threeplusfire | Recent Entries

A single day later, they executed a man on the street who was trying to protect other people. A man holding up his phone. They shot him multiple times while he was on the ground.

Right in front of one of my favorite restaurants in the cities. Blocks away from my friend's apartment. Only two miles away from me Saturday morning. After gym class, someone broke the news to us. When I left and drove down Lake Street, it was empty. Two miles of silent road in the middle of the city.

I called and screamed at my senators. At the governor.

The insanity of watching the government lie and lie despite the evidence in front of our eyes. A woman who is job is painting kids' faces at parties, is in hiding because the government is trying to arrest witnesses.

They are killing people out in broad daylight, not even bothering trying to hide it.

Call your reps, all of them. Call them and demand they impeach Noem, that they remove the president with the 25th, that they refuse to fund ICE, that we have a general strike. Hold a sign. Organize with your neighbors. For fuck's sake DO SOMETHING. DO SOMETHING.

This isn't going to just stop here. This isn't going to stop if we just endure the rest of this term. It's not going to stop with immigrants, with people of color, with one state or two.

Around December, my blood pressure started to run higher. It's been controlled for years with a simple steady pill.

A little over a month later and I'm taking three different pills every night and it's not under control despite everything we've tried.

Maybe one of the reasons it won't go down is because the federal government is engaged in domestic terror against Minnesota. Maybe it is that I have seen ICE in action repeatedly outside the gym. Maybe it is that a vibrant neighborhood is now a ghost town and the only people I see on the street are neighbors organized in watches trying to protect each other. Maybe it is the horror stories I've heard from every single person I know here - like my realtor who has to stand guard shifts outside their daycare or the guy who sits next to me at hockey games who lives down the street from where an ICE agent named Jonathan Ross executed a queer poet named Renee Good in the street. Maybe it seeing every day these small, vicious people throw tear gas and brutalize people while trying to instill fear. Maybe it is seeing the federal government refuse to do anything and the courts fail to enforce any law. Maybe it seeing children thrown to the snow in subzero weather and handcuffed by ICE agents wearing masks and no badges.

Maybe it is knowing the federal government is mobilizing military units for potential deployment into the city where I live.

Maybe it is learning my in-laws have been Trump supporters all this time.

Maybe it is that a friend of mine died early on the 2nd and that I'm so homesick I cry and it's not any safer there but for different reasons.

Maybe it is having years of reading and studying Russian/Soviet history and literature and seeing how unpleasantly similar these events are.

Every day I wonder when they start hunting trans people along with immigrants. We already have concentration camps and they are already places where queer people like me are tortured. Every day I wonder when they will automate and mechanize the process of death.

Every day I wonder if I am doing something for the last time.

Every day I wonder what it will take to stop this, and whether we're capable of it. Every day I wonder if there is a single person in my family who would do a goddamn thing to protect me.

Every day I am more unforgiving of the people who support this, the people who voted for it and the people who don't care enough to do anything.

Yesterday, I had a cheerful morning. I worked out, I watched a very enjoyable stream. I started a new book and ate a salad for lunch.

Then a bunch of white nationalist fascists stormed the DC Capitol building to derail the certification of the election. The police just let them do it. Guns were drawn on the House floor. Windows were smashed. Rioters trashed offices, took selfies on the Senate dais. They hunted for the vice president in the halls. There's a photo of a man carrying a gun and zip ties, of a man carrying a confederate flag into the Capitol. The amount of pure evil on display was nauseating. I heard one of the Oklahoma representatives, Mullin, say the violence was "on both sides."

The president stoked all of this. He spoke at their rally and basically pointed them down the avenue. He refused to call in the national guard to protect the senators and representatives, much less the staff of the government offices caught up in this nightmare.

It is hard not to see this as civil war at this point. Only 13 people were arrested during this riot. 13. They'll be emboldened, ready to come back and do it again. This isn't going to disappear when he's out of office. It's a cult. How do you deprogram so many people across the country from a cult?

