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versegm · 10 days

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Book 2 has been out for more than a month now! Time to post the whole first chapter!!

Chapter 1: Rabbit Hole to Hell

Dante had chased fires for as long as he could remember.

It was hard not to, with a curiosity as endless as his. He'd burned himself on the stove despite his mother's warnings and he'd burned himself in the sun despite the protection his father slathered over him. They were both so busy with their work that Dante wandered aimlessly towards the fires.

He drew friends for tea parties, but those niceties grew boring. He counted eyeballs and their parts to himself in play, but it always ended on the same numbers. Searching for a proper adventure, he traipsed down the winding mountain trail behind their home.

(He was barely seven. Not even seven.)

(It was supposed to be a birthday gift.)

Usually, his mother or father held his hand the whole way down. If he was lucky, he'd get to play with Damon and Damon's Nanny. Mostly, though, he counted to himself until his mother became upset and his father carried him out of their space.

He was left alone more often than not.

Dante liked being on his own.

The path wound quite a ways, shrouded in shadow by the late afternoon sun. Dante wished to watch it like he could the rest of the stars. Wished he could one day go supernova just to prove he could.

Fire was unruly. Fire was fair. To bite back when handled without consideration; that was the goal Dante strove towards every day. To be known as something not to be toyed with.

At the end of the path was a dark cave. Not the iron door that usually greeted him. Someone had torn it out, maybe, and Dante peered inside, hoping to glimpse the cause of such destruction. A melting giant of slime resting in these mountains, perhaps. One of his good tea time friends with their spindly limbs and black blood, could be. Or perhaps a more traditional monster, like those in the storybooks he was so fond of.

(It wasn't a monster.)

(Dante was the monster.)

The sudden thought made him jolt back, made him doubt. What was he doing here again? Wasn't he supposed to be at school, with his friends?

Marina Royal. For gifted youth. Shadows, shadows, shadows, all sitting in rows of desks, staring at him from across the classroom.

Their blank white eyes were funny. Their stapled grins kept them laughing.

Dante shook off those foreboding images and walked down into this cavern. He'd find something fun at the end. He always did.

There were no lights, so Dante made his own. He followed the trail down, down into the heart of this beast. The deeper he went, the stuffier it seemed. Like he was inside some living thing, breathing around him and making the air musky.

(Wet and flesh walls. Eating him alive.)

He reached out to touch the wall and met with coarse rock. Enough to give him a scrape and he flinched back. So, not some belly. All the same, as he kept walking, he had the distinct impression that he was being swallowed.

The air grew thick with ash. Distantly, he could hear burning. Cackling. A steady hum, the whir of technology. Dante's parents always seemed to have spare tech around. Misfit eyeballs were his favourite. He loved pulling them apart and reassembling them in different configurations. It was something his parents actually encouraged. The differently coloured irises and each unique error were fun puzzles to solve. Which pieces fit together, which equations were correct, Dante had the most fun with those.

The ground beneath his feet gave out suddenly, without warning. He fell, fell into pitch black, unable to even scream.

He closed his eyes and curled himself into a ball, bracing for impact.

It never came.

When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on the ground in an unfamiliar and red landscape.

He stood up slowly, taking in as much of it as he could. The dirt below his now bare feet was a reddish brown. Plateaus, his mind helpfully supplied. The sky above his head was the colour of broken hearts. No clouds. No draw distance. And, situated around him in a neat little ring, was that fire he knew to be living beneath his skin.

Hell.

This was Hell.

It had to be.

He took an experimental step forward. The fire moved with him. He took in a deep breath and stretched himself up on his tippy-toes. The fire rose with his efforts. Delighted laughter bubbled up from him and he ran out to the edge of the plateau to look down into the frozen lake below, the ice just as red as the skies above.

(Simple times. Simple curiosity.)

"You certainly took your time getting here." A voice said from below him. He squeaked in surprise and tried to step out of their way. There was no one around him that he could see, however. "How dare you keep royalty waiting. Now, confirm your designation so that we may get started."

"Hi. Who're you?" Dante looked around the area once more, but it was a futile effort. At least they spoke Italian. Damon's English was hard to grasp at times. "Where are you? I'm Dante."

