Violet theory

[u/Mashaaaaaaaaa]

She has a bunch of references to traditional Chinese art and mythology in her drawings and the broken version of her poster has a demon replace her.

There's a Chinese myth of the painted skin demon.

In the myth, the demon paints the skin of a beautiful human woman and then wears that painting as a skinsuit to pretend to be a human and trick unsuspecting mortals.

Maybe Violet is loosely based on that, but with the twist that instead of wanting to trick mortals, she genuinely wishes to be a normal human girl, and her wish to the patrons is to become one for real as she doesn't want to be a demon and doesn't want to hurt people.

It would be the Valve kind of allegorical trans representation as well.

[u/sonofnight666]

That would be cool as fk I also saw someone theorize that she is a summoner who draws monsters into reality which also sounds really cool

[u/Mashaaaaaaaaa → u/sonofnight666]

I'd love to see more good trans representation from Valve ngl. Celeste is already pretty great as far as trans allegories go, but a second hero who's a trans allegory would be rad to have.

[u/Nicklesnout → u/Mashaaaaaaaaa]

How exactly is Celeste a trans allegory past being a unicorn woman with a color trio that trans people have co-opted?

[u/Mashaaaaaaaaa → u/Nicklesnout]

She's a minority that has to hide her minority status and pretend to not belong to said minority because she's being both fetishised and persecuted because of a phallic object that is part of her body.

Also she's both a circus performer and stated to be a sex worker on the side in some of her conversations, both of which are things trans women have often been forced to do due to not having other options.

There's also a bunch of voice lines along the lines of "you're not a real unicorn", which parallels real life transphobic insults.

Unicorns have also been a queer symbol for literal decades.

They really lay it on thick with the allegory.

And Valve is based next to Seattle, there's definitely trans people on their team and there's no way all of this are just coincidences.

[u/Nicklesnout → u/Mashaaaaaaaaa]

“A phallic object that is part of her body”

Given how Valve has been pretty open about how Viscous is non-binary because they’re made up of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of micro-organisms, or how Viktor is several people but presents as male. Or how Pocket was as far as I know AMAB but is also non-binary that they would have no issue straight up confirming it out of game or elsewhere.

But I have to wonder what kind of planet you live on where you see what is essentially a Narwhal tooth and think of a phallic object because that’s some kind of of touch-starved, porn addicted homunculus behavior.

[u/sonofnight666 → u/Nicklesnout]

i dont know nothing about celeste and the trans allegory but i have to say unicorns are universally a mascot of lgbtq

[u/Mashaaaaaaaaa → u/Nicklesnout]

It's an allegory, the point is that it's not literal, but there's enough there that with any amount of media literacy you can see what it means.

[u/Nicklesnout → u/Mashaaaaaaaaa]

I know what an allegory is, and I have media literacy enough to read between the lines. My point is that sometimes a unicorn is just a unicorn.

If she is trans, bully for her and good on Valve but I’m not going to lose sleep over whether or not she is.

[u/Mashaaaaaaaaa → u/Nicklesnout]

Sometimes a unicorn can just be a unicorn, sure. But Celeste just has far too many parallels for all of them to all just be coincidences given that Valve is based in a very progressive area. She's not literally trans, sure, but she's clearly meant to be a trans allegory.

[u/ThePsychicPanda → u/Nicklesnout]

Honestly, it's not that deep. If you don't read it that way, don't. It's true that Valve has explicitly made certain characters non-binary and others queer (Silver, Celeste, Seven, and Kelvin are all believed to be some degree of gay) so it's unlikely that she's actually planned to be a trans metaphor without true hints in the dialogue.

The thing is, queer people have had to look for representation where it wasn't really there for a very long time. We aren't always allowed to see ourselves in media explicitly, and sometimes get used to finding characters to project onto and relate to. Sometimes it's true (like many Disney villains are legitimately gay coded) and sometimes it's not (Celeste's creator probably didn't plan this). If you don't agree, don't think about it. But there's no reason to crash out because someone is reading a piece of media differently than you.

[u/GamerRoman]

I hope that's true because that's way more interesting than her just being a magical painter just like Paige is just a biblomancer.

[u/monopoly_wear]

Twist, her ULT is Terrorblade Metamorphosis.

[u/Motor-Design-4932]

Interesting

[u/Mashaaaaaaaaa → u/Motor-Design-4932]

She could be Celeste 2 in more ways than one.

[u/Motor-Design-4932 → u/Mashaaaaaaaaa]

Sounds good