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early morning ramblings

It’s in these dark and quiet moments where I truly miss the comfort of my friends. The ones I’m really close to. The ones who I I’m (apparently) comfortable enough with to fall asleep next to. It’s these moments where it’s just me and my thoughts. They’re so loud, so convincing, that I have to restrain myself from (as you would say) “doing something stupid”. It would be so easy. That used to scare me y’know. It doesn’t anymore. Not much scares me anymore and that’s almost a shame. Just one step up to the ledge, and then one step off. The mental safeguards of preservation have long since been lost, Replaced by incident reports. I miss my friends hugs, but distance is the right thing to do at the moment.

23:28 on a rainy Wednesday night

Normally heavy rain helps me think

(for a while it did tonight)

But now the container’s burst

Emotions I thought buried

Rising from the dirt

Like some rotten fruit.

I was doing better

I could hold a smile and mean it

I was thinking about eating properly

(As if I had the money for food)

So close to being able to claim recovery

Or at least the start of it

Instead I decompose

My mind slipping like spoilt meat from the bone

Landing with a wet splat at my feet

(it makes the same noise I think would)

I don’t want to worry you

you’ve got your own weight to carry

I don’t want your concern

Let me just be your happy girl

I dont want your sympathy

You’re doing better so should leave me behind

I thought I was nearly happy

But this feels like coming home

I take off my hat and coat

Unlace my boots

Sharpen the knife

Wishing to slip it between my ribs

Pierce my heart

(you’d know the right spot)

It would hurt, but what’s a little pain,

Compared to the festering wound

Called being me ?

I’m sorry for admitting this here instead of in person

Sometimes I cannot wait for the point where everyone will go off to uni/jobs/further life and I’ll finally be given the space to die.

musical stormclouds

Going back to being suicidal 

Is like waiting for a shit beat drop

You can feel it coming,

In some unexplained way, 

Storm clouds on the horizon

Creeping ever closer 

Trying to hold it back

Only prolongs the outcome

As music changes 

I start to say goodbye 

Ticking off the letters I need to write

And fulfilling obligation.

slippery dreams

Raining again

The brick is slippery

Under my feet

Blown towards

Away

Towards

The edge

I can’t help but wonder

What blood pooling with rain

Really looks like

I know it’s morbid

But I find a strange satisfaction 

In picturing the fall

The crunch of bone on concrete 

Nothing to be done at all

A strange dream

If only it was just a dream

The rain on my face 

Is just as real as the drop

eulogy

The hourglass is running dry

The lifeboat is losing air

The cloak is out of battery

I think I’m all prepared

Goodbyes written already

(But there’s an hour or so to refine)

One last hug at the station

Maybe that was the start of this decline

I have no promises holding onto me

No obligations to fulfill 

Maybe I should catch a train

But that would inconvenience others

The bath isn’t deep enough

And I don’t want to leave it stained

Instead I’ll fly

Free from everything

For a few beautiful moments

The last time I tried

I had over 10 missed calls

From the space of 10 minutes

I wonder how many I’ll have

After I succeed

last call at the coffin-wood bar

Stuck in another fucking limbo

Nothings ever black and white

Just a murky state of grey

Trash rags waiting to be thrown away

Life’s funny like that sometimes

The old adage “death and taxes”

In reality it’s love and death

Both assured in unequal measures

Soothing shadow and blinding light

Holding onto to what I have

While trying to wrench free from your grasp

Life is pain to those too afraid to live it

So raise a glass of bleach in cheer

For a life so full of suffering 

Cheers to the ones who lessened it

Cheers to the ones still holding on

Cheers to the ones with a knife in my back

Drink it down in one and call for another

I never could handle my li(fe)quor

Crying wolf

I’m so fed up with maybe

And they must be too

So tired of the constant stress

Even if it isn’t real

Wish I could choose one way or the other

Take the high road or keep living 

Instead of having a foot on each

It’s not bravery required

Not this far past the first time 

Just need a quiet hour

Maybe some determination

Give me an inch 

I’ll make it last a mile

Tying nooses as a hobby 

Going to hell with a smile

Funny how I can be so open

As long it’s a bloody poem

But try and talk in person ?

Rarely

Something in the way

Even the most solid smile drops

When you admit that, yeah

6ft of rope is more than enough

perfect descriptions

Apathetic is such a poignant word 

It rolls lazily off the tongue 

The “ah” is forced out

Followed reluctantly

By the other syllables

Perfectly encompassing 

The weight such an emotion brings 

The desire to reach out to heal

Is crushed by the weight of uncaring

So much easier to step off

Than to pick up the phone

So much easier to use the knife

Than to send a message

Wholly apathetic

Reblogging this just to increase visibility along with adding a few extra thoughts to this.

If Tosteur or Sunny wishes for me to delete this post then I will happily do so! Please check tags for more rambles lolol.

