#gerudo and goron genderqueer solidarity

[sobdasha]

genderblind link calling everyone brother! and then some hylian some day is like 'you have to tell link come on' to link's adopted goron unit and the goron family unit is like '????????'

Hylian person: "are you a boy or a girl?" Goron: *Radchaai panic*

–

“Sav’aaq,” hails the Gerudo guard on the left side of the town entrance, almost before they’re close enough to hear. The guard on the right side—taller, more fleshed, and not bouncing on his toes in eagerness—just patiently watches them struggle through the sand, the butt of his spear resting lightly on the ground beside him.

When they’re a bit closer to the walls the guard on the left calls again, “Are you vai or voe?”

Daruk rolls to a stop in a spray of sand, and oh Radiant Din, he forgot about the test. Dinraal-on-fire, he had been warned about it, but he forgot about the Gerudo door test.

Daruk is a competent, confident Goron elder, and in his opinion he’s pretty dang good at it too. But Daruk’s always felt most at home with problems he can solve by crushing, or by having a meal with, or by banging people’s heads together and telling them to make up and be friends because brothers help each other out now don’t they (threatening).

But he doesn’t feel good about blustering his way through a multiple choice quiz where he doesn’t know what any of the answers mean. That’s not an informed leadership decision; that might as well be a coin toss. And he’s not in the habit tossing coins with his people’s well-being unless he’s sure he can snatch the coin out of the air and flip it to the side he wants to see.

(He’s a thinks-in-straight-lines sort of brother.)

To continue the coin metaphor, the Gerudo Urbosa had explained to him at length about the whole vai only no voe allowed thing but he hadn’t been able to make heads or tails of it. As far as he can see, both sides of the coin the Gerudo are showing him are smooth and unmarred.

“Hah! Hah…” Daruk says, stalling for time as Link trudges up next to him, “Uh, what was that? Couldn’t hear you, y’know,” he makes a show of ruffling sand out of his mane and shaking his head to each side, “sand in the ears!”

The guard gestures understanding and repeats, “Are you vai? Or voe?”

“Oh! Oh, right, yeah,” Daruk says. He clears his throat. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Link looking up at him, probably all expectant and trusting and waiting for the unbeatable Daruk to have the answer. It’s a bit hard to tell through the gauzy veil someone in Kara Kara lent the little guy, but Daruk feels the pressure keenly regardless.

Well, the mighty Daruk thrives off pressure! He swings his arms, definitely just subtle enough to sneak a glance at the inside of his upper left arm where, after the last time he met with Urbosa, he scratched in chief (not elder), she/her (pronouns???), and vai (more pronouns???)

Daruk coughs again, just in case, to cover the motion. Best not to look shifty in front of guards and all. Urbosa would certainly smooth things over and vouch for him—a fine and fierce brother, that one!—but Daruk is a leader himself and hates the idea of dragging hhhhher out of important elder—nope, chief—important chief duties just to get him through the gates of Gerudo Town.

“Vai,” Daruk says. “Yep, definitely vai. That’s the one.”

The guard on the right nods at Daruk. “Vasaaq.”

Daruk returns the nod and grins not-at-all overly-relieved. “Yeah, right back atcha.” Except the guard on the left still has his spear flung dramatically across the entrance carved through the city’s walls. It…it was vai, right?

“And you?” the left-hand guard asks. He looks at Link, waiting.

The little guy looks back.

He wants to know what vai and voe mean.

“Oh,” the guard says, a bit bored, like someone used to having to explain this a lot to tourists. “You’d probably say vai means a woman and voe means a man. So, are you a woman or a man?”

Link’s veil puffs out a little, like he’s mouthing the foreign words, and keeps staring.

–

Years ago, Daruk finds the little tyke scrambling along the lower slopes of Death Mountain and thinks, this is what comes of having a garrison of armed soldiers for neighbors. Widows and orphans and property values going down, and sometimes you turn around and find that the Sheikah have been struck off the list of officially-recognized Hyrulean ethnic groups yet again.

(Some of those Hyrulean kings are not good brothers.)

He’s tempted to tuck the little fellow under his arm and tote him back to the Akkala Citadel and make him their problem. Those soldiers clearly don’t have enough to do, and raising a child is a great way to eat up time, lose sleep, and make you want to stay home with the family more often and start fewer fights.

But.

