Tragedy, that's when I cut my finger. Comedy, that's when you walk into an open sewer and die.
-Mel Brooks

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ANNIVERSARY: 04/25/22 - A year of being Rachel once more

Life can change a lot in a year. But no change is quite as dramatic as remembering who you are after having buried that part of yourself 30 years prior...

I did just that back then: I buried my awareness of who I was. I had an unfortunately good reason for it, involving my own safety around my father, but it was nonetheless a decidedly poor decision on the whole. I proceeded to be quite miserable for about the next 30 years until one fateful day: April 24th, 2021. That was the day that I remembered who I am once more.

And yet, that wasn't really where my journey to finding myself again began. That journey started quite some time before that, in 2019, when my best friend confessed to me that she thought she might be transgender (spoiler: she very much is!). That singular event set into motion my return to awareness of who I am, though it would take a few years yet to really come to fruition. Quite a lot of self-reflection and pondering took place in the intervening time, and a certain global pandemic also happened right around that time to further push me into introspection. By April of 2020, I had decided that I no longer wanted to be male; I would much rather just not have a gender. Right around mid-August of 2020, I had an amazingly restless night after having read Mae Dean's coming-out story arc in the webcomic Real Life, wherein I came within a hairsbreadth of remembering myself, but was too scared and backed down at the last moment from confronting that side of myself.

So what finally changed all of that? Well, put simply, my mother's death in early March of 2021 did. The one firm anchor point in my life outside of Lilly (my aforementioned friend) was my mother, who I had not spent more than a few weeks away from my entire life. Losing her changed something significant in me, and broke down an invisible barrier I had erected many years prior. When I was 10 years old, not long after the trauma that buried me away, I had promised my mother that I would look after her when she got older. That promise had been on my mind ever since, and now I had fulfilled it. So... what was left for me? What purpose, then, did my life now have if my oldest promise had been fulfilled? The obvious answer was Lilly, as she was still my dearest and closest friend (we'd lived together since 2016 and that wasn't about to change). But I couldn't bring myself to tell her how I felt, for whatever reason. Why, though? What was I afraid of?

I got my answer 3 days after her birthday that year, on April 23rd. I realized that what I was really afraid of... was that she would turn me away, and I would be well and truly alone forever. And that realization led to another: I didn't have to be alone any longer. I could tell her, because if I didn't, what would I have left in life? Nothing, nothing at all. (That's what I told myself at the time, anyway.) So I gathered my courage, and that day I finally told her how I felt. And against all odds, she loved me too!

It was like a switch was flicked in my brain at that moment. Even in the midst of the euphoria of suddenly having a girlfriend, something amazing was going on in my brain. Liberated once and for all from my greatest fear of being forever alone, I was now free once more to explore my identity. No matter what happend from there on out, I would have Lilly by my side. And that is indeed when the wheels began to turn once more, and my mind began its intricate dance of helping me see what I had forgotten: that I am Rachel, and I am female.

Honestly, it's kind of amazing that I managed to last until the evening of the 24th. The thoughts were so pervasive as to be a litany in my mind, a need to express myself to Lilly as not being even remotely masculine and in fact thoroughly feminine. And the moment I did, a memory that I had buried so deep that it had only ever came to me in a disconnected flash in the intervening 30 years resurfaced: the moment when my mother had told me, at the age of 8, that my name was going to be Rachel had I been born as a girl. And the memory of accepting that name as who I was, and happily thinking to myself about how I now felt like I was finally myself. It was the start of an entire flood of memories! So many things that had happened to me during those years came back to me that night, and I recounted them with Lilly as I came to realize that I had in fact come out as trans a very, very long time ago indeed!

I didn't remember why I had given it all up, of course. That memory was buried very, very deep indeed. It would be a few days yet before I even acquired the trigger necessary to recover that particular dark event from where I'd buried it. Said trigger was a reproduction of a beloved stuffed animal from my childhood, which upon my touching it caused all emotion to drain from me instantly. The first one that came back after that was pure undiluted existential dread. There was something very, very unpleasant associated with this toy, apparently...

