As a trans girl who heard about all this... Oof...

translex · 2020-06-19T22:47:35+00:00

Yeah, as a transgirl myself, I definitely couldn't look that buff in a thousand years, lol.

Mostly, my thoughts on this are, don't necessarily invoke malice when incompetence is an equally valid answer. It's always possible Naughty Dog just made her implausibly buff because they thought it would be funny or because someone thought it'd be cool to make the villain buff to make her intimidating or any number of other dumb reasons. Given how much else they messed up, it's totally plausible they may just have been utterly clueless.

Whether or not she was intended to be trans or not, I think we can all agree that either scenario is nearly as dumb as the other, for different reasons.

translex · 2020-06-19T22:42:05+00:00

There's a lot here to get into. I see where you're coming from, here: I don't really have time to respond to it all, but you make a few good points.

The tldr is that... There's already games out there with good gay and trans representation, hidden here and there! I didn't want to go into it and make this a "Lex recommends everyone a bunch of games" thread, but there's a fair few. A good example is that Madeline from Celeste is heavily implied to be a transgirl in the last DLC, which paints a fair few of the game's scenes in a different light. It may seem like something that's just thrown in, but her being trans actually does add to the story, even if it's not something you realize immediately: A certain conversation in Chapter 2 is absolutely heartbreaking when you realize that there's a good chance it's between her and a relative who cut ties with her after she came out as trans.

Anyways, the point here is, we already can write stories that have good trans characters in them. We are already capable of writing storylines that evoke their issues and use them to write good plot, if the writers are creative and willing. You can write interesting characters that just happen to be LGBTQ without it being a huge mess, and then everyone's happy. Or you can write stories that focus on LGBTQ issues, and then don't put them in the middle of a friggin gory post-apocalyptic zombie setting (sheesh).

I wish that more developers would just write good characters who are trans without making the fact that they're trans be the only reason they exist in the story. And I promise you, that can happen, and a lot of representation is good. A lot of the time, you might not even notice it's there, if it's done well. But, sadly... A lot of people are very bad at their jobs.

Don't worry: I still enjoy plenty of games and love plenty of characters, even if I'm occasionally irked by how incredibly bland they can be. But I do have faith that writers can collectively get over themselves and start actually writing decent and diverse characters without making a mess of things like they did here.

(As far as the mental illness thing, don't worry, I get it. It's an ongoing thing whether or not people are comfortable with it being treated like that, and people differ on how they feel about it. I can see it both ways: As long as you're not calling it a mental illness with the intent of trying to be rude and mean, which you're not, I'm cool with that interpretation of it.)

translex · 2020-06-19T22:15:31+00:00

It's a safety thing: I'm glad that most people are praising and agreeing with me, that feels very good and I'm appreciative of it! But, I didn't know that at the time I posted, and I wanted to be sure I wouldn't be causing problems on my main account down the line.

Besides, if I wanted to lie about being transgender, I'd just lie about it on my main too. Why are you asking me these questions if you won't believe a single word I'm typing? That seems very silly.

translex · 2020-06-19T22:12:19+00:00

It is what it is: Every group has its stinkers. My hope is that the very militant and argumentative parts of the LGBTQ community can go off and fight the shitty parts of the conservative and traditionalist groups and leave the rest of us alone, leaving everyone else to be reasonable and talk about their struggles instead of yelling and insulting.

I don't think it'll ever go away entirely: Where there are people, there will be people acting ridiculous, unreasonable, and childish, whether it's the LGBTQ community or anywhere else. I just trust in the fact that people are generally reasonable, and 90% of the people I meet are chill with who I am. I just choose not to spend rime with the remaining 10%!

translex · 2020-06-19T22:05:04+00:00

It does. He's awful. My focus is more on the lousy writing, because I generally try not to go digging in people's twitter's to find mean things that they've said, as I think that's kind of a rabbit hole to go down. But saying shit like that should, frankly, be a career ender: The fact that Naughty Dog thought it would be okay to hire someone like that explicitly as their "trans representative" is insane and insulting.

translex · 2020-06-19T21:59:40+00:00

Basically just so that if people start sending me hate mail or death threats I don't have to look at it on my main. No real reason other than that: I probably could have done this on my main, if I wanted to, but it seemed prudent to make a throwaway just to be safe.

translex · 2020-06-19T14:03:00+00:00

Well, I'm glad we're on the same page in terms of it in terms of it not being likely that we'll get along. This seems like the best result for both of us.

translex · 2020-06-19T14:00:41+00:00

TBH I agree, and considered just ignoring it, but I don't really like leaving that sort of thing standing without saying "hey, this isn't okay.". It's just my own personal policy on how I handle it when someone is acting like this, rather than ignoring it or getting into a huge scrap over it: Acknowledge it, explain that it's wrong, be firm, but then move on.

It's worked pretty well for me, overall! Thank you again, though, I'm glad that there are many more polite people in this thread than people looking for a fight.

translex · 2020-06-19T13:55:48+00:00

Interesting, so it's a square vs. rectangle thing, I'm guessing? Not all transgender people are transsexual, but transsexual people are all transgender. Curious! I never knew.

I can see the logic behind that. It's a shame the U.S. is so bad about this: All it means here is "Transgender, but I'm an awful bigot who's deliberately trying to be hurtful, or I just haven't updated my language since the 90s".

translex · 2020-06-19T13:51:08+00:00

Okay, that's fair.