But it’s been such a long time since Daruk’s had a little guy in the house. His own son (whom Daruk must have, despite BotW not mentioning this crucial detail about Daruk’s character at all, given that Yunobo is his grandson, and I don’t actually know how Gorons accrue progeny so technically maybe Daruk could skip a generation and go straight to grandson idk b u t the only thing worse than Daruk having a child that’s never referenced at all is Daruk having a grandbaby that’s never referenced at all or shown off or talked lovingly about too much by Daruk, my point being that I hate inventing names with a passion) is grown already, and he’s a good boy who visits his ol’ dad but it’s not the same. There’s just something about the pitter-pounding of little feet.

Daruk looks at the little guy, who’s currently hooking his fingers through the links of Daruk’s sword-belt and shoving a rock in his mouth with his other hand. He feels his chest liquefy into a pool of magma.

“Alright, little guy,” he says, scooping him up. “You’re coming home with me.”

–

The Gerudo guard—the one on the left of the gate—has educational pamphlets.

The pamphlets aren’t helping. The pamphlets are, in fact, making things worse. While Link’s been reading a merchant caravan and two other independent travelers have come up to the entrance, identified themselves as vai to the right-hand guard, and entered Gerudo Town. Link has been reading for a while now.

(“No rush, little guy, take all the time you need,” Daruk keeps saying. Secretly, Daruk is hoping Link won’t ask him for advice. Sure, Urbosa gave Daruk the secret hint vai, but Daruk’s pretty sure it’s more than just a fancy password and he doesn’t have any more clue than Link as to what it really means. He didn’t have his little guy for the Gerudo chief to meet back then; what if it’s different for Link? What if Urbosa wouldn’t have given Link that answer to the Gerudo gate test? What if telling him to just say vai would be disrespecting Urbosa’s people? What if Daruk has a healthy respect of Urbosa that makes him inclined to uncharacteristically ask permission before he has to beg forgiveness?)

(Also...woman? Man? The words do sound vaguely familiar but for the life of him Daruk can’t remember where he’s heard them before...)

Link’s currently trying to make sense of several anatomical illustrations that make no reference at all to the boulder patch that baby Gorons are plucked from. (Link himself was picked off the side of Death Mountain although, Daruk has admitted, he has his suspicions that Link’s birth may have been a bit different than the way Gorons traditionally do it.)

Maybe Link doesn’t need to know what is vai and what is voe. Maybe he only needs to know the difference between vai and voe.

The left-hand guard, who seems more and more like he doesn’t have much experience with people struggling with the whole vai-voe debate, flaps a pamphlet helplessly. The guard on the right, with the more worldly air of someone who knows the noon shift change—when the gates are closed and everyone goes inside to rest for the heat of the day—is coming soon but not quite soon enough, says simply:

“The difference is that only vai are allowed in Gerudo Town. If you are voe, you are forbidden entry.”

Link thinks about that one for a bit. Link thinks that, maybe, since they have not let him in yet, and it seems a bit like maybe they’re actually keeping him out, maybe they’re trying to politely suggest that he is, in fact, voe. Maybe Link should have inquired about mail-order jeweler options before coming all the way out to the Gerudo region.

The guard looks Link up and down, scrutinizing him from veiled-head to toe. All the Gerudo in the town are taught that there are a few fairly-reliable ways to spot a voe, in the interest of keeping the peace and public safety.

For example, if a person says, “Oh, so you won’t let me in if I say I’m a voe, but if I just say I’m a vai it’s fine?” and sounds like an asshole while saying it, that person is probably a voe. (Also, such a disrespectful person should be summarily thrown out anyway.) If a person says, “I said I’m a vai already, why should I have to wear that sort of outfit?” and sounds like an asshole while saying it, that person is probably a voe. (And is clearly not here to support the local clothing and jewelry tourist trade, so it’s no economic loss to throw them out.) If a person says, “So you’ll let that guy in but not me, huh?” about a vai and sounds like an asshole while saying it, that person is probably a voe and is also about to cause a commotion and needs to be escorted into the desert at spear point about five minutes before that person began harassing others.

On the other hand, if a person doesn’t say that she is voe and behaves respectfully to all the other vai in the town, why on earth would any guard be motivated to throw such a person out?

And if a person stands out in the desert sun for over half an hour without evincing much discomfort, staring blankly at pamphlets and addressing you as brother…

“You’re a Goron, aren’t you,” the right-hand guard says.

