#words...

It's canon that angels in Ultrakill are 'it' unless they're high ranking enough to be given male pronouns, and so gender is more like a status symbol than an actual identity to Gabriel. Though he acknowledges that his male pronouns were probably revoked when doing the whole, y'know, mass murder of Heaven's Council, he's also done his mental gymnastics of "well, they were also corrupt and had no real authority to judge me in the first place so technically speaking i am still the highest ranking angel even if i have self-exiled myself from heaven so i am keeping my male pronouns tyvm".

to him, he's still a 'he' because he's an archangel loyal to God, damn it. If he ever felt like that was no longer the case, he would probably revert to 'it'... but would still respond to 'he/him' just out of sheer habit. Gabriel's adherence to a masculine form kind of ties in with that too, because as "God's Will" he would feel the need to present heavily as masc bc he views himself as a representative of God and so he needs to project the same masculinity that he feels 'Father's would have.

tl;dr Gabriel's gender identity is more wrapped up in how it pertains to status in Heaven and how he feels he needs to present to fulfil his role as God's Will. When it comes down to the actual gender, Gabriel is pretty apathetic towards it. He's first and foremost an angel and he doesnt see the relevancy of what gender he is outside of how it reflects on 'Father'.

(also in 21ge fic all of the angels have female sex organs, but the pronouns they use are either it or he. There is a lore reason for this that will come up in the fic eventually but yeah, if there is an angel with a humanoid shape, none of them have dicks in 21ge fic (looks at Uriel) especially him. so Gabriel wouldn't really consider himself trans, he is just... an angel high-ranked enough to earn the privilege of using he/him, but from our perspective he is trans. god i hope that made sense)

alright, V1 - it has no thoughts whatsoever about gender identity and it likely never will. It is kind of uncomfortable with being 'humanised' in general, because it is a warmachine and it is a very good warmachine, which it feels is pretty incompatible with a human being.

oh it takes pleasure in achieving things a human can, like creativity and stuff, but it doesnt want to be compared to a human in terms of personhood. So the whole gender identity thing would be dismissed outright as nonapplicable to it, and is perfectly happy to stick to 'it' and think no further on the issue.

Okay, so what does that mean for them in terms of sexuality? again, they have no real thoughts about it. Gabriel is an angel who is supposed to be above carnal attraction and romantic love, and V1 is a machine whose sole purpose in life is to kill. The fact they end up in a relationship that is bizarrely functional bc they're both so dysfunctional they kind of cancel it out is already a miracle in and of itself, and couldn't be replicated ever again with anyone else.

I will say Gabriel does feel attraction for things (he's just extremely repressed), but he is more inclined towards things that look like they could kill him in a back alley brawl, so... yeah. V1 would still be his type lmao

ALRIGHT BONUS VENUS-1: it uses it, but it will eventually shift into using 'he' because it personally finds 'it' dehumanising, and unlike V1, Venus does actually want to be more like a human than a machine (or a demon-machine). while it doesn't really, like, view itself as male, it is the gender it feels it is more aligned with.

Admittedly though Venus doesn't really think too deeply about it. It will eventually decide "hm ok i will use he/him bc the 'it' is annoying me you use that for machines" and then that is it. that is the level of thought Venus puts into it. oh, and his choice is also influenced by the fact that he does actually have a dick. anyway.

that ramble was very incoherent, but i hope it was interesting on how these three view themselves gender identity wise in 21ge. like that post said, they're not going to view themselves in the same way we, humans of right now, will view themselves. None of them are human, and all of them feel severe degrees of separation from the human experience of gender too as they're, uh, angel/machine/demon-machine respectively. they're gonna come at it from an entirely different angle.

its fun to think about though, and also funny because excepting Venus, Gabriel and V1 are so confident and sure in their identity regarding their gender that they dedicate no real thought towards it anymore. like that book is closed on that chapter on their lives, they've got bigger fish to fry like Gabriel wrestling with his crippling Catholic guilt and growing desire to jump V1's mechanical bones and V1 with letting itself care for something other than itself for once.

Ahhh greetings from a month in the future. I have finally finished this sldfksd. Have some Sol and Arcade pre-ship content :3

Thunder cracked on the stale dry air like a whip, reverberating through the floor of the cramped room Sol and Arcade had rented for the night. Sol’s geiger counter quietly clicked its response. 

The rare rains that rolled through the Mojave were appreciated by the flora and fauna alike, even when lightning fractured the sky, but radstorms were all but unheard of so far from the oceans of radiation that dotted the map. The woman who’d rented them their beds claimed it was the first one she’d seen blow over outer Vegas since she was a child. 

Sickly green seeped in through ripped linen curtains and Sol struggled to swallow against the dryness in his throat.