I remembered what it was that night, in the form of an extremely vivid night terror. I won't go into the details, but the short of it is that my giving up on being trans back then was forced upon me by my own father in a single grotesque act in the dead of night, when I was only 9 years old. Had Lilly not been there to help stabilize me the next day, I shudder to think what might have become of me! It took me many, many months to fully come to terms with it. Some small part of it still lingers in my mind, though at least now I can move on from it and recognize that if it hadn't happened (vile and damaging though it was), I never would have ended up with the life I have now.

I had a lot of struggles with myself during the next few months. Between my budding relationship with Lilly, my efforts to transition socially and medically, and my need to come out to my family and friends about what I had recovered, it was a trying time in my life! I wrote literally hundreds of pages of diary entries during those months, detailing my thoughts, feelings, experiences, and struggles as I worked through the challenge of becoming Rachel once more (and for good this time!).

The early months I was consumed with a constant inner struggle with my own hormones. I had become abundantly aware of how much I despised my own testosterone production, and sought ways to stymie it without HRT (to limited success). Everything about my body felt repulsive to me, something I had worked very hard to deny for a very long time with only some success in the past. There were times in those early months where I felt utterly despondent, and the promise of HRT in the near future was just about the only thing keeping me sane (besides Lilly, obviously). Family drama ensued briefly as well, though it was thankfully pretty short-lived. And I found myself experiencing night terrors on a regular basis. It was a rocky start to being Rachel again, but I kept at it! The alternative was far, far worse, after all...

In the midst of this turmoil was my birthday, which Lilly strived to make as special as possible for me. She succeeded, to say the least! It was the start of my ascent into a genuinely happier "me", which was definitely augmented a few weeks later when I finally started on HRT. By August that was a reality, as was my legal name change. It felt like life was going pretty well indeed!

One lingering fear remained that kept me up at night, though: how things were going to go at the family get-together in August. It was the first time that almost anyone in my extended family would see me as I am now, after all! And what if my father crashed the party? The worries were almost overwhelming, with nightly sessions of anxiety as I imagined various unhappy results. But when the event finally happened, it was perfect. Nobody made a big deal of it, family and friends were all supportive, and we had a grand time remembering mom without my transition clouding the experience. It was such a relief to no longer have that worry hanging over me!

Pretty much immediately after we got back from that, Lilly and I started to plan our wedding. We had resolved to get married all the way back in May, a mutual agreement that was kind of a foregone conclusion at that point. It took us longer than expected due to the paperwork and the like involved, as well as the requirements for actually getting a valid marriage certificate, but on October 13th we finally managed to pull it off! A month of marital bliss followed, leading directly into our welcoming a close friend from out of state to come live with us in order to get away from a very toxic relationship.

Things got a bit tense for a while at that point, as we quickly realized that the apartment was way too small for the three of us. Fortunately we had a plan that was already in motion: find a house and buy it! But the market was being difficult, so we ended up without any leads for months. Our trip down to Texas in late December helped ease a lot of the tension (a whole week of just Lilly and myself was just what the doctor ordered!), but upon our return the problem seemed to just come right back. Lilly was getting overly stressed by the hunt, and I resolved to take over without her (which she agreed to).

In early January, we finally found a place. After a month of shenanigans filling out paperwork and getting everything in order, we finally laid claim to our home on Valentine's Day (which seemed fitting somehow!). As luck would have it, that meant we didn't have to chase our friend out either; she still lives with us and has been a big help with keeping the house going during this time of major change. We spent about a month after taking possession moving everything we owned over to the new place, and ever since life has just kept getting better and better. Lilly and I have both confronted many of the demons of our past and put them to rest, as well as explored more deeply the connection between the two of us than ever before.

