3 AM // FEELING PARASOCIAL

parasociality is one of those words like 'abuser' where people try to never touch it with a 10ft stick. words often used as cudgels (at the end of an 11 foot stick, i suppose) to name, punish, and eliminate unwanted behavior. bitches see that word and just start floundering around and trying to draw some line in the sand, redefine it in a way that excludes people they know are 'one of the good ones'. not me, though. i once had someone tell me 'oh, youre not a college dropout, you just waited til the end of the semester and then left :)'. pansy bitch behavior. hey reader if you ever go "oh its not X it's just [x said in a nicer way]" youre being a pansy bitch

so anyway im parasocial about patricia taxxon

patricia taxxon is a severely traumatized and mentally disabled autistic musician that posts hot takes. she's also a trans woman, and a dog. well she's got DID so like mostly trans women and also some guys and other creatures in there but for the sake of this ramble i am going to just refer to her as one person

i'm a really, really big fan. it's something i'm embarrased about, every time i use or reccomend music and its just patricia taxxon again. every time i talk about a post to my friends and it's just patricia taxxon discourse again. unfollowed her tumblr for my mental health but i crawl back to open it on a daily basis. i imagine that she is my friend, and that i see the little pomeranean dog sona crying by herself, and i come up and comfort her and hug her and shit, and then things somehow magically improve. like a self-insert fanfic. as i type, i imagine sending her this essay and her being appreciative of my honesty and then we become friends. it's really cringe.

for multiple reasons it's really not advisable for me to try that. like first of all starstruck fools are an obnoxious type of person to befriend. giddy little idiots so constantly worried about being annoying that they in the process become much, much more annoying. more importantly, though, i've also had a savior complex for a very long time. i lecture like i'm the second coming of christ sent down to this earth to impart wisdom to the self-hating dumb fuck artists of the world. the miracle maker that can make a blind man see and make a whipped dog happy again. and god do i want her to be happy. why wouldn't i, after all? she's my best friend. yadda yadda.

and to all this, one that didn't read my introduction might say, brak, it's normal to look up to people and want to help them. personally i am not all that comforted by an experience being normal. like, i am sometimes, but as an example: if nobody else has figured out how to stop agonizing over shit they did as a kid, then i'm DEFINITELY not gonna be the one to do it. every time such thoughts arise i twitch and say aloud, shut up. shut up or sorry, one of those. i am embarrased about many things, and i'd like to stop entirely. but humans are a naturally embarrased species i guess

anyway back to patricia taxxon

patricia receives harassment about pretty much everything, for years. it drives me nuts to see. there's a number of different camps of people. first there are those that are convinced she's a pedo or abuser or something (she's not, moving on.) and then there are the fans deadset on fixing her. there's this particular situation where uh. ffffff okay this needs its own section

2 PM // GOOD MORNING. TRANSMISOGYNY TIME

this is now an obnoxious essay about discourse

transmisogyny is the descrimination against specifically transfems. transphobia + misogyny creates a specific type of bullshit that neither cis women nor transmascs experience. transandrophobia is suppose to be its opposite, the unique experience of transmascs not experienced by transfems. miss taxxon STAUNCHLY does not think that's a thing. androphobia isnt a thing, she say, so why would transandrophobia be? and the 90,000 transmascs in the audience have responded by being really, really offended by her, like, 'taking away their experiences' or something. i really don't give a shit about this. i absolutely do not fucking care at all what words are problematic to use due to Intersectionality Oppression Math, and i find both sides of this debate deeply boring, so if you want to see them better articulated then fuck off elsewhere.

so the situation i actually wanna talk about is the reaction of the transmasc fanbase. swaths and swaths of well-meaning explanations and explosive outrage. patricia taxxon has expressed that she's afraid of trans men in the same way that an abused cis woman might form a fear of cis men, and in turn, a bunch MORE transmascs started to explode again, either tearfully apologizing for being the gender that they are or, bafflingly, going "you find me dangerous?!? I'LL SHOW YOU DANGEROUS" and oh my fucking god this whole thing makes me want to kill myself. and it's just kept going on, for weeks, and at this rate it is never going to stop. miss taxxon and others chalk it up to transmisogyny. something like, she wouldnt receive this much backlash were she not a trans woman.

and i admit i find this baffling. i find it hard to imagine that her gender status really factors in to this reaction. i guess i ought to believe that it does, because who am i to deny the experiences of the gender that i am not, except miss taxxon's doing that too, so i dunno, whatever.

