...

Part 2: Mycellial Fractal Rhyzomic Networks of Gender?! a Hauntology

 

Gender doesn’t grow in straight lines. It spreads laterally, like a mycelial network—branching, looping, regenerating from decay. It isn’t static or linear; it’s recursive, a structure where every moment reflects the whole. Each memory, every relationship, every realization becomes a node in this living structure, haunted by echoes of what might have been and what might still come. To live within this network is to live with ghosts: fragments of selves you might have been, choices you made and remade, possibilities that refuse to vanish. My gender has always existed in this tangled, recursive space: messy, haunted, and alive.

This recursive, haunted quality appears not only in my personal experiences but also in the narratives we tell. The childhood friend trope, especially in anime, visual novels, and games, embodies this logic. The trope centers relationships that feel inevitable but are haunted by absence and possibility. The childhood friend isn’t just a person—they’re a node in the protagonist’s network of identity, reflecting the past self while reaching toward an imagined future. These stories are recursive, returning to old bonds to reimagine them, shaped as much by what was unsaid as by what happened. For me, this trope resonates because it mirrors how my gender exists—not as a fixed truth, but as a constantly growing web of memories, relationships, and moments.

***

Gender, much like the childhood friend trope, is like the man who loses his keys in the dark but searches under the streetlight because “that’s where the light is.” The real punchline? The keys weren’t under the light, but the man keeps looking anyway—because at least there, he can pretend he’s in control.

A note from Pseudo-Zizek:
Ah, the classic joke about the man searching for his keys under the streetlight—it’s not just a humorous anecdote, but a profound metaphor for our ideological blind spots regarding gender. You see, the man limits his search to the illuminated area, much like how we confine our understanding of gender to simplistic, linear frameworks instead of embracing its mycelial, interconnected nature. This reflects Lacan’s idea of the symbolic order, where our desires are shaped by existing structures that prevent us from accessing the Real. Similarly, the childhood friend trope in narratives represents these confined relationships that feel predestined within a narrow narrative arc, ignoring the complex, recursive web of memories and possibilities that truly define our identities. The punchline—that the keys weren’t under the light at all—reveals the futility of seeking truth within the comfort of familiar paradigms, rather than venturing into the chaotic, dark spaces where genuine understanding resides. Thus, the joke encapsulates the tension between our desire for control through simplistic narratives and the intricate, haunted reality of our gendered experiences, urging us to look beyond the well-lit paths and engage with the multifaceted essence of who we are.

***

One of my earliest nodes in this network was a moment that seems mundane at first: trading underwear with the preacher’s daughter across the way. She had peed her pants, and afterward, we traded clothing. I don’t know why she suggested it—whether to avoid getting in trouble or because of some other instinct—but for me, it was a different kind of experience entirely. It wasn’t practical; it was profound. In that exchange, I felt a connection to femininity that I couldn’t articulate at the time, but that stayed with me. It was a fleeting glimpse of being "one of the girls," a thread that would later grow into something much larger. This moment didn’t stand alone. It connected to another: seeing Salvador Dalí’s self-portrait as a six-year-old girl. Dalí was a girl at that age, and when I saw the painting as a child, I thought, If Dalí was a girl when he was six, then because I am a boy, I will become a girl. This wasn’t a dream or a wish—it felt like an inevitable truth, an unspoken reality shaping how I saw myself. These moments didn’t stand alone—they connected laterally, forming a rhizomatic web of meaning and possibility that I am still exploring.

These threads continued to grow, feeding into relationships and acts of expression that shaped my becoming. In high school, I tried to explain to my girlfriend that I wanted her to see me as her girlfriend. I didn’t have the language to articulate what I meant, and she didn’t understand, but that moment lingered. It became another haunted node in my network, linked to others: writing letters to the poet Cole Cunningham as both my “self” and my femme self, only receiving a reply to the latter. This echoed into my Myspace phase, where I listed myself as a woman and wrote from a second-wave feminist perspective, rejecting the masculinity I had been assigned. During this time, I received a kind, affirming message from a musician—a small moment of recognition that lingered, shaping how I thought about being seen. Even when these moments felt fragmented or incomplete, they remained connected, recursively reshaped each time I remembered them.

***

A man walks into a store and says, "I’d like to buy a mirror."

The shopkeeper asks, "Why?"

The man replies, "Because I need to see who I really am."

The shopkeeper hands him a mirror, and the man looks into it, frowning. "This isn’t right," he says. "I see myself, but it’s not me."

