Update: CaptainCaption Is Transgender (And Begging For Money) (Patreon)

Hey folks, CaptainCaption here with a very special update about myself that was apparently so obvious to everyone but myself that I'm apparently by far the most surprised person about it: I'm a transgender woman.

I've known for a month; also, I'm 2 weeks into HRT. My name is Allison, but please, just keep calling me CaptainCaption or Cap, and don't diminutize it to something childish like Cappy or CapCap or Allie or something like that. I want to be a woman, not a girl, and I find using real names online weird.

Okay, okay, okay, let's get the elephant out of the way. Yeah, I was an obvious egg, and it's borderline comedy how hard I convinced myself I wasn't.

As one woman from the server put it, "Your writing had so many trans elements and handled them so well that no cis person could have written it." Hell, I got this job by Espeon finding me such an obvious egg from an eggy gender bender story I wrote about myself on DeviantArt that she tapped me for the job (if you are curious, the name of myself from that story is the source of my name; it's also close in sound to my deadname, but I swear I was just listening to Scapegoat Wax's "Aisle 10 (Hello Allison)" while writing and decided to run with the name on just that).

That being said, I do not want to make a circus out of this announcement, which is why I am not turning this into what I planned the update to be about (all the ways I was an egg and didn't notice).

That's because that circus already happened when I made the Discord server ping:

And the reactions I got made me uncomfortable the point that I had to make a follow-up ping about it:

Both of these are pinned in #general if they're too small to read here.

I really want to be low-key about this (no way am I doing more than pronouns in the bios on social media and I don't want trans pride flag emojis in my usernames anywhere), but the creator of an adult gender bender visual novel with a sizable transgender audience (28.2% of you are, according to the player survey) realizing she is transgender herself is major development news you all have the right to know.

If I am going to be blunt, this personal realization is inevitably going to affect my writing in some way no matter how much I try to avoid it, but I am going to do my best to not let it influence my writing.

I've made some vague jokes in the past roughly stating that I am done with this visual novel if I ever crack, but I want to state clearly that I am committed to staying on the course I have set out on and seeing this project through to completion. There just might a bit more "realism" to the gender issues than I had planned.

A person views the world through themself, and that type of drastic change in how one views oneself is a frightening thought experiment, let alone a reality. I'm still coming to grips with what this means for me (and just how many red flags I missed or ignored about myself). I had started to consider myself an excessively self-aware person in the past 3 and a half years, and I was genuinely so, so sure in my masculinity that I didn't even have a doubt in my mind that I wasn't a cis male until all of a sudden, I was sure I wasn't cis. I wasn't an egg because I was a woman who hadn't hatched yet, I was an egg because I feel like a helpless baby chick who doesn't know anything now that I have.

So... how did this happen? What cracked this diamond egg?

Well, it was me. I did it to myself, which was the only way it could have happened.

I have to be a bit vague on the details due to privacy concerns of the other party, but I got into an argument with a woman I know on February 14th (Valentine's day, a day I'm going to remember because it's my grandpa's birthday) about what I perceived as discrimination against me by a group of trans women for being a cis male. When I said that this was unfair treatment as I wasn't really a cis guy, something clicked in my brain. What had been meant as a blasé joke admission turned out to be a confession that shifted me on what I had always viewed as the sturdy wall of my identity and made Humpty Dumpty start to tumble from his wall. The sheer rush of giddiness and panic and terror and exhilaration and overall understanding as I felt as I fell down to the ground is an experience I will never forget, and I'm pissed to this day that the way I cracked came from what was essentially a sledgehammer hit to the face, or leaning too far over a railing.

Seriously, you can see the panic attack happening live. I was on my phone at the time, which is why the typing looks off noitotallywasntbottomkeysmashingonmyphone.

It was like if Moby Dick just impaled himself on the Pequod's main harpoon while trying to ram it as Captain Ahab sat on the deck and sipped his liquor as he watched the floundering white whale with equal parts amusement, satisfaction, and concern.