I mentioned previously that I had gone on an alt account to have a conversation about Zeteroxx and Fey's accusations. Our conversation got a bit heated, but one of the main things I had asked Zeteroxx about is its goal with the constant harassment of my friends. It had clearly stated that it wanted Tosteur and Sunny to 'go to therapy and they would be allowed to come back when they are different people'. There are a few issues with this: it's not up to Zeteroxx or Fey to decide if someone's changed, they have gone way beyond a reasonable and polite solution and instead started asking people to harass and block my friends without clearly stating that they just want Tosteur and Sunny to take a break just to go to therapy, Zeteroxx and Fey aren't privy to the information to see if the parties they've already started accusing are already in therapy or if they have looked into therapy, and also some kids online don't really get to make the call that someone 'needs therapy'. I personally think therapy is beneficial to everyone but trying to diagnose someone mentally unwell(or whatever they are trying to convey by their accusations) as someone who is not a trained professional can be quite damaging.

Also, while Zeteroxx or Fey are now deliberately trying to sabotage Tosteur and Sunny's relationships it kinda goes beyond 'spreading the word'. It is harassment. Not to mention making entire block lists of people who side with the two accused and posting it as a threat to add more people or using the overhanging threat of yourselves blocking them. At this point you are trying to scare people into siding with you.

This has already been brought up. But it's not up to Fey to decide if people are allowed to be a certain person or align with a certain identity. Fey left Tosteur's server because they got into a disagreement with Sunny. Fey made a comment saying that someone they used to know likely was lying about their sexuality because they were a bad person and Sunny called Fey out saying that Fey doesn't get to make those accusations because that is invalidating part of someone's identity. Fey said 'i know when im not wanted' and then left the server with Zeteroxx. Two weeks later the hate posts started coming up. Now, Fey is trying to invalidate Sunny's identity saying that they won't call them the name Sunny because 'Sunny' is a fictive and not the person fronting. Plus the constant use of wrong pronouns when on the server and now after they've left.

I'm not saying anyone involved was blameless. Multiple people have made mistakes in this situation, including myself. But there's a clear difference between people who are using popular Omori creators to constantly spread their hate and people who are trying to just take the hate. Tosteur hasn't lashed back or done anything to aggravate any of you guys after that situation! Why do you feel the need to be lurking on the page of the guy you blocked and screenshot his posts just to post a picture to your following and encourage people to drive Tosteur off the platform??? That's not a decent-person thing to do???

Putting harder to read things below the 'read more'. This mentions Zeteroxx's accusations against myself and a few other people regarding their mental state when they were on the server and mentions of taking ones life. Please proceed with caution.

When I tried to confront Zeteroxx on my alt account it accused me of 'making it almost commit' along with hurling those accusations to the other accused and people in that server. I do not plan on invalidating it's feelings but it is extremely important to make some points clear.

First of all, after breaking the rules on its first day, I offered to help Zeteroxx in DMs so it would not continue breaking the rules on the server(spoiler alert: it kept breaking the rules on the server). My thought process in offering to help it is that I was the oldest person on the server and I thought that the responsibility should naturally fall to me to make sure that Zeteroxx was okay and other people weren't being made uncomfortable. A few days into talking to Zeteroxx in DMs I realized that I truly had no clue what I was doing and started feeling more and more uncomfortable as I felt my own mental health taking a toll so I told Zeter that I didn't feel comfortable DMing it anymore and offered different online resources that would have people better suited and trained to help people. I also offered to help it find alternate resources if the current ones did not work.

Zeteroxx told me that those kinds of resources just don't really work for it and then proceeded to continue ruminating on the server. At that point I only kept my conversations with it public and did not respond anytime it attempted to DM me.

My next point is that while several people can influence a choice, no human can truly make anyone commit. It sounds cruel to say that, but my point is that Zeteroxx is placing all of the blame for its mental health onto other people very publicly in a way to hurt them. It hurts a lot to have an accusation like that made against you and while I understand that it may be upset with Sunny or I, it's not necessarily correct or fair to place us as the pure blame. There are a lot of factors that tie into decisions that impactful, and for someone to be held as the sole reason can take a large mental toll.

Also, its ideation of committing was brought up on its first day in the server. Zeteroxx has been blaming Tosteur and other server members for everyone excluding it and ignoring it, but there were no such conversations like that. Likely, the two reasons people wouldn't always respond to Zeteroxx's message is because 1) most of the server is in an entirely different time zone and could be in school or sleeping when the message was sent or 2) people just didn't know how to connect with Zeteroxx and felt uncomfortable when being in a conversation when the other party started spiraling. There was no consensus for everyone to ignore specific members of the server, people are just allowed to have conversations with who they wish. And we aren't going to make anyone have conversations with someone either.

I apologize if this comes across as harsh, but it was of my opinion that it would be best to be blunt about my thoughts on this subject because this situation has hurt multiple people. And even though the people accused keep trying to ignore and just let Zeteroxx and Fey be angry, the hate posts haven't necessarily been going away.

Making this post because I am so incredibly tired of all this bullshit, with all the stress me and my friend went through.

TW Drama

It's been almost two months, and i've been isolated, under the pretext that I'm a harasser and that I've manipulated and bullied two former members of my server. 

