Monthly Archives: April 2019

Spoiler Territory

  • Reading time:8 mins read

I’m just not sure that I see the value in an immediate reaction to a thing. Maybe it’s my autism, but I only tend to know what to think of anything in retrospect, and the more information I have, the better I can figure out what I think and feel. Surprises interfere with that.

Like, I don’t experience anything in the moment. Everything is posterity for me. And so, uh, things that are meant solely to trip people up in the moment tend to kind of irritate me as they get in the way of longer-term understanding of a thing.

I find any first experience with a thing to be sort of a first pass. A painful rough draft of understanding, where I expect I won’t pick up most of the important details that I need to actually understand what the fuck is happening. Which, yes, makes social situations difficult.

In the case of media, actually watching a thing, taking it in, it’s like research. The real experience happens later, inside my head, when I work through all of the stimulation that makes no sense to me when it’s in front of me. Holding important stuff back makes that harder.

Once I have sufficiently interpreted a work, what the words and actions and themes and idea actually mean, and why, and pertaining to what, then eventually I’m primed to be able to have something like a real-time emotional experience while taking it in. But it’s like practice.

The notion that I’m going to get anything like a useful reaction out of a thing the first time I see or hear it, it’s kinda absurd to me. It takes me weeks, months, years to understand simple conversations I’ve had.

(I’m able to run through ideas much more quickly and clearly in writing than otherwise. Again, that’s kinda how autism works. And that’s probably why I wound up spending so much time writing about media, for as long as that was tenable.)

Likewise, any event or work where the whole point is to elicit a cheap, immediate reaction… kind of falls completely flat with me? Like, it doesn’t work, except to the extent of puzzling me until I figure out why they did such a thing and figure out—oh, contrivance! Okay then.

I’m like. People who are extremely socially focused, they get angered by my lack of response to things, sometimes. I’ll just listen and nod, and they’ll read in all of this meaning to my apparent decision not to engage in banter or show an appropriate emotional reaction.

The real meaning is that I have no clue what is happening around me, and I’m just sponging up what I’m able to while carefully filtering the overstimulation that comes from things happening around me at all, so that I can lay it out in front of me later and start puzzling it out.

This doesn’t work too well with interpersonal relationships. People don’t like it much when I go back for clarification, especially for things they figure I should be able to figure out on my own (but can’t!). But media, it allows for repeat engagement and nuanced understanding.

And that’s where 100% of the value lies, from my personal experience: a work that supports revisiting, to understand more fully. Anything less is just… kind of, pain? Like, I wasted my life subjecting myself to something that wasn’t actually gonna be worth the long-term effort.

Any experience is a sort of pain to me, at least in the moment. It’s a thing I suffer through in order to grow retroactively.

I don’t expect the experience of my particular neurology applies to everyone (as a lifetime shows it clearly clearly doesn’t!), but, uh. It’s definitely a real thing.

There is a level of presumption that comes with the notion that a person’s immediate response to a thing is their most genuine and telling reaction, that doesn’t really map to my lived experience and actually has been the foundation of a lot of abuse that I’ve suffered.

And I think that, as people do, rejecting a different model of experiencing time and stimulation and processing of information as a lie, as something that doesn’t happen and is a mask for some kind of other underhanded business, it’s maybe not… an entirely good way to go about things?

The implication behind anti-spoiler rhetoric is that one’s first exposure to a work is a special experience to be treasured, that should not be tarnished by foreknowledge or else one’s appreciation for its impact will surely be diminished. My counter-argument: but, is it?

I’m saying that from another perspective, a first exposure to a thing is an awkward, obligatory draft round that you get out of the way in order to be able to appreciate a thing properly, and thereby “spoiling” that experience is arguably, well, at least in part a good thing?

I don’t know how many things I’ve thrown away because I couldn’t wrap my head around them and I didn’t immediately understand why I should devote the time to figure them out—only to have them explained to me later and realize how much I adored them. First impressions suck ass.

Like, I find them 100% useless in understanding anything. I’m getting old enough that before I devote my very scant energy to thinking about a thing, I like to research first; see what I’m getting into. Tell me the whole plot if you want. You know, it’s just stuff happening.

What matters to me about a work—and I grant this is not a universal perspective—is how it betters me through understanding of Stuff. This is a long-term process. And a first pass is just this disorienting familiarization to permit the important work to get started.

Again, the distinction here is that I can’t experience things in the moment, really. Not in the way a neurotypical person would (by most accounts!). So this special visceral thing that people describe from their immediate emotional responses, it’s this alien weirdness to me.

Much as I know my own perspective comes off that way to most people I encounter. Different brain shapes, you know. Point being, the suggested “lie” is in the notion that the first experience isn’t this special thing you can never get back, and that there’s nothing to spoil.

