#ve's more rebel than queer in terms of like Human Norms but in yy'vae terms. yeah.

[the-faultofdaedalus]

i think its funny that even inside my head i tend to massively simplify the gender/sexuality of MANY of my ocs for convience’s sake (like listen i do fucking shorform inside my head as well because i KNOW the thought but i do not want to take the time to think it in words) but like,,,, i’ve been having Thoughts, you know?

so uhhhh case study of various ocs of mine and their “condensed” gender identities/sexualities vs what they Actually Are because hey! im having those kinds of thoughts (and yes im also thinking about my Own deal as well but we are doing that through the medium of fictional made up characters it’s Fine)

cutting here because uhhhh not everyone wants to see a long-ass post of rambly garbage about oc queer stuff even though i am really only doing the characters i find to have the most interesting bits w/ this, that i have thought out the most. i bet tally’s whole deal is super interesting! but i also have not developed them very much whereas i think about the others Fucking Constantly.

1. Kat: ace lesbian (cis)

like, ok that Works, for her, she’s cis, she’s definitely only ever been romantically attracted to woman (no not a typo she saw her gf/wife and decided That One and this has never changed) and ranges from “doesn’t give much of a shit abt sex but would attempt if partner so desired” to “ew”. likely lesbian demiromantic, definitely still ace.

she was assigned female at birth, mostly still presents as such, and goes by she/her pronouns. so like, cis. but ALSO she has little to no concept of what “gender” even is (the francaphoneness makes this Worse because everything apparently has a gender and it’s all apparently entirely arbitrary) and mostly just guesses and goes along with whatever people say. definitely gets “misgendered” (she doesn’t give a shit) on a fairly regular basis because she can and does still pass for a teenage boy well into adulthood. if she had grown up not largely isolated from most of human society? who knows. maybe she still would’ve just continued to present as and ID as female because it’s Easy and not harming her to do so. maybe the rigidity of the slowly disolving (thank god) gender binary would’ve made her feel trapped and she would’ve done something about it. i have no idea.

2. Lily: also a cis ace lesbian

yes but also no. for a WHILE (into her late teens) she IDs as aroace lesbian because she just,,,, does not have any romantic or sexual attraction to really anyone. she still fucks and has a lot of one-night-stands through uni (it’s fun, it feels good, she’s good at it, she likes being good at things, she’s also definitely some form of ADHD and is almost constantly both over and understimulated and is constantly seeking novel and interesting sensations and sex (especially w/ kink) has a READY supply of those) mostly all with women or NP people and maybe even a dude or two because Science and Curiosity before she decides that actually, no thanks. eventually after meetng endgame GF realizes that she might, in fact, actually be demi (because ohhhhh That’s what a crush feels like) and then mostly sticks w/ that for a while

gender is uhhhhh well she’s definitely involved enough with human society to have Thought about this and to have like, context for gender n shit and has generally decided on “a woman, but like, very gay about it” and is fine with that. BUT she also... doesn’t really have that much emotion about gender and how it applies to her specifically, and for... a good couple years at the beginning of her superhero career gives out zero pronouns for her Changeling (her alter ego) and has her team to do the same. most people end up going with he/him for Changeling bc wooooooo misogyny (robot-looking fucker doesn’t have visible tits? clearly a man) but some go with they/them, or she/her, or even it/its. Lily doesn’t care at all and keeps a careful tally of all the pronouns that are used for Science. there’s multiple reasons for playing it this way, partially to refuse to narrow down her secret identity at all, partially for the data, and partially to fuck with people, but.... maybe just to see what it’s like, yknow?

also she goes by almost exclusively male pronouns for a year and a half when she’s 29/30 because she has to fake her death and steal the identity of her murderer but that’s more like,,,,,, disguised as a man trope as opposed to actual gender fuckery but like at some point we’ll have to unpack Why i have So Goddamn Many of my characters Do This, and specifically have lily go by alt identities with different pronouns all the goddamn time.

(all she’s sure of is that she’s fine being a woman, and also that she’s definitely doesn’t have the same feelings re: gender that Tally, her nonbinary teammate, does. doesn’t mean she’s not not cis! but like. listen she’s dealing with enough.)

3. Ve: triple A baeby (aroace agender)

no because Ve is an alien bug and everything is more complicated than that SOOOOOOO. ok. aro? check. no romantic attraction, but that’s not queer in terms of her species because that IS the norm that IS the centre. ace? check, but same as above. no sexual attraction is normal. Technically, Ve isn’t even sexually mature because she’s never moulted into a drone, AND she (and all other workers) are haploid and so don’t even really have sex organs/produce gametes. it’s really more like spores? since it’s just mitosis to produce the gametes that then get sprinkled like icing sugar onto the eggs the queens produce. sexual reproduction HAPPENS but it’s entirely external, and yy’vae as a whole have never really developed any form of.... mating behaviour or model for sexual attraction. not to say that yy’vae CAN’T develop those feelings, because who am i to say, but the vast vast majority do not. really any sexual “attraction” that yy’vae ever feel is more repulsion because there’s in-built anti-inbreeding functions when they moult into drones, but the way it works is like,,, still just through their pheromone senses which is used for All communication w/ others of their species so like. not really.

gender-wise, uh, yeah they’re alien bugs. technically there are two to three sexes, depending on how you look at it (diploid egg-laying queens, haploid sterile workers, and fertile spore-producing drones (which are just a different moult stage of workers)) and the gender/pronoun system IS based on that but also not really because it’s also based on the function an individual serves in society. there’s behaviours that only queens or only workers or only drones take part in, there’s roles that only one gender can fill, ect ect. it’s a biological caste system but with a sapient species it’s GONNA be weird. most yy’vae go by she/her or they/them pronouns if they have to use human/english pronouns (queens tend to favour she/her, workers tend to favour they/them, drones tend to keep whatever human pronoun they went by before moulting, mostly they just kinda go with it) and ve personally mostly goes by she/they (i am using she/her in this for Consistency). again! that’s the norm! that’s the centre! in a societal sense, she isn’t queer at all.

but then, she is also somewhat outside of the normal caste structure because she’s queenless, in a society where connection to your queen/leader/mother is a Big part of the social structure (which ties heavily into gender!!!!!). To the point that she has to take meds to prevent herself from involuntarily moulting into a drone because she can’t prevent that the “natural”/”normal” way, which is routine semi-ritual groomings by a closely related queen to exchange pheromones and solidify that You Are A Worker In This Colony (and therefor do not have to moult and fly off to pollinate some other queen’s eggs)

And what’s more, when she meets her queen, she does not fall into that social structure, either. Specifically, when Ve meets her mother queen for the first time, and finds out who she is, Ve explicitly does not submit to the normal queen/child grooming pheromone exchange, and instead, actually postures at that queen. which is a thing only queens should ever do at eachother. which is a thing that workers should not even Do (some workers will mimic it at eachother to establish who will take a leadership position, but it doesn’t really like. Do anything functionally)

so, in that case, as a queenless worker who preformed queen-like behaviour and disobeyed her queen, she’s definitely queer as in “fuck you”