#she's not a fan of the hrt thing so she's not. helping too much. also apparently bc I'm 18 and not 19 I need her with me to talk abt a plan

[buysomecheese]

Crazy question + I'm not expecting much response but. DOes anyone have experience in signing up for medical insurance. Specifically Medicaid and specifically New York Medicaid. Even more specifically as a student. Bonus points if you're transgender and on HRT

[mathcat7]

2024 Gaming Retrospections

What a year huh. I won't repeat the opening spiel I did with last year's post (although much of it still applies), but this time around I'm armed with a few harder curveballs for things I've played this year that were new to me. In fact, I do need to warn now that two of the titles in this mix are visual novels that contain explicit sexual content. I'll be more specific with both when I get to them, but y'know, fair warning and all that. Additionally, while I'll try to keep the spoilers light, some of these games will inevitably cross that line, so again fair warning.

Let's get rolling:

Mice Tea

Cinnamon Switch

(Content Warning: This is porn vn 1 of 2 and contains some, albeit optional, kink delving into hypnosis, voyuerism, bondage, etc. Also it's at its core a furry transformation story.)

Yeah, this year I did make it somewhat of personal goal to stop acting as inwardly prudish towards the both the art I want to experience and want to support, and this visual novel was a great opener to that, especially with our point-of-view character Margaret.

Each of the main branches in the story sees her accidentally transformed into an anthropomorphic mouse (and/or other animal) and it's fun seeing her thrust out of her comfort zone in such a way where she confronts both that and all the other issues in her life (low self-esteem, being a doormat at her job). I had originally gotten this to play after a little in-joke with my friend, but the game is just genuinely kind about everything it tackles. Sure it's having fun putting Margaret in all these situationships with her boss, coworker, and other friends (and trust me on this its really good porn), but it also gives time to let all these people both grow on her and create some really compelling friction. Margaret's genuine distress about learning that Gavin's a furry in his route and that nearly creating a wedge in their budding relationship, was an incredibly strong hook for me. Which is wild given that by the end of it, I thought his route was the weakest of the bunch. By comparison, route that I've head anecdotally to be the general favorite by other fans is the one's with Margaret's boss, "Felix"; the magical properties of the tea are not just anthropomorphic, but also some extreme tier of HRT, and turns him into a catgirl. This leads into, among other shenanigans, a rather fast egg-cracking moment, as Margaret helps the now-Felicia navigate this new facet of her life. It's a super sweet and lovely storyline, and I love how much this route highlights the overlap between furry/therian and trans experiences. Oddly enough, what I find best about this is Felicia isn't even a token trans girl among the main cast; you get to see how much she contrasts to the more forwardly confident Sylvia, and some of the ways her route explores those aforementioned themes that a recent egg crack that Felicia can't.

I won't talk too deeply on the sex scenes themselves, but I found each of the scenarios well described, and (barring some oddities with Gavin's) well illustrated. Plus, even if I'm not into every kink Mice Tea provides, I do have to give the team at Cinnamon Switch props for how wide they throw that net; Margaret is an incredibly convincing vers, and I have a lot of fun reading her have fun.

This was a great opener to my year, and I would easily recommend this as a beginner piece for both people just starting out in furry culture or trying to get into more explicit pieces of media. (Heck, the game even has a SFW mode for the scenes that might turn you off, which is a nice boon.)

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

Ghost Ship Publishing - Funday Games

This is gonna be a short coverage because I haven't touched it since February, despite it being an extension of one of my favorite co-op titles of all time. Promising take on what Vampire Survivors popularized, but given how early of an early access it was at the time I initially played, and that I don't think I was as into this genre as I'd initially hoped (I like more hands-on rogue approaches), I might have to wait a bit before I give this another go. (Ngl, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this getting to publicly playable state a lot faster than the other DRG spinoff in Rogue Core, but that's really neither here nor there.)

Persona 5 Strikers

Atlus - Koei Tecmo

I think it's really funny that I'm now 2 out of 4 for playing spinoffs that involved Persona 5 without actually playing the main game. Beyond that though, I think this was a really fun Musou game for someone whose exposure to the genre thus far has only been through spinoffs (Hyrule Warriors, both the OG Fire Emblem Warriors and Three Hopes). The part I think it especially shines in is using P5's exploration-and-combat loop as the gameplay core, as opposed to being a full musou with Persona paint. It certainly fits the setting and the smaller cast of the Phantom Thieves (relative to those other spinoffs), and at least for me resulted in a lot less long-session fatigue trying to use everyone equally. If there's only one major complaint in terms of gameplay, is that Joker himself feels rather awkward to use at times due to how his wildcard mechanics are adapted here. I'm not even talking about how different personas contribute to his combo routing (though that is a factor), but the lack of deeper fusion mechanics such as arcana burst makes fused personas a lot harder to utilize as they will inevitably always be behind the experience curve. His starter Persona Arsene gets some unique bonuses in his later levels but it is straight up a herculean test to get him there. And while the game does have a catch-up system in Persona Points, you never gain enough points to where you can use it beyond sparingly.

Story wise, I think it makes for a rather well constructed continuation of where P5 left off (ignoring the elephant in the room of Royal's continuity). It's nice seeing how the Phantom Theives are continuing their lives—the former third years prepping for college, Futaba properly re-entering school—while also grappling with and re-interrogating their convictions with the new threats.

Also, the new characters in this story are amazing. Sophia, the A.I. designed to be humanity's companion, is equal parts adorable and heartfelt. Her sort of "robot learning to become human" arc has been done before with P3's anti-shadow suppression weapons, but it still takes that arc in very interesting ways, especially once her newfound outlook on life puts her at odds with her creator, culminating in a reinforcement P5's rebellious themes. And while I don't care as much for Zenkichi's arc concluding in the same sort of reformist slop that Makoto had in P5, the way his opposition of their methods giving way to mutual understanding, and the way his much more seasoned, fatherly life creates push-and-pull with the rest of the cast makes for a very welcome addition the Phantom Thieves.

Don't have much more to say since Persona isn't really my wheelhouse, but I for the most part enjoyed my time here, and am willing to bet anyone who loved P5 and hasn't gotten to any of its auxiliary media will love to see Joker and co. return to action.

Balatro

LocalThunk

Holy shit, this game. I'm honestly amazed to see how much this game blew up, given I was one of the early fans of it, back when it just a well constructed Steam NextFest demo in Aliensrock's wheelhouse near the end of last year. I don't know if there's much I can say here that does this game enough justice, but I would definitely argue for its GOTY contender status. It flips the script on what one would typically expect of a deckbuilder roguelike, much to its favor. Rather than utilize turn-based combat cards to defeat waves of enemies, it's a much more of an arcade-y score attack; match the required score with good poker hands to proceed. This is both a boon in accessibility of both appeal and mechanics; everyone knows what playing cards are, and you don't need to already have some foreknowledge in rpg/tcg style gaming to understand the core gameplay loop. Beyond that, the game is just oozing with strong design; the sound effects of gaining mult, flames burning on the scorecard whenever your hand one-shots the score requirement, a singular music track (with variations) that give a very zenlike sensation as you play, the lava lamp-esque backgrounds, even down to the gorgeous pixel card arts... the game just *feels* good to play. Additonally, since this game is a score-attack, this creates additional lines of play beyond the typical deckbuildrogue "beat the game with harder enemies, player penalties, etc." Some people just enjoy playing the game to see how high they can get the number to go, even to the point of where it becomes incalculable by IEEE 754 standards, and/or to see how many more blinds they can last in the game's Endless Mode (whose required score can also hit the IEEE 754 limit). I adore this game, and I hope that the waves it creates does foster new innovations within its subgenre.

Xenoblade Chronicles (Definitive Edition)

Monolith Soft

I don't think there's much I could say about this game (and its respective trilogy) that hasn't been said more eloquently or deeply. Anyone else with a relatively deep enough RPG repertoire can gush about the game's deep community systems, the story's powerful twists and turns, the close knit main cast, the jaw-dropping environments and music, or how sexy Dunban is. There's not really anything I could add to that really, and even then, it would feel incomplete given I had a plan to play the trilogy in whole, DLCs included.

But if anything, I'd like to recount one of my favorite moments, deep into the plot. That moment where Shulk stays the Monado mere moments before he would have slain Egil and gotten the revenge this whole journey was originally building towards. It's a perfect character moment, and I particularly love that it isn't just Shulk plainly laying down his arms.

"I can't kill you, but I can stop your blade. And I'll do it. Over and over again, until… we understand each other."

This, coming off of his questioning why the conflict even originally started is amazing to me. And combined with the visual of him just sitting on the shoulder of the giant that is Egil's Yaldabaoth, it's the near-perfect realization of how much bigger the world has become beyond what now feels like a petty dispute at the end of it all, which makes the subsequent betrayal by Zanza and his co-conspirator all the more compelling when you take a step deeper; it was already out of shulk's hands the moment he stepped into the Mechonis.

But of course, this is one amazing moment in a series known for these. So I look forward to when I eventually return to XC2 and so-on.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year-Door (Switch Remake)

Intelligent Systems

The original TTYD still stands as one of my favorite games of all time. "Baby's first rpg" sort of deal, sure, but still holding a few key mechanics that I'm still surprised haven't been utilized in other modern rpgs (biggest example being the audience system). The remake is still grand in the way that most remakes/remasters are (which is to say, mostly unnecessary if porting to modern systems was the ideal standard), but still brought some nice surprises that made me fall in love with the game all over again. All of the main areas gaining new renditions of the battle theme, relocalizing the english script to affirm that Vivian is a trans woman (and making her mini-arc directly related to that fact) are both nice new details among other QoL improvements. There's even two *new* superbosses unique to this game that are both welcome additions. It was very nice to return to this old gem, I'll say that much.

The World Ends With You

Square Enix

(Sorry if this sections a bit half-assed, was the last section written for the year)

Yeah there's... quite a few rpg classics in this bunch, but this one was a huge reccomendation by one of my friends. I could wax poetic about how much the game utilizes the Nintendo DS as a console to its fullest extent (including a wireless feature that would be the spiritual predecessor to the 3DS’s Streetpass functionality), but really as a piece of media, it’s probably one of the best at folding a narrative into itself. Early on in the game’s first week, the faux-mentor figure to Neku Sakuraba in Mr. Hanekoma poses him the words of advice that make up this game’s title:

"The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You gotta push your horizons out as far as they'll go."

This tenet is so deeply intertwined with both the game and story. I'm gonna skip ahead to the ending for this, Neku ends up inadvertently saving the city because he's gained the ability to trust even in someone who has just proven his betrayal. It's a powerful moment, but it's incredibly powerful that Neku was chosen to be someone meant to rig the game against this outcome; from the outset we see him incredibly rude and untrustful of the world around him, and tries to shut out everyone and everything. But through the three weeks we see him, we also get to see him slowly expand his world beyond himself, begin to empathize with his game partners and even strangers. I especially love the way this dynamic is flipped by midway through week 3; Neku fighting through for the sake of everyone else at this point, having to remind Beat that there's more than his life on the line.

This also reflects so well in aspects like shopping and food. The best gear isn't just found in a shop, but properly mingling and bartering with the storeowners reveals new shit bit by bit in a very cool way. Food's a lot more direct, obviously it helps to increase stats but I love that the most effective way to do it is as a team. But I also love that game encourages slowing down in ways beyond what the game is directly. Letting real time pass on a DS frees up space for food, and the pins that Neku uses to fight passively gain strength while the game isn't played. It's a really strong ludonarrative reinforcement: It wants you to spend time outside its world too.

It's a clever and thoughtful game and also influential in ways I don't think it gets proper credit for. Certainly something worth interrogating over and over.

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vegeance

Atlus

There is probably an argument to be made about the potential anti-consumer practice that comes from Atlus doing revised releases of their major titles, thus making fans pay twice for full experiences, as often as they have, but honestly I’m quite glad they revisited SMTV of all things. While I’m not of the opinion that the original was a “glorified demo” and this is the real game, it was certainly evident that its development was less-than stellar in several aspects: nearly nonexistent dungeon design, weak story and characters, and being locked to a weak console with poor optimization. Even the gameplay loop itself, the game’s strongest factor, was being marred by a harsh level-scaling formula in its damage calculations, an issue that has rarely ever been a problem for modern megaten titles. Between it, the more disappointing release of Soul Hackers 2, and the still frequent milking of Persona 5 as a brand, there was a lot of sentiment that the franchise’s best days were behind them.

Vengeance, and Atlus’s other big hits this year (one of which I will touch on later), did a lot to assuage those fears. While it doesn’t try to fix the original story, now dubbed the “Canon of Creation”, the new “Canon of Vegenace” gives us a lot more focused plot and characters, and even the structure itself does the Creation Canon a boon by informing on their more distant personalities in that story. Yoko Hiromine is the closest thing to a dueteragonist this tale has, and her combination of pessimism, lack of faith in others, and vindictiveness bounces very strongly on the rest of the human cast, especially when it frames her as a foil to the Creation Canon’s most intriguing character in Tao Isonokami. Even once she does her grand betrayal and leaves the party before the game’s final arc, she never feels truly “absent” from them, and it still left me rather interested to see her goal in all this. The more focused plot also benefits the new antagonistic faction in the Qadištu. I love how cool and calculated they are as a group, and in true megaten fashion, I like that their motivations speak more to the world’s larger structure, and why the Mandala System that Lucifer struggles to break exists in the first place. I would be remiss not to also mention the reintroduction of demon conversations in the new demon haunts, in which there are a lot more lore and story tidbits to chew on, especially with our protag’s ever constant companion in the proto-fiend Aogami. Hearing him mull on the story developments, and his growing concern for the Nahobino endears me to him quite a lot, and his loss in the party kicking off the final arc hits with the weight it needs.

In terms of gameplay, while dungeon design is still nothing too special, navigating the world feels a lot better to do with the introduction of the magatsuhi rails, which serve as useful shortcuts or expansions into less traversed areas from the original release. I didn't care much for the original's traversal, but romping around the ruins of japan in this run feels a lot more fun. But that's a bucket in the water compared to how much the combat loop was improved from the first game. I've already mention the og SMTV's issue with level scaling, and it's removal from the calcs is already a fine improvement, but the first real big win was the addition of demon traits (a carryover from a mechanic first toyed around in Persona 5 Royal). It's a continuation of the efforts first started in SMTIVA to make demons have more definitive identities, but the traits in this game really do take it to another level. Of the megatens with fusion that I've played up to now, Vegeance actually made me want to pay attention to the deeper mechanics in demon fusing, because now it felt like I was playing to make demons synergize with each other and the Nahobino rather than purely making a team that counters the next major boss. Some of the traits also make good use of the base system mechanics of press turn; Vengeful Might is one of the best passive power boosts in the game, tied to a few select demons, but makes you play a rather vulnerable team since that boost is tied to the number of exposed weaknesses on the team. It's a rather clever reversal on what the game implicitly teaches you, and I love the risk and reward built into that sort of design. I also love that Atlus is willing to play more into the volatility of the press turns themselves. Several passives and Innates grant more icons when triggered, but I think the coolest adjustment is in another new addition of the virtual trainer, the tech that lets you rematch bosses with the twist that they now gain an extra turn and may sometimes gain the ability to piece resistances if an attack is nullified. It's a simplistic addition, but I love that it leads to deeper strategization without resorting to the megido rage spam of games past.

