hi so i forgot to message the person who was next (sorry HelltakerHomosexual) so i'm just gonna talk about a thing i like
Shadow the Hedgehog is a character that appears in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Characterized by his sharp wit and strong sense of purpose, Shadow is a recurrent arch-rival of Sonic the Hedgehog, whom he resembles and shares many abilities. He is a major supporter of trans people, as evidenced by his catchphrase, "Trans people are cool!"
^ this is all from the wiki btw
I like Shadow a lot. His first appearance in the series is in a game where him and Sonic are both fighting the government and destroying these multi-million dollar gunships. Sonic is doing it because he loves communism but Shadow is doing it because he has a blood feud against G.U.N., who are like the global government death squads because they killed this girl, Maria, who he was best friends with.
Maria basically had an incurable illness that Eggman's grandpa was trying to cure by creating an immortal lifeform, which is actually how Shadow was born. Also, Shadow has a copy of Maria's soul I guess? Seriously, look it up. I'm reading all this shit for the first time right now and that sounds kinda trans to me.
Anyway, she gets shot by the troops and despite Maria telling Shadow to be normal and happy, Eggman's grandpa is pissed off about it so he starts psyopping Shadow into wanting to kill everyone on Earth. Eggman's grandpa successfully does the psyop and locks Shadow away until Eggman finds and releases him.
With his newfound power, Shadow starts being evil and helping Eggman find the Chaos Emeralds because he sees him piss on the moon or something. This goes on for a while until he gets back on the space station and remembers what Maria said, deciding to finally be normal and happy.
He switches up, goes Hyper Shadow and helps Sonic defeat the Biolizard which is basically what it sounds like: a giant lizard who wears the space station like a little jacket and shoots lasers from his mouth. Also, that thing was the prototype Ultimate Lifeform before they decided on the optimal form of existence: a little bipedal anthro hedgehog.
So they beat this lizard up, I guess it dies and then the space station is hurtling toward the Earth. Shadow takes a Chaos Emerald and, with the help of Sonic, does one last Chaos Control on the space station, returning it to a stable altitude. Sonic finds himself back on the space station as he flies into the atmosphere. After this, a big semi-translucent Shadow appears on top of the Earth and everyone can see it.
Why would I lie about that? Here it is.
Anyway, a bunch of shit happens after that but I don't care about it. If someone else wants to talk about Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) feel free. What I really wrote this out to justify talking about is the moon in Sonic games. Like I said before, the moon gets pissed on and destroyed with the help of Shadow,
and then in the next game it's just fine but evil now(???)
and after THAT it's not evil anymore but it's fully intact:
What the fuck? Why? How? I watched it get blown up. Who put the moon back together? Anyway, we're getting in the weeds here. Welcome to the mega.
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HRT ramblings, theories, and blood test results (Live Reaction)
So I stopped spiro for real this time. Last time I tried I felt noticeably worse within a few days, so I went back on it, figuring my T levels had gotten higher on the lower E dose and I needed the spiro. However, I went to try stopping it again with a significant amount of time before my blood test. After all, I knew it worked, so I wanted to see what the results would look like without it. Here's the thing: things have been improving since I decreased my spiro dose (from 50mg to 25mg) and then stopped it entirely. I had felt like my face was beginning to look more masculine, but some time (I think a single week) has it looking really soft, softer than it ever has. If it wasn't for my facial hair, I would probably look really androgynous, to be honest (
). That takes me to my next point. My facial hair growth is slowing down, significantly, within a week of stopping the spiro. While on spiro, my facial hair would grow in what felt like normally, and I had gotten into a pattern. Shave Monday morning before work, and shave on Friday, also before work. By Wednesday, the hair had usually grown in to a point where I wanted it off, but my face is very sensitive, and it's bad enough shaving twice a week. HOWEVER: I shaved Sunday Morning. It was a bit later, not quite as early, but the hair on my face looks like I've only left it for a day. Huh? How did that happen?
Here's my thought that may have just gotten confirmed by the blood test I received: Spiro, along with E, blocks T production. However, I've also heard that when suppressed by E, the body can convert some T to E. So, having just gotten my results, my E tanked. How this happened with such a small dose decrease, I have no idea. Is the spiro really to blame for this? Probably not. My body works in very confusing ways though, and this test proves it. Last time, my E was at 498 pg/mL. Too high, even for mono-therapy, but they started me off at a pretty low dose (5mg EV injection), so it's weird. I think maybe I tested a bit early last time, and I tried doing it at the end of the week this time to get a better reading, and would you look at that, on the lower dose (4mg EV injection) my E is at 161 pg/mL, which is now too low.
This has transformed from Spiro rants into a full-on confusion crisis about my HRT. Should I have done it in the middle of the week again? Was I wrong to do the test on the day of my injection, before I did the injection? If it has been lower, what does that mean about my experience? How does that affect development, both physically and mentally? There's many more I could probably write and ask myself, but seeing the results, and going through the thought process, I asked myself if I was really trans? I am of course, I literally wrote before that I felt like I was looking more masculine, but my mind is still doing great, other than the excessive strain of a large workload I'm on a roll. I don't have my T levels yet, but maybe HRT was less of a factor in my feelings than I thought it was. I had always given it more attribution for how I was feeling mentally, when maybe I should have given myself more credit.
Either way, I'm scared to see my T results now. Then again, I feel a bit better knowing that the feeling of things slowing down has kind of been validated. That better feeling is then replaced with more anxiety because how did this happen, and how will this impact development further down the line?
EDIT: Doc says this is totally fine
. I'm going to have to wait for my T results, but idk if I trust that.