>
> —_Star Trek: Voyager_, "Repentance"
-(some amount of **SPOILERS** for _Star Trek: Discovery_ Season 1, _Fan Fiction_ by Brent Spiner, and [_Transcat_](http://transcatcomics.blogspot.com/))
+_(Attention conservation notice: boring Diary-like post about a boring special event.)_
+
+(**SPOILERS** notice for _Star Trek: Discovery_ Season 1, _Fan Fiction_ by Brent Spiner, and [_TransCat_](http://transcatcomics.blogspot.com/))
I [continue](/2019/Aug/a-love-that-is-out-of-anyones-control/) to [maintain](/2017/Oct/a-leaf-in-the-crosswind/) that fandom conventions are boring. I enjoy _consuming_ fiction. I even enjoy discussing fiction with friends—the work facilitating a connection with someone else present, rather than just between me and the distant author, or me and the universe of stories. But for the most part, these big, bustling conventions just don't seem to facilitate that kind of intimacy. At best, you might hope to _meet_ someone at a convention, and then make friends with them over time?—which I've never actually done. And so, surrounded by tens of thousands of people ostensibly with common interests, invited to a calvacade of activities and diversions put on at no doubt monstrous expense, the predominant emotion I feel is the loneliness of anonymity.
(As far as workmanship quality goes, I wonder how much it helps that [Crea FX](https://www.creafx.com/en/) are visual-effects artists by trade—makers also of male masks and monster masks for movies and plays—rather than being in the MtF business specifically, like the Breast Form Store. They know—[they _must_ know](https://www.creafx.com/en/crea-fx-at-the-german-fetish-fair/)—that a lot of their female masks are purchased by guys like me with motives like mine, but we're not the _target_ demographic, the reason they mastered their skills.)
-Somehow the mask somehow manages to look worse in photographs than it does in the mirror? Standing a distance from the mirror in a dark hotel room the other month (that I rented to try on my new mask in privacy), I swear _I actually bought it_, and if the moment of passing to myself in the mirror was an anticlimax, it was an anticlimax I've been waiting my entire life (since puberty) for.
+Somehow the mask somehow manages to look worse in photographs than it does in the mirror? Standing a distance from the mirror in a dark motel room the other month (that I rented to try on my new mask in privacy), I swear _I actually bought it_, and if the moment of passing to myself in the mirror was an anticlimax, it was an anticlimax I've been waiting my entire life (since puberty) for.
The worst nonrealism is the eyeholes. Nothing is worse for making a mask look like a mask than visible eyehole-seams around the eyes. But suppose I wore sunglasses. Women wear sunglasses sometimes! Could I pass to _someone else_? (Not for very long or bearing any real scrutiny, but [to someone who wasn't expecting it](/2020/Dec/crossing-the-line/).)
Saturday morning, I got myself masked and padded in all the right places, and suited up to walk from my hotel room to Moscone West for the convention! They had a weirdly cumbersome check-in system (wait in line to get your QR code scanned, then receive a badge, then _activate_ the badge by typing a code printed on it into a website on your phone, then scan the badge to enter the con), and I dropped my phone while I was in line and cracked the screen a bit. But then I was in! Hello, Fan Expo!
-And—didn't immediately have anything to do, because conventions are boring. I had gone through the schedule the previous night and written down possibly non-boring events on a page in my pocket Moleskine notebook, but the first (a nostalgic showing of Saturday morning cartoons from the '90s) didn't even start until 1100, and the only ones I really cared about were the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous at 1315, and a photo-op with Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden at 1520 that I had pre-paid $120 for. I checked out the vendor hall first. Nothing really caught my eye ...
+And—didn't immediately have anything to do, because conventions are boring. I had gone through the schedule the previous night and written down possibly non-boring events on a page in my pocket Moleskine notebook, but the first (a nostalgic showing of Saturday morning cartoons from the '90s) didn't even start until 1100, and the only ones I really cared about were the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous at 1315, and a photo-op with Brent Spiner and Gates McFadden (best known for their roles as Lt. Cmdr. Data and Dr. Crusher, respectively, on _Star Trek: The Next Generation_) at 1520 that I had pre-paid $120 for. I checked out the vendor hall first. Nothing really caught my eye ...
