#they need to be less classist pricks

[imbellarosa]

i thought about not writing anything bc I'm late to the discourse game this time round and bc I've been so unplugged for so long that I don't get anons asking me things anymore but then I was talking to @twopoppies and like actually - I have shit to say

the first thing i have to say is that the British economy is overwhelmingly failing the working class. Teachers, train workers, and the fire service have all voted to go on strike in the last month. and the reason that this is happening is twofold: the first is that the MPs are self-absorbed dicks. The second is that the UK pulled out of one of the largest single-market economies in the international community, which hit every sector of the economy bc new taxes tariffs trade agreements erc. So like - don't talk to a Brit about what their utilities are doing. The third reason that these towns are dying though is because of the practice of outsourcing labour to cheaper countries/cities/communities. This is why people began to blame immigrants for the decline of the working class. Which like - if a Brit wants to come and teach my kids and write my PhD, they can pry it from my cold dead hands.

That's a really roundabout way of explaining that if you don't live in a larger city, you're gonna have loads of poverty in the area. And that - for the most part - your distance from London is directly proportional to the poverty rate. I work in *small British coastal town* in a *large comprehensive school* (that's like a US public school), and my kids are about 13-16 years old. The 16-year-olds are doing their GCSEs (like GEDs) in the spring, and loads of them don't believe that they can do it. Out of the Y11s that I know, I know maybe one or two that have concrete plans to go to university. Most don't believe that they can succeed, and are unwilling to go anywhere far from home. A comparable region of the world would be Appalachia in the US. The school I teach at is right across the street from council estates, and some of the kids have never left the town - even though there's a 2 hr train that takes you into London. Loads of their lives are really tough. I obviously can't give specifics, but I've definitely had days I can't shake off at the end of them.

This is all to say that out of the hundreds of kids I know, I don't know a single one that's gonna win a Grammy in 15 years time. Or a Pulitzer, or an Oscar or a Tony or an Olivier or a BAFTA. and this is absolutely not because they're not capable of doing it - they 100% have the capacity to succeed and the talent to be amazing. We just don't have the resources to nurture that talent in a way that would make them competitive to the people in the first ring of the ladder to success. I have a kid who wants to be a detective, and another teacher (!) told me 'well that's just not realistic. kids like him don't get into the programs he'd need to get into to do that'. That's just the reality of life for them. To them, I'm the anomaly. I'm the one who made it out! I left a tough home and a rough couple of years to become a PhD student and a young woman with a stable job, a guy who agrees to watch my cat, and loads of good friends. And I'm DEFINITELY not winning any Grammys hahaha - but by their metric their TEACHERS are some of the most successful or educated people they know, and they don't see themselves as those people.

We do our best for these kids, but it 1000% makes sense that someone from a background like this would say that the kind of success and fame and resources it takes to be an international pop star doesn't happen to people like him. Because it's a million to one. For every Harry Styles, a million David Smiths (not a real kid) don't make it out. So maybe shut up, have some empathy and celebrate an unlikely success? Or like. Eat cake if that fails.

[utilitycaster]

What bothers me on principle about Syldor: the man is an ambassador. His ENTIRE JOB is to be a good representative of his people and foster mutually beneficial relationships. If it takes twenty years and his estranged children showing him up by saving the world for him to decide that maybe his society and he in particular could stand to be less of a classist/racist* prick, it's hard for me to feel especially impressed. (*On that note, it looks like the current guide did some strategic editing about mixed ancestry, but the way half-elves were originally described was that humans saw them as a blessing, but elves saw them as impure and as something lesser. The first edition specifically said "the elves of Syngorn have looked on them with contempt." Whether it's currently part of the lore or not, that...kinda set a certain tone about that whole family relationship. It wasn't a great tone.) As for the others: Howaardt suffers in my recollection because that plot was happening right when my own father died, so it's hazy and I frankly don’t want to backtrack to remind myself of the details beyond "Tary eloquently told him off for his failings and I'm glad he said what he did." I’m with you about Thoreau, though. That man’s the worst.

So just to stave off any further questions...to be honest I don't need to know why anyone on an individual level thinks this about Syldor, and I do get that a lot of people don't recall Tary's arc terribly well for a variety of reasons. Call me cynical but "fandom opinions tend towards the less nuanced, and it's very easy for one person's highly specific projection to spread around as The Correct Interpretation" tends to explain it on a broad scale.

