El Goonish Shive II - I stand by my ridiculous comic

[Qwertystop]

hm.

-has gender-bent a lot before and is comfortable with it
-doesn't want to correct the person on actually being a guy, but still uncomfortable with his advances
-suddenly decides to have pink hair
-turns female to become a better cook
-has willingly worn a female uniform
-is starting to be more respectful around women
-the "bridal fields" vision
-willingly grew out long hair on the logic that people will blame the hair and not his face for being girly.
-mental projection was female
-wants to bring back the hammers

.....yeah, there is a lot of evidence that Tedd might be transsexual who self-denies it because of the bullying s/he gets for having a feminine face....

thats all the evidence I can think of right now though, anything else?

2 and 3 have been justified in-comic.

4 is also sort of justified, more strongly.

5 was just a vest, it's not really a female thing outside of the school's uniform policy. I don't think he wore a skirt.

6 - ...and that's evidence towards being TS/TG? Really?

7 I have no idea what this is

8 And he was right - I (and a lot of other people going by Dan's commentary) thought he looked a lot more girly after the short haircut.

10 Do you remember the original purpose of the hammers? It was to encourage the remarks.

So yeah, only two points that seem to actually work as evidence, and they're pretty slim.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I don't think he wore a skirt.

He did, but only in a show of support of Susan's campaign against the uniforms. Like you, I do not believe it indicates closeted MtF tendencies.

Grey Wolf

[Lord Raziere]

2 and 3 have been justified in-comic.

4 is also sort of justified, more strongly.

5 was just a vest, it's not really a female thing outside of the school's uniform policy. I don't think he wore a skirt.

6 - ...and that's evidence towards being TS/TG? Really?

7 I have no idea what this is

8 And he was right - I (and a lot of other people going by Dan's commentary) thought he looked a lot more girly after the short haircut.

10 Do you remember the original purpose of the hammers? It was to encourage the remarks.

So yeah, only two points that seem to actually work as evidence, and they're pretty slim.

Nevermind then. just forget I said anything.

[Luzahn]

Well, in my opinion the most compelling point by far was #9, and we don't really have an explanation for that right now.

Even if Tedd isn't denying anything, I suspect that Shive is going somewhere with this beyond a "Tedd looks like a girl" joke.

[Randomguy]

hm.

-has gender-bent a lot before and is comfortable with it
-doesn't want to correct the person on actually being a guy, but still uncomfortable with his advances
-suddenly decides to have pink hair
-turns female to become a better cook
-has willingly worn a female uniform
-is starting to be more respectful around women
-the "bridal fields" vision
-willingly grew out long hair on the logic that people will blame the hair and not his face for being girly.
-mental projection was female
-wants to bring back the hammers

.....yeah, there is a lot of evidence that Tedd might be transsexual who self-denies it because of the bullying s/he gets for having a feminine face....

thats all the evidence I can think of right now though, anything else?

I've been assuming Tedd is gender fluid, mostly because of the first point. If he identified as male, he'd probably experience some dysphoria when he transforms.

[Mina Kobold]

Going to agree that Pockets-Sam seems to think that Tedd is something other than cisgender, and is trying to be helpful.

As for Tedd's gender: a lot of identities are possible. Raziere is right that Tedd's bridal fields vision and mental image, as well as how comfortable Tedd is with being transformed, could be indicative of Tedd being a trans woman. Genderfluidity is also a possibility, as Random mentioned, as is Tedd being bigender or agender. It is possible that Tedd is cisgender and just comfortable with temporary escapism of a sort, though my bets are on Tedd not being cis.

All speculations until Dan confirms one guess or the other, though, but I'm personally hoping we learn more soon.

[Hytheter]

He did, but only in a show of support of Susan's campaign against the uniforms. Like you, I do not believe it indicates closeted MtF tendencies.

Grey Wolf

You're misremembering, Tedd only wore the vest, not the skirt, on that occasion. The skirt was worn at Grace's party, and maybe other times when he was transformed into a girl.
I don't think he's ever worn female clothing except before, during or after a transformation.

[Lord Raziere]

huh......apparently Tedd never even heard of Transgender people before according to the latest comic....odd. considering that one of his friends is gay, and therefore is a source of LBTQA info but....whatever.

[Hytheter]

I find it especially odd that Grace knows about this stuff, considering her upbringing.

[Lizard Lord]

huh......apparently Tedd never even heard of Transgender people before according to the latest comic....odd. considering that one of his friends is gay, and therefore is a source of LBTQA info but....whatever.

Having a source of knowledge is not the same as using said source. I can't really see Tedd asking such questions nor can I really see Justin volunteering such info unprompted.

