i'm looking at this again and it's so striking to me how it just makes the story, *worse*
it's a nickname, just a silly little thing we're calling frankie for funsies! you know the best context to establish this? when her abusive guardian figure is threatening her with violence! Gruff Abusive Father McToothRipper (voiced by a trans woman by the way) is just a goofy little guy playing into this goofy little quirk!
i'm forced to conclude that this show isn't written as well as i thought! taking dana at her word here this is just, silly, tonally dissonant, and needlessly confusing!
just, grah, this is so emblematic of the kind of short sighted writing you get when you're not a trans woman and you've never considered for even a moment what it's like to be one. writing an all-but-explicit trans woman, (to the point during my first viewing i genuinely thought there was no question about her transness) and then explicitly making sure that we know she's *actually* cis, that transfemininity doesn't even deserve a token "haha you can interpret it that way if you want!" but a flatout denial.
this is apparently what explicitly writing a character as cis looks like! and you did a bad and thoughtless job of it! i think less of the writing for this (and not *just* because of the passive thoughtless exclusion of transfems that is so painfully common in all tme writing!)
god and of course you get replies like this
thank god she's a *normal* woman who's just buff, the real representation we needed. she's not built for any freaky trans reasons she's just an ACTUAL fem character.
just
grahhh
like i said this is painfully common. basically every single piece of major Queer Animation i can think of has been headlined by tme people, focuses almost entirely on tme people, and only features transfems as an afterthought, in minor roles if at all.
disappointing but not at all unexpected.
