Dana Nightingale 🏳️‍⚧️

I am completely disarmed by this comment Danielle 😅

Dana with long hair and a 5 o'clock shadow. Pretty sure that's lipstick too. She's wearing a white top with a black floral pattern.

Dana with much shorter hair wearing the same top, but with a bra under it now. She's got a septum ring and isn't wearing makeup.

3 years HRT (as of tomorrow.)
FFS in 42 days.

I know
Gay

up as their trajectory? How much hell can I put them though? What's dramatically satisfying without feeling contrived? How badly can they fuck up but still have a path forward?

Nothing groundbreaking. I keep in mind the starting point and the endpoint. What do these characters want and what do they need? What does the reader understand about them and what do they still need to learn? What needs to happen for them to approach what they need while paying off what's been set

Cried while writing the first chapter of it.
This is going to be good shit.

I know

I, who plan my novel in six chapter arcs, feel uneasy as I sit down to write. I take a walk listening to a playlist inspired by the book. While climbing Croix Rousse listening to Doomscroller by Metric, I throw out the entire outline and rewrite it in my head. It fucks.

This is an anti gen-AI post.

Me, an idiot, looking at these two photos: "other than the hair length and laser'd off facial hair I look pretty much the same"

Oh gosh hello Jaws! 😊

Thank you Nicole 🥹

Thank you 💕

The above photo gave me so many complicated genderfeels when I took it. I was pretty shaken. It wasn't an egg cracky moment - I'm pretty sure by then I already knew I was trans - but heck, it messed with me. I knew it was a woman staring back at me. I both couldn't look at it and couldn't delete it.

Thank you. 💜

Something about the inverse rule of hair length to internalized femininity. IDK.

Dana with a short but full beard. Her hair is super long here. She's wearing a dark gray Arkane t-shirt.

Oh yeah and I used to look like this.

Full body shot from the same day as the "after photo". In addition to the white top Dana has a black skirt with a large metal belt buckle. It also has a floral pattern.

Dana with long hair and a 5 o'clock shadow. Pretty sure that's lipstick too. She's wearing a white top with a black floral pattern.

Dana with much shorter hair wearing the same top, but with a bra under it now. She's got a septum ring and isn't wearing makeup.

3 years HRT (as of tomorrow.)
FFS in 42 days.

I remember thinking at the time, it's okay to delete it. I didn't create anything I can't create again, and even better than before.

Additional Lore:

Once in a phone call Ken Levine (who was working on System Shock 2 at the time) asked to see my old System Shock level sketches. I said sorry, I had to delete it all.

I had to delete it all because my father decided it was taking up too much hard drive space on his computer.

1995, Autodesk Autosketch, and me deciding I could improve the level design of System Shock.

PASSAGES, by V/A - Framed by Nova 13 track album

The entire album is so good holy shit

ultimae.bandcamp.com/album/passages

YouTube video by ultimae | records VA - Passages - 04 Opal by BRANDO LUPI

This morning I went into my old archives and dumped at least 48 hours of music into a playlist and hit "shuffle".

Within 3 hours a track I used to be obsessed with and had /completely forgotten about/ came on.

I'm obsessed all over again.

youtu.be/KTS0NWhf3Xs

dotmeow.org/en/what/

Get more from Ela Bambust on Patreon creating queer and transgender novels and novellas

like goshheck they're both so fucking cool

www.patreon.com/c/elabambust...

The talking about partners is to gush about how amazing they are and to promote their work, so they don't mind either :3

I don't really feel like doing an ama is my thing because all I really want to talk about are my books and partners.

a close up of a cartoon character wearing a hat Alt: Carmen Sandiego

Close second with entirely the same deal

Mostly the hat

Cis allies, if you're not sure of a trans person's pronouns, be sure not to eat of their food or dance to their music, for if you do you may find yourself in the intoxicating reverie of the trans people for three hundred years, and though you age not a day, all your loved will be dead and gone.