i personally think it's more effective that way. there is a trans flag at the end as a little canon-confirmation which is nice. so madeline is trans in the text. but i prefer the beautifully crafted subtext arc over having text boxes where madeline like talks about trans stuff or whatever (although i totally understand wanting more overtly trans media, i think celeste stands on its own as almost perfect the way it is). i think the amount of trans love for the game affirms that it is effective allegory.
The fact that anyone still speaks about "queer rep" in terms of 'canon' really shows how far behind rep is. Not sending their best
I'm not exactly asking to be told HEY, THE CURTAINS ARE NOT JUST BLUE point blank, I mean if you're a real dumbass like me the trans flag-coloured clouds spell it out plainly. It's undeniably textual that Celeste is trans rep, that Madeline is A Gender®, but what exactly it has to say is so interprative that I wonder if it even has a deliberately intended message about the subject. The fact that the dev wasn't even aware of being trans at the time makes me wonder further. I guess it doesn't really need to have a "point", but I guess I was expecting it to considering how hyped it is in this respect. Regardless though, the textual arc about overcoming anxiety and depression is flavoured really well by the trans subtext.
I'm not against heavily interprative stuff even though I'm really stupid, but I run into subjective issues I guess. This whole passage
When Madeline looks in the mirror and sees her other self; when she attempts to abandon her reflection, who then drags her down the mountain; when the two reconcile and merge to become stronger and more complete… that was all unknowingly written from a trans perspective."
from here took me a few tries to even understand ( ) and didn't really resonate personally. I didn't really note it the first time through because, Idk, that experience of denying yourself and having it set you back, not something I can say I've had. (I know, I'm so fucking lucky) It clearly hits home for a lot of people, I actually think my wife would really like/absolutely hate that read, but to me it was kind of like Oh, Okay, I get it now, in post.
The throughline to understanding everything I'm saying (aside from the fact that I'm fucking stupid) is that none of it is actual criticism. I don't actually have any, really; I thought it was very pleasant, it is a nice arc, I like it and it's cool that you can read it on multiple levels... but it was weird having all of this fly clear over my head, which I guess is the other edge of the "every trans gender is a lil different an experience" sword.
thank you for sharing these thoughts:) totally agree it's a desert out there in terms of trans stories and a lot of them are just tragedies too, we need more radically hopeful/optimistic shit imo.
regarding the "deliberately intended message"
... personally for me when it comes to art, authorial intent is literally the last thing on the list of shit that matters about the work. I don't really care what the intended message of anything is, what matters is what I and others get out of it. how it relates to me. I'm completely death of the author brained. that's how I personally feel and I know other people can hold very different views when it comes to art which is also valid.
Yeah I should clarify, I don't usually give a fuck what the author says, it's more like "you can read amything into a text sure, but is there one that's more supported by the text?" I guess. That's probably still a little too literal, thanks to whoever invented Autism probably. Death of the author is always cool and funny.
I strain constantly to try to comprehend things and I'm really fucking stupid, so I'm basically the worst possible person to be dedicated to this sort of thing. But actually it's not, I mean more representation in visual media is needed but I've got like 57 trans related novels, novellas, graphic novels and so on to read, on top of 36 already read and maybe like 100 more in my general tbr. My life's work and I am shit at it.
I don't relate to most media and I'm heavily autistic in I feel empathy completely different to the "norm" hence why I don't seek stuff out.. I already feel alienated because of this and part of why I feel broken compared to everyone else. (I can't tell if it's autism or trauma or both or other factors either)
Why I constantly remind people I'm from the void, because I don't experience things the "intended" way the majority of the time and it's been a source of conflict from various people over time.
That's true ^^ stuff like that mirror quote above and such I don't feel anything to a lot, I don't experience emotions like most people typically would. Hence the alienation.
The fact that anyone still speaks about “queer rep” in terms of ‘canon’
Ftfy
Actual, albeit semi-tangential reply
There's definitely always going to be a few trans narratives that don't click when your experiences are different enough (or really any narrative in general, but focusing on trans ones in particular here). I know I personally have felt deep connections with works that you would probably find less compelling and vice versa.
