Choose Your Own Adventure

I wrote like the first third or fourth of a choose your own adventure novel last month. I’ve got the pages hyperlinked so you can read it from the beginning here. Unlike the original CYA books, this one sometimes has choices and sometimes has “variables” where you should choose the option that matches a choice you made earlier in the book. If anyone reads this thing, let me know if you run into stuff that doesn’t work or causes problems.

It’s a sort-of-erotic sci-fi space thing. Probably there should be some content warnings here, but I’m not sure what. I don’t remember anything being too egregious. There is one option where you are not respecting a person’s boundaries, but they already made you a captive in the story, so is it more problematic than the setup itself? Don’t know.

I wrote it so that the reader is the main character, which meant making every direct reference to you gender neutral. Hopefully not too awkward. The writing is a cheesy first draft, but not as cheesy as it probably should be. I feel like I need to make the writing more melodramatic and big, give the characters more distinct voices. But never mind all that. Have a go at it, if you please.

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The Mysterious Allure of Spider Sauce

This is one of my main mans, Hecubus. He is a cat. Looks kind of oily in this picture, maybe he needs a bath. Anyhow, the point: He has a wet nose. It’s the perfect amount of wetness for a cat. See a cat trailing snot? Might be sick. See a cat with a nose that’s bone dry? That’s not what a cat nose is supposed to be like. I suspect this optimal cat nose wetness gives him a better sense of smell than other cats I’ve had in the past because he likes to sniff things more than the others.

The other day I killed a spider on my wall, apologies to our FtB thought control overlord. It left a barely perceptible smear on the wall. I flicked off the pieces of exoskeleton with the corner of my murder weapon. Hecubus did not bear witness to this event.

But later he found the spot on the wall, not even convenient to get to up behind a lamp. He found it with his sniffer, and came back to it later to sniff some more. I’ve seen him eat a spider once in his youth, but that was a few years ago. Does he remember the taste and smell on some level, and is therefore drawn to it? Or does spider sauce have a distinctive and potent smell to the right mammals, and just draw interest on the level of curiosity?

Without experimentation we can never know. I guess I’ll leave this one to science wizards. It’s gotta be in the list of things they’ll get to eventually. What is the allure of spider sauce?
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Gender Anarchy

Yesterday was International Down With Cis Day, a good time for reflection on one’s relationship with the kyriarchy. A while ago I brought some discourse into an AFAB NB person’s casa that resulted in a burned bridge, but also left me unsatisfied. All around, a bad time, and my fault. Wrong place and time to wax socratic.

What I wanted was an answer to a doubt. A position one holds in life is strongest when one has considered and accounted for ways in which that position can be attacked – especially from within.

Transfeminine people have long been smeared with the idea their gender expression is just a sexual fetish – “autogynephilia” theory and such. This doubt is external in terms of systemic medical discrimination and internal in that it turns a transwoman’s natural sexual feelings into a source for wondering “am I just a pervert?” and delaying treatment for dysphoria.

To my thinking the transmasculine version of this doubt is this: In a world that is drenched in misogyny, “woman” is an insult. If you are AFAB but feel insulted or uncomfortable when people treat you as a woman, how can you tell if that’s actually gender dysphoria, nonbinary or agender feels, or if it’s just a natural result of living with misogyny?

On a DWC discussion with somebody, we came to an answer that pretty well satisfies me. This question has been kicking around the back of my head for about five years now and I’m glad to be more or less done with it. The answer lies in gender anarchy.

Basically, you shouldn’t be required to have a set reason for your gender expression. Consequently, any reason is valid, and that includes a reaction to misogynistic abuse. So what if you only disidentify with womanhood because the world is a misogynist hellhole? It’s like being asexual because of sexual abuse rather than a biological imperative: still valid.

The line of thinking that led to the question in the first place had a baked-in assumption that there are correct and incorrect reasons to be trans. What foolishness. Gender anarchy now!

