An old conversation has sparked back up on the Animal Crossing subreddit as fans have highlighted Julia's feathers as evidence of her being trans—they're male coloured, while she's a woman.
While this was something that circulated back in 2020, the revelation was news to a lot of people on the subreddit, with over 1,000 upvotes and plenty of comments celebrating this repeated discovery: "That is so cute!" gorgon_heart added. "I headcanon Rex, my favourite villager, as non-binary. He just looks really cute in dresses."
And, as another commenter points out, Sandy and Papi are likely trans too. "Sandy is female but has a male plumage," marshedmallo wrote. "And male okapis usually have horns but Papi doesn't."
Animal Crossing is a fruity game with fruity characters, but it's even fruitier in Japan—according to commenters AiRaikuHamburger and riotcab, Gracie is a camp gay guy in Japan, while he was made into a woman for the English port. But there are still a lot of nods in the English port for other characters.
Take Merengue—"She's the only female rhino with two horns which is a trait only male rhino villagers have," Aracnel added. "So I like to consider her as a transgender woman who I enjoy having on my island."
Circling back to Julia, cowboysaurus21 speculates that she might be a reference to Julia Serano, a famous trans doctor, slam poet, activist, and author who wrote Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity as well as Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.
There are plenty more headcanon takes shared in the comments varying from cottagecore lesbian to non-binary villagers, with one commenter even adding that they think Fuchsia is pansexual because they are literally the colours of the pan flag. Wherever you land, there are a lot of potentially unspoken LGBTQ+ elements to this world of animals and mounting debt.