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hello-rambling-my-old-friend · 28 days ago

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On Gallifreyan Vestigial Gender

[this is the revised and expanded version of some rambling i initially did in my cowriter's discord DMs. i tried cite sources where i could, but a lot of this has been marinating in my brain since half-absorbing posts twenty pages deep into peoples' dw tags 3 years ago, and also i spend way too much time on the wiki, so please excuse anything i can't quite source, which is most of it. huge thanks to @oriigami for being my original conversation partner and contributing extremely to the concepts here, and to @bird-of-paradox and @waywren, neither of whom I am being allowed to @, for bothering me into not leaving it as unreadable discord screenshots]

There's this tendency among queer Doctor Who fans to look at Time Lord society, with its alienness and regeneration, and ask, frustrated, "Why do they even have gender?"

I sympathize with this extremely. I've been the one asking this question plenty in the past, and I do think it's a bit silly, and even sillier that the genders are "man" and "woman" and there are apparently two of them. But I also think that the section of canon most insistent about the Gallifreyan gender binary, the 7th Doctor novels from the 90s, also has the potential to be the most interesting about it.

Now, this is not to say that the text of those novels isn't weird about gender in a flawed, written by (as far as I know) cis people in the 90s way. But I think that you can extrapolate and queer what's there in very interesting ways, often because it's so flawed in the first place: Gallifrey, too, is an extremely flawed society. Decadent, degenerate, and rotten to the core, as the show put it.

So, VNAs Gallifrey: living Houses and their female Housekeepers, cultural and literal planet-wide sterility, Loom birth, rigid overcomplicated bureaucracy, the enduring legacy of the pre-Rassilon Pythian regime. The gender binary as presented here goes something like

women: chaos/magic/psychic powers/superstition/the house (scary)/biological childbirth/fertility men: cold rationality/order/science/bureaucracy/loom-birth/sterility

The Pythia and the Lord President. Magic and science. The House and the Web of Time.

Obviously a lot of this is classic gender binary stuff. But let's put the exasperated question of "Why must we do the gender binary like this?" aside for a moment and think about Gallifreyan society instead.

Pythia-ruled and Time Lord-ruled Gallifrey have a lot of the same problems in the end, just wearing different faces: they're both very much totalitarian states that believe themselves to be above everyone else. But while the Time Lords observe and micromanage the Web of Time from their Panopticon, maintaining its integrity to their standards, the Pythians didn't have time travel, so this preoccupation with control manifested--as far as I know; this is the bit in the meta where I admit I haven't actually read Time's Crucible yet--as keeping the entirety of society in one psychic hivemind, leaving nobody any privacy, plus a lot of future-reading and prophecy and whatnot.

The main relics of that societal layout into post-Rassilon Gallifreyan society are the Matrix, which has every single dead Time Lord's brain in it and does their prophecies for them, just couched in a little bit more science than Pythian magic, the Houses, which are alive all around you and in which you're constantly being watched by the Housekeeper through her mirrors, and, of course, the gender binary.

The Pythia was always a woman. Women were the ones with vast psychic powers, with magic; women were the ones in charge. Pythian Gallifrey was a heavily gendered society. This is because Gallifreyans are a kind of bug /shot with the "irrelevant to the point at hand" gun.

And so, when Rassilon rebelled, he was very much playing the part of "opposite gender with opposite worldview." The Pythia had female magic and superstition; he had male science and technology. His most trusted Founders were either all or mostly men, depending on the version of events you prefer. (Personally I have my doubts about the Other.) Rassilon built his new society as a man, among men, in opposition to the matriarchs before him.

Gallifrey, despite the invention (or theft, depending on the story) of regeneration allowing people to trans their gender randomly and sometimes unintentionally, never left the gender binary behind.

The whole point of modern Gallifreyan society is that they're still stuck in that exact same moment Rassilon took over (and the Pythia cursed them to sterility, if thats the version you're going with). You could easily make an argument for this being some cycle of abuse type situation; Rassilon and co overthrew the Pythia and immediately did exactly what she was doing to them to the wider universe. I tend to read it as a regeneration: it's the same society, really. It just died and was reborn, and now it looks and sounds different.

