I can never show him this, but writing it helped me feel better anyway

Dear Vella,

Recently you have been PMSing, excuse me, irritable and blaming a great many things on your eldest son and your eldest son’s girlfriend. While both these people admit they are hardly stainless innocents, there are some things that they rightly refuse to accept responsibility for.

Things that are not Eagle’s fault:

• Your leg ulcers.
• Your summer flu.
• Faruque’s bad habits.
• The bloody oppressive summer heat.
• The fact that Ash sometimes calls when you want to talk to Eagle. This is made especially pertinent by the fact that you keep slamming into the room, yelling for thirty seconds, then leaving for ten minutes or so before coming back in and yelling again. If you have a point to make, then MAKE it for goodness’ sake instead of ranting vaguely and then storming out. And if you leave, you cannot expect Eagle to not assume you are done with the conversation and find something else to occupy himself.
• The fact that when you vehemently tell him to do something, then five minutes later and just as vehemently tell him not to do it, Eagle just sits there like a lemon blinking confusedly.
• Your forgetting to use a condom, approximately twenty-one years and eleven months ago.

Things that are not Ash’s fault:

• Your leg ulcers, summer flu, Faruque, etc.
• The mess in Eagle’s room. Amazing though it may sound, Ash is not capable of making a mess in a room at the other end of the fucking country.
• Any and every defect in Eagle’s character.
• The fact that she sometimes calls when you want to talk to Eagle. You hardly have a schedule or some such that she can avoid.
• The fact that Eagle does not always agree with you.
• Eagle’s lack of ‘respect’ for you. That has more to do with the fact that it’s hard to respect a total whackjob even if they are one’s father.
• Original sin, bird flu, the destruction of the rainforests, the high price of butter and the common cold. Despite your claims that she is responsible for ‘everything’.

the home front

I can't blog about this. It's too private, too personal. But I can't not say something about it either.

All I can say is-homophobia in religion sucks, especially when it gets internalised. That, and...there's the moment when it all becomes horribly real and immediate-all the shit you know goes down. When some of it happens to someone you know, or a friend knows. The moment you can hear the wolf at the door.

Cousins, it's dark outside.

Hoenn roller coaster ride?

Hunting the Suicune; this is a new phrase in the land of its birth, one coined by recent developments, a recent person who is becoming legend. To hunt the Suicune is to chase your dreams; to quest after a hopeless cause; to seek and never give up, though you never glimpse your quarry, but to carry on seeking from pure orneriness; to go to see the elephant, travelling because you’re sick to the stomach of staying in the same place; to try and go out beyond the edges of things. “Now, bring me that horizon.”

I’m waiting on the delivery of the Hoenn games, fingers twitch-itch-itching to press the little buttons on the little controller and begin to kythe. Only that’s a lie; I’m kything already, but bits and pieces, guesswork and stepping stones. When the package comes in the post and the cart’s in the bottom slot of my little red spaceship, that’s when I’ll let myself fall into the river, be carried by the currents out to sea. When the kything becomes the air you breathe and the ground you walk on. (Earth, sea and air; Hoenn again there, the slow strong amoral forces that birthed the world where life can be.)

I don’t know what I’ll kythe from Hoenn, though I have guesses.

(And there’s an irony in all this; I walked those paths before and didn’t feel a thing, too caught up in annoyance at new game mechanics and the absence of old favourite Pokémon. I didn’t care for the third gen ‘dex; couldn’t see the beauty in the Hoenn beasts. Too narrow. Always too narrow. It’s always that way with me, maybe with everyone, like Jack pointed out in The Magician’s Nephew; try to be stupider than you are and you’ll succeed, try to be deaf and blind and you’ll succeed. Say No, not this, I do not accept this-and it won’t go away-it never does-but it’ll go from you. Or never show itself at all. It’s possible to go through the world with eyes closed, sleepwalking, and everybody does it at some stage, in some places.)

