bev! @TonicBH@computerfairi.es

New on the ol' Secret Area Patreon: It's RTC-3057 for Doom.

Doom mods are one of my favorite things to write about. So let's look into one that was taking use of the then-new ZDoom in 2003.

Available now at $1 or more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rtc-3057-for-of-128377951

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rest in peace giant bomb 2008-2022

Hey folks, we just had a bunch of big expenses come in during a time when we don't have any income due to lack of work and a gap in my disability payments. if anyone can help us make up the deficit and put food on the table and keep us supplied with vital meds, it would be really appreciated. please boost if you can't donate, reach really matters #transcrowdfund #mutualaid https://gofund.me/580dbcb4

Dec 29 / 2019

If you have had to put off trauma for decades just to survive in a kind of perpetual crisis mode, you may find that when you stop doing that it suddenly feels like pain is coming from nowhere. You were just kicking it down the road.

This is what I am pretty sure is up with transitioning and then realizing how incredibly awful it feels to be treated like something you're not: you probably didn't have a point of contrast before with which to compare your everyday experience.

In other words your lungs started to hurt when you stopped running from the truth, but the pain is from the decades of running.

I was talking to my sister today about the trauma that often comes of the first few years of transitioning. So much of it is really reckoning with and facing a lifetime of being taught that what you are - a trans person - is a terrible thing to be.

Trans girls who have been out for not long spend a lot of time obsessing over perceived "failures" that are really just differences between us and cis women. That's painful because we were never taught that there were other ways to be a woman, just "failure."

But when we start spending time around each other this beautiful thing happens. The realization dawns, sooner or later, that the women you're spending time with are truly and incredibly beautiful.

As you get used to the company of your kind, you start to understand in your heart that you are a kind. It's a LOT like "the ugly duckling."

It goes against some of the most conventional and bad advice about love out there, that love begins with loving yourself. It doesn't, it begins with loving others and then accepting that you deserve that love too.

Once you get there, REALLY get there, looking back is hard sometimes because you remember what it felt like to constantly compare yourself unfavorably to both cis men AND cis women. And bc you remember only being able to see cis beauty as beautiful.

You don't know HOW to appreciate a swan even if you're starting to suspect that you are one. No one taught that to you socially or otherwise, and it feels awkward to be learning it so late. It can feel unfamiliar and strange to look at other trans women and SEE our beauty.

There are so many fears: am I becoming deluded? Why didn't I see this before? What does it say about me? Am I a chaser now?! (You're not, please let that worry go ASAP.)

What's happening is that your mind is broadening, to put it simply. Raised in a sexist and misogynist world, we're taught that seeing beauty in women outside of a very narrow bandwidth is shameful, wrong, even suspicious.

You're not going to stop seeing the differences between you and cis women. But if you let yourself, you can START to see the beauty in your own kind. And that has the potential to be one of the most powerful and beautiful revelations in your life.

But don't let anyone tell you that you have to accept the hand you were dealt and love it forever, and that means never changing. You can trade in one or two of your cards and still love yourself, other trans women, and cis women too.

People grow and change, and trans people can grow and change even more. There's nothing wrong with you for knowing that you want full breasts, or a thick ass, or admitting that you want your crotch to be different.

Think of it as customization.

And those women are beautiful too. Those women who you might be a little afraid of becoming. Cis girls go through this earlier and differently but they go through it too. Because of course you're afraid of becoming a woman in a world that hates women.

Practically every memoir of girls' teen years gets into those feelings. What does it mean to look at a mature sexual woman and know that's what you're becoming? It's rarely emotionally simple or straightforward.

We get that later, and with a ton of social pressure to not change. Cis women will talk to you sometimes and you'll realize this woman isn't talking about my relationship to my breast size, she's giving a voice to her own self-doubts and insecurity.

Anyway, it's very early. Love your sisters, all of us, and all of them. It will pay you dividends in love for yourself and in understanding that you're something special in this world.

-Mira Fucking Bellwether