The downside of trying to translate a discord conversation into a proper meta post is that sometimes making a coherent transition between thoughts is impossible. So to introduce the next bit of this post, I'm going to hand you off for a moment to this post about the 8th Doctor's "I'm not sure I've ever even been a man" quote from Interference. As op of that post says, the Doctor is genderqueer even by Gallifreyan standards- he's being questioned in that scene by another Gallifreyan, who doesn't understand his experience of gender.

The EDAs are full of "Eight is nonbinary" quotes, of course. Every queer fan who's ever engaged with them has a collection (and if anyone knows where that one google doc compilation that was going around awhile back went I'd be in your debt, because I'd love to know if my collection is missing any), but almost all those quotes refer to his genderqueerness in human terms, as observed by human companions, or in response to human assumptions. Except that one. Not only is Gallifrey's gender binary alive and well in a society where people can literally change their gender when they die, but the Doctor doesn't fit inside it.

All this to say that being a renegade Time Lord is a nonbinary thing to do. Especially the Doctor, with all sorts of weird Other Timeless nonsense in their biodata. Women stay on Gallifrey (or Karn!) and do magic and watch you. Men stay on Gallifrey and do science and watch other people. Renegades go out and do whatever they please. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So. Gallifrey has a gender binary. It's vestigial, a remnant of an earlier iteration of society with a much sharper male-female divide, and it doesn't make logical sense for it to exist. So: How does it manifest? And what function does its continued existence serve in the interests of the status quo and ruling class?

Let's take a look at 7th Doctor novel Lungbarrow.

Lungbarrow introduces us to (among many other things) the living Houses of the Time Lord Families, and to the family structures within: the patriarchal figure of the Kithriarch, the always-female Housekeeper, bound in her ritual marriage to the House itself, and hordes of petty squabbling Cousins.

Kithriarch is already an interesting title. It's obviously a gender neutral version of matriarch or patriarch, but the role itself seems to be almost entirely a male sort of thing in opposition to the feminine Housekeeper.

The Housekeeper, meanwhile, seems to be in a direct conceptual and societal line of descent from the Pythian priestesses: she can see anything within her domain, she has a psychic connection to the House, from whom she cannot hide anything, she can command the wooden Drudge servants and other House subsystems, she prioritizes the House above all where the Kithriarch is supposed to prioritize the Family. Women are frightening and powerful psychics. They know everything you want to keep secret, and prioritize the collective.

(There's also something here about how Lungbarrow presents duelling dualities--the Doctor and the Master, the CIA head and the Lord President, the Kithriarch and the Housekeeper, the masculine and the feminine--but I haven't quite tied it into the rest of this yet.) (Although while we're mentioning the Master. He's girlcoded by Gallifreyan standards and the Rani is boycoded by the same. I will not be expanding on this at this time just trust me.)

I think Housekeepers and women who want to be Housekeepers try to keep their self-image as women strong enough that they never regenerate into a male body (whatever a '"male body" means, of course, but I'm not sure Time Lords have gotten that far in their queer theory yet). I also think that there are more female Kithriarchs than male Housekeepers, because Housekeeper is much more heavily ritualized role in keeping with the Pythia's more ritualized general vibe, but I do think female Kithriarchs are still few and far between.

I also think that these are probably the most explicitly gendered occupations on Gallifrey, although of course you'll see some drift. Most women are out there getting the same scientific, military, and bureaucratic positions as men. But there's this lingering specter of gender roles, a Pythia-shaped hole that exists around the concept of womanhood. As my cowriter put it when we were talking about this, an "ideal of womanhood. not ‘ideal’ as in desirable, [but] ‘ideal’ as in the quintessential image of the thing."

This is further amplified by the continued existence of the Pythians in the form of the Sisterhood of Karn, living in their perfectly functional all-women magic society just out of sight. Their presence at the edge of the Gallifreyan consciousness must haunt the Time Lords, as any imperialist power is haunted by its own past and its own ultimate impotence.

Because that's the other thing. Gender roles are, to quote my cowriter again, "stupid and antiquated and historically potent tools of authoritarianism." Of course the Time Lords have them. Have you seen them?

They're tools of control, of conformity, of idealizing the past. Of conservatism. Consider, to once more quote my cowriter, "the weird traditionalist psychosis of having gender roles in a society that can’t bear children."

