Trans Audience Interpretation / Video Games

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Trans Audience Interpretation in Video Games.

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• A3: Yuki is a Wholesome Crossdresser who enjoys cute things and insists on being referred to as male, leading some fans to headcanon him as either nonbinary, a gender-nonconforming trans boy, or a closeted trans girl.
• Bugsnax: One theory states that Grumpus physiology might have sexual dimorphism in their dentition: most characters with an overbite are female, while most of those with an underbite are male. There are only two known exceptions to this: the first is Floofty, who is canonically non-binary and has an underbite, which can be explained by them being assigned male at birth. The second is Chandlo, who is male but has an overbite. Unlike Floofty, Chandlo is not confirmed to be transgender, but some fans use this as evidence that he is a trans man.
• Cookie Run: Kingdom: Black Lemonade Cookie is introduced as female, but between her androgynous looks, husky voice and her Image Song "Transfigure" (which can be a play on Trans figure and the MV has symbolism of her staring at her younger self wearing a skirt in contrast to her more goth rock attire in the present, along with numerous mirrors shattering) had fans interpret her as a transwoman. Others like to say that she's non-binary because her attire has the same colors as the non-binary flag.
• Deltarune:
  • A fair amount of people interpret Noelle as transgender; this likely stems from her already being a confirmed LGBT+ character (having a crush on Susie) and the fact that, despite being a female reindeer, she has antlers during the same time of year as her father.^note Male and female reindeers have different antler cycles -- males shed them in winter, while females shed them in spring.
  • Headcanoning Berdly as trans — both as a trans man and as a closeted trans woman — is also somewhat common among fans, in part thanks to his fascination with having nipples in Chapter 2 and his close association with Noelle, herself commonly headcanoned as a trans woman. The "closeted trans girl" interpretation of Berdly further stems from longtime jokes in the trans community about dudebro gamers who are fascinated by "beautiful gamer girls" and constantly play as female characters before eventually realizing that they were the beautiful gamer girls all along.
  • It's also common to interpret Spamton as a trans man, due to him wanting to transfer himself into a different body, him refusing to be put into the mannequin that looks just like him in a dress, and the Pipis resembling eggs.
• Dragalia Lost:
  • Euden is meant to be an avatar character that’s meant to be akin to a modern Fire Emblem protagonist, who can be either male or female. He is In Touch with His Feminine Side and is never shown to be sexually attracted to anyone. Many fans found it weird that the game didn’t come with the option to make the protagonist male or female, since you get to name him, other Gacha games like it such as Genshin Impact have that option, “Euden” sounds like a fairly gender-neutral name, and Zethia exists, so we already have a general idea of what a female Euden would look like. That is why some like to headcanon Euden as being non-binary or gender-fluid, in order to compensate for this. Not helping is Euden’s similarities to both Mordred and Anne Boonchuy, both of whom have also been viewed as being trans.
  • Zethia (and by extension, Zena) can be seen as being a trans girl. Being Half-Identical Twins with Euden (who we know was born male) is already good evidence, but flashbacks show that she used to have a fairly androgynous appearance as a kid. She’s even about the same height as her brother. One of her main character arcs is that she wants to take on every issue on her own, and not have to burden others with her problems. After seeing just how much Euden is willing to go for her, and that he loves her no matter what, she happily lets Euden help with with anything that he can, and vice versa. A lot of trans people face similar problems, as they may believe that their gender identity is their own problem and can be fearful to ask others for help, but the people who love you the most will help you and stick by you no matter what.
  • Leonidas could be viewed as a trans man. The first clue is with his hair, which is incredibly long for a man. The Alberian royal family is very male-dominant (6 males, 2 females), which makes it possible that at least one of them is trans. He is incredibly masculine to the point of reaching almost Testosterone Poisoning levels, and always tries to prove his strength to others. His sudden Heel–Face Turn is also a factor, since both Euden and Chelle are baffled by it. Ilia once asked him about it, to which he responded that he never changed; he’s just living his life a bit differently. This is part of what it means to be trans in the first place; their body and/or appearance may have changed, but that doesn’t mean that they have as a person.
