Theme from Route 1

[captlebubbles]

I was thinking earlier about how the Rangan Donpa fandom has always had Discourse about whether or not Chihiro is trans, and I just realized that while the fandom is very insistent that he's a trans girl, in fact his narrative works a thousand times more coherently if he's a trans boy.

• He was referred to as "a boy in a dress"
• He said he was a boy

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Ooh, that's a really good point! Dressing and living like a girl was presented as the easier option for Chihiro, and admitting to being a boy in a dress who'd been living as a girl and trying to be more manly was the brave option. So having Chihiro be a trans boy works really well!

[captlebubbles]

It does! I'm probably going to adopt the clearly-labeled headcanon if I ever get back into DR, I think it'd be fun to explore.

[wolfy_writing]

It sounds like it! And as headcanon goes, it's both interesting and logical!

[captlebubbles]

Now I just gotta persuade myself to be into DR again.

........

nothing

[rionaleonhart]

This makes sense! It's made pretty clear in canon that Chihiro identifies as male but presents as female because that's the easier option.

People can interpret or headcanon Chihiro however they like, but I've always been really uncomfortable with 'Chihiro is a girl and if you don't think so you're transphobic' arguments. So, er, it's transphobic to consider Chihiro to be the gender he wishes he could be accepted as?

[wolfy_writing]

Yeah, I could construct a logical interpretation of Chihiro as a trans girl, but that involves less taking what Chihiro says at face value than reading Chihiro as a boy (either cis or trans), and "believing a character about what they say is their real gender" doesn't seem inherently transphobic?

[captlebubbles]

Believing a character about what they say is their real gender only counts if they say they're a girl. A character who says they're a boy is clearly just a case of the writers being transphobic. /bitter

[captlebubbles]

The point that it started bothering me was when everyone started treating it as canon, but that's stock-standard for me, I get a lot of it on Tumblr so it sticks in my craw a lot. But either way I'm not gonna make a big production out of someone's headcanon unless they're trying to force me to share it.

That said, I'm going to be bitter about that Chihiro vs Pidge thing for like, a week now. Probably longer. I have a lot of bitterness in me.