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I'll bite. What's a gender tulpa? Also is this a murkoph ask account? Is he there to answer questions?

There was an iteration of this blog where I remained "in character" as Murkoph the entire time. Quickly realized two things though: that bit would get incredibly tiresome to read before I'd even cleared out of the first chapter, and I'm not quite confident enough in my voice for him yet to where it wouldn't feel fumbling. Murkoph's a delicate balance in terms of both silliness and legitimate menace, and if you overshoot him he winds up sounding incredibly Cringe. Maybe one of these days I'll do an Event, but no promises.

Anyways, you've foolishly wandered into my trap card, so: gender tulpa. The term itself was coined by my friend Atlas while talking over this concept in ASOIAF. Its an interpretative lens I've been picking at for a while, combining a lot of the feminist pscyhoanalytic/psychosexual critical theory I used for my master's thesis with my own transmasc gender witchery to identify some specific patterns in how girls, particularly young girls, are written in fiction.

A quick disclaimer because people can get. Weird. About this: I'm not working with authorial intentionality here. Unsounded's kind of a unique work in that it gestures a lot more openly towards the reproductive/gender subtext I normally have to tease out on my own. But I'm very much doing my own thing here I'm not claiming any of this is ultimately what Sette and Murkoph's relationship LITERALLY means. This isn't red string theory I'm not suggesting in the end we'll get the reveal that we'll find out they're secretly literally the same person or that we're being hinted that Sette is trans. This is just an interpretive lens I have fun with. Think of it as fanfiction, if you will, and proceed. Rest below a cut because I like to Y A P.

So, in the broadest possible strokes, gender tulpa is born out of a specific hypothesis: Young girls in fiction, due to their narrative disenfranchisement both within and without the text, will often be paired with a male counterpart who acts as their vessel of narrative intent. This vessel not only enables them to enact their will on the story in a way that characters in-universe (and often, the audience) would find abhorrent were it coming from them. Nice girls, after all, are supposed to be kind, dutiful, and innocent, kept well away from adventure. If they should ever find themselves in one, then what they need to do is keep their head down and let their guardians take care of it. Stay out of their way.

This isn't a comfortable position to be in for anyone, of course. Some girls like adventures! And even if they don't, its not very reassuring to know your best defense should shit hit the fan is that someone is nice enough to rescue you. But girls who fight battles, who learn magic or solve mysteries by sticking their nose where its not wanted, who cause a fuss towards their father who knows best, aren't nice girls. No one wants to help an annoying little bitch who complains too much, or read about her for that matter! Hence, a tulpa. Someone else to do the slaying and the saving, to have the rowdy bar fights and make the snarky one-liners and flirt with black magic. This lets her enjoy a proximity to all of these things without losing sympathy that she'll need in order to survive to the end of the story. Some examples in recent fiction, off the top of my head:

The specific dynamic each girl has with their counterpart differs depending on the character's themselves. At times it is romantic, at times paternal, at times a secret third thing. Some may seek out their counterpart forcefully, some may not want him around. But the primary constant is this: he is empowered to act in a way she is not, and yet for one reason or another he will act only on her say so. This often creates dynamics marked by incredible envy, as the girl will understand subconsciously that a lot of her agency rests with this third party. Just as often, though, they are marked by a trust and mutual respect (however toxic) that sets the relationship apart from any other in her life.

This is not always a dynamic that I would regard as innately transmasculine. Some girls want to warg into a man because they want liberation from patriarchal constraints and this is the easiest way to do that. Some girls want to warg into a man because they aren't girls at all. Nuance in all things.

(A brief aside: if you're reading this and thinking 'isn't that a character foil', yes! Character foils are about reflected identity. Gender is a part of identity.)

I consider this distinct from a cousin trope, the Grizzled Damaged dad and his plucky female sidekick (think Geralt and Ciri, or Joel and Ellie). With that trope, our narrative focus is largely on the male character's point of view, his reverence for her innocence or his delight in watching her grow up. This doesn't mean the girl in that dynamic can't be an engaging or well-written character, but her desires simply do not drive the plot forwards in the same way.

With that explanation: Sette is not anyone's definition of a nice girl. From the beginning, she's loud, brash, demanding, and badly behaved. Its hard to imagine her caring at all what anyone thinks a girl should or shouldn't do.

And yet, the fact remains that she exists under a violently patriarchal state. One more than capable of punishing her if her antics ever become too troublesome to deal with, or if she just proves herself too inconvenient.

Sette herself is aware of this, at least on a subconscious level. Take a shot for how often she insults someone by calling them womanly, girlish, unmanly. Largely just imbibed cultural misogyny, maybe, but equally reflective of the fact that she knows a girl isn't a very good thing to be in this world.

