#prefers to present masc but enjoys dressing more femininely every now and then

[empyreasheart]

op doesnt know it but seeing axel referred to with fem terms is like soup for my soul. genderfluid axel is so real. roxas and xions big sister

[marzipanandminutiae]

I think the line between representing gnc women in the past and interpreting the NLOG trope as applying to any gnc woman in fiction is difficult to chart—I don’t deny that authors do this, but the thing is that real historical women did feel like this for very legitimate reasons, even if they come off as condescending today (I’d be pissed too if I was told I Had to wear skirts and corsets, and I am someone who personally really enjoys wearing skirts and corsets). Representing women who did not conform to gender norms on various different ways is important, and I don’t think Cox’s critique of any of her chosen movies/shows is particularly convincing in part because she does not acknowledge this at all—and while not every YouTube video essay has to be all things to all people, this is a touchy topic and some effort on her part would’ve been really appreciated, because it very much comes off as “gnc women make me uncomfortable” more than anything else.

See, I really don't get where the whole "she doesn't talk about real GNC women!!" thing comes from

because I am literally watching the video right now and, direct quote, "while rejecting traditional gender norms of their era happened, that doesn't mean it can only be expressed in the rejection of distinctly feminine articles of clothing..."

"And while I'm not saying there's anything wrong with breaking gender norms in historical dramas...Gentleman Jack is a good example of this...I'm frustrated with the reliance on 'Girly Bad! Boy Good!' clothing defaults...without what seems to be a second thought on how problematic it can actually be."

"The idea of creating the bloomers and the trousers could have come from this very genuine place of like 'I want...to be able to run...without having to deal with all these skirts around my legs.' And that is fair..."

and the big part, prefacing AN ENTIRE SECTION OF THE VIDEO: "Now, all that being said, I want to acknowledge the historic reality of women who did dress in masculine clothing." She actually goes further than I would in using they/them pronouns for George Sand (I have a "pronouns they used in life" policy, personally), and discusses in detail some examples of women who presented masculine at various times, for various reasons. She also gets in-depth about Gentleman Jack, and why the show was more authentic to Anne Lister's life (as a distinctly butch woman in the 1830s) for showing her having to bend slightly to accepted feminine modes of dress rather than just...sticking her in anachronistic pants all the time.

I don't think the video is perfect- it's clear what presentation Abby herself prefers, and thus she can sometimes muddy her own message. For example, to me it's clear that she's not saying it would be BAD for a suffragist character to be GNC, but it would be UNREALISTIC due to the emphasis the actual suffrage movement had to place on conventionally feminine attire to avoid distracting the press from their own message. But I can see how it might come off as "feminine suffragist character good, masc suffragist character bad" to someone with less baseline knowledge of the speaker's general views.

(It could also be hard to get that she's not decrying the rejection of feminine attire wholesale in criticizing Anne W*th an E, but rather saying that it's unfaithful to the character as originally written. Also she could have been clearer that the issue with Miss Stacy is that she would be INSTA-FIRED if, as a small-town teacher in the 1890s, she showed up to a town hall meeting in trousers. Like. I cannot overstate how fired she would get from any position overseeing children's education, as an outsider and not even an "accepted local eccentric," in a backwater like Avonlea.)

In short, while it has its issues, I don't really see that it's as horrible and prescriptivist a video as everyone makes it out to be. But you're entitled to your opinions, just as I am to mine.

[ink-flavored]

General 5 and 9; Romantic 2, 8, 11; Gender Identity 4 and 7(or 8); Intersexuality 15 for whichever OC(s) have interesting answers :)

oh boy, thank you! i'll just hit the OC Roulette, get ready for none of these to be the same person

General

5. What did they do to explore their queerness? Have they tried to explore it at all?

Jao (from TGDW) has really not thought about it. She's been busy being a healer for her village, and then literally the queen's father, and then staying on as the queen's right hand. She's been grinding too hard to worry about gay stuff.

However, spending so much time around Xinya and attending all her formal events and helping her dress has. Y'know. Opened her mind to the possibility.

9. Did it take them a long time to figure out which labels they prefer? Are they still searching for the right fit?

Priscilla (from Henry & Priscilla) is very ignorant of labels, because it's the 1930s, so the few labels she's aware of are insults, plus she runs the mob and has to make sure she's a leader respectable (read=powerful) enough to follow. She hasn't spent enough time around other queer people to know what they would call her whole gender situation. For now, she just "feels like a man sometimes" and that's that. She'd like to find a label, but you don't know what you don't know. Part of her is convinced she's the only one like this.

