Let me be personal for a bit. When I was a kid, I got VHS tapes from the library and the local Hollywood Video (RIP) to watch. Some tapes were Yu-Gi-Oh, which I was really into. Though, some tapes were Sailor Moon. Originally it was my sister that got them, but I ended up liking them too. I had no real preference, Yu-Gi-Oh and Sailor Moon were equally cool to me, though I wound up having to repress my Sailor Moon appreciations (along with my bisexual feelings for Seto Kaiba).

I forget how, but I ended up watching Soul Eater and the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime. Maybe it was on Netflix before everyone decided to get their own streaming service and things got enshittified. My favorite character in Soul Eater was easily Crona. I felt for their anxieties and I thought they were really cute. I thought it was interesting that their gender was ambiguous, though I remember defaulting to calling them a girl sometimes because 1) I was still struggling with the idea of sexuality and I loved them and 2) I didn’t think there could be a label beyond man or woman.

As for Fullmetal Alchemist, my favorite character was… Scar. Dude was cool and I saw him as based and valid. But my second favorite had to be Envy. I thought it was really cool how they could switch their appearance around, and I liked their feral nature. They were my Joker. Their default form was also hot to me, but I remember sorta rationalizing it away as, “well, they’re a girl sometimes…”

Anyway, fast forward. I got close to a trans man and he was actually my first partner. We’re still friends, and he left a mark on me in that it encouraged me to explore gender for a bit. For a few years I identified as nonbinary, but as I got to know other trans people, particularly trans women (one of whom a current partner), I thought, “am I a girl?” I like keeping myself shaved because I sometimes hate the way I look in the mirror… though sometimes I think, “dang, I think I’d be a good otter.”

So, I’ve stuck to considering myself nonbinary, and I go by any pronouns. They/them is primary, but she/her’s good. He/him’s only good if you’re cool and mean it in a faggy (complimentary) way. Would genderfluid be the right label for me? I dunno.

Why do all this rambling? Well, I played a game about someone realizing their trans identity through fiction – particularly anime – and playing this game reminded me of my own path. Earlier this year, we followed the story of a trans man and today, we’re looking at the story of a young trans woman. And uh, this sure is a time in American history to be looking at trans narratives. But as Secret Little Haven may say, it’s an important truth to come to terms with.

Secret Little Haven is a 2018 game by Hummingbird Interactive. It’s 1999, and the story revolves around an early forum for hit anime series Pretty Guardians Love Force. Alex is a big fan of the show and is looking forward to the upcoming movie. Alex’s primary reason to be excited is that the show’s local male character Minori is slated to become part of the magical girl gang. And Alex is fascinated by the idea of the character becoming a girl.

And in talking to fellow fans through an early chat program, Alex considers: maybe she’s a girl too.

Secret Little Haven is a story about a young trans woman realizing who she is through the lens of the early internet. The main interface of the game is the chat program where Alex talks to all her relations. You have to wait seconds between character dialogue boxes, which provides realism and grants a natural tension in conversations. You can also poke around side stuff, including the local anime fan forum that really made me miss forums.

And I’ll end things off here with a Safe-for-Work Sasuke spoiler barrier picture spam to encourage you to play Secret Little Haven for yourself, because I’m just gonna ramble about my general takeaways. Besides, it’s only a few hours long anyway, it’s kinda hard to talk about this game without getting into spoiler territory anyway.

A major helping hand Alex gets is Laguna, who reads as an older sister character. She had recently realized she was a trans woman herself, and hopes to help Alex in her own journey, being Alex’s connective thread to the trans community like the connection I got. Going on the forum in the game, she drew fanart of the Pretty Guardians Love Force character becoming a woman, and it really reminded me of a bunch of ladies that expressed who they are through fanart.

A lot of my journey's been shown online since I do YT/Twitch, but for those who don't know, there were a lot of signs over the years. The final tipping point/the actual crack, was offering to do a cosplay of a community character that was a genderbent version of myself mixed with Rosalina, RosaJon.

