diary

i'mma keep my silly little entries here.. expect thoughts about politics, media i'm into, linguistics, and anything else that crosses my mind.

entry list

• May 21, 2025 — disappearing from the internet (clickbait) (not real)
• May 3, 2025 — Sinners (2025) Review
• April 28, 2025 — i can't speak AAVE online
• April 13, 2025 — Home Safety Hotline Review
• April 4, 2025 — what have i been up to lately?
• February 16, 2025 — bougie chocolate review: Dehn Spring in Central Park Coffee Chocolate Bar
• February 1, 2025 — brainworms = profit?
• January 10, 2025 — why is Sekh-net's capitalization like that?
• December 26, 2024 — the actual intro to this page
• November 20, 2024 — Trans Day of Rememberance... & the people who forget

May 21, 2025 — disappearing from the internet (clickbait) (not real)

i originally wrote out a whole thing for this entry but i realized that it was unnecessary and not the kinda thing i wanna post on this site. i have a lot of complicated feelings on what it’d be like if i suddenly stopped updating my site, socials, etc. without warning. i doubt that’ll happen — at most i’d probably just forget about online stuff for a while — but if it did? i guess it probably wouldn’t be on purpose, and i’d feel bad about the hole that my absence would create in many people’s lives.

either way, i’m not going anywhere anytime soon. i haven’t been updating Sekh-net as much lately because i’ve been busy with other things, but i’m still here. as for my Bluesky, i’ve been checking that less frequently because… to be honest, Bsky boring as fuck. i mean, there’s some funny stuff on there, and plenty of great art and interesting posts, but there’s a dearth of memes on my dash and it’s getting to me. feels like some greener-grass-on-the-other-side type shit. i left a shitty blue app for a better blue app, but the shittier one is where all the funnies are! fuck kinda sense does that make?! i really don’t wanna start using Tumblr again because it makes me miserable, but the shitposts call out to me...

May 3, 2025 — Sinners (2025) Review

summary

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

is there anything i can say about this movie that hasn't already been said? it's a spooky romp, a bang-up job, a masterpiece that does everything right and then some. it’s like horror meets Black culture meets music video. i like this movie so much that there's not a even dedicated bad stuff section. i genuinely have nothing bad to say. i went into it completely blind which is how i recommend everyone watches it. that being said, i’m about to spoil the hell out of it so if you still haven’t watched it, maybe read a different diary entry…

• rating: 5/5
• finish date: May 2, 2025
• genres: horror, For Us By Us

stuff i liked

• the music was excellent!!! Sammie (Miles Caton & Buddy Guy) such a talented musician. Sinners reminded me that i think Irish step dancing is cool so i watched a bunch of videos of that afterwards to get a look at that fancy footwork. I also started listening to the soundtrack and added Juke to my Veritable playlist. i been sleeping on blues honestly… i’ll have to seek out more of it soon.
• the sound design was some of the best i’ve ever heard. like, the scene where Slim (Delroy Lindo) was talking about how someone he knew had gotten lynched for no fucking reason (there’s never a reason beyond bigotry, really) and in the background, you could hear the white mob and the victim’s last breath… you just know mans was having flashbacks to when it happened.
• Michael B. Jordan did such a good job at playing both Smoke and Stack that i was convinced that two different actors played the twins for the entire movie. i can’t really discern bad acting (unless it’s abysmal) but i can tell when acting is good, and it was all perfect in this movie.
• it really highlighted the solidarity (and the simultaneous lack thereof) between the Black and Irish communities. Our histories got so much in common but Irish people got to be racialized as white, so many of them are racist af towards Black people even though we should be on the same side… and then in Sinners, you got Rennick tryna create this i-don’t-see-color ass fellowship that on its surface seems like camaraderie, but actually assimilates the victims and erases their culture. when Sammie sang I Lied, so many cultures mixed together, but when Rennick performed Rocky Road to Dublin it was only Irish culture, and the other vampires literally centered around him.
• Sinners funny as hell!!! i watched it with a Black friend and we were trying so hard not to bust out laughing in the theater. too bad most of the other moviegoers were white cause i bet if it was more black people the whole theater woulda been cracking up. one of my favorite parts was when Rennick and them were performing their little ditty to try and get into the juke joint, and the Black characters were shaking their head like “what the fuck is this?” because that’s just what it’s like!!!
• the movie honestly wasn’t very scary, which is great for people who got a lower tolerance for horror and might be worried about whether they could handle Sinners. but this can be a con if you wanna be super frightened.

