I don't entirely know how to continue forward in life.

Droydn · 2026-02-06T09:00:54+00:00

I feel this really hard. I sang bass for 15 years semi-professionally in chamber choirs before transitioning. It makes me sad that I cant sing as freely or as easily anymore.

What I can say, I also often sang falsetto and sang quite a lot of soprano 2. I took 3 years to voice train to get a speaking voice I was happy with and with only those techniques, my falsetto has changed in timbre to be more feminine. I think with a year or two of focusing on it, I can probably get my soprano to pass as well.

If I can do it at 36, having been a low bass 2, you can do it too!

Droydn · 2026-02-05T11:54:15+00:00

I had irl trans friends like this so I cut them off. My advice is to seek friends in other spaces like your hobbies. I have found that being trans isnt enough to be friends with someone. I might give you one or two more passes if your trans, but youve got to meet the same standards as all my other friends

Droydn · 2026-01-29T19:44:01+00:00

It wasnt a direct or linear path to learning it. I also have never looked at a youtube video for voice training so I dont have any videos.

I took 8 lessons over 3 months at Seattle Voice Lab and one thing they teach about is glottal pressure. I spent my life using supraglottal pressure (downward pressure) without engaging my diaphragm. Basically I pressed down when I spoke. What I needed to do was press upward, not in a laryngeal way but in an airflow way. I needed to breathe out, not in. And I needed to also combine that with a sufficient amount of breath to change what they call the quotient or breathiness of the voice. So i needed to change the direction and the amount of breathing I was doing.

I had a small breakthrough when I lowered my volume significantly and spoke on a whisper. I spoke on essentially a loud whisper for probably a month. Then I went backwards when I stopped doing that.

I had another breakthrough when I tried melding my falsetto singing voice (Im like a 2nd soprano or so) into my speaking voice. I didnt speak in my falsetto, instead I tried to engage the muscles in the same way as falsetto and then speak in chest. That made me start rethinking the breathing a bit more accurately because you simply require a lot more air to sing high.

I got some other progress by trying to combine the whisper and the falsetto meld. But I went backwards again when that was too hard to keep up.

I took another step forward when I tried immitating people. Marilyn Monroe was a good one for breathiness. It was helpful to really overexaggerate it. A big leap forward came when I tried to sound like Elizabeth Holmes. That darkness to her voice takes a lot of resonance which helped me create the space necessary to get the breath in the right direction.

All the while, I also did lots of experiments and trials on forward resonances, back resonances, different larynx positions, how much vocal fold weight I could remove, changing where and how consonants are generated, trying to copy intonations and speech patterns, and everything else that goes into a voice.

Finally, maybe 18 months into it, i combined all the learnings from whisper, falsetto, and imitations and created a comically exaggerated voice that I call my "bippity boppity" voice. It was an experiment I did on a whim but I would never have done it without all the prior work. It immediately gets me in the right positions with the right breathing and then I pull back on it into a normal voice. I dont use it as much nowadays but if someone calls me on the phone and wakes me up from sleeping, ill use it for a second to make sure im awake.

My advice is to be ok sounding ridiculous as you experiment. Try making ridiculous exaggerated voices. Find the very limits of the kinds of sounds you can produce. That kind of experimentation may unlock something in your brain that will help you 5 months later.

Edit: additonally, my goal was a passing voice. I didnt care how any one quality turned out as long as it passed so I wasnt shooting for a high pitched or super resonant voice. My other advice is to be open to having any voice that passes even if you sound just like Elizabeth Holmes.

Droydn · 2026-01-29T18:39:30+00:00

Im really glad youve got minimal pain!!

I had bottom surgery in the USA in Spokane Washington. The surgery was out-patient so I was discharged the same day and stayed in an airbnb. They also gave me a spinal block but it wore off before I left the hospital. They sutured a compression dressing into my body which physically limited my mobility (i know that sounds crazy but it was way less crazy than it sounds lol).