Oh and the music. Ryota Kozuka was already proven to be an amazing musician after the banger that was Battle B2 in SMTIV a decade ago, but he continues to push the bar with his contributions to Vegeance's OST. Like I'd be hard pressed to name a game with this much level of variety in its boss themes for the dozens of bosses between both canons, and every track is a banger. The head bopping Battle -bounce and roll-, to the goes-hardism of Battle -The Adversary-. Not a day has gone by since the drop of soundtrack that I don't have the urge to jam to it.

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers

Kart Krew Dev

If TWEWY and XC1 were the result of my friends heavy recommendations, this one was going against the grain of my friends' complaints about this title. I never touched its predecessor, SRB2Kart, but my impression from the videos I watched of it were that it was a rather creative and impressive Mariokart-like, using Sonic and Sega as the baseline for it. Apparently the version 2.0 sequel, Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers, was a lot more divisive, with a complete overhaul to many of the game's systems mechanics, and layering a lot more complex tech into the game's code and identity. This had turned off many casual fans, and when I decided to give the game a go, early on I could understand those complaints. The game's deceptively hard, no doubt about that; you think you're doing nothing wrong, and yet you end up in the back of the pack for most of your online sessions. I even got my another of my friends in Eve to join me along for playing this game and a lot of our sessions would just be struggles. I was ready to just write it off plainly as a fangame of wild disparity in its quality.

But then one night I had joked, after reading how fighting games inspired a lot of the design choices in this game, that losing in the game gives the same defeatist feeling of going 0-2 in locals. And in saying that, something just clicked for me. I stopped just throwing myself at the game, and instead did some studying up. I watched how other people tackled the game. I watched other people's time trials and even ran a few of my own in this game's alternative trial mode, SPB Attack (which is overall a lot slower and you're chased by this game's take on the Blue Shell in the Super-Propelled Bomb). It became less about playing the game, and more about grinding it, and what do I have to show for it? Well... I'm not winning races outright, but I'm also no longer struggling to climb out of the lower half of the pack, and I'm having so much fun just being in the scrap.

Setting aside gameplay, this is a really outstanding fangame. There are so many loving recreations of Sega's history in the game's ~150 tracks and ~60 battle stages (even when they're complete dogshit to play in like Carnival Night, lmao). Even the courses that are from titles well after the Sonic series’ jump to 3D look and feel like effective backports (see: Savannah Citadel). Other aspects of the art design, the clean as hell pixel art for the various kart racers and items, the repurposing of old favorite SFX from the classic era of sonic, as well as how visceral the kart explosion is in all its glory; It's the sort of game I daydream about returning to when I'm bored at work.

I won't recommend this to you if balk at the idea of "grinding" a multiplayer game. It's certainly not the sort of party play experience that modern mariokart is. But if you can enjoy a good ass-kicking and a race that makes you actively think about every state of the game, Ring Racers is fuckin' perfect.

Class of ‘09, Class of ‘09: The Re-Up

SBN3

Now, while I will touch on what I got out of these two VNs, I also want to mention why I never went on to do the series’s third installment in C09: The Flipside despite its release this year, and to juxtapose it with a phenomenon F.D. Signifier noted in his great video about edgelord-centric media. Me and a few friends were rather grabbed by the leading lady, Nicole, and the several plights she finds herself in. Beset by classmates and teachers alike who all want to use and abuse her for sex, her own poor mental well-being and coping mechanisms, and living in a political climate so deep into the wars on terror and drugs, her vicious reversals on her school life revealed some rather surprising relatability for Nicole's plight, and some interesting introspections to our own pasts in high school. Sure, a large chunk of this game's dark humor does still rely heavily on punching down on racial minorities, and the creator posturing C09 as an “Anti-Visual Novel” was always gonna be an eyeroll for me, but at its core I really thought for a time that Class of ‘09 was a well made period piece about the underbelly of urban-suburban schooling that could sometimes be serious about the interiority denied to girls living through that, and those moments were good enough to let me look past SBN3’s dodgy politics and the more egregious shit.

Come around the Flipside’s release, and I learn through word of mouth that it is terrible. SBN3 makes a huge point within one of the ending messages to disparage the series’ budding popularity with newer fans giving the minimal amount of critical pushback. Another of the endings makes the anti-arab sentiments espoused by the characters explicitly about Palestine, which feels equal parts gross given the year-long genocide the country now faces and rather out-of-place given the previous two game’s focus on a more nebulous “The Taliban” brand of xenophobia. Which brings me to why I mentioned FD’s video; he makes the point that trying to course-correct a piece of media’s audience by making the politics more direct is more likely to do more harm to the work’s overall quality than keeping said politics ambiguous. His examples were all media trying to push a progressive message, but I think the Flipside is a perfect example of this phenomenon in a conservative vector. Even beyond the political scope, there’s a lot of signs showing that SBN3 was phoning it in: smallest number of endings in the series with very few dialogue prompts, all major routes repeating an already used prostitution plot thread. Really the whole crash-out killed a lot of the motivation I had interrogating this series, and I can't in good faith recommend spending any time on a story that's gonna childishly call you a pedophile for enjoying it.

Peglin

Red Nexus Games

“What if Roguelike Peggle?” is an incredible sell of a game. This is another instance of something whose existence I learned of through Aliensrock, and I think on paper it’s another neat subversion on the deckbuilder subgenre. Rather than some deck you're given a set of orbs you shoot down a board, and every peg you hit contributes to the damage dealt. It's a simple loop, and oftentimes a lot more engaging to play through than your Griftlands or other standard deckbuilder.

That being said, the game's hampered greatly by its take on the difficulty climb. The Cruciball levels aren't much different from something like Slay the Spire's Ascensions (bulkier stronger enemies & less access to heals, etc.) but because it's hard to get a good read on an orb's trajectory beyond maybe the third peg bounce, and because the Cruciball penalties are insistent on both weakening the base power level and access to the special pegs in criticals, refreshes, and bombs, runs feel wildly inconsistent because enemies don't get cleared fast enough (or at least, that's how I felt using my favorite class in the Spinventor). There's even possibility that one of the first floor bat enemies just regularly outheals the damage you deal because the singular refresh peg is barely out of discernible reach.

Generally, the base game and concept are cool and fun, but I think its still rather rough around the edges in terms of difficulty balance.

Hopeless Junction

NadiaNova

(Content Warning: This is porn VN 2 of 2 and this one contains scenes of dubious consent involving alcohol, a little unsanitary kink, and while not definitively incestuous, some scenes lean into the idea.)

In some of the NSFW circles I lurk in on Tumblr (iykyk), I was made privy to Nadia’s body of visual novel works through fanart of this title. I was curious (and horny) enough one day in the late summer/early fall to give it a proper look over. I think it's fairly effective on the smut it sells, watching our main girl Kalinda pushed well into humiliation by her "love" interest Zarina, up to a surprisingly hilarious moment where drunken sex gets entirely wrecked by Kalinda barfing out the cheap beer she was goaded into drinking. But take it a step above and I think this story paints some rather sweet pictures about sapphic sisterhood. I won't spoil the why, but beyond Zarina's abrasiveness is a woman ready to give up on life, and despite Kalinda never really being able to be her match to that abrasive personality, it's quite sweet seeing her keep making that effort in this short tale. There's also a fauxcestual side-plot between Kalinda and her "little sister" Chandra, where Zarina's antics force the pair to reevaluate the status of their relationship, and while I don't have larger thoughts on the -cest part of this dynamic, I did enjoy the deeper conversation being had here, especially given the fact that it is two trans women giving retrospection to their sense of sisterhood.

Nice work all-in-all. I'm looking forward to reading Nadia's other previous works, especially given how much work I've heard go into her most recent venture in Malcatras' Maiden.

Marfusha: Sentinel Girls

Hinyari9

Pretty simplistic rouge-y shmup that a friend really wanted me to play. It’s a pretty small game and there’s not a whole lot for me to sink my teeth into, but I think it’s core loop is quite easy to settle into a rhythm with. (Heck, the day before this post is supposed to go live I ended up doing 5 or so runs back-to-back with no issue.) There’s also some neat tension between the story and gameplay; in order to learn about Marfusha’s relationships with the other girls in her squad, you’ll likely have to play to cover the weakness in her partner’s weapon type, but that gets compounded by the fact that Marfusha’s guns don’t last forever and that you’ll likely have to cycle towards other weapons throughout the many waves you’re expected to outlast. Again, simplistic stuff, but not bad by any means and it’s all-around a fun game to just play. And the artwork does a good job of selling the military state aesthetic.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Atlus

Incredible game for me to close the year out with, and an incredible release for Atlus to close their bonkers year of fantastic rpgs with, both celebrating everything that came before it while also aiming to sprout new ideas into the fold. I think the easiest thing for me to point out from the get-go is the battle and game systems, those being a melting pot of modern megaten’s press turn systems, combined with Persona 3’s take on the phys/mag split, with a little touch of Etrian Odyssey’s usage of frontline/backline and aggro mechanics. Even the Archetypes function a lot more akin to Digital Devil Saga 2’s mantra grid, albeit trading in pure skill trees for more of an EO-esque job system. It’s a fun system to play around with, even if it’s incredibly prone to getting broken open once you’re in the late-game (let’s just say you can stack a lot of damage boosts together really easily to one-shot bosses). Even older megaten gets a little love with both direct callbacks to the devil summoner titles, and several of the skillnames being reverted to their Megami Tensei iterations. I was just excited to have a press turn game with proper party members again, but the way the other mechanics with Archetypes ebb and flow give it an even more unique edge than the "Digital Devil Saga 3" I was memeing it out to be pre-release.

Visually speaking, the game is equally stunning. The painted skies, the handrawn UI portraits, the particle effects (especially with the weapons, oh my god). It really does make you feel like you’re walking through a fantasy novel at times. Obviously an artstyle as strong as this game ‘s shouldn’t be too surprising given this is something the P-Studio team is well known for at this point, but is still worth stating (god I need more artbooks and design works books).

I think if there was one thing everyone was concerned about prior to release, it was the way the game would handle its writing. One of Katsura Hashino’s biggest directorial weakness as seen in his previous ventures with both Persona and Catherine was his handling of minorities and women. (Persona 3’s oddly transphobic beach scene, Persona 4… just in general, to name some examples.) Given the early information that this story would deal with issues surrounding race gave a lot of people pause, myself included, and the early stretches of the game’s prologue hadn’t done much to persuade me either way (really only made it more evident that whatever would happen would likely be heavy-handed). But I stuck around, and was pleasantly surprised by this game's political musings. It takes time to properly cultivate Euchronia's history and how a populist figure like Louis Guiabern rose to the prominence he did. I eyerolled a little bit that the fantasy races fell in the usual fantasy pitfall of definitive physical differences, but this is really only a footnote and many aspects of the racism depicted in Metaphor highlight how much the divides are struggles of class. My jaw dropped when I learned that a race war was really a coverup for the church's misdeeds on experimenting on the underclass. Speaking of the Sanctist Church, the other major faction in this game, I love that their motivations for evil aren't out of some love for a problem dragon (ily Fire Emblem but lol), but rather the calculated moves of an institution trying to cling to ever corrupting power. There is no grand conspiracy, just a power struggle. The supporting cast is also amazing: Brigitta is a banger of a class-traitor throughout her entire arc, and while I have some complicated thoughts about her framing of the matter, I did enjoy Catherina's arc culminating in her trying to educate her people instead of clinging to leftist vagueries. I won't say all of the game's writing is perfect by all means (despite its best efforts to the contrary, it does dangerously tow the line of political adventurism at times, and the big late-game twist does give echoes of FE Echoes in ways that nags at me a little), but I do think this was by all accounts a well thought-out and made metaphor on the moments of ever-destabilizing governmental rule.

There's so much more I could talk about here, how much I love the gauntlet runners as a concept, how amazing each of the party members are (Heismay's speech against the boss of his introduction arc is a top character moment of all time, hands down), but if I kept going I would not be able to finish this post before midnight. I'll say this much though: Metaphor deserves its larger consensus as a GOTY contender, and I am very hopeful about this marking Atlus's return to prominence as a developer of RPGs.

In close

What a great year for me, huh. I didn't even get into any of the books I read here either (This is How You Lose the Time War was amazing omg). But I dunno, part of writing this year's lineup made me feel like this was an unsustainable method of talking about games. I had plenty to say in 2023's lineup, wheras here I ran out of time even accounting for games I know I wouldn't have super deep or well written thoughts on. Maybe I should start writing about these things as separate entities, or something like that.

That being said, I do want to strive for even nicher titles. Mice Tea and Hopeless Junction were good starts, but I still don't have the committal to the idea that I want to have, especially as I get more and more frustrated with the current state of mainstream and even upper-echelon indie gaming. (Rahhhh I hate that all the good yuri fanartists talents are wasted on gacha slop rahhhhh)

Also some things I didn't get into were the games and VNs I played made by my friend r0mbuffer. I didn't want to weigh too heavily in on the stuff I had a hand in helping in (even if it was just proofreads and some QA), but you should check their shit out, I swear!

Here's to 2025, the year that Royals of the Tempest will no longer be a copium title!

[boydykedevo]

anyway my trans Devo headcanons:

He got a tonewheel for his birthday when he was 16, and that's where he learned what being queer was from Seldom's broadcasts. He identified as a lesbian pretty strongly for a while, but he always kinda knew that wasn't quite it. He was 17ish when he finally admitted to himself he was trans. (and once he started perceiving himself as a man more often, he realized he was bi -- he just hated the idea of being with a guy as a girl)

He's not a binary/monogender trans guy. BUT he is in heavy denial about it. He'll get there eventually...

Seldom gave him guy's clothes when he came to his school, but they're all very basic and colorless and boring. He was never a big fan of them. He didn't really come into his own with masculine presentation until Nermal's Pile; she lets him try out whatever he wants. He's still kinda feeling things out, but he's way happier and has a lot more fun with it now.

Hair length isn't strongly gendered in Founders' Wake, it’s more tied to practicality. Guidance always kept his at shoulder-length and never let him change it at all. He was growing it out after leaving, but after confronting Orlean in the infinite clam he had a breakdown and chopped it all off. Amber helped him tidy it up and he's kept it short ever since.

There's some sort of magic HRT in Founders Wake, but since magic is rationed he hasn't gotten on it yet. Seldom was helping him with it; he's on a waiting list.

His chest dysphoria used to be a lot worse, he did a lot of unsafe homemade binding back at the parish, which gave him chronic back pain. Seldom convinced him to stop and got him a proper binder. Even that he can't wear too often cuz of his pain. It sucked a lot at first, but he's started to make peace with his chest and his dysphoria isn't quite as bad. He still binds more than he probably should though.

He has a decent amount of bottom dysphoria, he packs pretty much constantly.

