Blog Post

In the months before I ultimately accepted my transsexuality, I wasn’t very preoccupied with gender. That isn't to say it wasn’t an issue. I was, to put it lightly, constantly traumatized by it. The fog of dissociation was just too thick. To this day, I still don’t remember when or how I got the bottle of estrogen pills I took in secret. I’m not sure I even understood what I wanted out of taking it. Instead, I was obsessed with two things: tarantula husbandry and beating Majora’s Mask.

What does the brain do after realizing it lost its way? Maybe it restores to the last back-up like a computer. It finds some moment in the past where things were different, when it knew what it wanted. For a trans brain, how far back does it have to go? The last time my brain set restore points was in 2000. Just before leaving Denver for Orlando, my parents took me to the newly founded Butterfly Pavilion. I was the only one in my family who held Rosie the tarantula. Her setae had the texture of a velvet painting. Something clicked.

We moved, and I was pretty instantly an outcast. My only friend at school was a girl, though it didn’t last long. While sitting together on the jungle gym one day, she explained how boys and girls couldn’t be friends. It’s not like I didn’t try. The boys just didn’t want anything to do with me. They could sense something was off too. In an effort to solve this, my parents sent me to a local cub scout troop orientation at some kid’s house. The whole time I felt uncomfortable. Just before the end, I walked into a room where a small group of older kids were sitting around a CRT. They gestured to me to sit and watch. I learned that the little elf boy with a sword was named "Link" and that the game was called "Majora's Mask." I felt my heart skip as I watched him put on a strange mask and turn into a beautiful sea creature called a "Zora". Something clicked. One last back-up before the fog that stretched throughout the decades of my life.

Growing up, I would check out Majora’s Mask from the rental store down the street every week. Each time, I would have to restart my progress. This incidentally melded quite well with the game loop, where you would attempt to make as much progress helping the people of Termina as possible within three days. At the end, the cycle would start over as soon as the moon crashed into the earth. It’s a challenging game to beat as an adult. But for an eight year old that didn’t know there was a song that slowed down time, what guides were, and had maybe a week to figure it out? Impossible.

So, what did I get out of it? There’s definitely a way that kids play video games without any concern for progress. They revel in the movement and the mechanics, make up their own objectives, marvel at the seemingly unattainable. I remember staring at the fence in front of the Great Bay or the tree that grants entrance to the Ikana Canyon. I remember rolling around Clock town as Goron Link. I remember collecting the moon stone each cycle.

There was something more: I loved the characters. Years went by, and I didn’t get any better at belonging. My classmates confused and ignored me. Instead, I found something in Termina that I lacked in the real world. Majora’s Mask hides everything behind talking to the characters. The more you trace the knot looking for a way forward, the more entrenched you become in their lives. For a little, lonely faggot girl, I satisfied my longing for meaningful relationships in their short-lived little world.

So, I waged a war of attrition to save the doomed cast of Majora’s Mask. Starting over and over again: new cartridges, new days, new cycles, constantly counting down. I obsessed over the details of their lives hoping to save them. Each play-through my developing mind inundated with the despair of my failed attempts.

Romani, a little farm girl sitting on a crate looking upset and disoriented I’d try to get even a word out of the broken, disoriented Romani, traumatized after I failed to protect her from the Flatwoods Monster look-a-likes invading her ranch. I’d get Kafei all the way to the end of his quest to retrieve his marital gift to Anju only to let him down and have to listen to him accept his death. I’d leave the foolish monkey to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit. I’d watch the moon hit from all over the map, surrounded by the only friends I had in their final moments. Still from Majora's Mask showing the moon crashing into clocktown.

Romani looking at her sister Maron as she milks a cow and says 'Sleep with me in my bed tonight, Romani' knowing that it's their last night together, even if little Romani doesn't I did gradually unravel some of the game’s knot, never enough to beat it before I had to return the cartridge. In one particularly bittersweet success, I finally rescued Romani only to witness a final scene on the end of the third night. Her older sister conducts a little ceremony recognizing her as an adult (a decade too early) and then says, “Sleep with me in my bed tonight, OK, Romani?” I loved them, but I couldn’t stop the moon. The one-sided nature of these relationships left me with a self-sacrificial steak that followed me all my life. I never beat the game as a kid, and ultimately abandoned my only friends to their fate when Blockbuster removed it from their catalog. For the rest of my life their incomplete stories haunted me, but none so much as Grog.

