Just sort of in general I am exhausted. I know I put on a brave face a lot, but the hate does get to me. The constant unceasing hatred both offline and online gets to me. I'm human idk what to say. Been thinking a lot about the Bilbo quote, I might be paraphrasing, "I feel like too little butter spread across too much toast."
It's pride month, I should be feeling happy right? I convocated finally after a brutal long degree I should be feeling happy right? I like how my body looks for the first time in my life shouldn't I feel happy?
And I know that's not helpful, that feelings are not a should thing. And yet I feel it anyway :/. Not that I do not feel happy, I would say on average I am better than I have been at any other point in my life. But it does get to me.
I was invited to dinner with a former family member, a blood relative that breached every boundary I placed and even went so far as to accost me in a public space. It's hard watching someone lose all love for you the more you become yourself. Being told I'm an embarrassment to my parents by creeps online stings a lot more now that I had a blood relative say it to my face while aggressively yanking my jacket so I couldn't get away. I know its a lie, I know that this person saying that hurt my parents as much as it did me. Alas, anxiety rarely responds to facts or evidence.
Everytime it feels like I'm fine and over it; this person manages to weasel their way around boundaries to fuck up my mental health for a week. And the thing about chronic illnesses like mine is they flare up quite horrendously when you get stressed and anxious. Anxiety means waking up to acid burnt throat from reflux.
It makes my voice dysphoric all day.
I think deep down one of my greatest fears is that I am unlovable, that everyone around me secretly hates me and is just waiting for the excuse to finally be rid of interacting with me. I am terrified that I am a burden. Mortified by the false belief that I am broken.
Despite how horrific my childhood adolescence and some of my early adulthood were, my family was at least a safe place. I recognize that I was privileged to have that. With that said I think the reason this whole thing has rocked me so much is that it violated that one last place I felt safe. It has made me doubt the love of those I never thought I would.
Sometimes transphobia feels like drowning, and if you try to swim for air everyone decides to shove you further down cause actually it's proof you are faking needing breath.
I text someone anytime I go run errands, just to make sure someone knows. Had too many experiences of hate. I get anxious when I go to get groceries; will this be the time I get hit by a vehicle driven by a far right transphobe, am I going to get called a slur again, will the store staff get suspicious of me and search through all my groceries to make sure I actually paid for it. But please, tell me how I don't know what its like to be oppressed. When men sexually harass, catcall, creepily hit on, follow me around clearly I am not at all experiencing sexism. Obviously the real worst thing in the world is that women "cancel" people on the internet, and trans people exist. Did they think sending me hateful articles would suddenly make me go "oh yes clearly its all in my head, please genocide my community, I stand for nothing and have the moral backbone of a slug."
I don't really know why I'm writing this, I dont usually feel or desire to express something like this publicly. I will probably delete it later. Maybe I disappear into writing cause its easier to deal with the feelings that way. That at least then someone gets something out of my pain. That maybe it helps to condense emotional mountains to the mole hills of short strokes of a pen or presses of a key. To let them explode outward in a flurry of thoughts and words that others look at and say "I too have felt this, you are not alone, you are not wrong for feeling this way."
Anything to take the weight of it all off my chest for a second.
Because I am tired.
I'm exhausted really.
I don't want to be brave or strong or resilient. It's tiring to bear the weight of that and a billion projections. Atlas does not bear the heavens upon his shoulders because he is strong or brave. He bears it because he has no other choice. Because people put it on him.
I just want to exist; that is apparently too much to ask for as a trans woman.
If you are concerned, please don't worry I'll be fine, I was fine every other time after all. This too shall pass. But right now it hurts.
And I have had my fill of hurt for many lifetimes.
alright kit one voice of the paranoid pretty please with cherry on top 🥺
(Thank you for re-sending this ask, IDK why Tumblr hated my last attempt so much-- 🥺💕)
HELL YEAH MY #1 BLORBINA!!!!!
First impression
Haha, okay, that vocal delivery is great and I love that paranoia of the "what if He hears us?" followed by "shit!" Paranoid characters can be really hit-or-miss, though, and this particular shtick could get old really fast; I hope it doesn't.
Impression now
My favorite darling who I love and adore, my most beloved of current blorbos, the reason my STP hyperfixation is so so strong, bird of my heart 💖
Favorite moment
This is such a hard call! I'm especially torn between two moments: Of course the initial "Heart. Lungs. Liver. Nerves." is amazing and holds a special place in my heart because it's the moment I knew I absolutely adored her. But also, despite loving absolutely everything about both the Wraith and the Moment of Clarity and the transitions into both of them… "Oh right, yeah, fuck this guy. Don't trust Him." all by itself makes me love freeing the Nightmare in her Chapter II just as much. (Not that there aren't other great lines in that path, like the delivery of "I thought you needed me to run the autonomic nervous system?" which is just hysterical to me! But that line… It just won me over even more.)
