Introduction

Grab yourself a drink or two, this is a long one. I’m putting each part of the introduction into its own collapsible section and if you read only one of them, make sure it’s the final one.

Content Warnings:

• Abusive Relationships
• Discussions of sex
• Dysphoria
• Feminism, or lack thereof
• Misgendering I don’t remember what year and month it is, and quite frankly it doesn’t matter if it’s 2021, 2020, 2019, or earlier.

What matters is that I’m desperately trying to delude myself that it’s better to be a miserable nonbinary woman (emphasis on nonbinary) in a loveless and, quite frankly, sexless comphet marriage, because men are evil abusers and society at large ought to regard anyone who unquestioningly benefits from the patriarchy with suspicion. I have already resigned myself to a life of thankless suffering in my mid-20s due to a history of such abuse, and the one thing people don’t talk about enough is that victims of manipulation are conditioned to think they don’t deserve better. I find escape from the torture of my circumstances in Discord servers that are queer in nature, some of them leaning feminist and unwelcoming of such aforementioned evil abusers. One of those servers is dedicated to an author whose debut book is quickly carving out space in feminist of color circles, and another is a decidedly Women and Nonbinary in Games (Development) server.

The early days in the author’s Discord server are glorious; it’s private and I have the honor of being personally invited by the author themself. I find kinship with many others with similar diasporic backgrounds to mine as we discussed the harms of the West appropriating and bastardizing foreign cultures. As for the author themself, they are proudly nonbinary and use they/them pronouns, but generally tolerant of others using she/her and other traditionally feminine titles to reference them. There’s an implicit understanding that gender is nuanced; or, maybe that’s what I told myself as the server grew and moderators were chosen among the author’s close friends.I don’t recall the inciting incident. It was likely another cis male celebrity being revealed as a sex pest to no one’s surprise but to everyone’s anger. I just remember the stream of rapidfire messages from members and moderators alike that escalated from “he needs to be locked up” to “we need to start turning men into eunuchs again” to “all men should die.” The energy in the room unsettled me for reasons I couldn’t articulate at the time. “Hey everyone,” I made the mistake of typing. “I don’t know if this kind of talk is productive. Shouldn’t we focus on supporting the victims instead?”

As I said, that was a mistake. Full disclosure: I’m a burnt-out “gifted” kid who had already dropped out of college. I still considered myself smart, or at least above average in terms of intellect, but I wouldn’t have pretended to be the most well-read among queer leftist feminists; for a long time I didn’t have access to a comprehensive library with books on political theory, and I was too much of a proletariat to have the time or energy to read long swaths of text when I was juggling a physical labor day job, game development in the hours I was home, taking care of a grown-ass human adult and a cat, essential household chores, handling rent and bills... This is all to say that I lacked the vocabulary and eloquence to express that actual effective feminism is probably more focused on dismantling the conditions in which (oftentimes) cis men in positions of power are continuously given permission to enact violence upon people of marginalized gender and ethnic identities than it is, say, threatening to perpetuate the patriarchal systems of violence but it’d be okay if it was a girlboss doing it.

In any case, a moderator directly replied and pinged me to say something akin to “No, fuck men. They should just die” and none of the five or so other members who had he/him pronouns selected as a role, myself included, dared to speak up again. I don’t leave the server immediately, but after a few days pass and the author and owner of the server doesn’t comment on the incident, I quietly remove myself. I had committed a grave social faux pas after all.

Meanwhile, the other server I mentioned is a little less angry, a little more celebratory of members. At least at first. After three months of slowly losing daily activity, the space full of promising talent largely turned silent, save for the obligatory self-promotion channel. I was honestly bummed out because I was excited to be in good company with so many creative folks from all walks of life; but alas, actual attendance to the virtual networking events was low and the person who started the server inevitably got busy with personal circumstances. Still, it was a good server to be in.