miscellaneous comments

i wonder what it woulda been like if there was an Indigenous person trapped in the juke joint (maybe a Choctaw person since they were featured at the beginning of the movie?). i’m not listing this as a con because i don’t think it was a flaw, but i think it’d be interesting if the movie explored how Indigenous history and music ties into Black & Irish culture too. but also, having a vampire hunter character would make Annie kinda redundant, wouldn’t it?

i think Sinners would happen to work really well if it was set in the 1960s. imagine Rennick forming a new-age ass hippie vampire cult. imagine Sammie as a Jimi Hendrix-type playing killer rock solos. imagine how they could weave in the political climate of the time — maybe Rennick capitalizing on the civil rights movement to act as if he’s the solution to racial equality, unlike the Black Panthers or NAACP or what have you. idk what the ‘60s version of a juke joint is exactly, but the potential is there. i wonder if there’s a 100k word AO3 longfic about this…?

Whenever i enjoy any piece of media, i automatically project my OCs onto the characters. this time, i got brainworms about what if Veritable and Anna were vampires. i think Veritable would be a vampire first, then turn Anna at some point, which means she doesn’t die in 1929. and that means Landon would get to meet her! i won’t go into any more details of this Sinners AU I’m brainstorming because it ain’t really part of the review, but maybe i’ll end up writing a story or two about it…!

P.S.: when looking up clips of the vampire dance scene, i found at least 4 nearly identical YouTube videos that were very clearly narrated by AI-generated voices, reading AI-generated scripts. The titles were nearly the same too. i didn’t even find any good clips of the movie (maybe because it’s not available digitally yet?)… the channels were FameFiles, Wikizone, and Unfiltered Truths btw, so you know who not to watch.

April 28, 2025 — i can't speak AAVE online

well, i can. but i don’t do it nearly as often as i do irl, and it’s so frustrating. i like being visibly black online but it feels like if i don’t use AAVE all the time, people will assume i’m white.

and yet… there’s this mental block that i haven’t gotten rid of. it feels like i’m typing to an audience of white people. when i do manage to use AAVE it usually feels forced, even when the words just slip out. it’s not as bad when i’m in a space where there’s only other POC (shoutout to BCM!) but i still struggle to code-switch back into AAVE sometimes. i can think of a couple reasons why. right now it might be because i’m in a majority-white area and since i’m using more standard English irl, i struggle to turn that part of my brain off when i switch to talking online. or maybe it’s because of residual fears about not sounding Black enough, or sounding “too” Black.

whatever the case, the way i talk online doesn’t entirely match how i talk irl. i don’t want it to be 1:1, ‘cause of internet privacy and all that, but i don’t like this kinda mismatch. i wanna overcome it somehow; i’m just not sure how yet, aside from forcing myself to speak it more.

… actually, why not do that right now? i’m going to retype the last three paragraphs in AAVE and see how that makes me feel. i like translating things so this should be a blast, right? 3, 2, 1…

well, i can. but ion do it nearly as often as i do irl, and it’s mad frustrating. i like being visibly black online but it feels like if ion be using AAVE, niggas will assume i’m white.

and yet… there’s this mental block i ain’t gotten rid of. it feel like i’m typing to an audience of white people. when i do manage to use AAVE it be feeling forced, even when the words just slip out. it ain’t as bad when i’m in a space that only got other POC (shoutout to BCM!) but i still be struggling to code-switch back into AAVE sometimes. i done thought of a coupla reasons why. right now it might be ‘cause i’m in a majority-white area and since i’m using more standard English irl, i be struggling to turn that part of my brain off when i switch to talking online. or maybe it’s ‘cause of residual fears about not sounding Black enough, or sounding “too” Black.

