Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26174543-20181006151501/@comment-26174543-20181006222349

I really do appreciate you acknowledging my points and the apology, but there are still some points that I just can't see eye to eye with here

first and foremost, I'm not necessarily arguing that michael had to have been trans, who knows. thousands of years is a long time to be alive. what I am arguing is that identifying as a different gender, hell even going from identifying as a genderless spirit to a binary person, is itself existing as a trans person

lets assume a point you brought up earlier, michael's spirit data being changed when he turned into michaela, is the absolute truth. depending on how you slice it that's either a man spiritually transitioning into a woman or a nonbinary person transitioning into a woman.

half of my point is that there is textual evidence that suggests that michael was already trans, or at the very least questioning. but the other half of my point is that michaela specifically counts as trans regardless

honestly, whether or not that makes it into her article I think it's important that it's acknowledged by the people writing her article (so us here). stripping away too much flavor text can lead to misinterpretation of a scene, but if the writer's voice pokes through and they don't have a firm, coherent, or accurate interpretation of their character it can also lead to misinterpretation. it's balancing act

but also, my point with michaela's article is how it's read by someone who doesn't know the full layout of the scene. yes elluka does suggest that they imagine a woman's body, but michaela questions her on it, elluka admits that it doesn't matter, and michaela decides to pick a woman's body anyways. given all of that infomation the audience can interpret it multiple ways.

but in her article it just says "Once they reached the location for the reincarnation ritual, the two spirits were instructed to imagine beautiful Elphe women who weren't already alive or shared the same appearance to become their new human bodies. Entering the ritual, Michaela pictured Eve Moonlit and reincarnated into her form."

my point here being, that the lack of context leaves the scene open to be misinterpreted, which when combined with noticing that other spirits have physical forms that match their previous lives as far as gender goes could give someone leeway to argue that her gender was forced on her by elluka, such as the commenter at the start of the thread

it's an issue with how the information is presented, not a falsification of information

and in that same vein, what is there that explicitely states that lich is an exception as far as his gender identity goes. what in the text tells us that eater only starts using male pronouns after he meets lich, assuming they didn't already know each other from the beginning.

we know, 4 forest spirits on a personal level. that isn't enough to establish a baseline to determine what is against the social or even biological norms for them at that time.

all in all I understand your point, but I also still stand by some change being necessary, even if it's, as you said, something less overt and/or mentioning her being interpreted as or being a metaphor for (or what have you) being trans in a triva point