Author Archives: Webmistress Ave

I’m Avery, the one who primarily develops this site. I’m 22, mixed Mexican/Hispano, a student, a butch lesbian—I can keep listing things. I use any pronouns, not in singularity. Do not use a singular set for “simplicity.” I’m a disabled artist, a writer, creative. The first time I touched a computer I started to learn how to type and this is why I write so much. I tell stories and document experiences rich to me. I hear noises others do not. I have a long history with radio and the news.

All Things Left Behind: Log-03072024

March 7, 2024

For the last several years, when you entertain your interests in fields like video games, media, art, journalism; you’ve gotten used to seeing layoffs, haven’t you?

I’ve given a lot of my history with the web out in different contexts, though I find it important to give everyone just a little more. I was barely living, only a little over a year old when a few guys in a shitty apartment bedroom started their independent entertainment website. As of now, I’ll actively be outliving it.

I have a complex history with Rooster Teeth and the associated artwork and media the company released. Of course, I have a complex history with a lot of my presence online, as my access to the computer came very early in childhood, but Rooster Teeth may be the gold standard of complex feelings.

As of yesterday, announced by their CEO, Rooster Teeth is shutting down after 21 years of operation, and more than 150 extremely skilled people are now losing their jobs. I’ve had the joy of getting to interact, even if passively, with some of these people whether they worked at the company in the past or in the present, and I grieve for them deeply. I hope, above all else, that everyone is able to get back on their feet financially and creatively.

In reflection on this particular loss, I thought it would be nice, as one last goodbye to reflect on some of my earliest moments in online communities, fandom, and digital creation that led me to where I am now. I may reference people, not by name, who I interacted with at the time though I keep close to very few of the people I met in my time within the community.

A Place of Your Own

One of the earliest things I learned on the web in some part due to the early Rooster Teeth model was having your own place on the internet, that you control, is a must. I did not participate in any internet forums out of discomfort for a majority of my childhood, however where I was not speaking, I was reading. The Rooster Teeth site, when comments and forums were available were some of the first times I learned of people like me.

The foundation of online presence would drive me to other places, of course, but I took the standard of control and ownership to heart the older I got and the more corporate the web became. In reflecting on not only the community aspect and the corporate aspect of Rooster Teeth and the people within these spaces, I realize now that some of these spaces were incredibly insular, and cut people off from other systems of support and creative exploration for the sake of fitting in with the zeitgeist and culture established by the company and community. I noticed this primarily with artists, whether they were fan artists, hopeful but naive workers, or professionals who saw Rooster Teeth as a dream job.

When looking back, we of course see that the culture of adoration and idealization of Rooster Teeth’s work culture was not healthy, for both workers and fans. People across departments over two decades of the company’s existence have spoken out over poor treatment, crunch, and mismanagement. I believe in listening to workers, both past and present, who have expressed their own mix feelings and faced their darkest days while working for them. Solidarity to the workers, you deserved better. Solidarity to the contractors and freelancers. Solidarity to the unpaid members of moderation teams. Solidarity to all those, past and present, who were hurt in the process of Rooster Teeth’s continued existence.

In moving forward, learning from Rooster Teeth is a case in sustaining healthy spaces to harbor true creativity. Where management came out of a decade of internet and pre-internet culture left a clear grain of ignorant and harmful ideologies, especially for those in the company who left under duress of harassment and bigotry. It is on the surviving creatives to form new spaces truly meant for us, and meant for establishing communities where a longstanding silent tolerance for these legacies of toxic internet environments can no longer exist.

Inspiration

Rooster Teeth and its community gave me many things. My first bouts of digital artwork I was sincerely proud of came out of my last few years being around the community. Experimentation with color, line work and texture in my early work (such as the stained-glass inspired series) would be formative for what made my art mine. Though I did not share much of my work until far later, I taught myself editing software, audio editing, and basic video editing because I thought maybe, because of places like Rooster Teeth, that kind of work was an option for me. Because of the sheer number of projects you could see at one time at Rooster Teeth, for a budding creative mind, there was a lot to be curious about.

I find the biggest inspiration effect Rooster Teeth had on me would come to their various forms of gaming news production, in particular, the work of Ashley Jenkins (Burns), Meg Turney, Kdin Jenzen, Brian Garr, Bruce Greene, Lawrence Sonntag, Autumn Farrell and many other people I am likely forgetting, for which I apologize.

My introduction to tech and games journalism through much of Ashley’s early work, Inside Gaming, The Know, and other analysis was likely the sparkle in my eye leading me down the path of journalism long before I ever worked in an sound booth, radio station, or newspaper.

While the state of the industries (games, journalism, news media) are frankly, a hellscape right now. I would not have the skills I have now without seeing Ashley roam the floors of an E3, or talking to Brian about journalism when my career was just starting. I do not know where my passions would have gone without this early love in reporting and research.

Community

To close, I center my thoughts on the people I met.

I tend to be a bit of a recluse online, interacting and vanishing out of fear of my own incompetence and struggle to communicate. I admire from afar, and I had plenty of admiring to do.

My first friend group I made in the RT community was also the first time I met another trans person my age. I was young, confused, angry with my body and existence, and through community, I found other queer people who enjoyed the same thing I did.

I took up positions, for a time, sustaining community spaces myself, moderating was one of the earliest community positions I took, and in that I forced myself from a young age to learn the complexities of what that took. While I owe it to Bria Davis and Blaseball for my interest in community management, communications and the advancement of my moderation skills, learning as a child to understand and care for the different people around me was because of the Rooster Teeth community, and is also why I left the community and stopped engaging with the company’s work when I felt their values did not meet mine.

I’ve lost connection with most of the people I found myself close to in the years I was in the community, some my choice, some by the nature of the internet. I’ve keep some of my online identifiers largely the same, I vaguely recognize people through memories, art, writing, and nicknames.

One of my best friends is still someone I know through RT, and ironically, in the wake of Rooster Teeth’s end, I’m learning that people I met far later in life have their own complex connections to it too.

I said goodbye in the social sense several years ago, not acknowledging the past years of engagement in favor of moving forward. Now, I think it’s nice to say goodbye, and hope that what blooms out of this loss is something better for every single person who was touched in some way by what was the industry juggernaut that was and is Rooster Teeth.

If you, like me, spent time in the community, now is a good time to seek out the people who created what you loved, especially those who may have been behind the camera, and find a way to support them.

Overheating: Log-02222024

February 22, 2024

I’ve always grown up somewhere hot. Every summer, the heat would climb until the swamp cooler’s effectiveness would be diminished by physics itself.

