YO i return with number 24... book club... yes... This week we read Abyssal Somewhere! big fan of celia fiction. shorter meeting today as a lot of people got busy with things, but we still found stuff to talk about
If you're interested, we host these meetings every Sunday at 12pm MST in the Bug Fables Discord! It's a good time, we read cool fanfiction, and then we draw.
we'll be reading Bewildering Buddies: Bug Fables by Toast726 this week! this is our last backlogged work before show and tell next next meeting, so stay tuned for a more formal announcement soon..
BUT BUT-- Its based on this ask. Ive alwasy wanted to do this but never had the time too, now that I have-- it turned out bad. I kinda wanted to change the clothes, but yall know me ┐(´ー｀)┌
Anyways tldr: Shaleus looks exactly like Astotheles
Shaleus belongs to @/tangyfighter
yall should not introduce a dead character to me or I WILL get curious. This happened like 2x now
Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast pretty damn good. This probably still my fav song. Close second would have to be Know Better Learn Faster by Thao because that's my goat Thao.
*basegame pronouns
a long-form blogpost about trying labels on
(estimated read time: 10 minutes)
Introduction & Philosophy
Keen-eyed viewers of my general online presence will notice that I don't really have pronouns listed in most of the spaces I commonly inhabit. Whether that be here, or YouTube, or fuckin, MSPFA, I, for the most part, leave that field blank.
Hey, where are the pronouns?
The cause of this phenomenon has been one that has been mostly unknown to me for, well, a long time. I don't know when this started, but ever since perhaps a couple of years ago, I have mostly forgone actively wearing them in these spaces.
I don't herald myself as being particularly gender-averse or androgynous in that manner: in person, I look just about like the average cishet Filipino guy does (footage of me "in the flesh" exists out there: just go watch the VOD for Melty Blood's Top 8 at Combo Breaker 2026 and I'll be there in the crowd). If actively prompted, I'll default to he/him. I feel just about enough as a guy to be able to confidently call myself one if asked. If I had to really define myself into a readable paragraph, the definition is clear-cut and so unassuming that it hardly stands out from Joe, 26, Football Fan.
This is a conversation I've had with myself and with others before, enough times to where I feel pretty confident in the answer. The conclusion has always been "it doesn't matter, stop thinking about it so hard", and for the most part, I still agree with this! My general philosophy is that labels are a thing you opt-in to: you can equip as many as you feel are needed to make you feel comfortable in your own skin, part of the reason why I respect microlabel users quite heavily. For me as a person, the only one I've actively cared about presenting as is "Filipino" for reasons hopefully obvious by now, and the rest have been quite tertiary.
I'm fine being just me: but, an idea struck me one day, a couple of weeks ago.
See attached image at the top.
Basically, for a couple of days, I'd try out and actually identify as some pronouns for once. I'd test the main three (he/him, they/them, she/her) in one small server and privately with a couple of friends, put my hands in the water, and by the end of it I'd be able to sure-heartedly know what I like and what I don't like. And then, maybe a tier list.
It was genius.
The point of this blog post is to both act as a bit of self reflection on my own part for this experiment of mine, and to perhaps psychically link with other people who feel the same way. Maybe this will help someone pin down what they actually feel like, or reinforce the wonders of being limitless to others, but either way, I hope this does something for someone.
He/Him - Hey, I Know This One
The first few days were spent on he/him: the absolutely most standard pronouns on the market, obtainable at a Wal-Mart near the checkout aisles next to the gum and candy bars.
It's a strange feeling to actually have a label attached to you after so many months of the contrary, although if I'm being honest, not much really changed in terms of actual feelings--in some part, because I already am this one at about a 99% confidence level. This is what most of the people I was testing this out with already knew me as, and as such, the immediate reaction was actually quite mild.
Tragically, my affinity for power tools and monster trucks did not spike by 3x, nor did I start looking like Yujiro Hanma. I was, well, just about the same I had always been, except now it was a little more clear that I was a guy. I don't even know what I come off as to most people, honestly, although maybe the fact it doesn't come up is cool itself.
In general, this was kind of just the "Now I'm just getting started" phase of this little experiment: nothing too deviated from my normal identity, but still different enough to justify it being there.
PRONOUN RATING: I Was Basically Already This One Anyways
They/Them - Okay This One's Different
This was the first instance of active change in this experiment. The first thing that you kind of realize immediately after making the decision to change is that it feels weird to be called something else than what you're usually used to.
I won't lie, it did feel good, and new, and weird to be actually called non-binary. I won't lie and be all like "yeah I tried it out and it SUXORZ!111" because I did try it out, and it actually did feel pretty nice! I attribute this to the fact that I've actually kind of felt this way before.
In the near past, the one time I've tried different pronouns before (he/they) was because I felt so strongly resonant with a character in a show I watched that I started, for a lack of a better term, "feeling things". And while this ended up lasting for not that much time, I could attribute a lot of my feelings about the label shit to that: the lack of affinity towards really "being" a guy, the intentional de-labeling, all that.
Do they know? Shoutout to my homie Para, by the way.
The universe feels like it is trying to tell me something. One of my favorite musicians, Jeff Rosenstock, came out as non-binary back in November of 2024, and ever since then I've kind of on that sort of precipice. On one hand, it probably does fit me, and there's like, quite a lot of signs towards that.
On the other hand, do I care?
So beautifully succinct: probably one of the best posts ever.
