Violet Hargrave's page

Quasar takes a step back, visibly relieved the people who actually look like they can take a solid hit have interposed themselves, and leans over to Janira for a quick, "You OK? I'd thought you were just going to keep running back towards the city until this jerk gave up."

She then once again pulls together the stones for another oversized blast.
Earth Blast: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (7) + 4 = 11
Damage,point blank: 1d6 + 3 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 3 + 1 = 9
Pushing Infusion: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (8) + 3 = 11

Too late to edit the post, but yeah, less rock throwing, more rushing forward. Just... pretend I was getting really descriptive about kicking a rock into the river while rushing up.

Quasar frowns as another pile of rocks goes wide. "I swear I usually land those right on target. My balance must still be off from drinking that elixir."

He looks at the furrows opened by Quasar's blasts, then turns to the woman. "Alright, I hope this isn't prying, but... How do you do that!? That's not like any magic I've ever seen." He jiggles a finger in one tall ear. "Leaves quite the impression!"

"Yeah.. I've noticed gifts like mine don't seem as common out here as they are back in Vudra. Back there it's just 'this child has a strong connection to the earth' where here it's 'ooh, where'd you learn that spell?'" She shrugs.

Survival: 1d20 ⇒ 4

"For some reason, I was expecting a clearer trail to follow..."

Quasar is more than happy enough to get away from the potentially feuding pets of the others, and pick up all the supplies she can carry. A single torch and a day's worth of trail rations. 7 str is hilarious like that.

Once out o the road, the appearance of a roiling pile of snakes moving in quickly towards them, she snaps out of her usual awkwardness with a smirk, rolling up her outsized sleeves and tossing off a quick "I've got this" as she sweeps her hands upward, followed by a loose pile of rocks and thick clods of solid earth, which coalesce into a hefty mass before her, before she thrusts her arms forward, propelling the bulky missile towards the snakes from 30 feet away.

earth blast: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (8) + 4 = 12
blunt damage, full to all swarms: 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (6) + 3 = 9

Quasar nods. "And we're sure these caves aren't flooded? I don't want to end up drowning because it turns out Groetus worshipping weresharks have been waiting for a spring tide to swim up to some otherwise inaccessable chamber or something." She tugs anxiously on the collar of her studded leather armor. Which has always been such, and was never a chain shirt, because I totally didn't forget that even with no other equipment those are a no-go with only 7 str.

I'm fairly certain I'm on the record several times over as originally being inspired to start working for Paizo by Crystal. So... here's hoping I will soon be inspired to try a lot of other awesome and fulfilling things.

Done.

If anyone has any unchained monk experience I'd love some advice! I've only played a chained monk, and that game fell apart after 2 sessions.

I've played a ton of monks, all of them chained. My recollection though is the only real changes are you lose some of the more eccentric higher level abilities, and you just plain have full BAB so you don't end up playing Schroedinger's bonuses when you might potentially kill something on the first hit.

So... basically save all your starting cash for a fancy shirt or buy some shuriken, pump up str, consider power attack, split the rest between dex and wis, maybe squeeze in the int for combat expertise and improved whatever, otherwise enjoy shopping for style feats?

Suddenly I'm slightly embarrassed that I dropped everything and slapped together a character with a class I'd never actually looked at in such a hurry last night. Although I AM happy with the backstory I slapped together to rationalize super minimalist equipment purchases.

The sites I usually use for sharing character sheets for online campaigns still haven't set up good Starfinder templates, so I made my own.

Online Starfinder Sheet v1.0

It's pretty straightforward. Make a copy. Fill in your attributes/race/class/theme/level/skill ranks and it will automatically update basically everything else. Archetypes are supported. Multiclassing is not, particularly, mostly just because I couldn't think of a way to support it without adding a separate field to track your level, archetype, and first level class choice in each class, and that'd ruin the aesthetics.

That said, nothing should actually break too badly if you start inserting extra rows or overwriting cells, so "not supported" just means it won't automatically take into account racial skill bonuses for races it doesn't know about, or force you to track your own saves if you're multiclassing.

Dragon78 wrote:

What powers does the redkind have? Alignment?

