Why do you Give a Fuck if Bridget is Trans?
You are nine or ten-years old and playing the first game where you create your own character. it is Phantasy Star Online: Episodes I and II for the GameCube. You are playing with friends. Your eyes slide off the cool rangers dudes in metalic vests, passes by the robots, and onto the pink hair elfin rose. She is physically weaker, but better at magic, as if you give a crap about that. Obviously this is the character you pick. You will pick her again after you lose your character data months or a year later.
You are at a friends house. They have a copy of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Edition Players Handbook. Excited about the idea of role-playing games, after once making a character before for a Palladium fantasy game a friend of your older brother had, you make a character. After looking closerly, and groking what the heck a preferred class was, you take out a piece of lined paper and create your character. Wait, gender doesn’t change the math? Cool. She is an elf. She is a druid. She inherited a sword from her parents because the books says you should have stories about your character’s possessions to make them more meaningful. You rolled enough gold to buy a horse, so of course you have a horse too. You go into a cave to kill some spiders.
I’ve been patient, but it was bearable
I’ve had a gray haze for a long time though
I never found out, what it was I
It’s my stress, that’s for sure
You are 13-years old and trying to convince one of those friends that is reasonable to use she/her for the one visible trans student at junior high school. He is not having it. His attitude doesn’t make sense; its just the kind thing to do. He grew up in a conservative household you know that, but you didn’t see the same shit he saw and didn’t have to deal with brushing your teeth with soap as punishment for cursing.
You haven’t gotten a haircut for two years. People have noticed and make comments. A girl once tells you its pretty and you should cut it off and “donate it to charity”. Why don’t you?
You’re 13 or 14-years old and are an internet professional now. You’ve gotten very good at not being caught looking at porn, but you have alienated that earlier friendgroup, probably for looking at manga with a bit too much gender-swap magic in it, while at a sleepover.
You know at this point that some people take hormones and cross gender lines and get surgery. It’s neat, you guess
I’ve moved on, by my own will
(I had nothing else I wanted to do)
It wasn’t hard, but I didn’t hate it
(I did not even like it)
You tell your mom you want to be a girl. That you need to start hormones now. She doesn’t get it. You don’t know how to maker her see that your voice is already fucked, you have hair on your chest and it makes you nausea. You haven’t even realized you can’t see youself in the mirror. She is confused. Tells you that she doesn’t undestand and that if its really somethin you want to do you are free to do it when you turn 18 or if you get yourself emancipated. She told your brother that too when he had trouble functioning at home.You are technically entitled to the social security benefits from your father’s death, after all.
Time is muddy, around then, a few years later maybe, no, this was certainly before high-school, but you can’t place it. Was it before the NaNoWriMo novel about the ships and the war and teh badass lady admiral? You can’t remember, but your first exposure to Bridget from Guilty Gear is the TVTROPES page for “Dropped a Bridget on Him”. You thing its weird. You look up the character. He’s cute, but the story about the village supersition and the being raised as a girls seems really contrived and weird. Like, ~she~, um he continues to wear the girly nun outfit. Like, whatever. Your brain hadn’t quite yet been poisoned by hentai at that point. The libidnal affordances of a cute boy who likes a girl weren’t any of your concern.
I’ve been patient, but it was bearable
I’ve had a gray haze for a long time though
I never found out, what it was I
It’s my stress, that’s for sure
You were tall, no one fucked with you. That’s why highschool was bearable; oh and there was a club with a bunch of other queer and neurodivergent weirdos. Despite technically being the “anime clube” there wasn’t that much anime watching. You remember a lot of Sould Calibur 3 and Yu-Gi-Oh with the friend who would give you a “Kuribon” card at your request. A Kuribon is like a girl Kuribo, which is a fuzzy little ball monster with eyes and feet. Kuribon has a tail with a bow and eyelashes, so you know its a girl. When you play Soul Caliber you main Tira, the hot psychopathic clown with an outfit that looks like it got attacked by a lawnmower who fights with a bladed hoolahoop. She says things like “I can’t wait to cut you to ribbons,” and “Oh, playtime’s over already,” before and after each match. But she is so cute, much cuter than Talim who you player when you were a child.
I never wanted to run away
(I was vеry motivated)
Then what is, this feeling?
(Who would I ask?)
You dressed up as Grell from Black Butler for Halloween of freshman year. You can’t quite explain what you identify with about her.
You did a poor job dressing up as a maid for Halloween of sophmore year, but the dress did go spinny in an incredible satisfying way, and something was, so right.
Sometime in the month or two later you mention dressing as a girl and she says it’s be fine whatever for fun, but if I wanted to be a girl that’s be weird.
