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another one????????

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Ain't nothing like turning to your coworker to ask what they're making and hearing them say "piranha solution".

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I need to be more disciplined starting tomorrow

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i stopped the dental technician while he was applying fluoride to ask what the fuck the flavour was supposed to be. And he was like oh I was wondering that too. It says it's walterberry.

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cmon stoned butch blues. please laugh 🩵💙

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instagram: cheri.png

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Gus, 2007

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if chapter 4 did anything its that it reminded me how zooted she is for the lizard

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FUCKING YOU OVER AGAIN AND AGAIN

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A Transition

Okay. Deep breath. Here we go.

I started Shapeshifters when I was 28. It was the spring of 2014, we were at a Transgender Tipping Point, and I wanted a binder covered in scales. I had been trans and out for two years and I felt right. I felt queer. I felt like an alien: beastly, monstrous, fantastical. Powerful. I connected with other queer and trans people feeling similar ways. I wanted to give them my best feelings; I wanted them to feel what I felt when I put on my homemade blue-scaled binder.

Tomorrow I will turn 40. It's 2025, and putting on a binder feels more like armor. Like protection. Like: this is a container that holds who I am, still, always. Like: I am connected to my queer folk. I am connected to my found family and my greater community and to over twelve thousand people who we have clothed with binders just like these.

Shapeshifters has borne my partner and I through eleven years. We got married, moved to our dream town, bought a house, had a child. I have put everything into this enterprise and it has given me everything back. I am so grateful for this job and this career and this life.

And I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to begin a new career, to make a few large changes in my life for my own mental health. Somehow, by luck as much as hard work, this company grew out of the aether, and, honestly... it's outgrown me. I never really meant to run a business, or employ people, or manage a supply chain. It just sort of happened along the way. I've done my best with it, I've made it what it is. And I know that someone with a different kind of energy and organizational capacity and drive could make Shapeshifters into so much more.

So, this is my notice! I am selling Shapeshifters.

Not right away, and not to just anyone. I want to hand this company over to someone who will do right by it; who will keep it as this local, community-focused business known for customization, acessibility, and genuinely compassionate customer service.

We are the high-end tailored option for a highly niche market. We need someone who knows the field and can bring love to the work. Preferably someone who is near or can relocate to southern Vermont. We need someone who can manage a small team, who can approach every week as a new challenge, who can organize tasks and processes on multiple levels.

We have helped thousands upon thousands of people go out into the world as their authentic selves! It's wild. It's wonderful. It's fulfilling. And, sometimes, it's a lot of finicky detail work involving layers of spreadsheets, pattern math, hands-on sewing, and machine repair. Sometimes it's road trips to Pride festivals and sometimes it's filing taxes. All this too is part of the work.

If that's the kind of work you want to be doing, reach out to me. Shoot me an email at eli@shapeshifters.co with the subject line 'Biz Transition' and let's talk. Tell me about yourself and what you want and what you can do. I'm open to all the financing options. I would love to train the right person from scratch and seller-finance a long-term sale.

If you know someone who you think would be a good fit, please send them my way. We have relied upon word-of-mouth from the very beginning, and I suspect that's how we'll find our new showrunner going forward.

So. Do you want to run an established, successful business that pays trans people to make things for trans people?

Hit me up.

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heyyyy lostwave community. does anyone know what this song is called. please this has been bothering me for at least 2 years

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anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

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o,o