Romantic Orientation

2. Do they enjoy dating or prefer being single?

Asim (from my Unnamed Dream WIP) has never had the luxury of dating. Before he became the Speaker for his village, his parents were thinking about arranging a marriage for them, but they died before it could pan out and Asim ascended to his role as a wiseman/healer/problem solver for everyone in his general radius, and thus taking on any of them as a spouse would look like special treatment.

When they think about it, they might like the idea of being in a relationship or starting a family with someone, but it's not something he needs to be happy.

8. Are they polyamorous? Do they consider it an orientation or a preference?

Justice (of Pride & Justice) would definitely 100% be polyamorous, he loves love, he would be thrilled at the opportunity to have multiple romantic partners, or even to just have different types of relationships that span the gap between platonic and romantic... if Pride didn't have so many fucking problems that would immediately implode any polycule he ever tried to form or join.

For Justice, it's something he can choose. Being poly would be nice, but the way his life currently stands, he's more than happy being monogamous too.

11. How has their romantic orientation shaped their interactions with peers and family?

Yvonne (from my Horny Urban Fantasy Anthology) was so so so shy in her herd, and continued to be so so so shy once she left it. If anything, being biromantic/bisexual just made her more nervous around literally everyone she ever interacted with that she found even a little bit cute. Centaur herds are a mix of family and peer, as not all of them are all related to each other but they all live together as if they were, so she was very close to everyone she knew. This eased her shyness a little bit around people she considered closer to "family" than "romantic prospect." But as soon as she got out into the Big City, and all she had was peers, she's playing Extreme Wallflower at every social gathering.

Gender Identity

4. How do they prefer to present?

Hayden (from Dragon Raising) has long since given up trying to present to what society expects a Black man to present like. He's often on crutches, and when he's not, his MS means he wants to be wearing comfortable clothes that are easy to move in at all times. Adaptive clothes are pretty expensive, so he takes what he can get when it comes to fashion.

On a meta-level, I'd call him.... soft masc? He's not concerned with being macho, but he's not really feminine either.

7. If they’re trans, do they plan on socially transitioning? In which ways? If not, why not?

Pride (of Pride & Justice) has basically socially transitioned in all the ways he wants, and doesn't really bother trying to "pass". He uses the pronouns he likes, he uses the name he likes, he wears—well he wears whatever the fuck he wants, but in a distinctly transgender way.

Intersexuality

15. How does their intersexuality interact with their other identities?

At time of writing, my only intersex OC is a side character from Pride & Justice. One of the members of the book club Justice attends, Chris (it/its), is intersex. I don't have a whole lot about it on my blog rn, I mention it in Justice's powerpoint that I made, and I do plan on making a whole slideshow just for the book club because there's a lot of characters to cover, but for now I will drop the picrew i made for it

Ta-da! With the intersex pin, and in case you can't see that little blue one, it's the Achillean flag.

I am still in the early days of my research about intersex variations and stuff, but I do know that Chris has Late Onset Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (LOCAH). Signs of puberty appeared in childhood, way earlier than every other kid it knew, and a lot of people in its life were not kind. After basically an entire childhood of being called "it" and a "thing", Chris has embraced it instead of giving in to dehumanization. It takes a lot of joy in being immune to categorization, and "my gender is Thing" is their way of reflecting those attempted insults back at the world.

Additionally, it was very hard to connect with other straight peers in its youth, much less get romantic with them, and trying to conform to cis beauty norms made everything worse. It gave up after high school, at first out of futility, but over time learned to embrace its masculine qualities and started curating them on purpose. It had always known it was attracted to men, but in embracing its own masculinity, it found it was able to appreciate the masculine no matter what gender it was attached to. Achillean really was the perfect word for it, and to this day it appreciates the masculine from butches to bears.

Also it has frogs. It has three White's Tree Frogs named Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Gonzo. This has nothing to do with sexuality but it is very important that you know this.

[try out my 74 Question Pride Month ask game]

[tumblunni]

Ok so.. I feel really ungrateful as fuck saying this.. but it kinda bugs me how much perrin being nonbinary just.. isn’t really shown at all.

At least, in what i’ve seen so far, yknow? I watched the first ep of someone else’s let’s play to see if i was gonna like this game, and i like this game SO MUCH that I stopped right there and am downloading it at the speed of light yo!!! My hype is maximum and I really don’t want this to be seen as a hate message or anything, it's just a mild opinion piece about something that bummed me out a little, as a nonbinary person.

