- Joined
- May 6, 2022
Long story short, Testament and Bridget, characters who were originally introduced as male, were suddenly changed to be non-binary and trans-fem respectfully, despite evidence present in the game's original lore. This, of course, led to Tumblr freaks and weirdos from the alphabet crowd joining the game in droves and drown out otherwise normal players who wouldn't have given a shit, had it not been for the new crowd of players who joined to just glaze these two characters. It should be noted that Bridget wasn't announced as trans until UMISHO won EVO the year of his release (convenient). A small thing to note, but there it is.
What made it worse though was that the new troon players would annoy normal players by glazing Bridget ad nauseum, talking about how much they loved the character and making dumbass fan art and making people who still called Bridget and Testament dudes (like most Japanese fans and players) check their privilege and use that opportunity to farm social media credit and clout. This, combined with UMISHO's win at EVO brought in more troon fans who, obviously, were also blatant sex pests who, of course, began to gather in number. Now forums like Dustloop and r/GuiltyGear on Reddit are full of nothing but Bridget glazers, troons trying to use Bridget as a positive example of a trans character, and sexpests who are using the community as a way to find more sexpests.
The reality is that Testament and Bridget getting added to the alphabet crowd is actually more fucked up then people realize. Like it or not, crossdressing and crossplaying is a thing in Japan, and Testament and Bridget were originally made to represent that crowd. Hell, originally, Bridget was supposed to just be a crossdressing bounty hunter living his best life and that was it. But now, ArcSys attempted to please the 1% of people in the world who identify as non-binary and trans for no other reason other than added attention to their new DLC character, while also removing any representation for the very prominent Japanese crossdressing community. And it's pretty much been downhill ever since.