Like, my favourite novel, in general, is a visual novel with a character whose arc you would probably consider at least partially trans misery porn, but is ultimately deeply compelling and relatable to me (especially as my life continues to mirror his in frankly worrying ways).
And on the other hand I find force femme stuff deeply uncomfortable since I place a lot of importance on my agency in transitioning and the trope feels like a removal of that agency to me. (Actually now I forget if you ever posted about force femme stuff here, well either way it's an example of something that doesn't click for me but does for a bunch of other transfemmes)
But also, I agree here in the context of Celeste. For one I just never had the mirror discomfort that its creators did, and while I can kinda relate to that quote in a "I used to hate the way I look but now I'm happy with it" way that's ultimately too... Surface level and vague? At least too much for me to really find it compelling.
But moreso I think, for me at least, the context of its creation as a not-specifically-trans narrative (Calling it this since there were some trans influences from the start, the composer and a few of her songs, for instance) means that a lot of the trans subtext is very vague and undirected. And a lot of the more explicit text was stuff added onto the finished game in updates. Like the CG with the trans flag wasn't in there at launch. (This goes into a bigger mess of subjects on whether the first or last version of a game is the "complete" version of it but I'll spare you it right now). Overall though this leaves me feeling that while it's a cute game, it doesn't feel like a trans game to me in the way it does for a lot of other people.
I think I just wasn't primed for it, Idk. Also it's kind of a new subject to me in general, discussing trans rep with anybody, which is awesome but means you get to watch me mull over and internalise shit in realtime, cause I'm really stupid. The thrust of everything I said is in fact basically "I felt weird that it went over my head cause it didn't click", some fuckin rep enthusiast I am.
I'm thinking really hard and, visual novel that would be considered trans misery porn?? Also, if a work is engaging meaningfully with the misery or trauma or w/e it depicts, I do not consider it to be misery porn generally. I'm very curious to know what this is.
Lmao I have asked briefly about The Masker by Torrey Peters here before, but I avoided discussing it because A) hypersexual B) I figured it might be unpleasant to people here, as you say. It's not hard to see how the trope feels like a removal of agency though, even if I equally understand why people might like that "removal of agency" aspect, and I really enjoyed The Masker digging into that stuff.
Yeah, the mirror thing almost feels a touch literal now I look... I think Badeline is better parsed as a manifestation of anxiety and depression. Reading the mirror allegory as denying your true self and it bringing you low, is kinda weird in a trans context given how shitty Badeline is for most of the runtime...? Idk!
Ooooh I did not know that a lot of stuff had been added in updates, ty for the info! I agree in turn with what you say as well - I think the reading can enhance the game in many ways, but also I went in all eyes-on about trans rep, but I sorta let that go about five hours in because it just wasn't giving me many (if any) signals that said "hey, maybe there is A Gender at play here!" or anything. Idk.
Oh don't be so hard on yourself, literary analysis is hard and you tend to do a good job at it from what I've read in your postings here over the months I've been active. Sometimes a particular take just doesn't click for you when it does for other people. But that reading of Badeline you just described is basically exactly how most people read her prior to the writer's transition, including the writer herself. (At least from my cursory understanding when the game came out, I never got around to playing it until years later)
VN talk
The VN I was talking about was The House in Fata Morgana. Misery porn was definitely an exaggeration, the VN as a whole is basically a series of tragedies that all relate to eachother as a larger supernatural mystery that gradually gets revealed. It's very theatrical, very pretty, and has an incredible OST. Seriously even if you don't read it listen to a couple of tracks sometime. The entire VN is incredible, I adore it.
It's honestly not really a trans narrative at all though, only one of the tragedies is, and even then the main character of that section is actually intersex (although you can read him as both, I certainly do (and I think that's the intent too)). Despite that I still feel and read it as a trans narrative. I just relate to him on an incredibly deep level, more than basically any other character in fiction. I should also clarify that most of the suffering isn't stuff that the character feels so much as other people being abusive to him.