Ok so.. again, this makes me sound like an ASSHOLE but I have to say it.. Perrin looks like a boy. 100% of all LPers I have seen have assumed they were a boy. I, a nonbinary person, assumed they were a boy. (And felt like absolute shit afterwards, man I still have to work on my internalized gender stereotypes!)

Now in real life I absolutely wouldn’t go around being some douchebag who tells other NB folk they aren’t dressing ‘right’, or whatever. In real life people can feel very different ways about being outside of conventional gender norms. Some people feel like “both at once” or “neither” or “something else entirely that doesn’t touch either side of our society’s current binary stereotypes”. And regardless of whether you’re agender/bigender/genderfluid or any other type of genderqueer person, your fashion sense doesn’t have to fit any strict rule to “prove” it to people. Some people try and dress in androgenous stuff, some people try to mix parts of both gendered fashion worlds, some people like to wear very neutral baggy stuff as a different way of being androgenous, some people like to wear wild and fun stuff that never had any gender stereotype in the first place/because it helps them feel confident in themself if they have a big brave kind of fashion, yknow? (that’s why I dyed my hair at least, and why I think a lot of lGBT people do) And of course, some people just prefer ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ clothes regardless of not being that gender, and if we can accept that cis women can enjoy ‘tomboy’ fashion then we should accept that trans people don’t have to fit into even more rigid fashion rules in order to ‘earn’ their gender.

BUT this isn’t real life, it’s a videogame

We have a lot more context here, with the context that this is a character designed within a fandom whose previous attempts at NB representation have kinda started setting up a trend. In that context, this is a bit worrying that it’s happened again, and maybe future fangame creators are feeling like they have to do it, or something?

Like the NB protagonist Pluto in Pokemon Uranium.

They’re still someone I deeply love, but their design looks incredibly masculine aside from a side ponytail. If anything their design communicates more that they’re a younger option compared to the other two, or something?

And the two NB protagonist options Ari and Decibel in Pokemon Reborn

Their designs look like more traditionally masculine and feminine-leaning ways of being nonbinary, ykno? And that wouldn’t be bad on it’s own, but let me try and explain what I mean...

A similar issue occurs in the unrelated dating sim Hustle Cat:

Which is generally incredibly progressive and actually the first dating sim I’ve ever seen that lets you play a nonbinary protag! But you still get only two character models to choose from.

Like it’s great that they had two options to aknowledge how not all trans people are the same, but it starts to look a bit.. odd, when those two options are ‘feminine and masculine’ and no form of androgenous is ever an option. or even like.. someone with a ‘masculine’ body build but a ‘feminine’ fashion sense. That would be kind of a stereotypical way to depict a trans character but it wouldn’t just be making a random design that could fit amoungst the already existing gendered protags and then just saying they’re trans. And a lot of people found it weird how these ones seem to be drawn as like.. both on the far masculine end, just a cis man and a trans man.

Like.. even as a nonbinary person myself, I wouldn’t have known these characters were nonbinary if you hadn’t told me. And that leaves me feeling horrible about myself that I judged them on first sight, but I mean this is within a genre of entertainment that’s literally never had any Me in it and i’ve got used to being all ‘no you’re just reading too much into it’ whenever i headcanon anyone as genderqueer...

And just.. I feel like if you’re gonna just draw another two masculine and feminine looking characters, or just a second masculine one (or a weird two masculine ones that’re labelled male and female with no option for in-between...) then couldn’t you have saved time by just letting us choose our pronouns for the two you already had? like I already play a lot of games headcanoning the protag as just a masc-fashion version of my enby self, I feel like kinda the point of adding a third design would be to make it something the others aren’t already delivering. Look at it this way, you already HAVE two nonbinary characters who look masculine and feminine, just like the player could also play them as a trans boy and trans girl. Pronoun selector box is the greatest invention of our time! So what I’m really saying is not “don’t have super masc NB protags” but just “can we have another option too?”

Oh, but then that’s also been done not-so-well by certain games too.. Awesome amazing multiplayer party game dating sim Monster Prom let’s you choose your pronouns!

