A.B.I.torial: LGBT and Non-Binary Characters in Fighting Games (ft. The4thSnake)

Comments · 3K

• SU

  @SugarPunch · 4 years ago (edited) · pinned

  Gotta post this for posterity: this video was released on June 30 2022, roughly one month and 9 days before Bridget&apos;s reveal in Guilty Gear Strive on August 8 2022. As a result, my reading of Bridget in this video does not take into account her new plot direction in Guilty Gear Strive, something that I have discussed at length with my discord and with my friends. I&apos;ll repeat the plot points here: I am totally cool with this new plot direction, and I think it really adds some purpose to Bridget&apos;s whole journey. <br><br>Allow me to provide my reading of Bridget&apos;s new plot:<br><br>At some point before the events of Strive, Bridget <i>does</i> manage to achieve what she&apos;s been chasing after since XX; to prove her &apos;manliness&apos;, she actually becomes a top-class bounty hunter with tons of money, and is so successful that her village even stops believing in the twins superstition. But she finds that even this doesn&apos;t bring her the closure or satisfaction she thought it would. Even though she&apos;s far from home and no longer obligated to abide by the superstition, the fact that she has spent her entire bounty hunter career attempting to defy it means that she never truly escaped it in the first place, forcing her to abide by a false expectation that she put on herself. But to lose this identity she has built for herself would mean that she is nothing without it; &quot;I&apos;m afraid of losing what I have&quot;, in her own words. It takes a pep talk from Good Dad Ky and Pro-Trans Uncle Goldlewis to learn that her hardship hasn&apos;t been for nothing, and she now has the freedom to choose who she wants to be; to be the person that makes her the happiest, not the person she <i>thinks</i> people want her to be. It is actually an extremely common theme in Guilty Gear Strive that characters come to terms with who they are and their place in the world; Testament, Bridget, Baiken, Jack-O&apos;, and many more share this theme.<br><br>A lot of people expressed that this change in identity also takes away from her representation as a transfemme male, but I don&apos;t think anything is taken away from the character at all. If you looked up to Bridget as a transfemme icon, you absolutely still can. The important takeaway from the story is that labels aren&apos;t as carved in stone as people think they are. People change, learn things about themselves, and sometimes come across bumps in the road. Some people spend their entire lives never knowing who they really are. But Bridget teaches us ultimately that you can choose who you want to be. Not because anyone expects it from you, not to prove yourself to anyone, but because you deserve to be the person who makes you the happiest. <br><br>Be who you want to be.

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• PL

  @pleasecallmedoku7215 · 4 years ago

  I&apos;m far from a Guilty Gear expert but &quot;Sharknado made me realize I&apos;m NB&quot; was not something I was expecting

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• AR

  @arthurhill8185 · 4 years ago

  Testament&apos;s list of hobbies is so funny to me. It&apos;s like Daisuke was like &apos;what do non-binary people like&apos; and then just wrote down every single answer he found.

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• KE

  @KevinSkye1 · 4 years ago

  The people I used to run with back in the day when Guilty was new would always make fun of me for playing a homosexual character. &quot;You know your character is gay right??&quot; for anytime I thought anything was cool about Venom. That shit was so annoying and I&apos;m straight so I can&apos;t even imagine what actual gay people had/have to deal with at the time.<br><br>22 years later and I just think Venom is cool as hell.

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• MO

  @moonlight2870 · 4 years ago

  Poison is the epitome of &quot;I&apos;m sexy and I know it&quot;. She&apos;s sassy, she&apos;s powerful, she&apos;s hot, she&apos;s angry. She&apos;s amazing. I love her

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• MA

  @makreeldraws · 4 years ago (edited)

  THE GAYEST FIGHTING GAME made me laugh so hard. But jokes aside, Ladiva&apos;s backstory is so inspiring, it honestly makes her one of my favourite characters of GBVS

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• FE

  @fenrirsrage4609 · 4 years ago (edited)

  Ngl Ladiva not going for a sex change and keeping their body as is but changing their gender identity is kinda wholesome and could def be a nice inspiring and motivating story for people who are in the same boat as her.

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• DE

  @devin5201 · 4 years ago

  I like that line from Raiden about &quot;They care where your heart is, not who it belongs to.&quot; Or however it went, it&apos;s acceptance while also being like &quot;we&apos;re warriors, we don&apos;t have time to discriminate&quot;

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• HE

  @HexManiacArtie · 4 years ago (edited)

  When I first watched Seth&apos;s story mode, what I took away was that he was an exaggerated depiction of gender dysphoria. Literally struggling with your own body because it clashes with your identity. The computer voice in Seth&apos;s body even establishes that gender was the incompatible parameter which made his programming not function properly. I agree that it was mostly a botched plot and I see it as basically a display of one of the struggles of being non-cisgender instead of a story about identity

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• GE

  @GenericSoda · 4 years ago (edited)

  There&apos;s a bit in Testament&apos;s episode mode where Chipp is baffled that somebody as extraordinary as Testament has a normal day job, to which Testament says &quot;I AM normal&quot; and I think it fucking rules to see a non-binary character say that so loud and proud.

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• KI

  @KINSkully · 4 years ago

  Me before watching the video knowing that Venom is going mentioned: Venom is so fucking cool.<br>Me after watching the Venom segment: Venom is so. Fucking. Cool.

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• OS

  @oscarshedwick4862 · 4 years ago

  Kung Jin is always a difficult one I find since people just leap on to paise how sublet it is when if you have to clarify in a tweet &quot;he&apos;s gay&quot; in a fighting game it&apos;s too subtle. <br><br>I&apos;m genuinely tired of folks assuming being open about your sexuality just makes &quot;your entire personality gay&quot; because they never apply that same logic to straight characters they can be straight and a person but a gay guy is always seen as just being gay and thier characteristics are discarded by the audience because they&apos;re just that gay guy.

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