NOVEL NEXT Episode 8 ▶ 1.21 Discussion & Channel Update
@sofa_king 2 hours ago
It’s a pity the devs are getting harassed like that for the lack of content. If anything, the true culprit is Microsoft, not the developers of the game. Seeing they don’t seem to be able to keep up with the pace they’ve set themselves to, I think they should take more time between two major updates. Though, that might not be up to them either, it might be a decision from higher up.
Regarding what you said at the end: I think it’s a great idea to take a bit more time to yourself in january! It’s not a very good month for ad revenue anyway.
Shorter videos are absolutely not a problem for me, I’ve only been watching your videos for a few weeks now, so I’ve got a whole catalogue to catch up to :-)
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▴ 5 replies
@GonzeRel0u0 2 hours ago
Hi sofa
@RogerCross 2 hours ago
By the twelve! It’s good to see sofa in this comment section. I wonder if that means Screw will join CovenCraft… ;)
@GerschwinImpact 1 hour ago
The thing I’m the most frustrated about is they still haven’t reverted the changes to the copper block. I’m glad screw mentioned that
@_a_pig 1 hour ago
o
@_a_pig 51 minutes ago
Yes
People who aren’t the gender everyone thought they were, uh?
A spark of understanding shot through me. A sensation as powerful as that time I first nailed how to pillar below me on Minecraft; as raw as the one I felt when I understood how to make my first piston door by watching a tutorial from orangetech on YouTube; as deep as the one I got the moment I figured out how to make an entire Minecraft farm by myself. This was it. All the pieces connected themselves together to solve the most intricate puzzle.
“I think I know someone like that,” I said, snapping my fingers.
Mandel perked up. “Oh yeah, now that you mention it, that must be why—”
I flashed him a frown and mimed zipping my mouth.
“Ah, sorry!” He turned again towards Zee, choosing his words more carefully. “Yeah, we probably know someone like that. Though we don’t know for sure. We haven’t asked them directly.”
“We share the same online space,” I continued, “and someone slipped up about her being trans… I think. I’m still not sure.”
Zee grabbed his chin with his hand, looking up for a moment. “Well, if you want to know more about it, I know lots of trans people, even some here in the city!”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and that’s what I was getting at. I think you should go to the Gayette. That’s the local LGBTI association. Here, I’ll send you the address.”
“The wha—”
“Tut! Don’t ask me about the name, I think I’ve demonstrated my skill in French enough for today. I. Don’t. Have. A. Single. Clue.” He punctuated his speech with a silly dance of his hands that made me giggle. “But yeah, I really don’t think I’m the best person to talk to you about trans stuff in the end. I gave you the basics, but I’m sure I’ve butchered it, somehow. I’m just bad at this…”
“Zee…”
“Anyway!” he exclaimed. “You should go there, better to ask knowledgeable people directly!”
I sighed. “I guess. I can’t deny I’m very curious right now.”
“They don’t bite — except maybe Marie if you start talking flat earth, even as a joke…” He grunted and rolled his eyes.
“O— Okay. I’ll think about it. How about you, babe?”
“Hg-mmhg?” he meekly contributed, then yawned with a loudness that could’ve easily rivalled the sound of a Wither being summoned.
“Okay, I think this big baby needs sleep.”
“Shleeeeep, with youuuu, cutie-heehee.”
Sleep together… We’d never done that before.
I shook my head. Not that night, it was still too early.
“Oh my god, your boyfriend is high from tiredness alone.”
“Tell me about it.” I rolled my eyes, fighting a rising blush. “I hope that won’t worsen with time…”
As soon as we were up, Mandel got a bit of his senses back, just enough for him to walk without tripping down the stairs. The fireworks had finally calmed down, they only threw light our way every minute or so and had left a faint scent of creeper remains (gunpowder, that is) in the air. We stopped at Zee’s floor and bid him farewell, then the two of us continued down to Mandel’s room.
“That went well,” I said.
I took off my extra layer of clothing and harvested the three mugs from earlier, bringing them to the sink for a little wash. I heard Mandel grunt, and his bed caught his fall.
“Zee’s fun,” I continued.
I let the water run and got to work. I had my own little method for washing a mug. First, start with a big stream down the centre, then flip the mug to flush the larger chunks away.
“I— I didn’t know about all that trans stuff… It’s interesting.”
Then stop the flow of water for a second, and with the sponge and some soap, draw little circles, starting at the bottom of the hole, then on the inner side, then on the ridge, by pinching it with the sponge and turning the mug itself instead of bending your hand in weird ways. If you’re feeling extra fancy, like me that day, you can complete that by rubbing the handle and the base too.
