Welcome to my diary. Be warned that nothing here is accompanied by a trigger warning. It is the unfiltered talking space of someone who, in a word, "is fucked up". This isn't a happy or relaxing page! Proceed only if your curiosity outweighs any discomfort with dark topics.

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5.3.2023

Lyric of the Day: I know Victoria's Secret / Girl, you wouldn't believe! / She's an old man who lives in Ohio / Making money off of girls like me / Cashing in on body issues

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Tomorrow, I'm meeting up with my group project partners at a nice little cafe to work on the project. I'm a little stressed right now, as I have that group project and my final essay for American Lit (25% of my grade...), so I've hardly had any time to do much anything else since I last wrote. I've been very stressed, but trying to manage the best I can. The 10th is the last day of school for me.

I've also had my final neurodivergency club meeting. The last day was a crafts day, and everyone was making a shirt that said 'autism shirt' on it, because it's silly. I had to leave early because my aunt was waiting to pick me up, so my teacher finished my shirt for me. I went to her office the week after (this week) to get it! She's super sweet.

I want to write about positive trans-related things when I'm able to, and less stressed about finals.

5.4.2023

Lyric of the Day: You look good, I will not lie / But if you ask where I'm staying tonight I gotta be like / Oh baby, no baby, you've got me all wrong baby / My baby's already got all my love

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I'm hanging out in the cutest coffee shop right now! I just finished meeting up with my group here. I would feel so aesthetic if I wasn't having to balance my laptop messily on my lap without a table because it's too crowded.

But, as promised, I wanted to write about the support that trans people are getting, as a break from all the doom and gloom. And trust me, there is a lot of it. Florida has officially passed an anti-trans bathroom bill, amongst many other things (including, again, Florida, trying to make the punishment for sex offenders the death penalty, while also trying to make being trans a sex crime). But there is still hope.

Cis people everywhere are gathering behind trans people in solidarity; packing courthouses and protesting on campuses and in cities. Matt Walsh (one of the leading anti-trans rights activists right now) had very few people turn out to his public speech, and the ones who did were publicly shamed. Meanwhile, hundreds upon hundreds of people showed up to protest. There are literally more of us then there are of them. And I feel like that's very important to write down here, and remind myself of. Falling into despair is, ironically, the easy option. Keeping up hope is harder, but it is worth it.

And speaking of trans joy: I got accepted into the trans Danganronpa zine as a writer! So exciting! It's also my first time being in a zine as a participator, and I'll get paid for each purchase of the zine, hehe! I've already sent my 3 pitches in. I can't wait for pitch approval so I can get started!

5.6.2023

Lyric of the Day: You can sleep while I drive, so you don't feel anything

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The Power vs Wisdom vs Courage Splatfest has begun! My boyfriend and I are on the same team for the first time in a while (Team Courage!), so we can join battles together! Finals season has sort of been wrecking me and my mental state, which means that a Splatfest weekend was exactly what the doctor ordered. It always puts me in a great mood! The halftime results haven't been announced yet, but here's hoping Team Courage isn't defending.

5.7.2023

Lyric of the Day: In a cavalcade of anger and fear / There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year / I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me / I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me

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I watched an interesting video essay today. It argues that, in the modern age of leftism, people are often focused on 'realistic' goals. But the truth is that, the way things are now, basically anything but the tiniest nudge away from the status quo is wildly unrealistic. The revolution won't be allowed to happen, under the current rule of the government and the 1%. This knowledge leads to the amount of leftist doomers that we see today. Seeing what goes on around us, leftists are not short of righteous anger or reasons to radicalize ourselves, but we are short on how we can imagine our future. It feels as if there's nothing worth fighting for. The solution proposed was leftist Utopianism; or, allowing ourselves to imagine a radically unrealistic future, and fighting for that. For if we fight tooth and nail for our perfect future, then, if we fail, we still would have changed the world to be closer to that perfect future. You can't move people without a vision, after all. Just anger isn't enough. It's just the first step. You also have to point to a hope, or a new way.

I think that the essay put into words a lot of my current issues with how I view politics, and I found it very interesting. I think I agree with its message. I've felt myself becoming more and more helpless lately, and, despite my efforts to remain hopeful, I've felt myself slipping into a more and more doomerist mindset. Perhaps I'll participate in a bit of idealistic, unrealistic imaginings for our future.

5.9.2023

Lyric of the Day: Poor little Liddy used to always quit / But she never really quit / She'd just say she did

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I got around to watching a video covering the story of PS1 Serial Experiments Lain! As much as I liked the anime, I think I may like the PS1 story even better. It, even more so, leans into the themes of our perception being reality, escapism, and, of course, mental health is a huge focus. In the PS1 game, Lain has hallucinations, and while she does in the anime too, this is more explicitly a mental health issue in the game, and is the reason why she starts seeing a therapist. It's a painful story, and makes the anime's ending seem much brighter by comparison. Lain is a deeply relatable character for me, due to her autism symptoms, issues with mental health, and desire to escape the world and escape into the internet.

Speaking of autism and feelings of not belonging, I read a few story recommendations I saw on a personal site recently, and one that has stayed with me is "How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps" by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor. It's a story filled with themes of queerness, nontraditional relationships and nonhumanity, and... Well, it's the type of story where I thought, "This author is definitely autistic." I checked their Twitter bio and, lo and behold, it says that they're autistic. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this story. It deeply moved me. Stories about nonhumanity have always resonated with me, but this so more than others, perhaps because the main character isn't nonhuman, but is specifically a human who not only wants to become nonhuman, but who isn't ridiculed for it.

I'm writing this before my last day of speech class! After this, I have SUMMER BREAK!! Aaand I'm gonna see my friend later today! We're probably gonna rewatch Good Omens together or something hehe. Exciting stuff!

