#xtale!frisk genderbender

[starclast]

ERASED 📝

[color-sanses]

|The Frisk and Chara Gang|

Charas and Frisks everywhere dear lord. okay these are the cannon Charas and Frisks on Colorverse, they will appear one time or another, also those are the nicknames between each other.

[zirkkun]

I have a question that you might be able to answer. How would I write a trans sans AU? Like male to female without making it offense. They're skeletons so I'm not sure how make it work out.

I mean I'm notoriously bad at explaining gender to people, but I can do my best! It's one of those concepts that I understand but don't quite understand how others can't since it just works in my brain, ahah 💦💦

I do know that there is a short AU comic that I read a while back that had a trans Sans. I can't remember the name... "Spring Before Another Winter" maybe? Something like that. That might help you, too!

But the thing with gender is that it's not biological. It's just... a way of expressing yourself, I guess? Being trans is just going from one side of the spectrum to the other (or transitioning from whatever your assigned gender may have been. In the case of Mettaton and Mew Mew notably, they were both non-binary originally before transitioning.)

Besides, monsters aren't exactly depicted canonically to have any reproductive biological differences, and monsters are pretty open when it comes to gender (calling Frisk "they" rather than "he" or "she" as a default; ghosts all being essentially agender until they decide otherwise such as with Mettaton and Mew Mew; Papyrus's door saying "No boys, no girls, only Papyrus allowed;" probably many other examples). It's to be inferred that they probably don't really have the same binary system that humans have. Which, actually, this may seem like useless information for writing a trans character -- but considering this is a pre-established work, taking into account the culture and society of monsters is actually pretty important! It would be strange for monsters to suddenly have human customs or suddenly go against what they usually believe.

There's a few different ways I often see writing characters as different genders goes, too, but they all are pretty different, despite on the surface being the same.

1) Writing a character just in general as a different gender from the start. For example, Aqua (ULR!Muffet) is like that for me, being that they are genderfluid. Or people tend to have different interations of Frisk or Chara, such as XTale. Or, another example is nekojaf's Idoltale, where all of her Sanses are girls. If you were to write Sans as trans from the start, it's probably best if you establish them as a woman and have the topic be brought up naturally. A very cliché way of revealing a trans character tends to be a "Oh no, I walked in on you dressing" scene or something, which I would highly advise not doing, because this has a lot of implications that go against the gender spectrum itself by enforcing "biology defines who you are" and creates and uncomfortable scenario for the viewer and characters too. (Obviously, the characters are characters and not people, but I mean this as... it's not a good way of establishing relationships between characters.) That and it's just very overdone. Unless this Sans you're writing is younger -- Sans by default is an adult, and is definitely (despite their jokester attitude) mature enough to bring it up if necessary. But you also don't have to bring it up at all! It could just be something in your notes and you go through the whole series writing Sans as a woman. Mettaton, for example, is a character that is wholly written as a man despite being trans. It's only clarified in his diaries that he used to be a ghost.

2) Writing a genderbend, which is... often frowned upon. I separate this from the first one, because genderbending is typically done in a manner that is more focused on the idea of "biological gender," and often it's done to either be a gag or sexualized. Some people just do it for designs, but even still it often makes people uncomfortable. (Frankly, changing anything from canon will always make people uncomfortable, but genderbending has always been a touchy subject.) I'd try to avoid this, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to write a trans character.

3) And, of course, writing a character who is still discovering more about themselves! This can be a bit more difficult to write, especially if you've never experienced this yourself. If you're uncomfortable or unconfident in this, you don't have to write it -- but either way, I WILL advise reading or studying how trans folk think and feel when discovering more about themselves (if you don't have any personal experiences with it yourself.) I feel as though the experience is pretty similar for a lot of people, just based on the ones I know and have talked to. I know for me I actually figured out I didn't fit my assigned gender at a really young age, like before middle school (though I didn't know what it meant) just because of my surroundings being harassed for wearing the "wrong" clothes and following around my very gender-ambiguous sister. However, it took me until I was 18 to really feel remotely confident in who I was -- and honestly, I still question it. It's a learning process, and people tend to be really flexible in going between a few different things before they settle on something that really clicks.

I... think that's about all I can think of. Anyone else can feel free to add on to this!! Or.. remind me of the title I forgot earlier lol. But I hope this helps!!! Like I said this is kinda hard for me to explain sometimes so 😅

[starclast]

hehe, I'm very much aware that both X!Frisk and X!Chara are canonically boys...but me and Avatar here were curious about how would they look like as girls!! :D

(P.S: As you may have noticed, Avatar is this cute OC here which comes from one of my own AUs and...I will reveal more about her and her world soon enough :3)