Not remotely comparable. Mulan is gender-non-conforming. Bridget in Strive is GNC erasure - possibly just to appease Chinese censors.
It’s also the polar opposite of what the character was about. Bridget was already a trans allegory. By virtue of a coin toss, Bridget was assigned female at birth. Nearly every encounter in Midnight Carnival started with getting she/her’d and immediately correcting people. Bridget’s entire storyline was hunting bounties to man up. This was a cute character in a pretty blue dress literally kicking people’s asses to be treated like a dude. The writers going “whoops, nevermind” is not growth!
Now there’s twenty years of forum exchanges going ‘she’s cute!’ ‘do you like surprises?’ that were effusely queer-positive and taught a lot of dudes about the Kinsey scale… but in the absence of a timestamp, would be viewed as outright bigotry. This change was bad, actually. This was possibly the worst character to do this with. Johnny being trans would fit better. Fem-Johnny being a womanizing lesbian who still doesn’t wear a shirt and keeps that jacket closed by sheer force of will would warrant little more than a “huh.” Like how absolutely everyone heard Testament was nonbinary and went, “well, yeah.” The only reason you can casually allude to discourse about Bridget is because there’s a serious underlying discussion about gender in commercial fiction.
Chinese censorship is part of that discussion. China has cracked down on queer representation and “effeminate men” in particular. Strive came out the year China applied those TV and movie restrictions to video games. Strive has patched out mention of regions and countries the CCP doesn’t like to hear about. I’m glad you enjoy where Bridget’s story went, but it probably only happened because of an autocracy keeping its populace narrow-minded.
And yet the worst part is missed opportunity.
We’ve never seen Bridget’s family. They don’t even have names. There is an identical twin out there who could have been a drop-in replacement but happened to be trans-fem - and butch as fuck, because their idiot parents got it completely backwards. We were robbed of the twink icon, and some new short blonde terror.
Not remotely comparable. Mulan is gender-non-conforming. Bridget in Strive is GNC erasure - possibly just to appease Chinese censors.
It’s also the polar opposite of what the character was about. Bridget was already a trans allegory. By virtue of a coin toss, Bridget was assigned female at birth. Nearly every encounter in Midnight Carnival started with getting she/her’d and immediately correcting people. Bridget’s entire storyline was hunting bounties to man up. This was a cute character in a pretty blue dress literally kicking people’s asses to be treated like a dude. The writers going “whoops, nevermind” is not growth!
Now there’s twenty years of forum exchanges going ‘she’s cute!’ ‘do you like surprises?’ that were effusely queer-positive and taught a lot of dudes about the Kinsey scale… but in the absence of a timestamp, would be viewed as outright bigotry. This change was bad, actually. This was possibly the worst character to do this with. Johnny being trans would fit better. Fem-Johnny being a womanizing lesbian who still doesn’t wear a shirt and keeps that jacket closed by sheer force of will would warrant little more than a “huh.” Like how absolutely everyone heard Testament was nonbinary and went, “well, yeah.” The only reason you can casually allude to discourse about Bridget is because there’s a serious underlying discussion about gender in commercial fiction.
Chinese censorship is part of that discussion. China has cracked down on queer representation and “effeminate men” in particular. Strive came out the year China applied those TV and movie restrictions to video games. Strive has patched out mention of regions and countries the CCP doesn’t like to hear about. I’m glad you enjoy where Bridget’s story went, but it probably only happened because of an autocracy keeping its populace narrow-minded.
And yet the worst part is missed opportunity.
We’ve never seen Bridget’s family. They don’t even have names. There is an identical twin out there who could have been a drop-in replacement but happened to be trans-fem - and butch as fuck, because their idiot parents got it completely backwards. We were robbed of the twink icon, and some new short blonde terror.