silly joke or maybe aren't intended to be that serious, have helped me.

I'm having to relearn who I am in a lot of ways. A lot of other folks have kinda built my identity for me and now I feel a little lost in that area. But when I figure out who I am, I hope I'll still find little influences of you in there. I really look up to you, Logan. I hope I can be as cool as you are one day.

Happy Appreciation Day and thank you for being you.

And thank you to @thatsthat24 for sharing this amazing character and story with all of us.

[redtail-lol]

It's almost like the symptoms ARE caused by your pathology

That behavior is not "on me" because sometimes neurodivergent and mentally disabled people CAN'T help it. It's not easy to control your reactions when you feel a strong emotion. I'd like to see you suffer from RSD and keep a straight face and not lash out.

Was it my fault for having a limited symptom panic attack in class and then sobbing when the teacher told me to join a table group? Should I take responsibility for making a scene? Oh wait, I can't fucking help it because *I have autism and subconscious social anxiety* you dumb fuck. I can't have friendly interactions with strangers without immense physical fucking pain and I was asked to play board games with other students. It was going to hurt me. If I "humanized" my symptoms instead of saying "I'm autistic and I have subconscious social anxiety so it's uncomfortable" people probably WOULDN'T understand! It sounds ridiculous. It only MAKES SENSE if someone clarifies their brain works differently.

You're literally so fucking ableist for this post. Genuinely, a bona fide piece of shit. Like, let's ignore the fact that you think having a disability and having symptoms is inherently not human, and humanizing is pretending you don't have any disabilities. You want to take away words that are important tools for disabled people: the names of their symptoms and conditions. "I have ADHD and because of it I have RSD" is better than saying "I was overwhelmed and felt attacked" because it explains WHY. You have no fucking idea how much it matters for us to be able to say WHY. I had no friends and hated being around people and I didn't know why. I had very emotional meltdowns and I didn't know why. Knowing the answer to all that and more was being autistic made me not feel alone. It made me feel less out of place and showed me a community of people who are like me. It's freeing to be able to see you are suffering from a symptom and not just having bad behavior. Back to your example, if you just describe the feeling, and the person you're talking to assumes you're neurotypical, they might think they actually did say something wrong or offensive. If you say "I have rejection sensitive dysphoria" then the other person knows they didn't say anything wrong necessarily, they just have to be more delicate because this person is just more sensitive than most. Despite your 'humanized' example taking responsibility, it puts the blame on both parties, while explaining you have a disability and were suffering from a symptom puts the blame on no one.

"pathologizing" your behavior which are literally symptoms of your disorder or disability is also better than ignoring the fact that they are symptoms because it allows you to ask for accommodations and have people understand more. Saying "I felt attacked and overwhelmed but I know you didn't mean it so it's on me for getting upset" says "I'm wrong, I should work on myself because I'm just too sensitive." Saying "I have rejection sensitive dysphoria so I'm just really sensitive" gives the people around the person who has RSD an idea of how they should accommodate their DISABLED FRIEND. Maybe you think I should have just fixed my behavior and made myself okay with playing those board games with other students but unlike you, I think disabled people deserve to be happy. I got a 504 plan so I'd never have to do it again. The person in your example has done nothing wrong and doesn't need to fix their behavior for being disabled, they deserve to tell their friends that they have RSD and be accommodated by their friends.

It's also ableist that you don't think disabled people are allowed to have symptoms and that they are in the wrong if they experience symptoms. People with RSD are allowed to have intense emotions when they feel rejected and if that leads to them lashing out then they're not in the wrong. People can't usually control how they feel and it's incredibly difficult to not lash out when you feel really upset, because it's hard to even fucking think or care if you upset others. They can say "I'm sorry and I didn't mean it" later, and they should, but blaming people with a disorder symptom that causes them to have intense emotions for showing those emotions is so gross and ableist. Disabled people don't always have palatable symptoms and that doesn't make them in the wrong. We exist and if you genuinely want to be an ally for disabled people, you have to accept that sometimes we won't be perfect angels who are just quirky sometimes and sad, shy victims. Your shit example has "but I know you didn't mean to offend me so that behavior's on me" but that's not true. It doesn't matter if they realize later, the person with RSD likely DIDN'T know their friend didn't mean to offend them in the moment and therefore it's not on them for getting upset and lashing out when they felt, in the moment, like someone was attacking them. It's not on the friend either if they didn't know, but if they did, they're ableist and an asshole for not being more careful with someone who they knew had RSD.