The ideal woman on Gallifrey is still the Pythia, millenia or even billenia on. And the ideal man is still the Lord President Rassilon.

[thank you for your time! if you liked this please consider checking out my fic Something Old, which is about lungbarrow, the adventuress of henrietta street, and the gallifreyan concept of marriage, and in the writing of which i initially articulated most of the thoughts in this post. i've previously characterized it as a fic that's actually a meta post. and please don't be too mean to me for anything i got wrong in here! i'm just a little guy]

#oooooo this is so cool #finally getting to this after over a year v much worth it

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hello-rambling-my-old-friend · 4 months ago

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What's the deal with SEKAI?

Due to popular demand, here is a post compiling everything that we know about SEKAI lore, accurate as of At the Beginning of SEKAI With You. Happy 4th anniversary!

First off, what is a SEKAI? As stated multiple times in the game, SEKAI are worlds inhabited by Virtual Singers that are created by particularly strong feelings. These feelings can be those of a singular person (e.g: Tsukasa or Mafuyu), or ones shared by many (like the other three units). The only thing that determines whether or not a SEKAI is created is how powerful those feelings are. Additionally, even if they didn't create the SEKAI, other people with similar feelings can in special instances access and influence the SEKAI (refer to WonderlandsxShowtime or 25-ji, Nightcord de.).

SEKAI can be accessed through an untitled audio file that will appear on the owner's or accessor's computer or phone. Once the person has discovered their true feelings that the SEKAI is linked to, the untitled file will become a song. More songs can be created by the SEKAI as new feelings are uncovered, as demonstrated in event After Lives. The main stories also show that the singers will know the lyrics to the song even if they have never heard it before nor know what the lyrics should be before singing.

Despite what some believe that the SEKAI are inside the phone/computer of the accessor, it is shown on multiple instances that the characters retain their phones inside the SEKAI and can still use them, suggesting teleportation. We can also take Rui's observations from the main story into account here, that the SEKAI is a physical location rather than a virtual world. It's all but confirmed that SEKAI exist on a separate dimensional plane. That said, the phone/computer is the key to remaining in the SEKAI. Should the device run out of power, the connection to the SEKAI is severed and the person will be returned to Earth. The other way to exit SEKAI is to manually pause the Untitled song.

(TL by Puroeng on YT)

At the Beginning of SEKAI With You goes in depth on how SEKAI are formed and how they develop. SEKAI are initially formed as a Fragment of Feelings when a person or group of people exhibit a strong, unyielding desire. School SEKAI was formed when Leo/need saw the meteor shower as children and wished to stay together forever (roughly 6-7 years ago), Wonderland SEKAI formed when Tsukasa was a kid and wanted to make Saki smile (roughly 10 years ago), and Empty SEKAI was formed when Mafuyu started to lose sight of herself and wanted to find her true self again (roughly 3 years ago).

Stage and Street SEKAI aren't entirely clear. Stage SEKAI's Fragment was shown to form when Haruka, Airi, and Shizuku initially debuted as idols. However, all of them debuted at wildly different points in time. Haruka debuted earliest, so we can assume the Fragment formed then (an unknown amount of time ago). Street SEKAI's Fragment is actually never shown forming, so the trigger is unknown. All we know is that it formed during or just after RAD WEEKEND, 3 years ago.

SEKAI grow and change over time. This was first mentioned in Miku's Vivid BAD SQUAD 2* story and was since repeatedly mentioned in Colorful Festival card stories. When a SEKAI is in it's Fragment stage, it sometimes may be able to hold a physical form for a short amount of time. This physical form can be accessed through a glowing orb of light (as shown in the gacha animation) and has to be accessed inside of a fully formed SEKAI. Some Fragments are only temporary and will never become a full SEKAI, something that is alluded to in a few ColoFes stories as well.

If the feelings that formed the Fragment continue to stay incredibly strong, they can manifest into a fully-fledged SEKAI. Again, At the Beginning of SEKAI With You goes into more depth about this. For School SEKAI, it formed when the girls were separated from each other in middle school (~2-4 years ago), Stage SEKAI formed when Minori was attending one of her auditions, which was around the same time as when Haruka, Airi, and Shizuku began to feel dissatisfied with their careers (roughly just over 1 year ago), and Empty SEKAI formed around the time of the Someday, From the Depths of Despair event.

