Fem!EnDouma. Introduction doodle page I made as a break from commissions. Before Douma realized Enmu was sentient, she had kept her blob form as a pet after the Mugen Train disaster.
Enmu played into it to bide her time, eating Douma's cultists to grow larger and hopefully reform her body. She does eventually achieve this, but her time as a pet was a huge ego blow. It doesn't help that this form of their bond is the strongest thing she has to exploit in hopes of getting back on Muzan's radar to try again for power.
Douma doesn't mind the change, though. The spoiling just looks different now.
I don’t want to do too much more with this because it’s been in my wips forever. But I do have a drabble in mind that’s kind of a sequel to the other one I posted.
At this rate though, I think I need to make a whole new collection for the genderbend version of Endouma. Because I actually do have a start and finish line in mind.
While being part of the genderbend modern au, she doesn't get a name change. mainly because her name still makes sense for her. Douma means polished child, and given she was still a worship object for a neoreligion, I doubt she would have much change.
The same lore as my male modern au Douma carries over. She burned down the Paradise cult at 13 but her birth was never reported to the Japanese family registry system (koseki) so she has no legal identity. Meaning she can't make a bank account or do anything requiring one, possess a valid ID or driver's license, and she can't work most jobs.
She found a lucky break at an assembly line factory and became a shift lead there, eventually securing an apartment from a landlord who owed her a favor and didn't care to ask questions.
Douma doesn't care as much about high effort into her appearance, opting for comfort. If it looks silly to you, that's not her problem. She's very heat intolerant but doesn't seem very bothered by cold. Under the softer fat layer, she's actually fairly muscular.
The savior complex from her youth never went away and effects her interpersonal relationships greatly.
In your genderbend au does Kotoha’s and Douma’s relationship change in anyway?
I already viewed them very differently compared to most fandom goers, so to understand how I see them in the AU, you need to understand how I see them in main canon.
Though to quickly answer a possible hidden question here, no, being women does not make me ship them. In main canon I feel there was absolutely nothing romantic about them, and being women still doesn't save the ship for me. I think it's perma-fucked and not in a fun way at all. Like I actually just hate the ship. If anyone else on my blog ships them, good for you. Could never be me though.
More under the cut, this is very long.
In the manga, Douma expresses that he believes the work he did with the cult benefitted the world, so I wanted to explore that in the genderbend AU. As well as his feelings about not for Kotoha, which he never spoke about as an equal. He had affections for her, but the way he talks about her is like talking about a pet you had to put down. He was fascinated by her because she was a good mother, and he expresses himself in canon that he was drawn to her because he never grew up with parents or siblings.
We know the cult was actually made before he was born. Because in Douma's memories in the manga, his father is seen wearing the robe and hat that Douma wears now (also his hakama). The Founder position was likely transferred to him. Especially since Douma says his parents "made that stupid eternal paradise faith religion". (anything in quotes is paraphrased from the manga. Specifically the Viz translation.)
Douma is one of those characters people don't really look super closely into but he's very layered.
Additionally, he canonically says that Kotoha running away was a bad decision because she would just be beaten if she ever went back to her family, and her baby would be at risk too. He definitely wasn't right to kill her, but I also think when she challenged him on being a monster, it conflicted with his own sense of self. Since he describes himself as "a benevolent leader" and believes that those he eats will be happy with him forever and can never truly die. In this way, he is assigning himself the role of the afterlife, as he himself is atheistic thanks to his prayers never being answered as a child, yet countless people came to him for help. Which he implies that since he was so young he wasn't able to assist them well and their expectations of him were idiotic.
Again, just very interesting things to consider. Especially when we note that it was only 15 years ago (in canon) that he killed Kotoha, but he needed to physically pick his brain to recall the memory clearly. I don't know if that's because the nature of being a demon makes memories less permanent, but I doubt it since it was a memory he formed while he was a demon. Especially since he also says his memory is good, even of his human life. I believe it's been suppressed as a memory because it conflicts with how he perceives himself, and we know he's touchy about it because he only started fighting Kanao seriously when she insulted his emotional capacity and asked why he was even born.