Which is why my life mirroring his is a bit worrying since I read this VN before my egg cracked and the abuse I've gotten, particularly around October to November when I was kicked out is... Distressingly similar. I'm actually a bit afraid to reread it rn if I'm being honest.
I know I'm being very vague but I love it so much and don't want to really spoil it
Well thank you, I like to think I'm okay at it sometimes lol. At least I'm not totally offbase with that... You can always read Badeline equally as being a manifestation of anxiety about transition, which is fun!
VN talk!!!
Woah no fucking way, I have never once heard of this!!! That sounds kinda rad honestly, I might have to poke it at some point. I will admit that queer characters getting abused unendingly by cishets in fiction is one of my big pet peeves, but I've read stuff featuring that and gotten along with it before, so yooooo!
That is distressing, sorry to hear you were kicked out easily one of the shittiest things... Hopefully it's less distressing when next you go back to it
That's great that you seem interested in it! The endless abuse is luckily not the only thing going on with that character, and the chapter which focuses on that aspect is one of the shorter ones overall with it only coming into play halfway through so it's also relatively brief. If you want any extra content warnings don't hesitate to ask, since there are a few other ones due to its nature as tragedy. If you do read it please don't hesitate to message me about it since I don't have a ton of people to discuss it with and I would love to get to yap about it in more detail for once!
And thank you for the concern.
Show
I haven't been updating here as much as I could about my situation since the first month but I've been doing much much better and have mostly stabilised since then, both emotionally and economically. I'm also just much happier now that I get to be myself and not repress myself as much anymore.
You can bet when I pick it up I'll be sure to post about it Oh fucking shit this has a PS Vita version? I should fucking dust off my Vita for this!!!!! Yoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
I expect it to be sufficiently traumatic but I'm kinda ready for it. Readying the hype train.
And ofc Glad to hear the good news, and that you're in a better place after all of that. Love to see it
I know, it's not exactly subtle, quoting self downthread
Also I think the word is "subtextual". But for how much I hear its praises sung I was expecting any amount of text I guess...
i personally think it's more effective that way. there is a trans flag at the end as a little canon-confirmation which is nice. so madeline is trans in the text. but i prefer the beautifully crafted subtext arc over having text boxes where madeline like talks about trans stuff or whatever (although i totally understand wanting more overtly trans media, i think celeste stands on its own as almost perfect the way it is). i think the amount of trans love for the game affirms that it is effective allegory.
stupid hateful bullshit
The fact that anyone still speaks about "queer rep" in terms of 'canon' really shows how far behind rep is. Not sending their best
I'm not exactly asking to be told HEY, THE CURTAINS ARE NOT JUST BLUE point blank, I mean if you're a real dumbass like me the trans flag-coloured clouds spell it out plainly. It's undeniably textual that Celeste is trans rep, that Madeline is A Gender®, but what exactly it has to say is so interprative that I wonder if it even has a deliberately intended message about the subject. The fact that the dev wasn't even aware of being trans at the time makes me wonder further. I guess it doesn't really need to have a "point", but I guess I was expecting it to considering how hyped it is in this respect. Regardless though, the textual arc about overcoming anxiety and depression is flavoured really well by the trans subtext.
I'm not against heavily interprative stuff even though I'm really stupid, but I run into subjective issues I guess. This whole passage
from here took me a few tries to even understand (
) and didn't really resonate personally. I didn't really note it the first time through because, Idk, that experience of denying yourself and having it set you back, not something I can say I've had. (I know, I'm so fucking lucky) It clearly hits home for a lot of people, I actually think my wife would really like/absolutely hate that read, but to me it was kind of like Oh, Okay, I get it now, in post.