Wonderland SEKAI notably became fully formed incredibly quickly, when Tsuaksa was still a child (hence the presentation of the SEKAI and the fact that he doesn't even remember the feelings that created it when he first discovers it). It is unknown when Street SEKAI fully formed, but it seems to have been almost instantaneous, with the newly formed SEKAI being shown in scenes set not too long after RW. The vagueness could mean that it's possible that this will be elaborated on later.

(TL by Puroeng on YT)

It's not quite clear as to whether you can always access a SEKAI as soon as it has a physical form. In the main stories, the characters first discover Untitled on their phones when it flashes in response to them experiencing the feelings that led to the SEKAI's creation (e.g: Ichika wanting to mend her friendship with her childhood friends). The characters have no prior knowledge of Untitled being on their phones or computers at this point. Beginning of SEKAI somewhat contradicts this, by having Miku and KAITO constantly trying to reach out to Tsukasa and have him find untitled throughout the past 10 years. However, you could possibly say that the file wasn't there until he was 17 to justify why he didn't find SEKAI and respond to Miku and KAITO earlier.

SEKAI also continue to grow even after they obtain a permanent physical form, something which was first hinted at in Miku's Vivid BAD SQUAD 2* story, and later became the focus of the World Link events. As the feelings that created them continue to grow and change, the SEKAI continues to grow with them. It should also be noted that SEKAI, according to Miku's Protective Gaze 3* story, will never disappear, even if the creator were to forget about it.

The final thing to cover here is the Tree of Feelings SEKAI. Last year I wrote a post speculating on some of the lore surrounding this SEKAI, most of which was confirmed to be correct as of Beginning of SEKAI. That post covers this final part in mroe detail, so read that if you're interested. The Tree of Feelings SEKAI is a mysterious Fragment SEKAI that so far has appeared in Miku's Where Feelings Come Together 4* story, and the events Sakura Across SEKAI, Interconnecting Our Feelings and Let Your Song Resonate Throughout SEKAI. The Fragment briefly obtains a physical form whenever the inhabitants (human or Virtual Singer) of all 5 main SEKAI are experiencing a shared feeling.

As mentioned by MEIKO in Sakura Across SEKAI, the Tree SEKAI appears to be some sort of Nexus between the 5 we follow in the story. This is later confirmed to be the case in Beginning of SEKAI, with the same tree appearing in all 5 SEKAI, occasionally transmitting music from the other SEKAI it is connected to. Stage SEKAI MEIKO also mentions in the Sakura Across SEKAI story that this has never happened before.

While animated by an outsider source, so not entirely reliable, the NEO MV suggests that the Tree SEKAI is beginning to take on a permanent physical form with its own Untitled song. The Untitled song in this case is, of course, NEO.

Part two: What are the Virtual Singers? The Virtual Singers in each SEKAI are stated in chapter 10 of the WonderlandsxShowtime main story to have physical bodies. While we don't really know anything about their biological make up, they're at the very least, humanoid and sentient instead of being holograms, though they can present themselves on Earth in that form through any device that can display holograms (or on computer screens as seen in a few 25-ji, Nightcord de. stories and cards). While implied in Miku's Protective Gaze 3*, it is confirmed by Beginning of SEKAI that the Virtual Singers are immortal and don't physically age.

Versions of the Crypton VOCALOID characters that resemble their real-life character designs exist "between the SEKAI", which appears in-game to be some sort of white space, however the I'm Mine another cuts may be set in this location. While very early stories don't make it entirely clear, it is officially confirmed as of Sakura Across SEKAI that the Virtual Singers in each SEKAI are completely individual entities, rather than the primary Virtual Singers travelling between SEKAI and changing their form.

The versions of the Virtual Singers in each SEKAI are aware that they are derivatives of their primary form (mentioned in both Virtual Singer events). The derivatives are influenced by the owner(s) of the SEKAI, taking certain aspects of their psyche and abilities. It should also be noted that not all SEKAI start with all six of the Virtual Singers. This is heavily implied to be the case with Street SEKAI and Stage SEKAI, but it not the case with the School, Wonderland, or Empty SEKAI. School SEKAI started with just Miku and Luka, with the other 4 arriving during event stories. Wonderland SEKAI started with Miku and KAITO, though the Kagamines arrived immediately following the main story, shortly followed by MEIKO and Luka. Empty SEKAI started with only Miku, with the other 5 vsingers appearing in response to changes in Mafuyu and the others' mental states.