And, well. That’s not a lie. I don’t see it as special; I see it as a barrier of entry. I don’t see how one could describe an attempt to mitigate that barrier and actively appreciate a thing as in any sense spoiling that experience. Because that experience is worthless to me.

Or close enough to it, anyway. Because that’s the way I interact with things, the way my brain is wired. I’ll even counter that so many experiences for me have been spoiled by *not* knowing enough to be able to cope with them ahead of time. This is a much bigger problem to me.

Really super simple example: there’s no way in hell I’d have gotten interested in Steven Universe if I hadn’t read several articles about the arc where Pearl effectively rapes Garnet, and then gone back and watched “Stronger Than You.” I filtered the show out for ages until then.

Until I had a glimpse of something deeper, of what the show was actually doing and talking about, and how, I was unable to engage with it. It was just this visual noise. That’s not unusual, I know, needing a hook. But that need for a hook, it’s more of a fundamental thing here.

I don’t feel like I appreciate a thing well enough to respond to it on what I’m guessing is probably the level that a neurotypical person might do on a first pass until I know it backwards and front. Because my brain isn’t wired with those kinds of natural assumptions one makes.

There’s this thing with autism where, like, they’ll do studies of kids and they’ll have them sort things. A neurotypical person will quickly work out this shorthand, and breeze through. The kid with autism will take each instance individually, on its merits; make no assumptions.

This can be useful in some kinds of cases, approaching every fucking thing you meet as if you’re brand new. But in other cases where it’s expected you’re able to chew gum while riding a bicycle, so to speak—e.g., socially—it sets one up for huge, distressing levels of confusion.

A conversation with a piece of art, it’s basically a conversation with another mind. And I can’t do chit-chat. It is almost literally impossible. I sit there, waiting for them to finish speaking. If it’s just one line, I blink at them, wondering where the rest is. It gets weird.

I think in paragraphs. Which again is pretty common with this neurology I got here. And when I’m with other people with a similar neurology it works dandy; there is an intuition about when people are going to speak, and how much, and in what ways, and so on. It’s tailored.

Art, it’s another kind of discussion, because the statement is bottled. You engage with it by picking at it, stripping away the layers. And, it’s that process of understanding that happens after you already know the full boundaries of the discussion, that’s the real relationship.

Steven Universe: Unwinding Season 4—Episode 18: Rocknaldo

  • Reading time:8 mins read

Okay. If we can get over the experience of Ronaldo being insufferable and look at why we have an episode about Ronaldo being so insufferable, it gets a little more interesting.

What we’ve got here is a discussion of toxic allyship. Which is… it’s an unusual thing to talk about, but it’s relevant to a lot of stuff going on in leftie spheres. On the one hand, swell; good to have people theoretically on your side. But, none of this is really about them.

It’s not even all that subtle about what it’s doing, with this white dude who starts off passing out, er, Ronalphlets about these insidious figures infiltrating society who, among other things, “hate men.” When checked on his bullshit, he goes away to think then has a revelation.

And now he’s like Joss Whedon or some shit. Just creepily in there and making this whole discussion about someone else’s struggle all about him. Ultimately, after all the familiar fuckery of even accusing in-group members of not being in enough, he learns to be a better ally.

Like. Show your support, but give them breathing room. Don’t speak for them, but have discussions with other out-group members about who the group is and try to correct misconceptions. Help to spread acceptance. Keep your own ego out of it.

It’s, hm. Not sure exactly how to talk about this. But I think part of the long, long delay in my recognizing my gender diversity and accepting my sexuality for what they are was out of fear of co-opting someone else’s thing. Like, who am I to say that any of this applies to me?

I’ve co-opted things before, as I’m sure most people have. And I’m not entirely certain if I meant well or not; it’s hard to tell, you know? I don’t want to act like a dick. I don’t want to be like Ronaldo here, barging into a scene he doesn’t understand and making his groove.

Ronaldo is a fragile guy. He has a really poor sense of self. I don’t know what hole it is in his life, what he’s avoiding with all his conspiracy theories and everything else he does. I’m tempted to connect a few dots with his lack of a mother figure. He’s older than Peedie…

And, like, when is “Lion 4: Alternate Ending?” Soon, right? Three episodes from here. Which is where Steven goes all conspiracy crazy about his mother and his place in the world. Ronaldo is this lost figure, just trying to figure out where he belongs, what everything really means

At the end of the season, Steven of course figures he’ll rid everyone of the burden of himself and all the weight he carries as his mother’s son. When, uh, the Rock People do in fact come to town and… what is it Ronaldo says in this episode? Hang on.

Seriously, though, I want to feel free to walk around town like this.

Okay, not many details, but. Again, this is just a few episodes before this all… kinda actually becomes relevant, what with Aquamarine and Topaz. Could be a little more on-the-nose, but in retrospect, this absolutely serves as foreshadowing.

