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?
Thank you for the questions <3
🏳️🌈: Vast majority of my characters are queer :) I don't even know who to talk about more in depth, but first here's a quick rundown of some of my central queer characters.
Gay: Laurent, Elian, Sali, Morgan
Ace/aro spectrum: Riina (aroace), Sali (asexual), Otto is maybe demisexual? Not that he has any idea!, Elian (demiromantic and demisexual)
Trans: Arden (non-binary), Devon is possibly a trans guy?
I hope I'm not forgetting too many! There are a lot more of them but they're more side characters or characters of side stories.
And let's just choose Laurent for the "how did they realize they're queer" because they happen to be listed first here: He was probably noticing from a young age that something was 'different' about him. Maybe since six or so. His family isn't wildly homophobic, but there was definitely no talk about anything else than "future wives", "man and woman" etc. in his household.
So when he started to notice the men in movies, the older sons of his father's friends at dinner parties, he knew to keep it down because it was something outside of those set expectations and was afraid of what the reaction of his family might be. But he dreamed about being able to hug a boy, to kiss a boy; at weddings he'd dream about standing where the bride did and marrying a handsome man... He didn't have words for his experience at all for years, and he thought that maybe everyone starts out like this - maybe he will start to like girls when he's a teenager, like his brothers did - but at some point he learned about homosexuality and he was both relieved ("I'm not the only one") and scared shitless ("I'm never going to be who I have to be"). </3
🏳️⚧️: (mentions of transphobia here) In the story set in our real world, Arden had a pretty tough time with their identity. I think their family might have been pretty religious and they had lived their whole life in the middle of quite strong "there are only two genders" type of talk. So for a long time they were just confused and didn't even know how to phrase the questions they wanted to ask; when they did, it was met badly. It made Arden anger and rebel (changing their name, starting to dress more queer...) and eventually got kicked out of their community. But they had supportive friends, and became a lot happier being able to be themselves :)
Devon on the other hand had a fully supportive family and his journey was pretty much as easy as it can get.
Then there's my fantasy world. In that universe there are some different countries and areas, and it depends on the place how accepted those identities are. This is something I'm still working on, but I don't think being queer is outright illegal/punishable anywhere; there still can be places where it's strongly socially unaccepted, or you can only ever be recognized as what you were assigned at birth, etc. A lot of places are neutral or positive about it though! Some communities recognize multiple genders and won't blink an eye when someone shares they're neither woman or man. In some places one could also get gender-affirming care, alas the field of medicine isn't super advanced everywhere and therefore limits opportunities.
(mention of homelessness, starvation, alcohol and panic attacks in the next one)
🌈: Let's stay on Laurent. I think he's been once, when he was kicked out/ran away and was living on the streets, he one day stumbled across a parade and just jumped in. He was in absolutely in awe and just so excited at first but then it turned out to be a really bad experience because he was exhausted and starving and he soon found himself in very overwhelming, overstimulating situations. He was trying to find company (just people to hang out with, maybe make some friends) and food and water, but couldn't really accomplish any of this. People offered him booze before they did water and drinking it to an empty stomach made him feel even more terrible. Some nice people eventually found him having a panic attack somewhere and helped him to an unhoused shelter for a night.
Several years later, when he's safe with the team, he dreams about going again because his situation is very different; now he'd have his own friend group to celebrate with and take care of him. I'm sure he does go at some point :)
