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INTEREST: Guilty Gear Strive Developer: Bridget Identifies as a Woman

While I respect the right of the developer to do what they want with their product, but this is disappointing all the same and I think I'm done with the series at this point. I guess asking for more GG after Cross Tag Battle was just a monkey paw wish in the end.

I'm going to preface this reply with the acknowledgement that my opinion isn't valid, I really never have nor never will enjoy Guilty Gear (Despite my boyfriend's attempts to get me to play) I'm just really bad at fighting games. The music is nice, but I'll be honest, I'm probably never going to get into it. I also recognize that it's likely that my reply won't be well received, and if this post gets me banned off the forums here, so be it. Do what you guys thing is just. But I want to clear the air and dispel this idea that everyone who isn't in favor of the new lore on Bridgette is somehow a transphobe or is turned off because they are "into" femboys.

ThePatmann wrote:

I'm going to preface this reply with the acknowledgement that my opinion isn't valid, I really never have nor never will enjoy Guilty Gear (Despite my boyfriend's attempts to get me to play) I'm just really bad at fighting games. The music is nice, but I'll be honest, I'm probably never going to get into it. I also recognize that it's likely that my reply won't be well received, and if this post gets me banned off the forums here, so be it. Do what you guys thing is just. But I want to clear the air and dispel this idea that everyone who isn't in favor of the new lore on Bridgette is somehow a transphobe or is turned off because they are "into" femboys.

So, first of all, opening a new account and having your first ever post begin with a paragraph like this is not going to get taken very seriously. High "I'm not a ___ist, buuuut" energy. .

Gem-Bug wrote:

ThePatmann wrote: I'm going to preface this reply with the acknowledgement that my opinion isn't valid, I really never have nor never will enjoy Guilty Gear (Despite my boyfriend's attempts to get me to play) I'm just really bad at fighting games. The music is nice, but I'll be honest, I'm probably never going to get into it. I also recognize that it's likely that my reply won't be well received, and if this post gets me banned off the forums here, so be it. Do what you guys thing is just. But I want to clear the air and dispel this idea that everyone who isn't in favor of the new lore on Bridgette is somehow a transphobe or is turned off because they are "into" femboys. So, first of all, opening a new account and having your first ever post begin with a paragraph like this is not going to get taken very seriously. High "I'm not a ___ist, buuuut" energy. .

Well, I'm not a regular around here, there's not much I can do about that, first thing I've seen here that really made me want to make an account so I could post. And I wanted to make it clear I'm not espousing my stance on things to be correct. (I'm not a fan, nor am I in any way affiliated with the development or design). I am repeating the story of a friend and hopefully de-escalating what I saw as a pretty tense and edging towards hostile comment section. I went in with as much humility as I could, and recognized that due to how things are lately, there's a non-insignificant chance that I'd have the opposite of my intended effect and heighten tension and get banned for being a new user "stirring the pot".

Sorry if my intro comes off as racist or transphobic or something, I really wasn't sure how to get across the idea that I'm honestly not trying to boost those hateful beliefs, while still defending a group of people I think are wrongly being labeled as such. Did I atleast make sense and pose a good argument for why it's okay that some people aren't jazzed about the direction they took Bridgette? [I mean, it ultimately is a matter of opinion anyhow, no amount of that is going to change whether or not Bridgette is transfemme]

That said, you currently can’t see the deleted posts that were in this thread or the last. You can see some of the same people in the previous thread making the exact comments Daisuke was responding to... The posters you’ve decided to come to the defense of here were not doing that. They were finding reasons to invalidate not just the story choices, but also the experiences of anyone that relates to it. They were inventing reasons why this must be wrong, because transgenderism is a wrong. That is transphobia. It’s the exact type of thing that makes it hard for your friend to communicate what happened to them. Not that your friend is transphobic, but that transphobes are more than happy to co-opt his experience in order to hurt others, and trying to give your story feels like joining them in that cause. This is why there is such pushback to the transphobia that was on display in this thread. So people like your friend can speak up about their experiences as well.

