Finally got into Baldur's Gate 3, and oh boy! I get what people were saying. I'm INVESTED. I'm going Dark Urge and currently trying to figure out if I wanna be with Karlach or Shadowheart.

ooh, I wanna see this as hexagons!

So many examples of this.

US absolutely torches any progress made in alternative fuels then goes on to claim no possible alternatives to fossil fuels.

It's a very nerdy one.

In Final Fantasy XIV, there's a race of little dudes named Lalafell. Their naming scheme makes for repeated and rhyming couples between the first and last name.

I made a Lalafell boy years ago named Cocozan Cozan.

After playing for a bit, my wife's character and mine got married. I decided to change my character's last name to hers, so the Cozan was gone. We always joked about the height difference, though, since I was a little guy and she was a taller race. So I joked about making the tallest character I could, which I believed at the time to be a female Roegadyn.

We quit playing for a while and then returned to the game a few years later.

When we came back, I decided it was time for a change and used an item that lets you change your appearance permanently. I ended up finding an old saved appearance from when I was joking about Fem Roegadyn, and just went with it.

The name Cocozan was no longer appropriate, given the lore, but I found out I could drop the Zan and it would fit fine.

So I became Coco.

It was absolutely amazing being called Coco and she/her by folks online. It wasn't the only thing that did it, but the whole thing absolutely helped crack my very thick egg.

I ended up stealing my character's name IRL, and now I have a very nerdy origin story.

The thing that gets me is how often this sort of thing is happening all around us without us noticing. Every online purchase is bound to be doing this in some form or another. Every plane ticket, every uber ride. All designed to figure out the exact cost we're willing to pay for the service.

I'm so tired of capitalism...

It's a shame, really. A non-centralized internet has existed before and must exist again if it's to remain useable. It's sad so many have given up because of early internet struggles. Things are even far less painful now than I remember them being in the past.

A little bit more emphasis during Star Wars that Vader wanted the Storm Troopers to aim poorly and let them get away. It would have solved decades of jokes and arguments about Storm Trooper weapon accuracy.

A house and a home are not always the same thing.

I can relate to this. I play Final Fantasy XIV and changed my character to female, probably because my egg was cracking already.

But having people call me "she" and "femme" and being happy about it... It felt amazing and definitely shattered whatever egg was left.

A lot of it comes from Tiktok culture. YouTube has started doing it too.

Videos that say "kill", "rape", "died", etc are all deprioritized by the algorithm if not demonetized entirely.

People have been editing subtitles to avoid these words, and the behavior spread.

I had an appointment to start HRT in January 2022 and chickened out. I was 32 years old at the time.

After three months and some therapy, I went back and started officially in March 2022.

Sometimes you aren't ready, and that's okay. Give yourself some time and some love. You deserve it.

And trust me, here at age 34, I can tell ya that no clock has run out. I love myself more than ever and I still have so much more growing to do.

I'm the middle kid and I needed attention.