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traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns @hexbear.net
Hestia [she/her, fae/faer] @hexbear.net

Trans Megathread from May 5th, 2025 to May 11th, 2025

Heya Everyone, new Mega time and for it, I'm gonna advertise a TTRPG system called Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

A sword duel can end in kissing, a witch can gain her power by helping others find love, and an entire campaign can be built around wandering matchmakers flying from system to system.

Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a roleplaying game for telling queer stories with friends. If you love angsty disaster lesbians with swords, you have come to the right place.

In this book, you’ll find:

Flirting, sword-fighting, and zingers in a system designed for both narrative drama and player safety.

An innovative take on the Powered by the Apocalypse family of games.

Nine character types, each focusing on a particular emotional conflict: Beast, Chosen, Devoted, Infamous, Nature Witch, Scoundrel, Seeker, Spooky Witch, and Trickster.

Guidance and support for running the game, including how to make appealing adversaries, set the tone, pace the game, and structure play.

Tools to create your own settings and stories, alongside a dozen pre-written options including the cyberpunk Neon City 2099, steamfunk poets battling oppression as Les Violettes Dangereuses, laser swords and intrigue in the Starcross Galaxy, and more.

World building worksheet for custom scenarios and starting scenario seeds to play with: Best Day of Their Lives, The Constellation Festival, Gal Paladins, and Sword Lesbians of the Three Houses Variant rules to highlight different identities, emotional connections, and setting elements.

Strategies to adapt any setting where swords cross and hearts race for Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

Here's a link to their website, I did copy everything over directly from it because I put off writing the Mega this week. I was drawing a blank on what I wanted to talk about.

https://evilhat.com/product/thirsty-sword-lesbians/

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Join our public Matrix server!

https://matrix.to//#/#tracha-space:transfem.dev

https://rentry.co/tracha#tracha-rooms

As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.

385 comments

  • I need to make a Galatea to live with me in a tiny cheap apartment in the same bed and make her work a couple shifts a week to split the rent. Don't even care if she covers utilities or food.

  • day 7 of new name choosing.

    reached the summit in Celeste (first playthrough, with my name in game set to one of the names i was considering), excited to play more of the game but aooaugh that means its time to decide how I feel about that name, now thats its been on some kind of journey with me. I cant say I'm certain I'll use the name forever but thats perfectly fine, and at a few points in the game realizing "oh yeah, ill have to tell my friends this name" had me sob relieved tears. so I've gone ahead and used the name for the external deadline that inspired this week of intense consideration, and next will tell my friends.

    and yeah Celeste definitely joins my small list of really-important-to-me games

  • From an old interview with the Dragon Quest 3 creator:

    Interviewer: In Dragon Quest III, if you select a female Hero, in the beginning your Mom says, “I’ve raised you as a boy”… I remember thinking, wow, what a crazy home. (laughs)

    Horii: In Dragon Quest IV, the dialogue doesn’t change that much whether you pick a male or female character. People did complain about that in DQIII (that there weren’t enough differences), so we had intended to include more places where it differed… but I just never got around to it. (laughs)

    DQ3 hero is trans confirmed.

  • Did my 3rd injection today (IM with 1 inch needles) and uhhh I didn’t notice until after I was done that there’s a bit of blood in the syringe

    What are the chances I fucked up and accidentally injected into a blood vessel?

    strangely I didn’t see any blood coming out after removing the needle, which did happen the first couple times

  • I know I've been doing this for a year, and this is the question of one who's been doing this for a week, but what gender-affirming stuff can I do? I really need to get back to taking care of myself in some sort of way, and I don't have energy to do much, but I really need to try.

  • The other day I held the door open for two cops

    my natural response to want to help people lead me to acting before I saw who I was opening the door for. My kindness is a weakness gonna go on a new arc soon

  • I finally did some reading on grapefruit medication interactions as it pertains to estrogen! the primary mechanism of interaction is at the "gut wall" (I was surprised to see scientific papers use this term), where the grapefruit can inhibit an enzyme that works to break down and metabolize many oral medications including estrogen. So with oral estrogen grapefruit will definitely screw with your levels and cause them to spike.