I don’t tan like my siblings or my grandparents, not as much. My grandparents both had and have beautiful, wrinkled tanned skin from years of outdoor work, spending their time outside. They used to talk about the garden they had, or the days they would hike canyons. I remember my grandmother taking me out to the desert a lot when I was younger, and sometimes she’d remember to slather me in sunblock, but I think I found my appreciation for the outdoors, regardless of the heat, because of the vast open space the rocks, cliffs, and dunes offered me then.

I have some distinct high heat memories, like the summer before my freshman year, when I surprised by family by also joining the marching band. Though I had covered myself in sunscreen, though my grandpa warned me to wear long sleeves instead (a sensible, logical, and effective way to protect your skin from the sun); I came home with my skin covered in reddish amber, and shoulders covered in blisters everywhere where my tank top straps could not protect. I distinctly remember the process of pain I went through during my first band camp, largely because for the most part, I was the only one to be trained in my position; the longer I worked, the more I embraced the pain, dealing with the blisters and accepting the friction as my arms and flag glided through the air and around my body. For me, heat meant pain, and heat meant action.

Another one of these memories was the move in process going into my freshman year of college. Down several family members compared to those summer days four years ago, it was understandable that my (grand)dad could not help me with the extensive move. I got help from a local friend I haven’t talked to in a long time, with the two of us laying out, appreciative of the broken AC that sent out air much cooler than it was supposed to. It was 113 degrees outside that day, and by the end I was shuddering and dripping with sweat, but it was the most free I had felt in months. I opened my blinds in the room I would be staying in, and accepted the sun in full.

I’m reflecting on heat, specially overheating, because of my ongoing illnesses and exhaustion. Where I am now, we were lucky to get a bit of cold in the early winter, and rain at the start of the year to reasonably drop the temp a bit, but this place, every part of it, isn’t exactly designed for safety in mind.

I’ve been feeling guilt about a particular issue I’ve been having. I got quite comfortable in environments by myself. Furthermore, I suspect that, in terms of my academics, a part of my unease in many of my classrooms is related to a lot of torment and harassment. When you are picked at and fucked with in a contained space, it turns you into something tense and always aware. Before I was on my recent medication, and while I was younger, I was often the one separated from the classroom, by choice, or by force because of my discomfort, instability, and outbursts. Sitting in a classroom desk, I feel myself get hotter and hotter, unable to focus on instruction. Every sound, noise, cough, squeak and scratch makes my skin crawl. If I get touched. I panic.

This was me in childhood. I recognize the patterns I took to keep myself stable in those environments, removing myself, extracurriculars that kept me out of the traditional classroom, the lunches I spent hiding. Those were sensible coping mechanisms I manipulated and begged for to my teachers and peers, and because I was a child who could not receive mental health support, that was the best they could do for me.

So I find myself in college now, and I thought I’d have far more control over my stability within my existence and education.

This was, unfortunately, an ill planned thought.

When local cases of COVID-19 were located in my county, soon things shut down, my grades were okay enough for the most part as a senior in largely supplemental classes that I didn’t need to do much, and my college registration, instead of being a grueling trip for an elderly man and his disabled kid, was a simple few hours of online, direct communication and getting my classes situated.

Even though I was physically on campus in 2020, the campus was a dead zone. I lived alone at the end of my hall, and I loved it. My requirements for the day that saw me out in public were the essential matters, and my job. This was arguably the semester I had the best attendance in my entire academic career, following the intensification of my symptoms beginning in my sophomore year of high school. Whenever I go back to my camera roll from that time, around March 2020 to May 2021, I see a person who’s entirely different from the person writing this, even though for the most part we’re the same. He was on testosterone, seeing changes, taking classes he enjoyed, spending time alone.

I differed in the summer of 2022, I don’t need to talk much about the in between time, because it’s a period I’m still examining for my own wellness, issues, and trauma.

I’m writing now, I am on testosterone, but I am not seeing changes other than the way I sweat and getting dizzy in the heat. Not only that, but I’m taking classes I am far more passionate about, but struggle to attend consistently, and instead of enjoying my time alone, I am fucking desperate for it.

There’s at least several things I could pinpoint. I mentioned before my anxiety and unease in physical classrooms full of people, though I think this is only a part of the problem. COVID-19 isolation was such a vital part of keeping my family safe due to a number of reasons, I continue to keep myself as educated as I can on the ongoing pandemic concerns due to my months of reporting local, county, and reservation case and death numbers. Once I started having in person classes, mask mandates did exist at first, but that did not solve the classrooms with horrible ventilation and heating. In numerous classes, since returning, I have sat, unfocused, vibrating, trying desperately to not vomit back into my mask.

Any precautions my university once had for respiratory illnesses and infections is now gone. I have and continue to wear my masks. I have classes in a small window of time to accommodate for my mobility and my transportation schedule. Likewise, I changed my degree, so I wouldn’t be forced into classes with attendance policies so strict you’d have to hope someone in the class had gotten seriously ill and drop out in order to get off the wait list.

I’m not succeeding. The classes I sit in, their ventilation is worse, unless you’re able to maybe open a window. There is no restraint on disgusting behavior, getting coughed on out in the open from behind because no one covers their mouth anymore. Coming into a room, being the only one in a mask, where it’s already presumed I’m a student who’s sick and troublesome because of my accommodations submitted from the DRC two weeks in and the click of my cane (or eventually, I suspect soon, my walker.) I’m a student who will sit in your in person class praying the entire time I don’t catch a respiratory virus, or measles. While my professor lectures, I’m doing the math on the safest time to take my migraine medication, since I’m not sure the seed pain has grown enough yet for me to “justify” it.

I get stars in my vision, blinking hazy spots surrounded by blackish gray haze. There is a distinct tingle to the body, where you can feel the chill of your own sweat and electric stings firing off your nerves, my breath gets heavy, long, and slow.

I had to leave class again, and I’m skipping my second one too. I’ll go back to my job in a few hours, where the airflow, and the occasional ability to take a break outside, will keep me going till closing.

I want to be seen as a good student, as a good person. It’s not terror anymore, I haven’t felt driven by terror in a long time. I feel deliberately distant, like the exact kind of student the advisors and mentors and professors and administrators identity as lazy, uncaring, and wasting everyone’s time.

I think the way universities and schools often treat their students as a part of larger money making systems, and the way it is encouraged to dehumanize the student so that the most efficient teaching and grading can take place. Receiving an education, regardless of whether it’s post secondary education or vocational focused, still feels like my only way out, even though the demands of labor in this country continue to shrink in favor of capitalist gain at the cost of the people who commit the labor. Because I am not, and never will be, an optimal student for the system I’m in, and other systems I look at with a lot of melancholy, my ill-preparedness for the future is just more point of pain, stress, and obsession for me.