Point being, there are parallels in this episode between Ronaldo and Steven. It’s safe to say when Ronaldo shows up, he’s usually there for a reason actually. Sort of a canary thing. You don’t want to make the connections because he’s so friggin’ annoying, but that’s the point?

Ronaldo has no filter, and so he tends to play out things that other people choose not to say or haven’t fully processed yet, and serve as, um, a catalytic clown. Gosh, that’s a term, huh. He presages the development of important themes and concepts before they fully manifest.

And Ronaldo’s whole misadventure with the Crystal Gems… it’s not accurate, because when does Ronaldo ever really get the meaning right, but it kind of mirrors how Steven is starting to feel about himself at this point.

Which again the episode even makes explicit, during the scene where Ronaldo in his seventh day (or whatever) of sleep deprivation convinces Steven to walk out and question his own role in the team. Which is over almost immediately, because it’s a Bugs Bunny gag, but. You know.

Like. Ronaldo in this episode is who Steven is starting to get scared that he is. The way that everyone feels about Ronaldo is how Steven is becoming scared that everyone feels about him. Sorta kinda. Broadly. He’s not fully one of them. He’s a burden. He’s a liability.

And at the same time we get an episode about how absolutely not to support a marginalized group of people.

You can get a lot more out of a story if you’re not all caught up in this notion of being entertained.

All of this hit me about two minutes into the episode. I’ve not actually watched this full thing get. Possibly because of my hang-ups about being entertained. Hang on, let me get some cola and see this through in full before I say anything else.

Ronaldo: “DO YOU KNOW, I’VE ALWAYS FELT STRANGELY AT-HOME HERE…” Everyone else:

It’s some character trait to be able to yell an ellipsis.

Yeah, Steven leaps right in by comparing himself to Ronaldo. The CGs tell him his body is organic and he doesn’t have a gem.

“M-my body’s organic, and I’m a Crystal Gem!”

“You’re going to entertain this?”

This whole conversation, yeah, hits both of the above points square-on.

It both goes on about how isn’t it good that someone’s taking an interest, and shouldn’t we accept allies where they come—and also shows how much Steven is projecting his own insecurities onto Ronaldo. Like, accepting Ronaldo into the group is proxy or test for accepting himself.

Here I am Ronaldoing my own self. This isn’t the end of the episode. This is, like, twenty seconds after I said I wouldn’t post anymore.

Well, whatever. The episode also kind of deals with Ronaldo, um, fetishizing, for lack of a better way to put it, the CGs and their identities and ways of life. He’s role-playing with stuff he bought at anime conventions. Already getting close to the line with this nonsense.

The fetish thing often being a big element of toxic allyship. Again, look at the Joss Whedons of the world. They downplay the creep factor here, but they get the psychology down hard.

As a long-time aficionado of James “Kibo” Parry, I have to once again commend the writers and storyboarders for their commitment to the inexplicable ubiquity of durian juice.

As a character note, I absolutely have to underline that Ronaldo wears khaki cargo shorts.

I don’t think I need to say much more about that.

Hell. Yeah. So. When Ronaldo doesn’t get to go with them on the next mission that comes up, again here’s Steven projecting himself onto him: “I didn’t get to come along at first either!” (All of which we thematically revisit, of course, a season later…)

Oh fuck. And what does Ronaldo say as they warp away?

“But… I’m a Crystal Gem too… “

In terms of Steven’s mental breakdown, I think it’s actually kind of relevant to have an episode that establishes he’s afraid on at least some level that he’s just another Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, actively undercutting Steven’s already-shaky confidence in his identity at every step. Even in the dumbest fucking ways. “Funny that you… sleep, when Gems don’t need sleep. Why is that?” “I—I don’t know?”

A very relevant time for a callback, actually.

Steven doesn’t get outwardly angry all that often, but his annoyed face always kills me.

What the—they actually fucking redrew the whole background for a very slightly closer-up shot in the same scene?

Again, Ronaldo saying what nobody wants to address.

Notably, it’s not until Ronaldo picks on Connie that Steven gets his ire up.

And as I’ve commented before, this episode probably has the single best line in the whole show.

The signs… don’t quite say what they seem to say.

NOW WITH 100% EEEL POTATO

YES, LAE’RE OPEN

It’s not ambiguous. They’re just… intentionally misprinted for some reason. Which just adds another level to the strangeness.

About five seconds later, drawn even smaller, we get REAL POTATO. It could have looked like this in the other one, but it doesn’t. On purpose. Just… because?

I mean. Ronaldo is Ronaldo, and this show isn’t about him. Really, none of this is about him. But the growth that he demonstrates, tortured and minor as it may be, it’s not unimportant for the things the show has to say.

