My experiences with the TASer Hazel/FusionVaria

Yesterday I retweeted that Hazel, also known as FusionVaria (itspersonnal on TASVideos) is truscum/transmedicalist. Hazel is most known for her work with TASing and glitch hunting the Metroid Prime series, Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom, and the Sonic Adventure games. Apparently the friend of mine who I rted later protected their account so you can no longer see it unless you already happen to follow them. However, Hazel's issues go a lot further than that. This is going to be in regards to my experiences with her mostly.

I got into speedrunning through metroid2002 and metroid prime, so when I finally started watching twitch streams around 2013, I found Hazel fairly quickly. She wasn't especially crazy back then, but I don't think I would have seen the extent of her issues. I gradually got more and more into the community, partaking in twitch chats and on forums.

In 2014 she posted about something going on at tasvideos where basically a group of tasers that weren't super involved with the prime community wanted to get into the game. This is more or less the first time I really witnessed Hazel's ego. They asked for some input files and weren't really knowledgeable about the speedrun. She was hostile towards them and I'm ashamed to admit, I joined TASVideos to take her side in it. I bashed them for their lack of knowledge and lack of participation in the prime community. Nowadays, I don't think that being involved in an RTA community prior should really be required for trying to get involved. I hate that my first couple posts on TASVideos were this. I apologize to AngerFist, Got4n, solarplex, and Mothrayas for my participation in that. I apologized in the thread after I realized how heated I got but I didn’t deeply regret what I did until much later when I got more into the TASing community. I apologized to Moth later in private and expressed the deepness of my regret but didn’t really express it to the others.

This apparently wasn’t the first drama involving Hazel on TASVideos, but I wasn’t around for many other incidents.

I joined twitter in 2015 and quickly became friends with much of the prime community including Hazel and largely just joked around with them. I saw Hazel shit on tasvideos every so often and I essentially copied her opinion. When I finally got into TASing myself at the end of 2015, I submitted a run and the positive feedback I got led me to start changing my mind about the site. Huge shoutouts to Samsara, whose positive judgment note really encouraged me. She unfortunately had a meltdown the next year and left the site, but I will forever hold her as my greatest inspiration for TASing and for judging.

I remained friends with Hazel though… even though she occasionally whined about not getting enough shoutouts at like GDQ and such. When I got into a relationship in 2016 with somebody who happened to also be friends with her, she encouraged me to make a private account and follow her private. I was accepted into the private accounts of our friend group. This is where I started to learn the depths of her issues.

Hazel had came out as trans earlier that year and she was… rather hungry for compliments and attention, straight up asking people to call her pretty. This wasn’t even just in private but also public.

Around this time Hazel started listening to some… questionable people. She later started to listen to Jordan Peterson but I’m not sure if she did at that point. I do know she listened to Blaire White and legitimately said “I think Milo has a point about trans people”. That absolutely baffled us. She was previously involved with an apparently rather pushy leftist, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this move to the right was a sort of in response to that.

A member of our friend group was considering the possibility of being trans. I believe my response at the time was something along the lines of doing whatever will make you the most happy. I wasn’t out at the time so I didn’t feel like much of an authority on the matter, but I still believe in that sentiment.

Then Hazel got involved. She asked if they experienced gender dysphoria. Now mind you, what gender dysphoria is can be super complicated, but none of that nuance was on display. The person said no. Hazel then said that because they do not experience dysphoria they are not trans. This is a transmedicalist view of transitioning. She basically believed that one needs to hate themselves in every way in order to consider transition. This is an extremely narrow view of things and one that is often criticized by the greater transgender community. I wasn’t as aware of things back then as I had yet to accept myself as transgender, so I didn’t reject this notion.

On her private, I also saw her shit on the concept of non-binary gender. In her words, to be trans, one must fully transition from one gender to the other. This is another transmedicalist point of view, where in order to be transgender, one must fully transition in all aspects, all relevant surgeries must be completed etc. In my opinion, this is completely ludicrous.

