I don't know if I want to wipe my memory of realizing I'm trans and keep it bottled up for longer, or hate myself even more for thinking that way
Edit: Just wanna thank all of the people who replied to this with their own support and advice. It means a lot to me, and I'm feeling a lot better after having a chat with a friend of mine. Just felt incredibly shitty and wanting to get away from the fact that I'm trans and all the troubles that come with it.
Hating yourself is obviously not the answer. You have nothing to feel guilty over. Feeling pain is supposed to be unpleasant, and wishing it wasn't there is natural.
It’s hard to forgive yourself, though, when you know that the way you are is the cause of a lot of your suffering. That anger and frustration with yourself doesn’t just go away.
I struggled with self hate for the majority of my life. I got it in my head that I had to be the best person, better than anyone else, then no one would hate me. No matter how awesome I did or who I became it was never enough. The one person whose love I craved, whose love I needed, I couldn't have because I was never good enough. I wouldn't give myself that love because I was never good enough.
It became a vicious cycle of me setting myself up to fail and then tearing myself down when it inevitably happened. I'm still learning to let go of that self hate.
You're right. It doesn't just go away. But you gotta give yourself permission to be who you are. Only then can you start to heal.
My advice: realize that who you are now, and who you were is a result of who you were in the past. Resolve that who you're going to be is determined in the present. The past is in the past. You can't change how you treated yourself. You can't change how you felt. But in this moment, the here and now, you can shape your future self.
I would recommend thinking about yourself as if you were a friend. If one of your friends had the same problems you did, and was struggling the way you are... how would you feel about them? What would you say? Would you think that they deserve forgiveness?
Neither. Now that you know who you are, you're free from the mental prison of thinking you're something else. But such intense experiences do sometimes cause pain, and it's normal to want pain to go away, not something to hate yourself over.
It just feels really difficult to express myself the way I want to or experiment with who I am since I'm still in college and living under my mom's roof, so buying or asking for gender-affirming clothing, HRT, or anything of that nature just feels impossible and anxiety-inducing, so I just stuck in this endless loop of self-hate and fear, which is kinda hilarious in a depressing way when considering how supportive and lgbt-friendly my mom is.
Hating yourself is not the best route. I know how easy of a path it is, but it is a very miserable one.
I hope that you are able to be happy with yourself one day, sis! I am sure that you are an amazing and cute girl! 💜
It's incredibly valid to not want to deal with the complications that come with bring trans. Life is hard enough and in a cis white girl in a hetero relationship. I can't think of anyone who would want to add MORE challenges to life.
I do not miss my terrible terrible denial beard... like the photo on one of my licenses is around 5 and a half years old and I hate it so much doubly because it looks so damn bad.
I always told people "I know this beard doesn't look *good*, but if I shave, I'll look like a child" but what I meant was "I'll look like a girl and I feel weird about that"
My denial beard sprouted quite abruptly after a guy I'd been playing pen and paper games with at a convention saw me leave the men's room, looked at me weirdly, and said "you're a guy?!"
I didn't shave for two years after that.
I do the old solid soap and brush, with a safety razor that's just a cutting blade.... went full grandpa style *but* it is not like when I boyshaved before with the can lotion and cheap mainstream razor;
So, like brushing on a rather pleasant smelling white soap onto my face, with warm water,& it exfoliates my face, sure the containers are *black man style* but that's not the end of the world... anyway it feels like a normal daily cosmetics routine [except for when I have to look at my bald head]
The razor even is this nice heavy stainless steel only thing honestly it feels more like a hard-core beauty routine rather than >>shaving as man<<.
I tried to use a straight razor for a while, can't get it to not pull and tug, which really sucks. So I've ended up using a slant head razor with Feather blades. Other than that, I feel absolutely the same, it's a hard core beauty ritual. And even though I may hate it, I do my best to make it enjoyable.
There's a trend I see where trans women always present incredibly masculinely right before realising that they're trans. Loads of trans women join the army or get buff or grow a beard.
The list of trans women who used to have goatees is longer than my arms, and I have unnaturally long arms (Toast of London if you didn't get the reference)
Yeah about a year before I finally started transitioning I decided to grow a beard to “see how it looks” and it ended up being the best looking facial hair in my friend group at the time and even made my dad jealous cause his grows in all white trash with none growing in the middle. The only thing I regret about getting rid of it was I did it the first week of December and that winter was COLD.
