My Best Friend Is Resisting Every Attempt I Make To Get Her To Read These Books As She Vehemently Hates

I hate how relatable this is…

Seeing wicked with the fam today and yes once again i was right. Conservative people CAN watch wicked and enjoy it and get the message because they see it differently. On the History scene (which mirrors the government trying to block out history lessons on slavery) and the Something Bad scene (where they talk about animals losing their rights and ability to speak), my mom equated these to us trying to erase the Bible, and (racist) white people being publicly shamed for speaking (racist) things.

Truly one of the best side-effects 😭

Heck that’s honestly just one of the effects lol, no side- about it!

I love the fact that I can cry like Mary in a pietà for whatever reason now, good or ill.

My comrades and I got threatened by a pack of neo-nazis at a benefits show we were hosting for our new local Food-not-Bombs chapter in SC last night.

Nobody got hurt and the show was a huge success after we got them to fuck off, but it really put things into perspective for me regarding my transitioning body and physical wellness/performance. I work a physically demanding warehouse job, but the workload is just inconsistent enough where unfortunately I’m not getting much out of it unless we’re super busy. Currently I’m just a wiry bundle of sticks with A-cups and mediocre upper-body strength (on a good day 😅).

I think it’s high-time I properly break the glass on my Vi/Gideon Nav/Scorpia/Zarya transition goals. Gonna look up how to min-max my vegetarian diet and find a queer-friendly workout center in my area.

I suppose a hefty DIY belt chain would do me some good too…. 😈 Stay safe out there y’all. It’s only gonna get worse before it gets better.

so like this will be rambly but oh well.

i’ve only been on hormones for almost 2 years and i have some Things to Say.

Transfems you need to eat and you should workout in general but especially strength training. You’re going through puberty so you need a ton of fuel, also the fat redistribution that will give you feminine features comes from incoming fat, don’t expect your existing fat to just migrate on its own.

as for working out, it will make you feel better i promise. It also is important to focus on functional fitness so when youre old you can squat to pick things up with ease, or farmer-carry the heavy groceries, or help lift friends off the ground when theyre injured. Working out is your way to say “fuck you world, i’m trans and i will survive and even when i’m old i won’t go down easy”

I know the dolls are underrepresented in fitness spaces, so it can be intimidating, but fitness is for everyone and you may able to be positive exposure to trans people for those who otherwise might not see people like us day to day, and that makes them think of you as part of their community.

I also want to point out that I worked out before transitioning, i wasnt super strong or anything but i lost nearly all of my upper body strength after my T dropped, I STILL cannot reach some of my old PRs for certain movements. I’m not trying to paint women and AFAB people as inherently weak (there were tons of cis women way stronger than me even when i wasnt on E), but when your body shifts from relying on testosterone to estrogen you lose a ton of energy and a ton of strength. Working on building and maintaining strength is nothing but beneficial in every facet of your life.

(this may be a good time to point out if youre scared of being bulky and muscly: dont be. its very difficult to get that physique and you have to be actively working or planning for it 24/7)

All this to say that I’ve seen so many scrawny transfems wondering why they dont see many physical effects from their transition while they under eat and dont train. Fuel, Fat, and Muscle will give you the results, the hormones are just blueprints to tell your body what to do with those things (among other things).

Another thing for the American transfems, with the next minimum 4 years looking very bleak: a strong doll can fight back.

For years, the TV in my parents’ house had a greyscale Fox News logo burned into the bottom-left corner of the screen due to how often that channel was on.

I used to think it was funny back before I started questioning myself. Now I’m just glad I don’t have to look at it anymore.

This isn’t really meant to be a comic trashing my dad.

I do truly appreciate his commitment to education.  I do truly have a soft spot for his style of humor, which certainly influenced the development of my own.  I appreciate how he had this VHS-C camera that he was always bringing out and would let me use, sparking my love for movies and starting me on a path that led to me going to film school.

All those good things about him were real.

But so was the colossal amount of damage he caused.

If you happen to be a parent and are reading this right now, I’m going to ask that you consider this suggestion from a childless thirty-six year old:

You need to consider how you communicate with your child, and how communication doesn’t just mean the words that you use.

You’re telling your kids something with the foods you eat, the activities you engage in, etc…

…you communicate to your children with the media you consume.

The rhetoric against the trans community wasn’t as much in the spotlight when I was growing up, but every time my dad turned on the radio, he’d have my sister and I listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, etc…  One of the topics that’d come up frequently was queer people. 

Issues about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, gay marriage, gay boy scouts…

The “gays” were an issue.  More than an issue really, they were a problem.  If someone was queer, these radio hosts were quick to villainize; “this teacher is going to turn their students gay,” “this troop leader is going to abuse his scouts,” you don’t want your kid to end up like that, do you?”

