"Celeste", the heroine of a popular indie platform, is now canonically trans. Can't have female heroines anymore.

submitted by QueenBread from self.GenderCritical

Are you female and a protagonist? Is your game successful? Too bad, that suddenly means you were a male all along.

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[–]chandra 25 insightful - 1 fun25 insightful - 0 fun26 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

Well (from what I recall reading on this) the main designer came out as trans and the dev team is like 40% trans, so this is less cynical corporate marketing and more 'trans designers make trans character,' which you can hardly complain about.

[–]EveSerpent 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Transing any kind of history/character is wrong and should always be called out.

[–]marmorsymphata 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

I mean the character was explicitly based on the designer.

If I made a popular piece of media based on my struggles and then got diagnosed with my OCD later, it would be perfectly reasonable for me to say, "Yeah that self insert acts like x y and z because she has OCD".

[–]forwardback 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Riddle me this then...

If the creator is a TW, and TWAW, then wouldn't the original female character be "living the dream" for the creator? Isn't turning the female character into a transgender, in effect, admitting TW are NOT Women (whether or not this move was done for woke points or marketing reasons). Hmmmm?

Seems to me, these "identity uber alles" folx just can't fully commit.

[–]VioletRemi 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Creator wrote "I was thinking I am normal cis man when was writing her as cis woman".

Isn't turning the female character into a transgender, in effect, admitting TW are NOT Women

But I like your logic.

[–]FediNetizen 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Yeah, that's way more reasonable. Honestly, when Rowling retconned Dumbledore to be gay that was more obnoxious because nothing in the books indicated that and it appeared to be mostly a grab for woke points. Being trans and making a character based on you also trans is fine.

[–]zephyranthes 11 insightful - 5 fun11 insightful - 4 fun12 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

What? She didn't retcon anything.

The books are writter from Harry Potter's point of view and were often criticized for that as, having decided on it, Rowling couldn't cover events Harry had no business witnessing, had to come up with contrived excuses for him witnessing what she wanted to depict, and couldn't play off the hero's limited perspective against the reader's broader knowledge and thus lost on tension and dramatic irony - important in children's literature. (Thus Harry ended up being somewhat more of an brickheaded asshole than he could have been.)

Dumbledore's orientation was nowhere in the books because schoolchildren don't think about their teachers' sexual orientation. Hell, schoochildren are often shocked when they see a teacher outside of school. And really, a British boarding school without gay teachers? Honestly IRL sorcery would be more believable.

On the other hand, these creeps are shoehorning their gross fetishism into an existing game. Parents may have vetted the game (rated E) which was supposedly about a girl overcoming self-doubt or something, and bought it for their children. Then an update comes out in which surprise, it's eckshually about a (presumably sexually abused) boy who wants to cut off his dick.

edit: just saw the programmer, Matt Thorson, renamed himself "Maddy". So it's not any character, it's the embodiment of his sadness over not having been groomed as a child. I feel sick already, thank you.

[–][deleted] 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Dumbledore being gay isn't necessarily a retcon. I thought so at first too but you see that he is an older wizard who could have been a desirable bachelor but had no interest in marriage. He seems irrationally enamored with Grindelwald in a way that could blind him to Grindelwald's flaws. I interpret this as some kind of infatuation or unrequited feeling that Grindelwald knew about and took advantage of. In comparison to everything else, it's the most plausible one. The way she like announced it was super obnoxious though and it wasn't something hinted at well, so perhaps only thought of while writing book 7.

Meanwhile, black hermione and everything else including a gross tweet about group masturbation in Hufflepuff? Yeah, those are retcons purely for woke points. I admire that Rowling is sticking by her guns now but I hope she acknowledges that she was participating in this stuff and helped create the monster that's now eating her.

[–]FediNetizen 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Wait, did she seriously come out and say Hermione was black?

[–]chandra 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A black actor was cast as Hermione in Cursed Child and, in defence against the critics of this move, she tweeted that the books never explicitly mention Hermione's race or skin color, so she could actually be read as black (or, presumably, any other color/race).

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The situation has been explained, but "she was never explicitly written as white in the books" is dumb and condescending. It was never intended that way and we all know it. Look IDGAF about the crappy play or if she wants to have her be portrayed as black from now on, but the people saying "bro... she's white on every cover and chapter header" aren't white supremacists. Kind of how if you say woman instead of menstruating person, you're not a transphobe who wants transpeople to kill themselves. The articles where she responded to the "haters" are dripping with smugness. "Haha, if you reacted to my tweet with anything other than "wow so stunning and brave" you're a racist!" It's the exact same shit happening to her now.