After one particularly nasty argument with my then-spouse that left me especially dysphoric, I poke the server’s general channel. “Hey, is anyone available to talk about a potentially TMI thing? I’m having gender feelings,” I write. A few minutes later, another nonbinary member raises their metaphorical hand, and we slide into DMs. I don’t have the exact chatlogs anymore, but it went something like this:

Them: What’s up? Me: So I’m married and I struggle with my libido. I’m too fucking horny and it’s causing issues. Them: uh Me: I’m like, genderflux, you know? Mostly nonbinary but there’s a tiny part of me that will always identify as feminine, and I get a lot of dysphoria on days my feminine gender is stronger. Them: oh, I think I understand. I’m sorry Me: So when I get dysphoric, I try to use sex as like, a coping mechanism...? To accept my body. I don’t really like my boobs and I don’t think I can ever afford top surgery, but if someone else likes my tits, then I can live with having them because they’re useful. Does that make sense? Them: I see... Me: But my spouse isn’t having sex with me. I’m lucky if we do it even once a month, and I have to pretend to enjoy it. Them: Oh, that sounds really hard. Maybe you can talk to them about your needs? Good luck

I don’t even remember who this person is anymore but I don’t know why they didn’t say something like “hey uh that’s a really maladaptive coping mechanism you have there, that’s super fucked up and you should maybe look up if there is an affordable way you can get top surgery.” I’m sure they meant well but after this, I’m afraid to talk about my dysphoria with anyone else. It’d be a while before I quit trying to force myself into these spaces which, ultimately, never accepted me.

---

It is March 2023, another day of my first GDC with talks and panels abound.

The crowd spills out of a fantastic panel that’s filled everyone with excitement and renewed energy to bring queer representation in games to greater heights. There’s still time before the next talk I want to attend will begin, so I follow the stream of bodies over to the restrooms on the other end of the hall; as expected, the lines are long since everyone else has the same idea. I don’t mind. The line to the mens’ room is moving quickly anyway. Attendees sidestep one another and utter polite niceties to one another as they make their way to their next destinations.

Just as I’m about to enter the restroom, one of the facility’s janitors stops me. He’s an elderly Asian man, possibly in his mid-60’s, and stands maybe 4-5 inches taller than me. “No no,” he says, pointing to the women’s restrooms. “Your restroom is the other side.”

My glee for the day, tarnished.

“I know where I’m going,” I insist, pointing at my badge. I have both the he/him/his and they/them/theirs pronoun ribbons attached on it, obvious in view to those who would look below my chest.

I don’t remember what he says next, but I do remember him being so sure of himself and of all the eyes watching us. I’m making a scene by standing my ground. Look, I’m just here to take a shit and get to my next talk! But here I am, being a cliché. Eventually I relent and go into the wrong restroom against my will because I’m holding up the line.

I’m confident that the other people trying to mind their business overheard. As soon as I’m done with my own, I get the fuck out of there before one of them says anything. I know I don’t belong in the women’s restrooms.

---

It is March 2024, yet another day at yet another GDC.

This time I’m at a casual dinner event for folks to network with one another. It’s extremely disorganized and no one knows where we’re supposed to sit, and eventually all of us figure out that there’s not really a private reservation for the restaurant, nor is our dinner being paid for by the “hosts.” As an upstanding member of society eager to learn and connect with my peers, I choke down my anxiety and put myself out there so I can meet some of my fellows.

There’s two people I find myself in easier conversation with: both of them have she/her pronoun ribbons and already seem to be friends. I might be their senior by about 4-5 years, given the way that they hold themselves and their choice of vocabulary. One of them introduces herself as a 3D artist with an interest in narrative games, and they both work at an established indie studio with modest funding, enough to keep them afloat without need of another day job. They tell me that they’ve secured talks with a publisher for another round of funding, and I congratulate them and wish them the best of luck.

“Who do you work for?” the 3D modeler asks.