Spoiler:

Neutral Evil Fey, they can change shape into a cat, child, snake, or spider. They morph shadows around them into disturbing shapes that can cause observers to be shaken. They have spell-like abilities that let them find out what you are afraid of and create that image. Their primary weapon is their claws and they occasionally hang out with a bogeyman.

Strangely, if you can't see it, it has a hard time seeing you. You get partial concealment by closing your eyes, and full concealment by covering yourself with a blanket...much like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal! :D

(OK, much like a monster-under-the-bed, so rather cool!)

I still don't have my copy of this one, but I am so very happy to hear that the

Fairly sure that one's an intentional omission. Aging rules have always been a bit confusing/prone to abuse, and there's a general move towards simpler rules with less fiddly bits in SF, at least in terms of tracking numbers (see the lack of non-lethal damage, touch AC, CMB/CMD).

Specifically, the idea is that while Pathfinder goes:

Here's the new AP about acrobats in Geb.
... So here, have a new campaign setting book on Geb.
... and here, have a new player companion about acrobatics.

Starfinder will go more like this:

Here's the new AP about the goatspiders of Rygel 9. There are articles in the back with everything you need to play goatspider PCs, and an overview of Rygel 9.

This both keeps them from having to spread resources thinner supporting literally twice the regular load of books, and makes logistical sense since intergalactic-scale space fantasy stuff isn't really suited to broadly covering the details of a general geographic region and revisiting it regularly. It's more, here is this one-off planet we really don't have any plans for beyond setting this one adventure there.

Just tossing it out there, but speaking as a trans woman working in fields with significantly higher than average levels of rampant sexism, I'm in as close a position as one can find in the real world to being in the shoes of a drow man with access to a sex-shift serum, and "I'd rather be dead than take that option" is the general stance taken under such conditions.

Dysphoria is, in fact, that bad, and there's this innate sense of solidarity that comes from marginalization and general solidarity with one's gender that shouldn't really be taken lightly.

Plus honestly, this whole conversation hinges on the notion of drow men being a slave-caste plotting rebellion, which really doesn't mesh at all with how they're depicted in Second Darkness. It's much more real-world-patriarichal-stuff-flipped-around, with drow men owning their own businesses, exercising some political influence via their masculine wiles, etc.

Ikiry0 wrote:

Aerotan wrote:

The family looking a little different is something He's always frowned on, and his worshippers tended to ostracise those who deviated from the norm.

I think you might be reading a little too much maliciousness into a Lawful Good faith.

People have been doing this for years. There is one poorly worded line in one book, and now all everyone talks about is how he's basically the god of misogyny.

Yeah, it's been rather explicitly stated that the "traditional values" Erastil upholds emphatically don't include sexism, racism, homophobia, or transphobia, as there never having been a time where anyone in Golarion held those as "traditional values."

Lashuntu culture on the other hand does have a long tradition of strictly defined gender roles, and a generally pro-nature population historically against getting together in big cities, which relatively recently they've pulled a total 180 on. As it happens Castrovel is also the one pact world remaining where farming and hunting are still thriving lifestyles.

I would figure he still has a fair number of worshipers there, and since he IS an LG god, and the radical shift in lashuntu social structure is a good thing, there'd have to be some kind of overprotective-parent-learning-to-let-go sort of thing softening his stance on some issues, while focusing more on his other areas of concern.

There's a lot of potential for positive queer themes there, particularly since it's already so easy to approach the lashunta restructuring from that direction.

There's a lot of other good potential plot seeds baked in there too, but that's beyond the scope of this thread really.

I'd say Envoy, moreso than any other class, looks like hot garbage if you're looking at it side by side next to any Pathfinder class, but when you get your head around how Starfinder's rules differ the "small" bonuses they toss around are actually quite significant.

It does underwhelm at first level though. Sadly I missed the part of the GenCon demo with ship combat, where they'd shine, and just had to deal with standing still to give small bonuses the rest of the party ignored.

Cayden Cailean and the universe's worst drunk driving accident.

Fortunately, his clerics are hard at work rolling sticky balls around everywhere hoping to collect enough random debris to form a suitable, if cow heavy, replacement.

Well, it could be be a verb if there was a jackass transmutation mage going about putting people in bodies they don't want.

A- That still wouldn't quite be grammatically correct.

