Hi yes hello! Celeste is my favorite video game of all time, and probably will be forever because of where I was in my trans journey when I found it. (I have played it for over 1,500 hours, and don't intend to stop anytime soon.)

It's also just a very good video game in every single aspect, and has a vibrant speedrunning and modding community. If you're interested in speedrunning, Celeste is a great game to start with, because you don't have to go all in on learning complicated tech and sequence breaks; just start by focusing on consistency and try to beat the game while minimizing your death count.

That said, Celeste speedrun tech is also super super fun when you get good at it. Celeste girlies will say things like "reverse midair cloud bunny demo" and pretend it makes sense. It's me I'm celeste girlies.

Does coming out lead to too much focus on labels?

(I don't really have a main thesis I'm trying to convince anyone of, I just had a thought and wondered what other people thought.)

When I had recently figured out I was ace/aro/nonbinary, I really cared about finding the right labels for me. And the aspec community in particular has so many unique perspectives and labels that you can apply to yourself. What kinds of attraction do you feel, how do you label your orientations and attractions, what model do you use to think about attraction, how do you think about relationships, how do you feel about sex/romance/relationships, etc. It was super eye opening to learn about lots of different terms, and different ways of thinking about things, and things I'd never even thought about or thought I even could think about, and I ended up applying lots of labels to myself.

But, it's been many years since then, and over time I've grown less interested in applying specific labels to myself. I'm still queer/ace/aro/trans/nonbinary/polyam, but I don't really use other labels. (And depending on the situation, I might end up omitting labels when vagaries work fine.) That's not to say that I don't have affinity with other labels, whether that's "I'm similar to what this label describes" or "this label provides an interesting perspective that I like", I just...don't use other labels to define my identity. If I'm comfortable enough talking about something that I could use a label for, I'll just describe my experiences directly, instead of saying "I'm [blank]".

And, I wonder if that shift from specificity to vagary has to do with coming out. For a young aroace like me, part of why coming out was so nerve-racking was that I felt like I had to prove that my identity was real, and having specific labels I could point to and say "look, this is real, I'm not making this up, other people are like this too" was super helpful. But, it's been many years since I've come out, and I'm more confident and know who I am, and that insecurity that I fought back with fistfuls of labels and well-rehearsed explanations is gone. (With the potential exception of QPR-related discussions, which feel kind of like coming out again; I might make a post about that some time if people are interested.)

Every time I've ever come out, or seen someone come out in real life or in media, it's always been "I'm [blank]", but I've never seen someone come out as "I'm not cis/straight". It's always a declaration that you are a specific thing, never a statement that you aren't something someone thought you were. I remember really wanting to make sure I knew exactly what I was and didn't come out as one thing and then change my labels later, because it would mean I'd have to come out again and it would be embarrassing that I got things wrong and maybe people would start to doubt me and not believe me when I said I was something in the future. But, people don't have to be a fixed, immutable set of labels forever; I'm comfortable with using vague labels for myself and letting myself be vague and nebulous and fluid without frantically trying to label every single part of myself. (And, in fact, I did technically get my labels slightly wrong the very first time I came out, and everything turned out okay in the end.)

So, maybe coming out puts an undue pressure on finding specific labels and making sure they're exactly right; maybe coming out should also be able to be "I'm not cis/straight". What do people think?

(This is not to say that specific labels are bad, because they can often be very helpful! Specific labels were helpful for me when I used them, and their existence can spark conversations and lead to new perspectives and learning. Even as I'm finding vagueness and nebulousness to be better for me right now than specific detailed labels, other people can be finding that specific detailed labels give them a sense of belonging and community and identity. But, I still wonder if coming out placed an undue burden on younger me to find all the right labels when vagueness could have worked just as well.)

[ID: A man says “I’ve had enough of this dude“ while gesturing at a painting labelled “people acting like nonbinary people don’t exist”. End ID]

[ID: A two panel meme. In the first panel, Bilbo looks at the One Ring and says “After all, why not?”. In the second panel, he says “Why shouldn’t I headcanon all the characters as trans?“. End ID]

[ID: The draw 25 meme. The first panel shows an Uno card that says “stop headcanoning your favorite characters as trans or draw 25”. The second panel shows a person, labelled “me”, holding many cards in their hand. End ID]

[ID: At the top, text reads “Types of Headaches”. Below are four diagrams of a head, each with a different region highlighted in red. The fourth diagram is entirely red, and captioned “cis people forgetting that someone can be both queer and straight”. End ID]

[ID: The first image, labelled “Talking about gender presentation with trans people”, is a famous painting of two Greek philosophers having an in depth discussion. The second image, labelled “Talking about gender presentation with cis people”, shows a mom handing a toy to her toddler. End ID]

[ID: The Cat in the Hat meme. The Cat in the Hat, labelled “subtle transmisogyny in the writing”, sneaks up with a bat behind a young boy, labelled “me, enjoying a new piece of media”. End ID]

[ID: The John Mulaney meme. The first panel shows John Mulaney yelling “No!” at “cis people who only ask for someone’s pronouns when they think they’re interacting with trans people”. The second panel shows John Mulaney yelling “Yeah!” at “cis people who normalize giving/asking for pronouns by regularly giving their own pronouns”. End ID]

[ID: A boy, labelled “me”, holds a lightsaber, labelled “I like being nonbinary”, behind his head to block another boy, labelled “society”, from hitting him with a lightsaber labelled “trying to force me into the gender binary”. End ID]

[ID: The me explaining to my mom meme. The first panel, labelled “Cis people saying it’s so hard for them to use they/them pronouns when talking about me in the 3rd person”, shows someone talking in great detail. The second panel, labelled “Me, an enby, who noticed them automatically use singular they when talking about someone whose gender they didn’t know 5 minutes ago”, shows someone listening skeptically. End ID]

[ID: The Cat in the Hat meme. The Cat in the Hat, labelled “a random stranger misgendering me”, sneaks up with a bat behind a young boy, labelled “me, feeling pretty good about my gender presentation”. End ID]