My friend already clarified this on his response post on his now inactive alt, but this is not true. I have almost never talked to Zeteroxx in DMS, and when I did, it was me checking if it was okay after it felt bad after a roleplay session. On the server, i've always been respectful. All I did was reminding it and Fey to respect the rules, which they were both constantly breaking. Venting, bringing out dramas, constantly despite my warnings. I have tried to be understanding, and most of the time I would just brush off their behaviour even when it made several members uncomfortable. Venting is not allowed on this server, and while I understand they'd want a safe space to vent to, it shouldn't have been here. People from the server did want to help it by making a venting group. People were not harassing Zeteroxx.

It got upset when Theoku stated he felt uncomfortable at the idea of Zeteroxx seeing his content. That's it.

Fey did have disagreements with members of the server but again, it was always respectful, and members were always understanding of Fey's past experiences. Their disagreements with Theoku were resolved in DMS and were not heated. At all. Not in any way was it harassment. Theoku had always been trying to be respectful as well.

And again, the proshipper allegations are baseless. Just because I drew my Basil|Stranger character wearing a crop top and flirting with Sunny. They're both 17, and even then, there was nothing sexual about this. It is just a teenager wearing a crop top. What is wrong with you people. And since it is now used as Fey's main argument against us, I find it concerning. They seem to care way more about a drawing they don't like than the actual person who has been hurt. 

It is valid from Zeteroxx not to feel good after someone clearly said they don't like it, in a moment where it was in a very bad headspace and struggling. But I do condemn the constant harassment from their side.  The amount of posts they've been making on us and telling my mutuals and friends to block me is harassment. I have received asks that were clearly the results of those posts. And talking to the artists I've interacted with to "warn them about us", making a bunch of call out posts is a hate campaign. Fey, what you're doing is harassment, and it's not helping anyone. All it's doing is hurting every party involved. I am not happy about losing mutuals, potential friends. I am not happy about seeing all the hard work I've put on this blog crumble.

Fey was the one who had been horribly disrespectful, misgendering Theoku and using the wrong name despite his constant reminders; while insisting on using the right pronouns for you, which we had been doing since the beginning. This is in no way okay. 

Explicitly refusing to use the name that Theoku gave them because “it’s clearly the host talking, not Sunny” despite Theoku clearly stating it is his name everywhere including on discord is disgusting.

I invite you to look at the posts Fey had been making "exposing us", as well as Theoku's response on his alt account ( @theokusobjection ) but you can clearly see that no significant proof was formulated that would prove us guilty of such things.

They have been accusing us while misusing extremely serious and sensitive language, with again, no concrete proof. I am not happy about the image they are painting of us, it has been impacting our mental healths very badly.

And regarding this old friend again, this should've stayed a private matter. I am deeply hurt by this as well as it was a very painful and traumatic friendship fallout. I had been avoiding this person and moving on with life, and that helped me recover from all of this, yet here we are.

I stayed silent for so long to protect myself, not to feed the drama, but I cannot take this anymore.

Original comic by Rasenth

day 5 of @podcastgirlsweek: god forbid women do anything. celebrate a female villain. defend your #problematic fave.

i am here in defense of abigail reed >:]

you guys have to here me out on this one cause i’m not 100% sure she’s classified a villain, but she is absolutely a #problematic fave okay

abigail reed is the deceased wife of solomon reed (aka the worst person ever). she took her own life, and was subsequently trapped in a fife by said terrible husband. while trapped in said fife, she was constantly screaming, which is really girlboss of her.

she did sew her son’s mouth shut and leave him to starve to death but WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES

(i’m joking, this was obviously wrong)

but!! she was clearly not well, and shouldn’t have been left alone with percy. solomon is not as responsible, but i still want to blame him for it. so i will.

also, her story (ep 40 graves - stuck on the needle) is written SO WELL

“Judgement day was past, and she had missed the rapture, and the rain burned her eyes and her soul. It was something else—invasive, a virus or a parasite, altering her. She could feel it churning within her bone marrow. She couldn’t let it, couldn’t be changed…”

BARS

“Abigail nodded, and descended quietly, brushing a hand through her son’s hair. It was funny, she thought, how much he looked like that preacher’s boy. She wrapped her arms around him, and he cried quietly, and she was not repulsed. The tears that fell from her eyes surprised her, burning like stars themselves.”

BARS!!!!

kind of the only reason she wanted solomon was because he was quiet and wasn’t annoying. and calls him a ‘funny little thing.’ which is SO REAL.

despite her upbringing and everything else, she learns to accept percy for who he is. her son, not her daughter.

she also saved riot, and didn’t kill that family.

i just really think she’s cool okay

Im just gonna assume the anon wanted to send this to someone else,but Tumblr glitched and perhaps accidentally sended it to crimew

Anyway that anon needs some hot chamomile

i can’t express how much i hate the word “slay”. stop saying it you sound absolutely fucking retarded. if you still say it today aug 14th IN 2024; you need to kill yourself, you are the reason the world has gone to shit faggot.

i think you need to calm down

he's teaching him how to play COD online

Textless ver↓↓↓

we have back grounds now bois

Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the Straights

Had a video call with my brother Chuck the other day.  Things got heavy:

KATE: Was Kurt Cobain a trans woman?