With that out of the way. Your examples are also structured in a dishonest way, meant to make the 'humanizing' example better. The first sentence of the first statement is "Hey, sorry I yelled at you." The first sentence of your second statement should also be "Hey, sorry I yelled at you" because the sentence doesn't have any relation to pathologizing. But instead it's"Hey, sorry I blew up like that earlier." Doesn't change anything about the context of what's being said, but is intentionally better written, and this was clearly a rhetorical choice. It's done to make the reader think it's better simply because it's using more, neater words. Your example SHOULD read "Hey, sorry I yelled at you. I felt attacked and overwhelmed and so I reacted badly. I know you didn't mean to offend me so that behavior is on me." The statement would still suck, but at least you wouldn't be dressing it up to make it appear better than it really is.

Go fuck yourself you ableist scum.

Sick list of symptoms bro. Now try humanizing your behavior instead of pathologizing it.

[ghost-of-the-machine]

just saw a button that says "im not myself today. maybe im you" SHUT UP....... dont remind me!!! theres a specific shame in it that no one seems to grasp, which makes sense, when do i ever explain it?

it feels so. shameful, even though i know i cant help it, even if its just my natural tendency, its like. i want to RISE ABOVE my disorder, but.. i cant. its a personality disorder, it defines my personality. having back to back personality/dissociative disorders is so fucked up man i do not know who i am!!!! my only worth of myself comes from what other people tell me. am i sweet? am i kind? am i funny? at surface level i believe it, thats how i seem to others so it must be true... but beneath that i detest it, i feel rotten to my core. it feels disingenuous since its coming from others instead of within, so i feel like im hiding something. like theres some part of me thats so indescribably ugly and vile, and i cant let anyone i love see it. even when theyve already seen it, i hide it further, i pretend like its not real. i forget long conversations full of understanding and love, i embrace the fact that i need to hide this thing, this monster. there is no monster!! its just me, and that makes it worse.

isnt it horrifiying, though? i take the voices of others, take their mannerisms, sometimes i even take their skin, i shape myself in someone elses image. realistically i know why, mimicry keeps you safe from rejection, people are less likely to throw you away if you act like them. you are more likely to be accepted into a group if you mask and mirror. you pick up on their vocabulary, their personalities, and you display it back to them. but theres more to it than that, i spend too much time abusing myself over things i cant control, in the hopes that itll fix me. its not like i do it just to endear myself, i do it because i like it. is that worse, then? i like when i copy, i like the way people are!! i wanna be like the people i like, is that bad? i cant tell, i see it from both sides. it makes me feel dirty. i really dont know who i am

am i still the angry boy i was in middle school? that was me right? maybe it wasnt me, maybe im new.. if im new then who am i? am i the me i draw? the me i project out to others? who would that even be?? it seems no matter what, i remain dissatisfied with how everyone sees me, like theyre not seeing ME... but how can i know what that should be if i dont know myself? its like its locked somewhere within myself, but ill never be able to open it up, never be able to wear the skin i was meant to wear. i think it has nothing to do with the usual suspects, nothing to do with gender dysphoria, social anxiety, no. my mind is made of barriers and walls, im hiding from myself. i want to see it, dont i deserve it? its me after all.

to other people i must be someone right? so why does it feel so wrong? its not me, its wrong! surely its wrong? idk man. it makes me tired, i remember a couple years ago i managed to completely convince myself that i existed in a box and the box wasnt real, the whole time i was completely dissociated from my body, imagining one of my self inserts instead, crying and panicking because i wanted to get out of the box it was. MESSY, but when i calmed down i realized i was so worked up cuz i didnt know myself

for years ive worn the clothes my family picked, i didnt even know i could change my hair, i thought it wasnt allowed. i didnt have any self expression whatsoever. i was a husk, a shell of a person. to the point where now when i buy a piece of clothing, or i do ANYTHING with my appearance, i feel this.. it feels like such a big deal to me, and no one else really cares cuz hello? yr supposed to do that i guess, but i was 18 years too late. i have no sense of self cuz ive never explored myself, i thought it was against the rules. i dont know why i thought that, but its fucked me up i guess. i feel lost, i feel aimless. and im sucked back into that familiar feeling, i feel empty

[runekeepershymnal]

Personal gender and relationship shit under the cut.

My spouse and I both have our gender... stuff. They've been coming to terms with theirs lately, after many years of trying to keep it all bottled up.

I realized that my NBness is more in the agender realm, and I'm mostly comfortable with it, most days. I'm frustrated and sad because anytime I express discomfort or dysphoria about my body, or feel like I need to adjust my self-perception, my partner almost immediately feels like this means they've been fetishizing me and that they're a creep for being attracted to me.

Recently, they showed me some character art which was very hourglass, which is how my body is built, with vague association with me, and I asked that they maybe not send me those anymore, as it just sort of pushed an uncomfortable button for reasons I couldn't fully define. I tried to make it very clear that I was not blaming my partner in the slightest.

