#willowwasbored

‎I've been thinking about our discussion regarding the two characters. Chara (they/them) and the other character whose gender is up to interpretation which is Clover.

You've made an take where both are binary female and male, and you call their relationship "gay" – especially during Pride Month.

‎‎I want to be clear: I'm not trying to shut you down or tell you you're wrong. I'd actually like to debate this openly, meaning I'll share my concerns, but I also genuinely want to hear your reasoning. To start, I have considered that:

‎‎· "Up to interpretation" means any reading is equally valid, even binary ones.

‎· "Gay" can be a fun, broad term for any relationship that feels queer to you.‎

· Changing characters is just part of fandom creativity, and no harm is intended.‎‎‎

From my side, here's why I struggle with it:

‎‎1. Chara is canonically non-binary (they/them in the game, no gender options from Toby Fox). Changing that feels like erasing a rare example of non-binary representation. That representation matters to real people. You can see many reminders, especially on Tumblr why this is

‎2. If both characters are now binary F and M in a cisheterosexual relationship, calling it "gay" is factually inconsistent. It would be like calling a banana an apple – you can do it, but it confuses the meaning of the word.‎

3. During Pride Month, labels have extra weight. Using "gay" for a relationship that isn't gay (by standard definition) can feel performative – like borrowing queer joy without queer identity.‎

4. I am queer myself

But I don't want to just lecture. I want to ask you honestly:

‎‎· Why change the original at all? What was unsatisfying or difficult about keeping Chara non-binary and the other character gender-open?

‎· What does "gay" mean to you in this context? Are you redefining it, or using it as a vibe rather than a literal description?

I'm genuinely curious. And I promise to listen. If you can convince me that I'm missing something important that there's a valid reason to erase Chara's non-binary identity and still call it gay –.I'll tell you so.‎‎ No hard feelings either way.

English is not first language so I had help from someone

Hello! Willow here!

(As i wrote this i started rambling a bit so im super sorry for that)

I've read your message and i'm very happy to have this conversation considering i'm very open with my views, so to adress some things perhaps much like you i'll put them into some important points just to make sure i answer everything, though of course considering this is very long and you caught me at a late hour im very sorry if i skipped something small, in advance thank you for understanding. This is a story i've been developing since around early 2020 and still am working on, some things may slightly change over time as i write the script or make more finalized designs for all of the characters not to mention fixing the possible plot holes but by now most of it is basically done so im very happy that you seem to enjoy my work so far, i've been really excited to finally share it instead of just having a bunch of lore that sat in a random drawer just waiting to be seen, especially since i'm actually going to keep working on the series for a while, right now the end goal is finishing a full comic series, most likely here on Tumblr but also on other possible sites, but i didn't look into which ones exactly just yet. With that stuff out of the way, i want to adress that i too consider myself a part of the LGBTQ community, i am nonbionary (He/They), and an abrosexual pansexual, i would say that im not someone to be looked at politically for inspiration in that sense considering i don't really get into them very deeply and nowadays live in a country that doesn't have any issues with the community for years now, not to mention how my town puts up pride flags out in the street from time to time so i simply do not feel the opression all that much anymore, of course i do not come from that place, i was raised in a highly homophobic town in Poland so perhaps i've seen both sides of the spectrum. Which yes, Poland is my homeland which yes, that also means english isn't my first language so no worries about that, im happy to help as much as i can, though maybe if you have more questions that might be unrelated to the blog of this AU i'd rather answer them on my main account @willowwasbored.

I also want to mention that i don't mean any harm and wish for everyone to be equal, no matter your race, gender, etnicity, sexual or romantic orientation, disability, uprising, religion, conditions and so on. - Why the hell do you call a hetero couple gay? Ewwww

I don't actually mean it literally because then it'd weird me out too, i have a tendency to throw words around or get very sarcastic which none of my content properly show because i don't really make videos or stream so you don't really even hear my voice or see me, i use the word "gay" very loosely around people that might have a tendency to swing both ways or be queer in some capacity, maybe show that they might not be as gendered as they're supposed to be and all that.

Normally you probably wouldn't know this until i released the comic but all of my characters genders, even when specified are written very losely and stray away from the standard characteristics of the concepts very very much even when it comes to ones that present more masculine or more feminine.

Not to mention how i think quite a lot of words when used only jokingly can bring a sort of joy, of course i don't mean strictly offensive terms but only simple words, i don't think the word gay is offensive to anyone, did you know it actually used to be a synonym to happiness? Which i find myself also using sometimes, because i love word plays.

Chara:

Chara in my story may be considered a girl, lorewise; she is a princess that was adopted by the royal family at a very young age and stayed like that for a while, but as time passed she ends up disliking a lot of girly things quite a bit because of another lore reason and ofc they're very specific girly things which are associated with the royal life, not long ago i didn't even know if to ever put her in a dress at all but the story requires it so far so i forced myself to figure out some royal clothes for her. She has overbearing parents that keep her in check a lot of the time, you could say that Toriel is a helicopter parent and Asgore is the standard dad that works a lot and hardly has time, making her expression of self very limited, so eventually later after some sad lore things she ends up living with Sans which is her familys friend in the story, she considers him her uncle but also he again is far too leanient for her which leads to her still not doing too well on her own and that leads to some other stuff down the road.

