But then I ran out of hearts. And I wasn't finished with violence yet, so I decided to turn on my own music.

"What are you doing" say the youths. I shrug.

The youths begin to bop along ironically.

"They hate this," I think. "I am winning."

"Hang on," says a youth. "What is that."

I realise something is going wrong but not what to do about it. "It's Italian," I mutter

"Are you Italian?"

"No, I just speak it."

"Oh shit. This goes hard actually," says a youth, whose bopping along no longer appears to be ironic "Is that rap? There's Italian rap? Whoa. Took me a second"

"What's it about?" says another youth.

My inner Public Transport Etiquette Absolutist and my inner Italian Music Evangelist are now at war. Fatally poised to decide the balance is the fact that I am a middle aged woman who has just had her musical tastes flattered by Youths.

"It's called Arresto Cardiaco, which obviously means cardiac arrest, and it's about a panic attack," I say. They lean over to peer at my phone.

"He must have some bad panic attacks," says the first youth thoughtfully.

"Maybe he gets them all the time," agrees another.

Somewhere along the way, and I realise I don't know when it happened, they turned off their own music and are now bopping along to mine.

I can't bring myself to turn it off.

Other passengers stare at me with open loathing. They are right to do so.

Me before I came out, when I did pageants and modeling.

This was me the day of my junior prom. The dress weighed around 20 lbs, was the first one I tried on, and my makeup was done by someone who still thought brown lip liner looked good on white people. I spent the entire day being photographed and generally hating how I looked and wishing I could figure out why, when everything was technically perfect.

Came out in 2016, here's nine years of transformation (in reverse order, sorry)

Turns out I'm neither a Normal Guy nor a woman, but a much weirder type of faggy masc thing.

In my lifestyle lolita egg era. Somehow getting to dress like a princess gave me the will to get up in the morning

granted being a big ol goth doesn't really fit the bill of "socially acceptable heterosexual femininity" but i was HYPER feminine when i was closeted, especially in the years between when i FIRST tried to come out (age 16 - around the time of those first photos) and when i actually made the jump (age 19 - about a year after the last photo)

you can tell in that second to last photo i literally got a tattoo that said "MAD GIRL" which was an exercise in many things, including abstract self-harm, a visual reminder that i had given up on myself, and wildly underestimating the number of dudes who would misread it as BAD GIRL and take that as a cue to say gross shit to me while i was at work

anyway never kill yourself

haha yeah 🫣

consciously dipped my toes into the gender fuckery pool at around 15/16 but I was pentecostal at the time and well. took them out real quick

i tried very very hard to be “femme” for a LONG time but during covid lockdowns I didn’t have to perform for anyone and I slowly started to let it all go and now I’m a silly little man 😌

the vision i had for this fibre is really working out, entrelac + handspun is so good

Most of the critical complaints have been about the tone; in a review from 2005, Professor Victoria of Spagonia University said, "The constant self-aggrandizement undercuts the idea that its subject ought to be taken seriously. Also, wasn't the 'feminist' line from the Sonic Heroes manual a mistranslation of 'womanizer'?"

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.