How I Found Trans Joy and Community Even With Social Anxiety

Hello, my name is Becca. I'm an aroace and genderfluid writer. I've been working on a novel and now  I'm jumping into new storytelling frontiers by playing TTRPGs and making zines. How I Found Trans Joy and Community Even With Social Anxiety is my very first zine that I put together for Zine Jam: Pride Edition. I made it using Electric Zine Maker and Electric Zine Maker Reader.

About the zine:

When I first came out as aro ace and then later as genderfluid, I felt disconnected from a diverse queer and especially trans community because I have social anxiety. I focused a lot on writing my own novel and reading a lot of diverse books to learn more about community building. However, I always did these things in isolation and I wondered if I would ever even see many gender-diverse people. Then I discovered tabletop role-playing games, Twitch streams, and zines that helped me see and hear from more creative people. Along with the books that I read, they also helped me at least start crafting the idea of what kind of community member I'd like to be. I'm still extremely shy and have only scratched the surface of everything I'd like to do. I created this zine as a way to push myself into finally try something new and share a little bit of my experience through writing, my preferred way of communication.

I hope that if you've felt as disconnected and lonely as I have, this zine will maybe give you some comfort and ideas.

NOTE: The ALT text option for screen readers didn't work for the Electric Zine Reader version so I will hopefully figure that out soon.

Resources mentioned in the zine, including links:

Benjamin, Ruha. Imagination: A Manifesto. W. W. Norton & Company, 2024.

Benjamin, Ruha. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Princeton University Press, 2024.

Heglar, Mary Annaïse. “To Build a Beautiful World, You First Have to Imagine It.” The Nation, 24 October 2021 https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-world-building/

Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. The Future Is Disabled. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022.

Trans Formations Project https://www.transformationsproject.org/

Trans Formations Project Newsletter https://www.transformationsproject.org/newsletters

Some Diverse TTRPG Actual Play Programming that I've enjoyed or want to start watching:

• Ampistrano https://x.com/AmpistranoDND
• ChariTTRPGs https://charittrpgs.substack.com/
• Desis & Dragons https://linktr.ee/DesisNDragons
• Starlight Tales https://linktr.ee/starlighttales
• Stellaluna produced actual plays https://linktr.ee/stellalunaTV
• Taletell Hearts https://taletellhearts.carrd.co/
• Transplanar RPG https://transplanarrpg.com/
  
• Unprepared Casters https://www.unpreparedcasters.com/

There are a lot of amazing programs and players that I haven't mentioned here because I am just one person and don't have a lot of time to dive in to as much as I want. But I'm always on the lookout for more to add to my giant lists of APs to watch, games to play, books to read, etc.