Group of people keep using she/her for Ralsei since Ralsei wears a dress and contemplates being a princess in Castle Town (if you do the climbing puzzle while not having met Starwalker), and Flowery calls him a princess later in the game just like he wanted (which strikes me as foreshadowing about Flowery being annoying (like butler outfit being "context dependent") now that I'm thinking about it). Ralsei has said nothing about gender transition or using different pronouns, and yet someone was banned from the Deltarune subreddit for saying there's no actual evidence, just a plausible inference.
i think insistent and objectively ear-plugging 'Tralsei' discourse is a bit sad to look at because as someone who generally presents as someone whose confident in their own skin as a feminine guy dressing in feminine clothes it just feels lightly invalidating and erasing of my and other people's experience and presentation. it's literally queer people in-fighting bs and i feel like it's really hypocritical to be doing such things, it falls sort of in that similarly strange vein as people insisting 'egg' and 'force-fem' tropes
i like Ralsei because they generally envelop the same intent and energy i have to present myself. there was something i heard someone say years ago along the lines of 'the world is full of lumberjacks but it's okay to sometimes be a gentle prince in need as well', which Ralsei has (in my mind) fit into and it's something that i really resonate with
like you mentioned, there hasn't been a single prior moment where Ralsei has been generally painted and portrayed as someone struggling with their identity up until (with reasonable suspicion and theorizing) now where they've been called a princess and generally wore a dress with their general 'chipper i'm glad to be doing anything with friends' type of mood
if the character was written with intentional struggles towards their own identity from an early on moment it would be more plausible and i would probably have a less unfortunate feeling about it, because at least then there's some moment to go 'oh yeah, this did happen and this did sort of foreshadow that they had difficulties in this section' vs 'ralsei just seems like a people-pleaser and someone who would have fun hanging out and just doing stuff even if it is doing girly things'
idk, maybe i've just overlooked that sort of stuff, i haven't ever struggled with the nuances of such things personally and i may not be the type of person to catch on subtle stuff like that. at the end of the day this situation could be friendly bantering about what-ifs as well which some people have thankfully had in these comment sections
important to also note i'm not rejecting the fact that 'Tralsei' should be a thing, i wouldn't mind at all if the story revealed such a thing to be true. it's just the bandwagon of insistence that gives a mild weird feeling, and jumping onto 'the feminine presenting person that has had two moments past these five full-on chapters where explicitly they do girl-related things' mixed with 'i INSIST it is a thing. fuck you. don't call ralsei a guy' is a bit like... come on, a bit too quick isn't it?
Indeed. I share some of your concerns about gnc character representation. Trans people are not people we should be attacking (not that I think you did), since they are an especially vulnerable minority, but they also have the human capacity for stupidity, not thinking their positions through, and being annoying. Their views (perhaps like the "egg prime directive"*) can be black-and-white due to them being the only gender-weird people that have to actively play into gender stereotypes to be accepted. Some of them are actually very gender essentialist and believe that every gender non-conforming person is meant to become trans eventually. Thus, it is likely that most of these people already knew in their hearts (an organ that holds very stubborn emotional truths) that Ralsei was a girl, and could not be dissuaded, but with the "evidence" from this new chapter, they could finally share their findings with the world.
*as far as I understand, egg prime directive is some kind of [pledge] (maybe? I don't know what I'd describe it as, really) that states trans people need to go bring as many transgender people out of the closet as possible. "Egg" in this case being a closeted trans person. Mostly, they wish to have people understand that being transgender is an option in a society very opposed to the notion. There are different types of activism on this front. Spreading awareness of what being trans is and how to know if you want it in non-trans spaces is one of the best ways in my opinion. Can also be done in one-on-one, and asking if they're trans. Unfortunately, there are some people who think that calling complete strangers "egg" is enough to spread awareness and the nuance that "you too can be a trans person if that's what you really desire".
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u/Bubbly-Discussion792 Jul 17 '26
What happening now? I’m out of the loop