Transgender Representation In Gaming: A Brief History

Umm.. Magypsies isn't a romanian slur but a romani slur. As a 1/4 Romani, the term Gypsy is used to refer to Romani who originate from Northern India, exiled to the Balkans, then travelled through Eastern Europe finally into Western Europe, usually due to various slavery laws, Eugenic attempts and kill-on-sight laws. While Romania does have a substantial Romani population in comparison to other locales, Romani is not the same as Romanian...

We actually get to see the lion character from Undertale fully transitioned in Deltarune! She works as a waitress wearing an apron with the same colour scheme as her original outfit. edit: spelling

Nah, ladiva is a great character, and even though the beard is prominent, she as a character is fantastic and is never seen as less for being "masculine" and she herself is proud of who she is

Mettaton's story is heavily trans-coded. Ghosts in Unterdale have no gender, but when they attach themselves to a physical form making it their body, they adopt a gender identity, in Mew Mew's case it was female, and in Mettaton's case it was male.

It's worth noting that in Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, Beldam is seen as an almost exclusively antagonistic force that we are *not* rooting for; and Vivian's journey's more or less a raging middle finger to Beldam's harassment and bullying. Also worth noting that only the English and German versions actually censored her trans status; as every other localized version features Vivian as trans or otherwise nonconforming (with Italy outright having Vivian state that she's a proud trans woman).

I love Vivian. Her family doesn't accept her but mario and friends come along and help her. I always loved her.

Yeah I'm pretty sure mettaton is basically an allegory for being trans. If you enter his home back when he was a ghost you can look at his diaries and well.. imma just quote the section I wanna highlight: "Sketches of a body that she wants to create for me...a form beyond my wildest fantasies. In a form like that, I could finally feel like... "myself."

as a trans man i do feel a bit sad that im under-represented in almost everything. also if mettaton was a trans man thatd be sick af

I personnally tend to consider mettaton to be more of a drag artist (an extravagant personality that transform into a magnificent and flamboyant creature that plays with traditionnal gender attributes to create their esthetic). But because it is implied that he was searching a body different from his past appearance (wich is never shown into the game) to truly feel like himself, i guess he could be a representation for more "feminine" and flamboyant trans men or trans masc people and its possible that he does drag on top of that (explaining his more androgynous appearance). It could explain why despite doing a more traditionally "feminine " type of drag, he still is referred with he/him pronouns when he's in drag because he's more comfortable with those. I mean, obviously, that 's just my interpretation of the character, it might not be true.

I know you skipped over Poison, who is both quite notorious as a trans character, but also has a muddy history regarding her representation. Also, while I've never played Granblue, from everything I've heard about it Ladiva is handled well. Yes, she's stereotypically masculine in the way her body looks and her facial hair, but that is shown as a personal decision to stay with said aspects, because she doesn't believe it makes her any less of a woman (and it obviously doesn't--women come in all shapes, sizes, and presentations).

I, as someone who is transmasc, identify so much with Damien and Mettaton, I've always liked "feminine" things, but I stopped being feminine at some point so other people could see me more as a man, but after some time, I could finally feel like myself even if I like presenting as a feminine person, and this two characters actually helped me a lot with it, especially Damien

It's a shame the English version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door scrubbed all reference to Vivian being trans. Before I found out, I thought it was just your standard "Cinderella and wicked stepsisters" story. She's one of the best party members in the game! Absolutely the best to fight the final boss with.

I like this video but I think it is important to note that the queen from Mighty Jill Off was not designed around being trans! She was actually retconned to be trans when i jokingly asked if she had a dong when contacting the developer about the possibility of a rerelease (which happened) I believe LGBT representation is great but only when it is deliberate, otherwise we glorify characters that are LGBT but have no traits of a LGBT person. This also kinda applies to Frisk (not Kris i think their identity has a very good chance to become a plot point later on in Deltarune)

Damien from Dream Daddy has really helped me feel comfortable with my own identity as a trans man who tends to be a little more feminine and has a stronger attraction to men. It’s nice to see the complexity of gender being recognized and that trans men are allowed to be feminine as well.

