ok ecter talk that has to do with my ocs

i have these ocs who are nonhumans, and the way their society works is that they are superficially derivative of humans. they’re not humans, they don’t have to look like humans, but the powerful ones imitate human ideals to the best of their ability anyways, mostly because of laziness and corruption but also because they just genuinely don’t know how to structure anything without something to base it on

this includes gender. except it’s not gender. it’s roles. but they’re very obviously mimicking human genders without fully realizing the purpose or reason for its existence. this species doesn’t even sexually reproduce, they only have some semblance of human “body sex” because again, they mimic humans down to the appearance of them, but without having any actual use for doing so. and yet, this corrupted society still puts value onto the “"sex”“ of beings and tie it into the roles you can have. why? well. control and some mockery of "law and order,” mostly. the real answer is that it’s just what they believe is an extremely simple and easy way to create separation of labor and identity, not realizing that um. this is not how living creatures tend to operate on a 1:1 basis. you fucked it up

the fun thing about this though, is that just like with gender roles, and the patriarchy- yes, this society ends up forming its own fucked up roles and oppressive structures, but this also means that there’s this species’ own conceptualization of a sort of “non-binary” that slowly forms and is given shape and language. there’s also the whole idea of being non-conforming or just “trans.” it’s very difficult for them to understand, because their role is so tied to everything about them and splitting up, say, presentation and role, or role and job, is entirely foreign to them. but as they keep doing it, eventually the whole system kinda comes apart

best part? these guys can shapeshift. you can just insta-transition yourself in pretty much any way, if you work on the skill for long enough and will it into existence