Being cool doesnt mean youre trans, but I get your point.
I’m happy either way, but I personally don’t see it. There isn’t enough of the day to day of that journey in the movies, especially with how heavily shes featured in the 2nd one.
We know a lot about her life between the 2 films, and besides her being fucking awesome, no elements touch on her being on puberty blockers or having gone on that specific personal journey of discovery. With how intensely emotional and human these films are, and how focused they are on family, I just can’t see them hiding all the literal trans moments to just have allusions and allegory instead.
bear in mind that no matter how progressive the filmmakers are, the Spider-Verse movies are still mass-market movies, and the corporate studio overlords would never greenlight anything which they deem “controversial” and could hurt the film’s reception. in the West, gayness is sufficiently widely accepted that the entire MCU was able to get away with a single canonically gay character who says one throwaway line (which is totally inconsequential and can be easily dubbed over for less progressive markets). on the other hand, even in the “progressive” West, the mere existence of a trans person is enough for some people outside of the alt-right to raise a huge fuss - there’s no way any major studio would allow an open discussion of a character’s transness in one of the most hyped franchises of the past few years, let alone one of the main characters¹. veiled hints and nods are the best you’re going to get.
that said, while i sorta understand your skepticism, i think there’s enough times throughout the movies where it’s just aggressively in-your-face without explicitly saying it that i have no doubt that the writers intended her to be trans. off the top of my head:
she has a trans pride flag in her room. this could just mean she’s a cis ally, but there are almost certainly fewer cis people flying the trans flag than trans people
her entire color scheme is white, pink, and blue. could be coincidental, but considering how intentional so even the most minor visual details are throughout the series, i refuse to believe that they didn’t consider the potential implications of that choice when deciding on the color palette for one of the main characters (and her entire universe)
her dad has a trans pride flag on his police uniform. again, he is a cop. with very few exceptions, cops simply are not trans allies, and certainly not to the point that they’d show it off on the job - unless, perhaps, maybe one of their family members is trans…
having your hair turn into the trans pride flag while having a heartfelt speech about having to hide half of yourself from the people you love is about as subtle as a brick
again, considering these movies have so much thought put into the most minute graphical elements, i simply cannot imagine a way that they could’ve managed to accidentally surround a character whose entire story is a clear trans allegory with so much blatantly obvious trans imagery. of course there’s no way it could ever be said out loud, but what they’ve done with Spider-Gwen goes very far beyond the usual “transcoding” or “queercoding” of characters in media.
¹ unless the character being trans is portrayed as a joke in and of itself, in which case it’s apparently totally fine!
Being cool doesnt mean youre trans, but I get your point.
I’m happy either way, but I personally don’t see it. There isn’t enough of the day to day of that journey in the movies, especially with how heavily shes featured in the 2nd one.
We know a lot about her life between the 2 films, and besides her being fucking awesome, no elements touch on her being on puberty blockers or having gone on that specific personal journey of discovery. With how intensely emotional and human these films are, and how focused they are on family, I just can’t see them hiding all the literal trans moments to just have allusions and allegory instead.
bear in mind that no matter how progressive the filmmakers are, the Spider-Verse movies are still mass-market movies, and the corporate studio overlords would never greenlight anything which they deem “controversial” and could hurt the film’s reception. in the West, gayness is sufficiently widely accepted that the entire MCU was able to get away with a single canonically gay character who says one throwaway line (which is totally inconsequential and can be easily dubbed over for less progressive markets). on the other hand, even in the “progressive” West, the mere existence of a trans person is enough for some people outside of the alt-right to raise a huge fuss - there’s no way any major studio would allow an open discussion of a character’s transness in one of the most hyped franchises of the past few years, let alone one of the main characters¹. veiled hints and nods are the best you’re going to get.
that said, while i sorta understand your skepticism, i think there’s enough times throughout the movies where it’s just aggressively in-your-face without explicitly saying it that i have no doubt that the writers intended her to be trans. off the top of my head:
again, considering these movies have so much thought put into the most minute graphical elements, i simply cannot imagine a way that they could’ve managed to accidentally surround a character whose entire story is a clear trans allegory with so much blatantly obvious trans imagery. of course there’s no way it could ever be said out loud, but what they’ve done with Spider-Gwen goes very far beyond the usual “transcoding” or “queercoding” of characters in media.
¹ unless the character being trans is portrayed as a joke in and of itself, in which case it’s apparently totally fine!