CHUCK: What?

Kurt Cobain.  Rock musician.  He was in a band called Nirvana.

I’m familiar with him, yes.

Was he a trans woman?

Um.  No?

OK.  Why not?

I mean, he wasn’t.  It’s like asking why he wasn’t an astronaut.

He wasn’t an astronaut because he never went to space.  Why wasn’t he a trans woman?

Because he didn’t transition.  I mean, he didn’t ever say he was a woman, didn’t ever say he was trans.  So no.  Kurt Cobain wasn’t a trans woman.

So someone is trans if they say they’re trans.  Self-determination.

That’s what you’ve told me.  Is that wrong?

No, that’s right.  We know ourselves better than anybody else can know us.  If we say we’re trans, nobody can say we aren’t.

And Kurt Cobain never said he was trans.

So was I trans in 1994?

I don’t know, were you?

Yes, but if you’d asked me in 1994, I would have told you “no”.

So if I tell you I’m trans, I’m trans…

Right.

But if I tell you I’m cis, I might still be trans?

If you tell me you’re cis, I believe you.

That’s not the same thing as “I’m cis”.

That’s a really good point.  This is sort of what some queer people are getting at when they say “gender is a construct”.

Come again?

Well, you’re cisgender, right?

As far as I know, yes.

Aha.

Hmmm?

You hedged.  “As far as I know” isn’t the same thing as “yes”.  “As far as I know” opens up the possibility that you could be trans and not know it.

It doesn’t seem terribly likely.

That’s an interesting statement.  Early on in transition one of the biggest problems I had was dealing with the sheer unlikelihood of my being trans.  I mean, I knew trans people existed.  I knew somebody had to be trans.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that it would be me.

Do you think this is why you’re on this whole “Kurt Cobain was a trans woman” kick?

Hey now, I’m just asking questions.  You know.  Like J.K. Rowling is “just asking questions”.

Kate, you are literally wearing a T-shirt that says “KURT COBAIN WAS A TRANS WOMAN” on it right now.

Am I?  Oh, shit.  I thought I was wearing my “Skip school, take hormones, kill God” T-shirt.  To your question, though - yeah, I do think that’s part of it.  Honestly, the hardest thing about growing up trans was believing that nobody in the world had ever experienced what I was experiencing.  I didn’t have any role models.  I didn’t wonder if I was the only one.  I was convinced of it.

So being able to say that this incredibly gifted songwriter, the voice of a generation, was a trans woman like you…

I need someone like that.  I need to not be the first of my kind.

Of course you’re not the first trans woman.

No, but before a couple of years ago almost every trans woman would tell you they always knew, unquestionably and innately, that they were women.

So it’s not just about him being trans, but specifically his being a trans woman who didn’t know he was a trans woman.

An egg.  Right.

Why Kurt Cobain, anyway?  What’s so special about him that you’re trying to induct him into the Egg Hall of Fame?

He knew things.  Things cis guys don’t know.  Things I didn’t know until after I started transition.  He understood women, what we’re like, what we experience.  “Pennyroyal Tea”.  “Rape Me”.  I just have a hard time thinking of a cis man who could write songs like that.

It wouldn’t be the only way in which he was exceptional.

True.  Ahhh.  I don’t know.  I mean, I know, I can give you all the reasons, but there’s something in his eyes.

Something in his eyes.

All the pictures of him.  No matter what he’s doing.  If he’s grinning, or sad, whatever he’s doing, you can see something trapped there.  Trapped and in pain, wanting to get out but not quite knowing how.

Huh.  You, uh, know that what you’re doing is pretty much the textbook definition of projection, right?

Maybe.  Chuck, do you think I’m happier?

Since you transitioned?

Yeah.

Of course.  Absolutely.  Night and day.

Everyone says that, and honestly, I see it.  Even in pictures, you know?  I see it.  You’ve seen some of my transition timelines, right?

You do look really different.

It’s not just me.  Every single person who transitions looks like that.  We look so much happier, so much more alive, so much more us.  I don’t understand how anybody can hate us.

I don’t get it either, Kate.

And when I look at any timelines, I look at the before photos… and I see something in their eyes.  Transmasc, transfem, doesn’t matter.  There’s something trapped wanting to get out.  Every picture I’ve ever seen of Kurt Cobain looks like the “before” picture on a transition timeline.  It’s just that with him, there aren’t any after pictures.

And it’s not just the eyes, either.  The way he dressed, the whole “grunge look”.  It’s just literally egg fashion.  We dress with total disregard for our appearance or how we look because no matter what we do it’s wrong.

“Egg fashion”, egg this, egg that… isn’t it a little bit anachronistic, judging him by 2022 standards, 2022 values?

Is it?  Chuck, I was alive in 1994.  I was an 18 year old egg.  I know what that feels like.  I know what that looks like.  I lived that.  Why didn’t I come out as trans in 1994?  Because I didn’t have the opportunity.  Because self-determination needs to be informed, and none of us were.  None of us.  Look.  You know what he said to Melody Maker in 1991?  “I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all.”  That’s what he said.

Holy shit.  Really?

