Bridget - Guilty Gear Strive

anon7631 said:

It simply doesn't make sense to have NSFW and SFW get tagged in opposite ways. Consider the simple scenario of a SFW image of Bridget kissing a boy, then a second sequential image as a child post, of the two moving on to sex, with visible penises.
If one image in the pair gets tagged as 1boy 1girl, and the other gets tagged as 2boys, you've got a contradicktion that will leave everyone unhappy, whether they wanted yaoi or hetero.
If both images get tagged 2boys, then you're tagging one image based on the contents of a different image, when if posted alone it would have the opposite tag. And if there's a gap in time between the two images getting uploaded, you'd be changing tags on an image despite the image itself not changing, and not getting any new information about the character.

If there's a dick in a Bridget Strive picture, it's just easier to use 1boy. Not being transphobic. This is the best solution. (Nice pun).

We wouldn't tag posts with Strive as hetero, yaoi, yuri, or anything unless it's explicit content, which would change this. This isn't unseen on this website. Again, look to Hoshikawa Lily.

When tagging (as per forum #152601) use:

1girl for normal appearances
1boy and/or otoko no ko when her body or former identity is directly referenced.

Ideally, it would be somewhat like this. Only for posts explicitly showing Bridget in Strive.

anon7631 said:

A separate tag for Strive Bridget doesn't fix matters, even aside from not solving the issue of what tags should actually accompany that version, because all it takes is drawing him in a way that makes it ambiguous which game's version he is, and you've got a war again.

Bridget has shorter hair and prominent eyelashes in GGS. So far I think the designs are discernable, even in nude posts.

feline_lump said:

Bridget has shorter hair and prominent eyelashes in GGS. So far I think the designs are discernable, even in nude posts.

There's also that change in symbols on their hat, right?

sadodere said:

We wouldn't tag posts with Strive as hetero, yaoi, yuri, or anything unless it's explicit content, which would change this. This isn't unseen on this website. Again, look to Hoshikawa Lily.

Kissing and other expressions of affection aren't always explicit, and would warrant hetero/yuri/yaoi regardless of rating. The topic where the Hoshikawa Lily policy was established never mentions those tags, and a cursury glance suggests the general absence of those tags on her posts to be the result of a general absence of such content, not an intentional decision to not use them.

A Hoshikawa Lily post that doesn't meet the criteria for her to be tagged as a boy and featuring her kissing a girl would be tagged yuri, and a post that does meet the criteria would be tagged hetero, whether the context is explicit or not. The same would apply to Bridget regardless of any decisions regarding how to tag her sex/gender.

blindVigil said:

Kissing and other expressions of affection aren't always explicit, and would warrant hetero/yuri/yaoi regardless of rating. The topic where the Hoshikawa Lily policy was established never mentions those tags, and a cursury glance suggests the general absence of those tags on her posts to be the result of a general absence of such content, not an intentional decision to not use them.

A Hoshikawa Lily post that doesn't meet the criteria for her to be tagged as a boy and featuring her kissing a girl would be tagged yuri, and a post that does meet the criteria would be tagged hetero, whether the context is explicit or not. The same would apply to Bridget regardless of any decisions regarding how to tag her sex/gender.

Well, whatever we're doing with Lily, we can do the same here, too.

nonamethanks said:

What you are "predicting" is already happening, we have no lack of users doing this kind of vandalism and then boasting about it on twitter.

Funny how the guidelines on Bridget's wiki page only say "Please refrain from editing gendered tags until a decision is determined" yet it's only tag vandalism to you when someone edits her to 1girl and not the other way around.

nonamethanks said:

It should go without saying but we are not going to make decisions that hurt our users' ability to search for their fetishes just to appease terminally online people. If we decide to change our policy it's going to be because of valid reasons, not to avoid offending the feelings of an imaginary character.

Have you considered that maybe some people have fetishes for transwomen? Isn't their god-given right to find their fap material being encroached on by continuing to tag her this way?

I think the only way to move forward with this is to tag at least all of post-Strive Bridget posts with 1girl, considering that's clearly the developer's intention and is honestly closer to following the TWYS rules than otherwise. I also support the creation of either a universal transgender tag or a transgender (mtf) tag for this situation. If people are really worried about seeing a girl with a dick, they can add it to their blacklist, just like they already have to with the futa and newhalf tags. Of course this can cause more tag vandalism, but that's gonna continue anyway and this situation isn't gonna just go away without a decision.

