#kwellpost

Anyway, so, supporting evidence that I've seen for Trans Ralsei: Asgore and the Title "Dark Vine" refer to Ralsei with they/them pronouns, and Flowery referring to Ralsei as a "princess", as well as Ralsei saying that he hasn't tried it yet. Along with a long history of expressing stereotypical femininity. Any further evidence would be nice so I'm not just building up a straw man here.

It feels a little disappointing to be the one that breaks it to you that Asgore referring to Ralsei as "they" is a polite thing to do because they've never met or been introduced and Asgore doesn't know Ralsei's pronouns.

The Dark Vine title using gender-neutral language is interesting, I'll admit. Titles have used pronouns and gendered terms before ("Prickly Prince: Deals damage with his rugged scarf", "Stool Boy: Boy with stool-like abilities"), so it's not like "they" is used here to be more vague to evoke normal class titles in other video games. I don't have a good argument here, I'll admit. All it points to is Ralsei being either a demiboy or trans-nonbinary.

Ralsei expresses interest in being a princess if you don't have Starwalker. He also says it's fun to have options while Kris inspects their wardrobe. The latter is fairly weak evidence in favor, but I'm submitting it anyway. As for the former, I honestly don't really know. Another point at which my counterarguments falter. He does turn into a lot of things. A plush, a yarn ball, a butler. He's very malleable and seems to enjoy tempory changes. He has more different forms than Susie and Kris, at least. Which may or may not just be another point in favor of Trans Ralsei. But being a princess honestly seems to have the same appeal to him as being a box in the video game section, especially since he seems to have been put here by someone else or something. He views it as exciting, then says it's just a difference in self-expression, and that it's fun to try new things.

Flowery is very laissez-faire, especially when it comes to dealing with the Fun Gang. He grows bushes to hide them, blows them away so he can skateboard through a puzzle himself, and smushes Ralsei into the ground. He also seems to enjoy teasing Ralsei, verbally riposting Ralsei's accusations of messing with and falsifying game data with "Look who's talking." (It's a pity we still don't really know what this implies.) His voice lines are establishes in his first scene to talk about "ladies" and "princesses" (He calls Susie a princess right after introducing himself), and we know some of his lines are anime fansubs-level off due to the Japanese theme (Jarona, anyone?). It makes sense for Flowery to call Ralsei a princess, between his teasing towards Ralsei specifically, as well as his theme of old-timey chivalry and the mistranslation gimmick (though I'll admit this last part is less supported because there is no audible voice line that plays when he calls Ralsei a princess, but I don't think there was a "princess" voice line in the first place). Additionally, blue and pink are Kris's colors or Kris and Susie's colors. Elaborating on the chivalry, I think Flowery probably learned it from stories that Asgore read to them. Stories that usually involve a few things: Kings (twelve guesses who this is) who make decisions, Knights who carry them out in honorable, stylish, and cool ways, and Princesses, who need to be protected and/or rescued. There aren't usually a whole lot of princes in classic storybook fantasy tales, and if there are, they're usually just romantic interests for the princesses (who are also normally somewhat devoid of personality, but who at least are connected to other characters in the story by relation).

(all pictures courtesy of BeardBear's Youtube playthrough)

So, Ralsei's feminine self-expression and crossdressing. He knows that he's cute, and wears dresses and other feminine outfits. This is the part where we dip into the supplemental thoughts that I have prepared for us.

The core trio of the Fun Gang is designed as a masculine (or butch) female character, a somewhat androgynous nonbinary character (a subversion of the "main character with a selectable gender" trope), and a feminine male character. This is a fun group dynamic that I thoroughly enjoy, parallel gender subversion. In Chapter 4, Susie admitted at the tea party in Castle Town that she had to act tough in the past and is now starting to get over that. This doesn't mean she's dropping the masculine identity as a whole, it just means she is dropping the more toxic and performative aspects of it (overly violent, refusal to interact with or participate in cute things (ribbons). It's possible Ralsei goes through a similar arc, dropping the more toxic aspects of femininity that are holding his self-expression back. We've already seen him express more annoyance this chapter, and choose to focus on singing instead of baking and sewing, stereotypical female household chores.

Anyway, Susie is masculine. And yet I don't see anyone claiming that she's transmasc. I don't think that's a valid counterargument against Trans Ralsei. Just a data point. I'm also not going to claim "No one wants Susie to be a man because that would prevent her from being lesbian". But I have thought that, and written that. I'm sure it means something, even if that something is that I'm delusional. Oh well. Susie's identity as a masculine woman and a lesbian should be celebrated. I'm happy whenever I see her and Noelle together.

So, back to clothes and gender expression. Ralsei wears a dress in Chapter 5. Hey, uh, back to the "Mirrored gender subversion" thing the Fun Gang has going on... Susie can wear a tuxedo and she doesn't say a word about it, at least not anything she doesn't say about everything else. And it's pretty obvious that she's put off more by the fuss than the outfits (she'll put on the full duck costume when you leave for the Light World too). There's another piece of Chapter 5 Trans Ralsei theory, the Butler Outfit Rejection. That's fairly obviously because he dislikes Flowery putting him in the costume. I honestly don't think Ralsei has really cared about being put in any outfit except chapter 3's horse costume. Speaking of which...