• The Final Boss of Earthworm Jim 3D is Earthworm Kim, the embodiment of Jim's suppressed feminine side. This has led to fans viewing Jim as transgender, though it's debatable whether this would make Jim/Kim a trans man reaffirming his masculinity, or a closeted trans woman in denial trying to suppress her femininity. Either way, this interpretation is popular among fans who disagree with transphobic comments made by Doug TenNapel and choose to view his character as transgender out of spite.
• Ensemble Stars!: Originally, Arashi was often interpreted by fans as a trans girl due to having feminine hobbies and using pronouns associated with female speech. However, due to mounting evidence, a new popular fan theory interprets her as a AMAB bigender who switches between he and she pronouns. First, she has no problem exposing her masculine chest and even seems to be flaunting it in some of the artwork depicting her. Second, she has no problem attending an all-male school despite seemingly identifying as a woman. Third, while she does exhibit dysphoria, it seems to be more of social dysphoria, rather than body dysphoria, due to the others not recognizing her as a woman. Finally, her desire to not have any type of cosmetic surgery, when paired with the previous three pieces of evidence, could point to her not wanting gender reassignment surgery, which would further point to her being bigender.
• Fate/Grand Order: Famed Renaissance artist/inventor/everything else Leonardo da Vinci appears as a beautiful woman, despite being a man in life. They themselves explain that they appear as the Mona Lisa because she is the ideal of beauty. She has also described herself as having "discarded the concept of gender" and in one interlude briefly has to stop and think about what gender to make her new Body Backup Drive before settling on another female body. Needless to say, trans and non-binary fans raised some eyebrows.
• Fear & Hunger: Termina:
  • Daan's arc of reinventing himself as a doctor after his troubled past in religion and war, feminine facial features, being addressed as "Daniël" by his father, and being called a "dirty degenerate furry" by Pocketcat (as the Furry Fandom has a sizable portion of LGBT+ members), has led some fans to see him as a trans man.
  • Levi's slender physique, discontent over his status as a child soldier, wish to leave his past behind, and having Ship Tease with Marina (a canonically trans girl) have resulted in headcanons of him being trans as well, whether it'd be as an out trans boy or as a closeted trans girl.
  • Samarie displays an extreme admiration of and attraction towards Marina, and shows signs of body dysmorphia to the extent that her Moonscorched form is outright named Dysmorphia. As a result, interpretations of Samarie as a fellow trans girl are relatively high.
• Final Fantasy VII:
  • Cloud is sometimes headcanoned as some form of trans (either nonbinary, a trans man, or a closeted trans woman), partially because of the infamous Disguised in Drag arc of the story, but also because of elements such as his struggles with identity and wanting to be different from the other boys in his village. This essay discusses the interpretation of Cloud as a trans woman in light of his struggle with the unattainable masculine ideal of Sephiroth.
  • Aerith is similarly headcanoned as a trans girl thanks to her role in said arc (she knew exactly where to take Cloud for a femme makeover, and was very enthusiastic, after all; especially in the remake). As well as more subtle things like her fashion choices (she wears a choker, and heavy boots, both of which are popular choices with trans women as well as a hairstyle that frames her face), and finds herself in the company of an anarchistic environmentalist group (it's a popular meme in trans communities that recently out trans girls' politics tend to swiftly move left).
• Fire Emblem Engage: Ever since he was revealed, fans have had many debates as to what Rosado's gender identity really is. He is a crossdresser who prefers feminine things, and always tries to look as feminine as possible. Even though it's very possible that Rosado is just a gender non-conforming guy, with official sources even claiming that that's the case, more than a few fans have theorized that it may go a bit further, with him possibly being non-binary or even a closeted transgender woman.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • Mangle (Funtime Foxy) is sometimes perceived by fans to be non-binary or transgender. This is due to the games intentionally switching up the pronouns by not just the other characters, but also in the in-game text and books. Even when Phone Guy from the second game refers to Mangle as a male, the character is a selectable foe in the "Ladies Night" section of Custom Night. To add more to the confusion, Funtime Foxy in Ultimate Custom Night has a male voice, where Mangle has a clear female voice. Even the creator is aware of the constant gender debates and jokingly answered "Is Mangle a boy or a girl? The answer is yes".
