LogFAQs > #950406868

I've been thinking a lot about Philosophy Tube lately. I only found her a couple of weeks ago through a playlist, after the new year but before her latest video. Her coming out video was astonishing, and my assumption is that Abigail had recorded the first part of the video in make-up. She had been performing as her pre-transition self for almost an entire year while she transitioned in the background, and I thought that for the first 2/3rds of her coming out video, she had stuck on a fake goatee and made herself up as her pre-transition self for the last time.

But I just learned that the character hosting the episode for all that time was another person. Abigail had another character playing her pre-transition self the entire time, and he nailed her inflection and tone - it was spot on. He delivered the monologue about living in the trenches, spoke as the person Abigail used to be, and bowed that person out to make way for her.

For this last week, I wondered how Abigail had found the strength to make herself up as her old self. I understand that dysphoria is a hell of an experience, and to be able to play that part of herself as a character was an incredible thought. But learning that it was another person playing that character didn't diminish from the impact - it might even be more impressive. I thought they were the same person. To a degree, they are - one retired character from the past of a blossoming new identity, just interpreted and played by someone else.

That character lives in the past 7 years of Philosophy Tube videos. But it's not her. It's not Abigail Thorn. And Abigail Thorn will never play that character again.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft