itch.io

Thank u for Shimp. they are VERY delightful...

First of all, I usually bundle the zines I download on my computer to my tablet, but the theme of this one is just so on-the-nose to my experiences I wanted to read it right away - and yeah, wow! This is a really, really good read; my experience was hardly blow-for-blow, but it's an intimately familiar Middle School vibe...

What I find really interesting is a lot of the dynamics and social behaviors are still obviously present in my 23-33 year old Gal^tm coworkers - I'm not out to them, but they can tell there's something Weird* about me, and they react to my personal quirks like they're somehow A Threat Aimed At Them.

(*You might even say.... QUEER...)

PDF is not actually attached!

In other circumstances, I'd just comment on the art aspect of the zine - something along the lines of "art is an act of communication, and I can assure you this must be good art," with the text equivalent of a sly wink and a nudge at the end.

However, I'd say that because you've communicated a flavor of misery I spent years floundering through myself, so...

First off - I can't speak to this personally, but iirc the regret rate for people who get reductions specifically instead of 'complete' top is fairly abysmal. I would seriously advise against seeing that as some kind of 'compromise' - 'reductions' have essentially all the medical downsides of 'top', so unless a gentle chest curve is what you've been imagining instead of Flat...

Me: I don't think there's a line in your zine not resonant to my pre-surgery experience - with the caveat that, while I suspect you may mean a similar thing when you say "But sometimes I like my chest," to what I once felt, I may be wrong. I did ultimately get top surgery, and did so without ever having gone on HRT. 

A question to ask yourself may be "Do I have memories where the way my chest currently is makes me HAPPY": just like your eyes adapt to the dark and will come to interpret what might otherwise look gray as white, having experienced the kind of intense misery you sometimes do may be making the little reprieves between spells read as positive when (if you look at other characteristics of those memories) they're really something more like neutral.

It may also be worth looking at the idea you've been exposed to an environment that says male-like bodies are sexually unattractive - "but what if I don't feel attractive" implies your feelings are biased to see the attraction of people who prefer male-like chests (which may not be flat - ex. a gay bear) as less real than that of people attracted to 'breasts'. The people who find you sexually attractive may change, but they're not going to disappear as a category! (Also, and yes, I have checked on myself, you will likely still be able to use push-up bras if you feel like dressup!)

Ok, that's about all. It may be worth browsing r/FTM - which is actually a general-purpose 'transmasculine' community stuck with an out-of-date URL - to read and/or ask users there about their experiences, because you're likely to get responses from many transmasculine-spectrum people, not just me (who is just one Guy^tm, and may have failed to vibe on some vital nonbinary axis of your experience)

Per how completely meta the comments section is, I'm honestly intrigued that you bothered to put any contents into the playbooks at all; also, it's amazing there are people in the comment section who aren't clocking that is a thinly-veiled spoof of something

Yup, that's Homestuck for ya

For me, it was the fanworks that finally helped me Get that not all dysphoria looks like [a specific kind of transhet transmedicinalist] which was otherwise what I'd run into at the time. It makes me happy to know the canon comic contents can have the same kind of effect!

Ooh, interesting. (I'm very curious about your backend and whether you were tracking any variables...)

Note for players: the following is spoilers for this twine

Playing this game made me really reflect on how absolutely, thoroughly, and comprehensively I've  pummeled my edition of The Monster into a paste.  For a long time, I've been the person friends (and... acquaintances. My bar for friend is pretty low, yet even lower than that) come to for reassurance etc. in the face of The Monster, because I both know and can carry out talking someone down. However, for most of the time I've been doing that, behind the scenes I can feel my own monster nodding along. But! It's gone! Not only has it not made a direct appearance for... a longass time, it didn't even peep in the face of dialogue of exactly the sort that's historically triggered it. Wow. I guess recovery is real???

Ooh, nice! This should be incredibly useful...

Hmm, I feel like the next step (beyond specialized attacks) is for someone to make a "intended to be used with SyrupLiteRPG" toolset for overworlds and/or clickable-image-coding - I was already planning to write a package to simplifying that in ren.py, so.... If I do, I'll just crosscheck it with yours and let you know?

If there is any way - any way - to access formal diagnosis for ADHD, do. Even if it means getting help to get through the paperwork hoops. (For US patients, Psychology today has a database that lets you search for specialists by specialty - here, ADHD - physical location, and insurance they take.)

You're describing basically a hallmark behavior for it (inability to direct focus) to a degree (as discussed in zine, $) that clinicians are likely to take very seriously. At a first appointment, in addition to whatever other prep you want to do... print a copy of this zine, and give it to them. As far as "the fine art of being taken seriously," this communicates very clearly the problem you are having and why it's dissatisfying to you.

EDIT: as far as the zine, rather than "I experience a rather strong emotional response to its message", high compliments on the formatting/art/etc

I'm not joking when I say: this is genius and revolutionary. Congrats!

Oh that is a very clever thing to use bitsy for...

I love this trend of ~anamatics made with the platform, it's a really clever way of tricking the mind into seeing more animation than there is

HEY, do you have a digital edition for the sale?