As an honorable mention, let me pour one out for the cut Paranoid moment in Apotheosis:
I carry this moment, and Paranoid's thoughts about listening to others' lies having value, in my heart forever. It's just such an interesting touch and I'm incredibly sad it's gone!
Idea for a story
I have so many unbaked, half-formed idea snippets and NO details to go with them:
Paranoid running into trouble when her overpreening habits leave her without the ability to fly in a key situation, when she'd been able to (with increasing difficulty) up to that point since getting out of the Construct.
The world outside the Construct being some post- or mid-apocalypse survival horror situation and somehow Paranoid's body winds up warping in ways that remind her unpleasantly of Nightmare, primarily a bunch of eyes beginning to open up all over her body, especially her wings.
Either post-Construct or a mundane AU, bird-people or human or just human-looking, where Paranoid figures out she's trans (and slowly gains in confidence) due to drag.
Something that explores the idea of the beta voices actually turning into some of the current voices (Doubting becoming Skeptic, Flinching becoming Cheated, Meek becoming Paranoid, and Obsessed becoming either Stubborn or both Hunted and Stubborn -- and Smitten splitting off from the beta's Hero too actually!). I actually do really like the idea of the beta voices being their own individual people out there somewhere, but Paranoid reverting to Meek for a while under some circumstance could be fun to play with! And only Hero, Broken, Cold, and Contrarian would even possibly remember Meek…
Unpopular opinion
Paranoid really is not helpless and I think some people forget that sometimes! She's also got wonky morals. I'd argue that the voices you can get in other voices' Chapter IIIs often says something about them; while getting Paranoid in Apotheosis is more her going "That's Enough" and getting Skeptic in both Eye of the Needle and Den is kind of the same, the way Cold and Opportunist both show up in Wraith-from-Nightmare feels more… simpatico with how Paranoid operates? Paranoid can be fucking ruthless and also seize any opportunity she spots, especially if she doesn't trust a person (and the only people she trusts are the Long Quiet and the other voices).
She is also totally willing to abandon or murder a woman and the only one she seems to feel at all bad about at any point to any degree is the Wounded Wild. She's also also super dedicated to coming out unharmed and surviving, but she will do things like advise slitting our own throat when she thinks it's a good idea, and she is prone to panic but also remarkably self-aware about it and knows her own paranoid tendencies aren't always good, and both of those things can be easy to forget but I love them!
Finally, I want to note that people sometimes seem to forget that she doesn't actually get along as badly with Opportunist as you'd think she might! Maybe it's because when you get Opportunist in Wraith, it's specifically via doing exactly what Paranoid is advising (or would advise) you to do in that situation. Cheated and even Hero are more snippy with and disparaging of Opportunist -- even Smitten is to some degree -- and Paranoid is more snippy with Hero and Broken, and Skeptic is the one who seems most disparaging of her. The dynamics being different from what you might think fascinates me, really, and I'm curious about how both new and old dynamics might end up looking in the Pristine Cut.
Favorite relationship
I MEAN…
Much like last time, romantically speaking I love her dynamic with Cold. But platonically, I'm fascinated by her dynamics with Broken, Opportunist, and the Narrator, love her dynamic with Hero, and would be interested to see more (or any) of her dynamic with Hunted, Skeptic, and/or Smitten in the Pristine Cut.
Among the vessels, I also think she'd have interesting dynamics with Damsel, Prisoner, Spectre, Stranger, and Thorn, and would actually love to see more of her dynamic with Nightmare, Wild, and Wraith. (Looking forward to those new Chapter IIIs, too, and I'm very curious about the expanded Apotheosis chapter!)
Favorite headcanon
Well, hands down my favorite headcanon is transfem Paranoid!
But I am also super attached to her having major difficulties with getting her own body: She overpreens to the point of not being able to fly, she has all sorts of trouble sleeping (nightmares, night terrors, insomnia, even sleepwalking), and worst of all she has a harder time trusting the others to the same extent that she used to, at least at first. They're still parsing as us but they're also parsing as other and it fucks with her a bit. She also can panic due to not being able to protect the others or sense the pain/injury/illness/etc. of the others the way she'd have been able to if they still shared a body...
Like, overall she does like having her own body, it's quieter and she has more control over herself, but there's a lot that's difficult about it for her too.
Long-ass story short: She said she always intended Dumbledore to be gay, but only didn't write into the books because it was not necessary to that particular plot. People understood and cheered.
Then she started revealing OTHER "bonus information that didn't make it to the books" through the years. They started out reasonable enough, but it soon became clear that Rowling was just making that shit up as she went along, to get more praise and attention in a quick way instead of actually sitting down and writting new material.
