for the last week we've had family visiting (my uncle and cousins), and it's been great. i came out as trans to them when they got here (and my grandma a few days before that) and it went great! i love having them call me by my chosen name, and it also meant my immediately family wouldn't have to go back to calling me the old name for closet's sake. it's a big joy, to be so immediately accepted. this means i'm now out to everyone on my mom's side of the family! :D

on my dad's side, there's just my aunt, my paternal grandma, and some extended family i see rarely enough that i'm not concerned with their reactions. my aunt has actually spoken positively about a trans student of hers in the past, but idk about my grandma. she doesn't really... talk about anything political? but she (& the rest of my dad's side) also live out in Alabama, so idk. but i don't see them nearly as often as my mom's side of the family (see also: Alabama), so i'm already quite satisfied.

(also i think my older cousin's mind was slightly blown when he learned that our grandma was Totally Cool With It, like immediately.)

we played quite a few board games while here, as per usual, but we also all watched The Mandalorian together bc my uncle got disney+ for christmas, and my older cousin ran a D&D one-shot! which looked like this:

• my older cousin (he's a decade older than me) DMed
• my grandma: half-elf sorcerer
• my dad: drow arcane trickster rogue
• my uncle: human life cleric
• my cousin (1 yr older than me): half-elf hexblade warlock
• my brother: dragonborn paladin
• me: halfling assassin rogue

so my dad and i both played rogues! it was fun. grandma had a little trouble keeping the rules straight sometimes but she was very enthusiastic. (she's a big board gamer as well, so this isn't that out of left field.) haven't gotten to play much tabletop rpgs recently, so this was nice :3

for christmas my older cousin gave me the Mistborn trilogy and my similar-age cousin gave me 2 more fantasy books, which on top of the books i got from my immediate family, means i have a lot of books. i'll have to try and read them all instead of getting distracted!

i also bought a few games in the steam winter sale: cultist simulator, tacoma, and analogue: a hate story. now that my cousins have gone (left this morning), i may have a chance to actually play them! especially since my brother's been hogging the switch playing Shovel Knight, so i can't play Hollow Knight :c tho i did enjoy playing a good deal of Stardew with my similar-age cousin.

i signed up for Get Your Words Out for the third year now -- doing the 75k pledge again; maybe i'll get closer to my goal this year! i also want to do the snowflake challenge, so watch for that later today.

hope y'all had/are having happy holidays!

our last two campaigns have been in dnd 5e, but for this one we're branching out into monster of the week, which is super interesting -- basically it's a tabletop RPG based around the themes and character archetypes of "monster-of-the-week" type shows, like Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so on. it's a really neat system, i'd def recommend it!

( our first session )