Trans OC prompt - worldbuilding edition!
What is your OC world like, and how does gender factor into it? Does it have an entirely different understanding of gender, or is it the same as our world?
OH YAY A PROMPT FOR ME!!!!!!
So my OC universe involves gods that can move between the Realm of the Gods and Earth, they have great influence over humanity; since so many gods are nonbinary, this of course influences how humans see gender too. So being nonbinary is more normal here and everyone knows how to use they/them and multiple pronouns with no trouble, but there's still a lot of transphobia in the sense of "oh I don't want you to transition" or even "usually gods are the ones who are nonbinary, don't you think it's more human to be a binary gender?" and this sense of rigidity also affects binary trans people's ability to transition. That being said, those who are religious may be able to ask for the blessing of a god and this may involve their gender, ex: asking for approval as a woman, which then will have their gender seen as "more valid" by virtue of coming from a god's approval instead of a human's
(Of course some humans hate the gods but that's a whole other Thing. I don't think the Godhunters and other anti-god humans are much more transphobic as a whole but there's definitely some biases there against gods that permeate through society in a lot of small ways.)
The gods themselves face a lot less transphobia than humans, but they have a lot of gender stuff going on re: the creator and destroyer of the gods, the Higher Being (above the gods) named Mother Nature.
When the gods are created, they're given a short time to develop their identities and be close with Mother Nature, after which they'll leave her watchful eye (except under specific circumstances) and Mother Nature will just... not accept them changing afterwards, including their genders. She's very rigid in her views of them, so while Tempest and Wayfinder are nonbinary, Mother Nature will almost always misgender them because they transitioned outside of the training period where they're "allowed" to transition and change themselves. After that, they're forced to conform in various ways that make it hard for them to come out and change themselves, even if they still do.
A character like Storm (real name: Norrie) will be able to avoid being misgendered because they were able to transition fast enough, but they still get seen differently by Mother Nature based on their initially assigned gender. This doesn't cause much friction for Storm specifically, but other gods hate it.
As a note: Other gods will also sometimes struggle with the idea of the others changing, to various degrees. Centinel (an antagonist) feels possessive over Wayfinder's gender presentation because they broke up not too long after Wayfinder transitioned from being a "cis man" to being feminine nonbinary, which though Centinel does accept their gender, does make things extremely difficult between them due to Centinel's transphobia lurking under the surface
But Mother Nature is worse than anyone else because she gives "special treatment" to the women, discarding everyone else. Araceli is expected to hold herself to a high standard of perfection that Centinel (who is ranked the same as Araceli but is a man instead of a woman) is not, but she's also given more love (manipulative love, but love nonetheless) by Mother Nature, something that others who aren't perceived as being deeply connected to womanhood like Araceli don't get. This leads to Xirui, a trans woman, to feel jealous of Araceli, because Mother Nature disregards her deeply in a way that the other girls don't have to deal with, and Xirui feels mistreated in a lot of ways which makes her very bitter and wish she could be treated the same as Araceli, even though Araceli is also suffering. There's a sense that Xirui is stuck where she is, unable to change herself even after transitioning, because her Mother will never truly understand her or give her attention the way she will for any cis girl god. Araceli and other women have less freedom, but some women covet the idea of being under that eye of their Mother because that's the only way to have power in the Realm!! The rest of them are given different roles in Mother Nature's plans for them!!
Topaz is also "cis" but she tries to avoid Mother Nature, which is largely impossible, so she just suffers through being around the Mother that loves her while Topaz can't figure out her own feelings. And then post-story Topaz has huge identity changes which makes her change her pronouns to she/it. The gender situation with it/its pronouns in this universe is VERY different from they/them; they/them is common, it/its is not. More carefree gods who have accepted themselves and their genders are the ones who tend to use it/its, and Topaz is following them in this by accepting that part of itself, but also there's a level of borrowing it/its from Fate, one of the Higher Beings (same rank as Mother Nature) who uses it/its exclusively, and it influenced Topaz so much that she doesn't really know where her godhood and humanity and everything else intersect. And thus it changes its identity to include it/its pronouns to give itself more of a sense of freedom while it figures out what it really wants.
So even if nonbinary gods are the norm, often but not exclusively with they/them, there's still a lot of identity struggles that comes with figuring out that one might NOT be fully a woman or fully a man, the way they were chosen to be by the Higher Beings!! Because the gods are controlled including their identities!! And once they're freed from the Higher Beings they all have to examine what it means to be free from the gender expectations coming from Mother Nature