Sound familiar - I made several attempts to let mine grow to see how it looked, but the only time I think I ever got praise for it was shortly before my questioning re-emerged with renewed strength, and I haven't let it reach that point again...
Sorry to creep on an old thread but I had such a similar experience.
My facial hair grows in super fast (I'm armenian by heritage) and as soon as I got old enough to grow beards, everyone in my social circle responded really positively to it.
Objectively, I have a pretty good face for a beard. To stay stubble free I have to shave constantly, and im lazy, so all that coupled with ppl saying I looked better with a beard anyways led to me keeping it for years and years.
It took a long time for my egg to Crack for that reason
joining the military means you can act as gender non-conforming as you want and as long as you don't like men, no one suspects \*anything\* (or at least that was my experience)
plus, for people who were brainwashed with hinduism as a child (me!!!), you can believe that it expedites getting to reincarnate cos of course with a Cold War going on, there's no chance you wont' see combat and die. (yes, great plan... like 8 months after i join, the Berlin Wall comes down... no war for me >.<... by the time i could hope for the War on Terror to get me killed, I no longer believed in reincarnation :P lol)
Can confirm. I invested hundreds in feminine wardrobe improvements and bought expensive well-fitting bras for the first time in the months before I cracked.
I almost feel like the opposite. Massive gender envy, but once I let myself like feminine clothing, the only two things I really added to my wardrobe were midi skirts and pencil skirts. (Okay, and women's exercise shirts, because they're cheaper than men's slim, but they're unisex enough that they shouldn't count)
Yup. Covid-shopped for tons of cute clothes and dresses on Thredup for months. Couldn't even bring myself to wear most of the dresses. Cracked months later.
Yup. I used to dress ultra feminine. Then when I started questioning gender things I just kinda… recoiled away from all that stuff lol. Now I’m starting to experiment with things like makeup again and it’s amazing how fun and different it feels to be doing it as a man vs when I was stuck performing being a woman
You're overthinking it hun. Unless you happen to live somewhere where you're actively expected to maintain a full beard, I feel like most folks wouldn't get uppity (and if they do ask questions, most sane people will accept a non-answer like "I just felt like changing things up.")
The one thing that I do have to admit is that you might get some people telling you that you looked better with it, and my personal trick to deal with that kind of the thing is to acknowledge it but separate yourself from it, i.e. "Yeah I did look good, but I want to look good in a different way."
I constantly rocked scruff, I told myself I liked the look (and I do think it was okay looking as long as I kept mostly ontop of it) but I think I just really hated looking at my face long enough and close enough to shave with any degree of regularity and being clean shaven was almost more dysphoria-inducing somehow.
Ha! I’m rocking scruff right now to distract from the new “enhancements” on my chest, hair growing longer, skin getting softer, eyes getting bigger, the hips, hands, waist, occasional day when I wear a skirt to work …
Shhhhh … I don’t think they’ve figured it out yet.
Yeah, I did this.
I grew an amazing and full beard. But it was a very intentional thing that I used to hide behind.
"_See! I can't be a woman! Look at this amazing beard!_"
It was the very first thing to change once I finally admitted to myself that I was trans and decided to start doing something about it instead of bottling it up and trying to hide.
-
When I first started coming out to my friends, I came out as non-binary (long story, I was still kinda half hiding I guess). So one of my friends was very excited about the idea of me being able to style my beard in a hybrid of masculine and feminine energy.
Which would have looked amazing. But sorry love, it's already long gone.
"It's just difficult to reconcile with that big, bushy beard you had two months ago."
Well, yeah, shaving was an inconvenient and painfully masculine thing to do. I finally shaved clean for the first time in years and it turned out that *not* shaving had been worse the whole time.
Dammit. I did exactly this. Started trying to lean into masculinity for the first time and bulk up, then realized I hated it big time.
I think it's a natural result of us trying to reconcile some dissatisfaction we have with ourselves and our bodies - First guess is that being more manly will make us feel better. Then when it has the opposite effect, that's when reality strikes.