Five days ago (the 20th) was Lilly's 36th birthday, and the 20th anniversary of our first contact with one another. The entirety of that week was littered with important milestones and celebrations, and now that we sit on the far side of the 24th of April, it seems appropriate to look back on the last year like this and see just how much has happened. My entire life has transformed since that fateful day last year, and I have come out the other side far happier and healthier, myself again at last. After so long, I am finally "me" again.

It feels good. It feels really good. I'm glad I stopped running from myself.

TOUCHING BASE: 01/11/22 - Let's talk about life for a bit

So, how's life been for everyone? Good, I hope? Well, probably not great due to the ongoing problems in the world, I realize... But still, I do hope life is at least at a level slightly above "tolerable" for you right now! Me, you ask? Well.

I'm doing great! I got married to the love of my life, Lilly, on October 13th. We went to see her family for Christmas in Texas and had a surprisingly good time. And somehow I look younger now than I did 20 years ago. Apparently HRT can do that to you!

As you can imagine, in the half-year since I last posted any sort of life update, quite a bit happened to me. Half a year's worth of quite a bit, if you can believe it! Since I last posted, I started taking a testosterone blocker and a biweekly (er, as in "every two weeks", not "twice a week"; the English language really needs to figure that mess out!) estradiol injection. The effects were... swift, let's say. Within two months my T had dropped down to 40 (typical is 89 to 120 for males and I started on the high end of that), while my E shot up to around 143 (which is right on par with where I want it to be at).

I'm fairly certain my numbers are better still at this point, and I can tell you now that life has been immeasurably better! I feel far more in control of my emotions now, which have grown considerably in complexity. My skin, which had just begun to show signs of aging, did a complete turnaround and I now look like I'm in my early 20s at oldest. My chest has expanded, though it actually started doing that before I started HRT (probably because my natural estrogen levels were a bit on the high side to begin with). But by far the biggest change I've experienced in all of this has been how I relate to others, particularly to Lilly.

Before the hormone replacement began, I loved Lilly, but I also had this uncomfortable undercurrent from my testosterone levels of a sort of possessive desire. A twisted part of me wanted to "have" her, not to be with her. I was in a constant struggle with that part of me, and now it's gone entirely! All that remains is my love for her, which has grown deeper each day as we spend more time together and bond even further than we have in the 19 years we've known one another. I wake up every morning glad to be alive, with the greatest reason why lying right next to me: my wonderful, beautiful wife. Seeing her face is enough to brighten my day, and every time we embrace, it feels like all of the problems in my life are irrelevant now. It is truly the most amazing thing, and I do not know how I ever thought that this was something that I could never experience.

Whoa, slight (but happy!) tangent I got off on there! Still relevant, though, as it was an undercurrent to everything else that happened in the last few months. Let's see... At the end of August I attended a gathering to say farewell to my dearly departed mother. It was my first time reconnecting with a lot of my extended family in years, and it also served as my coming out to all of them as transgender. Thankfully nobody made a big deal of that and we were able to focus on what mattered: honoring mom's life. Her passing hit me pretty hard at that point, unsurprisingly! But I'm doing much better now.

As we got into September and headed toward October, wedding plans were underway (we decided on a quick, very private ceremony with only 5 people present) and we got an unexpected twist in our lives when a long-time friend of ours asked if she could camp out on our couch for a while. We did a brief (very brief) and unsuccessful (wildly unsuccessful) house hunt, then decided that we needed to wait for the market to improve before we tried that again.

The first half of October was a blur of wedding preparation (there's more than you'd expect even for one so tiny!), and the second half was marital bliss. Everything was pretty awesome for quite a bit there, but then the next big change in our lives hit in mid-November when our friend moved up to live with us. To say that it changed the household dynamic is an understatement; it really changed things. Gone was our freedom to move about the apartment as we saw fit, or to leave our doors wide open without concern for unwanted attention. Suddenly there were more dishes to wash, we had more food to prepare (that got eaten up faster), and time had to be set aside regularly to interact with and assist our new roommate in her transition to living in Oregon.