"No, no, that won't do." They laughed, a cruel and mechanical tone. Dante noticed the way his shadow rippled with the sound. "You're supposed to give me your designation. You're supposed to be frightened of me."

The shadow stretched out long like it was sunset, then pooled together in a spot just outside of his fires. The figure which rose from it was familiar. A friend. Their blank white eyes and stretched white smile made it unique. Different from all the other friends Dante had ever drawn. It had hair, too. Or, the impression of such.

"I am the first child, ruler of all the Kingdoms in Hell."

Dante hopped towards them with an excited, "Nice to meet you. Unless you're a part of me. In which case, it's nice to make your acquaintance again. You came out of my shadow."

The child stared at him for a moment, silent in contemplation. Silent as it loaded. Hell was for sinners and bad people. At least, that was what Sunday school always said. But Dante was much too curious to see how it really looked. Much too interested in this new friend, whom he was sure looked too familiar to just be new. Maybe even his parents would like this, would actually let him talk to them for a change.

(Never. Couldn't trust them. They caused this.)

"Designation: Inferno. Subject: Delta." The child said, its voice wholly mechanical now. Wholly devoid of familiarity. "Processing speed: bit crushed due to complications in framework."

"Ugh, again?" Complained another voice. A different voice. This one was much deeper than even Dante's father, sounded as gravelly as the stony wing beats which accompanied its arrival. "What's causing this issue? My White Rabbit won't be happy if we can't get this resolved in time."

Dante watched closely as this stately Gargoyle landed beside the shadow child. He'd seen them before adorning churches, in pictures, on the telly. This one had deep red eyes, much like his own. Had claws and a beak and wings as big as its body.

He didn't get a chance to ask anything of it, as it next advanced on him, hovering right over that circle of fire, and stabbed one of its claws right into his eye.

He screamed so loudly that he was sure he tore something in his throat.

"Hm. No response." The Gargoyle said, withdrawing its claw. The fires around Dante flared up, licking and biting, but the Gargoyle paid them no mind. It said to the child, "Subject 00, locate the anomaly within Subject Delta's framework."

The child snapped back into focus, info life. "Obviously, it's that nose of his. Gumming up the works." They said, an amused sort of taunt to their more natural tone. "I think it should get removed."

"Worth a shot, if just to isolate the code there."

The Gargoyle hunkered down, like a robot running out of batteries. The air around it hitched weirdly, pixelating and growing unfocused until it smeared the whole thing out of view. The splotches of grey that once made up its body turned into a more flesh-like colour until it sharpened right back into focus, revealing a Chimera where it once stood. A lion's head with a mane of fire, the body of a crocodile with fleshy scales, and three rows of sharp, shark-like teeth.

"Now hold still and this will go much more smoothly than last time."

It leapt at him and tore at his face with those teeth. Ripped at his body with its claws. Again, Dante screamed and the fires rose and no amount of flailing would get it off him. The pain was so searing that, as he faded from consciousness, he fell into a white void instead.

Recalibrating. Reconstructing.

Rebooting.

Dante blinked and his feet were once again on the ground of these red-brown plateaus, his body no longer torn apart. There was a hole in his face, though. He touched gingerly at the spot where his nose should have been and met with air. Surprisingly, absolutely painless. He stuck his whole hand inside the space devoid of all the important things, like his skull or blood or a brain.

"Stop messing with your code, Dante." The Gargoyle snapped, making Dante straighten up at attention. The Gargoyle was back. It held something small and fleshy between its claws. "This was, indeed, the cause of the error. Thank you for your scan, Subject 00."

"And you call me the unstable one." The child laughed, clapping its mitten hands together gleefully. There was no sound. Shadows didn't make sounds. Didn't have bones, either. Weren't constrained to things like sense and logic. "Delete the whole thing and start from scratch. This one's obviously a failure."

"You may be right. But that would be a waste of time." The Gargoyle turned its eyes sharply on Dante and he flinched. His whole body trembled from the memory of being ripped to shreds and the flames around him quivered in agreement. He had no power here. "Subject Delta. Do you know why we gifted you with this particular signature?"