After reading the most recent pages of the thread, I see that there's still no compelling reason to change 1boy to 1girl and worsen the search experience for a large number of users other than recognizing Bridget's new pronouns in the tagging system (even when the wiki already does). All of the suggestions (including mine, I must admit after reading new posts) have more downsides compared to the current approach than advantages.

Just create a transgender_(lore) tag like that other guy suggested and add it to post-Strive art (without changing the 1boy tag that seems to imply biological sex rather than gender and is necessary for a lot of other tags, filters and searches) if not being able to call Bridget "she" in the tags is too much of an issue, but in my opinion there's no point in changing stuff yet because Bridget hasn't undergone any physical changes that would justify changing basic tags.

plep said:

Funny how the guidelines on Bridget's wiki page only say "Please refrain from editing gendered tags until a decision is determined" yet it's only tag vandalism to you when someone edits her to 1girl and not the other way around.

Ignoring that the current status quo is to tag her 1boy and that line in her wiki is just to reduce the amount of edits that go against that until some sort of decision is reached, that post was edited by the original uploader. It's not vandalism for someone to fix their own edits, and based on the tag history, they didn't even know who Bridget was until someone else tagged her for them, prompting them to fix their own mistake.

blindVigil said:

Ignoring that the current status quo is to tag her 1boy and that line in her wiki is just to reduce the amount of edits that go against that until some sort of decision is reached, that post was edited by the original uploader. It's not vandalism for someone to fix their own edits, and based on the tag history, they didn't even know who Bridget was until someone else tagged her for them, prompting them to fix their own mistake.

Well here's a better example then. At the very least, the line in her wiki should advise to tag her as 1boy until the discussion is solved if that's the way the moderators are siding on.

plep said:

EDIT: apologies, I can't read

Edit: No worries, it happens

bakanon said:

but in my opinion there's no point in changing stuff yet because Bridget hasn't undergone any physical changes that would justify changing basic tags.

The conflict is that generally, the stance of people proposing changes to the tag system is that physical changes aren't necessary, and they consider the relevant line of Bridget's dialogue (plus the devs' statements) to be the only thing required to make him a girl. Some have suggested that was the exact point at which he became a girl, and a minority have suggested that it was retroactive so that speaking that line meant he had always been a girl deep down and was just in denial, but in any case the root of the issue is whether tags should be based on physical sex or the fact that he said "uchi wa onnanoko".

Kaiterra said:

Insisting that the tag stay as 1boy simply because changing it would make people who do not respect the identification of transgender people upset is actually insisting that political ideology shape the tagging system, because it means the political preferences of one group of users on the site are being given elevated importance above the intentions of the artist or the original creator of the character, or the context of the character within the work.

People can take a political stand on any issue, there's no reason that means it has to be treated as a legitimate debate. Academics and medical professionals very heavily fall on the side that transgender individuals are the gender they identify as, or at the very least should be treated as such, and just because there are powerful forces in politics that insist otherwise doesn't make it an actual, legitimate debate. Politicians and pundits regularly argue all kinds of shit that isn't true, or is intentionally deceptive, it doesn't mean that it's all a legitimate debate. You've basically got one side doing the research and another side digging their heels in and going "Nuh uh, it scares me/makes me feel bad!"

The existence of an argument does not mean that they are both viewpoints worthy of equal consideration. Y'all keep bringing up "political ideology shouldn't decide this" as if "trans girls are not girls" isn't a position that is only thoroughly supported by politics and ideology and as if claiming that recognizing trans girls as girls is only political. It's a flimsy and transparent stance.

DeinGott said:

Wait, I actually went and looked at the wiki for 1girl and all it says is "An image depicting one female character."

This really is as easy as a few of us have said.
Bridget's a female character, so she should be included in the *girl count for an image she's in - no matter her state of dress or skin exposure.

And wow, yuri is "Any romantic or sexual interaction between female characters, mutual or not."
Bridget's still a female character, so if there's art of her doing something R18 with another female character, then there's no problem with tagging it as yuri either.