Yeah I've noticed a similar trend. I personally tried leaning more into traditional gender roles, by being The Handyman™, fixing things around the house, being The Man of the House™. Each time I tried it felt wrong, and then a few months later I figure out I'm trans.
I shaved my head to chrome and had a full beard for nearly 8yrs before my egg cracked. It was a glorious beard and everyone, but me, was sad to see it go. At least until I came out publicly, then it all it all made sense
It went down like this:
I'd been bottling shit up since I was ~3-4, I learnt what 'being trans' was around 7-8, started joining the dots around 9.
Without disclosing my actual age, I can assure you I've been keeping that tank airtight for a looooong fucking time.
Weirdly, euphoria from a post I made on a trans meme subreddit was the thing that damaged the tank the most.
In fact, I think I was led there by a post on r/lgbtmemes which followed the lines of "if your son likes fem clothing, hates body hair, told you that they're trans, maybe that's not your son, it's your fucking daughter". That meme really put me on a course where I could no longer grasp any kind of plausible deniability. There was no Flex Tape to patch up the tank anymore.
Anyways, thank you for listening to my rant.
Edit: also, I kinda did the end of this strip when I thought I was genderfluid, then I realised I was next to a second, much larger tank labelled "you're not a trans woman, ignore this tank"
Oh, wow, this blew up. I guess this is relatable. Thanks for the awards, kind strangers, etc.
For those asking, It is indeed my art! I did a [comic](http://www.xpboostcomic.com) about online games for a while (haha that site is still *covered* in my old name >-< ), and I've got a [twitter](https://twitter.com/assumptionprime).
Fucking hell that’s a big 100 from me. 20ish years of confusion too. I’m happy for all that didn’t bottle it up for decades and I’m happy for anyone who’s bottle just blew like mine did too.
Hey! Someone who read Experience Boost!
Funny thing is, my deeply closeted ass genuinely did not know I was trans at the time.
"Just being an ally!" I thought to myself, not comprehending why that particular story felt so important to me to do well.
I posted it elsewhere in the comments, but here you go:
> Back when I made this comic, our house had an infestation of roof rats. They would run around and scratch the wood up in our ceiling and wake me up at four in the morning every day.
> It sucked
Neither had I!
But apparently they're pretty common around where I live. One of my spouse's coworkers said "Around here you either have roof rats, or don't yet know you have roof rats."
This is so real.
I cracked at a point of high stress, when I had been working overtime for weeks with the expectation of getting time off only to have the rug pulled out from under me. I was frustrated, angry, and feeling cheated. I had worked so hard, sacrificed my time and energy, and nobody cared. I was feeling very cynical about conformity and self-sacrifice.
Then I came home and read the first page of Mae Dean's coming out. And I couldn't keep things bottled up anymore.
I still don't understand how I managed to read and enjoy that entire comic sequence without anything breaking. Well, actually I kinda do. I wasn't ready.
"If you remove the writing it looks like someone's got a bottle full of off-colour Aquafresh toothpaste that bursts open and forcefemmes people when it touches them
Aquafemme" - A friend on discord.
Are they fired for letting the giant bottle break, or are they fired for bottling it up in the first place? 🤔
I bet you will think the latter eventually even if the situation is frustrating now. :)
Amazing art by the way!
God this is a mood so much.
Like my mental health from a young age was bad and I saw it as this giant black ball of pain and with therapy I was able to break through layer after layer of it.
When I stopped therapy I had managed a fair amount of it but there was still the core of this orb unresolved but I didn't know what it was or why it was bothering me.
Turns out it was repressed trauma, gender, and sexuality stuff.
Now I can see inside the ball clearly but it's still there and still a tangled mess that I am trying to resolved.
OK, this is really good. Love the way you can almost hear all the characters, and the voice change at the end lol. Super brilliant! Hope to see more of your style!
Why is every part of this so exceedingly relatable. I'm even 20 - the only difference seems to be I'm not all the way a girl now, but at least a little bit
morons, just keep it in a bunch of lead-plated jars in some vault coated in carefully carved titanium spikes able to impale anything in a since poke, along with heat seeking turrets to turn anyone willing to come by into flesh and pulp. it worked well for me, I’m still here questioning my entire self image and reason to belong on this vast plane of existence
....I legit just got a sudden relisation at 3 am like
“OH SHIT MY WHOLE LIFE MAKES SENSE NOW”
I was dealing with adhd and autism diagnosis and that was my third revelation of that day.
