Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26174543-20181006151501/@comment-6986530-20181006225748

I'll concede to a lot of this; ultimately, Michaela's end gender identity ends up at odds with something--whether it's her memories of Michael's gender identity, Michael's body, her time as a spirit, or something else, and that's something you can define as a trans experience. I'm mostly just discussing the point about Michael because that was an original point of contention, but it is something to keep in mind, it's true.

The wording for that scene can be changed, as well, if that's another point of contention. Yes, it ultimately was up to Michaela; since Elluka expresses surprise at the woman she picked it presumably was out of her control if Michaela decided to choose a male body at the last minute.

Elluka's statement, which is backed up by Michaela and the way the narrative and Held himself refers to most of the spirits, set the baseline for the spirits being assumed to be genderless. Since Lich and Eater (and Eater is a hard case because iirc Song of the Black Bird is from Lich's first person perspective) are exceptions to that treatment out of 5 personal examples and one broad statement, they're currently regarded as just exceptions--especially in the case of someone like Lich, who died in the crash and wandered over to the forest instead of for sure going through the same motions as the other forest spirits.

If something suggested the idea that forest spirits, as a whole, are not genderless and Elluka and Michaela didn't know what they were talking about at the time, we wouldn't have a problem. That's all it is.

But yeah; I can agree to acknowledgement of the issue in the form of a trivia point, and possibly trying to use more neutral wording in Michaela's history section.