A little story about transing gender in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Not sure if this is the right thread for this, so just let me know if there's a better option:
The ebay listing for my old Switch sold today, so I called up the Nintendo customer service line to help me with transferring my Animal Crossing island to my new console (I had some trouble a few weeks ago). Fortunately, after about an hour of troubleshooting, we got everything moved over successfully (thanks for the suggestion @"treefroggy"#449).
I've barely touched the game in over two years, but my partner and I put a lot of time into our village — It's full of personal touches, little inside jokes and some good memories. Every once in awhile I've wanted to start it up just to hang out and kick it with our villagers, but being unable to change my old name has just made me avoidant. Starting a new island from scratch seemed like too much slow progress to get through, and I knew neither of us would stick with it very long.
So today, with the old island on the new console, I was finally feeling motivated to figure out a solution for our little paradise of deadnaming animals. I'd start over. I'd take some photos of the rooms I wanted to remake or remember, dump whatever I wanted to save outside on the ground, delete my registered villager from the account, and start fresh on the old island. Oddly enough, the process I went with resembled moving — Taking each item, one by one, until the room was empty, deciding what to toss or leave behind to avoid making the whole process too miserable, and making periodic trips outside to get the stuff out — even in the goofy simulacrum of AC the slow progress of watching a familiar home return to an empty room was weirdly emotional.
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I dumped whatever I wanted to keep on the beach (as one does), emptied my old bank account, recorded vids of the DLC vacation homes I'd made, and then deleted the account. I'd tackled social security, driver's license, credit cards and now most importantly, registration with Mr. Nook on the Island of Nonamé.
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Before you delete a registered user, they make it very clear that not only will your stuff be gone, but so will any villagers' memories of your old character, they'd all be Eternally Sunshined — Perfect! While I was 'packing' everything up I grabbed a small photo from my mantle of Goldie and remembered that she'd given it to me for being a close friend. I'll still have the photo, but I'll be meeting her for the first time again soon.
One thing I was a little worried about were the attributions of donations in the museum — It was about a 50-50 split between my partner and me. I was wondering if mine would retain my old name or just disappear. After starting the new save, I was relieved to see my former contributions listed as "anonymous donor." Amazing!
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So, I'm really happy! I've avoided it for years now despite wanting to revisit. It felt like it wasn't an option, so all that time was just gone. I'm excited to have access again to a game I love. There's a weird sense of closure — my partner joked that it was the final step of coming out.
If anyone wants to hang out or help me out getting restarted, let me know! I'll probably be jumping in pretty regularly for the next couple of weeks. It'd be cool to see some new faces too : )