There is a man down the street from your house. You must approach him. This is not optional.
Once you get close, he will turn to you and ask what you would like for dinner. You will tell him that you are not hungry. He will insist you eat something.
You will think for a moment. It is important that you actually think, visualize. Conjure in your minds eye the food that you love the most. Whatever will bring you the most joy when the time comes.
The man will smile and pat your head gently. He will take a few steps and disappear into the fog. You will see him again, in your own time.
Safe travels,
Rigel M.
šÆtoraleistripestan Follow
Every full moon I leave an open can of tuna in front of me so that the beast within can have a tasty little treat š§”
š§š»āāļøolderbloood-remade Follow
āTasty little treatā godddd no wonder nobody takes werecats seriously yall are so corny š go back to the zoo
šÆtoraleistripestan Follow
The beast within fucked you mom to make her a better son
šÆ toraleistripestan Follow
LMAO he blocked me
š¶ yowlmusix Follow
why is it always the Victorian vampires who say shit like this. what compels them to say this sort of crap about other monsters on tomblr dot com
š« ghool Follow
Racism turned with them
he looks like scrappy doo
(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:
@thenightfolknetwork
Would you still love me if I was a A large serpentine creature born to mortal parents who didnāt listen to the advice of a old crone and thus borne me (Cool & reptilian) and my younger brother (normal & boring), and I disappeared to woods after my birth only to return when my brother is about to get married so I can throw a hissy fit because I wasnāt married first, but each and every time my parents found me a spouse I ate them and after the third or second time of eating them they decided they couldnāt give me another noble /or royal spouse so they went to your father (a shepherd) and arranged our marriage, and you go to the woods and met a old crone (the same crone my mother spoke to) and you tell her about our engagement and how I ate my last two fiancĆ©es and you think Iāll eat you too (this is absolutely 100% true) and she gives you a list of things to do for our wedding night and we get married and your wearing all of your clothes at the same time and this begins a really long strip tease where each time you take off a article of clothing I have to shed my snakeskin and once you finally take off all your clothes you take out the whip you soaked in lye and whip me, put me in a bath full of milk, and then put me to bed, so when they find us in the morning we are both alive and Iām no longer a man eating snake
Would you still love me then??
Iām having a meltdown. When I was 9 years old I read an article in a magazine called Backyard Adventures about how this antelope, the saiga, was on the verge of extinction. I enlisted the help of my best friend and launched a fundraising campaign called Save the Saigas. We sold lemonade, had bake sales, sold belongings, yelled at strangers as they passed in their cars. Our parents were able to match the money we made. Our school helped. It wasnāt much, it didnāt save them, but it helped the organization at least a little bit.
Yāall. The saigas have been saved. A little piece of my passionate child heart that has seemed hopelessly lost and endlessly disappointed for a long time feels so soothed. Maybe itās not all hopeless. Maybe our efforts arenāt a complete waste. Maybe we keep trying and actually hope for the best.
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 LāGogamet, 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 āsorry, canāt make it, save the next one for me.ā
My family wasnāt 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, Iām all alone. I have no clue what Iām meant to do.
I have a small apartment and a roommate. Iāve tried to get interested in the same stuff she likes, but it honestly just doesnāt appeal to me. But I have no clue what there is that I do like. Apparently, outside of my family, there isnāt exactly a āLāGogamet fanbaseā, and that was the only thing I was allowed to be interested in for my whole life.
Iāve gone to support groups, but sitting in a circle with other blank slates doesnāt exactly feel helpful. And then when someone does find something interesting, Iām like āwow! good for you! time to go back to doing nothing with my life.ā
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, Iām stuck with them. And most of them are cursed to never be removed. Iāve been called out a few times, told that theyāre āappropriative for a Sapio like me to have.ā That hurt more than most comments, because I guess thatās 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 Iāve been raised to be a nobody?
I'm so sorry your family have treated you with such unkindness ā 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 ādisgustingā, 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 ā 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 āreallyā 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 ā 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 ā 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 āstrangenessā 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.
hi. im rod serling. not to spoil anything, but these guys are fucked
wow these bitches gay! good for them! -Adil probably
Greetings and salutations! Most people writing in say that itās their first time doing so. I admit, that isnāt quite the case for me. I sent in a letter back in 1942, asking about whether or not I should medically transitionāthough of course the terminology was a bit different then.
I admit, I donāt remember the specifics of your response, but whatever it was, within twelve months I was taking testosterone pills. And Iāve been on HRT since then! Itāll be eighty years come January. I suppose Iām what you might call an elder in the community, though I certainly donāt look it.
Thatās sort of why that Iām 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. Iām currently in my third repeat of this cycle, putting me at about 375.
I donāt mind it, honestly. I know that a lot of folks who grow younger tend to dislike it, for very understandable reasonsābeing 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 itās pretty fun! Nothing beats hide-and-seek as a nine year old, and when Iām in the de-aging half of life, itās 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, letās say I get a tattoo when Iām 27 years and two days old, while aging up. Iāll have that tattoo through when I die, and all the way back down to when Iām 27 years and 3 days old. Itāll disappear sometime during the following day, and by the time Iām 27 years and one day old, itāll be like I never got it done. Itāll pop up again the next time Iām that age, but for those 40-ish years, I just wonāt have it.
And attempts to change by body while Iām growing younger all vanish after the dayāIāve become very well-versed in wigs for this reason. I can change my body while aging up again (I donāt choose the tattoo example lightly; someday Iāll figure out a system that prevents me from getting overlapping ones), but it's a rather long wait.
Still, itās primarily just a nuisance. Iāve had plenty of time to figure out workarounds and roundabouts. However. Iām 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, Iāve been slowly but surely getting a body closer to the one I had when I started medically transitioning.
Iāve 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, Iāll have a form indistinguishable from the one I was so desperate to escape. From then, itāll be about 20 years until Iāll have even a little-kid sort of androgyny again.
I have lived through this period in my life before. Iāve 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 Iāll know what itās like to live without that underlying sense of constant pain.
Iām not exactly sure what Iām 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 āconstant painā. 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.