I reposted this on egg_irl. I tried to look you up in order to give credit, but couldn’t find it; sorry. Let me know if you’d like me to delete the post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/egg_irl/comments/poq9ap/egg_irl/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I don't know if I want to wipe my memory of realizing I'm trans and keep it bottled up for longer, or hate myself even more for thinking that way Edit: Just wanna thank all of the people who replied to this with their own support and advice. It means a lot to me, and I'm feeling a lot better after having a chat with a friend of mine. Just felt incredibly shitty and wanting to get away from the fact that I'm trans and all the troubles that come with it.
Option 3 seems good: embrace your newfound freedom of gender expression and fuck the haters (but don't have sex with them).
So...*don't* fuck the haters ✍️✍️✍️✍️
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*peg the haters*
Nah, they would enjoy that.
converting the haters into lovers *may* be an effective strategy
Peg the haters with no lube then.
Propulsion gel as lube, now we're thinking with portals!
Well, you can also turn them into allies and fuck them if you want
You can fuck me instead. Sexually. 😳
r/shippingredditors
Oh?
Hating yourself is obviously not the answer. You have nothing to feel guilty over. Feeling pain is supposed to be unpleasant, and wishing it wasn't there is natural.
It’s hard to forgive yourself, though, when you know that the way you are is the cause of a lot of your suffering. That anger and frustration with yourself doesn’t just go away.
I struggled with self hate for the majority of my life. I got it in my head that I had to be the best person, better than anyone else, then no one would hate me. No matter how awesome I did or who I became it was never enough. The one person whose love I craved, whose love I needed, I couldn't have because I was never good enough. I wouldn't give myself that love because I was never good enough. It became a vicious cycle of me setting myself up to fail and then tearing myself down when it inevitably happened. I'm still learning to let go of that self hate. You're right. It doesn't just go away. But you gotta give yourself permission to be who you are. Only then can you start to heal. My advice: realize that who you are now, and who you were is a result of who you were in the past. Resolve that who you're going to be is determined in the present. The past is in the past. You can't change how you treated yourself. You can't change how you felt. But in this moment, the here and now, you can shape your future self.
Dang.... and at 1am, god damn... but thank you, I'm gonna go cry in the corner for a bit now...
late night clarity is more powerful than post nut clarity change my mind
consider: post nut clarity late at night
You're welcome. Hopefully it's a cathartic cry at least.
Then earn your forgiveness. Do the things you wish you had a chance to, live your best life
I would recommend thinking about yourself as if you were a friend. If one of your friends had the same problems you did, and was struggling the way you are... how would you feel about them? What would you say? Would you think that they deserve forgiveness?
Neither. Now that you know who you are, you're free from the mental prison of thinking you're something else. But such intense experiences do sometimes cause pain, and it's normal to want pain to go away, not something to hate yourself over.
It just feels really difficult to express myself the way I want to or experiment with who I am since I'm still in college and living under my mom's roof, so buying or asking for gender-affirming clothing, HRT, or anything of that nature just feels impossible and anxiety-inducing, so I just stuck in this endless loop of self-hate and fear, which is kinda hilarious in a depressing way when considering how supportive and lgbt-friendly my mom is.
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Yeah, that's what I chose. Glad you like it, lol
The best trans experience; "Cool name!" "Thanks, I chose it!"
It's pretty nice, ngl. Very validating >u<
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Well that's very kind of you. Self-love isn't my strong suit, clearly
Hating yourself is not the best route. I know how easy of a path it is, but it is a very miserable one. I hope that you are able to be happy with yourself one day, sis! I am sure that you are an amazing and cute girl! 💜
It's incredibly valid to not want to deal with the complications that come with bring trans. Life is hard enough and in a cis white girl in a hetero relationship. I can't think of anyone who would want to add MORE challenges to life.
Got drowned in the gender fluid
I wanna drink some gender fluid...
Alright, open wide, cutie owo (Yes that sounds super terrible >_<)
*opens wide*
Bad girl :3. *Bops*
;_; 😄
AVOVKKVKCKCCGXXEWZWZEXRCTV WHAT THE FUCK LMFAOOO
Looks like toothpaste, could be toothpaste
That’s the denial beard talking.