Hazel also mentioned an lgbt club at her school and how she basically felt she was too good for them because she worked on passing. This was another component of being transgender to her.

She also criticized someone who came out as trans not that long ago who had earlier shaved their head. This was completely uncalled for.

Eventually these opinions wore on me, my relationship partner at the time, and a couple other friends, though the majority of the group was silent. However, we put up with it because we were friends and that’s what friends do… At least that’s what I thought.

One night when Hazel was drunk she mass blocked a bunch of followers on her private without warning. Supposedly it was largely people “she didn’t feel close to”. My girlfriend and I was initially spared. However, the next day she made a tweet about a military guy hitting on her or catcalling her or something I forget. She acted proud of it. My partner told her that military guys often ironically hit on transwomen as a sort of joke.

Then we were removed from her private as well, from friends on discord, and maybe even softblocked on main. This was all without any warning, and nobody else was removed at this point. We were singled out. We heard the same “she removed people that weren’t close friends” and later “she wanted space from the prime community” even though my ex had basically nothing to do with the prime community and some other people from the prime community were spared.

I felt this was partially a blessing. I was getting really tired of her shit, and took the opportunity to express my grievances. It’s funny though looking back at the “we weren’t close” idea, she was part of the reason I made a private account to begin with.

My partner on the other hand took it horribly. She had severe abandonment issues and was suicidal for the rest of the month. Apparently Hazel told my partner two weeks prior she was the person she talked the second most to. I cannot pin my partner’s response entirely on Hazel, but it was still extremely shitty of her, and the whole month led me to feel a large amount of resentment to her.

The idea that we weren’t close to her was totally bullshit, we were very close. However, I think what did it was my partner challenging her. Given the timing, there’s no way that wasn’t the immediate trigger. Being called out was enough for her to end her friendship with both of us.

I realized I was wrong to hold back prior. People should be open with each other with their flaws, even if they’re friends. However, much of our friend group still stood by her despite being friends with us, and tried to overlook her obvious shittiness. Once I complained about Hazel to someone who was still friends with her and they told me that they wanted no part of the “drama” between me and her. I started to resent many of them for being unwilling to look at her and realize that she was shitty. They did nothing, unwilling to challenge her or even consider if she was doing anything wrong. As such, I drifted away from much of that group. Most of the group much later realized that she was in fact shitty and stopped being friends with her. However, I feel this was mostly a result of a significant shift to the political left and incompatibility with her shitty views, rather than a sort of regret. Very few apologized to those that were severely hurt by her and indirectly by them. As such, there are a number of people from that time who I still haven’t totally forgiven, even though they have long since abandoned her.

At the end of that year, I finally accepted myself as transgender. I had considered it once in high school but knew a lot less about what it meant at the time. I am extremely glad I was not friends with Hazel during this time, as her questioning me about being transgender would not have been fun.

At some point later an account quietly followed my main and tried to follow my alt. It took me a little while to realize that was Hazel. I was still extremely bitter about what happened and her trying to pretend nothing happened wasn’t going to fly by me. I dmed her “Fuck off”.

From then she continued to be shitty. She “warned” some people against being trans, and dictated to others whether or not they were trans. For the most part, from here on is what I’ve either heard from others, or just happened to see on her main account. Some people were deeply fucked up by her, but almost none mention her by name. Just recently I saw a pastebin where someone mentioned they were introduced to transmedical ideas by an ex-friend and deeply hated themselves for a while because of it, and I heavily suspect that person was Hazel given some replies.

I deeply hate Hazel. An irrational anger often consumes my thoughts when I think about her. I don’t like to hate people, but I cannot help it with her. Yet, I don’t hate her so much as to wish she would die or anything. I just wish she would try to become a better person. To make up for her wrongs. So far it sounds like she’s just been losing friends left and right but I dunno if she has taken any actions to improve. All I know is that me and a number of other people were hurt deeply by her, and that people should be careful in regards to her.

Update: I have been given permission by the person that initially took these screenshots to share them here. Content Warning extreme transphobia: https://i.imgur.com/IQUCNHD.png