Asa mo yoru mo koikogarete,
Hoshi ni naru yo, kimi mamoru, tatakai wa yukue shirazu!
Ashita to kinou no kousaten de
Majiwaranai, kimi to boku,
Ima iku yo, boku wa nagareboshi!

My doubts are gone. I am Maia. Even if I sort of consciously wished her into being, it’s the strongest personal identity I ever had. The old me has been slowly dying ever since the awakening, and even before that, never felt so real to begin with. Whether female or genderless mind-wise, one thing I’m utterly convinced in is that I’m not male, and the very thought of identifying as male disgusts me.

That being said, it’s somewhat uncanny how often it happens that people cast off their cheery facades and open up to me in PM, sharing their insecurities. I wonder how often winterwyn and other de facto “unpaid therapists” go through this. I try to comfort them and inspire hope, and it’s important for me that I say what I really think. Honesty all the way. I’ve seen enough depression around that seeing people depressed makes me depressed by proxy, and I try to stop the mind poison that is self-loathing, assuming they listen.

In her conversation with me, in-between describing her depression, Hazuki raised some rather interesting points, especially about transition. There are people in the world so uncomfortable with their physical sex, feeling so outright wrong that they’d do anything to change it, even knowing that they would probably die earlier, go through utter hell, and be treated like trash. Do I really want a female body so badly? No. It’s more a case of, “I’d nearly die of happiness, but I can live without it.” It’s not a definite no, it just means that other things take priority. I’ll only be ready for transition if it doesn’t ruin my life. Most of my contacts I only know online anyway—my body doesn’t matter to them. I hope.

Hazuki and I were also amused at the uncanny mental “resonance” between us, and the many ways in which we think alike and even have similar life stories. As she noted, we are similar in so many aspects, and different in just a few key ones.

Finally, in preparation for meeting Hazuki’s avatar in Second Trainwreck (it looks positively creepy), I tried to replicate the pervasive female mental self-image. This was the farthest I could go with freebies, but I’d really like a T-shirt like my “circle/gender” one.

I find this entry on the TV Tropes Wiki quite insightful and an interesting read for both atheists and non-atheists.

Your friends have been bugging you to watch the latest TV show that everyone’s talking about. Every newspaper raves about its originality, well-deserved popularity, and effective mix of comedy and drama, on the front page of the Entertainment section. The critics are rushing to hail it as the re-definition of its genre. After the thirtieth or so “Just watch it already, geez!” and maybe a Hype Aversion stage, you finally give in, pop the DVD in your player, and lay back to enjoy the latest masterpiece…

…Only to end up watching a mediocre show with average plots and few laughs or an utterly confusing one with more than enough Shocking Swerves to boggle the mind; one that definitely isn’t the seminal classic everyone’s been touting it as. What on earth did everybody see in this retread and/or overrated piece of drivel?

Usually occurs when Quality By Popular Vote fails. Most often, the work isn’t bad at all by itself, and would have easily been accepted as a solid and enjoyable work by the same person under different circumstances. But to someone who was expecting nothing short of a flawless masterpiece to live up to all the hype, the disappointment can be bitter indeed.

The true backlash comes when the person who “doesn’t get it” becomes so irritated at others’ tendency to see that work as absolutely perfect that they put as much energy into downplaying or nitpicking it to show that it isn’t as wonderful as everybody seems to think it is. If it becomes particularly nasty enough, the two camps can degenerate into a Flame War.

Source

This sums my “Shin Seiki Evangelion” impressions pretty accurately.