but the reason i find this so hard to picture is that they're so much like me. i understand the impulse.

every time this girl posts some take i dont agree with i get this heavy feeling in my chest. it feels like an unresolved problem, a blot that i need to smudge out, something that i can ruminate about for weeks. i am weak to this sort of thing, and that's exactly why i should stop looking at her fucking blog. but i do anyway so here's me talking about it. i think its just because of my attachment to her. patricia taxxon is easy to get attached to. she's earnest, and enthusiastic, and charming, and brings a perspective on life you really can't get anywhere else. so when she posts some dumb fucking shit then youre like patricia noooooooo

my personal poison is this post

PATRICIA TAXXON 9-23-23: "every once in a while online some artist will be like "don't use automatic line smoothing" or some producer will be like "don't use loops and presets" and will be resoundly hounded by a billion variations of "you should make whatever art you want :)" but, that isn't actually contradictory, right? like, if you took "making whatever i want" to heart then you'd agree with the curmudgeons, cus the way to actually make whatever you want is to have the program do less of the work for you. i think you *should* make whatever you want, which is why i'm telling you that it's a natural part of an artist's development to gain control over the things they make"

it drives me so fucking crazy that i feel the impulse to derail this shit and argue against it right now

ME, RN: "no, miss taxxon, that's literally not what that means. 'make whatever you want' is literally a different sentance from 'take control over the things you make'. personally i want to have way less control. i'm so perfectionist about shit and i'd rather just throw crap at the canvas and let whatever happens happen. natural development of an artist does not have to involve becoming more detail oriented, that's stupid. uh, sorry if thats a misinterperetation of what you meant, but also you're misinterpereting the people youre arguing against so actually whatever. why do we have to develop anyway? why is it a necessity to not make lazy trash music? i don't understand this whole CJ-the-X-brained mentality that making good art is some sort of god given destiny. but that's a different fucking ramble i should write. anyway also my life was fuckng ruined by shitty art tutorials as a kid so i think skepticism of senior artists that tell you to do shit a certain way is good, actually"

so anyway the number of times that i have been impulsed to join the stupid crowd of obnoxious correction people has been Several. happened, too, at the start of the transandrophobia debate. the only reason i dont give a shit about it now is that it just kept going on for months. number of times i've been THIS close to chipping into the debate has been.. it's been a lot. i am writing this right now instead of sending an ask to miss taxxon. so that's kinda why i don't see it as transmisogyny. because i'm not a transmisogynist, i'm a parasocial brat that likes to argue. that's where its coming from with others too, i think. people get so overly familiar with their favorite artists that when they say something cringe it's seen as a personal betrayal. why would you say that? we're friends, aren't we?

there's probably transmisogyny too but i dunno thats just been something ive been thinking about a lot

i think at the end of the day though there is nothing to do but leave her alone. i guess this is the part i am adressing to , hypothetically, the fellow annoying transmascs. and also ... to me. even if miss taxes has been wrong about everything she's ever said in her entire life, you really just gotta cut your losses at some point. you need to recognize and accept, that you can't fix people. sometimes your favorite artist will say some cringe shit and you just need to suck it up and do something else with your life. because they're not your friend, and they're not your responsibility. and you shouldn't have idolized them as a perfect person who is always correct anyway. a thousand people in a thousand ways have already tried to make the same point as you, and it should be obvious now, nothing is going to work.

also she's literally like extremly traumatized, terminally online, and mentally an average of thirteen or something. she was never going to be a source of rational purity. and we're all morons for ever thinking she would be.

leave the dog alone. that is all.

and patricia taxxon if youre reading this somehow then HAKJFHKJSHF STOP ARGUING ON TUMBLR

okay, well, that's off my chest now. i fucking hate how much mental space discourse takes up. my mind is full of sludge. i wish that i could say this where anyone who ever actually needed to hear this would see it? but i just can't. i can't justify arguing on the internet anywhere but in defense of myself. because i have a savior complex, i chronically think i can fix people. but i need to accept that i can only do the work the Lord allows of me (i am an atheist but you get the point maybe) and most of the time that's going to be in service of my 7 friends and a bunch of lurkers that are too shy to say anything.

god i hope someones reading this who has never experienced horrible online discourse and now has a headache trying to figure out what i'm even talking about

this will happen again

byyeeeeeeee

- brak 5-9-25