The legislature went back into session late last night and the odious Republican objectors kept them at the floor til almost 4am. Biden's win is certified though. A possibility that happened because some staff members of the parliamentary office saved the ballots in the evacuation so they could not be destroyed. Heroes.

I've finished my current iteration of the book, and I'm sending it off to a couple readers. Still trying to wrangle a sensitivity reader. (I know I can't expect immediate responses to emails but MY GOD it chafes when I email and don't hear back for days)

I don't know how to handle the anxiety and anticipation of this election day. It is the memory of how crushed I felt in 2018, the shock I felt in 2016, the unending sense of terror about my place in this country as a trans person.

I worked out for an hour, and later did an hour of yard work. I watched three hours of a video game stream. I don't know how I'm going to keep going.

Today is splix's birthday. I miss her so much. There have been times in the past few months where I've woken up and I've wondered if she's posted her thoughts about whatever horrible fuckery we're living through. Then I remember she's gone and it hurts.

I'm grateful she's not having to endure this significantly fucked portion of the pandemic. But oh so often there are things I wish I could tell her about, like this picture of 1988 David Bowie on a motorbike in Greece or a movie or a book I'm reading. I think she would have really enjoyed And Then We Danced.

Alex remains one of the coolest people I've ever known.

The past year has been hard. So hard. I couldn't write for most of it.

The 80's novel I so wanted to finish for her is in revisions. I have an agent who wants to try to sell it. How badly do I wish I could give her a copy.

I think I might watch Paris is Burning later. Or something where Sean Bean dies.

Completely lacking in eloquence but here I am.

My complaints about my birthday feel even more petty considering the turn the country has taken since last week.

Tonight the man who claims to be president had peaceful protesters attacked by police so he could walk across the street and have a photo op in front of a church. This after giving a speech where he threatened to send out the military against American citizens protesting police brutality and the systemic racism poisoning the country. It was the speech of a fascist.

This country is burning and frankly, it deserves to burn some.

The priorities of this country are clear - no way to enforce stay at home orders, no way to get supplies, no way to get medical care or provide access to people. The bare minimum to help them. Funds meant to help small business looted. White people screaming about their need for a hair cut and "tyranny" went armed with guns to statehouses without nary a blink from the police.

People protest police brutality after police murdered a man in broad daylight on the street, and they turn convention centers into military bases overnight, bring out the national guard and start enforcing curfews. Peaceful protests chanting black lives matter are gassed and shot with less lethal rounds.

This is what America is. This is the fruit of a poisoned tree, a nation that was built on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of black people.

I think about 2016. About that SNL skit and that card "He will kill us all." About my boss at the time telling me things would be fine for white men. About everyone who said we were overreacting when we cried and went numb and scared after the election. About how we could have had something other than this, and we're here now, and we may not make it to November between the virus and the violence.

I knew I depended on my routines but I didn't know how disorienting it would be to take them away. I didn't drive anywhere for four days, which is an awfully long for a person in the suburbs who needs a car. Everything's screwy - my workout habits, my eating habits, my daily life in the house. We are lucky that Mike is employed and able to keep his job from home without much hardship and I don't want to make light of that. But god, I find myself going crazy that I am never alone. I need my alone time to be an ugly mess. Otherwise I just store up all this tension until it feels like I am going to explode. I am alone when I take a walk around the neighborhood but it is not the same.

I miss going out to lunch. I miss ordinary grocery shopping. I miss the gym and the movie theater.

Everything feels so fucking bad.

I watched the entire season three of Castlevania today and it was a delight of grim, bloody madness.

The new Westworld is brutal and their future looks too much like ours.

This nightmare election season, combined with the coronavirus situation, is driving me off a lot of public facing social media. It makes me feel so bad, so grim, so despairing. No amount of cute animal pictures really helps. I worry about it because I'm dealing with this onset of social anxiety in the past year, and the loneliness of having most of my close friends scattered around the world. But I need to stop constantly refreshing that scrolling horror show.

