I Embrace My Inner Tarzan [open post]

[summerdude]

There's a massive old oak about fifty yards west of Magnus's favorite clearing. It has thick, sturdy branches; he can climb nearly forty feet up it before he starts to worry about them holding his weight. There's a family of squirrels that lives nearby -- good squirrels, nothing like Ratatosk -- and Magnus likes to listen to them discuss their acorn deposits. Sometimes, when they're not looking, he'll grow and stash more acorns for them to discover; he's not sure how long the winters here get.

He's pretty sure it's cold outside, but it's not cold enough to affect him, and so he's still barefoot and in a t-shirt pretty much all the time.

Today, he's been scrounging in some of the out-buildings. There's a portable outdoor fireplace. While he doesn't feel the cold, he finds (contained) fires comforting, and it'll be nice to have some hot food, so he shoulders it and a makeshift grill surface, and lugs them to the base of his oak tree. Now he'll have an easier way of preparing the fish Mothwing sometimes leaves him than trying to summon the right amount of summer into them so that they cook and don't explode, at least.

He lights a modest fire, feeding it with fallen sticks. Then he shoves an apple, picked from another nearby tree, into his mouth and a book he'd pilfered from the library into the waistband of his pants, and climbs up an easy ten feet to his favorite branch. Things don't seem so bad, living out here.

Comments

[agula]

"When I was born, my parents needed a son, politically. The elders of the tribe would not accept my mother as Khatun unless she bore a prince. So my father resolved to say I was a prince no matter what my gender. His intention was to have a true son with my mother as soon as possible, and then, with her position secure, I could live as a woman. The elders might be irritated by the deception, but by that time my mother would be established as Khatun and they would have to accept it. My mother was very anxious for this to happen—she took it hard when their second child was also female. She badly wanted a son, so I could claim my identity as a girl. But it didn't matter much to me." It is always difficult to think of her childhood, the happy memories suffused with painful yearning and regret. There was no reason to believe things would not continue always as they were, with Qiyan Agula raising her perfect horse, learning to fight, and finding gifts in the woods to delight her sister.

"In the Chengli tribe, being a man or a woman made little difference. Either way, I would have been able to ride my horse and hunt with my sworn brother, and the Chengli also would have accepted a female Khagan. Men ruled by tradition, but the strength of women was respected, and my father intended to champion me as his heir. But my family was murdered before my parents' third child could be born, so no one ever knew I was a female prince—not even my own sister. After that..." How much of this to tell? Qi Yan does not want to discuss the masked princess. "I did live openly as a woman for some years, while recovering from illness and studying. Again, it made little difference to me. But when I went to the southern Wei kingdom, it was necessary to disguise myself as a man, because the Wei kingdom is different from where I grew up. Women's options are very limited there. I took poison to restrict some of my feminine aspects, so I wouldn't be discovered and killed." She pauses to put her thoughts together. There are more details about the trouble her gender has caused her, but they're not relevant to what she's trying to explain to Magnus. "I am not a man. Among my own people, I might have liked to live as a woman. I sometimes wonder what it might have been like—what kind of woman I would have been. But I could not have lived as a woman of the Wei kingdom. In that land, I much prefer to be a gentleman of the court."

[summerdude]

Magnus listens attentively, trying to slot Qi Yan's experience in with his understanding of gender. So like a butch lesbian? he wonders. He feels a little out of his depth, actually, and wishes Alex were here for this conversation instead. Knowing more about gender than most of the residents here is a really low bar, and he's by no means an expert -- after all, he's been trapped in one gender his entire life, and it fits him fine enough. Heck, he didn't even realize he was into dudes until Alex kissed him while male^*! So it's not like he's any wiser when it comes to sexuality, either.

"So it's more of a -- safety and convenience thing?" he asks, to clarify. "Rather than an inner need?"

*To be fair, he also didn't really think about being into girls. Until Alex kissed him while female.

[agula]

Qi Yan has never much thought about it. It is difficult to explain what is not clear even to her. "I don't know. There has always been an external need, so I can't say how it would be if I had the choice. I have no desire, now, to start dressing as a woman and answer to feminine titles." She gives Magnus a little smile. "I don't expect you to diagnose me, like a physician." She just wondered what it would be like to take advantage of her apparent safety here, and say things she has not been able to say. Her gender became common knowledge in the Wei kingdom just before she left it, so it feels as though the secret has already been half-exposed. Otherwise she might have kept it a little longer, truth spell or no.

[summerdude]

"Gender isn't a diagnosis," Magnus says, immediately and firmly. Of this he is certain. He's learned about how it's been used as one in the past, and come down on the side of 'strongly opposed.' But he abandons his attempt to try to categorize Qi Yan anyway, instead taking everything she (they? he?) says at face value.

He still does have one question, though. "You have no desire to answer to feminine titles," he says. "Does that include pronouns?" He's mostly avoided thinking of Qi Yan in terms of pronouns since they met, and he wants to make sure he's doing it right. "Would you prefer masculine ones, or neutral ones?"

