#hehe sorry k u ask me a question and i spend literally 24 hours crafting a nonsense answer

[solacesque]

hi hehe i see ur tags & its opportune bc i was wanting to ask u anyway, how would u describe bavecs gender situation? if u feel like getting into it! 🖤

omg well. for starters, i think gender in skotia tends to be very binary and normative, very quintessentially victran. there just isnt room or thought given to living outside of that binary. women’s and men’s roles are structured, and culturally honestly more heteronormative than transphobic necessarily? i don’t remember how much it came up in conversation, but pious and bavec’s relationship ended in part because queer relationships are viewed as inherently childish and silly and something only kids are allowed. adulthood is marrying and having children and cultivating community through nuclear family, and certainly part of that requirement within the cult structure is because it is easier to manipulate people when they have children, and it’s simpler to maintain that status quo through nuclear heteronormativity. and u know cult tactics. you can only marry who we say, you can only be with who we allow, etc. anyway all of this is to say bavec’s gender is just another reflection of discomfiting repression in their community. bavec isnt a woman so they can’t marry pious and have kids. they aren’t a man but that’s kind of how they’re perceived by their community in the “well if u arent a woman i guess u have to be a man bc those are the roles available in our community” but they ARENT a man and don’t want to live as one and so on and so forth.

and all of this is to say i think their gender situation is very complicated for them! now they know people who live outside that victran norm (casper, charmain, etc) but for a long time they were isolated from adult queerness, and didn’t know exactly who or how they could be.

basically their gender is kind of a metaphor