Current Events > Bridget from Guilty Gear comes out as trans.

(+) Yeah! (+)

CyricZ posted...

The real question is why this dialogue of clear signs of personal character development is the one YOU choose to say doesn't count.

You're making shit up now, I clearly said earlier they're genderfluid or whatever. Identifying as a girl sometimes is part of that so so you're strawmanning me.

Bottom line: Bridget isn't yours, accept it and find your representation elsewhere. Might I suggest the fine curated collection of itch.io?

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

You're making shit up now, I clearly said earlier they're genderfluid or whatever. Identifying as a girl sometimes is part of that so so you're strawmanning me.

You don't even seem to know what you're claiming she is so why the heck should I consider your opinion as the more valid one?

Bottom line: Bridget isn't yours, accept it and find your representation elsewhere. Might I suggest the fine curated collection of itch.io?

See, it really seems less about what she is and more about what you can deny others see her as.

Toxic, man.

CyricZ posted...

Yes. Embarrassment, resignation. You can easily hear it all. None of that is present when she IDs as a girl. Take a hint, buddy.

Yeah here's the thing...you can't explain why the endings with them self-referring as a boy even exist, then. If the intended message is "she's definitely a trans girl bro" then why include 2+ endings to a different effect? Are they trying to make it clear they're a girl, or are they trying to make the character's identity open to interpretation? Think carefully on this one, now.

CyricZ posted...

You don't even seem to know what you're claiming she is so why the heck should I consider your opinion as the more valid one?

Your distaste for the way I phrase things is a thin excuse to not engage with the point.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/8/8/AAYVThAADj5w.jpg

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

Yeah here's the thing...you can't explain why the endings with them self-referring as a boy even exist, then. If the intended message is "she's definitely a trans girl bro" then why include 2+ endings to a different effect? Are they trying to make it clear they're a girl, or are they trying to make the character's identity open to interpretation? Think carefully on this one, now.

I've thought carefully. Every argument you've made thus far boils down to "But what if she isn't" with nothing conclusive in any of the endings that she isn't.

I don't even know why you're demanding I explain the scenes where she clearly resignedly says "I'm a boy", and you're assuming the paths where she doesn't outright say she's a girl out loud must mean that she still ID's as a boy.

It's happened man. The genie doesn't go back in the bottle.

is guilty gear good for a newcomer to fighting games

Watching through Bridget stories from XX/AC+R, there isn't as much straight from her personal stories as I remembered offhand, though also no doubts about her gender being expressed; very few people actually refer to Bridget as a her. Closest example I'm seeing offhand is from her first scene is XX: I-No calls her a girl, and she replies with "I'm not a lady. I'm a bounty hunter." I do wonder if the original JP had her at least hinting at being a guy, given that I-No immediately starts referring to her as a boy, but I don't speak JP at all so I can't do more than speculate there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98u0zcTRDCI

Then there's... uh, her ending with Johnny. Which is kinda oof as a whole, but does have her responding to Johnny asking if she's a guy with "Sure am." Also being offput by Johnny referring to her as "My lady", but that's probably less for the gender stuff and more for the flirting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqQiWbgZYqA

Her stories in AC+ don't even touch on her being a guy that looks like a girl; even characters that should probably think she's a girl at first go straight to calling her a guy. So zero chance or need for her to state her gender there.

I could also start going through every other character's story modes from XX/AC+R for Bridget bits but uh... that's a lot of effort.

Also I hope I'm making the right call here in calling her by her current gender even when referring to her past self <<

Kloe_Rinz posted...

is guilty gear good for a newcomer to fighting games

As much as I personally dislike Strive, it's a great one to start with.

FaultyCircuitry posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/8/8/AAYVThAADj5w.jpg

Who's on the left?
<_<
>_>

Kloe_Rinz posted...

is guilty gear good for a newcomer to fighting games

Guilty Gear is pretty technical compared to other fighting games but a beginner can probably play some of the easier characters without issue. Stay away from people like Jack-O

MedeaLysistrata posted...