I want to love being in a classroom, I want to love school and the work I do. Instead, all I feel is heat. I feel invisible blisters and wounds in the places old scars lay, unstable hands taking minutes to type what takes an instant to come to my mind.

I am burning, and I am begging to be put out.

Introduction: Log-1282024

January 29, 2024

Changes

In an effort to be truthful, I am an inconsistent person. I struggle with consistency in every aspect of life. For every routine I set, and every list I make, things will fall by the wayside. I struggle in day to day basics, everything from the necessary to live to the things I am forced to do to survive in the state we live in.

Dead Signals, a namesake I’ve adopted over the last year is rooted in connection to my work in radio and analogue tech, and the long running social and cultural connections I have to death. I don’t really think of it as a grim thing, because the signals still exist, as long as people can recieve them.

I hope you’ll recieve my signals.

As for my other alieses online, I think I’ll be lovingly retiring the 15 year old namesake I’ve gone by since I started being somewhat social online. Ackasi was truly, just leters put together I like, and some shuffling of a namesake we hold, I made it when I was nine, I love it, but expect some effort of retirement. Tumblr is the only piece of social media I go by a different name (along with Discord) they are both blaseball references, I haven’t decided what I’ll do with those yet, if anything I’ll just intergrate my tumblr feed to my site as a permaqueue.

Over the next few months I inted to make this the place for my online presence.

What it means/Creativity

A part of my ongoing undergradute (and potentially graduate) research projects has been the inspection and understanding of online presence, communial accessibility and technological intergration with the arts. This is a formal way of saying I like being online, using tech, and creating things, and I want to help people learn to love these things.

I have experimented with a lot of options and intergrations with different apps, systems and formats, those familar with my work understand that I started actually quite young with the coding of HTML and theme intergration across blogging sites, Tumblr being the one I was most present on in social circles, with that.

I got really passionate about the aspect of retaining ownership and control over the data you create and presence you have at a young age, largely due to engagement online simply not being congruent with my ethical standards, and fearing retaliation both online and in real life, due to things like bullying, sexual harassment and invasions of privacy.

Later in social “fandom” spaces, where the engagement changed to being more about passing interests, creating interest works, staying long enough to see social complexities in tight knit groups, and witnessing a lot of uncomfortable things, I’ve been known to go “ghost” or wipe the slate clean in a sense, while I still hold friends from old friend groups, fandom spaces, creative projects, and connections, I use the word friend in a uh, probably unfair sense of the word, I don’t talk to a lot of people day after day, i have a tight knit group of friends and my partner, I think of people I care about in the online presence as people I do care for, or people who did effect me sincerely, and I want to understand how to connect to them.

People who know me more recently, since the Pandemic began and continues on, you know me because I was in Blaseball spaces, the enthralling pull of sports and horror, chance and creativity did not escape me and it most certainly spawned a greater interest in both archival, social curration, moderation, and again, online presence. This is not a place to dictate the experiences I went through, nor the ones I witnessed or heard second hand, though it certainly influenced my degree, ironically enough.

Since the Blaseball times, I also took on the depth of my facination of web design, notably intrigued by the Web Revival and Indie Web scene, I’ve coded my own Neocities site since Apr 22, 2022, and It’s time I announce I’m putting it to bed. The site, as it stands, will likely go offline sometime within the next month or so, though I will retain a hard copy on my harddrive I will save. The creative work on the site will survive, it will be ported over to this site in segmented subpages dedicated to hosting my writing, art, and various creative projects.

I am glad I took the leap into web design, I’m glad I was inspired by the Indie Web scene, though I cannot go without highlighting things from the insustainability communities like the Yesterweb faced, nor the considerable accessibility concerns Web-1.0 and early 2.0 revival culture brings to the internet. I undoubtedly contributed to that with early renditions (which no longer exist except for still screenshots, I’d have to search for) of my site, and my goal towards the end of life of my Neocities site, and the establishment of this one, has been accessibility. A part of the shift away from Neocities, is frankly, I’m not skilled enough yet at raw HTML, CSS, and Javascript to implement best practicies behind the scenes. There are things I am skilled at, like captioning and providing alternate text according to standards, and keeping my essentric taste in color to WCAG standards, but using WordPress, and having access to a greater bank of resources to facilitate making sure my work is accessible helps me. The interface I’m working in now allows me not only to port the work I do have easier than before, but it will make creating new work, both for personal and academic purposes, that much easier.

I will note, I did try utalizing a direct publishing tool in Obsidian Publish, and while that served a nice inbetween purpose for things I was writing between the mid point of last year and now, I simply want a consistent system for everything in one place. The Obsidian Publish site will also depreciate (though I will note that is the first place I’ve used the phrase Dead Signals) sometime in the next month or so, and the blog posts will be added to this site.

This experimentation, passioned by the creative in me, inspired by things like streamers, video makers, essayiests, tutorial makers, artists, musicians, programmers, game developers, poets, authors-far to many people to count, brings me to the point of wanting to document that inspiration and experimentation, my life and my art, first hand. I’ve been doing this for some time now, I want to make it mine.

With making a place for consistency, and presence, there is also the relevence of the academic and professional existence which is asked of us. I have complex feelings on art and labour, and the systems in which creatives are tasked with essentially marketing themselves, utalizing language principles, social, cultural, and contextual clues in different enviornments to appeal to whatever entity they are interfacing with. We do this, not so we can engage in the things we aspire for, we do this so we can follow a scheme set for us, fufilling labour requirements to contribute to a greater entity’s earnings. We recieve a fraction of those earnings as a result of our labour, though these greater entities could not survive without us.

In creating this site, I am committing myself to the terrifying act of unmasking myself. I imagine, through exploring this site, my ethics and principles, though they may be varied, inconsistent, and ever changing, are clear. A world without capitalism would see to it that the lives of people who struggle and suffer under the weight of these forces masks would be able to survive. I believe in striving for that world, I have the ability to demonstrate how that can be done.

What it means/Professionally

My first job was a florists assistant.

It’s true.

I would join my grandmother, age 12-13-14, and I’d slip in the back door of the corner store tourist shop that also served as the town and surrounding reservations’ premier flower and gift shop.

