Self Love is the most important type of love.

I think an important part of life comes down to self-love and self-care. If you're not comfortable, you won't have a good time, no matter what it is that you're trying to do.

I'm quite big on self-care. It's something I try to fit into my life as often as I can, either through taking time to rest and do something I enjoy, or picking music that makes me smile while I do work that I can't get out of.

I've taken up meditation again, and started to try my hand at yoga, and my body feels less like a place I'm not welcome in.

But for all that, I'm not as stable as I usually think I am, not yet. I still get thrown off my small things, with a bad spell of dissociation last week because I spiralled into low self-worth being a noteworthy example. Self-care isn't something short term, it isn't a plan that solves everything. For me, it's a part of my routine, and I try to impliment it as much as possible.

A big part of my self-care is building an environment where I feel comfortable. For me, that's mostly my flat. I have a few cafes I feel safe in, one of which I really hope I get to work in, but predominantly I spend my time at home.

I surround myself with things that make me happy. Our table is right next to a wall full of One Direction photos, photos of the day I met Moony, the poem they wrote me, various items my sister sent me. We have a small collection of books - nothing like what I was forced to leave behind in Dorset - and roses that I got Moony last year because they'd mentioned wanting flowers.

This is my safe space, this is where I know who I am, and I know my true personality can shine through. Whenever I feel like I don't know who I'm supposed to be, I look around this flat, and I remember.

On how my family fucked me up.

It has recently become apparent to me that I neglected using this blog at a time when I may have needed it most.

A friend wrote recently that often creative people stop being creative when they feel sad, and that's what happened here. This has been my safe space since I set the blog up back when I didn't have this name, I was still in an abusive household.

When I started this blog, I was a kid. I use that term fairly loosely these days, but it is a word that here means naive, optimistic and scared. I had a safety net that lived on the other side of the ocean, and I had no idea that those closest to me were worse than I thought they could ever be when I came to respecting my representation.

Every now and again, I scroll back through this blog, and I find that post I wrote the day Moony went back to Sweden, and I got called for an intervention in the wake of finally telling my parents that I'd changed my name legally months earlier. It's probably self-destructive, to read back through that, to see the words they actually said, the words I typed out in a room lit only by my screen, blurred through tears that didn't stop until well into the night, replaced by a constant ache in my chest.

Life is about moving forwards, about letting go of the things that hold you back, but I'm not moving on, really.

I'm going to dedicate some proper time to how my life is now, but even with all this. Even with the life I'm carving for myself as I learn how to be independent and fall in love with this town, my partner, and myself, I won't be able to get rid of the grief I feel each time I recall something related to my home, to my family.

I was saying to my sister just now, I'd love to keep up a steady contact with them. I want nothing more than to send a witty e-mail to my dad, and get some stupid joke in return without it feeling about as natural as a science-fiction horror piece worthy of H R Giger. But it isn't easy, and it isn't possible at this moment in time.

And that's still with me, every day. Brighton is often a place people flee to in order to escape something, and it works, but you can't escape your past.

This was a bit bleak, and not very helpful in the grand scheme of my recovery, but I'll do better next time.

So what if I love each feather and each bangle, why not try to see things from a different angle?

Jake and Alex got invited to Summer In The City (basically LA's VidCon but for London) so that Alex could talk on the Gender panel and the LGBTQ+ panel. They were fantastic, as I know since Jake was sweet enough to record it all.

But there was an interesting point in one of the panels. All the speakers were asked how they came to terms with their identity that wasn't through Youtube, because not everyone had it around, and we weren't all lucky enough to find the It Gets Better project early on.

These two were idols for me, to be honest.

As everyone answered this, I was thrilled to see so many people mention Willow's story in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Moony, too, cited this as one of her first introductions.

I think it's safe to say this was a strong leap in TV history, and it properly portrayed the relationship delicated and professionally. I love Willow.

