hey! if you don’t already know me, i’m devyn, i’m a trans guy, and i’m a human being who deserves to live safely so i’m asking for whatever help i can get.
if anyone wants to help me get gender affirming surgery, or share to help others find me to do so, here’s the gofundme i just started!
more info on the page, but i have pretty much everything ready except the final surgery date.
i live in the borders of both missouri and oklahoma, so i really want to get this done soon for my safety, on top of for physical and mental health purposes.
it’d mean a lot if you could share! and if you have twitter to share there as well, i’ve included the link to my post there!
"no one is super offended or offput by transmascs, they aren't viewed as sexual predators" steve dain was:
discouraged from being a tomboy by his counselor as a child (he was told he had "penis envy" and needed to "straighten out" or he'd become a lesbian)
accused of "violating God's laws," and called "thing" "creature" "it" after transitioning and returning to his job as a teacher
his transition literally "divided the town" he lived in
the superintendent fired him for "immoral conduct" and "unfitness"
said superintendent also publicly speculated about his genitalia, suggested that he would have to use his own bathroom because "would you want your little girl in the powder room with her?" and spread rumors that he had shown young girls his genitalia & molested them (likely, imo, what he means his "he talked about transitioning to some interested students and their parents got pissed" if there's any truth at all)
also said "And I’m telling you, kids here just don’t understand this hanky panky of people going around chopping off their breasts" (fearmongering about top surgery from 1975!)
Steve won his wrongful termination suit, but the school board then accused him of misusing sick leave because he took time off to medically transition. He tried to fight this but after four years he could not afford the legal costs.
He was never able to return to teaching even after winning his lawsuit because no one would hire him, so he had to completely switch careers.
erasure is not a lack of hatred or violence towards transmascs. its a culture of silence around that violence. you cannot know how people see transmascs by only looking at how they treat us when they think we're cis men.
Earlier this year, I released a new solo TTRPG: VOID 1680 AM. In it, you use a deck of cards, a six-sided die, your music collection and a voice recorder to create your own late-night radio show.
The cards help you dig deep into your collection to reconnect with music you love; they and the die also help you create anonymous Callers and the concerns, hopes and obsessions that drove them to reach out to you, a fellow lone voice in the darkness.
I also included steps for joining the library of Callers for other players to use, and even to submit your full show for broadcast on the "real" VOID 1680 AM. You can see some of those Affiliate broadcasts here. They're genuinely very cool.
VOID was the culmination of a lifelong obsession with commercial radio; both the technology (which feels retro despite scarcely being over a century old) and the melancholy romance of lonesome voices baring themselves to an audience they'll never know the scope of.
This, to me, is an apt metaphor for the act of making something - anything at all. Speak into the Void, the back cover copy says. You never know who is listening. So it is with putting something you love into the world.
So what inspired VOID? I cite both Anamnesisby Sam Leigh and The Wretchedby Chris Bissette in the book itself, two solo RPGs whose tones and methods did much to help me find my own.
But if I'm being truthful, VOID's inspirations mostly reside outside of games. Here are a few things that haunted me profoundly enough to drive me to respond.
The first is Talk Radio, specifically Oliver Stone's adaptation of Eric Bogosian's play. The movie's tagline is "the last neighborhood in America," which to me frames radio's persistent relevance and puts social media - often called a "town square" itself - in proper context as one piece of the many ways people find connection with others, for better or worse.
Contra the VOID DJ, Barry in Talk Radio is very, very aware of how his audience receives him (hint: not well). Barry must be heard, and so must the similarly damaged souls who call in to dump the poison in their brain into his... and everyone who's listening in, besides. It's a host of people who want to connect but don't know how, spiraling in decaying orbit around each other until something awful happens.
VOID 1680 AM was originally much darker before I decided to pull back and let players pick their own tone, and Talk Radio is why.
Oxenfree is a narrative video game about a small group of teens stuck on an island haunted by hungry ghosts who can be tuned in and out of reality with handheld radios. There's more to it than that, but I'll leave you to discover what on your own - because I would recommend this game to just about anyone.