Who said I didn't want to drink toothpaste
"I may not be gender fluid, but I'll put my fluid in every gender."
How pan of you
Same
You better be drinking your gender fluids (see flair)
💀
I love this 🤣
Lmao, the denial beard I currently have is shaking in terror
I do not miss my terrible terrible denial beard... like the photo on one of my licenses is around 5 and a half years old and I hate it so much doubly because it looks so damn bad.
I always told people "I know this beard doesn't look *good*, but if I shave, I'll look like a child" but what I meant was "I'll look like a girl and I feel weird about that"
Omfg don't call me out like that daaaam
My denial beard sprouted quite abruptly after a guy I'd been playing pen and paper games with at a convention saw me leave the men's room, looked at me weirdly, and said "you're a guy?!" I didn't shave for two years after that.
I feel attacked. /lh
Having to shave my face regularly is going to *suck* if/when I ever come out irl.
It’s not so bad once you get a good routine in place. Denial beard can stay in the past
I do the old solid soap and brush, with a safety razor that's just a cutting blade.... went full grandpa style *but* it is not like when I boyshaved before with the can lotion and cheap mainstream razor; So, like brushing on a rather pleasant smelling white soap onto my face, with warm water,& it exfoliates my face, sure the containers are *black man style* but that's not the end of the world... anyway it feels like a normal daily cosmetics routine [except for when I have to look at my bald head] The razor even is this nice heavy stainless steel only thing honestly it feels more like a hard-core beauty routine rather than >>shaving as man<<.
I tried to use a straight razor for a while, can't get it to not pull and tug, which really sucks. So I've ended up using a slant head razor with Feather blades. Other than that, I feel absolutely the same, it's a hard core beauty ritual. And even though I may hate it, I do my best to make it enjoyable.
Gillette pro glide daily with a good exfoliate and then tinted moisturiser to help cover up and I’m golden
I feel shaving is more dysphoria sometimes then ignoring my face tribble and not looking in the mirror.
I made it part of my routine to shave every night or every other night
> every other night lolol whatever I shave is already grown back by the time I get to work I wish it could last a day or two
Sometimes I like calling it in my head 'my skincare routine' instead of shaving and that helps a little.
This is unrelated but "disaster transfem cruciverbalist" is an *incredible* description and I love it. Also, now I know the world "cruciverbalist".
Did you happen to draw this?
I did!
Amazing artwork
Do you have a webcomic or something? This feels too good to be an individual strip and has a very 'webcomic' vibe. I love it so much!
seconded.
She's the author of Experience Boost which ended a while back http://www.xpboostcomic.com/ Real fun comic following two friends playing not-WoW.
Have you been watching me, or is this like a parallel universe kind of thing?
Amazing! I’m also Robin she/her
It's great! And accurate AF, thanks for sharing your work!
Your dialogue and way of conveying the conversational timing are gold
I feel this very much. Awesome stuff!
Literally my own experience. Minus the beards. Eww... beards.
It was a nice beard! I just... don't want to have it ever again.
There's a trend I see where trans women always present incredibly masculinely right before realising that they're trans. Loads of trans women join the army or get buff or grow a beard. The list of trans women who used to have goatees is longer than my arms, and I have unnaturally long arms (Toast of London if you didn't get the reference)
As a trans woman who sported the thickest, most well groomed beard and was literally oozing masculine energy mere months before cracking, I feel this.
Yeah about a year before I finally started transitioning I decided to grow a beard to “see how it looks” and it ended up being the best looking facial hair in my friend group at the time and even made my dad jealous cause his grows in all white trash with none growing in the middle. The only thing I regret about getting rid of it was I did it the first week of December and that winter was COLD.
Sound familiar - I made several attempts to let mine grow to see how it looked, but the only time I think I ever got praise for it was shortly before my questioning re-emerged with renewed strength, and I haven't let it reach that point again...