The throughline to understanding everything I'm saying (aside from the fact that I'm fucking stupid) is that none of it is actual criticism. I don't actually have any, really; I thought it was very pleasant, it is a nice arc, I like it and it's cool that you can read it on multiple levels... but it was weird having all of this fly clear over my head, which I guess is the other edge of the "every trans gender is a lil different an experience" sword.
thank you for sharing these thoughts:) totally agree it's a desert out there in terms of trans stories and a lot of them are just tragedies too, we need more radically hopeful/optimistic shit imo.
regarding the "deliberately intended message" ... personally for me when it comes to art, authorial intent is literally the last thing on the list of shit that matters about the work. I don't really care what the intended message of anything is, what matters is what I and others get out of it. how it relates to me. I'm completely death of the author brained. that's how I personally feel and I know other people can hold very different views when it comes to art which is also valid.
Yeah I should clarify, I don't usually give a fuck what the author says, it's more like "you can read amything into a text sure, but is there one that's more supported by the text?" I guess. That's probably still a little too literal, thanks to whoever invented Autism probably. Death of the author is always cool and funny.
I strain constantly to try to comprehend things and I'm really fucking stupid, so I'm basically the worst possible person to be dedicated to this sort of thing. But actually
it's not, I mean more representation in visual media is needed but I've got like 57 trans related novels, novellas, graphic novels and so on to read, on top of 36 already read and maybe like 100 more in my general tbr. My life's work and I am shit at it.
I don't relate to most media and I'm heavily autistic in I feel empathy completely different to the "norm" hence why I don't seek stuff out.. I already feel alienated because of this and part of why I feel broken compared to everyone else. (I can't tell if it's autism or trauma or both or other factors either) Why I constantly remind people I'm from the void, because I don't experience things the "intended" way the majority of the time and it's been a source of conflict from various people over time.
the "intended" way is bs and the backbone of lazy art critique!!! death of the author!!!!!
That's true ^^ stuff like that mirror quote above and such I don't feel anything to a lot, I don't experience emotions like most people typically would. Hence the alienation.
Ftfy
Actual, albeit semi-tangential reply
There's definitely always going to be a few trans narratives that don't click when your experiences are different enough (or really any narrative in general, but focusing on trans ones in particular here). I know I personally have felt deep connections with works that you would probably find less compelling and vice versa.
Like, my favourite novel, in general, is a visual novel with a character whose arc you would probably consider at least partially trans misery porn, but is ultimately deeply compelling and relatable to me (especially as my life continues to mirror his in frankly worrying ways).
And on the other hand I find force femme stuff deeply uncomfortable since I place a lot of importance on my agency in transitioning and the trope feels like a removal of that agency to me. (Actually now I forget if you ever posted about force femme stuff here, well either way it's an example of something that doesn't click for me but does for a bunch of other transfemmes)
But also, I agree here in the context of Celeste. For one I just never had the mirror discomfort that its creators did, and while I can kinda relate to that quote in a "I used to hate the way I look but now I'm happy with it" way that's ultimately too... Surface level and vague? At least too much for me to really find it compelling.
But moreso I think, for me at least, the context of its creation as a not-specifically-trans narrative (Calling it this since there were some trans influences from the start, the composer and a few of her songs, for instance) means that a lot of the trans subtext is very vague and undirected. And a lot of the more explicit text was stuff added onto the finished game in updates. Like the CG with the trans flag wasn't in there at launch. (This goes into a bigger mess of subjects on whether the first or last version of a game is the "complete" version of it but I'll spare you it right now). Overall though this leaves me feeling that while it's a cute game, it doesn't feel like a trans game to me in the way it does for a lot of other people.
hateful bullshit
I think I just wasn't primed for it, Idk. Also it's kind of a new subject to me in general, discussing trans rep with anybody, which is awesome but means you get to watch me mull over and internalise shit in realtime, cause I'm really stupid. The thrust of everything I said is in fact basically "I felt weird that it went over my head cause it didn't click", some fuckin rep enthusiast I am.
I'm thinking really hard and, visual novel that would be considered trans misery porn?? Also, if a work is engaging meaningfully with the misery or trauma or w/e it depicts, I do not consider it to be misery porn generally. I'm very curious to know what this is.