My guesses, my snippets, my dreams; earthquakes, volcanoes and tidal waves, hurricane and typhoon, twister coming-

-it's about the stars
the way they burn, the way they kill
it’s about the black acid ocean
the way the planet’s heart is red-hot iron
gravity that crushes
radioactivity
so many different ways to die-

so many different things we need
because we need all of them to be
or we cannot be.

the world is destruction
fury without malice.

all order is based on chaos.

Glory to Groudon. Glory to Kyogre.

...

The people of Hoenn-from them I kythe human warmth. Schoolteachers in sensible shoes. Old men who like to laugh. Lovers billing and cooing. An exuberant twychild. Stories, human stories, familiar as paving stones and sweet as Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Maybe that’s paradox, but to me that just looks like life.

I’ve been listening to the Lilo and Stitch soundtrack lately; the gorgeous sounds of Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu and the Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus have become the Hoenn Sound, for me. Hoenn roller coaster ride? Maybe so. It crossed my mind just now that Hawaii is volcanic. Lava and ocean water. Hoenn has Mount Pyre; I’ll have to wait for the playthrough, as I really can’t remember the geography, but perhaps there’ll be some similarities of appearance at least?

And I’m pretty sure that Wallace knows how to surf, as well as Surf. Hehe.

Does your brain ever do this to you?

Me: *playing Pokemon innocently*
My Brain: Sacredshipping.
Me: what?
Brain: Eusine and Morty are TOTALLY getting it on. Sacredshipping.
Me: That's beside the point. Go away, I'm busy with the Bug Catching Contest.
Brain: Sacredshipping.
Me: Neither of them are my type.
Brain: You're not the one doing them, so you're not required to think so. Sacredshipping. Write it.
Me: Pokemon isn't my fandom and never has been. Well, except for the anime when I was, like, prepubescent.
Brain: Gotta start somewhere. You already did those Gym Leader drabbles. How about doing some fanart too?
Me: I can't draw.
Brain: Stick figures.
Me: And I haven't got any paper.
Brain: Go buy some.
Me: I don't know where to find an art shop.
Brain: Try Google.
Me: I'm meant to be saving money, dammit.
Brain: Cheapskate.
Me: Will you please go away now?
Brain: Sacredshipping. WRITE IT.
Me: *kills a lot of innocent Caterpies*
Brain: Sacredshippingsacredshippingsacredshippingsacredshippingsacredshipping-
Me: DAMN YOU.*gives up and writes it*

A Few Days Ago...

...there was Athene, and bad fish with good chips, and very happy plastic elephants; there was a museum with happy rocks and pretty metalwork, and a very fancy gun, and there was discussion about Balthier stealing from museums, and Charles the Second, and Ashelia B'nargin Dogmasca. There was Mieville's wonderful latest, which you MUST READ NOW, 'Thene, and there were green tea puffs and green tea mochi, and a very wonderful hoodie.

Things I Have Decided About My Funeral

(My grandfather's funeral was the first one I have ever been to, and so I went into it with the manner of someone investigating a New Experience. I do not know whether or not it was typical, as funerals go, but it certainly made me formulate certain definite Ideas about what I shall arrange to have happen after I croak.)


• No leaving the planning to my widow and kids. People who’ve lost a spouse or parent have enough on their plates as it is. I will put away a lump sum for the purpose and leave instructions in my will.
• Black is a good colour, and there’s something to be said for tradition in this regard. However, to my mind it does not go far enough. Everyone in attendance should be encouraged to dress Goth.
• No fake flowers.
• No hymns. Particularly no ‘dur, dur, dur’ ones. I demand decent music.
• No Bible readings or other compulsory Christianity.
• If anyone takes the opportunity to feel up my grandkids under pretence of comforting gestures, I’m coming back and haunting them.
• No embargo on mentioning my fuckups and less attractive qualities. Everyone can bitch as much as they want about me; I won’t be in a position to mind, and anyway it’s stupid giving people rave reviews as soon as they shuffle off this mortal coil.
• No damn quiches and penance sandwiches. The funeral feast shall be a hog roast. And there shall be free beer, too.
• On the subject of food, before the funeral everyone must get together and anyone who wants to can have some tea and cake and Breton biscuits to tide them over till the pig. It’s too hard to have a ceremony if your stomach is rumbling.
• Having charity donations instead of relatives spending money on flowers is, I admit, a good idea. However, part of the funeral funds must go to at least one big bunch of tiger lilies.
• The whole thing must be outdoors.
• As soon as it gets dark, let off some fireworks.