(I'd like to stress that nothing our friend did was actually problematic in all of this! She needed help, we offered to help her, and she's been extremely good about everything. The toll it took on us was the unexpected factor, and had nothing to do with her specifically; anyone living with us would have had the same effect!)

We got a merciful break from the stress of our new situation during Christmas, but then we were right back to it when we got back. The house hunt started again at that point, and stress levels got pretty unbearable. After only two weeks of this, we both came to the same conclusion: regrettably, we cannot play host to our friend any longer as it is driving us a bit crazy! So she's having to find new housing (which is no easy feat for someone who is legally deaf, blind, and is also transitioning). We're still continuing the house hunt, but now we no longer feel obligated to find a place that can fit all three of us.

And that's the gist of it to this point! Life's been good, HRT's amazing, there have been a few hiccups along the way, Lilly is the best, and I'm the happiest I've been since I was 9 years old! Here's to a good year!

STORY TIME: 07/26/21 - You are a koala (but you're really not): A parable

Transgender is not a choice.

The only choice being made is whether or not you embrace what you are, and in truth that is no choice either. Between living in misery at the fact that you cannot be yourself and being yourself even though it flies in the face of the beliefs of a handful of others, the latter is the only choice that makes sense.

Since this concept is so hard for those who are not transgender to understand, perhaps it would help if I framed things in a way that is more universally understandable.

Suppose that half of everyone in the world was actually a koala. Not metaphorically, like literally half of everyone was a tree-dwelling, eucalyptus-eating Australian bear. Nobody sees anything strange about that in this scenario; it's just the way things are. But here's the thing: everyone is convinced that you are a koala too. They give you the side-eye when they see you doing things that koalas don't normally do. They berate you for not koala-ing up and acting more like your species. They think you're the weird one, and nothing you say or do seems to get through to others. It doesn't matter if they're human or koala, everyone just assumes you're a koala when they look at you.

Now the humans, they tend to get it better than the koalas. Usually you can talk to them and they'll realize pretty quickly that you're not a koala at all. Some of the koalas figure it out too, and if they can't see you but can see what you do they'll pretty much always correctly identify you as a human. But there's still humans who swear you're a koala, and the majority of koalas are convinced that you're a koala as well.

"That's a ridiculous analogy!" I hear you say. "Nobody can mistake a human for a koala, or a koala for a human!" Yes, you are correct. And that's kind of my point. It defies all logic, judging someone as being something when there's ample evidence in front of you that this is incorrect. And yet, it's so easy to disregard huge piles of evidence and go with an assumption based on something irrelevant. This happens daily to transgender people.

See, the thing I didn't tell you about in this scenario? Everyone in this scenario knows that koalas have brown eyes. That's how they decide if you're a koala: if you're born with brown eyes, they slap "koala" on your birth certificate and call it a day. And in this scenario you are a human that just happens to have been born with brown eyes, so in the eyes of the law you are a koala.

"That's even more absurd!" you cry. "Your eye color doesn't make you a koala! And besides, there are koalas who don't have brown eyes!" Yes, you are correct. And that's kind of my point. Deciding that someone is a given gender based off of an arbitrary physical attribute makes exactly as much sense as deciding someone's species based off of an arbitrary physical attribute.

Now in this scenario, there's controversial measures available out there to deal with being mis-specied, but they're very effective. You can get colored contacts to make it appear that your eyes aren't brown, and basically nobody ever twigs on that you're wearing them (though they will raise holy hell if they do). They're uncomfortable and don't address the actual problem, but it's better than constantly getting misidentified as a koala! You can get your eyes re-pigmented too, though there's huge stigma against this as humans are very afraid that a "real" koala might get their eyes changed from brown to blend in and take advantage of them. There's even surgeries to replace your eyes entirely with a set of eyes that aren't brown, but that's really risky and anyone who finds out that you did that will absolutely stigmatize you unless they're in the same boat as you are of being called a koala despite being a human.

