The SuperDQP Weekly - January 12, 2026

I’m taking a break from video games to discuss something that I briefly mentioned in last week’s newsletter more in-depth. I’ll be talking about gender queerness, microaggressions, exhaustion, political anxiety… and Homer Simpson.

Smithers, who is that balding layabout?

“Who Shot Mr. Burns?” was a two-part, multiple-season-spanning Simpsons episode that cheekily lampooned Dallas, wherein, well, Mr. Burns gets shot.

He ultimately gets better. Maggie was the culprit. Neither of these are what I wanted to draw upon from these episodes.

Sorry for spoiling it. You’ve had over three decades to figure it out. Statute of limitations passed a while ago.

Like any good whodunnit, nearly everyone in Springfield has a motive for wanting the energy tycoon dead. Paraphraising Smithers’ own words, Mr. Burns spends the first part crossing the line from everyday villainy to cartoonish supervillainy, and he pisses off most of The Simpsons’ very large cast in the process.

To Homer Simpson, though, his cruelty is one of mundanity; everyday villainy, as Smithers would say.

It's a common gag in the show that Burns can never remember Homer’s name. Every time he spies on his employees, he always has to ask Smithers what Homer’s name is. And in “Who Shot Mr. Burns?”, Homer finally gets fed up with it.

At first, Homer takes gentle, patient measures. He introduces himself. He wears a name tag with large text in plain view. He even sends Burns and Smithers a box of chocolates with a photo of him and his family. None of these work.

Finally, he sneaks into Burns’ office and graffitis his name on the wall. When Burns walks in on him finishing the tag and asks “Who the devil are you?", Homer finally cracks and reacts to this with murderous intent, joining the rest of the suspects.

He spends part two being the prime suspect thanks to Maggie’s DNA, and even after he’s acquitted, Burns still can’t grasp his name.

So… if I’ve personally vented to you at any point in the past few weeks, you’re probably picking up why I’m opening this newsletter with a plot summary of a 30-year-old Simpsons episode, but in case I haven't, let me explicitly spell it out. Tag the wall with graffiti, if you will.

My name is Crystal Hyde. I am non-binary and genderfluid. I identify as neither a man or a woman. My preferred pronouns are “they/them.”

For example: “Crystal went to the grocery store. They need some cheese.”

If it sounds like I’m being condescending, yes. You’re right. I am.

Though we’ve always existed – there has never been a world where trans and non-binary people don’t exist, and there never will be – non-binary people like me aren’t exactly common relative to the greater population. I know I’m not the only one here in Anchorage, Alaska, but it often really feels like it. I’ve been out and using they/them pronouns since 2021, and no matter how much self-advocacy I’ve done in that nearly five years, friends, colleagues, relatives, and strangers alike still often don’t seem to “get it.”

(Mom, Dad, I know you’re reading this, I know you’re trying, and bless you for it. This isn’t a specific call-out to you.)

I’ve had patient heart-to-hearts, worn pins on a beanie just above eye level, left signs around the office, the works. People will often still ignore the cues and default to masculine pronouns even when I broadcast my pronouns as loudly as possible.

I’ll acknowledge that a large part of this is cultural expectations. Christian cisnormativity has been baked into Western society for millennia, and beaten into other colonized cultures when applicable. Trans and non-binary people have been forced into the cultural margins for a long time, and the idea that they shouldn’t be is a relatively new one for the broader Western population to accept.

It’s been speculated by some that the current wave of transphobia in the United States and United Kingdom is a “backlash” to this idea. I personally reject this speculation; I think cultural vilification and/or genocide is more often than not the result of powerful autocrats desperately trying to cling to fading power by turning their base against scapegoats. But this is beside the point that I wanted to make with this newsletter.

This constant defaulting to masculine pronouns is a potentially-unintentional, but nonetheless constant microaggression, and a rejection of all the hard work I’ve had to do for years to advocate for myself as a non-binary person. The persistent need to validate myself is a source of exhaustion, depression, and loneliness that only amplifies the messaging coming from the current United States government: that gender-non-conforming people should be reduced from personhood to a nebulous “gender ideology” or "transgenderism" that must be eradicated.

“Returning” to masculinity is an idea that sickens me, and yet, as I phrased it last week, my gender identity exists in this cultural void; unseen by most, hated by many, and embraced by a few.

I want to believe that a world can be built where trans and gender-non-conforming people can live authentically as themselves and be broadly recognized as such. It seems fantastical, but to queer people, it is a basic, self-evident dignity.

Being denied that dignity, no matter how well-meaning the person who does so is, is suffocating. I feel like many cisgender people don’t understand just how oppressively disheartening it can be to have a basic part of your identity, like gender, denied by the culture at large.

Aside from, well, Homer Simpson. It’s no wonder he threatens Burns in his hospital bed after everything he goes through in “Who Shot Mr. Burns?”.

(Legal disclaimer: I am not at the point of threatening anyone with deadly force. I don’t think I have that in me.)

This denial left me feeling insane and deluded, which is exactly what hateful people want me to feel, even if I know, on some objective level, that I’m not.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep this candle lit.

If you have any trans or non-binary people in your life, please, please, please, reach out to them and validate them. Treat them authentically. You have to try, because the casual denial of our existence is killing us.

Don’t let the Mr. Burnses of the world get away with this.