🐯toraleistripestan Follow

@thenightfolknetwork daily affirmations

to any wizards who might find this on their dash, click keep reading 👇

your. incantantaions. are. impressive.

people are bewildered and amazed by your magical abilities, even if you don't hear people talking about them.

your spells are potent. they are influential on their environment.

your robes are lavish, and they are not overly gaudy. your brain is lying to you.

💖💖💖

woah. woahhh.

thighs

yeah I knowwww the witch said to only eat one of the roses but like. theyre soooo good you guys no no like it tastes soooo yummy

what do you mean “would I love my son if he was a worm?”

No, because people keep acting like Grace Chastity being consumed with a lust for the power that Lords in Black provided her doesn't count as a world ending Cataclysm - but it very much does. Not only has she shown little to no empathy for others throughout the entire show and only ever felt bad for lying to authority figures and being horny - but the final song of the Musical is essentially a reprise of Max's Murder Song/Manifesto which places her as a parallel to Max. Max sings about how he's going to kill ALL the Nerdy Prudes and not once but twice tells the audience that it doesn't matter if someone is actually a Nerdy Prude because he makes the rules and gets to decide who is or isn't a nerd etc etc. Grace's take is that she is going to kill all the Dirty Dudes but she's literally singing it to a guy who has, throughout the entire musical, done nothing to indicate he's a pervy/dirty dude and only kissed her after she asked him too. Like Max, Grace Chastity doesn't actually care if someone genuinely fits the framework of her stated victimology, because she has the power so she gets to make the rules.

Honestly it's like some people didn't think about the implications.

vampires will never hurt you🕸

(theyre too damn busy hiding from the sun under their black-and-white umbrella)

bunny bennett, will wood and gerard gay

cant believe they all have their names begin with the same letter as their last names

the reason for this:

Greetings and salutations! Most people writing in say that it’s their first time doing so. I admit, that isn’t quite the case for me. I sent in a letter back in 1942, asking about whether or not I should medically transition—though of course the terminology was a bit different then.

I admit, I don’t remember the specifics of your response, but whatever it was, within twelve months I was taking testosterone pills. And I’ve been on HRT since then! It’ll be eighty years come January. I suppose I’m what you might call an elder in the community, though I certainly don’t look it.

That’s sort of why that I’m writing to you again. As you know, most genuses age getting older, but some age getting younger. My genus, whatever it is, does a combination of the two. I aged normally from when I was born til when I was 73. At that point, I died, spent about a day and a half decomposing, a day and a half un-decomposing, and then popped up out of my casket! My relatives were… surprised, to say the least. I think we all were. Regardless, I grew younger at the same rate until I was seven years and four months old, and then boomeranged and started growing older again. I’m currently in my third repeat of this cycle, putting me at about 375.

I don’t mind it, honestly. I know that a lot of folks who grow younger tend to dislike it, for very understandable reasons—being patronized by someone a fifteenth of your age is quite an experience. But aside from the condescension and not always being able to reach the top shelf, I think it’s pretty fun! Nothing beats hide-and-seek as a nine year old, and when I’m in the de-aging half of life, it’s always a relief to get my 30-year-old knees back.

There is another aspect to it, though. However my body ages, it de-ages in the exact same way, no more and no less. For example, let’s say I get a tattoo when I’m 27 years and two days old, while aging up. I’ll have that tattoo through when I die, and all the way back down to when I’m 27 years and 3 days old. It’ll disappear sometime during the following day, and by the time I’m 27 years and one day old, it’ll be like I never got it done. It’ll pop up again the next time I’m that age, but for those 40-ish years, I just won’t have it.

And attempts to change by body while I’m growing younger all vanish after the day—I’ve become very well-versed in wigs for this reason. I can change my body while aging up again (I don’t choose the tattoo example lightly; someday I’ll figure out a system that prevents me from getting overlapping ones), but it's a rather long wait.

Still, it’s primarily just a nuisance. I’ve had plenty of time to figure out workarounds and roundabouts. However. I’m almost 34 right now, and have about 14 months until I hit the date I first took testosterone. My boy-thday, if you will. Ahem. Anyway. For the past few years, I’ve been slowly but surely getting a body closer to the one I had when I started medically transitioning.

I’ve tried continuing to take T, consulting with other people who grow younger, even contracting time travelers to see what they could do, all to no avail. When these 14 months are up, I’ll have a form indistinguishable from the one I was so desperate to escape. From then, it’ll be about 20 years until I’ll have even a little-kid sort of androgyny again.

I have lived through this period in my life before. I’ve lived through it on five separate occasions. I will be alright. But every time, it hurts. Quite a lot. And I fear that these upcoming two decades will hurt even more, since I’ll know what it’s like to live without that underlying sense of constant pain.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m asking here, maybe you can tell me what my question is, but, um. Do you have any advice?

Thank you so much for writing in, reader. It's always lovely to hear from people who have found my advice helpful in the past, and I hope I can offer you the same comfort and support you felt in 1942.

An important thing to remember here is that, no matter what stage of life your body is at, it is still your body. To be clear: a trans body. Your physical appearance may seem to be resetting, but your life experience is not wiped out by each new cycle. You carry with you all your past experiences, and all your current perspectives.

You may or may not consider yourself to have been male during your first adolescence. The way we frame our own histories naturally varies from person to person, and not everyone retroactively identifies their younger self in the same way they identify in the present.

But regardless of how you perceive that earlier self, your current self is undoubtedly transgender. That doesn't change just because your body does. When your dysphoria starts to rear its head, hold onto that. Your body does not define your gender, and your identity is valid no matter what you look like.