whatever the case, the way i talk online don’t entirely match how i be talking irl. ion want it to be 1:1, ‘cause of internet privacy ‘n’ all that, but ion like this kinda mismatch, i wanna overcome it somehow; i just ain’t sure yet, aside from forcing myself to speak it more.

okay, that wasn’t so bad. it’s honestly not even that different (maybe i should say “it honestly ain’t that different”!) from the first version. if i’d included all the phonetic differences it’d look more different, but i usually don’t type out the different ways i pronounce words. anyway, when i really make myself use AAVE consistently, it looks fine. maybe i just need more practice, huh? feels like a funny thing to say but it’s true. ion wanna hide my Blackness from no white people — not the real ones nor the made up ones in my head.

April 13, 2025 — Home Safety Hotline Review

my wonderful brother gifted me the game Home Safety Hotline. i decided to review it because i wanna do a better job at keeping track of what games i play and how much i like them. i'm notoriously bad at remembering what media i like so hopefully this will help with that. i plan to keep most reviews to myself but if i post enough, i'll make a separate page for them.

summary

the game's description on its Steam page:

“Hearing noises? Seeing things? Call Home Safety Hotline! Our operators are standing by, waiting to give you the answers you need to protect your home from all manner of pests and household hazards.”

Home Safety Hotline is an imperfect, but neat little homage to analog horror. i’d recommend it to anyone in the mood for a spooky retro sorta game. i wanna keep an eye on the devs to see what else they make, because HSH has some solid ideas.

• rating: 3.5/5
• finish date: April 13, 2025
• genre: analog horror, simulation

good stuff

• only took me about 4-5 hours to play, which is great for my busy schedule
• the gameplay loop was mostly fun
• the art and costume design was very well done, and the artbook was very sweet and interesting to read
• did a good job at integrating fae lore and creepy stuff into daily life
• most of the voice acting was pretty good
• the wallpapers slowly changing over time genuinely spooked me
• most of the entries were spooky and well-written

bad stuff

• the short runtime could be a turnoff for people who want an in-depth story. i actually was hoping for like, about a week’s worth of playtime
• filled with flashes of boredom. i'd keep running out of new entries to read, then sit around for a few seconds waiting to get a new phone call
• the glitchy ringtones and the fake callers felt unexplained. idk what their deal was, although the callers were kinda funny sometimes
• it’s scary, but not scary scary. i was expecting a scarier game so i felt like i'd gotten my hopes up (until i realized that it was meant to be more funny/intriguing)
• the UI felt a bit basic, although i might be biased because i love Hypnospace Outlaw and that game is much more complicated
• i kept having nitpicks about some minor grammatical errors throughout the game. i had a bone to pick with the Science Mysteries video, too — the mouse squeaks really didn’t sound like they’d translate to “help me,” and it rubbed my linguist brain the wrong way… but most players wouldn’t notice or care about that, i’m just a huge nerd

miscellaneous comments

HSH's official art book mentions that a couple of the creators used to work at a theme park called Evermore. if that name sounds familiar, it might be because YouTuber Jenny Nicholson made a video about Evermore a while ago. i'd already watched the video before playing this game so i was surprised at the Evermore mention, but it checks out. you can tell the devs have a genuine love for high fantasy and fae stuff.

April 4, 2025 — what have i been up to lately?

unfortunately, i didn't write any diary entries during March 2025 :( (besides editing the January 10 entry). I been had a couple drafted, but they're pretty long and require a lot of thought even though they're not that serious. turns out writing article-length pieces ain't something i really got the capacity for lol. i remembered there's actually nothing wrong with writing shorter entries so i'm gonna do that now. a lot has happened since February 16 lol.

first off, Sekh-net as a whole hasn't gotten many big updates lately because i been busy as hell. it's been on my mind more lately but there's other stuff that's been taking higher priority. some of those things are stupid adult responsibilities, but two of them are fun and interesting.