The name Damian is the one he first picked out when he was accepting himself, as a replacement for his birth name (not Devotion, the Cern one). But he started to really hate being called Devotion, and Devo was something he could spin as a nickname without raising suspicion. Guidance hated it and told people not to use it, but at least a few people did, so when it came time to pick a new name, he was attached enough to it he went with that instead of Damian Cern (also cuz his relationship with the Cerns is. complicated.)

(The Cerns do call him Damian, but Tolliver had no idea, he isn't exactly a part of family dinner. Last he heard he had some little sister who he’d never met. So when Devo was like "my real name is... Damian Cern" Tolliver's response was a cover for him internally going "what the fuck what the fuck since when do i have a relative named Damian hold on????? did i forget a cousin or something????????? oh my god this is humiliating" Devo does not clarify and Tolliver is too proud to admit to not knowing so it's a good couple weeks after that when he finally learns how exactly theyre related)

[terriedirewolf]

Ight, lets get a post in here

So metroid dread came out not too long ago. I'm very pleased with it. Samus returns was a little shaky imho, and i was only slightly concerned that it was the same people. But I think they surpassed expectations. Issues from the 3DS game didn't make it in, the art design is phenomenal, and the world and story are very cool and fitting for the universe. I'm a particular fan of this sort of rebuilt power suit that totally still has fusion suit elements all over it still. And the chozo boss who's face rips open is quite pretty. Good game. 10.

But anyhow, it's definitely not supermetroid levels of non linear. And this is the tie breaker. Metroid 1 was about as open as possible. Kind of a rough expereince even by the standards of the era honestly, I'm kind of amazed the series didn't die then and there. But the sequel did wonders for the series. It is also however, much more linear. Now, you can backtrack if you want, and honestly, the map is small enough where it's not that much of a pain in the ass. But it's not open design really.

Supermetroid was a mix of the two. Metroid 1 with the sensabilities of metroid 2, and like five times the tech to make it all work. And it did work. But it's also not nearly as open as people think it is. It just does a real good job at hiding it, and it is kind of nonlinear as it has four distinct paths to travel down once you get through the intro exploration. The hidden movement tech also did wonders for it. People suck this games cock all the time though, so I won't dwell on it's acomplishments.

Fusion is way more linear. It does open up in places, but for the most part, you're stuck following orders and being a shadow of your former self, and fighting your own ghosts. Ibreally like the game though, and it feels and plays just like how I want metroid to feel and play.

I guess what I'm trying to get across is that dread not being a hand free "wander this vast cavern and good luck" kind of game isn't really that weird, and metroid hasn't been about open ended exploration for most of it's lifespan. Much like many games, it's a puzzle room. The keys are just very fun to play with, and it likes to hide secrets. I think metroid has always been about the lonly atmosphere, as well as the idea that something sinister is watching at the same time.

Now it's worth noting that I never played the prime games, but the only 2d game I haven't beaten is samus returns, and that's cause my 2DS has been lost. But I think that this is that thing about the series that no one ever mentions cause of how the genre the series helped create has formed over the years. Metroid has never been interested in being a metroidvenia. Which is kind of weird to think about.

Anyhow, visually, it's always bugged me that samus is supposed to be this powerful woman who takes no shit, got bird hrt, and can brave situations that few others can get out of alive, but is built like a barbie doll. People have pointed out the shoulders before. It's weird, and never has been addressed in canon. It's always obscured too when she changes in and out of her power suit, so, if her arms are even in there is a bit of a debate.

My solution is buff samus. Niklas Arne Jansson did the concept a bit better, and I think there's a handfull of other people who drew her stacked like a truck, but not enough imho. I also wish she'd wear anything but the zero suit once in a while. Cause it's cool and all, but pockets are dope as shit.

The arm canon is another issue. Seeing as she has like, an arm in there. Anyone even slightly savy with ballistics can tell you that a snub nosed thing like that is gonna be aweful. The crazy bit is that the barrel opens up instead of the rockets just using folding fins or something. How 250 rockets fit in that thing is another question entirely, but I guess, there's like, borderlands digitalization or something, so it's workable I guess. Recoil will be harder to handle without a wrist, and aiming is kind of impossible without a heads up display I expect. The fusion arm canon has more issues, and I seriouy doubt you could get a forearm in it and still have room for any of the cool foldy stuffs.

I really do not have a lot of solutions here, but there are two ways I figure. The easiest is to just remove the arm. Which is always cool. Robot arms that transform into guns is like, peak design. The other way is to extend the cannon, or make it offset from the actual arm. Maybe even a combination. That way there's room forbthe big arm gun to be like, actually big and gun, and still let samus have all the thumbs to fly a spaceship. Also, I feel like she should be able to drop the thing. Like take it off and set it down, piloting the ship with a partially armored forearm and hand, with exposed internals and hardpoints to mount the blaster.

But yeah.

Rough sketches

[entityskillcount-archive]

Thoughts on everyone in the realms?

"Short Answer; I made a chart. Not a well drawn chart, mind you, but a chart. Sometimes you don't wanna put effort into drawing 50 something faces"

"Long answer, uh....well lemme go down the list"

Claudette: My Starflower~!! She's so sweet and kind and amazing in trials and every time I see her I swoon a little- I love her so much~ Dwight: He's cute- And he's a good leader, despite his nervous personality, he knows how to bring a group together. Final guy potential. Ash: ....Don't...Tell him I said this? But uh....Evil Dead was one of my biggest comfort series, the thing that got me through losing both my parents....the thing that helped me transition, pick my name, and fueled my FX hobby. And I'm still attached, even realizing he's a real person and all- But...it's weird to just, be upfront with something like that, so I'm just...burying it as best as I can. David: He's a little rough around the edges but he’s good to have in a trial, plus when you can get past the walls, he’s nice to talk to. Kate: Her music by the campfire is calming and she’s such a sweetheart. If we were in a better situation I’d love to learn Guitar from her, but, it’s hard when you’re a moment away from a trial at any given time. Amalthea (@askthewidowstars OC): She judged my entire vibe but jokes on her I’m the one who snagged a cutie for life- Meg: If I had a dollar for every time she left me for dead I would have enough money to paint the entire campfire in solid gold. The only time we’ve ever properly talked was about SAW traps and 90% of it was her admitting she could beat every single trap because she was ‘built different’  Jeff: He’s a sweetheart and really nice to be around. Sometimes when we’re by the campfire in our downtimes I’ll let him draw on my arm. it kinda makes me want a tattoo, honestly. If we ever get out of here, I might get one. Steve: Bros!! We kinda make up team ‘Altruistic Himbo’, Plus the ‘Babysitter/Brother’ Vibes mesh really well. I kinda wanna re-style his hair though, mostly because it looks fluffy, and nice to play with.  Quentin: Bros!! We’re gonna make matching T-Shirts about committing Arson on Freddy in particular. He’s fun to hang around in our downtime, and I hope there’s a chance he can get some actual rest, even in here. He deserves it. Adam: If Dwight wasn’t the leader I feel like he’d take over the Reigns. I feel like he’s the calm type that doesn’t handle energetic types well though. Which, y’know, makes things hard.  Nea: Anytime I see her she’s either sneaking around the map and watching everyone get killed, or doing something stupid to get herself killed. I’d get grey hair if We were actually friends.  Feng: Gamer bros- I got to find out we actually played a lotta the same stuff before we were taken by the Entity. We get a chance to nerd out in between trials- Laurie: Best Final Girl hands down. I kinda hope she can teach me Decisive Strike one day- I feel like its also just a little awkward since again, still a fan of Myers Nancy: She doesn’t agree that Demo’s a good boy, which makes sense, but we but heads over it. Also I’m pretty sure she wants me dead for touching the bones around the map one too many times. They’re just too tempting.... Jake: He’s pretty quiet, but he’s helpful in trials. I heard he’s been to a convention a few times, but I don’t think he’s actually into it as much as I thought...Which kinda sucks. I’d love more cosplay buddies y’know? Yui: Kinda makes me want a motorbike. We don’t talk but she seems really cool. A little too cool to me around if that makes sense.  Yun-Jin: She benefits off of throwing everyone else under the bus. And 90% of the time she will throw everyone under the bus. Even if she needs actual help to escape the trial.  Cheryl: Cheryylll!!  She’s really cool and honestly would add her to the ‘Can kill god if she was not nerfed’ Squad. Especially since y’know, she has- I bet if we got enough of the kids together we could just beat the Entity’s ass. I know she could.  Tapp: Always been a fan of Tapp before I was taken, although I feel like he’d wanna arrest me if we weren’t in the Entity’s Realm. I might be a little too excited for my own good about Kramer���s work. I don’t think he’d believe the fact its a movie either.  Ace: He’s kinda like the Uncle of the group around the campfire, but, coming into trials, He’s still for saving his own skin- You can also only stand dad jokes for so long. Especially in an eternity like this.  Leon: He’s cool!!! I got so excited first realizing He and Jill were here, and I wanna get a chance to talk to him about everything that went down, but Haven’t got the chance. He’s nice inside of Trials though, usually doesn’t leave anyone behind. Not a fan of getting blinded though.  Jill: She knows how to lead the trials well, and I look up to her a lot. She’s always been such a badass!!  Bill: If Bill gets his hands on a weapon the entire Realm would be fucked. Badass as hell and Kinda scary. Another one on the list of ‘Entity needed to Nerf’ Felix: You’d think a Childless Father and a Fatherless son would be able to bond a bit more, but, I think we each kinda get the same vibe of homesickness from one another. He’s kind though, and it’s neat to see his work whenever we’re by the campfire.  Elodie: She’s better at helping out than most of the others, but she’s still in a survival of the fittest mindset. I loved hearing about her studies from before she was taken though. I feel like if we had more time we could dig deeper into this whole world and what its about. But we don’t get that- Zarina: We just don’t really click as much, honestly. I’d love to get to know her better but I think she’s more into digging into the killers and what she can find out about this place. Which y’know, could be better done with a team. Sage (@askthewidowstars OC): HUSBAND!!! My husband. I love him to the Moon and back. He’s amazing and I miss him even when we’re five feet apart-  ...I need a hug now-  Amanda: Best girl hands down!! We vibed a lot in between Trials talking about her traps and old designs, she was impressed by my knowledge, and we hang out in Gideon sometimes!   Ghostface: He’s pretty cute- Also fun to be around, even if he’s kind of a dick when he’s actually at work, it’s better when you’re outside of a Trial. It’s also neat to see he’s not just two idiots in a halloween costume and his own person, as much as I love the Scream Series, too-  Leatherface: Bubba!!! Honestly I’d handle being chainsawed. Fuckin Love Bubba-  Huntress: I wanna learn how to throw hatchets but I know I never will. She’s kinda scary, but also I feel like if she could adopt some of the others in the Realms, she totally would.  Oni: The only times I’ve ever really seen him is just before my skull gets bashed in. All I really have associated to him is the splitting headache.  Twins: I’m gonna punt Victor into the sun. I haven’t been good around kids beforehand and this tiny gremlin motherfucker just makes it worse.  Pinhead: I was so excited to see him!! He’s one of the few that talks more often than not in a trial, and he’s always had this air of elegance about him which makes it so much cooler! I’d be tempted to grab the box to solve it, but, at the same time Dwight’s already been hunted. I just...want to see how it works, really. Maybe if I ask nicely? Nah, probably not.  Pyramid Head: He’s so fucking COOL!!! He’s always just been really fucking cool and I still get stars in my eyes. I wanna re-create his weapon one day.  Joey: Joey’s one of the chill killers to be around, probably my favorite amongst the legion. Also Cosplay gang?? Hello? Susie: She’s cute!! I like her vibes whenever there’s not violence involved. I wonder if she’d ever get into costume making, she has the artistic eye for it. I also wonder if she’d ever dye other people’s hair...I’d kinda want green tips one day- Frank: Still wanna throw a palette at him. He’s one of the more serious of the Legion, and usually the one you’d find with a Mori. Not as Serious as Julie but only because he has the cocky god complex to go with it.  Julie:  She’s definitely the most serious out of the Legion. There’s no real rest whenever we’re in a trial against her. Scary as hell and less of a bastard than the other three.  Hillbilly: I know he deserved a lot better than this, especially after hearing more about him. I...Haven’t gotten to see much than the end of his chainsaw though.  Blight: This dude’s singlehandedly bringing back my fear of needles and I thought I lost that with HRT- Also like, dude spits up orange fuckin everywhere.  Michael: My Mans!! I always get a little excited knowing we’re up against him. It’s habit- It’s kinda weird to see him easily affected by like, palettes or flashlights though.  Spirit: She seems like she could be nice when there’s some downtime. I’m also one of the few that can understand her well enough, which probably makes things easier. I found out she’s basically my age when I survived a trial by myself. I’d hope to hang out more sometime. Nemesis: God he’s so fucking tall. Kinda surprised it was Nemesis out of everyone that could’ve been brought, and also, kinda terrified? Still am kinda terrified. I’m surprised he hasn’t just torn up an entire map yet. His zombie minions are also annoying. Wraith: All this motherfucker does is roll up to pull me off Gens and Exist as a problem. I don’t see much of him outside of a Trial. Trapper: Motherfucker Incarnate. If the Entity lets us throw hands I’m fighting him first.  Freddy: ....Gross. I liked the Nightmare on Elm Street series a lot, but...Freddy as a person? Ew. Especially this iteration.  Demogorgon: Demopuppy!! He’s a good boy and he deserves to get treats. Even if the Treats are flesh....I wonder if he likes candy though. Trickster: Pretty!! He also Gives me DIO vibes because of the Jacket and the Knife throwing...Imagine if a killer could stop time...that’d be terrifying. Deathslinger: I wanna sit down and look at his gun more but I also feel like if I ask I’d just get shot on sight. Intimidating as hell but also cool. Mary: ....Still on the very complicated ‘Ex Girlfriend that murdered me’ State. It’s hard to avoid her though. Especially since she wants to get back together since we’re stuck here. Nurse: She does not help my fear of Hospitals, honestly. While she’s easy to go up against, it’s still eugh. Plague: I really, really hate her power. The Sickness and the Vomit is just- Eughhhhh- It just hits every bad sensory issue at once.  Clown: ...I get killers are Killers and aren’t supposed to be good people but also like....Disgusting. Please Remove from the Realm. He’s just- ...Ew.  Doctor: NOPE. NO. NEVER. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

[possiblyjad]

So I noticed that I have had a bunch of new followers over the last month or so and I haven't taken the time to send you guys love and a proper intro! So here we go:

Hi! My name is Jade, but you can also call me Jad. I'm 27, Canadian (I live in Niagara Falls), and super queer. I use both she and they pronouns. I have two conflicting aesthetics of super cutesy pastel stuff and emo renaissance. I love fashion, makeup, and body modification as outlets of expression. I go to school VERY soon to be an esthetician, and I'm currently looking into the possibilities of getting a piercing apprenticeship.