I’ve been patiеnt, but it was bearable
I’ve had a gray haze for a long time though
I never found out, what it was I
Tastes like vegetables I don’t like
You are sixteen or seventeen. You are playing fighting games with a few friends from anime club and one of the meanest people you have ever met. Het doesn’t fuck with you though; he might play at being the alpha of the group being older than everyone else, but you are mature and are very good at not pissing people off (your younger sibling instints for playful annoyance atrophied to nothing). You can almost beat him at BlazBlue using your favorite squirrely beast-kin Makoto Nanaya (with the underboob).
You play the girls in the few matches. You always play the girls. It’s May (a wacky pirate), Dizzy (a half dragon demon thing), and Bridget.
The town inside me
And everyone’s voice
Only I’m not there
Just watching from afar
I can’t go home
Because I’m afraid
Something will change
Be without me
I’m the one to blame
You don’t know how to communicate. The relationship you have with the kindest person you ever knew is falling apart. Why can’t you give them what they need. Why does it seem like they don’t respect it when you do succeed. Why do they yell at you? You know that one actually; that’s just modeling. Perhaps your mother was exceptional in how well she kept her temper down, not everyone’s childhood trauma is as socially productive as hers. But you’re not prepared for it here. Why doesn’t your partner understand (well you haven’t said it, you don’t even know that that is why none of this makes sense).
“Why are you scared of me?” You don’t remember if that was said before or after they pushed you into a wall. “You are a fucking foot taller. You could easily stop me,” or something like that. I couldn’t. Despite my mass and leftover muscle from lifting for a few years before that point. I couldn’t be able to. Not necessarily because my body couldn’t, but because it was difficult to assess how much of an I was in there at all.
I’ve been patient, but it was bearable
I’ve had a gray haze for a long time though
I never found out, what it was I
I hate the alarm clock I chose
It’s 2019. Last summer,you hit the wall and realized you had to start fucking doing something about your fucking body. The tipping point was probably the graduate student who taught one of your classes. You can be trans and be a graduate student and teach. What the fuck? Holy shit that is a thing you can do? You are figuring out how the fuck you preserve you genetics.
You are in the game lab going through the library. Guilty Gear Xrd is there. You heard that canonically it is 3 years later in the timeline. You play it, but you don’t play long. You don’t quite get the combo system, it’s trickier than BlazBlue was, and also there is an absense, a few, but the most noticable one.
. . .
What would that have even done. The character would be what 19? Could they really rationalize the cuteness thing? How would they deconstruct the moe type?
I’m not waiting
(For santa clause)
I already have the gifts just can’t open the box
(just can’t open the box)
I know all about it, no one can stop it
Unless I just had to do something ‘bout it
“It’s not even a case!”
I wake up. I’ve been on estrogen for three years, in which I’ve gotten softer and prettier and grown boobs, and progesterone for 3 months, in which I’ve developed a yuri-manga habit.
I’m out of patience, my body is light
Let’s paint the gray haze into sky blue
I know who you are!
I’m not leaving you again!
This is one of the first things I see:
bridget's character page on the official site reading like a fucked up discord server that banned pronouns pic.twitter.com/YW4YWgYjx2
— Regular Abbock (@Novasonicrun) August 8, 2022
I read it and laugh. With that framing its hilarious how awkard the text its. But then it turns our that. Wait. . . They really fucking did it ?
okay so a friend ripped the dialogue from the arcade mode. seems that bridget's story is about ||coming to terms with not having to be a boy and being comfortable seeing her true self as a girl||, which, would explain out-of-game resources being cagey about pronouns
— Ada Basilisk, Haunted Doll VTuber (@ComfyBasilisk) August 8, 2022
ok there simply is no cis explanation for the lines
— Ada Basilisk, Haunted Doll VTuber (@ComfyBasilisk) August 8, 2022
"I'm out of patience.
My body is a lie.
Let's paint the grey haze into sky blue."
at the end of Bridget's theme pic.twitter.com/bHsWpnzhbJ
HOLY FUCKING SHIT
And it is so unquestionable. They fucking committed and they commited hard. Fuck the Disney crap. There was the scene of Bridget saying that she is a fucking girl. No hedging, no bullshit. Yes she is afraid of the possibility she might be wrong, but that is fucking human. Mistakes fucking happen sometimes you have to take a risk on being who you are. That is what the game was fucking saying. And sometimes that meant choosing to be a girl.
The absolute joy I saw from my trans friends and colleages. The absolute joy I fucking felt today. After more than a fucking decade. This wasn’t a token character, this is BRIDGET. HAHA Oh, Fuck.
The night falls, the place where I belong
No matter what changes, will no longer change me
No matter what- change- no no no won’t change me
I can feel the light, even after the sun goes down