This is where I kind of come to a stand-still with my gender identity. There's so much out there I could put on myself that would very easily define myself in a concise manner, and yet I try them on and don't feel much of anything. I don't consider this a necessarily bad thing, but it does feel strange to make such a big decision and then live in it for 3 days and have it essentially be background noise to the main symphony that is being Filipino.
It's not really a question of what I feel is better defining of me as a person, rather, just the fact that it's comfortable to exist in some parts on both spectrums. It doesn't feel right to call myself actually non-binary, but denying it outright isn't right either.
Perhaps somewhere in the middle is where I find myself. I think punching myself in the gut about it won't be productive, and so, I'll leave it at that. I'll figure it out eventually, probably, maybe.
PRONOUN RATING: Check Back In 6 Months
She/Her - Wait How Did We Get Here
The first time I got gendered as she/her made me feel really strange: not in a bad way, but in a different way. I consider it similar to the experience of being called they/them but to a further degree, considering that I've never gone this far before.
It's weird. But also, kind of nice?
And for a couple of minutes after having actively declared myself as running those pronouns, I couldn't shake that strange feeling in my gut, like something had been forever changed in my psyche. People who are in the "know" will perhaps see this as the cracking of some sort of "egg", and I feel like they have good reason to at least suspect something going on. Who is running those pronouns without that sort of intent, anyways? Like, 3 people?
I don't consider myself particularly feminine, although I probably pop enough jokes about it to where someone could start trying to suggest something about me if I felt like it. I'm lucky enough to have been surrounded by quite a lot of trans people, in a way that has made me far more prescient of that sort of thing.
Of course, after the initial shock of it wore off and I got back to being busy, I kind of just.. forgot that I had set my personal identity to she/her in that server, until I got gendered as a girl a couple of days later. And this is, yet again, an extension of the things I talked about in the last section.
Shoutout Bronze for being so supportive through this all, by the way. That's oomfalicous.
One of the things I was made quite aware of during this week of she/hering was that like, I don't think about this stuff actively. For what is usually such a massive change in identity for most, this was yet again subjected to becoming background noise for being Filipino. I think I get actively gendered so rarely online that it's made me forget that I have actual pronouns sometimes, and the fact it was isolated to one "place" probably contributed to that.
It also made me realize that I don't see myself as a girl or really feel like one, which is probably another reason why seeing myself referred to as she/her after day 1 just instilled a reaction of "whatever" from me. I look back at these messages now while writing and they just feel like any other.
It was nice, though, and I honestly ended up not minding them at all. I'd say this was a fun experiment because like, what other guy is going to go as she/her for an extended period of time? I actually ended up becoming a bit more comfortable in the skin I already have. So, thanks, she/her pronouns.
PRONOUN RATING: Not Presently, But Open To Change If It Comes
Conclusion
I honestly don't know if I learnt much new information from this experience, although I can confidently say that I thought it was worthwhile.
At the start of writing this circa ~2 hours ago, I was going to conclude this off by formally announcing myself as now going by any/all. It sounds right, it fits well with what I've thought about myself, and I've seen so many examples that I think it would fit.
And honestly, yeah. Any/all. That's about right for someone like me. However, I don't know if I'll ever formally identify as that.
I've come to the conclusion once again that the pronouns have since become less important for me to understand myself as an individual. Like my friend Bronze said:
Fax nukeotron.
At the end of it all, I think of myself as a guy, and so, that's what I am. I think the attempt to define myself to a singular set has instead reminded me that I can legitimately just do whatever I want and nothing can stop me from doing so. Even as I was running she/her, I was still feeling like a guy under it all, honestly probably even more so than usual. Something something "Filipino guy SHOCKS LGBTQ+ community by speaking in perfect they/them" or whatever. I think being a guy is cool. I like looking at my cool facial hair and my muscles and having a nice baritone voice. I think it's neat.
Maybe I'm a guy who is a little bit of everything, and that's pretty cool! I can be kinda non-binary, kinda feminine, do all this shit that could fit under a thousand different umbrellas and still be able to sequester myself under the same umbrella as Todd, 26, Football Fan. I can make a bunch of transgender and non-binary OCs and read all these books about queer identity and write fanfiction about being trans and all this stuff and still just be the same person I was at the start of it.
Don't get me wrong, it's still open invite. I'm confident enough in myself to say that if I ever feel the pull to become something, I'll trust my instincts and go for it, because the last thing I want to do is deny myself something that might make me feel more comfortable in my own body. But, until that day comes knocking onto my door, I'll stick to what I've got right now. At the very least, I tried something new! That's pretty cool.
Good lord that shit was so good it made me stop reading and post on tumblr ! Everyone go read this damn fic right now if not to finish it to read chapter 16. But chapter 16 so damn good u might as well read chapter 17-37 afterwards
Hello hello hello it's the 23rd iteration of bug fables book club!!! This week we read Until the Last Ember Dies it was beast. Thanks all for attending today it was a great time even if I was so damn sleepy during it LMFAOOOOO i woke up at like 10pm did picross for an hour and then made fried rice it was awesome. Shoutout Advisor for the mini interview as well!
If you're interested, we host these meetings every Sunday at 12pm MST in the Bug Fables Discord! It's a good time, we read cool fanfiction, and then we draw.
our work of choice this week is Abyssal Somewhere by Termistae! Celia fans unite it's for you.... this one for you...
gummygunk
origamiaround
titsay
germansingergirl
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
