#shape gender

[ckret2]

nobody asked me my headcanons on Bill's weird alien shape gender but that's only because you didn't know you wanted to know

of course he has gold bricks and pronouns

[ckret2]

Hi, in an old post you linked to in a recent ask you said “Amongst Bill's own species, maybe he was the most cishet guy you've ever met, I haven't decided” and I was wondering if at this point you have decided

Thanks for asking! Bill's gender is pyramid, Bill is genetically square & thus technically intersex by Euclidean standards but it's possible he himself doesn't even know this, and Bill's sexuality is so complex as to be unknowable even to himself but we'll simplify it to "monsterfucker."

This makes him 🎉 officially 🏳️‍⚧️ super 🏳️‍🌈 queer 🥳

Though he still identifies as a triangle; being a pyramid just makes him a triangle plus other stuff. When he's talking to outsiders (like humans) he'll usually still say his gender is triangle, because like... if you don't understand what it means to be a cis shape gender, you don't have the context to BEGIN to understand what it means to be a trans shape gender, so he's not gonna bother explaining to you.

Even though he's a square pyramid, Bill does identify as a triangle but never identifies as a square.

Every one of these self-revelations came millions or billions of years post-Euclidean Massacre, so like... amongst Bill's own species, he thought he was cishet lmfao

since queerness is more or less defined as everything that stands in contrast to cisheteronormativity, and since with no Euclydia there's no Euclidean normative expectations to stand in contrast against, Bill's personal experience of being "queer" is dampened. Like he remembers what was normal, but... as it is, whatever gender/sexuality Bill is, that's the gender & sexuality of 100% of the Euclidean population. is it still queer then?

it's like,, if a human lesbian is abducted at 3 years old, grows up among aliens that don't have genders, and never sees another human or another female-by-human-standards person again, then what does being a "lesbian" MEAN? Does her sexuality still make her queer? Or is the queerest thing about her the fact that she's human?

that's the boat Bill is in.

[ckret2]

Bill genetically being a square is funny given all the random shade he throws at quadrilaterals. Guys he can say that he's like, somewhat a square. Quadrilateral-ish. Square once removed. Maybe you're the one who's problematic if you're assuming he's only triangular

I'm officially on the record as headcanoning that Bill's gender is a full plate of triangle with a side dish of square pyramid.

He just simplifies it to "triangle" because the intricate nuances of his inner sense of identity isn't some nosy alien's business.

[ckret2]

I was sad you were getting rid of trapezoid dad bc I loved the twin hexagon thing you had, but I really love the alien reproduction fuckery you made. Really emphasize it's not man and woman like humans think about it

triangle dad lost the twin hexagon thing but now has a twin rhombus thing. Or maybe a twin parallelogram thing? His brother can be the trapezoid now.

I might mess with their proportions later so that they've got closer to equal surface area while also getting their undivided shape closer to equilateral. But you get the idea.

Anyway bottom line is dad's keeping the twin thing.

[ckret2]

How married are you to shapes carrying pregnancies at all? As opposed to other methods of making babies, such as spores or eggs or more outlandish sci fi options like parts assembly

Bare minimum, we know that shape reproduction needs a mother and a father.

I'm going to take it as a given that for Euclideans "mother" and "father" refers to "two individuals performing two different but necessary parts of a reproductive act to produce offspring," and not something like "they're totally not necessary at all but the government requires two people to sign up to co-parent before they'll hand out a baby" or whatever.

I'm taking it as a given because if I didn't, the contrary alien worldbuilder in me would go "well if mother and father are made up social roles rather than social roles derived from pre-existing biological roles, then why did they have to make up social roles that just so happened to be so similar to humanity's? I'm calling bull, bad worldbuilding, how dare you foist mom/dad pairs on a species that had no reason to develop mom/dad pairs as if we're supposed to just accept that that's the only NATURAL and NECESSARY way to rear offspring—" so I'm not giving my inner worldbuilder that option.

So, with "reproduction requires two different roles" as our starting point: at the moment, my own personal purpose in worldbuilding how Bill's species works is for use in the post-canon fic I'm working on that explores Bill's home dimension in flashbacks. That's what I'm keeping in mind when I worldbuild.

And I say that to give context to this: for my own personal purpose, my motivation is to worldbuild the way Euclideans' reproduction works in a way that ISN'T so interesting that mentioning it in fic will cause the readers' imaginations to immediately veer off the plot and focus on that detail. I'd rather how they do the do to be unremarkable as hell.

Anything mentioned about Bill's homeworld in the fic is put in either to explain who and what he is and why he's that way, or to sprinkle in a jazzy little bit of flavor. I'm trying to avoid turning his species into a deep exercise in alien speculative biology, since that doesn't mesh with the vibes of the story I'm telling. (As I say this i'm covering that "which shape sexes are reproductively compatible" chart with my body so you can't see it. I said I'm trying to avoid getting deep into the biology, not that i'm succeeding lmao. I'm too interested in how Bill sees his gender.)

Every aspect of Flatland was worldbuilt specifically to comment on the horrors of contemporary Victorian society, even the stuff that surprises readers that don't know much about the Victorian era like "well surely the stuff about irregulars being euthanized or poor babies being stolen and given to middle-class families is a dystopian invention," and anything that DOESN'T serve the social satire is handwaved away with "we have a very interesting way of propelling our bodies but unfortunately I don't have time to talk about it." Bill is written into Gravity Falls to be a foil to every member of the Pines family and to show what they could be like without love, trust, support, and family. That's the same role I want Euclydia to serve in my fic. Anything that diverges from rather than reflects Gravity Falls' contemporary society is out of place.

