Maya Masilingi is a person of many dualities: Nerd/Jock is one of them, being equally interested in programming & sports. The most obvious one, however, would be Female/Male. Maya is genderfluid, their gender identity constantly changing between the two mentioned genders, and with the help of a friend's invention, can also change their physical appearance at will. Even before they realised their gender fluidity in their mid-20s, though, the AFAB Luxray possessed an alter ego: a male, more confident persona called Luketz. Originally, he was just a way for Maya to gain respect from those who would downplay and belittle Maya in their daily life, but over time, they realised that the character they played was simply a half of themselves they weren't consciously aware of.

Although Maya gave up their double life, the two halves of themselves still differ slightly in which side of their interests and personality are expressed more openly. Their female self is more outwardly geeky, often talking about the game projects she's working on, and also comes across as calmer and conflict-aversive. Maya's male self (for which they still occasionally use the name Luketz for) acts confident and competitive instead, and in place of video games, he is more ready to chat about last night's rugby match instead.

Nowadays, Maya has learned to embrace the various facets of themselves and is glad that they don't have to play pretend any more: pretending to be a different person towards others, but also no longer pretending to themselves that their other half doesn’t exist.

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Roughly a month ago, I adopted a couple of characters  ThreeSecondsBack had no use any more, and one of them was a genderfluid Luxray called Maya. Their design and fluidity inspired me strongly, so that n the span of just 24 hours of first seeing them, I already formulated the basics of their personality and lore. While they have kept their first name and many of their traits, I pretty much build up their character from the ground up, reinterpreting what was already established and changing up aspects of them to my liking. In the end, I'm very happy with how Maya turned out and exploring their gender identity was something I found quite exciting to mull about.

In order to show off and contrast their female and male sides, I asked  GalaxiMonkey to depict them both next to each other. I gave them a detailed description of the scene and was honestly unsure at first if I wouldn't overwhelm her. When I received the first sketch, however, all worries disappeared. They captured the essence of Maya's two sides perfectly, helped by how well they drew their dreads.

(As an aside: Usually I don't put pronouns for my characters in the description, since they're usually pretty obvious. In the case of Maya's genderfluidity, things get a bit complicated. To put it simply, they go by she/they when female and he/they when male. When I'm referring to a certain gender, I tend to use gendered pronouns. If I am referring to Maya in general, I tend to use they. Ultimately, use whatever you're comfortable with.)