Under the cut will be 25 random facts about me. Click to see them:

1. I grew up in a smallish town called Bowmanville, which is about an hour east of Toronto. It's rapidly expanding but in the heart of it is a bevy of picture esque historic neighborhoods lined with centuries old mansions. If you ever go, the one place I highly recommend food wise is Norm’s Deli downtown. The handmade pierogis and cabbage rolls are unmatched. Also, if you’re a tattoo fiend like me, some of my all time favourite artists are in Bowmanville/Oshawa.

2. I currently have 4 tattoos and 12 piercings, with the strong desire to get more.

3. My favourite colours are pastels mainly, baby blue, mint, lavender, and millennial pink.

4. I have a caffeine addiction which is usually fueled by coffee (mainly iced) and sugar free energy drinks.

5. I don't really care for alcohol too much, I like the occasional beer at Taps or a cocktail on a hot day, but I hate getting drunk and I'm also not fairly comfortable around drunk people unless I'm also drunk. (I don't really do parties anymore for that very reason)

6. I've been pescatarian since Feb 2020 and I've been trying my hardest to use cruelty free personal care products since the beginning of 2020.

7. My favourite CF makeup brands are Colourpop, Milk Makeup, Sugarpill, and Anastasia Beverly Hills.

8. Even though I'm trying really hard right now, I am USELESS when it comes to hair. I don't really know how to curl hair, I don't know how to braid, and I cannot be trusted with bleach (I won't fry your hair, it'll just be very uneven). I'm trying to learn hair curling now, though!

9. I smoke weed almost everyday. Depending on what I smoke with, it actually levels me out anxiety wise and allows me to focus and think like a normal person. I also smoke before bed to help treat my insomnia. On occasion though, I DO like to get mind numbingly stoned.

10. I actually have a hard time getting close to people, predominantly because of my past relationships with toxic people. My broken brain automatically considers most relationships temporary until proven otherwise, in an attempt to protect myself from further heartache. I always want to make new friends, I swear! Just keep interacting with me and I'll open up at some point.

11. I don't shut the fuck up. Ever. I'm either talking my friends' ears off or I'm complimenting a stranger because I can. Let’s just say that I’m a hit with my friends’ parents or family.

12. I LOVE TTRPG, it’s likely my biggest creative outlet right now. I play both DnD 5E and Pathfinder 1E. I partake in 5 games right now.

13. I’m a first time DM! I started a campaign for a bunch of people who are relatively new to DnD a few months ago and it’s been a hit so far! I absolutely love flexing my creative muscles and writing for my friends!

14. I also write as a hobby as well. Mainly fantasy drabble based on my TTRPG characters, but it’s still something.

15. I’m almost always either listening to music or finding new musicians to listen to. I curate playlists all the time and daydream to songs constantly.

16. My favourite artists/bands right now are: Lights, Marianas Trench, Mothica, BMTH, Halsey, Ashnikko, Billy Talent, Stand Atlantic, and a plethora more.

17. I’m technically the oldest in my family. I have a younger brother (also queer and trans, he recently started HRT!!), and a little half sister who is the literal light of my life.

18. I LOVE animals! I have a senior cat, Willow, who does not look or behave like a senior cat. I also have a lionhead/dwarf rabbit named Theodore, or Theo. I’d get more pets if it weren’t for the fact, we don’t really have the room for other animals in our apartment, and also the fact that Willow hates other cats.

19. I’m TERRFIED of bees/wasps. I understand their importance to the world and they can vibe and save the planet as far away from me as possible.

20. My favourite food is sushi. I’m also a massive sushi snob and I have strong opinions on many of the places I’ve been to in my lifetime. The best I’ve had is still this place in Freehold, NJ that I don’t remember the name of. In Ontario, thus far, is tied between Oishi Maki in Whitby, ON, and the St Catharines location for Wind.

21. I’m also a sucker for good bubble tea. It’s one of the easiest ways to win me over.

22. I just love tea in general. Hot or iced. You should see my tea/coffee cupboard, it is PACKED. I’m a huge David’s tea fan but I also like trying other loose-leaf teas as well, and I prefer herbal/fruit infusions over most other teas. Except for chai, you can win me over with a good chai.

23. I marched in a pride parade once! It was the Durham Pride Parade in Oshawa in 2014! I was still very much in the closet at the time, but I did get photographed by the news and everything! I would LOVE to go to Toronto Pride once in my life with a bunch of my other Alphabet Mafia fiends when things die down.

24. I am a shameless collector of Pokemon and Alpacasso plush.

25. Back when we could, I used to go to conventions a lot! I’ve been to Anime North, Fan Expo, and Con Bravo thus far. My favourite out of all of them is easily Con Bravo, but I would LOVE to check out other Ontario conventions when things open up!

[nappinenn]

contact, wild card

Contact: how does your OC(s) feel about touch/physical contact? are they affectionate? if so, how do they display affection to others?

Ziggy - Hates it unless she's drunk or it's Ellen. Needs plenty of personal space and tends to show affection mostly by doing little things like noticing what kind of starbursts you like so she can leave them uneaten. Makes it a point to perform some sort of PDA with Ellen, so people know they're dating because she's afraid someone might try to hit on her gf.

Ellen - Uncomfortable with strangers, but very affectionate with friends and family. Loves playing with Ziggys hair, especially when they cuddle as they go to sleep. Loves hugs and often leaves notes for people to find. Also overtly concerned of others and their well-being and easily falls into Mom-mode.

Bee - Used to be a big fan, but is wary of it now. Zero interest in romantic affairs. Shows affection and intimacy by being present in the moment and by giving the person he is interacting with his undivided attention. Does engage with friendly shoulder pats and once in a blue moon if someone is willing; a comforting hug (they are VERY good).

Randall: He's a player so ake what you will from that. Has a crush on Ziggy and tries to do some flirty shoulder punches etc. while at work. She punched him back once and he lost a tooth, but at least Ziggy took it home with her which he assumed was just her way of saying she likes him even if it was weird. Very cuddly but kind of an oblivious dumbass so don't expect any emotional awareness from him.

Wild card: talk about any oc! Anything you want!

Okay!! I'm gonna use this to name a couple of them and give you some basic info, since I've never really talked about them 💕

Ziggy, 24, F, a poodle

You've met her! She is the light coloured poodle gal I draw sometimes :D

Ziggy is a complete and utter party animal, has temperament issues and she's just like when she was a teen, except now she's forced to do taxes sometimes. She isn't sociable and many people dislike her as she can be a little crude, standoffish and rude, but she is kind at heart and loves those close to her dearly...in her own way. Ziggy is a heavy smoker, but due to encouragement (read; relentless whining and deep concern) from her girlfriend Ellen, she is trying to transfer to vaping. She doesn't enjoy it as much, but the watermelon flavour has made her more willing to at least try. She also drinks a little too much, and her boss is most displeased about it (she is a bartender at a bar called Sewer Rat). She started HRT at 18.

Ellen, 22, NB, a bombay cat

Goes by she/they but prefers she, is butch, and very progressive. Many people can find her off-putting at first, because she struggles with displaying and reading facial expressions. She is however extremely kind and friendly and tends to keep her girlfriend on a leash aka out of jail for punching a cop or something similar (unless justified!). She grew up too quickly, having to take care of her father who developed bipolar after her mom left. She is responsible and sometimes plays the violin and is oddly good at ballet. Has a distressing obsession with teeth and likes to collect them so having a punch-happy gf has proven to be a real asset in that regard! She does freelancer video editing and photography.

Bee, 37, M, a schnauzer

Weird guy and overly friendly so he can come off as creepy, especially with his unkept appearance. Completely oblivious about it tho and is just overall Extremely sweet. Lonely and jobless, lives off alimony checks he gets from his rich ex-wife. Depressed and still hung up on her, but is trying to let her go since she married the man she had had an affair with for the last 5 years of their marriage. Some fridays the lesbians next door invite him over for dinner and game night. He often brings the only dish he knows how to make, lasagna, because the girls seem to only eat fast food.

Sad because he always wanted to be a dad but couldn't have kids of his own with his ex, so he often hangs out near the fire escape he shares with the other lesbian, Ziggy, so they can chat while she's smoking out her window. Helping Ziggy with her problems has brought him such deep fulfilment he started online university and studies to become a therapist.

Bee is a nickname he was given in middle school, his full name is Bentley.

Randall, 26, M, French bull terrier

A bartender with Ziggy at Sewer Rat. Works out a lot. Doesn't really understand the woke thing and think there is still hope for him because her co-worker had a boyfriend once, even tho she's dated her girlfriend for 4 years. The girlfriend also looks a little like a guy, so maybe she's not a lesbian. Kind of an ass. Lives in a flat with 3 housemates, two being his twin Trevor and adopted brother Stephen. He is the 'middle' pup which has always left him in the shadows of his brothers, especially after Stephen because he was only a few months old when his parents adobted him. A bit bitter, and likes to play pranks. Just an average asshole of a dude. Still, somewhere deep in his heart has hopes of becoming a better person.

Trevor, 26, M, a French bull terrier

An overachiever, suffers from anxiety and wants to have a better relationship with Randall. Skateboards in competitions sometimes and works in an art gallery part-time while going to law school and taking online courses of his true passion; coding. A true busy bee, but only because he is pressured to. Keeps the boys of the household in check and is often labelled as the 'not fun' one. Loyal and kind person, just wants what's best for everyone, especially his brothers. Dislikes their parents, but respects them so keeps his mouth shut. Enjoys politics and often goes to protests and donates go charities. Just wants to sit down with a cup of tea one day and play a visual novel for a couple hours without distractions.

Stephen, 14, M, a fruit bat

Lives with his brothers because their parents left to travel the world. Secretly does graffiti and gets into fights with Trevor a lot. Thinks the world revolves around Randall. A troubled teen. Often hangs out at the youth center with his friends where they play billiard. Gets detention often, mostly for disturbing class and for playing pranks on the teachers.

Venus, 14, M, a rat

Best friends with Stephen since kindergarten. A sweet kid, but feels pressured to be rebellious by his peers. Dates a girl from another school, sorry her parents don't let her use the Facebook so you can't look her up. Videogame streamer and secretly does well in math. Sometimes sad Stephen can be a bit mean, but it's probably just because he is a bat and forced to go to school during the day. Likes salmiakki and avoids anything that isn't vegetarian friendly, but has no set rules about his diet and will down a burger sometimes. Wants to go scuba diving.

[prouddly-me]

My Name Is Gavin: My Full Pre-Transition Story

So, My story begins as a 11/12 year old. That’s when I can remember the most, so that’s what I’ll talk about. I remember that I went to the boys and girls club every day with my little brother in the summer. I had a little group of friends, and they were all boys. This was one of the first distinct times I can remember the feeling of not really being...  a girl, the way I was “supposed” to be. I never aligned myself with feminine things. And no, gender roles are something I no longer care about or really adhere to, but as a child like that, it was my first indicator. I had long hair down to the small of my back and it was one of the biggest sources of my insecurities. At the time I still hadn’t developed mammary tissue so I wasn’t uncomfortable because of that yet. 

As I got a little older, into the 7th grade, I had been begging my parents to let me cut my hair, but my mother was adamant that I keep growing mine. She always cited that she had been traumatized by being forced to cut all of her hair off once as a child. I did later learn that she had gotten lice and their family was too poor to afford treatment for her long hair so they cut it off. While I understand how it could be upsetting, she should not have projected that onto me. Finally though, fate struck and I got lice myself, funnily enough, and I was finally allowed to cut my hair off. By this time I had more body dysphoria that I did not understand, so I had been wearing baggy clothes and long sleeves constantly to try and hide my increasingly feminine body.

It wasn’t much but it was anything. It wasn’t as bad and was more manageable and easier to ignore. While of course it was still upsettingly long, I could live with it. As I grew more, in the 8th grade I started to try and force myself to be more feminine to no avail. I still hated it and still revolted against it as much as I could. I kept my hair as short as my mother would allow me to keep it, and I tried my hardest to keep my clothing androgynous. I never ever wore skirts or dresses because they made me feel abhorrent. I hated it more than anything so I avoided it. My mother hated this. Any time I was forced to wear a dress (easter, other big things) my mother would always emphasize how much she loved it when I wore those things and how beautiful I was. I never felt the same. I felt ugly and disgusting and wrong moreover. 

But my parents pushed for me to be feminine. My mother wanted me to wear makeup, which did develop into something I enjoy greatly, and now, I am a cosmetologist and I actually have a client I regularly do makeup on, including pride makeup. But this push by my parents to pursue more feminine interests didn’t really pan out other than me starting to like makeup. I have a hard time wearing it because I don’t feel like I pass when I wear makeup, but I love it deeply to this day. 

My first distinctly short haircut came when my dad’s friend who happened to be a hair stylist told him he wanted to color and cut my hair. It was the first step in a long line of getting myself to where I wanted to be. He gave me some blonde highlights and cut it shorter. Now, I’m not such a fan of the cut on me, but back then it was a huge victory for me. Something felt better. Something was better. By this time I believe I was a freshman in high school, and I had begun using a binder that was unsafe, similar to what’s pictured below. It hurt a lot to wear but it made me feel better when I wore it. I was not binding every day due to fear that my parents would be angry at me. At this time I identified as genderfluid and had not yet chosen a new name. 

With that haircut and my first binder though I started to feel more comfortable. By the beginning of my sophomore year, I now realized who I was and began identifying as a transgender male instead of genderfluid. Now, I don’t mean to say that genderfluid people just don’t know, just so that no one feels that way. In my personal journey, I misidentified myself because I didn’t really understand the way I felt yet. And that’s not bad. people question their identities all the time, and if that’s how you feel as well, I hope you become more secure. However, at this time, my parents actually pushed me to grow my hair back out. They didn’t say it outright but they would never take me to get my hair cut, so it was getting... out of control and my image was all wrong to me. At this time, I finally settled on a name that I would later change. I was Chase Jason. I changed it to Elliott in my senior year of high school to keep my original initials.

Finally, it took my mother telling me she hated my ugly combover and starting an argument with me to get a really, really good haircut that I loved and that made me feel more like me again. We went to my dad’s friend, and I told him exactly what I wanted. Sadly.. he went a little longer, because he wanted to avoid upsetting my parents. I understand the sentiment but now that I myself am a hair stylist, I do think that I was more than old enough to decide my own haircut. It was enough though. I liked it and I kept it a similar style for a long time.

When I started to really be happy with my appearance it wasn’t until my junior year when I went to see a friend of mine at her beauty school, which I now attend as well and will be graduating from in october. I told her my identity and that I wanted an androgynous look that my parents couldn’t object to, but while preserving my masculinity. She colored it how I wanted it and cut it so that I looked amazing. I hate to really focus on the way my hair looked through the years but I feel like that really marked my progress in my transition. By this time I was binding semi regularly with yet another unsafe binder but by the middle of this year I would get my first safe binder. 

At the end of my junior year I had silver hair, bound safely, and I felt so much happier with myself. I was out to my friends and had been for quite some time, and I didn’t question myself anymore. It felt so good to understand myself and be happy about it. Of course, I wasn’t out to my parents yet, and I was terrified to come out to them. That fact to this day is saddening, but is by no means my fault. My senior year was fantastic though, I got my first tattoos and I finally felt comfortable and happy and empowered in my body. The summer after I graduated, I felt like I looked the most masculine I ever could. While I was visiting my best friend to see a concert with them, They and I took this picture and to this day the way I looked makes me feel so, so happy.