Duane, of course, is the likeliest candidate for gender tulpa, being literally her leashed attack zombie and body man. Sette certainly makes a pretty good go of it, using Duane as her proxy for the Awesome Violence she wants to rain down on her enemy's head and making herself look more impressive and more boss-like by proxy.

I'd argue we see a pretty explicit distillation of this, not through our Sette, from from her first self in the Khert. A nihilistic belief that the body she's in is not one made to lead (and oh, brother, if I had the time what you can make of the maternity horror of being referred to as a Soulcage), and a desire to escape from that body, using Duane as a vessel for that escape.

Duane, however, at many points disqualifies himself from that position. Not least of which: because Duane himself is a misogynist, and at time can be provoked into directing that ideology AT Sette when he becomes angry enough with her.

It mattes on an interpersonal level that these moments are not the sum total of Duane's feelings for her. We have just as many instances of him uplifting and protecting her. But these are reminders that linger. Duane will not forget she is a little girl, or that she is a woman, for better and for worse. That means while she's with him she can't ever fully escape from BEING one.

More than that, though, as the story points out time and time again, Duane hasn't really internalized Sette as a protagonist of this story, and won't until near the very end. He is leashed to her intent on many meta levels, and yet very rarely are her wants quite at the center of his worldview. She's his plucky sidekick, the little girl he'd do anything to protect. But this is the tale of Duane Adelier saving the world from silver! Her ghost-y magic near have to force compliance out of him more than once.

You know who her magic has never had to compel?

An Ald, possibly, yes, but one with brown hair and a Sharteshanian accent, who acts like the frightening powerful men she grew up fearing and admiring? Who enters the scene dick swinging, as opposed to her attack zombie's rotting member?

I find it notable that Murkoph slips into the plot at a moment when Sette is, arguably, feeling at about her lowest and most alone. Duane has scared her before, but having just tried to eat her she's lost even the illusion of control she clung to before.

With one proxy abandoning her into this scary new world, another emerges. This one speaks in a language much more familiar than that of a preaching Aldishman.

They even make the same jokes!

More importantly, at the moment he needs her more than she needs him. Sette's in a bad spot, but without help Murkoph literally has NO movement or agency in him. Its a tantalizing chance for a new dead man who needs her much more than the last one ever did.

It can't last of course. Murkoph isn't any little girl's friend for long. He's a violent predator! And dutifully Duane appears to spirit her away when she realizes she's in over her head. Yet, that sense of connection persists. Both stand in a unique position as Khert walkers who aren't dead souls. Both share some interesting philosophies around how to handle a story you don't like.

With him safely on the other side of the Khert (and thus once again dependent on her!), Murkoph has a tendency to appear when she' without Duane again, offering advice on a way of doing things Duane would never have agreed to.

Sette's too savvy to believe him again, of course, but the fact remains that the Khert, subconscious of the whole of reality, keeps heaving him up as a voice of temptation.

Both are similarly preyed upon by Lady Ilganyag, shaped by narrative forces neither quite understand. One's that determine what they are for no matter the toll it seems to take on them. Note particularly the predation of Lady Ilganyag, archetypal Mother and thus archetypal Woman of the story, who seeks to smother and shape both into her preferred shape.

And both buck, rebel, fight for their escape with all the silver bursting out of them.

There's an element I've been skirting in this: Jacaranda. Perhaps the closest thing to a literal boy self Sette has, her twin brother and literally the other half of her soul. We see flickers of this from their very first meeting, in fact.

Her instinctive response is a (gentle, half joking) gender regulation, scolding him for not being manly enough. He's her male reflection, and it won't do to have him being just as girly!

But Jac is new. Jac is an unanswered question. Sette has not met her Jac, and he's not an answer to her current gender woes.

So, for the purposes of the here and now. She's left with two choices: Duane, who is no Sharteshanian's ideal of masculinity, but is in so many ways that picture perfect protagonism Sette yearns for. Duane's cool. He's smart, he talks like he's from an opera, and he can blow the bad guys up with stoopendous pymaric hellfire. The other is Murkoph. A violent, worse, and more unstable version of herself....but also one that understands her. If Nary-a-Care is exactly the monster he needs to be for what he is, then is there not a chance that Murkoph is the monster she needs to be if she wants to be that Frummagem boss king?

There's not a definitive answer. In the end, its Murkoph and Duane both who come to the rescue. But its Sette who frees herself. Whether or not the desire for masculinity is innate or just a misplaced desire for freedom, in the end Sette is Sette, and no one else. She can't escape into being someone else. She must choose who it is that she wants to be, and become it on her own terms. Inasmuch as that's possible in any material reality.

That material reality is a dangling thread. As Murkoph himself is. Our last sight of him is a troubling hint that just maybe, he and Sette CAN'T coexist.

In the end, he is her own worst days. And the cost, one way or another, is coming due.

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