In the back of the building was where she worked, the helium station for the latex balloon station she hated, the rows of Halmark cards on the wall, the lounge area that sat the house plants reserved for the more conservative botanical gifts, the books of predesigned arrangements she rarely followed. Solid in the middle of the space was the walk in freezer, you could see the premade, slightly cheaper options, like prepped roses, nice vased tulips, and whatever was the relevant holiday pick. This time of year, summer rolling into fall, I remember the flowers being pink and warm. Inside the solid steel door, that’s where the work began, rows of different cooled flowers, prepped or wating to be prepped, sitting on standby, and on the rare occasion, an arrangement that hadn’t made it’s way to it’s destination.

After standing in the freezer for far to long according to her, I’d bring the bulk of our workload, white carnations and babies breath, for the sake of my favorite tedious project. She’d teach me how to make corrsages and butiners for one of the high school’s homecoming festivites; but not before informing me of the color scheme, blue and silver.

We would come home those nights with our fingers; I picked up bad habits from her withered hands, covered in blue dye, fine silver glitter, and fragments of tuul stuck to our clothes.

At the end of those few days, I’d get slipped 150, maybe $200 at most as an “under the table affair.” Ironically the first time I was likely underpaid for a creative job.

I tell this story first because I fall into a lot of my work by knowledge of others and happenstance, or an often annoying refusal to not ask the adults questions.

I started using the computer around the age of seven or eight, my mother was a web developer working in the music industry, my grandmother was writing a book using the desktop and got familar with publishing among many of her other creative persuits. I had a strong foundation of technical knowledge because when I was young, I wanted to learn what they were doing. I soon learned the word processor and paint tool when a few years before that I was writing and drawing comic books with my mom’s stolen art supplies. I consider my early time on the internet a little understated compared to my time offline. I loved writing things, and not saving them, playing with the computer interface and learning how each of the buttons worked. I was taught how to use a file system because the computer software we were running was one era behind what was in the school computer lab, and my god, did I use the school computer lab.

Along with personal access to technology, I was a student placed in classes that encouraged more hands on, technical based learning, and I had a fantastic teacher early on who introduced me to the world of robotics, which I participated in through high school. I mentioned I was a stubborn and often annoying child, I wanted to learn how things worked. If things could not function how they needed to, and in the expected way, I would get, to put it lightly, irate. I learned how to use the equipment my teachers were, to be honest, not trained to use. Arizona, where I live, is not exactly a leader in education across the United States, however I find that a largely ignored facet of this is how the education system here fails to provide technical based education that continues to build on a learners understanding. From the teachers, to the students, both through economic and instructional means, we are not given the tools to succeed.

I formed my path through this system in ways I was privleged to have, and ways that I had to fight for. In recognition of my own disiblities and struggles, there are things, within the current academic and professional systems I contribute to, which I struggle with greatly, I do not, at this time, feel like I have the tools to succeed.

In documenting my job history, I often took on shorter roles, spots of work as an editor for both video and audio, serving as the house sound and light controller for several local performances and events, a tutor here, a writer there. In school early on, you figure out that your skills are less something value as a service, but it’s something they view as an asset you owe them. For as many things I’ve been paid to do, I did a lot of unpaid labour from the ages of 12 to 18 that left varying effects on my mental, and in one case, physical health.

The most consistent, enjoyable, and well paying job I’ve held, which I will likely continue to contribute to on and off for a long time, is the job I held at my local radio station. I continue to go back and support the station either as a guest host, writer, editor, or educator, but I count my time there six years. I picked up my passion for journalism and my hate for local fiscal government action. I wrote and read daily live news reports for many mornings, afternoons, and evenings, and at one time I held the position of Communications Director. Since I started working at the station, every person who has worked there since has been trained by me. It’s a job I had a lot of love in with the routine, though it had it’s difficult moments. I’ve read obituries for family, loved ones, friends, and classmates. I, more often than not, was one of the first to know of a death besides the local hospital, mortitian, and family. I covered instances of mass death at the start of the pandemic, and the way the government failed my communities. I saw first a lot of local corruption and racism that I documented. Covering the news, that being the cycle of events relevant, important, timley, and interesting to your intended audience; is a nonstop job.

I fell out of love with journalism largely due to the moralizing of the industry within the United States despite interests of the industry going against the needs of the public, the consistent presence of ethical abandonment for monitary and disinformative gains along with a lack of care, and instances of disregard for my mental state and disibilites within my college’s Journalism school.

To capture the panorama of my work experience, I’ll be archiving segments of written work, such as articles, blog posts, news articles, production credits, and media. This work will be archives as original as dictated on the documentation date. This archival process will take place under fair use standards, with the archival materials including commentary along with context on what I provided to the given project.

Currently, I work in a job unrelated to any of the prior areas of interest I just demonstrated. I am fine with this. Though I continue to be interested in sustainable, supportive, long term creative work, the conditions of employment will continue to be complex, I again, intend to use this site to bridge the connections between my presense, form, creativity, and survival. If you want to employ me for a project, email me. If you want to support me as an individual, you can tip me. I am currently investigating and applying for grants and programs to continue my research and artistic endeavors.

A version of my resume in more tradional terms, along with a PDF copy of my condensed portfolio is avaliable upon email request.

For commission and self employment work, I continue to develop these offerings as they come, reach out to me at avery@deadsignals.love for more information.
A note on upkeep costs: As covered earlier, the depreciation of both Neocities and Obsidian Publish will save me some money, however everyting I create with DeadSignals is paid for my job earnings, academic funds, and generous support from peers, friends, loved ones, and family.

To close, as the year continues to march forward, so to will the way I engage online, and the way I commit to labour, the way I create and the way I intend to survive. I hope you will join me on this march.

If you recieved this signal, thank you.

2023-12-20 Reading List and 2024 Goals

December 20, 2023

I’m writing this with a warm excitement, both because they finally turned on the heating at work, and because I feel really proud after I hit my reading goal for this year.

I set myself a 12 book goal, one book a month, as a means to seemingly pase myself and allow for a bit of experimentation in terms of what I read.

First and foremost, I hit my goal and exceeded it by one book, I read 15 in total from January to the day I’m writing this. While there’s a chance I finish one to two more books by the time this is out, I’ll probably add them to next year’s goal, which I’ll discuss further down.

Secondly, just to provide some context for how I managed to finish my goal this year, I want to be clear that what counts as a finished piece in my tracker of choice, Storygraph, can very. While I did read larger works, a majority of what I read was under 300 pages, with the smallest page count clocking in at 12 pages.

