#kreludor

But for Derlyn's nonjudgemental attitude towards others, her pictures clearly show a significant discomfort with her appearance, or at least an intense dislike of having her picture taken. If you're queer and you've ever thought "everyone else is valid except for me" you know this feeling all too well. It could be gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, or some secret third thing (species dysphoria) Any of these are reasonable.

Here are some examples of Gnorbu body language that will be relevant:

Read the image descriptions for more information.

Let's analyze perhaps the most iconicimage of Derlyn:

Her ears are down and her tail is puffed up. For a long time I just thought it was her being the first Gnorbu NPC on Neopets, meaning her design probably has leftover Lamameeah elements like the ears and the tail. However, an analysis of body language shows that it's more that she's actually very angry that her picture is being taken for some reason.

I've never really liked the above picture, and I'm just now realizing... it's empathy on my part. She is very uncomfortable in the picture. probably as angry as the picture above with the most forced smile she could give. Really, I feel bad for her in this picture.

In this image, Derlyn is (probably?) naturally smiling for once, and her tail is down. However, her ears are also down. This means that either she is less angry about her picture being taken, or that she is more sad than angry. It can be hard to tell, especially since she has good reason to be happy in this image: it's the first time Kreludor won the Cup!

Interestingly, for Kreludor's second win, an image I couldn't find, instead of an expensive custom asset that'd have to come from Dom's salary, they instead reuse the first asset. Now, a custom asset like the one above is actually very rare (this may be one of the only times they did it?), and possibly came about because a younger me was angry at the second image and was very vocal about it on the Neoboards and somehow I got my way.

Now, let's look into why.

There are three main reasons, in the context of Neopia, that someone could feel this strongly about their body: gender dysphoria, species dysphoria, and body dysmorphia. The latter two go somewhat hand in and so I'll start there.

One of Derlyn's weaknesses is size. It always seemed weird to me because she didn't seem small. And then I remembered that Gnorbu are stereotyped as unathletic and clumsy, as well as Kreludor initially being seen as the team of strong tactics and less athleticism. With this context, it's clear that Derlyn's size weakness more a matter of she's a big, clumsy Gnorbu rather than her being small like in Zenor's case. I wish TNT were clearer on this, but it is what it is.

She could reasonably not like this for the obvious reasons. I do think it's more likely to be body dysmorphia in her situation simply because it's more about how her size holds her back in gameplay rather than a true desire to be another species. However, I could see either direction working with this as a starting point, and possibly even the lines being blurry on which is which.

Now with gender dysphoria... last year the blurb referred to Derlyn as a "he". This is why I mentioned earlier "hey pronouns could have changed and I'll edit this post as needed when the time comes". This to me could imply that Derlyn is trans, most likely transmasculine.

Disclaimer: I am myself nonbinary, and I have identified as transmasculine in the past. I no longer do out of a mix of trauma both pushing me towards and away from the label as well as feeling a serious lack of need for physical transition.

Something that supports this is that in most of the images we see of Derlyn, she is hiding her breasts, possibly out of dislike of them. It could also be partially just how the uniform fits on her as well, however

Derlyn being transmasculine would not come out of nowhere after last year's mistake. It would instead be a natural conclusion to twenty years of images. If it turns out that he is indeed trans, I hope we see post transition images of him being happy for once, with the spark in his eyes that trans people living their true lives have.