#pazooka

I know it's a trope to say "I always felt wrong in my assigned gender" but in my case it's true. For me it was very confusing because I do like a lot of the femme stuff that kind of gets pushed at you when you're AFAB. Pink and dolls and dresses and long hair, stuff like that. But the idea that those things made me a "girl" just never sat right. I remember being like 13 and asking my first boyfriend "would you still like me if I wasn't a girl" and he was like "ew no" and it made me feel so deeply sad for reasons I couldn't quite explain. There were a lot of little instances like that, but that one really sticks out in my mind.

I first ran across the concept of being nonbinary on a livejournal community that I don't think had anything to do with gender? I don't remember where, it was some fandom or hobby thing. Like, I don't think it was this exactly, but it was something as silly as someone posting pictures of their BJD and being like "I decided this doll is nonbinary!" Something like that. And I was like wtf and immediately went down the rabbit hole. Which was much shorter like 12-13 years ago than it is today, but what I found made me go "oh shit, this is the thing, huh?"

Around that time, I was also starting to make more of an effort to get involved with Native American communities and studying the history of my specific nation (Oneida). I was raised by the white half of my family so it wasn't something I really got to experience growing up. And in doing so I learned about being Two-Spirit, and even though that's not how I identify per se (there's a lot of debate around exactly how you define being Two-Spirit and who has access to the label, etc.) it felt sort of like, idk, permission? Like, "this is part of my cultural heritage, it predates the gender binary, I'm allowed to not be a girl."

But it wasn't an all-at-once coming out sort of thing. I kinda floated it at the people closest to me, like "how would you feel if I wasn't a girl lol wouldn't that be crazy lol."

One of my two best friends at the time was very resistant to me not being a girl, us not being best girl friends, who had the sort of romantic-Victorian platonic-but-intense girl friendship. So we ended up having no friendship at all.

The person that I was dating at the time was outright hostile to the idea. Abusively hostile. And the thing about it was he (pronouns at the time, don't know if he's changed them, not going to look him up to find out) had also just come out as trans. He/him agender. And when I repeated that same question that I asked my 13-year-old boyfriend "would you still love me if I wasn't a girl?" His response was something to the tune of "I guess it's fine as long as you still have a girl's body." Which was a wild thing to hear from someone who was also AFAB. Weren't too long after that we broke up.

My other best friend @skulldilocks, maybe you've heard of her, she was my oasis. She never judged, she was curious and interested and so kind about it. The second I told her "I don't think I'm a girl" she was like "yeah, okay, you would know best" and that was it. She was one of maybe three people in my life (the other two being my cousins) that didn't tell me I was wrong or pushed back at all. She called me by my chosen name, used they/them pronouns, corrected herself when she got it wrong, and that was it. It was just, idk, easy. And it made me feel like maybe this wasn't some forbidden, shameful thing that I knew was true about myself, but I still couldn't tell anyone.

So I started to assert my gender and pronouns in online spaces. I was really clumsy about it at first, and my terrible experiences with the people that I had been closest to had me feeling very defensive, expecting a lot of pushback. Aaaand, I got it!

Some of it was definitely my own doing, like, getting upset with people who misgendered me out of confusion rather than active hostility, but there was a big faction that went right to work on the trolling. Most of it was contained on simsecret at first, with lots of secrets as well as huge threads of people saying that I was lying, calling me slurs, discussing my genitals, claiming to know me personally IRL and to have insider knowledge that I really was a girl and I was just doing all of this for attention.

And then it spilled over from simsecret to GoS, to my livejournal, to every part of the community that I engaged with. I went into lockdown mode. Deleted my livejournal, changed my email, turned off commenting or messaging where possible. I left the community completely for about a year and a half. I still played the game, still shared pics with @skulldilocks but I had no intention of returning.

But then stuff just kinda changed. It didn't have anything to do with me, it was just that more people were starting to identify outside the gender binary, so it stopped being so stigmatized in the community. Forums started cracking down on people being shitty about gender. And some very kind people sent messages to me through @skulldilocks saying that they hoped I came back some day. So I did. I still get the occasional hateful anon message but at this point there's literally nothing left that they can say to me that I haven't already heard a decade ago.

