Happy pride month everyone! I was curious what everyone’s ideas would be for a pride celebration in Lenore. Would they have a parade? A kiki in the night market? Student drag contests for points? Lacer with a glitter beard? What would you like to see…
I would love if they didn’t need a pride month, tbh.
It would be amazing to just have everyone, regardless of sexuality, gender or species be accepted and just be allowed to be themselves without a struggle.
We know there’s magic being developed to help same sex couples reproduce, which is awesome. But we also know that Damien being gay would be blackmail worthy, soooo…sounds like pride is pretty necessary.
With that in mind - imagine how wild people could go with magic. Imagine fabrics that ripple with the colour of your chosen flag. Or moving rainbow butterfly tattoos or hair ornaments that flutter about by themselves.
One area where I used to work had rainbow crosswalks - imagine instead rainbow roads with cobblestones or paving stones that shimmer with colour as you walk over them.
Imagine putting out bird seed to turn all the pigeons rainbow colours.
The never ending white cliffs of Gilbratha could become somewhat more interesting to look at while we cling for our lives!
A few quick observations:
.I would like to point out that they might not need a pride month.
Lacer isn’t interested in our girls sex life, even if lacer thinks that his male apprentice dresses like a girl on off time, doesn’t matter
Someone is actively trying to figure out how to let a same sex couple have a baby, and Anna throws pennies at the project.
As a crown family, if there was something unnormal about same sex couples, I’m pretty sure we would have caught something about.
And there is a whole scene where Tidus is worried about D being taken advantage by someone he’s never heard of, not that s is a “boy” that doesn’t seem to bother him at all
So I’m pretty sure that they don’t have pride month
Because it’s a perfectly normal and acceptable part of being human and don’t impose on people’s rights like that.
I hate that Americans have to fight for what should be our basic rights
I wonder if being gay is only blackmail worthy because of the Westbay name - given the emphasis on hereditary nobility, having a major noble (even a second son) who isnt going to have legitimate heirs would be an issue. (and it’s historically accurate, too!) I don’t think we’d see the same if someone like Alex was gay, because he’s not close to the line of succession (despite his father’s best efforts).
I disagree, Tidus is worried that S is taking advantage of him, not that S is a guy.
And then Tidus is also a little worried that Oliver is taking advantage of S.
Honestly, why is Tidus so worried about someone taking sexual advantage of others, is it happening to him
Or is he just stupidly protective
Quite possibly, I’m contemplating the fact that the guy threatened to go to the newspapers and that he was sure the newspapers would run with it, indicating that enough people would actually care and not in a “ooh, celebrity gossip” kind of way.
Titus isn’t out and out horrified, but he does love his little brother and wants the best for him.
I guess it’s kind of a feeling of well, it’s a scandal for rich people like having a bastard child is a scandal, but for people struggling on the streets no one really gives a damn.
Maybe even a 90s kind of vibe where gay people were accepted but there was a certain amount of otherness to them and side eyeing.
I’m sure Damien’s father would have thrown a fit if he’d heard.
I lived through the 90s, and I definitely don’t recall it that way. Being gay might have been alright, if you were rich, popular, and in the arts.
But, not so much if you were in high school and you “friends” called gay people “faggots” and the jocks would harass and beat up the gay kid for fun. It was not so accepting, when a gay person’s church (and 99% of Americans believed in God, and 70% were church members) would basically say that homosexuality was a “choice” and your teachers were convinced that homosexuals were a subversive deviant.
Hundreds (if not thousands) of gay kids were disowned and homeless in the 90s, with gay youth representing a not small fraction of underage homeless in Seattle and LA.
Billy Jack Gaither and Mathew Shepard were in the news, AIDS was a gay disease, and legal gay marriage was impossible everywhere. President Bill Clinton’s 1995 Executive Order 12968 ended federal discrimination based on sexual orientation re employment in classified fields. Before that point, federal jobs were almost exclusively for people in the closet. And, the military’s policy was “be in the closet or else you’re fired.”
I sense that the vibe in Lenore is not as bad as the 90s, and certainly not as bad as the 50s (gay people were arrested for gathering together, openly discriminated against, arrested for sexual activity in their homes, ect.); instead it feels a little like what I know of the 30s in America. Being gay might have been “scandalous” but typically only socially - government had not turned it full weight to threatening a gay person’s freedom due to sexual orientation, and legal enforcement of consensual sodomy laws were relaxed. Privilege would always keep “the private life” of a wealthy gay person out of the papers.