Really.  September 14, 1991.

Hold on, let me look that up.  Oh, yeah, I see it.  Look, if you look at the full quote he’s just saying he’s not a jock.  Like he didn’t fit in with the jocks. 

Well, what about the dresses?

What dresses?

Kurt Cobain wore a lot of dresses.  Like, a lot, both onstage and off.  On MTV in 1991, he said “It’s ‘Headbanger’s Ball’ so I thought I’d wear a gown.”  He said in a 1993 interview, “I personally like to wear dresses.  I wear them around the house sometimes.”  This is not some shameful secret he kept hidden from the world.  He was open about this.  He was proud about this.

Yeah, but… it’s just clothes.

Except it’s not just clothes.  Listen to his songs.  Listen to his lyrics.  “Should have been a son”.  “I’m a lady, can you save me?”  “Everyone is gay.”  The original lyrics to “All Apologies” from his journals – “Boys write songs for girls.  Let me grow some breasts.”

I mean they’re song lyrics.  There are all kinds of ways to interpret song lyrics.

Sure.  All kinds of ways.  You ever read Michael Azerrad’s biography of Cobain, Come As You Are?

Nope.

Azerrad spent weeks talking to Cobain.  He was Cobain’s biographer, but also his friend.  And he has his own interpretation of the lyrics.  For instance, Azerrad talks about all the lyrics about guns, and to me, now, I look at that, and I think of how he died, but Azerrad, when Kurt was alive, he looked at it another way.  He thought it’s about dicks.  “To paraphrase Dr. Freud,” he says, “sometimes a gun is just a gun.  But not this time.”  He talks about “Come As You Are”, where Kurt keeps singing “I swear I don’t have a gun.”  That’s not my interpretation.  That’s never been my interpretation.  That’s what this cis man says.  More than one cis man.  Kurt says Dave Grohl’s dad, he said the same thing.  Yeah.  There are all kinds of ways to interpret lyrics.

“By this time,” Azerrad wrote, “one begins to wonder how Kurt rationalizes being a man at all.  His first response is revealing.  ‘I don’t know,’ he says.  ‘Castration.’”  I don’t wonder how Kurt rationalizes being a man.  I rationalized “being a man” in all kinds of ways.  What strikes me is that he needed to rationalize being a man.  Had to come up with some kind of excuse.  It just strikes me kind of funny.

Kurt’s songs have meanings.   The lyrics to “In Bloom”, Kurt was pretty explicit about that.  The lyrics he wrote have meanings.  “Heart-Shaped Box”.  You know what that refers to?  When Courtney Love was flirting with Kurt, Michael Azerrad says in Come As You Are, “She gave Dave (Grohl) a package to give to Kurt – little sea shells and miniature teacups and a tiny doll, all packed into a small heart-shaped box.”  A tiny doll locked away inside a box shaped like a heart.  That was what I felt like before I came out.  A tiny phantom doll.  Kurt and Courtney first kissed after a show at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago.  Rumor was that they fucked against the bar, but they denied it.  What actually happened, Azerrad says, is that “Courtney had a bag of lingerie with her for some reason and Kurt ended up modeling the contents.”  And then they went to Kurt’s hotel room and they fucked.

You’re making it sound…

Maybe it was.  Because you look at that and you think that if it was like that, it was perverted and wrong, because that’s what you were told, that it’s a sick fetish thing, and I look at it and it isn’t.  To me, that’s normal.  That Kurt Cobain was sexually aroused while wearing Courtney Love’s lingerie, that’s normal.

Kate, he was a punk!  He hated jocks, and wearing a dress pissed off jocks, so he wore dresses.  He talked about wanting to wear a dress and piss on a redneck A&R man’s desk!  You think that was some kind of sex thing?

Sexuality is part of being a woman.  Part.  Rage – and Kurt Cobain had a lot of rage inside him – that’s another part.  Am I interpreting, am I looking at things from my perspective as a trans woman?  Yes, certainly, just like you’re interpreting, looking at it from your perspective as a cis man.  When cis people interpret things, their conclusion is never “they were trans”.  Never.

Ed Wood wasn’t a trans woman.  He was just a transvestite.  He was a man.

Pete Burns from Dead or Alive wasn’t a trans woman.  Sure, he got all sorts of feminizing surgeries, but he never said he was a woman.  Man.

Prince Nelson adopted a female persona, feminized his voice, and recorded a song about wanting to be a woman's girlfriend, but he was also a Christian and believed that being queer was wicked and sinful, and that's the identity of his we need to respect.  Man.

Richard Wright, who wrote the Phish song “Halley’s Comet”, spent most of the 1980s telling everyone he knew he was a transsexual lesbian named Nancy, but after being consistently treated like shit changed his mind about that, so none of that counts for anything.  Man.

Dave Carter was on HRT when he died, but he was just questioning.  He didn’t tell anybody for sure that he was a woman.  Man.

Quentin Crisp said just before he died that if he was younger, he absolutely would have transitioned, but wanting to transition isn’t the same as actually transitioning.  Man.

