First things first. My name is Catarina and my pronouns are She/Her.

So what can you expect from me and my blog? Perhaps contrary to what you might have figured from my lynx persona, you will not find much furry content here, so if that is what you came for, sorry. This persona is in fact based on a roleplaying character I started playing in 2010, and in spite of a hiatus or two, still do. I comissioned some drawings of the character and eventually started using them as an avatar on my previous blog for fun. I comissioned the lovely Coffeejelly (Link to her DeviantArt) to draw reaction sketches kind of like my very own emoticons, I grew accustomed to it and here we are!

I am not, however, a complete stranger to the furry community, I took quite a long detour among them in my journey to finally find a way out of the closet and be at home in my own identity. That identity turned out not to be furry, but the floofy friends I made along the way I intend to keep. I love ya, fuzzballs.

The roleplaying community on the other hand, I 100% belong to, and I will often share roleplaying experiences and thoughts on this blog.

I also play digital games on different platforms but I already have another site to write about that, over at myogaming.se, where I review games, both digital and otherwise. If you read Swedish, go check it out!

I am a trained actor and tend to go all in on the psychological fourth wall immersion as much as I can; be it on stage, camera or at the reolplaying table. In a nutshell, that means I do not see acting as performing a character in front of an audience, but rather an opportunity to experience the character’s life. If we play a dramatic game together, be prepared for crying. Real crying, not the pretty and cute kind you see in movies but the whole deal complete with rivers of tears and snot.

I also enjoy writing but lack the constitution to get very far with long works, even though I do try. I have recently become obsessed with writing poetry in iambic pentameter, especially following roleplaying sessions. This will definetly end up here.

So if that kind of written ploy

Does not fill up your heart with joy

Perhaps another blog you seek

Cuz you’re a different kind of geek

I am also into human rights, and do what I can to be an ally to those that need it, as I am myself a member of an opressed minority and know how desperately represenation and acceptance is needed. There are too many terrible things going on in the world right now for me to bare writing about right now but eventually that kind of content is bound to show up here. And yea, I am obviously a full time feminist.

I love musicals and a lot of different kind of art as I love both the cheesy shallow stuff and the deep mind blowing depths that changes us to our core.

Furthermore, I am trans. A binary transgender woman to be more exact. I live in a country that is not interested in fixing it’s completely broken trans care health system, in fact right now there is more done to worsen it than anything else. In spite of this I have begun my medical transition on my own, with the help of the wonderful people at GenderGP. This is expensive for someone of my economic status and will be very challenging but the alternative is… well there is no alternative. I am looking into things like pateron or gofundme and when I have figured it out it will surely show up here if anyone out there who stumbles upon this blog is able and willing to lend me a hand. I am barely affording the hormone treatment and will eventually need surgery that is way beyond my means right now. Just a heads up, I will be asking for financial help here.

So, there will most likely be a lot of posts about my transition journey here eventually, until then I can bring this thing over from my previous blog, where I came out to my readers and let them ask me questions from a meme-list!

And here are the answers to the questions that were picked! I can see some of these answers need updating so I will highlight amendments in italic and purple.

5: What is your favorite dinosaur?
T-Rex. They are just so iconic

7: What does AMAB or AFAB mean?
I was who I am at birth, what gives my gender identity has always been there even before I knew or was old enough to even understand the concept. It is a hard concept to understand even for me, and much harder for people who are cis and never experienced it. Still it hurts quite a lot to be referred to as “man who wants to be a woman” or “guy who is becoming a girl”. It hurts because it means the person saying it does not see me. Does not think of me as me until after the transition. I AM me. I was me from day 1, I am not becoming me, I am adjusting my body to fit ME. It’s like being born with a glove on my foot and I am moving it to my hand.
When I was born, no one knew that of course. So I was assigned the gender that looked appropriate. AMAB. Assigned Male At Birth. A trans man might have been AFAB, Assigned Female At Birth. I have never BEEN male, I was ASSIGNED male. I AM female with a mismatching body. Well that was the scenic route XD