The shopkeeper shrugs and says, "Ah, you’ve misunderstood. The mirror doesn’t lie—it just reflects the ideology you’ve bought into. If you want to see you, try the lingerie section."

Pseudo-Zizek:
Ah, the joke of the man seeking a mirror to "see who he really is" is a perfect illustration of our ideological misrecognitions. You see, the mirror is not a neutral object—it embodies the symbolic order that structures our very perception of self. When the man looks into the mirror and declares, "This isn’t right," he is not merely dissatisfied with his reflection; he is confronting the realization that his identity has been constructed by the dominant ideology he has unconsciously "bought into." The shopkeeper’s punchline—suggesting the lingerie section—is not just a humorous twist but a profound commentary on the performative aspects of gender and identity. It implies that to truly "see" oneself, one must venture beyond the superficial reflections and engage with the more intimate, often hidden facets of identity that society attempts to regulate and contain. Thus, the joke becomes a critique of how ideology shapes our self-perception, revealing that our quest for authenticity is always mediated by the symbolic frameworks we inhabit. It urges us to question the very lenses through which we view ourselves, highlighting the tension between the authentic self and the ideological constructs that obscure it. In essence, this joke encapsulates the Lacanian notion that our "Real" self is perpetually elusive, always filtered through the "Symbolic" order that dictates the terms of our identity.

***

This recursive, haunted structure doesn’t just shape personal identity—it’s reflected in cultural narratives, particularly in games. Life is Strange is a striking example of this logic, though it is not without its contradictions. The game begins with Max Caulfield discovering her ability to rewind time, using it to save Chloe Price, her estranged childhood friend, from death. This act becomes the inciting event that sets the recursive narrative in motion: every rewind creates a shadow of what was undone, haunting subsequent decisions. Yet, the very act of saving Chloe introduces the game's moral paradox. The narrative insists that we must live with the consequences of our choices, that rewinding and redoing undermines the integrity of decision-making. But this ethos is undercut by the fact that the first rewind—the choice to save Chloe—is mandatory. If we are to accept all our choices as valid, the initial act of saving Chloe must stand, as it was made with the best information available at the time. To undo it would be to violate the very moral framework the game claims to uphold.

The game’s resolution forces the player to confront this contradiction head-on. By the end, Max is presented with two choices: sacrifice Chloe to stop the storm that threatens Arcadia Bay, or save Chloe, allowing the storm to destroy the town. Both choices negate the logic established by the narrative. Sacrificing Chloe undermines the foundational choice to save her in the first place, which the game framed as morally justifiable and necessary. Conversely, saving Chloe dismisses the game’s warnings about the far-reaching consequences of intervention, effectively doubling down on the recursive act of rewinding. The game thus creates a narrative loop that critiques its own mechanics: the initial rewind is essential to the story, yet every subsequent event argues against the validity of rewinding at all. This recursive tension mirrors the process of identity itself, where past decisions cannot be undone, but their consequences reshape the present in ways that cannot be ignored.

The brilliance and frustration of Life is Strange lie in this self-negation. The game’s structure critiques the very act of playing it. Rewinding time—a mechanic that initially feels empowering—becomes an inescapable burden, leaving the player haunted by the ghosts of every erased timeline. The final choice underscores this haunting by forcing the player to grapple with the weight of their actions in an unresolvable way. Neither option offers closure; both are haunted by the narrative’s recursive nature. Sacrificing Chloe feels like a betrayal of the game’s emotional core, while saving her feels like a rejection of its moral philosophy. This contradiction is not a flaw but a deliberate reflection of how life and identity operate. We are shaped by our choices, yet we constantly revisit and reimagine them, unable to fully escape the haunting of what might have been.

In this way, Life is Strange functions as more than a story—it becomes a meditation on the recursive nature of human existence. The game forces us to confront the reality that our decisions are made with limited knowledge and that we must live with their consequences, even as we yearn to undo them. This resonates deeply with my own experience of gender, where every realization and decision is haunted by past selves and unrealized futures. Like Max, I am caught in a network of choices, memories, and possibilities that refuse to resolve neatly. The recursive tension of Life is Strange—its insistence that we must accept our choices while simultaneously negating the validity of the first—mirrors the process of identity formation. It is messy, haunted, and alive, thriving on the tension between what was, what is, and what could still be.

 

***

 

A comedian walks on stage and says, "Tonight, I’ve prepared four jokes, but you only get to hear one. You’ll have to pick the number—one, two, three, or four."