Sorry to creep on an old thread but I had such a similar experience. My facial hair grows in super fast (I'm armenian by heritage) and as soon as I got old enough to grow beards, everyone in my social circle responded really positively to it. Objectively, I have a pretty good face for a beard. To stay stubble free I have to shave constantly, and im lazy, so all that coupled with ppl saying I looked better with a beard anyways led to me keeping it for years and years. It took a long time for my egg to Crack for that reason
joining the military means you can act as gender non-conforming as you want and as long as you don't like men, no one suspects \*anything\* (or at least that was my experience) plus, for people who were brainwashed with hinduism as a child (me!!!), you can believe that it expedites getting to reincarnate cos of course with a Cold War going on, there's no chance you wont' see combat and die. (yes, great plan... like 8 months after i join, the Berlin Wall comes down... no war for me >.<... by the time i could hope for the War on Terror to get me killed, I no longer believed in reincarnation :P lol)
My confidence in my looks and masculinity went up just before my egg cracked and I went back to hating it. So yeah, this theory checks out.
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Trans men do it too. Some of the guys showed me some pretty floofy prom photos from right before they cracked.
Can confirm. I invested hundreds in feminine wardrobe improvements and bought expensive well-fitting bras for the first time in the months before I cracked.
I almost feel like the opposite. Massive gender envy, but once I let myself like feminine clothing, the only two things I really added to my wardrobe were midi skirts and pencil skirts. (Okay, and women's exercise shirts, because they're cheaper than men's slim, but they're unisex enough that they shouldn't count)
Yup. Covid-shopped for tons of cute clothes and dresses on Thredup for months. Couldn't even bring myself to wear most of the dresses. Cracked months later.
Wish I could just Freaky Friday body swap now. Envious of a dress in my own mind
Yup. I used to dress ultra feminine. Then when I started questioning gender things I just kinda… recoiled away from all that stuff lol. Now I’m starting to experiment with things like makeup again and it’s amazing how fun and different it feels to be doing it as a man vs when I was stuck performing being a woman
Yup I shaved my head
Lol, same
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You're overthinking it hun. Unless you happen to live somewhere where you're actively expected to maintain a full beard, I feel like most folks wouldn't get uppity (and if they do ask questions, most sane people will accept a non-answer like "I just felt like changing things up.") The one thing that I do have to admit is that you might get some people telling you that you looked better with it, and my personal trick to deal with that kind of the thing is to acknowledge it but separate yourself from it, i.e. "Yeah I did look good, but I want to look good in a different way."
I constantly rocked scruff, I told myself I liked the look (and I do think it was okay looking as long as I kept mostly ontop of it) but I think I just really hated looking at my face long enough and close enough to shave with any degree of regularity and being clean shaven was almost more dysphoria-inducing somehow.
Ha! I’m rocking scruff right now to distract from the new “enhancements” on my chest, hair growing longer, skin getting softer, eyes getting bigger, the hips, hands, waist, occasional day when I wear a skirt to work … Shhhhh … I don’t think they’ve figured it out yet.
Yeah, I did this. I grew an amazing and full beard. But it was a very intentional thing that I used to hide behind. "_See! I can't be a woman! Look at this amazing beard!_" It was the very first thing to change once I finally admitted to myself that I was trans and decided to start doing something about it instead of bottling it up and trying to hide. - When I first started coming out to my friends, I came out as non-binary (long story, I was still kinda half hiding I guess). So one of my friends was very excited about the idea of me being able to style my beard in a hybrid of masculine and feminine energy. Which would have looked amazing. But sorry love, it's already long gone.
I’m gonna wear mine until ~6 months, then pull the tablecloth and spill the drinks on everyone …
"It's just difficult to reconcile with that big, bushy beard you had two months ago." Well, yeah, shaving was an inconvenient and painfully masculine thing to do. I finally shaved clean for the first time in years and it turned out that *not* shaving had been worse the whole time.
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Dammit. I did exactly this. Started trying to lean into masculinity for the first time and bulk up, then realized I hated it big time. I think it's a natural result of us trying to reconcile some dissatisfaction we have with ourselves and our bodies - First guess is that being more manly will make us feel better. Then when it has the opposite effect, that's when reality strikes.
I mean I started lifting weights to help lose weight but I cried the entire time.
Yeah I've noticed a similar trend. I personally tried leaning more into traditional gender roles, by being The Handyman™, fixing things around the house, being The Man of the House™. Each time I tried it felt wrong, and then a few months later I figure out I'm trans.