Of course, you still need to find ways to manage that dysphoria when it happens. I'm sure you're well aware of your options for temporary, daily management of your appearance through wigs, gender affirming clothing, and so on. You might also consider applying a glamour to yourself to help your outward appearance more closely match your inner self.

If you're not a practitioner yourself, you can either use ready-made glamours or hire a practitioner to craft one to your own specifications. Even off-the-rack glamours can be expensive, however, so you may want to save this option for special occasions rather than daily use.

Beyond that, your best defences against the anguish of gender dysphoria are good mental and emotional health, and a supportive community. Be sure to practise regular self-care (real self-care, not the type invented to sell face masks and scented candles) and lean on your loved ones as much as you need to during this difficult period.

Finally, remember: your body is not the enemy here. You deserve to be treated with gentleness, love and kindness, and this extends to your physical self, too. Try to develop a practice of mindfulness and active gratitude, checking in with your body regularly and taking note of all the joys you can experience as a physical being, from enjoying the cold wind on your cheeks or the smell of clean bedding, to the delights of good sex, delicious food, or a hot shower after a long day.

This is a difficult time of your life, and you have my sympathy. But I don't believe it has to be a source of “constant pain”. Treat yourself kindly, let others support you, and know that no matter what the world perceives, you know who you are, and nobody can take that away from you.

Ever since I was young, I was raised to be a total blank slate. No interests, no aesthetics, nothing. I was meant to be the vessel to L’Gogamet, the Hallowed One. So, that meant I had to fully give myself over to Them.

The only problem is: They never bothered to show up. I sat there, on my eighteenth birthday, waiting for Them to rend my soul from my flesh, only to receive a burning blaze of light reading “sorry, can’t make it, save the next one for me.”

My family wasn’t exactly thrilled. They were under the impression that I had done something wrong, though for the life of me I have no clue what it was. And now, I’m all alone. I have no clue what I’m meant to do.

I have a small apartment and a roommate. I’ve tried to get interested in the same stuff she likes, but it honestly just doesn’t appeal to me. But I have no clue what there is that I do like. Apparently, outside of my family, there isn’t exactly a “L’Gogamet fanbase”, and that was the only thing I was allowed to be interested in for my whole life.

I’ve gone to support groups, but sitting in a circle with other blank slates doesn’t exactly feel helpful. And then when someone does find something interesting, I’m like “wow! good for you! time to go back to doing nothing with my life.”

Worst of all are the modifications. My family took it upon themselves to alter me in a few ways, various piercings and tattoos that They should have loved. Only now, I’m stuck with them. And most of them are cursed to never be removed. I’ve been called out a few times, told that they’re “appropriative for a Sapio like me to have.” That hurt more than most comments, because I guess that’s all I am now. A Sapio, with nothing special about me except the disgusting markings all over me.

Your show came up in one of the support group meetings. I thought maybe you would have some advice? How do I find my interests and my self when I’ve been raised to be a nobody?

I'm so sorry your family have treated you with such unkindness – and I don't only mean their failure to support you after their plans went awry. It was profoundly unkind of them to raise you the way they did, as if you were nothing but a vessel for their hopes and aspirations and not your own person.

Their treatment of your body is particularly upsetting. I am certainly not going to try and tell you that your markings aren't “disgusting”, or to tell you how you ought to feel about your own body. I do encourage you to take whatever steps you feel appropriate in reclaiming your body, however.

Part of this reclamation might involve covering or removing the marks inflicted on you by your family. But I encourage you to experiment with other ways of changing your appearance, too. Play around with your clothing, hairstyles, hair colour, make-up – whatever you can think of.

The point isn't to find a style that you love, but rather to demonstrate actively to yourself that this body is yours, your own, and that finally, you are in charge of how it looks.

Of course, this process does bump up against your initial question rather. How are you supposed to know what sort of choices you want to make when you've never been allowed to make that kind of choice before?

The answer may seem obvious: you need to try as many things as you can, and expose yourself to as many new experiences as possible. But for the time being, I want you try and set aside your concerns about finding what you “really” like.

That is a huge amount of pressure to put on yourself, especially when you're starting from scratch, like you are. Instead, go into these activities with no more pressure on yourself than a sense of open curiosity.

You're not on some great quest to discover your True Self – you're just popping into the local book club to see what it's like, or borrowing some knitting needles from a friend and giving it a go. You can check what clubs and events are running at your local library, and make a game of trying as many as you can fit into your schedule.

Give yourself time. Imagine your personality as a plant that has been left in a dark, cold room with nothing to feed it and no light to help it grow. Against all odds, it has survived – pale and stunted, but alive. Now imagine you bring that plant into a warm, bright room, you feed it and water it, and above all you give it the space it needs. Who knows what kind of beautiful thing it might blossom into?

Finally, a word on your identity. Reader, you absolutely don't have to identify as sapio if you don't want to. There are plenty of people who consider themselves to be people of the night based on their magical practice, their religious background, or their occupations. You personal experiences more than qualify you to do the same.

As I've said many times before, liminality is defined by the people who claim it. There isn't an external, objective standard of “strangeness” that you have to meet in order to be a member of the community. Anyone who says otherwise is at best dangerously ignorant and at worst, wilfully so.

Putting your vampire fuckbuddy into the sauna to reach normal body temp before sex so their ice cold hole doesn't kill your boner

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he looks like scrappy doo

hammer-headed bats are the only thing you should be thinking about