1. i began writing a textbook/guide/??? to khS last month. the pronunciation guide on this site is good, but while writing it i realized i was limited by its medium. it would be out-of-character for the in-universe Sekh-net devs to explain every detail of how khS works (imagine being on GameFAQS and finding a page explaining the English language!). also, khS is still a WIP, and i change lots of small details very quickly so i'd find it annoying to update the website in addition to my notes every time i edit something. i don't think khS will ever truly be "finished", but i don't want to write a guide that never feels complete because it's too easy for me to edit (or procrastinate on editing, then feel bad about that...). so i made an itch.io page — which i'mma link later once it's not so barebones — and i'll post this khS guide as a PDF on there. it'll be free but people can donate if they want. i'm a couple chapters or so in and it's hard work! as a reminder, you can always donate to my Venmo if you think my work is cool.
2. i started writing a book! again! not the first time i've attempted, but this time i have a year's worth of worldbuilding and conlanging to make the process easier. i actually did update the archive to have the elevator pitch for the book, Scam Likely. it features Landon and Veritable, and tells the tale that Veritable mentions about getting fired from his professor job. as of writing i have about 23.4k words across 6.5 chapters, plus some snippets. i've never finished a (good) book before, so i'd love to at least finish the first draft of this one. i don't have a dedicated page for snippets so i'll probably post some on this page later.

besides the writing stuff, i've been getting into some new (to me) TV series. I like White Lotus, Hunter: The Parenting, and Monkey Wrench a lot (the latter two are YouTube animated series but shhh). i highly recommend all three. White Lotus influenced Scam Likely a little lol, and it made me realize that "drama" is a good word to describe the kinda stories i be writing. i love writing about themes of communication and getting along with friends and family and putting characters into magical yet relatable situations... and i love making their lives go wrong! through this lens i think you could describe Scam Likely as a... low fantasy drama? middle fantasy drama? genre name's a WIP but you get the point.

finally, i read Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner. it's a fun and scary book about two trans people running away to California. but there's a creature, and bigots, and the main characters are each other's exes. chaos ensues. i think adults and teenagers would enjoy this story a lot. the author is trans too and his personal experience shows through the writing imo. i guess this paragraph is my way of saying happy (belated) TDOV! i don't really have a conclusion in mind, so i'll leave it at that.

February 16, 2025 — bougie chocolate review: Dehn Spring in Central Park Coffee Chocolate Bar

this was originally a discord message that i wrote because my friend Michael likes eating bougie chocolate. i happened to score myself some at the Met so i decided to tell them about it. unfortunately i accidentally threw it away so i didn't get to finish it, but i enjoyed what i did get to eat. this is also loosely inspired by the tea reviews on my friend Rachel's site. check both of them out!!

summary: a decent chocolate bar that definitely has a different flavor profile than your usual Hershey's bar. at $6.50 per bar, it's certainly not the most expensive either... although that price doesn't include how much Met tickets cost.

pros:

• nice wrapper with a pretty painting on it
• genuinely tastes like if a chocolate bar had coffee in it
• nice crunch to it, and I feel like it's good at not melting
• survived being stuffed in my little backpack for like 3 hours

cons:

• the bitterness from the coffee gives it a bit of a dark chocolate taste... a con for some, a pro for others
• doesn't come in easily breakable pieces, which means i have to bite into it like a heathen (/j) instead of snapping off pieces and letting them melt in my mouth
• very easy to bite into a little coffee bit (ground up coffee beans, I guess?) and taste just pure coffee. again, a con for some and a pro for others

conclusion: to be honest, i was surprised by this chocolate bar. i was expecting a totally sweet milk chocolate-y flavor, because i'd forgotten that I'd bought a coffee flavored chocolate bar but this surprise wasn't exactly unpleasant. the bitterness isn't my favorite thing ever, but if coffee is your jam then this chocolate bar will be too.

February 1, 2025 — brainworms = profit?

as the previous diary entry and the various khS words scattered around this sight may imply, i'm really into linguistics. i started studying it in college recently and it's wild because the knowledge i've gained from conlanging is very useful in the field, but it blurs the line between real life and my internet activities somewhat. i think people who only know me online wouldn't be able to find my real identity easily, but i'm not sure the reverse would be true.

how do i put this on my resume? do i really want employers to know that my conlang is connected to a setting with many queer, neurodivergent/disabled, characters of color? what if my boss finds my Bluesky and sees my old Deltarune fanart?

these questions don't actually need answers right now. but someday they might, and that's a little nerve-wracking. if push comes to shove, maybe i can make a whole new conlang and put that on my resume instead... i been wanting to make a beatboxing language for a while now. i can beatbox so making the sounds is easy, it's just a matter of figuring out how to transcribe them, especially when it comes to beatboxing and humming at the same time. i don't think the International Phonetic Alphabet accounts for that!