“Oh,” says the left-hand guard, clutching the pamphlets. “Oh! Sorry! You’re a Goron, really? Wow, you’re skinny for a—I mean—Vasaaq! Please, enter. Gorons don’t have voe, of course, so you’re both welcome in Gerudo Town.”

Inside the town walls, Daruk heaves a sigh of relief and lies loudly over Link’s question of what the guard meant about Gorons not having voe that no sweat, little guy, you’ll understand all about it once you’re older just like Daruk here.

–

There are some...logistical problems, with Link being (as best as Daruk can tell, or at least close enough to) a racial Hylian.

It’s one thing to carry the little guy up the mountain and christen him with a (n admittedly old-fashioned, historical, but who doesn’t love the classics?) fine Goron name.

It’s quite another thing to keep the little guy dosed up with fireproof elixirs and tucked up in his flamebreaker bassinet. The local lizard population takes a severe hit before a couple of brothers think about starting a breeding program. For a few years Daruk’s older son moves into the suburbs among the foothills of Death Mountain’s southern slope, to mind Link while Daruk commutes back and forth between between his duties as an elder in Goron City and his duties as a parent. Link outgrows several sets of flamebreaker armor, which is reportedly stuffy and heavy and too hard to roll in.

Link longs for the stories of the legendary old days, when the goddesses handpicked chosen heroes and blessed them with handy, lightweight, portable magic to not combust in the heat of an active volcano. Is that really so much to ask?

–

The shop that Link visits does a lot of business with Goron City’s mining trade, so the jeweler looks only mildly bemused until his gaze skims over the the tattoos on Link’s upper arm—peeking out from under the gauzy fabric of the top that Link was told would be most appropriate to wear when visiting Gerudo Town—and his confusion clears into a smile.

“Sav’aaq. You probably aren’t aware, but the word we use here is actually ‘sister’.”

Link nods and files sister away as more important Gerudo vocabulary. He's becoming so worldly and learning so much culture on this trip; it's the first time he's ever really left Death Mountain.

He peruses the jewelry displays, reading the descriptions carefully. Link got the idea from old legends Daruk told him before bed and from the brothers who go to Gerudo Town with the gemstone exports. The Gerudo jewelers are master craftsmen who use the gemstones to imbue their wares with divine qualities: a necklace of rubies to keep one warm in the frigid deserts of northern Hebra, rings of amber to make other races as tough as Gorons, earrings of opal to swim like a Zora, a circlet of sapphire to keep one cool in the local desert heat.

Link's plan is to commission a piece of sapphire jewelry so he can live in Goron City proper and contribute more to the community—he knows he can—without having to wear that awful flamebreaker suit and all of the brothers having to consider, any time they assign Link a duty, whether it will take him into contact with an active lava flow or magma chamber.

"I'm sorry, excuse me?" a second jeweler comes out of the back room, rather alarmed. "I cannot guarantee your safety in a volcano. I strongly advise against this."

Link knows that, actually. Otherwise Goron City would be importing sapphire necklaces by the dozen, to resell to repeat tourists who love the hot springs but otherwise can't stand the heat.

So the second part of his plan is to visit the Fairy Fountain in the oasis deep in the southwestern desert, make an offering, and petition the fairy to bless the jewelry the rest of the way to make it volcano-proof.

The first jeweler presses a finger to his cheek in thought. He says doubtfully, "I suppose that might work…"

"Well, it's your life," says the second jeweler, frowning. His face is lined and wrinkled and it makes his frown even more impressive. "If you don't want to continue living it, so be it."

Someone else calls from the back, "I've heard the Great Fairies can work marvelous wonders, for the right price. Let her try; I like this vai's spirit."

Link is prepared to give a hefty donation to the fountain. All the brothers of Goron City discussed it and agreed to pool funds to invest in the blessed jewelry, so that Link can contribute his talents without the ongoing cost of armor and elixers.

"Okay, then," says the first jeweler. "What kind of style would you like?"

No circlets; Link is tired of flamebreaker helmets, to the point that even the light veil pinned to his head is unwanted. Rings would be too much of an occupational hazard, and Link suspects the same is true of the many bangles clinking on the jeweler's arm. Perhaps a necklace, if it were a collar rather than a pendant?

Actually...what Link really wants are the earrings. He's the only brother in the city with Hylian-typical long ears, and he thinks he would feel better about that if he had the multiple earrings that the jewelers are wearing.

The only problem is, he doesn't understand how they're supposed to fit on his ears.