Right, and the very last note of the episode is Ronaldo asking Steven why he never uses his Gem name. To which he responds that it’s his mom’s name, and nobody ever calls him that unless they’re about to kidnap him or beat him up.

…

So, about Ronaldo and foreshadowing…

Steven Universe: Unwinding Season 4—Episode 17: Storm in the Room

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Going to go light on “Storm in the Room” because I’ve unraveled that one so heavily elsewhere. And, uh, I can’t quite figure out where that was at the moment. I did track this down, though:

A thing that particularly baffles me is when people dismiss “Storm in the Room,” which for my money is close to my favorite episode of the entire show. It’s the apotheosis of the show’s themes to that point, and basically the crux for the show’s entire third act. And, it’s such an unnerving piece of drama. The whole pacing of it is unlike anything else in the show. I’m almost not sure if I’m more impressed with the quiet first half, in which Steven sweats and tries to avoid his mother’s portrait, or the stormy climax to the second half.

His rage against Rose’s figure, it may be his most upsetting character moment. There’s a little Wizard of Oz moment in the resolution (oh, that Sugar) to cheer the audience up a bit, but this is, I think, the moment that finally breaks him, allowing the finale to happen; allowing Lars to die; allowing all of the relationship upset in early season five to occur; allowing him to finish his journey that ends on the beach with that little song about self-love.

Season four is when the show finally breaks Steven. And it does so in such a heartrending way. The show had been unavoidably building to this point ever since “Full Disclosure,” but in reality since its earliest episodes, with the Gems consciously protecting Steven from a reality they knew he couldn’t yet handle. It’s a thing that had to happen, dramatically, to produce the consequences that would permit a resolution of the show’s overarching conflicts—all of which is what season five serves to fuss over. But, season four—this is what the show has been preparing us for the whole time. This is what the rest of the show serves to clean up. This is the centerpiece, in dramatic terms.

And, personally, I think it pretty well nails it.

I’ve written so much about this episode. It’s galling that I can’t find more. But, it’s just one of the very best things the show has done as of early 2019. I’ll probably come back to it in later thought-chunks.

Likewise if I can locate my notes or other material, I may well return to update this entry.

Facets

  • Reading time:11 mins read

So, yeah. I keep rehashing this stuff in writing, because this is the way that I think. But, the way this all is panning out is, I don’t fully respond to either binary gender and I never have—but where I do fall, it’s not ambiguous. It’s clearly much closer to female than male. And the more I respond to this, and realign my thinking and conscious sense of self to what’s always been steering this thing underneath though I’ve been told never to look, the less constantly-awful I feel. This base level of garbage I’m used to feeling, it just goes away.

Again I’m cautious not to be performative or reactive, and for it to come from a place of truth—and earnestly, it’s just such a weight off, every small step toward femininity I take. At least, a sort of dorky, passive femininity. My brain, I’m wired to be girly on balance.

This is the me whom I love. And so many prickles fall away when I’m allowed to drop the awful mask and just… be this person. This big part of me, I do see as female. Yes, in sum I can’t deal with the binary thing—but for this aspect, it helps to think of her as a her.

Again with the containing multitudes; the truth in the singular “they.” I imagine it’s easy to misread or pathologize what I’m saying here. It’s just hard to explain neurology except in metaphors to concrete external things with existing nouns and verbs, like relationships. Different parts of me guide different parts of my day. Domestically, moment to moment, just in terms of keeping myself company, she’s the part who tends to take over and feel most comfortable. When pondering, I tend to go to this gender-blank space tied to the other person I’ve learned to be all these years. The one I use to face the world.

Whenever there’s a danger of encountering other people, I’m… not sure what to do. Azure’s sure as heck not confident enough to take the lead at the moment. My usual face has always been useless for that. That leave me with this awful mask I’ve been forced to hew out over the years. And I just hold it up, show people something along the lines of what they may well expect or want to see, and hope no one looks closely enough to notice all the cracks as I scuttle out and do as I need, then retreat. At which point I toss the mask aside, breathe, and decompress.

Building this relationship with myself—that’s one thing. Building it to a point where I can show my real self in public, that’s something else. Something I’ve never figured out, but I now better understand why not. We’ll figure this out together, eventually, I think. Maybe. Again it would help to live almost anywhere else, but… I’m starting to get a hang of my situation enough that maybe I’ll be able to do something about this in the next year or so.

If you know me, you know about my sensitivity to sound. Much of that’s an autism sensory thing, but also it just slots into my memory centers better than most things. I don’t remember names or faces, really, but I remember voices very well. And melodies and rhythms and so on. That sensitivity plays into one of the bigger elements of dysphoria in this whole process, and one that’s taking a bit more effort.