From there it was easy going, appearance wise. The big struggle for me now was to get onto HRT and figure out my top surgery. However when I started college it was back to unsafe binding when I shrunk my underworks binder during a period of dysphoria where I really just hated my body and needed to change it. Though I do feel like college was the time for my absolute best looks that made me feel the most confident, I was stuck in a pretty eternal pit of... I don’t think I’ll ever make it and transition, and it got really, really hard for me.

I even took on a more masculine job as an auto tech at an oil change place to make myself feel more valid. I didn’t feel good. It was really rough. Around this time was when I started to bind less and less. I tried to wear sports bras or wear baggy clothes instead because I was starting to hurt my ribs. Like I mentioned in my introduction post to this blog, I capped off at a 38D, so I have a good bit to bind. I also... had a lot of issues with people, including a friend of mine I no longer speak to as of three year ago, who would comment on my chest. They would tell me that it was a shame I wanted to cut them off because they were so big and nice. It made me hate myself so much. It made me feel disgusting and like a freak and like I would never pass in a million years. I switched back to my really unsafe binder because it felt like I passed much more in it. Once I switched back to safe binding near the time I dropped out of college though, I realized it was a better option the entire time. Around this time was when I picked my current name, which is the name I plan to legally change my name to: Gavin Alexander.

 Now we bring ourselves to last year, when I stopped binding regularly because of the pain I was in because of it. However, last year was also when I came out to my parents. Technically I came out in 2016. I did it on new years eve, because I knew my parents would be drinking and they were both milder people when they drank. So, I came out. My father has... tried. He offered to help me, and he told me that he accepts and loves me. He does not call me by my chosen name and refers to me as his daughter, but I do not hold it against him because I know he tries. My mother however, maliciously calls me the wrong name, because she feels like “I’m your mother, I get to pick your name.” so she refers to me as James when she really feels like it. But rarely. She calls me my dead name more often. My brother however, when I came out to him this most recent winter after my parent’s divorce, when he and I started to get along better, told me he had known, and that he was waiting for me to tell him. He told me he had never called me by my name and that calling me anything but the nickname he’d called me since he learned to talk would be hard. He still calls me “sis” however, he told me now he wants it to be a play on “cis” to make me feel better. I like the effort and how much he’s trying, so I like it. He also calls me bro a lot, and it’s great. Last year was also when I began to embrace more “feminine” things like makeup and the color pink again, and when I began beauty school.

And this brings us to close to present day and present day. In school I have been met with a lot of support by my classmates and friends, and I don’t have a single friend that refuses to call me Gavin. It feels amazing. I’m happier and calmer now, and last year was also when I began to seriously research and pursue HRT on my own. I struggled a lot of last and this year because I was trying to figure out a way to go through my doctor. However, my family doctor is through a catholic organization so I was trying to figure out how to switch healthcare providers. This never panned out. I even tried asking my psychiatrist to help me and give me a referral but a specialist can’t refer to a specialist. She wanted to help me more but she couldn’t. I don’t hold it against her. 

This year, I’ve been working on taking care of myself better, and I haven’t been binding in order to let my ribs heal from the damage of years of unsafe binding to make sure that later when I work towards top surgery I don’t have complications. Now though I have my initial appointment for HRT at Planned Parenthood. I’ll be updating you all and doing voice and facial comparisons as well as documenting other changes and my experience with PP. Moving forward I can tell myself that It’s been me who had my own back and me who got me through this. I can’t wait to see what the future holds, and how much better things will get. 

[unravelling-the-world]

I was trying my best, and another friend who always took pictures of us (we took pics of him as well dw) documented all of those moments, i even used a not-permanent spray color hair for that day just so the pictures could be special. I didn't particularly like myself, I never did ,but I was too busy to think about it. When i went out, i felt decent at least. Binder, thick under-eye red/black liner, just the perfect e-boy look i wanted. I felt that, as a pre-hrt person, I was looking as masc as I could while doing the style that makes me comfortable and I want to achieve. I was doing my best everytime we went out to look presentable in the pictures, and I did well 9/10 times. At some point, there was a light festival as well. I went with one friends and my cousin and we had fun. My friend and I took pictures, my cousin didn't want hers taken but we still interacted a lot and had fun, I loved the pics of that day. I never got to post them, because my downfall came soon after. At that point in time, I was finally living the dream. I posted frequently on ig (bc i went out frequently) and even though i wasn't anyone big, no partnerships or anything, not even 1k followers, I was growing, and having been intoxicated by fame at age 12, it was just what I needed. My posts started getting 70 likes on average and 7-10 comments, i only had 500 followers but they were growing at an average of 20 followers/month. A lil tween reached out to me and told me he thought I was really cool and was my fan. Bro, that was awesome. Things were moving forward, and altough i felt afraid of the future, I was working on it all. I was making progress in other aspects as well,having come out formally recently and with help from my psychologist, we were going to start looking into hrt, and i just couldn't believe it. I only have read fast and short info. I never really wanted to inform myself more because deep within me I was just afraid I'd never be able to get it and get my hopes up for nothing. We appointed a session to talk about that. This was march, and at my house, we watched a Japanese channel (because we are all interested in Japanese culture and such) So I knew the coronavirus was coming. They started talking about it since the start, in december, obviously, because they are way closer to where the virus started so it spread faster there. I remember it was on a cruise first. I knew it would eventually arrive here, so through all summer i told my mother "it's only a matter of time." I knew it'd come. March was here, and the last time i went out with my friends came along. Inside my head, I felt like I knew that was the last time. I had thoughts about "I wonder if i'll ever get to see a sight like this again". I managed to take some pictures, because,inside me, I knew that was the last time. I wanted to preserve the memory of it. I didn't want to forget. At the time, with a friend, who took the same metro line as me but lives further away, since it was just us two, when saying goodbye we'd always say "see you in five minutes" (like in endgame, because i told her the whole movie and told her when they said that and then black widow died) and she LAUGHED so hard and it became an ongoing joke between us (we are both kinda suicidal ngl but we just laugh abt it.) We said it that day as well, but we actually never saw each other again lmao

At that point, in the country, there were about 4 covid cases. Only 1 in the capital, so it had started, but was only just the start. When I got home, i kind of knew that was the last. My classes started, and for two weeks, it was hell on earth. Online,obviously. I got paired up with the guy I hated the most in the entire generation (I only knew half of them, and liked even fewer, but this guy. fuck. i would have killed him. he was awful.) Anyways. Yeah. But at the end, classes got postponed until further notice. So I was now a Neet! For a while, even though coronavirus was getting worse and worse here as everywhere, I was doing good. I was living the introvert dream, and since I have a decent/good relationship with my parents and grandma, life was just great. All around me I saw everyone struggle with quarantine. I was having a blast. Playing sims, watching anime, anything went. Shit was great. Got Gta V for free when epic released it, and had a blast. Got obsessed with obey me for a while. It was all fun.... Met via discord with my friends. Almost daily with certain friends, once in a while with others, but the whole group would be together at least once. It was good, for me. I felt good. I would ocassionally wake up and tell my mother that I was happy, and hug her. I don't think i'd ever done that. I was at peak, and I knew it. Drew a lot, played a lot. Did a lot of things and projects. Everything felt ok...My dysphoria wasn't great during these times (since now i stay in pajamas all day except when I use camara to meet with friends, and obviously I dont wear my binder with my pajamas) But i had so much free time, that I could just ignore it. (I'm good at avoiding things. at running away.)

Classes started June 1st. First day, I had a breakdown. I don't remember why, but I couldn't connect to class. I felt overwhelmed. I don't know and don't like asking for help because i feel useless when I do. So I didn't. Apparently I seemed more upset than I thought, because my dad noticed. When comforted or confronted, I always cry. I can't talk about my feelings without crying. I feel weak for expressing them. Even writing this, i feel the knot in my neck. My dad saw and ended up helping and comforting. I cried a lot. I went to class, but spent the whole 3 hours of class crying. Things were unstable for a while, but I was keeping afloat, I guess. I started feeling like shit, I wasn't happy daily anymore. Online learning felt so distant and so difficult and so different. I don't like change. At least not without expecting it beforehand. So yeah, that ended up taking a toll on my mental health. The downfall started. I was quite busy, but still tried to meet with friends via discord whenever we could. We had some online birthdays, and season 3 of osomatsu san had already been announced. I was looking forward to it so much. I was in pain, but that thought was keeping me going. I started getting worse, mentally. I started isolating myself ocasionally. I have quite long gaps from this period. I can't really recall much of what happened or what it was like. At some point around August-September I was watching 6teen, because my uni decided that starting a semester and compressing it into a trimester was a good idea, and finals were in september, i think. At the time of finals, i was watching 6teen. I didn't wanna finish it, so I started total drama after. I had a week of vacation in September as well, and I think I was OK for the week.

I won't lie. I don't remember october. I only know Osomatsu-san started here bc I waited for it all year long. I regained closer contact with a friend who lives in japan. Halloween also had an online meeting. I cosplayed, and felt good with myself for the night, for the first time in months. But I ended up having a breakdown later that night. A friend who didn't come and had said he'd come ended up arriving very late (2-3AM ish, meeting was at 10PM) He was very drunk. I don't mind. He says he just came to say sorry he didn't come bc he ended up meeting with irls. We tell him it's ok. He disconnects. He reconnects not long after, but we are confused, since that's not his voice. It was his friend who took his phone, a classic party prank. Doesn't matter, it was fun for a bit. This guy is also mad drunk, so talking to him is weird and funny. But shit gets bad for me in a bit. I was using a voice changer, as I usually do online, because Im ashamed of my high pitched voice. But this guy misgenders me, more than once, and also my friend who lives in japan. He doesn't seem to care, and I act like I don't, but it hurts so bad. My other friend who was there at that time corrects him, more than once. I felt thankful to her. I never thanked her afterwards because I didn't know how to bring out that topic without crying. This guy is very drunk though, and altough i doubt he had vile intentions because of the way he phrased it, he insists, that those are womans voices. They talk about it a bit, verbal comebacks. I wanted them to stop. At some point, my friend who lives in Japan leaves bc its lunch time for him. I felt like shit. I just told this other guy "I'm 10" and he dropped the subject, he believed me and the explanation. My friend laughed her ass out, because she thought I said it as a joke. Truth is, that was just a desperate answer to get him to drop the topic. I dont really care if he believed I was 10 or not though. I just wanted it to stop. He jokes with my friend for a bit more. I didn't talk much after, because I felt ashamed. I didn't want to talk ever again. Even now, even with the voice changer, I don't have the confidence I had when I started using it. I have lowered the pitch twice, just in case. My friend left the call a bit later. When she left, I left as well. I was thankful to her though. I don't remember if i cried or not, but it caused me a massive breakdown for about two weeks. I didn't talk online with anyone until my birthday, I think. I didn't tell anyone but my psychologist this.

I don't remember November much either. I know it's my birthday, and I know I came back to tumblr in november. Yall know when. Canon destiel and shit. Tumblr hadn't felt so alive in years. It felt like home. I remember I was having a bad breakdown during that time. I think it was career related. I can't really remember much. The shitshow happening on tumblr Destiel Election actually helped me get better. I remember this only because of a conversation I had with a friend. I started working on christmas decorations as well. December came along, I worked hard on christmas decorations. I played a bit as well, because on some of my classes I just didn't have anything to do lol. Decorations were finished two weeks in advance for christmas. For the first time ever! I was happy. During these times,Nov-Dec lockdowns started easing up a bit. I still can't go out at all though, because I live with my grandmother, so we're supposed to minimize risks. My parents only go out for shopping essentials that can't be bought online. So it's fair and I understand it, but it started becoming hard on mental health. Not because I can't go out, but because my friends start going out. They know I can't go, they don't exclude me, but they know I can't and I also know I can't. I guess in a form, its jealousy. It becomes hard because there's no one to blame. It's no one's fault. I'm not excluded on purpose, but the truth is, I don't want to hear them talk about what they do when they have fun. I've always been insecure. Even when all evidence points otherwise, I still believe, deep inside,they hate me. They wish I weren't in the group and would be better off without me. It gets hard sometimes.

Even though in general December was quite good, it also came with a major breakdown. One of my best friend's bday is in December. Up until then, Me, her, and another friend had been playing league of legends nearly daily. It was toxic sometimes (the game/community, not my friends) but we had fun. I just liked playing together. But that would come to an end as well. My friend celebrated her birthday, and did invite me, but obviously I couldn't go,and she knew this beforehand, so she didn't get mad or anything. She handled the situation very well, wrote on the gc once, and then did a special gc for birthday attendants to talk about details there and such, and reminded friends who asked in the gc to talk in the birthday gc. (this is how i knew, but i think it was well done tbh, i wish they'd just asked in the bday gc instead so i wouldn't have seen it and felt bad about how i couldn't go) My friend also offered to have me as an online guest, like, being in videocall in the computer on the table. like Karen from spongebob ig. the idea was cool, but honestly i felt bad. She celebrates her bday with her gf bc their dates are near, and I just didn't really want to inconvenience them? I mean, her gf is cool and she used to hang out with our group ocassionaly and she was cool and fit in, and it never felt awkward talking to her irl or anything but it's not like she's my friend and honestly I didn't wanna inconvenience her party, and even though I'm sure my friend wouldn't have minded, I didn't want to be an extra inconvenience for her too. I just wanted her to have fun, honestly. But feeling like a burden ended up weighing on my mind. This caused a bad bad breakdown, beforehand I had started to become better,little by little, but these two weeks waiting for that event to happen felt like a nightmare to me. I didn't tell anyone. I think i wrote it about here once. Around this time, an account on instagram called "matsunoadvice" got reccomended to me, and Oh boy Have I gone to them for advice. Of course, I sent them a message at the time, desperate for someone to talk to, because I couldn't tell anyone about this, because all my other friends know each other kinda and i didn't wanna inconvenience everyone. I didn't want anyone to know i felt like shit. I felt thankful to my friend, because she did try her best to include me, I just didn't really wanna inconvenience anyone. I guess I'd rather suffer alone myself than being a pain in the ass for someone else. After all, I've accepted that I'm alone long ago, and since now there's nothing I can do to maintain my social relationships now,I may as well just accept that theyre ending now. I kind of isolated myself for those two weeks, sometimes i would still connect on discord, but it always felt kind of distant. I stopped playing league of legends around this time.