It might not help my feelings of being disconnected, but it will probably help my productivity. I want to try to write more regularly, maybe a couple times a week here. Maybe I'll finish revising this novel. Maybe I'll do a lot of things that don't involve twitter.

How many books read in 2019?
106

The first book you read in 2019:
Snobs by Julian Fellowes, I remember reading this in the bathtub.

The last book you finished in 2019:
On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufhal, which is quiet and lovely.

The first book you will finish (or did finish!) in 2020:
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, as recommended by a friend. Like a better HP.

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
19 nonfiction, 87 fiction.

Male/Female authors?
65 women

Non-white authors?
29 non-white authors, which I'm trying to do better this year

Most books read by one author this year?
I read three stories from Delilah S Dawson - Black Spire, Phasma and Perfect Weapon.

How many books in each format?
12 were digital, the rest paper books

Top Five Favorite books read?
In no particular order:

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Phasma by Delilah S Dawson
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno Garcia
The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O'Meara

Best books you read in 2019?
The Cooking Gene by Michael W Twitty completely reshaped how I think about the food traditions of the South and how it relates to slavery & American history.
In the Woods by Tana French was the most incredibly tense novel I've read in years.

Least favorite?
I quit reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara several hundred pages in, skipped to the end and then read a synopsis online for the middle. It was fucking horrible and I hated this book. It baffles me that so many people, including one of my favorite authors, adore this book. Maybe I just don't have the stomach for literary torture porn. Because that's what this is - hundreds of pages of (quite literal at points) torture and injury. The book starts and ends with no real change except the character dies.

Most disappointing book/Book you wished you loved more than you did?
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan was awful. A beautiful premise utterly spoiled and terrible. Made even more disappointing by the author's obvious disdain for the scifi he was writing. It could have been amazing but it was just bad.

Best series you discovered in 2019?
Chuck Wendig's Aftermath books, set in the Star Wars universe.

Favorite new author you discovered this year?
Delilah S Dawson

Oldest book read?
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, 1939

Newest?
On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufahl

Longest book title?
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

Shortest title?
Lot by Bryan Washington
Shrill by Lindy West
Dragonfish by Vu Tran
Parkland by David Cullen
Snobs by Julian Fellowes
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
Hollywood by Gore Vidal

How many re-reads?
Four, half of which were Fay Weldon whom I adore.

Any in translation?
Just four, something I'd like to improve this year.

How many of this year's books were from the library?
52 (My library emails my checkout receipt and it keeps a running tally of how much money I've saved. My 2019 total was something like $1500.)

How many books did you buy?
No comment at this time.

Book that most changed my perspective:
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo made me think long and hard about my words and my actions when it came to race and racism in America. There's a lot of unexamined stuff in all of us and sunlight is a good disinfectant.

Favorite character:
I loved Phasma's story so much because it was unapologetically ferocious and she was so determined.

Favorite scene:
The party scene where Ambassador Mahit realizes she will never, ever belong to the culture she's studied and loved her whole life in A Memory Called Empire. It's so visceral and moving.

Most inspirational in terms of own writing?
Lot by Bryan Washington. He brings so much queerness and life and Texas to the page in ways that people don't expect. Also, food.

How many you'd actually read again?
Quite a few probably.

A book that you never want to read again:
I am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto was so shallow and disappointing.

Book you recommended most to others in 2019?
The Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno Garcia

The book series you read the most volumes of in 2019:
Wendig's Aftermath books

The genre you read the most in 2019:
Science fiction/fantasy, no doubt.

Your favorite "classic" you read in 2019:
Does Gore Vidal count? I loved Hollywood.

The hardest book you read in 2019 (topic or writing style):
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo covered a lot of brutal ground on white supremacy.

The funniest book you read in 2019:
Shrill by Lindy West

The saddest book you read in 2019:
Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain by Danny Goldberg really moved me. I was unsure a book by Nirvana's manager would really tell me anything I didn't already know as a 90's teen who stayed up all night with Kurt Loder the day they found him. But it was really a moving book that made me miss Kurt and the artist he might have become.