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All is Well

All is well, I’m doing great.  Everybody en mi casa is
Peachy keen. I was sent home from work but they didn’t
Requisition enough equipment so I am cold chillin’.
I’m healthy and relaxed and it radiates from me to
Loved ones. They’re feeling it too.

Fortune has smiled on me and I’m smiling back.
Of course, the good times can only last so long. I’m
Optimistic civilization will remain intact by the time
Logistics are worked out and they call us back in.
Say, this plague ain’t so bad at all.

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The Invisible Queer

Content Warnings: Suicide mention, Less than positive trans stuff.

Trans Day of Visibility, right?  A lot of trans people don’t love this occasion for a lot of reasons, and that’s fair.  Anybody should be allowed to be as invisible as they want to be.  Invisibility is by definition part of passing, which is the trans dream.  It is hard to argue with its usefulness to the people that it’s useful for: knuckleheaded cis people who need reminders of trans people’s humanity, and baby trans folks who need to see that life is possible – given their high rates of suicide.

Where do nonbinary, agender, and genderqueer people belong?  In a sense we’re trans, so should we be visibling out right now?  If we want to sure.  As for me, I’ll just reflect publicly on what being genderqueer means to me…

Or not.  It’s kind of personal, isn’t it?  It’s in my head, waiting for a future that is never going to come, like so many other things.  Sayeth my problematical inspiration, “Don’t dream it, be it.”  But I don’t have powerful dysphoria pushing me to make the choice between a life of facing bitter and extreme prejudice or living with crushing pain.  (And be real – passing isn’t possible for everybody, open and sometimes murderous prejudice is what I’d get.)

If it can be a dream for me, that’s enough for now, I think.  I might feel differently next year, if the ‘rona don’t take me out first.  Who can say?  In the meantime, ya might catch me in sequined shoes or wearing costume jewelry.  Just a little something to let you know what’s up.

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Who Else is Paid to Stay Home?

Where my teleworkers at? My workplace was shut down without full preparation for everyone to go on telework, so until they acquire a lot more gear, I’m getting paid to chill and check my email sometimes.  My last job was Malwart, so while it’s a shame to not have the inside track on getting groceries with less hassle, my situation is a lot less cruel.  #blessed lol.

Anyway, I know I’m lucky as hell here, even though it took 3 hours to get groceries at the Winco this morning.  How are you?

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I Know What You’re Thinking, Biden Dems

Obams=good. Obams like Joe. Joe=good. Bring back time when president nice.

Alternately – and more venal –

Obams=economy good. Economy=my personal comfort. Joe=successor to Obams. Make economy good.

This is the thinking of people who wish they could vote for Bill Clinton again. At least he made the economy good. Therefore your retirement fund is less scary. It’s the safe choice.

Except it isn’t. Conservative dems are going to be like that Trudeau up in Canada. Make nice words while they line their pockets with money from petroleum, prison labor, and the war machine.  Burn down the world to make a little gold.

Don’t you give even a tenth of a shit about your children? Choke on your binkies you adult babies.

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Ghost Pangolin Breath

I’m sure there’s a billion people in china that don’t go in for medical woo that involves slurping down nature’s rare wonders. I just wanted to say to the other ones, this is not the recommended use for chopsticks motherfuckers.

To be honest I find the idea covid entered humans via pangolin consumption a little suspect, if only because it seems tailor-made to appeal to aggrieved environmentalists like myself. It is an evocative idea, isn’t it?

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Under the Sign of the Rabbit

I got this job about a year ago.  Used to see rabbits about every day there.  Less so in the winter, but I still see them sometimes.  On the way to catch the bus in the dark, the streetlights silhouette a tree stump making it look like a rabbit.  Above is the moon.  Across the ocean there’s some people who say there’s a rabbit in that celestial body.  Stopped to get a new litterbox for my cat.  The place in the store that normally has cats to adopt only had rabbits.  My favorite movie of 2019 had prominent rabbits.  This wasn’t that movie, but it’s a pretty good depiction of the mood in life.