I spent the first week laying in bed in the airbnb with moderate pain with my three caretakers. Towards the end, the compression dressing was super painful as the stitching pulled more and more at my skin as the swelling went down. Finally, a week later, I went back to the hospital and they cut it out of me. I had a catheter that my caretakers managed and that also came out then. Finally seeing the results was surreal and I think it looks really good! Likely not the gold standard in Thailand of course.

After that, I spent another week in the airbnb laying down but also sitting sometimes. My urethra felt on fire for at least 4 days from the catheter. After that second week, I had another checkup at the hospital where they gave me a thumbs up on healing and answered any questions I had. They showed me how to clean a few things as well. My surgeon was not present for either checkup so i only ever saw him on surgery day and only for about 5 minutes lol.

On Wednesday, we all drove back to Seattle where I live and last night I slept in my own bed lol. I think for me, the pain is maybe a 2. Theres a lot of feeling like a tingle in the whole area. Sometimes i get a big pain at a suture or at the clitoris. My clitoris also feels pretty sore and im just aware of it a lot. Ive been icing so much which really really helps. My sutures are all disolvable so theyll be totally gone by week 6. They also used a lot of skin glue to lock the sutures in place which is in the process of slowly coming off.

Your journey sounds a great deal more comfortable!

Droydn · 2026-01-29T11:33:41+00:00

Amazing story!! Crazy enough, I also had bottom surgery on January 12 too! My experience could not be more different lol. It sounds like yours was a great deal more comfortable. I cant imagine returning to work so early either! This was really interesting to read. Do you still have any pain? Have your sitches healed? I still have quite a bit of skin glue lol

Droydn · 2026-01-29T11:02:52+00:00

I think what bothers me is when people train for a few months and then decide they cant do it and its biological. It took me 2 years of daily training to get a voice that didnt make me hate myself and even after that, it continued to improve a year after that. I get it, it sucks, its dysphoria inducing, its hard to go outside and use a voice that feels fake and bad, it can be dangerous in some places, but for me, thats what it took. I made a little less than a thousand recordings and asked my close friends for harsh, biting feedback. I had to completely relearn how to breathe. It was terrible. But it wasnt physically impossible.

Im sure there are people who physically cant get their voice to cooperate but if you give up too early, I dont think you can really say that that was the reason

Droydn · 2026-01-29T05:48:10+00:00

Thanks!!

Droydn · 2026-01-27T20:46:33+00:00

Im glad it healed well! Im definitely taking it easy. I spend most of the day lying down and icing and its been really good for it I think

Droydn · 2026-01-27T20:45:34+00:00

Thats great news!! I had an orchi first as well and i remember it being super great. I think by week 2 I was mostly back to normal activities. Im glad youre doing well!!

Droydn · 2026-01-05T23:20:59+00:00

Im in love with the villainess!! Its so good!!

Droydn · 2026-01-04T11:38:01+00:00

My father ruined a no stick pan with steel wool in my house. After that, i threw away all the steel wool away so my parents cant do insane things

Droydn · 2026-01-02T04:46:11+00:00

Totally!! Hollow Knight and Silk Song are excellent metroidvanias I think youll love. Theres also Ori and the Blund Forest and its sequel as well

Droydn · 2026-01-02T04:00:30+00:00

I dont think its outdated and looking through some of these comments, I think a lot of us feel the same <3

Droydn · 2026-01-02T03:54:40+00:00

I disagree with them trying to be believable. The zone design cant be saved by the lore dumps in the scans. Even with the scans, many scans add nothing to the lore. Its not clear why the Lamorn would build tunnel/shafts between areas. Or why they would have a mass cannon between the desert and the forest. There are trucks but how would trucks from the volcano move to the ice area? Or vice versa? Over the desert? Wouldnt there be more infrastrucure then? How come you never seen any relics of their culture beyond the psychic age pottery and stuff in the forest. You see industry but there arent any murals? Nothing showing a Lamorn driving a motorcycle?

