AU Thursday: Mega Gender/Sexuality Headcanon Post
Because it’s Pride Month, and because I just did a post on all the various ships I have featuring Victor, Alice, and their friends/potential partners. Time to bring everyone up to date on my various headcanons regarding their genders and sexualities! To make things a little easier on myself, I’m using the names that they would have in the Running Headlong Into The Bullshit mega-poly ship (that is, the Modern AU one where the first nine people here are all in one big relationship tangle together), but you can assume that these headcanons also apply to other versions of them from other verses (e.g., the headcanon for Christopher White also applies to Sir Christopher Lloyd in “Secundus”).
Victor Van Dort: Cis male, Biromantic Bisexual (leans toward women partners)
Victor used to be my token straight person, but then I started realizing that I could picture him easily being in a relationship with the right sort of man (or nonbinary person, see below), and things evolved from there. He does still tend to lean toward women partners, and that preference is why he identifies more as “bi” than “pan,” but he is attracted to multiple genders!
Alice Liddell: Cis female, Demipanromantic Greyasexual
Otherwise known as “the complicated one.” XD This is largely because I’d already established her as willing to have sex with Victor to the point of having biological children by the time I found the “Ace Alice” headcanons and decided I rather liked them (also, noticed a lot of what they said about asexuality fit me…) Having played around with her character a bit more over the course of my stories, both public and not, I have come to the conclusions that a) she doesn’t really have any gender preferences, but she does need a strong emotional bond with someone to start seeing them as a romantic interest; b) she is generally uninterested in sex (if neutral toward its existence, despite her traumas) but has a few specific circumstances that can get her motor, if not running full speed, at least puttering. (These circumstances are invariably very specifically kinky because I know what I like when it comes to those sort of stories. There is a reason that I would call any specifically NSFW writing handle “Alice Dommes Victor” or similar!)
Victoria Everglot: Cis female, Biromantic Bisexual
By contrast, Victoria’s easy – she’s basically a “perfect” bisexual, with a roughly equal attraction toward her own and other genders. There might be a tiny lean toward men as partners, but I suspect that shows up more in Victorian-era Victorias than modern ones.
Emily Cartwell-Merrimack: Cis female, Biromantic Lesbian
I don’t recall exactly when I decided it would be interesting for Emily to be romantically but not sexually attracted to men, but it must have been around the time I discovered that romantic attraction and sexual attraction didn’t NECESSARILY have to match. But yeah, as it turns out, I picture Emily as someone who is happy to be romantic with multiple genders, but is exclusively attracted to her own when it comes to sex. Victorian-era Emilys either don’t realize they don’t have a “proper” attraction to men or figure everything will work out once they get married to their One True Male Love; more modern ones come to grips with their sexuality earlier and happily embrace their “three-quarters lesbian” nature. :p
Christopher White: Cis male, Biromantic Bisexual
Another fairly simple one – the Christophers were initially conceived of as straight, like Victor, but I embraced the bi when I updated the character for the Cuddlepile poly pairing. Like Victoria, they have roughly equal attraction to a variety of genders, with maybe a slight lean toward women.
Richard Hatter: Agender (amab) with “xe/xim” pronouns; Panromantic Asexual (no gender preference, no interest in sex)
Another one where things got interesting – learning about different sexualities also involved learning about different gender identities, and I was already familiar with neo-pronouns through earlier RP on LiveJournal, so I figured I could make one of the original Cuddlepile have a different gender identity than “cis.” Richard felt like a good choice, as I can’t see even Hatter in the games having an especially strong connection to the concept of being male. So yeah, Richard is like “Gender? Nah” – though obviously only the modern versions use the “xe/xim” pronouns – the Victorian-era “Richard Dodgson” from “Secundus” just goes with “he/him” because that’s what he’s used to by this point (and because I wrote that version, again, before learning about all this). I think I had xim as just bi all the way before, but panromantic feels more right to me the more I think about it – and I’ve also NEVER been able to imagine xim having sex (I’m not sure some of the more robotic ones even have the capability anymore), so yeah – asexual it is!
Preston Garvey: Cis male, Biromantic Bisexual
Back to fairly simple for good old Preston – he’s a romanceable companion in FO4, and you can flirt with him no matter your character’s gender, so – basically he’s CANONICALLY bi! Doesn’t get easier than that!
Piper Wright: Cis female, Biromantic Bisexual (leans toward women partners)
Piper is slightly more complicated – like Preston, she’s a romanceable companion in FO4 regardless of player gender, so canonically bi. But she ALSO has a reasonably well-known moment where she accidentally flirts with Magnolia and gets flustered if you take her to The Third Rail and then talk to Magnolia after her set. I’ve decided this is good enough for me to push her toward generally favoring women partners, though she likes guys too if they hit the right buttons (which my Sole Survivor Victor does – as does Preston!).
Smiler Alton: Nonbinary (amab) with “they/them” pronouns; Panromantic Pansexual
This one proved to be easy after I devoured as much information on The Smiler roller coaster as I could on tumblr – the moment I discovered the coaster and its theming shares the colors of the nonbinary flag, I knew my Smiler had to be nonbinary too. And given The Smiler’s thing is spreading joy and happiness to all, pan felt like the right label for their romantic and sexual attractions – why would someone like that have a gender preference? (Which is very much reflected in my Sim Smiler Always and their Wonderful Whims attractions. XD) Smiler loves who they love, and they’re very happy that way.
Lizzie Liddell: Cis female, Demibiromantic demibisexual (sex-repulsed after trauma)
Lizzie, by contrast, proved to be difficult simply because – well. The big character beat of her life in the Alice games is what Bumby did to her. Looking at how I wrote her in “In The Land Of The Dead” and “The Technicolor Phase” and thinking about the kind of person I picture her as, I have decided that, like her sister, she’s capable of being attracted to multiple genders, but she needs to form a strong bond with the person first. However, her experience with Bumby left her heavily sex-repulsed, so she’s unlikely to actually want to have sex with anyone. (Not that she can in the stories I’ve written for her so far, but yeah.)
Jeremy Samuel “Bonejangles” Thatcher: Cis male, Hetero-romantic Heterosexual
…I have decided we do need a token straight and BJ strikes me as such. XD He likes the ladies and that’s that. (Well, so far he likes Lizzie and that’s that, but I implied an at least sexual history with other women in “In The Land Of The Dead.”)