My dad would listen to these folks non-stop and nod along in agreement, all the while his extremely queer and aware of it child was sitting right behind him, listening to how she was some kind of monster.

So I hid. 

There could be no sharing about aspects of myself.  My parents would be listening to 770am or Fox News all the time.  If I share that I was queer, I’d be finished.  How couldn’t that be the case?  Every day they chose to listen to people that hate me, so they hate people like me. 

So I can’t let them know me.  I won’t let them know me.

Even though they never said that they hated queer people with their own words, they told me that they hated queer people every day with the media they chose, and in turn forced me to consume.

So again, if there are any parents reading this right now, consider my words.  Hate is a choice you make, and hate can be communicated with more than just words.

If for no other reason, you never know if that kid in the back seat is listening, listening to how you hate them.

Alternatively, the Warp from Warhammer 40K. Heavy metal space-hell infested with demons and madness. If your ship isn’t shielded properly you get invaded and and driven insane. Fun stuff! John would have loved it.

The River is essentially just the Warp combined with the aesthetic of Hades’ soul whirlpool at the end of Disney’s Hercules.

the argument between john and mercymorn over what metaphors to use to describe river travel to the baby lyctors is so funny to me as i’m rereading slightly behind my best friend reading the series for the first time.

bcuz when they told me they were still kind of confused by it, i first went ok did you ever read a wrinkle in time? it’s similar in concept to the way they travel in the book

no? ok wait it’s actually like minecraft. which i now think is the best metaphor. you go into the nether, have to deal with difficult terrain and a bunch more shit that can kill you, but you travel a short distance in the nether and end up much farther in the overworld

So eerie and wholesome at the same time. 🥘🧌

Little Xallergh and her hags moms

Come Alecto the Ninth the absence of gender norms is likely going to come back to bite everyone in the form of a resurrection beast manifesting itself as a terrifying physical embodiment of dysphoria covered in blue hair like fuzzy dice. Mark my words!

i love the way the way the locked tomb does gender. like gideon is butch, undeniably, but also can you really be gender non conforming when there’s no real image of gender to conform to in the first place? palamedes and pyrrah aren’t NOT trans in nona; their souls are trapped in different bodies, and those bodies ARE the wrong gender but also that’s literally the least of their problems. ianthe is pretty firmly in the box we would label “femme” and she’s simultaneously the princess of ida and a tower prince. but that’s also the least of her problems she’s literally puppetting a dead body around. nona experiences dysphoria about her body (harrow’s body and the barbie body) but that’s because she’s literally the soul of a planet trapped in a meat prison. any shaped meat prison would be bad.

like i wouldn’t call the locked tomb a “post gender” world, but they seem to all basically have the attitude of “i don’t have time for gender right now we’re trapped at the murder mystery dinner party from hell and someone stole god’s sperm we have bigger problems”

So glad two of my favorite fandoms are still getting along splendidly ☺️

i can be your angle....or yuor devil

🫂

So much of my gender is wrapped up in what I can do for others. What I can be for others. My gender is anything before it is my own; the helpful young man holding doors open for strangers, the caring grandson visiting his grandmother in the hospital, the protective older brother, the son trying and trying and trying to be perfect for his mother.

I am the son trying to be perfect, and the best thing I can do for my mother is be a daughter. What else am I supposed to do, other than try my best to be a daughter? My gender is a man whose only purpose is what he can do for others, and that means I must be a woman.

I heard someone say, once, that men are taught that our value comes from providing for those around us. We're taught that being a man means taking care of a family, but we never learn that being a man means taking care of ourselves too.

Do I matter too? The best thing I can do for my mother is be her daughter, and the best thing I can do for me is be her son. What am I supposed to do? What's more important? My gender is about taking care of my family, providing for them, and my gender has never been about doing anything for myself.

And then transmeds took it back and ran with it. 😔

But like, what did people we would define as trans do back before we had lab-grown HRT like we do today? Did we used to just, roll over and waste away? I don’t think so.

Modern HRT is a wonderful thing (I should know), but I personally see it as a societal bandaid solution and a “cure” for cis people’s perceptions of us. I LOVE what it is doing to my body, but if I lived in a world where transness and gender roles where fundamentally permeable, would I think the same way?

At that point it would just be another form of body modification I suppose 🤔

the “born in the wrong body” model has never been a correct and universal explanation for being trans, it was always just a simplification to get cis people to understand things better. but then cis people took it to mean “there is something fundamentally wrong with trans ppl that can only be fixed with hrt” and its making me lose my mind.