They told me to take what time I needed to figure out how to talk about it, but then started to push the conversation the very next day. I understand that it's something that is causing them anxiety, but they are a highly sensitive person, and I started my response with "One of the reasons I want time to get my words straight is that I don't want you to spiral."

I tried to explain that my entire childhood was spent in a state of depersonalization, and it was so hard to phrase it, to come up with the words in the moment.

It was a delayed spiral, but they spiralled nonetheless, declaring that they considered themselves a creep for being attracted to their own partner, and that their whole worldview needed to be reset, sand that they were going to bottle their own gender exploration back up as a result, but that they're not blaming me.

I tried to express that they didn't get to decide for me that being attracted to me makes them a creep. Like many sensitive, traumatized people do, they latched onto the things I said which they felt supported their terrible view of themselves, and didn't hear the rest.

They say that they don't have anyone else to talk about this stuff to, since I'm their best friend. It's hard not to feel like I don't even have that, because I feel like I can't express anything about myself other than a perpetual homeostasis of being "fine, this is fine, I'm fine" without them using it to hurt themselves.

In musical terms, they're caught up in "I/Me/Myself", and I feel like I'm in "Marsha, Thankk You for the Dialectics" etc.

I don't complain about much of anything anymore. I generally don't get angry, maybe mildly annoyed. I try to let everything go, because I got so tired of causing other people pain, and these days, nothing seems worth pushing back on, even if it's hurting me.

Every time this happens, every time they spiral because of something I've said, I feel another little bit of myself get scraped away, and I tell myself it's inconsequential. I keep hoping things will get better, try to make the environment as comfortable as I can, make them feel safe to heal and find themselves, but when something like this happens, I go back to feeling like every conversation is a game of operation, and I'm trying so hard not to make the wrong move. And I move less, and less, and less, because sometimes it feels like the only way they can feel safe is if I'm as still as a statue, that any changes in me are plate tectonic slow.

I know it's not fair to expect them to be able to handle things the way I do, but I'm starting to feel exhausted and despair because it seems like every one of my feelings and everything about me ultimately gets reframed into how it affects them.

[yaminerua]

Idk just rambling about my brain

Man I don’t think I have adhd but I do think my dad does because he fits SO MANY hallmarks of the inattentive subtype. He doesn’t want to bother getting a proper confirmation of that being the case but like the CPN who visits to assist my brother more or less said he agrees that adhd is very likely in him given everything he’s come to understand about my dad over the last several years of knowing him.

But he did also sort of just generally sit and point at all of us and say he thought we were all autistic on like the second time he ever met us so lol I don’t know

it does make me wonder though if there’s SOMETHING going on with me too. My brother is definitely autistic since he received that diagnosis back in school, and though it’s not confirmed, dad matches so many check marks for adhd that it is reasonably likely for him to have it but whenever I look up one or the other to try to see if I see myself in them I don’t feel as though I fully relate enough to one or the other to think I really have it.

Like yeah there are a handful of things I do relate strongly to but idk if they can just be written off as coming from a different source. There’s a lot of trauma and depression and anxiety in general swirling around in my head so it would be easy to put some of those things down to those instead.

so I generally just assume I don’t fit into autism or adhd. But it’s fairly present in the family so I can’t help but wonder.

Autism is definitely in the family on my dad’s side for sure. His cousin and all three of her children have it as well as her brother and I know one of his children has it too.

I found out a while back that my uncle had been told he was on the spectrum too and I wouldn’t be surprised if my other uncle was as well bc they’re both very similar in the same ways, though that’s just speculation. But there’s definitely multiple confirmed instances of it so idk. It makes me curious about whether there’s a chance I’m somewhere on the spectrum too bc as I mentioned before there are some things here and there which I relate strongly to but none of it is strong enough overall to be like oh yeah that sums me up you know? Like maybe some lesser traits but not so much the bigger ones.

I do think I have some kind of dyscalculia for almost certain though, given my well-documented struggles with maths, and other shit like reading clock faces. And the cousins I mentioned earlier all have confirmed dyscalculia. So that’s there. And apparently it can be present alongside adhd from what I read a while back. But again I don’t relate strongly enough to think I really have that.

Executive dysfunction is the biggest thing that does match up. God knows I’ve spent so much of my adult life trying to get myself to do what needs done to maintain the upkeep of even just my own bedroom and even with the best intentions of keeping it up I could never do it. I’d sit for months screaming internally at myself to fucking tidy up and ultimately the best thing that worked to make it happen was knowing I had friends coming up to stay and then I’d suddenly erupt into a hurricane of productive tidying, kicked into action by an immediately approaching deadline. and to an extent I relate to people’s descriptions of what rejection sensitive dysphoria feels like. but at the same time I wouldn’t say I had a particularly hard time in school wrt studying and working, or other things people generally look for. It was the being bullied that I struggled more with then.

anyway idk. There’s something about my brain that is definitely… idk… SOMETHING. It has real observable effects on my life and relationships and everything but I just dunno what exactly it is.