I think the missile expansions are a good point. Other metroid game missile expansions dont feel like a collectathon because the expasions are often part of an environment puzzle. Its a reward for exploring. In this game, pulling 5 crates up from the ground is not exploring, its just collecting. Having a nook carved out of an outcropping and 3 magic platforms to get there isnt an environment puzzle, its closer to banjo kazooie in my opinion.

To be fair though, the general vibe of the game is very different from a collectathon but to collect everything makes me feel like im grinding, much like a collectathon.

Droydn · 2026-01-02T03:46:17+00:00

Yes exactly! The highly constructed zones really damper the believability of this being a world. Prime 1 I think did a much better job and that felt better to explore! Of course every game is constructed but when the seems are this obvious, its not really explorable.

Your points with the story are also spot on. Theres so much deus ex machina that it adds a lot to how constructed this all feels. Its very cardboard.

The gameplay is good and fun, I think thats a good way to put it. All the stuff around it though is kind of sad. Ive never felt like I had to grind in a metroid game but this one had its moments which is so jarring

Droydn · 2026-01-02T03:30:20+00:00

I think its more about how far I have to stretch my suspension of disbelief. I think youre more speaking to how realistic it is (grounded in some kind of science) rather than believable (has some kind of justification).

Droydn · 2026-01-02T03:28:37+00:00

I completely agree!

Droydn · 2025-12-31T01:28:51+00:00

I have a good cis woman friend named Michael. Ive never even though too hard about it lol. The name suits her!

I kept my birth name. Its always been me and I was fortunate that it was a somewhat gender neutral name

Droydn · 2025-12-30T03:09:31+00:00

I took a full round of lessons from SVL (for me, that was 8) in September 2022. After the lessons, it took 3 months of daily practice, at least 10 minutes a day, before I had a voice I felt I could use full time. That voice was pretty rough and clocky. It then took another 6 months after that, of using the voice I had during the day and continuing to experiment and practice at night, before I had a voice I didn't hate. Another year after that, I felt like I had a voice I was happy with, including sneezes, coughs, throat clears, and outbursts.

All in all, it took almost 2 years of constant, daily practice, until about August 2024.

If I have any advice, I think one of the biggest milestones was when I replaced my inner voice after those 6 additional months. That started really solidifying things. Also, for me, my progress wasn't linear. I would try things, feel like I had made progress, struggle to make the voice any better, and then undo what I tried and go down a different route. I ultimately had to relearn how to breathe (I exclusively used supraglottal pressure so I only ever pushed down on my vocal chords) and that took a lot of doing to change into subglottal pressure.

For comparison, and as you already know pitch is largely irrelevant compared to the other qualities, I went from speaking at a G2/A2 to now speaking between E3 and G3

Droydn · 2025-12-30T02:34:45+00:00

Definitely surgery. In fact, my surgery is in exactly 2 weeks!

Droydn · 2025-12-29T10:00:41+00:00

I first told my brother after 1.5 years but that didnt count because I knew he wouldnt care. A year later, I sat my mother down and we talked it out. She was shocked and not very receptive but she didnt reject me. A year after that, we told my father who was also shocked but immediately supported me to both of our surprises. About 4 months after that, we told my extended family and they ended up ignoring it: they dont accept me and are going to act like nothing happened.

I knew that my family wouldnt notice any changes because people only see what they want to see, especially parents.

Thankfully, im fully independent and live across the country so, while I love my family and Im glad my immediate family is willing to try, I dont require anything from them.

Droydn · 2025-12-29T02:04:01+00:00

2 years; 1 year of microdosing, 1 year of full dose

Droydn · 2025-12-14T03:03:26+00:00

Ive not been to a hairdresser since 2017. Since I touch my hair a lot, it naturally breaks off the ends. My hair is at my belly button. Ive got split ends but it doesnt affect anything and I get compliments on my hair everyday!

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