when people say not to "misgender" x character, i understand and agree with where they're coming from, but can't help but feel that "misgender" has different meanings to different people. specifically, misgendering a character only arises as a structural issue when a person denies the reality of a character's status as a minority, which is often indicated by misgendering. for example, your average youtuber he/him-ing kris deltarune is certainly misgendering them, but specifically because the average guy doing this clearly sees kris as a cisgender boy. by and large, this is the majority of the kris-misgendering out there. (though simply given the game's sheer popularity i'm sure there's a nonzero amount of people who think kris is a cis girl too, i guess). you can't misgender a fictional character the way you would a real person—they have no consciousness, no capacity to feel disrespected or violated—it honestly feels strange to see people treat it this way when it'd be much more useful to analyze what that difference in interpretation actually implies. in this case, denying the reality of what they represent (erasing a trans character and replacing them with a cis boy) is a marker of discriminatory biases itself
with that established, it is exceedingly clear to me that there is no issue whatsoever with people she/her-ing kris through a transfeminine lens (which is textually implied, for the record) because this does not strip away their transness. if anything, imo, the people actively engaging with the way kris's transfemininity is acknowledged within the story are leagues more invested in her identity as a trans person than the ones going "well i think all the humans in the undertale universe are nonbinary :) kris was assigned nonbinary at birth and identifies with that gender assignment :) this form of representation is so compelling to me" which i see all the time for some reason. and yet people want to treat "cis boy kris" and "trans girl kris" as if they are both transphobic. like it's kind of embarrassing
INB4 "god forbid nonbinary people have anything" nonbinary transfems are just as nonbinary as any other nonbinary character you could name, you are either willfully ignorant or willingly obtuse "god forbid transneutral people have anything" come back when you understand labels as descriptors of material oppression and not personal identity. we are discussing discrimination here "stop treating nonbinary identities as mere stepping stones to a different gender" i am not 🌸
