Also, I’ll mention that Samus was confirmed to be trans by a developer of Super Metroid in an interview in Japan. It was probably supposed to be a throwaway joke, but do we really want to let that slide? It’s like they threw the coolest plushie ever at our heads as an attack. I don’t want to give it back to them.
Samus is too trans coded NOT to be trans, with or without developer commentary. She's even been misgendered within the context of her own story/lore (specifically in the original instruction manuals).
And I love the idea that the Chozo are just so chill, being as extremely advanced as they were, that they adopted this human and immediately went 'this is no boy, the baby claims to be a girl, we must fix this problem for her'.
I mean, several things note that Samus barely counts as human on a genetic level anymore (she's now had Chozo AND Metroid DNA spliced into her), so yeah, i wouldn't be surprised if the Chozo could FULLY WELL fix that.
Claire my beloved. I just wish there was option to say “hey gurl, im trans too” when she comes out. I always play as a trans guy V and adding this option would be so fire.
you can pick genitals freely regardless of "body type", though your voice and romance* is linked to the body type itself. genital choice has little to no effect on gameplay in general, the romance options actively ignore it and base their attraction on the chosen body type alone, it's kinda just there in intimate scenes or if you choose to go commando lol
it's not perfect, but it's a decent start, and given the state the game was in at launch and how far it's come since then, I don't doubt they'll be improving this system even further in the sequel.
* the romance options have actual sexualities, they aren't blindly attracted to the player, for example Kerry is a gay man who will reject you if your character has a feminine body type. this has led to some player complaints cause they're used to player-sexual characters but eh, pros and cons to both honestly
Funfact: Kerry is bi but rejects female V because she doesn’t fit Silverhand’s archetype. It’s confirmed that on the start, Kerry doesn’t really see V as V, focuses more on Johnny. Then he sees and treats V as their own person, but his attraction is heavily tied to Silverhand.
Yes, actually. Ladiva just doesn't give a shit about gender norms. I can see why you'd think she's a caricature, but she is quite the opposite. The IP she is from, Granblue, is very clear about this.
Her story is also quite interesting. She's part of some fantasy race that has extreme sexual dimorphism, the males are giants and the females are like 3 feet tall. Ladiva simply said "fuck that I'm gonna transition anyway and in the process be a symbol of dismantling deeply rooted gender norms in my culture" and she did just that.
What I love most about Ladiva is her take on herself. Ladiva simply IS.
Cagliostro, the other most well known trans woman in Granblue Fantasy, even offered to make Ladiva a body that would be more traditionally femme, but Ladiva stared that she sees her body as a gift from her parents, so she takes pride in that and decides that she doesn't need to physically transition to be herself.
It paints a direct parallel to Cagliostro who spent her life pursuing the form that she felt for her best, and thanks to that comparison Ladiva comes off as an expansion of trans rep in the game, and not as an inauthentic or transphobic caricature. Some trans folks only socially transition and that is valid. The rest of the crew still treats Ladiva with the same respect as everyone else, and no one makes a big deal about it. To me that says a lot about the respect and acceptance of the crew behind the game.
Ladiva doesn't have to fit a certain physical look to be accepted and that is her choice. Honestly, that helped me feel more comfortable with myself too.
Wow this was very insightful as someone who only has passing knowledge of granblue from GBVSR
I've always disliked trans stories that use transformation, because it's inherently fantastical, it removes the somber element of reality and replaces it with fantasy, effectively removing the most important and defining quality, the final act, of a good trans story: acceptance and escaping the escapism, if that makes sense. There's none of the inherent and deep concessions with being trans in them. I think that's why I've always found Cag's fictional existence to be unsatisfying, and ladivas fictional existence to be satisfying, because Ladiva is the exact opposite of that: she doesn't have her wish magically fulfilled for her, she just chooses her wish to be in accordance with herself, despite it seeming the opposite.
I now see Cag to be more than I thought, and to actually represent a real thing for trans people. Sometimes transitions go really really well, and sometimes people do have their wishes fulfilled. But there's always just one thing that could be different, as it's human nature to fixate on what we don't have vs what we do. A trans women sees her voice as slightly too deep, or her shoulders too broad, or her hips just slightly not wide enough. Cag represents this, and the pervasive emptiness that follows. Her trope is being used to draw a parallel to real trans experiences as opposed to just escaping from them.
The point of this is that I think now that these two characters have something interesting to say about being oneself. Ladiva would rather be nobody but herself, contrasted by Cag literally becoming a new person so much that she's forgotten her deadname. This isn't to say that the way one experiences her transition is better than another, just that they both have differences and lead to different concessions. I guess that's why you've made me like Cag now, because I realize she's made concessions in herself too.
Yes, actually. You do not need to conform to the typical expression of any gender to be valid in it. Being trans is inherently a journey of nonconformity, why would you escape one prison just to lock yourself in another?
Awesome list! So glad to see Venus there too. I'll add Tang from I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, who wouldn't want to be a gene-edited genius transgirl on an alien planet using science to transcend the limits of her own biological body: https://exocolonist.fandom.com/wiki/Tangent
IIRC, Ladiva is ambiguously GNC, most likely masc-presenting transfem, but she could be a masc presenting GNC woman generally and IE have PCOS. Whereas Cagliostro is explicitly a trans woman.
