last month, i wrote an essay for patreon about deadnames and people writing about characters with deadnames. it's now available for non-patrons. give it a read!

primarily a homestuck artist, currently working on @burningdownthehouse and vast error.
last month, i wrote an essay for patreon about deadnames and people writing about characters with deadnames. it's now available for non-patrons. give it a read!
I really resonated with this. While I understand why many trans people want (and deserve) the agency to discard everything about their old, constructed self, I also wish there was more willingness to engage in the ways our experiences contribute to a uniquely blissful identity. There is so much pleasure and freedom in acknowledging the ever-transitory and the "ugly" and I honestly recoil a little at the idea that trans people are best served cis-passing past, present, and future. In some ways being unflinching in the history of a perceived maleness feels more affirming than any trans waifish teenage anime girl could.
Hope this is legible I have like four concepts vying for a spot in this comment and idk if any of them are winning.
deeply felt every single one of the four competing ideas, don't worry. there's absolutely a lot of stuff to say about it, namely a lot of my desire to portray more messy versions of trans arcs comes from poking against the archetypes of clean trans narratives that no human being has ever actually had
i think was a line in a review about detransition, baby by torrey peters about how she writes like terfs aren't watching. and thinking about how so often cis-ciety imposes such demands to legitimate transgender as immutable and essential like cisgender is supposed to be in a way which constrains our writing. idk just a thought that seemed related