I don't usually comment if this is all I have to say, but...
Amazing. Umazing, even.

If I may, rather than attempt to continue any specific conversation here, I'd like to point out two things. First, that zero replies were made that addressed the only thing(s) I actually solicited in my orginal comment. Not even in tandem with criticisms or attacks. Do people just not do hypotheticals? Second, if my intent was malicious, I could have commented on any previous Bridget image. My account isn't new.

^ Damara, a character original to the never-officially-translated Zero Mission+prequel manga. Samus saves her from Space Pirates and she comes back a few times because she's a named character in a limited cast.

@LilyStorm Philosophical question for you: If your thoughts on something are only as complex as a facial expression, is it really something that matters to you?

^ Is it a [problem] if everyone who makes the assumption is loudly refuted? I suppose diegetically it's still a [problem], but not to the viewer, which is sort of subversive.

I feel very strongly connected to a certain subset of GNC female characters, but I am careful to compartmentalize what is explicit, what is implicit with an evidence-based case (headcanon), and what could be implicit but only has vibes (what I call heartcanon). This really limits my options, and I am at peace with that. I know people are starved for trans rep, but watching them latch onto canon and especially headcanon even when the character actually makes for really bad trans rep always confuses me. Bridget's a whole order of magnitude less bad in this regard than Yamato from One Piece, but I thought that fact would allow for more nuance.

Edit: You're probably right that it will be better in the long-term. The character as they now exist will mutate based on the writers of the era and what the fans of the era want, and eventually the origin of the controversy will become irrelevant. Poison is pretty celebrated now, but she was introduced under the premise that punching gang-affiliated trans women would be perfectly acceptable where punching cis women would have raised eyebrows.

Mod Edit: Removed unnecessary usage of a term. If you can avoid it, then don't use it. Putting in it quotes over and over does not diminish the problem.

last edited at Apr 22, 2026 12:38AM by MrEngenious

For the record, I'm still interested to know if anyone has thoughts on my hypothetical of Bridget's twin.

^ Okay, let me put it this way. To my eyes, pre-retcon Bridget was more positive in being trans-coded than post-retcon being trans. Their parents assigned them a gender for backwards reasons, and rather than let that define them, they chose to loudly declare themselves not the gender they were assigned, without erasing the trauma of their parents treatment (which the nun outfit represents).
Post-retcon, nothing of that is necessarily lost, but there's a lot of room for the aforementioned positive qualities to potentially resonate negatively instead. For example, seeing Bridget circling back around to her assigned gender as a form of regression or arrested development. If anything, what I'm curious about is why no one seems to see them that way.

last edited at Apr 20, 2026 11:47PM

^ If you're only going to look for missing words and use them to conveniently misinterpret what I'm saying, I think we're at an impasse.

^ It is problematic, that's the core of my point, but the way Bridget chose to act defiantly within those circumstances made for an interesting, compelling GNC character. Post-retcon, while there's not any provable causal relationship (and almost certainly not an intended one) between Bridget being forcefemmed and coming out as trans, it makes for weird optics and ambiguity in a way there was no real need for. Without knowing the writer's thoughts, it seems short-sighted on their part. Hence the hypothetical.

last edited at Apr 20, 2026 11:03PM

^^ I've wanted an insider view on this for a while and I didn't/don't have a lot of places in mind to ask about it. Sue me.
^ Okay. Whether you believe I'm in good faith or not, could I ask you to give your opinion on my idea regarding Bridget's twin? That's the actual reason I made this whole post.

last edited at Apr 20, 2026 10:48PM

^ You know what, that's fair. I should have been clearer. By "premier internet femboy", I was specifically referring to widely-known characters around which there is no controversy, like Astolfo. Or Bridget, prior to the retcon.

I'm certainly attached to some niche GNC characters for similar reasons, but femboys are not my thing, so I haven't been much exposed to examples outside the zeitgiest. I guess I should also qualify that in my mind, there is intra-fandom discourse and broader discourse. I am specifically coming from the "broader discourse" here, observing that both streams seem to agree on Bridget and not getting it.

...shake off Gandrayda?