Here I thought there was some sort of long-standing, extremely specific definition for what counted, but it's been written an a rather inclusive way all along. Guess we should make sure to revisit all of the other trans characters who have been miss-tagged as well.

-----

Anyone with a problem to the above solution really needs to be arguing for changes to existing tag definitions or for the creation of new tags to satisfy whatever use case you have that's not accommodated for by tagging a female character AS a female character.

Bravo. Bests posts on this whole thread so far. As things are going, with each day growing more pages for this problem with such a simple solution we are slowly realizing that it's not even a problem with the tags but just a problem with the people that use the tags. Staff isn't even considering tagging the right thing but are putting "muh yuri search results though!!!" as a front to cover up for the fact that they won't accept Bridget as a girl, and even if they did, they would just tag her 1boy 'cause "it's what I see in the art!!!", just a bunch of nonsense. And it is even clearer by the fact that there's been countless messages by some people here right out being absolutely gross and hateful towards protected groups of people and getting little to no warning at all, it proves that the staff's views agree with them but they opt for the neutral, centrist approach to let everyone express and push their viewpoint before taking action.

Just pack it up, everyone. We're not gonna finish this in a billion years with people like this in charge. People who think gender is tied to politics and to genitalia, typical of conservative weebs. If I get removed I'm right.

sadodere said:

I believe it's been stated that there's a high chance NSFW art with dicks will be tagged with 1boy still. This would apply solely to SFW art, if I'm reading all this correctly.

I think you missed one of my previous comments where I explained why it would be a problem even on SFW posts, and something like bringing back the transgender tag would at least alleviate it without drastic changes.

plep said:

Well here's a better example then. At the very least, the line in her wiki should advise to tag her as 1boy until the discussion is solved if that's the way the moderators are siding on.

I actually don't disagree with your point, and have edited the wiki slightly to clarify that we tag Bridget as male by default, and to leave male centric tags alone for the time being. We're trying to keep the tags consistent, and prevent people from getting into edit wars, so there's not a huge mess that needs to be cleaned up when we finally decide something, even if that decision is to change nothing.

No one reads wiki anyway, least of all people who come here just to vandalize tags, but it's better to at least have things like this clarified for those that care.

blindVigil said:

I actually don't disagree with your point, and have edited the wiki slightly to clarify that we tag Bridget as male by default, and to leave male centric tags alone for the time being. We're trying to keep the tags consistent, and prevent people from getting into edit wars, so there's not a huge mess that needs to be cleaned up when we finally decide something, even if that decision is to change nothing.

No one reads wiki anyway, least of all people who come here just to vandalize tags, but it's better to at least have things like this clarified for those that care.

Thanks. At least this way the team isn't doling out harsher punishment for breaking the rules the same amount.

Following sort of off what Kamsthetics said, I think it's obvious now that there's no way to pretend that this argument doesn't just come down to if you believe Bridget is actually a girl or not. Looks never defined a character's gender tags (otoko no ko exists), genitalia never defined a character's gender tags (newhalf and cuntboy exist), so there's no reason either should break this argument one way or the other. There's no way of pretending this isn't just a political argument, so either you put it to a vote or make a decision from the top down. Or I guess we can just continue dancing around the heart of the matter forever.

sadodere said:

Well, whatever we're doing with Lily, we can do the same here, too.

The case of Lily is pretty different than Bridget. Honestly, it's not helping to keep bringing up Lily without addressing the reasoning for it.

Hoshikawa Lily is treated as female from the start and all the time by the anime itself, other characters, etc. The information that the character was born male is a spoiler, as decided in forum #152601.

Bridget on the other hand is a very established male character since the character's debut in Guilty Gear XX, with the character being born and identified as male, for two decades. If the same reasoning for Lily's case was to be applied here, treating Bridget as female would be considered a spoiler. Even in Strive, Bridget is shown as identifying themselves as male at the start of their new journey, and comes out as female, as shown in at least one of the endings. Their japanese bio used male pronouns, probably to avoid spoilers as the character was established as male until that point.

Of course it's not actually that spoilery considering everyone keeps talking about Bridget's gender since the DLC is out, but I have to explain the difference between both situations.

