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Playing With / Insect Gender-Bender

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Basic Trope: An insect character is a depicted with traits of the wrong sex.

  • Straight: Bob is a male honeybee who functions as a worker and has a stinger. (In Real Life all worker honeybees are sterile females.)
  • Exaggerated: Antonio is a male honeybee queen who lays eggs for the hive.
  • Downplayed: Tara is a female tarantula who is smaller than her mate, a male tarantula. (In real tarantulas, the female is usually bigger than the male.)
  • Justified:
    • The gender of Bob the honeybee is purely aesthetic; functionally, he is still a sterile female honeybee.
    • Bob is part of a fictional species of honeybees where there are both male and female workers.
  • Subverted: Bob is a female honeybee in both sex and gender; she merely has a Gender-Blender Name.
  • Double Subverted: ???
  • Inverted: Neither male or female honeybees have stingers.
  • Parodied: ???
  • Averted: Beatrice is a sterile female worker honeybee.
  • Defied: Any male honeybees that try to become workers are executed.
  • Zig-Zagged: A honeybee colony has male drone honeybees, but also male worker honeybees.
  • Enforced:
  • Lampshaded: "Aren't all worker honeybees female? Why is this one a "male"?"
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: "Did they even do their research on bees? In the real world, all worker honeybees are female!"
  • Invoked: Bob the honeybee refuses to work as a drone and decides to be a worker honeybee instead.
  • Exploited: Bob uses his stinger (which only female honeybees should have) as a weapon.
  • Played for Laughs: ???
  • Played for Drama: ???
  • Played for Horror: ???
  • Implied: Bob appears to be a worker honeybee, but has an Ambiguous Gender.
  • Deconstructed: Bob is outcasted by his fellow honeybees for wanting to work instead of just being a sperm producer for his queen.
  • Reconstructed: ???

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