[revcleo]

I'm pretty sure I was fired in part at my first proper job I got on my own because I said I was uncomfortable being called "love" in a way which felt like I was being treated like a woman. I think the fact that I stood up for myself meant that I was just not a good culture fit, I got dropped basically a week or two later where they said that they didn't think they should have hired me because I they didn't have enough of a product to promote yet which feels like it's something obvious they should have noticed earlier, or maybe trained me to help with something else, even if it was a start up.

Also while I don't expect any cis person I don't know to gender me properly, prior to any physical changes in transition I wouldn't basically have anyone I know gender me properly, with some people I didn't get on with purposefully seem to misgender me no matter how much I literally shouted in our community meeting to get it right, she kept calling me "she".

I still have to correct some cis people who are amenable or friends nowadays, I basically end up saying just call me he/him rather than she/her because it's less invalidating.

Like at work I have my pronouns as they/he because while it's a great company and people are generally happy to use whatever pronouns, cis people still tend to find it easier to use binary pronouns. I still get misgendered sometimes but it tends to be a mirrored pronouns situation which is silly but after hormones bothers me less. I know it's just how a lot of non binary people experience life.

I didn't put my gender down on forms for a while because I was like "maybe calling myself genderqueer will scare people a bit" but now idgaf that's me gender

I have some friends who are nb who have changed their passport markers but the government refuses to add X and I'm not swapping my marker to another one which is also wrong.

I also remember having a mild anxiety attack in hospital having to line up for an x-ray either going through a male door or a female door (which both went to the same place?? Which is stupid but like dysphoria can be stupid in how it presents.

I have honestly stopped going to the shops to buy clothes and I carry a disabled key so I have a place to definitely piss. I am more likely to use the mens than the women's nowadays bc I think it's the place I'll get less harassed, I do still get some weird looks going in (and I'm like more than 5 years on t) but I'm tall and strong so I think that helps in my favour.

Also as a nb who didn't want to be forced into a binary path (in 2011) I had double the normal amount of gic appointments (6 and a panel meeting and seeing their shrink for a couple of months - note there's a big gap between normal appts) before getting anything, one of the clinicians misgendered me, talked about me derisively and then after submitting a formal complaint I still had to see him a second time (where admittedly he did give me a basic level of respect, but it's very stressful having to see someone who treated you badly in the past).

I didn't really suffer much misogyny when younger, and I've always been tall and powerful so I don't think I feel as afraid as shorter and weaker people might be. Like when my ex and I had our boobs grabbed (while wearing binders) at the bus stop, I put the drunk man in an armlock until he let go (though he did punch me in the face and break my glasses, I was uninjured) I didn't feel afraid, just shocked and annoyed. So I might not suffer a lot of paranoia that other people may feel.bc

I feel like non binary identities can still be treated as not really trans or a stepping stone, my ex made me feel like I wasn't a proper tranny like he was, and I was just stealing trans valour or something.

I feel like transphobia directed as non binary people assumes we're all stupid girls acting out, infantilising and making amab nbs invisible. I feel like there's a two prong attack of terfs trying to prevent young adults from being non-binary and then a bunch of trans people using "theyfab" to either refer to abusive people (insinuating that an entire group of non binary people are abusive) or just using it to describe people being trans in a way they don't like.

It jus reminds me of when I felt like I had to not identify as bi because the group I was hanging with (a couple of gay guys) were super dismissive of (as I was at the time) bi women, saying "all the fangirls are bi nowadays" so for ages I didn't identify as bi because I didn't want to be bullied for it by the people I thought were supposed to be my community. (he was later transphobic against nb people so I dropped him, I had other friends by that time anyway)

It has felt in some online spaces that a lot of intra community ire is on non-binary afab people, and I think this has also lead to a bunch of people doing like I did when I rejected my bisexuality, trying to be one of the good ones and directing hate at who they are being told are evil.

I think it's possible to combat shitty behaviour without pinning it down on an identity.

❗️❗️ This is asked entirely in good faith. This post is intended to open dialogue and help with solidarity and understanding. ❗️❗️

I would like to hear specifically from nonbinary people how the system of exorsexism/enbyphobia uniquely targets and affects you. Things that you feel other demographics do not experience. Reblogs and replies are very encouraged! If you would prefer, you could dm or send an ask to be added anonymously by me.

This is in the spirit of wanting to understand. I am listening. I encourage all binary trans people to not speak on this topic and let nonbinary people do the talking here. Reblog the post to spread it, but please say nothing.

