Waough!

point one: scythe's aesthetics

a key part of being butch is, of course, masculine presentation (though that is not all it is!). i have always personally believed that, in terms of strictly canonical or semi-canonical material (e.g. skins, soda's art), scythe is easily perceivable as masculine-presenting through the eyes of the player. scythe has a functionally masculine fashion sense, both in and outside of her work for the church. though she seems to prefer practicality over style, she still dresses up (in button-downs and vests) from time to time, usually when work calls for it. it's not just in her clothing, either—it's in her body language and the way she talks to people, too, though i'll be elaborating more on the latter in my second point. along with that, i've even seen numerous new phighting players confuse scythe for being a man, with some of those who don't calling her tomboyish instead.

now, i will admit that there is some nuance here. blocky roblox models combined with none of the phighting cast having hair or secondary sex characteristics means that masculinizing/androgynizing them is relatively easily. along with that, phighting's worldbuilding itself places the inpherno as a genderless society, though this is implemented in a... rather sloppy manner, i would say. but this is an essay about scythe, not about the specifics of all that. although the inphernals live in a world without gender, we as the viewers/players absolutely do not. in a cast full of what we would view as ostensibly masculine-presenting characters, scythe fits right in—see my previous comment about people initially thinking she's a man.

i'll be using images here of various art to prove my point, because i don't think words are convincing enough when her appearance is the topic at hand:

(all images taken from the phighting wiki except for the last one, which is from soda's twitter)

point two: scythe's personality and character interactions

this is where things get good.

from her first introduction, scythe has been characterized as sly, silver-tongued, charismatic, and highly suspicious. she's a very dramatic person who puts up a mean front of self-confidence, but still treats others with respect and can even show moments of earnestness and reflection at the right times. you could also say that she has a flirtatious side, give her interactions with vine staff as well as a few of her dialogues + one of her ultimate animations being her blowing a kiss at the viewer. i think that, especially given the performative nature of both her presentation as a hunter and the cockiness she displays with characters like ban hammer (which also counts as disrespecting law enforcement, something you could also easily spin as butch-coded!), you could make an argument for these aspects of her being intertwined. gender presentation as performance/entertainment is a very common thing in any queer or trans culture, but in this case, i see it as quite reminiscent of butch/stud lesbians and drag kings.

scythe's true self doesn't lie within that persona, though. "rifle" is the one that can smooth-talk people and carry out father overseer's orders, but the perception other characters have of her doesn't go far beyond that; no matter what, she is always viewed in a negative light. to them, scythe's motivations are inscrutable—but, in reality, her wants are quite simple. scythe has always been defined by her loyalty. the love she has for her people and her family shows in everything she is, even if it's now been warped and exploited beyond recognition. when it comes to the other churchgoers' perception of her (which she clearly cares about the most), scythe is viewed as someone to rely on as a protector and a provider—and, despite the circumstances, she is clearly fulfilled within this role. this is the strongest argument i have to scythe being butch, as this is the entire motivation her deeper character revolves around. she is loyal, she is suave, she is chivalrous, and she is protective—in all the wrong ways, for all the wrong reasons. i really can't think of any better way to depict a morally corrupt butch!

point three: scythe's backstory and her relationship with the church

ultimately, scythe's loyalty spawns from the injustice she faced during the scorch; that event was what drove her to leave her old life behind and join the church, where her love and faith was then used against her to protect overseer and his values. this further displays just how important being a protector driven by loyalty is to her character, as well as how revealing it is that that fact has never changed, even as her morality and actions in the name of it have. (very notable, also, is that scythe used to be a manual worker as an oziphrage wrangler. these sorts of jobs were and are extremely common with working-class—especially butch—queer women.)

now, it's time for me to bring up her relationship with grappling hook. admittedly, we don't know much about their dynamic before the scorch—or even their feelings on one another after the fact—but one thing is made clear through reading the comic: these two are incredibly similar characters. i'd even go as far as to say they're narrative parallels, with similar values and ways of cunning to get what they/the people they love need. hook leans less into the "protector" side of things, but it's clear that they have earned the respect the other redcliff wranglers have for them via their leadership and providing for them. they have their moments of greyness, but overall, i would say that they are a reflection of what scythe could have been had she not gone down such a dark path. because of these similarities, i firmly view scythe and grappling hook to have been butch4butch. even the ditf artist who designed grappling hook openly supports this headcanon:

(posted hours after the reveal that scythe & grappling hook are exes. creativortexx you will always be beloved by meeeeeee)

conclusion

while i do not think all of this is explicitly canon anymore, like i did when her backstory was first revealed last december, i do still wholeheartedly believe that there is plenty of evidence pointing to a viable argument that she is heavily coded to be a butch lesbian. i believe that viewing her as such, whether it be from a watsonian or a doylist point, greatly enhances her character and adds some beautiful insight into her flamboyant, charismatic persona, her relationship with being a mob enforcer & protector for the church, and the bonds she holds so closely, both in the past and in the present. i truly wish that people took this interpretation of her more seriously and saw it beyond just the aesthetics, if even that. it's in the very foundations of her character if you have the right eye for it—and, through my point of view, it's borderline impossible to me to see her as anything else.

