Can we talk about how “Sun” and “Moon” are both treated like the Celestials’ sexes and their genders? Because I feel like it’s been a thing for a while now and nobody’s brought it up.
Like I don’t mean a one to one parallel between male and female and Moons and Suns, but more like the way they treat Moons, Suns, and Eclipses, both socially and physically, resembles a (flawed) sex and gender binary.
When the Celestials are first manufactured, they are either Suns, or Moons.* They have minor physical characteristics that indicate their “sex” (Suns have rays and a warm color palette, and Moons do not have rays and have a cool color palette. Whether the hats are a sex characteristic is up to interpretation, but I’d say it’s at least a social norm for Moons, sort of like having long hair with women.)* Based on that and that alone, they get treated differently on a social level. Suns are stereotyped as energetic, nitpicky, rule-following, and caregiving. Moons are stereotyped as lazy, insensitive, aggressive, intelligent, and independent.
*But, these sex characteristics aren’t always accurate, and there isn’t just Suns and Moons. Eclipses are shown to be either a mix of sex characteristics, like with Ruin and Clipper, or completely outside of the sex binary, like with Eclipse, Lunar, and Solar. Even though there are so many Eclipses, they’re still treated like an exception to the rule and not a part of the bigger picture. In the beginning, Ruin was treated with disgust over his mixed traits. Eclipse and Solar are constantly being forced into a “Sun” or a “Moon” pigeonhole. People treat Eclipse like a Moon with Sun characteristics, and Solar like a Sun with Moon characteristics, even though they exist outside of that binary. In a way, Eclipses are representative of an intersex, either with mixed traits or completely new ones that change the “sex binary” of Suns and Moons into a spectrum.
And sometimes, we see a celestial with intersex traits who still identifies as a Sun or a Moon! For example, Moon visits a dimension where there is a Sun that murders his Moon. That Sun has a red hat on! If you interpret hats as a sexual characteristic, then he could be seen as an intersex Sun. If you interpret hats as a social characteristic for Moons, then he could be seen as an intersex Moon. Sundroid was able to change his appearance to a Moon model at will, but he never used it because he identified as a Sun.
This makes the social dynamics of the Celestials so much more interesting, because we get to see characters who struggle to separate their assigned “sex” and their identity as a person. For example, Solar.
Solar was manufactured as an Eclipse. He’s intersex. His entire upbringing, his Moon treated him like a defect. Not a Sun or a Moon, so instead, a mistake. An it. Even now, in the current dimension, he still has those internalized feelings about Eclipses. He doesn’t want to be seen as an Eclipse anymore. He doesn’t see how being an Eclipse is a morally neutral thing. So, he changed himself to get away from that identity. One would hope that he could reconcile his feelings about his sex, and then be both comfortable with his sex as an Eclipse, and his celestial identity as “Solar”. He doesn’t have to go be valid obviously, but it’d probably be healthier if he did.
Nexus is another good example of a celestial “transitioning” into something other than their assigned “gender”. She was assigned Moon, based off of her sex being Moon. But she clearly felt she was different from Moon. She transitioned from a Moon to something different. Once again, since she’s the only Moon we’ve seen transition into her specific “gender”, I guess we can say she transitioned into Nexus.
Ruin and Clipper can be seen as examples of intersex pride. Ruin was berated and mocked for being intersex. He was called a freak, an amalgamation, a ruined Sun and Moon. And, he decided to reclaim his identity for himself. Fine, he was a ruin, and he was proud of it. Sun and Moon are dead and he killed them. He wouldn’t change himself for anyone. Clipper is accepted in his community, and though he does occasionally struggle with thinking about what it would be like if he was a Sun or a Moon, he wouldn’t change himself either.
There’s so many minor examples of this in other characters, too. Dark Sun is housing a Sun whose sex is “Moon” (from the dimension where they swapped roles). Francis and Frank are intersex, and identify as a Sun and Moon respectively. Sundroid has two different modes where he could be either a Sun, or a Moon, and he chooses to be a Sun. There could be a celestial that switches between Sun, Moon, and Eclipse presentations.
This is also separate to their gender as we know it, as in pronouns and masc and fem. They can not only transition between celestial identities, but also gender identities as well! It’s so cool.
