People Go On About Good Healthy Queer Rep But I Cannot Express How Much I Want Unhealthily Devoted Queer

People go on about good healthy queer rep but I cannot express how much I want unhealthily devoted queer rep. Raise your lover from the dead no matter the cost. Kill to get them to safety. Trade your soul for theirs. Die to reunite with them. I want gothic hyper-devotion codependent lovers

We will take what we came for and then we will leave. 

                                  Violence will only be used as a last resort. 

            Any questions?

Can you imagine trying to explain to a judge that yes, I would like to legally change my name to Esme Cuckoo?

So I'm gonna ramble for a bit.

Ever since coming out as trans, I have seriously struggled with what to call myself, thanks to not being given a name that has an easily feminised form.

For the last few years I've bounced around with several options, likely annoying all my friends as I go from one shiny object to another, until I've finally settled down...on two. Which isn't really settling, but here we are, and I just can't pick.

I keep going back and forth between Caitlin and Esme, and I really like both of them. Caitlin feels very comfortable, and normal, whereas Esme is SUCH a different name. I feel so self conscious saying it, almost absurd, and almost like I'm putting on airs (But at the same time, with the reason I chose that name, aren't I? I'm nowhere near a Frost.)

And yet, when I look at the footprint I've made across the internet as Esme Grey, when I see that name it just looks SO RIGHT and the way my name should be. Every time I doubt this choice, all I have to do is see "Esme Grey, movie reviewer" and I know that's what I want.

And there's a level of confidence that comes with it, when I think of Esme in my head. And even with the strangeness, there's something about that I really like too, that I know it's an odd name, and I own it, it's MINE, and screw you if you don't like it.

I genuinely love both names, both feel like me, and I wish I could keep using both. It just feels weird when I talk to some friends as Esme and others as Caitlin.

I've put my podcasting aside for awhile, and I've not told anyone the reason they're on hold or started any of the new ideas I have, is because I really want to settle this name issue, so I'm not changing that if I change my mind in a few months. I want to pick a name, stick with it, and just be that, be myself.

There is a compromise of making Caitlin my "real" name and Esme Grey my "professional" name, but even that feels confusing and inconsistent, and like I'm annoying people.

I'd do a poll on Twitter or something, but I just KNOW the Esme group would pick Esme, and the Caitlin group of friends will pick that, solving nothing. ;)

*throws hands in the air* I don't fuckin' know.

Hellraiser, 2022, dir. David Bruckner