Big, blonde and beautiful? Well, two out of three's not bad...and I'd rather be big than lumped in with Rauk.(j/k)

My grandfather died. Don’t offer me sympathy; he was a hidebound, racist, sexist, homophobic, malicious old arsehole, and our relationship was strained to say the least. This did not get me out of having to go to his funeral, though.(More on that later.)

So I came down from London to spend some time with my birth family. And one thing that my mother and her boyfriend just never shut up about the whole time was the issue of my weight.
I’ve always been big-hipped and big-chested, but these last few months I’ve gotten bigger in those areas and all-over, really. According to the doctor when I had my medical checkup I’m four pounds shy of being clinically obese. Me, I say ‘wut?’ to this. I wouldn’t call myself fat. Plump yes. But I don’t feel I look fat. Not that looking fat’s a bad thing necessarily, it’s just that I don’t think I do.

My birth father Vella’s made a few comments about this, but he is a fashion designer and has gotten used to stick insects in makeup and thus I generally ignore him. Besides, it’s mostly due to his cooking and choices of snacks that I’ve put on weight.(Mmm, fried aubergines...)
Even though Vella considers it his bounded duty to evaluate all apparent women for attractiveness, though, he has not made anywhere near as many comments as my birth mother Sarah and her boyfriend Michael.

I was there Saturday 24th to Tuesday 27th, and all the damn time it was ‘you have put on a lot of weight dear, you’re really less attractive, you used to regulate your own weight so nicely, you need to cut down...’

And the crowning idiocy, the crazy diamond of dumbassery, ‘This is because you don’t realise what a pretty girl you are, your self-esteem has always been too low, you need to make more of an effort with your appearance and then people will like you and you’ll feel better about yourself!’

The sheer stupidity of it floored me, I swear.

Fuck you, Mother Dear. Most of my self-esteem problems were your fault in the first place! And they never revolved around appearance!

Yeah, I did-at one point-have issues with the look of my body. Thing is though, that was because it was too Milesian, and I’d been hanging out with chicks from the people I called the Tuatha de Danaan then. I was holding myself to standards that bodies from this world just cannot meet no matter what their genes are like, no matter how they diet or work out, no matter how much surgery they get. And the appearance wasn’t the point in and of itself, either. I wanted to be like my de Danaan friends because they were tough, smart and mostly happy, and I felt that a Thulcandran could never be any of those things. The face in the mirror just rubbed that in every time I saw it. Maybe if I’d had some good Thulcandran mentors earlier...ah, well. Can’t change the past, and I did eventually find a very cool Thulcandran-Milese wingsister who helped me out with that whole tangle.

Anyway, point is, I wouldn’t say my self-esteem issues are gone totally, but I’ve given them a few good whacks, and I’ve at least got it into my thick skull that Thulcandrans can be very cool. Ergo, no need to wish I’d been born on another world. The bits of the multiverse I can reach as is-in body and spirit-can give me everything I need if I just figure out the how and why.

On a more universal note, I have NEVER thought that my physical appearance was a matter of grave importance in and of itself. You get told all the time when you’re a puggle, ‘the moral of the story is, it’s what’s inside that counts’. Now, back then I didn’t get that people paid lip service to that only. I took it as the truth! Crazy, huh?*

The important things, I thought, were: my intelligence; my basic decency; my artistic talents. In no particular order. Looks were just ‘stuff’, and I wasn’t really interested in ‘em much. The closest I got was how I loved to play dress-up in a witch’s hat or devil horns or pair of sparkly fairy wings or the Pocahontas dress and dog costume Vella made me. (Not both at once.) Oh, and one time he got me a dress with lions on. I couldn’t care less what I looked like in it, I just adored the lions. I liked the ladybird buttons on my school cardy, too. I was kinda potty about animals in general, I guess.