[Lord Raziere]

Having a source of knowledge is not the same as using said source. I can't really see Tedd asking such questions nor can I really see Justin volunteering such info unprompted.

a guy who regularly uses a ray gun that is every transgender person's dream come true, who is friends with a gay guy?

and you find it plausible that this topic has never come up?

[Lizard Lord]

a guy who regularly uses a ray gun that is every transgender person's dream come true, who is friends with a gay guy?

and you find it plausible that this topic has never come up?

Yes. Tedd enjoys transforming, sure, but outside of with Grace he never really talks about why he transforms or anything like that. He also at one point has been shown to be nervous when discussing Justin's sexuality with him. Granted said nervousness was in regards to Tedd's suspicions that Justin may be attracted to him, but still.

And, frankly, I would imagine that Justin would find it to be none of his business and would only discuss it if Tedd brought it up. Not to mention what would there really be to talk about? Justin identifies as male and as far has been shown doesn't know anyone, outside of maybe Tedd, who is transgender. Like Grace seems to he would just assume that Tedd is familiar with the term and that would all Justin would have to add to the conversation.

[Lord Raziere]

....I repeat: ray gun. transgender peoples dream come true. and he never thought to bring it up? something that could. y'know. help a bunch of people with their psychological iss- oh right the stupid MIB, nevermind.

[Lizard Lord]

....I repeat: ray gun. transgender peoples dream come true. and he never thought to bring it up? something that could. y'know. help a bunch of people with their psychological iss- oh right the stupid MIB, nevermind.

Oh that is what you were driving at?

Yea, Justin seems to fully support keeping magic secret. The ray gun (which, make no mistake, is magic) could open up a whole can of worms. Especially since you can use it to create combat forms.


Also, why would Justin be more likely to bring that up than anyone else in the group? Like say, Ellen?

I mean, she may identify as female but she has the memories of being male. Where areas Justin identifies as male and with the exception of a one time event that lasted less than a day always has been. I could be wrong, but as far as I can figure him being gay should have nothing to do with it.

I apologize for my confusion. I am just trying to understand.

[Mina Kobold]

Considering Grace's reaction, I'm presuming that everybody who know about trans people assumed Tedd did too. It might have been brought up as a specific argument if they discussed it, but I don't think the group as a whole has done that too much. Tedd has argued with Mr. Verres and has talked about wanting magic revealed to the world, but I don't recall anyone having arguments about what specifically the guns would be useful for.

Given that, I can believe that most of the group would assume that Tedd would include helping transgender people in the list of stuff that magic could do to help the world. It's also possible that nobody in the group knows much about transitioning and are not aware of how much help the TF gun would be. In my experience, a person being gay generally doesn't mean they know much about trans people and the issues we face, though they do tend to know a slight bit more about us than most. Plus, as has been mentioned, Tedd has a tendency to not want to think about LGBTAI+ stuff (nervous when believing that Justin might be interested, weirded out when thinking about Grace appearing male, etc), which isn't very conductive to learning.

Or, in other words, during all the excellent communication about emotions and such in the last few arcs, this may have been something that actually wasn't well communicated.

PS: Yay for the fact that transgender people are brought up in the comic, even if the explanation is a bit colloquial. ^_^

[Grey_Wolf_c]

a guy who regularly uses a ray gun that is every transgender person's dream come true, who is friends with a gay guy?

and you find it plausible that this topic has never come up?

Yes, yes I do. Being gay doesn't magically give you knowledge of all other LGBT+ issues, or interest in them. Being gay is not the same as being transgender - indeed, other than their current alliance for equal rights, they have no real overlap (in that, afaik, transgender people are as likely as the general population to be straight or gay - gender and sexual attraction being two independent characteristics), so there is no particular reason Justin is on the lookout for magical items that will help transgender people. In fact, Justin may not be particularly into LGBT+ activism (he certainly has not shown tendencies towards it, although he has a lot of off-page time), being more concerned with being a geek.

Grey Wolf

[Lord Raziere]

I know. but this is the information age, and I haven't met a geek who didn't gather information ceaselessly. such information is easier than ever to come by, my suspension of disbelief is honestly being stretched here by people not knowing about the sort of stuff related to their interests- I mean we got two people who'd be validly concerned about this and they didn't bother to check any further information on this? this sort of thing is a google check away, Tedd himself is probably the kind of person who would study the most about this, and your telling me they just didn't bother? seems like lazy writing to me.

I mean if they were people who weren't interested in this sort of thing, I'd be able to believe it, but I'm just kinda finding it hard to believe.