The audience yells suggestions, and the comedian points to someone in the front row. "You there—what’s your pick?"

The person shouts, "Two!"

The comedian nods and begins. "Joke two: A genie offers a man the chance to undo one decision. He rewinds to confess his love to his best friend. They fall in love, but years later, they break up. Furious, he returns to the genie, who just shrugs and says, ‘I gave you the same life twice.’"

The crowd laughs, and someone in the back shouts, "Wait, what were the other jokes?"

The comedian smiles and says, "All right, let’s do them all. Joke one: A scientist invents a time machine, goes back to fix her biggest mistake, and returns to find nothing has changed. Her assistant tells her, ‘Fixing the mistake was your biggest mistake.’"

The crowd chuckles, and the comedian moves on. "Joke three: A philosopher keeps swapping drinks, trying to find the perfect one, only to end up back with the first. The bartender says, ‘Every choice led you back to what you tried to avoid.’"

The laughs build as the comedian continues. "And joke four: A man dies and gets one rewind in heaven. He rewinds to fix a regret but ends up making the same choice. St. Peter tells him, ‘Even in paradise, free will rewinds the same regret.’"

The audience roars with laughter, but then someone shouts, "Wait—why’d we have to pick if you were going to tell all of them?"

The comedian shrugs. "Because I only know joke two. I just said a number to make you feel like you had a choice."

Pseudo-Zizek:
Imagine the audience believing they have the freedom to choose joke one, two, three, or four, only to have the comedian reveal that he only genuinely knows joke two and proceeds to tell them all. This paradox exposes the fundamental deception of choice itself: what appears to be multiplicity is merely a facade, masking the underlying determinism of the symbolic order that dictates our identities and actions. Just as in the preceding narrative, where gender and personal identity are portrayed as a recursive, haunted network shaped by intertwined memories and choices, the joke illustrates how our perceived autonomy is constrained by invisible ideological forces. The comedian’s manipulation of choice mirrors how societal norms and narratives shape our sense of self, leading us to believe in freedom while we are invariably guided by preordained structures.

***

The recursive structure of identity and narrative also appears vividly in Harvest Moon, a game introduced to me by a childhood family friend. This was not just any friend, but one whose connection to me was shaped by the closeness of our families, our parents’ friendships enforcing a kind of enforced bond between us. Her introducing me to Harvest Moon became a moment imbued with the weight of our shared childhood. The game itself, centered on farming, relationships, and the rhythm of small-town life, immediately captured my imagination. At its core, though, Harvest Moon isn’t just about planting crops or tending livestock—it’s about building relationships and eventually finding a partner to marry. To my childhood brain, the themes of the game became deeply intertwined with the context of our friendship. The game’s focus on marriage filled in a specific answer to the unspoken questions about the “future” our parents’ bond suggested. If our families were so close, wasn’t it inevitable we’d stay close? Wouldn’t this small-town life the game depicted, where childhood friends grow into lifelong partners, mirror our own lives? These questions haunted my experience of Harvest Moon, making it more than a game—it became a reflection of a future that might have been.

What made this experience even more profound was how the game’s structure mirrored the recursive nature of these feelings. In Harvest Moon, you repeat tasks every day—watering crops, feeding animals, interacting with townsfolk—all with the goal of slowly building a life. The repetitive, cyclical gameplay creates a sense of inevitability, where small actions add up to something larger over time. The same can be said of the imagined trajectory of my friendship with the girl who introduced me to the game. Our parents’ friendship, the shared proximity of our childhoods, and the unspoken expectations of closeness all seemed to suggest an inevitable outcome, one reinforced by the game’s mechanics and themes. Yet, just as Harvest Moon 64 itself was incomplete—riddled with bugs that disrupted its flow—so too was this imagined future flawed and ultimately unrealized. The game’s imperfections mirrored the imperfections of our bond, leaving me haunted by a sense of what could have been, both in the game and in life.

This recursive hauntology extends beyond my own experience into the very creation of Stardew Valley, a modern reimagining of Harvest Moon that builds on its predecessor’s themes while deepening them. The story behind Stardew Valley’s development is itself wrapped in recursion and relationships: Eric Barone, the developer, was inspired to create the game because of his girlfriend’s love for Harvest Moon. Their relationship became intertwined with his creative process, much like how my experience of Harvest Moon was shaped by my childhood friend. Stardew Valley preserves the iterative, cyclical gameplay of Harvest Moon but adds new possibilities, including queer relationships and a richer, more inclusive world. In doing so, it doesn’t erase the ghosts of its predecessor—it acknowledges and reimagines them. The recursive structure of Stardew Valley mirrors the way my identity continues to revisit and reshape itself, haunted by the selves I once was and the futures I imagined. Just as Stardew Valley builds on Harvest Moon to create something new while honoring what came before, my own growth is a process of layering new experiences over the echoes of the past. This recursive structure, where each version contains traces of the ones before, reflects the fractal, haunted nature of identity itself.