I laugh sheepishly. “I’m kind of a solo developer doing my own thing, I work with freelancers when they either hire me or I can afford to. I’ve been at this for a decade.”

“You should start your own studio!” she exclaims.

I start thinking I should leave. This year my badge says “CEO” instead of “Lead Developer,” a well-meaning suggestion to make myself look more important in any publisher talks I might manage to get my foot into.

But, I am here to make connections with my peers, so I stay. “Oh, it’s a little hard to find any funding in Indianapolis, we’re not much of a hub for game development.”

At this point we’re seated and the person I’m talking to orders a round of beers and mozzarella sticks for the table, on her. She then turns to me once more, eyes alight as if she’s about to share the trade secret to financial stability: “Have you heard of Rami Ismail? He has a great blog about pitching to investors!”

I excuse myself to the restrooms a few times to escape her monologue, which she resumes each time I return. Who the fuck doesn’t know Rami? I’m literally a trans person from the Chinese diaspora, and here is a white cis woman “introducing” me to one of the most important men of color in games whose writings and resources are shared the second he hits publish.

But you know, I can’t really tell her to stop. You see, it’d be mansplaining to inform her that nothing she is telling me will magically solve my lack of generational wealth, safety net or network with those already established in the industry, that yes I’ve already talked to all the folks at the forefront of DEI initiatives, yes I already talked to the women and nonbinary games fund (who would later tell me that there isn’t an interest in trans men, fictional or real), yes I have read HowToMarketAGame, yes I’ve considered taking a loan to develop my games, no I’m not going to because that’s a terrible fucking idea.

Eventually I finish the half-pint of beer I allow myself to have and grab one final mozzarella stick before I slink out of the crowded restaurant. I eat a granola bar for dinner in my motel room.

---

It is June 2024. I got laid off from my day job not long after GDC ended.

Since I’m helping a vendor at our city’s Pride Festival I don’t have to pay for the exorbitant entry tickets, so I let myself have a spending cap of $100. I am always careful with my money but I likely won’t get another chances like this, and I want to support my local queer artist scene. Besides, I deserve to have a little treat too, don’t I?

Our neighbors to the right of our booth are just one of many sellers of enamel pins and earrings, but I spot two items that catch my eye: a headless bust wrapped with a trans-themed ribbon, proclaiming “NO TIDDY COMMITTEE,” and another one in the form of an ouija board planchette that says “He/They.” I excitedly grab them both and ask them to ring me up pronto, keep the change, hope that sales are good today. The two men thank me for being their first customer and that they’re delighted to see their designs on my nonbinary-themed binder tanktop. “Have fun! Happy Pride!” they shout as I walk off, waving.

I’m in high spirits as I wander the vendor village. This is my first major Pride event and the energy is positive. So many lovely queer folks, so much exuberance. I end up picking up a fan and parasol that are also trans-themed, and I make my way back to my booth before I’m tempted to overspend.

“GET YA MEAT! COME GET YA MEAT!” an African-American lady screams, waving a girthy silicone toy in her hand that flops about with a loud smack. The sight is hilarious and I can respect the hustle, as it’s clearly working: there’s a lot of customers browsing her wares and buying up toys of all shapes and sizes. I try to pass by as quickly as I can, but the lady points the toy in my direction and announces, “YOU THERE, MA’AM, LOOKS LIKE YOU NEED A TOY.”

I nearly trip over myself. My pins are right there. I’m literally wearing a binder in the colors of the nonbinary pin. The trans parasol is protecting me from the sun but not from the misgendering.

The next events are a blur. I end up walking away with a business card and one of their last double-ended toys, which a lesbian friend of ours expresses envy over. I have yet to ever use it the way it was intended to be used.

I am really trying here.

---

It is October 2025. Recovery from my total hysterectomy is going well after some hiccups the first week, and I am about three weeks out at this point.