Any and all people who identify as nonbinary are encouraged to participate. This is not agab-locked. If you are agender, trans neutral/neutrois, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, multigender, xenogender, genderqueer, third gender, two spirit, or any other gender not wholey contained within the strict binary of "man" or "woman", this post is for you. Even if you have already posted on the trans fem or trans masc versions, if you are nonbinary, you are welcome here.

This is not bait to start a fight. I will block without hesitation anyone who is actively being a shithead on this post. I want to hear and uplift your voices by getting it directly from you.

Click this to access the trans fem and trans women version of this post.

Click this to access the trans masc and trans men version of this post.

Click this to access the intersex version of this post.

[adhdeancas]

if you're still taking requests he/they nonbinary sam and he/him trans man dean and 'i could not care less about pronouns' agender cas all being happy in the bunker when jack comes out to them as trans?

Love this 

and since you didn’t specify, I’m going to go with Jack comes out as nonbinary? Since that’s the general knowledge of his gender

(now part ten of my transnatural series,)

It starts at breakfast. Sam is tasked with making breakfast, since Dean and Cas spent all night watching every Rocky movie ever made, even the bad ones, and definitely including the Creeds. Thus, Dean is slumped over against Cas who is barely upright themself and they are both forbidden from operating near any hot surfaces. Dean already spilled coffee down his shirt so he is now shirtless and careful when he brings the mug to his mouth. 

Jack comes into the kitchen bright eyed and bushy tailed as always, the smell of turkey bacon making him smile wider. “Good morning!”

“Morning, Jack,” Sam grins back at him. Dean grunts. 

Cas offers a small smile and, “Hello, Jack.”

“Hello.” he turns to Sam. “What’s wrong with them?”

Dean’s too tired to even complain about being talked about like he’s not right in front of the kid. “Late night. Don’t worry, they’ll perk up later.” Cas raises an eyebrow skeptically. “After breakfast. And a nap. And maybe some adderall.”

Dean snorts at the joke but Jack doesn’t get it. He moves on anyway, unbothered as always. “Well, I was hoping I could call for A Family Meeting,” he announces proudly. The resulting silence is not exactly stunned but definitely confused.

“A what?” Dean picks his head off of Cas’s shoulder, leaving a wet spot on his shirt. 

“A family meeting. Maybe tonight, at dinner. I have something I want to discuss with you all.” 

Sam and Dean make eye contact over Jack’s shoulder, both their heartbeats picking up at the formal announcement. In their experience, in human experience, a big Talk is never good. Cas notices their tension and pushes himself up so she can go to lay a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “That sounds wonderful, Jack. Although if there’s anything wrong, we can help now.” It’s both for the sanity of the adults of the room and for Jack’s problem, whatever it may be.

Jack shakes his head with a smile. “No, that’s okay. I have to take a shower!” He’s out of the room without another word. 

Cas reaches across the counter to steal Sam’s mug (a mug Eileen got him that says “I love you more than Wifir”) and gulp down coffee, his own and Dean’s mug a whole six feet away. Sam waves a hand in exasperation before trying to steal it back, which leads to a staring contest with both of their hands on the mug. Sam wins by licking Cas’s hand and making him let go, a move which earns them a laugh from Dean, who taught him that move. 

The rest of the day is spent in relative quiet; Cas and Dean do go off to take a nap but they decide to take one outdoors because as Cas says “humans were meant to spend time in the sun every once in a while” and as Dean says “Cas wants to punish me for getting old by sleeping on the fucking ground after not-sleeping on a fucking couch.” Sam video chats with Eileen for a few minutes while she’s at a truck stop; she’s on her way to them after a hunt in Wyoming (which Dean demanded pictures of, he doesn’t think the state exists. It’s the only one in the contiguous US that they’ve never been to). Then he spends the rest of the day pouring over one ridiculously complicated spell that Rowena has assured him is worth the effort (it’s a surprise) but which has to be watched over for several days before it’s ready. It feels like a magic game of jack-in-the-box (no pun intended) to him. Jack spends his day in town with some of his townie friends, and they all miraculously manage to make it home in one piece this time.

Still, by the time dinner rolls around, Dean’s dragged himself away enough to put aloe on his new sunburn, his lack of shirt making his freckles and top surgery scars the only breaks in light pink from waist up, and start making tacos and fried potatoes. 

They’re all seated around the table, Dean and Sam getting nervous despite Jack’s reassurances that the Meeting is nothing bad. “What the hell could he have to tell us? We’re literally around him all the time.”

Sam shrugs and wipes their hands off on their pants again. “I dunno, maybe…” he tries to think of anything it could be, but with Jack’s 22-but-also-three-year-old thing going on, he has no idea what to expect. Cas comes back from fetching Jack, the kid in question smiling like a doofus. 

Cas sits down with Jack across from the brothers, one of their arms on his shoulder for support. “Okay, Jack, go right ahead with whatever you want to tell us.”

