This week has actually been really good for me! If anyone read my post last week, I had a pretty rough time of it then, having had a date flake on me and having a friend not talking to me. Well, this week I’ve sorted things out with that friend of mine, we had a lovely chat at the queer climbing night we both attend, I also went for a great meal out with my climbing friends which was super nice!

On the date front, I matched with an extremely cool and gorgeous enby on the dating app I use, we got chatting and clicked pretty much instantly. We’re nerdy about similar things and have very compatible senses of humour, we’ve genuinely been messaging pretty much nonstop since we matched and today we had a first date which… holy crap, I didn’t think it was possible for a first date to go as well as it did 😍 we went to a super cool barcade, drank mocktails, flailed around in co-op arcade games together, laughed, chatted, won each other plushies from a claw machine and just generally had a whale of a time. We went for bubble tea afterwards and ended up kissing in the boba shop, it was amazing!

In general life news, next week is going to mark my 5th tranniversary! 5 whole years of being out and living as myself, which feels like kind of a big milestone. It feels like I’m starting to turn a corner in my life, feeling more confident and comfortable with myself these days after a pretty big mental health wobble recently. I’m finally starting to feel like I’m actually worthy and deserving of good things happening to me, and they are starting to happen 😊

Yeah, I don’t mind them too much when they’re intentional (i.e. during sex/masturbation) but at any other time they’re awful, I use gaffs to tuck and the result of an erection in a gaff is both dysphoric and painful 😔

I’ve been on EEn for 8 months, currently at a dose of 5.5mg every 7 days (I started at 5mg and upped it after the first 3 months) which felt like it was working decently well for T suppression up until the last couple of weeks, but my mood’s been all over the place (and not in the inconvenient-but-affirming way of bursts of happy or sad tears I was getting for a while) on top of the physical symptoms.

And I know you’re right about the date and my friend, the logical part of my brain agrees, but I’m a chronic overthinker when it comes to these things and it’s tough to silence the anxiety/depression thoughts 😥

Thanks so much for the thoughtful response, I really appreciate it 💜

It’s been pretty awful for the most part to be honest. I’ve been getting random erections again so I think I need to up my E dose (I’m DIYing, injectable EEn monotherapy), but I’m kind of flying blind on that as my GP won’t do bloods and I can’t afford private tests right now so I’m just gonna have to up my dose and hope for the best.

I was meant to have a second date today and she flaked on me this morning with no real reason which just leads me to believe she got a better offer (we met through a dating app), plus a friend who has been supportive of me who I really want to support and be there for in return has left me on read for 3 days so I’m feeling pretty adrift and abandoned right now 💔

It’s a long and detailed article, and it gets to the current trend of indie cartoons being made outside of corporate machinery and being released for free on YouTube, like ViziePop and Glitch Studios productions.

There’s a direct throughline in content and style between the queer cartoons made within said corporate machinery and the new ones being made outside of it (and in Dana Terrace’s case, a direct throughline in creator identity, from The Owl House to Knights of Guinevere). It’s all important context to see how corporations acted when funding queer media was seen as profitable, and how artists are dealing with the funding shortfall now that it isn’t.