#n asks

This fandom is obviously heavy on the female player base, so most of what gets explored and written about and depicted is M/F pairings with m!UB and F/F pairings with f!UB. I’m definitely part of this trend too, because all my detectives are women. So, because we tend to see the same type of content (and to everyone who is creating M/M, NB/M, and NB/F content: you are all a wonderful and valuable voice in this fandom), remembering that these characters are bisexual (pan in M’s case) seems pretty important to me, as well as just a really interesting thing to explore in general.

And N in particular is such a fascinating character for this because unlike any of the others, they’ve been actively having romantic relationships for the past 300 years. A hasn’t been involved in any (at least since turning), F has only been in our world for 7 years so they've only encountered modern values, and M only has sex (which is its own issue). But N has been navigating dating and relationships for three centuries and this includes changing attitudes towards, well, everything. Gender and sexuality being one of those things. And I think we can safely assume the relationships they’ve had have been with people of different genders.

And yeah, most supernaturals are bi, the Agency has probably always been fairly open about these things because they have a different mindset from humans, etc., etc. But historical context is still a thing, and I think it’s interesting to explore it. (This is why I said that these thoughts 100% extend beyond canon, because I don’t think it’s something that will or even necessarily needs to be explored in-game, I just have a lot of feelings).

So, one of my WIPs involves Nat having a relationship with a human woman in the 1940s. This is obviously very different from Nate having a relationship with a human woman in the 1940s. There are codes that need to be navigated and things that need to be implied instead of said outright and so on. But then, it’s not only relationships with women that they’ve had, is it?

So how does Nate pursue a relationship with a man in, say, 1850? It would be very different from how he'd have approached a relationship with a woman in the same time period. How does Nat pursue a relationship with a man in 1850, knowing as we do that N has always been the pursuer in relationships, the one to make the romantic gestures? That's a very interesting dynamic flip to have, and something I’d love to see. I see N as being someone who is very aware of societal codes and absolutely not above using them in their favor if there’s something they want/someone they're interested in and want to charm—all that subtle gauging of interest and tentative comments that we see with the detective just fit into this.

Tangentially related sidenote here: one of the reasons I, and I think many others, love Nate (and love the idea of having Nate and Ava in the same universe) are the typically quote unquote 'feminine' traits that he has, a male character who is nurturing and gentle and open about his feelings. Many words have been written on this so I won’t repeat what others have said. But it wasn't until I started writing Nat in a historical context that I realized she's also quite subversive in her own way, with her confidence and the way she’s presented in general (another bit I bring up in my fic, in one of the snippets I've posted—whiskey was a man's drink, for a very long time, so Nat drinking it becomes noteworthy in a way it just wouldn't be for Nate).