That aside, this feels like it seriously misses the point. Taking only 15 years and two visits from his estranged children for him to apologize - even badly - and begin a slow about face against his entire culture, even when he knows it will never be enough to mend the relationship? Quite a lot of real people would, genuinely, do anything for their parents to do the same.

(I also think that Syngorn's xenophobia does need to be considered in the context of "the ambassador from Syngorn to the primarily human society on the continent was assassinated, kicking off a bitter three-decades long war, less than three centuries ago and very possibly in Syldor's living memory." It doesn't make it justified, but the tone-setting is actually like...fairly good world-building that puts this in context.)

It is also rather irritating that in a fandom that loves a redemption arc, someone who has, again, fucked up badly, but then made an honest to attempt to improve, is so frequently thrown in the same (or worse) bucket as a serial gaslighter rather than treated as "kind of an asshole." Which is, to be clear, what I'm arguing. I don't think he's a good person. He was bigoted and took the twins away out of a misplaced sense that they couldn't be happy in a small town with their human mother. I think the twins are justified in being mad at him still. I would not expect them to ever forgive him fully. My point is that there are shades of gray here that are entirely ignored. (This also happens to cross into a more serious issue I have with fandom frequently diminishing some pretty horrific emotional and psychological abuse such as Thoreau's, but that's also a whole different story.)

With all that said I covered Syldor in the original post primarily because I found it particularly hypocritical that in TLOVM, he was as awful as the fandom makes him out to be, and unhappiness with the story shifted to the twins and Percy acting in ways that were consistent with Syldor being worse and with their mental state re: everything else going on being very different than in canon.

I guess the underlying point is that I'm fairly vocal when I find the story isn't hanging together logically, and both C1 and TLOVM do hang together logically. That, again, doesn't obligate anyone to like it, but I do want to observe that it does, in fact, make a lot of sense if one considers the actual canon of how Syldor behaves in each work, and it specifically makes sense for Vex's arc and the changes made to it.

[phantomato]

Uber

Nottmort (Tom Riddle/Nott Sr.), Modern Muggle AU, ~2k words

Thanks to @yletylyf for kicking around this idea! Tom drives an Uber in the Bay Area. Thoros & co need a ride.

—

Abraxas and Orion are bickering over luggage in the background when your Uber pulls up. Black, of course, so it’s a Mercedes that will smell a little too much like leather cleaner when you get in, but none of you have ever ridden in an UberX or, god forbid, an Uber Pool, and you’re not about to start.

Your colleagues—never forget, you are not friends, no matter how much time you spend with them—slide into the back seat before you can even begin to help load bags into the trunk. You’re left alone with the driver, and though he offers to help, you haven’t let yourself sink that low as to make this man pile all of your shit in his car while you sit around and watch. And anyway, it feels like the polite thing to do. More than Abraxas or Orion, you’ve been raised to be polite.

So you fold yourself into the front passenger seat, too kind to push the seat all the way back and give yourself the leg room you need even if Orion, behind you, is just 5’8 to your 6’3, and smile at the driver as he confirms your destination.

He’s pretty. You’ve been in a lot of Ubers and you’ve never seen a driver this pretty. Is that classist?, you wonder to yourself, remembering something you read in Vox the other day. Probably. Nevertheless, you’re taken by the curve of his mouth, the sweep of his dark hair, and you throw a smirk over your shoulder at Abraxas who you know must have also noticed.

“Traffic to SFO will be busy,” he says regretfully, and you roll your eyes. Orion refuses to take the early morning flights, unwilling to wake at 3 AM, and you’re always stuck with these long, miserable Uber rides down from the city to the airport. “And Terminal 2—right in the middle of it. There’s construction around those doors, if you haven’t been there—”

“We know,” Orion butts in rudely, shutting up your driver for the few minutes it takes to get out of your neighborhood.

You use those few minutes to swipe through your phone. Email—nothing important. Messages—you clear the notifications. Your Instagram is alight with people reposting the same infographic about voting rights and you make a mental note to kick some money to that non-profit that’s been all over Twitter lately. You close out apps and end up back at Uber, watching your car’s laggy progress through the San Francisco streets. Your driver’s name is Tom, the app informs you. It’s a nice name.

