Internet Trolls, I think I want my mommy!

Last weekend I took a short trip home to my mom. It was badly needed as I hadn’t seen her in almost two months, and while I’m no mommy’s girl I do still need some time with her now and then. Time in my mom’s is useful though, and not just for time with her.

When I stay with my mom I usually sleep alone, even when I’m down there with my Partner in Crime. Nothing to do with my mom being a prude, really 34 years of being my mother has definitely cured her of any prudishness long ago. No, I sleep alone because her spare theoretically “double” bed is more like a very large single, and its mattress bruises me (which is weird since it’s an extraordinarily good mattress, but there ya go.). So instead I sleep in the same bed I slept in when I was 15.

Now when I sleep alone I tend not to sleep very well the first night, and when I don’t sleep well I get sort of thoughtful. And usually those thoughts lead in one of two directions, either I get super creative, plotting out whole chapters of whatever book I’m working on at the time in my head, or I get super self-assessing.

Last Friday night I ended up both.

Over the course of the night I figured out huge swathes of missing storylines from the novel I’m currently working on. A very good thing as I had been very worried that while the core story was pretty good, the secondary plots were kind of weak. It’s a big relief to have much more solid ideas.

However over the course of the night I also got thinking about my own life, not just the lives, and deaths of imaginary people. And more to the point about my worries at the moment. There aren’t many…

Will I ever have a slavegirl again?

Will “insert person’s name who I love” be okay?

Should I kick “insert name”‘s ass for being a selfish prick?

How do I modify a really crap airsoft springer rifle so that it’s going to make other airsofters claim I’m cheating?

Why do I keep putting off my video blog?

So, would you like to guess which one pulled me up short? Yup, that’s right the last one. I’ve wanted to add a video component to this blog for a long time. I think it’s important to do so, because there are so many topics which I would like to speak about that need to be spoken about, not merely written about. The difference is important, some topics are too complex, too emotionally loaded, or simply too personal to truly convey what I want to say purely through written words. They need the sound of an impassioned/annoyed/pissed to high hell voice, they need body language, they need facial expressions. And to be honest they sometimes need a huge amount of swearwords beeped out to really bring across what I want to say.

So why have I been putting it off? After all I have a really amazing webcam now. I know how I want to make them. What program I intend to use to edit them. The format, I even have a few scripted. I know what I want to use as a background, and no my bedroom won’t be the background, I’ve no intention of letting strangers see where I sleep thank you…Yeah that’s the problem do you see? Strangers.

Even in real life I’m hardly a shy retiring wallflower. Frankly if I’m any type of flower it’s something like a Triffid you know, moves around quite quickly, is can be poisonous and is definitely carnivorous.

But I am also a transgirl. One who is less than totally confident about her voice, even if I am completely confident in my appearance (at least for this). This matters because, well have you ever actually read the comments by men on YouTube when a woman posts a blog type video?

Do I really want to end up seeing comments where some guy tells me in excruciatingly precise language where he wants to stick what in my body?

Or the comments about how because I don’t have a cervix I’m just a guy, but hey he’ll fuck me anyway cos I’m a very pretty guy? Gee thanks buddy.

Or of course those who just spend their time in my comment section explaining why I’m wrong. Because I have tits in case you wondered, because no-one with breasts are ever right about anything according to these particular men.

We won’t even get into the people who think that a relevant comment on any topic is “You’re hot wanna go on a date with me?”

My conclusion is that I’m holding off because I haven’t figured out how I’m going to cope with this yet. Not what will I do about it? They’re trolls, aside from not feeding them there’s not a whole lot you can do, not if you actually want to interact with your audience. No I really do mean how will I cope emotionally? Or probably more accurately, can I cope with it?

Sure my health has been an issue, who wants to be seen by the world when they feel like total crap? But figuring out a coping mechanism for internet trolls is definitely the core problem.

I know that in the end I’ll do what I always seem to do with these sort of situations. Make a positive out of a negative. I know I will get a video blog up sooner rather than later. But to expose myself to the world in the way I want to…that’s a scary thought…*pulls blanky up* I want my mommy!