Jenny’s narrative in my life as a teenage robot is implicitly trans, and her struggle with being viewed as a normal girl by society going so far as to wear a human suit is a perfect representation of trans people’s struggles to pass and be accepted by their communities. In this essay I will….
Trans people are not the only group to struggle to fit in to anywhere. It is not implicitly anything
Being a misfit isn’t exlusively trans. But take this show as you will.
Hey! No shit struggling to fit in is relatable to any marginalized community. I’m saying the very specific narrative of wanting to be a real girl, (which is text not subtext by the way, she at one point has a short speech about wanting to be a ‘real girl’) changing your name because it doesn’t match how you see yourself (Xj9 to Jenny), changing your appearance to pass as a real girl only for it not to work and to be seen and regarded by mainstream society as a literal freak, finally getting what you want and conforming to standards only for it to necessitate you changing who you are as a person, are all intensely trans experiences. Obviously the showrunners didn’t construct this narrative with a trans intent and there is the potential for parallels to other marginalized experiences, but Jenny’s character arc bears uncanny resemblance to the experience trans people have coming to terms with their genders.
Also it’s fucking trans.
Actually. I wouldn’t be too quick on saying there was no intent on the show runners part:
Like OP mentioned Jenny often is shown to experience disphoria. Especially in relation to her outwards appearance.
She also was shown to go through “puberty” in one episode. And the writers decided to give her symptoms that are traditionally associated with male puberty. Which horrified her despite people around her assuring her it’s just fine.
Jenny also learned mutiply times that she doesn’t need to comform to anything to be a real girl. She already is, the only difference is that she was made with diffrent parts.
While there certainly are diffrent interpretations, as is always the case with metaphores, it’s not unlikely that some of the writers explicitly had the trans community in mind while writing some of the episodes.
Jenny’s narrative is heavily tied to self image issues, insecurities about her identity and a feeling of issolation.
She is surrounded by people who are supportive of her but still can be ignorant and even hurtfull without intend (her mom and Brad come to mind which both clearly love her but both have upset her on multiply occasions due to not really getting her). She is constantly side eyed by society for potentially being dangerous. She is often treated like a sort of “freak show” by others and generally a lot of the people around her only give her respect if what she is doing is directly benifitial to them or is a source of amusement for them.
Then there is Sheldon who almost fetishizes her to a very uncomfortable amount.
All of them had induvidual arcs which relate back to said issues. Jenny’s mom starts viewing her more as a daughter then as a robot. Sheldon started to be less of a creep and developed more genuine feelings for Jenny based on her personality rather then on her being a robot.
Even Brad, who already was just the best, was called out and confronted with instances where he unintentionally was being hurtfull more then once.
So yeah. Jenny is very heavily trans coded and a lot of the narrative mirrors the experiences and struggels of real life trans teens.
And frankly I think that are too many coincidences to 100% rule out intent.
D&D is a wild experience when you’re invested, you’re simultaneously playing a game, creating a narrative, and become a fandom??? so you and your friends can talk for hours about your characters and theories while guarding character secrets to not spoil anything and then think ‘i can’t wait for the next episode’, while knowing you’ll actually be collaboratively generating content, but are still like ‘i cant believe my dumbass child did that’
These two creators were siblings the whole time and none of you thought to tell me?
I read this guy’s thesis floating around on the web once that actually stated that the Cicierega family has basically singlehandedly shaped internet culture and are alone some of the most important figures in pop culture but literally barely anyone actually knows who they are. It’s interesting stuff
“when youve done something right, people wont be sure you did anything at all”
I may always reblog every gifset/imageset I see of this scene, if only to point out (over and over and over again) that Black Widow’s “very specific skillset” is not, actually, ass-kicking (as amazing as she is at that), because all the Avengers can kick ass to a pretty high degree. The Black Widow’s superpower (as it were) is emotional manipulation.
She is not interrogating this man not while tied to a chair. She is tied to a chair because that is exactly where she wants to be, because apparent vulnerability on her part is part of her interrogation. She uses the exact same trick on Loki later, when she leads him into gloating over having successfully pushed her buttons (and I have a theory that he did actually push her buttons, that she was genuinely distressed by the things he said to her because Loki is old enough and smart enough to know when someone is lying to him) and turns his gloating around on him, uses it to dig into the cracks of him, because that is what she does, and she can do it even when her target is expecting it. (Really, Loki knows that’s why she’s there. He was expecting to be physically tortured first, and for her to come be sympathetic later, if you recall, but Loki and Widow both know that wouldn’t work.)
And this is why she’s so unsettled by the Hulk. The Black Widow relies on emotional manipulation — and the Hulk, to the best of her knowledge, only has varying shades of a single emotion: anger. She doesn’t know how to manipulate a creature if it doesn’t have all the hooks to emotions like pride and lust and guilt and greed that she’s used to using.
This is a REALLY good character analysis of Natasha.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
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