#there's stuff i'm enjoying that isn't yuri or yuri adjacent

[risingshards]

"Oh man this season is AMAZING so far." —me, who grades anime seasons by how much yuri is in them

[smiegrin]

11 15 26

I'm putting this under a readmore because I'm uh... thorough in my responses here. X]

11: describe your ideal day.

Waking up (without an alarm) at 8 am, wishing my girlfriend good morning with a kiss, washing up. After that, catching up on internet friend stuff until lunchtime around 11 am. After a simple lunch (sandwiches, probably, even in my ideal world X]) I could spend the early afternoon on a single-player game I'm playing though (or maybe watch my girlfriend play something) until I switch to doing something more creative like draw or code until dinner. (probably something more elaborate, like helping my girlfriend make "yuri pasta" (penne rosa) from scratch or my mother's signature "Sanette Spaghetti"). Then me and my girlfriend can play/read something together for the evening (and get to other yuri activities as our uh... mood may dictate)

15: five most influential books over your lifetime.

OOGH I uh... I might have a hard time pulling out five... I better try, though.

"Cat Wishes" (the full title is longer). I mark this as the most impactful because it's what really convinced me that I needed to transition. It's a simple, earnest, wish-fulfillment furry-adjacent light novel that really got me to realize I wanted to be... something else. That "sometimes it's worth asking for what you want," as the book puts it.

"Substitute Familiar" (same author). Same vibe as above, but I read it second so the impact had already been made. Turns out I'm a huge sucker for "transgender person gets her egg cracked wide open before she even knows what's happening."

Book of Mormon (TECHNICALLY***. Also the Bible and stuff). I'm not like... recommending reading it. This list of "books that influenced my life" just wouldn't be complete without the thing that I spend two decades reading almost every day and that shaped my approach to theology and spirituality, even if I've uh... distanced myself somewhat from that group since then. Like, some of my first posts on this blog were talking about "#ldsconf", but now I'm on that "#that is yuri" and "#do that to me" posting era. X]

[Brony Fanfic I think is best left in obscurity] (ask for a link and I'll send it if you really wanna know) I remember it was filled with lots of... hallmarks of bronydom from the time, but it was the first story that was like... that direct about how weird it was to be at a stage of life where my "bOdY iS cHaNgInG" and I'm suddenly interested in girls in a new way but there's all kinds of other baggage that's attached to those feelings? Not the least of which was, at the time, the pressures of masculinity? And everyone around me is really cagey about explaining any of it clearly? It resonated with me so well at the time that I would recommend it to everyone who asked me at the time about my favorite book.

DK Scientific Encyclopedia (I... think that was the title?) I don't know if it really counts as a book for the purposes of this ask, but it's gotta mean something about the kind of kid I was that, when assigned to read something EVERY DAY that my parents had to sign off on, my instinct was "I don't wanna have to pick something new every day or week, so I'll just pick the biggest book my family has" and then actually enjoyed learning about atoms and electricity and analog/digital signals. I think I was 7. I was definitely younger than 10. If that doesn't count then uh... Homestuck. Because Homestuck is just a domino that keeps coming back around to so many big things in my life.

26: how would you describe your gender/sexuality?

Short answer: transfeminine lesbian

More complicated short answer: girl-adjacent nonbinary girl-liker

Kitchen sink answer: I'm like if a girl was also kind of a raccoon who isn't REALLY a robot but likes to think of herself that way to frame her behavior and past. Oh and I wanna live like a yuri light novel.

My "real" (thorough) answer: if we take the mean value of what many people call "girl" in the two-dimensional space formed by the cross of Masculinity and Femininity, my gender lies in a space that projects into low-masculinity, medium femininity, but in fact lies in a higher-dimensional location (as all genders do) that can be found navigating a short distance along orthogonal basis vectors "domestic creature" and "machine". That space that is not quite otherkin but is nonetheless intertwined with the desire to be cared for like a strange pet raccoon but also linked to the symbols of being jailbroken from a dogmatic hivemind of normalized thought patterns and behaviors prescribed as "worthy". (a similar expression can be found using an alternate vector space, feminine x profane x solarpunk). Oh and kissing girls. I just... (gestures widely to the multidimensional space that lies in my own gender neighborhood) really REALLY like girls.