**<u>An Incomplete List of Games that made me Trans</u>**
(link-reveal:"> **Every Bitsy Game Ever**")[(display: "Every Bitsy Game Ever")]
(link-reveal:"> **Judith Hunts**")[(display: "Judith Hunts")]
(link-reveal:"> **Full Service Shop**")[(display: "Full Service Shop")]
(link-reveal:"> **Some Sword / Some Play**")[(display: "Some Sword Some Play")]
(link-reveal:"> **Perseids**")[(display: "Perseids")]
(link-reveal:"> **On My Own So Called Cleverness**")[(display: "On My Own So Called Cleverness")]
(link-reveal:"> **Minecraft**")[(display: "Minecraft")]
> > I’d made a lot of bitsy(link: " [*link*]")[(open-url: 'https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy')] games before I ever joined the community.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I normally find interacting with other people pretty draining.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[But the bitsyfolk were cool. We got along.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[And they were mostly queer, many were trans.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I didn’t think anything of it.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[I might have joked about being the only cishet male bitsyfolk.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[(link-reveal:"Ha ha")[ ha ha].
(link-reveal:"> > ")[But something in me felt like I’d found my people.]]]]]]]
> > This isn’t a game, but rather a twitter bot (link: " [*link*]")[(open-url: 'https://twitter.com/judithhunts')].
(link-reveal:"> > ")[That’s close to a game though. Procedural generation and stuff.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[What are you going to do, call the videogame police on me?
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Anyhow, among other things, it is a story about lesbian yearning, as its two principle protagonists, Judith and Gwendolynne fail to get together.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I wrote some fanfic. Bullshitted with other JH fans.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[I’ve always written female protagonists, often lesbians.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[I’ve always felt a bit ashamed of this. Was I fetishizing?
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[But the JH community liked the fics. Didn’t think it was weird.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Some of them wrote fics as well, spicy ones.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[That made me think.]]]]]]]]]
> > I decided I’d also like to do some spicy writing.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[A smut game.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[So I asked for some recs for good, well-written smut games.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[Just so I could see what good looked like, you understand.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[A friend recommended Full Service Shop(link: " [*link*]")[(open-url: 'https://alexisroyce.itch.io/full-service-shop')].
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[And it is, indeed, a very good game. Hot, too.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[You can’t be a man in FSS.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[You can be an enby or a woman. And you can have cock or a pussy or just a tactile plate.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[Okay, well it might be a bit weird, but I’ll play a woman with a cock, I thought.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[Reader, it was not weird.
(link-reveal:"> > > > > ")[I ignored that.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[But I did decide that my game would have a similar independent choice of identity and equipment, except I would also allow for cishet men
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[because I still thought that I was one.]]]]]]]]]]]]
> > So, I began to write a game(link: " [*link*]")[(open-url: 'https://moniker-ersatz.itch.io/some-sword-some-play')].
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I enjoyed writing it.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[Writing smut is a lot more fun than writing anything other than smut.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[Like lists, for example.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I was worried, though, that I might not be able to write all combinations equally well.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I was not into cocks, (link-reveal:"I thought")[ (wrongly)], so could I write an erotic scene with multiple cocks?
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[Yes.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[And it was hot.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I talked to a friend about it. I hadn’t really considered my sexuality much.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[The conversation turned to other things I was avoiding thinking about.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[*“When I was young, I wanted to be a girl.”*
(link-reveal:"> > ")[It was a throwaway example. But she said “If you ever want to talk about that, this is a safe place.”
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[The key to not thinking about something is, and I cannot stress this enough, to **not think about it**.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[I was thinking about it.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[By the time I finished making SS/SP I described myself as “questioning” my gender identity.]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
> > While I was still making SS/SP a friend said “Hey, you should play this”.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Perseids(link: " [*link*]")[(open-url: 'https://communistsister.itch.io/perseids')] is a game about four trans girls on a road-trip.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[It is lovely.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[At the start of the game, it asks you to name the protagonist.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I meant to ask myself *“what would my name be if I was a trans girl?”*
(link-reveal:"> > ")[But what I actually asked myself was *“what would my name be if I was *(link:"out")[OUT] as* a trans girl?”*
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[I had a mini-breakdown.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[More would follow.]]]]]]]
> > So my “questioning” was becoming urgent.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[As is my wont, I made a game about it(link: " [*link*]")[(open-url: 'https://moniker-ersatz.itch.io/on-my-own-so-called-cleverness')].
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[For a Critical Distance jam, in fact.
(link-reveal:"> > > > ")[The typical place to process your gender and sexuality, obvs.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[And it kind of worked, because while the last scene was about being okay not knowing the answer,
(link-reveal:"> > ")[As I wrote it, I kinda knew the answer, I just couldn’t say it.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[I was too afraid.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Another trans gamedev contacted me about SS/SP, and I mentioned my questioning, and she said,
(link-reveal:"> > ")[“Oh no, you’re definitely trans.”
(link-reveal:"> > ")[And hearing it, I knew that she was right.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[(And I pretty much crapped myself)]]]]]]]]]]
> > I settled in the mushroom biome.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[I am afraid of monsters.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[The nearby lands were mostly forest. Supplies were good.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Except for wool.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[No sheep.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Finally I tunnelled all the way to a grassy biome, and shepherded two stupid sheep back through the tunnels to my mushroom tower.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[You can dye sheep in Minecraft, and their lambs inherit the colour.
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[Biology is complex, I guess.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I wanted some nice decorative banners.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[But what colours?
(link-reveal:"> > > ")[Pale **blue** and (link-reveal:"**pink**")[. Yes, I made a trans flag].
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Technically, the first place that I came out was Minecraft.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[I'm still afraid of monsters.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[Videogames don't teach you how to fight.
(link-reveal:"> > ")[But
(link-reveal:"> > ")[They teach you how to press forwards.
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]