whatever our souls are made of

The answer is: the uterus isn't what causes your period, it is effected by your period. What causes your period and what causes trans women's periods is the same thing: the endocrine system.

HRT changes the sex of your endocrine system. Feminizing HRT makes it a female endocrine system, giving us a 28-day hormone cycle just like cis women. At the end of that cycle, the hypothalamus floods the body with prostaglandins. Those are what cause all but one of the period symptoms, because they make muscles inflame and contract. They are what make the uterus shed its lining, they are what cause intestinal cramps, they are what cause body aches, they are what cause headaches and migraines. The only period symptom not causes by the release of prostaglandins throughout the body is depression, and that is caused by your endocrine system simply not processing as much estrogen and from simply feeling like shit.

So, the only symptoms trans women don't get every 28 days is menstrual cramps, because yes we do not menstruate since we don't have uteruses. But migraines, depression, body aches, intestinal cramps, and the infamous "period shits" don't exactly add up to us having any better of a time. Except we have to pretend that we're fine and nothing is different because no one believes that we get periods, not even cis women.

Jacob with some spot-on Ilya character analysis (and general thoughts on sex-as-self)

I think this is something lost on the audience in the show that is explicitly implicit in the books.

Shane thinks Ilya is a sex god bc

1) he is "better at sex" than shane

2) shane up to this point hasn't had a successful and Very Good sexual experience. He literally says once Ilya dick is inside him that he "finally understands why people are sex- obsessed." It has clicked, and his brain says its because of ilya, not bc he is gay

3) ilya is a whore so that translates in shanes brain to very experienced, good at it, therefore sex god

They tease back and forth that ilya has ruined sex for shane bc no one else will do, and while shane is embarrassed by this, he agrees.

In TLG it comes out that ilya has maybe been with like 5-10 guys at most. Personally i think its the lower end of that. He specifically says that men are a "rare treat," implying that 1) its safer to pull women (he really is terrified of being outed and shipped back to russia), and 2) he only pulls men when he is missing shane so much he cant stand it.

Shane has canonically been with 3 men. Two pulls he didnt care for, and ilya. Again, in his mind, ilya is the key, but its not inherently bc of ilya's skill, its because of their crazy deep connection.

Two it creates a mess and is really itchy, so we have to plan to do it somewhere where we can clean it up easily and take a bath afterwards and Not! In! Your! Kindergarten! Art! Class!

Three other kids might see how much fun you’re having getting your hair cut and also cut their hair and then be sad about how their hair looks. I know YOU don’t mind (and apparently Malachi is some kind of genius kindergartner barber??) but they might mind how they look, you have to set an example.

my heart's heavy.

On Endings and Goodbyes and Beginnings III

i. ii. iii.

Like, you really get the sense that he got dragged into this against his will

Unlike the other scrumptious scoundrels he doesn't have any great ambition or secret machination going on so he is the only one who doesn't actively make the situation more complicated for himself and despite this he still ended up on that road covered in the queen's blood (juice?)

Colin did everything in his power to be a normal man and to have an unremarkable and simple life but he still ended up being a key player in Calorum's history. And why?