All men.  Always, always men, whatever they do, whatever they say.  I know how that works.  I was told all these same things about myself for decades, all these same reasons, and now, I don’t know, I guess people will make a personal exception for me, but for everybody else, the same old assumptions, the same old arguments, they still apply.  They’re still legitimate.

I thought we were talking about Kurt Cobain.

And the only way to do that is to talk about him in isolation.  There’s no larger context to consider, no bigger picture.  I can’t really know.  I can’t really judge.

I mean, everybody else does.  I guess I can’t tell you not to.  But all of this circumstantial evidence, all of the dresses and the lyrics that you I guess know the real meaning of – none of that makes him a girl.

Sure.  And nothing can make him a girl.  Because he’s dead.  Because he killed himself.

Oh, here we go.  After thirty years and countless speculation, you have at last uncovered the real reason Kurt Cobain killed himself – gender dysphoria.  Do you have a book deal yet?

Working on it.  And yes, people say a lot of stupid things about Cobain’s death, like it’s this big shock that this guy who hated himself and wanted to die killed himself.

Right.  He was pretty well-known for being a heroin addict, which isn’t exactly something that improves one’s quality of life.

Sure, but why did he start heroin?

I don’t know.  Why does anybody start heroin?

To help him cope with his eating disorder.

Wait, what?  Eating disorder?

You don’t know about that?  He had stomach problems, for a long, long time.  He could only eat certain kinds of food, certain kinds of food that wouldn’t make his stomach hurt.  Doctors looked but they could never find any organic cause for it.  Nobody took it seriously.  So he self-medicated with heroin.  “It was my choice,” he told Azerrad.  “I don’t regret it at all because it was such a relief from not having stomach pain every day.”  I know, though.  Lots of cis guys have eating disorders.  Doesn’t mean anything.

Kate there’s a lot of interpreting going on here.

Yeah, I guess there is.  Is that necessarily a bad thing, though?  Is that necessarily wrong?  Like.  You’ve seen The Matrix, right?

Only the first one.

Yeah, that’s fine.  So you know how important The Matrix is to a lot of trans women, right?

Yes, but I’m not really sure why.  Just seems like a retelling of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” with extra fight scenes.

It’s pretty trans, though, right?

Clearly.  It was directed by two trans women.

And trans women who watch it – eggs or otherwise – find their own lives and experiences reflected in it in ways that cis people, like you, don’t.

I guess, but the fact that it was actually made by two trans women carries a little more weight with me.

OK, but what if the Wachowskis had died in 2000?  In, like… a car crash or something?  Does that mean The Matrix isn’t a trans film?

Well, no, because it’s still a film made by two trans women.

A film made by two trans women that speaks to the trans experience, and that is recognized by living trans women as speaking specifically to the trans experience.  The only difference is that, in this scenario, nobody knows the Wachowski Sisters are trans women.  And we can’t prove it.  We can’t possibly prove it, and nobody is going to just believe us when we say it’s a trans movie, that the Wachowskis were trans women, because they didn’t say it, they didn’t say the special magic words.  Self-determination.  You know what self-determination meant to Kurt Cobain?  I remember seeing Courtney Love on television reading his note, I remember her interrupting to say that he was an asshole, that what he was saying was bullshit.  She didn’t respect his self-determination.

Um…

“Pennyroyal Tea”.  Cobain told Azerrad “It's a cleansing theme where I’m trying to get all my bad evil spirits out of me and drinking Pennyroyal tea would cleanse that away.”  Pennyroyal is an abortifacient – but, Azerrad notes, only in lethal doses. 

Hell, not just that song.  The whole album.  In Utero.  The collage on the back cover, the one Cobain described to Azerrad as “Sex and woman and In Utero and vaginas and birth and death".  The occult symbols surrounding it, taken from Barbara G. Walker’s The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects1.  There was something inside Kurt Cobain, something inside him waiting to be born, but he was told, over and over, that it was a monster, so he killed it, the only way he could.  By killing himself.

That could have been me.  That could so easily have been me.  I was told all the same things he was.  We all were.  When I was 27?  When I was 27, I was addicted to benzos, benzos they prescribed me because I was trying to bury, trying to kill this thing, this thing I had inside of me.  I was a zombie.  Walking dead.  When I quit, I quit cold turkey.  Nobody told me about the withdrawal syndrome.  Nobody told me it could have killed me.  And if it had, everybody would remember me, everybody would think of me, as a cis man.  Forever.  They would perpetuate the Lie.  That’s why I transitioned, why I chose to go through all the shit I went through.  The writer and musician Margaret Killjoy, in 2017 she talked about what she went through the day before she came out:

“All I could think was: ‘Oh god, I don’t want to die a boy.’”2

I felt the same way, came out for the same reason.  I figured no matter what I did, I was dead.  I didn’t do it live, but to at least have an honest death.  I genuinely believed transition would kill me.

It didn’t, though!  You’re alive and you’re beautiful and I’m so, so glad for that.  It didn’t kill you.

It could have.  Still could.  Transition has helped, has made it easier­ for me, but it’s not that way with everyone.  People have been kind to me, in ways that they aren’t kind to other trans women.  Others of us… aren’t so lucky.