...except these are your only character options! All of these are very clearly intended to be read as masc or femme, you’re probably gonna feel dysphoric as heck if you play them as trans, and none of them work super well as nonbinary either. I think pretty much every NB player has always gone for Oz (yellow one), cos he’s the one that’s most capable of fitting that headcanon just by virtue of being perpetually shadowed. Tho still his default is “he” pronouns, his fashion sense is masc and his voice is masc. Still I’m really fuckin proud of the fandom for collectively latching onto NB Oz and using “they” all the time in fanworks, and then the developers being okay with it, like holy shit man you healed my goddamn heart... <3

Still, it makes me feel a lil like this would have been easy to fix? like I’m not saying redraw everything to have them all change bodies/fashion style depending on your pronoun choice, but like.. maybe just not draw them with such super disparate body styles in the first place? like in this style every girl is hourglass and has weird legs out arms out pose, and every dude is a chunkfest with twice as big hands and feet. Like you could have maybe just made two of the characters be a very curvy girl and a very buff boy, and then the other two be more neutral in appearance but still retaining the same designs. Like I think if you just gave the blue girl a baggier shirt that doesn’t highlight her boobs and hips so much, she could easily be my favourite ‘most NB-able’ design! maybe also tone down the eyelash and lipstick effects?

I think probably a similar thing could have been done with the Reborn protagonists? like there’s nothing inherantly feminine about wearing a tanktop and having a fancy undercut hairstyle and such, its just the way they drew Ari that makes them look feminine. I guess maybe that’s a necessary evil of fangames, since they usually use edits of already existing characters from the games? Then again the games have plenty of androgenous characters already, even if nobody is canonically confirmed as LGBT. *shrug*

Anyway

I absolutely am not trying to nitpick and attack the game for not being perfect in this one aspect. i’m still super excited to even see someone like me in a videogame at all, and I’m definately not one of those people who’s like ‘I’d rather have nothing than have something flawed’. I already admire you greatly for what you’ve done for the inclusivity of this fandom, and I hope that my discussion of this stuff doesn’t discourage you from continuing.

And I guess my point is, in summary

What I mean is not “there are no nonbinary people who prefer to dress masculine instead of androgenous”, but instead that when you’re designing a nonbinary person as the only option a nonbinary player gets or the only nonbinary person in the game, with no playable option, it would probably be a little better to draw them androgenous.

Like, you’ve put that NB character into the role of representing all nonbinary people ever, to the hypothetical audience of people who’ve never heard of the concept before and aren’t super educated about the intricacies of gender presentation. And then also rather than using traditionally gendered outfits to aknowledge that NB people have many ways to present themselves... you’ve given us less ways to present ourselves.

Also it’s a little bit odd that you have an NB rival but said “we’re not ever considering an NB player option in the future”. Sorry but I cannot understand the logic? Like.. you know NB people play your game if you wanted to put NB representation in it, but you didn’t put it as playable because... reasons?? I hope maybe that interview was just taken out of context and you meant something more like “it’s not planned for now because it’s a lot of work and the game is still in its demo stage”, which is absolutely an understandable reason and how Uranium and Reborn did it. But Uranium and Reborn were kinda odd for being a world where literally nobody else aside from you could ever be NB, so I am really grateful that your game did add an NB character. And one in a big role!! This is what i mean about how grateful I am and how I feel awful that my bad internet typing skills are making this post come off as more aggressive than intended.. *sigh*

OH and also maybe a tip for Periin? just.. like.. mention their pronouns. It’s really frustrating to watch everyone doing let’s plays of this thing and constantly assuming Perrin is male because their design is very masculine. Even me! Even me was assume! :( So like... maybe just have Perrin actually tell the audience that they are nonbinary at some point, during this introduction? or have the protagonist’s inner monologue mention it, or another character mention it on the way towards meeting Perrin? like I dunno, maybe a Perrin fan npc?cos it would seem a bit more natural to talk about gender if it’s someone saying “wow I admire Perrin’s androgenous fashion sense” rather than like.. a stranger saying “i can’t tell if you’re a boy or a girl from your face”.

I can understand how it can be tricky to figure out how to introduce a LGBT character’s LGBT-ness without having them go around saying it to every new person they meet, it’s something I’ve had to fix in the editing process even as a trans person writing trans characters. But just having their gender only be mentioned on missable promotional material outside the game means that a lot of players won’t ever hear about it, and it like.. has zero impact of actual inclusivity on the game. It’s why people were angry about DUmbledore only getting revealed as gay after the series already ended. Him being gay missed all of its chances to make gay readers of the series feel welcome, or have any part of his character be informed by his sexuality. like the plot between him and grindlewold could have been way more effective if it was him losing a boyfriend to the dark arts, just sayin...

anyway whatever, bunni is bad at writing coherant posts in summary thanks for perrin and sorry for whining about perrin, aaaaa