(It seems really unfair to you to have the physical listed for free...)

Any chance of making a variant of default view that allows for no animation? I'd really like to be able to use this tool to figure out city shots for ex. a comic (or other sequential graphic arts) but locking camera to ground and making the motion quite slow in that mode doesn't allow for the range of poses needed.

WASD/arrows for XY camera motion and mouse to rotate camera work well enough, perhaps the zoom wheel for Z-axis or FOV (and if using it for FOV, R/F keys for Z axis?) (I am not a patron so take this all with a grain of salt, ofc.)

EDIT: I am an idiot, space-bar unlocks Z axis control...... gosh, what a cool tool

(This should probably be in "tabletop games" not "games"; the former is where the RPG players are usually looking)

(yo, this will be easier for people to find in the "tools" section than "games")

This will do better if you move it from the "games" to the "tabletop games" section where the pen-and-paper RPG folks are looking ;)

fyi, the bitsy hacks ("borksy" is a good start - that's the title to search on itch; it's in the "tools" section) let you add audio very easily; you can also swap out the files on this page for the "hacked" version without disturbing the page continuity.

WOOOOOO UPDATE!!! Congrats on the good work!

Ugh, this is... very relatable. Even beyond the inherent crappiness to people who are fat, it's... dehumanizing/monsterifying of people who find them attractive, in a way that's almost impossible to talk about because being attracted to an ordinary way a human body can look is automatically considered a fetish. 

IDK, I just don't think I can verbalize how badly the cultural attitude of "not only are we going to treat your partner like an inherently awful person, we are also going to treat you badly for daring to have affection" messes someone up. 

Oi! Looks great, but you wanna have this categorised in the database as a "comic" and not a "game" so the people looking for something to read can find it!

Make browser playable, please?

Oh, fantastic! The imagery is really well-written

Thinking of that as a twin/sibling seems like it's a Thing; I've been writing poetry to vent gender feels while I'm stuck quarantined w Schrodinger's Parental Acceptance and one of mine shook out to the same kind of metaphor (although my relationship with my "her" is different). 

looks great! should be in the TTRPG section of itchio, though - it'll get more attention

> gay robot-romance-detective-novel you never knew you needed

INCORRECT, I KNEW I NEEDED THIS

(looking forward to reading through ch 9!)

(Should be in tabletop games! It'll get lost in the general Games section ;) )

;n; this is so cute I'm tearing up a lil now

This is great!

If you ever get around to expanding it, it would be nice to set it up so you have to see all the substories to advance, or at least have the option to see them without using the "back" button (there's a couple ways to implement that type of thing)

"Transgender" is not a sexuality!

Oh, I adore this! It's cute without being unrealistically saccherine

Tapas and webtoon links lead to the wrong places!

Looking forward to archive binging :^)

Cute and has a great deal of promise! 

However, there are issues with the English localization. This isn't a line by line analysis, just the basics:

• There are a number of jokes that involve the possibility that children are being touched inappropriately by adults. In general, these won't go over well in the states, particularly in the preexisting English-primary-speaker Motherlike fanbase, which has a downright rabid fear of creators turning out to be child predators...
• "Determination" is used in a thematically significant way 3 times. 1 time is a cute nod to an inspiration; more than that risks overassociating your game with Undertale, where that word plays a crucial role in the game's text and motifs.
• General janky wording, especially in long dialogues towards the end of the demo.

Basically: you need a native English speaker to edit the English localization after translation to make things sound good, retain emotional tenor, and prevent culture-based marketing issues.

So, some more thoughts now that I've made it through the character introductions! (I stopped at the point you start to collect the other party members)

I haven't checked to confirm whether there's a different introductory sequence for each potential PC, but I think it would really improve the player experience to (if the paths are different) allow the player to see however many routes they like before making a final choice of PC (basically, add a dialogue tree at the end of the flashback that directs the player back to the room where the choice is made, and only let the player confirm they want to play a PC after having seen their route) or (if paths only change the PC name/minor details) make it clearer that the player will only see one PC's past per playthrough. I was really disappointed to find out I'd have to savescum to figure out!

Hey, level "peer pressure" seems unsolvable?

I've figured out how to turn the darts on and off, but there's nowhere I can jump but onto spikes, and I can't get the potato to move.....

Hmmm, this looks promising!

In addition to typical art-creation purposes, this looks like it could be useful (after you make a system for custom brush loading - perhaps from numbered PNG files for each potential sprite in a brush?) for games that use sprites to create static maps - the RPG Maker community in particular uses this technique a lot, but most existing methods of placing sprite assets into image files are slow and tedious.

I used too much indirect phrasing and that translation is almost incomprehensible. My proposal that google translate could localize this game was foolish. That software is simply too feeble! (I hope this comment translates closer)

Надеюсь, это логично, так как я использую гугл-переводчик ... эта игра выглядит фантастически, и я думаю, что английскую локализацию стоило бы сделать, даже если это будет сделано не хуже моих попыток написать этот комментарий.

psst, this should be listed under physical games!