right!? it’s a terrible question, I wouldn’t want to choose, and I would hate whatever anyone came up with

(I hate what I came up with!)

which makes me think you could use Garry’s Mod to recreate TF2, so maybe that would open up a slot …

maybe the committee would actually look to preserve game engines first and foremost, and then count on recreating other games from that

if I had to pick I would at least try to preserve Source, Unity, and Unreal … HPL Engine (Amnesia, Soma, etc.) is pretty unique, but it might not have enough cultural relevance - depends on whether we are prioritizing diversity in our top 5 picks, or just going based on commercial success & popularity …

why!? I’m not sure that game makes me hate myself as much as it makes me hate the game - most of the time it’s just bad luck when I die … once I git gud it’s like slowly accumulating power until I’m god, and then it’s just so delightful and satisfying - that game is just so psychologically brilliant that way

how could I forget noita

• Garry’s Mod
• Starcraft
• Team Fortress 2
• Minecraft
• Skyrim

that’s already five - which one of these shouldn’t be saved?

maybe Age of Empires 2, Stellaris, or Civ V instead of Starcraft?

maybe Oblivion, Morrowind, or Fallout 3 instead of Skyrim?

maybe Terraria, Stardew Valley, or Factorio instead of Minecraft?

maybe Counter-Strike, Half-Life 2, or Insurgency instead of Team Fortress 2?

This is an awful choice, a committee would have to decide this …

we’re really going to let all these games die?

not to mention games like:

• noita
• Rimworld
• Stanley’s Parable
• Soma
• Alien: Isolation
• BioShock
• Silent Hill
• Amnesia
• Disco Elysium
• Grim Fandango
• Thief
• Beginner’s Guide
• Cuphead
• Hotline Miami
• Celeste
• Command & Conquer
• tetris
• Super Mario Brothers
• Mario Kart
• The Legend of Zelda
• Pokemon
• Animal Crossing
• The Sims
• Halo
• Battlefield games
• Call of Duty games
• Grand Theft Auto
• World of Warcraft
• Doom
• Quake
• Mortal Kombat
• Street Fighter
• Dark Souls

You can find more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered_the_best

this question is evil, and I hate everyone’s answers.

yay for selfie posts; they also like selfies on [email protected] if you felt like x-posting 😁

quick googling shows that fat memory operates over a decade

https://www.dw.com/en/fat-cell-memories-why-its-hard-to-maintain-healthy-weight/a-70840434

“In the timespan we looked at — 2 years in humans and 8 weeks in mice — we still found changes that persisted in cells of the adipose tissue. It is possible that these will be erased over a longer period of weight maintenance,” Hinte told DW.

Human fat cells live for around 10 years, which means it could take 10 years for the obesity memory in cells to vanish.

that’s super disheartening 😞

I mostly spent the first year on estrogen gaining weight, I was worried that losing weight during early breast growth would be a problem, but my high body fat might have made that irrelevant - my breasts seem to maintain the same relative size, as I lose weight I seem to lose it from all over in roughly equal proportions? I wish my neck, shoulders, and belly would melt, though.

oo, thank you!

hard not to read this as misogyny…

it’s smart to worry about infertility and to freeze sperm - I agree with panathea, get on that quick!

however, you should know not only is it not 100% you will be infertile while on estrogen, there’s a good chance you will regain fertility if you pause HRT:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9873819/

There is a common untested assumption that this inhibition is permanent, resulting in infertility. In this longitudinal study, we report the recovery of viable spermatozoa in nine trans women who stopped GAHT for reproductive purposes. Our preliminary findings suggest that the negative impact of GAHT on spermatogenesis can be reversed, casting doubt on previous claims that GAHT in trans women inevitably leads to permanent infertility.

sample sizes are small and we can’t generalize from such a small group - but it at least falsifies the common belief that HRT will make you permanently infertile, it seems like the opposite is true - that fertility is regained in the majority of observed trans women when they pause HRT.

But you may have to use them if your body doesn’t switch from androgen to estrogen production as the primary on its own which can be caused by both genetic and/or environmental factors

just to clarify, the body doesn’t switch from androgen to estrogen production - what happens is sufficient exogenous estrogen tells the brain there are sufficient sex hormones, and shuts down sex hormone production; if the sex hormones drop low enough, the brain knows to turn production back on - but it will still produce testosterone rather than estrogen … unfortunately there is no way (currently) to make testes produce female levels of estrogen or to stop producing male levels of testosterone 😞

So the goal is instead to get the body to stop producing male sex hormones by taking enough female sex hormones.

General guidance now is to avoid androgen blockers at first and test testosterone levels to see if your body slows production of them. Androgen blockers have side effects, but without them the changes may take more time.

I think the desire to avoid androgen blockers is likely only relevant for people who opt to try monotherapy - that’s a missing component of what you are advocating; typical doses of estrogen that would be taken with anti-androgens will be much lower than necessary for monotherapy, and probably wouldn’t be enough on their own to shut down testosterone production.