My concern here is twofold:

A- It's important to have a standard in place for how people write about one of the core 7 races in all upcoming official Starfinder material.

B- It's important to have that standard make sense, and not cause offense to any actual real world people.

What we have as established precedent here so far is one specific NPC whose gender is host, and whose pronouns are they/them/themself.

Without altering that, moving forward, the obvious standards to run with so as not to contradict that would be:

#1- "They" is the generally accepted pronoun for all host shirrens, with males using "he" and females using "she."

#2- "They" is the generally accepted pronoun for all shirrens regardless of gender when speaking in common because more accurate terms don't exist or don't translate well.

#3- That one particular shirren whose pronouns have been established does not fit within the typical shirren gender expressions and personally feels more comfortable going with "they" as a result.

#1 I have a serious serious problem with, because the singular they, in the real world, is used very specifically when referring to people whose gender is unknown (i.e. each player draws a card at the start of their turn), or for whom there otherwise aren't appropriate pronouns to use (i.e. my friend bought a binder so hopefully people will mistake them for a woman less often). In both these cases, the idea is that we are actively avoiding the use of a gendered pronoun because we don't want to use a gendered pronoun for someone not of that gender.

On the other side of that coin, as someone who is trans, and does fit nicely into the standard gender binary, I am acutely aware of how painful it is to have people actively avoid using gendered language when referring to me (usually in overtly bigoted terms like "it thinks it's a woman" but some people refer to all trans people as "they" to achieve the same effect). All three of the shirren genders are pretty explicitly referred to as being innately gendered, with all the societal expectations that entails, so it's rude and confusing to refer to any one of them in explicitly gender neutral terms.

#2 is better, although potentially insensitive towards shirrens if they do have gendered pronouns in their own language (although I can totally see a case where they wouldn't as the whole individual identity thing is relatively new to them).

#3 I like because it's always nice to see more non-binary representation, but doesn't help to establish a setting bible for other writers to use, and still leaves this as something I'd really hope gets pinned down before I ever end up needing to know this for professional reasons.

I think for shirren sex the idea is that male means they have sperm, females have eggs, and the host has the 'incubator' plus some certain traits. Unlike humans that seems to be the only biological difference, so I don't think shirren care too much about pronouns. Also they are telepathic as well as having a bug language, so their language might get weird. They is probably best.

Oh yeah, there is a fantastic argument to make for (nearly) every shirren just using they. Not really the sort of social structure that enforces gender roles, being formerly of a hive mind potentially leaving them still easing into the whole singular-address concept, no physiological differences other races can consistently pull out/language not mapping one to one and wanting to save the hassle.

It's just the notion of a happy trio with matching "his/hers/theirs" towels where I have an issue. Three gendered pronouns is fine, no gendered pronouns is fine. Gendered pronouns but only for 2/3 of the commonly occurring genders while the third is ungendered is a bizarre misappropriation of an important real-world concept.

And this really isn't the thread to elaborate on my "biological sex" comment. Alternative phrasing there if you'd like: "Yay there's no accidental invalidation of trans people or dog whistles for hate groups in how this text is worded."

Host Shirren go by the singular they.

That strikes me as just about the worst possible standard to set here, honestly.

First off, as I already suggested, when your cis population breaks down into 3 genders, and you want to refer to one of them as female, it should really be the one that actually carries the children, because that's going to be the closest mapping onto how humans see things. This would also apply to anthropomorphized seahorses, but here we really don't even have the biologist's pedantry to fall back on, since host shirrens contribute genetic material, and thus clearly the "sperm moves with flagella, egg sits there, so that's actually the male" logic doesn't particularly apply.

More importantly though, people in the real world who use the singular they as a pronoun specifically do so because it is the only gender neutral third person pronoun with any traction in English, and we are not using it here as a gender-neutral pronoun. We're using it as a very specifically gendered pronoun. That gets downright confusing, because hey, now what do we say if we're trying not to specify the gender of a given shirren because we don't know it, or how do we talk about non-binary shirrens? And there's kind of a real world issue here over what you're implying about actual people who go by they.

Violet Hargrave wrote:

Humans- Eh, they're humans. Iconic is explicitly a lesbian though, so that's a good precedent. B+

Technically, we don't know that, actually. She could be bisexual or pansexual just as easily. Or even asexual. All we know is that she once loved a woman.