January 10, 2025 — why is Sekh-net's capitalization like that?

edit (3/3/2025): an updated, in-character version of this entry is now on the page about kemharSekharu. just keeping this entry around for posterity.

whenever i get around to making a page explaining kemharSekharu i'll copy or move this explanation there, but in the meantime i've been wanting to talk about this and it's easier than figuring out how to summarize an entire language-in-progress, so:

words are capitalized in a specific way here to reflect kemharSekharu's capitalization rules. it has a unique alphabet, but no upper- or lowercase. here are the rules about how kemharSekharu should be romanized:

• the first letter in a sentence is not capitalized unless it's a proper noun. proper nouns are capitalized even if they're in the middle of a portmanteau (e.g. the "S" in kemharSekharu).
• the letter "H" is always capitalized regardless of its place in a word or sentence (e.g. "khajaHu") because it represents the /ħ/ sound, unlike "h," which only represents /h/.
• similarly, the letter "h" is always lowercase even if it's the first letter of a proper noun.
• pronouns are not capitalized.
• acronyms may be capitalized (although i think i've been inconsistent about that... oops). abbreviations are lowercase, but if they're short for words with a capital letter in the middle of them that letter should stay capitalized (e.g. dhS = djuharSekharu, the indigenous word for khS's alphabet).
• honorific adjectives like Duwa'e (compare sama in Japanese or xiansheng in Mandarin) are always capitalized.

despite all these rules, if you've seen any of the user profiles you'll have noticed that none of them follow the rules at all. this is because i also want to reflect their personalities through how they write. but i and the Sekh-net UI do write in khS-case to create some sense of immersion.

December 26, 2024 — the actual intro to this page

my first diary entry was about TDOR because that's how everything lined up for me. but i didn't actually explain why i made this page. it's not much i guess, i just have a lot of thoughts that i would rather put on my website than on the socials. other times they're thoughts that i wanna share with other people and this'll be like a rough draft so my words are more coherent later. or they're thoughts from a conversation i've already had and i wanna express them more concretely. there won't be many updates — i started writing this entry on November 28 and then forgot about it for a whole month... oops. anyway, here are some of my thoughts from the past month:

• Kendrick Lamar dropped GNX last month. it's a great album. man at the garden made me realize Lamar has a big ego, which is normal for rappers and celebrities in general, but also he's kinda weird about it. i think it's less common to compare yourself to Jesus the way he does. he's still one of my favorite rappers to be clear, he just a lil quirky.
• also Drake accusing UMG and Spotify of inflating Not Like Us streams is CRAZY. very mixed feelings on him accusing Lamar of falsely asserting he's a sex offender. messy, messy...
• i checked out this book called The Circle by Dave Eggers. it's a dystopian near-future novel about this tech monopoly-ass company that the main character gets a job at, but it turns out it's real cult-y, and then she has to escape or sumn. so far i love the premise and the dialogue; one character has big Larry energy and i'm the kinda guy that loves imagining my OCs in whatever media i'm enjoying so this book is feeding the brainworms. i don't love how the main character is one of those straight white women whose life sucks compared to her (also straight and white) singular bestie who's more attractive and smarter and priviledged and blah blah blah. it's super unrelatable to me... i have more than 1 friend, i'm not straight or white or concerned with hookups, and like... i've noticed with this narration style the MC tends to spend paragraphs talking about how cool her bestie (and other characters) are compared to her. my writing style kinda the opposite; i'd rather let the readers figure that out themselves via dialogue and actions, and i like it when other stories do that too. so i keep getting annoyed at how much the MC narrates about stuff that i feel could be explained more naturally. but. i really like that premise... so i'll keep reading. i heard this book was good so i wanna see where it goes.
• ok so i wrote that last bullet a month ago and i'm keeping it in because this next part is really funny: at about the same time i checked out annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and got super obsessed with the Southern Reach trilogy instead. it's way better, and i'm on the surprise 4th book now — although i ended up getting distracted and reading a bunch of other books. i do this a lot lately lol. i will probably never finish The Circle at this rate.
• Noname and Tyler, the Creator are feeling like some of my favorite rappers rn. Chromakopia goes hard and I went and listened to Noname's albums again, and just. I love her sing-songy voice and how you can tell she used to do slam poetry, and i love his production and his flows and lyricality. them two and kendrick are now my top three. not sure about the order though.