  • Roxanne Wolf is sometimes interpreted as a trans woman. This is due to The Ultimate Guide implying that the seemingly male Twisted Wolf could be an alternate universe version of Roxy. There's also a separate theory that Roxanne either replaced or once was a Glamrock Foxy. She also has major ego problems about her self-worth.
  • Also from Security Breach is the Daycare Attendant, who, while looking mostly male and having a more masculine high-pitched cartoony voice, is only ever referred to as it/its in-game. Fans naturally choose to treat it as an agender character.
  • The Kid Hero protagonist of Security Breach, Gregory, also has trans headcanons. This is partly because of a possible translation error in the international release. The Tales from the Pizzaplex story "GGY" implies that Patient 46 from the Retro CDs is possibly Gregory while possessed. However, the CDs are consistently translated in such a way that suggests that the therapists are speaking to a girl rather than a boy. Fans who believe Gregory is Patient 46 sometimes explain the discrepancy by interpreting Gregory as a transgender boy. It helps that he's also voiced by an adult woman.
• It is not uncommon to see people headcanoning Fortnite character Meowscles as a trans man (with some fanart even depicting him with top surgery scars) due to the fact that he's a calico cat, which, in real life, are almost always female.
• Genshin Impact: Scaramouche is a mechanical puppet created by the Electro Archon to become her Body Double, yet was deemed unsuitable for her purpose, something that left him deeply traumatized and resentful since it's basically his "mother" rejecting him for not being what she wanted, and he struggled to ascend as a god and achieve perfection since. Flashbacks from when he was young show him wearing a veil for Japanese noblewomen, which also helped the fanbase to view him as a trans boy.
• Honkai: Star Rail: March 7th is often interpreted as a trans girl on account of her color scheme including mostly white, light blue and pink, and the "A World Beyond" log-in bonus introduced when the game launched featured a picture of her alongside a pin with a ribbon strongly resembling the trans pride flag. Her story of having to rebuild her identity from the ground up due to being amnesiac, including picking a new name for herself, is also one that resonated with trans people.
• THE iDOLM@STER: SideM: Saki Mizushima is often viewed as a trans girl through this lens. He was inspired by Ryo Akizuki's gender reveal in THE iDOLM@STER: Dearly Stars to openly start wearing femme clothes, takes on primarily feminine roles while at 315 Production, and is noted to keep his work secret from people he knows. As 315 Pro is shown to accommodate the idols under their care, their attitudes also extend to respecting Saki's identity and choice of style. This, along with the fact that the game never once shows Saki out of costume, coupled with the "Dreamy Balloon Festa" event having Saki wear an outfit with the pink, white, and blue of the trans pride flag, leads to the interpretation that Saki is still closeted but on the road to transition.
• Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Xion is often seen as trans. She is created by the villains to be a replica of Sora, but along the process of tapping into Sora's memories, she starts turning into a separate individual. Even after her body is physically transformed into Sora's, Xion still refers to herself as "she". Inversely the villains insist on referring to Xion as "it", in a manner similar to misgendering.
• League of Legends has Taliyah the Stoneweaver, a character who somewhat famously among her fans was originally pitched by her creative team as being a transgender woman. For whatever reason (implied by her lead writer to be Executive Meddling), this detail isn't present in the final game, but the fact her story centralizes on personal growth and finding acceptance — both from a loving family and from herself, albeit based around her abilities as a young, insecure stone mage — makes it easy to interpret as a transgender parallel, to a point where even said writer (who has since departed from the game) still headcanons her as such.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Link is often interpreted as being somewhere on the nonbinary spectrum. Word of God states that he was designed as androgynous, so players could project themselves onto him, and his name is rather gender-neutral (although not said in-game until The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). Link has, in fact, taken on an almost memetic status within the trans community, being seen as nonbinary, transmasculine, transfeminine, and everything in between at various points by various people.