Who are we respecting, exactly, by remaining silent about our shared experiences, our shared perspectives, things we see that you fucking don’t, that you can’t see?  Of course I can’t prove it.  I can’t prove that I’m trans.  You can’t prove that you’re cis.  Cis people, though, cis people never have to prove anything.  Their prejudices are the null hypothesis3.  If I was to go out there and say that Kurt Cobain was a cisgender man, would anybody say I was wrong?  Would anybody object or complain?  Even though my saying that is an anachronism, is meaningless.  The word, the concept, it literally didn’t exist when Cobain died.  Have you ever heard the word “agnotology”?

No?

It means making a false claim to ignorance.  Claiming that we don’t know something that we do.  That we can’t know something that we can.  We know things now, Chuck.  We know what the symptoms of gender dysphoria are.  We know what it does to people.  How eggs think.  How eggs act.  How eggs die.  But we pretend we don’t.  We still pretend.  We pretend suicide is an individual act, even when we know it’s not, that the reasons for it are wholly personal.  We pretend that when someone dies by suicide, their reasons for doing so die with them.  And they don’t, Chuck.  We’re still dying, still dying for the same reasons Kurt Cobain did.  It’s not just that we aren’t allowed to recognize ourselves.  We aren’t allowed to recognize each other.  Individual choice or social contagion.  Those are the options we’re given.  And neither of them are right.  Neither of them are who we are.

Kurt Cobain wrote, thought, talked, died like eggs do.  I don’t care if he never said the magic fucking words.  We know our own.  We recognize each other.  And if someone is alive?  If someone is alive I will go my whole life without ever breathing a word.  Because as long as we’re alive, we do choose, and that means we can choose ignorance.  What I think, what I want, for someone else, for us, it doesn’t matter.  I do that, I follow that code, for the benefit of one person – the egg themselves.  Once they die, all bets are off.  Omerta no longer applies.  Kayfabe no longer applies.

To be queer is to be erased, to experience erasure.  I still hear straight men arguing, as if they have any right to argue, as if they know, that Emily Dickinson was not a lesbian.  Emily Dickinson!  I’m supposed to listen to people who say this shit?  I’m supposed to take them seriously when they say well, actually, calling Dickinson a “lesbian” is historically anachronistic, we can’t apply the standards of the present to the past, and Jesus fuck have you read her letters?  She liked girls.  She really liked girls.  Kurt Cobain was a trans woman.  Kurt Cobain was every bit as much a trans woman as Emily Dickinson was a lesbian.  Refusing to say it isn’t “respect”.  It’s perpetuating the crime perpetrated against Cobain, against every other trans woman who ever killed herself because of the lies we were told about ourselves.  No more.  Kurt Cobain was a trans woman.  I can’t, as an individual, say that.  I don’t have the right.  No trans woman can say that, individually.  But collectively?  All of us together?  The things we see in each other, we see those things in him too.  Not all of them, and not all of us.  Absolutely not all of us.  But enough of us.  Enough that we have the right.  We have the right, and I will fucking say it, and if you don’t like that, you can go fuck yourself.

Kate, are you ok?

I’m fine.

Do you want a hug?

Fuck you, Chuck.

OK, well.  I’m, uh.  Gonna go to the other room.  You should, uh.  Drink some water.  Stay hydrated.  Love you, Kate.

Love you too, Chuck.  Sorry.

Shhh.  It’s OK, Kate.  It’s OK.

1 Diane Purkiss criticizes the occult nature of Walker’s encyclopedia in "Women's Rewriting of Myth", in Carolyne Larrington (ed), The Feminist Companion to Mythology, London, 1992, p. 444: “In Donna Haraway's influential terms, these women may wish to be goddesses, but they are cyborgs all the same”. The work she’s referencing is Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”.  Haraway was, it happens, an academic advisor to the trans woman Sandy Stone, and her “Cyborg Manifesto” was a pivotal influence on Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto”, one of the foundational works of transgender theory.

2 Margaret Killjoy, https://birdsbeforethestorm.net/2017/06/im-not-even-going-to-try-to-pass/

3 Natalie Reed, https://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/17/the-null-hypothecis/

The Tragedy of Ashtoret, Part 2: Survival

This is a continuation of my post-mortem for my first character's journey through Baldur's Gate 3. Spoilers for the entire game lie below the cut. If you read further, I can no longer be held responsible for what gets spoiled for you.

Part 1

Part 3

Part 4

If there's one trait that defines the arc of Ashtoret's travels, it's their absolute determination to survive. Despite knowing that they had a time limit hanging over their heads, despite knowing and accepting and outright stating that if they began to Change, they would need to be put down like a rabid dog for the sake of everyone else, they were never the sort to simply lay down and die until there was absolutely no other choice.

Survival above all else. And in the wilds, as well they knew from their years traveling as a Ranger, there is no moral limit to what an animal will do when its life is threatened. When people hear they are a Ranger, they make assumptions of camping beneath the stars, hunting beasties quietly in the woods, enjoying an existence in harmony with nature only outmatched by the Druids. And it is that, all of it.