“I think…”
I turned on the water again and executed my special technique, developed by my brain experts team over the years: I put my hand between the tap and the dish, first in order to wash the soap that had lost its way on my skin, and second to split the water into hundreds of tiny droplets that will clean the foam away from the mug more efficiently.
“I think I’d like to meet some trans people.”
I dried myself, then turned around.
Mandel was snoring.
I whispered a quiet goodbye and left for my flat. And I was left alone with my thoughts.
✦ ▶ ✦
The next morning I got up at eight, not because I was still particularly attached to my strict schedule, but more because I had so much trouble sleeping — a cube of something had been churning up my insides and forcing me to turn left and right every few dozens seconds like it was an hourglass in need of flipping — and staying in bed any longer was simply not a very enjoyable prospect. As soon as all the necessary nutrients were ingested, I turned on my computer.
On my crafting table today was posting a short video discussing my feelings and predictions for the next update of the game. I would also use this opportunity to follow on one of Mandel’s suggestions and announce I would try to take a bit more time for myself in the coming month. Partly because — since we’d had decided on joining — we would have to prepare the new season of CovenCraft, and mostly because I needed it. Granted, we hadn’t answered to 40 to announce we would be joining the server yet. Nothing was official yet. So I decided I would only briefly mention the second reason and leave the why’s to speculation.
I got a ‘gm pretty’ from Mandel in my DMs that made my lips curl into a happy smile. I immediately replied to it, wishing him a good day, and returned to my work.
For this kind of light discussion video, I liked bringing something more to the table in terms of mise-en-scène. That’s why, in my solo Let’s Play world, I’d built a neat and cute little trail leading up to a terraformed depression in the back of a meadow, just before some mountains started their ascent. The place was garnished with all types of flowers and overlooked by a huge Screw-made red tree. A sort of big blue screen with concrete blocks acting as the matte was standing in the centre of the alcove. It was enclosed by a fancy border carved from the newly added mangrove wood and planks that helped to give the place its main colour accent, a deep crimson, contrasting with all the greens from the leaves, the grass, and me.
Because this was my ‘I’m going to present something on a screen behind me and talk about it’ place, I’d added a little desk and a mountable chair (a minecart, really) at the right of the screen. I sat on my throne, launched a mod that would record everything that occurred in-game and let me scrub through it afterwards — I could even choose the position of my camera and put some keyframes to make it move — and opened my audio recording software on the side. With that, I started doing the talking, occasionally punching the air, knowing I would put something on the blue screen later in editing. Within an hour, the recording session was finished.
I opened the mod interface and prepared some simple clips. First, a slow forward dolly shot, following the trail and panning to progressively reveal the place in all its glory. Then, a second shot, more ambient, taken from above, with the tree in the foreground — its roots, trunk, and leaves framing the alcove — that I could insert when I hadn’t any important images to display on the screen. And at last, a still shot of the entire blue screen with my little desk on the side. It would end up being the point of view I’d work with the most; the other one only coming up now and again.
The next thing I had to do was to open my editing software and get rid of the blue background.
I did not think about my avatar a lot; it had a purely utilitarian purpose. But here, it was a bit of a hindrance. My skin was a sort of green enderman with a green spacesuit and a white helmet with some lime sprinkled in. That meant I couldn’t use a green screen. They only work when there’s no green in the image, after all. But blue was working wonders. I just had to use the keying effect to transform all the blue into—
To change the—
To delete the blue and put some images of what I was talking about in its place.
I stopped working on that video and decided to switch tasks for a while. I would come back to it later.
✦ ▶ ✦
January was always a mediocre month on YouTube. All the ad-revenue came in December, for the holidays. That meant my overwork tendencies of last month had actually been a positive for my balance, if not for everything else. What it didn’t mean was that I was making a lot of money. My average income was barely above the minimum wage.
As soon as I went to add the numbers from last month into the spreadsheet, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. The first year on YouTube had been quite strange. On the grid, I could see the exact date I started to track the ad-revenue. I remembered I had kept my grades just above the necessary requirements to pass and focused all my attention on my channel. Every little nook of available time was being duly filled by an engulfing passion to create. Then, after months of little to no viewers, numbers started going up. And I’m a sucker for numbers going up (I never use the ‘/time set day’ command in any of my worlds because that would mean the day counter would reset, and that would be an utmost tragedy. Numbers must never go down.) The day Google announced I’d made enough money for a first payment, I’d been ecstatic. It meant so many possibilities and so many dreams might now come true. In that first year, I had made just enough to buy a new computer, and it was still the one I was using today — even though it’d got a bit ship-of-Theseus’d since. I glanced at my PC tower and exhaled a little stream of nostalgic air. All of that history was oozing from that little spreadsheet.