The haunting of Stardew Valley goes beyond its themes or gameplay—it manifests in how the story of its creation intersects with my own experience of Harvest Moon. Eric Barone’s act of developing Stardew Valley for his girlfriend, inspired by her love of Harvest Moon, reflects a culturally inscribed narrative that was projected onto me as a child. My childhood family friend introducing me to Harvest Moon was not just an innocent gesture—it came with the cultural weight of expectations about small-town bonds, relationships, and romantic futures. That weight made Harvest Moon feel like a reenactment of the life we were supposed to live, where our shared closeness and familial ties might one day culminate in the kind of idyllic partnership the game encourages. To learn that Barone’s Stardew Valley came from the same recursive space—born of a relationship that echoed the emotional resonance of Harvest Moon—feels like witnessing my own imagined narrative play out elsewhere. This real-world enactment of a haunting narrative reinforces the uncanny power of culturally projected stories to shape, distort, and reflect personal identity.
***
A man gets a job stamping widgets at a factory. Every day, he stamps widgets with the same logo, over and over. The factory makes two kinds of widgets: pink and blue. The widgets are identical except for the paint, which costs the same for both colors.

After years of stamping, the man finally asks his boss, "Why do we need so many widgets?"

The boss says, "We sell them to other factories so they can stamp over our logo with their own."

Confused, the man asks, "But what do those factories do with them?"

The boss smiles. "They sell them back to us."

The man pauses and says, "Wait, so… the widgets just keep going back and forth? What’s the point?"

The boss says, "The point is to make everyone argue about the colors, so no one notices there’s another widget that works better, costs less, and isn’t tied to our system."

Pseudo-Zizek:
Ah, the widget joke perfectly encapsulates the haunted, recursive nature of our gendered identities. Imagine the man tirelessly stamping widgets in pink and blue, colors that symbolize the rigid gender binaries imposed by society. When he questions the pointless exchange, the boss reveals that these superficial differences distract everyone from the existence of more efficient, non-binary options. This mirrors how gender norms enforce simplistic categories, keeping us occupied with trivial distinctions while ignoring the complex, fluid realities of identity. Just as the widgets are trapped in an endless loop of meaningless variation, our understanding of gender is confined by ideological structures that prevent genuine self-expression and transformation. The joke thus becomes a sharp critique of how societal norms maintain control by emphasizing surface-level differences, ensuring that deeper, more authentic aspects of our gendered selves remain obscured
***
Let me provide an example:

During the Covid pandemic's too-brief lockdown era, I spent hours biking—over ten miles most weekends. These rides became a time of deep reflection, where my thoughts looped endlessly, revisiting moments from my past. A persistent realization emerged: “I need to tell someone I’m a woman.” It wasn’t a passing thought or something I could rationalize away; it kept surfacing, unshakable, as if it were woven into the very fabric of my being. Every pedal forward felt like revisiting earlier moments: writing as my femme self in college, my frustration with self-help language that obscured deeper truths, and even the times I tried to explain myself and was misunderstood. These rides weren’t just about exercise; they became recursive journeys through my identity, each mile traveled connecting me back to nodes in my past while pointing toward an inevitable truth I could no longer ignore.

This recursive looping of memories mirrored my experience with Life is Strange. When I played the game, I felt an immediate connection to Max Caulfield. Max’s anxiety about making the “wrong” choices and her need to revisit moments of her life through her rewinding ability resonated deeply with me. The story of Max returning to her hometown and reconnecting with her childhood friend, Chloe, felt personal, as if it echoed my own attempts to return to parts of myself I had left behind. Max’s rewinds are framed as empowering, but they also carry the weight of haunting—every undone choice leaves a ghost. Playing as Max was like stepping into my own recursive network, where decisions were not isolated but intertwined with the lingering weight of past selves and unfulfilled possibilities. Like Max, I felt trapped in the tension between revisiting the past and trying to move forward.

