SV characters you think could possibly be transgender or non-binary?

[Giramax2]

Dunno why you're singling me out with this question here instead of asking generally but like, the same reasons as most other people. Penny at least is considered Trans coded by a large portion of the community, you can fairly easy find people giving their reasonings for it online and they make sense when all put together. Reading those is what convinced me of HCing it too.
The other two I just think the Trans HCs people have for them are neat for the given characters, nothing more to it than that really.

And what are those headcanons if you can explain?

 

[guzmania]

i love trans penny ^^
i actually hc rika as a trans lesbian! i like enby atticus as well

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Trans Clavell. I came up with this as a random example once and realized later it made a weird amount of sense. I've also seen it other places too!

 

[BronzeHeart92]

Grusha's the most common target of this speculation apparently.

 

[Luci_]

Trans Jacq, Larry, Rika, Clavell, Carmine and Ryme, why? It makes sense to me for some reason

 

[demonerium]

i am a transmasculine grusha truther but generally speaking i like bigender Rika or nonbinary in general, transmasc nonbinary Mela, Nonbinary Giacomo, and transmasc Larry is super fun we need more transmasc rep that's just some guy

 

[Queen Of Space]

Penny is definitely transfem and her ace being a sylveon just makes me think that even more,

 

[mastermind lissi]

I personally headcanon penny as non binary, probably using she/they pronouns!

 

[Silverwynde]

I thought Rika was transfemme and Grusha was enby.

In my headcanon, Penny is a lesbian and she's my in-game wife. Do not judge me.

 

[Cherri Blossom]

has anybody said "all of them" yet? cause i can only think of maybe two characters who are definitely cisgender (though in fairness, i havent played the games yet and most of my knowledge of the characters has been osmosed from my friends)

 

[FelipePR]

As some have said, it is complicated, if not impossible, to pinpoint the gender and/or the sexuality of many of the characters in the Franchise, as, beyond their physical appearance and, perhaps, personality and pronouns, little is given to us to know about them.

That said, to me, it seems clear that Rika and Grusha are characters created with the intention of bringing up gender issues and are a relevant and remarkable representation of transgender/nonbinary people in the Pokémon Franchise. Whether the characters exactly fit within the parameters and definitions of transfem and transmasc I don't know, and I believe that GameFreak does not intend to clarify this fact. The main objective seems to be the message that these characters convey to the players, their non-adherence to rigid and archaic definitions of gender and sexuality.

So my personal suggestion would be Mela. I genuinely thought that design looked transgender when I first saw it, then thought no for a while… but now I think yes. They… just don’t look that female to me at all. And that’s why I decided that they would indeed be non-binary in my comic!

I don't know, but it's possible. Mela, indeed, does not seems to conform to certain conventional expectations associated with the female body, but I believe this does not necessarily indicate anything about her gender or sexuality. Instead, it highlights the limitations of relying solely on physical and visual attributes to define gender, as it overlooks the rich diversity that exists beyond those narrow categorizations.

Personally, something about Mela's face reminds me of Mars and Arezu and I've always seen her as a representation of a rebellious teenage punk version of those characters.

Florian/Juliana is genderfluid.

The basic mold of the protagonists seems increasingly versatile. Which, added to appearance customization possibilities, tends to allow characters to be and represent, at least from a visual point of view, whatever the player want. So, theoretically, Florian and Juliana, unless proven otherwise, are cis, trans, genderfluid, everything that we always want.

Iono's gender is "Iono"; transfem; everytime she gets a transphobic comment she becomes more trans.

Nah, Iono is above any gender definition. After all, I'm "sure" that she is a virtual person. A kind of Hatsune Miku played by an AI. Plus, she has the mentality of a pre-teen whose only concern is "having fun", or generate revenue. Let's be honest, the only things Iono loves are views and likes (Business Capitalist Mentality).

 

[Welkamo]

As some have said, it is complicated, if not impossible, to pinpoint the gender and/or the sexuality of many of the characters in the Franchise, as, beyond their physical appearance and, perhaps, personality and pronouns, little is given to us to know about them. [...]

Here's the thing: queer representation is still extremely rare. We've made incredible strides in representation, but in the grand scheme of, what, forty-ish years of video game history, they're still pretty rare. For a lot of queer people (including myself), they didn't get any explicit queer representation growing up. Instead, they embrace(d) "queer coded" characters: characters with stories that mirror the struggles and experiences of queer people (ie the Team Star plot), characters that defy gender norms without outright being stated as trans or queer (ie Rika, Grusha, etc.), and so on.

(Side note: queercoding can also refer to the... problematic practice of coding villains as queer and making their villainy tied to their nonconformity. This is an aftereffect of the Hays Code, which forbade any depiction of queerness/nonconformity unless the queerness/nonconformity was portrayed as evil and the queerness/nonconformity was punished, but that's an entirely different topic. I'm mainly talking about queercoding in the headcanoning sense.)

So yeah, maybe it is hard to say who exactly is queer and who isn't. Unless Game Freak comes out and says "here's a list of who's trans and who's cis" (which probably isn't happening anytime soon), all we can do is headcanon based on anything from "this character's nonconformity resonates with my experiences" to "idk I like the headcanon so it is mine". But these are fictional characters in a video game who at most get several lines of dialogue. If people want to take a queer reading from them, especially if they are themselves queer, then more power to them.

(This isn't to dismiss people having different gender/sexuality headcanons and/or headcanoning a character as cis, but more of a... I guess sociological/psychological? explanation for why these headcanons exist in the first place)

 

[FelipePR]

Here's the thing: queer representation is still extremely rare. We've made incredible strides in representation, but in the grand scheme of, what, forty-ish years of video game history, they're still pretty rare. For a lot of queer people (including myself), they didn't get any explicit queer representation growing up. Instead, they embrace(d) "queer coded" characters: characters with stories that mirror the struggles and experiences of queer people (ie the Team Star plot), characters that defy gender norms without outright being stated as trans or queer (ie Rika, Grusha, etc.)