Literally, this was the image she posted in response to the last message of the night.

So, of course the immediate thing I do is tell the server for the reason I state (I don't want to run away from this and want accountability by making it public):

From there, I felt 2-3 days of intense dysphoria (it's a bit of a blur and I don't want to think of the exact timeline lest I remember the worst of its details). It wasn't quite "I want to commit suicide" bad, but it was very, very rough, especially since everyday actions would trigger a cascade of self-hatred and depression that I had never felt before and I could understand how years of this might wear someone down to that point. I've been through some shit in my life, but this was such a different type of stress that I had a hard time dealing with it.

For instance, I had a panic attack so bad when I was taking in groceries and hated how I felt my muscles move as I lifted the bags up from the trunk of the car so much that I ran to the bathroom to throw up.

Another time, I opened the fridge. This was an action I've done countless times, but this time, I was a bit too hard and jerky with the motion. I'd done the same just a week before and distinctly recall feeling a bit of pride in that I had shoulders that were so big and strong, but now when this happened, I immediately let go of the fridge door handle like I'd grabbed a live viper and clutched my shoulders with my hands and resisted the overwhelming urge to press down on them hard enough to break my collarbone or dislocate the joints. That's so unhinged to type out, but I would have done anything to get rid of that feeling like they didn't belong on my body when they were this wide. And, I don't know, I was vaguely thinking that if they cracked the right way, doctors could stitch them back in a narrower way.

I didn't sleep much for a while after that (a problem that now exists in a different way). Every time I rolled over in my sleep, I would feel my shoulders and hate what I was. I felt like I was a cruel punchline to a sadistic joke that just wouldn't stop. I'd gone through so much shit in my life, and now I was trans? What was next, cancer?! Sure, why the fuck not?!

I survived the hell of those first few days post-crack, but things were still so bad that I was worried I'd listen to the darkest of those demons whispering in my ear, and I bought HRT online as I was desperate for any edge against this.

They arrived here on March 2nd.

I have an extraordinarily high testosterone level of 1,300 ng/dL (or 45 nmol/L) that is about 250% higher than men my age (it's weird typing that, as I don't really count as that anymore). After talking it over with other DIYer girls, I just decided to go for 50 mg/day of bicalutamide and 4 mg/day total of estradiol oral of 2 mg taken after breakfast and late in the evening.

This has curbed a lot of my dysphoria, but it isn't the silver bullet I had thought it'd be, especially not at first.

My first night on HRT, I was a mess. I kept spacing in and out of conversations, arousal kept creeping up on me, I was panting and moaning from essentially going into heat, and my breath kept hitching and when it passed over my lips my brain would fizz out with white fog. Most of what I've seen from HRT is that it lowers or neuters arousal, but mine got amplified to an incredible degree. About an hour after taking HRT (especially in the evening), I'll start to fall into a rut. If I'm not careful, I'll start squirming my hips around in my chair, my breath with catch in my throat, my face will heat up, I'll start to fidget with my hands (or my chest; more on that later), I'll move my toes around and curl them, and/or I'll be unable to think unless I do "something" to quell my arousal.

I recall expressing worries about HRT dropping my levels as I use that to write and we have new sex scenes coming up soon, but the monkey's paw of my life decided to say, "heh, watch this," as it grabbed a finger skateboard, did a kickflip with it, and curled two of its fingers ("I wish I could get the woman I was arguing with to acknowledge that I'm not really cis" and "I wish HRT won't drop my libido"). It now has one finger left, and it's the middle one, and it's flipping me the bird.

I blame it being bica this time and not cypro, but seriously, HRT round 3 has turned me into a fucking useless pining lesbian who breaks out into tingles from seeing a picture of a pretty animal girl, and God help me if the art is good and of a character I like. Much to my surprise, it turns out my waifus are also envy characters! It's a long list for sure, but Skadi from Arknights, Scathach from Fate/Grand Order, Eula from Genshin Impact, Iowa from Kancolle, and Honolulu and Taihou from Azur Lane are close to the top (I have a type lol). I'm not sure if I want them to top me, I want to top them, or I want be them. It's like what I had assumed was autogynephilia (spoilers: I had probably been self-medicating with a gender bender porn addiction and forgot that's what I was doing), but so much more intense. Making it even weirder is that there's a degree of bisexuality there, and I don't know how I feel about that.