This year, I prioritized short stories at first to just encourage me to read. I found even the average size novel intimidating given I hadn’t tackled one since high school. I found myself pretty disillusioned and intimidated even though by and large, I spend large portions of my day reading and writing. In the latter half of the year, the short story emphasis continued since I had a course focused on such. For that course, some of the material I read I chose to add to my list were the ones I enjoyed the most.

As I eased myself into bigger novels or different mediums, I found myself enjoying the pace of reading or listening, and the habit became not only comfortable and consistent, but something I turned to in order to calm myself.

That was a lot of pre-amble, so lets turn the page into the amble.

2023 Reading List

Fucking Trans Women: A Zine About the Sex Lives of Trans Women – Mira Bellwether

Statistics

80 Pages
First Published in 2010
Finished January 7th 2023

Thoughts

I was vaguely familiar with Bellwether’s work in extension to the way she was often cited among other trans women and sex educators in the field, though I only picked up FTW after hearing about her passing from across the internet and her partner.

I want to highlight the insurmountable value I received from Bellwether’s words on sex, intimacy and communication. Importantly, the acknowledgement of the body and how to inhabit them. The abandonment of metaphor that Bellwether puts forward in respect for sex provided a framework I never had before in dialogue about sex even if I’m not dating a trans woman.

It stunned me so as someone with a stunted sense of the sexual self, and I ache for more work that takes on the raw, genuine complexities trans bodies can experience the way Bellwether did.

You can get Fucking Trans Women here, and support Mira’s family while you’re at it.

Love, Despite Everything – Elliot Herriman

Statistics

32 Pages
First Published in 2020
Finished April 9th 2023

Thoughts

Love Despite Everything features three short stories, either played through Twine or read in a PDF.

The Pieces: teeth into bone, maladaption, and seré, lo que era,

I found this piece on my browses of itch.io and in carving into the smaller creative works I find a lot of beautiful and aching stories I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

With stories as short as these, I suggest you read them on Elliot’s page, but I want to address the afterword Elliot offered:

I’m proud of you for healing, as much as you have, I hope you know that I found these words cathartic and meaningful.

I hope you know you’re more than good enough.

Disintegrate/Dissociate – Arielle Twist

Statistics

80 Pages
First Published 2019
Finished April 21st 2023

Thoughts

Taking on a poetry collection is an essential part of any reading goal for me. I often feel far too embarrassed to publish my own poetry, so seeing Twist put this much soul and rage into depicting and weaving together her life that it smacked into me like the kind of punches being thrown by kids who called me disgusting words.

I read Under Uprooted Trees and I start to feel static behind my eyes, losing control, losing me, Twist thinking of the selves she killed and I wonder how many of us commit to those suicides compared to the physical act. I am not owed the intimacies and pain Twist displays across Disintegrate/Dissociate. Though poetry, however personal, has always given me a sense of connection both in the patterns of pain, and the patterns of love artists allow us to follow.

The Lemon King – A.E. Ross

Statistics

46 pages
First Published 2018
Finished April 21st 2023

Thoughts

This is a shorter historical fiction piece, centered on the lives of two boys in California’s juvenile system on the cusp of discovering so much about themselves, and their communities. While it clocked in at 47 pages, I found myself feeling connected to these two boys, their isolation and frustration. To capture the unique perspective of homophobia in childhood communities and how it is punished differently for the likes of non-white men, the prose provided so much yet made me ache to know more about Clark and Julio, even without the chance to

Meteor Family – Ennis Rook Bashe

Statistics

31 Pages
First Published 2018
Finished April 23rd 2023

Thoughts

Every once and a while I’ll come across a piece that checks all of the boxes for what I look for in fiction, and Meteor family frankly nailed it. Following the butch gladiator and a genderless reptile mercenary, the piece builds as a cosmic found family narrative with love and violence that left me utterly losing it. Cameron instantly charmed me as a character, but the entire cast gets the chance to shine in really stunning poetic vignettes. Bashe’s work continues to pull me in with the way descriptive text and poetics meet the characters and plot to actually flow quite well. I definitely encourage giving this one a read.

Stone Butch Blues – Leslie Feinberg

Statistics

308 Pages
First Published 1993
Finished May 11th 2023

Thoughts

I think it’s funny when a text is associated as an essential work, yet the discussions I see surrounding the book only seem referencial, not contextual or focused on the writing itself. I feel this way with Stone Butch Blues.

I’ve seen quotes, I’ve seen artistic depictions, memes and posts shaming the commodification of this book over and over before I even knew I was a lesbian. I was fully aware of the intensity of this piece thanks to several kind warnings, and because of those warnings I knew I would be hit hard by the novel, but would likely find some comfort in seeing some experiences (especially that of the earlier chapters) played out. Because of that, this year was finally the time for me to dig into the piece without any preconceived notions of the book and allow myself to embrace it for what it is, and this was a fantastic choice.

Workplace struggle. I find if you don’t come out of reading Stone Butch Blues with that burning familiar feeling that comes with living to survive, and the presence of labor rights and unionization discussion is simply a background piece, I think you go the wrong thing out of this book. I have never seen myself in another lesbian the way I have seen myself in Jess’s stress in the factories, or frustration in typesetting, or the dread and fear that comes with being the person demanding better treatment. To see the struggles I’ve had in the workplace as a butch mirrored here made me feel almost bitter and comforted at the same time.

Interestingly, the parts I connected to the least were the parts that heavily featured the extended presence of lesbian community and interaction throughout the book. Bar culture is dead, communities get tighter and harsher. If I’m being realistic, a lot of what we saw in the novel, the back and forth between different ideological frameworks of not just lesbianism, but how we carry on existing amongst each other would cause such imaginable discourse now (it’s no wonder we can cite the likes of Feinberg and writers of the time discussing the same issues in a circular inescapable tar pit.) I distinctly remember Jess’ disgust at her friends, both butches, being together, and how disgusted it made me. To watch Jess and the surrounding cast grow and change for the sake of living the best lives they could though, that SHOULD be something readers of Stone Butch Blues take in. Whether due to the time, their circumstances, or survival, it was the people who changed and grew who survived.

I cannot finish a review or thoughts on Stone Butch Blues without talking about the way love is depicted. There’s of course a lot of impactful love that isn’t romantic, though longing feels key to Jess’ survival as a butch. These relationships pulled at my heart, seeing the people who I looked up to and loved in the lines talking about Al and the roles Jess was taught. Theresa and Ruth both play such key roles in the depictions of love and roles within the piece. Like Jess being unable to let go in a lot of ways, Theresa to me felt close to the longing I felt when young for that perfect relationship, the one that clicks, the easy proposal and spark. What I saw in Jess and Theresa’s relationship was the walls closing in on what could be normal, what could be acceptable, and the pain of not only being confused as to who you are, but rejected for it. It’s where Ruth offers an embrace of the imperfect, acceptance and understanding of who Jess is and was, along with Jess accepting Ruth. It’s the fact that implicitly, the pair had equal footing over the other, where the lines of gender and love willingly blur for the sake of sincere connection; I can’t think of something more beautiful to end on.