“And hurry up, because the food’s getting cold.” Dean says, more out of anxiety for this to be over with than concern about the food. Sam elbows him anyway. 

Jack pops a potato in his mouth first with a grin. Dean rolls his eyes. “These are very good. Okay, so! Remember how we talked about human conceptions of gender?”

They all nod. The conversation had been a memorable one, confusing both Sam and Dean when they got into the more complicated aspects of what gender actually means. In the end, they’d explained pronouns and dysphoria and told Jack that he could be whatever he wanted to be.

“Well, I don’t think I’m a boy!” he says it like it’s a grand reveal at a party, which, to him, it is. They blink around the table, Sam smiling gently to encourage him to continue, Cas tilting his head and waiting for more information, and Dean squeezing his arm over the food. 

“That’s awesome, kid, what are ya?” 

“I think I’m like Sam. Nonbinary?” he looks at Sam for clarification, and Sam nods. 

“Not a girl, not a boy, somewhere in between or outside?”

“I think I’m in between.” Jack says thoughtfully. He looks to Cas. “It seems strange, to identify with human gender since I’m only half-human, but…” it’s like he’s looking to his angelic dad for reassurance that it’s alright.

Cas grins. “Well, you’re only half-angel as well. I think you decide.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Dean asks, trying to seem casual. If it was him coming out right now, he’d be three seconds from heading for the door at any question, but… Jack’s not him. Jack wasn’t raised the same way. 

“Hm, I don’t know what there is to talk about really. I mean, I thought about it, and gender doesn’t really make sense to me, like Cas, so I thought I might have no gender for a while. But I also like the feeling of it sometimes? So then I thought about whether I was like Dean and I knew it wasn’t that, but I’m not like Mary either.”

Cas, Sam, and Dean look around at each other quickly, their pride barely contained. “Well, that’s awesome, Jack.”

“Yeah! We’re gender buddies! Matching gender!” Sam laughs and nods, their hair falling into their eyes, which covers up how wet they are.

“Does anything make you uncomfortable? Any term or word or clothing?” 

Jack looks at Cas with that head-tilt he’d picked up from them. “I like the word them for pronouns. I like how it sounds. Also I wanted to do something with history since I don’t have like… a lot of history.” they look momentarily sad. “I thought about doing xe and xem for a while but I kept forgetting.” they laugh. 

“No problem, kid. Is Jack still okay?”

“Yes.” they say confidently. “My mother gave me that name and we knew each other well. She knew it fits.”

“Cool.” Dean nods, out of questions. Sam jumps in. 

“We’re really glad you told us this, Jack.”

Cas nods and pulls him into a hug. “We’re really proud of you.”

“We love you a lot, kid.” Dean’s voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, and Sam reaches over to squeeze his shoulder. 

Jack hears the change in tone and looks up, concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, m’fine,” 

Jack looks over and realizes Sam is sniffling too, and Cas looks like he’s about to burst with the emotions on his face. “Is this about the stuff you told me- that some people don’t like it when you’re not a boy or girl or when you change?”

Sam nods. “We’re just glad you know that’s not us, bud.”

“Well of course not. You’re my parents.” They’re suddenly taken over by a group hug, Sam and Dean come over to pile on top of them and Cas. They let the confusion of outsider ignorance roll off their back and revel in the love they have right here at home. After a few moments, their muffled voice says quietly, “Um, dads? The food is getting cold.”

And the spell is broken. It’s a normal family dinner.

[hannahdra-ws]

Yes please

- rambling anon

okay here we go

the template was taken from remuscore so full credit to them

Patton

full name: Patton Hart

date of birth: January 15th

gender: trans male

presentation: masculine

pronouns: he/him

sexual orientation: homoromantic demisexual

status: eventually taken (w/ Logan)

height: 5'5

body type: small; healthily skinny

hair color: dirty blonde

hair type: curly, 3a

eye color: hazel

race(s): white

piercing(s): both lobes pierced

tattoo(s): none

physical: none

mental: PTSD, dysphoria, adhd, severe clinical depression

family

• parents: Diana Hart and Michael Hart

• sibling(s): Angela Hart

• pet(s): none

skill(s): sewing, baking

goal(s): survive high school, get on hormone therapy, and grow old with his friends

Virgil

full name: Virgil Williams

date of birth: December 19th

gender: cisgender

presentation: masculine most of the time

pronouns: he/him

sexual orientation: homosexual

status: eventually taken (w/ Roman)

height: 6'1

body type: underweight, malnourished

hair color: naturally, ginger, then he dyed it purple

hair type: straight

eye color: light blue/gray

race(s): white

piercing(s): both lobes and upper lobes, helix on right

tattoo(s): stick and pokes all over, mostly of different types of spiders

physical: chronic pain in his left leg; disordered eating

mental: c-PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, disordered eating, alcoholism

family

• parents: Julia Willaims (deceased); Patrick Williams

• sibling(s): none

• pet(s): none

skill(s): art, stick and pokes, stealing, guitar, skateboarding

goal(s): to get out of his Fucking house and maybe do something productive for once in his damn life