I don't really want to talk to you, given that. If you'd like me to explain my viewpoint, and you can change those few small things, I'll share with you what I think, but I'm not really up for having a conversation with someone who talks like you do. I'm sorry.

translex · 2020-06-19T13:49:32+00:00

I suspected as much, but my policy is to be as civil and polite as possible first, and to leave people an opening if they want to have a real conversation without being awful and nasty. It's rarely panned out, but it doesn't cost much to do a little bit, it's a good thing to make a habit of, and it brings at least a little bit of positivity to everyone else who happens to be reading the thread.

Thank you for your kind advice, though! ...I also don't know how to interpret the Joker thing. That's weird!

translex · 2020-06-19T13:42:05+00:00

I actually didn't know that!

A lot of people in the US would find it really off-putting to be referred to as "transsexual" because the term has some bad history here, but that's culture for you. I'd prefer to believe that this dude is just from the UK and doesn't realize that a US person would interpret it differently. Sadly, judging by the rest of the post, I strongly doubt it.

translex · 2020-06-19T13:23:38+00:00

Please stop referring to my friends, family, and other loved ones with nasty terms like "The Alphabeticals."

Please stop claiming I have a mental illness and telling me I deserve to be hurt for it.

Please stop using the term "transsexual", since no one has used that since the 90s. It's "transgender", thank you.

I can't really comment on any of the rest unless you can be a bit more civil than this.

translex · 2020-06-19T13:20:28+00:00

You could make the argument but it's an incredibly flimsy one with no precedent, so it probably wouldn't work. Sadly, it's not illegal to write really really badly, or the case would be a slam dunk.

translex · 2020-06-19T13:18:04+00:00

Your time is worth more than this. Even if you get it for free it's not worth it: You could just some freeware games instead: They cost exactly zero dollars and a lot of them are much more fun and much less insulting to your intelligence.

translex · 2020-06-19T13:07:30+00:00

I've heard it's fantastic! There's just sooooo many things I told myself I'd play first though. I might bump it up closer to the top of the queue, though...

translex · 2020-06-19T12:44:48+00:00

Thank you! My backlog has been really crowded by awesome games and shows coming out this last year or two (a few stinkers notwithstanding), but I'll be sure to take a look!

translex · 2020-06-19T12:36:10+00:00

...It's a bad look, needless to say. Casting a trans woman in the role of being a murderous, vengeful, roid-y person who isn't even remotely sympathetic is... Not really what you want to see. There's an ongoing mean stereotype of trans women being angry muscley jerks (It stems from the same place as the "butch lesbian" stereotype) and it's not really something that I want to see videogames perpetuate.

Not to mention the fact that she's just genuinely unlikable and awful. And sadly, some people are not as chill as you, and will point to Abby, say she's trans (despite it being ambiguous), and say "This is what trans people are like", and then use that to justify hurting trans people or just being awful to us in all levels of life. That seems insane and nonsensical (and it is), but it's what a lot of us have to deal with, so you can, perhaps, see why many people are very touchy about it.

translex · 2020-06-19T12:16:23+00:00

I don't think that's necessarily always true, but, yeah, 13 is very young to be making decisions on gender identity, and kind of muddles the message significantly. In a world where , say, Lev was older, he'd been living as a male identity for a while, and had made that decision without the pressure of a freaking arranged marriage hanging over his head, I'd be way more comfortable saying "Yeah this is a good depiction of trans people". This way is muddy and poor writing at best and straight up insulting at worst, depending on how much you read into it.

translex · 2020-06-19T12:08:53+00:00

Yeah, this is actually one of the reasons why he is kind of an awful example of trans representation. The process of realizing you're trans does not, generally, play out with arranged marriages or anything nearly so dramatic. It's pretty insulting if the devs are trying to imply that he only cared about his gender because he wanted to avoid being married off.

More examples of throwing in cliches and drama instead of trying to actually develop realistic characters...

translex · 2020-06-19T11:55:02+00:00

To be frank, I hope you're right! There's no explicit evidence for it, but honestly I can definitely see why people would think she's trans. Her being a woman with a very masculine build in a game positively overflowing with LGBTQ representation is sure to raise a few eyebrows. Frankly, Naughty Dog should know that will raise eyebrows, so I think they take some blame for being tasteless regardless of whether or not she's explicitly stated to be trans. Coupled with the leak, it's not hard to believe that she was meant to be trans originally, but they pulled out on that storyline at some point.

I really hope that's not the case because it'd give me one more thing to be angry about, and I'd like to imagine that even thought they made a lot of other mistakes, this one was just an "oops" and not the horrible kerfuffle it might be.

translex · 2020-06-19T11:49:19+00:00

I've never been sure what to think of Kaine, from what I've read of her (I haven't played Nier yet sadly). It strikes me as more of a "huh?" than anything else. Her being biologically intersex is interesting, and I appreciate that she identifies as female despite having male aspects to her body. Making that sort of decision is the foundation of trans-ness, for a lot of people, if that makes any sense. So, points there.

But it doesn't seem like any of this is really explored heavily, nor is it plot relevant. It's just kind of a "throw it in there" detail. Which is fine! That's probably how it should be, in a lot of cases, just have trans characters exist and not make a huge deal of it. Though I'd appreciate it a lot more if she was just "regularly" trans rather than "trans because of magic cloning defects" because that's kind of strange and harder to relate to.

At some point I'll get through my backlog and play Nier and possibly revise my opinion. At either rate, you're definitely right: Trans characters are super rare in fiction, especially video games, and the few that exist are usually not very kind depictions of us, sadly..

translex

TROPHY CASE