Alright, I have something to tell all of you. I don't know how much you will care, but I felt I had to say it anyway.

Some of you may have noticed that I've been taking steps to start using the name "RedCarDriver" on VS instead of what I had previously used. You also may have noticed that I don't tend to talk much about myself, even when some of you have asked me how I've been doing. Some of you may also remember that I disappeared from Facebook a long time ago. These are not coincidences.

The truth is that I have been avoiding mentioning something for years, because I was afraid of what would happen if I said anything about it. I'm not afraid any more. And with current events in America being the way they are, I felt it was important to say something.

The truth is that I, VStanced user RedCarDriver, am a transgender (transsexual) woman. My name is Lydia.

Yes, you read that correctly. No, this is not a joke. I have been out to my family and on hormone replacement therapy since 2015, and my documentation (driver's license, etc) has listed my name as "Lydia" and my sex as female since 2016. This is for real, and this is not going away.

For a long time, I thought about saying nothing. I also thought about trying to lie about it. I could have tried to pretend that I had inherited this account from my brother. I could have claimed I had been pretending to be someone else this entire time. (In a sense, I guess it's true that I have been pretending to be someone else, since I haven't really been that other guy for years - if I ever was him to begin with. I've always been Lydia. I just didn't know it for a long time, and other people didn't know it for even longer.)

Today I have decided that I'm done hiding, and I don't want to try lying. If you can't be honest with people, what's the point? You - VStanced and the SLRR modding community - were the last people remaining who didn't know, and it was getting more and more ridiculous to put on a name I hadn't answered to for years anywhere else.

Honestly, you all probably won't need to worry too much about this. I'm the same person I always have been. Now you just know a little bit more about me. If you didn't know a transgender person before today, now you do.

And, hey, if this gets my mods removed from Modzona (because my existence is illegal in Russia, or something), I guess that's an acceptable loss.

If you have (polite!) questions, feel free to ask.

#WontBeErased ⚧

████████████
████████████
████████████
████████████
████████████