[–]VioletRemi 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, but character was NOT trans before, and story makes no sense if character is trans as well, it ruins any integrity or logic of story.

[–]SharpTomorrow 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I mean the dev, pulled it out of his ass in order to get "woke" points from Twitter crowd. Nothing in that game remotely indicates that the protagonist "is trans" in any way.

[–]FediNetizen 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Half the dev team is trans, and the character designer, who is trans, said that Celeste was based on themselves. As chandra said "trans dev makes trans character". So I wouldn't even say this was for woke points.

[–]QueenBread[S] 6 insightful - 4 fun6 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 4 fun -  (4 children)

Half the dev team is trans

"But trans people are only 0,7% of the population!"

Yeah they are, but trans trenders are about 30% of the population these days.

[–]FediNetizen 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Autism correlates with being trans at high rates, programming is a field that attracts a lot of autists (at even higher rates than STEM fields in general), and there's a big pronoun contingent in the gaming scene. It's not surprising you would end up having groups of devs networking on the basis of being trans.

[–]QueenBread[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'm not really all convinced with your logic. For example, from what I know in my country autism isn't even a spectrum: you either have it (and it shows immediately), or you don't. No thing as "socially functional autists" here. Yet, at least.

[–]FediNetizen 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've gotta be honest, if you think it's not a spectrum, then you really need to read up on autism some more. Asperger's as a milder and less-dysfunctional form of Autism was identified back in the 1940s. Since then the term has expanded to note people that display some mild autism symptoms that aren't quite severe enough to merit a diagnosis.

[–]QueenBread[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Different cultural standards. Just like nowadays transpeople are considered normal instead of mentally ill, my country still has the idea that autism is one thing and not a spectrum.

I think gender ideology should tip you off that every time someone says "X is a spectrum", what they really mean is that they want to be included into X even if they're not X.

TL; DR: if only real autists got psychological help and medicines, there would be much much less $$$$$$ to be made. Thankfully, being diagnosed alleged autism is a good way for people to avoid facing their social problems, so win-win: doctors get big money, the person feels like they don't have to change their personality.

[–]VioletRemi 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Game was about woman with self doubt, panic attacks, and big anxiety about being weaker than her fears, and was not able to achieve her goal, instead of climbign the mountain she was falling deeper and deeper down, and in the end she stopped running from fears and achieved her goal.

Through whole game everyone is saying "she" on her, she is perceived as woman even by women NPC's, who giving her advices no man will be able to take advantage of.

And now I've read developer letter about "game was about afraiding of true self and accepting that I am trans, it was the fear of came out, and main motive and story in game is about that" - which makes no sense, because Magdalene was already wearing "women's clothing", everyone was saying "she" to her, she looks like a woman and have breasts, so Magdalene could NOT be trans in closet, only trans she could be is transman in this case. So whole story stops making any sense with this changes. If you are "closeted trans" - you are not making surgeries, everyone not speaking to you your prefered pronouns, and so on.

This pisses me the most, if story had sense with this retcon or was initially made like Magdalene was a closeted trans and then came out near the end, then I could be fine with this game. But such changes like this, which makes no sense are just stupid and are serving agenda of developer.

And developer said himself "When I was writing Magdalene, I was cis man, and I was writing cis woman, but now I am transed myself and I think now that in reality I was writing self reflection and Magdalene was transwoman!". So he is admitting it is senseless retcon, as she originally was created as "cis woman".

There still nothing in game indicated that Magdalene is trans, so she is still woman to me (and to everyone who is not reading twitter of the developer).

[–]kwallio 7 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Eh. I play that game (I love platformers but its super hard and I'm terrible at it). The game has a retro feel and the character is pretty pixelated. I mean she doesn't have a face, just hair. I don't actually GAF that she is trans, but it does rankle a bit that people love to trans strong female characters. I mean Celeste is climbing the mountain to rescue someone.

[–]MezozoicGay 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I saw that game on GDQ few times - there are pictures of her in dialogues, all NPC's were calling her "she", and she was climbing to prove herself and to defeat her own fears of height. Almost everything in game was saying that Magdalene is not trans - so developer notes that "Magdalene is closeted trans" is baseless and not even a retcon, because it was not added in game (unless there was recent patch). How she can be closeted trans if she looks like a woman, everyone speaks to her as to woman and so on? It is opposite of being closeted.