The shortest book you read in 2019:
The Best Girls by Min Jin Lee

The longest book that you read in 2019:
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

Best book that was outside your comfort zone/a new genre for you?
In the Woods by Tana French. I don't tend to pick up police procedural/investigative mystery novels but this was so incredibly done.

Most thrilling, unputdownable book of 2019?
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden reads like a snowball rolling downhill and becoming an avalanche.

Most beautifully written book in 2019?
A tough question but I think the magic that Ann Leckie pulls off with perspective and voice in The Raven Tower was the most remarkable.

Book you most anticipated in 2019?
I was extremely excited for Gods of Jade and Shadow.

Favorite cover of a book you read in 2019?
Probably the cover of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir especially with the black edged pages of my hardback copy.

Book you can't believe you waited till 2019 to finally read?
Chuck Wendig's Aftermath books, for sure.

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?
Let's not talk about the shelf of un-read books in the dining room.

Did you DNF anything?
Three books, including A Little Life which remains a baffling nightmare doorstopper.

Looking Ahead:
One book you didn't read this year that will be your #1 priority in 2020?
My newly installed TBR shelf has Curious Toys by Elizabeth Hand which I am very excited for. I love her everything.

New book you are most anticipating for 2020?
Looking forward to Tamsyn Muir's next book, Agency by William Gibson, Cleanness by Garth Greenwell and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia!

I screamed today, and there was such a difference to my voice. After I started testosterone, I stopped crying at the drop of a hat. (And really that was a relief) But today I ugly sobbed and screamed in the silence in of my house. It seems every time someone dies, I find out before noon when I'm home alone, sitting in this chair. It was like this for James, for my father and now for Splix.

I'm struggling to contain my superstitious fears and my inability to deal with mortality and death.

It was supposed to be brutally hot and sunny today but there have been clouds all day, which has been a mercy because I don't think I could handle full sunlight right this moment. My eyes are raw.

The longest friendships in my life came from livejournal, the people I met there who let me into their heads and their hearts, when we recklessly, relentlessly wrote about ourselves and our loves. I can't even remember exactly how Alex and I became friends. Probably because of fic, though the specifics are lost to time. We shared a love for that enormous cast from LOTR and their works, a love of shiny things and ballet and stories and 80s music and queerness and the beauty of the American southwest.

I wish I had told her more how much I appreciated her friendship, her writing, her incredible style, her wit, her sharp tongue. I wish I had done more, been a better friend.

I sent flowers the week before, and I hope she enjoyed them. An enormous, riotous bunch of pink ones because she loved pink.

1. What are the five oldest songs on your iPod, computer, or phone (whatever device you store your music on)?

Perfect Sex by Icon of Coil
Heaven Piercing Giga Drill by Area 11
All the Lights in the Sky by Area 11
Disappoint By Assemblage 23
I Am The Rain by Assemblage 23

2. And the five newest songs?

All from Aesthetic Perfection - Gods & Gold, No Boys Allowed, Wickedness, Supernatural, Echoes

3. What’s your favorite song to sing along to?

Probably anything by Tom Petty, but especially You Wreck Me

4. What’s the first song you ever memorized?

When I was elementary school age, I was enamored of the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas

5. What song is your current earworm?

I don't think this is a problem I often have, getting a song stuck in my head. When I listen to music it is almost always on shuffle. The song I get super excited to hear lately is Harvest by Ionnalee with TR-ST

I finally went ahead and changed my username here. The old one was a relic of another lifetime. I started using threeplusfire when I got back into fandom a few years ago. It also has the advantage of not being so heavily gendered.

I've started trying to work out more, and longer. Rather than an hour every other day, I do one and a half hours, or two if I'm feeling motivated. I am trying to go two days on, one day off. It basically doubles my time - from three to four hours a week to six to eight. I am trying to ramp it up so I don't burn out or hurt myself.