But here's the thing. I've never actually mapped out my own story. Sure, I lived it, but I've not experienced it in retrospect, and that seemed like a fun experience, the results of which are certainly interesting. So here, let's talk about how I came to be the queer little creature I am today. It's basically a picturesque thing, full of photos of the things I'm talking about to make this massive post a little less boring for you. So just enjoy looking at the gay things and the neutral beings.

Lorcan's Big Gay Journey

It starts at age nine. I discovered Doctor Who and fall in love straight from the reintroduction of it to British TV in May 2005. This opened up everything, but most importantly, at the time, was the gay kiss in The Parting Of Ways, the season finale for Christopher Eccleston's era.

At the time, I didn't see anything wrong with it, Jack had just kissed Rose, and now he kissed the Doctor. Makes sense, right? I was completely unaware that this was a big deal. But watching back, the introduction of Captain Jack Harkness was a gift. Boom Town remains one of my favourite episodes, simply because of how unabashedly gay the show let him be, probably at showrunner Russel T Davie's request. I very recently cleared his original series Queer As Folk in like two days flat, and I'm so proud that an openly incredibly gay man got to run Doctor Who for several years. Thanks, Britain. But Moffat was a mistake. No, wait, this isn't a post about him.

So I let that go, moved on with my life, then realised Torchwood was on TV, an evening re-run. I knew it starred my favourite side character, and convinced my mum to let me watch. I was maybe 11? I'm sure sci-fi fans remember the beautiful fight scene in the season two opener Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that ended exactly how we all wanted it to in front of a fire light on a screensaver. Cute.

And hey, look, it's Spike from Buffy! My queer heart could never stray far.

My memory of this episode is only this scene. I was sat so close to the tv I could see the different colours in every pixel, and they were fighting, it was intense, then suddenly two men were kissing? Somewhere between that Doctor Who episode and my discovery of Torchwood, my mind was opened, and I knew this was a risky move. I learnt then that Torchwood is like the adult alternative to Doctor Who, like Sarah-Jane Adventures is a gentle introduction for the little ones. I shouted for my mum and couldn't stop thinking about the kiss, even though I didn't watch the show again for a long time.

Then, probably about 2010, I stayed over a friend's house, and she had Torchwood on her TV. We'd just watched Eden Lake, we were kinda shook up, and she suggested it might chill us out a bit. That's when I met Ianto Jones, my first honest love. It's dumb, considering my options and all, but I was besotted. Imagine my innocent surprise when Jake kissed him in Cyberwoman, and episode based around Ianto's cyber girlfriend.

I can sense a pattern here.

Only looking back like this do I realise how important to my alternative education the existence of John Barrowman is. Seriously. But this is when it really started.

By this time, I think I was old enough to be totally sure that this was a big deal, this was personal, this made sense to me in a way other things rarely did. Over time, I succumbed to pressure and discovered the seedy underworld of fanfiction, known as fanfiction.net. For a while, I simply read cute stuff about these two, but then, one fateful day, I found an M Rated fic, the adult kind, and around chapter six I realised they were having sex, right before my screen, in a detailed form I didn't understand. Words I'd never connected to sex of any kind were being used, and I was so lost, I'm pretty sure I cried, while still trying to read it. Yeah, let's all spare a moment to coo at little baby Lorcan and his innocence. Now, I can write hardcore smut and feel fine about it. I'll write another post some time about how important fanfiction is to my own self discovery, because that deserves it's own place.

So it seems everything in my life comes back to Barroman. Never has that gif been better suited to a post. 

From fanfiction and Torchwood - including Torchwood magazine, with a beautiful cover that I still own and sometimes weep over thanks to the false hope it gave me - I made a friend that owned several seasons of a little US remade series called Queer As Folk. I don't even know where to begin with this one, because it meant so much to me, and I had to sneakily watch it with headphones in the evening so my parents didn't see the hardcore gay sex I was watching. It wasn't porn, there was genuine plot around the episodes, but any show that has multiple sex scenes one episode in, including an underage boy discovering rimming from a man in his late twenties, is going to be difficult to explain to the parents at 14 years old while identifying as female asexual.