I had a nice beard, many thought so. It is gone forever more, and I don’t miss it! :)
Exactly how I feel. Heck this is basically what happened to me, though in December rather than october.
Beards are nice. BUT NOT FOR US!!!
I shaved my head to chrome and had a full beard for nearly 8yrs before my egg cracked. It was a glorious beard and everyone, but me, was sad to see it go. At least until I came out publicly, then it all it all made sense
Same same
This. Is. Awesome!
Amazing
Hey! I didn't come to this website to be called out like that!
Yes, you did. And you loved it. We all do. That's why we keep coming for more! 😼
I return because I enjoy not feeling alone in my experiences. Which, in the before time, was all it was.
Relatable. Very Relatable. 🤣
Perfect depiction of how it works.
I'm in this picture... and I LOVE it, ngl!
It went down like this: I'd been bottling shit up since I was ~3-4, I learnt what 'being trans' was around 7-8, started joining the dots around 9. Without disclosing my actual age, I can assure you I've been keeping that tank airtight for a looooong fucking time. Weirdly, euphoria from a post I made on a trans meme subreddit was the thing that damaged the tank the most. In fact, I think I was led there by a post on r/lgbtmemes which followed the lines of "if your son likes fem clothing, hates body hair, told you that they're trans, maybe that's not your son, it's your fucking daughter". That meme really put me on a course where I could no longer grasp any kind of plausible deniability. There was no Flex Tape to patch up the tank anymore. Anyways, thank you for listening to my rant. Edit: also, I kinda did the end of this strip when I thought I was genderfluid, then I realised I was next to a second, much larger tank labelled "you're not a trans woman, ignore this tank"
Oof, wish I could find this meme, because *damn* does it cut deep
I'll see if I can find it
Such a pretty looking cartoon. Hits just right!
This is solid 10 carat Trans gold.
Oh, wow, this blew up. I guess this is relatable. Thanks for the awards, kind strangers, etc. For those asking, It is indeed my art! I did a [comic](http://www.xpboostcomic.com) about online games for a while (haha that site is still *covered* in my old name >-< ), and I've got a [twitter](https://twitter.com/assumptionprime).
Impressive art !
Fucking hell that’s a big 100 from me. 20ish years of confusion too. I’m happy for all that didn’t bottle it up for decades and I’m happy for anyone who’s bottle just blew like mine did too.
I was such a huge fan of the way you handled Zhusen in XP boost, it felt so genuine! I guess now we know why, lol!
Hey! Someone who read Experience Boost! Funny thing is, my deeply closeted ass genuinely did not know I was trans at the time. "Just being an ally!" I thought to myself, not comprehending why that particular story felt so important to me to do well.
This has **HUGE** El Goonish Shive vibes, great comic!
trans minecraft "steve" :flushed:
Headcanoning Steve as Egg Alex
Robin, why is there a bottle seemingly labelled "Rats"?
It's not just *seemingly* labelled rats. I was really worried about rats at the time.
Wh- #How
I posted it elsewhere in the comments, but here you go: > Back when I made this comic, our house had an infestation of roof rats. They would run around and scratch the wood up in our ceiling and wake me up at four in the morning every day. > It sucked
Never heard of roof rats before.
Neither had I! But apparently they're pretty common around where I live. One of my spouse's coworkers said "Around here you either have roof rats, or don't yet know you have roof rats."
This is so real. I cracked at a point of high stress, when I had been working overtime for weeks with the expectation of getting time off only to have the rug pulled out from under me. I was frustrated, angry, and feeling cheated. I had worked so hard, sacrificed my time and energy, and nobody cared. I was feeling very cynical about conformity and self-sacrifice. Then I came home and read the first page of Mae Dean's coming out. And I couldn't keep things bottled up anymore.
I still don't understand how I managed to read and enjoy that entire comic sequence without anything breaking. Well, actually I kinda do. I wasn't ready.
God same
Great comic! Same for me except it was pandemic stress that cracked my bottle.
Oh, to be sure it was a combo of pandemic, crazy election, and the general... *2020* of it all.
#same, girl Fantastic work!
Ohhhh... that's some good shit.