  • Gerudo Town in Breath of the Wild added a lot of fuel to the fire for various trans interpretations. To enter Gerudo Town, Link and a masculine traveller have to crossdress, to which Link shows no hesitation. The guards also mention letting a Goron (a race of rockmen who are usually referred to by masculine pronouns) in, since he wasn't really either.
  • Sheik from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is frequently interpreted as trans or nonbinary. Canonically, Sheik is a male-presenting alter ego of a cis woman, adopted under duress.
• Samus Aran of Metroid is often interpreted as nonbinary or a trans woman. In addition to being the trope namer for Samus Is a Girl (which causes her to be misgendered in-universe), she's portrayed as tall, very femme presenting (even when she's alone on her ship), was modified at a young age, had short hair as a child (which was also clipped short when she joined the military) and is a Pro-Human Transhuman from being modified to help her survive on the Chozo homeworld. In addition, a developer and early concept art referred to her as such, although clearly in a joking way, which is sometimes cited in a "no takebacksies" sort of way.
• There's a meme among LGBT fans of Minecraft to claim that the bees are trans. While more of a joke than a serious interpretation, fans use the fact that all Minecraft animals are genderless and can breed with one another as support for nonbinary interpretations.
• The description for the Super Crown power-up on the New Super Mario Bros. U website featured the note, "Sorry Luigi - only Toadette can use this item!" This led to many people interpreting Luigi as a trans woman who wanted to use the Super Crown to turn into a Peach-like princess. This has sort of appeared in earlier games as well, such as Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and the cartoon where he dresses up as Peach (and enjoys it), but it didn't take off due to a lack of awareness in those years.
• Persona 4: Naoto Shirogane had a character arc and dungeon level centered on gender issues, complete with a laboratory and gender reassignment imagery. The game confirms that Naoto is actually female, with some Values Dissonance about career-related gender roles that didn't translate cross-culturally. Regardless, many disregard what the game itself says because Naoto being trans has more potential to explore in their minds.
• Pizza Tower's frequent comparison to and Friendly Fandoms with Celeste (especially an infamous tweet calling it “Celeste for weirdos”) has lead to internet users tongue-in-cheekly calling Peppino a trans man to Madeline’s trans woman. The former's heavyset build stands out against typical portrayals of trans men as either effeminate-looking or rich with Testosterone Poisoning also factors into the popularity of this portrayal, giving many trans fans an unconventional yet still positive portrayal of a trans guy to enjoy.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokemon with a masculine appearance that can be female like Machamp, Samurott, and Emboar, and Pokemon with a feminine appearance that can be male such as Gardevoir, Gothitelle, Sylveon, and many more are commonly interpreted as trans. Sylveon is also often considered a transgender icon, as its color palette matches that of the transgender flag and it has the most feminine appearance of the Eevee evolutions, despite its gender ratio being skewed towards male.
  • Prior to Generation VI, Azurill had a 1/4 chance of being male that became 1/2 chance when evolving into Marill, so there was a 1/3 chance that a female Azurill could change gender upon evolving. Similarly, in Generation VIII, certain glitches can allow male Combee or Salandit to evolve into their female-only evolutions. Fans often refer to Pokémon affected by these glitches as transgender.
  • On the human side of things is Bede, who could be seen as a trans girl. Although he starts out masculine, he eventually takes over as a Fairy-type gym leader. He then adapts a much more feminine appearance, which could be interpreted as him starting his transition. Not helping is that his signature Pokémon is Hatterene, which is a female-only species.
  • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet brings a few additional fan favorite candidates for transgender interpretations to the table:
    • Penny's appearance is quite androgynous, so some may think of her as being non-binary or a transgender girl. She is the founder of Team Star, and she created the team to act as a safe haven for kids like her, who have been constantly bullied in school. Unfortunately, transgender kids are common targets for bullies. Her team also consists entirely of Eeveelutions, with Eevee being a Pokémon whose biology changes as it gets older, similar to Hormone Replacement Therapy. Her ace is even Sylveon, who, as mentioned above, is considered a transgender icon, and when she terastalises it, she says "become who you really are". There's also her attire, namely a hoodie (a popular choice for dysphoric trans folk who want to hide their body, to the point of being the subject of a song by Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!), and the fact that she's really good with computers and coding (a common stereotype of trans women).
    • Rika is often subject to Viewer Gender Confusion at a glance, boasting sharp and cool facial features and dressing in a smart dress shirt and pair of pants with suspenders that shows off her slim and rather straight build. She's popular with LGBT players in general and gets love as a butch cis woman, but the androgyny of her presentation and figure also lends to many enjoying interpreting her as trans, typically either as a trans woman who's comfortable without medical transition or as a nonbinary person who happens to go by she/her pronouns and other traditionally feminine language.
    • Grusha is in a similar boat to Rika; he has a very pretty, conventionally feminine face, and the thick and heavy clothes he wears due to his living in a snowy environment obscure his body type (which it's not at all unusual for dysphoric trans people to either welcome or do intentionally). As such, it's not uncommon to see him interpreted as a trans man.
• Project SEKAI: Mizuki Akiyama, one of the members of Nightcord at 25:00, struggles heavily with Ambiguous Gender Identity as part of their background and the official description on their gender is listed as "unknown". Their physical build bears a closer resemblance to the male cast and various flashbacks reveal that they forced themselves to wear the boy's school uniform throughout middle school to "fit in" even though it clearly made them unhappy, but they have a feminine face and hairstyle, are attached to feminine dress styles, have a passion for fashion design and are commonly referred to as female by most of the cast outside of characters who are aware of their situation. Naturally, there are a lot of red flags for fans to headcanon Mizuki as transfem despite lack of official word, to the point where this is actually the most common interpretation of their character among English-speaking fans.
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has Rivet, Ratchet's alternate universe counterpart. Alongside being a female alternate of Ratchet, there is the fact that she is a Female Lombax who has a tail, despite the only previously seen female lombax being tailless, with Word of God confirming that female lombaxes are born as such.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Charmy Bee has often been interpreted as trans due to identifying as male despite having a stinger, which only female bees have. The fact that Charmy is wearing a jacket in contrast to how most of the other male Funny Animals wear only gloves and shoes may have also contributed to this interpretation, as the only anthros who wear anything else besides gloves and shoes are almost all female.
  • Additionally, Sonic himself is also commonly seen as a trans man. This is mostly due to the fact that when you compare him with the other 3 recurring hedgehogs in the franchise, you'll see that while Shadow and Silver have chest fur and arms that match the color of their bodies, Sonic and Amy don't.
  • Also, the Avatar (especially the red wolf Avatar dubbed "Gadget") from Sonic Forces and the quokka/Barry from The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog are also interpreted as being nonbinary, especially the latter. The former is due to the nature of the Avatar as a featureless character (although Gadget's design is designated as male in-game), while the latter has a relatively androgynous design and uses they/them pronouns and gender neutral language exclusively.
  • To an extent, Tails has also received some attention from Trans fans, mostly stemming from an urban legend saying he was originally designed as a girl and people who live in countries where he indeed is changed to female.
• Splatoon 3 has one of the main idols, Shiver. While canonically female, she has a very androgynous design and was not initially referred to with gendered pronouns even in heavily-gendered languages like Spanish and French. As such, non-binary interpretations are popular.
• Artist Molly James, while playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, commented on a possible reading of Cal Kestis as a trans woman, noting that he seems most comfortable around women, with the majority of both his allies and enemies being female, and that he either lets down or is let down by all the male role models in his life, namely his hypermasculine Jedi master and a fallen Jedi who tries to seduce him to the dark side.
  Molly: [going through an obstacle course trying to reach Cal's master] Look at that ideal of masculinity that you will never truly reach.