The way that this changes how I feel about myself cannot be overstated. I'm still getting a decent bit of dysphoria here and there, and there are some doubts about if I'm really trans, but that is apparently just a part of the experience of what it's like to not have your sex match your body. As a whole, I'm a lot more comfortable with my body as a neutral state after cracking but before starting HRT, but I just wish it wasn't so fucking distracting... especially my chest.

So, just before midnight on the 14th, I dropped a mechanical keyboard switch I was fiddling with (an idle habit I have; you can make all the puns you want about the switch fiddling with the switch). I leaned over to grab it, and even though I was wearing a thick T-shirt and hoodie, I fucking jumped when my chest brushed against the armrest of my chair.

A bit less than 2 weeks after starting HRT, I had started to develop buds. They're now each the size of two poker chips stacked on top of each other, and while it's kinda awesome (and unexpectedly validating) to be taking to female hormones like a fish takes to water and develop this quickly, it's insanely distracting to feel these on my body no matter what I do. I can't even sleep on my chest anymore like I prefer, I wake myself up when I roll over, and if I'm going to be honest, I don't really want breasts (at least, not yet).

To explain, let's dial back why I didn't share these details earlier despite really wanting to (as the last update post said).

In the middle of me trying to figure out what was going on with my identity (I was positive I wasn't cis, but might I be bigender?), I got doxed with my legal name and face, and it put me into "OPSEC panic" mode:

I've deleted the posts, but as the images say, I was in the periphery of some questionable people from my speedrunning days who are pretty shitty people (think edgelords who talk in slurs and think 4chan is too PC). The person we were connected through (a speedrunner known as Cyberdemon531) got swatted a bit after coming out as trans, and my first thought was "I need to keep what happened with my gender identity being realized private."

I'm only coming out publicly as I talked to this person to learn that this group hadn't swatted her, but her personal info had been carelessly passed around from this group and would up with an 8chan hate group (whose head is now in prison), and I deemed the risk of coming out acceptable.

You see, I never really thought I'd be swatted, but I could easily be outed to my parents as I was doxed in the wake of my high-profile Games Done Quick ban (full disclosure: I am obviously not a MAGA-er and didn't wear any of the MAGA hats of the then president-elect Donald Trump on that couch; I got banned for a second reason, pulling a power strip, that I was also innocent of, but staff didn't want to actually unban me and wanted me and Cyberdemon531 as persona non grata; yes, it's that fucking stupid).

My dad probably wouldn't care much to learn that his only son was now his younger daughter, but my mom would have a much more... interesting mindset about the reveal.

I've stated the abuse I've suffered at her hands in a previous Friday Update, but it's fucked that Zach's severely mentally ill yandere mother is a hyperbolic caricature of my own mother put through a funhouse mirror (that makes her hot), yet she's set up to have a better redemption arc for Zach/Zoey in Keisuke's route than my own ever would.

Maybe it's beauty bias that makes crazy + hot = crazy hot?

Simply put, my mom is transphobic, and it's not even in the worst way possible. If she were a Bible-thumping conservative or full of hate in her heart from something else, I'd just cut her out of my life right now. But she isn't that. She's an ignorant neoliberal boomer who has made her transphobic views known repeatedly throughout my life, and she's disguised them as tasteless jokes.

So, I have a demisexual friend from high school who is using she/her now (but really, she's trans and wants to stay a bit closeted about it should she need to). She's been away at college and we're planning on hanging out for a day on Saturday for the first time in almost 2 years after a missed attempt around Christmas because everyone kept getting sick, and my mom has asked when she's coming over or if she's coming over several times... but most of the time (although not every time) by using her deadname and male pronouns.

