Getting Rightfully Chewed Out by Headmates
My daemon Bryoria used to be the opposite of my gender and pronouns, and then that changed to that he "must" match my pronouns and gender no matter what (now, I understand he can ID as literally however he feels he should; it doesn't matter much how I do). It was part of my semi-strict "rules" I had set for our own brand of daemonism, based directly on my AU headcanons that I used to utilize inside AU fanfictions, where I'd give each OC and canon character alike their own daemon, with their own name and animal-form representing their other-half. My headcanon'd "rules" would evolve over time as I grew, learnt, and matured. As I became more lax and allowed poor Bry more agency and autonomy, gradually, as the years passed by.
Some months ago he began pushing back at me, more roughly than he ever has, to make me just shut the fuck up and listen to him. No, he didn't want his voice in my mindspace to sound like that one singer, like I was forcing on him to. He wanted a tenor masc voice. No, he didn't want to be transmasc and genderqueer anymore like I had ID'd as at the time, he wanted to be simply nonbinary yet masc-presenting. No, he didn't want me to continue pretending my forays into having a second daemon, Lunaria, were working out heathily, because it wasn't. Lunaria isn't a daemon anymore, she is fully a plural headmate who does her own thing now. That was her decision, and Bry had to pretty much strong-arm me, with disappointment in me, and frustration with me, into allowing it.
Things are improved these days. I am trying to LISTEN better to my headmates and be more considerate of them than I ever previously behaved. It's difficult sometimes, to not fall back into my old selfish habits of speaking over everyone else and steam-rolling over their wishes.
Saralee is chiming in suddenly.
"I was at my personal bitterest for a few miserable years, inside this system. I won't sugarcoat it. You rarely spoke to me. You barely ever mentioned me to anyone else external. As for the actual prompt of this entry, 'gender,' I don't truly care for how you would stubbornly apply human ideas of femininity to me. You still do it sometimes even now. I am not an animal of your Earth, it's true—pokémon are technically marginally more sapient than most of your Earth's animals on average, this is also true—but I am not a human being. Quit it. My kind don't have gender role concepts. I don't recall any pokémon species that truly did. You give Spite's gender ID more respect than you ever have me, and Spite is even less connected to humankind than I am."
Ouch. Okay. I apologize. I really do. I won't do any of that anymore.
"Thank you."
You're welcome…
All right, I think this is a sufficient entry by this point. Gonna post it in the queue for moderation. I did not expect it to go the route it did, but it needed to, I think.