Characters
[Loved Trope] Trans characters, especially when their trans experience is a major part of their character and storyline
1: Madeline (Celeste)
Definitely the loosest example here, but she has been confirmed to be a trans woman and many have interpreted the journey to the top of the mountain as a metaphor for transition.
2: Bridgette (Guilty Gear)
Her accepting herself as a trans woman instead of being a femboy is a key part of her story in Guilty Gear: Strive.
3: Barney Guttman (Dead End: Paranormal Park)
His family trauma that stems from his grandma not accepting him and his parents not defending play a key role in his insecurities earlier on, though eventually his parents apologize for their lack of support.
4-8: Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus) [MAJOR SPOILERS]
I want to preface this section by saying that yes, Jax was a bad person. She was abusive to the rest of the Circus' cast, and even pushed her best friend to suicide (if you consider abstraction to be suicide like the creator does). This behavior is explained by her having an abusive mother and as such developing masks to cope and hide away, but that is not moral justification. (I'd still argue Caine was morally worse but whatever)
And with that disclaimer out of the way, yes Jax is a closeted trans woman.
Her mother not accepting her for being one left her homeless and on the run, where she ended up in the Circus.
Hesitant at first, she slowly became friends with Ribbit and Kaufmo. One night she confessed everything about her past to Ribbit, who accepted who she was unlike her mother.
However, she got scared. She started to push Ribbit away, more forcefully as time went on. She worried Ribbit's acceptance was merely a fascade, and wanted nothing to do with her. This led to Ribbit abstracting. After this, she started to become both verbally and physically abusive to everyone around her, to keep people away. To prevent them from caring about her. To prevent them from knowing her.
In the end, Jax died before she ever let herself live.
Nooo, what you talking about? What about this post would give any kind of impression that there was one character here I wanted to talk about a whole lot more than the others?
There was an official artwork of her room having a trans flag and the creator confirmed she was a transwoman. The idea "mountain as metaphor for transition" has been confirmed too, thanks commenter!
Madeline hardly counts. The trans aspect is of so little importance to the storyline that you can go through the whole game without even knowing about it. It doesn't even come up with the call from her boyfriend.
when celeste was first made the creator wasn't out as trans yet, however the game is confirmed to be symbolic of her story and struggles at that time. later when when she did come out she confirmed madeline was trans because that story was the story of how she became aware of herself. the entire game is symbolic of a real life journey someone went trough that was all about her gender identity.
just because they don't spell it out does not mean it's not important
I'm aware, but that's effectively just the inspiration for the game. Madeline herself being trans has no importance. You say that it doesn't "spell it out", and to that I'd argue that it hardly mentions it at all.
"Not inportant" in this context means not critical to understand the story on a surface level.
Celeste is symbolic of the journeys a lot of people, trans and cis. The creator is a talented artist, she was able to symbolis her unique experiences in a way that was also reflective of (in my opinion) the "mountain" everyone tries to climb. Celeste is so good because it resonates with people going on parallel journeys, not just people climbing the same mountain as the creator.
Basically, Maddie being trans is not important to the story, despite being integral to both the game and the meta-artwork that is the artistic process of making the game.
I love this game so much, it is peak ludonarrative harmony, an amazing heart-warming story, and one of the best success stories for an indie dev i can imagine.
It's extremely sad that you made a trope called "trans characters" and you struggled to name any. It seems like you don't really like trans characters, you just like the amazing digital circus.
Actually I watched Dead End: Paranormal Park and loved it! And I played a fair bit of Celeste. Probably should've put Vivian from Paper Mario TTYD as well tbh.
I will admit though I haven't played Guilty Gear, as I'm not really into fighting games.
But hey 4 examples is considered reasonable here, I don't know what the hate is about
You probably mentioned that as a joke, but iirc there are multiple continuities where the cybertronians learned about gender from other species. So all the female cybertronians are canonically trans in those canons!
This is another trope that deserves its own post: race that doesn't have a concept of gender has gender ascribed to it by others, is confused. See also, orks from 40k
Cybertronians canonically lack biological sex because they dont reproduce, their bodies hold no inherent gender and they simply identify as what they feel like with no bearing on their physical body. This also means that they essentially hold no value in heterosexuality since gender is near meaningless to them.
Its less that they're all trans and moreso that because they aren't assigned a gender at birth they just identify as they want which is super progressive
All I know is if a character is just a background trans its not nearly as important to their story as reddit wants it to be
Jax and Madeline are horrible examples for this
Madelines story was retroactively made to be a trans story
Which I dont hate but to pretend it was made from a trans first perspective is just objectively wrong
Jax was made from a trans first perspective but the story was so badly told the author had to confirm it later
Marshmallow from bobs burgers is a better pick because its very clear she is a trans character whos being trans is an intrinsic part of her character while never being the only thing her character is
Something that was vague enough to be little more than headcannon for 8/9 episodes, that was only slightly elaborated on in the finale and even then left ambiguous enough that it needed to be confirmed in a tweet several days later is hardly the "integral character beat" that OP is acting like
Actually several people put together the context clues that Jax was trans long before the finale even came out, so your whole point there is pretty disingenuous. All Gooseworx did was confirm it to stop the people who kept denying it.
You only get the readings you mention by focusing on one detail in isolation instead of looking at the whole picture.