At first, all I did was video showcases of mods. Then I started talking about the updates of the game. In my second year, I went through some adventure maps and started my still standing solo series. On the third, Mandel got in touch, and that’s when the machine really started going. Around this time, I hit ten thousand subscribers. And I could see how all the little graphs in the spreadsheet reflected this sudden growth. A mix of successful little explainers about the latest features and the collaboration with Mandel had started a chain reaction. So after finishing school, I focused for an entire year on this project. And by the end of it, I could proudly call it my job.
All of that wouldn’t have been possible without my parents. We had a little contract during all these years: I was allowed extra screen time whenever I was working on creative projects, and I’d never missed a chance to take advantage of it. It helped that Mum was a streamer in her free time. She and Dad never had that ‘internet bad’ mindset that other teens had to deal with. From the moment they understood my channel was a worthwhile project, they’d been supporting me all the way. I wondered what they would think if I—
I looked at my ceiling, then back to my screen. I rolled my chair forward by grabbing my desk with my hands and pulling lightly. I copied the numbers from Google Adsense and the Twitch reports in the respective entries of the sheet, saved a copy of the document, changed the ‘November’ by a ‘December’, and turned off my computer.
✦ ▶ ✦
Skelegal
Skelegal
This is the beginning of your direct message history with Skelegal.
1 Mutual server • Add friend Block Report Spam
—01 January 2024—
Skelegal Today at 13:19
Scrello Hew!
oops
Wrang woy
Happy Newy 🎉
I’m Skelegal, one of the admins of CovenCraft. (I was teaming with sofa at the PvP event! We came in second place)
sonicScrew Today at 13:22
Hello. Happy new year!
Yes, of course I remember you. You knocked it out of the park back then.
Especially knowing that you had to face NESammy and AlexCraft…
It was impressive
Congratulations on second place!
Skelegal Today at 13:23
Thank you, I’ll transmit your praises to sofa, he’ll be pleased as punch to hear that :p
You did pretty wlel too!
sonicScrew Today at 13:25
Having an extra sneaky member in our group helped haha
Skelegal Today at 13:25
And 40 exploding early
as usual…
sonicScrew Today at 13:25
It wasnt his first time??? (edited)
Skelegal Today at 13:26
Nope
He always has a blast playing pvp
;)
;)
;)
Anyway, I need your help
sonicScrew Today at 13:26
hit me
Skelegal Today at 13:26
Never!
So, I know you haven’t said whether or not you want to participate in the new season of the server yet…
But
I had a quick question to ask Mandel in case you’d join season 5 on the 13th
And the thing is, he doesn’t answer my messages.
So I was wondering if you knew what was up?
Sorry, I don’t actually know if you know him that much, I don’t want to assume anything about your relationship or smth.
(I know people are doing all kinds of speculation around you two, don’t want to add to that…)
anywayy as always i talk too much lol
┌── Skelegal So, I know you haven’t…
Skelegal Today at 13:28
oopsies 
Keep this one to yourself okay?
┌── Skelegal Keep this one to yourself…
sonicScrew Today at 13:29
Mum’s the word 
Skelegal Today at 13:29
Lol i dont know why but i hate this idiom
sonicScrew Today at 13:30
I like it
And i think I know why I feel like tha|
No, what the hell? Don’t tell her that?
I stopped myself from writing my worst gender thought this far, deleted it, and veered the discussion back to the subject at hand.
sonicScrew Today at 13:31
About the question, don’t worry. You told me a secret, I’ll tell you one: I do know him IRL!
But I have no clue where he is. I know he’s gone outside this morning but usually he takes his phone with him
Skelegal Today at 13:32
Ah well
I’ll catch him later dw
Though maybe you can answer the question yourself since you know him well?
sonicScrew Today at 13:32
hit me
Skelegal Today at 13:32
I said no!!
sonicScrew Today at 13:32
:)
Skelegal Today at 13:33
I know he plays piano and stuff. But do you know if he knows how to compose music?
sonicScrew Today at 13:34
Oh yeah he dabbles! And he thinks he’s bad but that’s nonsense, he’s really talented
Like I listened to some of his compositions he did with musescore a while back and they’re very solid
Skelegal Today at 13:34
Fantastic!
Does he have a gumroad or something?
sonicScrew Today at 13:34
Nah, I don’t think so
Skelegal Today at 13:36
Well, I was planning to ask him if he wanted to compose a quick little theme for season 5! As a paid commission ofc
We were just thinking how cool it would be to have a theme composed in-house you know
sonicScrew Today at 13:37
That’s a wonderful idea!
I think that might interest him yeah
Well if i see him today, I’ll tell him to check his DMs
I swiped Discord away and stared mindlessly at the home screen of my phone for a moment. My breath evened out, and the tension in my body withered away little by little. It was still not very natural to have conversations with strangers on the internet, but I was getting the hang of it! That thought alone made the corners of my mouth turn up slightly. Then I looked at the next message she sent me and a pang of panic shot through my stomach.