I still hadn't confirmed to my friend if i was virtually going or not. Truth is, i kind of knew I probably wouldn't want to go in the end, bc im Like That™ But i told her in advance that i'd let her know the date of the event early in the day because of how unstable I am and I wouldn't actually be sure until the day (which was true when I told her) So the day of the event i told her that I was thankful but I wouldn't be assisting virtually and told her to have a great day! She replied okay in a nice way as she always did. I don't think she seemed weirded out by my answer. I hope she didn't feel bad, because she's very empathetic so I hope she didn't think about me at all that day. I hope she never reads this, and even if she does, she didn't really do anything wrong and handed the situation the best she could, the pain was unevitable for me due to the situation. beforehand i had also had a similar breakdown though, because 3 friends who i was/am? still very close to started meeting each other to skate together. I don't know how to skate/have never skated and obviously can't go either way, and sometimes they'd talk about it in the vc. I remained calm always until the call ended,but I did cry about it late at night. It's selfish, of course, but when no one saw anyone, it was easier. we were all the same. But now it felt like they were all moving on without me. In a way, it's what I always wanted, but I always wished to die first. I know it's not sane, but i'd imagined situations like that in my head, where I die and then everyone moved on and it made me feel calmer. But seeing that unfold before my eyes, when i'm still breathing here, i'm still here. It felt lonely. I'm glad they're having fun. I'm just upset I can't do it as well? And it makes me feel like inevitably my relationships with them will break and fall apart and dissapear and they're all still gonna be a interwined network, even though I did everything I could to maintain it because it's all I've ever had outside of my direct family? I didn't make any friends at uni or have a different group of friends so it just...hurt? It still hurts, i'm just more used to it. Also after the bday i did try to connect in vc but it just made me worse, like a friend said like "noo it got too wild honestly u didnt miss anything" and i was like lmao ok but i felt like kinda sad anyways but if i was there i wouldve probably slept through it anyways

...after i felt awful bc i have another friend who is just kinda blunt and kinda dumb when it comes to how others feel, and he was like ohh yeah but after the bday [friend] took us and some of [friends gf's friends] to our houses and since it was early we went to a mcdonalds and it was so fun !! and it was just so uncomfortable bc obviously im glad you have fun but like i dont wanna know??? bc it hurts a fuckin lot???? and my other friend who was also in vc (he was the one w the car) he was like "haha yeaaa it was fun" but he seemed quite uncomfortable talking abt it he could probably tell i didnt wanna hear and ik my other friend only did it bc he's naive not bc he had bad intentions but yeah it sucked i was like haha thats great heh.....like what ya want me to say babe

Christmas arrived and it ended up helping me a lot. Christmas is my favorite holiday and I decorated a month in advance, baked cookies for the first time (with my mom) and we just did a lot of things this year. It made me happy and kept me occupied through the pain (I know i described a lot of pain here but I only paid attention to it at night, which is why it still hurts now probably bc i've had it all repressed) And of course the gifts, honestly I didn't know what to expect because this year I didn't really know what to ask for and just asked for a surprise (because i love receiving things! anything) And my dad definetely outdid himself with all the gifts, I loved them and they're all useful too! I was amazed and i told my friends abt it and it ended up in me talking more in the vc again, and i also started playing genshin impact in late december as well. We also held a secrer santa in the group but not everyone participated (mostly bc of money) but the 4 of us that did was fun! i knew everyone's secret santa bc 2/4 asked to me for help and they were mutual </3 so i knew me and my other friend were mutual too lol but it was cool. I kinda was a bitch a bit though bc he delievered my gift to my home and was going to come a random day and I just wasn't prepared bc I was afraid of seeing him honestly I didn't want to see him and I hoped he wouldn't come? He didn't come that day but he did come some days after, I truly wasn't ready at that point anyway and my mom said we could let him inside if he sanitized, but he came with his mother and didn't get out of the car, we just exchanged the gifts, and honestly I was glad, i was polite and just said hi to both and thanks and all! Obviously i love him a lot bc we're close but idk why i didnt want him to come into my house i just feel like im so boring now and I dont know what we couldve talked abt and honestly ive always been shy but now i just forgot how to socialize and i was terrified so when he didnt get out i was just glad.....well, also

I feel like all of these incidents separated me and my friend who had her birthday on december. Now she wouldn't join the vc or gc often (or say she couldn't, which she usually did before) so I just assumed she hated me, but i didn't really have the guts to ask? She still liked my memes on the gc sometimes but not as she used to, she always used to like every single meme (or nearly all) and she never talked over me (I always get talked over except when I'm drunk bc i become a bit less shy therefore more violent) and would even call others out for me when talked over and always respected everything i told her abt me (Through the years, i've told her some of my deepest shits bc i just trust her like that i dont mind if she knows) but it just felt distant? Also a bit before that, at the start of december we started streaming on twitch, and that week i was very bad I told her i wouldn't play much bc i wasnt doing well but I was up for streaming bc i rly wanted to be professional abt it even if we dont pursue it as a career, but in the end we didnt stream, and fell out of streaming a bit after that. I was kind of afraid to ask her if she wanted to stream again, but we'd talked once and she said she'd finally gotten the cat earphones for the streams (she mentioned she wanted them beforehand) yeah anyways i dont think she actually hates hates me but idk the idea still lingers in my mind

uh yeah also i felt like shit for a bit bc i thought she definetely hated me bc we hadnt talked in a bit and she didnt like my memes anymore so i just assumed the worst, i even listened to break up music (which is what i do when a friendship ends bc altough ive never rly had strong romantic feelings for anyone that kind of song helps me move on after friend breakups too bc no one warns you abt how painful these are) and i cried obviously, but again i never mentioned it to anyone (i made a few vague textposts here though) and just got my shit together even if it hurt? lol, well a bit of time passes and everything seems to go back to normal, i dont remember how she told us but she said she had a job now which is why she didnt connect much and slept earlier and i felt relief lol bc i legit thought she hated me and i felt like shit abt it lol i mean the idea they kinda hate me lingers in my mind all the time but at that point in life i was like. SURE she hated me until that point. now we ocasionally play genshin together but i cant really talk at that time and that also makes me upset bc i do wake up late and im trying to fix my schedule a bit by waking up at 2pm instead of 5 pm but it doesnt even matter bc i play board games with my grandma daily (bc its good for her and its fun i do enjoy it) i just wish we could do it earlier bc lately she gets up at like 9pm and i end up finishing playing at 11/12/1 and its just kinda late to meet w my friends bc i always have smth to do/finish after and i just cant make it in time even if i wake up earlier? lol but i cant change her schedule so theres nothing i can do but cry about it

oh also ik matsunoadvice gave me advice on this but like there's this friend who i love obviously but sometimes he just talks abt his meetings w other friends and like it only makes me angry as fuck and i cant ask him to not bc im too shy but i wish he could stop. and also when he complains abt skate related stuff it makes me unexplainably angry but like i have no reason or right to im just angry bc i cant do that and probably never will bc i doubt ill ever be able to go out again ?? lol. and he even offered like "when we go out again u should come and ill lend u my skate and if u like it u can get one" and honestly its all super nice and i appreciate it and ive thanked him and told him yes but it just makes me feel angry inside bc i dont see an ending with all the mutations and shit and my voice cracks when i tell him haha yeah if we ever meet again bc honestly my youth is already over and i just spent it like a social recluse and i read a post here when i was younger that said like lgbt people spend their teens closeted and ashamed and live their teens in their twenties but now im gonna miss my twenties to the pandemic and then ill be too fucking old and itll be too fucking late and ill have to die and i just never lived bc i still havent even transitioned yet and i doubt ill ever be able to (this also causes me a lot of pain but i will ignore it) and the other day he said like i hope i can see u this year bc i miss u and i just said that honestly ive lost all hope of ever seeing anyone again and my voice cracked and my other friend said something related but not so related and im just glad he talked in bc i didnt rly care i just wanted to change the topic bc i know ill never see them again and eventually probably lose contact and see them all have fun together without me just as if i was dead but just didnt pass away and its difficult but i have to accept it and it hurts a lot now but in 7 years itll be fine, just like i accepted im unlovable and will never have a s/o and when i was 12 that hurt a lot but now it doesnt so someday i will be alone but i hope it doesnt hurt anymore.

this is all a mess and the format is everywhere and theres no timeline i hope no one reads it. if u do read it im sorry. i just honestly been carrying all of this for a while now and i want it out of my system honestly bc i dont know what to do with it and i was on the verge of a breakdown for a minimal thing hours ago i just want all this info out of my brain.....also obv these are only the bad things that have happened/good things that took me out of the hole but a lot of good things happened too lol and i skipped a lot of imp points like i changed careers and shit and also i met a lot of cool mutuals since i got back to tumblr and ososan been carrying my mental health every monday but yeah i just wanted the negatives out of the system. the frustrations and the anger. i hope no one reads this fr its so messy

[crystalracing]

20. Josef Newgarden

After finishing runner-up in British Formula Ford in 2009, Newgarden had his fingers burnt in the inaugural GP3 series in 2010 when average results and a lack of funding left his F1 dream in tatters. A return Stateside in 2011 saw him crowned Indy Lights champion and, over the next decade, become a two-time IndyCar champion.

He’s never denied the strong allure of a switch to Formula 1: “I’d [still] like to do it,” he told the New York Times just 10 days ago. But with a plum seat his at Team Penske, we can’t see him taking the leap anytime soon.

19. Jamie Whincup

He's Australian Supercars' Michael Schumacher with seven championship titles and the most race wins in that championship's history, so the thought of Whincup in Formula 1 gets the blood pumping.

Fast, consistent and dependable, Whincup has only finished outside the top-three in the championship once since 2007. Even at 37, retirement supposedly looming, he's winning races and has a contract through 2021. The mind boggles at what Whincup, who started in single-seaters, might have achieved in open-wheel racing.

18. Davide Valsecchi

Known today as the most effervescent of racing pundits, if you could imagine taking that enthusiasm and manifesting it behind the wheel, that’s how he drove: Valsecchi was a joy to behold. His junior racing career yielded just one win, but when he arrived in GP2 he flourished and was crowned both GP2 and GP2 Asia champion.

Promoted to Lotus F1 reserve, his big break should have come when Kimi Raikkonen missed the final two races of 2013. Yet the team opted to call up the perceived safe hands of Heikki Kovalainen, who finished a disappointing and distant 14th in both races – most frustratingly at Abu Dhabi where Valsecchi held the record as the most successful driver at the circuit in GP2, scoring three wins and two P2s. His dream crushed, he hung up his helmet in 2016.

17. Antonio Felix Da Costa

As a member of the Red Bull junior programme, Portugal’s da Costa should, by rights, have slotted into the mix to partner Jean-Eric Vergne at Toro Rosso in 2014. He had wowed his bosses and the establishment with a sensational 2012 season, juggling multiple disciplines, winning Macau, and narrowly missing out on the GP3 crown.

After a slightly more frustrating 2013 for da Costa, Red Bull brass decided to promote Daniil Kvyat to Toro Rosso to replace the promoted Daniel Ricciardo. DTM came calling for da Costa and then Formula E, where he currently leads the championship.

READ MORE: What now for Hamilton, Vettel and co? How delaying 2021 rules will impact the driver market

16. Gonzalo Rodriguez

“Gonchi” was a racer whose star shone bright and burned out far too quickly. One of an old-school guard, he rocked up to Formula 3000 in the late '90s and left an immediate impression on anyone who had the pleasure of meeting him and watching him race. Physically and mentally strong, friendly and charming, he became a sparring partner and great friend of Juan Pablo Montoya.

The Uruguayan followed his friend back across the Atlantic to race in ChampCar, but he was tragically killed in practice for the 1999 Grand Prix of Monterey at Laguna Seca. Having already secured a seat for the 2000 season with Patrick Racing, there’s no telling what he might have achieved either Stateside or, should fate have allowed, in Formula 1.

15. Simona de Silvestro

Simona could and possibly should have been on the grid as Formula 1’s first female racer in a generation. A regular winner in Formula Atlantic, she was regarded by many in the Indycar paddock as a genuine talent.

In 2014 she took a gamble and walked away from Indycar to pursue a year in the Sauber F1 stable as an affiliate driver in training for a 2015 seat. The team was impressed from her very first laps in their car, with internal talk that she was at least on a par with their then driver Adrian Sutil. But as her backing faltered and with Sauber already on precarious financial ground, her seat and shot at Formula 1 never materialised.

14. Paul Tracy

Although Tracy’s big F1 chance came in the mid-'90s, thus outside our 20-year remit, he could also have made a switch in the 2000s. Testing for Benetton at Estoril in 1994, he lapped faster than both Jos Verstappen and JJ Lehto's qualifying times for that year's Grand Prix.

He was offered a seat, but after seeing how Formula 1 had chewed up the undeniable Indycar driver of the day, Michael Andretti, Tracy decided to keep his focus Stateside. His peak was yet to come and, given his ChampCar title came in 2003, an early 2000s Formula 1 career could have been on the cards. While some might argue that ChampCars suited Tracy’s style better than the F1 machinery of the day, Montoya's transition suggested that PT could have made the jump and shaken up the establishment in much the same way.

13. Colin McRae

Could it have happened? There was certainly talk, and there were definitely some chances. But were they all just sponsor bluster? McRae’s first Formula 1 laps came when he and Martin Brundle did a car swap at Silverstone in 1996. Although purely for promotional reasons, Colin didn’t exactly hang around in the Jordan 195 and lapped within a few seconds of the regular racer, setting a pace which would have been good enough to see him line up on the grid for that year’s Grand Prix.

While McRae returned to rallying and winning world championships, the prospect reared its head once again at the start of the 2000s. With the Scot now a Ford driver, there was talk he might switch to Jaguar's new F1 team. Though McRae called it PR chat, you can’t help but wonder how a switch to F1 would have played out.

READ MORE: Flavio Briatore on crashgate, Schumacher vs Alonso, and winning the title for ‘a t-shirt maker’

12. Robert Wickens

Robert Wickens always seemed to be just that half-step away from getting a full grip on his dream, and he had the talent to ascend to and compete in Formula 1. As part of the Red Bull programme he’d monstered Formula BMW USA and Formula ChampCar Atlantic before running A1GP, F3 and eventually F2 and GP3.

He came second in both the F2 and GP3 championships before taking a reserve driver role at the Virgin F1 Team and moving to World Series where he won the title, beating Jean-Eric Vergne in the process. Dropped by Red Bull, he moved to DTM where he bided his time with Mercedes.

With no F1 opportunities, he found immediate success and became a fan favourite in IndyCar with a pole on his debut and the podiums flowing. Then, he survived a sickening accident at Pocono, which left him paraplegic and one of the greatly missed aces of F1.

11. Gary Paffett

Few drivers have had as many near-misses with an F1 seat as Gary Paffett, but the stand-out DTM driver for over a decade never got the deserved opportunity. An F3 champion in the early 2000s, Paffett made DTM his home and was crowned champion in 2005 before being called up as McLaren's test driver.

In 2006, Juan Pablo Montoya left the team to race in NASCAR and Paffett believed the seat was his, but McLaren went instead for Pedro de la Rosa who had deputised for Montoya at the '05 Bahrain Grand Prix.

For 2007, McLaren had already lined up Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, and Paffett’s chance had gone. He stuck with DTM, becoming one of Mercedes’ most valued assets with another title in 2018.

