This is an unpopular opinion, but y’all are forgetting about inflation. $60 in 2017 is $78 in 2025. $300 in 2017 is $390 today.

My ex always mocked me for the prices of Nintendo switch games. She even got me into playing games on my PC. But except for trackmania, I always gravitate back to the Switch. And I’m definitely in a priveleged place so take this with a grain of salt, but I’m buying the Switch 2 pretty much no matter what. To me it’s worth the cost.

I think that’s a pi: π, so loπers will be shot. Lopers, as in people who lope, or in others words, runners. Or maybe they are using loper as short for interloper, which actually makes sense in this context.

When I lived in the dorms in college, I saw everyone around me getting care packages from their parents, and I felt sad because my parents’ gift to me was that I could take some hangars for my clothes, but not the nice ones. I went to my girlfriends house and when her mom realized I didn’t really have much food in my dorm room, she took me into her pantry and started loading up bags of food for me, including just so many cans of pineapples. It was such a touching gesture that made me feel loved, especially considering she was definitely less well off than my parents. I ate so many pineapples that I got very sick of them, but I still think about cans of pineapple with great fondness.

This sounds like a great first step for him. I’m guessing it doesn’t feel great that support for you is conditional on you receiving mental health counseling. There are a few conditions that might look like gender dysphoria but are not (Dissociative Identity Disorder, in which a person has multiple parts living in the same brain, some of which may be a different gender, and Borderline Personality Disorder may lead some people to constantly switch identities), but generally speaking, and even with those disorders, it’s best practice to trust the person that says they are transgender and support them however they need.

Mental health counseling may still be a good idea for you. First, it’s good to establish a relationship with a mental health provider who can write letters of support for you to give to pcps and surgeons to help you receive any care you might need. Second, transgender people often have co-occurieg mental health issues. This is largely due to your identity being rejected during childhood, which causes gender minority stress. Some have theorized that DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) might be a good fit for people with gender dysphoria. And mindfulness, anecdotally, has been very good for me personally dealing with dysphoria. It is not a replacement for transitioning, though. A self guided transition still has the most evidence supporting its efficacy. And mental health should not be a prerequisite to transition related healthcare, even though it unfortunately is sometimes.

I am a social work student, not a mental health professional, so take what I say with a big grain of salt.