Lmao
I have asked briefly about The Masker by Torrey Peters here before, but I avoided discussing it because A) hypersexual B) I figured it might be unpleasant to people here, as you say. It's not hard to see how the trope feels like a removal of agency though, even if I equally understand why people might like that "removal of agency" aspect, and I really enjoyed The Masker digging into that stuff.
Yeah, the mirror thing almost feels a touch literal now I look... I think Badeline is better parsed as a manifestation of anxiety and depression. Reading the mirror allegory as denying your true self and it bringing you low, is kinda weird in a trans context given how shitty Badeline is for most of the runtime...? Idk!
Ooooh I did not know that a lot of stuff had been added in updates, ty for the info! I agree in turn with what you say as well - I think the reading can enhance the game in many ways, but also I went in all eyes-on about trans rep, but I sorta let that go about five hours in because it just wasn't giving me many (if any) signals that said "hey, maybe there is A Gender at play here!" or anything. Idk.
Literary analysis talk
Oh don't be so hard on yourself, literary analysis is hard and you tend to do a good job at it from what I've read in your postings here over the months I've been active. Sometimes a particular take just doesn't click for you when it does for other people. But that reading of Badeline you just described is basically exactly how most people read her prior to the writer's transition, including the writer herself. (At least from my cursory understanding when the game came out, I never got around to playing it until years later)
VN talk
The VN I was talking about was The House in Fata Morgana. Misery porn was definitely an exaggeration, the VN as a whole is basically a series of tragedies that all relate to eachother as a larger supernatural mystery that gradually gets revealed. It's very theatrical, very pretty, and has an incredible OST. Seriously even if you don't read it listen to a couple of tracks sometime. The entire VN is incredible, I adore it.
It's honestly not really a trans narrative at all though, only one of the tragedies is, and even then the main character of that section is actually intersex (although you can read him as both, I certainly do (and I think that's the intent too)). Despite that I still feel and read it as a trans narrative. I just relate to him on an incredibly deep level, more than basically any other character in fiction. I should also clarify that most of the suffering isn't stuff that the character feels so much as other people being abusive to him.
Which is why my life mirroring his is a bit worrying since I read this VN before my egg cracked and the abuse I've gotten, particularly around October to November when I was kicked out is... Distressingly similar. I'm actually a bit afraid to reread it rn if I'm being honest.
I know I'm being very vague but I love it so much and don't want to really spoil it
o boi literary analsis!
Well thank you, I like to think I'm okay at it sometimes lol. At least I'm not totally offbase with that... You can always read Badeline equally as being a manifestation of anxiety about transition, which is fun!
VN talk!!!
Woah no fucking way, I have never once heard of this!!! That sounds kinda rad honestly, I might have to poke it at some point. I will admit that queer characters getting abused unendingly by cishets in fiction is one of my big pet peeves, but I've read stuff featuring that and gotten along with it before, so yooooo!
That is distressing, sorry to hear you were kicked out
easily one of the shittiest things... Hopefully it's less distressing when next you go back to it 
VN talk!!!!!
That's great that you seem interested in it! The endless abuse is luckily not the only thing going on with that character, and the chapter which focuses on that aspect is one of the shorter ones overall with it only coming into play halfway through so it's also relatively brief. If you want any extra content warnings don't hesitate to ask, since there are a few other ones due to its nature as tragedy. If you do read it please don't hesitate to message me about it since I don't have a ton of people to discuss it with and I would love to get to yap about it in more detail for once!
And thank you for the concern.
I haven't been updating here as much as I could about my situation since the first month but I've been doing much much better and have mostly stabilised since then, both emotionally and economically. I'm also just much happier now that I get to be myself and not repress myself as much anymore.
LFG (I am prolly gonna play more Celeste first but
)
Waow, the Novel is Visual...
You can bet when I pick it up I'll be sure to post about it
Oh fucking shit this has a PS Vita version? I should fucking dust off my Vita for this!!!!! Yoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!
I expect it to be sufficiently traumatic but I'm kinda ready for it. Readying the hype train.
And ofc
Glad to hear the good news, and that you're in a better place after all of that. Love to see it 