Still of Grog's asset in Ocarina of Time, saying 'People are disgusting' Like many of the NPCs in Majora’s Mask, Grog was a re-used asset from Ocarina of Time. My experiences with him in Ocarina left me very nervous. The Grog in Ocarina can only be found at night. Sitting dejected at his tree in Kakariko Village, his only dialog is about how disgusting he thinks people are. He was an oddity in a game full of a mostly cheerful cast of characters fighting against evil. I didn't like seeing someone else defeated by their anger about being an outcast. At the end of his story he vanishes in the lost woods to become a Stalfos (skeleton), and I remember letting out a cruel sigh of relief.

Still of Grog's asset in Majora's Mask sitting surrounded by his chicks, saying 'My only regret is that I won't get to see these guys in their prime as roosters' From the moment I initiated dialog with him in Majora’s Mask, I knew something was different. Gone was the anger and loneliness. Grog is singularly focused on how he won’t get to see his chickens grow to adulthood. His quest involves using one of the games magical masks to lead the chicks in a march that expedites their growth. Once I figured out how to help him, I did it every single cycle, regardless of whether or not I had already received his reward. I just didn’t like the idea of leaving him to die when his wish was so simple. Once, while playing during a hurricane, our power went out before I could. I remember frantically flipping my N64’s power switch on and off and crying. Like every other occupant of my favorite game, I was never able to truly save Grog.

Each passing year the dissociative fog of my denied transsexuality grew thicker. I tried hard to make friends, to mixed results. I got older. I grew hair places I didn’t want. The reflection in the mirror became more alien. Gradually, the few things that made me, me withered away. I gave away treasures from my childhood. I abandoned hobbies. I struggled to make music. I lost jobs. The days counted down.

I remember when I let go of my dream of having a pet tarantula. Ever since I first held Rosie as a kid, I wanted my own. I always knew it wasn’t a possibility when I lived at home: the only arachnophile in a family of arachnophobes. Instead, I held on to the belief that, one day when I lived alone, I'd get one. Unfortunately, like Grog, I got stuck on the things I wouldn’t get to see to fruition. The older I got, the more I struggled to conceptualize the future of pets or loved ones, let alone myself. The thing about tarantulas is that they can live for decades. Eventually, I accepted that I wouldn’t be around long enough to uphold my responsibility as their keeper.

On a random day in 2019, I decided it was the final day. I decided to fulfill one last wish and save Termina for good. I booted up a rom verison of the original Majora's Mask and was sucked into it. I rescued Romani from the aliens, saved Pamela’s Father from his Gibdo curse, reconnected Kafei with Anju, cleared the evil from each temple, stopped the moon, defeated Majora, and marched Grog’s chickens into adulthood. When the screen read “Dawn of a New Day” I sat as tears streamed down my face. I watched as my oldest friends finally got to live in a world free of the threat of extinction. Something clicked.

Majora’s Mask is a game about regret. Link’s journey requires he fulfill each character’s final wish. However, because of the three day time limit, you must undo it each cycle. You take what you learn and receive back and hope to make more progress the next time around. Seeing characters I saved in a previous cycle suffering again was always my motivation. I needed to find the way to make my acts of love permanent. Something about finally seeing my efforts stick made me stop and confront what I was doing. Why was I letting my self disappear when I always knew what I really wanted? As much as it might have felt like it, there was no grimacing moon hanging low in the sky coming for me. Why couldn’t I do for myself what I did for them?

So, I kept living, this time as the woman I always knew I was. It isn't as easy as it was in Majora’s Mask. There is no Link to make my dreams come true with the help of some enchanted mask. The existential perils I face today aren't as simple as a falling moon. My choice to live requires me to sacrifice and struggle. It took years to internalize that I wasn’t going to wake up on the first day again. Even so, things are better here after the moon didn't fall. I even got a couple baby tarantulas to raise. Every time I take care of my spiderlings, I reaffirm the day I decided that I was planning on being here for good.

And so:

To my beloved Grog,

There’s all the time in the world to watch those chickens grow after the moon doesn’t fall.

Love,

Nessie