    My main curiosity was injectable estrogen though. Many drugs taken by injection are unaffected by grapefruit, so I thought estrogen might be fine! As ever with biology though, apparently it's not that simple. Even with purely endogenous (body-produced) estrogen, grapefruit consumption increases levels (though more modestly than the extreme/dangerous effects seen with oral medications, the study I saw cited a peak 26% increase in cis women 8hrs after consuming grapefruit). I didn't see a ton of specific research on the mechanism of action here, but I expect it's related to the fact that the exact same enzyme responsible for breaking down medications in the gut is also present in the liver and helps break down and eliminate various substances from the bloodstream there. The study noted that average levels remained the same with whole grapefruit consumption, it was just a temporary fluctuations.

    So my conclusion for my own personal consumption (please don't take this as gospel/medical advice, I'm pretty dumb) is that grapefruit intake doesn't appear to be much more dangerous than it is for cis women if you're doing injections (the reason for the study was elevated cancer risk associated with high estrogen levels so there may be some long term risks there).

    It does affect levels, which is good to be aware of, and is a valid reason to be cautious, and there may be nuances I'm missing here (please tell me if you see any), but much like how preferred HRT dosage and levels vary widely by person, and even in cis women, vary drastically throughout hormonal cycles, the variance caused by grapefruit interaction is probably not harmful in any immediate way.

    I guess if I was using a shorter lived ester with sharper peaks in levels and I was really worried about levels, I might be more concerned about not having grapefruit around those peak times? still probably not acutely dangerous though, IMO

    • Usually people on HRT are on other meds too, an anti androgen (spiro or whatever) and being trans is a risk factor for mental health problems to probably no one's surprise. It's not just the E that has interactions with grapefruit and the CYP 3A4 liver enzyme.

      But if someone was on monotherapy and injectable, that's really good research! Very fascinating!

  • Some random 8 year old girl was just hard staring at me while I ordered my coffee.

    My usual experience is that I pass very well, but now I'm starting to doubt, was I just clocked by a literal child??

    • Little kids and babies stare at me at work, like siblings of patients. They lock in on attractive people, not a joke it's a whole scientific thing apparently. Eventually they start to learn not to stare but someone has to teach em, 8 is getting a little old to just stare at random people lol. The girl probably thought you had some striking feature and likely didn't care if you're trans and might notve been able to guess (who knows - kids gender weird shit)

    • Children also just stare at interesting people since they don't necessarily feel the stigma of that faux pas. Even if they did suspect something, it likely that it wasn't judgemental.

  • I remember trying to get through some judith butler and thinking this is some advance gender stuff. I can appreciate nuanced discussions of course but sometimes my brain is

    I'll give myself some credit tho got through 1/3 of gender troubles at least when I started it. Gonna have to restart it but it'll only make my brain stronger

    • Gender Trouble's prose is so bad, like winner of a bad writing award bad levels. (Admittedly that award is more just indicative of the perpetual war of Philosophy between continentals and analytics but still) Butler's writing just... Isn't super great. Like when I find fucking Kierkegaard and his deliberately indirect writing easier to read there is a problem.

      Also doesn't help that a lot of people reading Gender Trouble lack the assumed academic background for it, given that it's building off of plenty of the big continentals. I don't think I've ever even seen anyone online even comment on Butler's takes on object/subject distinctions, for instance, even though I think it's lowkey one of the most interesting parts of the text and an integral reason for why they argue their notion of gender is necessary (and the first one that made me really critical of it, since I don't think their critique actually stands very well, I think Butler misreads Hegel and when read in that respect a lot of their other theory breaks down a little imo, but that's neither here nor there)

      Basically I wouldn't take finding Butler difficult as a sign of not being smart, this is stuff that people need a lot of background to really understand and it isn't expressed very clearly in their writing.

      • a lot of people reading Gender Trouble lack the assumed academic background for it

        had a feeling something was missing on my end still

        Butler misreads Hegel and when read in that respect a lot of their other theory breaks down a little

        going to the first point the most I know on hagel was some yt vids so my understanding is shallow

        I do like continuing my attempts but I'm glad you cleared this up, philosophy isn't so much my weak point academically but non existent. I still try since I've heard high praise of gender trouble from a friend tho and word of mouth is how I find new things to tackle

  • I remember looking at Thirsty Sword Lesbians when it dropped. I had just freshly watched Utena and started getting into Rose Of Versailles; but havent had a drive to play d&d much for the past 5-7 yrs -- so I ended up not trying it 😔 but I do love testing out systems with my wife.

  • One day I swear I got a feeling my nephew is gonna trans to niece. I talked to them before about this stuff and they got a lot of signs but I don't know how soon it'll be. They alongside their younger brother and mom moved out to texas and are living with some more conservative family members. Idk if I'm just thinking too much of things that might not be there but idk.

385 comments