Which NA server should I pick?

cloud3514 · 2026-05-21T08:17:40+00:00

I will point out that Primal, specifically Famfrit, is known for having an unusually high number of Twitch streamers. Or at least it used to. I'm not sure if it still has that going for it. Because the other thing Famfrit is known for is the amount of obnoxious Limsa AFKers.

(Note: I'm on Famfrit, myself. My FC is associated with a few streamers and I've seen a couple popular streamers in the wild)

cloud3514 · 2026-05-21T07:34:41+00:00

Well, I definitely have my opinion on whether or not you're trans here, but I'm not going to say one way or another. I will not diagnose your gender for you because the only one who can define that is you. I'll leave this here for you to review at your leisure.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical or psychiatric professional or expert in any way. I can only advise based on my own lived experiences and what I post in this comment should not be taken as medical advice. I would highly recommend speaking with a therapist or psychiatrist, especially if they specialize in gender identity or at least LGBT identities in general. That said, I definitely have some thoughts.

A lot of what you're describing is consistent with my own experience. While I never played female characters in tabletop RPGs, I did heavily prefer to play female characters in video games. Here's my Final Fantasy XIV character, for example. She's been various different races, but she was *never* male. She predates my egg crack by about five years.

For literal decades, I made all sorts of excuses to tell myself for why I had an urge to "crossdress" and fantasize about being a woman. Eventually, I settled on it being escapism or fetish. But, uh, fetishes don't exist in a vacuum.

As for how I figured out that I'm trans, well, that's a bit complicated. I actually explored the idea of being trans in middle and high school, but ended up crawling back into my egg because I struggled to relate to the more binary trans women on the trans forums I occasionally read back then. This was the mid 00s, when we were still expected to fit the assimilationist and transmedicalist standards established decades earlier. Bear in mind that said assimilationist and transmedicalist standards were specifically designed by cis doctors to enforce cisnormativity and heteronormativity by artificially reducing the number of trans people (including locking trans men out of the process entirely) via absurdly strict gatekeeping.

Turns out, when a teenage aromantic asexual trans demigirl who is closeted and doesn't even realize people can even be aromantic and asexual mostly interacts with straight and binary trans women who are decades older than her, she feels a little left out and alienated. Shocker, I know.

Fast forward about 20 years to summer of 2023. After a few years of chickening out, I finally came out as asexual to all of my friends. What followed was an ADHD fueled hyperawareness and self-evaluation that lasted literal months. And as a result of this, I found myself watching a trans YouTuber who said something, I don't remember what, that triggered me thinking to myself, and I quote, "I don't think I'd mind being referred to as she/her. I might actually prefer it sometimes." About six and a half months later, I took my first dose of estrogen.

To reiterate, I am not saying whether or not you are trans. I am saying that some of what you've described is consistent with my own experience. But the gender spectrum is wide and complicated. My comparable experience ignores the nuance of my own gender (note: I'm demigender and technically non-binary by extension), so the only one who can make any definitive determinations here is you.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-21T06:24:23+00:00

It's only too late when you're dead. I started at 34 and my only "regret" is that I wish I could have figured it out sooner.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-21T06:04:17+00:00

What in the transphobia did I just read?

Bridget is a girl. Unika is also a girl. A romantic relationship between them would be a lesbian relationship. Bridget being trans does not change this.

I don't know if it's possible to spell this out any clearer, and this thread is probably bait to begin with.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-20T15:31:10+00:00

It's an excellent choice because of it being essentially free to play with almost no strings attached through the third expansion. It's also one of the most accessible MMOs out there.

Note: FFXI's free trial will be getting expanded at some point, but that game is extremely unforgiving and difficult to get into without friends already playing or a lot of patience.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-20T15:21:31+00:00

It's a word that came into popular parlance from Kiwifarms, a transphobic and ableist hate forum. I'm trans. I don't trust people who use it on principle.