Skelegal Today at 13:37
Sooooo does that mean you would like to join season 5?
No pressure I’m just curious
sonicScrew Today at 13:40
Yeah, I think so
And Mandel too, we talked about it
we still have to tell 40 though
Skelegal Today at 13:41
Worried?
Tell me if the questions are too much
I know it’s a lot. I was really scared when I joined
sonicScrew Today at 13:43
Yeah, same. I’m not good with people
But it will be fine, i'll manage
The questions are fine, dont worry. You’re good. Talking with you helps a lot. Thank you for reaching out :)
Skelegal Today at 13:43
Well, if there’s anything troubling you, I’m there!
sonicScrew
Do you know anything about gend|
I couldn’t.
sonicScrew Today at 13:47
That’s very nice of you thank you. If anything comes up I’ll let you know
✦ ▶ ✦
After ten minutes of fiddling with the parameters of the key effect, I finally managed to delete the blue screen entirely. In its stead, I inserted images of the subjects I’d broached in the video, and stretched them just right to make it look like it was a proper screen. I even added a little white grid filter that, when zoomed off and adjusted properly, made for a convincing screen texture.
Onto rendering now. For an eight-minute video like this one, it shouldn’t take too long. I sent the project into the render queue and let the machine do its work.
While my PC roared loudly and lifted the room temperature by several degrees, I prepared a little thumbnail for the video. I opted for something simple, with some screenshots of the most important subjects of the video and a text announcing, ‘How the crafter will change the game!’
It’s important to have a double title: the one on the thumbnail (it’s actually what captures attention first), then the one of the video proper. Making them different from each other gives you more opportunities to hook viewers without bloating the main title.
That said, I still bloated my titles because it was very funny!
While writing a description for the video, I was startled by a little chime sound my rendering software had let out. It was time to upload.
In a matter of minutes, every detail had been neatly tended to. The video had been scheduled to be released later in the day, the thumbnail had been tested on a mock-up of the YouTube homepage to quickly judge if it was catchy enough and if no element was being obscured by the time indicator at the bottom right, the description had been copy pasted and double checked for any armadilo with only one L that would have slipped through, and of course I checked the whole finished product, one last time.
It was a well-rounded little video. The cinematic introduction with the camera following the path to upbeat music for a few seconds before revealing the alcove was pushing all the right buttons for me. Did I overdo it? Absolutely. But that’s what was kind of my whole shtick.
“Today I wanted to take a minute to talk about my overall opinion on the as-of-yet-unnamed update of the game. Especially this block.” My in-game avatar punched the air to their right, and a screenshot of the crafter appeared on the screen behind. “The crafter,” I said, pausing for effect. “The past few weeks, I played a bit with it and compiled all the use cases I could think of, and let me tell you, there are plenty. There’s obviously already been extensive work from SphereGnawer two months ago when the block was first released, but—”
I paused the player.
I hated my voice. It sounded wrong. I know people found it feminine but it was not enough. It was a feminine guy’s voice. I didn’t want—
I pushed my chair backwards, letting it roll for a second while I blinked very hard. My brain kept spouting gender thoughts, and they were becoming really hard to ignore.
✦ ▶ ✦
After having eaten my fix of noodles, I’d decided to take a breather and go on a stroll on the old slag heap. I’d found a bench under a large lime tree nestled in the side of an old quarry repurposed as a park. There was a decent amount of small paths winding through the trees at different heights around a central pit, forming sort of a large amphitheatre, with one of its sides open towards the city. Nature had taken over again and had transformed — or more accurately, brought back — this place to its former lushy glory. It was strangely reminiscent of the place where I recorded my video earlier.
I sat there for about the duration of a Minecraft day, playing with a rock between my shoes to see what kind of lines it could trace on the dolomite.
Usually, I wasn’t big on the whole ‘going outside’ thing. But at that moment, I had to admit it had its merits. Each step I had taken to come to this place had helped me form a plan. Each breath I’d taken since I left my flat had scattered my doubts a little bit further away. Each scan I’d given my surroundings at every new turn of the road strengthened my resolve.
I chewed on the question in every little way I could, giving it the time I thought it deserved, and then some. And when I gave my reasoning a seventh check to catch a flaw I didn’t in my sixth, I exhaled and welcomed the idea in my mind.
I’m not sure, but I think I might be trans.
I so dearly hoped that I wasn’t making a mistake.
Coming to this particular park hadn’t been a random decision. If you followed one of the higher paths of the quarry, you would stumble upon a road that led to the old colliery. And with a few taps on my phone, I confirmed one last time that, yes, the address of this ancient coal mine coincided with the address of the Gayette, the local LGBT association. The bench had only been a limbo place to make sure I wouldn’t make any rash decisions.