But it's also nights curled in to fresh skins still warm with blood to survive the bitter cold. Finding a family of deer and slaughtering the mother to get enough meat to last another week. Stabbing a dagger into the neck of an owlbear cub because its only life after its mother passed would be starvation and it's more merciful to end it.

Survival means using every tool you have to your advantage, including the wits and guile afforded intelligent creatures, to get out of a situation. It means playing along with all sides of a conflict until you're sure of which one you can safely antagonize, even if you despise all of them.

Ashtoret listened to all sides of the conflict at the grove. Kagha was on their shitlist for daring to imprison and likely kill a literal child with her poisonous pet, but they knew their group wouldn't survive the confrontation with the entire grove full of druids. To survive, they had to talk their way deep into the Goblin Camp, then sneak their way out with their compatriots, assassinating their foes along the way.

Survival meant not setting one damned foot towards the githyanki creche once the first meeting with their gatekeepers proved that they would seek to 'cleanse' the infection by killing, not healing. Even if Lae'zel disagreed, it wasn't worth the risk.

Survival meant that when Isobel fell unconscious and was spirited away from the Last Light Inn, every single other person in that area that was now afflicted by the Shadow Curse, had to die. That they couldn't prioritize keeping the one ally to keep her head, Jaheira, alive.

It meant playing along with the Cult of the Absolute and how their zealots might expect initiates to behave. (Even if it meant coldly ordering someone to kill themselves and watching them do it. More on that in another post.) It meant not killing Balthazar on-sight, despite how disgusting Ashtoret found his actions and general demeanor both. It meant playing along with Raphael, even if they never intended to make any sort of deal with him.

Surviving also meant not standing in the way of Shadowheart when she prepared to level her lance at the Nightsong to complete her ascension as the Dark Justiciar. They knew it wasn't right. But they didn't want to fight her, and neither did they want to die for their conscience twisting their guts.

Their will to survive made them promise to deliver Gortash Orin's head in the middle of his 'coronation', then turn around and promise Gortash's filthy corpse to Orin in exchange for the hostage she had taken. Orin, despite being utterly unhinged, was a straightforward foe who wanted a bloody fight in the eyes of Bhaal. Her lust for violence could be trusted. Gortash and his honeyed words and penchant for manipulation absolutely could not. (Which is ironic, when one considers Ashtoret's implicit trust in the Emperor. The determining factor, I think, was that Gortash actively screwed over Karlach, while The Emperor didn't directly screw over anyone that they knew or cared about.)

(Speaking of, survival also played into Ashtoret's decision to trust in The Emperor, rather than side with the githyanki attempting to free their captured, enslaved prince. The Emperor had been ensuring their survival thus far. The githyanki were an unknown factor. If the prince were freed, he could just as easily turn on them and slaughter them all for being larval ghaik, just like the rest of his kin. Better the devil they knew, the one that they knew was protecting them, even if they didn't care much for keeping a sentient being imprisoned.)

Survival meant playing along and leaning in to the traits Sarevok and the other Bhaalists wanted to see when facing the Murder Tribunal to gain access to Orin and save Lae'zel from capture. It meant letting their absolute joy at putting a bloody end to Gortash for all he'd done infect their voice, conveying a level of bloodlust not actually inherent within them. It meant slaughtering the little celestial detective (who was already on their shitlist for profiling the tiefling refugees as responsible for the series of murders) without a moment's hesitation and accepting a baptism in blood to become an Unholy Assassin of Bhaal.

Did Ashtoret much care for the rot of Bhaal spreading through the sewers and the city itself like a cancer? No. Could they and theirs survive the battle against the entire cult right then and there? Also, no. Thus, they turned an 'innocent' into a pincushion and sank deep into a bath of blood, overflowing with unholy power.

This would not be the only time a baptism of blood marked their decision to take an innocent life in service of reaching or fighting the Elder Brain. In fact, one might call their bloody baptism and "rebirth" as an Unholy Assassin symbolic foreshadowing for their much more literal rebirth upon stealing the life of Orpheus while the afterbirth of their old flesh sloughed off of their new illithid form.

Lastly, survival meant that they did not feel nearly the moral qualms one might argue that they should with their new diet. It requires ending an intelligent, sentient, sapient life. But as a hunter, they're all too familiar with needing to take life to preserve their own. Illithid feast upon brain matter as surely as a wolf would feast upon a lamb, and only a fool would shame the wolf for acting in accordance with its nature.

For the sake of their own continued existence, they would deny that they are falling into Nature's design for a mind flayer. That they are above their baser instincts and will end themselves before they slip into becoming a true monstrosity.

However, they of all people should have known that no man nor beast on any plane is truly so above their instincts as they might believe.

Carlo's Song - Noah Kahan makes me cry every time I hear it. Reminds me of my best friend that committed last year, I miss him :((

Tw for the following Darlin'&Honey headcanon: suicide mention/ideation

I present to you

Darlin' "I can still kill myself if this goes wrong" Shaw and Honey "If I kill myself now all my work will have been for nothing" Bby Darling.

They're dysfunctional besties and when they die it will be together by hitting the asphalt after jumping off a building.