I do not believe Douma was truly emotionless rather than just extremely limited because of his childhood trauma. Had a full shut down. The way he talks about the cult and his parents is super critical with negatively charged language. So while he believes he was born for this role, I also believe he was deeply dissatisfied with it, which is where he continues to over insert himself in other people's business like Akaza in particular.
All this in mind, we can continue to the genderbend AU. The rules for my genderbend AU usually just follow the idea of "What would be more interesting with more women involved?" since KNY is very male centric. I wanted a more female centric story. (Though sometimes I do genderbend the female characters like Nezuko, as I think it would compliment a female Tanjiro much better.) That being said, Kotoha remains a woman, but both Douma and Inosuke become female.
As women, their relationship would change, but it wouldn't be romantic. Douma and Kotoha is a ship that is forever fucked to me and I really just hate it. If you like it, more power to you, but those aren't power dynamics I would touch with an 80 foot pole. Especially since Kotoha is described as "a girl of 17 or 18" by Douma in canon. What I do think is that their relationship would be closer in this AU, like that of a mother and child. Douma becomes a matriarch figure with the power of a cult and devoted followers. Temples often invited others to live within them, and so Douma's operation, like in canon, takes people in. Also like in canon, she is annoyed with Kotoha's family for having beaten her and shaken her baby, and kills the ones who try to come for Kotoha accordingly.
Kotoha, being a teen mother, views Douma's establishment as a symbol of maturity and self sufficiency. She feels safer with Douma because she is a woman, and her guise of friendliness seems more trustworthy. Please understand that for Kotoha to be a teen mother, she was younger when she fell pregnant with Inosuke. Given her husband is abusive, she was very much still a kid herself at that time. Being so young, an established woman would be like a mother figure to her.
However, this closeness means that when Kotoha learns Douma is a demon, she is more horrified and betrayed feeling. Douma would try to reason with her like in the main canon that Kotoha didn't understand, but Kotoha would still call her a monster and flee. This would be a more powerful trigger to Douma's sense of self, since as a woman, she probably also feels a certain protectiveness over the women in her temple.
I don't think canon Douma was a womanizer like people said considering he judges his own father for being a lecher (a sexually offensive person) and acknowledges that this was the reason his mother murdered him because he "dallied with the female cult members." I think Douma's mother killing herself would have a lot more weight to her as a woman, and she would take that as a sign that the cult needed major reformation. I think it would also cause some resentment, as Douma feels abandoned by her mother for not staying after murdering her father. Douma's mother was the adult and should have handled this, so Douma would mature very quickly to fill her shoes. Though it is heavily implied that Douma had already stopped feeling much of anything emotionally before the murder-suicide even happened in canon.
As a child Douma would have been left behind to struggle with curbing the sexually offensive behaviors of others, especially since I doubt Douma's father was the only sexually contestable person there. But as a woman and later a demon, Douma would not feel helpless to these things happening because she could simply throw out whoever she chose or kill them herself. Because she takes her role as the appointed founder so seriously, she would seem to Kotoha like a very trustworthy person. Douma likely would also have a fascination with her and baby Inosuke because who better to learn emotion from than a baby experiencing the world for the first time?
Basically, Douma and Kotoha's relationship would be much more intimate, but not romantic at all. More like a protector and protected dynamic, though to Douma, Kotoha is more of a pet and Inosuke is a pup. She still wants to nurture them to the end of their natural lives.
Whereas Kotoha's lashing out at Douma in canon came from fear, I feel like her lashing out at Douma in the genderbend AU is from the betrayal I mentioned before as well as deep anger. She's so angry that Douma could tout herself as this matriarchal figure with grace and power, yet use it to trick people and eat them.
Douma would still kill her like in canon, but I do feel a stronger effort would be made to convince Kotoha to still trust her and explain the cult's true proceedings, but this would result in an unwinnable argument. When Kotoha flees, Douma feels that Kotoha is hypocritical to judge her when she would leave safety and damn her own baby to death as far as she sees it. Douma's slaughter of Kotoha is out of mercy from her perspective, because like in canon, she acknowledges that Kotoha and Inosuke will "die like dogs" and will "only be beaten" if they return to Kotoha's family.