READ PART 1: Will Buxton's top 20 drivers never to race in F1, #20 to #11

10. Jason Watt

Danish racer Jason Watt had the world at his feet: Danish karting champion, Formula Opel Lotus champion, Formula Ford champion, he was running in DTM against the likes of Dario Franchitti, Giancarlo Fisichella and Alex Wurz when a call came to race Formula 3000.

He leapt at it, finishing third in his debut 1997 season. In 1999, he took the title fight to the finale but Nick Heidfeld ultimately prevailed.

And then F1 came knocking, via the prospect of a shoot-out for Williams against the likes of Brazilian Bruno Junqueira, whom Watt had dispatched with ease in 3000, and an F3 rookie called Jenson Button.

Watt never joined them as a motorcycle accident in 1999 left him paralysed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair. And that was Formula 1 done. He continued to race but Watt's F1 dream had been taken in a cruel twist of fate.

LISTEN: Jenson Button on his 2009 title, his toughest team mate and more, in Beyond The Grid

9. Adam Carroll

Impressive in everything he ever drove and gifted with the most natural flair and touch, Adam Carroll could get into anything and win.

A junior champion, he became one of the stand-outs of the early years of GP2, renowned for a racing hunger and heart that never wavered. He was the ultimate giant killer, yet he always struggled for budget and top-line drives.

Formula 1 was watching, however, and he was signed up by BAR-Honda as a test driver. He led a championship-winning assault on A1GP for team Ireland, which put him back in the spotlight for an F1 seat.

Campos (HRT) and Virgin came knocking, but Carroll was still lacking budget. Lola rated him so highly they would have given him a seat for nothing, but their 2010 entry was rejected. The frustrating thing is that he knew he had to make the most of every shot he was granted and that would have made Carroll one of the most tenacious F1 drivers of his generation.

8. Greg Moore

So revered in the racing world is the electrifying Greg Moore that even 20 years after his death, racers still put on red gloves to pay homage to the Canadian.

Moore seemed to toy with the monstrous beasts of Champ Car in a way that almost nobody else could. But as his star ascended in the States, could he have switched to F1?

It seemed very likely in the early 2000s when greats such as Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastien Bourdais all crossed over, and Moore could easily have followed.

Sir Jackie Stewart was interested, and it is rumoured that those red gloves would have found no happier a home than Maranello, where Greg was held in incredibly high regard. Sadly, we'll never know, as he was killed in a crash at the California Speedway in 1999.

7. Valentino Rossi

If ever there was a case of what might have been, it was the hugely publicised relationship between Ferrari and nine-time motorcycle racing champion Valentino Rossi.

His first running with the Scuderia came at a three-day test at Valencia in 2006 and by the end of it he was lapping within half a second of Michael Schumacher, a feat that left the German "incredulous", according to Ferrari engineer Luigi Mazzola.

READ MORE: What now for Hamilton, Vettel and co? How delaying 2021 rules will impact the driver market

We now know that Ferrari had made an offer to the Italian, which insisted he start as a test driver, move to a satellite team and only race for Ferrari should all those steps go well – but Rossi rejected it.

The shocked but impressed Schumacher was thus left somewhat saddened when Rossi decided to stay on two wheels.

As Rossi continued to test for the team through to 2010 and Ferrari looked at running a third car for him, the prospect lingered tantalisingly out of reach.

The desire clearly burned strong on both sides and, as Rossi’s recent swap with Lewis Hamilton reinforced, it’s a dream The Doctor never quite let go.

6. Jamie Green

It’s late 2004 and the GP2 Series is set to replace Formula 3000 as the feeder championship for Formula 1.

Based on the last few years of racing at this level, the plum seats are going to be at Arden – filled by Heikki Kovalainen and Nicholas Lapierre – and BCN Competicion.

Nico Rosberg is about to sign with BCN when a call comes through from Nicolas Todt and Fred Vasseur at the all new ART Grand Prix squad. The driver they’d hoped would sign with them, their reigning F3 EuroSeries champion, has decided to go to DTM. Would Nico be interested in the seat? The rest, as they say, is history.

ART was set to become the dominant force of GP2, launching not only Rosberg but Lewis Hamilton, Romain Grosjean and Nico Hulkenberg to F1 as champions in its first five years.

QUIZ: Who's missing from these classic F1 scenes?

But their first champion? That should by all accounts have been Jamie Green. A force in junior racing, phenomenal in Formula 3 and a racer who, at the time, was considered a better prospect than both Hamilton and Robert Kubica, Green has and continues to have a solid career in DTM.

But he could, and arguably should, have been battling Hamilton for Formula 1 glory for the past 15 years.

5. Scott Dixon

One of the most versatile and consistently competitive drivers of his generation, Scott Dixon is a great lost talent of modern F1.

As a five-time Indycar champion, it isn’t just his raw pace that has marked him out as the target man of the championship, it’s the fact he’s a threat no matter what he’s up against.

He’ll drive just about anything, too: A multiple champion at Daytona, he’ll just as happily tackle Le Mans as the Indy 500. And he’s respected by everyone who ever sat in a race car.

Dixon did have a trial in F1, however. After his early 2000s successes Stateside, he tested for Williams in 2004 on two separate occasions. But he failed to impress sufficiently without the time to fully embed himself in the team and on the narrow window of the grooved tyres of the day.

4. Sebastien Loeb

The greatest rally driver of all time very nearly made the jump to F1.

It all started with a promotional seat swap in 2007 where he got to try Kovalainen's Renault R27 at Circuit Paul Ricard. The very next year, Red Bull became the sponsor of his Citroen factory team in WRC and as a reward for winning the championship he tested Red Bull’s 2008 RB4 at both Silverstone and the post-season test at Barcelona where he was eighth-quickest.

READ MORE: Rivals on track, friends off it – 7 of F1’s greatest ever ‘bromances’

In 2009, he tested GP2 machinery to keep himself sharp. As Toro Rosso’s relationship with Bourdais was faltering, a plan was hatched to run Loeb at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, before a full F1 debut in 2010.

The reluctance to issue one of the most supremely gifted drivers on the planet a Superlicence scuppered all the plans for what would have been one of the most incredible crossovers of the modern era.

3. Jeff Gordon

The man responsible for making an entire generation of Americans fall in love with NASCAR, the 'Rainbow Warrior' never actually wanted to race stock cars.

He began his career in karts and quarter midgets, moving to sprint cars and winning the USAC Silver Crown at the age of 20. He dreamed of racing Indycar but couldn’t find the backing. Then came a call from someone who had seen him race. They wanted him to come to Europe and test F3. That someone was Sir Jackie Stewart.

With Gordon on the path towards stock car racing in the Busch Series – where he was crowned 1991's Rookie of the Year – the test never happened.

He very nearly made the switch at the end of the 1990s when BAR Honda tabled an offer to Gordon which would have seen him leave NASCAR and come to F1, but only after he’d run two seasons in ChampCar for Team Green. But Gordon wasn't swayed and, by 2003 he was a four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.

That year, mutual sponsors gave him the chance to swap a seat with Montoya for 15 laps of the Indianapolis road course and Gordon wound up half a second off the Colombian.

Those 15 laps were all that he got. A touted 2005 move to Williams never took place and F1 missed out on the most gifted American racer of his generation.

2. Dario Franchitti

Dario could have been an F1 driver, not just because he was a great talent of his or any generation, but because there were three chances.

Call it luck, judgement or simply fate, the cards never fell quite right. The Scot had his first taste of F1 courtesy of the McLaren Autosport Young Driver award.

He impressed McLaren so much that they offered him a test role alongside his Champ Car commitments Stateside, but with David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen at the team he sensed a chance was never there and turned Ron Dennis down.

His next opportunity came at the end of the '90s when he was approached to quit Champ Car's Team Green and move with BAR-Honda to F1. He didn't take the gamble.

Incredibly, Franchitti’s move to F1 would have freed up his Champ Car seat for Jeff Gordon as BAR and Team Green were linked back then by BAT sponsorship – so BAR-Honda may have had Franchitti and Gordon in F1 by 2002!

A final chance came in 2000 with a surprise test for Jaguar at Silverstone, but following the death of his best friend Greg Moore and serious injuries for Franchitti from a huge crash in testing at Homestead, he wasn't prepared.

Over the next 15 years, he would win three Indy 500s and four IndyCar titles to go down as one of the greatest racers to cross the Atlantic. We can’t help but wonder what he might have achieved in Formula 1.

1. Tom Kristensen

Mr Le Mans is widely regarded as one of the greatest racing drivers ever with a combination of humility, grace, uncompromising work ethic and a calm, assured style behind a wheel.

He's racked up plaudits, awards and success in the sport that is rivalled by few others.

He was German and Japanese F3 champion, won races in Formula 3000, Formula Nippon, the DTM and BTCC, and when the chance came with a last-minute call-up to race at Le Mans in 1997, he put in one of the most astonishing debut performances ever witnessed to help Joest take victory.

While his junior racing contemporaries Alex Zanardi and Mika Hakkinen went on to success in open-wheel racing, Kristensen made Le Mans his domain.

His real run of successes at La Sarthe began in the 2000s where he won six in a row, amassing nine total Le Mans victories, six Sebring 12 Hours and a World Endurance Championship.

There was always interest in Formula 1, both from him and from the sport. He tested for Minardi, Tyrrell and most notably Williams, where his work for Michelin was considered vital to the manufacturer’s understanding of the category.

He very nearly signed for Prost but the budget wasn't there and, arguably, F1's loss was the rest of motorsport's gain as Kristensen could have become a footnote racing for teams beneath his ability.

It's simply too sad a notion to think that we never witnessed him race in this category, such is Kristensen's skillset. Would he trade one Le Mans win for a year at the sharp end in Formula 1? Unlikely. But that would have been something to see.

[writterings]

hey im nb/ag and my name is alex but anyway i really want to start T but my family is really, really poor and im guessing my insurance doesn't cover that and im also worried that if i start it I won't like it or something but i want a lower voice and to look less like a girl ffffffff dysphoria is my middle name tbh .,..,., ., .

hey alex, i’m so sorry for answering this late!! i’ve been on mobile literally all day yesterday and today and i felt as though this ask needed a longer answer than i was able to type on my phone. 

anyways! dsyphoria sucks major ass, and if it was a physical thing i would punch it for you. HOWEVER, i do have some advice that could possibly help if you’re interested, and some advice on going on T. 

i’ll put that all below the cut:

T Facts:

first things first, some insurances offer coverage for hormones. i suggest you look into company yours is through and to what extent it goes to (basically just google your insurance company’s name along with “hrt” or something like that, you should find answers pretty quick)

next, T does drastically change your body -- but at a gradual pace. if you see something you don’t like happening, it’ll be pretty easy to quit T and that certain effect should wear off after you stop your use. just be warned, if you do continue T beyond that point, that effect will develop however. 

T can cause cystic acne, hair growth all over your body, and clitoris enlargement (bc a penis is actually an overgrown clit tbh -- but that’s just another story), BUT it can also cause vocal cords thickening for a deeper voice, increased body muscles, and your jaw may become squarer. there are also other side effects -- both good and bad -- and if you’re seriously considering going on T i recommend researching it thoroughly. 

the price of T can range tremendously, especially in regards to what type you get (ex: shots vs pills vs patches). i suggest you research that as well and figure out which form of it would be the best for you considering your family’s situation. 

you typically need a gender therapist/a therapist in general to help get you on T. medical doctors want a note saying yes, indeed, you are trans before they give you any hormones. luck with this many vary. 

****disclaimer: please note i am not on T and have not taken it, i’ve just researched it along with my gender therapist a lot considering i am trying to get on it within the next few months/this school year 

Passing/Kicking Dsyphoria’s Ass/Looking Less Like A Girl:

this part is easier and cheaper than going on T tbh. first things first, you’re going to want to work on your mannerisms. to talk the talk, ya gotta walk the walk pretty much tbh. the things below will help you with the whole “appearing less like a girl” thing:

square your shoulders and stand with them back when you walk. this doesn’t have to be all the time, but it makes you look taller, thinner, and more intimidating. guys tend to walk like this, and it could be good for presenting androgynously for when you’re not exactly presenting as a guy.

when walking, look over people’s heads in the direction you’re going in. they’ll subconsciously get out of your way then. guys tend not to move out of the way for people when they’re about to collide when walking at each other, so this will help

spread your legs when you sit

take up as much space as you want when walking/standing somewhere (without being rude)

don’t look people in the eye as much when you talk to them

shake people’s hands when you meet them. and i mean. all the time. especially if it’s a guy. even if you’ve met them before.

now here’s some fashion advice:

get a binder. a good one. i personally recommend getting a gc2b one, directly off their website and ordering a size above the one you would usually wear in shirts. it WILL make you as relatively flat as you need, but will take some breaking in. their binders are about 30$ so if you need to save up, i seriously recommend investing in them. research the risks of binding, also. 

you don’t need a packer. no one cares that much to check down there.

don’t wear button down shirts unless you’re at a formal event. button down shirts call too much attention to you when you’re someplace casual, and people will stare. because they’re staring at you too long, they’ll stare at the parts they shouldn’t be  and then misgender you as a girl. however, they do think they’re properly gendering you, of course -- cis people pride themselves on figuring out people’s “”””Real”””” genders and then calling them she/he despite how the person is not dressed like a she/he. (and they don’t even consider the person is a “they”)

wear t-shirts instead, and one that’s in your proper size. no baggy Ts. regular, fitting ones are lighter and more form fitting so they make you look more attractive and they call less attention to yourself. don’t worry about your breasts or curves showing if you have them -- if you look androgynous or like a guy enough people won’t question them. (and this is coming from someone with double d breasts who just got called a “he” in walmart despite how i was only wearing a sports bra)

cargo shorts are ugly but literally talk to any guy and he owns like ten pairs. also every butch lesbian friend i have loves them as well. they’re a win if you’re aiming for androgyny/looking more masculine. they also have so many pockets. i recommend cargo shorts. 

wear your pants/shorts below your belly. it’s just a guy thing to do. 

TAKE CARE OF YOUR SHOES!!!! AND GET GOOD ONES!!! you’re agender but i don’t know how much you want to look like a guy, but lemme tell ya guys take GOOD CARE of their shoes. literally, once i started passing as a guy all the dudes at my school starting making fun of my shoes because they were a no-name brand and had holes in them. shoes are important. i can understand if you can’t afford jordans or doc martins (bc i sure as hell cant lol) but just take care of what you got. 

grooming/personal care

don’t shave your legs

let your eyebrows grow out

ditch the bangs. bangs are feminizing. (i recommend a fade away tbh -- they’re pretty androgynous haircuts)

tbh i recommend shaving your pits because they get smelly if you don’t

shave your face. everyone naturally has peach fuzz on their face and teenage boys typically start shaving off whatever they got on them when they reach high school. also, it will start growing in more thicker and faster when you do this, if you want a beard. 

voice

you can actually naturally lower your voice without going on T. 

first, you can try speaking at a lower pitch. this will hurt after you do it for a while so i don’t recommend it too much. 

you can also try vocal exercises to warm up to that. i personally use the “bing-bong-king-kong” method, where i say all those words and go down a pitch on each word, and draw out the syllabels so it’s like “oooooong”

singing along to guy’s part’s in songs and trying to match their pitches actually helps a lot! i hope your a musical fan because trying to do “waving through a window” from dear evan hansen has actually helped me a lot

this link should help you

anyways...that’s all the advice i got! sorry if you weren’t actually looking for advice tho lol. i hope this was able to help in some way. if you ever need someone to talk to, my inbox and DMs are always open. good luck, alex.

