face your fears and survive

I'm Dimitri, a 23 year old trans man from São Paulo, Brazil. I've been living alone with my cat since late 2023, and currently I have a job that keeps me away from home 12 hours a day on top of sometimes doing commissions to supplement my income.

I've been drawing fanart for FMA, more specifically for Riza and Royai, for 8 years! On January 29, 2022, I posted a couple of doodles of a very self indulgent scenario of Riza as a trans man on twitter, and to my surprise it got a ton of attention(and some hate too lol). But it made me happy that a self indulgent AU I made to project my own experiences and wishes as a trans man onto my favorite character was so well received :)

This AU was born out of the wish to project onto my favorite character the life I wanted to live. Back then I felt very lost in life, being very dysphoric but with no prospect of getting to start HRT, much less being able to look into top surgery, projecting into Riza the life I wanted for myself(working towards being comfortable in your skin while being loved and supported through it by the people you care about) helped me a lot through it. So as you can imagine, it's a headcanon really personal to me that I hold dear to my heart. Which makes it really funny to me that the more I drew about it, the more popular it got. To the point of there being people who think it's simply a fandom-wide popular headcanon for Riza, not realizing that most, if not all, art for it is born from this one guy's unhinged dedication(me!!!)

Fast forward to 2026. I've been on HRT for 8 months after knowing I'm trans for about 8 years!!! Finally being able to start my transition after so long has made me very eager to start living my life as my authentic self, so I quickly started looking into getting top surgery, something that at this point you could say it’s my dream, as it’s a procedure that would give me back my life as someone whose dysphoria can be paralyzing at times. But the thing is, top surgery is expensive.

To give you some perspective: It's possible to get top surgery for free in Brazil through the government's trans healthcare program. But on top of there being a waitlist of around 2 years, you can't choose the professional who is performing your surgery(among some other bureaucracies).

This is going to be a life-changing surgery for me that is going to give me my life back, so I don't want to wait even more and feel uncertain about the results. Which is why I'm looking into paying for my surgery out-of-pocket. After researching for a while, I've decided on my surgeon. A renowned surgeon in the field who has performed this same surgery countless times, and has even taught surgeons who now perform it for the government's program how to do it in the first place! Which makes me feel confident about his skill and care.

So then I scheduled a consultation with him on April 22, 2026. After a few questions about my journey and clarifications about the surgery, the doctor gave me a price estimate for the procedure.

27(twenty-seven) thousand reais(approximately). This is roughly 20 months of minimum wage here in Brazil. (with roughly 4.000 reais needing to be paid beforehand to schedule a date for the surgery)😭

With all that being said!!!!!! Here are the conclusions:

27.000 reais is a looooot of money for someone who is paid in reais. But the conversion of BRL to USD, based on today's conversion rate, makes it around 5.500 USD— Not so bad if you get paid in dollars, right? It's like a real life money hack ... wowza...

So I'd really appreciate the help of anyone who CAN and WANTS to help me over on Ko-fi. Any amount will help me A LOT, even if to take off the weight from other life expenses so I can focus on commissions! And as I have talked about before, I'm also offering a digital PDF Transmasc Riza zine! With all of the transmasc Riza art I've posted so far + unpublished/revamped illustrations and sketches + guest art/writing from my friends! With both SFW and NSFW sides ;) I plan to have it out by the end of May/beginning of June! I hope you look forward to it!!

PLUS, it's not much, but if you ever thought "damn, I wish this idiot would draw more of this thing he has already drawn or has talked about drawing before", on my ko-fi you can leave a request regarding that! (Do keep in mind it's a tip jar for supporting what I already do, so it's not guaranteed I'll get to draw it at all)

I sincerely thank you for reading until here! Every donation, commission request, purchase of the zine, and reblog would mean the absolute world to me! Thank you so much for all the love and support across all these years, and for staying around to be part of this very exciting stage of my life!

Here's my KO-FI!

PIX(for fellow brazilians): 8c988f0c-81cc-464d-bc4e-39a86cb9c7fb

edit taglist; @moldwood @petitexreine @teamhawkeye @benwishaw

edit taglist; @moldwood @petitexreine @teamhawkeye @benwishaw