Basically a mix of bad parenting, something i got the idea from both Deltarune and Undertale considering the way Toriel acted towards her kid and all that lore, not to mention i saw a lot of my queer friends have similr issues, but they're not limited to queer people either from what i've seen at all. Chara was always a girl in all of her concepts ever since the first creation i ever made of her but also she was never supposed to be someone you couldn't just interpret as the other gender if you just wanted to do so, honestly i'd say that if i just snapped my fingers and put a proper label on her it wouldn't even change anything in the story which is probably why i skipped that over and now she's technically more like a glorified tomboy with anger issues and a chocolate addiction, not to mention her Shoto Todoroki ahh powers if you read my other post.

Im not justifying myself, but usually my work is quite a bit up to interpretation so you can think of her whatever you want.

Besides i also wanted to mention that when it comes to gender expression, i think it's deeply connected with our mental health and how we precieve ourselves, so this serves as a great example of how to notice when things change in her life. You can literally see the change which is also something you do in media that has images, the famous rule of show don't tell which makes me hope only like three people reads this so they get to this conclusion all on their own. Clover: The belowed cowboy is one of my favorites, he basically solves conflicts, is absolutely in love with Chara, has way too much to do for a 16 year old which makes him basically a workoholic, not to mention how he keeps doing things, that guy has two jobs just because he wants to and still takes side jobs anyways but aside from that i consider him a cross dresser, though he is written in a way that you can also interpret him as trans (ftm) which once again! It is fully up to you, i do not fully care how you precieve him.

My point is, he is very flexible with it, i was thinking about a scene later in the comic where Chara doesn't want to wear a dress she got from Toriel and he wears it instead to encourage her and even asks if he looks good. This is just an example but, he's clearly comfortable with who he is and it shows in his confidence, positivity and all that.

These two are the stereotypical sun and moon.

(I'd share more but i don't want to spoil you too much)

Quite ironically his gender specifically doesn't exactly matter in the story either, if i snapped my fingers and turned him into a her, it wouldn't change anything to me because i simply don't care about gender this much.

I honestly think gender is a construct that men made to create patriarchy, and it's clearly working which i dislike so i don't want to even think about it when making an enjoyable piece of media like this, especially since it highlights real issues too and believe me there's more than i ever expected. Another thing is that in my story i take representation seriously and especially want to have some realism and with so many characters having all of them some sort of lgbt just isn't realistic so the queer characters you get so far are Undyne and Alphys as a lesbian couple (Duh), considering Mettaton to be trans (Mtf cuz he's cool af), Vess (he's actually gay and most likely crushing on Raven), Raven (Nonbionary they/them but also masculine presenting most times), and i have some other stuff in my sketches, for example Asriel is written to contrast Chara and be more feminine and brighter in a childish way considering he's actually 5 years younger than her in the story.

Also i wanted to mention that i've never actually found terms for a Princess or a Prince that weren't specifically gendered, not to mention the cowboy and cowgirl terms which are quite off putting, in those cases my default is the masculine version because in my first language it'd be the most neutral term without just changing letters to x or someting like that considering it is very gendered if you look at Polish grammar (You don't actually have to look, just saying).

- But the original is completely different, what the hell???

Toby Fox made an amazing game and im not doing anything to it, the original honestly has almost nothing to do with my AU, it's just a base for the story and that's it, there's just way too many things about the lore to mention right at this moment. I mean look at other AUs where Chara's openly just a guy or just a girl, or the countless fanfiction where people just genderbend characters, i like the original too but don't mistake my AU with it, i don't get anything from making this story at this moment, just some seratonin and experience writing something bigger. That's it. It's a passion project.

- You're lgbtq and you erase lgbtq from content? Seriously???

Yes and no, actually nowadays my default is that if i don't specify a gender of a character, it's immediately nonbionary as a base, because it means that no matter what i do with them, it'll work and unless i want something specific it's just like that, though usually i end up with some sort of a mix. In this story i wanted to experiment on what i could to with them and went out of my comfort zone quite a bit, not to mention how these two are basically the only possibly cis couple i ever made so bare with me-

Besides i would describe this AU more as something that empowers women considering Chara is trying to become an elite swordswoman along the main plot which is actually relevant to her lore quite a bit due to her reputation and all that.

Yet i also want to show someone struggling that still gets through life and leans on people they trust to keep going, it's just a very complex issue the AU explores deeply, especially in Charas ACT (The story is separated into acts like in a theater play and it'll explore literally everyone that's relevant)

Honestly this whole premise is so long i could make a whole post just rambling about that.

- You still called the two gay, that's weird

Yes it is, because apparently i found it funny at the time which i apologize for, i don't mean harm, i just never used that word in a serious way to begin with, i would simply use different language when adressing a serious issue instead of being silly.