You clear the side streets and Tom offers amenities. “If you want any water, there are bottles in the cooler between the seats,” he calls back to Abraxas and Orion, “and mints in the cup holder. You can adjust the air conditioning if you like, and there’s a charging cable attached to the back of my seat if you need it. Would you like to choose any music?”

“No,” Abraxas says, and whether he means the music or the entire spiel doesn’t really matter, given his withering tone. You look back at him, trying to convey ‘Be nice’ with just your eyebrows, but Abraxas is fussing with his hair and ignoring you.

Tom’s one of the chipper ones, it turns out, because he takes the rejection in stride and shifts to the dreaded personal conversation. “What do you all do for a living?”

“Ah, we invest in companies, mostly start-ups,” you say, trying to avoid—

“Venture capitalists!” Tom guesses, and he’s right but you hate the term and its connotations. So what if you are all white men whose family money has bankrolled tech speculation? It’s what anyone with half a brain would do. You donate, you read the liberal news—at least, you think that’s true for all of you, though Orion was friends with that Republican mayoral candidate and Abraxas’ father sponsors that conservative think-tank and…

Ah, fuck. “Yeah, pretty much,” you agree, hating yourself.

Behind you, Orion digs his AirPods out of his pocket. You hear the snap of the magnetic lid as he closes himself off to the world. Abraxas is slouching, the hem of his third-favorite cashmere cardigan catching on the seat behind him, and you realize that you’re alone in this conversation.

Well, fuck it. If those two pricks are going to make you call the Uber, deal with the reimbursement paperwork, and sit in the front seat, you’re going to talk to the driver and make this car conversation as painful as possible for them.

As if reading your thoughts, Tom does the one thing that guarantees a terrible ride: he pitches his app idea.

“You know, I’m also a software developer,” he says, which is at least more promising than when someone isn’t, “and if I had the kind of funding that companies like yours provide, I would absolutely make this app.” He proceeds to describe something completely inane, the type of exclusive, niche social networking app that hasn’t had legs since before the Trump presidency and you would be content to let him drone on, to let Abraxas keep melting into his own seat and to let Orion channel his anger through a knee driven into the back of yours, but—

But for all that Tom’s idea is stupid, he has the energy of the best pitches you see. His energy is infectious. His eyes light up, he gestures with one hand, and when he stops to take a drink (one of those water bottles with a built-in straw, which you associate with joggers and your lamest employees but which does very different things to you when it’s Tom’s mouth wrapped around the top) you’re transfixed by the wet sheen over his chapped lips.

And so, yes, maybe it’s mostly lust, and maybe this is a sign that you need to download Grindr again, even if only to jerk off to the dick pics you’ll get, but you start to actually talk to him.

“There’s no future in niche social networks,” you say, halting Tom in his tracks. “There will always be new ones, don’t misunderstand me, but the broader landscape is saturated by the top names, and they’ll buy out their competitors if they need to. Perhaps you can topple Tumblr, but that’s not a path to profit. If you want to impact the social market, you need to pinpoint the novel interaction model that you want to offer and make yourself buyable.”

“Buyable,” Tom repeats, like he’s never been interrupted before. He probably hasn’t. The first rule of Ubering around the Bay Area or the Valley is to never engage the app pitches, and Orion has started kicking your seat for your transgression.

“Yes,” you enunciate. “You want to be bought out and brought in at a high level. The giant that eats you may or may not use your idea, but you’ll make a comfortable sum as a consolation prize.” You’ve helped companies through this before. You’re flying out to New York this week in part because one of your investments is considering purchase offers and you want to strategize in-person. The founder is dallying, sending emails about independence and integrity, and Orion will bully him into selling while you and Abraxas negotiate the best terms for the contract.

You can feel Tom’s eyes on you. Abraxas might be calling “Thoros…” from the back seat, and Orion might be attempting to annihilate you with his gaze alone, but you’re smiling at that handsome face behind the wheel and hoping for an accident on the 101.

Unfortunately, you make it through San Bruno without running into more than the usual level of traffic, and Tom’s pulling up to your terminal much sooner than you would like. Abraxas and Orion jump out of the car with uncharacteristic speed when it stops, Orion even moving to stand by the trunk in readiness to take his bags. You delay.