"Come on, this just gets more and more silly!" you declare. "Anyone with half a brain can tell a human from a koala, and nobody would seriously feel the need to go to such ridiculous lengths to prove that they're not a koala!" Yes, you are correct. And that's kind of my point. It is frankly absurd the degree to which someone who is transgender has to go go to in order to be recognized as what they are. They have to augment or alter irrelevant attributes just to be recognized as what they really are, and the standard response if someone finds out about such augmentation or alteration is to be utterly horrible to the person who's been forced to do those things. Some of us genuinely want those augmentations, but not everyone who is transgender does.

Just like your eyes don't decide whether or not you're a koala or a human, your genitals don't decide whether or not you're a man or a woman. And I no more identify with men than you identify with koalas, for though I was born with male anatomy, that does not make me a man. And though scenario-you was born with brown eyes, that does not make scenario-you (or real-you, for that matter!) a koala.

DISCLAIMER: If you do in fact identify with koalas, I apologize for making assumptions. Though I think it would be safe to say that you would not be amused if people only thought you were a koala because you have brown eyes and didn't care about anything else.

GREETINGS: 06/07/21 - Hello, My Name is Rachel

The odds are good that we haven't been properly introduced.

My name's Rachel (she/her), and this is my site. Sorry the archive's so full of hateful diatribe, but I was going through a VERY bad phase for about... hm, 30 years. I can't promise I won't ever get mad again, but I can promise that I won't be posting nothing but negativity here any longer. That's not really my jam any more.

To answer a few questions that I know people who have been here before no doubt have:

1. No, I haven't gone insane, and this is not "some weird phase". 2. Yes, my name was Rachel long before I started this site. It's a long-ass story and has a very disturbing twist in it. 3. No, you may not continue to refer to me as my deadname. I hate that name, and have hated it ever since I was 7 years old. 4. No, I will not bite off your head if you accidentally use the wrong name or pronouns, but I will ask you to try to get it right. 5. No, I am not deleting my old content or modifying it. It's like a time capsule of everything I hated about my life, and it serves as a good reminder to me of what happens when you give into the stupidity of others instead of being yourself. 6. No, I'm not single, and I never will be again. Kinda weird anyone would feel the need to ask about this, but I know someone would. 7. Yes, I am a lot happier now! Thank you for noticing!

With all that out of the way, welcome to Sky Render's Domain! I hope you enjoy your stay.

(WOW I need to update this website's content badly! Note to self: take some time and do that soon...)

Older News

Personal Links:
RPGOne Translations - The game translation site that I work for. UPDATE: RPGOne is no more, sadly...
Phantasia Knights' Website - The website of my fellow RPGOne member and good friend, Phantasia Knights. UPDATE: Yeah, no longer updated.
GameFAQs - Still the best site to get information on games. Some of my guides are posted there.

Comedy Links:
Something Awful - I think the site's name speaks for itself. Comedy gold, assuming you have enough sense to not take it seriously.UPDATE: I don't even go here any more, though half the LPs I enjoy come from there.
The Let's Play Archives - More LPs than you can shake a stick at!
The Talking Time LPing Forum - Where I (used to) LP games. A pretty fun place.
Engrish.com - An amusing look at English as it's often (mis)used in Japan. Update: I don't go here any more either...
Homestar Runner - A Flash animation site that pretty much everybody has heard of by now. But it's still amusing. Update: This place stopped getting updates years ago.
Video Game Recaps - For all your snarky recapping needs! High-quality farcical looks at modern RPG's. Update: I rarely visit this now...
TV Tropes - The place to go when you want to read up on the various plot devices that the media uses to keep narratives flowing.
iLL WiLL PreSS - Home of Neurotically Yours, aka. Foamy the Squirrel, the funniest fast-talking rodent ever to be put in Flash format.

