Your mystery question is here :)
🏳️🌈LGBT Pride: Are any of your characters LGBTQ+? What are their identities? How did they realize they were queer?
🏳️⚧️Trans Pride: How is the idea of gender/queer identities treated in your world? What was your character's experience like?
🌈Rainbow: Has your character ever been to a Pride event? What was it like for them? If they’ve never been, what would it be like?
🏳️🌈LGBT Pride: Are any of your characters LGBTQ+? What are their identities? How did they realize they were queer?
Well, a great number of them are but I don't really use a modern lens of sexuality when I'm writing so that makes it a little bit awkward hahaha most of my characters don't really think of themselves in a way where who they're attracted to is actually ~who they are~, it's just something about them. One notable exception might be Izare from Second Chances but he has a very negative relationship with that fact so it's not a way he enjoys thinking about himself. Because of the kinds of settings that I write, most of my characters are much more concerned with social class, family responsibility, and the politics of a relationship than they are with the genders or sexes of the people involved. I do sometimes enjoy exploring the politics of same-sex relationships in my settings, but they're still not viewed quite the same way that a modern person would think about it.
So some examples are in Legacy of Kings where you can have a same sex relationship and it's fine, but you can't be legally married because marriage is about providing heirs. Or in Dragon's Daughter it comes up in discussions about Johan and Oliver's relationship that generally speaking they would not have been allowed to get married because they're nobility and both eldest children, but they have some weird things going on with their family backgrounds that make it just acceptable enough that they can (whereas lower-class people don't have to worry about that and they can just get married regardless). I don't talk about it a lot in Celestials because it's middle grade, but it comes up a little bit and in that setting there's no issue with same-sex marriages because they already have a entranced tradition of adoption for heirs. In settings like Second Chances and Silverwood, which deal with a lot of different cultures and countries and races, there's a lot of different takes on homosexual behavior and relationships.
🏳️⚧️Trans Pride: How is the idea of gender/queer identities treated in your world? What was your character's experience like?
I do have a handful of trans characters but the funniest one is definitely Keir Silverwood. He was raised in hyein countries which do have pretty strict ideas about gender but it's not like Anthem and Ithea give a shit about that. So he was able to socially transition before he even started going to boarding school and it was never an issue, and then he used magic to physically transition later. The funny thing is that when he talks to other drezhein about this they find it SO baffling because while there is a concept of biological sex in Cylli, it has absolutely no effect on anything. People dress however they want, and all of their pronouns and identities are based on social status only, so to them it seems like he did a lot of work for almost no reason? I have debated whether or not he would necessarily even "be" trans if he had been raised in Cylli, and what his relationship with himself might have ended up being instead! I haven't really come up with an answer for that, but it may be something I want to explore with a different drezhein character in the future.
There are also the draconians who are hermaphroditic as a species, so you have some like Aidian who mostly dressed and presented as feminine but wasn't necessarily too concerned about it, some like Charlie and his oldest child who identify as male, and his younger child who specifically identifies as female. When it comes to draconians (and honestly other races in the Silverwood setting) they are generally treated based on what their clothing and style seem to imply about them. How fluid this is for the identity of any individual person varies based on the race and the country. Obviously drezhein and draconians don't put a lot of consideration into sex and gender, daemirrans tend to be quite easy going and do whatever people want them to do. The vekein and hyein tend to be a little bit more narrow-minded but it does depend on the country.
🌈Rainbow: Has your character ever been to a Pride event? What was it like for them? If they’ve never been, what would it be like?
Not applicable. I think Felisjyta would have a good time, Izare would have a bad time, Oliver would find it interesting, and most of the rest of my characters would consider it along the same lines they would any other party, and would feel the same way about it that they would feel about other social events.
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