Spending time this weekend with my family visiting for the thesis defense has been painful. I'm not out to them yet, so this is just the "regular" nagging and disrespect I see from them, my father and one of my sisters especially. Finally had the courage to tell off my dad, at least via text, although the message was softened.

I've spent the last two hours wanting to cry. The tears are welling up, but they don't release. This should be a happy weekend. I put in so much effort and time and I just feel so bad.

Goggles' pro tip of the day: switching to your other bowl is always faster than refilling (and you can use the empty bowl as a chair to sit in while you eat out of the second bowl)

Curly's culinary review of the day: his paw tastes like paw

You know I'm not ashamed of the way I dress, Corrin. And I feel I should show that confidence and pride in public. The only way the world will grow more tolerant is to see people like me. ...See us living, loving, and being both our unique selves and quite ordinary. When we're not invisible, we can become part of the pattern—woven into the fabric.

-- Forrest in a support conversation with Corrin (the avatar character)

This is the same game that doesn't allow for homosexual marriage unless it's a Corrinsexual, has gender-locked classes (including for this character, he has to wear masc clothes for certain classes), and has ZERO characters outside of the gender binary. The only gender-diverse representation in this game (Fire Emblem: Fates) is the character speaking the quote above, Forrest, a boy who's non-conforming in his gender presentation. What's cool about Forrest, though, is that he breaks the gender-lock on one of the specific classes that used to be locked to women (Troubadour, essentially a cleric on a horse). As I said above though, fuck him if he wants to be the butler/maid class, he has to experience dysphoria as a butler.

Doing some research on trans characters in Fire Emblem, and somehow one of the best examples comes from the disaster for the human race that was Fire Emblem: Fates. I can only think of one other decent example in the official series, Intelligent Systems needs to step up their game.