[Tono]

But why would Tedd care to know anything about it? 'Geeks have to know everything.' Frankly isn't true. In my experience at least its 'Geeks know about what they want to know about or are forced to learn.' And I cannot see Ted being interested in the subject. I doubt he scourges the internet looking for information, since it most likely is not on there or is not reliable(Unless related to a game he is playing), and even if he was anything that looked even remotely 'gay' was probably just ignored by him. Even if he does his keywords where probably more transformation based, and these forums are not an appropriate place to discuss what that brings up on google. There are guys who dress like girls. Magic/Technology can make some guys girls and vice versa. Beyond that, he doesn't know or care to know.

What he does is totally different. He becomes a girl. Then he behaves as he thinks one should(Cooking, make-up, looking hot, etc). While he is a man, he holds on to his masculinity as much as he can(Getting angry at people saying he cross-dresses, growing his hair out so people don't think HE looks feminine, refusing to let grace carry furniture while cleaning the kitchen, etc).

[memnarch]

I know. but this is the information age, and I haven't met a geek who didn't gather information ceaselessly. such information is easier than ever to come by, my suspension of disbelief is honestly being stretched here by people not knowing about the sort of stuff related to their interests- I mean we got two people who'd be validly concerned about this and they didn't bother to check any further information on this? this sort of thing is a google check away, Tedd himself is probably the kind of person who would study the most about this, and your telling me they just didn't bother? seems like lazy writing to me.

I mean if they were people who weren't interested in this sort of thing, I'd be able to believe it, but I'm just kinda finding it hard to believe.

I quite like the Marvel movies, but I have no interest in reading the comics. While the information about them (and the comics themselves) might be quite interesting for me, I only have so many hours in the day to amuse myself reading about whatever, so I choose to spent that time elsewhere. Likewise, Tedd is more interested in working with magic and figuring out how it works and can be controlled, so learning about other things will take a backseat to that. And even then, people don't remember everything they see, read, or hear, so perhaps it didn't click that first time under the assumption that the current comic is not actually the first..

[Lizard Lord]

I know. but this is the information age, and I haven't met a geek who didn't gather information ceaselessly. such information is easier than ever to come by, my suspension of disbelief is honestly being stretched here by people not knowing about the sort of stuff related to their interests- I mean we got two people who'd be validly concerned about this and they didn't bother to check any further information on this? this sort of thing is a google check away, Tedd himself is probably the kind of person who would study the most about this, and your telling me they just didn't bother? seems like lazy writing to me.

I mean if they were people who weren't interested in this sort of thing, I'd be able to believe it, but I'm just kinda finding it hard to believe.

Well I figure the joke is that one would think Tedd would know about this. I am reacting to the idea that Justin would fill Tedd in on this. Also, the information age and having reason to look it up is most likely why Grace knows.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I know. but this is the information age, and I haven't met a geek who didn't gather information ceaselessly.

Lucky you. Many adolescent geeks (and even some adults that should have grown out of it, but haven't) I know are nowhere near fully informed on transexual issues, concentrating their information gathering on latest videogames (which, as a rule, are only now starting to include gays, but are nowhere close to including transexuals), comics, films, and other forms of entertainment. I fully believe that a random sampling of them would discover a non-zero number that would not even be aware of the fact that transexuals even exist (or worse, confuse them with travestism). Tedd has been known to be overly focused on his own pursuits (indeed, that is the canonical reason why he becomes Lord Tedd in the other dimension: he doesn't have friends to distract him from his obsessive research into giving himself magic powers). I can perfectly believe that Tedd, never having randomly come across the concept of transexuals, he is simply unaware they exist, since they do not overlap with his otherwise very extensive set of perversions (his word, not mine).

such information is easier than ever to come by, my suspension of disbelief is honestly being stretched here by people not knowing about the sort of stuff related to their interests- I mean we got two people who'd be validly concerned about this and they didn't bother to check any further information on this? this sort of thing is a google check away, Tedd himself is probably the kind of person who would study the most about this, and your telling me they just didn't bother? seems like lazy writing to me.

Tedd is interested in turning himself and others into female because he prefers to be surrounded by bodies he finds sexually attractive. He also has no need to research into means to achieve this surgically because he already has the means at his disposal to do so - so why would he research transexualism? Justin has, to the best of our knowledge, no transexual desires whatsoever and thus would also not have a reason to research it either.

It is also damn hard to research a word you are unaware exists, and even harder to research a concept you are unaware exists.

