#mononormativity

[PT: "Gay marriage has been legalized, marriage rights don't need to be fought for anymore." /End PT]

1- This is such an narrow-minded ass thing to say. Please learn about other countries and their rights.

[ID: A world map, marking in green where gay marriage is legalized. The only places marked green on the map are Canada, the US, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecudor, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, France, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Greece, Malta, Liechtenstein, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, Thailand, and Taiwan. Some of South America, nearly all of Asia & the Middle East, nearly all of Africa, and all of the Oceania [aside from Australia & New Zealand] are marked white, meaning gay marriage is illegal. The text on the image says "Same-sex marriage is legal in nearly 40 places around the world. Note: Current to June 2, 2025. Source: Pew Research Center analysis of government sources and international news articles. /End ID.]

2- What about polyamorous marriage (polygamy)? Have you seen the map of where that is legalized? Polyamorous marriage has not been fought for in the slightest.

Below is a map of all the places that have polygamy legalized.

Black = illegal.

Orange = illegal, but not criminalized in practice (as in, they often "let it slide" if they got married in a different country/state/province where it is legal.) This means polyamorous people have no legal protections whatsoever and that the law will not be of any help to them, and could punish them if they seek any legal assistance related to their marriage.

Blue = legal.

Green = legal, but only for Muslims.

White = legal status unknown.

[ID: A world map. In Africa, the blue locations are Algeria, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eswatini, Gabon, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, South Africa, Sudann, Togo, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The rest of Africa is either orange, black, or white. In Asia, the blue locations are Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Maldives, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The green locations are Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Pakistan, Singapore, and India. The rest of Asia is black, orange, and a few small spots of white. Russia is orange. The rest of Europe is black. The Solomon Islands are blue. The rest of the Oceania, North America, and South America are all black. Only Antarctica and a few small specks on the map are white. /End ID.]

"Oh, but they could move to a location where it is legal" - this is classist and ableist. Not all people have the financial or medical ability to move. They might be unable to afford it, or they might be relying on specific healthcare that is only provided in their current area.

Additionally, you shouldn't have to move in order to be able to marry someone. That is a fucked up standard to give queer relationships.

Let's flip this the other way, too. If a married gay couple or polycule from a legalized location wanted or even NEEDED to migrate to a location where their marriage is illegal, what would they do? Getting a citizenship in a new location can risk not only their relationship, but legal trouble, potentially even jail.

And finally, 3- trans, gender diverse, and varsex people are rarely considered in marriage rights either.

The legal rights to marrying someone marked with an "X" on their ID (either due to being non-binary and getting their legal marker changed, or due to being one of the rare cases of being unassigned at birth) are complicated in a majority of the world.

The legal rights to marrying a binary trans person or an intersex person who has swapped from "F" to "M", or "M" to "F" is also complicated.

I’m sending Nintendo a feedback form of stuff they could add to TL:LTD, would it be okay if I included a screenshot of ur post about it? Or is that not okay? Thanksies :3

Yes, but please include the reblog that discusses disability [link], or just screenshot this ask instead!

Issues with TL:LTD!

1- No option to select "don't fall in love with this person" in the menu. The only wat to prevent people from falling in love is by putting them down as family, but that can make the family trees in the game weird (ie; what if you want Mii A and Mii B to date, but you selected Mii C as the family of them both, so A & B think they're related, and won't date each other? It's just annoying, the players should have the ability to just bar off certain Miis from falling in love with each other without having to turn them into family.)

2- No polyamory.

Solution: in the character creation, make these options

-Closed monogamous (wants a monogamous partner)

-Open monogamous (doesn't mind having a polyamorous partner)

-Ambiamorous (fine with polyamory or monogamy. Add a partner amount or a "no limit" option for the possibility of polyamory occuring.)

-Polyamorous (and then you'd select how many partners the character is interested in having, or a "no limit" option.)

Then, if a character has a partner, and falls for someone else, you have them ask you "I want to pursue [insert character]. Should I talk to [current partners] about it?" and then you can encourage or discourage them, and if you encourage them, then you get a little cutscene of them talking to their current partners about wanting to add a new member to the relationship. The current partner either accepts or declines, based on their personal feelings towards their partners other crush.

"But I like the cutscenes of them fighting over the person!" That could still happen, if the miis dislike each other, or one of them has the "closed monogamy" setting on.

2- All binary characters are default straight & gender conforming. Yes, you can change that in the menu, but there just shouldn't be a default in the first place.

3- Mii babies are always boys or girls, which reinforces negative stereotypes about how nonbinary is something that happens "later in life" rather than something kids can be.

4- No ability to make multigender characters. You cannot make a character female and nonbinary, male and nonbinary, female & male & nonbinary, etc. I get that they probably did this because they wanted an easier time determining what characters would be attracted to who, but I pose that if a character is attracted to women, and another character has "woman" as one of their genders, let them get a crush! (Or if you're so worried about it, have it where only people attracted to both women & enben can get a crush on someone with both those options selected.)

5- No ability to select multiple pronouns and create neopronouns.

6- No wheelchairs, walkers, rollators, canes, crutches, or prosthetics.

7- No ability to customize limbs/make amputees.