“Do you have a business card?” you ask, when it’s clear Tom’s waiting on you.

He fumbles to pull a wallet from his jeans. You can’t quite get a view of his ass as he does, but that doesn’t stop you from looking.

His card is bent at the corner, printed cheaply, and probably from his last job. You’re pretty sure that company doesn’t exist anymore. Tom taps the phone number. “I can be reached here,” he says smoothly, but his professionalism cracks when he adds, “by call or by… text.”

You know what sort of texts you’d like to receive from him.

Pulling out your own card case, you hand him your card. “Text me,” you say, your voice just this side of appropriate, “any time.”

Tom visibly swallows and jumps out of the car. You take your time getting up, and if your cashmere sweater—Margaret Howell, not that Elder Statesman piece of shit Abraxas is wearing—ends up in the footwell of Tom’s passenger seat, well, you’ll be back in SF next week, won’t you?

“Thanks for the ride, Tom,” you tell him as you take the handle of your luggage, letting your fingers brush his. “I enjoyed our conversation.”

“Yeah,” he nods, and you don’t care that Abraxas is snorting behind you, he’s been judging you this whole trip and he lost out on a hot guy’s number as a result. “It was…”

“Thoros,” you interrupt him before he can ramble and psych himself out. “My name is Thoros, and I really would like to hear from you.”

Tom looks at you then, and you see him pull together the same sureness that drew you into his initial pitch. “I’ll text you about the app.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you say, meaning it.

—

Bonus:

“You know,” Abraxas drawls as you sit in the United club lounge, gesturing lazily with his overpriced airport Fiji water, “if you tip him too much it’s like you’re paying him for sex.”

Orion looks up from his phone then, removing one earbud for the first time since he put them in. “I’ve paid more for sex with less attractive men.”

“Welcome back,” you say, “I didn’t realize you had paid any attention.”

“Someone would need to not have eyes in order to miss how hot that Uber driver was,” he bites back, returning to his phone.

“Well, I’m tipping him extra anyway,” you announce, confirming Tom’s five-star rating. Should you write a review? Is that too much?

Abraxas, with a grumble, declares, “I’m telling Alecto not to approve this expense.”

—

Bonus bonus:

Your phone buzzes at the end of dinner, the celebratory affair to close the sale which someone had insisted must be at Lilia, even though Abraxas doesn’t eat carbs and you would have preferred to grab a slice at Scarr’s rather than haul out to Williamsburg, anyway.

It’s Tom. Of course it’s Tom—you’ve been texting all week, and between a few late-night flirtations and one very bald statement of interest, you’ve got a date set for when you’re back home. You’re going to Mensho Tokyo, since he lives in the Tenderloin and you live… vaguely around the Tenderloin, at least, you tell people you live there when you want to seem cooler, and Tom is the type of guy that makes you excited to stand in line for hours to get seats. You’re already thinking about whether you might put your arm around him while you’re waiting, and you unlock your phone to see what he’s saying now.

It’s a picture message.

A picture of Tom, wearing your Howell sweater and no pants and oh god oh fuck—

“Was that Uber driver’s dick?” Abraxas whispers, next to you, and you curse your luck. “Remind me to call the next Uber, Jesus Christ.”

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

It’s no secret that Republicans are anti-intellectual, but it makes you wonder what their end goal is?  Why do they keep electing dumber and dumber presidents?  Is it just to own the libs?  Do they just not care?  They’ll get what they want regardless of how smart their presidents are, so why always pick the low hanging fruit?

The only smart Republican of the last 60 years was Bush Sr, and he was a one-term wonder who rode Reagan’s coattails into office.

Nixon was notoriously incompetent as VP, almost beat Kennedy in 1960, threw what should have been a career ending shit fit in 1962 after losing the California governor’s race, but not only came back in 68 and win because Goldwater was so unpopular in 64, but won 72 in the greatest landslide in history up to that point.  Corrupt to the bone, he resigned before he could be impeached for hiring burglars to steal dirt on a political opponent, covering it up, and lying about it.

Ford was appointed VP to replace scandal stricken Spiro Agnew, specifically chosen because he was known as an honest politician.  His reputation evaporated the second he became president because his first act was to pardon the guiltiest man in the country; he lost handily in 76.

