Reintroduction, Realization and Reinvention...

From a photoshoot I did with a friend shortly
after getting my lip pierced at the end of July.

Long time, no see blogger. Some things have changed since I last actually posted here -- like, a lot of things have changed. And honestly, it's all been for the better, in my opinion. 

So, about three years of news to update readers on, huh? I think one of the most obvious things is that I'm finally out as a trans guy now. I had my original "realization" that I was a guy back in 2009 at the tender young age of 17. I was living with conservative queerphobic parents at the time and while I kind of socially transitioned for a little bit, I eventually went whole hog into pretending to be a girl again... 

From 2014 (when I left Wisconsin, moving to Rural PA, 14 hours away from the rest of my family) onward, started to experiment with gender and try to figure out what I was and what felt right to me -- going from woman to genderfluid to nonbinary femme to nonbinary to bigenderflux and (for now, at least) settling on nonbinary trans man.  A very gender nonconforming trans man but that's what makes me happy -- and being happy is what matters most to me in my life. 

I ended up mostly homeless at the end of 2018 but my boyfriend and I were lucky enough to have found some amazing friends with whom we're kind of still staying -- the problem with rural towns is that landlords from big cities come here, buy up all the cheap housing and think that a town with almost no full-time labor can afford Pittsburgh's rent. 

Channeling the 80s with leopard print

Physically, my health has kind of continued to decline, which is deeply unfortunate. I don't really get to go places very often because "going places" requires walking, which on a lot of days is something I'm really not up to doing and my wheelchair is sadly not in good condition anymore. I just recently started new medication for my arthritis though and so hopefully that will result in a decrease in my pain and allow me to move around a bit more.

The summer weather, however, is really not helping with being able to go places -- since there's a good number of my medications that cause it to be more difficult to deal with the heat and shorts are a nightmare for my dysphoria, apparently! I'm experimenting with my fashion a bit more and trying to figure out what kind of "masculine" looks make me happiest and what feels the best to me.

A very blurry photo from karaoke
(8/5/2021)

In 2018 I also started going out to karaoke! Which has been fantastic for my self-esteem and also for overcoming some of the problems I've had with my singing voice thanks to overly critical voice coaching courtesy of my mother. I'm eventually hoping to start creating my own music again at some point in the future and instead of doing the old "girl with an acoustic guitar, vaguely indie sadpunk" style I was doing before I'm hoping to lean in to goth and industrial styles -- channeling my love for Nine Inch Nails, Sisters of Mercy and Blutengel into something that's more listenable than me badly playing acoustic guitar and scream-singing about my mom trauma (though I cannot guarantee there won't be scream-singing about mom trauma in the future).

Mostly though, I want to start actively posting again because there's a near total lack of fat goth dude representation out there and someone needs to get that started. On top of that, I'm getting exhausted with the algorithm-driven, instant gratification-centric, constant content creation & comparison model of most social media. It's exhausting to feel that kind of pressure to constantly create and constantly be offering myself up. Especially since social media like Twitter really encourages a lack of nuance and proper understanding... Not to mention the fact that sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram are all loaded with weightloss bullshit and actively work to repress self expression and punish adult content creators (I'm a former online SW and I'm also an erotica writer who makes illustrations for his work so...) As such, I'm working to create an online presence for myself that's a bit more detached from that sort of thing.

A recent OOTD 

Starting to work on my blog again is part of that -- the other part is creating a website for myself on neocities.org! (Which you can find at http://ex-rosa-per-noctem.neocities.org -- or just click the "personal website" link in my sidebar). It's absolutely designed to look as "retro" as possible -- based around the kinds of websites I made for myself back in the day (2004) and it brings me immense joy to look at. You'll be able to find my writing and art there (once I get my art uploaded and the pages finished). It's very, very much under construction at the moment, lol. 

So, what does all of this mean for my blog? Well -- I'm not really going to change much. I still want to focus on goth fashion and try to do more DIY type posts because the commercialization of goth is beginning to irritate me in my approaching middle-age. Spending time with cranky elder goths is fantastic except that one begins to develop a very "get these whippersnappers off my front lawn!" sort of mindset. Not to mention I'm just going through a very nostalgic period and deeply longing for the days when goth didn't look so perfectly put-together and not everyone was an influencer doing promos for K*llstar, D*llskill and Bl*ckcraft...

In addition to all of that, I started T in February and I'd like to occasionally talk about that as well as just making posts about living as a trans goth guy in a rural area.

I think that about covers it for now! I'm looking forward to making a comeback and hopefully I can actually stay somewhat consistent in posting, lol.

Photo Gallery ("recent" photos I like)