Queer As Folk is an important series to me, because there's so much diversity. Brian Kinney, the guy in the middle, is just perfect, everyone wants him. If you don't know the series, I fully advise you dedicate time to it.  This series was the first time I felt like I was included in a big thing, the gay thing, and I was completely happy about it. I felt like I'd found a place where I belonged. But still, I was identifying with the guys rather than the girls. This is when I think I started really questioning.

I discovered Tumblr not long after. I was into Sherlock at the time, massively, and I found this kid with some great fanart crossing over with Doctor Who (look how connected it all is). This kid, now identifying as genderless and by the name of Red, at the time was "genderqueer" in their description.

Red had a complete tag full of information about gender identities, and it was the first time I'd ever realised there was a chance that I wasn't feeling weird because I was crazy, or stupid, or exaggerating. It was the first time I felt comfortable, and like maybe I was getting somewhere. 

Around the time I started talking to Red about coming out to my parents, I got my first haircut. I used to have it halfway down my back, but when the lady asked if I was sure I wanted it so short, I couldn't say yes fast enough. They said my parents would be okay, which was a fucking lie, but they didn't know that, and I massively appreciate their helping me. 

I started identifying as genderqueer, and felt I needed to be in the trans* category, and I chose the name Zak. Around this time, I rediscovered John Barrowman, to nobody's surprise. I have a strong memory of spending every morning listening to his cover of I Am What I Am in my earphones on repeat while I sat at my laptop writing stuff before school. It got me in a good headspace, and I think it's a habit I need to go back to soon. 

From here, I had a two year gap of no exploration, thanks to parents, but then Chase Ross came into my life through youtube. Up until here, youtube had no impact on who I saw myself as and understood myself to be.

This is Chase as I like to think of him, back with the scruffy cute hair, the trans* flag in the background, fresh from his Ellen show, on T pre surgery. He's basically one of the reasons I feel so comfortable not wanting lower surgery, and he taught me that there's no such thing as being "trans* enough". The path you take is yours to choose, and nobody can take that from you, or should feel like they can tell you how to transition in a way you're not comfortable with. 

Since he got top surgery he's changed, and I'm no so happy about his message, but these days, back in this room, I appreciate them and cherish them.

I found a lot of other youtubers through Chase, including the FTM Transtastic video blogs, and personal vlogs through that, and again, seeing a wide spectrum of people helped me feel a little less on my own. I'm a little embarassed that I didn't find Alex, to be honest. He was right there the whole time, right when it would have been great to know he was there, and I completely missed him. Sorry, man. At least it meant I didn't freak out when I met you and cry about how important you are to my individuality or something? You know I would have done that.

how does this fetching genderless thing
exist

We also need an obligatory mention of Ivan, of course. We met on my sixteenth birthday in a chat room, and have gone through a lot with each other's help. I can't praise this loser enough, and I'm glad we met, I'm glad we talk a lot and that we've learnt a lot about ourselves through really complex discussion or fanmixes for each other. Truly, he's maybe my best friend - Moony, you're my fiancee, you know you win all the things - and I adore him. 

It's always nice to actually befriend people like him, because it serves as a personal reminder that I'm not suffering these things on my own, or because I'm overreacting to things. Sure, Moony does all that can be done, but like I can't properly sympathise when there's a day of bad anxiety, we can't intimately understand everything. I'm a little relieved, because I'd never really push transgenderism onto anyone by choice. It isn't easy.

 AJ is a cutie

Since then, it's just been a long journey of discovery that I'm still working on. I started talking to YA Author AJ Amaro, who is really sweet and easy to connect with, and we keep in touch, loosely. Every now and then I go to their page and check up on things, coo over their relationship and cats, and generally feel like I'm so happy for them that I can't possibly feel bitter about how far in transition they might be.

I feel like talking to trans* people in all areas of the spectrum and all walks of life has really helped me out, and given me a broad view of how 

things can be for me. I've had the chance to pick my identity with the help of seeing how others choose to portray theirs. 