I kept an eye on the Trans MLM Jam 2025, lamenting that I didn’t have the time to make a proper game for it because I was gearing up for my medical transition at the time. Now I’m making slow headway on reading Pageboy by Elliot Page. Jude Doyle’s recent book DILF: Did I Leave Feminism filled my Bluesky feed for a short while as I ate up all the interviews and pre-release reviews I came across. I was excited to get my hands on it once my library got the physical copies ordered in.

Meanwhile, in a small local Discord server I help manage, a younger member expressed some hesitance over the effects of HRT and if they should start it. “I’m afraid of the irreversible effects,” they sent in our dedicated #transition channel.

Something in me fucking snapped.

I was livid. Not towards that person in particular, but at the culmination of all the micro-aggressions I have been forced to endure as someone who tried so fucking hard to be a woman and was still rejected from spaces that should have claimed them. As someone who delayed their own transition in hopes they would get access to resources and support they desperately needed. As someone who tried really fucking hard to be a “good” queer but was still labeled a bitch (derogatory) for having principles and a good sense for detecting the shit-talking troublemakers who’d tiptoe the rules just to cause moderators a headache.

So fuck it all. I decide that, against my better judgement, I am going to enter Trans MLM Jam with only 14 days to spare.

Writing

Somehow, against all odds, I managed to write over 11,200 words under the span of those 2 weeks. I know for a fact that maybe a good 4k of those words were written in 2 days.

This is remarkable because I am normally a very slow writer; thanks to my first commercial narrative gig going south when I was only 18 years old, I’ve had the bad habit of editing as I write because fuck me if my words aren’t perfect right off the bat. Battling that festering wound that’s ruined me for over a decade was fighting for my life; I was dumping all of the anger and frustration over being told to shut up about my lived experiences into Twine. Part of me was afraid that a bad actor would inevitably come out of the woodwork to call me a misogynist, as though I, a person of color who has been told that they’re “too cute to have depression” and “like a China doll,” had magically obtained the equivalent of white cis male privilege that would render all of my trauma null and void. I would love not to be so full of rage and resentment but the beatings will continue until morale improves.

So it strikes me as odd that, more than once, some friends have told me that my stories are “cozy” or “wholesome.” To me, wholesome describes a loaf of bread, or perhaps a whole grain cereal with lots of fiber and minerals for proper nutrition. I’d wager to guess that “wholesome” in this context is opposed to “toxic” or “edgy,” but with all honesty we’ve already long past run the entire gamut of the “wholesome games” discourse; if anything, I’m just going to end this section with labeling my current wave of works as Hurt & Comfort and maybe a bit of wish fulfillment. I don’t think someone threatening to vomit all over you is cozy at all but I do wish I had a cute boyfriend who I could do weekly HRT shots with.

Speaking of HRT shots, the excellent G.C. Katz aptly noted that I “often approach thematically similar topics from different tones (lighthearted or serious),” said themes being that of trans masculine experiences and oftentimes the pain from menstrual cramps versus the medical needle. For a long time I dreaded doing my weekly injections but I desperately wanted my menstrual cycles to stop as they were the chief cause of my dysphoria, so it was either bleed once a month for the duration of a week or deal with the needle once a week. Even now as I retire from my own HRT regimen, I do not look forward to the shots, and I explore this experience in some of my other works. In HRT Simulator 2023, a trans man has a supportive group of online friends who cheers him on as he takes his first dose, and in a scene of Blood & Play that is not currently in the demo, Santiago struggles to do his weekly injection due to his anxiety. As ridiculous as the contrary must sound to my fellow creators, I feel like I have to plainly state that I reject the notion that a singular work of art must perfectly reflect every possible imaginable experience, or else be regarded as flawed and unworthy of recognition. I hope that the same subject, when viewed from different lenses and set to different circumstances across a body of work, can speak to the wide berth of experiences one may go through themselves.