Reagan was an actor who wanted to play politician so he could hurt the people he didn’t like; blacks people, poor people, gay people, women.  It was a power trip for him, and because he was good at reading cue cards and delivering jokes written by other people, everyone let him get away with murder.  He committed treason by selling weapons to Iran; this isn’t hyperbole, the actual definition of treason includes giving aid to out enemies, and after the oil and hostage crises of the 70s, Iran was an enemy first and foremost.  Oliver North took the blame and had his secretary shred the evidence, the President Bush pardoned everyone involved.  Reagan won in an even bigger landslide than 72 in 84, and Bush won in a major upset against Dukakis in 88.

Bush lost in 92 in no small part because of Ross Perot splitting the ticket; no third party candidate has ever done better nationwide than Perot in 92, with 19% of the vote (though he didn’t win a single state, which some minor candidates have done).  Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote.  Forty-three percent!  57% of people voted against him, and he won.  92 was a farce, as was 96 with less than 50% voter turnout, the lowest in modern history.  Perot ran again and got 8.4% of the vote, Republican Bob Dole only got 40.7%, and Clinton got 49.2%.  This means that less than a quarter of eligible voters voted for Bill Clinton, and he still won.  FARCE!

Al Gore rightfully won in 2000, but the conservative majority Supreme Court stole it from him.  Florida was too close to call; whichever candidate won it would become president.  George W. Bush’s brother Jeb was governor, and he ordered the federally mandated recount be stopped, breaking the law.  The Supreme Court decided not to restart the recount for no discernible reason besides they wanted Bush to win.  He was notoriously dumb, stereotypically dumb, so dumb a lot of people thought it was an act and voted for him because they thought he was a secret genius who was just pretending to be a cowboy running for president off his daddy’s legacy.  He was the stupidest president we had ever had up to that point, and hired a lot of smart people to do horrible things so he could claim plausible deniability.  That Obama didn’t send Dick Cheney to the Hague was a deafening silence.  Bush only won re-election in 2004 because he started a war in Iraq in 2003 and the country didn’t want to change horses midstream; same exact tactic his daddy used, only this war lasted longer than the Gulf and “worked” as planned.

2008 was a ceremonial race; McCain didn’t stand a chance.  He was not incompetent, but his running mate was.  Sarah Palin was even dumber than Bush, and like Gingrich in the 90s was responsible for a conservative revolution we’re still feeling today.  Barack Obama wasn’t an amazing president, but he was an AMAZING candidate.  Everybody loved Obama in 2008, he won more votes than any candidate in history until 2020.  McCain was a career moderate, and after the last 8 years of failure both parties were running on a platform of “I am not George W. Bush.”  Turns out a young charismatic smart black man is less like Bush than another old white guy.

Obama lost a ton of momentum going into 2012 because he didn’t really DO anything his first term.  His only major accomplishment was the Affordable Care Act, which was an act of the Democratic congress than anything else, and it still wasn’t nearly as progressive as it needed to be (the US is still the only developed nation without universal healthcare).  Romney, a Republican governor from the Democratic stronghold of Massachusetts, could have beaten him were he not a classist piece of shit.  Romney hated poor people more than Reagan, and once wore brown face to a campaign event to make himself look more like Obama (they didn’t paint his hands or neck, just his face).  Obama made a lot of promises he didn’t keep, in no small part because of the Tea Party and the devastating losses in 2014 (we suffer under Mitch McConnell because of that).

2016 was a dumpster fire that shouldn’t have happened, and if either party had run a different candidate, it wouldn’t have.  Sanders would have beaten Trump, Clinton would have beaten Cruz.  It was a perfect storm of a very unpopular and insincere grandma running against a cartoon supervillain.  You couldn’t repeat that with what we know now.  Your vote in 2016 came to represent who you were as a person; people took it to the extremes, and the sunk cost fallacy made the entire Republican party shift so far rightward that we have actual concentration camps now and NOBODY GIVES A SHIT!  Trump was a game show host, a used car salesman famous for being tacky and dumb and offensive.  He was KNOWN for running his companies into the ground, that was his MO, he made a career out of bankruptcy, and Republicans still can’t believe that he drove us into the worst economic depression since the last Republican (history repeat itself, whoop-dee-doo).  Biden won in 2020 because of record turnout, though 2020 was closer to the intentional walk of 2012 than the home run of 2008 in terms of enthusiasm for the candidates.