(Change. Always changing.)

(Rules, glamours, warping.)

(Inferno, shadows, Hell.)

The Gargoyle approached him and he was, once again, frozen to the spot. A deer in the headlights. "Curiosity led you here. Creativity led to this realm's creation. And fear led to your demise." The Gargoyle said. It placed the nose back on Dante's face and he winced this time as it clicked and reconnected painfully. "Each of these things shall be your punishments. Keep providing us with the data we need and your life shall be spared."

"Until the day Hell reclaims your soul." The child joined in.

They cackled once more and, this time, the sound was completely off. Not the same as before. Mechanical, harsh, hurtful. He knew that voice. He checked the Gargoyle next and screamed at its suddenly human eyes. Suddenly recognisable and brown and disapproving.

Now, finally, he broke into a run.

As fast and as far as he ran, it didn't change the fact that he was in Hell. He couldn't log out. Still, his feet carried him as the fires died down, refusing to listen in his distress. His stomach was too cramped, begging for something to fill it. Starving himself of power, his flames of danger. He heard singing and continued to run. He heard a chorus of voices all clamouring for his attention, for his companionship, and broke free of all their tendrils grasping at his back.

He tripped down into one of the plateau's gaps and fell towards the frozen lake.

As he plummeted to his freedom, he closed his eyes and thought one desperate, commanding statement:

Wake up!

He gasped as his back hit the ice and his form shattered completely.

(All that was left was fire.)

(All that was left was fear.)

When he landed on his feet, he was no longer barefoot. No longer fire. He was almost seven once more, standing outside that cavern on that mountain path. Home again, home again. Was this Hell or reality? Was he awake or was he still dreaming?

His skin was too warm. Too restricting. Dante went to tear it off, to peel away the layers and release the fires pleading to get out, but was stopped by a startlingly solid, "Haven't you caused enough damage?"

When he looked up, his no longer empty stomach lurched. The world around him was full of demons, spectres, shadows, and ablaze with an unrelenting Inferno. The shadows stood amidst the thrumming flames, watching him with their blank white eyes.

No longer grinning. No longer laughing.

He wasn't the cause. He hadn't done this. He couldn't have.

"Don't lie to yourself, Dante." They reprimanded him with their many silent, booming voices.

He ran from the sight, up the path and towards his home. When he burst inside, the White Rabbit was there. Waiting for him. "Will the Queen be returning to join us for supper? Or have you made him late again?"

Her eyes were red, too. Devious and uncaring. And her voice echoed, as if coming from everywhere all at once. Dante wanted to scream again, but only a billowing cloud of smoke escaped his mouth. At this, the White Rabbit clicked her teeth together at him in disapproval.

"No fires inside, deerling. Burning our equipment would mean instant liquidation."

His friends, the shadows rose up all around him. Each one uniquely maimed. Each one missing something necessary. They clawed at his body with their dripping, messy limbs and whispered it was his fault, his fault, his fault.

They were all he could hear.

No matter how much he tried to answer them, all that would come out of his mouth was that choking, suffocating smoke.

(Marked for Hell. Marked for Hell.)

His mind shouted at him over and over as the shadows tore into his flesh, pulling him apart chunk by bloody chunk, searching for his heart.

Then all he could hear was singing, urging his head to pop and more smoke to spew from the flames.

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versegm · 17 days

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Everyone, I have done it.

So, the post about Yugo and queerness in Wakfu is a 3 parter due to my use and abuse of pictures. You'll be able to enjoy part 2 here, and dw I'll add one at the bottom too

First, I would like to preface this by saying that, while I do believe they didn’t create or write Yugo with the idea making him queer in mind, I do not think the creators made things unintentionally either. What I think they actually wanted to do with Yugo, was to have a character that felt as gender neutral as possible, in order to make him relatable to the show's originally young audience, without alienating girls or boys. A character not leaning too much one way or the other.

But as such Yugo is a character that can be read within a queer lens without that much of an effort. I know a lot of people on this site hc him as on the aro and/or ace spectrum, some degree of nonbinary and in my specific case as genderfluid bi/pan, and I'm even considering possibly intersex.

