i have no idea how to word this question so sorry if it sounds weird </3 but i was wondering when/why the trans reading for mary started? don't get me wrong, i absoulutely love this abt our manta queen, but if i recall, it wasn't your original intention? unless im wrong then you can correct me on that 😭😭
Doesn't sound weird at all!! The whole thing is like...well, a whole big thing so I'll try to give you the run down and hopefully I don't make it sound too big and complicated!
SO! It all started when I was like 15 years old and made Mary for the first time. As I was drawing her and trying to decide on traits for her, I had the thought that maybe she could be transgender (MtF). It was an idea I continued to float around in the air for a while but decided not to cement because I knew Mary's character would have a lot of violence targeting her, and I didn't want to leave the impression that I was wishing harm on transgender people through that. Even if she wasn't being targeted for gender reasons specifically, it felt better to be safe than sorry.
Over the years lots of things changed within my little world of Noisrev! I had made many new characters of a variety of genders and gender experiences, and the lore surrounding Mary and her friends had changed significantly! While Mary still faces a lot of challenges and dark times, the nuance surrounding her and those challenges changed a lot. And because of that, I kinda felt myself wanting to put the idea back on the table. I was at least open about her being conceptualized that way in the first place.
I wanna say like maybe the summer following CM's release, I felt like I was being too non-committal around the conversation of whether Mary was trans or not. I thought that I should just commit and say that she was transgender, so I did.
What proceeded next was that I had an actually-autistic-meltdown about it for the next 2-3 days while I tried to figure out why this was affecting me so bad. Looking back with what I know now, having undiagnosed OCD probably also didn't help.
One of my loveliest friends helped talk me down from it and helped me realize what the issue was. Mary is such an important character to me, and as such I was using her to explore my own feelings towards gender and what it meant to me. Now I am AFAB, so confirming Mary to have a gender experience I couldn't definitively relate to took away that outlet for me and caused me to freak out.
I've got my own very complicated feelings towards gender, but at the end of the day I know I am and would like to be seen as a girl and I think Mary is a lot like that too. And it's because of these reasons that I can't say she is only trans or only cis. She's gotta be both because I think she's always been that way even when I doubted myself!
I know that like, not everyone will agree with the way I go about this. I know some people are upset about it for one reason or another, and I sincerely apologize to and sympathize with people for the reasons they might have to not like it. But at the end of the day I have to do what's right for me!
Sorry if this is messy I kinda just typed this up as quick as I could so i hope it all comes across ok LOL thank you for listening ♡