(Side note: queercoding can also refer to the... problematic practice of coding villains as queer and making their villainy tied to their nonconformity. This is an aftereffect of the Hays Code, which forbade any depiction of queerness/nonconformity unless the queerness/nonconformity was portrayed as evil and the queerness/nonconformity was punished, but that's an entirely different topic. I'm mainly talking about queercoding in the headcanoning sense.)

Very true words. Just over a decade ago, queer representation was extremely scarce and almost always comical or pejorative. And, even today, it is still substantially insufficient. I remember that in the original anime, the transgender representation (Ash, Jessie and James) was always comical and, possibly, mischaracterizing. The gender issue was ignored and represented as something that should not be taken seriously.

Then we had, as you said, queer coded villains, like Harley in Pokémon Advanced Battle. A character who, despite being fun, acted in an extremely inappropriate ethical and moral way, even though he achieved a certain redemption in the end.

Therefore, it was a happy surprise when, in the ninth generation of games, GameFreak, through Rika & Grusha, addressed gender issues head-on, and in a natural and positive way. What I meant was that, although Rika & Grusha are patently queer and nonconformity characters, the Producers just wisely chose not to specify exactly which gender and/or sex conformation they fit better.

Who knows, on the other hand, in the near future they will not dare even more and provide the public, for example, with a natural representation of affection and sharing of life between non-binary or gender nonconformity characters.

Anyway, I did not intend to disqualify any of your headcannons, to which you are fully entitled, but rather just point out GameFreak's change in approach with the protagonist characters so that they can reflect, at least in a visual aspect, and, I believe, in the near future, in terms of pronouns, the preferences of all players.

Lastly, as for Iono, I simply dislike the character. An annoying little girl addicted to social media and obsessed with making herself look like an influencer and who, to do so, abuses her position as Gym Leader. For me, she sees the player as just an opportunity to pump up her likes. Therefore, I prefer to see her as a product of the entertainment industry that she is rather than as a person to be reckoned with. So, in my headcanon, she is a robot, an AI, a virtual person managed by some company.

However, feel free to interpret the character however you want and understand. After all, what I'm trying to say is that the Pokémon Company has been both concerned with bringing more representation to games (& Anime) and with allowing, apart from some aspects of some characters for script and story reasons, that players can, regardless of any issue related to the genre, interpreting the characters according to each one's own experience.

 

[mastermind lissi]

Lastly, as for Iono, I simply dislike the character. An annoying little girl addicted to social media and obsessed with making herself look like an influencer and who, to do so, abuses her position as Gym Leader. For me, she sees the player as just an opportunity to pump up her likes.Therefore, I prefer to see her as a product of the entertainment industry that she is rather than as a person to be reckoned with. So, in my headcanon, she is a robot, an AI, a virtual person managed by some company.

That’s a cool and interesting headcanon! So I guess she’s like a messed up hatsune Mike except for battling? (Except she actually exists as a physical thing and no hate to hatsune Miku, while vocaloid isn’t my thing, she’s cool)

 

[FelipePR]

That’s a cool and interesting headcanon! So I guess she’s like a messed up hatsune Mike except for battling? (Except she actually exists as a physical thing and no hate to hatsune Miku, while vocaloid isn’t my thing, she’s cool)

Yes, and this positioning is not at all unreasonable as we have in the same games AI Sada and AI Turo, of which Iono would be a beta version. But, to be honest, I only agree with this theory because I dislike the character for the reasons already listed.

 

[Kanjouhi]

I personally see Eri, Tulip, Penny and Lacey as transfem (Eri because she reminds me a LOT of Ladiva from Granblue Fantasy (who's a confirmed trans woman), Tulip for similar reasons to Eri except she reminds me of Proti Balarina from NND Compass, Penny because. Tbh a lot of it's due to how popular the headcanon is in the first place and alsyo she reminds me of a lot of my transfem friends from other social media sites and Lacey because... idk, she just gives me distinctly trans vibes. Can't really put my finger on Why but she does), Clavell and Giacomo as transmasc (Clavell because honestly I just like hcing older male characters as transmasc and Giacomo because he's a Dark-type specialist and I just feel like all male Dark-type specialists are trans guys. Maybe it's me projecting because Dark is my favourite type idk) and Atticus and Iono as nyonbinary (specifically I hc Iono as agender, but that does fall under the nyonbinary umbrella I guess).
And even with the other characters I don't think I see anyone as 100% cis, I feel like there's at least a decent argument to be made for any of the characters being trans in some way. (Except Poppy I guess, but that's because she's, like, 3, syo she probably just hasn't had time to think about stuff like that yet. In a future AU, sure, but nyot during the events of the game.)

 

[toastghost]

like tood said, the team star admins seem VERY queer coded to me. they were bullied for not following conventional social norms and were all outcasts. mela, eri and giacomo i'm not particularly adamant about their queerness (but lesbian eri is real to me), but atticus, ortega and penny all seem super queer coded to me (especially ortega who when i first started playing i immediately started associating him with my very gay irl friend). also penny has trans colored hair and her ace is sylveon, the trans pokemon, so

 

[PageEmperor]

I’m not gonna lie… I regret ever making this thread. And I’d do anything to delete it and the discussion that followed. Can someone help delete it off for me please?

 

[toastghost]

why??

 

[colours]

this is a perfectly fine discussion thread - there's nothing rulebreaking or concerning being discussed here, so it's going to remain. if you have any further concerns, feel free to reach out to myself, or a SV mod.

for everyone else, feel free to carry on here as usual~