-Until I came across a comics table hawking [_Transcat_](http://transcatcomics.blogspot.com/), the "first" (self-aware scare quotes included) transgender superhero. I had to stop and look: just the catchphrase promised an exemplar of everything [I'm fighting](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/)—not out of hatred, but out of a [shared love](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) that [I think I have](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) the more [faithful interpretation](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) of. I opened the cover of one of the displayed issues to peek inside. The art quality was ... not good. "There's so much I could say that doesn't fit in this context," I said to the proprietor, whose appearance I will not describe. "Probably not what you're thinking," I added. "Oh no," [she](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) said.
+Until I came across a comics table hawking [_TransCat_](http://transcatcomics.blogspot.com/), the "first" (self-aware scare quotes included) transgender superhero. I had to stop and look: just the catchphrase promised an exemplar of everything [I'm fighting](/2020/Feb/if-in-some-smothering-dreams-you-too-could-pace/)—not out of hatred, but out of a [shared love](/2021/May/sexual-dimorphism-in-the-sequences-in-relation-to-my-gender-problems/) that [I think I have](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) the more [faithful interpretation](/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/) of. I opened the cover of one of the displayed issues to peek inside. The art quality was ... not good. "There's so much I could say that doesn't fit in this context," I said to the table's proprietor, whose appearance I will not describe. "Probably not what you're thinking," I added. "Oh no," [she](/2019/Oct/self-identity-is-a-schelling-point/) said. I didn't want to spend the day carrying anything that didn't fit nicely in my fanny pack, so I left without buying any comics, thinking I might come back later.
-I wandered around the con some more (watched some of the cartoons, talked to the guys manning the _Star Trek_ fan club booth). Eventually I checked out the third floor, where the celebrity autographs and photo ops were. Spiner and McFadden were there, with no line in front of their tables. I had already paid for the photo op later, but that looked like it was going to be [one of those](/2016/Dec/joined/#photo-assembly-line) soulless "pose, click—next fan" assembly-lines, and it felt more human to actually get to _talk_ to the stars for half a minute.
+I wandered around the con some more (watched some of the cartoons, talked to the guys manning the _Star Trek_ fan society). Eventually I checked out the third floor, where the celebrity autographs and photo ops were. Spiner and McFadden were there, with no line in front of their tables. I had already paid for the photo op later, but that looked like it was going to be [one of those](/2016/Dec/joined/#photo-assembly-line) soulless "pose, click—next fan" assembly-lines, and it felt more human to actually get to _talk_ to the stars for half a minute.
(When I played Ens. Tilly in 2018, I got an autograph and [photo with Jonathan Frakes](/images/tilly_cosplay.png), and got to talk to him for half a minute: I told him that we had covered his work in art history class at the Academy, and that I loved his portrayal of—[David Xanatos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Xanatos).)
I guess it's not entirely obvious how I would tell in every case. A woman wearing a Wonder Woman costume recognized me as Tilly, enthusiastically complimented me, asked to get a photo of us. She asked where I got my costume from, and I murmured ["Amazon."](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C1LCMSB/) Her friend took the photo, and accepted my phone to take one for me as well. Would that interaction have gone any differently, if I had actually been a woman (just wearing a Starfleet uniform and maybe a wig, with no mask or breastforms or hip pads)?
-People at the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous were nice. (The schedule called it a cosplay "meetup", but I'm going with _rendezvous_, a word that I'm sure I learned from watching _The Next Generation_ as a child.) A middle aged-woman in a [2380s-era sciences division uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(early_2380s)) asked me my name. "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_," I said. No, I meant, your alter-ego, she said, and I hesitated—I wanted to stay in character (that is, I didn't want to give my (male) name), but I later changed my mind and introduced myself with my real name, and she gave me a card.
+People at the _Star Trek_ cosplay rendezvous were nice. (The schedule called it a cosplay "meetup", but I'm going with _rendezvous_, a word that I'm sure I learned from watching _The Next Generation_ as a child.) A woman in a [2380s-era sciences division uniform](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(early_2380s)) asked me my name. "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_," I said. No, I meant, your alter-ego, she said, and I hesitated—I wanted to stay in character (that is, I didn't want to give my (male) name), but some minutes later (after the photo shoot) changed my mind and introduced myself with my real name, and she gave me a card with her _Trek_ fan club's name written on the back.