Not sure if it's any consultation, but I've done a few pieces of art for Bridget with one of them being uploaded here and everytime I've drawn her, I've drawn her with the intention of being a girl. On the upload of my art here though she is labeled as 1boy. I understand the reasons for why, with TWYS and the like, but her being a boy certainly isn't how I've intended for it to be read. Of all of the suggestions here, given a quick glance through of them, I think labeling her as a girl in SFW pieces for her strive appearance going forward looks to be the best suggestion with a tag of like Transgender_MTF or Transgender_Lore being added for all cases regardless. This would help appease lots of people while not disrupting other peoples search in case it's a nude bridget and can be labeled as 1boy with either of the 2 above tags while still making it clear of her status of being trans for others who want for there to be a change of the tags. Bridget just looks like a cis girl in all cases where she isn't nude, so as long as the art doesn't make it obvious what she was born as, I think the TWYS system should work just fine with this.

I'm not opposed to the idea of tagging Bridget as a girl when she's presented as a girl. And I'm not opposed to the idea of tagging Bridget as transgender when she's presented as transgender. But there are still many unanswered questions about how this would actually work:

• If we tag Bridget as a girl, then do we tag every single Bridget post as a girl? Only Strive posts? Only SFW Strive posts? Only SFW Strive posts where she passes as a girl?
• If we tag every Bridget post as a girl, then what about posts from 15 years ago, when the character was universally considered male? Don't say "well obviously we're not going to do that" because it's not obvious, there are people arguing exactly for this.
• If it's only on Strive posts, then is it on every Strive post? What about posts that predate the announcement (post #4380966)? What about when Bridget is drawn as a hyper-muscular male (post #5578244)? What about when the artist explicitly says their version of Bridget is a boy (pixiv #101019086, post #5668339)?
• If it's not on every Strive post, then when is it? Just when the artist says their version of Bridget is female? Just when Bridget passes as female?
• If it's when the artist says their version of Bridget is female, then what about when some artists say their version is a girl and while others say theirs is a boy? Then we're getting similar-looking posts tagged differently based on what the artist says.
• If it's when Bridget passes as female, then what about NSFW posts like post #5575041 or post #5576596? Do these pass as male or female? If we go this route, we're going to have the "is Bridget a girl or a boy?" debate on every single post.
• What about when the character looks female, but the artist says it's an otoko no ko? See this Pixiv search; many Japanese artists still tag Bridget as 男の娘. Sometimes even in conjunction with transgender tags. What takes precedence, the developer's intent, the artist's intent, or the viewer's interpretation?
• If we just tag Bridget from Strive as a girl, and old Bridget as a boy, then what about posts like post #5624037? This is new Bridget together with old Bridget. Is this 2girls, 1girl+1boy, or 2boys? What about post #5624039; is this yaoi, yuri, or hetero?
• If we tag Bridget as a girl, then what about all the other gender-related tags? Do we remove the otoko no ko and crossdressing tags (is it crossdressing when Bridget wears boy clothes or girl clothes)? Do we replace yaoi with hetero? Do we tag her as flat chested? When Bridget is drawn with breasts (post #5654426), is that a magical male-to-female genderswap (implying the character is originally male), or a hypothetical post-gender transition scenario?
• If we tag Bridget as transgender, again, do we tag every Bridget post as transgender, or only Strive posts, or only Strive posts where Bridget is overtly depicted as transgender?
• Do we need new 1transgirl and 1transboy tags instead of 1girl or 1boy? Is it transphobic to tag her as a transgirl instead of a "real" girl? What about when you just want to do a simple 1girl+1boy search, but now gender is fragmented into N different tags (1girl, 1boy, 1other, 1transgirl, 1transboy, etc)?
• Do we need new transgirl with male and transgirl with female tags to replace the yaoi tag and hetero tags? What about all the people who blacklisted yaoi? Keep in mind yaoi and male focus are some of the most blacklisted tags on the site.
• Does Bridget even identify as transgender? She doesn't say "I'm trans"; she says "I'm a girl". The developers don't say "Bridget is transgender"; they say "Bridget self-identifies as a woman and use female pronouns". Arguably "trans" is not a label Bridget uses for herself. And arguably tagging her as transgender or using tags like transgirl with male instead of hetero can itself be called transphobic, because it's a rejection of the idea that she's a real woman the same as other women.