[funeralshawls]

headcanons

well here are some of my gorillaz headcanons bc i have nothing to lose, i already submitted some to that headcanons blog on anon so i’m outing myself here we go 💜💛💙❤️💚🖤

💜

they all do that dip dance move where you slap your thighs and curve your back at each other saying “elevator……. going up”

the band likes to kidz bop the lyrics for fun after they saw what happened to feel good inc.

they all Adore beyoncé

💛

they held a web series called russel’s roast, russel’s online cooking show where he also roasts the audience. special celebrity guests are always 2D in a wig. it only lasted 3 episodes.

he’s Afro-Cuban and spanish was his 1st language. him and noodle bonded through both being esl.

he has paranoid personality disorder

middle name is ángel. everyone that’s heard it tells him how “fitting” it is.

believes in orixa and used to have shrines. he feels like he doesn’t have the spoons for the upkeep anymore and doesn’t feel like explaining himself to the others anyway. there’s also too much of a risk of the others eating the food off of the shrine…. again.

he honestly wants nothing more than to just drop everything and move to Bahia and live by himself in the mountains. he feels like he should isolate himself and if he must go out he’ll at least be around people that look like him, the spirits too. at least he can have conversations and reconnect with the spirits in the mountains. the spirit house ghosts just annoy him and are childish.

likes to play with tarot and the like because he doesn’t take it seriously at all, he laughs at most “witches”

doesn’t like to celebrate his birthday

💙

2D’s mother is somali.

she’s trans feminine a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶ ̶l̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶, she’s been gaining weight from starting hrt and is fucking estatic (using she/her pronouns srry) and now feels like she can take full control over her own appearance

due to her anxiety and how drastically her appearance changed from the accidents, 2D had killer stage fright and was camera shy in the early days. before shows she would vomit, freeze between songs, and screw the lyrics  up. that’s why they had the screens to play behind during most of phase one. her self-medicating habits helped to dull his anxiety. but, she would still turn her back to the audience or distract herself trying to do tricks. she was relieved to sit behind a piano during the phase 2 shows.

she had a cleft lip when she was born that was repaired as a teenager, it’s the source of her voice and speech impediments

learned to do body tricks because she hung with performers at the fairground, she’s good with hula hoops and if she can get her hands on one she will not put it down. was totally that one binch that carried a hula hoop around in school.

she has names of people important to her tattooed because she’s afraid she’ll forget them. noodle and russel on her shoulders, rachel over her heart, del behind her ear, david on her neck, etc.

❤️

noodle can get on some basic, separatist, hypocritical, baby’s 1st feminism bullshit b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶J̶a̶m̶i̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶. her barely-there body hair is radical, “pussy power”, riot grrl, “fries before guys”, quoting lemonade out of context type stuff. she’s not the worst, but she needs to work on her nuance.

noodle’s nickname is lil’ bit/lil’ mama/babygirl, none of them call her noods and none of them know where the fans got that from

she’s had double lid surgery and a breast augmentation

she’s still spoiled to the core and called the “baby”

was never in a closet

she’s afraid of meeting her real parents (if she even has any) because she doesn’t know how she’ll react. her biggest fear is that there wouldn’t be a connection

💚

murdoc is a changeling. the thought’s never occurred to him even though his features keep showing with age. he has wings on the small of his back that will pop out sometimes. he doesn’t know what they are so they’re tiny and didn’t form from not using them and he calls them his “fins”. he’ll also float on occasion when his emotions are high bc i like to imagine the others pulling him down by his shirt or his shoulder or something idk he’s a faerie y’all

that’s it lmao

🖤

2D would call paula “Cherry” and paula would call 2D “Honey”, others thought that was just them being sappy but they’ve had those nicknames long before they started  dating

cortez could talk, murdoc taught her to say basic things like “hello” and names, then things like “hail satan”. russel got her to say “pretty bird”, noodle got her to answer the phone and go “what are you doing?/nani shiteruno?”, 2d got her to go “blimey!” and to blow kisses. unfortunately, everyone would get pecked in the face getting one of cortez’ “kisses” from time to time. but, murdoc didn’t care and loved getting kisses.

[wirewitchviolet]

A Random Roundup of Surprisingly Positive Trans Portrayals

Over the last half a year or so, I’ve run across a number of bits of media I’ve come across which blindsided me with trans characters that rang pretty true. Every time, I was tempted to sit down and write a proper review, but other things were going on, so I’m just going to sit down and bite the bullet with a collection of relatively quick takes.

So let’s start off with Swiss Army Man. It’s an indie film, but it caught on a bit with wider audiences thanks to, well, the titular character being the magical farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe. Odds are you’ve at least heard of it, but at least no one I’ve talked to about it had any idea there was anything trans-related in there, so you might be thinking I’m reading into it. Quite the opposite. The main character is, with absolutely no ambiguity about it, a closeted trans woman, and the entire plot of the movie is directly about her coming to terms with that, learning to accept herself, and stop worrying about everyone judging her so she can transition already (which she’s heavily implied to do just after the credits roll. A lot of this is subtext, but plenty of it is just plain text. I mean, halfway through the movie she starts dressing as a particular woman she sees as a rolemodel and getting lost in very girly fantasies, and these are specifically presented as her only really happy memories in a later life-flashing-before-her-eyes sort of scene. I’d really recommend watching the whole thing yourself, since hey, it’s a funny uplifting heartfelt movie (if requiring a trigger warning on suicidal imagery) but here’s someone else’s spoiler filled, inconsistently gendering explanation of a good chunk of the trans imagery.

Somehow though, all this gets lost on a huge chunk of the audience. Including most professional reviewers, even ones for LGBTQIA-focused media outlets. I read one shortly after watching it which stubbornly insisted it was trying to convey that the main character was a gay man through a bizarre metaphor that didn’t work. I’m tempted to call that one willful ignorance, but it IS to be fair one of those movies that plays around with an unreliable narrator and an odd mix of grounded reality, obvious fantasy, and supernatural elements that are hard to fit in either of those boxes. As someone who takes in a lot of that sort of thing, my personal takeaway is that while the main character is just imagining the corpse talking as an imaginary friend to cope with her suicidal loneliness, it does seem to be, within the observable reality of the movie, a legitimately magical corpse full of hyper-compressed Gyo gas. And a metaphor about shame. The main character being trans though is completely unambiguous and clear through every possible prism.

I do find it interesting though that on the commentary track, the pair of writer-directors responsible for it fail to directly refer to the main character’s womanhood, mostly just talking about her loneliness, and how relatable it is. So, blatant as the nature of the movie is, this may be a case of closeted trans women creating a story about a closeted trans woman without even realizing it.

Next we have a Korean film I stumbled across on Netflix with the unfortunate title of Man on High Heels, which I have to assume is trying to riff on Man on Fire or something similar. It’s about a tough martial arts action figure sort of cop who ignores procedure and beats confessions out of crime lords, who’s even more respected in the underworld for being such a stone cold badass than by the police force who has a pretty easy job accordingly. Who is, again, a closeted trans woman. This one I went into expecting to cringe a bit at a weird exploitation action comedy, but it plays the premise completely straight. When the movie starts, she’s been walking that knife edge for a while of starting HRT, buying a new wardrobe, and practicing with makeup, while still very much in the closet, and the main thrust of the drama is her trying to scrape up enough cash for The Surgery while trying to preserve her tough macho action legacy, and generally fumbling, with fellow cops thinking she has a drug problem and mobster fans thinking she’s gone crooked. Lot of emotional gut-punches too with flashbacks, falling out, and not exactly a happy ending. It doesn’t have the same inner monologue as Swiss Army Man, but it still feels fairly authentic in terms of the emotional turmoil she’s going through. And of course it gets some basic facts about medical transition wrong. Still, not what I expected.

Turning to TV, somehow I ended up marathoning through the entirety of Sons of Anarchy on a whim. Now, I cannot actually recommend that anyone ever watch Sons of Anarchy. Frankly it’s a poorly written show which spends more time than not completely rudderless, constantly forces people to act completely out of character to spur on new plot arcs, and stumbles hard every time it tries to say anything about women, race, politics, or morality.

Some time in the 5th season, a random filler episode has the core cast hiring a trans prostitute to stage explicit photos with someone they’ve knocked out in order to blackmail him, resulting in a very forced exploitative scene. It certainly doesn’t help that the trans woman in question is named Venus, and played by Walter Goggins (not that I approve of cis men playing any of the characters I’m listing here, but Goggins is the most overtly masculine actor in the mix, and playing the only character on this list who is out as trans and well past first transitioning). That episode left a particularly bad taste in my mouth, and I’m curious if there was some backlash to it at the time, because in the next season, Venus returns, as a minor recurring character who gets fleshed out and made significantly more sympathetic. She gets a tragic and cliched backstory full of sexual abuse of course, but she’s at least in the running for the single most morally centered character in the series, gets a lot of sympathetic dialog, and sticking up for her in various ways becomes a way to signify someone is, for the time being at least, on the path of righteousness.

What really amazes me though is the last season. The entire final season of Sons of Anarchy is frankly a train wreck. Season 6 ends with the incredibly pointless and poorly motivated murders of its most sympathetic major characters (including the main audience surrogate) to stir up conflict, and as a result season 7 is just a ridiculous exercise in body stacking. Almost every character ends up either dead or at a complete loss of what to do with themselves, and there are really only two characters who can be said to really get a happy ending. Tig, one of the more consistent characters, who can largely be described as the Designated Weirdo in the core cast, ends up spending the last season dating Venus, and their last scene implies that him falling in love with her breaks him of his weird self-destructive performative freakiness, and they get to live happily ever after. Everything else about the final season, and really the show at large, I rolled my eyes at, but hey, pleasant surprise there!

Meanwhile, turning to Japanese children’s television from a few years back, there’s Kamen Rider W. Like every Kamen Rider series, it’s a self-contained superhero show with lots of quirkiness and rubber-suit action sequences. The main gimmick the W alludes to is that the hero of this particular show is really two people. When it’s time to throw on the suit and jump into action, one of the two protagonists passes out, the other getting a split consciousness (and then of course late in the series when they get their ultimate powerup, they full on merge into a single body instead). One of these characters is Shotaro, a dorky wannabe hard boiled detective. The other is something of a mysterious MacGuffin character named Phillip, who has quite a lot going on, but most significantly for this article’s purposes, this is Phillip:

Broadcasting standards in Japan are a bit further behind the times than they are in America, so you can’t ever full on come out and state that a character is gay or trans. The best you can manage is to just barely provide plausible deniability while implying the ever loving hell out of it. And so we have Phillip, who is about as blatantly not-a-man as you can really get away with, visually. Whether the idea is to subtley portray a trans woman, or to portray the only non-binary human character I can recall ever seeing in anything is a tough call, but the hair clips and some variation on this non-quite-a-dress are present on Phillip in every single episode other than the one where a contrived sting has Phillip throwing on a dress and a wig to really pull of a Lovely Magician’s Assistant look... and trying to find a screenshot of that by searching for “Kamen Rider Phillip Dress” just gave me a variation on the standard Phillip Outfit on a female manikin at a cosplay shop.

Anyway, Phillip is great. Aside from being Very Clearly Trans, Phillip Very Clearly Has Autism (sensitively and realistically portrayed), but neither of these is ever commented on by anyone in the show. Instead, everyone is constantly talking about how Phillip is so unambiguously the more powerful, intelligent, and competent of the two, and constantly suggesting Shotaro is dead weight. It’s fantastic. Oh and the two are also as unambiguously in a romantic relationship with each other as broadcasting standards will allow. There is blatant queer-baiting between male leads in every Kamen Rider show, but I mean, they have a love theme, their ultimate weapon/armor is rainbow themed, and the lyrics to the show’s opening are all about the ultimate union of body and soul between two partners.

Incidentally, Kamen Rider Wizard from 2 years later does make a more overt effort of trans representation with a minor character, but fairs far worse with it, and the following year’s Kamen Rider Gaim has... this character, but I’m trying to focus on surprisingly good representation, and neither of them exactly qualify.

Finally, the tragically obscure 7th Dragon III Code VFD for the 3DS, along with making literally the entire cast of NPCs and PCs explicitly bisexual features as a prominent NPC a game designer/time machine designer who shortly before the game begins switched over to being called Julietta and dressing like this:

I haven’t found the time to finish it, but misgendering localization aside, yeah this is totally in keeping with my general composite image of my fellow trans game devs, and she’s great so far.

[a-gender-less]

Hey Drew! I've just looking through your blog and it has really helped me be more comfortable with my identity, and I wanted to thank you for being awesome. Any tips for coming out ? And did you come out as agender or FtM? I'm non binary and I want to be on T, but I'm not sure how to come out to my friends/family. Any suggestions? (sorry if you already made a post about this)

Hey! Nice to meet you :) If you ever want to PM me, feel free as well!So, well, when I came out, it started 2 years of hell for me pretty much, and that does scare a lot of people but people need to know that coming out effects so many things and sometimes it’s not good :( It really really depends on how well your family and friends will take it. I really hope for your sake if you do decide to come out, that you will be in a safe position. For me, because it wasn’t taken well, I had to rely on some friends to get me through the hard parts, but, I am a massive fan on giving things time. After giving my parents lots of time, granted they said some things I will never forget or forgive, they have come through and now they are my number one supporters. Mum is even driving me to get my top surgery and she’s taking a week off to help me :) I love her very much. And dad has recently started calling me ‘mate’ which is very very validating! He was a bit trickier because, you know how baby boomers are ;)I came out as FTM, not many people actually know that I identify as agender/non-binary (for me: I do not identify with even having a gender) but because my gender expression is like 100% masculine (I dress and present myself in a very masculine way) I just figured it would be easier for people to accept the fact that I’m FTM without having to confuse them with the label ‘agender’ because people just won’t understand and it would be a pain in the ass, you know? But close friends, and those who understand what agender is, know that I’m agender but also know that I call myself FTM too. :)So, suggestions. 

- Give friends and family time. Honestly, this is crucial. Mum has always said that by me coming out, she lost her daughter. Fair enough, since I believe that the other person, her daughter, is dead. She ain’t coming back. - Stick with those who support you, rely on them. You’ll need them.- If you want to transition, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll need some money to spend on doctors appointments and on T, unless you had completely free healthcare like NHS in Britain. 

- Be kind to yourself, give yourself time too. You need to make sure that this is definitely what you think you need to do to be happy :) It’s a big life changing thing, but it’s okay to give yourself time to understand.- Understand the ups and downs of HRT, doctors usually tell you but look it up just in case :)I can’t think of more at the moment, but I hope this helped friend. Love yourself and one another.

-Drew