Also the form of estrogen they prescribed trans women in the 90s, Premarin, looked like this.
And lest there be any remaining doubt.. remember the blue pill? The pill Neo could have taken to forget the truth, bury his troubles and go back to living a normal life, without fearing a system that wanted to destroy him? The pill that was easy, perhaps cowardly according to some, but comfortable?
Here’s Prozac.
For a trans woman in the 90s, where the choice was be safe, suppress, cope, and pretend everything is still how it was, or embrace the danger, accept the truth, realize your full potential, and transition into a world that still thinks you’re a joke and would rather have you dead…. well. The metaphor is pretty fucking clear.
I’m not a psychology researcher, but my guess would be that the nature of it being a time-limited puzzle game where you have to juggle multiple factors means that your short-term memory gets filled and the traumatic images are “dumped” in favor of remembering how many times to rotate the L piece. “As soon as possible” is probably because the sooner you do it, the less likely it is to become part of your long-term memory.
If that is true, then other time-limited activities where you have to remember and plan in a tight time frame may serve a similar purpose.
This can have an effect hours after the traumatic event happens too! All participants were treated within about 6 hours and played for a total of 20 minutes of Tetris (with at least one play time of 10 minutes straight).