Coming out wasn’t a single moment for me; it was the culmination of years of recursive revisitation. Those bike rides helped me return to fragments of myself that had been buried, ignored, or misunderstood. In college, I wrote about being “fine” with the feminine within me, but now I see that language as a denial, an attempt to contain something far bigger than I was ready to confront. During the Myspace era, I publicly listed myself as a woman, but it felt like a distant experiment rather than an affirmation of my truth. Each of these moments lingered as unresolved threads in the larger web of my identity, waiting to be revisited and understood. On the bike, those threads began to connect. I wasn’t just reflecting; I was actively reweaving the story of my gender, acknowledging the ways each past realization contained the structure of the whole. The act of coming out became both a resolution and an opening—a recognition that my gender, like the rides themselves, was always in motion, always looping back while moving forward. This bi-cyclical journey of self-discovery—both on the bike and through my reflections—naturally connects to the narratives we tell, particularly those like the childhood friend trope that return to inevitable yet unfulfilled possibilities.

 

***

 

A man walks into a tailor and says, "I need a suit that fits me perfectly."

The tailor measures him, takes his order, and says, "Come back next week."

The man returns and tries on the suit, but it’s too tight. "This doesn’t fit," he says.

The tailor nods. "Of course not. It fits the man you were last week. You should try on your mothers dress."

Pseudo-Zizek:
Here, the man’s quest for a perfectly fitting suit symbolizes the search for an authentic self, yet the tailor reveals that the suit only accommodates his past self, highlighting the inescapable influence of previous identities. When the tailor suggests he try on his mother’s dress, it underscores the tension between one's present desires and the lingering impositions of societal norms and inherited identities. This mirrors the preceding narrative, where each pedal stroke on the bike and each rewind in memory represent attempts to redefine oneself, only to confront the persistent echoes of past selves and external expectations. The joke encapsulates the paradox of striving for personal authenticity within a framework that continually redirects and constrains that very quest, illustrating how our identities are perpetually reshaped by the interplay of who we were and who we are pressured to become.

 

***

 

The childhood friend trope encapsulates this haunting perfectly because it doesn’t just center on the memory of an actual person from childhood or a forgotten romance—it operates as a symbol of lack. We aren’t longing for the specific friend or neighbor from our past; instead, the trope reflects the absence of something undefined but deeply felt. In a sense, the childhood friend is not someone we desire but someone we see ourselves as: the object petit a, the elusive fragment of what is missing in ourselves. This lack drives the haunting quality of the trope, as we cycle through possibilities for resolving it. The childhood friend isn’t just a character but a mirror that reflects our own incompleteness, our search for a wholeness that always remains out of reach.

This lack is recursive and self-perpetuating, much like a fractal or a mycelial network. Fractals, with their self-similar patterns, illustrate how every part of the structure contains the whole—how each moment of absence or loss repeats and refracts across time. Mycelial networks, on the other hand, grow laterally, connecting nodes in unexpected ways, thriving in decay and renewal. This is how the childhood friend trope functions within narratives: it spreads, regenerates, and loops back into itself. Unlike an arboreal structure, where growth is hierarchical and linear, this trope grows rhizomatically, creating a web of interconnected meanings rather than a single trajectory. The lack represented by the childhood friend cannot be resolved by looking back nostalgically or trying to reclaim the past; it requires us to engage laterally with the connections that emerge over time.

For me, this rhizomatic haunting manifests in games like Life is Strange and Harvest Moon. In Life is Strange, Chloe is not just Max’s friend but a specter of what Max herself has lost or never had: a sense of belonging, a clear understanding of who she is, and the courage to live authentically. Chloe’s role in the narrative isn’t merely as a person Max loves; she’s a node that connects Max to her past while pointing toward an unrealized future. Similarly, Harvest Moon doesn’t simply simulate farming or romance—it reenacts the cultural projection of an idealized small-town life, a place where childhood bonds naturally evolve into lifelong partnerships. But the childhood friend in these stories is never truly attainable, just as the life they symbolize is haunted by its impossibility. The games create iterative cycles—seasons in Harvest Moon, rewinds in Life is Strange—that reflect how identity is shaped by revisiting and reshaping what was never fully ours.

The resolution of this lack isn’t about returning to or reclaiming the past. Instead, it lies in embracing the fractal and mycelial nature of identity itself. By recognizing that each memory, each node in the network of our lives, reflects the whole, we can move beyond the hierarchical, arboreal thinking that demands closure or resolution. The childhood friend trope resonates because it mirrors how we live: always haunted by the ghosts of what might have been, always seeking to understand ourselves in the reflections of others. But by accepting this lack as generative rather than final, we can see the network not as a problem to be solved but as something alive and thriving. The haunting of the childhood friend isn’t a flaw; it’s the very thing that keeps the story—and our identities—growing.