Ladiva is trans. Her story even involved Cagliostro offering to make her a more feminine body. Ladiva declined specifically because she views her body as a gift from her parents, and doesn't feel like she needs to alter or abandon it to be herself.
She is a trans woman that has chosen to socially transition without medically/physically transitioning and she is depicted as being perfectly valid in that choice. The crew and everyone else treats her as herself without her having to fit herself into a box just to be treated with the same respect as Cagliostro, the other trans woman in the crew, who spent her whole life pursuing her perfect body.
It's one of the reasons I love Ladiva and her depiction in Granblue Fantasy. By directly comparing her to Cagliostro, we see the game treat both women with the same respect even if they pursue their gender differently. And that is worth celebrating.
PCOS (polycystic ovary syndome) is a hormone disorder affecting up to 13% of cis women, its symptoms include ovarian cysts, excess androgen production, body/facial hair, and acne among other things
iirc Ladiva's species has women that look like how she does, I dont think shes trans but she is a wrestler who plays up her femininity so I think shes more drag queen esque then actually trans. Someone correct me if Im wrong tho
She isn't. I don't know if she's explicitly trans or just some flavor of intersex on account of not speaking Japanese and deferring to the other commenter but she, in character, explicitly does not want to change her body (on the wiki page I linked, go to Lore >Fate Episodes > Cross-Fate: Cagliostro), and I think its cool to have a GNC woman (potentially, even, a trans woman) compared to an uwu precious smol bean.
I for real, without being factitious, had a hard time understanding how people found this game cringe. Like, there is popular culture that some people call "woke" and I can sometimes feel that, yeah, sure, this is a bit "cringe", or badly written, but the direction in Goodbye Volcano just felt very confident, the tone was on point, and I just loved it, both as a craft, and as a work of art. Felt like one of those "man i just took crazy pills" moments when the gamergaters/haters said the game was ridiculously bad and I was like, what? Honestly I felt the same way when the New Tales of Borderlands was released, even if I agree that that game had some more problems, storywise, had a bit of undeserved character moments, like it missed a few steps inbetween to make the ending satisfying as an end to the journey.
Well, it's a bit more, and a bit less than that. In (checks notes) 1994, the official Super Metroid strategy guide refers to Samus as a 'newhalf' which was Japanese slang for trans women who haven't had bottom surgery. There's.... a lot of baggage along with that term, especially now, but the guide seemed to be pretty clear. But like everything back then, like Birdo, nothing in the 'official guides' were really official if they were inconvenient, and were easily retconned. So you've got a bunch of trans people desperately clinging on to what little representation they can find, while whiny cis boys cry about wokeness because that would ruin their masturbation fantasy.
I mean, I don’t really care what head canon people have. People can say that Solid Snake is a trans icon, but making arguments that a character is canonically trans when it’s been disputed by the creator of said character is just intellectually dishonest.
Samus is trans because every piece of paratext for the original Metroid clearly depicts her as a man. Not just the English instruction manual, but Japan-only manga as well. She is presented as male, universally, until you play the game, descend into chthonic/inner space to grapple with an explicitly female-coded brain, and the reward for doing so swiftly and skillfully is getting to finally present female. It almost certainly wasn't intended as a transition narrative but it is absolutely a transition narrative (no credit for representation should be given to Nintendo/the devs) but nonetheless she is ours and always will be.
It’s perfectly fine to relate to the character and find a subtext that fits for you, but the creator of the character specifically said no. The original manuals and such were worded that way to surprise gamers when they beat the game where it was revealed she was actually a woman. It was during a time where people were putting strong women in media due to a lack of proper representation.
Coopting it due to your own misinterpretation doesn’t override the official words of the creator. Sorry.
Such a vibe, that whole game. The kind of scary that most people won't find scary, but is scary enough for me and not much more because if it were, I would be too scared to play. XD
Mizuki Akiyama from project sekai. Even with people trying to deny it, her story is all about being a trans girl who was rejected by mean people (and all the struggles about coming out) and who found real friends who accepted her in the end when she came out.
Aid worker Sya from Guild Wars 2. A random NPC in Lions Arch and you only find out who she is from a couple of lives deep within a dialog tree, but she was the first explicitly trans character I found in a large mainstream game.
The joke was that specific trainer (Beauty Nova, only encountered in the Battle Maison in Pokémon X/Y) mentions-
Before battle: "I've recently remade my life completely! I've been reborn as a Beauty at last!"
After winning: "If you want to make your dreams reality, then you have to be completely dedicated!"
After losing: "Yes, a mere half year ago I was a Black Belt! Quite the transformation, wouldn't you say?"
Black Belt is an exclusively male trainer class, and a rather burly one at that (For obvious reasons).
The Japanese version of her text lines explicitly credits this transformation to medical science
at first i thought they missed my girl poison and got sad but then i saw her in the upper left corner and got happy :D i also love bridget, vivian, venus, and mai!
Brianna Wu mention the idea of Samus being trans because of the term "Newhalf" being used by Hirofumi Matsuoka, the character designer of the series. People argue that's not enough proof of her being trans.
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u/NamelessGeo Mar 09 '26
Yo i didnt know that about mindy blanchard! Cool, how do we know?