Also, OP mentioned they have been prescribed anti-androgens and oral estrogen particularly, meaning the dose they were given is probably low, and is in a form that won’t work well for monotherapy - so to follow your advice they would probably have to change to injections as a route of administration.

However, you can take anti-androgens and oral estrogen - probably most trans girls in the U.S. take this route, and it’s the default way doctors handle transition here (not that I think it’s a particularly good way to go about it - it has lots of side effects and less / slower feminization with consistently low E levels, but I think doctors are afraid of monotherapy because they are afraid of high estrogen levels increasing risk of strokes based on some studies done on Premarin; though I don’t know why they aren’t also afraid of spironolactone causing heart problems, which at least has more evidence behind it than bioidentical estrogen causing strokes).

that’s pretty interesting - I guess being in the closet as a trans woman made me appear to be in a cis-het relationship with a woman, so I could totally understand feeling some ick around going back to that … but I am still too stuck in the pragmatism of passing as cis (and relatedly as straight) - I don’t like looking queer or being perceived as queer (and I don’t generally feel a belonging to the queer community - though I try anyway, lol)

my hang-ups / struggles are probably from self-loathing and internalized transphobia as well as just more practical considerations about not enjoying the discrimination that I experience when perceived as queer (and the fear of violence, etc.)

all this to say, I like the closet, thank you 🙈

yeah, I wasn’t repressing my sexual attraction to men before estrogen but never felt attraction to men anyway; I was open to it before and even considered myself technically bisexual, but it took estrogen to actually finally experience attraction

I’m not sure you can prevent rumors, even if you communicate clearly and directly - people lie, people won’t believe what you tell them and come up with and share their own explanations, etc. … and again, you can do that communication in an easier way … do you really think getting drunk and announcing it in person will really ensure the best outcome?

Are you able to see a therapist and work on this with them? It feels like you are exposing yourself to unnecessary hardship, and there might be better ways to accomplish what you are hoping to accomplish.

Either way, I understand your anxiety, it is reasonable to be anxious about that scenario, and I hope you take care of yourself and find a way to be compassionate to yourself 🫂

I hate dishwashers, I wash dishes by hand.

honestly that sounds a bit dismissive, reddit isn’t the problem here, you should talk to her about what her actual fears and concerns are - she’s seeking our reddit content to confirm her fears and it might help to talk to her and reassure her

also couples counseling is a good idea, it helps create space for discussing and exploring these kinds of things which helps

and yeah, I doubt your attraction to women will disappear with estrogen, even if I think you should be prepared for the possibility of changes to the way you experience that attraction

estrogen made me much less receptive to visuals and more turned on by context, if that makes sense

You just don’t know what it will be like … a lot of my attraction to women shifted over time … it turns out being a repressed woman made me react to women with a kind of obsessive reverence that diminished once I became a woman - but the changes were not a complete reversal into only wanting to date men …

I know some trans women feel more like women when they date straight men, and that’s a real psychology, but even though I’m bi and now attracted to men, and I would feel validation as a woman by dating a straight man, I still wouldn’t do that (even if I were single).

Like you I just love and trust women, I could see sex with men but a relationship would probably be harder to make happen. Even with my most sensitive queer male friends I struggle in the friendship in ways I don’t with women - I’m just not cut out to date men, I want too much emotional intimacy and feel too much like a lesbian if that makes sense 😅

Anyway, you should talk to your partner, getting lost about the details of sexuality changes on HRT misses the most important part, which is that they are feeling vulnerable and insecure, and reminding them that you will love them regardless of how your sexuality shifts could be helpful.

edit: (and in my experience, you might feel vulnerable and scared of losing her, too, as you transition - my partner is pan and very supportive of my transition, but I still felt scared and vulnerable when I transitioned, they are huge changes and it makes sense both people might worry the relationship could be impacted or romantic interest might not be the same as it was, etc. - I certainly became a very different sexual partner, but in the end it worked for my spouse and she is very happy with my transition)

edit2: also might be worth exploring why it matters to your partner whether you experience attraction to men, I keep forgetting how common it is for cis straight people to have misconceptions about gender and sexuality, she might fear your gender stuff is actually repressed homosexuality, it’s also possible she doesn’t believe bisexuality is real and that if you experience attraction to men that you will really be a gay man rather than a bi woman - might be worth getting clarity on what the beliefs and concerns are on her end.

not a bad idea - I could always email the researchers on the papers I read … my GP doesn’t know anything about trans care, but I could still ask her just in case she knows someone (though I am scared to admit what I’m doing, doctors tend to get nervous about stuff like this)

I would love to be a guinea pig or talk to actual experts about this, but I wouldn’t know who to reach out to or how to initiate something like that 😅

If you know any interested doctors or researchers let me know!

Mostly I wish solutions were already researched, developed, and made readily available, but since they haven’t and it seemed plausible to me that I could work out my own solution, I have tried to … if anyone else might benefit, all the better!

yes, this is a great idea! I already have a donor lined up, but I will wait until I’m fully healed and not nuking my microbiome with vinegar douching every other day before trying it 😄