— Proton Jon / Claire (@protonjon.bsky.social) 2025-07-16T02:35:00.793Z

I’d actually like to point to the streamer Claire that still labels herself as ProtonJon, who was part of Youtube let’s play group I used to watch. She openly came out as a trans woman earlier this year. I remember for years she represented herself through fanart of Rosalina and dubbed it as RosaJon and she even cosplayed as Rosalina at one point to truly embody RosaJon. And Claire was open about how this soon led to her own realization. In a sense, this fanart helped open the way for Claire to reach an understanding of herself. Looking at the comments of the vod posted in the thread linked, Claire’s coming out encouraged some trans people to push on in their transitions, helping people along like Laguna does for Alex.

Laguna also teaches coding to Alex, which becomes a puzzle mechanic later in the game. The puzzles are really simple and easy to get. Well, unless you’re me. That’s part of why I know I’m not a full girl, I don’t live up to the programmer trans woman stereotype. Laguna fights with her dad about her transition, but she’s settled into a safe enough place with her aunt, and despite the anxiety this gives Alex, she encourages Alex to embrace herself.

Speaking of people that provide a safe place for trans women, we have to acknowledge Jenni, the creator of everyone’s favorite Pretty Guardians Love Force forum. Well, she does accidentally out Laguna as a trans woman to Alex, but it did introduce the idea of being a trans woman to Alex before she starts having proper one-on-ones with Laguna. Otherwise, Jenni just wants to be a supportive friend and acts as the ideal forum administrator instead of a Lowtax.

Though, that’s where Secret Little Haven‘s nature as a look into early internet forum culture gets pulled into view. Jenni thinks about stepping away from the forum, to Alex’s disappointment. She has her own life to focus on, she can’t be running a forum forever. Getting glued to a fandom won’t make you money… for the pre-2000 internet, anyhow. This really was before the internet turned passion projects into hustles you can fully put yourself in. If Secret Little Haven took place later, Jenni would probably be running a Patreon funded podcast about Pretty Guardians Love Force. Jenni’s problems are mundane compared to the others, but it’s a strong contrast with the current state of the internet that’s inseparable from every day life, where people proudly parade their fandom pride for better and for worse.

Returning to Secret Little Haven‘s trans topics, we have to acknowledge Alex’s friend, Samuel (or Sammy). From the beginning, Sammy is Alex’s closest internet friend, and Sammy’s as excited about the Pretty Guardians Love Force movie for the same reason as Alex. As Alex is encouraged to explore her gender feelings, she realizes that someone else is in the same boat as her.

Contrasting Alex’s own awakening and the enthusiastic support of Laguna and Jenni, Sammy is bitter. Sammy tries to change the topic whenever Alex tries to bring up her awakening, and comes off as outright hostile. Sammy had also realized that she’s a trans woman, but rather than accept it, she runs away from it, instead opting to live the fantasy of being a trans woman through Minori.

A big part of why Sammy rejects this awakening is because of her own situation. Sammy lives with her parents in Alabama, a place that’s generally been hostile toward trans people. In fact, Alabama’s become worse toward trans youth since Secret Little Haven originally released. Since 2022, Alabama upheld a bill, the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which outlaws gender affirming care for transgender youths; the 2025 Senate Bill 75 further enforced a legal gender binary that affects all trans people in general.

So, it’s hard to blame Sammy for feeling that way. However, just ignoring the problem just leads to worse pain. Sammy’s bitter toward Alex for being in a situation where she can more freely explore herself, but Alex points out that while she theoretically has more freedom to pursue womanhood than Sammy, she’s not fully safe to do so yet. Building off her own situation, Alex acknowledges that yeah, embracing a trans identity will be hard, but the dysphoria of not doing so may be worse. She assures Sammy that they’re both in the same boat as trans teenage girls, and they should embrace that truth and find solidarity.

Along with her internet friends, Alex also chats with her real life friend, Andy. Andy solidly identifies as a man, but he identifies so strongly that it becomes toxic. He aligns himself to the societal expectation of masculinity, being super into guns, sports and action movies, and he expects Alex to be the same. Alex fights with Andy on how he’s being, especially when he shows entitlement toward a girl he hit on.

