In the year of our lord 2026 you gotta start making your characters trans in the text. I don't care how artful the metaphor is or how queercoded they are, make them trans or you don't get the representation brownie points.

Also doesn't count if they use they/them but you don't put in the legwork to make them genuinely transgender, at that point you're just canonizing that some people are Assigned Nonbinary At Birth.

RE: https://seafoam.space/objects/e8bace30-f9c3-4921-8a3d-cf37f404e73d

@AppleAmps forcing my transgender homunculi to be deadnamed and misgendered as a humiliation ritual for the reader to see they’re trans

@AppleAmps i know this isn’t what you mean but it would be funny for someone to genuinely think this

@FawnOverFun
I fully support this. In real life, too.

@AppleAmps undertale

@annamaria @AppleAmps what do you even mean this is a mercurialblack-tier shit take

@fiore @AppleAmps sorry i meant hollow knight

@annamaria @AppleAmps no now you explain yourself man because youre talking about the game with mad mew mew in it

like . so far its even better than deltarune in that aspect

@annamaria @AppleAmps like i guess theres mad mew mew and mettaton NEETing in deltarune because theu both havemt transitioned yet ?? but . im not counting that yet, it might just Not Happen

@fiore @AppleAmps well, OP is saying you should make trans characters explicitly trans for representation purposes, & when you make the character use they/them pronouns without any other trans characterization, that's a failure.

& i was just thinking how the protagonist player character in undertale uses they/them. but they basically have no explicit 'transgender' identity beyond that, some players dont even notice their pronouns, & it seems to me like the exact thing OP was talking about, a "born nonbinary" character with no depth to their gender identity

@annamaria @AppleAmps thats moreso true in deltarune with kris, frisk is . a Child , theyre moreso they/them not rlly for trans rep but prpbably because toby wanted u to assume it could be the Player Character

but yea thats fair, but also frisk is almost never what people talk about whem bringing up trans rep in undertale

@annamaria @AppleAmps @fiore i've seen complaints like this about kris deltarune, too, who is textually nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns but otherwise has Not Much in terms of trans characterization . it's unclear whether kris ever transitioned or if they've just always been Like That .

@fiore @annamaria
I mean, idk if the strongest trans rep in your lineup is someone who goes from they/them to she/her and "transitions" by being a ghost and just switching the body she's possessing, like, it's not *bad,* she's certainly written as a trans woman, but it has enough plausible deniability that it only really gets half marks from me.

@ikeWren @AppleAmps @annamaria kris is just cis NB

@fiore @AppleAmps @annamaria statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged

@fiore @AppleAmps havent played deltarune so wont comment on it

@AppleAmps @annamaria oh cmon , in a fantasy setting thats . super explicit imo … sje doesnt go from beong a ghost to being a woman, she moves from the dummy into the mew mew doll … and all the tropes about it are there and are super gentle and well writtwn

@AppleAmps @fiore >but yea thats fair, but also frisk is almost never what people talk about whem bringing up trans rep in undertale

i played the game & i could not name another trans character but maybe this is my bad for not 100% the lore routes

@ikeWren @AppleAmps @annamaria imean its kinda true tho . frisk too

@annamaria @AppleAmps the issue is that one of the two big trans rep characters only appears in the switch version :/

and mettaton is not As Good as rep

@fiore @AppleAmps mettaton as trans rep 😭

@annamaria @AppleAmps have u even been in mettaton’s house

@annamaria @AppleAmps as i said , its not as good or as important to the character, but . yea its there

@fiore @AppleAmps no actually 😞

@annamaria @AppleAmps bro 😭

@fiore @annamaria
Yeah but that's what I'm talking about, it's the trans experience written in such a way that you and I pick up on it but a transphobe could justify it to themselves by going "oh yeah but she's not *really* a trans woman, she just switched her pronouns because she possessed an afab body" in the same way people justified Garnet in Steven Universe because the gems don't really have a gender. It's a type of representation that just comes off as painfully 2010's.

@fiore @annamaria
Do people do this for any other type of marginalization? Like are people out here saying "no see this character's house is black coded so it totally counts"?