Janus

full name: Janus "Deceit" Michaels

date of birth: February 3rd

gender: cisgender male

presentation: androgynous, leaning towards masculine

pronouns: he/him

sexual orientation: homosexual

status: FWB and eventually taken (w/ Remus)

height: 5'6

body type: thin, strong

hair color: ginger

hair type: curly, 3a

eye color: brown

race(s): half white half asian

piercing(s): both lobes, orbital conch on both, snake bites

tattoo(s): stick and poke of a snake around his left wrist

physical: chronic pain, fully blind in his left eye, 3rd degree burn scars scattered on his face and down the left side of his body, cigarette addiction

mental: PTSD, hypochondria, cigarette addiction

family

• parents: August Michaels (deceased); Damien Michaels

• sibling(s): none

• pet(s): two snakes, "Ella" and "Dizzy"

skill(s): lying, manipulation, forgery

goal(s): to get out of this batshit town with his friends

Logan

full name: Logan Reeves

date of birth: November 3rd

gender: cisgender male

presentation: masculine

pronouns: he/him

sexual orientation: bisexual

status: eventually taken (w/ Patton)

height: 6'4

body type: fit, strong (kind of a less intense Chris Evans)

hair color: dark brown

hair type: straight, fade cut

eye color: dark blue

race(s): white

piercing(s): both lobes

tattoo(s): none

physical: none

mental: autism

family

• parents: Lillian Reeves (adoptive), Cat Reeves (adoptive)

• sibling(s): none

• pet(s): black calico cat named Luca.

skill(s): violin, first aid

goal(s): make all a's, graduate with honors, live with his friends

Roman

full name: Roman Diaz

date of birth: June 4th

gender: cisgender male

presentation: masculine

pronouns: he/him

sexual orientation: homosexual

status: eventually taken (w/ Virgil)

height: 6'2

body type: Fit, little soft around his thighs

hair color: dark brown

hair type: curly, 3b

eye color: green

race(s): mexican

piercing(s): both lobes

tattoo(s): none

physical: none

mental: PTSD, adhd, rsd

family

• parents: Sofia Diaz, Romulus Diaz

• sibling(s): Andrea Diaz, Markus Diaz, Caesar Diaz, Camilla Diaz (adopted), Julius Diaz, Claudius Diaz (adopted), Felix Diaz, Hadrian Diaz (all deceased); Remus Diaz

• pet(s): none

skill(s): guitar, singing, theater, track

goal(s): sweep Virgil off his feet

Remus

full name: Remus Diaz

date of birth: June 4th

gender: cisgender male

presentation: ranges from feminine to masculine to androgynous

pronouns: he/him buts also fine with they/them

sexual orientation: gray-romantic homosexual

status: FWB and eventually taken (w/ Janus)

height: 6'2 (seems taller bc he wears platforms)

body type: underweight, way too skinny

hair color: dark brown with gray streak dyed in

hair type: same as Roman's; mullet-style

eye color: green and brown

race(s): mexican

piercing(s): gages on both ears,  both upper lobes, industrial right, double helix left, eyebrow, bridge

tattoo(s): too fuckin many for me to describe, all stick and pokes. mostly cartoon gore

physical: drug addiction, heterochromia

mental: PTSD, drug addiction, Bipolar 1, autism, paranoia

family

• parents: same as Roman's

• sibling(s): Same as Roman; Roman Diaz

• pet(s): small rat he snuck in, "AssAss"

skill(s): designing tattoos, hustling

goal(s): to literally just survive high school

[bumblee-stumblee]

Lupron is used to treat precocious puberty(CPP) in children and people that say puberty blockers are dangerous understand that it necessary for some children, specifically the ones that that suffer from this.

From Mayo Clinic:

Precocious puberty is when a child's body begins changing into that of an adult (puberty) too soon. When puberty begins before age 8 in girls and before age 9 in boys, it is considered precocious puberty.

Puberty includes rapid growth of bones and muscles, changes in body shape and size, and development of the body's ability to reproduce

We aren't arguing children suffering from CPP should not have access to it, but we acknowledge that even in cases where it's prescribed as medically necessary there are many risks to patients. Per their own website :

There are serious risks in using Lupron.

Lupron was approved to be used as a treatment for prostate cancer. This may be a helpful treatment but the side effects are really quite something. Again we understand that this might be a necessary treatment. The link below is a pdf.