If we’ve learned anything its that Republicans just keep getting worse and worse, so it’s getting hard for me to imagine what 2024 has in store.  Will Trump risk losing the popular vote 3 times in a row for a second term?  i think he’ll pretend to so he can scam millions of dollars out of his base, but he’ll either lost the primaries and tank the Republicans by running third-party, or he’ll drop out and endorse one of his spawn.  If Biden decides not to run in 2024, the nomination will almost certainly go to Kamala Harris, at which point I expect the Republicans to run a woman as well, so that we’re guaranteed the first woman president; she’ll be young, and white, and blonde.  My money’s on Ivanka.  Kamala vs. Ivanka will be a repeat of the 2016 dumpster fire, only worse because then everyone would be acting like both candidates are feminist icons, #GirlPower #SheRunsTheWorld #WarCrimesAreBetterWithTwoXChromosomes  If Biden DOES run again, then I suspect the Republican pool will be wide early on (Prick Scott, Ron DeathSantis, Uncle Tom Cotton, Nikkki Haley, you name it), only to shrink before the primaries as they all coordinate to get behind someone strong enough to defeat an incumbent.

Republicans are very good at coordinating; they are the party of “Follow the Leader.”  Whoever is in charge has 100% authority, no ifs, ands, or buts, no questions asked, just follow orders.  It would be easy to call them lemmings, but it’s more insidious than this.  They run dumb candidates for president, but have very smart people working behind the scenes to do horrible things.  They’re willing to follow orders blindly to ensure that the party prospers, whereas Democrats are chicken running around with their heads cut off.  There are no Democratic leaders.  Pelosi?  Schumer?  Nobody likes those dinosaurs!  The only really popular Democrats are progressives, and they will never have power as long as the moderates have a majority of the caucus.  AOC could be a senator someday; she could replace Schumer whenever he retires, but that would hinge on her not having any moderate primary challengers.  Moderates are still very popular because they are seen as “electable,” even though they never DO anything once elected.  Progressives have big ideas and the concrete plans to get them done, but the moderate establishment is afraid of losing power, and would rather placate the other side doing nothing, changing nothing, making no waves.  The party needs to shift leftward, or the country is doomed.

I would suggest the progressives splitting off to form a third party, but that would almost certainly destroy left-wing politics in this country as every safe seat would become split.  In an ideal world, it would be a nominal change; they would be the Progressive Democratic Party, they would continue to run in blue districts and caucus with Democrats on votes, but would advertise themselves as anti-establishment.  They would be like the New Democrats in Canada, which now that I think about it is a very bad idea because the New Democrats have no power and end up giving more votes to the Liberals and Conservatives instead.  The Progressive solution is intended to show the caucus that the moderates don’t have total control, but it would end up with the moderate Democrats shooting themselves in the foot, running against Progressives in every seat, handing them to the Republicans.  Every election cycle people act like a loss would spell “the end of the _____ party,” but this would actually be it for the Democrats.  It would be a turning point, like the 1960s, with millions of people changing parties out of principle, a major shift.  A Red Scare

I just want to crawl in a hole and die.  I hate politics.

[insipid-drivel]

My little brother made me cry. He’s autistic, not good with change, but used my preferred PLURAL pronouns without thinking about it.

This is long and personal, so I’ll put the story under the cut for those interested.

I have multiple personalities, but not DID. I’ve been out and living as my authentic self without bothering to mask it for a year (I actually have a unique manifestation of a condition called Schizotypal Personality Disorder, which is in the same diagnostic family as Schizophrenia and Schizoid Personality Disorder - my mom just calls it “Schizofriendia” because she refuses to use the word “disorder” for something she herself has come to love as part of me). 

Over this past year, I’ve come to realize that I’m happier as an ace/aro neutrally-gendered person, and that the love I have for my “Team” is really all I need to feel fulfilled. I’m AFAB, and have been taking my very first baby steps into trying out things like packers and binders when I feel the urge, which is surprisingly strong sometimes to the point that it really can derail my day because once I feel it, I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to look less feminine and at least androgynous. One of my alters in particular, who I adore and is very special to me, is very firm in his identity as a man, and he does express feelings of dysphoria sometimes, particularly when it comes to my breasts, so binding them from time to time is my way of showing him that I’m listening and that I want him to be comfortable in our body as much as he can.

