Today's Gender Realization: As A Kid I Was Teased When I Acted Like A Girl AND When I Acted Like A Boy.

today's Gender Realization: as a kid i was teased when i acted like a girl AND when i acted like a boy. teased when my hair got long, teased for playing in the sand, teased for going down the "wrong" toy aisle, teased for going down the RIGHT toy aisle, what do you want from me??

as i grew older it only got more complicated: i had very few role models in my life outside of TV, which often depicted men as violent, women as temptresses, and positive qualities as punchlines.

and, ugh, my parents explained NOTHING about puberty. it was all just more teasing!

multiply all that by autism and is it any wonder that my gender identity was so repressed? that i started at nonbinary because i was so confused by everything and everyone?? that even now i worry my boy feelings are """toxic""" and my girl feelings are """lustful"""???

it's only as an adult that i've seen positive reflections, depictions, and discussions of gender in my life… and they're all queer.

every. single. one.

(i could say the same for relationships, honestly…)

I'm Sky now!

Hi everyone! In light of coming out as genderfluid, I have a big announcement: I'm changing my name! You may remember me as WillWare, but from now on, I go by Sky ✨

*crickets*

What, is that not news? Okay, so maybe I've been putting off writing this post for a bit... *sigh* like a few months. But, as always, I wanted to do more than just say that I have a new name. In this post, I'd like to talk about why I changed my name, and what the future of my identity looks like.

Of course, changing my name is not a decision I made lightly. To be totally honest, I didn't want to give up WillWare at all! It's a great name, I've built up quite an identity around it, and changing my username literally everywhere on the web is a daunting process. Why go to all that trouble when I already like what I have?

The reason for this is twofold, and the first... is that "Will" makes me feel boxed in to being a guy. It's a traditionally male name, and as a genderfluid person, I want the freedom to feel like a guy or like a girl. Even back when all I knew is that I was nonbinary, I still had this issue; I tried going by any pronouns even back then, but I was only ever referred to as "he," and didn't even feel comfortable referring to myself as anything else!

When I came out as genderfluid, I remembered a name I had been kicking around since college: "Sky." It felt right, but I still wasn't sure – so I tried changing my name in a private Discord server, and that's when it clicked: This is my name. This is who I've always wanted to be. As much as I still love my old name, it's time to become something new.

For the record, I'm not getting rid of my old name; you can continue to call me Will or Sky and it's totally cool. In fact, I'm keeping Will as my middle name! But Sky is more accurate to who I am, and it's the name I will use for myself going forward.

The other reason I'm changing my name isn't as much about gender, but rather, identity... "WillWare" made me feel boxed into being a brand. This is at least partly my own fault for trying to build myself into a brand in the first place; even so, something definitely felt impersonal about it. This was fine back when I didn't quite know what my gender was yet (and I even leaned into it on some occasions), but I often felt like I was only a presence on the internet, rather than a person.

"Sky," meanwhile, is just my name – it's just me! And in a crucial time of my transition, where it's helping me feel more like a person than ever before (even IRL!), calling myself by just my name helps make it more concrete, more real.

Of course, I'm still a graphic designer at heart, and I love making fancy branding – that's not going anywhere. So my look is transitioning, too, to align with my new name! It's been slow going, but here's a sneak peek:

I'm not yet sure what else I want to do with it, but I do know that I even want to make this more personal than before, too. As such, this leans into the genderfluid color scheme, and makes the letter motif more obvious than with my old W. I'm excited to experiment with this and see where it takes me!

Until my new look is done, I've been using pictures of my OC Rivers for my social media (who I also want to talk about here soon!) – and, honestly, having a face instead of a hexagon has made me feel even more like a real person on the web. Maybe I'll even stick with that for a while... So as a parting gift, let me illustrate this with what may be my best tweet of all time – one that perfectly summarizes my feelings on my gender at present:

Thanks as always for reading!

Get The Bananas, Rivers 🍌

Redraw of my winter pfp of Rivers!

Turns out drawing bigger helps way more than I thought it would, hehe~ ✨

Rivers is ready to party 🎲

i don't usually give my depression enough credit for how much it affects me, but this week it's kicking me in the teeth. couldn't even get through a game night with bae without collapsing into a crying heap like an hour in.

objectively speaking, my life is better than it's been in at least the last ten years, possibly ever. yet, i'm struggling to appreciate it, because depression sucks the life out of me.

i just want to enjoy things again!!!

this depressive episode will probably let go of me in a few days, as they usually do, but it's always a background process in the back of my head. i need to give it the attention and care it deserves, instead of constantly forgetting it exists.