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.