I’ve had years of voice training—albeit decades ago, while working on my music degree—so it’s not alien territory, finding new shapes for things. But I’m awful with practice, and discipline, and my muscles are weak from lack of regular use. So that’s this ongoing project, finding my literal actual voice as sort of a conduit and icon of finding my more metaphorical one. It’s hard. Like, really hard. But I’m getting somewhere.

This is a major thing for me. There’s this switch in my brain, where I feel like when I get this down, I’ll have my larger sense of self pretty well nailed. I’m not in a rush; like anything, I’m trying to be earnest here and to get this right. It’ll happen if I keep chipping away

So there are two things, really. There’s the voice, which I’m slowly working on, and there’s the facial hair situation—which was never tenable, even when I was masking as male. It’s thin, it’s patchy, it’s slow, and it’s prone to ingrowing. I’ve never wanted it, but now I’m done.

That at least has more concrete solutions, whenever I’m financially able to pursue them. It’s a tangible thing I can point at and say, yeah, I can take care of that eventually, when the resources are together. It’s quantifiable; so fine. The voice is more of a personal struggle.

In the short term, as far as tangible reflections of my inner life… well, frankly I’m kind of girly anyway, which has always been part of the struggle with others trying to box me into a shape that physically and mentally doesn’t fit. But I’m maintaining my body okay, for once. I’m taking time to actually just pay attention to myself. And it’s making a big difference, emotionally. As well as helping to dissuade the impression that I just climbed out of a gutter. I also have been mending key clothing articles, and have bought some small basic items.

Nothing extravagant. A couple of cami tops. My old underwear was all falling apart, so good time as any to replace it. Everything on sale. But, just a simple swap of a few elements makes a huge difference in impression—illustrating how fucking arbitrary gender is as a construct. People are all basically the same, underneath all the mental and emotional and physical and social decorations we lace onto them.

Then I’ve got my eye makeup coming on Friday. (Again, cheap as I could find. Gotta eat and maintain a place to live, but also gotta start somewhere with emotional needs.) Super oblivious here, but also curious enough that I know I’m gonna go in deep in figuring this out.

I feel like if I were still in New York I could just go outside like whatever, and nobody would give half a shit if they happened to notice at all. But, I’m not in New York! So I still feel a bit under siege. Still, hey.

Just, to compile a couple of previous comments: yeah, as scrawny (even malnourished!) as I may be, I do have noticeable fatty tissue to my breasts—as people close to me have on occasion made, well, an occasion. This often contributed to my body issues when trying to mask as male. It’s not even to the level of an A-cup, I don’t think. Not that I’m an expert. But it’s there-enough to be a talking point. And it’s interesting how the “shelf” in a cami affects this. I’m so goddamned—I need to eat more, right. I could use some fat on me. But even without HRT, I like the shape things are taking.

The more I conform my handling of my body to its actual shape, and my real sentiments, the more comical it feels that anyone ever tried to paint something else over this. Like, really? I’ve had so many body issues in my life, precisely because it’s failed in all these attempts. But taken away from these external influences, and just attended as its own thing, I’m… I kinda like it, actually? I’ve always been made to feel… gross, and misshapen, and like a lost cause. But I can work with this.

Nearly every part of my body has caused me to feel ashamed at some point, either for going against what I was told I must be or for supporting that mold so ineffectively that I was made to feel broken. But flip the tune, and it’s really just the voice and whiskers that need work. After that, it’s little things. Maybe HRT could help fill out my face a bit, pad some areas better. I’m sure it would help my brain! This is all subtle stuff, though. Polish. Which… I don’t know. Again, no rush. But it’s a consideration, once some other stuff is settled better.

Also, I’m at the elevation of Big Bird. So I’m never going to not stand out. But, whatever.

But anyway, I notice just the way I move and hold myself, and respond to things, it’s changing so much. I’m not accustomed to smiling, at all. Or feeling allowed to gesture or use my hands. And all of this stuff, there’s this level of freedom. Like a real person is forming now.

I’ve never felt entirely real, you know. I’m sure I’ve talked about this extensively over the years.

I don’t actually know the deal with my hormones, but amongst my total lack of a sex drive, my retention of scalp hair, my total lack of body hair (except sparsely on the limbs) and my pathetic facial hair situation, I suspect that I’m not quite bursting with testosterone. I don’t know that I have a lot of estrogen going on either. But proportionally… well, again with my body’s features. I think I may just be low on both, considering how frickin’ long it took for me to develop at all, and how slowly it did once it started. Which may in turn have something to do with why I tend to look… quite annoyingly young, actually.

And also, potentially, have to do with the autism thing. Maybe.

If I were a mouse.