To see someone like Jess embraced and loved. To see Jess and Ruth survive and have those beautiful moments. God. What more could a lesbian ask for.

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx and Speech Sounds by Octavia Butler

Statistics

55 Pages and 12 Pages
First Published in 1997 and 1983
Finished on September 11th and October 13th 2023

Thoughts

Both short stories I read for my fiction class last semester, and the standout ones at that. These two are in my personal reading list because I took extra care to reread and dissect them for my course, though I honestly have some pretty brief thoughts.

The key thing with these two pieces is you need to experience them. Read them. Read the dialogue out loud, linger over the ways description is constructed. For every page there is a litany of vibrant description and stunning internal narration.

The best way to experience the joy, love and pain these two pieces have to offer without pulling it out of myself is to read the work yourself, and hopefully you’ll be utterly captured by it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Volume 1 – Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Erik Burnham

Statistics

424 Pages
First Published 2015
Finished October 20th 2023

Thoughts

I got on a big Ninja Turtles kick this year because of my wife (getting into things because of him will come up again), and I’ve got to say the IDW collection is quite fun. It’s not my perfect TMNT lore by any means, but by starting with Raphael and the outside world of New York getting the picture of just what is happening and how it effects the turtles made for an unique introduction that left me absolutely enamored with the boys and their childish spark. I definitely called the turtles cute a lot while reading this, but the IDW series is a must read for turtle lovers in my book and I plan on finding the other volumes.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – Alison Bechdel

Statistics

232 Pages
First Published 2006
Finished October 24th 2023

Thoughts

I described Fun Home in my initial review of the comic as being dunked in ice.

I’d describe it now as standing in a walk in cooler.

My situation isn’t exactly similar to Alison’s but it did scare me. You have a parent in your life you look up to, you loved, but the conditions of your life and theirs make for nothing but well, conflict.

I see Alison’s parents in my grandmother, the love and disgust playing back and forth between the all consuming depth of their creativity. Bruce’s opulent and flowery home feels no different to my family home drenched in southwestern ruggedness and obsessive reverence. The two of them, Bruce and my Grandmother, are more alike than not.

I played around cold dead bodies and flowers waiting for their rightful place on top of caskets.

Missing her, it’s nice to know I’m not alone in the ache.

Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition: A Guide to Narrative Craft- Janet Burroway

Statistics

240 Pages
Edition Published 2019
Finished November 30th 2023

Thoughts

Another piece for my fiction class, except I found Burroway’s advice rather flat, basic and trite with far too many examples and not much in the way of exploratory writing outside of the prompts offered within the book, which were the best part by far. I think it’s kind of heartbreaking that thi is one of the most popular means of teaching fiction writing for students.

Murderbot Diaries #1,2 and 3 – Martha Wells

Statistics

3 hours 17 minutes, 3 hours 21 minutes, and 3 hours 46 minutes
First Published 2017 and 2018
Finished December 2nd, 21st, and 25th

Thoughts

For a series I’ve heard about and avoided due to how much I’ve heard about it, this might be the best thing I’ve picked up that was actually worth the hype. I listened to the audio books (narrated by Kevin R. Free, which delighted my brain as a long sung Welcome to Nightvale Fan) with Nel and got instantly sucked in to basically everything.

Murderbot offers a look into the world shamelessly critical of the systems within it while implicitly aware of how dangerous they are for people who fall outside of those systems. The books were an absolute joy to read with someone while reacting incredibly autisticly, and bouncing back and forth discussing the complexities of the world Wells created. In the New Year, we finished book 4 as well, and while we’re stalled for the semester starting, we can’t wait to jump back in to the much longer later books.

Somewhere Like This – Pat Arrowsmith

Statistics

190 Pages
First Published 1970
Finished December 22nd 2023

Thoughts

Likely the most niche book I read this year and the last physical book, Somewhere Like This was originally published in 1970, though my copy published in 1990 offers a preface from the author which lends itself essential to how I digested the book.

Somewhere Like This is a prison novel, depicting the likes of an all Women’s prison the likes of with Arrowsmith understood well, as the preface details the likes of her own sentences for anti-war activism, with this she crafts a narrative surrounding prison life and the intersections of lesbian identity, gender nonconformity and power structure that felt real and raw.

Depictions of women across the spectrum of perspectives in both their internal and external selves was stunning. First and foremost, encountering the way Arrowsmith put to words the social dynamics between women who hold power and the people under them was jaw dropping. Much of the administrative force within the prison system was also women and the clear way evidence of self inflicted misogyny and the misguided ideologies the staff has, from the punitive and corrective means to the more progressive seeming mental support efforts it’s clear from the start that the system fails every person from the top to bottom. This failure becomes clearer and clearer through the cast of prisoners as the the conditions of their imprisonment and their mental state is given to you directly. Many of the women in this prison were failed, whether through abuse, violence, poverty or mistreatment and this is a realistic and painful read.

I find it incredibly rare in the books I’ve read that depict the emotional pain of rejection and existence as a butch so true to form. There’s a particular scene where Lorry, the introductory character to the novel, confronts this life-long part of her existence and is rejected by an officer who she thought was also a butch. I was caught by the dysphoria and shame across the novel, especially by this rejection and the officer’s own conflict and ultimate upholding of the status quo the most. I ask myself how many of us, the butches and women I love in my life, ache and crave for the connection and understanding that the prisoners and workers of Collingwood prison long for.

None of the characters are perfect, but that is what made them feel real. The longing for intimacy, touch and love, that felt real. Bitter heartbreak and raw anger felt real too. Somewhere Like This consistently pulled me into thinking about my own past and reality as someone on an outskirt of womanhood and the meaningful and complex relationships I had in the past and now.

Giving this book a shot after finding it in the somewhat dated Gay and Lesbian section at my used bookstore was one of my favorite decisions this year, and will absolutely pull me back to the section for the hope of more raw, real and niche writing like Arrowsmith’s.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with everything I read this year and really enjoyed getting to write about them for you! If you have any questions for me, wanna talk about this article or want help accessing the books I read, give me a shout!

2023-11-20-New Exhaustion

November 20, 2023

Originally Published on Obsidian Publish.

This is new, isn’t it?