One thing I especially lament about having started so late in the jam was the fact that I didn’t have time to rope in a proper editor to help me tighten up my writing. I think the lack of polish is a lot more apparent starting in the latter half of the game, once the protagonist and Xinyu get on the bus. There’s a lot of redundant descriptions across the routes and some clunky dialogue that could be reworked, though I hope that the core message underneath still came across as sincere. I was up late during the last three days before the 31st pouring yet more words out and complaining that I fucked myself over by adding a fifth ending and drawing out Ending 1 so long. I’ve been hanging onto this one line I couldn’t fit into the protagonist’s confession and I hope that I can add it back in if/when I have the energy to update the game:

You can’t gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss your way out of dysphoria.

I can’t spend forever writing this postmortem though, so here’s some things I wanted to mention:

• The story wasn’t originally set during Halloween, but when my roommates were talking about how much candy to get for the Trick-Or-Treaters, I realized that there wasn’t a reason not to set it on the holiday.
• I’m a lightweight against my will so I don’t drink as much as I’d like (being predisposed to diabetes doesn’t help either). I haven’t actually tried any of the cocktails I listed on the bar menu; they’re just ones I found with names that seemed holiday-appropriate.
• I wish I could say that the protagonist’s plague doctor costume was an intentional choice to obscure their feelings of body dysmorphia and dysphoria. Think about it: you can’t really tell who the person is under the standard mask and coat. I mostly chose it because I was at a recent artist market and someone had some gorgeous prints of plague doctors.
• I actually haven’t played Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, Pokemon Champions, or even watched the anime where Rika and her stinky poopoo mudfish Clodsire appear. I am confident that I’ve witnessed enough fanart of her to understand her character.
• When you get to be my age, you start gaining an appreciation of things like nice, functional pens.
• I’m not explaining the lore behind Xinyu’s keychain. I hope the mental image upsets you.

Programming

This is actually only my third released Twine 2 game. I use the program pretty often to outline my other games, but actually using variables and flags to determine endings is new to me.

For the folks who aren’t as familiar with interactive fiction, it sucks to be us is based on the Harlowe story format, which is designed to be easy to use for developers who are using it to outline narrative games that will be programmed into another engine, or who aren’t as savvy with Javascript for their games. Most story formats will still let you play around with extensive CSS though and while I was tempted to use some of the tips and tricks from Grim’s Twine Grimoire (1, 2, and 3 respectively), I eventually had to can it in favor of prioritizing the writing. It helps that I cheated and largely borrowed the stylesheet from 8=D~<3 (caution: NSFW game) to swap the fontface and some text colors. I did have a little bit of trouble doing variables checks towards the end but I attribute that to lack of time to properly think through the variables I defined earlier, but for all intents and purposes, it’s a simple affair if you want to look into using Twine 2 in the future.

By the way, something that bewilders me about Twine 2 is that it still doesn’t have proper spellcheck in the editor. What’s up with that?

Promotion & Week 1 Analytics

I think trying to figure out how to market this game caused me some anxiety that slowed my writing down in the beginning. In most Discord servers as well as Bluesky, I used the following message:

「something somewhere inside you just isn’t getting the memo」

New yaoi just dropped, it sucks to be us is a Twine game about feminism and trans people who suck at being lesbians, made in two weeks for Trans MLM Jam 2025. Cover art by Loom.

Features:

• 11K+ words
• 5 Endings
• What happens when Girlfailures™ are such miserable failures that they aren’t even girls anymore
• Technically illegal acts of crime

Most people probably don’t use yaoi and lesbians in the same sentence to describe the same thing, but I wanted to see if I’d get certain reactions if I was vague about what exact types of trans people “weren’t great at being lesbians.” And well, it worked, because one of my local friends said he didn’t understand what I was going for until he read this part of the page:

it sucks to be us is a Twine game about a closeted trans masculine person and a trans man who was forced to detransition

Both descriptions are true, but which one would have better Search Engine Optimization or appease the mysterious algorithm? While things are slowly starting to improve in terms of balance, it’s not a secret that trans women suffer from hypervisibility while trans men are largely invisible in the public conscience. The average layperson still doesn’t really know that trans men exist, and this reality seeps into the current media landscape as well when you consider that a large majority of the trans representation in mainstream and even indie works are of trans women or nonbinary people; this isn’t to say that there should be less trans feminine characters in fiction, but rather I’d like to advocate for more trans masculine characters and narratives as well.

