#but also both turned out to be trans

[peregrineggsandham]

...I met a friend once, at what I'll just describe as nerd summer camp. This friend talked excitedly to me about Portal 2 for hours, was the only other person I knew who knew Tom Lehrer's Elements song by heart, and introduced me to Team Fortress 2. This friend and I played TF2 together for hours.

This friend introduced me to the game Psychonauts, which became a favorite of mine. (This will become plot-relevant later.)

A bit later, it happened that this friend's prom was coming up. I happened to be visiting my grandmother around then, in the same area (I did not live in the states, the coincidence of me being in the same country let alone region as this friend was ridiculous and fantastic).

We went to prom together. It was... a little awkward. I liked this friend, but as a friend (I cherished the night before prom in which we talked for four hours about the evolution of the borg), and completely did not pick up on this friend's Crush Indicators™ towards me. This culminated in a somewhat awkward slow dance at this prom (alongside a similarly awkward prom photo, in which the photographer took great joy in posing us like dolls and neither of us were smiling convincingly).

My mother and grandmother had taken this even as an opportunity to dress up the (grand)daughter. My dress was TARDIS blue and I had a corsage of celery; I and this friend were both Doctor Who fans. I was Inexplicably Uncomfortable the whole time for reasons that had very little to do with my friend and much more to do with Being A Girl At A Prom™. (Couldn't put my finger on why. Wouldn't, for about four years.)

The event itself was a lot of fun, though! I enjoyed spending time with this friend, and dancing, and was only a little betrayed upon realizing that what I'd thought were mozzarella sticks were in fact breaded zucchini. (Who does that???) All in all, it was a positive experience!

A few months later I was off to college, and we kept in touch for a while. Then my mental health crashed, and I forgot to reply. Then months passed. A year. Three years. Five. It reached the point, rather quickly, when reaching out felt too awkward - it had been too long.

And by then I was a very different person than I'd been at 16.

But now and then I'd play a little TF2 for nostalgia's sake, and be reminded of this friend. We were still friends on Steam! They kind of haunted me from my friends list; I felt so bad about having vanished, left our conversations unfinished, even though I've since come to forgive myself for most of that (was definitely Going Through Some Shit). But still, that friend haunted me.

...And then Psychonauts 2 came out.

Psychonauts 2 is the perfect sequel. It is a fantastic game and a love-letter to fans of the first so many years later. So after playing it, I figured, well, there's the ice breaker. No "hey. it's been eight years. sup". No "so I stopped being a functional person for about half a decade, how've you been". Just, "Hey! I don't know how much you remember me, it's been a while, but Psychonauts 2 came out and I thought of you."

Psychonauts 2. A barrier, ready-made, to avoid being too friendly after too long. A bridge, ready-built, between the me of 16 and the me of my mid-20s.

I was a little scared. I was a very different person than I'd been at 16. I'd already tried to reconnect with one other friend from my preteens who, well, lets just say I decided not to come out to her. But I could not in good conscience avoid coming out to this person. I had no idea when or where that conversation would happen, but the "yeah so it turns out I'm actually kind of a dude" was probably inevitable.

But, well, as far as I knew, this friend was a straight man; we'd been friends and there'd been a one-sided crush and I'd dropped out of existence before we really moved through that. I had absolutely no idea how they'd take this development. Hell, when we first met, I hadn't ever met a trans person (that I knew of) - I had no way of knowing how they'd feel about that now, if it'd be an impediment to rekindling a friendship.

Our friendship before had always been sincere but inexplicably awkward in a way I couldn't articulate. But I wanted to reach out. So I did. On Steam, the only place I knew how to contact them.

This friend's Steam profile was sparse.

"Katherine", was all it read.

(........No, I thought. What were the chances, I thought.)

Psychonauts 2 sat in my Steam library, 100% completion, the dulcet tones of Jack Black singing in-character as a gay psychic viking-themed musician ringing through my heart and soul. I reached out.

It's been a long time. (How have you been? I've been really busy being dead.) I am so sorry I vanished off the face of the earth eight years ago. My mental health plummeted and by then I felt awkward about trying to reconnect, but I wanted to reach out and say hi.

.........

........

......

...So anyway, Katherine and I video call a few times a month now to talk about life and TTRPGs. She's came to visit in-person, got me into Magic: The Gathering, and we've been working our way through seasons of Taskmaster together.

Turns out a lot of that awkwardness was greatly solved by us just... growing up. Becoming adults. Understanding ourselves better.

Also swapping genders. That probably helped.

"It's easy to lose touch with friends, especially when you live far apart. And sometimes the longer you've gone without speaking to someone, the harder it feels to pick up where you left off. However, a new study suggests that reaching out to pals—especially ones that you have not talked to in a while—is even more appreciated than initially thought.

“People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others. Yet, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to by someone in their social circle?” the study asks. To answer this question, the authors gathered 5,900 participants and put them through a series of experiments.

In one scenario, half of the participants were asked to remember the last time they contacted a friend they had fallen out of touch with, then estimate on a seven-point scale how appreciative the person was (with one being the lowest score, and seven being the highest). Then, the other half of the participants were prompted to recall a time when someone had reached out to them and assign a number to how grateful they were. When these two groups were compared, the researchers found that people greatly underestimated the value of reaching out to someone.

“Across a series of preregistered experiments, we document a robust underestimation of how much other people appreciate being reached out to,” the authors continue. “We find evidence compatible with an account wherein one reason this underestimation of appreciation occurs is because responders (vs. initiators) are more focused on their feelings of surprise at being reached out to. A focus on feelings of surprise in turn predicts greater appreciation.”