• Street Fighter
  • An increasingly common fan theory is that M. Bison is a closeted trans woman or some sort of nonbinary. There are two main points to this theory, the fact that some of his replacement bodies that he has prepared for himself have been women (including Decapre and Cammy), and the fact that when Bison "Rejected the good part of his soul" the result was Rose... a woman. Some have even commented that the entire thing where he used to, before Cammy rescued them, surround himself with a group of cute young girl bodyguards called "The Dolls", which some fans think seems similar to closeted trans women who always play as women in video games.
  • Also of note is Poison, a transplant from the Final Fight series. Capcom's handling of her gender is, put simply, a bit of a mess, with them waffling back and forth as to whether or not she's a cis woman, a trans woman, or a cis man who's crossdressing over the course of over two decades, often treating it all as a big joke. By this point, the vast majority of fans simply accept her as a trans woman and move on.
• As MandaloreGaming points out, in the original version of System Shock the malevolent AI SHODAN is referred to in the manual and promotional material with masculine pronouns, which don't reflect her voice and appearance in the game. While the Doylist explanation is that the game devs defaulted to referring to the AI with masculine pronouns and then cast Terri Brosius and altered the dialogue, it is compelling to think that SHODAN's creators didn't understand her well enough to grasp that she had a different preference.
• Terraria: Before it was changed, older versions of the game had the Party Girl be summonable with a King Statue, which normally teleports male NPCs. She and the child Princess are also the only female NPCs that do not get irritable during a Blood Moon, which was a reference to PMS. A section of fans have interpreted her as a trans woman stemming from these.
• Undertale:
  • In the Nintendo Switch version of the game, if the player makes enough progress, they can find a secret room inside Sans' and Papyrus's house that contains a Mew Mew Kissy Cutie doll. Upon interacting with the doll, it reveals itself to be possessed by the ghost inhabiting the Mad Dummy from earlier, who is trying to unsuccessfully fuse with it, and initiates a battle with the player. Throughout the battle with Mad Mew Mew, they talk about how they knew the body was for them as soon as they saw it, and how they feel that fusing with it would ensure a "brand new life" for them. If the player ultimately spares Mad Mew Mew, the pronouns referring to her change from neutral to feminine, and she explains that she hopes to successfully fuse with her new body soon. This leads many fans to see Mad Mew Mew as trans.
  • For similar reasons, Mettaton can also be read as trans. When other characters talk about Napstablook's cousin, unaware that he's now living as Mettaton, he's briefly referred to with "their". While this could be because the characters in question didn't know him well (they also forgot his name), it's worth noting that his cousin and other ghosts are usually only referred to with either they/them or it. The other major exception is Mad Mew Mew, another ghost that goes from using "they/them" to "she/her" while trying to fuse with a Mew Mew Kissy Cutie doll. Furthermore, the reason Mettaton left his home and family behind was because Alphys offered to make him a body he loved and needed to accomplish his dreams. As he puts it: "In a form like that, I could finally feel like... 'myself.'"
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • Nia is often interpreted as being a trans girl due to her backstory, as well as a scene where she is initially extremely reluctant to enter a hot spring until Mythra coaxes her because of her need to hide something about her body from others. She was once with a family, with her being particularly close to her adoptive sister, but one day, her sister fell terminally ill. Out of desperation, their father injected her cells into Nia, altering her appearance and making her a Flesh Eater. In order to hide her identity, she went so far as to change her appearance even further and hide her true powers to avoid persecution and execution. Her entire arc is about her learning to accept her identity as a Flesh Eater and to not be afraid of sharing that information with the people who care about her the most.
  • It's also not uncommon for fans to interpret Mórag as a trans woman, since she has an androgynous Bifauxnen appearance and a very deep voice courtesy of Mitsuki Saiga that could be mistaken for a man's. In addition she's shown as being somewhat sensitive over other characters mistaking her for male, despite her masculine appearance and mannerisms. The existence of Sena in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, who is vaguely implied to be related to Brighid and possibly even her daughter, caused an increase in the number of fans who believe Mórag may be a trans woman, and that if Sena is Brighid's daughter, she may have helped her conceive.