Eventually she DID started writting, or at least approving, of new stuff, like "The Cursed Child" play, or the Fantastic Beasts movies. The receptions were mixed to put it VERY kindly, and worse yet, Fantastic Beasts had a controversy regarding Rowling seemingly not understanding that women can sexually abuse/coerce men - something that was already a big issue in the original Harry Potter books, but it no longer got the pass of "It was a different time."
One of those movies would be centered around Dumbledore and his falling out with his evil boyfriend - yet the script was not going to acknowledge that they were indeed a couple, even though it was relevant to the plot this time, so it basically confirmed to people that "Dumbledore is gay" was just bullshit she made up at the last second to get praised as being a super progressive writer, aka queerbaiting. To make it worse, Rowling acted like people asking for canon confirmation that Dumbledore was gay could only possibly mean that they wanted sex scenes in the film, even though they were only saying "If he really is in love with this dude, let him say it. That's literally a key aspect of his conflict in this story."
To make matters even worse, during all of this, Rowling also decided to go full TERF/Radfem mode:
Any criticism of her, no matter how mild or valid? She'd call it misogyny.
Trans person existing? Treated like walking, living, breathing rape-threats. But no comment on TERFs literally spying and sometimes filming people in the bathroom "just to make sure they're not secretly trans" and TOTALLY not because they're creeps.
(And she'd also not comment on how some of her TERF buddies were doing insane shit like "claiming/exposing/harrassing" famous people like Daniel Radcliffe, aka the guy that played Harry Potter himself and that Rowling knew since he was a little kid, for "secretly being trans" for stuff like "being too short/tall for their supposed gender").
People getting uncomfortable with how she continued to not so subtly double-down on "Women cannot be abusive/predators, that's exclusively a guy thing"? Yelled at for "demonizing women" instead of "calling out the patriarchy."
Finally, her TERF buddies also started putting her on a pedestal for being "one of them", doing shit like claim no other woman EVER had any success as a writer. People were already no longer comfortable praising her for her real accomplishments after the shitshow she had turned into over the years, so you can bet that they were NOT okay with acting like women like Mary Shelly, ya know, the one who literally wrote Frankenstein nearly two centuries before Harry Potter was created, didn't exist or weren't important just because some truly vile people wanted to kiss Rowling's ass and she continued to let them be vile because she liked having her ass kissed.
So yeah, reminder: FUCK JK ROWLING AND ALL HER TERF BULLSHIT! Now excuse me while I wait for the inevitable angry asks from Radfems calling me a pick-me, porn-addicted "fmoid" brainwashed by the patriarchy.
I LOVE BEING TRANS!!! I LOVE SEEING THE WORLD IN ITS SPECTRUM OF COLOUR AND BEING FREE TO EXPRESS MYSELF HOWEVER I WANT!!! I LOVE THAT I CAN EXPLORE MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY FREE OF RESTRICTIONS!!!!! I LOVE THAT I'M PART OF SUCH AN ACCEPTING COMMUNITY!!!! I LOVE BEING TRANSGENDER!!!!
honestly the only thing keeping me going through this bullshit is being friends with so many freaky trans people i feel like talking to other trans people is the only thing that keeps me sane sometimes
Had a really stupid conversation via minor emotional breakdown with a queer friend about what makes an LGBTQ person 'assimilist'. From what she said I'm kind of forced to draw the conclusion 'if you say you're not assimilist, then you're not'.
Apollo with thick eyebrows and freckles and body hair is my truth. He's a small tank also. Wide. He works out bc 1: he does not want to ever be called a twink and 2: it helps with stress and God knows he is STRESSED. Oh also he's trans. Also when his hair is un-gelled it looks almost exactly like trucy's, his lil bunny ears curl around his face all cute and he hates it which is why he gels it back so aggressively
ppl who like making friends solely with one-note cardboard boxes who will hang out with them when it's convenient and never open up about who they are as people and what their lives are like dni
how to stop thinking any good thing someone says to you (like compliments or being proud of you or other positive expressions such as these) is a lie just to be polite or bc they're biased and thus can't judge you work and your being objectively bc they love you. asking for a friend
thank u to the person who called me a "transtrender" and said i'm faking it and not queer enough and learned about queerness through tiktok etc etc. all because i made the absolutely fucking buck wild claim that we should let bi lesbians live their lives in peace. wow
i am out as trans in a mostly just. silent but understood way. in the sense that my boss was told my Status by my partner (weird situation) and has never once questioned or talked to me about it. and he just uses the right pronouns confidently 100% of the time when speaking to others and just expects everyone to catch up. and that’s great and nice of him. and im glad i am not misgendered by the person im interacting with the most and that matters the most to me. but going to these fucking events and doing meetings with other people outside of our company where im involved fucking sucks so bad
i feel like not being out and being misgendered is so much more bearable than you are out to a select few who are respectful but you must then endure others misgendering you in front of them. fucking infuriating i can’t handle this. i hate attempting to pass in a business setting. id rather eat my own eyeballs but what else can you do when this pays the bills