Grey Wolf

[Mina Kobold]

I know. but this is the information age, and I haven't met a geek who didn't gather information ceaselessly. such information is easier than ever to come by, my suspension of disbelief is honestly being stretched here by people not knowing about the sort of stuff related to their interests- I mean we got two people who'd be validly concerned about this and they didn't bother to check any further information on this? this sort of thing is a google check away, Tedd himself is probably the kind of person who would study the most about this, and your telling me they just didn't bother? seems like lazy writing to me.

I mean if they were people who weren't interested in this sort of thing, I'd be able to believe it, but I'm just kinda finding it hard to believe.

I think it's sadly less likely than it seems. I spent a semester in a group that included a lesbian and an asexual person and had several of the straight cisgender folks in it discuss Conchita Wurst a lot, and they did not learn anything about trans people even when I was grumbling about their prejudices constantly*. They knew trans people existed, but thought the proper way to talk about us was to describe someone as "a trans" with a tone that sounded as if that was the grossest thing they could imagine, and they did nothing to do any research into it at any point. Nor did any of them connect transgender people with the idea of transformations (aforementioned lesbian was very open about what manga she reads, most of which is NSFW), they just assumed they knew all they needed to know about us and judged accordingly. Didn't matter how many gay people any of them knew, didn't matter if it would have been a lot easier for their discussion of someone they thought might be trans to research it, didn't matter that they would have researched Marvel characters for hours had the discussion been about those, they didn't care to learn anything they hadn't been forced to learn.

And those are the most pro-LGBTAIQ+ people I've met in Denmark outside of LGBT Danmark. It may be different in the US, but I can imagine that someone who does not live in a big city could just have missed it for the most part or simply being mistaken about what the words mean. After all, Tedd just misunderstood Grace as meaning "transfomed" when she said "transgender" (which also fits with how Grace's birthday was described using the word transgender), so it may just be that Tedd never considered researching LGBT stuff and assumed that any mention of the word was similar to Tedd's own understanding from early in the comic (i.e. that it was a sign of being a pervert). It's unlikely that Tedd wouldn't have heard about trans people in some regard before, but I think it's plausible. ^_^'


*Though it is important to note that I am not out to them about being trans myself.

EDIT: On a related note, I think it might not be the case that Tedd's explanations for liking the transformations are entirely reliable. It is possible that Tedd merely did it to be surrounded by attractive people, but it's also possible that that was a sort of rationalisation for wanting to do it. Kind of like how a lot of trans people had perfectly unrelated explanations for playing female characters in games or dressing androgynously prior to realising that we were trans.

[Yuki Akuma]

I, too, have experienced the epiphany that is "wait, there's a word for that thing about me?!".

[memnarch]

Heh, and today, we get a whole commentary dedicated to our discussion. XD

[Weimann]

This page very economically gives us insight into an aspect of Tedd which has not been really been touched on before, but still makes all the sense in the world right off the bat. I really quite love it.

It's also incredibly cute.

[Mina Kobold]

Heh, and today, we get a whole commentary dedicated to our discussion. XD

Does Dan know what we discuss? Is Dan watching us?

...

Dan, we need more pink hair in the comic! Don't listen to them, make all the hair pink! :D

This page very economically gives us insight into an aspect of Tedd which has not been really been touched on before, but still makes all the sense in the world right off the bat. I really quite love it.

It's also incredibly cute.

I'm actually really glad that the comic touched on not just the most well known trans identities (Though even the representation we get is pretty small >_>), but actually showed that it's a lot wider a spectrum than that. Not a lot of comics even mention genderfluidity, let alone have major characters be genderfluid.
Yay representation! ^_^

And yes, it is cute. It is a page entirely with Grace and Tedd being couple-y, it can't be much else.

[The Mormegil]

I shall make my ignorance manifest and say I had no idea such a thing even existed.

[Radar]

One thing I wanted to say yesterday, but couldn't quite put into words:
since I'm lucky to be comfortable with what I was given, so to say, I didn't quite understand the problem at hand. For quite a long time I thought that the current need to categorise and subcategorise every facet of human gender, personality or other aspects is going a bit too far and bares a risk of stereotyping people. I thought that it would be much healthier to simply forego the labels and let everyone simply be themselves. Tedd's revelation shows something I missed in the whole issue: having a name makes you belong somewhere - it tells you, there are more people like you and there is much comfort to be had because of it.

In short: very strong and well executed page.

[Lizard Lord]

So, it would seem that Sarah ships Elliot and Justin.

[The Mormegil]

Dan's Patreon campaign is up. Consider paying 1$ a month, it's two coffees from the machine and if everyone that read EGS did it Dan would basically have another job's revenue. Or more, IDK how many people actually read EGS.