There's at least as much evidence for Transhorse Ralsei as Transfem Ralsei as far as I can tell. Especially if we're going with the "in the closet" metaphor. I'm not really advocating for this either, just putting up more Ralsei self-expression things that we aren't sticking onto the Ralsei's Self-Expression conspiracy board in explicit favor of a giant Venus symbol with four pieces of evidence.

In conclusion, Ralsei's self-expression is just gender- (and perhaps species)-nonconforming. Just (or mostly, in the case of species) like his mirrored-gender-subversion partner-in-crime, Susie. Even though this chapter had a lot of focus on self-expression and self-exploration, Ralsei is still doing that but most of what we've seen out of him this chapter is largely what he was doing in previous chapters.

Would transfem Ralsei make sense? Yes. The themes of the story of self-expression, acceptance, and not accepting the status quo would make it very easy to weave such a narrative through the story. Toby Fox is also a pretty good writer of LGBTQ+ characters.

Has Ralsei been shown to want to be a girl? Yes. But it doesn't seem all that important to him. Just something else to try. He seems to have equal desire to be a horse, something he tried and actually liked.

I was a bit appalled. All the characters in Ponyo are great, but Fujimoto's so cool. He's a former human who loved the sea so much he couldn't forgive humans for polluting it. He married the Queen of the Sea and gave up his humanity for magic to serve nature. He's so fundamentally changed that he can't walk on dry land.

In his introduction, he even has a flashlight so he can talk to squid.

That alone tells me he's really good at his job.

And his design? Long red hair, the weird suit, the gold earrings, the magnificent bags under his eyes. It all screams "neurotic wizard".

He ends up as the antagonist because he knows how bad humans can be and is reluctant to trust them. I love the scene where he talks to Gran Mamare for the first time. We see that Fujimoto is incredibly reluctant to trust a human with the fate of his daughter, no matter how much his daughter likes that human. He becomes so distraught he starts to retreat into himself and Gran Mamare calms him down like this:

Fujimoto somewhat reluctantly helps his wife set up the test of love, and when it's over, he tells Sasuke, "I hope you will remember me kindly." He knows that even though he was doing his best, he failed. He isn't human anymore, but he's still fallible.

My sister did change her stance on him after this re-watch. Growing older allows us to see things in deeper color than black and white.

(Also, being voiced by VAs who have other characters is a bad sign for their long-term health, but I'm sure I didn't need to tell you that)

AR-26710 has taken a name. Hers is just the name of her suit, Firefly. Obviously, this is not the most creative, but what can a girl do with limited exposure to almost any kind of art or culture? I want to have the names of these characters be somewhat similar, so I will keep with a theme that's already here for the other character's names. Anyway, on to those other characters.

Second, we have who is presumably AR-214. I think, with her glasses and camera, lenses and beauty are a theme here. It's more an appreciation of outward beauty, but let's name her after a beautiful insect: Butterfly.

Her mech design is kind of simple, with only the one back accessory, and doesn't really reflect what I've chosen to call her, but this video is all about who they are on the inside.

Moving on, we have AR-53935, a numerical palindrome (assuming I'm using this list correctly). Male, but just as pretty as the girls, his mech is much bulkier:

The wings of our Firefly's mech has always reminded me more of a Luna Moth than a firefly, and with moths having the feathery antennae that give them a bulkier appearance, I dub him "Moth".

Lastly, she is almost certainly AR-1368. She seems a bit prickly, and that's not just her personality.

Her mech's design is very sharp but also sleek. Her helmet is also screaming hymenoptera (bees and wasps, but also ants), so I think her name is pretty decidedly Wasp (and not in an unkind way).

Can you believe it? These were perfectly timed for actual Tummy Tuesday this time!

Alternate (but very similar) shots below.

they are firefly, butterfly, and moth. to me.

As an autistic person, I feel massively uncomfortable doing this, partly because "hello" feels worse than not interacting because it's very "I'm interrupting what you're doing to make you aware that I am aware of you. I don't necessarily care about you, but I need you to be aware that I'm aware of you." This will always result in either me being uncomfortable saying hello, or other people being uncomfortable that I'm not saying hello.

The reason they gave was that it's Christlike to make other people comfortable. And I have no problem with that, Jesus was a good guy. I'm fine with accomodating people, I've done it my whole life. But the fact that they make me uncomfortable every day by greeting me with "good morning" and expecting a reply makes me flare up because if there's one thing I hate, it's hypocrisy.

And also, I got a lecture about how kids these days overthink themselves into depression and then in this lecture they said that when you don't say hello to someone, they immediately start justifying that by thinking how much you must hate them and how much of their dirty laundry my grandparents must have aired out in front of me for me to not be saying hello to them. And my grandparents did not even seem able to consider that this is overthinking outward rather than overthinking inward (to depression or whatever), because that's "just how things work".