So, I see it as a kind of a middle road from before 1900 (widespread criminalization), but not the crackdown on enforcement post WW2. Not really the 1990s at all. It would be nice if it was much closer to modern legal environment (civil marriage , no criminalization, and some legal protection from discrimination in public accommodation).
I hold out hope that the scandal might be the fact that there Damien is unmarried and hiding out at a hotel with a less-than-crown-family lover. If he’d just been having his affair at home like a normal gay person, there’d be no blackmail.
Azalea has written that there isn’t much in the way of religion in Lenore. Without a strong religious dogma, it seems like it would be a little weird if there were laws against consensual adult sexual behaviors.
Thank you for your perspective.
I think you’re probably right in that Lenore is actually more accepting than I was thinking.
When I said 90s I was still thinking about the slurs and general feeling of otherness but that gay people were accepted as existing and were becoming less closeted (I’m probably phrasing this wrong but generally the 90s paved the way for the decades after but was generally quite rough because people who’d been largely invisible were claiming their place) than previously - but my experience of it was obviously at a distance since I was in the Middle East and it was more of a “we don’t talk about it publicly” situation for us. Our only real exposure was to media from the West which obviously prettied up the reality of what people were facing there, but the bigotry still came through (particularly in retrospect).
It would be quite nice to think that it was only newsworthy because it was two “celebrities” hooking up. I think I viewed it in a more negative light, because it knocked Titus a bit off his stride and I feel that he’s quite a progressive and open minded character (hence why Oliver is cultivating him).
It’s not such an unthinkable situation that no one assumes anything when two men hang out together, it’s not so normal that people don’t turn a hair when hearing about it. It’s somewhere in the middle, but I think much more shifted towards tolerance than I’d previously credited.
I had Damien’s situation, the disgust when the coppers found Sebastien and Oliver together, and the negativity towards Oliver hiring a male prostitute in my head, but in all cases there were aggravating factors.
My understanding of Gilbrathan views on sexuality is that, for the most part, no one cares. Except for some of the more backwards Crown families. I vaguely remember Azalea saying that even most of the Crown families don’t care, as long as you produce an heir and a spare first. If you’re sufficiently powerful, you might even be able to marry your real partner and produce the heir outside of your marriage.
Still kind of depressing, actually, but hey. If the world was perfect, our MCs wouldn’t have struggles to overcome. Right? Maybe?
My bet is that any pride celebrations would be centered in the more affluent parts of town or would be solely limited to the university. The lower class commoners are too poor really celebrate in the consumerist aspects of the holiday, and might not really care. I could see uni students dyeing their hair rainbow colors, or dyeing their clothes, or even having themed celebrations and parties. It would probably look a lot like pride month at colleges right now!
Happy pride 
I grew up in the 90s, in texas, and my neighbor was beaten up every day at and after school because he was gay, starting in the 5th grade in the upperclass school I went to. In HS I would see gay kids be shunned or verbally attacked, the physical beatings had stopped
Being gay was only “acceptable” if you were a freak, like a rennie (went to Reno fairs) but you show it outside of that. Kinda like being a furry, only okay at fair
00-01 school year I went to a school that was 90% poc, half being immigrants or children of immigrants of Mexico. Funny enough, it was okay to be openly gay… I remember being kinda shocked, but happy with it.
My senior year, 01-02, I was back at my upperclass school, and day two, two girls were making out in the hallway and no one batted at an eye, boys holding hands walking around, and no one seemed to notice, and a lot of people were dressed like me, jeans, t shirts, tennis shoes, gone was the slacks and halfway formal attire.
I was honestly confused about what happened to my school while I was gone
And then someone saw me taking care of my little sister in public (who was born the end of my 10th grade year) asked if she was mine, which my baby sister understood enough that it would be funny to call me mommy…
And I became the subject of ridicule, because it might be okay to be gay… It was still scandalous to be a teen mom. My district has a high school aimed at those who are preggo or need to work and will pull you out of the normal schools and put you in it. At least you get to finish high school.
It was at my graduation when my sister tried to call my step mom sissy that I was finally believed, no she wasn’t my daughter.
It was also at graduation that my class realized that while I had a brother and a neighbor had a sister, they were both younger (his even being a freshman, mine being a lot younger) and we were not related, they just kept going to his house to harass me and he covered for me (without saying a word to me, ever). Iirc he was a POC, though much lighter skin than his sister and my olive skin tone had me looking like a tanned Mexican, but still…
But that is what I remember of being different in the 90s… Heck, I was made fun of in the 80s for wearing glasses
This is what it feels like to me.
