More Rule 63 Designs

Tags: posts, gender, dev log, northanger abbey, from dreamwidth, visual novels,

Continuing adventures in creating a gender-swapped version of Northanger Abbey! Here's my first post about it.

These ones were a bit more challenging, both artistically and philosophically.

On the left is the matriarchy version, on the right the original patriarchy version. From left to right: Eleanor Tilney, Evelyn Stratford (an original character), and Captain Tilney. All characters are in regency wear matching their gender presentation. Short male and tall female versions of Eleanor, in cute pink and cream with dark skin, and friendly round face, and curly dark hair. Tall female presenting and shorter male presenting Evelyn, in purple with curly red hair and glasses. Tallish female and even taller male Captain Tilney, in red military garb with a sharp brown face and curly dark hair.

The challenge here is that Eleanor and Evelyn are trans, while Captain Tilney is wearing military dress.

In general I've been making all the amab versions of characters half a head/107% taller as a starting height, with the intention of tweaking everything once everyone's drawn and I can see how they look as a group. This is fine for the cis characters, but it felt a little weird making the trans male version of a character so much shorter, especially since Eleanor's character design is very cute and feminine. But I'm a short, cute-as-in-kitten transmasculine person (if not a trans man) and I'm not going to erase my own existence to avoid stereotypes. It helps that f!Eleanor is shorter than her two cis brothers, but still moderately tall, and so m!Eleanor isn't super short.

It also felt very uncomfortable thinking "What would a male version of this character look like?" about a trans woman. So instead I thought of it as: what would a trans man version of the (cis) Eleanor Tilney from the novel look like if I otherwise make equivalent design choices to my trans woman version?

Evelyn is less fraught: they're non binary, and only presenting as the opposite of their assigned gender for (complicated plot related) convenience. I originally liked the idea of their asab being ambiguous, and I may go back to that, I'm still deciding.

In general I made the tropey, lazy decision to keep mens and women's fashions basically the same under the matriarchal regency as under the real patriarchal one. I take a male character in a fancy coat, cravat, and waistcoat and give the female version a fancy ball dress in the same colours (and vice versa) But the original Captain Tilney is wearing a British Military uniform. What does a regency balldress version of that look like? You can see my attempt to answer that question. I took some inspiration from real regency military-inspired dresses, but it still needs some work.

Also I'm experimenting with facial features. Originally I had thicker eyelashes and coloured lips for the female characters, but I'm leaning towards switching to the same general features for all genders, with variation between characters but no neat gender dichotomy. Which means...a lot of redrawing /o\

Still, the project is coming along, and it's been fun.