Trans Boy Vanae NPC

[ChromaTaphore]

Basically, my idea is a restless Vanae that got kidnapped and drugged by slavers, however, one of them messed up and gave him ManUp instead of Gush, leading to him realizing that the cause of his restlessness was because of his body not being right, not any external factors. Thus, he hid himself in a storage crate heading to Tarkus from the slaver's ship, and now lives there, torn between facing the unknown of changing his body and the discomfort of leaving it as-is. Is this something people would be interested in?

 

[Preacher]

I like the concept but I have some concerns. Due to technicalities something like this isn't likely to fly. Vanae are all only a single sex, which is female. They can't initially feel like they're the wrong sex because they have only one sex. They may have some penis envy or something but it wouldn't fit well with their societal structure. Not to mention their entire society is geared towards the feminine form and female superiority, which would stamp out any doubts about how they are pretty quickly if there were any and establish a mindset that how they are is natural or normal.

If it were me I'd rather go about it in a way that suggests the ManUp exposed them to a different sort of look and life. Naturally, them being changed to be more masculine had them kicked out of their community and ostrasized. They initially hated what has been done to them but ended up liking it due to their exotic form, relative to the usual vanae, attracting more people who are interested in them by curiosity alone. Eventually they accepted their more masculine identity but are still at odds due to them now being somewhere inbetween the sexes and this is where the confusion begins and the turmoil of deciding whether or not to go completely male or back to being completely female.

A vanae on Tarkus would be suffering as well. It's dry, arid, and really hot. Vanae need lots of moisture. They also have no translator, the only reason the pc understands and can talk to the vast majority of species is due to them having one. I can't imagine them doing any sort of well at all if they did find themselves there.

Just my thoughts on this.

 

[ChromaTaphore]

Hmm. Thank you for your input, @Preacher . I really appreciate it!! I'll rewrite my concept and make a new post in this thread once I do.

 

[Thebiologist]

I'm with preacher here. The species seems incompatible with the scenario.

 

[Evil]

Honestly, you'd be better off with a completely new race or something. More or less the same scenario, member of a monogendered species gets abducted by pirates, works on the crew for a time and gets a dose of ManUp, they then become Roger the Cabin Boy.

 

[valk42]

I like the idea of trans dude from a female only species, but do what you think is right

 

[moobere]

I also like the idea but to me the Vanae are like the Amazons or Hunters of Artemis (from the Percy Jackson books). Kind of we don't need men, but we kinda need them for breeding purposes you know?

 

[Kesil]

Or The Legend of Zelda's gerudo. I take that's a well established trope.

 

[Stemwinder]

Like others have said this scenario doesn't make sense for a monogendered species. They have no context for what a 'man' is in their society (because there aren't any), their only contact with males at all is as prey. Put a penis on one and she won't start thinking of herself as 'male' because the whole concept of masculine/feminine is foreign to them.

Preacher's suggestion is a better one. Rather than coming at it from an angle of transgenderism, a concept that literally can't exist within the context of the Vanae, take it from the angle of them suddenly having no place in their society and how lost they feel as a result of their ostracization. So then it's less about the character dealing with how they 'feel masculine', which makes no sense, and more of a launching point for alien culture shock, the conflict between the values they grew up with and the much different one they're suddenly forced to confront.