This comes in large part because my cholesterol numbers were up some over the past year. Though just how much they're reliably up is questionable - two doctors looked at the same blood tests and had very different comments for me. One basically lectured me about how unhealthy it is for me to be fat as if I was somehow unaware of my weight, and how I really should just be doing cardio and losing this weight. The other simply said the year to year numbers were not unusual, still reasonable and maybe I'd like to take some B vitamins? Also that while cutting out fast food was great overall, I should look at how much sugar I ingest and try to level that down a bit to help those triglycerides. They were very different appointments.

While I am doing some intense cardio, I continue to also do circuits on the weights. I can lift things I would never have lifted before. It's probably not spectacular in the grand scheme of things, but I can lift 75lbs over my head and the novelty of that is still pretty great for me. (My long term goal is to basically double that.) My progress is slow, but steady.

I am still fat. I'm five foot four and I weigh 254lbs. I'm writing that because I don't want to be ashamed of this, and it's not like people cannot plainly see I am heavier than other people. But there is muscle underneath that fat, that I've never experienced before. Sometimes I touch my arms and marvel at how different it feels. I can see the shift in the back of my forearms when I clench my fists for the first time in my life. I did 75 push-ups today. If you had told 15 year old me I would ever be able to do more than 10, or even the me of last year, I would have scoffed.

My body changed pretty significantly when I started taking testosterone. A lot of weight shifted from my hips and my thighs to my torso. My hip to waist ratio changed pretty significantly, and my hips are about ten inches less than they were before.

That said, I do not pass often. Yesterday was the first time a grocery store clerk called me sir. It's weird. I have trouble figuring out exactly what it is. I don't correct a lot of strangers, because what is the likelihood of seeing that exact same HEB cashier again? And I genuinely don't want to embarrass some service worker just trying to get through the day. I try not to think of the potential for violence from strangers that comes with this territory, though that is certainly more on my mind lately.

The places I pass the most are the Alamo, and eating out with Mike. These days, servers ask if we want separate checks which never used to happen. It's the little things. Also I have a fondness for the terrible food of Taco Bell because the drive through people consistently call me sir. It was one of my few regrets about giving up fast food.

Sure, I would like to lose 20lbs because that's the American dream these days. I'd like for it to be a little easier to buy pants and shorts, a tiny bit more comfortable in an airplane seat. I'd like to not feel dismayed when I see pictures of myself. But really, for the most part it's better.

There is just nothing good to say about America. This country is cartwheeling into a hell that I'm not really sure we can climb out of once we're in there. I am fine most days, until I start reading about judges who want states to be allowed to criminalize homosexual sexual activity and my governor's crusade to keep me out of public bathrooms and the maneuvering in the courts here in Texas to deny the same marriage benefits to same sex couples and I start wondering how it will end.

Sometimes, I don't know what to do about how I will never pass. It hurts. I still haven't figured out what to say when the grocery store cashier or a waiter calls me m'am. I want to say "Uh, no." But I also don't want to make some minimum wage employee feel shitty, or have some weird conversation. It feels awful and overwhelming to just assert my basic sense of self.

At my last job, I asserted my male identity from the start. Even being introduced as a guy, I still had coworkers who would routinely fuck up and call me she. It's one thing for people who have known me a long time struggling to switch pronouns. It's another when people who are explicitly introduced to me as a man still refer to me as a woman.

I'm envious and sad. It reminds me of years ago, watching an episode of Queer Eye with my roommate. The guy was a young trans guy, and they took him out to buy clothes and all the usual nice stuff they did on that show. I remember going back to my bedroom and sobbing as quietly as possible, because that would never be me. I was still in the closet. Even now, out and effectively transitioned with the legal change, the hormones, the chest surgery - I still don't feel like I belong. I can not shave for weeks, and still get called m'am. No one is going to whisk me away to give me some magical makeover that will change things. I will just always be this person I am. I've been out for seven years, and so very little seems to have changed despite the thousands of dollars I've spent on it.