I've gotta say, this is getting old. The constant ankle biting and berating the haters are doing, blaming “woke” people for pressuring the game developers and creaters to admit Bridgets Identity, is profoundly stupid.

If this is what gets you to stop being a fan of the series, then you were never a fan to begin with.

I'm going to preface this reply with the acknowledgement that my opinion isn't valid, I really never have nor never will enjoy Guilty Gear (Despite my boyfriend's attempts to get me to play) I'm just really bad at fighting games. The music is nice, but I'll be honest, I'm probably never going to get into it. I also recognize that it's likely that my reply won't be well received, and if this post gets me banned off the forums here, so be it. Do what you guys thing is just. But I want to clear the air and dispel this idea that everyone who isn't in favor of the new lore on Bridgette is somehow a transphobe or is turned off because they are "into" femboys.

My boyfriend and I have a mutual friend who is really into the series and really related to Bridgette's old backstory because of his personal lived experiences.

there's quite a lot more complaining about people who supposedly are obsessed with "triggering the libs" and "anti-woke" in this thread than people actually talking about any of that stuff in the first place.

This is misconstruing and conflating people who are critical of media narratives that do in fact fetishize femboys with making it out that they think femboys themselves are fetishizing. Newsflash that media which fetishizes and stereotypes femboys can also be harmful to femboys. Also unless you're the creator of Bridget, how do you know what the "original concept" for her character was and what intentions the creators always had for her character?

When did he say that? It's fine not liking the direction an author takes their character, but to assume some kind of malice is unreasonable. And people's identities often change. What feels right at one time, doesn't feel right at a later. The latter identity doesn't necessarily invalidate the previous identity. Same thing with fictional characters: the good ones don't always stay the same. And Bridgett's a good character IMO, despite the problematic joke the Internet turned her into in the early days.

Ryo_rkgk wrote:

I've gotta say, this is getting old. The constant ankle biting and berating the haters are doing, blaming “woke” people for pressuring the game developers and creaters to admit Bridgets Identity, is profoundly stupid.

At the risk of falling for a troll comment and burner account I feel the need to point out the only instance of the word 'woke' being in used in this thread is one post on page 1 that is also complaining about people who complain about 'woke'. In fact, there's quite a lot more complaining about people who supposedly are obsessed with "triggering the libs" and "anti-woke" in this thread than people actually talking about any of that stuff in the first place.

Scion Drake wrote:

If this is what gets you to stop being a fan of the series, then you were never a fan to begin with.

You know all you're doing here is trying to gatekeep who is and isn't a fan of something with a post like this. You don't really get to decide that though. Individual people get to. Trying to interrogate someone on their fandom credentials is a pretty awful thing to do and happens way too often in nerd spaces and needs to stop. I'm sure there's plenty of things you lost interest in for one reason or another that people would try to call you out on for being minor or not big deals, so why do the same to other people?

Media is not produced in a vacuum. The media we create often reflects and endorses unconscious biases. For example it is a common stereotype that bisexuality is a phase people go through before they come out as gay. While some people may fit this stereotype. It is generally considered harmful to portray bi characters in this manner because it perpetuates the idea that being bisexual is just a phase. The same logic applies to femboys. Regardless of whatever intent Arcsys may have had. They basically validated the stereotype that being femboy is just a phase.

Meh, I'm not wrong.

Because if THIS is what gets you to hate the game, you never liked it to begin with.

Let me put it plainly, Bridget is a very minor thing to the game as a whole. Its a fighting game with 21 distinct characters, and an entire cinematic story mode (which she's not even in the story mode).

She is ultimately a very small part of the game and this easily ignorable. If this is the deal-breaker for you, than I'm sorry you didn't like the game to, was never that much of a fan of the series to begin with, and is just looking for any excuse to hate it.

If a character coming out as trans is that much of a problem then the doors right there. We don't need crap in the fanbase.