5.15.2023

Lyric of the Day: I'm Anonymous M / I'm the one that kinda sings / I'm just a music software / Pretending to be human / What image would you put over my lifeless body?

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First things first: I'm officially on SUMMER BREAK NOW!! I'm hoping to keep up my habit of going outside some. Like hanging out in that cute cafe to write, and even just to browse tumblr and blog. I often find myself depressed whenever I stay inside for too long, and I almost always end up just staying inside for 3 months straight whenever I'm on summer break. Here's hoping I manage to avoid that this year!

In recent internet news, while Musk is finally stepping down as CEO of Twitter (though he's still going to be super high up, so not much is gonna change), he decided to fuck up one last thing before that; making it so that Twitter accounts will be suspended for inactivity. And when you hear that, I'm sure you think the time required for that to happen is a few years? Maybe one year, if we're gonna get a little dicey? But, no... Your account will be suspended if you don't log in for ONE MONTH. If you go ONE MONTH without Twitter, then your account is suspended. Even worse, archiving someone's Twitter account to the Internet Archive is limited by the login wall. (Pro tip: you can get a more complete archive if you first access the account through Nitter.it, then back THAT up to the archive... But isn't it mind-boggling that we need to use a whole other site to back up someone's account in the first place??)

Twitter doing this will mean so many links in articles are about to break. We'll lose context to huge pop culture events, information, embedded videos and clips from now-dead accounts... Not to mention that the accounts of those who have passed on are going to be deleted, as well. I have heard so many stories from people whose dead loved one's old social media profile is a huge comfort... We are going to lose so, so much, for absolutely no reason at all. Or, at least, no reason that anyone on the Twitter team has named.

Growing up, I was always warned that the Internet never forgets. That you can never TRULY delete something online... But as I've grown older, and become more and more familiar with the consequences of the lack of internet archival, it's now clear that the Internet not only forgets, but perhaps has no memory at all. It actively destroys memory, even. Outdated code. Broken links. Entire sites and archives and wells of information, gone in an instant, at the will of some born-into-wealth boy billionaire. Nothing online lasts forever. And if you want something to have any sort of longevity, you're gonna have to archive it yourself.

It's because of realizations like this that I'm becoming more and more of a physical media person by the day. There are so many stories of games getting delisted for licensing. Recently, a bunch of whole series that real people put their blood and sweat into (like Final Space, Thundercats Roar and more) got removed off of every single streaming platform until there was NO legal way to watch them, for the sake of some fucking... Tax write-offs! Literally deleted from existence, like these pieces of art were nothing at all. But if you have a disc? That disc is forever, within reason. If you have a flash drive of your favorite series, you will always be able to rewatch it if you throw it into a computer.

I've resolved that, if there's something that's really meaningful and important to me, I'm going to own it physically. That's difficult, with DVD releases of cartoons becoming more and more rare by the minute... So much queer media recently has been streaming-only. It could all disappear tomorrow, because no physical copies were ever produced. We know for a fact that Disney+ edits and censors queerness for their streaming platforms, and we know this because people have the originals to compare it to... But, without those, these big companies could edit the queerness away. Censor it. Quietly get rid of it... All while we can't prove that any of this was done at all.

So, I download my favorite pieces of art and keep it on a hard drive. I buy physical copies of games. I'm currently in the process of printing out my favorite fanfiction to put into a binder, and likewise for all of my writing that, up until this point, has been online-only, including this very diary. This way, they will always exist, even if big companies try to bury them. Even if the sites hosting them disappear overnight. Physical media, to me, has become an act of quiet protest.

5.23.2023

Lyric of the Day: I've been patient, but it was bearable / I've had a gray haze for a long time though (boom boom) / I never found out, what it was I / Tastes like vegetables I don't like

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The lyrics for today are from Bridget from Guilty Gear's (canon trans woman) song, "The Town Inside Me!" I've been thinking about it a lot lately. It is genuinely one of the most resonant and understandable descriptions of gender dysphoria and, later in the song, euphoria, I've ever heard.

Speaking of gender! Pitches for the trans Danganronpa zine have been accepted! I don't think I'm allowed to say which one (confidentiality), buuut I've already finished the rough draft and I'm just waiting for rough draft admissions to be opened so I can work on it! I'm so motivated and excited, hehehe!!

In relation to my previous entry about physical media: I decided to try and gather all things that I've written and hosted exclusively digitally and print them out, so I can have them physically! And, to do that, I ended up reading a lot of my older work. And, you know, I never considered myself the type to "self insert" super hard... But, looking back at my work, and seeing how the discussion of queer topics has shifted as I've grown older, it's pretty clear to see a progression.

My earliest work that I can find involves a character discovering that they're queer, and shrugging it off as no big deal. I wrote that when I was still in the closet, and had never faced any homophobia before. Then, there was a notable trend in writing characters who were dismissed as being "too young," or "going through a phase." I found, like, 3 different stories with that plot point, and they were all written around middle school, which is when I first came out, and it, of course, reflected how I was being treated in real life. Then, in my later middle school years, I began to write more and more about characters who were bullied and/or socially ostracized for being queer. Gee I wonder why. (I was being bullied at the time.) And nowadays, I write a lot about characters who struggle with internalized shame due to the homophobia that they have either witness or have personally faced, which effects their present view of themselves and their queer identity.

Of course, this is all very much something that I realize in hindsight, as this was so subconscious that I didn't even realize it until I started to look at all of my stuff and try to sort it in order of when it was written... But it's very interesting to me, as, again, I've never thought of myself as someone who has inserted myself into the characters I like! But I suppose bits of myself will always leak into what I create.