Seemingly out of nowhere, Super Mario Bros. 2‘s Birdo, the first-ever confirmed transgender video game character, has become the center of attention. Birdo appeared for the first time in Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1988, wherein she started out as an antagonist but soon became depicted as an ally. She has also made several cameos in the Super Mario Kart series, in which she is a playable racer.

The English manual for Super Mario Bros. 2 refers to Birdo as a male “who thinks he is a girl” and would prefer to be called “Birdetta.” Ever since this information leaked, Nintendo fans have considered Birdo to be transgender. From Mario Tennis onwards, there was no mention of Birdo’s preferred name, but Nintendo consistently refers to her with female pronouns.

In Mario Tennis and Super Mario Advance, Birdo was given a high-pitched female voice. And there’s all the lore on Birdo, who has become the talk of the town on Reddit. Several images have surfaced showcasing Birdo and her perceived gender identity, including many memes about how she had been deadnamed for 30 years, but Bowsette (a fan-made, gender-swapped Bowser) went viral after transgender people began identifying with her.

She’s also made her rounds in several threads, essentially being called out as a character that “people love but you don’t understand why.” Other named-and-shamed characters include Waluigi, whose memes apparently “aren’t funny,” and Geno, one of Mario’s partners in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, whose fans “haven’t even played his game.”

There’s a whole list of reasons why Birdo is endlessly popular, but the glaringly obvious one would be that transgender gamers identify with her, especially concerning MTF (male-to-female) transitions. She might not have been welcomed by the community with open arms, but Birdo means a lot of things to a lot of people, so that must count for something.

We still can’t figure out for sure why Birdo is trending, but we’ll never be opposed to some transgender representation.

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