Who's on the left?
<_<
>_>

Mai Natsume from BlazBlue. Was a guy, magically got turned into a girl by a grimoire.

Robot2600 posted...

yes, you see a man walking down the street wearing a dress and you think "ah there is someone with no signs of gender uncertainty at all"

Rebel, is this you?

CyricZ posted...

I've thought carefully. Every argument you've made thus far boils down to "But what if she isn't"

Uh, no. My argument is that it's left to player interpretation.

CyricZ posted...

she clearly resignedly says "I'm a boy"

This isn't the point you think it is. Google "resign synonyms", one of them is literally "come to terms with", lol.

DeathVelvien posted...

Mai Natsume from BlazBlue. Was a guy, magically got turned into a girl by a grimoire.

She served no purpose in the game at all iirc. Then again, everyone introduced after CS was shoved into the story for fetish reasons, or to fill in a GG proxy.

Mai was absolutely used as fetish fuel too. It is so weird how Bb began as a really high concept time-loop story with some light anime tropes, to a gross pedo-joke and incest-gag ridden mess. Not only that, but the characters who werent used as fetish-bait were useless to the plot, like Bullet. Or they were from some dumb visual novel tie-in. And still served no point.

BB started as one of the coolest stories, and quickly turned into one of the very worst works of fiction Ive ever seen in my life.

Kloe_Rinz posted...

is guilty gear good for a newcomer to fighting games

Guilty Gear, at least prior games, have been pretty difficult to get a handle on. But the style of the games are impeccable and the music is consistently fantastic - especially the Accent Core OST - so it makes you want to keep playing.

I would absolutely recommend Guilty Gear for a relative newcomer. Not because it's particularly easy or user friendly, but because it's really fucking fun and cool. If you're concerned about price, grab Accent Core +R the next time it goes on sale - it'll be cheap, and it'll be stylish as fuck.

_____Cait posted...

She served no purpose in the game at all iirc. Then again, everyone introduced after CS was shoved into the story for fetish reasons, or to fill in a GG proxy.

Mai was absolutely used as fetish fuel too. It is so weird how Bb began as a really high concept time-loop story with some light anime tropes, to a gross pedo-joke and incest-gag ridden mess. Not only that, but the characters who werent used as fetish-bait were useless to the plot, like Bullet. Or they were from some dumb visual novel tie-in. And still served no point.

BB started as one of the coolest stories, and quickly turned into one of the very worst works of fiction Ive ever seen in my life.

That being said, I feel like BlazBlue was basically the contemporary shonen anime counterpart to Guilty Gear's 90's hot-blooded shonen stylings. We went from classic rock references and like immortality and the destruction of an entire country in the backstory, to a main character named fucking Ragna the Bloodedge.

It probably had merits of its own, but BB aways felt like it was filling a void. Guilty Gear is the original and the best, and BlazBlue - for all its merits - is second best.

Kloe_Rinz posted...

is guilty gear good for a newcomer to fighting games

the old ones, nah. xrd/2nd rev/strive? yeah.

does strive ever go on sale or should i just get it full price?

DeathVelvien posted...

I-No calls her a girl, and she replies with "I'm not a lady. I'm a bounty hunter." I do wonder if the original JP had her at least hinting at being a guy, given that I-No immediately starts referring to her as a boy, but I don't speak JP at all so I can't do more than speculate there.

My JP is a little rusty, but my guess is that it's because in that line Bridget refers to herself with "boku", which is a self-identifying pronoun very commonly used by young men. I-No was probably expecting her to use "watashi", which is the generic sefl-identifying pronoun.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/1/AABHfBAADj93.jpg

https://twitter.com/Oakblu/status/1558193401903960064
https://twitter.com/Nicto_png/status/1558466586188677122/photo/1

Kloe_Rinz posted...

does strive ever go on sale or should i just get it full price?

