Friday Update #41: Down Bad (Patreon)

"Hey all, CaptainCaption here, wishing very much that I had my upgraded (and work-in-progress) profile picture/Samantha sprites hybrid's confidence."

"It looks good."

"But..."

"Oh God, I hope that comes off as a nervous smile, not a smug one."

"There's... a lot I want to share about what they're going to be used for (no, they're not a total vanity project!), but it's not time to talk about that yet."

"First, the update is delayed a day as my mental health collapsed this week, somehow hitting rock bottom even more than me being suicidal. I'll explain the ultimate trigger in a bit (and don't worry, the update is done pending checks I cannot do right now), but let's check in."

"These are the broad strokes, but bluntly, my mental and physical health have both been terrible in the past month. Almost everything has been centered on how that 'actually, I am not cis, but I'm not binary transfem either' announcement prepending the full Britney outline brewed into an inescapable shitstorm with me at the center."

"I do apologize for how I worded things rather indelicately, but I wrote that part (and another part in the server I didn't share in that massive post) within 48 hours after what was 3 seconds away from being a suicide attempt, and I was angry and scared and all these other negative emotions, and that definitely shows in one or two paragraphs. I was looking for someone to blame, and I found it."

"There is a lot of blame to go around, with me by far having the lion's share (there's no way a cis guy could have gotten tricked into getting on HRT 3 times nor been receptive in any way to being denied his masculinity so often). And not to assign blame, but to show context since then (maybe too much, but that rambling detail is what happens when I write when I'm tired)..."

• I've been called transphobic by people I once considered close friends (I was so worried about transphobes using my story to be transphobic that I never contemplated that trans women would use it to call me one).
• Other people who I had trusted even more deeply committed indefensible personal betrayals (and I do not use that word lightly) and everyone involved is too stubborn and hurt to back down.
• Everything triggered a Discord server migration and culture collapse (it'll rebuild, but the sting hurts in a way I can't articulate beyond saying it feels like being abandoned in a dark hour).
• I've been subject to targeted harassment and smear campaigns.
• I've been flying blind far too frequently about the missteps I've made as very few of the people angry at me bothered to explain why before cutting off contact with me and I'm terrified I'm going to make another misstep (remember, I am on the autistic spectrum, and sometimes I just miss social cues).
• I've had to defend trans culture as a whole against concerned friends and bigoted strangers while being called a transphobe by those I've been standing up for.
• I've had a trans girl express envy for my warp-speed psychical transition when I was in the middle of PMS despite that being a trigger for me I've stated quite vocally.
• I've still had to fend off unsolicited advice trying to push me toward being more feminine than I would like to be, and that's really hard when how masculine or feminine I feel at any given moment is in flux and I have no security in who I am with no answers.
• My appointment with a specialized gender psychologist hasn't even been made yet because despite having a referral and urging the receptionist that things are "suicide attempt" level of crisis, the doctor has a very long waiting list for new patients I can't cut in line for.
• That the plan I came up with my doctor to get off of estrogen (take a boatload of dopamine agonists and ride out the storm) didn't work, and I am being forced to choose between enduring weeks of being functionally crippled and illiterate with worsening CBS symptoms as my hormones reset, blowing out my liver with much stronger medication doses to offset those symptoms while I can't risk further drug interactions (thanks, inhalant steroid I am still on!), or staying on HRT (I chose staying the course with HRT, because fuck it, it's not like these E-Cups would disappear anyways if I got off it without surgery and it's not like I am ever going to realistically have kids).
• My CBS has almost certainly gotten worse but brain scans and other methods can't accurately show how much as confounding factors such as my anxiety and depression worsening make it hard to separate reality from hypochondriacal doomsday thinking about my health.
• The hormones definitely affect my emotional stability and I'm prone to wild and erratic mood swings (it's not a good feeling to go from bubbly and outright effervescent euphoria to suicidal despair in the course of 30 minutes, and what I crave above all else right now is stability), and I don't like who estrogen turns me into (beyond physical changes).
• I'm still in constant physical pain (as an example from the other day, with context that I boymode in public and need a compression bra since I don't pass as either sex without one, I hit myself in the chest with groceries while unloading from my trunk while they were compressed and I crumpled to the ground and hit my head on the car as I tried really hard to not cry on my driveway).
• Seriously, people still act weird about the boobs, and it's not just trans women, as my mom pointed at my chest and whispered to my sister right in front of me when I saw her for the first time since I came out to my parents (that's going to be fun to walk back, but it's not like they're treating me like I'm female in the first place and I only get called 'Samantha' 20% of the time).

"But as horrible as all of that is, and how much I want to cry about it being an unfair situation even if that burns more bridges, it's just a bump in the crumbling road of my life. I have already been humoring myself that I'm moving past it, and I even more naively thought I was 'good' as of a week ago. Maybe I am, maybe I am not. I don't fucking know anything anymore because I don't know who I am anymore."

"'But wait, CaptainCaption! What triggered that emotional collapse this week you mentioned?' you might be asking, assuming I haven't lost you."

"And I'd say, 'very astute, reader, but hopefully not astute enough to notice that this Pose B sprite is still looking kind of jank compared to Pose A, and TiltSHIFT messed up some of the hair and I haven't fixed things yet!'"

"And then I'd say that, well... you're looking at it. Her, even."

