SELF

buster is the loveliest guy ever. thinking about him makes me feel so soft and warm so here are a collection of my ideas of who he is and what makes him him.

backstory

grew up in southern america. bible belt baby!!! super religious, fanatical and strict parents who saw queerness as a Sin that Corrupts and fills one with the Devil's Evil Influence. is EXTREMELY sexually repressed as a result. he's trans ftm, and when he started experiencing dysphoria during puberty (~11yo) he thought there was something fundamentally broken in his mind and spent a lot of his adolescence dysphoric, depressed, repressed and angry. he's always liked guys so he never denied his sexuality, only his gender identity. definitely had a hyperfeminine phase where he tried to force himself to enjoy girlish things to the extreme in an effort to sort of cancel out the dysphoria that plagued him. it did not work.
when he was around 15 or 16, he started to realise "wait, there is something very wrong about the people around me and the beliefs they hold". well, he'd had thoughts like those since he was young, but he mostly repressed them out of fear that he would be giving into the devil or something if he ever doubted his parents and church. it's when he meets a non-religious guy at school who openly questions the authorities around them that buster begins feeling more confident in his doubts about the adults in his life, and he begins to become deradicalised.
that guy is also the one who introduces buster to movies. he takes buster to the cinema for the first time - something that until that point buster had NEVER been allowed to do because any kind of non-heretical christian media was strictly forbidden by his parents. buster loves movies INSTANTLY. idk what the first movie he watches would be. maybe like, i dunno, the fuckin matrix or some shit. whatever it is, buster LOVES it. he starts sneaking out more to watch more movies with the guy, and starts disobeying his parents more.
yes buster is a late 1990s/early 2000s punk. 1000% he had a punk/rebel phase. got his first leather jacket in high school and hand sewed a million patches into it with dental floss. kept the jacket at the guy's place because if his parents ever found it, they'd throw it out immediately. he loved wearing it though, and he probably still has it in his closet somewhere. he also has a pair of doc marten boots that he customised with spray paint, markers and glued-on spikes. they don't fit anymore though because his shoe size went up by, like, 3 sizes after he got on T. but he still keeps them for nostalgia's sake.
buster finally accepts his trans identity when he's around 17 or 18, and he works his ass off doing whatever part time job he can secure to move out from his parents house as soon as possible. he gets into a relationship with the guy who introduced him to movies that i mentioned earlier, and they stay together for a couple years, until they're like 21. the only reason they break up is because they naturally grow apart, seeking different goals. they part amicably, and buster still thinks of him fondly even though he moved on a long time ago. it is buster's only relationship until fang.

theatre work

buster's interest in cinema leads him into forming an interest in theatre. however, he's shy and not particularly inclined towards acting, especially not in front of other people. he tries his best, but he's obviously not the greatest actor in his teens, and he finds himself doing a lot of backstage and tech work instead because it's where he feels most comfortable. and in the process, he falls in love with tech work. he becomes incredibly attuned to lighting and audio work, and he loves the feeling of just holding a wrench and adjusting lights. i may be projecting a tiny bit here.
in the summer, he works as a tech assistant at a local theatre and learns proper cable management, light rigging, speaker adjustment. learns how to put an LED together and how to patch and code lights. how to mic each actor up and check their audio levels. basically, he falls in love with theatre.
in college, buster goes to a community college. i'm not sure what he majors in, probably something to do with film, but at the same time he continues to do theatre work and becomes very technically minded in the process. it's the reason why he's the projectionist at the starr park cinema - it becomes very intuitive for him to work with technical equipment like the projectors and speakers.

arrival at starr park

buster comes to starr park around ~22 in search of a better life for himself. he applies to work in the cinema because it's the closest thing they have to a theatre, and it's the obvious pick for a movie lover and theatre techie like him.
at first he's shy and keeps to himself - buster's definitely the type who's quiet around strangers but loud around friends. it takes some time, but he eventually warms up to maisie and they soon become best friends. in fact, when buster expresses that he's struggling to pay rent, maisie offers to let him move in with her and they can share rent. buster is surprised, but grateful. he accepts instantly.

trans identity

as mentioned previously buster is trans ftm and comes out ~18. trans healthcare is expensive, though, and the wait is long. he only starts HRT at 22, and gets a T-anchor double incision masectomy (aka inverted T masectomy) when hes 24. i'd like to think he eventually gets RFF phalloplasty but it's not exactly a very cheap procedure. if it were up to me, he'd have completed the 2 stages of RFF by 26, but realistically it's probably something that he doesn't get until his thirties.
when buster starts T, he uses gel applied to his shoulders and chest. it's not the most convenient, but he prefers it over patches or injections, mainly because he's afraid of messing up self injections. when he moves in with maisie though, she encourages him to get injections because he expresses dissatisfaction with his T levels (thinks they're too low). so, he starts doing weekly subQ injections, which maisie helps him do for a time until he feels ready to do them himself. she's still there in the room with him but he does the actual injection himself, and slowly he's eventually able to do them completely alone. i think he would eventually move to 3/6 month injections same as fang.

TRIO

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