Can you do the last and first few on the sexuality headcanon post?
[I would be delighted to, thank you!
1. what do you label your muse as, and how do they label themselves? is there a difference, and if so, why?
I call Grelle a trans woman. If she knew of that term and understood it, she’d use it as well, but alas, she’s got a lot to learn and even more to unlearn before she reaches that point.
Normally, she just refers to herself as a woman, without modifiers. If you press her on that, she’ll eventually say something like [BAD TAKE ALERT] she’s a man who’s happiest pretending to be a woman. If you really trigger her, she’s likely refer to herself with outdated homophobic slurs, because she has the Victorian idea that [BAD TAKE ALERT] she feels female because she’s so gay.
2. has your muse’s understanding of their own identity changed after realising they aren’t cishet, and do you see it developing further in the future?
3. when did your muse first realise they’re attracted to the gender(s) that they are?
Answering these together because that makes most sense to me.
Her attraction to men is, of course, straight, but since she was raised as a boy it’s the deviation from the expected that she had to ‘realise,’ and she was made aware of it long before she started figuring out her gender. I say ‘made aware’ because other people noticed it before she did. Grelle is severely lacking in self-awareness as is, and her human self was 100x moreso. She would have been made fun of for checking out guys before she was even conscious she was doing it.
Even after that, though, she lacked the presence of mind to really ‘identify’ as anything, and if she had I doubt it would have made much difference anyway. The conundrum of being a woman attracted (mainly) to men, while expected to live as a man attracted to women, made her feel like she was accidentally living someone else’s life and didn’t have the power to change it. I’ve talked about it more in-depth elsewhere but the tl;dr of her suicide was to reclaim some agency in the only way she felt remained to her.
So the first time she consciously presented as something other than cishet was after her death, when she had a brief but intense period of living as a gay man (though she wouldn’t have used that label, because anachronism). “The Tale of Will the Shinigami” shows right when she began to realise that wasn’t quite what she wanted either—or rather that it was only part of what she wanted.
As of 1889 she’s in a weird sort of identity limbo of knowing that she’s most comfortable perceiving herself and being perceived as a woman, but she doesn’t understand the difference between sex and gender, so she doesn’t think she can actually be a woman without a womb and all that. For the same reason, it feels invalidating for her to acknowledge what her body is, even in the context of working towards changing it. Evidently at some point she heard tell of sex reassignment surgery, so that’s a start. Given that she literally has all the time in the world I think it’s inevitable that she eventually meanders her way around to medically transitioning, and I’ve written a couple things on here where she’s on hormones or at least further along in going ‘full-time,’ as they say; but tbh #1 on the RP wishlist is a slow burn of Grelle finally getting some good takes that give her the mindset she needs to transition.
21. what words do they reclaim, what are they okay with being reclaimed, and what do they do not want to used to describe them?
Her terminology is totally different from modern terminology so I’ll address it more generally.
On the whole, Grelle isn’t too bothered by words. She’s heard every slur for effeminate and/or homosexual men in the book and she’s put up with them for more than a lifetime. She’s also rather good at blocking out things she doesn’t like. So yeah, it’s not like she feels empowered by them, necessarily, but nor do they have much power over her. She doesn’t use them herself unless she’s having a self-destructive dysphoric moment, which does happen from time to time.
The weird thing about her (well, one of the many) is that being excessively validated bothers her just as much if not more than being misgendered, because she doesn’t think she’s valid, so she feels like she’s being mocked. And she’d much rather be outright opposed than mocked.
Once she’s a bit more secure in her identity and also actually knows some terms specifically intended for trans people, I think she’d feel fine about any that don’t reference her genitals. Tbh I haven’t written enough of her at that point to decide if she relaxes her overcompensatory standards of ladylikeness to use any herself.
For obvious reasons, she absolutely refuses to tolerate being called any slur associated with promiscuity or prostitution.]
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