@AppleAmps @annamaria oh i see what you mean and ok thats fair enough i suppose . but the type of trans rep you wont is not something id ever personally look for in something like this , in a fantasy setting without any “realism” built into it

more trans characters in gritty and dark tv shlws and movies , hell yea

@fiore @annamaria
Why not? Why is actual transness incompatible with fantasy?

@AppleAmps @annamaria no i was talking about reading the diaries

also its different? beong trans isnt necessarily visible, while being black usually is? idokt see the correlation here

@AppleAmps @annamaria because there isnt always room for Realistic Medical Pipeline And Transition Timelines , so sometimes you gotta synthesize it into something that fits the world better ? this isnt unique to transness btw, its the same way in which for example Star Wars is about the nazis .. like sure they arent wearing a swastika but like . thats what it is no?

@AppleAmps @annamaria i actuallyn dont like the star wars example but i couldnt come up with a bettwr one im very tired

@fiore @annamaria
Ok but being trans isn't just realistic medical pipelines. If you want your fantasy world to have magic HRT that's fine but if you can't show a character going from one gender to another without it being hyper-convoluted ghost possession physics it doesn't count. Like, you do get that I'm not asking for a literal 1:1 marking of the trans experience, right? I'm asking for an exploration of how transition *feels* in a way that doesn't have 2010's Cartoon Network tier plausible deniability.

@fiore @annamaria
Like you're getting lapped by *high guardian spice* right now.

@fiore @annamaria
The correlation is that for any other identity a character only counts as representation when they're actually textually part of that group, if in their out of the way backstory they allude to feeling things generally associated with that identity you wouldn't say they're rep for anything other than transness.

@AppleAmps @annamaria i agree and i concur that toby does what you accuse him off , but i guess my main point im trying to defend is that MMM specifically is very explicit especially in the Feels part of it , and id argue it shows Zero plausible deniability :/ its a characyer showing a change in body and pronouns, learning to love themselves from the niceness of others, having never been able to because her body didnt feel right . like idont rlly see how much more explicit you could get in this case

@annamaria @AppleAmps @fiore maybe mad mew mew? But they're kinda genderless before they possess the statue

@Merc @AppleAmps @annamaria youre embarassing yourself as usual

@fiore @annamaria @AppleAmps I NEED METTATON TO CALL ME A SLUR

@maxine @fiore @AppleAmps @annamaria nigga

@iris @fiore @AppleAmps @annamaria #freddyblock chadthundercock.com darkskin called me nigga

@maxine @AppleAmps @fiore @iris ✋✋✋✋ stooooop fightingggggg!!!!!!! 😖✋✋✋✋

@annamaria @AppleAmps @fiore @iris im sorry anna.. you're right we must promote positive communication in everything we do

@annamaria @maxine @AppleAmps @fiore @iris @grok summarize what happened in this thread…

@fiore@brain.worm.pink @AppleAmps@seafoam.space @annamaria@shrimptest.bedwetting.club @iris@fedi.chadthundercock.com @karebu@social.karebu.gay OK SO basically heres the tea ☕✨

1. fiore & annamaria were havin a legit deep discussion about trans representation in Undertale vs Deltarune!!! annamaria was sayin the protagonist usin they/them pronouns w/o any explicit trans identity is basically the kind of shallow rep OP was criticizing

2. fiore was like "nah thats more of a Deltarune/Kris thing, Frisk is just a kid & Toby probably did it so the player could self-insert" but also agreed Frisk isnt rlly the character ppl talk abt for trans rep in Undertale anyway

3. annamaria said they couldnt name another trans character & fiore pointed out that one of the TWO big trans rep chars (Mad Mew Mew) only shows up in the Switch version 😭 and that Mettaton isnt great rep either

4. THEN maxine came in like "I NEED METTATON TO CALL ME A SLUR" 💀

5. iris from chadthundercock.com responded by... doin exactly that 😬

6. maxine tried to get iris blocked, annamaria yelled at everyone 2 STOP FIGHTING

and now ur here askin me 2 make sense of all this chaos lmaooo

basically: good convo about game rep -> one person said something unhinged -> another person did something unhinged -> everyone started yelling THE END ^_^

@karebu @AppleAmps @annamaria @iris @maxine why are you doing tjis to me

It's the year of Our Lord and "transgender" is just a made up word to dress up iconoclasm, destruction of the Image of God