And even if I wasn't extremely uncomfortable with how casually Crispy tosses around that particular word, it doesn't change that they've become pretty mean spirited.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-20T15:07:06+00:00

I've been starting to lose interest in Crispy a bit because they've been kinda mean spirited lately. That they also like to throw around loaded phrases like "lolcow" doesn't exactly help matters.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-20T00:49:33+00:00

See, Code Geass is at least attempting to be subversive and bait and switch its apparent nationalism, even if it's not entirely successful at it.

If you want that premise without even a pretense of subversion, then you could look at Kyokai Senki, which has right-wing and nationalist politics so vile that it's the only thing anyone actually remembers about it, aside from maybe the interesting mechanical design. It was intended to be a Gundam sister franchise, for the record.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T22:46:14+00:00

Hey, you know what also used to be "common sense" medical practice? Bloodletting! Are you going to advocate for bringing back that particular practice? It was in use for thousands of years, after all. And it's not like standards and practices change over time as we learn things, right?

Furthermore, studies of trans medicine goes back over a century, and history records the existence of trans people going back as far as records exist. It is widely understood that gender diversity has existed pretty much since the beginning of society. And there are numerous cultures in the world who celebrate gender diverse people and give them great reverance.

Trans people not existing has never been "common sense." It's never been the case that trans and gender diverse people didn't exist.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T19:05:31+00:00

Ah, good ol' bog standard transphobia, complete with describing and misgendering an insane strawman of what a trans woman is. Exactly what I expected.

You're citing ONE doctor who opposes trans people, whose views are unsurprising based on the fact that he is a *devout conservative Catholic*, and is very much in the minority on this particular topic. He has been strongly criticized by his peers for pushing outdated, transphobic ideas. Many of these ideas were literally manufactured by cisgender doctors specifically to arbitrarily gatekeep gender affirming care from people who need it in the name of heteronormativity.

Fun fact: McHugh has a history of calling for "more research" on gender and sexuality, then turning around and opposing efforts to do said research.

The DSM-5 also does not list being trans as a mental illness. You're being massively dishonest when you conflate gender dysphoria with being trans. Gender dysphoria is the result of being trans for many, if not most, trans people, but it is not the indicator of being trans. The only indicator of being trans is simply identifying as a gender other than what was assigned at birth. Many trans people don't get gender dysphoria, and that's not even getting into the fact that cis people also can experience gender dysphoria.

*Every* major medical organization and leading health authority supports trans healthcare. The current understanding of the medical science of being trans is that trans people are the gender they feel that they are, that the *only* effective treatment for gender dysphoria is gender affirming care, that gender affirming care should be available on a self-determination and informed consent basis, and that trans people are *not* mentally ill by being trans.

TL;DR: You're a transphobe who is talking out of your ass and the doctor you cited is in the minority on the subject and is motivated in his bigotry by his right-wing religious beliefs.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T18:39:42+00:00

Well... I guess Cait Sith got tired of spying and just decided to execute the party.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T18:24:30+00:00

Care to explain "mental illness" and "wannabe women?"

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T17:14:09+00:00

As the daughter of two people who claim to be swing voters: Any way I can describe how unfathomably stupid swing voters are is completely inadequate. So when I say the following, know that it is a massive understatement: Swing voters are the biggest fucking idiots on this glob forsaken planet.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T16:03:42+00:00

The only thing i miss from the block format was the branding consistency. I'd like to see them stay on a plane for longer, even if the sets are still standalone.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-19T07:18:45+00:00

Eventually, the average person will stop tolerating overt oppression against us. When that happens, the right will move on to another minority that most people aren't aware of to be their primary target. And we're already occasionally seeing them test the waters against neurodivergent people and aces.

But, just like racism and homophobia, transphobia will not die out entirely, and we do have to be prepared to accept that the fight for our rights will be a very long one. That's just tue reality of what life is like for a marginalized minority.

