#or if i subconsciously want to be a triple a battery: aromantic asexual agender

[pinkfestivalpeanuttree]

omg i finally remembered to ask this X_X, anyways i remembered you left some interesting tags on one of my posts and i wanted to ask, how do you view yjh's gender identity?

i personally went with the masc-presenting trans lesbian angle since that felt the most "in character" and also had a lot of comedic potential in my au but im very curious about how you've characterized her since it seems like you see her as more feminine so to speak (feel free to make your answer as long as you want jdhfshfdsj i love talking about gender)

omg it's betawooper from transfem yoo joo au 😳 hiii!

Firstly I want to say that I ADORE your au!!! It's definitely influenced some of my headcanons on yjh's gender identity. I did see her as more feminine before but now I see her as comfortable with being masc-presenting and more androgenous. Secondly, I am biologically female and been comfortable with she/her pronouns and presenting femininely my entire life. However, after learning more about the lgbtqia+ community and doing some self-reflection, I realized that I may be under on the non-binary umbrella. I haven't really experimented with my gender identity much. Unlike my romantic and sexual orientation (aroace spectrum), which I felt a connection to as soon as i learned what it was, and felt the urge to do more research on it, my gender was more ambiguous to me. I didn't really feel a strong connection to it, or rather, I felt a strong disconnect to it. I feel like I should insert a cool metaphor here. It's like a cloud? I can see different shapes from it, but I can't get closer or touch it. It's amorphous and not solid, and I can't get a good grip on it. I like being feminine, but I like being referred to with they/them pronouns, and also get gender envy (?) from more androgenous male characters. I'm comfortable with having no labels as of now, but I'd like to experiment with my appearance and pronouns more irl if I get the chance.

All this to say that I started projecting onto Yoo Joonghyuk lol. Kinda funny because usually i project my aroace-ness and neurodivergence onto my blorbos, not my gender identity, but between Breaking the Sky Swordsmanship and the Punisher it was just too perfect. (actually I've noticed i've been projecting my gender onto more characters since I've fleshed out my headcanons for yjh. It's not a conscious decision, but if someone were to ask me what I thought of [character's] gender, I'd have to pause and go, 'Well, I'm not sure, but they're definitely not cis.' It's actually the same way I come up with my aspec headcanons: 'not sure where exactly you are on the spectrum but I like you way too much to make you allo.')

Another fic that inspired my interpretation of yjh's gender is this fic, https://archiveofourown.org/works/42593688/chapters/106989912, which I love dearly with my entire heart but might not be up your alley. It has a more feminine yjh and romantic yoohankim (if i may dump some more lgbtqia+ headcanons here I hc both yjh and kdj as aspec and yoohankim as a queerplatonic relationship but I am okay with romantic yoohankim mostly because there is so little qpr/aro representation in general. I am also a multishipper and I love your sapphic seolhyuk so much!) and it's a post-epilogue fic with yjh figuring out her gender identity with the support of Kimcom.

So to me, Joonghyuk's gender is similarly ambiguous in nature, the Amorphous Untouchable Cloud of Gender™️, Definitely Not cis, and she's androgynous-presenting. I think she would keep her hair short throughout the scenarios for efficiency, but post-epilogue she'd grow it out. Not a lot, but she would absolutely use her androgyny to fuck with strangers. I think Secretive Plotter with long hair would be great because she'd give me more gender envy than I already have. I don't think she'd have labels for herself. I think she wouldn't like makeup the one time she lets Seolhwa put some on her but everyone agrees that she looks amazing with eyeliner. I think she should be allowed to use Breaking the Sky Swordsmanship on transphobes. I think she uses any pronouns but prefers she/her. I think, had it been canon, her being trans would have added a whole new layer to her character arc and the meta-ness of ORV and its themes of breaking free from predetermined roles, to her role as "protagonist" and the way she breaks free from being a "character" and just... it would have been super cool and I can't write an entire essay on how trans yjh would have improved ORV but I want to.

Thanks for the opportunity for me to infodump about my headcanons lol! Just curious, what tags/post was it that made you ask?