Bridget being trans caused a big fuss back when it happened, in part due to how poorly managed and executed the retcon was, but even before word of god silenced the transphobes I feel like I saw the majority of the internet enthusiastically embrace the change. I saw a little discussion about the unfortunate choice to take away one of the premier internet femboys, already in short supply, but other nuanced discussion about Bridget's established forcefem backstory/character giving the retcon (at best) kind of questionable optics was very limited and brief.

Admittedly, I'm coming at this from entirely outside the series, but to me trans Bridget seems like an overall weaker, less interesting version of the character. I'm genuinely curious why the broad reception was and is so positive, but I wouldn't have brought it up at all this long after the fact if I hadn't thought of something... We have yet to even learn the name of Bridget's twin. Why didn't they take the opportunity to introduce them and have them be trans instead? It would have avoided retconning a beloved character and, in my opinion, made for a much funnier and less problematic story of both children breaking free of their weird, prejudiced parents.

Edit: I refer to "retcon" specifically based on the aforementioned word of god, not in denial of it. If you'll forgive my paraphrasing, the idea of Bridget being trans was said to be part of the original story planned for them, but the writers felt they couldn't tell the story at the time. Implicitly, that means they had been telling a different story until Strive. Remember that fictional characters do not exist outside of their media, and therefore unlike a real trans person, it is possible for a character to "become" transgender.

last edited at Apr 20, 2026 10:42PM

If an intelligent robot was constructed with detailed breasts and nipples, I feel odds are low that they aren't sensitive.

^ I was thinking of the follow-up where Kratos and Leonidas are buying candles and shit because they're in so deep they live together.

I brought it up because I imagined a very silly alternate timeline where Robin never broke the kiss and weeks later Nami and Robin are fighting whatever assigned opponents for the arc while still making out.

So Nami was just planning to go as long as physically possible, then?

Tangentially, anyone here remember Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, the surprisingly progressive webcomic? Spartan Gay Chicken?

^^ I had to double check because I only remembered the men's quarters and the hanging bunk beds. A shared king-size bed. That's amazing. So gay.

Edit: A queen-size could be considered gayer, but a king-size has room for Vivi.

last edited at Apr 5, 2026 1:54AM

If you never break apart, it's still only one kiss.

I miss when I cared about Naruto as a franchise, just a little bit, because it was fun being really attached to the idea of a Sakura/Ino/Karin triad fake-dating to spite Sasuke, falling in love for real, then still pretending for a while that it's fake as an excuse for obnoxious PDA any time Sasuke is like, in the same room.

I guess I've never thought about it before (despite being a furry) but the "two wolves" meme would be really weird/unlikely in a world of anthro animals. Maybe less so for something like Zootopia where a lot of the setting works on meta jokes about real life. Anyways, it would kind of be like saying there are two Italians (or [insert nationality/ethnicity]) inside you.

^ About that...
In the manga/S2 (when it comes out) Marcille gets species-swapped by the Changeling mushrooms a second time, and she turns into a ogre and is unexpectedly buff. The mangaka explained that elves have a much higher default muscle tone than tallmen in-universe, but it's much subtler visually, so Marcille was always buff (sort of).

^ Diegetically even, based on the size of her boobs in this image.

^^ I don't think any of the non-Nami merch is Robin. The body pillow definitely isn't, but admittedly I'm not sure about the figurines. One Piece has a absurdly large cast and not only do a lot of female characters look similar, but Robin has also gotten less distinctive as the series has gone on.

Side note, is that supposed to be Wanda in the bottom right, when she was wearing Nami's bikini?

last edited at Feb 2, 2026 9:50PM

^ You mean busy, right? Right?

^ Uh, wow. I was not expecting anyone to actually do the legwork. Kudos. Only fair I pay it back.

I suggest a scale based on how large/advanced of a civilization the lesbian in question could create with only her potential ships with a second axis for how many generations of science/magic babies it would take to get there.
For the first axis, I have a ten-tier one on-hand, based on one from Halo that I heavily modified for use in a Metroid fanfic, as an example: Sedent, Urban, Mechanical, Industrial, Electrical, Digital, Stellar, Interstellar, Galactic, Intergalactic, and Meta Supra et Ultra (currently a placeholder for sapient life that became so advanced it actually abandoned civilization in a conventional sense, working on something punchier). For the second axis, uh, someone else'll have to tag in, I haven't gone down that autistic rabbit hole yet.