I slowly got up and trudged on that path, my phone still firmly in my hand. When it finally connected to the road, I could start to see the highest part of the colliery peeking out from behind some houses. It was a huge square made of red bricks with timber framing. The uppermost part had been partially renovated with more wood wrapped around the building. You could hazard a guess at what the name of the former owner of the mine was by looking at a large blue panel in the middle of the frame, but you would probably fail, as the writing had almost entirely faded out.
Even though it was a mostly abandoned industrial district, the street was bustling with life. There was a donation box where people put books and board games to share with their neighbours, there was a community garden a bit further up the road, and there were two old ladies arguing about which one had the best looking ivy covering their front walls. Not wanting to be perceived, I looked down the pavement — surprisingly, unlike most streets, it wasn’t covered in old flattened pieces of gum — and scurried towards my goal.
I had to suppress a gasp when I saw that not only was the taller building of the colliery just a small part of a large industrial complex, but that it was also larger than the foundation it was resting on — like a house-bird had laid a big house-shaped egg on top of another smaller house. And amazingly, it hadn’t cracked yet.
Ranging from a fragile annex made of metal sheets and supported by oblique metal beams to a full-on extra edifice that had been stuck on the side of the main bulk, the whole complex shared that funnelled look.
My heart sank when my eyes saw a flash of colour. Flailing on the top-right window of the upper and largest part of the structure was a rainbow flag.
I stopped myself. I wasn’t sure I could just barge in and annoy people with my questions. I would be a hindrance; I would probably say something offensive or something wrong. What if I was wrong? What if I was being ridicul—
I noticed my breath had quickened, and I caught myself before spiralling further. I didn’t have to do this alone. I could ask for help. With Mandel at my side, it would be fine.
SonicScrew Today at 15:02
So ummmmm
hi
yeha first thing: skelegal was wondering where you were, you should really check your dms!!
second thing (the urgent one): i want to go to the place zee mentioned last night, but i m being pebble again soo can you come with me?
Mandel Today at 15:06
The Gayette?
SonicScrew Today at 15:06
Yeah that 🥺
Mandel Today at 15:08
yeah ofc, are you at your flat?
SonicScrew Today at 15:08
Nah I’m like two blocks from the front gate
of the Gaything
His dots hung there for a few minutes. I sat down on a boulder on the side of the road, and watched the rainbow flag swinging in the wind and beating the wall every so often with little slaps.
For a moment, I thought I heard some small critter roaming in the woods behind me. But before I could pay it any heed, Mandel came back to me.
Mandel Today at 15:12
Okay
Look behind you
Oh.
There he was, the sneaky little critter, coming out from behind a tree, with bleary eyes and a goofy smile that slowly morphed into a sad one.
“No!” Mandel whined. “You were supposed to yell, or produce a cute noise, and— Why are you smirking?”
“Well, I don’t know. Why is my partner here, on this particular road, on this day? What have you been doing since this morning? Thinking about what Zee said?”
“What? Uh…” Hovering on top of his head, a redstone lamp powered. “No! That’s not it! You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t…” he trailed off, and I don’t know if I imagined it, but I think his cheeks reddened. Unfortunately, he quickly shook off this adorable look, then sighed. “So the thing is, I have the same phone as Zee.” He poked his pocket two times.
“Yes?”
“And last night, I left my phone on the counter.”
“No…”
“He took it, thought it was his own.”
“You’re both dumbasses.” I giggled.
“Yes, exactly! So I sent him a message this morning, he replied saying he was here today. I came. He gave my phone back, and voilà,” he said, then produced the device out of his pocket, and showed it to me with a flourish.
“So you’re not here because you’re questioning your gender?”
“Uh. No? I don’t think so— Is that why you’re here?” he asked with a start.
For a moment, my words were stuck in my throat. “Y— Yes. I think. Is that okay?” My voice was barely above a whisper.
“Huh… Yeah! Totally. But I’m… I— I’m not sure what it means exactly yet? I kinda slept for half of the explanation. Zee was rambling a lot.”
“Well, he said they could answer things in there.” I pointed my thumb at the colliery behind me. “Let’s?”
✦ ▶ ✦
"OH GODDESS, THAT'S A BREAKTHROUGH!" a voice said, coming from inside.
“What? What’s happening?” another asked.
“She said she’s okay with she and her pronouns!”
“I said I’m fine with any pronouns, really,” a third and familiar voice said.
“No way! Finally, Zee?”
“What?”
“You’re a girl?”
“Hell, no! I’m a guy! I still have so many biases to deconstruct. Plus, I have a really strong male socialisation, y’know…”
“That’s some transphobic sophistry, and you know it.”
