#will taylor

Jess McConnell gets to pursue her love of exploring. Traveling with her archaeologist parents to Belize, Jess unexpectedly discovers new things about herself. Jess was the Girl of the Year for 2006, and served as American Girl’s first Asian and first biracial character.

Maritza Ochoa loves being part of the action, on and off the soccer or track fields. So when a friend needs help after her family is threatened by the ICE, it’s game on. Maritza was released in 2021 as part of the World By Us line, along with Makena Williams and Evette Peeters.

first of all, i'll get the obvious part out of the way: NiGHTS themself is canonically nonbinary (or at the very least in some way gender non-conforming). they canonically go mostly by they/them but really accept any pronouns or honorifics. while in their case, this might not necessarily be a form of being trans, seeing as they aren't human, they're also the only explicitly nonbinary nightmaren, so they may have had some kind of originally assigned gender that they later rejected. that to be said, this isn't why i think the story is trans, rather an added bonus.

more importantly, the main think that links every visitor is anxiety and the plot is always about their journey to recovery. while anxiety isn't an explicitly trans thing, it's anxiety about self expression - singing for claris, playing the violin for helen, football for will and basketball for elliot. dreams are their only escape from these fears, with the dreams themselves being riddled with nightmares. this lack of self expression is so obvious that i dont think i need to explain it, with the dreams being similar to being in a queer community; it's freeing, yes, but often even these communities have issues - maybe you're the "wrong type of queer" or you're in another oppressed group the other members of your community don't care to understand or accomodate for.

now admittedly, all the visitors we see are presumably white and while some headcanons are popular (wheelchair/cane user helen is one i see a lot), none of them are canonically disabled. in that sense, i suppose you could interpret it instead as the fear of being outed, however i think completely ignoring my original interpretation in some ways ignores the struggles you may face even in queer communities where people are supposed to be accepting.

i think part of the reason claris and elliot especially speak to me as being trans is 1) because they're older and are more likely to have realised these things and faced oppression for it, 2) as i said before, because the plot of NID is much more ambiguous and 3) small, insignificant things, like the bias i have because i prefer them as characters as well as the fact that their hair is blue and pink. like the trans flag. while i think helen and will's stories being about their relationships with their parents is honestly a more concrete link in some ways, if elliot and helen go wrong they fear their entire social lives could be ruined rather than just their parental ones. i am aware that their parents are mentioned on the japanese website, however i'm pretty sure everything is lost in translation because it barely makes any sense to me.

ALSO! i think it's important to mention that my source here is the NiGHTS wiki, hosted on fandom.com, and while i can't be sure, the articles on claris and elliot's parents honestly read as being sort of. ai generated? regardless, definitely not telligible. surprisingly, the links aren't dead, however the translations i get from my translator extension are. janky to say the least. if anyone has a good understanding of japanese though, i do think the website is worth a visit!

something important id like to mention is the importance of courage. arguably the most important ideya of them all and something "they" can't take away from you no matter what, as well as being the only thing that allows them to overcome their anxiety in the first place. im not saying that courage is an inherently trans ideal, however you need courage to simply EXIST as a trans person - either the courage to pretend to be someone you're not or the courage to become that person, both of which will bring intense hardship that can shape the rest of your life and how long it even lasts. i'll try not to get too morbid, especially with how at this point simply mentioning suicide or murder feels like some kind of offesive characature, but if you're in a hostile enough environment, making the "wrong" decision can literally mean life or death, whichever that may be. courage is absolutely integral to both trans identity and the plot of NiGHTS, to the point where i feel it's stupid not to mention it

oliver jackson-cohen attends the celebration of dunhill's 130-year anniversary at the royal hospital chelsea on september 12, 2033 in london.