Now if it were just this, I'd understand to a degree. Even the girls in the re:Dreamer Discord server still occasionally he/him me in VC, but they all promptly apologize and act really awkward and even ashamed when apologizing. It's really not the biggest concern for me right now to be misgendered and there's going to be an adjustment period as people get used to calling the bartender/slumber party host/main character of the server she/her, but my friend has been "out" for over a year now and my mom has kept up with her on Facebook.

In fact, one time in late August last year, my mom asked me if I had seen that my friend was going to Dragon Con in Atlanta... with her boyfriend. She had asked this in a slightly incredulous tone that I didn't notice until later, but I just told her I barely (never) use Facebook nowadays. My mom then viewed that as the perfect time to say, "I feel a bit bad for saying this, but there are easier ways to come out as gay."

I immediately said to her, "Then don't say it." She was slightly upset that I hadn't given her the desired reaction to her joke, but she shrugged and gave a meek apology.

Now, let's fast forward to a recent incident after I cracked to show that this is still an issue.

We were at my cousin's son's 2nd birthday party, and it was mostly the side of the family she had married into instead of my side of it. A few people are chilling on the back deck and that number keeps growing as people show up.

Along comes a woman from that other side of my cousin's family, and no offense to her, I clocked in a second. Admittedly, she was one of the most stereotypically-presenting trans women I have ever seen, with dyed bright red hair, a pastel skirt that showed a bit more skin than I assume would be comfortable on a moderately chilly February day in Georgia, and with Sailor Moon tattoos on the back of her hands over pride flags (one being the trans pride flag and the other being the gay pride flag).

My mom, using that same incredulous tone of voice, sorta nudged me and said, "Who's that person?"

I immediately said to her, "I'm pretty sure that's a trans woman."

My mom's response, after a brief glance at this woman, was, "Yeah, I should have guessed. You can always tell by looking at the shoulders."

Something snapped in my brain at that very moment. It was like my mom had gone into a lab to distill everything I hate about myself into a single joke, but without even trying, she had said one of the most hurtful things possible to me (my shoulders are where my dysphoria is primarily focused on, remember?)

Shit, maybe if I'm comparing my mom to Lex Luthor (a super genius), she has more in common with Samantha Taylor than I had thought...

Source: Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar and Dave Johnson

I hardly felt like a Superman at that moment, and much as I wanted to huddle into a ball and lurch forward so that my freakishly-wide shoulders would cave in just a tiny bit more, I had to play it off and act normal, like a man, so I just said, "That's rude as shit, Mom."

From there, the party lasted for another 3 hours, all while I was having a dysphoric attack and pretending that I wasn't. I hadn't excepted it to go for so long and I'd long since passed my alarm time for when I needed to take more estradiol when I got news that my mom and sister wanted to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant (despite there being a massive surplus of food at the party).

I just couldn't step foot in that restaurant because I was afraid I was going to break into sobs the second I did, so I told my parents that I was staying in the car because my allergies from standing outdoors under a tree that had started pollinating was making me feel sick (I have viral asthma, remember?) They made some snide comment about it (I don't quite remember what it was, but my mom suggested that I had needed to be careful by loading up on allergy pills before we left), and after I had confirmed they were inside, I curled up into a ball in the backseat and had a panic attack. I hated myself, but more than that, I hated that I couldn't be myself. I had to be this thing, and I had to keep pretending that I didn't feel like a monster in the wrong body.

By talking to someone online and venting before my parents came back, I managed to calm down enough to not burst into tears during the drive home. As I got upstairs and took my late dose and then started to calm down, I resolved that I wasn't going to tell anyone I knew IRL that I was trans until I moved out, not even my demisexual friend or my sister who I know would be supportive against my mom.

To my great shame, I am nearly 30 and still living at home. I don't want to be here, and it's pretty clear that I've started to wear out my welcome with my parents.