“Oh, yes, definitely! I’m not generalising, I would never. It’s just that, in my case, it’s true! Last week, I yelled at my aunt. That’s like, toxic masculinity pouring out of my mouth or something. Blegh. Granted, she was being very homophobic, but still, two wrongs don’t make a right. I— gm-hm…”
“You shut right up. I can’t deal with this fallacious nonsense today.”
“Smgm.”
“What?”
“Marie, you’re pinching her mouth, she can’t talk anymore,” the first voice said, with a giggle.
“Ah, right. Here. What did you say?”
“Sorry.”
“Good girl. Now, someone rang the bell two minutes ago, go fetch ‘em!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Zee arrived in a hurry in the hallway, wearing a frilly white and pink dress and dog ears. He… She? I recalled the discussion we just overheard while waiting outside. He’d said he was a guy and that any pronouns were okay. I decided that ‘he’ would do for now, though I should ask him for confirmation when the opportunity would present itself. He straightened his dress, then quickly unlocked the door with trembling hands, looking at me with sparkles in his eyes (he was wearing makeup).
“It’s you! Sorry you had to wait for so long. Ah, I’m excited!” He swayed his body left and right. “You came here the same day I gave you all the info; you must be very desperate,” he said in a higher voice than usual, wringing his hands.
“Wasn’t it yesterday—” Mandel started, but I elbowed him and shot my most devious stare. “Ah! No, yes, it was today, of course. Please stop glaring at me like this, Ju, you’re scaring me.”
My stomach dropped. “Don’t call me Ju,” I mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Can you not call me… that?” I looked up at Mandel.
“Oh, sure, what should I call you then?”
“I guess Screw’s fine.”
“Holy, squeeze a lime in my guacamole!” Zee shouted. “What. The. Actual. Fuck.” He gaped at both of us. “Of course, the voice — your voice!”
“What?”
“You said Screw?”
“Yeah, and?”
“As in sonicScrew? YouTube? Minecraft? Timelapses? Perfect screams?” My head betrayed me, and nodded ever so slightly. “Christ.” He flailed his arms with excitement, then flashed us a wolfish grin. “Can’t deny I had a hunch but, like… This is fun. This is really fun!”
Just when I thought the deepest pit of the earth was safely situated at Y=0, I discovered my stomach had been updated to go down to Y=-64, and it subsequently hit bedrock bottom.
“D— Don’t tell me you know my…” My throat tightened. I took Mandel’s hand in mine and gently squeezed it for reassurance.
“Oops.” He tilted his body to the side, placing his hands on top of his head and sticking his tongue out. “I confess, sorry, I’m subscribed, to both of you, tee-hee~” But he immediately sprayed his hands as if to reassure us. “Oh, I promise I won't tell, I won’t pry, I know how hard it can be! Don’t worry. We can talk about this later if you—”
I hoped really hard that would be the case, but my fears and his sentence were cut short by a tape measure that whipped across the hallway, only to come back to its sender. All of us turned towards the back of the room. A woman in jeans overall came in, inflating bubble gum. She did another whip of her makeshift yo-yo and her bubble popped. “Hey, Zee, so who’s this?”
“Gwenn! These are the friends I mentioned earlier. This is, uh…” Zee pointed at me first. “Lake! And…” He turned towards Mandel. “Investment!”
Mandel was about to say something before the girl, Gwenn, cut in. “Your name’s Investment? Wasn’t it—”
“Don’t ask such unnecessary questions, Gwoonn,” Zee cut her, putting his hand on his hips.
Gwenn giggled. “Alright. Gotcha. Nicknames, then. You two come inside, it’s freezing out there. Also, we have biscuits.”
I followed my gut instinct and the two people inside. On the wall of the hallway, I saw a sign that made me stop. On it was written, ‘We know it socks, but take off your shoes, please!’
While I did just that, I heard Mandel yelling, “My name’s not Investment!” And Gwenn and Zee giggled in the distance.
I turned back, saw he was adorably pouting, took his hand, and we pressed on.
Had we kept our shoes upon entering the main hall, every step we would’ve taken would have echoed loudly. The room was absolutely gigantic. It was full of bookcases and odd little nooks and crannies. On the left, there was a bright fireplace, with a bunch of sofas. On the right, there was a little bar with dozens of colourful drinks at the ready.
But that was not all. There were people playing a board game by the fire and an older woman reading a magazine behind the counter. People. Moderate amount of people, but people nonetheless. I squeezed Investment’s hand.
“Hey, Gwenn, was it?” he asked, and she confirmed with a nod. “So, we wanted to ask some questions about, um…” He looked at me for a moment. “About gender stuff. Is there a cosy place with fewer people around here? I’m not good with crowds, you see…” he lied.