Nothing helps. I feel weirdly disconnected. The narrative of knowing, deep and intrinsically, that I was a boy is an old fashioned one. It doesn't sell well in this era. I'm happy for people who have more complex identities to get their voice. I don't want to begrudge anyone that. Like pretty much everything else, I am forever late to the party. It might be easier if I could be the sort of person who felt inbetween genders, and not be bothered so much by what people say to me. I'm not, though.

It is my birthday today, and I feel old.

I realize that objectively 37 is not Old. But I was thinking about some things today, and realizing some of my internal monologue was excessively cranky about The Kids These Days. (Ask my opinions on how The Kids want all the fun part of intimacy without the work!) It's not just my birthday bringing it on this year, or the increasing number of grey hairs. It also comes from going through my dad's stuff. Making sure that Mike and I have a will to sort out things in case one or both of us die. Dealing with a 24 year old friend who is massively depressed and needs to be in therapy. Being consistently horrified by the political situation and the increasingly fucked up things happening in America.

For a person who didn't expect to live past 20, I sure have come a long way. Even if sometimes I still feel like I'm a failure.

But I just didn't imagine the future would have so many actual nazis and monsters.

I'm not good at letting go of worries about things I can't control. Like death. Or the creeping racist horror show of America.

This probably sounds more depressed than I want it to - I'm pretty okay in myself. I'm deeply unhappy with how often people call me m'am or refer to me as a lady. If my facial hair wasn't so sparse and terrible, I'd stop shaving in hopes that it would change that. (I am not a beard person.) But aside from feeling kind of meh about how people don't see me, and being fat, I'm pretty okay. The only upside of the current political horror show is that I feel better about myself. I'm at least not one of these assholes, whatever my flaws are.

Honestly, the thing getting me through this insane news cycle and terrifying time is praying for every asshat politician like Ryan or McConnell or Patrick to have their balls bitten by thousands of fire ants. Dear old gods and new, I will burn so many candles for you and bring you offerings, if you would lead the fire ants to the flesh of these men.

It's disgustingly humid, my anxiety is through the roof, and the country is ever so slowly descending into madness.

Finished: Genome by Sergei Lukyanenko reads like an older scifi novel crossed with a detective story. Pure fluff, kinda sexist, but the sort of escapist book I need right now. Probably won't keep, it will go into the pile to go back to Half Price or give away. I love his writing style, which is probably what kept it entertaining for me. I wish more of Lukyanenko's stuff was translated.

Also finished, the first three print volumes of Drugs & Wires which I loved a lot. It's an alternate 90s, with nods to all things Gibson, copious drug use, Russian, creepy mysterious malicious code, etc. Dan's a junkie desperately trying to fix himself and get back into VR, and this whole world is such a weird, messy place. It has all the things I like in this sort of fiction and I'm excited to learn where the story goes.

It's great. It updates every Monday as a web comic, and I've added them to my little roster of Patreons I support. (I gave myself a $20 monthly budget to throw at patreons and it gives me a bit of sorely needed happiness)

Currently reading: The Leavers by Lisa Ko, about Chinese immigrants and lost family. It's my book of the month selection, and I'm interested in what's going to happen. I'm only a short bit in, but so far it is intriguing.

I'm trying to spend more time consciously away from the 24/7 horror cycle of the news and reading, but it is hard.

Profile

three

January 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Lettuce for Crossroads by branchandroot
Resources: P r o l o g u e

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 28th, 2026 10:43 pm

endless iterations

I didn't sign up for this timeline

Recent Entries

fucking do something

there is no peace worth saving

a coup attempt

finished draft

(no subject)

I miss you

burning

days blur

(no subject)

maybe the internet was a mistake

books read in 2019

the weight of living, and dying

friday five

new name, still me

this body in flux

(no subject)

I just wish I was seen

(no subject)

(no subject)

reading in the cloudy weather

Profile

January 2026

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags