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      • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        6 months ago
        Chapter 2

        So she wrote about it. She laid it out and connected all these dots: the sometimes I want to wear dresses dot, the I am addicted to masturbation dot, the I feel like I have been punched in the stomach when I see an un-self-conscious pretty girl dot, the I cried a lot when I was little and don’t think I’ve cried at all since puberty dot.

        Fuck I felt all of these. I haven't felt half of these feelings in years but reading them each just felt like a punch in the gut when I remembered. Especially the first and last, although I felt both of those still less than a year ago.

        • ashinadash [she/her]
          ·
          6 months ago

          yea Nevada is Like That tbh, possibly the first time anybody put those feelings onpage in a novel too. It's kinda rad.

          • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            6 months ago

            Yeah definitely noticing, very rad.

            Chapter 3 (CW: Suicide)

            That sudden shift of Maria's thoughts towards something suicide-adjacent to avoid thinking about something she doesn't want to think about is... Very close to home. I've definitely done it, but the particular example here also just reminds me of the ideations I used to consistently have during classes when I started thinking a little too much about myself. I'll spare you the details.

            If she were a goth she’d tell you about how broken she is, but since she’s an indie-punk diy book snob, like, here we are.

            Um Maria, have you met book snobs? They love that shit. Or at least the theatre-adjacent ones do. Also she just like me frfr.

            I don't know if I really relate to her emotionlessness and masking, but that's because I think getting on estrogen has mostly helped my old depression symptoms so I can't really relate to them still being there like hers are. Maybe also just me being more neurotypical than she is meant to be. I can still relate to them to an extent but now that its been a few months the feelings almost feel a little alien to me. Odd. Actually wait I just realised this is just a more deadpan version of the thing I do when arguing sometimes where I switch into humour to cope instead of actually engaging with the situation. Somehow never thought of it that way but it makes sense.

            • ashinadash [she/her]
              ·
              6 months ago
              spoiler

              SHE JUS LIKE ME FR FR, Maria is def not a theatre kid though lmao.

              Haha look at that, you got got!! A neurodiverse read of Nevada is pretty interesting though, many layers at play.

              Her bike messenger shit makes me think that Maria Griffiths is transfem Ramona Flowers also. No I will not be taking questions.

              • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
                ·
                6 months ago
                Chapter 7

                Her bike messenger shit makes me think that Maria Griffiths is transfem Ramona Flowers also.

                Oh she absolutely is, I was already mentally imagining her with the same hairstyle, albeit not dyed

                God the play-argument between Kieran and Maria about Joyce and Acker is so literature student-y. Literally shit I'd argue about before class lmao.

                but for Kieran it’s like, Fuck yeah! Being trans, all right! Trans guys seem to have this relationship to being trans a lot more often than trans women. It’s understandable. Sometimes trans guys come out of radical activist dyke communities where having a punk rock gender is kind of like, chic, or whatever. Whereas for trans women, this tends not to be the case. When they come out trans women tend not to have the analysis that comes from having existed in a queer community where people talk about gender; the mistake some people make is assuming that this means trans women never put together an analysis.

                I quite like this passage, while I'm probably closer to the fuck yeah! point than not nowadays, it does touch on why it took me so long to get there and I like that. I don't really have much to add honestly, I just like it.

                Eventually you can’t help but figure out that, while gender is a construct, so is a traffic light, and if you ignore either of them, you get hit by cars. Which, also, are constructs.

                I know you discussed this one a few days ago but I didn't say my piece on it since I hadn't read the book. I feel like the analogy is definitely half baked but there is that certain sense of 'Yeah!' when initially reading it. But I think in the context of modern philosophical theories of mind and metaphysics, even mental-oriented ones, it's just overly basic and doesn't consider the further implications of what it's saying since it's more oriented around being quippy and easy to remember. In other words it's perfect characterisation for Maria! She's not me, with my weirdo philosopher brain, she's a tired, emotionally dead woman who can't even finish a damn zine. She cares more about the immediate vibe that something seems right to her rather than actually developing a rigourous understanding. And that's a great character to read! I love it.

                • ashinadash [she/her]
                  ·
                  6 months ago
                  spoiler

                  Her hair is actually like down her back and blood red, which is funny. My internal Maria has Ramona's short black cut.

                  Is that what lit students do? Scary ass...

                  I think maybe a lot more transfemmes are closer to the Fuck Yeah! Zone nowadays, I moved from Sad Nerd town to here tbh. It's one of the cooler and funnier passages.

                  YES OH MY FUCKING GOD, okay roll with me right, "Maria is kind of a dishit and Imogen Binnie knows this" has been my new working theory for why this quote kinda sucks. She's just like that. Bitch just read Gender Outlaw wrong. And she IS such a good character to read!!!! She sucks and I love her, she's so good fjjgjfhfjfbd

                  There is a reason this book sunk its dumbass talons into me and became my entire personality :>

                  • 🎀 Seryph (She/Her)@lemmygrad.ml
                    ·
                    6 months ago

                    Nooooo the reply I was drafting and adding to for like 8 chapters got deleted. Gonna just rewrite the important emotional bit and skip the rest of the funny replies

                    Chapter 15

                    We love our dipshits don't we folks?

                    Okay for the actual serious emotional bit. It's weird to think about Maria's transition ages compared to mine. We've known we're trans for about the same amount of time at 4 years, but she's been on hormones for seemingly that whole time whereas I only got on them less than a year ago. And yet I feel like I've matured out of being like her. I certainly used to be quite similar, but I've kinda moved past it I think. But despite that she's still ahead of me in the other way, the big hormones-y way. And that's so weird. And it's extra weird that there are just, people out there, even in this megathread, who are also like that. That there are trans people who didn't experience repressing for 3 years before getting the chance to take HRT, before getting the chance to wear any euphoric clothing. And then thinking about that it feels like there's a disconnect between myself and other people because of it? But I'm able to empathise and relate to people despite that disconnect in experience. But now I'm realising I don't think I know anyone older than me who went through this same sort of transition experience. The two elders I knew before Hexbear were either a rich kid who transitioned very young since she was also intersex, or a puppygirl who I think is still repressing to this day and didn't ever really act like an elder. And here I can't think of anyone who has had similar circumstances to me that isn't younger in their transition. Or maybe I'm too focused on my particularities to really see how other people have gone through similar-but-different experiences here. Idk. I don't really have a particular point here just this book is making me think about that disconnect in a way I haven't before.

                    The other serious bit. Maria talks about how she needs to do stuff with her hands to focus, is that a neurodiverse thing? I always thought it was but I just realised reading that that I'm not actually sure. It's one of the things that made me start to suspect I'm on the spectrum last year though since I do that exact shit, it's half the reason I don't watch movies much cuz I can't focus without some active physical component to the thing I'm doing.

                    The Internet at that time was this big, exciting place where you could anonymously spill your guts about gender and discomfort and heteronormativity and how weird male privilege felt and lots of other things, except back then she didn’t really have language for it so she just went like: everything sucks and I am totally sad. Just over and over and over and over, with minor variations and the occasional cuss word. It couldn’t have been very compelling to read, but writing about it at length made her pay attention to patterns and stuff and introduced her to the first real-life trans people she met, even if they were on the Internet and didn’t know what they looked like. She’d stay up all night, night after night, gushing her feelings all over the Internet until she figured out she was trans, transitioned, and wound up having the exact same problems as every other messed up, emotionally shut-off person in New York. She doesn’t post there as much as she used to but she still has that blog. People read it. Kids who are figuring out that they’re trans look up to her. It’s kind of nice although since there are so few decent resources for trans women that aren’t for rich trans women or boring trans women, sometimes being the big sister is exhausting.

                    Clearly Maria needs a Hexbear Trans Megathread in her life.

                    More seriously I can sometimes feel that last bit about big sistering being exhausting, but I love to do it anyways. It makes me feel more like me when I try to be a compassionate inspirational figure. I know I'm not really, since I'm actually really mean and awful, but it feels like who I want to be, who I should be. And it makes me happy to push myself to be that, even if I suck at it.

                    She tells the Internet about her early night, her early morning, the haircuts in the diner, figuring out her life.

                    /thread

                    Of course she fucking hates Serano posters. She is exactly that sort of person