Estrogen reverses autism-like features in mice | Spectrum | Autism Research News
Two new studies provide clues that may explain sex differences in autism prevalence. Italian researchers have found that injecting estrogen into the brains of young male mice reverses some of the…
spectrumnews.org

There’s a lot going on here that as yet is poorly understood on an academic level. Anecdotally and experientially, though, it’s clear that LGBTQIA+ and neurodiversity are kinda all aspects of the same thing. It’s all overlapping alternative mind models.

And a lot of it, a lot of the brain-shaping that results in these different neurologies and thereby mind experiences, it seems to be linked to developmental hormones. Not always in ways that make a clear linear sense. Like, why the deep association between autism and transness? It totally makes sense on a lived experience level. Like, yeah, of course. Obviously. But logistically, it’s a bit of a “Huh?”—brain not getting enough estrogen, so it settles into this other shape that… not infrequently makes one feel detached from assigned gender? Huh?

I can’t speak for the AFAB camp, but on this side of things, estrogen deprivation means… what, hunger for more estrogen or something? Is that what’s happening? Is autism happening in part because the way it’s developing, the brain knows it wants more than the body’s giving it?

The logic would make a little more linear sense for AFAB transness, inasmuch as, oh, brain not absorbing much estrogen. So, that means a more male-ish brain, right? Maybe? Kinda? Again the research isn’t particularly established on this as yet. As it wouldn’t be, right? But a thing I find kind of interesting, is that my experience with autism is, uh, much more like autism in women. Which adds another dimension to the whole mess.

My autism, my asexuality, and my gender issues, they’re three angles of basically the same discussion, all about neutral acceptance of the shape of my mind. Of those three, by far gender is the most interesting, in part because it’s the most confusing for me, and most rewarding.

Like, the autism I kinda… I knew it was there, and how it basically worked. The main issue has been accepting it as valid rather than something offensive and wrong. The asexuality, sorta similar. Just, accept that I don’t care about this thing and that this is perfectly fine. They’re both important to nail down, but they’re pretty straightforward once you get to the point of acknowledging them. Everything about gender is so much more complicated, and it goes so much deeper. There’s so much I’ve not really, well, dared explore, by comparison.

I feel like I haven’t even come close to the core on this. There’s so much I’m just… it’s like magnetic barriers, you know. I know there’s something there, but the pain and avoidance are so thick and repulsive. Ergo, I guess, the elation with every nudge I make in this area.

I’ve always been so scared of myself. And I’m only starting to face why any of that might be.

All of which serves to unfold what I said earlier, about surveys. If I have to tick a binary box, it’s going to be female at this point. Not because that’s accurate, but because the question itself is inaccurate. And one wrong option is nevertheless less wrong than the other.

Again, from Zero

  • Reading time:1 mins read

Working outside the gender binary sure is a thing, as far as figuring out how this space maps to what feels natural and true to who I am. It’s mostly about embracing femininity without overcompensating, since I’m okay leaving masculinity in the dumpster almost wholesale.

I’ve spent decades lying to myself in order to make other people feel comfortable, so I don’t want to start a new series of lies as this knee-jerk response. What this is all about is figuring out what’s real. So I’m really cautious of anything that approaches performance.

To that end, I’m slowly looking for where I’d probably be sat if I were assigned differently at birth, rather than manifesting and aiming for some kind of idealized end goal. And I think this is helping somewhat, reassuring me I’m making the right choices.

Which is steering me toward sort of a casual librarian lounge mess mode, rather than something, you know, fancy.

I am a piece of work. So that’s reality. Modulate the disaster; don’t pretend it doesn’t exist, or that I’m a different person. Just figure out the new key signature.

Steven Universe: Unwinding Season 4—Episode 16: The New Crystal Gems

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Connie asking the real questions in here. Did the zoo machines pierce Steven’s ears, or are those some kind of magnetic clip-on?

Also, this is Connie’s best shirt. It’s the same one she wears back in “Love Letters,” and probably some other places. I’ve always loved teal and turquoise—that whole range. Connie’s outfits, though they change frequently, usually incorporate some version of the color.

Dialogue thing: apparently despite there being, like, a few dozen people in Beach City, never mind wherever Connie lives (which isn’t Beach City), apparently it’s enough for a bus system, with a fairly regular schedule. One that connects neighboring towns, even.

Judging by the sound outside her house—in the daytime, compared to last time I had headphones on for this location—her house must be near a freeway. The sound is muffled, insulated, to the point nearby bird chirps are more prominent, but it’s persistent. Those cars sound fast.

I need to go back and pinpoint when Pumpkin’s pronouns changed.

Also, the bathroom scene: it’s interesting, as the dialogue bounces around, how the soundtrack mirrors, zorping back and forth between Lapis’ celesta and Peri’s… eerie… synth-celesta (?) thing, that she’s had since her first appearance on the warp pad, way back.