<a href="/images/fan_expo_star_trek_meet.jpg"><img src="/images/fan_expo_star_trek_meet.jpg" width="575" style="margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
-My wig was coming off at the beginning of the photo shoot, so I went to the bathroom to fix it. (The men's room; I am spiritually a child of the 20th century, _&c._) The man who was also in a _Discovery_-era uniform also wanted a photo, and I ended up explaining the rationalization for my sunglasses to him ("definitely not her analogue from a parallel universe where people are more sensitive to light"—but Doylistically because I'm wearing a mask instead of makeup this year), which he thought was clever.
+My wig was coming off at the beginning of the photo shoot, so I went to the bathroom to fix it. (The men's room; I am spiritually a child of the 20th century, _&c._) The man who was also in a _Discovery_-era uniform also wanted a photo, and I ended up explaining the rationalization for my sunglasses to him ("definitely not her analogue from a parallel universe where people are more sensitive to light"—but [Doylistically](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist) because I'm wearing a mask instead of makeup this year), which he thought was clever.
-Maybe I should have tried harder to make friends, instead of mostly just exchanging pleasantries and being in photos? There was a ready-made conversation topic in the form of all the new shows! Would it have been witty and ironic to confess that I don't even like _Discovery_? I guess I was feeling shy?
+Maybe I should have tried harder to make friends, instead of mostly just exchanging pleasantries and being in photos? There was a ready-made conversation topic in the form of all the new shows! Would it have been witty and ironic to confess that I don't even like _Discovery_? (I finally gave up halfway through Season 4; I don't care what happens to these characters anymore.) I guess I was feeling shy? I did join the Facebook group written on the back of the card I was given.
<a href="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg"><img src="/images/photo_op_with_spiner_and_mcfadden.jpg" width="350" style="float: left; margin: 0.8pc;"></a>
-The photo op with Spiner and McFadden was the assembly-line affair I expected. They had a bit of COVID theater going, in the form of the photo being taken with a transparent barrier between fan and stars. Spiner said, "Sylvia, right?" and I said "yeah". Pose, click—next fan.
+The photo op with Spiner and McFadden was the assembly-line affair I expected. They had a bit of COVID theater going, in the form of the photo being taken with a transparent barrier between fan and stars. Spiner said, "Sylvia, right?" and I said, "Yeah." Pose, click—next fan.
I did get "ma'am"ed on my way out, so that's something.
-At this point, I was kind of tired and bored and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate. But there was one last thing left to do. I went to the vendor hall, stopped by a side table and wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a scrap of paper from my Moleskine, then went back to the _Transcat_ table.
+At this point, I was kind of tired and bored and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate. But there was one last thing left to do. I went to the vendor hall, stopped by a side table and wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a strip of paper torn out from my Moleskine, then went back to the _TransCat_ table.
+
+I changed my mind, I said (about buying), where does the story start? The proprietor said Issue 1 was sold out, but that the book Vol. 1 (compiling the first 6 issues plus some bonus content) was available for $25. I'll take it, I said enthusiastically.
+
+And then—there wouldn't be any _good_ way to bring up the thing, except that I felt that I had to try and that I was paying $25 for the privilege—I said awkwardly that I was—disappointed, that our Society had settled on a "trans women are women" narrative. The proprietor said something about there being more enthusiasm in 2016, but that coming back to conventions after COVID, public opinion seems colder now, that she was worried.
+
+I asked if she had heard of the concept of "autogynephilia." She hadn't.
-I changed my mind, I said, where does the story start? The proprietor said Issue 1 was sold out, but that the book Vol. 1 was available for $25. I'll take it, I said.
+The proprietor asked if I would like the book signed. I agreed, then hesitated when asked my name. Sensing my discomfort, the proprietor clarified, "Who should I make it out to?" I said, "Ensign Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. _Discovery_."
+"Sylvia Tilly! Keep on exploring the final frontier," says the autograph.