The base price of the game actually went down like a week or so ago. Other than that it goes on sale pretty often.

Even if you buy it today or a month from now, you'll still be paying less than most of those who bought it at launch.

Robot2600 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/1/AABHfBAADj93.jpg

What the fuck is this even attacking? It's so off-the-wall I can't even tell if it's making fun of the right or the left

Giblet_Enjoyer posted...

What the fuck is this even attacking? It's so off-the-wall I can't even tell if it's making fun of the right or the left

It's attacking people who complain about forced diversity, doesn't have to be a left or right thing

I guess another layer of the joke is doctor chose the gender and that makes the parent uncomf

MedeaLysistrata posted...

It's attacking people who complain about forced diversity, doesn't have to be a left or right thing

I guess another layer of the joke is doctor chose the gender and that makes the parent uncomf

Don't trans people accept that biological sex is a thing and that's what's assigned at birth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBdTA6_T6zc

reb0rn posted...

"Feels weird especially since her story was that, from birth the female identity was forced on her by her parents, like those creepy TikTok moms and dads who try to make their 4 year olds come out as transgender. Except for Bridget it was from birth.

Testament's was fine because it made sense. Bridget's head on collides with everything established thus far and makes it seem like she's the way she is because of social conditioning/brainwashing by her parents.
It was to save her life, but it's still brainwashing rather than a natural acceptance, hence why Bridget always referred to themselves as a boy: he wanted to return home and break the superstition from his village that forced his parents to make him look, act, and dress like a girl his whole life."

Overall, the revelation has some messy implications and it just feels like a somewhat clumsy afterthought overall. And again, I have my suspicions on the motive based on the timing. But none of this means I have an inherent problem with the existence of a trans character in the series. It's okay to have standards/preferences for the implementation of any idea.

except its not fucking brainwashing for ffs sake. how do people not get that? bridget was wholly aware of her situation. her parents didnt try to trick or brainwash her into being a girl, they straight up tell her that she was the younger of a set of male twins and she must "pretend" to be a girl when in the village. you wouldnt tell someone you were trying to brainwash into being a girl that they were born a guy. her parents felt super guilty about what they had to do and hella compensated by giving her the best childhood they could buy given the circumstances. bridget always knew what her situation was.

DeathVelvien posted...

Yes, she was. The sudden lack of confidence is a significant curveball with the character. And again, I'm not saying it's bad at all for to have had this development; it's just the way it's been handled feels out of nowhere.

Also the fact that her identifying as a girl is only in the bad ending feels really =X

i would argue that bridget's lack of confidence is not a significant curveball. the reason why she always insisted she was a guy in previous installments is because the superstition would require a set of male twins. she cant break the superstition as a girl, so she needs everyone to recognize her as a guy in order to break the superstition. she then proceeds to prove the superstition wrong and it goes away, meaning she no longer has to pretend to be a girl. no longer bound by the village, superstition, and her parents, she leaves and makes a living as a successful bounty hunter. we see her six years later not just crossdressing, but still presenting as a girl. born a guy, forced to present as a girl, then forced to present as a guy. in my imo, there are only three possible ways her story could have progressed in strive: she comes out as trans, she comes back as old bridget and goes hey i just like crossdressing and the game keeps making gay jokes with them, or they come back as male presenting looking like leo or something. anything other than that would be a curveball. what daisuke decided to go with is not a curveball.

as for the ending situation: fighting games are fucking hard. strive was meant to bring in a new generation of fighting game players, many of which havent played one before. bridget coming out is probs something that arcsys wants people to see, so instead of locking it behind the extreme route that not many people will be able to beat, they had it happen in the normal route to maximize the amount of people seeing it and assumed people would understand the extremely heavy subtext in the other routes after seeing the normal ending.

also, its pretty funny how people only started using the term "bad end" for the normal endings after the voicelines got datamined

DeathVelvien posted...

Yeah actually no

https://international.ucla.edu/institute/article/110450

APA: Can you explain the creation of the cross dressing nun character Bridget in Guilty Gear XX?

