El Goonish Shive

Yeah, I thought his chest was a bit leaner than before, so I assume he's male now.

So yeah, I'm glad I was flipping out over nothing yesterday.

He is now genderless with no genitalia whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure he's male too.

Which means the bit about, "OMG It's permanent!" was completely pointless.

Well, not exactly. It tells us that his understanding of this type of magic is limited (at least for the moment).

He wasn't elated at the thought of being permanently female, which says something about him. Maybe.

I think he's looking out at the rest of the shop in that last panel.

I think he just turned the entire shop into girls, or GTF'd them.

No, I think he just noticed for the first time that he glows. He's glowed before, but never noticed.

That regardless of what Shive says, Tedd isn't genderqueer, but uses the transformations for fetish reasons only?

He is genderfluid, according to our WOG, so he'd have a reason not to be happy stuck as a woman. Namely, he's in the same position as he was before but on the other end + complications.

My current interpretation is that he did indeed turn male and he's not realizing all of the possibilities, including possibly reconciling with his mother now that he has magic. Really, probably mostly the latter since he could change before with the use of the TF gun.

And, WOG aside, I still feel like Tedd has a male identity and just enjoys dipping into the female side of things. He's no more genderfluid than someone who likes wearing women's clothing is transexual.

He wasn't elated but he wasn't freaked either, which is even more telling. Tedd isn't MTF, why would he be happy to be stuck as one gender, whichever it was? "Try not to think of how few objections you'd have to [being super girly as default]." Tedd's reactions are perfectly genderfluid or possibly agendered.

I'm going against the general grain here and guessing that Tedd is currently female. The chest still looks a bit peaked, while Tedd's male form looks like it has a bit of sunken chest to me. Of course, given what we're dealing with, I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility that Tedd is male again... or even intersexed somehow.

And yesterday's Justin appearance had me thinking of Haddaway's "What Is Love?" Partly because Shive already admitted to liking the song (and previously did a joke about it), and partly because it's kinda fitting in the current arc.

And the head bobbing with no music would stand out more.

Unless, of course, the other party is intently focused on something, like a trading card game. At some point, I imagine that Justin will have to realize that little flaw in his plan to practice his headbanging.

My current guess, apropos of nothing, is that Tedd accidentally willed everyone in the store EXCEPT himself to dudeness.

Also, thanks, Footsteps, now have that stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

\*ahem* To my eye, Tedd looks male now, based primarily on comparison of panels five and seven: in the former, Tedd's breasts are particularly visible, while in the latter they're not.

However, there is what seems to be an updraft in the former panel, which might well be accentuating the front of Tedd's shirt, so there is yet significant space for error.

As to what Tedd has discovered, I don't know: I feel that I don't have nearly enough information to guess.

I do note with interest that his eyes glowed before the rest of him did. On top of that, no-one seems to have noticed him suddenly glowing during his transformation at the card-game table, and nor did Grace comment on any light. Given this, I wonder whether Tedd isn't wearing contact-lens versions of his high-tech glasses, and through them is seeing something similar to what Luke saw when directing his power (inadvertently) towards Tedd—but with a better background in the principles of magic to inform him of the implications of that.

edited 2nd Sep '14 9:16:39 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Tedd needs to be a guy for school. He likes being a girl, but the world around him knows him as male - he can't go outside as a female in fear of someone seeing him, so he does it at home or in the company of close friends.

Being stuck as a female, permanently, would not be ideal for his living situation. Hence, in the face of a possible permanent transformation into a woman, he panicked.

Except for the part where he didn't panic. He seems surprised but unperturbed.

He didn't glow when he transformed at the table. Tedd's been glowing a lot longer than he's had that mark. That's a Tedd thing, not a Mark thing, which means his reversion just now probably has more to do with whatever special property Tedd has that lets him disenchant himself than the actual spell the mark gave him.

Tedd is living antimagic. It's a plot point I've seen in other stories before, the idea of a character who can break magic by force of will. That's why Tedd can't have spells and why he has zero magic potential: because he is literally the opposite of magic.

edited 2nd Sep '14 10:29:38 AM by TobiasDrake

Science!

The people at the tournament are his close friends, and people he doesn't know. If someone else from his high-school was there, he'd probably have been a lot more worried.

Plus, with his hair the way it was, he'd already been mistaken for a girl and mistaken for MtF trans. Either way, the risk factor at this event is pretty low.

...Tedd was also really hyped up on the thrill as well, before Grace took him to look for a mark. I'd say it was the surprise that he was suddenly a girl in a situation where no-one outside of the circle really knew his default gender.

edited 2nd Sep '14 11:02:28 AM by MrMallard

Sam thought he was in the process of Mt F, so there's that.

My guess is also that the glowing is unrelated to the mark - Tedd is discovering a whole bunch of stuff at once, and every time he tries to do one thing, he accidentally trips across another.

At this point, I'm mostly entertained that, despite everyone having a guess as to what biological sex Tedd is currently, absolutely nobody is definite on it. On top of that, I suspect nobody would take any options off the table.

I'm sure Tedd is a guy now, because he looks like one and it seems like it would make the most sense scene-wise.

Tedd is still a woman, but he thinks he turned back into a guy, because his boobs shrank.