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a picture of myself

February 2018

I'd acquired some more clothes, and I was taking very very long showers to keep my body hair under control, so there was no use hiding from my roommate.

"Hey, uh, I've been questioning my gender identity," I said out of nowhere in the living room.

"Oh. Okay," he answered. "Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to call you something different?"

"I don't even know yet."

What I particularly didn't know was what I was going to do with my real life. But I also had my Twitch stream, and my Twitter account of the same name. My identity when I was playing games online was already different from offline.

I had room to experiment. I could try different pronouns and be called something different.

I hadn't decided on a name to go by yet, but I formed a plan. One day I was going to come out online, particularly on Twitch and in the Crypt of the Necrodancer community (a community I knew would be incredibly accepting). When I did, I was going to have some cute artwork ready for my stream, so others could see me as I wanted to see myself.

And this would of course include an avatar. A picture of a girl. Who is me.

I can't really draw, but I knew exactly who should draw it, someone I knew from the Necrodancer community. I sent her a DM on Discord. I really hoped she was taking commissions.


Two days later, I got a response from Rittesora: "hey what's up?"

I replied to her with a big messy paragraph. She was the first person I was coming out to online.

She was really cool with it! The conversation that followed was wonderful. It was basically a consultation on cuteness. It was the beginning of creating a character out of nothing.

It turns out Ritte is very good at character design. She came back with some concept drawings two weeks later.

Sketches of four character designs

Sketches of four more character designs

6. staring at the ceiling