5 WARNINGS AND PRECAUTIONS

5.1 Tumor Flare

Initially, LUPRON DEPOT, like other GnRH agonists, causes increases in serum levels of testosterone to approximately 50% above baseline during the first weeks of treatment. Isolated cases of ureteral obstruction and spinal cord compression have been observed, which may contribute to paralysis with or without fatal complications. Transient worsening of symptoms may develop. A small number of patients may experience a temporary increase in bone pain, which can be managed symptomatically

This is the side effects for Lupron used for Endometriosis

This one too is for endometriosis, different dose publication

Some reviews both positive and negative

And then was also used to chemically castrate sex offenders.

So then finally all of this to say that Lupron as a puberty blocker is being used off label to prevent children from going through puberty, which is a very normal thing for children to go through unless that puberty is coming in way too early. It has not been approved as a puberty blocker for gender dysphoria.

The kids being put on puberty blockers aren't experiencing CPP, there isn't any medical necessity for them to be exposed to these risks. There seems to be this idea that kids need to be put on puberty blockers just incase that gender confusion really is gender dysphoria, this will not only expose them to irreversible damages that Lupron can cause such as osteopenia and pseudotumor cerebri- pressure within the skull (idiopathic intracranial hypertension which causes temporary loss of vision) but will also delay them socially from their peers and make them feel isolated.

From Mayo Clinic on side effects

You'll find from Mayo Clinic that they state that the puberty blockers might:

Improve mental well-being

Reduce depression and anxiety

Improve social interactions and integration with other kids

Eliminate the need for future surgeries

Reduce thoughts or actions related to self-harm

When it says improve mental well-being, that's just not true, it can cause mood swings and emotional problems, they themselves say it can lower their self esteem.

When it says reduce depression and anxiety, that may be true for kids and teens that experience true dysphoria, but we cannot be certain that all these kids do experience that and we can't tell which are caught in the social contagion, some of them are coached by online friends on what to say to get a doctor to take them seriously (ie-'ever since i was a toddler i wanted to be the opposite sex' 'im suicidal'). So this less anxiety and depression maybe for certain kids but it's not definite.

3rd It depends on the open-mindedness of their schoolmates. It depends on a lot of factors the kids and doctors can't control. We can't be certain. Bullying is a thing in school, tactlessness, social and self isolation.

4th eliminating the need for future surgery would mean either the child has desisted or has moved on to hrt, lupron isn't meant to be taken past 6mos if i remember correctly, that's when bone density starts to be affected. 6months might seem like a lot of time but it's really not enough time to make your mind up about such an important decision. Kids change their minds all the time.

5th reduce thoughts of self harm- there are studies claiming this to be true, and it might be for the kids genuinely having dysphoria but this movement has reiterated that you have to be suicidal, that children will kill themselves if they aren't given what they want so i have to wonder if it not also feeding this idea into these kids

If we go back to the manufacturer site for lupron it clearly states the following:

Some people taking gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists like LUPRON DEPOT-PED have had new or worsened mental (psychiatric) problems. Mental (psychiatric) problems may include emotional symptoms such as:

Crying

Irritability

Restlessness (impatience)

Anger

Acting aggressive

And

Some people taking GnRH agonists like LUPRON DEPOT-PED have had seizures. The risk of seizures may be higher in people

who:

Have a history of seizures

Have a history of epilepsy

Have a history of brain or brain vessel

(cerebrovascular) problems or tumors

Are taking a medicine that has been connected to seizures, such as bupropion or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) Seizures have also happened in people who have not had any of these problems. Call your child's doctor right away if your child has a seizure while taking LUPRON DEPOT-PED.

Increased pressure in the fluid around the brain can happen in children taking gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH)

So clearly there's some stuff missing from Mayo Clinic.

One of these girls was taking it for gender identity issues. There's another girl that had posted on Reddit about fearing she might have this but not wanting to tell her doctor incase she might be over reacting and also not wanting to prove terfs right, she's since deleted the post.

There's been some lawsuits as well

And some more.

Basically we understand some people, some kids going through precocious puberty might need it. We understand there is medical necessity, however trans kids, kids with gender dysphoria do not need puberty blockers.

They are not experiencing an early onset of puberty, they do not have to be exposed to to the side effects of this drug because there is no medical need for this. As it is right now, these kids are the test subjects and will likely become life long patients.

Hello! So, I've been seeing a lot of contradictory posts/info lately about puberty blockers, some people saying they're safe and reversible and have been used since the 80s, others saying they cause irreparable damage to your body and should be avoided at all cost.

Do you or your followers have any info on this? A lot of the pro opinions I see are saying children shouldn't have to deal with periods or big breasts at 7 years old, things like that

I, myself, am not an expert, but i will boost this for you, anon. 😤