Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26174543-20181006151501/@comment-6986530-20181006214232

Alright, I'm gonna try to address this one by one, sorry in advance if this becomes a wall of text or if I misinterpet anything you're saying here:

1. I am sorry for misunderstanding your point as well as your tone; I understand now where you are coming from on this. That's why I agreed that a trivia point could be added, so that people understand Michael could well be a trans woman except that nothing has outright confirmed it. If hateful people ignore that, that's not something the wiki can change. There's going to be bigots twisting things no matter what.

2. We do treat the other forest spirits as sexless and genderless. Or, we're supposed to anyway.

Lich is an exception officially and otherwise because Lich, unlike all the other forest spirits, unambigiously retains his Second Period identity. He, in fact, may not have even gone through the same process as the others to become a forest spirit, since he died way after the others did and way after anyone from the Second Period would have the time or means to change his spirit data. Similarly, we do not know how Lich became a death god and if that involved reincarnation or not.

Gumillia's page does not use female pronouns for the period where she is a forest spirit. if it does at some point, that's an error and not an official wiki stance on her treatment.

Eater's page also uses gender-neutral pronouns, or rather avoids using pronouns at all for that period. While in-story Eater uses ore as a pronoun (after hanging out with Lich, who is aware that in the Second Period he was male and is trying to make him remember it,) this does not exactly help the case because Michaela uses "boku" prior to transforming into a human woman. We also have Liliane Mouchet using ore as well so there's that.

tdlr; if at any point a forest spirit is regarded as having a gender, that is an error and not an official wiki stance and I encourage anyone to correct it.

3. Elluka did tell Michaela, specifically, to imagine a woman's body--not forcing Michaela and Gumillia, just making clear that that's what she wanted them to do. That's just a fact of the canon. It doesn't mean much; I mean, Michaela would have no way to know what to prefer. But it is what happened.

4. I addressed this point above. My point is that Michael and Michaela's genders may not necessarily be linked; even if she regains all of her memories and chooses to continue identifying as female, the fact that there is a midpoint where she (seemingly) had no gender at all and claimed to be able to incarnate as any sex means that it's not clear if this is for Michael's comfort or Michaela's; i.e. we don't know if becoming Michaela gave Michael their preferred body or if becoming Michaela changed her gender for good (and before anyone says, I know that sex =/= gender but I'm looking at it from the narrative's perspective). Similarly, Gumillia may identify as female now purely because she reincarnated as one in Wiegenlied, and not because she was a female in the Second Period.

5. I make no argument that Michaela isn't conclusively a female post-reincarnation, or that her situation isn't unusual. The fact that it's unique is what makes it hard to say either way.

6. While it is true that the spirits may not really be genderless, the fact is that the narrative has exclusively referred to them as such, so anything beyond that falls into speculation. Whether or not the term Michaela used was genderless or sexless, Elluka admits to herself that she only uses female pronouns for the spirits because she prefers to think of them as female.

"These girls just (well, spirits didn’t have gender so calling them that might not be appropriate, but I preferred to think of them as female so that's the way I worded it)"

While in real life you can't truly change your gender, it's true, the story presents a situation where a character goes from being referred to as genderless and identifying themselves as genderless to being referred to and identifying as female. 7. The DID thing is a good point, iirc it was put in for the sake of being brief but should be removed and replaced with terms actually used (having more than one personality?)

I don't think the wiki needs it said outright that Michael is trans, for the record. Anything like "Michael preferred to be thought of as a woman" or Michaela saying "This was my desired form from the start" or something like that would also be more than enough. So would, as I said, clarification on the actual nature of forest spirits' "genderlessness" and if it was just because they lost their memories or if something more was done to them or whatever mothy's intention was. -- tdlr; I think it's very possible Michael was trans, but it turns into speculation when we go outside of what the narrative says. If we had Michaela's word on this or, again, clarification on the nature of forest spirits (the midpoint that makes this muddied,) that would override anything else, but we don't have those things to my knowledge. A lot of your points, as good as they may be, are explanations for why Michael being confirmed trans wouldn't be a retcon, not an argument for why Michael is definitively trans in and of itself. (If that makes sense) In my mind, this is a similar argument to why we didn't merge Banica and Grave's pages until we were certain that Grave was just Banica in a new bodily vessel. It was blatantly obvious to a lot of people that they were the same person, but there were things unsaid that needed to be said first. The only things said, have been said by Levia and Lich, who while not the most reliable sources, are the only sources available. Michaela never uses any terms to identify herself. I remain hesitant as well because mothy is a Japanese author from a very conservative culture, especially when it comes to gender; while he may not share those conservative views, his views on gender may not necessarily be that of a Western audience. I don't want to credit him with something he may not have intended or considered.