i have one big thought that won't really fit in a list: i think tumblr is better for building community than bluesky, honestly. i feel like i've gotten less engagement from other oc artists, writers, etc. — you know, the kinda people who would be genuinely interested in my account — in the past month or so than i did when i first made the account. most of my followers don't interact with my posts at all, which i expected, but i got more notes on tumblr for my art than i do on bluesky, which i did not expect. i only expected the attention on my writing to drop bc bluesky isn't meant for longform media. to be fair, 20-something notes was a lot for me, but on bluesky it feels like a lot if i pass 10 likes. i've been wondering why this is happening and i think it's a few reasons.

• bluesky has a lot more people who are in way different demographics than me and who have different senses of humor. tumblr was more insular for sure.
• i got added to five (5) blocklists for people who are toxic, fascist, etc. even though i'm obviously none of those things like. if you've made it to this page you know that's not true. the person who did it is one of those trolls who does stuff like this for fun but i do wonder if that's tanking my visibility... i'm not enough of a bluesky wizard to know for sure.
• i don't really participate in art shares, "mutuals lemme draw your ocs!" challenges, etc. occasionally i'll do a qrt chain but the fact of the matter is i just don't have enough art for that shit. my backlog is small because i've only been drawing for 2 years and i don't like a lot of the older art lol, and i draw relatively slowly. a lot of my free time is spent writing or coding, too. i could just repost the same few pieces that i do like but... i don't wanna...
• i don't retweet* my own stuff very often. not as much as i used to anyway. i literally just learned you can undo retweets and then retweet something again, as in halfway through writing this sentence i got curious and tested it. so i really thought bluesky was making it super difficult to retweet stuff until now.

well anyway, on bluesky it really is just me and the mutuals out here. it was like that on tumblr too actually, but on bluesky it feels... different. and i'm not totally sure what to do about it, outside of reposting my stuff more so people don't forget it exists. i don't wanna get too stressed about this anyway. there are some positives, like i'm on a list for photographers, a list for people who its creator thinks are cool, and an OC artist list (i don't like how people tend to follow everyone on a list at once without checking to see who they might actually be interested in, leading a bunch of "ghost" followers who don't interact with my posts at all, but whatever). nekoweb added a site statistics page and it's telling me about 1,000 people have looked at Sekh-net, which is awesome. and i don't wanna be internet famous anyway because that would make my brain melt.

i just want a bit more engagement than i'm currently getting... but that's probably the devil talking.

*i KNOW you're supposed to say repost, or even reskeet now, but the former can be confusing and the latter sounds like cum. i swear skeet meant cum when i was in school and i'm not cumming i'm posting. i am NOT changing my mind on this

November 20, 2024 — Trans Day of Rememberance... & the people who forget

i uploaded this late in the day because i had a lot going on. part of that including reading this poem-speech-thing for a TDOR event. i'm putting it separate from the stuff in the archive bc it's too serious for that page.

Privacy

I’m a private person. I don’t take or post selfies much, I don’t go to parties.

And I extend that private mindset to how I treat other people. When I see someone exit a bathroom stall, my first thought isn’t “What’s in their pants?”

It’s “Damn, they took forever! Now I can finally go!” I don’t care what they look like, or what they were doing in there. I just wanna do my business and dip.

So tell me why these reactionaries, these politicians, these pundits can’t do the same thing.