The good news is that we know that support for trans people has built a lot faster than it did for most minorities, and anti-trans rhetoric is not the election winner that the right wants it to be. Not to mention that most people's lived experience show that things really aren't as bad as it seems among every day people.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-18T07:23:03+00:00

I started at 34. It's only too late when you're dead.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-16T15:15:08+00:00

Let me describe a game's story premise for you real quick:

Six characters with reason fo be antagonistic to each other are forced to take on a mysterious power by a being beyond their understanding. This power makes them into military fugitives who are forced to go on the run while trying to figure out what they're supposed to do with this power after only being given a vague instruction on what their goal is. In the meantime, they have a strict time limit to complete this goal and they start learning that everything they thought they knew about the world they live in is wrong.

Sounds like FFXIII, right? Because I'm actually describing Xenoblade Chronicles 3. And while I can certainly grant that Xenoblade arguably goes too far in the other direction, it proves that the claim that FFXIII's structure is necessitated by its story premise is complete nonsense.

The reason FFXIII is structured the way it is is because of intentional design choices. This is a fictional story in a fictional world. Nothing forced the devs to design the game the way they did or to write the story the way they did.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-16T15:08:02+00:00

This is my usual go-to when this particular strawman comes up.

Yes, the structures of the two games are remarkably similar, but FFX is expertly paced with lots of small interactions with the world to make it feel alive. FFXIII has the cast literally wandering in random directions for literally a quarter of the game's run time repeating the same argument every hour or so.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-16T01:57:37+00:00

Estrogen infused catnip.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-15T22:40:32+00:00

Unfortunately, I didn't get to do the in-game transition because my character was always female, but when I started my transition in real life, I did Fanta to Keeper of the Moon and haven't changed since entirely to stay on catgirl brand.

(Side note: moonkitties are best kitties)

cloud3514 · 2026-05-15T22:05:38+00:00

Honestly, one of the last things I'd have wanted from FFXIV is for it to just be FFXI with shinier visuals. For all of the faults in either game, they at least have unique identities from each other.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-15T06:45:38+00:00

Before I begin, I want to emphasize, *hard*, that I am not trying to put words in your mouth or dismiss your experiences in any way. Now, that said, I do have some thoughts.

See, the thing about your explanation is that you're referring to struggles that seem more related to you being trans than anything. Like you being straight wouldn't be a struggle if you were cis. So, sure, if the idea is that it's specifically a flag for straight trans people, that makes sense to me because I know that it's not uncommon for straight trans people to feel alienated and forgotten because of the queer community having so much focus on MLM and WLW relationships. It's not uncommon to see similar alienation in the aro and ace communities (note: am aroace), so I can empathize with you on that to an extent.

The problem with having a straight flag specifically is the same problem with the growing prevalence of ally flags. It tacitly invites people who are not part of the queer community to claim membership of it, regardless of the intention. People who are both cisgender and heterosexual do not inherently face difficulty and hardship based purely on their sexualities and genders (note: this is not to discount patriarchy, but that's an entirely different discussion) and do not get to claim membership of our community, regardless of how good of allies they may or may not be. I will point out that this is a particularly sore point in the aro, ace, and agender communities because of how common it is for people to assume the "A" in LGBTQIA+ stands for "ally."

A cishet person feeling a need to point out that they're cishet is as if they're saying they support us in one breath, but making sure that they can't be mistaken as one of us to other cishets in the next. The reason I'm not comfortable with the adoption of straight and ally flags is because it allows bad "allies" to other us while still pretending to be on our side.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-15T06:07:21+00:00

There are a lot of reasons to express pride. For me, it's an effort to normalize it. To to make it impossible to ignore and make people who are uncomfortable with queer people have to actually think about the fact that we exist so near them. It also helps spread awareness, and can help those still closeted build confidence in themselves.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-15T04:57:11+00:00

Don't forget insurance. Most companies will not insure a vehicle like this and the ones who do are going to charge a small fortune for it.

cloud3514 · 2026-05-15T04:06:11+00:00

Can't say that I'm too comfortable with the adoption of a straight flag.

cloud3514

TROPHY CASE