Absolutely true if we're going by her backstory. I could have sworn someone with authority had gone into more detail since though.

Perhaps a slightly less provocative title might be in order for the thread?

When I saw the initial thread it felt like it was a trolling exercise, and not a legitimate thread.

Really? I'm just used to that sort of phrasing for general catch-all discussions about this sort of thing. Have a better suggestion offhand?

As far as the Vesk go, I have to wonder if the females are the dominant gender, or males, or if they are more like hobgoblins in that regard: ie, 'everyone fights, nobody quits'.

I feel like of all the core races, vesk are rather intentionally painted with the broadest brush, not setting anything down past "the big tough warrior race." Safe to assume none of the core 7 have any real sexism, so hobgoblins fits better here as a rough analogy than orcs or gnolls, but there's some interesting cultural implications in the women having the sort of mate-attracting-markings you tend to see with male birds. Dead-lifting displays to turn a fella's head now and then?

I picked up my copy of Starfinder over GenCon, and as I read through it, I'm pondering ways to throw characters around who aren't all cis and straight. Let's start with a quick look through the races!

Androids- Specific thought was given to the notion that a race that doesn't reproduce sexually is going to have a whole lot of agender, genderfluid, and non-binary people, and this is even reflected in the iconic operative. A

Humans- Eh, they're humans. Iconic is explicitly a lesbian though, so that's a good precedent. B+

Kasathas- Nothing really jumps out at me here since they're basically just humans-with-more-arms, but there is a note about barely perceivable gender differences which... none of the artists seem to have caught. C-

Lashuntas- If I am reading between the lines correctly, roughly half of all lashuntas are now explicitly trans, and there is specific language differentiating a given lashunta's actual gender vs. their dimorphic body type. I am absolutely delighted to see that, even if I don't necessarily think the designers meant to do it. A+

Shirrens- Between having 3 genders, and a culture explicitly based around celebrating individualism, this is hands down the race I'm most excited about in the specific context of making queer as hell characters, but also the one with the greatest need to clarify a hell of a lot of things first. Like, what is the whole pronoun situation here? If I had to guess, I'd say males go he/him, hosts go she/her (specific reference in the stat block to 'queens' and all), and females have their own pronoun set going on. This is something that really needs to be sorted out officially before anyone can really properly write about any non-male shirren NPCs.

Also having 3 genders calls for a lot of specialized terminology for attraction. If you're straight, or ace, that's fine. A certain percentage of them being trisexual is a given. If you're specifically only interested in others of your own gender, that's manageable. But, what if you're, say, a host who's only interested in other hosts and females? Or exclusively into males? There is a need here for a fairly robust lexicon. D for now, real easy to up to an A with a well-thought-out blog post or something.

Vesk- I appreciate the women being larger on average and not having breasts as non-mammals, but that's just realism. Potentially some ground to explore with trans vesk doing interesting things to alter the color of their scales, but nothing really hinted at in-text. C.

Ysoki- Explicitly called out as having no real cultural gender signifiers, and a lot of notes about living on the fringes and standing up for each other. B

Moving on to the equipment section...

Serum of Sex Shift- This is the one thing in the book explicitly created with trans characters in mind. It's right here in the core book, comes across as the latest in a line of similar items (to the point where I'm 95% sure Amber Scott wrote this entry), and it is very carefully worded to avoid any awful garbage like "biological sex," language that excludes non-binary people, or you know, the core race with three genders. So, definite A for effort, although there is a definite cis-writer's-take-on-being-trans, come to a decision, hop into a building, tada, one-and-done angle here which is arguably dismissive of what we have to deal with in reality.

And I'm sure when I get the time to read all the way through the setting section I'll find a lot more to comment on (or have a lot to say about the lack of things to comment on) but, this is already a long post for me just trying to get a discussion going.

If I may step in here and try to address the original issue in good faith here...

I am running a west marches game, which means the game can consist of anywhere between 12 and 20 players who alternate in and out of sessions. Despite getting a large number of people interested, I'm having issues convincing my female friends to sign up to play. I would really enjoy ... to be more focused on character development and interparty politics

As plenty of other people have pointed out, those are two distinct, unrelated goals you have for attracting players. Also, they're both sorts of players you are inherently going to chase off by running in the West Marches format.

If you really want PCs playing off each other in interesting ways, you need a group where everyone is on the same page tone wise, making a considerable investment in their characters and eachothers' characters, along with the greater world of the setting and whatever the main thrust of your campaign is. If you're keeping everything very floaty, light, and friendly to people constantly jumping in and out, you don't really have the bedrock for that sort of serious character development to build on.

Meanwhile women, as a general rule of thumb, really aren't keen on interacting with creepy dudes, and especially aren't keen to put ourselves in situations where women are vastly outnumbered by men (who, statistically, are less likely to have their back in a clear unqualified fashion when a creepy dude reveals himself). So group size is against you, as is the wild card of new people constantly dropping in and out.

The simplest solution on both fronts here would be to not run a West Marches game, and instead just run a traditional campaign with a reasonable sized party, players who all know and like each other already, meeting on a regular schedule. But I assume you're really married to the West Marches idea for one reason or another.

On that assumption, you can probably spur on more character interaction in a few ways. Mandatory backstories, maybe throwing in some suggested hooks or traits to tie people to some aspect of the setting so they have that in common/to argue about. Push people into interacting around the campfire at the end of the adventuring day rather than skip to morning. Work in a lot of NPCs with serious agendas and obvious material reasons to help or hinder them.

Meanwhile, to get more women playing, the most obvious thing to do would be to just ask those women you know who you've presumably invited and presumably are on the fence about agreeing what concerns are holding them back and address those. Keep in mind though that women tend to be very much conditioned to just quietly avoid situations we aren't comfortable with rather than speak up, particularly in situations where there is a creepy dude present at a social gathering (and again, if you have 12-20 players, at least one of them is almost certainly a creepy dude).

Honestly, I can't really suggest any quick tips to help there. Personally speaking, I don't think I could be talked into a seat at a table with a bunch of men I don't really know at all, especially if they're all friends/acquaintances of the male GM. I'd need to know anyone who proved to be a creep would be dropped from the game no questions asked, without any resentment from anyone or the dropped creep then having an axe to grind with me, and any group who's going to make that sort of promise up front is kind of intimidating in its own somewhat creepy way.

Lissa Guillet wrote:

Selene Spires wrote:

Okay...maybe people here can help me with my social anxiety I am having over the LGBT minger/mixer. I would have to go presenting as a guy...but calling myself a Trans woman. I feel...like people might not believe me...or even get hostile. I hope I will be able to present as woman for it...but right now that will be a long shot.

I wouldn't give it a second thought. Lots of trans women who have trouble getting things together before a big event early and before transition. We all understand. I know, many lgbt cons have had little ribbons for preferred pronouns that you can pick up and I can't imagine an LGBT mixer wouldn't have some method for that these days to. Every one has to start somewhere. I went to my first support meeting "en homme" as we called it in the day. Worked up to changing at the center and eventually just being able to handle everything before hand. Took some work and some time and I'm sure you won't be alone. Go, say hi, meet some people, find some resources. You'll be great.

What Lissa said. Remember that all trans women start out presenting as guys. It's not a comfortable place to be, but it's not something any of us would look down on you for <3

I went to an LGBT-focused gaming convention not too long ago, presenting in as masculine a fashion as you can imagine, with a big shiny "She/Her" ribbon hanging off my ID badge, and not once was I so much as accidentally misgendered.

I still felt like some kind of horrible confusing fraud the whole time of course, but that was 100% internal.

And of course with any luck, a couple months from now I might be going to a con on HRT under my dead name, which should also be a weirdly awkward experience.

Catching up on the last week's worth of posts here, it seems there's some call for a general reminder that being trans is not a sexuality.

Whether you are assigned the wrong sex at birth and who you are attracted to are two completely different variables, and "I'm trans" is never an appropriate response when asked whether you are attracted to people of the same sex/opposite/both/neither.

I'd say they're completely unrelated, if not for the fact that for whatever reason trans people are SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to experience same-sex attraction than cis people, statistically speaking.

What are your thoughts on the safety pin thing, and other passive indicators of alliance/friendliness? (Happy Humanist symbols, rainbow accessories, etc..) Do they make you feel even a tiny bit better when you see them? Do you even tend to notice small symbols like these?

A well-intentioned but incredibly stupid, and honestly harmful idea.

First off, there's the stupidity of the whole "secret symbol" aspect, which supposes that somehow, all the at-risk people will be aware of what wearing a pin means when they see you, but not one single neo-nazi is going to hear about it and wear one to lull people into a false sense of security.

Moreover, why the hell should anyone act like being a decent empathetic person who stands up to bigotry be a secret club you need a badge for? It gives the impression that decent people are rare and need to stay hidden, to be sought out and whispered to, in a world where bigots are everywhere.

If your goal is to make marginalized people feel safe, and/or make it known you are a decent person, you need to make your views on people's basic humanity known to everyone present, and do so actively. Bring up racism, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny in conversations anywhere you go, and in a way that makes it clear these are things you find disgusting, with no place in society. Make a particular point of bringing this up in front of people who "don't like to talk about politics." If you do that often enough to earn a reputation for it, not only will you not need to wear anything to indicate that you're someone marginalized people can safely talk to, you're going to make bigots extremely uncomfortable around you, and when bigots are uncomfortable and nervous, that's when marginalized people can feel safe.

I don't actually want to justify, I'm just not sure how to deal with it as a accepted backdrop in a setting. I'm not really happy with the "you can't be good unless you're an active abolitionist" approach.

The ultimate motivating factor behind every argument on PC alignment I've ever seen is this bizarre assumption that every PC is inherently good, because the PCs are the protagonists which makes them "the good guys."

Absolutely nothing with regards to morality, storytelling, or the rules of the game supports this, and it is therefore not a valid base assumption to come into an argument with.

In addition to the Good and Evil alignments, there is this third option called Neutral. Generally speaking, people who are Neutral understand the difference between right and wrong, and consider themselves to be fundamentally good people because they avoid doing things they know are wrong. What sets them apart from Good people however is that they sometimes recognize what the right thing to do in a situation would be (abolish slavery, remove an evil dictator from power, etc.) but opt not to do it for understandable reasons (it would take years of draining effort/be a huge personal risk/is something someone more motivated probably has covered).

Evil people also largely consider themselves to be good people, doing things they would openly admit are the wrong thing if looked at in a vacuum, but finding ways to rationalize them as special exceptions (obviously slavery is wrong but this guy tried to kill us and knows where the villain of the week is, so it's OK to chain him up and make him lead us to him).

If you are not playing a character who always does what's right, no matter how personally inconvenient or risky, don't put Good on your sheet. It's simple, and I've never met anyone who refused to allow neutral characters. Outside of PFS games, it's also totally possible to play an Evil character, who ends up going along with the plot and saving the world for purely pragmatic reasons (you live in the world, it's where you keep your stuff, and speaking of stuff, monsters drop major loot).

Rationalize would probably have been a better choice. I would probably drop the "active" requirement but I don't think "good" characters should support or excuse slavery. I think if you're searching for the ancient macguffin to save the world you could probably ignore the evils of slavery and still count as "good."

OK now here's the thing. This entire conversation even happening in the first place is hugely offensive to a huge swath of people, as you are making an academic game out of discussing basic human rights. That is never a pure academic hypothetical without any real world impact, and if you think it is, you're not qualified to be discussing it. This "balanced scales" argument in particular though is something being actively applied to justify awful things in the real world, today, with people turning a blind eye to some serious crimes against humanity "in pursuit of a greater good." Ponder this in whatever combination of maintaining civility/trans rights/refugee intake/deportations/prosecution of terrorists you'd prefer.

I don't even know if I'm transgender. I don't know how to know. Some of my friends say that I am and others say that I would know. Some tell me not to worry about it either way and just focus on being happy. That last one is really hard if you don't know who you are.

Something a lot of people tend to say: If you're even in a position where you find yourself asking "Am I trans?" then you are absolutely trans. There's even a website based on the premise- amitransgender.com

Feels like a joke, but as you'll generally find for yourself when you start getting pushback from intolerant people, cis people never lose sleep over what their gender is. At all. Not one single night. It's weird, right?

I also have been thinking about the people I plan to come out too...how will they react and will it change the dynamics of the relationship? I am not exactly the same person I was two weeks ago..I feel I am still me though...just more me...if that makes any sense.

I feel I am acting more naturally...it feels great, but the back of mind is asking "Do they know?" I guess it has always been there...but now it is dieing...

In my experience, you're entering into the most torturous period of being trans right now. Once you hit the point where you stop lying to yourself and looking for alternative explanations for why you might even be considering that maybe you're trans and fully embrace it, it's a bit like that need to tell everyone else who you really are is a snowball you just pushed down a hill, and it's just going to keep growing and gaining momentum.

That said, feeling incredible anxiety over actually telling people is both totally natural, and frankly a good survival instinct. People's reactions to learning people are trans are totally unpredictable, often dangerous, and if anything, it's the people who claim to love you unconditionally who are most likely to turn on you, with the people you hardly know being way more likely to be totally accepting.

On the upside, the people with the worst reactions to coming out tend to be the ones with the deepest denial that you might be, so you can get pretty heavy handed in testing the waters. Bring up stories about trans people in the news around people, and feel free to make your feelings clear on them. The people who jump right in with prior knowledge tend to be safe to come out to. The ones who are legitimately horrified but had no idea that, oh, government officials literally think of us as animals probably aren't safe to come out to yet, but they'll get there if you keep bringing these stories up.

I've never hit a point with anyone where it wasn't still hard to really pull the trigger on saying "I'm trans" though. Even with friends who just came out to me about the same. Gotta give the bandaid a final tug in the end, but don't feel bad about how much time you need to spend slowly and carefully peeling it to get a good grip.

Crystal Frasier wrote:

Trump has never really cared about LGBT issues, but Putin hates the queer community, and Bannon HATES trans people. I honestly think this is laying the groundwork for an anti-LGBT event aimed at splitting the main queer community from the trans and/or bi community. Or more likely, Trump doesn't see any conflict of interests in leaving the Obama protections for LGBT federal employees AND pushing through FADA by executive order—trying to have his cake and eat it, too.

I didn't know that Bannon had it out specifically for us...that's incredibly scary D:

A not-at-all-insignificant percentage of articles published on Breitbart are just absolutely viscious libelous hit pieces written about random trans people nobody's heard of, accusing them of everything from terrorism to pedophilia, and providing entire family trees to stalkers.

Plus they're who started that whole "drop the T from LGBT" thing.

Crystal Frasier wrote:

Really sick of this "crazy trans lady is a murderer" trope, when we're so frequently the victims in violent crimes and so rarely the perpetrator.

Looking for good stories that treat trans-people right and perhaps maybe even as protagonists without Mary Sue/Gary Stu Complex.

What would be a good place to start?

Aside from Crystal's list, the two best recommendations that come to mind are:

Sense8- Full disclosure, I haven't watched past the first episode, but I've seen it talked up by enough people, but it's written and directed by trans women, and if I properly recall the trans character in the main cast is played by a trans actress, so my understanding is it's nicely handled.

Kamen Rider W- Arguably I'm cheating here. If this character reads as a cis man to you, never mind. Otherwise, hey, Kamen Rider W is a Japanese superhero show where the titular hero is this weird two-minds-in-one-body fusion of a dorky wannabe noir detective and his partner (in the sense of running a detective agency, and also in the sense of portraying them as a couple to the fullest extent one can get away with under applicable broadcasting standards), who while never specifically stated to be such reads pretty clearly as trans (or at the very least, really pushing back against gender norms) and a shockingly positive portrayal of someone on the autism spectrum. Neither is ever specifically called out by anyone, and both take a back seat to generally being the more competent of the two, to the point where a later plot arc involves the dorky wannabe noir detective's feelings of inferiority.

3. Timing of the end of the submission period. Around the holidays is just too busy for some people.

That was definitely a big factor for me. Aside from personally dealing the holidays, I find all my professional writing work tends to cluster up around the very end of the year as various editors and artists take time off. I only managed to find time to sit down and think of one submission, and wrote it about an hour or two before the deadline.

My appointment with my endocrinologist is in March. So... we'll see if I make it that long. I'm fairly assured in my own strength, but with the turn things took in November, I can't say with certainty that it will still work out. Who knows what measures will have been taken to stop people like me by then? I still don't have valid ID... and I don't know if I ever will, for similar reasons.

I can relate to all of that in a pretty active and immediate way. This is a handy resource for some of the ID stuff if you do want to try and tackle it. In particular, I BELIEVE that site has info on how to get an up to date passport with $100 and a note from any physician that you're seeking/getting any sort of treatment, no specific need to be actively on HRT/getting any sort of surgery.

Something to be noted: I hardly play Overwatch at all. It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but I'm generally too busy, and in the rare occasions that I have time to play some vidjagaems, I prefer to spend them trying to make some progress in single-player games. But I absolutely love the characters, the lore, the worldbuilding, etc etc., so I read the comics and try to absorb as much media about it as possible.

Honestly, I've always been terribly fascinated with how little the plot/backstory/fandom of Overwatch has to do with the actual game itself or vice versa.

Blizzard: Here's a bunch of cool women (and some men in culturally stereotyping Halloween costumes). You can either draw heartwarming fanart of them all being super queer, or play this game where they all shoot each other in the general proximity of a car loping about at 5 mph.

No particular reason for the two activities to intersect at all.

Today's announcement was very nice though either way.

So, I, uh, did a thing today.

It's amazing what a relief it is just to get that out in the open, isn't it?

Funnily enough, when I was first coming out as trans, I started a blog called "Secret Gamer Girl," specifically in reference to how "Gamer Girl" (and Geek Girl, and other variations) is a loaded, derisive term, rooted in a baseless sense of entitlement that games are an explicitly male space and any women in them are an aberration (with the "Secret" part referring to all the double-standard-loaded "Fake Geek Girl" talk I overhear from people who think I'm a guy).

Of course, now it's been a few years and I've gotten so used to people using that or a variation to refer to me that personally it just feels like my name now. Still, in other contexts I find it's better to avoid describing someone as "a gamer" regardless, and there's rarely call to specify that you're referring to a woman (particularly since if I recall, statistically slightly more women play games than men in the first place). Just say, "all the other women from my gaming group agree that ____" or "what? Every woman I know is into RPGs," or "oh yeah, I play a ton of ____."

Huh... that was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. I didn't realize people would actually respond O.o

I've played a lot of trans characters (though I've very rarely told the rest of the table that), so I don't think I have a preferred class. When I play trans characters in superhero, games, however, they somehow always end up being paragons or else fire-controllers. Even when rolled randomly.

Weirdly enough, taking forever to work out that I actually was trans and asexual, I spent the longest time playing trans and asexual characters without realizing it. Then looking back, and huh, nearly every "male" character I've ever played ended up with a hat of disguise or ever-prepped alter self in case there was ever a need (read: possible justification) for setting up a female alter ego.

Frustratingly enough, since working all that out (mainly by way of a friend playing the same sorts of characters coming out) I've been stuck always having to GM or having games cut before the first session. Most notably I have this here Shadowrun character all set to go who's basically Faith from Mirror's Edge if she was a trans lesbian orc adept, with a big chip on her shoulder about her actual ethnic heritage getting erased by the rest of her family embracing the orc thing.

So... I suppose by default that makes my answer rogue/monk for gay and every single class for trans? Thematically though there's a lot to be said for shaman (actual historical relevance there), or cleric of Gozreh. Alchemist works too (improving your body with Science Juice and all).

I mainly play surly lesbian knights.

Who doesn't want to play a surly lesbian knight, though?

Time for serious biz.

Spoiler:

With the dust-ups that have been happening in the law recently, how much it'll freak my mom out in the middle of her already super-stressed life, and hearing my conservative grandmother who is going to pay for college complaining loudly about LGBT stuff, I'm starting to consider that maybe it's not the best idea to get the ball rolling on transitioning until I'm independent and can fully support myself.

On the other hand, some part in the back of my mind is theorizing that the HRT will be much more effective if I start it while my body is still going through puberty. On the third, mutant hand, because T and a bunch of other male hormones are pumping through my body right now, maybe the effect will be diluted. With all of this going on, I'm honestly not sure what to do.

Does anybody have any personal experiences and/or professional expertise to help me with my dilemma?

I'm in something of a similar boat on the stressed-out-mom front, but I'd still advise getting the ball rolling sooner rather than later for a few reasons. Which I'm also going to spoiler because wow I can ramble on.