🐱 Fan Fave Bridget Joins Guilty Gear Strive, Comes Out As Trans

https://kotaku.com/guilty-gear-strive-evo-2022-bridget-dlc-trans-rights-1849386887

https://archive.ph/18HBu

EVO 2022 came with an assortment of hype moments over the weekend, including the most incredible “Cell Yell” I’ve heard since Dragon Ball FighterZ’s first season in 2018. Sprinkled throughout the tournament were a few announcements, too, such as the welcome reveal of rollback netcode for more fighting games. But perhaps most exciting was news that classic fighter Bridget is the next DLC character coming to Guilty Gear Strive. What’s more, in the day or so since, arcade mode footage revealed that Bridget has come out as a trans girl. Talk about a based W!

Bridget was first introduced in 2002's Guilty Gear XX, presenting as a very cute boy who instantly stole the hearts of fans. Though born as one of two twin boys to a multi-billionaire couple, Bridget’s gender presentation was decidedly feminine despite their use of masculine pronouns. (Official reason: convoluted anime bullshit.) However, with Bridget’s official return as a playable character in Strive as part of the game’s $25 Season Pass 2, ArcSys has given them a “come out” moment where they announce they do, in fact, identify as a girl.

An adept yo-yo user, Bridget’s dialogue in Striveshows her becoming comfortable in expressing her trans identity, telling deuteragonist Ky Kisukeand U.S. Secretary of Defense (lol) Goldlewis Dickinson that, “[calling me] Cowgirl is fine. Because…I’m a girl!”

Yas, Queen, live your truth! We love to see it. In fact, plenty of folks online celebrated the reveal with fan art and memes. Someone even created a mod for Bridget that sees her donning the blue, pink, and white colors of the Trans pride flag. It’s cool!

Kotaku has reached out to Arc System Works for comment.

Not everyone was thrilled about Bridget’s trans-ness, though, which shouldn’t come as a surprise in this space. Ready to dismiss their identity wholesale, there are plenty of gross tweets decrying ArcSys giving us an actual trans character in Strive. While there’s some nuance to the idea that the studio could be “erasing a character’s previous identity,” as one tweeter put it, most of the negative discourse oscillating around Bridget is framed as bad-faith arguments over “grooming.”

The negative response toward Bridget’s coming out is disconcerting to say the least. At a time when the U.S. government is penning legislation aimed at attacking the queer experience, getting representation in media—especially in games—should be seen as a boon. It reassures folks in our community that it’s OK to be who you are, and how you identify is both accepted and loved. As a nonbinary individual who sees a bit of themselves in the elegant “grim reaper” Testament, Strive’s first enby character, I’m absolutely living for Bridget coming into her own.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

This is forced feminized sissy genocide!

Whenever I see this I think it's the opposite like this

 

[The Token Ethnic]

Isn't that the same case as that junior detective in Persona 4?

Yup, she was just a tomboy trying to be taken seriously but they applied the tomboy erasure meme logic to her.

 

[Dysnomia]

Yup, she was just a tomboy trying to be taken seriously but they applied the tomboy erasure meme logic to her.
View attachment 3584511

Sometimes I wish I was talented enough to make the tomboyest tomboy character to ever not lop off her tits then confirm to fans that yes, she is a cis straight girl. But alas I have not drawn anything in 10,000 years.

Reminds me of the time people were using Ryuunosuke from Urusei Yatsura as a symbol of early-anime trans progressivism even though that character was also forced to be raised as a man due to societal/familial traditions.

It's like they're okay with forced lifestyle as long as they're forced to be something they morally agree with...

Well look at all the poor tranny toddlers too young to understand that mommy is setting them up to 41% before they can drive.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

Reminds me of the time people were using Ryuunosuke from Urusei Yatsura as a symbol of early-anime trans progressivism even though that character was also forced to be raised as a man due to societal/familial traditions.

It's like they're okay with forced lifestyle as long as they're forced to be something they morally agree with...

And the her fiance is a trap. A man raised like a girl.