Insofar as VOID 1680 AM can have a "soundtrack," it is this one by scntfc, created using WWII-era radio equipment.
The Vast of Night is a quietly alarming lo-fi/sci-fi set in a small town in New Mexico in the late '50s. A radio DJ and a switchboard operator pick up strange signals, and then... things happen.
This specific radio station (stylized in the poster above) is what I picture for "my" VOID 1680 AM.
Then there's Stevie in The Fog, played by Adrienne Barbeau. She's the bridge between VOID 1680 AM and my earlier solo game, Lighthouse at the End of the World.
She is, yes: a late night DJ. And her radio station is, yes: in a lighthouse. She's living my dream, at least until the ghost pirates show up.
Spoilers, I guess?
But the most important influence? VOID 1680 AM cover artist Jordan Witt's fan art for the podcast King Falls AM years ago. This image took up residence in my head, so much so that I still use it as phone wallpaper despite never having listened to the show it's for.
When it came time to partner with a cover artist, who that cover artist would be was never in question. Entirely unknowingly, Jordan took all these loose ideas in my head and gave them something to cohere to. A beacon, if you will.
They spoke something into the Void, and I listened.
Fun fact: Jordan even jazzed up the original logo I made for VOID 1680 AM when that title only applied to the AM transmitter in my garage. Here's my original - you can plainly see the influence of Jordan's art on that O. It all really came full circle.
Those are the biggest ingredients in the stew that made VOID 1680 AM. It's fun to talk about stuff I like, but also I hope it might nudge someone - anyone - to get going on something they're after.
(That's you. I'm talking about you.)
A project finding its voice is a wonderful thing, but there's no real miracle to it, no outside influence that will tell you what to do. It's just things in your head magnetizing to each other until they got a shape that - with coaxing - can stand on its own.
The Camouflaged Looper: these caterpillars fashion their own camouflage by collecting flower petals/vegetation and using silk to "glue" the pieces onto their bodies
Though they're often referred to as "camouflaged loopers," these caterpillars are the larvae of the wavy-lined emerald moth (Synchlora aerata).
Camouflaged loopers deploy a unique form of self-defense -- they snip off tiny pieces of the flowers upon which they feed, then use bits of silk to attach the vegetation to their backs. This provides them with a kind of camouflage, enabling them to blend in with the plants that they eat.
Some of them create little tufts that run along their backs, while others fashion a thicker camouflage that covers their backs completely. In some cases, the camouflaged loopers will even build much larger bundles that surround their entire bodies.
Their range includes most of North America (from southern Canada down through Texas) and they can feed upon an enormous variety of plants -- so the disguises that these caterpillars build can come in countless colors, shapes, and sizes, incorporating many different flowers and other bits of vegetation.
And this is what the fully-developed moth looks like:
SNAKE FARM will be coming out on Steam on September 5th! It's a top-down, Vampire Survivors-style action roguelike that lets you set your own challenges. Buy snakes to fight, then use their remains to buy stronger snakes and better weapons. You decide your enemies, pushing your luck every round in pursuit of exponential growth. You only have ten days to live; make sure every one counts.
With twenty upgradable pieces of equipment, from deadly throwing trowels to tractors that hate you, each run's build can go a different direction. Will you rely on high-risk headshots with a pitchfork? Igniting your own oil supply to explode snakes? Freezing your enemies with a high-power hose? As your farm fills with snakes, only smart build-crafting can keep you alive.
Eventually you'll make a mistake. You'll get too greedy, buy too many snakes, get cornered and destroyed. With each new run, you learn a little more, get a little further, get a better score. The more you go, the more you realize that your truest enemy is your own hubris.
a pack of 100 Vegas ants all working together to carry one single poker chip to a roulette table, betting it on red, watching it land on black, and each jumping into the nearest cocktail it can reach and drowning itself for the pride of the antill
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