Half an hour later, Link leaves the shop with a commission design to be fulfilled, a wallet lighter by one down-payment, the name and location of a cosmetics shop where he can buy powders and creams to give himself the same butterfly-wing eyes as he admired on the jewelers, several pairs of temporary studs for the new holes in his ears, and a deep respect for the intensity of Gerudo brothers.

(Or sarqso, sisters, to say it properly in Gerudo.)

Years ago Link went to get a carving on his back, a fashion that fades in and out of popularity with the tough Goron brothers. The brother had picked up his chisel and his hammer and hadn't even finished carving the first line before he noticed something red and wet welling up from the carving; the brother had promptly passed out. As no one else had wanted to risk the unexpected substance either, Link had had to give up his dream.

This Gerudo sister, however, had efficiently pierced through Link's ears with a needle, looked at the blood, and dabbed it up with a clean cloth without even batting an eye. The Gerudo's warrior reputation isn't exaggerated in the least.

–

I don't have a good scene for this and I have a suspicion the writing is going to suffer more the harder I try, so:

Zelda is coincidentally also in Gerudo Town visiting her 2nd mom Urbosa and is the one who is like "You have to tell him" (to which Daruk is "??????" and Urbosa is like "Oh little bird, you and your culture's gender binary…")

My headcanon for Gorons is that they have both no concept of gender (but use masculine forms because way back in the day some Hylians were like "rocks are definitely male" and the Gorons were like "shrug, okay" and by now it's become entrenched in the culture) and also no concept of sex (after I tossed it in above I decided that you know what, I really do like the idea of Gorons literally getting baby Gorons from the cabbage patch).

Daruk has memorized that Zelda uses she/her pronouns and that her title is princess, and he respects that even though he has no idea why these arcane choices. Link, who has met Zelda on diplomatic visits, refers to her respectfully as "Brother Princess Zelda" because he has yet to grasp the concept that "Princess Zelda" is not in fact her full name.

My headcanon for Gerudo: much as I enjoyed the Ocarina of Time implications that the Gerudo are a race of solely cis women who somehow have baby girls without going out and getting Hyruleans husbands and only ever have a cis male baby every 100 years (probably because I myself am a cis and lesbian-leaning lady), it just doesn't feel… Now that my worldview is slightly broader, if it's not inclusive, it doesn't feel true to the heart of why I like the fantasy of a women-only no-men-allowed society. Also, not being inclusive is garbage.

Therefore, my headcanon here for the Gerudo is that actually, Hyruleans have coded vai and voe on their own gender binary as "female" and "male" respectively (as has Nintendo), but this is actually incorrect. The Gerudo are apparently a society of "all women" because most Gerudo identify as vai. When the Gerudo say no voe are allowed, what they really mean is they don't want to interact with toxic masculinity and binary gender roles. They don't necessarily ban persons who have dicks, they ban persons who are dicks.

I imagine valid vai identities include: - cis women - trans women - trans men (trans men are men, obviously, but I'm presuming people with genderqueer identities have some experience with not feeling safe and would be good at respecting safe spaces, which is what Gerudo Town is intended to be, rather than a place for only certain kinds of women) - respectful persons who don't feel the need to go around announcing to everyone that they are men and enforcing the gender binary on everyone - gender nonconforming, non-binary, agender, or other genderqueer persons

I imagine voe identities include: - toxic masculinity - internalized misogyny - terfs, every terf is automatically voe and can gtfo - any and all transphobes and queerphobes

Anyway some Hyrulean guys at Kara Kara Bazaar were concerned when they saw Link and, incorrectly thinking "cross-dressing is required to enter Gerudo Town", helped him acquire new clothes. Daruk and Link try very hard to learn that to speak properly in Gerudo Town you have to say she/her and sister, while most of the Gerudo have enough trade contact with the Gorons to know that Gorons use he/him and brother without expectation of gender and therefore don't take offense. Link, who has no gender-coding for clothes or makeup or jewelry, is enjoying the trip to Gerudo Town to the fullest, while Zelda, who was very much raised with gender-coding for clothes and makeup and jewelry and had always just thought Gorons had a hard time correctly gendering people of other races, is like "Daruk I have seen Link in the hot springs why is he—what is he—you have to tell him about gender" while Daruk goes "wait what is a gender????" and Urbosa is like "oh little bird, I really do need to get partial custody of you."

I don't care for the "How To Have A Heteronormative Relationship" school in Gerudo Town, but the educational pamphlets 100% came from that place.