jkatkina

I'm feeling more myself today, the last day of my three-week unpaid holiday (lol), which I'm going to stubbornly take as a good omen. I am afraid of the change going back to working full time will wreak, but I am firmly putting that fear aside for now. I'm sitting on a sunny hillside listening to some plinky guitar music and all is well in the soft animal of my body.

Dreamwidth in particular is where I've been coming to get away from the rest of social media and let my sphere shrink for a bit when I need that. It's impossible to not want to be involved in trying to right the racist wrongs currently happening -- to somehow be supporting, rallying, mourning, donating, amplifying voices of colour. I do my best. I've been trying to engage with my more racist relatives on Facebook when they post bullshit "Jesus sacrificed himself because ALL lives matter!!!" memes. I haven't been out to a physical protest here in Vancouver and am beginning to realize that may not be a way I can contribute, at least not regularly, which means trying to triage what kind of online "help" actually helps and what's just privileged noise, and then executing on what I can. It's a lot. It needs doing.

But I may not post a lot about it here. At least the outward work. I'm trying to dig inwards, too, which does fit into the wheelhouse of this blog being unrepentant navel-gazey.

Anyways, we had DnD yesterday, and everyone in our group seemed to need it. Marla is coming over again today since the seal has been broken, and I'm glad of it. She's gone near full nocturnal and apparently stopped eating for three days last week, and I will not stand for this. She will get fed, she will get a bit of social contact, and if she feels like it she will get some things off of her chest. Honestly I wish we could have her just come stay here for a bit so we could keep an eye on her and help out, but I'm not sure where we'd stash her if she's sleeping in the day and I need to use my office for work.

So today is our Halloween DnD session!!

And I am dressing up as Bright, my high-strung, anxious, suspicious rogue Tiefling. He was once described by our Kenku bard as "that weird little man who screams at everyone and then goes to have a panic attack in the corner". This is accurate.

I have spent the last month or so -- and especially the last week -- accruing, finding or creating bits and pieces of the costume. It's not perfect (I could keep adding details for a million years), but it's getting close, and I am excited for it.

I've wanted to do "drag" for years. (Airquotes because tbh dressing in feminine ways feels just as much "drag" to me as masc.) I generally dress neutral-to-masc anyhow, but... but now I have a binder, and an explicitly male character to play. I probably didn't have to wait until I had a halloween excuse to get the binder, but, I don't know. There isn't really that much I can do about these tits, so in my day-to-day I think a binder would make me feel rather more self-conscious than less.

In any case, today it is fun. I am slowly undergoing my transformation over the course of the day (there's a lot of makeup, or at least what seems to me to be a lot of makeup!). I'm not sure how well the horns will stick, but I have a plan.

In our DnD game yesterday, our Barbarian punched a dog in the face. The dog said "Nature is chaotic", and the barbarian thought that the best expression of chaos was to punch that dog in the face.

Barbarians, man.

Tonight TL and I are going to a show in town by aivi + surasshu, also known as the people who do the music for Steven Universe. I am not stoked about it being on a Monday night, but I am pretty hyped for the content. SU music maybe?! If you haven't watched the show, the soundtrack is fantastic. Chiptunes meets piano, very warm and sunny and energetic mostly. Probably other animation folks gonna be there, because why wouldn't they be?? It'll be rad as hell and it's right in the bit of the city where most of the other studios are.