A new blog, a new format, I’ve been desperate for some changes.

I covered in the intro post that this blog itself will be a work in progress, and that is true, however you should come to expect a complete overhaul in my online presence by the time the new year rolls around.

I have issues, obsessions with systems and procedures and failing them. This impacts me in a lot of areas, but when it’s applied to my own created systems, I get a sort of misalignment in my brain that causes the kind of thoughts I don’t think I should post online.

That being said, this system is intended to get me to write. That’s the goal here. While I am porting some issues of the old Neocities blog to here, Obsidian Publish opens up the vault of sorts to allow me to publish much more of my writing and thoughts. As I organize this, and allow more to flow into the public, I hope to let this stand as a monument to the more interpersonal writing I enjoy.

Life right now, compared to my last entry for this blog, is a lot better. I got settled in an apartment, I’m back on the benefits I needed to survive, I’m back on testosterone.

Needless to say, there’s a lot more going on in the world.

I’m tired. I’m very tired.

Earlier today, I spoke loudly in the face of the man who can technically get me fired, and pushed him to answer for the ongoing issues in our department related to Gaza.

It’s hard to feel anger even, all things considered.

I want to fight for something better, a place that’s good. For the people I love and the people I can’t begin to know.

Dia De Las Lucha and Chalako – The Band! Review and Photos-11-01-2023

November 1, 2023

I went to this show on a pretty somber day for me, so in all honesty, I was looking for a pick me up, and this absolutely delivered.

An image of the Rockstar Wrestling Alliance Dia de las Luchas event, with music by Chalako the Band scheduled Saturday July 15th. The version of the poster is cropped to hide the location, it shows a green and orange lucha mask, over a green and orange stripes expanding outwards towards the center over a black background.

Before this, my experience with live wrestling was high school photography for the year book, our annual collegiate tournament that brought in hundreds of people. An exciting event, but not my style.

This event, however, was.

One thing that caught my attention right off the bat was the sheer variety of people, I got to compliment two older women on their WrestleMania shirts and El Santo earrings. An older woman using a rollater behind me was decked out in merch for one of the people on the card, and I’d later learn that she was his mom.

While I got their early in order to find a comfortable seat close to the rails, I was joined by a father and young son who were excited to hear it was my first show, they looked out for my stuff when I got up to visit the merch table, or when I wanted to get closer to the action.

Where Dia de las Lucha was a different kind of show was between each match, we would get some music provided by Chalako – The Band! They were fantastic! A mix of Mexicana, blues, and rockabilly honestly felt really homey, it’s stuff I’m quite used to.

Before the show, I took a lot of joy seeing the younger members of the crowd, dancing it out, practicing moves on the floor, I’m sure some of those kids are going to wrestle one day.

You could absolutely feel the energy the second it was time to start.

A photo of Calli Hiss the ring announcer, introducing us to the show.

Midas and El Dragon vs Phat and The Furious (Chubby Depp and Ricky Rayez) demonstrated the absolute joy of a hot crowd and managers who know how to work them.

I recognized El Dragon with his work on ROH and AEW, but the man was holding the AWF Arizona State Title for this bout, but both members of Phat and the Furious had history with the belt themselves.

Kick ass, fast as hell, and with a little bit of skillful trickery, El Dragon took it home, absolutely pulling me in.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-HMbweZuIKw%3Fsi%3D45RJDpmMW3Fhh1bc

An image of El Dragon kneeling in the ring in a stretch, with the referee calming his manager outside the ring

Now, I want to talk about the band a bit more, because really they were spectacular, not a hitch on their end all night, and even with my limited mobility I felt like dancing quite a lot. It was groovy and fun, and the absolutely packed crowd as into it.

What I was not into was the commentary team, where the ongoing bit between matches and songs was to either mispronounce or joke about botching their name. Throughout the entire show I stayed for, the commentary duo (both white men) would make these jokes, so that was a big downside for me.

That said, go check out Chalako the Band! and listen to some of their work.

The next two matches were of note were “King” Chris Evans vs El Cobarde, and Johnny Savoi vs Tecolote, two matches where the crowd division became just as much a feature as the wrestling.

Savoi was otherwise quite cool, but a Mexican crowd cheers for their luchador. Evans saw harsher crowd reactions, some cheering on the proud military vet bragging about being the king of Arizona, but I enjoyed the ass kicking Cobarde provided.

While I was enjoying the show, I have to be honest. I personally tapped after four matches, and five songs. The energy was great, but my body couldn’t sustain for the whole show, next time, I will call ahead and inquire about disability seating, since they offered seating for several disabled audience members and their families.

So, I decided to stay for one more match.

And god, it was worth it.

If I had to highlight my favorite male wrestler on the independent scene right now, it would be EJ Sparks. It is no hyperbole to say he fills the room with a bright, buzzing charge that no one can deny.

EJ Sparks standing on the middle rope calling out to the crowd

In the ring, his opponent Rompe Cabezas, large, undeniable, he hits fucking hard.

Rompe Cabezas chops EJ Sparks hard on the chest.

EJ Sparks flies into the corner with a hard hitting punch for Rompe Cabezas

EJ has this look of desperation, when a hit lands, the spreading pain all over his body, you see it in his grimace, and he lays it out for all of us. And god, the crowd screams for him, his family is there sure, but all everyone in that crowd of several hundred wants is for him to come out on top.

You can feel the charge, the tingle in your bones, when he gets the pin.

After this, I’m out of my seat and in the lobby, like every indie show, you got guys selling 8x10s, masks, shirts and other gear.

I chat up the guys out there working and compliment their matches, none of the guys have changed, and their instant transfer services are so busted, that I sadly can’t get much.

EJ though, he joins the table, still sweat covered from his match. It thrills me watching boys and girls run up to him and compliment him, and I too, a little eager, wait my turn.

He’s very nice, I get a trading card and a signed book, and he tells me a secret I appreciate, that women’s matches only happen every other show at this theater.

It’s weird singing a wrestler their praises as if they didn’t just put their body through hell, but I hope he felt my sincerity when I said I hoped he got signed.

All in all, my first live wrestling show was a rush of pure energy and community on a day that I really needed it. I feel myself aching for another show, which is coming soon.

In writing this, I hope you check these guys out! Some of them were hard to find, and I hope you can enjoy their work as much as I did, that somber Saturday in July.

2023-07-19-Moving Blog

July 19, 2023

2023-07-19

In the time it took for me to write this blog post, Blaseball permanently ended, I faced (and am still kind of facing) a rental scam, and I’ve setting into a somewhat permeant place to stay.