Putting in something like "eggs" or "spores" opens up cans of worms. How would laying eggs make their society different—are they less attached to their own kids, is trading eggs around and pre-hatching adoption more common, do people steal a neighbor's egg and leave their own? If it's spores, is it even possible to identify your own kid, does anyone care to, do kids ever just spawn out of a rotten log in the forest that spores settled on, are babies self-sufficient since they might be born without an adult nearby? These are fascinating avenues for some great alien worldbuilding! However I'm currently motivated to keep alien worldbuilding to a minimum lol.

In truth, I'll probably never need to know or explain HOW the shapes reproduce—pregnancy, eggs, spores, ritualistic magical waltz, collaborative geometry homework, whatever. Taking time to explain it means talking about details that aren't relevant to the fic, and the ghost of Edwin Abbott Abbott would sadly shake his head at me. However: if I don't explain reproduction, and if it requires two roles, most people are gonna default to assuming pregnancy. I can live with that.

All I need to figure out is how the two roles in the Two Roles Needed For Reproduction are assigned—like, can every member of the species automatically perform both roles at any time? (I don't wanna do that.) Are they born performing one of the two functions? (I don't wanna do that either, because now we've just invented a new male/female sexual dichotomy.) Does which you perform depend on your sides, the one with less sides does X and more does Y? Does it switch seasonally? Does it switch based on your age? Does it switch based on the number of each shape in the local population? Etc. (I'm not attached to any of these ideas, they're just examples.)

And the only reason that's something I need to figure out is that that could affect how Bill thinks about himself and his identity. Like, if which role you perform switches based on the amount of similar shapes in the local population, then it would have some kinda impact on him knowing that his body's been locked into the Lmao There Are NO Other Triangles Nearby role for the past trillion years. If it switches based on your age, then the fact that he never got old enough to switch would be one of many examples of the way his biological age has been in stasis since his dimension was destroyed. Etc.

[ckret2]

Do you have any headcanons about how Euclidean pregnancy/reproduction works? I doubt that it is similar to those of Earth mammals, but from your fic when Scalene and Euclid leaves the hospital it is implied that Scalene give birth to Bill (and his stillborn twin). But on the TINAWDC there's a picture of baby Bill ultrasound with caption "see you in 9 month papa" or something like that- implying that in Euclidia males give birth?? I'm curious what your thoughts are.

my official policy is that I refuse to worldbuild Euclidean reproduction because the only reason it's relevant to my life is for my fic, and anything normal is too normal for aliens and anything weird is so weird it would distract readers from the plot if it were explored at all.

Bill was unborn, and then a process occurred, and he was born. The process occurred in a hospital and was very strenuous on Scalene's body. Maybe she gave birth, maybe she punched him free of an egg with her bare fists, maybe a million other things, don't know don't care.

What I know is that there's absolutely not any seahorse dad pregnancy going on.

I didn't interpret "see you in nine months papa" as evidence that Euclidean males give birth. I interpreted it as Bill claiming he'd mpregged a human, without providing any commentary on his own species at all.

[ckret2]

how would Bill describe his gender identity to a cis shape vs a trans shape

trans shape: that whole thing

average human, for comparison purposes: "triangle"

cis shape: "equilateral triangle"

cis shape who's into woo woo new age stuff: "equilateral spherical triangle"

but these are only loose answers considering that the circumstances under which he might meet a shape he hasn't already known for a trillion years would have to be so bizarre that it could chuck all this out the window.

[ckret2]

"If it switches based on your age, then the fact that he never got old enough to switch would be one of many examples of the way his biological age has been in stasis since his dimension was destroyed." Oh I do like that avenue as a physical reflection of his emotional immaturity (though saying 'emotional immaturity' doesn't feel like a term that encompasses even half of what's going on with him). It also harkens back to like... the eternal summer vacation ideal. I remember Mabel being worried about getting older and things changing-- here's yet another way Bill reflects the consequences to a shallow, albeit heartfelt wish.

And like... cheers to being the generation of missed adult milestones. Sure you outlived your entire species and are this immensely powerful nightmare god-- but you never experienced one of the things that marked you as an 'adult', and you never will.

...although the drawback is that SOMEONE could misinterpret it as "What do you mean Bill's actually a CHILD?!?" and get Weird and Annoying about it. But to be fair, there's always someone in a fandom who's gonna be weird and annoying about things.

I respect What If Bill Was A Kid headcanoners but i'm sure not going with that in the fic where Bill's scheduled to fuck 6 to 12 named characters lmao. If Euclideans did switch reproductive roles at a certain age, presumably that would mean BEFORE the switch evolution expected them to be actively performing that role. So they'd have to spend a span of life sexually mature before the switch takes place. So yeah definitely not a child. I imagine that this hypothetical switch would prob take place at, like, equivalent to age 30?

Even that headcanon aside tho, I'm so leaning into the Missed Adult Milestones on Bill. I've got a whole mini plot arc around it. Even if it's not a milestone you WANT for yourself it can be easy to be haunted by a vague sense of failure if you never achieved it yknow? And there's so many milestones Bill does NOT regret missing, and those grapes are probably sour too.