For a time, Andy separates from Alex, but he comes back, acknowledging that she’s right and he’s being a weird manosphere guy. Alex doesn’t “fix” Andy, but she points him in the right direction and expects him to work on himself. Though Alex doesn’t come out to Andy, it works as a statement on how women shouldn’t be expected to fix a guy of his personal problems if he’s being fucked up. And if the last moments of the game is indicative of something, Andy genuinely resolves to be a better guy instead of becoming an Andrew Tate.

Maybe Andy also becomes a trans woman and had only focused on manliness to counteract feelings she had about herself. Maybe Andy really is just a guy that needed to step away from the worst parts of masculinity and he becomes the grungler of Alex’s friend group. Who can say? Besides, there’s a worse, more domineering masculine force in Secret Little Haven: Alex’s father, John.

John is a member of the class of evil guys that emerged: divorced guy that haven’t gotten over it. In his divorced guy antics, he becomes an oppressive force on Alex, trying to dictate how she runs her life to mold her into his idea of an ideal man. With the internet being a fresh new thing in the setting, John is paranoid about Alex’s internet usage and how Alex could be exposed to dangerous people and unhealthy things. John doesn’t even know about Alex’s gender situation, but his panic over the internet really mirrors how some right-wingers view the internet as something that’d make their kids queer.

Emphasizing John’s effect on Alex’s life, the presentation of the game changes whenever he talks to Alex. Alex’s conversations with others are blocked out as the screen glitches while John talks to her, with the color stripped out to conform to the cold uniformity John wants for Alex. This demonstrates how trapped Alex feels in her situation, and how uncomfortable her dad makes her. And this is all before she even comes out to her dad, too.

Eventually, John locks off Alex’s computer access to punish her for being too online. However, thanks to Laguna, she can figure her way out of John’s puzzle bullshit. Emboldened by her friends, Alex gets the confidence to talk back to her dad and admit to how uncomfortable he makes her. With the teardown from Alex and her friends, John does what most guys of his stature would never do: realize that he’s wrong. And so, Secret Little Haven ends with John giving Alex the freedom to use the internet and go see the movie, enabling her to continue exploring herself.

But oh man, I don’t know if John would approve of Alex being a woman, but he’s honestly leagues better than a lot of guys in real life since he shows the capacity to be better. In a different world, he’d be in that “listen up liberal: my wife left me” meme image with Elon and Kanye, two guys that got infinitely worse and has just continued to double down since their divorces. Elon is the more relevant fucked up divorced guy with how he publicly regards his estranged trans daughter.

And on the subject of the real world, things have undeniably gotten worse in the western world for trans people. Under the current American administration, protections for trans people have been getting rolled back, hospitals are threatened to have their funding cut if they provide gender affirming care, etc. A few supposedly trans people are blamed for mass shootings and the fucked up losers declare that trans people should lose the right to bear arms as if almost every mass shooting that’s happened in my lifetime wasn’t done by a cishet white man.

That’s not to say that good people that support trans people don’t exist. Protect the Dolls was a bit of a movement that started growing this year, highlighting the troubles of trans women specifically. Famed actor Pedro Pascal openly wore a shirt by the movement to stand up for his transgender sister. Sabrina Carpenter publicly backed the movement and protested her support for trans people with her VMA performance. They’re small things, but they give visibility to minorities that could have just been buried under the deluge of Stuff being done by this administration. We could have our own Jenni in our lives that gives the support we need, because Jenni is a friend of ours.

And even if there isn’t a Jenni, trans people still have each over. There’s surely a Laguna looking out for their trans siblings. You can be a comforting hand to someone struggling with the idea of transition, like Alex was for Sammy. Like with what happened with Alex, there’s an online community that can help you. No matter what happens, we have each other.

Anyway, it takes a few hours to play through Secret Little Haven, but it’s already slotted itself as one of my favorite games that I played this year, if not in general. I don’t know what the future holds, but we could try to make things better where we can.

Good luck everybody.