At the suggestion of Mindwipe i thought i'd make a thread so others can bring up more of the conversation from this post here hypnohub.net/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=150331

I'm a little uncomfortable weighing in like this since I prefer to lurk...

To start, I don't think this new development from Strive regarding Bridget is anywhere near as clear-cut as anyone is saying it is on either side. Some anons here and on /d/ have rightfully said that "I'm a girl" is a joke saying in otokonoko (trap) culture... but also even if Bridget is trans, this portrayal of a trans person is incredibly transphobic as it perpetuates groomer stereotypes and cycles of abuse that make it hard to celebrate this. Add onto that the fact that the ending where Bridget makes a (potentially) decisive statement being the one that happens if you lose fights, rather than a flawless arcade win, has me confused. Wouldn't you want to reward the player with a revelation like that for playing as skillfully as possible?

That said, I think this conversation doesn't really have any place on an image booru. I come here to appreciate a niche kink, find new images, and share ones I've found. If a user with no familiarity with Guilty Gear or Bridget came along and saw us tagging what to them looks like a femboy as a girl, they would think this place is useless for image search purposes. Tag what you see might step on toes, but it is also the best system, and has stood the test of time.

Of relevant note, there was previously a transgender_(identity) tag on the hub but it was removed from all images by a user. The forum post that discusses this is forum #106029.

I think if this conversation was really going to be about the semantics of tagging Bridget and similar characters, that's probably the conversation that should be continued (though I can see why you would want to name Bridget in the thread).

However, despite the mods best efforts and intentions, I'm pretty sure that's not what the conversation is going to end up being about.

That's what so confusing about this. If you want to argue that Bridget is an an example/representation of transgenderism, then you pretty much picked the worst possible character regarding what you're supposed to stand for.

Historically, Bridget was just a trap, a boy that look like a girl.
If it has changed at some point, maybe there should just be different tags depending on which version it is (like the saber-faced family)

I'm neutral about how people would perceive Bridget, but there's something I'm a bit conflicted about the endings.

Putting myself in the shoes of a game developer i guess if I would like to declare a character gender change as a surprise, (in this case declaring Bridget as trans in an ending) then I would prefer to save that surprise as a reward for the flawless ending so the best players can see what I wanted to do with the character and let the ending that a regular player get (non perfect ending) as the ambiguous one, so I set a mistery and encouraging players to get the flawless ending in order to know what the character will decide.

The way that's structured (Bridget saying "I'm a girl" on the ending the major part of users will reach and let an ambiguous free to interpretation ending for the best players) confuse me.

So... if Bridget is really trans or that was just an otokonoko behavior is still a mistery for me.

in backstory, Bridget was forced to live as a girl due to village superstitions. He takes up bounty hunting to rebel against this and though this superstition has faded by the time Strive's arc comes around, Bridget has never made a definitive statement to his parents of village from what I can tell.

from what people tell me, Bridget turned into a girl in one of the endings. I don't know if its by magic or not but does she really turn into a girl or is he just saying it.

There's no magic or anything like that, Bridget's body doesn't change. The main debate is more focused if Bridget declare to be a girl as a transgender or just a otokonoko joke (a special kind of japanese crossdresser).

You can see all the endings here:
youtu.be/9W5ezv_xxOk?t=1

Honestly I don't know... at this point I prefer to let it free to interpretation depending of the person, so everyone could be happy.

It actually isn't very strange when you think about what your performance playing the game means. If you don't perform well, that means Bridget has been struggling to succeed in these fights. Thus, Bridget is not confident enough to affirm their identity and accepts being a girl, and if you play perfectly they affirm that they want to be true to themselves even if it's scary. Since the "scary" option is to affirm their identity as a boy in spite of their local town's superstition, it implies that being a boy is what they want still.

We will only know the "definitive" end when the next game in the series touches upon this topic. Arcade mode dialogs serve more to show what is troubling that character during the battles, with the different interactions giving different perspectives. If you guys want to believe only the flawless endings are canon then most characters in the game spent turns beating up the powered up final boss.

That's why the GG community overall accepts Bridget is trans or is at least at a transition point, leaning towards a girl. Bad representation? Yeah, but her backstory was pretty shitty to begin with, used to justify having a cute boy with cute clothes.

That is both a severe misrepresentation of the community, and a shallow appeal to popularity.



And there it is. "It always sucked, so why do you care if we change it?" You hate Bridget; you hate something that appeals to a foreign culture, and want to appropriate it for yourself. It's cultural colonization.

If the creators were fine with the backstory they could just have kept the same style and the same jokes from past games. They made many allegories in this game for Bridget about coming out, being your true self and stuff.

Also, Bridget can be an otokonoko there and trans here because our cultures view gender in different ways. Not sure where you're going with this argument tbh

Okej, so I don't really know how this forum/comment thingy works, first time trying it. I don't really want to get into the argument about whether Bridget is a femboy or a transgirl, but I spent like two hours trying to translate the korean text of the image that prompted this discussion (since as far as I know it's not translated yet, and I wanted to make sure it didn't say something transphobic or something), and wanted to share what I came up with with others so that someone who knew how to could stick the translation on the image. My translation isn't very good since I basically just transcribed the korean letters into google translate, but it's better than nothing (if someone has a better translation, please use that instead):


"Hey Bridget, who are you?"

"Yes, I am Onahole Bridget, who has been given the command to wait for the weight to be borrowed by the owner at any time."

"Pu ha ha! To be hypnotized by the next yo-yo, there is no other gag!"