I pay a variable rent averaging to $400 that adjusts based on what I do around the house and in the yard every month to "contribute." One day, shortly after cracking, I ran a few errands, such as dropping off my prescriptions (that I pay about $800 a month for; I found an alternative to the very expensive dermal patches that works about half as good for a tenth of the price), getting groceries (that I paid for as I wanted to make caprese bruschetta for my family; I guess HRT has given me cravings), get gas (my dad's car broke about a year ago and he's been driving around in my car that I pay the service for yet don't own the title to; in fact, he now drives it a lot more than I do), and make a trip to Home Depot for wood glue and felt pads to fix a broken part of my desk. I had eaten out at Burger King (I had a driving job for a long time and got used to eating while driving).

I kinda fucked up the bread since my mom's suggestion to use the broiler backfired, but I also didn't dice anything as I was lazy. Which of us is to blame? They were tasty either way, and this is after I ate one.

When I got home, I went to my room to work. My mom later barged in and threw a fit at me for not doing the dishes for a meal I hadn't eaten and went off on a rant about how I don't contribute enough around the house and how I had used her card to buy the items at Home Depot and that if I was so ungrateful that she was going to raise my rent to $1,000 a month since she said she was also my landlord and had fixed my room.

(For context, she had recently tried to replace my bed frame despite having the exact conversation about me explicitly not wanting that since the new frame was a flimsy piece of shit she got from a buy nothing group on Facebook and she was replacing a black walnut frame that I had repaired with bolts that she thought looked ugly; making this even worse was that they had waited to do this until I was out of the house and unable to object. Part of the damage to my desk had been obtained when she knocked into a support privacy shroud (it's a U-shaped legal desk) close to my bed holding a very heavy and expensive broadcast room BVM (a CRT, but fancier) and 19" hardware rack. When I got home and objected to what was going on, she threw a massive fit about how I was being ungrateful and that she had cleaned up under my bed (displacing a ton of organized keyboard parts to the nearby guest room), and that ultimately, it was her house and I didn't get a say in it.)

I... got a bit tense during that conversation, and even a bit rude, but I basically told her that it had been my money for the groceries, and the prescriptions I'd pick up later, and the gas for my car that Dad drives, and for the Home Depot trip.

She didn't relent or even apologize, and she only put a pin in the matter of raising my rent.

The next day, she barged into my room at close to midnight and tried to search through the shelf on my desk where I keep my medications (like my HRT bottles that have clear trans pride flag colors on them that make it clear they are HRT). She had thought I had taken her entire pill bottle of Vyvanse because she couldn't find it, and her reasoning was "you'd taken some before." I had in fact taken some when my Adderall prescription ran out (I was supposed to be on Vyvanse but my terrible health insurance makes it cost $340 a month compared to Adderall's $70 or so a month, so I make due, but Adderall shortages have meant that my pharmacy is sometimes out and I need this type of medication to function), but I'd never do something as stupid as swiping a whole pill bottle. But because I kept trying to block her view of that pill shelf with my body, she nearly barged past me to check. I told her that I'd help her try to find her missing pills, which delayed her long enough for my dad to sort of wearily shout "I found them!"

She'd misplaced them behind her makeup, apparently.

As my mom left, I said, "Thanks for accusing me of theft, Mom."

Her response was curt. "Oh, fuck off."

So, I need to get the fuck out of this house, to say the least. My life in an already tense situation is going to become a lotmore complicated if I am outed to her. While I don't think I am going to be disowned or anything for being her daughter instead of her son, I am going to be placed under a microscope that is going to make me beyond uncomfortable. I don't even really want my mom to acknowledge me as her daughter so much as I want her to leave me alone, and she's the type of nosy parent who will not do that if she learns I am transgender.

