"The Angst Monarch"

Transitioning is so weird. You spend the first 16 years of your life as the stereotypical girl who does 12 hours of dance a week minimum, all that makeup and glitter and whatnot, and that's normal and expected and gender-conforming. And then one day you're 23 years old and doing some volunteering at an event. You're told that if you show up early enough, you can pick which workshop you help with. You discover that one of them is a dance workshop, and you're like "oh hell yeah. I haven't been able to do anything dance-related in ages. I want to volunteer for this one. Then I also get to watch the workshop." This makes perfect sense to you. And then, several days later, you realize that you are in fact an adult man who is very excited to watch a bunch of underage girls dance. All of a sudden, because you're a different gender now, that has gone from normal to extremely pervert-coded.

okay. new video game companion concept: game that introduces a pretty run of the mill companion. but they always die for you. it’s with the player character’s name on their lips and devotion to your cause that they throw themselves into the fire. it’s nice to be loved that much.

the frustration of not being able to save this companion. of not being able to just tell this character that there was no way for them to live. is built in. btw. you can, in-universe, try to explain or justify it. or you can try to explain it as a game mechanic, break down the fourth wall and just try to tell this character that it was predetermined, there was a script, there’s no way that this sequel could account for that character living.

furthermore: it’s important that this character can’t actually do anything to you. like, well, obviously a video game character cannot hurt you, the real human person, but I also mean that awareness of themself as a game construct can’t end in them glitching the game or hacking themself into some big boss. the only thing you can grant them is the knowledge of what they are, of what you did, and of how little it mattered. so, yes, they can break the fourth wall, stop addressing your player character and start addressing you, maybe refuse your orders in combat or straight up leave your party, maybe even pettily fill your camp inventory with useless shit. but they can’t actually change the game itself. they can’t change the story, or the other characters, or the mechanics.

​it’s imperative that the action that fucks this all up is NOT that you played the first game and got their sibling killed, understand? that wasn’t your fault. it’s a game. you didn’t know. you aren’t morally at fault for enjoying a video game, even one where characters die. that would be insane.

Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).

Sometimes, in their obsession with monsters, humans end up finding other humans. In 2019, Cachét developed a crush on Salad Fingers, the main character in a British cult web cartoon. She drew porn of Salad Fingers and sent it to David Firth, the show’s creator. Firth loved it and followed her back. “He thought I was a guy because no girl would draw porn of Salad Fingers,” Cachét says.

imagine you're a child, you learn your queer and your parents are extremely bigoted. you have some friends on Roblox who are very kind, they're in their early 20s and they sympathize as they went through the same things as a kid. they offer to use your correct name and pronouns, maybe some even offer to buy you a binder or help you find hrt or support groups local to you

Can we pick up “diamour” for a nonbinary partner again? Because that word was nice and pretty as heck.