I'm glad I know these kind of people, even if we don't talk, because it really helps me out to know I can fall back on people if I need to, and that there are actually nice people in the world rather than the elitists that we all get warned about. I've luckily never interacted with any myself, but given that I have a move to Brighton coming up, I feel it's only a matter of time before I might have my first angry queer sighting.

literally my favourite scene in Different For Girls

I think as well as all the serious aspects of transitioning, of the path to finding yourself, and all the heavy stuff that comes with it, it's important to seek out the things that help you feel good about yourself, too. Again, Different For Girls does this. It's the opposite world, given I'm not MtF, but it's heartwarming to see this awkward guy (oh Rupert Graves) struggle to accept this his best friend is a beautiful woman now, and try to make her feel comfortable whenever he can. Things like this film remind me that it isn't all doom and gloom, and I can actually have a good time while learning who I am, which is an ever growing process, I can assure you. 

Over the years, I've been blessed with so many chances to expand my understanding and smash down what gender means to me, and I'm glad that it keeps being a wonderful place for me to be, when I feel like I need a little support, I have all these resources to keep me strong.

I might do an update one day, on this. Because it's been really interesting to look at my life like this, and actually realise where my roots are, so to speak. I hope I can convey my thanks to John one day, even though I probably won't. 

Surprisingly, I'm okay.

I feel like I've neglected this blog, and I feel a little bad for it. I'd like to get back into the habit of regularly updating, if only to give myself something productive to do.

I've hit a really important part of my life, now. I'm in Sweden for a few more weeks, then I'm going back to Dorset, but I'm moving into a flat with my life partner just weeks later, and starting University in two months. This feels like such an amazing thing. Holy shit, adult stuff.

We've packed up the bedroom, mostly, sorted through everything and realised that between us, I am the one with most possessions, but far. I need to remedy that when I get home. I've enlisted the help of a friend who's a pro and just clearing stuff out.

Admittedly, it's different for me. I can leave stuff and just come back on the train, without hopping countries, but it's still a good idea to see what crap I own, and getting rid of it.

Sweden, as ever, is treating me wonderfully. I've spent two days now on the balcony doing my own thing while Moony's at work, and it's nice. As much as we love being together, it's nice to get used to not having that. There's a lot to look forward to, with two good friends already planning to visit as soon as we're settled, and while I sometimes get a little freaked out that there's so much riding on my grades, I know I can't do anything about them right now. I'll find out how I did in 12 days. And they usually take you on anyway, right? They seemed interested in getting me involved. Worse case, I've got Bournemouth. And if we get a long term flat in Brighton but I don't make it, that's fine. I can commute that. It's only like, three hours there and two hours back. Sure. And not too expensive. I don't know, I won't fuss about that yet.

Personally? I think I'm doing good. I'm happy here. I like knowing I'm making a physical positive difference to somebody's life, and being in a safe environment is so good for my mental health. I've barely had a bad day here since I arrived, as apposed to very often in my parent's home.

It's exciting. I love it. I hope it all goes as well as we're hoping. We deserve this break. I've done all I can for applying for flats, we'll decide as soon as we can. I can actually just relax, marathon tv shows I've been meaning to get around to for ages, and have fun.

I want this to go well, so badly.

The sum of the parts.

God look at these cute dorks. The inspiration this evening.

I've realised something. Maybe it's because it's past 2am and I always get so weird in these hours. Maybe it's because I'm seeing Moony in tomorrow/today, and maybe it's because Alex Bertie just got gay at me on Facebook. 

I met Jake last year at my first group session, the first time I met a group of trans* people and the first time I felt actually accepted. We got on instantly and I've considered myself lucky to know him and get to be such good friends ever since. 

Then he met this cute YouTuber, Alex. They're sweet together and all but this isn't a proper promo, god knows they get enough attention already.

The thing is, I was incredibly nervous about meeting Alex. We were suppose to all hang out for a few hours until he had to go to the dentist, and Alex kept commenting on how me and Jake had this 'weird connection', a habit of sharing glances and understanding each other. Admittedly most of them were Jake looking at me to say 'look at this cutie do you understand' and me nodding. I think at some point I helped manhandle Alex into a jumper. That was fun.

