The two faces of Yolanthe LaBelle
the only character who gets to have two faces in color on her new banner, since the dichotomy of how she presents herself as Antoine the tailor and as Queen LaBelle proper is essential to her character.
it already shows up in Chapter 8 with Joey actively correcting himself when addressing her outside of Club Chez Cabaret because she doesnt attempt to "pass" or "stealth" in public - the 2022 term would probably be "boymoding" but shes ~32 and has a day job, so hardly a "boy". she came into being trans as an adult from years of cross-dressing for fun, which also caused her relationship with Jasper "The Marquis" to fall apart (since she quite literally was no longer the man he fell in love with).
this and the belligerence of her home's police towards public signs of "deviance" gives a different view of gender expression than say, Reah (who got to experience a social and medical transition in her youth) or even her own protégé Joey (who arrived in Tyvia with no roots to connect him to a past identity and who can pass as a teenage boy).
leaving her home behind untethers her from the material need to be Antoine in her daily life, but not from the habit of doing so as a way to protect herself from outside scrutiny. i wont get ahead of myself and spoil Chapter 9 just yet, but this knot does not untangle itself so easily.
im just a random person from online so i dont presume to know every single queer or trans experience, let alone write them flawlessly, but i found it important to include a variety of them that differ from my own or from common tropes in the stories accepted as "good representation". im trying to write characters that i find interesting to think about! hopefully this translates to them being interesting to read about too
