[cw: Contrapoints]

Has, uh.

Has the Tabby character always been a she/they?

Just wondering.

No reason.

So, I guess we're going a little bit deeper,

'cause I'm seeing that people don't necessarily "get" the screencap out of context.

So, Tabby is one of Contra's longest-running character bits.

She's a trans woman who wears cat ears and carries a baseball bat, and that's about it.

That's who she is,

basically just a one-note joke character.

Shows up every so often just to wave her bat around and scream, "Burn it all down!!!"

And, basically immediately, she became the breakout star of the show,

which Contra didn't like, because she was supposed to be a derisive, dehumanizing caricature.

Thing is, it's kind of impossible to meaningfully critique Tabby's worldview

because she really only *barely* has one.

She's a bit character.

In terms of substance, she's next to nothing.

Her only real, identifying character trait is that she's pro-rioting,

which is a good and rational thing to be.

If her ideology was somehow flawed or incomplete, that never really came across.

For the audience, all that really *did* come across

was the sheer fucking *image*

of a trans woman with a baseball bat,

ready and willing to literally *crack skulls* to protect the people who need protecting.

Her only other real "thing" came in "the Aesthetic,"

where she's the one arguing that trans women have the right to present however they want,

even if cis people (or other trans people) think it's "embarrassing" or "unrespectable."

Like,

Tabby is explicitly intended to be Contra's caricature of everything "wrong" with "the left,"

so

Jesus Christ.

Anyway, the character was quietly retired after that,

because she clearly wasn't making the impact she was intended to.

People liked her.

They agreed with her.

They identified with her unironically.

She was always meant to be "sympathetic," but always specifically sympathetic and *wrong*.

Anyway, here she is now, two years later, making this sort of indirect cameo as a Twitter troll(?).

Which is, I guess, one way to get around the exciting image of the baseball bat,

and the implication that she might actually out there, putting her life on the line.

Just have her type all her arguments through the fucking Twitter UI.

Okay.

And she, all of sudden, has fucking "she/they" pronouns in her fucking display name.

what fucking motivated that choice, Nat.

why's that bad.