It is explicitly stated in Len's Vivid BAD SQUAD 2* card story that the Virtual Singers possess supernatural or magical abilities, and are actually incredibly similar to humans, although they have the innate ability to help people discover their true feelings. Despite this claim, Wonderland SEKAI MEIKO is shown to have superhuman strength, Wonderland SEKAI Luka's sleep schedule is controlled by Tsukasa and the others' emotions, and Wonderland SEKAI Miku is ambiguously a cat-humaoid hybrid. Not to mention the sentient plushies, and singing flowers and actual Phoenix. However, these can be somewhat justified given that the Wonderland SEKAI was largely influenced by the imagination of a 7-year-old child. It was also Street SEKAI Len that made this claim, and that is by far the most grounded in reality of all 5 SEKAI.

Now the final part, building off what Len said about SEKAI not being magical or supernatural. The only justifiable explanation is that they are alternate dimensions, as I mentioned briefly earlier on, where these sorts of inexplicable "magical" things are natural occurences.

So what are some of the physical capabilities of the SEKAI? Let's start with one that applies to all five, the innate abilities to create clothes out of thin air. The unit outfits for Leo/need, MORE MORE JUMP!, and 25-ji, Nightcord de. were all created by the SEKAI, which is mentioned in Honami's Unchanging Flavor 3* card story. The same card story also confirms that these costumes cannot be taken out of the SEKAI. Both Journey to Bloom -HOPE- and a 3rd Colorful Live 4koma illustrate how the costumes form. The 4koma shows it to be instantaneous, much like it is shown in vlives, so it's likely that Journey to Bloom animates the effect to be more visually appealing.

A notable new one is the ability to physically alter a person's appearance. This seems exclusive to the new Fragment SEKAI seen in Kanade and Rui's Bloom Festival 4* card stories, but given that they're technically still SEKAI, this may apply to regular SEKAI as well. In the aforementioned card stories, Kanade and Rui both turn into their younger selves temporarily. Also shown in those two stories and in Airi's To You Who Wants to be An Idol 4* story, the SEKAI (or Fragement SEKAI specifically again) have the ability to temporarily manifest a person's younger self, or separate versions of their present day self. It's shown that this is not a vision but a physical form, although they are clearly presented to have a separate consciousness to the true version of the person. The same can be inferred for the woman who appears in Haruka's Someday, I'll Deliver 4* card story, and Nagi's appearance in BREAK DOWN THE WALL.

A few SEKAI also deviate from Earth's rules of physics, notably, School SEKAI and Wonderland SEKAI. Wonderland SEKAI is incredibly obvious in its deviations, but School SEKAI recently acquired a flying train.

SEKAI also seems to prevent its inhabitants from dying or getting hurt. While falling from the flying train is treated as a danger in the Wonderland SEKAI Virtual Singer main story, Tsukasa falls from a height in Aye-Aye, Let's Aim for the Star that should have killed him, even with safety mats laid out. Wonderland SEKAI KAITO may or may not have been stabbed in the past too, though he is immortal anyway.

SEKAI can also give people amnesia, as shown in Akito's Wanderer's Thirst 4* card story. Additionally, whenever the unit representatives are summonned to sing together in Virtual Lives, or when they visit the Tree of Feelings SEKAI, their memories are wiped afterwards. However, unlike Akito's case, it's Miku herself who erases the unit reps' memories.

Lastly, the audiences in Virtual Lives. Obviously, no one inhabits the SEKAI other than the owner(s) and the Virtual Singers, so who makes up the audience. As explained in the First Star After the Rain After Live, these are Sparks of Feelings. Small sparkling lights (suggested in multiple Virtual Lives to be the small triangles seen floating around in the SEKAI) that respond to the songs heard in SEKAI. These are stated to be the feelings of other people (the player character) that resonate with the music and feelings of the performers.

And thus concludes this recap of all the SEKAI lore we know so far. Hope you enjoyed!

#TYYYYYYY

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