This is all especially curious as one of Connie’s key instruments (she has a couple) is celesta. Normally the show differentiates pretty well, but putting the three in a room together… I guess aivi and surasshu had fun with what that meant on their end.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

How is Connie seeing all this? The magic of artistic license, I guess.

This episode, it kinda… I understand its role as a cool-down after an intense multi-part plot arc, but I feel disappointed it doesn’t do more with the premise. It kinda just takes the idea of a B-team and shrugs it away. The best thing here is Lapis’ usual horrible attitude.

Seriously, this is some prime Lapis in here.

It’s just, you know. Three of the best characters in the show, teamed up for the first time as a backup for the Crystal Gems. You’d think this episode would write itself. … And as it happens, it kind of feels like it did?

It’s not awful by any means. It’s just weirdly slight. Like, really, argue over a car wash? That’s where we’re going to spend these eleven minutes? And not just that. The character points the episode hits, they’re not, um. It doesn’t cut very deeply, shall we say. Rather obvious.

It’s also curious, in that it’s Molisee and Villeco, who tend to be pretty solid. But as I mused before, they’re better with the slowly boiling tension. Their comedy, it’s… it works great as asides amidst awful happenings, yet feels directionless and without purpose on its own.

I’m assuming this is the first time Connie’s slept in Steven’s bed? She seems to have gone right for it.

Not sure what GameCube (er, that is, Dolphin) game is on the end there, but I’m sure it’s something. I like the one randomly upside-down, because, Steven.

The mystery of who knows whom on this show and why or why not is always a big head-scratcher, given, again, how few people live in the area. Like, nobody seems to know who anyone else in town is until we see them meet on-screen. But it makes sense Connie wouldn’t know Yellowtail.

Got to say this is a bit of a mood as well.

Lapis looks curiously like Jamie Lee Curtis there.

Just me? Okay.

Yellowtail doesn’t have the best experiences at Greg’s car wash, does he.

It’s also, I’m…

Okay, these two, their art style works when there’s a ton going on and their sketchy off-model boards make for constant expressive cutaways, conveying extra emotional information on top of the story beats. For flat sitcom staging? It doesn’t work so well.

Connie ranting about the two “super-powered children.”

“We’re both thousands of years older than you,” Lapis Darias back.

“Then act like it!”

Man, why wouldn’t you get the 10 x SUPER?

See, there’s always some kind of teal going on.

How many pairs of red shoes did Connie bring on this trip?

I’m struggling to grasp what larger role the episode serves in terms of anchoring or presaging or supplementing the larger concepts going on around it. Maybe I’ll have an epiphany somewhere down the line. Right now, it’s just… yeah, it’s there. It pads us out before “Storm in the Room.”

Steven Universe: Unwinding Season 4—Episode 15: That Will Be All

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Any time Amethyst spots someone in a strange outfit, she fatuously comments on how it’s “a good look for you.” In this case, Greg… Ah, Greg.

Most of this discussion, it originates on Twitter, and my tweets from March 2019 have mostly vanished for some reason. Don’t know if the pertinent tweet survives, but when I was musing a while back on Jasper’s gem placement (i.e., in the middle of her face) and how it was probably chosen to obscure how much Jasper would otherwise look like Rose, in particular with that upturned Universe style nose? Well, here’s Skinny, with her nose.

There’s this whole theory out there that’s almost become an accepted truism, that surely all these Rose Quartz gems are fakes that Pink created to throw people off her trail, and there never was any real Rose Quartz. Reminds me a bit of how 1980s Who fans grew weird about Susan.

Surely she can’t be the Doctor’s REAL granddaughter, because (we’ve decided) the Doctor doesn’t fuck! So many elaborate lattices were erected to prevent the Doctor himself from ever having to have been.

I mean, maybe. It’s a theory. Who knows. It’s got that kind of fan funk to it, though: a thing that maybe would be structurally clever, but that feels like it overlooks the show’s themes and emotional logic. 

I love the lighting in this show. Every environment, every time of day has its own palette for every character. Ergo Stevonnie having a different skin tone in almost every episode; they never seem to appear twice at the same time of day. Also, Gem tech tends toward gel lighting.

I mean. The reason Pink would have had to have bubbled every Rose Quartz she could find… it’s obvious, right? Especially in light of everything I’ve been saying about drawing comparisons. Jasper’s nose and all, for our benefit. CG Rose ain’t no normal Quartz soldier.

She’s this mythic figure with powers and properties that no normal Gem should have. And the strangeness would be so much more obvious if there were other Roses walking around, who didn’t exhibit any of those things. It would raise so many awkward questions.

It’s bad enough to wind up in a room with one Diamond. Worse enough with two. Then they have to reignite this strange domestic conflict partway through, and sing the most melodically and rhythmically awkward, off-putting song in the show. (Also the most difficult and best.)