Now, that’s a lot, lol.

To be frank, I’m in a weird state, things are okay to the extent that through support from folks, as well as receiving some of my money back from the scam. I start work in August formally for the University, and then I’m applying for work near my place. Things are okay, at least it feels like they should be.

There’s the lingering anxiety of financial stability of course, but I find myself actually managing my anxiety easier! I still have to pay rent at the end of the day, so I may be working on some things soon along with finishing up existing work. I feel the buzz of creative energy in me, but there is an unending exhaustion, and unending urge to move. Now that I’m settled, I have to manage the way I use my energy.

I don’t really owe anyone the private details, but managing the fear of complete collapse is my goal.

A certain six-year anniversary passed this last Sunday, one that feels harder and stranger to reckon with every year.

I find that the distance makes the ache hurt less.

One last small joy, I have a system to request maintenance from my apartment’s property manager and the mechanics? They’re lesbians. Lesbian wives too, they’ll be coming over to replace my oven hood next week.

In the meantime between blog posts and updates, my Ko-fi is the primary way to support me, or you can ask for something else via a DM, I’ll get together a page in the next few days that houses the support list.

It’s that time of year again, and it feels sort of like bittersweet chocolate. I’ve been craving creative outlets beyond my school work, of course, and Blaseball is a familiar house. It’s also one that’s gone now.

I don’t think I’ve really grasped what the end of Blaseball means in an artistic sense yet. In the practical sense it means the “community” will divide further, based on interests and preexisting divisions; the developers and moderators will, hopefully, all find new work in the future [in some cases, it looks like a few already have], it means people will move on.

Moving on is a weird way to put it, at least for me, I find Blaseball overall to be something really valuable to me, in the memories, peers, friends, and knowledge I found. I also know, that like most typical “fandom” spaces, the toxicity and genuine faults across all levels of the game and the network surrounding caused me and the people I loved a lot of harm and grief. In that sense, saying goodbye feels okay to me.

Back to the point of artistic meaning, I know I’m not done developing or depicting my thoughts on Blaseball. While I’m sure, like other previous creative endeavors in my life, I’ll fade it out of my creative lexicon, I still have stories I’d like to tell.

The Blaseball Zine Jam this year is going to give me a much-needed artistic reset I need, and while I’m sure I’ll have a lot of pieces released for it, expect some original work too!

Some Things I’ve Enjoyed During All Of This

I got turned on to non-alcoholic hops drinks by one of my mom’s best friends, he had us over, and he helped me move, but that might be my most pretentious moment yet. Also enjoyed Strawberry Basil Soda.

A new Mountain Goats song came out today. I need to know more about miss Jenny from Thebes

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VuO2gbeUzb0%3Fsi%3DhaXTqy9a9fWSHGS6

Ada made me this playlist that I’ve really been enjoying, especially tracks 9, 12, and 16

Here’s what news from the future looks like.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q85l1Fenc5w%3Fsi%3D2LDDvtnKcgzNLIw6

I cannot tell you how often Fuel occupies my brain, I am SO relieved someone like Jacob Geller covered it because it has lived with me as a title since childhood.

If you’re a wrestling fan, keep an eye on Exploding Cage! I may have a piece in the works, now that I’m recovering from my moving disaster.

Lastly, I really found solace in coding again recently, hense the varity of changes across my site. I think, in all of things that happened to me over the course of the last blog post to now. I ached for structure and stability while absolutely not having that, and during the time I was couch surfing and waiting for all the professional agencies to do things on their end so that I could get to where I am now, I coded. I’m happy with this set up as of late, and I’m sure more updates will come down the pipe.

Thank you for reading, thank you to everyone who has continued to keep me afloat, thank you to the people who have been patient with me.

Take care of yourselves out there.

Transgender Street Legends Vol.3 by Left at London Review-06-22-2022

June 22, 2023

Originally written 06-22-2022

I listened to this album on the shuttle heading home.

Home, funny enough, is something I associate distinctly with Left at London’s work. I was a 2 time closeted queer and trans kid when I listened to I Don’t Trust You Anymore.

Much like the sound of Transgender Street Legends Volume 3, both Nat and I have grown from that acoustic track.

Straight away. I was blown away by the audio mixing and the production. Puff is no slouch when it comes to production value within her music, but this release was truly a step above.

The start of the album, you can expect the absolute bright & engaging instrumentals despite the tonal difference SHH! Both SHH! & I’m Not Laughing Anymore we’re frankly some of the most stunning tracks on the album from a technical perspective to me, because Nat utilized a fantastic sense of theory to tell this story, without the instrumentals of these tracks, these stories could have absolutely still been told, but the shared unification of Puff’s stunning vocals & this musical storytelling instantly grabbed my attention unlike anything else I’ve listened to.

My Old Ways feels dreamlike, I’ve known myself to not be a fan of a lot of noise music but again, Puff is an expert of using every semblance of instrumentation to their advantage. Falling through remembering who you are, this song hit home on the drive home because it felt almost right to look back on ourselves, myself in this listen, without shame

Make You Proud and Will My Alters Go To Heaven crushed me in totally different ways.

I don’t believe it is my job to talk about Nat’s or my personal situations with family, especially loss. She’s shared what she is comfortable with in regards to the inspiration of Make You Proud. What was stunning to me, was the lack of grief within it.

Growing up celebrating Dia De Los Muertos, and living with the elderly myself, the resounding feeling of this song was a life celebration. Something utterly beautiful, and something that I feel is rarely recognized in music.

Will My Alters Go To Heaven made me cry. This was the one that wrenched my heart, this is the one that hit me with a wave of cathartic grief.

To look at the music itself. Getting a stunning piano track out of this album was not what I was expecting. This was one of the songs I had no clue about, and frankly, I think this is one of the most stunning features of Nat’s vocals in her entire library. This is raw & beautiful.

As someone who has also been left to ask the question, as someone who has come to understand my headmates, feeling that connection & knowing I wasn’t alone in that fear, was something I’ve never felt through music before…since I Don’t Trust You Anymore.

I know that this is the last volume of Transgender Street Lengends.

In a way, it feels like growing up.

This album is a principal feature of everything that is Left at London, & the sheer volume of talent she has. Knowing how long this album was in the making & the sheer passion that went into it. I will be kept aching for more & more of her work.

The stories being told in TSLV3 are seldom mainstream, but are absolutely vital stories, crafted by someone incredibly passionate & skilled to tell them.

Go listen to Transgender Street Lengends Volume 3, then do yourselves a favor, take in the rest of her discography too.

Thanks