We ended up holding hands (all of us in a queer little line but 'the hetero way' with me because interlocking fingers is too intimate) on the way to Alex's bus stop, we barely spoke unless it was through Jake, who was totally useless at talking about me beyond "he's cool, he wore that Star Wars shirt literally to appeal to you but he actually really likes Spock's dad", or something close. All accurate.

Me, Jake, Alex. Actual dorks.

So yeah, I was a little concerned that Alex was uncomfortable with me around for this reason, but it seems to have settled down. Despite being mostly iffy about contact, he'll hug me, and I feel like we've managed to get on pretty well, probably much to Jake's delight. 

Today, Alex just went to sleep after some sweet messages where we basically discussed our affections for Jake, I realised something. I've been worried this whole time that I was screwing up the situation between those two, but I've actually somehow helped. 

What I'm getting at here is a massive Star Trek analogy. It was going to happen, you know it.

Jake is Kirk, enthusiastic, full of ideas and an intense desire not to owe anyone anything, to just help where he can and get nothing in return. Alex is Spock, hardworking, more relaxed around Jake than anywhere, and passionate about his subjects. This leaves me as Bones, Kirk's  best bro and reliable source of personality boosts while patiently sitting through Kirk talking about his relationship and how great it is. Totally ready to help or tell him he sucks. Bones and Spock only interact because of Kirk, and while they're different (I can't work nearly as much as you, Alex and I could not make videos I just type things), they get on. 

I did it guys. I'm Leonard McCoy. I'm Karl Urban. I'm finally there.

My best friends are idiots.

Beyond that, most shows have this Triumvrate dynamic. Three main personalities that work together despite differences and create a stronger, triple the awesome version. Like the combo moves in Power Rangers. Scott, Stiles and Derek in Teen Wolf. Cas, Dean and Sam in Supernatural. It's a tried and tested method.

But more than the two cute homos pictured above, I've come to the realisation that I often set myself into triumvirates. 

When I was a kid, I always had two friends that I kept close, we worked together best. Then, as I grew up it became a rotation of my best friend and whoever else fitted at the time. Now, it's two really awesome guys that I consider close, and I appreciate the heck out of them. 

It's Emily and Kati on Skype/Tumblr keeping me going in the Dredd fandom and bouncing ideas off each other, letting me talk about my godawful AU and slowly wrecking this once hardcore Lawman when we're not having identity crises together or lamenting our lives. 

It's my partner and Erika, friends since Sixth Form and now considered a good friend of mine. Alternatively, my partner and Aniz, brother pictured below.

The strongest Triumvirate. Moony and my Swedish brother.
(Singing 1D, which explains the bottles).

I'm almost always Spock or Bones. I never fit Jim, which I'm fine with. I'm not good at direct sunlight. I work best when I'm reflecting the glow of others back at them so they'll understand what I see in them. 

Moony is the Kirk to my Spock, and I'll always cherish that most of all. I'm like a young Spock that hasn't learnt to turn off the human emotions yet, but the ideals remain the same. 

Basically we surround ourselves in triumvirates because they make everyone stronger. And it's a really interesting concept. Everyone builds on each other's weaknesses and they're practically unstoppable. I want that. I have that, everywhere.

Has Godzilla been misgendered this whole time?

Even the strongest fighters can get tied up in the traps of heteronormative society.

I guess this is a new installment of the projection onto fictional 'villains', continued from the Dalek metaphor post.

Disclaimer. My total knowledge of Godzilla is totally limited, I'll admit this. But I'm completely committed to watching the terrible old movies and learning all I can. Instead, I've done a little research online, and thought I'd share it all here. We all know sex and gender are very different, but I feel like Godzilla has bigger issues than that, so for the purposes of this post, I am discussing pronouns in direct connection to biological clues.

So, back in the early days, it appears the creator intended Godzilla to be female, though the Japanese narrations used neutral pronouns, which is super considerate. There are several instances wherein Godzilla is pregnant and has adorable babies, yet American dubs began using male.