Seems like every time Steven meets a Diamond, he’s wearing something peculiar.

But the best thing about this scene, that makes it one of the best scenes in the show, I think, is that sense of “Oh fuck, what did I just walk into?” that just keeps getting heightened. We’re not supposed to be seeing this. It’s uncomfortable, erratic, and none of our business.

Which makes it scarier. Like, I don’t know, you happen to be hiding in your parents’ closet as part of a game and then they go in there and start shouting at each other right in front of you about something you can’t begin to understand, and you don’t even dare to breathe.

At this point in the show, the Diamonds are a scarce commodity, and portrayed as immense, detached figures, scary in the way of an indifferent Greek god; beyond good and evil, as it were. Everything is just less significant than they are. And, they’re doing this.

Their most common view is still a profile; just barely deigning to taking notice, if at all.

Which is for the best, as if you happened to see them dead-on, happened to earn their full attention… that might not be a desirable turn of events.

There’s really a sense of, Christ, what is going on here? We didn’t ask for this, and they keep getting more and more worked up. If that rising emotional energy were to find a too-convenient outlet… well, uh. Best to get out of here, huh.

This would be a best-case scenario.

God, Blue is so fucking 1970s, it kills me.

Neither the Amethysts nor the Rubies seem to make particularly good guards. Like, as general categories of Gem, they’re all a bit… uh, erratic? Yet they seem to be among the most common types.

I wonder what’ll become of these guys.

It’s interesting that Holly Blue (with her Rose nose) has Amethyst’s kind of whip. Which suggests it’s sorta a Quartz thing. If that’s true, it raises questions about Jasper’s helmet. I mean, it might be individual to the particular Gem, but this is so specifically Amethyst-ish.

With all the hexagons, it’s hard to avoid lots of Homeworld architecture feeling Gallifreyan.

Is Pearl ever not just the biggest mood?

I mean.

Plastic With a Memory

  • Reading time:4 mins read

It’s funny to me, kind of, how much work other people have had to do over the years to paper over my physical appearance, to edge me into looking at all masculine. I have, like no body hair (except thinly on the limbs). Bad at facial hair. Delicate features. Thin at the waist. Even as scrawny as I am, I have, uh, noticeable fat deposits in my breast area. When I shave regularly and let my hair grow to a comfortable length, and stop repressing my facial expressions and body language and posture, and dress a little differently, all that work vanishes. Like, just allow me to relax and flex and stop trying to manipulate me, and without any makeup or medical transition or anything, I… kind of default to a feminine shape. More so than clearly masculine, anyway.

Except the height. Which is absurd, and awkward no matter what.

There’s so much self-consciousness I need to deprogram; all these years of people shouting at me to correct my posture, correct my walk, correct the way I use my hands, correct my actual facial expressions. And it’s gotten so jammed up I can’t walk without thinking of every step.

The mind isn’t just a brain thing, and the brain doesn’t exist in isolation. There’s a level of physical comfort that has to go along with mental health. And it just feels so much more natural to embrace what’s here, rather than fight against it. I am essentially more feminine. This is the better part of me, and the part of me I like more. I don’t like what’s been imposed on me, most of my life. It hurts. It feels dehumanizing; like I’ve always just been someone else’s property. I don’t care about that person, either how they’re expected to act or look. Which is a big factor in why I’ve never felt compelled to take care of them, taken much of an interest in them, and—as long as I associated them with who I am, or am supposed to be—was consequently so full of self-loathing. They were never real. Just an automaton for others’ use.

Building this relationship with myself, talking with myself, tending to what this person wants and needs, it’s so novel. And it feels so amazing. I really like this person, who I’ve been forced to ignore for so long. And the more I bond with them, the easier things become. It’s—not only did people have to fight constantly to box me into that shape, that I was so bad at holding, but the amount of strain it put me under, trying and largely failing to hold it together for all those years. It’s comical how long it took for me to understand why that was, given that the moment even the slightest pressure is released, sproing. Revert to my natural self.

I guess the main thing is I was never once in my life told it was okay to just be that person. So many of my health problems, down to the physical manifestations of stress, come from trying to accommodate people who don’t care about me. Well. Now I’m starting to fall in love with me—the event it seems like everything in my life has been engineered to prevent. So it’s all over for that nonsense. And I’m just… at fucking last, you know?

A thing I haven’t seen discussed, and maybe I’ve just been in the wrong places, is how accurate to experience the singular “they” feels as a pronoun. Interrogating, accepting, befriending these aspects of one’s self—one feels like one contains multitudes under the banner of “I.” That is to say, as pertaining to a gender-diverse experience. The only sensible way to discuss it is to split and anthropomorphize different parts of one’s self, which isn’t quite accurate, but there’s an active internal relationship going on, different elements rising at times.