I would like to recommend Secret Little Haven! While not many games had trans characters in 1999, Secret Little Haven is about actually being a trans teen on the internet in 1999. As someone who was also a trans teen on the internet in 1999, I found it very true to life 😊

amazing video!! really happy this popped up on my recommended, it was a great watch. a character i noticed that got left out however, is my favorite trans character, arashi narukami from ‘ensemble stars!!’. there was this whole story about her being trans and how people treat her in the way she doesn’t want to be treated, but it was also a really positive story about accepting yourself. quote from the story: tetora: -…i may not completely get it, but you’re a woman on the inside, right? and then i come in and start praising you for being ‘manly’ like an idiot… i’m so sorry, narukami. please forgive me. arashi: you’re still just a kid… still just a boy. i’m honestly envious… no matter how much i want it, and no matter how much i try… i could never become the beautiful woman i dream to be. but even if that’s true… i won’t let it depress me. i won’t whine about it anymore. i love myself most, no matter who i am. anyone who can love themselves like that is charming, no matter their gender… don’t you think so? the entire story is just really touching and it was a major waking up call to me. the game also has respected her gender identity beyond this point which was really thrilling! arashi is a great trans character and i love her so much

I'm not sure if the characters are what caused Mother 3 to not be released outside of Japan, but from what I recall it's just a whole mass of copyright issues the game would have dealt with in the west, compared to Japan which from what I've read seems to be a bit looser about that. I see no problem how they couldn't just change the name of the characters, and potentially alter some other dialogue to avoid discrepancies in the plot, to make sure the name doesn't sound so similar to a slur. It might be one of the reasons, but not the main reason on why it wasn't localised yet.

Wanted to throw in one of my faves: From the survival horror game Fear & Hunger 2: Termina, there's Marina, the occultist, who (with some dark magic flavor) is canonically transgender. Fair warning tho, the game contains quite a bit of body horror, themes of sexual assault and general depressing stuff, but Marina herself doesn't really suffer any transphobia so no big danger of that specific trigger. (She gets misgendered once, by her father, but literal moments later he calls her a girl, so nothing too bad) In the first game there's also an alchemist called Nosramus, who is left very ambiguous, but a lot of the community considers them non-binary. They seem to embody the alchemical concept of the Rebis, a body that is both man and woman (roughly, i'm no alchemist), and give off the vibe of being enlightened past mortal human concepts such as gender. Both of the games are really disturbing, but I like that neither of those characters deal with anything extra disturbing for their identities, just the same amount of horror that the other characters also endure

Italy made Vivian even more trans by giving her a scene where she affirms her gender in the face of the transphobia from her sisters, fun fact. As far as Krem goes, he's part of an unfortunate trend in game dev. Said trend consists of developers doing transmisogyny in an earlier game, and then putting a trans man as an "apology" in the sequel to it to "make up" for what they did, except they don't address the transmisogyny they perpetuated. In Dragon Age's case you can fuck trans woman sex workers that have "Female(?)" in their names. For Ladiva, I am not as deeply familiar with Granblue Fantasy but I can tell you she comes from a race of cow people and her goatee exists for the Japanese trans people that cannot transition in the way the west has established for whatever reason, she's beloved by the community and affirmed by the devs, she's there for the tall beefy trans girls that will not pass like the short skinny redditor catgirls will, she looks that way explicitly to go "Yes, I'm still a woman, so what?". Also Bridget should have been mentioned earlier in the timeline, her first Guilty Gear game is from 2002, it's just that it took until 2022 for her to properly come out. And SLARPG shout out! Hell yes! To summarise, good vid, you didn't do quite enough research on some of your examples but from me that's pot calling the kettle black, definitely going to watch more of your videos.

To comment on Mettaton. Although not directly stated, it's heavily implied due to the journals found in Mettaton's house, next to Napstablook's. "Blooky asked me if I was going to try to become corporeal, too. They sounded so... resigned... come on, Blooky. You know I'd never leave you behind. And besides... I'd never find the kind of body I'm looking for, anyway." Another line from the diaries hits this home. "In a form like that, I could finally feel like... "myself."" ---- I'd also like to say that I think Vivian is actually an excellent representation of a transwoman, She learns to stand up for herself against her family, with her found family in Mario & co. Not to mention that the other two are obvious villains. There's transphobia to be certain, but it's shed in a "transphobia is a bad thing" light.