ive been struggling for a few months, maybe even a year at this point, with the online obsession with egg cracking, namely depicting people or characters as women when the text or they themselves identify as male. im not new to fandom spaces, mpreg and gender bending and all that jazz dont bother me at all, so it was weird that i had such an extreme and visceral reaction. drawing, idk pulling some guy out of my ass here, sans undertale as a girl was fine! headcanon him as a trans woman and thats peachy too! i may even be able to walk with you on that. but tadc and now deltarune have really pinned it down for me why i hate the newer wave of this so much- its because its egg-cracking.
there was discourse about jax being trans fem or masc, because he had to be one of the two, and debating it with a level of seriousness that isnt "fanon". the issue wasnt about personal preferences or observations, it was about the text of the show and attempting to predict the outcome based on sprinkles of information. I would be far less critical of this if it was not exclusively done in regards to trans women or men, and if the focus was on the character, but it never was. the focus was always on being "right" of using the "correct" pronouns for a character that was not out and did not want them being used. of actively misgendering someone (fictional or not) because you think theyre trans. specifically i think of f1nster (from what i could find uses he/her on her insta) who started off as just crossdressing and then went fully into it after figuring out he was genderfluid. the issue here is not, and was never, that he was suggested crossdressing, or the manner that he "cracked" her "egg" but the sheer overshadowing of that realization by people who, i can only imagine mean well, telling her that they knew all along. that they were right. its no longer about your own path with gender, coming to that- sometimes deeply scary and troubling- realization and being met with folks who understand and welcome you. now its people meeting you half way through, shoving the trophy in your hand and watching you make your way to their makeshift finish line, so they can brag about how they were right about you all along.
every now and again i'll see a post like that where the "i hope she's doing okay" message comes from a clear place of "i was there, and i recognize it" and i can appreciate it. but this new wave of projecting so hard on other people that you superimpose your life and your struggles and your journey onto other people, so much that you assume that you MUST be the angel you wish you had is just harmful and borderline dangerous. just like real eggs, if you push too hard, or crack too early, what was in the egg will die. so its best to let them hatch on their own.