Again: I'm not opposed to the idea of tagging Bridget as a girl or as transgender in certain situations. But how that would actually work is an open question. And it still wouldn't satisfy people who want every single Bridget post to be tagged as a girl.

Anyone who says this is easy, "just do X", is ignoring the complexity of the situation. We have 15 years worth of fanart, produced by hundreds of different artists, each of whom has their own interpretation of the character, on top of the viewer's interpretation of the character. Artists can depict the character in all sorts of ways that defy canon or that contradict one another. Our job is to somehow reconcile all this and tag the posts we've got in a way that makes sense to the average user, who may not even know or care who Bridget is, but who still wants tags to make sense when they search for them.

I know making an acc just for this is probably frowned upon, but as a longtime user who is GNC and questioning I feel I should chip in.

First off, I don't like the change as a fan of the character. Obviously not against trans people, but against how this 1) reads for someone assigned female at birth, whose entire shtick was fighting against it, and just having it announced as what they want like it's ok now. It carries a very icky "groomerish" tone to it given how they were raised, and 2) sends a dangerous, oft-repeated message about acceptance where to be feminine as a guy you must be a transgirl. It's just as unhealthy, and takes representation from androgynous men (who are already mistreated for similar reasons in trans communities) and moves it to totally trans people.

My point being not every trans umbrella individual is on-board with this. I'd have much rather any character who wasn't in this situation been used for this honestly. Doesn't help that the game has arcade format storytelling and the dev statements are explicit in stance but unclear in detail (Why is the mars symbol an androgyne symbol now instead of a female or trans symbol? Is the character mtf trans or just genderfluid, which was my impression from the game without interview context? Is it because this has pushback in japan and they want it to go smoothly there?).
TL;DR I think the message of trans acceptance is good, it was just handled clumsily and with the wrong character.
I'm not alone in feeling this way:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Guiltygear/comments/wj1rn8/so_i_noticed_this_symbol_on_bridgetdoes_this_mean/ijh1ycj/

But I realise this isn't the tagging issue, as for that:
By and large I agree with keeping pre-strive bridget as 1boy across the board (because erasing that identity would be just as insulting to crossdressers who are having this happen to their characters more and more), I think most are in agreement with this. As for strive as 1girl, that seems to be the next best thing, though as has been said above, not without issues. Not sure how to deal with NSFW girl posts that show masculine features, or NSFW art with SFW parents. I think splitting strive into 1girl for most posts, and 1boy for NSFW posts is just illogical from a site usage pov.

The problem is that the ideology is that a trans person is their gender regardless of what you see, but obviously that goes against how sites like this operate to begin with, it's completely dissonant and there is no way to reconcile it. That carries unfortunate insensitive implications to real people. In my opinion with a character it's ok because it's in the nature of stories revolving around topics like this and art sites in general, none of these characters are people in other morally unacceptable tags, and shouldn't be looked at as a contradiction of real trans identity just because the site has to work a certain way, it's just how the cookie crumbles when it comes to body judgement. Maybe a disclaimer explaining all these tagging difficulties for this character, no matter what decision is made?

Like others have said, it works for a spoiler or reveal trope character whose whole point is they are known for their chosen gender and treated that way in-universe from the get go. Bridget has 20+ years of being an otoko no ko under his belt (this goes back to what I said about their taking representation away from one group and handing it to another, this happens), and seeing the art even post-coming out, that attitude isn't going away any time soon, and all sites like this will suffer for it.

Overall I hate this headache of a change because I need to make huge disclaimers and explanations about how I feel about him being a she now, and listing all the trans dressup and skincare guides I follow just to not look like a bigot. Sucks but what can you do, it's an important discussion to have because more and more characters like this are going to exist in the future, and public opinions will march with medical ones, so best to have a stance right now that keeps things smooth.

DeinGott said:

Wait, I actually went and looked at the wiki for 1girl and all it says is "An image depicting one female character."

This really is as easy as a few of us have said.
Bridget's a female character, so she should be included in the *girl count for an image she's in - no matter her state of dress or skin exposure.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a distinction between female and woman, or sex and gender? Bridget's undoubtedly male, not female. I think this would mean the tag should stay as 1boy.