As Moony pointed out when I said I was writing this, it shouldn't matter. And that's totally true, but I'm amazed at how big the confusion around all this is. It is as if the American narrators thought it would be cooler or more realistic to have a masculine radioactive creature emerge from the ocean and attack cities, ignoring the obvious signs that some form of explanation should maybe be given at least.

(It's kinda like how when Otachi was discovered to be pregnant in Pacific Rim, it changed how we understood the Kaiju, and since then it's been sort of understood that all the Kaiju must be female, if they're clones of each other. Because of course there is a Pacific Rim comparison here.)

Objectively, Godzilla probably doesn't give a fuck if we use an extra letter when referring to them, but I can't help but wonder if maybe there is some immense misgendering happening here that nobody is noticing. Which sums up trans* awareness perfectly.

I'm likely projecting massively, after an incident when a hetero guy on the train this week loudly asked his friends if I was a girl or a boy, and it still makes me uncomfortable. But it's a consideration.

There is a popular theory that there are hermaphroditic concepts as at work, allowing Godzilla to reproduce without another being, which would make sense given how nobody expected one, let alone two of these things to be created after years of toxic waste and planetary abuse of the oceans.

Either way, I adore this thing, and it was refreshing to see the focus be on how heroic this character is in the latest movie, so I didn't have to feel alone in my sympathies.

My hope is that one day, someone like precious Nick the worm guy of the '98 movie will ask 'wait, pregnant?' and we'll get some sort of closure, because nothing makes me more uncomfortable than getting things like pronouns wrong. As it is, I'm more confident with 'she', and I will fucking fight you about it.

Regardless of the sex of Godzilla, clearly producing model kids.
Don't share, just take the whole damn bag.

It is no sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.

It's 4am blogs with Lorcan, yaaaay.

This explains the lack of beautiful metaphors and so on. And punctuation. I'm on my phone. 

Since it's totally Saturday now, I can safely say it is my birthday tomorrow. I'm going to be 18 years old. I'm going to legally be an adult.

I know it's typically a thing in older people, when they hit a new benchmarker and realise how little they've achieved, but I'm getting that right now.

I can't believe that I'm almost 18 and today I made plans to borrow my friend's boiler suit so I can cosplay as my favourite character in the Lego Movie. 

I'm nearly 18 and my aunt got me elastic/rubber brightly colored dinosaurs. The aforementioned Lego character is dancing with a T-Rex on my desk right now.

I'm nearly 18 and I regularly ask myself (and am asked by Moony) how I'm still alive when I fall over my feet and burn myself making tea, a task I conduct multiple times a day. 

I'm nearly 18 and sometimes I feel so much older. You know, they say you can see in the Doctor's eyes that he is far older than his face, that he has seen so much more. I wonder if that's like with me, to a less impressive extent. I don't want that to sound like me saying I have the same cred as the Doctor, that's wishful thinking. 

But let's go meta here for a second.

The Lorcan has to deal with a lot in life. They have a fiancée on the wrong side of the ocean, a family that doesn't really accept them to the point that a slip-up of pronouns is a massive breakthrough. There's mental health, dissociation, exams, legit over abundance of stress hormones, not the correct set of hormones in general...

Don't get me wrong, there are awesome things in Lorcan's life, too. There is that same fiancée, for starts, and a support group that is full of completely lovely people. The Godzilla movie was hecking awesome, too. 

And they're getting presents tomorrow. Which would be great except it's two days before an exam, too.

And while we're here, let's take a moment for neutral pronouns. Wow, they feel strange, but they're hella. No assumptions made, perfect for raging Dysphoria, which is a thing today. 

Every time I revise, I either actually cry orI end  up close enough to it that I crawl under my comfort duvet - it has a space theme - and listen to music until I calm down. But that takes hours out of my time, and lead to things like this, where I'm laying in bed at 4am unable to sleep because I'm trying to work out techniques to pass - both the exam and in life generally. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll work something out. Maybe I'll find a kickass track list online and there'll be a study montage. 

Maybe Uni will let me in regardless. It does happen.