Maybe this is what some transwomen expect from lesbians?

 

[Epoch]

This reminds me of troons having autistic fits over Gwyndolin from Dark Souls being a tranny despite all the lore stating otherwise

 

[737 MAX Stan Account]

trannies are a cancer of the earth

 

[HTTP Error 404]

So uh, he didn't come out as trans.

There are 3 endings to the arcade mode. In both bad endings, defined as "you lost a round, get good you fucking scrub", he gives up trying to correct people and dejectedly says he's a girl. These are "Stage 7 Ending (Heart Lose)" and "Stage 8 Intro (Stage 7 Heart Lose) / Stage 8 Ending (Stage 7 Heart Lose)"

In the good ending, which you only get by doing a perfect run as him, he regains his confidence to come out to is family as male. They awkwardly as fuck don't say it exactly, but as his family and village's expectations are that he will live as female -- IIRC, his family doesn't even know he's alive, thinking that the church killed him when in reality they raised him as a girl -- the only "being proud of my true self" bullshit that makes sense is him coming out to his family as male. This is "Stage 8 Ending (Flawless Run and Win) " which unlocks Stage 9.

Notably early on in the arcade mode he corrects someone calling him a girl, saying that he's a boy, but his clothes are "a long story." (Both endings to Stage 1.)

The troons are just being insufferable cunts again, trying to colonize yet another hobby space out of spite and a desperate attempt to rewrite reality. (Bonus insufferable cunt crossover: TVTropes is currently banning anyone who uses male pronouns with Bridget for hate speech and doing a mass sitewide re-write to make him female and include some fanfiction from Tumblr about him coming out as trans in the "only ending to arcade mode.")

Oh, and there's translator fuckery involved, as well. The official bio of him on the US website SPECIFICALLY refuses to use any pronouns. The JP version uses male pronouns. Presumably, the localizers didn't want to use male pronouns on that page, but couldn't get away with female pronouns, so they just awkwardly use his name instead. The in game bio uses female pronouns, and in a sane world, would be fixed in the next patch.

And to quote some people on twitter, none of this is even a scandal in the Japanese community, which suggests the JP text is a whole lot less confusing.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

Here's the moon runes.

He literally doesn't call himself a girl in Japanese. He just handwaves the idiot who keeps fucking it up (he was told during chapter 1 that Bridget is a guy, apologizes, and then in chapter 7 goes back to calling him a girl again) to move on with his life.

So the "Bridget is Trans" thing is even less a thing than they'd have you believe. He's not even trans in the bad endings. He does the JP equivalent of "yeah yeah whatever."

 

[George Lucas]

We have literally gone back to the 80s in terms of the quality of video game translations.

Actually no, fuck that. The Dragon Warrior games had Elizabethan English which was really cool. This is actually worse than the 80s.

 

[Akumaten]

View attachment 3585294

Here's the moon runes.

He literally doesn't call himself a girl in Japanese. He just handwaves the idiot who keeps fucking it up (he was told during chapter 1 that Bridget is a guy, apologizes, and then in chapter 7 goes back to calling him a girl again) to move on with his life.

So the "Bridget is Trans" thing is even less a thing than they'd have you believe. He's not even trans in the bad endings. He does the JP equivalent of "yeah yeah whatever."

Localization deserves the wall.

 

[Ser Prize]

Isn't the lore that where this character was born, if you had two same sex twins it was a bad omen, so they raised him as a girl to avoid the bad omen? Years later decides "yes, I will live as a girl" after being raised as one since birth.

Trannies love this because they can only wish they could pass as a girl like this trap turned trans character could, instead of looking like a bunch of freaks.

It is, but now there are the voice lines where he says that in the end he is a girl so they put it everywhere mostly without knowing about his past and that he was forced to dress like a girl because otherwise he would be killed. His story is rather sad than empowering.

It's really depressing when you consider his story up till Strive was him going out and being a badass bounty hunter to try and prove his masculinity. Instead of having him succeed he essentially lost and became the 'girl' they groomed him into being.