Tell me why they scrutinize every aspect of trans bodies, intersex bodies, black and brown bodies. Tearing us apart to prove that we don't produce enough of the right chemicals to be legitimate human beings.

Tell me why they teach their kids to bully their peers to the point of suicide simply for having a gender presentation that’s more complex than “girls wear pink and boys wear blue”.

Tell me why they ban us from every activity they can think of, from playing volleyball to reading books to children.

Tell me why they even passed a bathroom ban in Ohio declaring that trans people can't use their preferred bathrooms on public or private college campuses.

Actually, I know why.

It's because they feed off of division; when we're too busy fighting against each other we don't notice the types of oppression that we do share.

It's because they fear what they don't understand — and let me tell you, they don't know shit about our complex histories and the communities we've created.

It's because they can't fathom that they live in a world where gender is more complicated than what they learned in middle school.

But you know what? We been fathomed that complexity. We been taken the time to build each other up, to shelter each other, to fight back, to commemorate those of us who didn't make it. And you know what else? Every connection we've built, every time we've accepted other's differences unconditionally, every day we wake up and face a world filled with people who hate us — all of that makes us stronger than the transphobes who want to destroy us. We’re strong for coming out here tonight. We’re mourning our fallen, yes, but we’re also saying, “We’re not gonna sit back and let this happen again.” Thank you so much for displaying that strength.

hope you enjoyed reading that. the use of AAVE was deliberate — incorporating it into my writing is something i'm always striving to improve at, and given how Black trans people (especially women/transfemmes) face a disproportionate amount of violence compared to the rest of the population it felt appropriate to like make our presence known through the poem's grammatical choices.

that's the nice part of this entry. the upsetting part is that i got angry that Sarah McBride, the first trans congressperson in the US, said she'd "comply" with a new ban on trans people using bathrooms in the Capitol that fit their gender identities. i feel like the people who'd find their way onto this page are also aware of the wave of transphobic legislation and violence in general lately, but this really ground my gears cause it's another trans person just... refusing to do anything about a law specifically targeted at HER (and any other trans people who may be in the Capitol, for that matter). talmbout some "I'm here to fight for Delawareans"... girlypop forgot there's other trans people who would probably like her to fight for them too.

eh, well it's a bit more complicated than that... for her campaign this year she accepted donations from Microsoft, JP Morgan, and The Liberty Group (a Texan real estate company), among other groups. you know, the sorts of large companies that don't care about marginalized people at all and would rather keep driving the capitalist hell machine. also she's a zionist. look at this stupid tweet she made on April 13, 2024:

I am closely following the news of the direct attack on Israel by Iran and its proxies. This is a dramatic escalation that endangers lives in Israel and throughout the region. President Biden is right to reinforce our collective commitment to support Israel’s self-defense, which, today, has resulted in nearly every missile being intercepted and countless lives saved.

All those with concern for the protection of innocent life must stand against these attacks and this escalation. I join with leaders from democratic nations around the world in condemning these attacks and the effort by the Iranian government’s alliance of authoritarianism to plunge the region into further death and destruction.

(source)

and also this article which has more info about the zionism (i'm a thorough ass nigga i gotta link everything!!) oh, and her official priorites page doesn't even mention trans people but she does show support for cryptocurrency?!?! look, basically what i'm saying is that despite being trans, just like every other politician the issues she cares about are directly influenced by who's funding her. she doesn't see trans people as worth fighting for because we're not the ones giving her campaign thousands of dollars. also, we a polarizing topic that could scare away potential (non-trans/non-ally) voters.

idk if i'm disappointed by her. to me to be disappointed also implies i'm surprised, but my expectations for every congressperson are very low. that being said i wasn't expecting her to be this much of a pushover. it's giving... whatever the trans version of coon is. although that would imply she feels some kinda guilt over this and erm.. idk if she does. impossible for me to tell — i can read through politicians' bullshit but i can't read their minds! whatever the case, the fact of the matter is she sucks ass and cannot be relied on to save trans people from the legislative hellstorm we in rn.

so let's go back to that poem. we don't have Sarah McBride, but we do have each other. please don't forget the people we've lost and support the people we still have. trans liberation now and forever and ever ✌🏿