Annotated X14-10
I have already mentioned the story of my own worst Christmas that inspired this tale, but we changed some details around for this version: would’ve felt too much like an invasion of privacy otherwise. And Chrissie’s forgiving lens is reluctant to assign the bad-guy role to either parent here, whereas I feel like the screwup was at least 95% mine.
Without the benefit of knowing it was taken from my life, readers thought we were going somewhere a lot darker with this. Spousal abuse? Spousal murder? Family murder-suicide and it turns out Chrissie’s a ghost? But this story was meant to be a palate-cleanser between our two most downbeat chapters, and I kinda liked the irony of Sepia World action getting unusually light at the same time “escapist” Arkerra is getting unusually heavy.
Twenty-twenty hindsight, I would’ve aged up Chrissie a bit in the flashback and maybe asked John to add a little facial hair. Showing her outwardly presenting as a boy was meant to be a quiet signal that she was trans, but it seems it was too quiet and some just read her as a cis girl who maybe looked a bit boyish at twelve. On the whole, though, I think it’s better to err on the side of subtlety than seem like you’re making the minority identity the character’s identity. I wanted to be sure her humanity was coming through strongly, partly to compensate for her pre-Guilded Age history… but more on that in a couple of days.
> Showing her outwardly presenting as a boy was meant to be a quiet signal that she was trans
Wait, really? I had no idea!
On the one hand, I feel kind of bad for missing something the author wanted me to know, but on the other hand, it’s not really any of my business what kind of junk she was born with, and maybe she’d be pleased that it never even occurred to me to wonder? Hmm.
Yeah, I hadn’t noticed either actually. I’m transfemme myself – though admittedly I hadn’t figured that out by the first time this particular page went up – so the representation is appreciated :D
I don’t remember if this was confirmed elsewhere, but she’s Bandit’s player, right?
Yeah, that’s the point. In an ideal world we absolutely wouldn’t need to know orientations, junks, transitions or anything of the sort, and we’d accept (or repudiate) characters entirely on their behaviour and actions. But because we don’t live in an ideal world, representation in media is an important way to normalise the existence of all sorts of folks.
And yeah, she’s Bandit’s player.
I don’t know about “ideal”. I’m reminded of Discworld Dwarf courtship, where a considerable amount of time is spent discreetly ascertaining that the other has the right parts for you, and vice versa…
When it comes to fictional characters, I think you can be as nosey as you like. You’d be a complete stranger if any of these guys laid eyes on you, but the nature of fiction means you’re still invited to their private gathering to pick up all sorts of things about them, spoken and unspoken.
I missed the cues the first time round, but noticed some time later due to some of the comments.
I have this thing about gratuitous nudity in movies: I know it’s there to serve the audience, not the story, and that feels wrong because it turns the characters with whom I’m supposed to empathize into puppets that dance for me. I *absolutely* cannot watch reality TV because it feels like it exists entirely to make fun of the people that appear in it, and it’s been constructed to feel invasive, rather than allow the audience to understand anything about them.
For similar reasons, I’m always a little embarrassed when I learn some private personal detail about a character which doesn’t feel like it’s crucial to the story, like it’s not my place to know that.
In this case, I did not feel the story lost anything because I had not noticed, and did not gain much either after I had. Which would put the information into strictly optional territory.
…however:
I know how important it is to have representation, to have something which most people don’t perceive as normal being mentioned, in passing, to normalize it over time. Good stories contain tons of ancillary details that I totally don’t mind, so the mere fact that I started thinking about whether this particular detail was needed or not means that trans characters are not (sufficiently) normal for me, and that in turn means it’s absolutely correct to display more of it until it becomes more normal. LGBTX people are found in all kinds of places, are is often not visible because being visibly non-cishet is bad for them. That’s why a story’s casual mention of someone’s trans identity with no repercussions feels unusual. But we all need to get used to it, to allow those in RL who are in similar situations to be equally casual about their gender identity, without having to fear the consequences.
It wasn’t on my radar the first time through, but something about the image pinged this time. Maybe it’s just the education I’ve had since (a family member came out as trans, and while it was something I was aware of and supported before, it wasn’t something I’d educated myself on).
Christmas is such a weird time, we bring so many little expectations to it, and they are so sourced in our childhood, we’re very rarely grown up about them. Like so many things we are immature about, it’s far nicer when you just let go and enjoy it for what it is.
I was familiar with Chrissie from Quiltbag, so I knew she was trans as soon as you confirmed it was this universe’s equivalent of that character, but I think I would likely have guessed from this page…despite the fact that the part I am zeroing in on, here, and presuming I would have there, I have no idea if it was deliberate…it just happened to click with my personal experiences.
Specifically the lack of anything particularly feminine in the presents – obviously she wanted the skateboard, and we don’t see all of her gifts, but even if she had been a hard-line tomboy, you’d expect at the very least a clueless relative to have sent, like, a skirt or a Barbie or something. But…again, I don’t know how deliberate it was that the only presents we see are aimed at boys, or toward the masculine end of gender-neutral.
This is new information; and honestly it makes me so happy that she’s trans.
Thank you so much, it makes a transgirl like me so happy to see.
I fully admit, when I first read this years ago I thought it was going to be revealed that someone had snuck in and stolen all the gifts.
But we’d already done How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
I appreciate this subtle trans representation so much