That Guy With the Glasses/Channel Awesome - Still generally pretty entertaining, one of the first "internet TV stations" that really took off.
The Spoony Experiment - Classic fun gaming reviews, from the Spoony One himself.
Informational Links:
UrbanDictionary - Useful for looking up slang terms. Also amusing at times.
The Whirlpool - A fairly extensive site for translation patches. A bit biased, though... Update: Pretty sure it doesn't exist any more!
Merriam-Webster Online - The online version of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesarus. Handy for writers everywhere.
Jim Breen's WWWJDIC - A wonderful resource for those in search of any sort of information about the Japanese language.
RPGamer - The place to go for the latest info on up-and-coming RPG's. Update: I don't go here any more either.
YouTube - Has anybody actually not heard of YouTube by now? A video repository (or possibly suppository, depending on your perspective).

Webcomic Links:
El Goonish Shive - It's weird, but one hell of a story comic. Read it, or the owl will eat you.
Misfile - Well-drawn story comic, and pretty interesting. Coincidentally shares a few themes with EGS.
Sluggy Freelance - Is it not nifty? Worship the comic!
Bruno the Bandit - Sluggy Freelance's arch-nemesis? Maybe... It's usually amusing, and relies heavily on puns for humor. Update: Dead comic.
Goats - Yeah. Uh... It's... Yeah. Can't really describe this one... Update: Nobody's gonna describe it as anything but "dead" now.
Sinfest - If you enjoy religious satire, then you'd probably enjoy much of this comic.
Cyanide and Happiness - Surrealist near-stick-figure webcomic, frequently with very naughty humor. Update: Don't read it any more.
Something Happens - Another surrealist webcomic, this one better drawn and more introspective. Update: Died young, it did.
Antihero for Hire - Made by the author of Adventurers!, a much darker-themed comic.
8-Bit Theater - A spritecomic about Final Fantasy I. Rather famous, I believe. Update: Comic all over and thank you for players.
VGCats - Gaming-related webcomic. Usually pretty funny. Update: Technically not dead, but also technically not very funny any longer.
Ctrl+Alt+Del - Another gaming webcomic, this one highly oriented on XBox. Eh, funny is funny. Update: After a brief debacle, it's now all one-offs. Probably for the best.
Penny Arcade - Yet another gaming webcomic. This one is well-known.
Little Gamers - A Swedish gaming webcomic. Yeah, I read a lot of webcomics about gaming... Update: I don't read this one any more either.
Dueling Analogs - Another gaming webcomic? INCONCEIVABLE! Update: Pretty much the Ebaumsworld of webcomics now.
Brawl in the Family - Yep, a gaming webcomic. I don't even need to say anything else.
AWKWARD ZOMBIE - A very entertaining once-a-week video game comic.
Life in Aggro - Also a very entertaining once-a-week video game comic.
The GaMERCaT - Also also a very entertaining once-a-week video game comic.
Darths & Droids - A Dungeons and Dragons-style re-imagining of the Star Wars series. It actually makes the prequels entertaining, which is in itself no small feat.
Real Life - A webcomic that does a bit of everything. Usually pretty interesting.
Three Panel Soul - A webcomic about life as a 30-something. I think everyone in my generation reads it or something like it.
Questionable Content - Pretty much a slice-of-life comic. It's fun enough, though watch out for the occasional dramabomb.
Candi - A comic about a college student's troubles. I read it while I was in college, go figure.
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Not suitable for art majors.
Battlepug - Erm, well... You have to see it for yourself, really. The title does not lie.
MegaTokyo - Highly story-oriented webcomic. Pretty interesting overall. Update: This comic is perpetually in a state of being dead and undead. It's Schrodinger's Webcomic.

Missing Links:
(Insert George W. Bush joke here)

Other Links:
Google - Who doesn't know about Google? A great search engine, it is.
ZSNES - One of the best SNES emulators available.

Comments or broken link reports can be sent to:
torquemada_gi@hotmail.com

Copyright 1997-2022 Sky Render