Ishiwatari: While I was creating the characters in Guilty Gear, I had a spot for a cute character. I thought it would be too boring if the character was just cute, so I thought it would be interesting to make the character a guy.

https://www.famitsu.com/news/202110/28237580.html

Q: What has Bridget been up to? Are they still a bounty hunter?

Ishiwatari: Bridget is now a well known bounty hunter and has managed to greatly contribute to his home village and his parents, and is now at a stage where he's "trying to understand his true self"

Q

MwarriorHiei posted...

i would argue that bridget's lack of confidence is not a significant curveball. the reason why she always insisted she was a guy in previous installments is because the superstition would require a set of male twins. she cant break the superstition as a girl, so she needs everyone to recognize her as a guy in order to break the superstition. she then proceeds to prove the superstition wrong and it goes away, meaning she no longer has to pretend to be a girl. no longer bound by the village, superstition, and her parents, she leaves and makes a living as a successful bounty hunter. we see her six years later not just crossdressing, but still presenting as a girl. born a guy, forced to present as a girl, then forced to present as a guy. in my imo, there are only three possible ways her story could have progressed in strive: she comes out as trans, she comes back as old bridget and goes hey i just like crossdressing and the game keeps making gay jokes with them, or they come back as male presenting looking like leo or something. anything other than that would be a curveball. what daisuke decided to go with is not a curveball.

Bridget being trans isn't the curveball; it's the change in attitude towards her gender. While it's 100% a believable outcome for her, narratively it feels like a piece is missing. Put another way: she's clear had some development since XX/AC+ that we're not privy to, and can only take educated guesses/assumptions at. That's the source of my issues here.

As for the endings: I'm mostly lamenting that they don't have it in both endings at this point. Don't give transphobes an out to deny her being a girl. I also already got corrected on the "bad ending" stuff here; last I'd seen Strive didn't even have arcade endings, and it wasn't until Bridget's story stuff was coming out that I was even aware that they had apparently been added. So I kinda just ended up jumping on the "bad ending" train. My bad, no pun intended.

MwarriorHiei posted...

https://www.famitsu.com/news/202110/28237580.html

I'm not sure what this has to do with that discussion? It's a Strive-era interview from last year (which does actually foreshadow their plans for Bridget a bit here), whereas the other guy was saying the intent for Bridget was to always be trans, something that isn't supported anywhere and is in fact contradicted by interviews like the one I posted.

MwarriorHiei posted...

and if you wanna get really immature, the first dislikes on bridget's strive profile are sea cucumbers and shiitake mushrooms lmao

...Yep that's Guilty Gear alright lol

DeathVelvien posted...

Bridget being trans isn't the curveball; it's the change in attitude towards her gender. While it's 100% a believable outcome for her, narratively it feels like a piece is missing. Put another way: she's clear had some development since XX/AC+ that we're not privy to, and can only take educated guesses/assumptions at. That's the source of my issues here.

i disagree, but i do understand its a matter of interpretation. the way i see it, everything pre-strive has to be viewed with the superstition as context. she was forced to act like a girl because she would be killed if she didnt, then she was forced to act like a guy because it was necessary to disprove the superstition. once she was no longer tied down by her village, she went on a journey of self-discovery since proving her "manliness" and her success was not making her happy. pre-strive, presenting as either a guy or a girl was forced on her by the village via the superstition; it was never her choice. her correcting everyone in X2 was because she needed everyone to accept she was a guy in order to prove the superstition wrong.

Why the hell are people still debating this? She's trans and if you have an issue, you lost and need to get over it.

I always knew Bridget was that way since X2, why is everyone freaking out about it? Isn't Venom like bisexual as well?

Unknown480 posted...

I always knew Bridget was that way since X2, why is everyone freaking out about it? Isn't Venom like bisexual as well?

b-but the pandering! my rights!

https://twitter.com/ZugSkeletorc/status/1560121333937315841