“Ah, sure, I’ve got just the place and just the girl you’re looking for. Is that okay if I come with you?” I nodded. “Alright, Zee, can you bring biscuits?”
“Sure thing!” he exclaimed, then he petered off to the bar.
Gwenn pulled the both of us to a bookshelf with an arch gate right in the middle of it. An arch made of books. Books people didn’t need, I hoped. On the other side, we found a dimly lit room with bookshelves on all sides and a whole canister of bean bags.
“Marie, babe, are you there?” Gwenn called.
From under the sea of cushions, a form swam towards our location. It stopped, and a head poked out. “I lost a Wittig book,” this red-haired girl said, with a husky voice. “It was right there—” she pointed at a pile of books gathered in a corner “—and it’s not anymore. I think it fell. Somehow. It’s a shame.”
“Lake, Investment, this is Marie, gender extraordinaire, and my girlfriend also!” Gwenn chirped.
“Yes. That is me. Who’s Investment?” In lieu of a response, I pointed at Mandel, and he mimed a curtsy. “Great name. Did Zee pick it for you?”
“Yes, actually. My real name’s Amaury,” he said, a little hesitant.
“There’s no such thing as a real name.”
“Marie…”
“Yes, okay, gotcha. I’m annoying. Which is cute, but should be curated. Welcome, Amaury!” She smiled, then turned to me. “And you are…”
It felt like it took as much time as burning a whole lava bucket in a furnace for my brain to properly answer the question. “Lake’s fine, actually.”
“Great. So you think you’re trans?” She wasn’t wasting any time.
“I don’t know. I mean, I heard what Zee said about, like, not feeling right in your body. And… And it got to me, you know?” I looked down. “I thought about it pretty much all day. Just ‘what if’ after ‘what if’. And I tried to work on my projects, but I couldn’t think of anything else, to the point I felt tired just trying to combat it. The more I considered it, the more things made sense. For starters, there’s this constant feeling that I just don’t look good, despite people saying the contrary.”
I addressed Mandel with a little smile, and he gave me one right back, putting his hand on my shoulder. I put mine on top of it and continued.
“I feel like whatever I do, every time I see my reflection in Man— on reflective surfaces, my gut wrenches. I get…” My voice became smaller. “I get so jealous when I see some girls, in any type of media.” I paused, inhaling a spoonful of air. “That’s not all. I’m sorry babe, but I kind of hate it when you call me by my real name.” Marie frowned. “We used our online names so much together before meeting IRL, it just feels out of place every time you do it.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Don’t worry. To be clear, it’s not unbearable, and it’s not really your fault. I only wanted to mention it because it plays a role in this whole gender thing. It’s one more problem that adds to the pile.” I squeezed his hand and took another big breath. “One more problem is that I have a pretty severe fear of people, especially when there are too many, and I’m not sure I understand why exactly. I spend most of my time online, and I try to keep everything private. And I recognise this is probably a healthy way of dealing with online shit, but I can’t get out of my head the idea that it’s partly because I just don’t want people to see me. I don’t want them to see someone I don’t want to be. I don’t know if I will ever be able to overcome my shyness — or whatever it’s called — but I don’t want to stay like this, not trying, not changing, stagnating. I feel like, like there’s a— Okay, this might be dumb: You know how the streets in the city here are all plastered with gum?”
I lifted my eyes to see everyone nodding. Mandel cocked his head to the side, and Gwenn bit her lip.
“Well, you don’t question it, every pavement is like that. At the end of the day, we just accept that every patch of bitumen will have little white and grey dots. It's normal. It’s expected. Then, there’s the street I took coming here. I don’t know how or why, but it doesn’t have gum on it. It’s only when I noticed that that I realised there was gum everywhere else. I didn’t think there could be an alternative. But there is.”
I paused and looked down once more.
“And you’re telling me there’s an alternative to being a guy? I still struggle to wrap my head around it. And I was afraid it wasn’t something I could do, but if I understood correctly, it actually is.” I closed my eyes and steeled myself before saying, “I could just be a girl.”
If that were the case, my long hair wouldn’t be a guy’s strange hair, it would just be a girl’s hair, even if somewhat unkempt. My voice wouldn’t be a guy’s silly voice, it would just be a girl’s voice, even if somewhat low. My lanky body wouldn’t be a weak guy’s body, it would just be a girl’s body, even if somewhat flat. And all of those could be adjusted, Zee told us that much last night; I could change all of them. I imagined it for a moment and thought it would suit me way better.
For a minute, nobody spoke, and I smiled.
Marie was the first to break the silence. “Wow. Seems like you did all the work yourself there, girl,” she said, with no awareness whatsoever as to how she just ignited an emotional TNT duper inside of me.