8- No ability to make asymmetrical features or customize individual eyes (so no heterochromia, no making one eye bigger than the other, etc.)

9- No ability to make characters mute, blind, or deaf. The mute one would be especially easy, you could just make them play every other game except for no repeats! And you could give options for mute or deaf characters to use AACs or write on notebooks! Like "Would you like this Mii to write, use an AAC, or communicate through gestures?" and you either select one of the options, or all of the options. There should also be semi-verbal options, where they speak sometimes, but not other times!

10- This is more nitpicky, but I actually would like it if you could choose to keep Mii babies...well, babies. Like, if the game asked you "Remain baby mode?" and if you said "no," then it does the classic cutscene. But if you said "yes", then you get to help your Miis raise their baby every day.

A while ago, someone asked me what the difference was between a polycule and a harem, so I made this cute little diagram to illustrate.

There's more to polycules and poly relationships than having multiple partners. To put it bluntly, what separates a harem from a polycule is that polycules have a huge emphasis on queer identity and queerness, whileharems still end up conforming to heteronormavity.

Whenever I've seen harems in fiction (especially in anime/manga), it's always focused on cishet guys being fawned over and worshipped by multiple female characters, and said female characters are often treated like status symbols and prizes to be claimed (as one would expect in heteronormativity). Additionally, there's an element of mononormativity to the harem as only one person in it is allowed to pursue multiple partners. Like, have you noticed that in harem anime and that nonsense, you always see the cishet male character forming relationships with other female characters, but you NEVER see any of the female characters forming relationships with ANYONE ELSE ONCE OTHER GUY THEY'RE CURRENTLY WITH.

You don't see any of that reactionary BS in polycules. Polycules can comprise people from any queer community and can be composed of many different kinds of relationships, NOT JUST ROMANTIC. Because I frankly find the idea that aromantic relationships are inherently lesser than romantic ones to be... icky for lack of a better word, especially as an aroace.

But like when I do tell her before hand… she just judges me. In that way mononormative people do. Because she still sees me as a teenager. And thinks I’m being self destructive in my proclivities.

what do you MEAN they're doing stoplight parties in HIGH SCHOOL for teenagers?! WHO thought that would ever be a good idea?! I would like to go back to ten minutes ago when I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

(Apologies for the vent; legitimately recovering from gaining that knowledge.)

An unconfirmed character is not automatically allorose, monorose, straight, monogamous, with 0 prioritized nonrose (platonic/queerplatonic, alterous, sensual, etc) attraction.

An unconfirmed character is not automatically unaltered perisex, cisgender, binary, gender conforming, and pronoun conforming.

Unless the creator or character explicitly states that they are all of those things, then you literally cannot tell people "[insert character here] isn't queer!"

Lazy Worldbuild Rant Number 2: Why the actual fuck do all fantasy worlds and almost all cultures in them copy-paste most attitudes towards sex and romance from the real world?

Don't get me wrong. I kinda know why. Because a) nobody IRL questions it, and b) nobody really wants to question it. So even those few fantasy authors that do realize that the mono- and heteronormative attitude humans these days have towards sex are not "natural" (in as far anything a human does ever can be, obviously), they would rather not challenge it. Besides, most fantasy books tend to be based in this romanticized idea of what the European middle ages looked like - obviously focusing on nobles or at least special people, rather than peasants.

But by all the gods, it irks me so much. Especially as mono- and heteronormativity also always imply some version of patriarchy existing in the world. After all, matriarchal societies tend to not have mononormativity, and are also way less likely to be heteronormative.

As some who have read me talk about this before know: I am irked by the drow worldbuilding in DnD a lot, but the one thing I will give that stuff credit for is, that it realized that in this matriarchal culture mono-hetero-normativity does not make any sense whatsoever and hence did away with it.

But really, though, there would be so many interesting ways to explore romance and sexuality in fantasy books.

Have a culture, in which romance is very strictly seperated from sex. Like, romance only exists for rasing kids, but it is basically assumed that those kids will always result from casual things outside of that bound, and people are superstitious if a heterosexual couple would actually conceive the kids together. It taints the kids, they say!

Have a culture in which romance really does not exist as a concept and everyone just does it with everyone with the kids just growing up in their village, where every adult will care for every child. The concept of "mother" and "father" does not exist. (This was fairly common for early humans, from all we know.)

Have a culture in which men and women live apart, only coming together for sexual encounters once in a full moon. Children will be raised by the women until a certain age, when the boys go live with the men.

Heck, have a culture in which the general belief is, that men and women should not touch one another, outside of specific rituals for conception. Outside of this homoromanticism is normalized, but heteroromanticism is seen as scandalous.

Recently I get fairly annoying especially when it comes to fantasy worlds of sort, that are basically stone age societies, meaning mainly hunter-gatherers. There is little evidence to suggest that hunter-gatherers do the entire "monogamous marriage" thing, outside of maybe a few exceptions. And yet, out of the couple of stone age or quasi stone age settings I know, most of them do monogamy at the very least, if not heteronormativity as well.

I mean, come on now. Read some actual anthropology people.

And that is without going into the fact that once we get to other fantasy species - or even scifi stuff - it is so boring to mainly get species that do two genders all the time.