sad pathetic weird hydra

Something else I have noticed on top of what you describe is that very often transmascs (of any ‘type’, gender identity, sexuality, and so on) that are not medicalized or not medicalized enough to pass are ALSO sidelined and dismissed, if not outright treated with hostility, in LGBT+ spaces, including ones that explicitly say they are 'trans inclusive'. So we are also sidelined if a person in these spaces deems us to be 'too cishet', but in the opposite sense - too much like a cis woman whose masculinity is not 100% irrefutable and unclockable.

And this applies not just to transmascs that choose to have a more 'feminine' gender presentation, but also just as much to transmascs that DO style themselves as masculine as possible but get still read as ‘tryhard girls wanting to feel special’ by onlookers entirely because of physical characteristics they cannot (yet) change such as facial features, voice, height, visible breasts even through binders &/or tape, body fat distribution, etc.

So we’re essentially damned if we do and damned if we don’t: we either aren’t trying hard enough and are silly little girl interlopers bothering the Real Queers or, the second we start to pass a bit too well, we’re evil rapey threats scaring the Real Queers.

...sorry, you don't like being told you look like a rapist? but I'm being gender affirming! telling you that you look just like a real man! don't tell me you're "not all men"ing me. you're just like the rest of them. maybe you actually ARE a future rapist if my suspicion upsets you so much. you're so lucky I'm even entertaining you. man up and take it on the chin, or go back to being a girl if you're too much of a bitch for that.

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:

transparency about the country of origin for cocoa

if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)

if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")

[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]

So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)

About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)

Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.

If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:

With the recent release of Donkey Kong 64 for Nintendo Switch Online, more players have discovered the Beaver Bother minigame and its infamous reputation for being unfairly difficult. The image in this post presents a method (the "60° Rule") used by Donkey Kong 64 speedrunners to consistently succeed at this minigame.

The object of Beaver Bother is to play as a Klaptrap crocodile enemy who needs to corral a preset number of Gnawty beaver enemies into a hole before time runs out. Pressing B makes the Klaptrap gnash its teeth and make the Gnawties run away briefly. During this scared state the Gnawties are able to fall into the hole.

However, the Gnawties often appear to run away unpredictably, giving the game its reputation. The image demonstrates how the Gnawty and Klaptrap need to be aligned for the scaring to work:

-drawing an imaginary line tangential to the hole parallel to the direction of the Klaptrap's travel, the Gnawty and Klaptrap need to be aligned so that they are both on the line that is at a 60° angle to the tangent line. -once they are aligned like this, and the Gnawty is close enough to the hole, pressing B at that moment will actually scare it away in the correct direction to make it fall into the hole.

Source: 2dos