Then I got bigger...and was totally confused by the sudden strong messages that I did, actually, have to care what I looked like. More than that, I had to want to look a particular way, want this with all my being, and do everything in my power to achieve it.

Out of cheese error; please reinstall universe and reboot...

Really, I never lost the view of that puggle who played with hir plastic animals; sie wouldn’t have said ‘We’re born naked, all the rest is drag’ because sie’d never heard that phrase and didn’t really think the concept out in words at all, but sie did think it. Drag can be fun, but it’s not real life.

So now that puggle’s grown his spines and left the pouch, he’ll clench spiked fists and growl when someone starts saying that women have some kind of duty to spend a good portion of their time beautifying themselves. Worse, that they all naturally want to. Because that is How Women Are. And any woman who doesn’t, or who doesn’t have a conventional notion of what beauty is, obviously has something wrong with her. (Oh, and any man who takes as much time over his looks as a woman’s supposed to is a wanker, probably gay**, and obviously has something wrong with him. And let’s not even get into crossdressing...) Why, is this my fist embedded in your skull, Michael? Dear, dear. So sorry. Oh well, it wasn’t as if there was much in there to damage. A few pounds of manure and it’ll be as good as new!

But enough about the placental mammal contingent.

Ash thinks I look okay and not too fat. I am more inclined to give weight(pun not intended)to her opinion than that of placental mammals, really. Several sensible people I know of take the view that fatness is not in and of itself a bad thing in any case unless you’re at ‘cannot shift own bulk’ level. (Which most fat people are not.) I’ve come round to their point of view too.

When people first started mentioning that I had gained weight, I worried. But when I thought of actually looking at my body, that all dissipated.

My body is very female in build, earth mother look enhanced by milky-coffee skin and dark eyes and hair. I have curves all over, and yes, that includes my belly. (If you don’t believe me, Ash, I’ll have to send you pictures. Actually I may do that anyway.*grin*) This is all pretty troublesome a lot of times, what with the whole genderqueer thing; my body doesn’t match my brain. If I’d been told to pick one female body and stick to it I’d have picked something with broader shoulders, narrower hips, smaller tits. Oh, and something taller while I was at it. My body does not feel like it’s mine-it’s more like I picked up the wrong outfit by mistake and ended up wearing something sized for my sister.

I guess all trans and genderqueer folk have their own ways of dealing with this. The way that works best for me is to not think of my body as mine. Or rather, to not think of it as me. It’s a tool; it’s drag; it’s my Pocahontas outfit and dog suit. It’s a thing I happen to have, and till I can alter it so it’ll fit a touch better I’ll just use it as is. It works okay for what it is, it’s not its fault that She Who Gives All Gifts picked the wrong model for me. It can eat and drink, walk, run, dance badly, talk, listen, snuggle and kiss. It has hands with opposable thumbs. It has muscles should I ever choose to train them, and a working female reproductive system should I ever choose to use it. I probably won’t do either of those things, but I have the opportunity. It’s mine to play with.

And hey, why not?

So, Sarah, sorry to disappoint you but I’m not gonna diet anytime soon. I’m just gonna let my curves stay curvy as hell-if I’m gonna look earth mother, might as well go the whole hog. (Mmm, hog.) Besides-I was a Qu before I was an Echidna! It’s only fitting. I like looking this way, and my self-esteem’s never been better.

I offer big love with no apologies
How can I deny the world the most of me?
I am not afraid to throw my weight around
Pound by pound by pound.

*I also believed that being different was good; that people different from each other could be friends; that girls were able to do anything boys could do, and should if they wanted to; and that in his youth my dad had been Mowgli from Kipling’s Jungle Book. Hey, I never said I got them all right.
**Even if he’s had girlfriends and enjoyed it and gotten hickeys and so forth. Especially if he has had girlfriends, etc. Also any nasty traits in his personality are proof that he is gay. Apparently straight men can’t be vain, vicious and vapid, because these traits are what define gays. And you thought it was just that they liked penises.