nicole @nicole@myna.social

In my experience, men generally, do not have the toolkit to process meaningful deviation from a norm. They’re the cultural/social equivalent of the picky eater: grilled cheese and coca cola for every meal.

As the girls say, “they simply haven’t done the work.”

I went to a wedding in Chicago!

How did the midwestern football set handle the west coast Doll?

Mostly avoidance! A lot of fleeting eye contact. Zero acknowledgement of the change except for one guy who declared himself “too busy” to bother with my pronouns. 🤣

I’m not upset: this was done for science. (But I am amused)

Just finished Cassandra Khaw’s The Library at Hellebore. Hyper-violent dark academia lovingly complicated by its non-linear unspooling. It’s a bit of a mess (See Also, Every Character Depicted Therein), but I loved the heck out of it.

I went to San Diego Comic-Con this year, and while I didn’t cosplay, I did theme my outfit.

I failed to get my Supergirl WoT comic signed, though—ten years of SDCC and I still couldn’t follow all the hoops and queues. Oh well, super hopeful for the movie next year!

Pauline hauled me out to Ezra Furman at the Great American Music Hall last night. The Ophelias opened. Both were tremendous shows. Afterwards, a brisk stroll through the saddest artery of the Tenderloin ending at the edges of the Transgender District.

No fainting this time!

Fainting at a Nine Inch Nails concert wasn’t on my 2025 Bingo card. 🤣 I blame the red and blue, three-dimensional death beam they fired into our eyes. @pauline and Aaron did a marvelous job of guiding my on-again-off-again consciousness from the arena. All in all, still a really fun night. 🥰

Pauline held a small dinner party, and somehow managed to fit me on the guest list. I love a good home-cooked tagine. 🥰

Got called in last minute on Friday for an art museum assist by @pauline. It was my third visit to the Ruth Asawa exhibit at the SF Museum of Modern Art, and I still found myself enthralled for hours by the artist’s mastery of space and vision.

I finished the core Ancillary Noun trilogy of Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch series. I couldn’t get enough of the space opera coziness, and immediately dipped into Translation State, another novel set in the same universe.

Translation State was a delightful read: the stakes are simultaneously personal and galaxy-spanning; the core dilemma is a body horror that evokes aspects of puberty and transition. Cannibalistic kindergartners, biological essentialism, and serialized television drama, oh my.