13: What has surprised you most about transitioning?
13A: How well prosthetic breasts work.. I used to think they were just for appearance but the glue transfers movement and weight and they feel.. almost real… it helps dysphoria more than I could have imagined.. I was worried they might feel fake and.. they do a bit.. they help more than I thought
13B: To have someone look at me and see ME… to know they SEE me… and say my name effortlessly… that was like.. breathing for the first time. I knew that would be great but.. not that it would be THAT great! (I am at early stages, once I’ve been on HRT a while this might change.. I mean.. one day my boobs won’t be on the outside OMGOMOMG!)
UPDATE: I have now been on HRT for over 6 months and recently adjusted my dosage closer to what I need and breast production has officially been going on since roughly the end of 2021. Even though I was prepared for the pain of this happening as newly awoken breasts are meant to get very sensetive, I was not prepared for that sensetivity to reach friggin superhero levels! A gust of wind was like being hit by a bus! so.. yea that was surprising.

14: What would have made it easier for you to come out?
To have grown up in a world that doesn’t insist we are either gross, evil or a joke or simply don’t exist. It’s better now but only slightly.
If I had been told as a child that people like me exist, and it’s okay. It’s okay for us to exist. But what I experienced was the opposite. We don’t exist and if we do, we shouldn’t.

25: How can I make things better for you?
I don’t know… realistically.. validate me.. pandering allowed. Ask me questions that let me self explore and keep learning about people like me.. and spread that knowledge.. Thank you for showing interest.

Yeah there is more now. Please educate youself. It is shocking how many people don’t even have the most basic understanding of what we are or how dire the global situation is for us. Understand that I am who I say I am, I didn’t change into this I just stopped lying to you about being smeone else. I am not pretending to be a woman I am a woman. I didn’t choose to become a woman, I finally revealed to the world that I am one. The medical physical changes are just that, correctional measures to fix a body that didn’t develop correctly.

Allies need to do some self reflection. Getting our pronouns right is important and helps us a lot but it is not about “the pain of hearing the wrong syllable.” It isn’t the sound of the wrong word that hurts us, it is knowing that people around us deny us our very own identity and our friends and loved ones do not even see us. They see their own imagined version of us and prefer that version over us. That hurts a lot. Getting pronouns wrong sometimes is excusable, it is a big adjustment for all of us, and mistakes, hurtful as they may be (and they always are) are to be expected and as long as you take being corrected gracefully and don’t get defensive about it we can all move on. But if you don’t improve over time you reveal that you do not really see who I am, you still cling to someone who isn’t me and just struggle to mask your words to protect me from hearing that horrible syllable. In fact, even if you do make progress getting the pronouns right, it doesn’t mean anything if you still do it by censoring yourself. Thinking “him” but saying “her” instead. Yes you got the word right but you still weren’t talking to me. If you are not interested in seeing me for who I am, I don’t understand why you’re even talking ot me at all.

26: What are you most excited about in your transition?
To have a body with REAL hips and breasts -and genitals that don’t feel like a tumor! To feel like me!

27: What is non-binary?
Binary means one of two. X or Y, 1 or 0.. that’s how the world is used to looking at gender. But it turns out, gender is a spectrum. Or even a spectrum of spectrums.
You are binary if you belong on the absolute edge of the spectrum, like I do. But if you are anywhere else you are non binary. Not simply one of the two but anywhere in between.
But yea, I am binary AF

28: What do you wish you could tell younger you, as a trans person?
Start transitioning NOW! Don’t hide! Demand treatment, you’re valid, everyone who says you’re not are jerks! It’s not a phase and you’re not crazy! PLEASE! START NOOOOOW!

Yeah needs bares repeating. I could have been spared the wrong puberty that permenetly destroyed my body. I don’t know how well it would have gone for me if I came out in the 90s, I might have been denied care anyway, but seeing trans kids coming out, begging on their bare knees to get the treatment they need just to be shut down and antagonized by the whole system and state media no less, and forced to just watch as the wrong puberty wreaks havoc on all their chances of future happiness is utterly heartbreaking. It is too late for me, but trans kids today can still be helped… but not in Sweden apparently.

29: What are you most excited about in your transition? (This was asked twice but that is OK, there are many answers)
To be me all the time, to never have to put the DEADNAME hat on again and be relaxed in myself no matter who is watching
If it was asked a third time it might have been a naughty answer.

I am closer to that than ever now! There are very few places where I am not out. Work and Aikido practise, though there are some people in both places who know. I am almost there now <3