It’s been hard. I lost a lot of people I thought were my friends when I tried to come out about it, and it took a lot of time for my close family to adjust to what had always been me, but they’d simply never seen. My half-sister isn’t part of my life anymore because she tried to call the Sheriff on me to have me forcibly institutionalized when I was already seeing a psychiatrist and other medical specialists on the regular. She didn’t care. She didn’t understand it, it scared her, she genuinely believed I might’ve been possessed by demons (who the fuck is the delusional one now? wtf) and her only course of action was to have authorities drag me away until I “got better”.

Granted, some of them are demons, but they’re more like Crowley from “Good Omens” than the product of something out of “The Conjuring” series, and when they change shape into something inhuman, it’s pretty typical stuff from the Book of Ezekiel; eyes and wings and lights and “Be not afraids” and “Why the fuck do I have eyes on my feet when I’m supposed to walk with those?!” 

Their conversational wit is off the charts and they’re the only ones that are able to make me burst out laughing out of nowhere like a lunatic. My brother and I lost an actual fucking bet with Lucifer over Monty Python and the Holy Grail and now we have matching necklaces that are secretly symbols meant to represent our hilarious loss of a bet over something in reality... to Lucifer. (He’s still giggling about it and we wound up sitting down and watching the whole movie together)

Since then, I’ve put stigma and paranoia in my rear view mirror and have been working on figuring Us out, starting with my pronoun game. When it’s just me, as myself, with no “backup”, it’s she/her. When talking about me and my team, I’ll say “us” and ask my close family to use “they/them” when referring to us as a whole. The pronouns change with whoever’s out at the time. Sometimes it’s “he”, “them”, “she”, and one of them insists his pronouns are “Your Majesty” and nothing else, and we all collectively let him have that one - except for the first alter I mentioned. He fucks with His Majesty at every opportunity because he thinks His Majesty is a classist prick.  

They otherwise live as a harmonious, if Addams Family-esque unit inside of my mind and are with me constantly without dissociation for me to engage with them or switch with them. Even my psychiatrist has decided against recommending medication for it, because I love them, and they love me.

But of course, the whole pronoun thing is still very hard for my family who have known me most or all of my life to adjust to. “They/them” was only used by me,  but I didn’t mind too much. My family were still respectful of the pronouns of whomever was “in front” at any given moment.

Today, my brother got home late from a long and rough day at work. His job is 70% hard manual labor and 30% customer service, so he usually comes home wiped out and grumpy/depressed and crashes into bed pretty much as soon as his boots are off if he doesn’t need to vent about the latest Kevins and Karens he dealt with that day first. He’s autistic, but his work schedule is so crazy that he doesn’t have the time or energy to build an adequate safe space for himself, much less do the introspection he needs to figure out what his ideal safe space is. I’m an Aspie and behavioral analyst, so I decided to look at what little self-expression he did have established at home to crack the code and find the styles, colors, themes, textures, and shapes best suited for him. I had an Amazon wishlist for him to review with samples of ideas I had that I thought he’d really like, and he paused and glared at me for a few moments, and finally said, “I’m so mad at how good you are at this. How do you do it?”

I explained a little bit about behavioral analysis and profiling, a little about the Fibonacci Sequence, and a little about how alternate personalities work and how The Team spends every second of every day, even when I’m sleeping, studying and examining the environment and even googling shit. One of my main guys, who I like to think of as a parasitic twin more than an alter because he’s like a missing big brother to me, is a med student that does his studies while I’m asleep and treats my actual little brother for musculoskeletal pain and therapy at home so he’s fresh for work every day without getting burnt out. In the process, he applied his own studies in medicine and mental health to help me build the concept for my little brother’s safe space using peer-reviewed data and research.

Now, my little brother doesn’t cry, but when he saw his room, he did. He turned to me and my mom, hugged her, and then turned to me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Thank all of you. They’re amazing. I love them.” 

Even the surliest of us all teared up as we hugged. He just says he drank bourbon down the wrong pipe (I have a brain-keg in there), but we all know better than that. 

It feels good to be seen.