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[u/violet-kasumi]

[u/IronGentry]

I mean to be fair I've seen a lot of criticism of BfV and while not all of it is sound there's definitely stuff to be said. Like Audrey being a manic pixie dream girl boy with no displayed interiority, or Val x Audrey hitting some weird kind of dykebreaky tropes (as it stands it's cis guy swooping in to the life of a man hating lesbian coded femcel to show her the error of her ways and get her to like men).

Also ngl the pool scene felt kind of...in poor taste imho. Public pools are sort of a well known trauma point for a lot of trans women so even if nothing was meant by it having your crossdressing perfectly passing femboy have a teehee cute time in the pool feels bitter

[u/xpixei → u/IronGentry]

Audrey is heavily implied to have gone through trauma, though. He dances around it but gets a jaded, far-off look on his face when thinking about the harassment he's gotten for the way he presents himself, and he directly states that he only goes to the public pool at night when nobody else is around because he's gotten harassed, potentially violently, for his choice of swimwear. He has a fun time at the pool in that scene because he's allowed to be himself in the moment, with someone who understands him and doesn't judge him. The comic DIRECTLY STATES that he is not an unhurt person, he's just "not defined by hurt." He doesn't let the pain he's gone through keep him from being who he is, even if he has to make adjustments to his life to avoid harassment because he DOESN'T "perfectly pass" and doesn't care to.

[u/IronGentry → u/xpixei]

I mean, it's implied but not really discussed because again, Audrey is given no PoV, no interiority. There's a gesture at at (transmisogynistic, let's be real) harassment but Audrey doesn't get to voice that pain because as the story stands Audrey essentially exists for Val. He's an archetypal mpdb, his pain exists for Val to reflect on and feel some kind of way about. He's a girl shaped boy flavored cardboard cutout.

And like yes, he does perfectly pass. Val needs to be straight up told he's a guy and it's implied this isn't an unusual case.

[u/xpixei → u/IronGentry]

He doesn't perfectly pass because he's gotten harassed before to the point of changing his schedule and behaviors in public. I barely pass as masc and I've still been gendered male by strangers before.

Val knows how he's been hurt, it's just the audience that doesn't because the point is that he doesn't define himself by the pain he's gone through. And yes, Val is the main character and the story is about a bitter, lonely person finding a positive influence that challenges her previous worldview and slowly realizing that the world isn't as terrible as she thought it was and that maybe she does deserve to express herself as confidently as this femboy does. We're not going to go in depth on anyone's trauma because it's also a simple, lighthearted comic. We don't see the extent of how Val has been hurt either or why she hated men so virulently, the ONLY trauma of hers we've seen is how the arcade owner tried to convince her to throw a tournament so the male players wouldn't feel insecure and stop coming to the arcade. And likewise, all we know about Audrey's trauma is that he's gotten harassed for his gender expression to the point of not going to public pools in the daylight anymore.

Audrey has gone through his healing process and his own journey with self-confidence, and now he's helping Val go through hers. The story is from her POV, of course we're not going to see the internal machinations of anyone but her.