In another experiment, participants were told to send a note and small gift to a friend they had not interacted with for a long period of time. They were then asked to estimate on a numerical scale how thankful the person would be because of the contact. Additionally, the receivers of the gifts were asked to rank their feelings upon accepting the gift on the same seven-number scale. Once again, the gift-givers greatly underestimated how much their gesture meant to the other person.

The study concluded that reaching out to people—particularly those that you've lost contact with—is almost always appreciated. It can seem challenging to maintain healthy social interactions, especially due to an increased amount of people working from home and a lack of opportunities. But clearly, the evidence suggests that a little extra effort is worth it.

“For those treading back into the social milieu with caution and trepidation,” the study adds, “feeling woefully out of practice and unsure, our work provides robust evidence and an encouraging green light to go ahead and surprise someone by reaching out.”"

-via My Modern Met, 7/31/22

[gaytedlasso]

love me more

[marcmorrigan]

@fenglianweek day 6: memories/growing up

the best thing thats ever been mine

[jianqzai]

Commission by the amazing @/xliansimp

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Hey, hey, I just wanna pop in here real fast and say that I've just discovered the funniest fucking trans head canons/aus, and that's the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles trans head canons/aus where they have no fucking clue that they're trans because Splinter doesn't know turtle anatomy.

It's the best. Holy shit. It's hilarious dog. They're so fucking stupid, it's great. This is my new favorite thing. They just find out one day that they've actually been trans this whole time because their Dad just assumed all of them were male. But surprise bitch! One/all/whatever of your sons actually had XX chromosomes the whole time!!

This is like... assigned cis at birth lmao

This is fantastic

[arolesbianism]

I caved and made them real. Obverse me losing more and more motivation to draw as I made each of these back to back lol

[smile-files]

i'm fighting every urge to headcanon nickel as a trans butch lesbian egg... and i'm losing...

[reanimatedgh0ul]

this is LITERALLY their dynamic in a nutshell

[harmoniouseclipse]

Me and my freaking ship charts for my freaky mind

[kjzx]

I've been playing slitherio these past few days, and after some time messing around with nicknames and my own experience with the stuff, I've realized anger is something very easy to weaponize. On my second attempt of having "trans rights" as a nickname I killed a huge ~5k point worm as a teenie tiny 200 point worm simply because it was so desperate to kill me specifically. Anger makes your life harder, but it also makes people really unwise. I fucking bet this is in "the art of war", even though I haven't read it.

[sparticus2000art]

Hey howdy fellow gays!

I did some fun funky and fresh subtle pride illustrations, and do hope you’ll enjoy!

I drew skulls mostly just cause I like bones and did a different species for each just to keep things interesting for me. The animals I selected are mostly random aside from giving the lesbians the cat skull because pussy. (Sorry I thought it was funny.

Gay- human skull

Lesbian- cat skull

Bi- dog skull

Pan- boar skull

Ace- kangaroo skull

Aro- bear skull

Trans- sheep skull

Nonbinary- mouse skull

[rabble-dabble]

A Karkat who isn't out to his friends about his blood color yet has to go to John to get patched up because all humans bleed red and thus John wouldn't think it's weird that he does too.

question but is it homoerotic to patch up your fellow friendleader so tenderly when he trusts no one else to and also linger your touch but only slightly subtly so as not to alert him to your pining gaze?

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

Behind every great warrior woman is another woman who is choosing kindness. For now.

[moongothic]

God I wish I could remember what Oda once said about mothers in One Piece... I can't remember if it was about Luffy's mother in particular or moms in general, but he essentially joked about how you'd have to be A Really Horrible Mother to allow your child to go off and become a pirate (dangerous business no loving mother would allow)

And just... My vague memory of that comment is living in my head right now, because truly, if Crocodile somehow is Luffy's mom, truly nothing would make him a worse mom than

Literally trying to murder his child and beating him to near death multiple times the first time they actually meet

Going so far to stop being a mom that he became a dad instead

[gibbearish]

ik i talk abt high control groups kinda often but i do encourage anyone involved in discourse in any capacity to watch folding ideas' "this is financial advice" video, because a lot of what he says about the gamestop apes being a self-organizing high control group imo also explains the more toxic discourse tendencies, and i feel like most discussion around high-control groups on here focuses on the tradtional kind that has one or a few distinct leaders which makes it harder to draw parallels between the signs. so i think its important to point out that these kinds of groups can still create that same energy as a unit even if there isn't one specific person calling the shots

[slow-reader-reads-books]

Anyone wonder about a The Substance (2024) au for svsss?

I'm thinking it could work for either Shen Jiu and a quasi Shen Yuan, or with Bingge and a quasi Bingmei, but I think being able to birth via your spine and some green medicinal goop (created by an underground black market company called The System, perhaps?) an "ideal" version of yourself and inhabit it for 7 days, but having to then return to your original body for 7 days, and having to both vicariously live through your ideal self, and then being haunted by them when you can't be them anymore until you feel forced to artificially manufacture a way to stay in your ideal self because you hate your real self to the point of wanting to kill them, but that in turn killing you, so you end up injecting yourself with too much Substance goop until you're unrecognizable to even yourself all in the name of escaping a world you feel unloved by...

Idk anyone think of this au yet? Highly recommend the original movie if you like plenty of horror, gore, and dissections of body dysmorphia that more or less leave you feeling like a changed person by the end (do check out the trigger warnings tho, it is a horror movie)