"Again, there are some real benefits to a commercially-commissioned avatar I can use for social media and hopefully as a side image in the author's notes developer commentary, but I'll admit that I asked Espeon for permission to pay TiltSHIFT not just for some fixes but to continue his commission to Samantha's sprites so that I could have a profile picture and a full-fledged sprite of "me" I could even hypothetically use as a PNG-tuber (not that I'm that cringe)."

"But I'll be honest, those were secondary reasons. The real one was that I was down in the dumps, and I was down deep in there, and I thought this would be a distraction to cheer me up and even lift me up out of rock bottom."

"Now, I'm not stranger to editing TiltSHIFT's art for polish (this delayed update is mostly about fixing some mistakes and adding a lot of new stuff to his Samantha sprites)."

"Versatility, folks. Remember that RD's sprite system is set up so that the eyes, eyebrows, mouths, etc. are all distinct parts than can be mixed and matched for new faces."

"So, I got enough of the art on Wednesday morning that it had shading and colors. I was ahead of schedule (minus the week delay), so I decided to spend some time thoroughly check the sprites for issues... since, y'know, this was so important and personal to me."

"I spent the next 2 hours in a daze, and I don't mean the Vyvanse and caffeine one I often am in. I edited the art of Pose A quite thoroughly, and I kept mixing and matching those sprite parts and even those outfits, making new variants, experimenting, all while something inside me wound up."

"I'm nearly positive had I not 'cracked' already, this would have done it."

"But instead, I spent those two hours hyperventilating from a mix of pain and arousal, and I slowly became full of the most palpable feeling of bitter want I have ever felt in my life, and I'm pretty sure I had my first experience of gender envy as my astral self made this face, and she's been making it for two days straight."

"Let me tell you, the 'god I wish that were me' meme hits differently than I expected in this case, because I think I was in a unique position for it to hurt so much worse than I told myself it should on paper."

Source: long since deleted off of pixiv, but here's the Danbooru post.

"Remember, this is the 'original' character I've transposed the better part of a decade of my writing persona onto (starting in late 2014), that I've come to think of as synonymous with a large part of my identity or even just 'me' to the point that despite not starting out liking the red hair/red eye color combination, I've internalized it to my tastes."

"I've tried numerous methods to make that persona have more concrete art than just a pilfered still image of a rule 63 version of a character from an anime I've never seen before."

"Kinda damningly to the 'Zoey is Cap's self-insert' theory, Britney's one worked better as a base, but it was still missing something (and to be honest, Britney's base faces have issues and I am not a 19-year-old woman; besides, my sister somehow wound up being a lot closer to being Britney than I suspected)."

"I have literally gigabytes of stable diffusion 'art' of redheads with red eyes, but this is a 'good' example of what I was trying to do with it (at least, a SFW one)... also, my hand got mangled by a wood chipper, so please don't bring it up, and I only used this one as it was a recent image2image example using the sprites as basis."

"But this art with TiltSHIFT? Now this would be special."

"It would be recycled heavily on the sprites of the character I unintentionally based on my number one envy character (until now), that being Scátchach. Both were fine by me, as I consider Zach's mom to have the best sprites in the game, and that sharp facial structure and eye shape sends me."

"But it's more than the art being good. Zach's mom, Samantha, is the only 'mature' character in the game so far (and I'm approaching 30 in 2 months myself). She wound up this passion project of a character with a backstory I put a lot of work into, and The Mom Route™ is shaping up to be something really special and unique that you don't see in visual novels and gender bender stories in general, and people are champing at the bit for more (more on that in a second)."

MAMA / UWUUUUUUUUUUUUUU / I DON'T WANNA DIE / I SOMETIMES NEVER WISH I'D BEEN BORN AT ALLLLLLLLLLLLL / *Brian May proceeds to completely shred a guitar solo*

"But I have a special connection with this chaotic larger-than-life character even further beyond that: I (very densely) gave her the name I wanted for myself for years without realizing it was my girl name: Samantha."

"And I stare at this art, because I can't stop fucking staring at it, and I'm so fucking unfathomably jealous of her, of this fictional anime girl that represents me, that I want to gnash my teeth into a block of wood, and I'm so utterly depressed and upset that I'm not her and never will be that I've been crying on and off for two days (most notably waking myself up crying, probably because I was dreaming of being her), and I utterly hate myself down to my core for being snared in such a dangerous trap I made around myself for years without realizing, and I can't stop wanting to be her, more than I think I've ever wanted anything."

"Yeah, I'm that much of a fucking dumb bimbo (or himbo, or thembo) that I gave myself crippling gender envy and dysphoria over 'myself.' I'm not sure if this counts as narcissism, but it's an intriguing thought experiment determining just who I am so 'down bad' for. Is it just a hot redheaded anime girl? Is it to the future concept of me as a woman? Is it the personification of the femininity I wish I had? Am I attracted to her as a guy? Is this lesbian attraction? Non-binary envy? Just how much of this is wanting her versus wanting to be her? But if I am her, then..."

"Fuck, who knows! Not me, that's for sure! I don't even know who I am right now!"

"But at least we all finally know who CaptionCaption's self-insert is, right?"

"Also, it looks like Britney won the poll for the route focus after this delayed update, but I'll have to check the weighted results after I sleep. I have been up for over twenty hours, and my pillowcase won't stain itself with tears!"

"Yes, humor is how I cope, but I'll see you all next time."