This is an argument that Rebecca Giblin and I develop in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back:

https://www.beacon.org/Chokepoint-Capitalism-P1856.aspx

Rebecca is a law professor who is, among other things, one of the world's leading experts on Termination of Transfer, who co-authored the definitive study on the use of Termination since the 1976 Copyright Act, and the many ways this has benefited creators at the expense of media companies:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/26/take-it-back/

Remember, Termination is one of the only copyright policies that solely benefits creative workers. Under Termination, a media company can force you to sign away your rights in perpetuity, but you can still claim those rights back after 35 years. Termination isn't just something to bargain away, it's a new power to bargain with.

The history of how Termination got into the 1976 Copyright Act is pretty gnarly. The original text of the Termination clause made Termination automatic, after 25 years. That would have meant that every quarter century, every media company would have to go hat in hand to every creative worker whose work was still selling and beg them to sign a new contract. If your original contract stank (say, because you were just starting your career), you could demand back-payment to make up for the shitty deal you'd been forced into, and if your publisher/label/studio wouldn't cough up, you could take your work somewhere else and bargain from a position of strength, because you'd be selling a sure thing – a work that was still commercially viable after 25 years!

Automatic termination would also solve the absentee landlord problem, where a media company was squatting on your rights, keeping your book or album in print (or these days, online), but doing nothing to promote them and refusing to return the rights to you so you could sell them to some who saw the potential in your old works.

Naturally, the media industry hated this, so they watered down Termination. Instead of applying after 25 years, it now applies after 35 years. Instead of being automatic, it now requires requires creators to go through red tape at the Copyright Office.

But that wasn't enough for the media companies. In 1999, an obscure Congressional staffer named Mitch Glazier slipped a rider into the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act that ended Termination of Transfer for musicians. Musicians really need Termination, since record deals were and are so unconscionable and one-sided. The bill passed without anyone noticing:

https://www.wired.com/2000/08/rule-reversal-blame-it-on-riaa/

Musicians got really pissed about this, and so did Congress, who'd been hoodwinked by this despicable pismire. Congress actually convened a special session just to delete Glazier's amendment, and Glazier left his government job under a cloud.

But Glazier wasn't unemployed for long. Within three months, he'd been installed as the CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, a job he has held ever since, where he makes over $1.3 million/year:

https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131669037

I recently got a press release signed by Glazier, supporting Disney and Universal's copyright suit against Midjourney, in which begins, "There is a clear path forward through partnerships":

https://www.riaa.com/riaa-statement-on-midjourney-ai-litigation/

In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI – he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to make the products that his clients will use to destroy creators' livelihoods. He wants there to be a new copyright that allows creators to decide whether their work can be used to train AI models, and then he wants that right transferred to media companies who will sell to to AI companies in a bid to stop paying artists:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

US Copyright has always acknowledged the tension between creators' rights and the rights of publishers, studios, labels and other media companies that buy creators' works. The original US copyright lasted for 14 years, and could be renewed for another 14 years, but only by the creator (not by the publisher). This meant that if a work was still selling after 14 years, the publisher would have to convince the writer to renew the copyright, or the work would go into the public domain.

This was in an era in which writers were typically paid a flat fee for their work, so from a writer's perspective, it didn't matter if the publisher made any money from subsequent sales of their books, or whether the book entered the public domain so that anyone could sell it. The writer made the same amount either way: zero.

Copyright's original 14 year renewal was a way for creative labor markets to look back and address historic injustices. If your publisher underpaid you 14 years ago, you could demand that they make good on their moral obligation to you, and if they refused, you could punish them by putting the work into the public domain.

Termination has been a huge boon to artists of all description from Stephen King to Ann M Martin, creator of The Babysitters' Club. One of my favorite examples is funk legend George Clinton, whose shitweasel manager forged his signature on a contract and stole his royalties for decades (the reason Clinton is still touring isn't merely that he's an unstoppable funk god, but because he's broke). Clinton eventually gave up on suing his ex-manager and instead just filed for Termination of Transfer:

https://www.billboard.com/pro/george-clinton-lawsuit-ex-agent-music-rights/

If that sounds familiar, it may be because I used it as the basis for a subplot in my novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle/

Back to Roger Rabbit. Author Gary K Wolf has successfully filed for Termination of Transfer, meaning he's recovered the rights to Roger Rabbit and the other characters from his novel:

https://www.imnotbad.com/2025/11/roger-rabbit-copyright-reverts-to.html

He discusses his plans for a sequel starring Jessica Rabbit in this interview with "I'm Not Bad TV":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_0lUiplxZk

Writing about the termination for Boing Boing, Ruben Bolling wonders what this means for things like the Roger Rabbit ride at Disneyland, and the ongoing distribution of the film:

https://boingboing.net/2025/11/17/disney-loses-the-rights-to-roger-rabbit-characters-as-they-revert-to-original-author-of-novel.html

It's not clear to me what the answer is but my guess is that Disney will have to offer Wolf enough money that he agrees to keep the film in distribution and the ride running. Which is the point: when you sell your work for film adaptation, no one know if it's going to be a dud or a classic. Termination is copyright's lookback, a way to renegotiate the deal once you've gotten the leverage that comes from success.

If you have a work you signed away the copyright for 35 years or more ago, here is a tool from Creative Commons and the Authors Alliance for terminating the transfer and getting your rights back (disclosure: I am an unpaid member of the Authors Alliance advisory board):

https://rightsback.org/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/17/stop-killing-games-again/#object-transience

Image: Ken Lund (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/16775732643/