And there is definitely more kindness and love, now. Turns out if someone treats you like shit, you can just leave! Tell her to give you back your Sailor Moon manga and to never call you again! Kick him out of your house and take custody of the cats! Excise the assholes, curate your online space, don't get involved in bad faith "discussions" about parts of yourself that you know to be true. Who you are just ain't up for debate.

1, 2: lol it’s ok anon! i’m glad u found it cuz i would have been no help. my sims puke purple glitter. and ty for the well wishes! :D hope u have a great day too.

3: hmmmm it might be the photoshop version you’re using? cuz i have no idea if later versions are compatible with my actions. i’m not sure how to go about fixing this cuz im still using photoshop cs3 (don’t have the $$ for anything newer) so there’s a fair chance my actions use commands that no longer work the same/at all. there’s not much i can do about this from my end, but if you’re willing to try another program, there’s the GIMP version by @iakoasims​!

4: aww, thank you anon!! it was so sweet of you to send this and to think of us. :D :D :D im sorry this response is so profoundly late!

5: mnope! i’m sorry but i don’t know who that is and don’t have their textures! you should probably ask them about it.

6: oh shit that is TOTALLY my bag!! thank u for letting me know, anon! i will def check it out.

7: i’m sorry anon, i don’t use a lot of facial hair so i can’t be of much help :( i feel like i have seen some facial hair in unnatural colors (not necessarily mine tho idk) but i have no idea where to find it. all i learned from searching for “pookleted beards” is that google is really certain i’m actually looking for “pickled birds.”

8: it’s def not you, anon, i gotta overhaul that whole set of actions cuz my explanation was so opaque and unhelpful that i don’t even remember how to do it. just know that if you export from the brow files i made, you will have a bumpmap to play around with, so any existing tutorials on how to edit bumpmaps should hopefully be helpful for giving them a more dynamic/3d look. i’ve been planning on updating all my eyebrows anyway cuz i mostly use unnatural colors now, so hopefully when i do i can write up a better tutorial! sorry bout that.

9: @cakehatwombat we have an instagram now but it’s kind of sparse cuz of a sudden avalanche of IRL health issues that have been keeping me in bed most of the day, with azayawife too busy takin care of me to do her own doll stuff. but! i had a procedure that will hopefully help with the pain and make it easier to get up and do stuff, both dolls and sims. and omg thank you. being married to azaya is literally my favorite fucking thing in the entire world!! def the goodest, purest thing in my life.

10: oh anon, i’m so sorry to hear that. :( i hope you are doing better in the ridiculously long time i took to answer this. i’ve been sitting on your ask for ages just tryin to figure out what to say. it’s really hard for me to give generalized advice for relationships cuz like ....... this is the only one i’m in. i don’t know how others would work, just how we work. which is by being best friends and having been that for years before we got together. we both wanted to find The One and marry the crap out of them and be attached at the hip all the way to the grave. and it’s cuz we both wanted that from day one that i think it has worked out so well.

like, it’s one thing to change and grow together, something you should definitely do, but it’s another to give your heart to someone who has to change before they’re worthy of it, you know?? if you don’t want the same things going into the relationship, you won’t have a strong enough foundation to build on. it also helped a lot that my psychologist was one of our staunchest supporters, even when very close members of our family were uh .............. less than pleased about us getting queer married. and thought they were doing the right thing by telling us we shouldn’t be together or pointing out perceived flaws that were just rooted in their own homophobic fears. having someone in our corner, someone objective who knew how to spot an unhealthy relationship versus a healthy one and assured us that ours was the latter, made it possible to tune out those family members, tell them that we loved them but that they needed to work out their shit on their own time, and get back to us when they could be a positive, supportive influence in our lives. obvs this is not relevant if u have a family that supports u and yr identity 100% already, but for us it was so crucial.