The Short Story

Name: Andrew
Age: 21 (Born 1997)
Pronouns: he/him/his
Transformative works policy: ask me first
Contact methods: fanfiction dot net private messaging OR email andrewtemerarious at gmail dot com

The Long Story

Content warnings for gender and dysphoria, depersonalisation and identity construction, and body horror and minor gore. There is a happy ending.

Here is a story that may interest you.

Once upon a time, in a small city-state in Southeast Asia known as Singapore, there was born a child. The child was proclaimed female on the basis of genital configuration and in the absence of contradicting evidence.

The child was raised by a loving family, and grew into an extremely opinionated young person whose hobbies included reading stories and inventing characters. One of these characters was named Irisquilla, another Mademise Morte, yet another named Treiza. It sometimes seemed easier to invent a character than to be a person, so the child adopted each of these names at one point or another. Over the years, there were other names, and other personae, but none of them felt quite right.

In fact, most things didn’t feel quite right. Sometimes, the child felt like their heart was a writhing mess rotting inside them, waiting to be burnt away. Other times, the child felt like their skin was too tight, stretched over broken glass. Very often, the child felt like all it could ever do was pretend to be a person, and never really be one.

As hurt beings are wont to, the child lashed out. They treated themself more like a problem than a person. They hit walls and kicked defenceless trees. They said impolite and unkind things to various people. All through this, the child tried over and over to prove themself female, presuming gender to be prerequisite to humanity.

Somewhere along the line, the child discovered how attractive girls are, and was enamoured of several, not quite knowing the difference between envy and admiration. They learned how to sing in a voice that fit best in a tenor section. They became enamoured of a boy or two, still not knowing the difference between envy and admiration.

The child feared many things. Most of all, they feared not existing. So one day, knowing that whatever it was, they would not be able to exist as female, they tried on existence as male.

It was a revelation.

Not everything changed at once, but enough changed that the child knew that finally, something was going right. They took the name Andrew and the pronoun he. He started to treat himself like a person, stopped mistreating the things around him, and finally began to learn how to talk to people. He sings with his own voice now, and calls himself his own name.

He is telling his own story.

Appendix

I am currently variously known as Andrew Kirkrose Temerarious and Iphis. The Iphis may also have the last two digits of the current year after it (e.g. iphis14, iphis20).

I am a university undergrad Linguistics major with a second major in English, minoring in Creative Writing. I find communication fascinating, and have developed a great fondness for experimental poetry.

I like making things. Words are one medium I use a lot. Another is music: I direct a church choir, sing in another, play double bass in a youth orchestra, and have been part of a wadaiko troupe for the past ten years. I've also recently become a vocalist in a queer Singaporean rock band.

I have folded many thousands of paper cranes, some of which are absolutely tiny.

I'm still not great at talking to people, so it's really not personal if I suddenly disappear, or if I don't respond a review. I still really appreciate messages and comments. I'm also around on the AO3 (kirkrose), Tumblr (iphis18/whiletheapocalypsebuffers), and on this site also as Sweethearted.