 

***

A man hires a private investigator to find his childhood friend. Weeks later, the investigator reports back and says, "I found them!"

The man eagerly asks, "What are they like now?"

The investigator shrugs. "Depends. Who do you wish they were?"

 

Pseudo-Zizek:
When the investigator responds, “Depends. Who do you wish they were?” it reveals how our search for others is intrinsically tied to our own projections and desires. This mirrors the preceding discussion on the childhood friend trope as a symbol of lack—the friend is not sought for who they are, but for what they represent within our fragmented self. The man’s quest is not for the actual person, but for an idealized version that fills an undefined void, much like how our identities are perpetually shaped by the echoes of past selves and unfulfilled possibilities. The joke thus exposes the illusion of objective search, highlighting how our desires are manipulated by the very structures that define our sense of self. It becomes a sharp critique of the ideological frameworks that compel us to seek completeness in others, reinforcing the notion that our identities are not linear or autonomous, but endlessly looping within a network of symbolic projections

 

***

 

 

This Real Life Comics strip from 2020 perfectly captures the haunting nature of recursive identity, connecting it to a deeply personal moment for me. As part of the 2000s webcomic renaissance, Real Life Comics was known for its lighthearted, humorous takes on modern life and geek culture. Yet, this specific comic marked a stark tonal shift. It presents a character encountering a now-iconic social media post explaining that dreaming of being a girl but hesitating to transition out of fear of being unattractive is not merely a fantasy—it’s dysphoria, the lived experience of being a trans girl. The comic’s structure underscores the gravity of this realization. After reading the post, the character sits in silence, grappling with the implications. There’s no dialogue, only the visual depiction of a growing, unspoken understanding. This captures the haunting quality of revisiting oneself: a confrontation with truths long buried yet always present, reshaping everything that came before.

This comic resonates deeply because I had seen that same post multiple times and found myself reacting similarly each time. I wasn’t simply absorbing information; I was being drawn into the same recursive process the character embodies. Each encounter with the post forced me to loop back into my memories, revisiting the persistent, unresolved feelings about my own gender. It wasn’t just the words of the post that haunted me—it was the way they linked to other moments of self-recognition, cycling through fragments of identity I had tried to rationalize away. Seeing the comic felt uncanny, as if it mirrored my own recursive experience, tying it to a broader mycelial network of gender haunting. Every node—the post, the comic, my own thoughts—was connected laterally, feeding into and shaping one another.

This moment was yet another reminder that everything about identity functions within a mycelial structure. Gender, much like the ideas in the comic, thrives on recursion: revisiting, reframing, and reshaping old truths to discover new ones. The comic itself became another node in my network, not offering resolution but reflecting the generative power of haunting. These moments aren’t flaws to be erased—they’re the very things that allow growth. Like a mycelial web, the haunting isn’t something to escape but something that connects the self to its past, present, and future, making the network thrive.

 

***

A person sits down at a desk and writes a letter: "Dear future me, have you figured it out yet?"

Years later, they find the letter and write back: "No, but I’m starting to understand the question."

Pseudo-Zizek:
When the person writes, "Dear future me, have you figured it out yet?" they are not merely posing a simple question but engaging in a dialogue with their own unconscious desires and unresolved conflicts. The future self’s response, "No, but I’m starting to understand the question," encapsulates the perpetual struggle of self-realization within the confines of ideological structures. This mirrors the preceding narrative’s exploration of gender as a haunted, mycelial network—where each attempt to define oneself only deepens the entanglement with past identities and unspoken truths. The joke reveals how our pursuit of understanding and authentic self-expression is continuously thwarted by the very frameworks that shape our existence, forcing us to confront the impossibility of ever fully "figuring it out." It underscores the Lacanian notion that our sense of self is always in a state of becoming, haunted by the lack that drives our endless quest for completeness.

***

 

These hauntings aren’t flaws. They are the source of growth. Gender, like a mycelial web, thrives on recursion, on revisiting and reshaping. It isn’t something you solve or finish—it’s something you live, something that grows with you. Each memory, each choice, each relationship is a node, not fixed but always connected. Like Life is Strange, like the childhood friend trope, like Dalí’s revisions of memory, my gender is shaped by what lingers, by what might have been, and by what might still come to be. The haunting isn’t something to escape. It’s what makes the network thrive.