 

[SuperShibuyaFighter]

Mind the fact that Bridget was forced to dress like a girl due to a superstition of same sex twins. So grooming won.

Edit: According to the normal(bad) ending.

Also Bridget was a "son" of a millionaire who was born in England...make of that what you will.

Inspirational! We have a game finally adapting the John Money story!

 

[Random Internet Person]

In FGC, someone tries to clear the air.

CALM DOWN FOR A MINUTE

I'd like to point out that all of this information comes from weebs who ran the site through machine translation. I've been a professional JP-EN translator for over a decade. Here's what's actually true.

1. The official profile on the Japanese Strive site, the one that everyone's been machine translating, does not use any pronouns whatsoever. This is mainly due to the structure of the Japanese language, where the subject of sentences is frequently inferred instead of being stated explicitly. Japanese machine translation often defaults to male pronouns when none can be found in a sentence. This may also be related to the next point.

2. The official profile on the global Strive site is an accurate translation. In fact, this is an extremely tight translation with no liberties taken whatsoever. As a result, the following point was made possible:

3. The official profile on the global Strive site does not use any pronouns whatsoever, instead using Bridget's name. While this is nonstandard and may sound unusual to a native English speaker, this is grammatically correct. It also has the added effect of completely sidestepping the issue of pronouns.

4. I have not seen any screenshots or footage of Bridget's profile inside Strive in both the Japanese and localized versions. This means I can't speak to the accuracy of anything outside of the official media provided by Arc System Works.

If someone would like to provide me with screenshots or footage of the game, I'd be happy to verify, but for now, don't go running off half-cocked because some weeb knows how to use Google Translate.

The last image does read "Because... I'm a girl!"

However, keep in mind that this is stated by Bridget, who has historically been unreliable at best when it comes to this topic. I wouldn't take this as ArcSys's official statement on the character's gender. A screenshot of Bridget's profile inside the game, where it lists the character's gender, would be definitive.

 

[Johnny Salami]

The fighting game's DLC story confirms the yo-yo fighter uses she/her pronouns now.
(Article, archive)
During EVO this weekend, it was announced Bridget, a character who debuted in Guilty Gear XX, would be returning to the series as a DLC character for Guilty Gear Strive. Now that the character is out, it seems like developer Arc System Works is attempting to clean up the character’s messy backstory: dealing with topics of gender identity, religious superstition, and with Bridget finally coming out as a trans girl.

Spoilers for Bridget’s story in Guilty Gear Strive follow:

Bridget’s gender identity has been complicated since her debut. The character was born in an English village plagued by superstition around twins of the same gender, considering them to be a sign of bad luck. As such, when twins of the same gender were born, the village required one twin to either be sacrificed or exiled. To avoid this, Bridget’s parents raised her as a girl and her brother as a boy. As she grew up, she turned to bounty hunting to raise money, hoping to one day return to her family to prove she could be successful in life, and that the superstition of unluck was unfounded.

It’s a messy, somewhat familiar concept. Though it was really made worse by the series’ use of Bridget in shitty, transphobic, and homophobic tropes throughout Guilty Gear XX and its successors. That “messiness” might have made some folks shy about including Bridget in more recent Guilty Gear games. The character hasn’t appeared since 2013’s Guilty Gear Vastedge XT (a Japan-only pachinko game).

Now, nearly a decade later, Bridget is back in Guilty Gear Strive and it seems like the game is trying to reckon with her gender identity. Fans took notice that her page on the official Guilty Gear website completely omitted pronouns for her character bio. This initially seemed to indicate a gender-neutral change — similar to Testament being made canonically non-binary.

However, it turns out this might have been an effort to avoid spoilers for Bridget’s actual storyline in Strive. She apparently comes to terms with her identity as a both a trans woman and a strong bounty hunter in her arcade mode storyline.