Wakfu also happens to be the kind of show that, whether intentionally or not, just finds itself to have a ton and a half of queerness in it: from simple implications to actually out queer characters, the world depicted in the show is a diverse one, in that sense and more.

That’s why I genuinely think that it's not just random readings that come from fandom's typical queering goggles, I think there are elements in the show that do help these readings, precise elements as well as elements that need a little more digging.

So here's what this post aims to do: to find those elements and compile them in as clear a way as possible. Please do take into account that I am very easily prone to reaching so if you don't see it, that's totally fine, and I may end up structuring things in very chaotic ways, but I am doing my best.

I decided to separate my writing between the gender elements and the sexuality elements, with a listing format. One element, one dash. Since I am french and don’t know much about the english translation, I’ll be illustrating everything using screenshots as reminders, and will be adding some small notes and quotes translated by myself when needed. Well then, let's get started!

The gender category, or as I'd like to call it "this could have been an email- but make it about a trans character":

Yugo's name: first, this one is 100% due to a fic I read that made me reflect on a very interesting fact: in s1ep1, when Alibert finds Grougal's message, Yugo's name is never mentioned.

During that scene, he’s only called “this child” and “that small one”

What that means, given that Yugo's name has been "Yugo" since previous lives, is that either Alibert somehow picked the right name on first try, or, more logically, that he didn't. That Yugo got called another name for some years, until he got old enough to correct them.

And you would think the argument stops there, but in s2ep12, a character gets openly deadnamed and mocked for it by literally everyone, saying "his real name is…". There is one exception to this,

Yugo, who never mocks him and says "It’s not because your parents named you… ", which is a very interesting nuance in phrasing. It implies that, while to others the name their parents chose is a "real" name, an immovable fact of life, to Yugo it is a choice made by others for them, that can be wrong, that can be changed.

Yugo's relationship with femininity (and masculinity): Have you ever noticed that the Brotherhood of the Tofu very frequently separate themselves with gendered terms? You’ll often hear Tristepin and Ruel call Amalia and Eva “the girls” and Eva and Amalia call them plus Yugo “the boys”. Prior to the OVAs Yugo only does so in one episode, s2ep21, the one episode where he's magically seduced into being aggressive towards "the girls".

“You are so strong and smart, right guys?”

“If you aren’t happy you can go with the girls!”

Prior to this, Yugo never really plays into gender roles, and after it will be mainly due to his aging process, which we will discuss.

Yugo seems to treat socially gendered activities as if they weren’t, I believe it is also noticeable with his relationship to heroism, though that one can only be inferred in contrast to Tristepin's former very strict hero/princess binary viewpoint.

(Here I would have put an exception about the OVA and him admitting he always wanted to save a princess, but given that in the most recent manga the term is used as a pet name for him I guess I’ll let that one slide)

During s1ep4, Yugo crossdresses and not only is he comfortable with that fact, not only is he the one who came up with the idea (although Amalia gave him an unconscious push), he is thriving in it.

Look at the joy on his face upon putting a bow on.

I feel the need to remind everyone Yugo is 12 during s1, an age at which young boys are definitely aware of a gender divide and typically reject girly stuff like the pest.

Back to the Boufbowl episode once more, in s1ep10, you may have noticed Ruel calling being a cheerleader “being the girls”, and while Yugo may be on the bench as a substitute, he does participate in cheerleading right in the next episode.

Two three very motivated children and their unconvinced chaperone.

Actually he is the only character in the Brotherhood of the Tofu to be a cheerleader during both Boufbowl arcs.

His outfits are also not strongly gendered, especially compared to Tristepin's chest-out s2 design or Eva and Amalia's early short skirts, his most gendered character design might be his adult-form one, and even then, when compared to Nora's, you’ll notice Yugo is only ever wearing the same thing as her with added details (royal details?) and his own color palette. My take is he’s actually meant to look like the Eliatrope goddess, with his cape reproducing her hair.

S4 teaser Yugo because we don’t have a clean pic of his s4 design, and I did my best for Nora.