“I’m not a girl!” I exclaimed, in a high-pitched complaint, then I flopped down on a bean bag and started playing with the little corner of its fabric. Mandel sat down next to me. “I just wish I were.” I looked to my side, where I wouldn’t risk crossing anyone’s gaze. “I don’t know yet. Maybe I am, but I still need to think it through.”
“Been there, done that,” Marie said. “I’ll tell you one thing: boy, girl, or beyond, you should experiment, see what fits. This place is the perfect place to play with that, we’re almost all trans — apart from my mums!”
“Wait, you’re trans?” Mandel asked.
“Of course! If you can believe it, I used to be a lame Minecraft YouTuber, and now I’m the prettiest girl around.”
What?
“No lies detected,” Gwenn said.
“Estrogen is magical, eh?”
“Fuck! Lake, Investment, wait!” Zee yelled from the entrance of the lair, he was panting.
What’s happening?
“What? It’s true. In my opinion, it’s the best part about being a girl," Marie continued.
Zee deposited a plate full of biscuits on a nearby stool, then he took Mandel and me by the collar and spoke hurriedly. “Excuse me, I’m borrowing these two.”
We both gasped, then followed him dutifully. The two girlfriends looked at us with worry in their eyebrows, but they didn’t say a thing. As soon as we were out of range from them, outside the room, Zee pinned us both to a wall, lowered his gaze, and started to speak with a growl in his voice, “I’m not gonna say this twice so it’s very important you listen to me carefully: you better not talk to Marie about YouTube, or I will personally hack both your channels and delete all the videos to replace them with videos of AI-generated billionaires announcing market prices of cryptocurrencies and releasing new NFTs with your skins’ heads printed on them, then all of that will be compiled in a shitty game with a battle pass and stolen assets that will secretly mine crypto on the computers of some of your less tech-savvy subscribers that will have had the unpleasantness of having downloaded it.” He inhaled. “Am. I. Understood?”
Close. He was very close. Great skincare.
I audibly gulped, and Mandel stuttered a while, sounding even more shell-shocked than me, before finally answering, “Y— yes ma’am— I mean, sir. Both? Sorry. Sorry. I…” His voice died out in a whisper. I nodded fiercely in approval of Investment’s reply.
“Good.” Zee released his grip, lifted his head, and grinned at us, innocently. “You can go back, eat your biscuits, and turn into a girl, or whatever it was you were doing.”
For a second, absolutely nothing happened. Then, all three of us let out our biggest sighs. Zee started laughing, and we couldn’t do anything but follow him.
“No but seriously,” Zee said, in a more neutral tone, “it’s her privacy, don’t ask questions. If she wants to talk about it, that will have to be on her own terms.” He sighed, then chuckled dryly. “Sorry for… jumping up at you like that. I’m a bit bad-tempered when it comes to my friends. Ugh, aggressive and reckless. I guess I’m truly just a guy after all,” he huffed under his breath. “Anyway, I hope you’re okay.”
It took some time to finally gather the strength to speak. “Don’t worry, Zee, you’re just trying to protect a friend. I get that.” I rubbed my left arm, a little bashful smile forming on my lips. “Though, I guess it was a bit out of character for you. You were so closed off when we first met, and now you’re all—” I gestured in his general direction “—confident!”
“Dresses do that for some people. You should try!” He winked.
Without being able to fight the heat that spread on my face when I imagined both Mandel and I in dresses, I nodded, then took Investment in my hand. Before going back, I stopped, turning myself towards Zee one more time. “Thank you again for the heads-up. I promise we’ll be careful.”
As we reentered Marie’s lair again, the two girlfriends were engaged in a passionate philosophical discussion about razors and explanations being too costly. I could have imagined hundreds of wild theories as to how those two subjects were remotely related, but fortunately, as soon as they noticed our presence, they cut it short.
Marie was the first to speak. “What did she tell you?”
“Nothing important, just warning us about, um, NFTs. He wanted to warn us about NFTs. We were not very informed on how to make proper investments.” Mandel nodded, and let out a serious ‘m-hm’ of approval.
“And about what we discussed earlier, do you have any questions? Do you want to keep talking about it?” Gwenn asked.
We sat down, and I sighed. “Let me think,” I answered.
Did I want to be a girl?
A blush rose in my cheeks. Even if I was starting to get acquainted with the subject, it still felt like a taboo, something you shouldn’t want nor question.
It has to have a catch, right? It couldn’t possibly be that easy.
‘Boy, girl, or beyond, you should experiment, see what fits,’ Marie had said.
“Hey, um, Amaury?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Could I be your—”
My mouth went dry. My eyes went wet.
This was it. My doubts could be lifted — would that be in a good, or a bad way — by unravelling this thread of thought head-on. Everything had led to this moment. It was an obvious question.
With trepidation, I tried again.
“Could I be your girlfriend?”
