#& lore

[deer-knight]

just wondering is your facial hair grown or special effects?

stache is all me, the rest is uhh i think eyebrow pencil? i do get hair on my chin but it's a sensory nightmare for me :P

[the-artsy-mermywitch]

The perfect gift from my husband 💙🧜‍♀️

[deer-knight]

do you prefer feminine or masculine or androgynous compliments? i wanna know whether to say youre so pretty or so handsome or so stunning or what word u would prefer - anon who was caught off guard by how ethereal you look in those forest pics

heyo anon! thank you so much for your kindness and thoughtfulness ^_^

i prefer neutral/masc compliments - but in the name of destroying the line between masc/femme division i'm down with most anything that doesn't explicitly refer to me as a woman.

"beautiful" and "pretty" are traditionally feminine compliments BUT. they don't have to be. unless they're not into it i call my guy friends beautiful and pretty if i think they are. i'm interested in breaking down that tradition.

compliments directed at my body are sketchy, but i LOVE when people compliment my strength if they think i look strong. that's basically the one exception on body compliments. also, i happen to be a thin person. any praise directed at thinness will be shut down.

thank you so much for asking anon! you've made my day better <3 cheers, and best of luck in all your endeavors!

&

[deer-knight]

Do you have any thoughts on footwork in swordfighting- do you take yours from any particular practice/method or martial art? Etc etc? I ask since I've heard so many different responses over the years and am just so curious :0

greetings anon!

my thoughts on footwork - the most important part of swordplay. if you don't have clean, stable, balanced, quick and reliable footwork, you are very much limiting yourself, and putting yourself at risk for injury. footwork first, and the rest will go from there.

my footwork comes from a long background of sport fencing, but a lot of my balance and coordination was developed through figure skating (and consequentially ballet and gymnastics) as a kid. i was a competitive figure skater from age 7 to 12, partially against my will. i didn't like the cutthroat competition, the intensely cliquey social scene, or the pressure the adults were putting on their kids to win and succeed and achieve...but my mother insisted i kept doing it because i was good at it. eventually i was permitted to quit, but yikes. it was a lot. (didn't mean to dump on ya there. sorry.)

aaaaaanyway though, i never did any martial art besides fencing that influenced my footwork, but developed coordination and balance from other areas of my early life.

and of course if you haven’t seen it, here’s my intro to footwork video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYJacZA92Vg&t=193s

cheers!

&

[deer-knight]

Do you have a hair care routine?

kinda, yea!

because of the length of my hair and the amount of time i spend outdoors (~8 hours daily on workdays) the ends get sunbleached and damaged by the elements, so i've just started using Overtone (espresso brown color) like once a month on the ends to repair some damage and correct the color. it's been working great so far. other than that i wash it once a week, generic shampoo/conditioner situation. my hair is straight on it's own, so if i want it curly i dutch braid it in two braids and leave that in for a day or two, after which the curls stick around for 2-3 days. always air dry. i've got real thick, heavy hair so i either wear it down or braid it. usually braided for work otherwise it gets crazy tangled. i brush it thoroughly before i wash it and not much more than that since it usually lives in the same braid(s) all week (unless it gets real messy then i'll redo it).

and that's it! thank you for the ask! <3

cheers, &

[deer-knight]

Is your sword decorative, functional, or stage-combat?

which one? i have three that appear in my photos!

my arming sword is functional and sharp. great for slow motion drills as the balance and weight is wonderful.

the longsword is blunted, heavy, and unbalanced. It's technically a rough, "unfinished" sword, as it was a prototype made by someone in the SCA. As such, it has the potential to be functional, but i use it for longsword drills so that when i fight with a proper longsword it feels much lighter - think swinging two baseball bats before going up to hit.

and my rapier is my practical SCA fighting sword. blunted and tipped with rubber for obvious safety reasons, but a fully functional rapier for our purposes.

[deer-knight]

I hope this isn’t a weird question but, how did you know you’re non-binary?

I’m starting to question certain things about myself and I’m not sure how to go about it. I don’t have dysphoria, at least if I do it’s very mild and mainly social, and I’m okay with being female but at the same time I have no attachment to it. I don’t know if this is just be wanting to express my identity differently than most females or if I might actually not be female?

hey there! thank you for reaching out <3

i'll start by saying everyone's experience of being nonbinary is different and there's no wrong way to be! i'll tell a bit about my own experience and then try my best to offer some advice.

this will be a long post so everything will be under the cut <3

i've been "out" for about 5 years now, but i thought about it a lot for several years prior to that, even before learning the word "nonbinary." i'm from a fairly conservative place and family, and i don't speak to some of them anymore.

as such, i didn't have a lot of opportunity to explore gender until i moved out, but it was pretty clear around middle school that i wanted to express differently than others wanted me to - my mother must have noticed that i kept asking for clothes from the "boys section" because she started asking me where i found items at the clothing store before she would buy them. if they were "boys clothes" she would tell me to put them back.

dysphoria. you don't need to experience dysphoria to be trans or nonbinary! gender is so complex and dysphoria is not a shared experience for every trans and nonbinary person. personally, i was (and continue to be) incredibly uncomfortable with my body - mainly i tried to hide my chest and hips. i didn't know why i felt so uncomfortable, and i didn't even realize i was expressly trying to hide those parts of my body until much later.

also, i was in denial about my dysphoria for a while. i would tell myself and others that i didn't take issue with being afab, that i could just deal with it and it wasn't a big deal. but that turned out to be just a continuation of my need to please people and deny myself autonomy, as i had been taught growing up. i still sometimes struggle to express my wants and needs, but i'm learning all the time.

my personal relationship to gender would fit best with the term "agender," as i have no attachment to being a man or a woman or anything in between, it's more that i exist without gender completely. inside or outside the box? for me, there is no box.

my advice? gently get to know yourself better. i only knew myself in the context of others for so long that i couldn't separate myself from what they wanted for me and what i wanted for myself. that's hard for everybody, young and old, but it is absolutely something worth doing.

play with expression if it's safe to do so! clothing, haircuts, pronouns, and names are not permanent, and you can absolutely change your mind. i socially changed my name twice, and the people who mattered embraced me each time.

talk with other nonbinary people! we all have such a vast range of different life experiences and our relationships to gender are just as varied. you may find that you relate to bits and pieces of many different people's gender journey.

and lastly, it's okay if you go through all that and end up being cis. you will have grown so much for it, and find so much more comfort in expressing however you want. and if you find you're nonbinary? congrats and welcome to the club! you are awesome either way.

best of luck my dear anon <3 you are magnificent.

&