Yugo's aging process as a metaphor for transness: as we all know, from the OVAs until the last quarter of s4, Yugo is a young adult trapped within a child's body. He gets mocked and infantilized on the regular, his status as king belittled. The only thing that he maintains some form of respect for is his status as a hero. And you can tell it is weighing him down. For one, this body is an obstacle to his relationship with Amalia, not just due to the eyes of others,

"I grow slowly whereas she, she became a queen, a woman...", with the implication "and I'm not a man” or “I don't pass as one"

but also due to his own degrading self-perception.

“Let’s see who’s small!”

(notice how easily he gets tickled by a simple comment on his size, how the mere notion of his body being revealed becomes reason enough for violence in s3ep7).

Yugo gets angry and violent, a lot, and more than is typically expected of him.

“I tried thinking like Yugo, I’m sure he would have preferred this to the hit-you-in-the-face method.”

“Dear little brother, I don’t know what happened to you these last few years, but I don’t recognize you anymore!”

A result of trauma, sure, but if you're like me you may have noticed how turning into an adult made him feel very… relaxed, suddenly. In a way that can be compared to the disappearance of symptoms of body dysphoria with people who go through a process of gender-affirming transition.

As an aside, his s3 design really makes him look like he's wearing a binder, in addition to the turtleneck that would hide the absence of an Adam's apple, the look is very transmasc.

That one particular art of him is what really marked me, because of the slight shade under the chest. Doesn’t mean it is a binder, just means it could look like one.

Yugo's Eliatrope hat as a metaphor: There may not seem like there is much to say, but the fact is that this hat was very mysterious for a very long time. If you were part of the fandom before the s2 finale you may have been theorizing on a forum about what was going on behind that hat (I was on the "a second pair of ears but these are shaped like cat ears" team, but still slightly unconvinced), and you knew that there wasn't anyone more curious about this than Nox.

“We may finally get to find out what you hide under your hat.

-Even my friends never forced me to tell them!”

was a very iconic line, one that definitely could remind people of the infamous "what's in your pants" question.

Well the Brotherhood was curious as well, but mostly respectful and patient with their friend.

It was clear that there was discomfort with that part of him that he refused to reveal, so much so that he probably never washed with any of his friends. When they would hang around for days, when the girls wouldn't care between each other (and neither would Eva and Pinpin between each other, wink wink), when they would all sleep together, Yugo probably would still never take it off in front of them.

Overall my point is just that inthe rare times the hat gets discussed, it just doesn't sound cis.

the Eliotropes: they're coming back in the sexuality section, dw.

But, as Yugo himself says, they are "versions" of himself. The interesting question now is "in which way?" Since they are not "past versions" of him, and since they seem to "inherit" some of his personality/physical traits, I do believe them to be an expression of his own fragmented sense of self. Some of them may be men, as a reflection of his own perception of himself as one, but then some may be women for that same reason, and well some are women, some even are canonically enby.

Character on the far left is enby and character on the far right is a woman. Obviously Echo is not an Eliotrope.

One could even go as far as considering these traits can physically express themselves only because Yugo's anatomy reflects them, and in that case we can go into not just a gender reading, but into an intersex one. Pushing further into it, Yugo, being their creator, effectively gave birth to them, and as such they call him father, but the act of giving birth itself is typically associated with the feminine, sowe could argue that Yugo’s position is both one of father and of mother.

Of course they also have physical and mental aspects that are separate from Yugo, like none of the ones we met are the same sandy blonde as Yugo is for example, but the ambiguity of the existence of the Eliotropes is and will always be a matter of "where does Yugo end and where do they begin?".

A little question mark for the road: In OVA2, as a joke, Rubilax “reveals” that Tristepin was actually a woman all along. This is a sample of everyone’s reaction:

1st, Amalia is so bi it’s insane, but that’s not my point here. Yugo’s reaction being of absolute shock, even more so than Tristepin himself always had me wondering what was going on in his head. Through a queer lens it remains just as hard to read through, so my personal take is that Yugo is amazed at how male-“passing” Pinpin is, so much so he may think “You mean to tell me I knew that guy for years and never realized he was trans too?!” I don’t know, I’d love to get some feedback on that one.

That first section was 2 pages-long without the pictures, so let’s take a tiny break and enjoy some Yugo cuteness as a breather.