I needed to "fuck off" a long time ago, but financially stability has always been an issue. I love the fact that I do my dream job for a living, and it's not even because in a roundabout way it made me realize something I might have been too oblivious to ever notice and too stubborn to ever admit. It's a creative job where I set my own goals, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

That being said... my parents would not approve of their child writing a pornographic visual novel for a job, especially if they knew how little it made me. The lie I've told to them and anyone else who asks me IRL is that I have a remote tech job with a west-coast tech company (and then later one in Indonesia; aka where Myumi and TiltSHIFT, our primary artists, are from) as they want to outsource work with lower labor costs and no benefits, and that I get money on the side with game development of a visual novel (I pitch them the exact synopsis of Umineko and tell them it's a serialized work I am in the process of developing) and custom keyboard commissions (something I've only made $800 from).

The issue of my precise income has been a problem for my parents more than once. I keep dodging questions, but I made just under $20,000 last year according to Espeon. I am registered as an employee to Espeon's LLC and I have a 1099 filed, but they think I have been ducking taxes and really want me to talk to the family accountant. If they knew just how little I make, or how I really make it, they would flat-out tell me to quit for what they deemed as "acceptable" work and pressure me if I didn't comply.

Remember, these are the type of parents who put their child through an abusive series of escalating punishments because I was suffering from debilitating illnesses (mental and physical) and wasn't applying for dead-end jobs that would make those worse fast enough for their liking. In their minds, they're being good parents teaching me a valuable lesson about hard work and how the world works, but it's hard for me to care about building a career they would be proud of when I'm projected to be dead by 45 at the latest and they'd likely outlive me.

Oh, yeah, that's part of what contributed to the crack. My stress has been through the roof as my life expectancy got dropped from 55 to 45 a few months ago.

Now, if I don't live with my parents, that threat doesn't mean shit, and I can control how much they interact with me. Those are great upsides to moving out, but the problem is my level of income. I can't afford to move out and there's a good chance I'll miss my October 2023 estimate (my 30th birthday) unless this page sees a monthly number of $3,300 or greater.

For transparency, the formula Espeon uses to calculate my monthly "cut" is:

$1,000 guaranteed from the total payout (92% of that number you see on the page as Patreon takes a 8% cut), then 1/3 of the total payout with deducted expenses (currently an Office 365 license, a Dropbox subscription, and one other subscription item I am blanking on, but this can include stock photos or audio packs), and then reimbursing me fully for those expenses.

For instance, the March 5th cut I got was:

$1723.02 = $1,000 + ($3,069.08 - $1,000 - $17 - $12.99 - $20)/3 + ($17 + $12.99 + $20)

The remaining $1,346.06 went into the art budget. For even transparency, Espeon does not profit from this game.

I can renegotiate that cut with Espeon (although I really don't want to as it is very fair in my mind and realistically accounts for future assets), but what I really need is higher Patreon numbers. I hate to beg as re:Dreamer is ultimately free and the Patreon better serves as a tip jar than a purchase, but I'm on a ticking clock.

Remember those buds I bitched about? Those are going to be more than "buds" soon, and I am having doubts about how well I can hide a growing pair of breasts in a hot American Southeast summer, especially if they're going to grow at this rate and to the size some of the women are projecting. I'm, like, the one woman on HRT who doesn't want to have huge tits, but dialing back my HRT isn't an option as I experience intense dysphoria when I'm even late for a dose.

S-So, uh... I hate to beg and I didn't want this post to feel emotionally manipulative, but if you aren't already, consider subscribing to the Patreon to give a newly-discovered trans women money to move out from her transphobic mom, or at least chip in for money so I can buy a few bralettes and sports bras? I'm going to need them pretty soon.

I can't promise they'll get as big as Zoey's, but I'll give it my best shot.

The proper Friday Update I'd say I do about standardizing Zoey's sprites' boobs is still in progress, but I'll be able to share it with you on the 24th (this coming Friday is my cousin's birthday and we're going out, and then I have my friend coming over). The update itself might be a bit late as I've been in a whirlwind on many fronts, but it's new writing of the Britney Day 4 Morning (Monday) of Zach's classes (and how they differ from Keisuke's route).

Until then!