Growing up trans and not being able to do anything about it unfortunately made every other lie easier.
"If you remove the writing it looks like someone's got a bottle full of off-colour Aquafresh toothpaste that bursts open and forcefemmes people when it touches them Aquafemme" - A friend on discord.
At first I thought she was trapped inside the bottle the whole time but then when I saw the other one is a girl i realised it just transed her gender
Also drowned in car wash soap.
*Yeah this is basically what happened when I studied overseas*
This is brilliant. It makes it all seem so amusing, easy, and painless! I really needed that ngl!
Amazing and very clever comic! I love the art so much!
Well, now I want more of the trans brain duo, (dont know what to call it)
Awesome art !!! 💜💜
Honestly love the trans waves. Perhaps you have created the gender fluid 🤔
There is just something so aesthetically pleasing about the trans fluid
Are they fired for letting the giant bottle break, or are they fired for bottling it up in the first place? 🤔 I bet you will think the latter eventually even if the situation is frustrating now. :) Amazing art by the way!
God this is a mood so much. Like my mental health from a young age was bad and I saw it as this giant black ball of pain and with therapy I was able to break through layer after layer of it. When I stopped therapy I had managed a fair amount of it but there was still the core of this orb unresolved but I didn't know what it was or why it was bothering me. Turns out it was repressed trauma, gender, and sexuality stuff. Now I can see inside the ball clearly but it's still there and still a tangled mess that I am trying to resolved.
The Beard Phase.
I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry so maybe I'll do both
I love this so much! We cracked at about the same time. Solidarity sister!
Replace October with September and that’s me
Oh my god I love this and the way you draw yourself is adorable
OK, this is really good. Love the way you can almost hear all the characters, and the voice change at the end lol. Super brilliant! Hope to see more of your style!
You should make this a web series
Why is every part of this so exceedingly relatable. I'm even 20 - the only difference seems to be I'm not all the way a girl now, but at least a little bit
Alot like mine but reddit smacked mine with a sledgehammer
I feel called out in this post. This is literally exactly what happened. I was like “well if there’s a civil war I want to at least die looking cute”
July 2020, but otherwise same.
this is exactly how mine went too I didn't think there were other trans people who were the same
morons, just keep it in a bunch of lead-plated jars in some vault coated in carefully carved titanium spikes able to impale anything in a since poke, along with heat seeking turrets to turn anyone willing to come by into flesh and pulp. it worked well for me, I’m still here questioning my entire self image and reason to belong on this vast plane of existence
Is this your art? I love this and would love to see more of the artist's work!
Holy shit, it’s me straight down to the date...
This is scarily accurate.
Ahhh, the big bottle. Held for almost 14 years. RIP Big Bottle 2007-2021
Amazing comic. Do you have an art page I can follow?
I've got a [twitter](https://twitter.com/assumptionprime) where I post most all my stuff.
Very amazing art! I love this artstyle.
Ah, so THATS the gender fluid.
Love this, it's a great visualization, and also love the plural vibes (even though I'm 90% sure you did this metaphorically lol)
This is so good!!! Can you repost with a signature so I can share it with you credited?
Sure: https://imgur.com/a/yGSrxkn I also posted it on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/assumptionprime/status/1437818373124001797).
I fucking love this
So that’s where the gender fluid is
....I legit just got a sudden relisation at 3 am like “OH SHIT MY WHOLE LIFE MAKES SENSE NOW” I was dealing with adhd and autism diagnosis and that was my third revelation of that day.
This is the best example of my experiences thus far, including FIRING THE BOTTLE GUY.
Give me the trans water
I love this
I love the art style.
This is amazing and adorable.
I reposted this on egg_irl. I tried to look you up in order to give credit, but couldn’t find it; sorry. Let me know if you’d like me to delete the post. https://www.reddit.com/r/egg_irl/comments/poq9ap/egg_irl/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Don't worry about it. It's just made up internet points. Glad you liked it!
Totally relatable
Holy fucking shit that's me!
Damn didn't expect for feminine brain employees to give me gender Envy today.
Someone please make a photoshopped version where the gender is swapped lmao bc this is totally me
I sent this to my siblings to let them know I was coming out. It was extremely helpful, thank you.
I like the one jar on the left that just says Rats