knightly

i've seen a lot of trans narratives in terms of killing their old self, murdering the self that was constructed for the world, killing the False so that the Truth may live. and i've seen many trans narratives lean back towards the Old once they carved the space to explore, approaching cautiously the gender they once ran from to scavenge the pieces they liked from the shell.

i've also seen many plural systems express this in a different way: you killed the AGAB, and the AGAB came back. turns out they weren't entirely fake, just contextually limiting.

the AGAB self often ends up cast aside, or worse, a corpse, abandoned for a flashier New that leaves what Was in the dust behind. and they're often angry that they had to be killed so that someone else might live, now that they have had the space carved to truly Feel.

to exist pre-transition, to exist in that identity haze, is oppressive to both sides of that coin. neither side has the space to explore, but one side makes it easier to fawn for others into reducing your needs, and that fawning is what holds us back.

but at the same time, it's not their fault, is it? your sense of self was traumatized into a mould more convenient for those Outside instead of being allowed to form and develop naturally. it's not the fault of the one shoved tightly into the mould that the mould restrained you.

i've often described my pre-transition self as being "more mirror than person" by the time i broke out of that. i describe it as breaking the mirror, flowery language that, while symbolic, disguises what it truly was:

i murdered him so that i could grow beyond him.

At the end of march, one of us wrote in a journal of ours:

there's large swathes of system states that we forbid regardless. We have particular genders we think would complicate the system in untenable ways, so we pull away from them. This is generally not hard to do, because it's not even a case of fear. we just don't like it. It's almost automatic.

There's also states of being, people who could come into being, people we could become, people we are that are ever so tantalizing, that we feel dark longings towards, but would be incredibly self-destructive or destructive to those we care about. We simultaneously want these states, but don't want the consequences. These are much harder to resist

This was written by one who was in a position of deep control at the time, steering the ship out of necessity. but even she hadn't really read the words she'd written and truly stopped to think what it meant was going on.

Feeling pretty damn seen with this one. This old pic of my 'sona (back when I was bipedal) literally has parts of their old self crafted into a weapon for keeping the world at arms-length. Kinda glad I've grown beyond such morbid symbolism (and into another pair of legs). XD

i've seen a lot of trans narratives in terms of killing their old self, murdering the self that was constructed for the world, killing the False so that the Truth may live. and i've seen many trans narratives lean back towards the Old once they carved the space to explore, approaching cautiously the gender they once ran from to scavenge the pieces they liked from the shell.

i've also seen many plural systems express this in a different way: you killed the AGAB, and the AGAB came back. turns out they weren't entirely fake, just contextually limiting.

the AGAB self often ends up cast aside, or worse, a corpse, abandoned for a flashier New that leaves what Was in the dust behind. and they're often angry that they had to be killed so that someone else might live, now that they have had the space carved to truly Feel.

to exist pre-transition, to exist in that identity haze, is oppressive to both sides of that coin. neither side has the space to explore, but one side makes it easier to fawn for others into reducing your needs, and that fawning is what holds us back.

but at the same time, it's not their fault, is it? your sense of self was traumatized into a mould more convenient for those Outside instead of being allowed to form and develop naturally. it's not the fault of the one shoved tightly into the mould that the mould restrained you.

i've often described my pre-transition self as being "more mirror than person" by the time i broke out of that. i describe it as breaking the mirror, flowery language that, while symbolic, disguises what it truly was:

i murdered him so that i could grow beyond him.

At the end of march, one of us wrote in a journal of ours:

there's large swathes of system states that we forbid regardless. We have particular genders we think would complicate the system in untenable ways, so we pull away from them. This is generally not hard to do, because it's not even a case of fear. we just don't like it. It's almost automatic.

There's also states of being, people who could come into being, people we could become, people we are that are ever so tantalizing, that we feel dark longings towards, but would be incredibly self-destructive or destructive to those we care about. We simultaneously want these states, but don't want the consequences. These are much harder to resist

This was written by one who was in a position of deep control at the time, steering the ship out of necessity. but even she hadn't really read the words she'd written and truly stopped to think what it meant was going on.