[agula]

"I don't think I understand. It may be a language difference."¹ This place does translate between different tongues. Magnus is not speaking Mandarin, and parts of speech differ drastically between languages, so "pronouns" may have an entirely different use to him. Qi Yan knew this, but it didn't occur to her that her gender might be indicated by the language others use, in ways she cannot perceive. "I would prefer if most people assume I am a man, and treat me as such. Whatever language indicates that is what you should use. Will you explain it to me?"

¹Modern Mandarin differentiates between "he" and "she" in spelling but not pronunciation. Before the 20th century, it did not differentiate. Qi Yan's first language is not specified in canon, but as far as I can tell none of the languages in the families it might belong to use gendered pronouns.

[summerdude]

"So there's masculine pronouns, like he/him/his," Magnus says. "Those are the ones I've always used. There's feminine ones, like she/her/hers. Alex has both sets. And then the neutral ones... it varies. Some people have they/them/theirs. Some people have other stuff that isn't in any of those categories, based on what feels the most correct. I don't know as much about that, but we had a kid at the Chase Space the month before I came here who had xe/xem/xyr."

[agula]

Qi Yan shakes her head, mystified. The translation is nonsensical, but the idea of different pronouns for different genders is simple to grasp. "It doesn't make any difference to me. But what I've told you is private, so you may use the masculine ones with others." It varies, which words in her own language feel like her, and which do not. She is Bayin's sworn brother, and a prince to her people. The word princess would sound inaccurate. Xiao-Die calls her gege, but she wouldn't mind jiejie, if it was ever safe to acknowledge their relationship. She would not like to be called a woman within the Wei court, especially as it would make her title Empress, which makes her skin crawl just to think of. But if Nangong Jingnu were to call her wife... The flame that lights in her heart, she must immediately extinguish before the heat reaches her face.

With all that in mind, it is impossible to choose how she might feel about gendered words that mean nothing to her culturally. "Lan Wangji knows." And Qi Yan mentioned her gender to Gu Xiang, but she doesn't know if Gu Xiang understood what she meant. "If you're speaking with him, you could indicate that I am a woman." Lan Wangji knows that she is a certain type of woman. He won't misunderstand.

[summerdude]

"Okay," Magnus says, frowning with concentration. "Let me get this straight: Out loud, masculine terms, unless I'm only around Hanguang-jun or you, in which case feminine ones are okay but not necessarily strongly preferred. And in my head, when I'm thinking about you... it can be anything?"

[agula]

"Exactly." She smiles at him, appreciative of how hard he's working to understand. It's this earnest nature that makes her like and trust him.

[summerdude]

Magnus nods, smiling back. "I still have questions," he admits. "But I think maybe our worlds have different words to talk about this kind of stuff, and my questions are definitely more based in what's familiar to me." Plus he's still trying to be better about respecting people's boundaries, and doesn't want to risk coming too close to any of Qi Yan's, especially after what is obviously a major revelation. So he'll just say -- "Thank you for trusting me with this, Qi Yan."

[agula]

Qi Yan might not have answers for his questions, even if he asked them. She has not met anyone like her, and she does not expect there to be a category to describe it. "Thank you for being trustworthy," she says with a respectful nod.

[summerdude]

Magnus flushes. "Sure, no problem," he says, a little awkwardly.

[agula]

"And you?" She gives him a little smile. "Yet a man?"

[summerdude]

"My whole life," Magnus says, with a crooked smile.

[agula]

"And how are your lessons? Have you learned anything new?"

[summerdude]

"I'm trying," Magnus says, now smiling. "Let's see. A few people are teaching me how to cook. Nina is teaching me how to flirt, but I'm terrible at it. Claudius is teaching me some more diplomacy. I've been doing a lot of reading on a ton of different subjects, too; I think I'm finally starting to understand triangles."

[agula]

"Teaching you to flirt? Who are you practicing on?"

[summerdude]

"Oh, it's all conceptual, since Alex isn't here."

[agula]

"Oh, of course." Qi Yan could probably use those lessons too. For so long she's been unable to openly express her feelings for Nangong Jingnu—she's not sure how she would begin, if she could. She feels a stab of kinship with Magnus, separated from the one he loves, even though Qi Yan's situation is different. Nangong Jingnu would not like to see her. Thinking it reminds her of how determined she is to return to Nangong Jingnu and force her to settle their affairs. She must stay well until then.

"I should go inside soon—the cold is not good for my health. I would hate to disobey the orders of my physician. She is a cat."

[summerdude]

Without any real thought or intent, Magnus summons some heat and pushes it Qi Yan's way. "Mothwing is the best," he agrees.

[agula]

"She is both knowledgeable and compassionate. A valuable combination."

[summerdude]

"Yeah," Magnus says. "It's cool other people here can talk to her, too. Back home I'm the only one who can talk to animals."

[agula]

"Can you?" Qi Yan glances at him in surprise. "Have you met Fenyes?"

[summerdude]

"Feynes?" There's another named animal on the premises?

[agula]

"Sagramore's horse." Qi Yan's affinity with horses isn't as dangerous of a secret as what she's just told Magnus, and in her childhood she was famous for it. So she doesn't hesitate to say, "I have the ability to communicate with horses. It is a gift I was born with."

Magnus' ability is likely different from hers, since so much of his life is unrecognizable to her. But she cannot shake her own associations with animal communication. To the Chengli, it would show that Magnus has a pure and loving heart. That is easy to believe.