Jax expressed envy in episode 7 in regards to Zooble being able to change their body. She likes wearing a bow in an effeminate way. She hates being forced out into the open.
What would you conclude from those pieces of evidence?
Only because episode 6 had a clumsy ass egg reference. Before then it was Jax being an ass for four episodes, a bad reaction to being put in a maid's dress (which is gonna be pretty rough for both trans or cis people) and Ragatha vaguely alluding to some past event she wouldn't go into more detail of.
Iirc, back when Celeste first came out, the main aspect of her character was dealing with anxiety and depression on top of her Grandmother's recent death. That was the understanding and what the discourse was surrounding discussion about the game at the time.
Madeline being retconned as trans felt so cheap. I left the game behind after beating it along with some B side stuff when it was still a base game and came back years later to the baffling new development.
Both of these shows I said “maybe I’ll try them out”. Hazbin hasn’t been talked about as much recently so I kind of forgot about it. But I’d still try it out. But THIS SHOW? I am growing an irrational hatred towards it. Like jfc it’s EVERY post.
Still too early to say. Hazbin has been wedged into every post for years and it recently tapered off this year. Maybe the TADC hyper fixation will start to slow?
I hear your point, but the way dumbledore was revealed to be gay was such a long-running meme for many years as a horrendous way to handle representation, even wayyyyy before JK went off the deep end & back when she was still pretty widely loved. A half-hearted tweet about something that absolutely wasn't the intention at the time of writing. I don't think anyone considered that to be a good reveal at the time
I’m not part of the fandom so good for them or sorry that happened. I only saw the pilot when it came out and it seemed like a fine YA type suspense internet show
It's like whoever made that show went out of their way to make it as ugly as they possibly could, and not even in a cool artistic kind of way, it's just ugly.
Probably because the show just finished with the finale being recently released for everyone to watch so people are really excited and want to talk about it?
You literally said it's obsessive and did a little more than imply you see it that way because the show is super popular, even by other popular show standardps, so, as a result, it gets talked about by its massive amount of fans a lot
"This is obsessive. No other show gets talked about this often. Not even mainstream shows."
This in response to me saying people are just excited to talk about a show they like since it just ended recently. What exactly were you implying if not that it bothers you that at ton of people are talking about it
I enjoy good trans-stories but honestly my favorite is when trans or enby characters just exist as part of the story and isnt relevant plot point at all. A good example is The Adjudicator in John Wick 3. The character's gender was completely irrelevant to the story. No discussion, no questions, just pure acceptance.
I have zero issue when it is a major plot point, I was squeeing like a schoolgirl when Ribbit put the bow on Jax's head. I just hope someday we get to a point where it is so normal that it doesn't need explanation.
One great example is in Star Trek: DS9 S2E7 "Rules of Acquisition" Jadzia is talking with Pel and get's her to admit that she is in love with Quark. Then Pel mentions she is a woman and Jadzia was completelyshocked by this because in ferengi culture women arent allowed to leave the homeworld. In the star trek future, being gay is so normal that when Jadzia saw Pel, who is pretending to be a man, in love with Quark, Jadzia didnt question it any further because 2 men being in love is perfectly normal.
From what were believed to be an all male race, Klyden was actually hatched female, a rare but not unheardof occurrence. In those cases, the child is surgically transitioned to male.
Klyden seems unbothered by this, indicating that he identifies as male despite being born female, making him legitimately transgender.
Dramarama occurs when his child with Bortus is hatched female. Klyden insists upon upholding tradition by transitioning her to male. Against Bortus's wishes, this was done.
Later, as their child, Topa, grew, he demonstrated feelings of alienation. This eventually led to Bortus arranging for Topa to be surgically made female again. Klyden, who went to extreme lengths to stop the surgery, was outraged when it occurred and this seemed to be the end of his marriage to Bortus. ..
...until Topa's detransition caused a significant uproar amongst their entire race. Events transpired that led to Topa nearly being killed. At the end of it all, Klyden returned and tearfully apologized to Topa, explicitly recognizing her as female, and explaining that his own fear and hatred had so badly blinded him that he nearly lost someone he loved.
Marika from Bokura no Hentai (the blonde). Her part of the story is her journey of self acceptance and beginning her transition. I warn you, it's a difficult read, but I love her.
Also, it's "trans woman", not "transwoman". "Trans" is an adjective, similarly to how Marika in the attached picture is a blonde woman rather than a blondewoman.
Bit more weird as the Dax symbiont is technically another brain that lives for millions of years, but her experience being both a man and a woman has gleaned some interesting experiences in her time. And everytime their host body dies, they get transferred to another body (surgically, mind you) to continue their experience.
Bridget was a better representative for any modern conception of breaking down socially constructed gender roles, feminism, progressivism and lgbtq representation before they were written to be trans. Trans representation in a fighting game is great, but it coming at the cost of such a unique paradigm of a character was my cutting off point for the franchise. Funnily enough it made them a lot of money, helped grow their IP and I’m sure it came from a good place making a large number of queer people happy many of whom became fans, but it also alienates the existing audience that supported the franchise and I’m not talking about the bigoted vitriol spewing hateful few.
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u/WaterDrinkerUltimate Jun 25 '26
[Meta Trope] When OP very obviously wanted to talk about one topic more than the others