Something I wonder if I’ll get beaten for is asking if the general popularity of yuri/lesbian content is more genuine than it is fetishistic. Yes, even some of those all-ages series about girls doing cute things in a world where men inexplicably don’t exist can be fetishistic as they are primarily intended for a cishetero male gaze, in that the lack of male characters in those universes is to ensure that fans do not experience “jealousy” over a masculine figure “taking away their favorites.” If you’re asking if this is a roundabout way of describing netorare, then yes I am sorry to inform you that some people believe that is NTR (and if you don’t know what these words mean then please stay ignorant for your own well-being). This is definitely not my wheelhouse at this point though and I don’t want to talk out of my ass too much.

The above graph was taken during the middle of the day on November 7, exactly a week from release, but you can see that the game received the most page visits and browser plays on November 1 and began to trend downwards since. Not unexpected, to say the least.

What’s more interesting to me is the referral data. I haven’t had the energy to do much promotion lately outside of Discord and Bluesky, though I did manage to push out a newsletter the same day after releasing the game. Internal traffic on itch.io does quite a bit of heavy lifting and many people clicked onto the page after seeing either the release or a rating from their Feed. After that is the main itch.io page that, for folks who are logged in, will have a section dedicated to new releases by creators they follow. In third place we see Bluesky, and thereafter all of the genre and platform tags. What’s curious is the fact that the Made With Twine tag led a lot of the early traffic, as the majority of my other releases are tagged Made With Ren’Py and largely don’t see traffic from that source (theory: so many visual novels are developed using Ren’Py so they’re harder to find in the tag, thus leading to a lot of competition). My takeaway from this is that if you use a common engine then it’s definitely worth going into your project’s Metadata tab and filling in the Engines & tools information. It’s free SEO!

Another thing I observed throughout the first week is that the Lesbian tag led more traffic than the Transgender tag at first. Transgender is taking the lead now, but Lesbian still outpaces tags like Gay, Yaoi, Boys’ Love, LGBT, and LGBTQIA at this time. The Gender and No AI tags are not proving to be effective tags, so if I can think of any better tags, those two will be moving to the chopping block first. For my fellow developers, it is almost always better to maximize your 10 tags with high traffic keywords, and if you can’t think of anything else, just slap something on there. It’s also free SEO!

When we look at the website/domain referral stats, internal traffic is unparalleled. Clickthroughs on Bluesky barely hold a candle to it, and the other referrals are likely from folks who received either my newsletter or an email from itch.io about the release or a devlog. I dunno, I don’t have much else to say about this one.

I think one thing I’ll do soon is actively link the game on my other releases to try and funnel folks who enjoyed the Blood & Play demo to it sucks to be us. Marketing is about communicating to your audience that a thing they might be interested in exists, and lately the struggle is finding a good hilltop to shout through your megaphone from.

Closing Thoughts

I uh, honestly have been doing myself dirty. A week before my hysterectomy, I told a small group of friends that I was going to spend my recovery time on finishing the script for Blood & Play, even if it was a shitty rough draft. I’ve been struggling to even stare at the project files for a long time after the pitch deck kept getting rejected left and right, and the fact that I managed to put out what’s essentially 1/5th of a novel before the traditional writing month kinda left me sitting there wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Was I making excuses this whole time? I don’t regret having made this game, but I wonder if I can reuse that sheer frenzy that gripped me on Friday night and finish another story that’s become much too personal and precious to me.