That’s great that you seem interested in it! The endless abuse is luckily not the only thing going on with that character, and the chapter which focuses on that aspect is one of the shorter ones overall with it only coming into play halfway through so it’s also relatively brief. If you want any extra content warnings don’t hesitate to ask, since there are a few other ones due to its nature as tragedy. If you do read it please don’t hesitate to message me about it since I don’t have a ton of people to discuss it with and I would love to get to yap about it in more detail for once!

And thank you for the concern.

I haven’t been updating here as much as I could about my situation since the first month but I’ve been doing much much better and have mostly stabilised since then, both emotionally and economically. I’m also just much happier now that I get to be myself and not repress myself as much anymore.

Oh don’t be so hard on yourself, literary analysis is hard and you tend to do a good job at it from what I’ve read in your postings here over the months I’ve been active. Sometimes a particular take just doesn’t click for you when it does for other people. But that reading of Badeline you just described is basically exactly how most people read her prior to the writer’s transition, including the writer herself. (At least from my cursory understanding when the game came out, I never got around to playing it until years later)

The VN I was talking about was The House in Fata Morgana. Misery porn was definitely an exaggeration, the VN as a whole is basically a series of tragedies that all relate to eachother as a larger supernatural mystery that gradually gets revealed. It’s very theatrical, very pretty, and has an incredible OST. Seriously even if you don’t read it listen to a couple of tracks sometime. The entire VN is incredible, I adore it.

It’s honestly not really a trans narrative at all though, only one of the tragedies is, and even then the main character of that section is actually intersex (although you can read him as both, I certainly do (and I think that’s the intent too)). Despite that I still feel and read it as a trans narrative. I just relate to him on an incredibly deep level, more than basically any other character in fiction. I should also clarify that most of the suffering isn’t stuff that the character feels so much as other people being abusive to him.

Which is why my life mirroring his is a bit worrying since I read this VN before my egg cracked and the abuse I’ve gotten, particularly around October to November when I was kicked out is… Distressingly similar. I’m actually a bit afraid to reread it rn if I’m being honest.

I know I’m being very vague but I love it so much and don’t want to really spoil it

There’s definitely always going to be a few trans narratives that don’t click when your experiences are different enough (or really any narrative in general, but focusing on trans ones in particular here). I know I personally have felt deep connections with works that you would probably find less compelling and vice versa.

Like, my favourite novel, in general, is a visual novel with a character whose arc you would probably consider at least partially trans misery porn, but is ultimately deeply compelling and relatable to me (especially as my life continues to mirror his in frankly worrying ways).

And on the other hand I find force femme stuff deeply uncomfortable since I place a lot of importance on my agency in transitioning and the trope feels like a removal of that agency to me. (Actually now I forget if you ever posted about force femme stuff here, well either way it’s an example of something that doesn’t click for me but does for a bunch of other transfemmes)

But also, I agree here in the context of Celeste. For one I just never had the mirror discomfort that its creators did, and while I can kinda relate to that quote in a “I used to hate the way I look but now I’m happy with it” way that’s ultimately too… Surface level and vague? At least too much for me to really find it compelling.

But moreso I think, for me at least, the context of its creation as a not-specifically-trans narrative (Calling it this since there were some trans influences from the start, the composer and a few of her songs, for instance) means that a lot of the trans subtext is very vague and undirected. And a lot of the more explicit text was stuff added onto the finished game in updates. Like the CG with the trans flag wasn’t in there at launch. (This goes into a bigger mess of subjects on whether the first or last version of a game is the “complete” version of it but I’ll spare you it right now). Overall though this leaves me feeling that while it’s a cute game, it doesn’t feel like a trans game to me in the way it does for a lot of other people.