Prior to her release this morning, fans already datamined Guilty Gear Strive to get at English and Japanese dialogue from Season Pass 2 (which adds Bridget to the game). These included interactions between her and Goldlewis Dickinson, where the alien-hunter refers to her as a girl, only for her to sadly “correct” him and say she’s a boy. This is bookended by several more conversations between Bridget, Goldlewis, and Ky Kiske about what she really wants, as well as sharing something important with one’s family.

Around the midway point, however, the two have another back-and-forth. Goldlewis calls Bridget a girl, then corrects himself again and calls her a “cowboy,” after which Bridget (much more happily) says she is, in fact a girl. She now appears to use she/her pronouns.

Notably, her new design also includes the androgyne symbol on her habit — turned upwards and to the left, mirroring its placement on the symbol for transgender people.

This comes several years in-universe after Bridget subverted her village’s superstition, so she has come to the conclusion divorced of her village’s original beliefs. But this does seem like an attempt to interrogate Guilty Gear’s treatment of Bridget in her debut and do right by her in the present. Earlier this year, Guilty Gear Strive also added the aforementioned Testament to the roster, who was previously referred to with he/him pronouns. They are now officially recognized as non-binary in the latest game.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

traps officially confirmed to be gay

lol. that's because Bridget is effectively indistinct from a real woman until you lift up his skirt, unlike every real tranny. seethe and dilate

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Oh look a retarded new fag that didn't check to see the shit already existed.

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/fan-fa...-gear-strive-comes-out-as-trans.126780/unread

 

[HTTP Error 404]

>The last image does read "Because... I'm a girl!"

https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/608365945#p608374008

Chapter 1 good end:
>A: 日を改めるとするよ お嬢ちゃん
A: (Out of context) In another day, little lady.
>B: ウチは…… 男です
B: I'm... A man.
>A: いろいろあって 女の子の恰好してるだけで……
A: The girl appearance is because bunch of things happened.
>B: ……そう か
B: ... Its that so.

Chapter 1 bad end:
>A:他にUMAを見かけたら教えてくれ お嬢ちゃん
A: Let me know if you see another UMA (ユーマ, Unidentified Mysterious Animal), little lady.
>B: ウチは…… 男です
B: I'm... A man.
>A: ……そうか それは失礼したな
A: ... Its that so, excuse me.

Chapter ... 7? bad end:
>A: あぁ 元気でな お嬢ちゃん いや お坊ちゃんか?
A: Ah, farewell, little lady, no, little boy.
>B: お嬢ちゃん でいいですよ
B: Little lady is fine.

As shown in the moon runes above, in Japanese, the sentence is "[Calling me Miss] is fine."

Not an acknowledgement or acceptance of gender identity, just a "call me whatever" statement.

Localizers were a mistake. They literally rewrote the line to troon him out, because the idea of a femboy is an abhorrent nightmare to the lefoid.

Also TVTropes wishes you to know that calling the ending you get when you're not good enough to get the perfect ending the "bad ending" is ableist and you should be ashamed of yourself (and they'll ban you for it, apparently).

Edit: Ah, 4chan might have cut the Chapter 7 text off a bit, to remove the "because I'm a girl" thing.

>A: あぁ 元気でな お嬢ちゃん いや お坊ちゃんか?
A: Ah, farewell, little lady, no, little boy.
>B: お嬢ちゃん でいいですよ
B: Little lady is fine.
>B: ウチは……女の子ですから!
B: because I am... a girl!

So the JP studio might have capitulated to current year. Localizers were still a mistake.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

Oh look a retarded new fag that didn't check to see the shit already existed.

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/fan-fa...-gear-strive-comes-out-as-trans.126780/unread

To be somewhat fair, it is two different articles. Still, I recommend people do a quick search on their article's subject just to be sure we don't have repeats. Makes for better discussion to keep it all together.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

To be somewhat fair, it is two different articles. Still, I recommend people do a quick search on their article's subject just to be sure we don't have repeats. Makes for better discussion to keep it all together.

It's basically the same article, lets not kid ourselves.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Glad Bridget is back as I knew a blonde one of those IRL and it was fun to make coded jokes. Very annoyed that they had to destroy the ~lore~ due to current year bullshit though.