#daveanswersstuff

[incendavery]

Hi Dave! I noticed in a previous post of yours that you sing alto in a choir!

If you feel comfortable answering, how has hrt effected your singing voice?

I am also an alto that can range from a high F to most of the tenor range, and I am very interested in starting testosterone. Being as I sing in a semi-professional capacity, Im worried that if I start T I will lose my range that i know my director relies on.

Have you noticed a large difference in your vocal range since starting T? Have you dropped any high notes or gained any low ones?

No pressure to answer, its just always nice to see fellow trans mascs in choirs. 💜

hi! i actually sing bass, not alto!

before T, i sang soprano (though i did expand down to a low alto/high tenor range just from practice and a bit of help training from my choir director at the time)

after going on T, my voice completely switched from soprano to bass. i lost my high range; my mid range lowered, and i gained a low range.

its also worth noting that there was a period during the shift where my voice hadnt settled yet, and it could be frustrating to try and sing; it cracked and squeaked and was generally inconsistent

i didnt sing professionally or anything and just rolled with the change, so i dont have any particular advice on that front? i sang in choirs before, during, and since, but only ever recreationally.

(i can say that my singing voice was a big part of my identity, and i was scared about it changing and prepared to grieve it. however, i ended up not really feeling that way; i love my bass voice and get a huge amount of euphoria from it!)

[incendavery]

What does your collection of ‘Fuck’ cards look like so far? I wanna print them off lol.

if you go through the 'tarot' tag, you can find the ace, two, three, four, eight, nine, and ten! (iirc)

i still need to finish the rest of the suit

[incendavery]

I went to the western mass sacred harp festival today! Where you able to go?

yes! it was very good

[incendavery]

Just curious, what are Squirrel’s pronouns? :)

they/them generally, though they also like to be called she/her sometimes! as a treat :)

[incendavery]

Am obligated to tell you that your nickname, Ven, means "friend" in Danish c:

aw hey really!! that's so cute... thank you for telling me!

[incendavery]

That last comic includes the loss meme in the upper right, could you please tag it?

[incendavery]

Can we have pictures of all of the resident plushies? If you want to? :0

from left to right, we have the lil bug that @tj-crochets made (yet unnamed), marie the cat, autumn the squishmallow, and blossom the bulbasaur!! also my adorable plushroom (plushie mushroom), which was made by creepycactuscurio on instagram.

[incendavery]

What does your blog title mean?? It’s been running around in my head for weeks.

it’s a line from my favorite book, maurice by e.m. forster!

forster, who was gay, wanted to write a love story about a gay man that ended happily. the fact that the book did end happily made it completely unprintable. the book was written by forster in the 1910s, but wasn’t published until after his death in the 1970s.

the line that i took my blog title from appears at the end of a chapter describing the heteronormative love maurice’s former boyfriend has found with his new wife. meanwhile, maurice is struggling with how lonely and alienated he feels.

[image text: They loved each other tenderly. Beautiful conventions received them—while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart, and his arms full of air.]

[incendavery]

Is your partner on tumblr?

yes! they’re over at @fuckaspunk 💜✨

[incendavery]

One of your drawings got on the login/signup page the other day!

i saw!! how exciting :0

[incendavery]

So I'm curious. With your love of musicals, which one do you hold as your favorite? For me personally, it's Wicked.

ooooh that’s tough!! ok ok ok hm. my top three of all time would have to be:

- Cats

- Wicked

- Bat Boy: The Musical

but! honorable mention to three more i��ve listened to nonstop in recent years:

- Les Miserables

- Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812

- Heathers: The Musical

fun fact, this list is also roughly in chronological order of me getting into them!

if you want to know more about my thoughts on individual musicals, i’ve published posts about various ones in my ‘#musicals’ tag

[incendavery]

Hey sorry if you get this a lot but I wanted to ask what kind of paper you use for your marker stuff? I like drawing with markers but I get a lot of bleed through. Thanks for your time! Have a good day!

i use mix media paper! special marker paper exists, but i haven’t tried it.

if you’re using alcohol based markers, they’ll basically always bleed to the other side of the page. i put a scrap page under the page i’m working with to stop it going any farther.

if you don’t want your markers to bleed, water-based markers won’t, but you’ll get a different effect and depending on the paper you use, they can eat into it if you layer them up too much

i use the side of the page with the bleed for warmups or brain dumps or notes—stuff i don’t have/want to worry about being good. i always use water-based markers or other media that won’t bleed for that part, so the drawing on the front isn’t ruined.

[incendavery]

Hi! I hope it's okay to ask but in your opinion is Cats a good musical to look up? The movie has deterred me greatly from it but I feel like I shouldn't shut it down so fast just because the new movie is rather questionable

i liked the new movie, but i’ll admit that unless you love questionable decisions that have been deeply committed to and/or already love cats the musical, it’s a hard sell

i really recommend looking up the 1998 filmed production! it has solid performances, charming costumes, and only a little racism (skip the song ‘the awful battle of the pekes and the pollicals’ to avoid)

there is a chance you just aren’t on board with the premise of ‘a bunch of talking cats introduce themselves in a series of loosely connected vignettes, then one of them gets reincarnated,’ and if that’s the case then probably cats the musical just straight up isn’t for you. but if that sounds ok, i recommend giving it a shot!

[incendavery]

can we find your music anywhere?

i just put a recording of the houseshow we played on youtube, and we also have a bandcamp with a couple songs.

[incendavery]

i cant stop thinking about happy spanxgiving i have to know if it was a true event that happened

word for word!

[incendavery]

I want you to know I literally brought your bingo card with me when I saw Cats and I am so hype to hear your opinions on it

i’m so excited to hear that! (i wonder if you got a bingo? it’s possible, but many of the squares are subjective, so not everyone will)

it’ll take a bit, since i have other stuff to do (and i don’t want to post spoilers too soon) but i’ll be doing a video discussing my bingo card and my opinions on the movie, so look forward to that i guess??