+Sensing that there was no way to cross [inferential distance](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HLqWn5LASfhhArZ7w/expecting-short-inferential-distances) in a minute in the vendor hall, I said that I had some contrarian opinions, and that I had a blog, handing the proprietor the slip of paper before taking my leave. (Implicitly proposing a trade, I thought: I'll read yours if you read mine.)
+
+[TODO—
+
+I _swear_ it looks worse in photographs than it does in the mirror.
- * I was tired and wanted to go back to my hotel room and masturbate, but I decided to stop by the vendor hall and buy Transcat; I wrote "unremediatedgender.space" on a scrap of Moleskine paper, as I bought Vol. 1 (issue 1 $5 was sold out, and I said I'd take it for $25 when Vol. 1 was pointed out); I said I was disappointed that our Society has settled on a "trans women are women" narrative; author said there was more enthusiasm in 2016, but stopped going to conventions because of COVID, and public opinions seems colder now, and she's worried; I asked if she'd heard of the concept of autogynephilia, and she hadn't (!); I said I had some heterodox opinions, but that I had a blog, and handed her the slip (as if implicitly proposing a trade; I'm reading your stuff, you read mine?)
- * when the author asked my name, I hesisitated, sensing my discomfort, she asked, Who should I make it out to; I said, "Ens. Sylvia Tilly, U.S.S. Discovery"
-
* masturbating in the hotel room; the mask with no wig; imagining being a butch lesbian with a shaved head
- * Transcat is really bad in the expected ways
-
* a slight tear in the mouth of the mask, the nostrils look kind of ragged?
-
* if Crea FX could make a female alien mask
+]
-Side life things to note—
-* memoir progress
+Later, I would force myself to read _TransCat_ Vol. 1. I don't want to say it's bad. I mean, it is bad, but the fact that it's bad, isn't what's bad about it.
+
+What's bad is the—deficit of self-awareness? There are dimensions along which my work is bad. I can imagine various types of critic forcing themselves to read this blog with horror and disappointment, muttering, "Doesn't he" [(or "Doesn't she", depending on the critic)](/2020/Nov/the-feeling-is-mutual/) "know how that _looks?_" And if nothing else, I aspire to know how it looks.
+
+The hero of _TransCat_ is a teenage boy named Knave (the same first name as our author) in Mountain View, California in the year 200X, who discovers a cat-ears hat that magically transforms him into a girl when worn. While transformed, he—she—fights evildoers, like a pervy guy at Fanime who was covertly taking upskirt photos, or a busybody cop who suddenly turns out to be a lizard person. Knave develops a crush on a lesbian at school named "Chloie" (which I guess is a way you could spell _Chloë_ if you don't know how to type a diaeresis), and starts wearing the cat hat more often (taking on "Cat" as a girl-mode name), hoping to get closer to Chloie. Cat and Chloie find they enjoy spending time together. Until one day, when Cat makes some physical advances—and discovers, to her surprise, that Chloie has a penis. Chloie punches her and runs off.
+
+And it's just—so disappointing, like _Nevada_, but worse. Superficially, this comic was clearly made for _people like me_. Who better to appreciate a fantasy story about a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who can magically change sex, than someone who remembers being a teenage boy in the San Francisco Bay Area of 200X who fantasized about magically changing sex? (Okay, I was _East_ Bay; this is _South_ Bay. Totally different.)
+But I can't enjoy it—not just because of the bad art, or bad font choices (broadly construed to include the use of ALLCAPS rather than **bold** or _italics_), or numerous uncorrected typos, or unnecessarily drawn-out pop-culture references that I didn't get—but because the whole thing is told from inside an ideological fever dream _that doesn't know it's a dream_.
-last time: ; art history class at the academy—David Xanatos
+The magic hat is interpreted as revealing our protagonist's true form. "[A]m I a straight boy with a girl on the inside? Or am I a gay girl with a boy on the inside?" Knave wonders. And just—what does that _mean?_
-https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Context_Is_for_Kings_(episode)
-I had already used "Context Is For Queens" as the title of my Facebook photo album for 2018 Comic Con, so I went with "Crossfield Class"
+[TODO— why TransCat—
+typos: anme (name), Cloie, thier, bringin (in the afterword!), vegitarian
+cafe painting reference in book 5
+
+Side life things to note—
+
+* memoir progress
+]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff