I wish this wasn't my lot in life. I didn't wake up one day and choose this. I identify with being a woman and feel weighed down by being trans and wish that part of me didn't exist. I don't really feel pride anymore.

Thinking back, I'm realizing that I wasted my entire life just trying to survive. I spent my entire childhood depressed and sometimes suicidal because I could never be a woman. When I was 18 and realize being a trans woman was possible, I wasted seven years toiling over whether that was the right choice, whether I'd be happier opening myself up to constant mistreatment if I got to live on my own terms. When I finally realized I couldn't go on anymore and found a therapist and started HRT, I was 25 and male puberty and completely run its course. I lost so much during that process. My transition has gone much better than expected, and I have my moments, but I will never fully pass now.

Conservatives say we make being queer our entire personalities, and I try so hard to resist that. I have other interests, but I'm just so exhausted by life all the time and I can't do them. I want to write a book, learn a language, learn code so I can make an indie game. I've been trying to learn piano for three years now and I'm still not very far. I wish I could have had the time to learn all these things earlier. So much my time has been spent either depressed about society's transphobia or trying to "catch up" on being a woman, learning how to dress and put on makeup years late, coming out and having to revisit my relationships with everyone I know, making new friends to make up for the ones I lost, doing voice lessons, going to protests, laser and surgery, constant appointments, undergoing the lengthy name and ID-change process. I could go on. I've missed out on so much in my life on account of being trans. I read a lot about authors who grew up writing fanfic wishing I was one of those people, instead of just being sad and doing the bare minimum besides keeping my grades up and reading books. These days, I just go to my job, sometimes work overtime, play catch-up, spend time with my partner, and read the news.

And now just three short years of being fully out and on hormones, it's all being taken away and I genuinely don't know where I'll be in four years or whether I'll be alive.

There's probably nothing after this, and this is the only life I get. I can't have my own consciousness if reincarnation is real. If the Christian god is real, then at worst I have being turned into a genderless angel-thing and being stripped of my womanhood in heaven, or hell at best. I'm not saying being born a cis woman would solve all my problems. I've dealt with sexism too and know how harmful it is. But I don't think I will ever get to live a normal life, and now at almost 30, I don't think trans people will ever achieve social acceptance in my lifetime. Things keep going worse, and our most influential trans person in office says we need to slow down trans acceptance.

I think a lot about the concept of people just living, wanting to do things but who end up just working and being tired, and then dying before they get to accomplish any of the things they wanted to achieve in life. At this point, I've whittled down all my life goals to just two things: get married to my fiance and make some piece of art that someone says they liked, even though I'm so far behind and it wouldn't be very good.

I wish I had listened to general fan wisdom and played Super Metroid first. Having played the original Metroid, then Zero Mission, this is my third romp in the planet Zebes, and I'm finding the game extremely redundant.

The original was a little tedious, but I absolutely loved Zero Mission. I appreciated the slightly more linear gameplay. Paired with the manga, it also had a surprisingly good story that establishes Samus as a character. In context with the manga, the Wrecked Ship segment where you lose and then regain your suit is an amazing piece of gameplay-driven storytelling.

And then Metroid II was just as interesting. A completely new horror-esque locale plus a really creepy minimalist storyline that makes you really question the orders forced on you by the Galactic Federation.

So I was expecting a lot more out of Super Metroid. So far, I'd say I'm about halfway through the game. I beat Torizo, the Spore Spawn, Kraid, and the Crocomire. Aside from a really stellar cinematic opening, there hasn't been any plot to speak of, just a nonlinear dungeon to explore without a clear path. I know that in development, Super was meant to just be a 16-bit remake of the NES Metroid game, but was later retooled to be its own game, so that might be why the story feels so barebones?

Everything feels like a rehash of the original. I looked up the wiki and all (Brinstar, Norfair, Crateria, Wrecked Ship, and Tourian) but one of the levels (Maridia) are lifted from the original game, and I've heard that one new level we get is considered the worst one. It feels like a remixed new game+ rather than a full-fledged game that stands on its own, and honestly, I'm bored. It kind of reminds me of what I didn't like about Castlevania after a while, that game after game took place in the exact same mansion.

This might seem a little unfair. Super Metroid came out first, so it might be more accurate to say that Zero Mission is just an asset flip, that it's the less original game -- which is absolutely true, but I played Zero Mission first. And nonlinearity isn't a bad thing at all and it's great for this genre, but since I feel like I've done all this before, I don't feel motivated to discover all of Super's secrets. Does it get any better, or can I skip to Fusion?

TL;DR I played Zero Mission first and read its tie-in manga. Now Super Metroid feels boring because it "reuses" all but one of its areas on the planet Zebes, and it has a comparatively barebones story. Should I keep going or skip to Fusion?

Posting this here because c/residentevil is pretty dead.

So I have a bit of a dilemma. I loved RE2, both versions but especially the remake, as well as Code Veronica, so I've been wanting a new Claire game for a really long time, not to mention wanting to finally get to play VII and the newer games. I've played all RE games chronologically up to Revelations 1 at this point, but RE5 has been a bottleneck for years.

I've heard that you need to have played RE5 to fully understand/appreciate the lore/plot points of Revelations 2, so I'd like to get through it, but I'm having trouble getting into 5 for a few reasons:

-It's more of an action game versus horror and the partner AI isn't great solo.

-I can't find anyone to play it with. I got to play the beginning with a friend a few years ago and had a blast, but we haven't played since.

-The game forces you to play as Chris first playthrough, but I want to play as Sheva.

-I don't want to play through the entire game as a character I don't like.

-I can't find any NG+ save files for PC where it's not 100% infinite ammo.

So I'm wondering if it's worth it to just skip RE5, watch cutscenes on YouTube, or just get the game over with as Chris. What are your thoughts? I'd love some other opinions as I'm not sure what to do and I'd like to finally get caught up and play the new games after all these years.

So "genderpocalypse" is a typically postapocalypic, but not always sci-fi subgenre where one gender survives and another gets some disease, turns into a zombie, disappears, etc. Sometimes there's meaningful reflection on the relationships between men and women. Sometimes it can be really trashy.

I noticed among the books I'm aware of, I can't think of any where trans women are treated the same as other women, whether through the established rules of the story or through specific confirmation in the book. So this typically means that if an author wants to explore a woman-only society, they inadvertantly or otherwise depict all the trans women dying in the process. I have those listed below to head off those being suggested. That doesn't mean I think any book that establishes the genderpocalypse based on birth sex is inherently problematic or anything -- I think The End of Men handles it really well. But I was wondering if anyone knew about any stories in this genre that bases it off of gender and not sex.

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King: The sickness tied to women falling asleep is tied to chromosomes, so trans women would stay awake based on the establed rules of the story.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan: All the trans women die with the men.

Afterland by Lauren Beukes: All the trans women die of prostate cancer along with the men.

The End of Men by Christina Baird: The virus in the book targets trans women and men, but there is a trans woman character and it's depicted sympathetically, in terms of the dysphoria that would come from a y-chromomosome disease targeting them.

Manhunt by Gretchen-Felker Martin: Men and trans women turn into mindless zombies, unless the trans women eat licorice, for some reason.

The Men by Sandra Newman: All men and trans women mysteriously disappear one day, despite the title.

Femlandia by Christana Dalcher: A non sci-fi apocalyptic example. The premise is that society and economics collapse at the hands of men, leading men and women to segregate and form separate societies. In the book, trans women are kept out of womens' societies.

Hi all,

I’m going on a backpacking trip in a month, and the only tucking underwear I’ve ever heard of is LeoLines and TomboyX, but I might as well ask if there’s anything else. Bonus points if it uses a material like merino wool.

I use both brands for normal daily use, but Leolines is made from cotton and TomboyX is polyester, both of which are not great for temperature and odor control during outdoor trips.

Tucking the old-school way sounds super confusing, so I’d rather not resort to that.

Hi all,

I'm going on a backpacking trip in a month, and the only tucking underwear I've ever heard of is LeoLines and TomboyX, but I might as well ask if there's anything else. Bonus points if it uses a material like merino wool.

I use both brands for normal daily use, but Leolines is made from cotton and TomboyX is polyester, both of which are quite bad for temperature and odor control.

Tucking the old-school way sounds super confusing, so I'd rather not resort to that.