The clothes Siverling had been wearing the night of the latest Aberrant incident, in addition to those stuffed hastily into his bag, were evidence enough. The boy may indeed have been at the Silk Door, but he had been in a liaison with someone wearing men’s clothing, while Siverling had worn a dress.
The boy must have needed to leave in quite a hurry when Newton Moore set off the alarm on that clever little linked bracelet, and ended up borrowing his paramour’s clothing to do so. Siverling’s normal clothes were of much higher quality than what he’d been wearing, and there was no other reason for a dress to be stuffed so thoughtlessly in his bag. If his paramour had been wearing the dress, he would have left it for her. It made the boy’s obliviousness to—or perhaps thorough disinterest in—the girls who flirted with him around the University take on new meaning.
Thaddeus remained deeply disinterested in his apprentice’s sex life or specific proclivities, but if the boy wanted to keep his activities a secret, he would really need to learn to be more discreet. Siverling was brazen in many ways, but not yet bold enough to do as he wished without fear of the whispers.
Lacer seems to think that there is something legitimate to fear in people knowing that you weren’t cisgender and heterosexual
… Crossdressing or maybe being trans might just be one of those things you get mocked for.
But it isn’t really a big deal, you aren’t going to go to jail or pay a fine for going into the wrong bathroom or having sex with the same gender
You aren’t going to curb checked for it.
~~really, it sounds like a handful of beings are looking for any possible reason to knock the rich down a peg,
Controlling people’s sex lives has almost always been about power. And if you can get the public to hate your political enemy because they fit into this box, even better
Even if they themselves belong in the box, oh well, stay in the closet.
Also, war and hate against groups is a tool used for power
I bet if someone introduced some of the horrid anti LGBQT laws to the crown he would implement them because it gives him more control over everybody in the country.
But instead, most of the population has little to no interest in others sexuality or what’s in their pants… And the handful that do seem to be blown off and ignored.
Lacer is prob like “oh that kid doesn’t realize if he wants to wear dresses he should, and doesn’t because he is to afraid of getting the weird looks”
It’s not illegal, just some people care, and S isn’t from the city, it might be a bigger thing in Vale
I dunno why people were extra mean in the 80s (blame Reagan?). I got the same treatment, as if bad eyes are something you could control. Also classmates made fun of me for being skinny; seriously, does anyone still do that?
Pride may very well be a subversive celebration in anyplace controlled by nobility, because of how it messes with arranged marriages, inheritance, potentially inherited magical ability (whether superstition or real) in fantasy universes, and… well, generally anything that goes against the ability for nobility/royalty to see their children as property to do with as they need for political purposes. So perhaps Pride in Lenore might be an annual anniversary of some pro-pride uprising, a Stonewall equivalent, that tends to have newspapers warn against participation despite popular support and pits the population against the coppers a bit-- especially being so close to the seat of royalty.
In the first book, S. thinks to herself that no one expects people to magically disguise themselves as men when they are women. Of course, in the same chapter we meet Anastasia:
Behind them, the girl in the suit and trousers shifted uncomfortably and shot Sebastien what might have been an apologetic look.
In the US from 1900-1930s Anastasia’s outfit was called “mannish” (although I guess we still do) and was subject to some argument on fashion magazines and newspapers about its propriety. After all, since the 1840s many cities required people to wear clothing that “matched” their “sex” (meaning gender). In some examples of how weird this actually is, recent articles have reported cases where individuals had lived their entire lives as one gender, but authorities determined that these individuals were mistaken. How the accused could be mistaken from childhood, I do not know.
I’ve also read articles that note people of all physical characteristics were arrested for it, although some of these cases seems to have been technically a complaint about identity theft or avoiding identification (which is exactly S) - especially slaves trying to using gender stereotypes to escape slavery.
There’s a ton of different historical examples of different gender roles and clothing, so it’s always cool to see a story like this one treat the topic in a refreshingly non-sexualized way.
Maybe no one would dare mock Anastasia. Maybe it’s no big deal. Like sexual orientation, gender seems to be not particularly important compared to status and ability. This seems like a patriarchal society, but only mostly and not entirely.
Only Anna’s family mother seems to be bothered by Anna wearing pants.
However, her family is considered backwards and quietly mocked behind closed doors.
… I absolutely love how there is barely any attention to beings genders and love lives, it’s a small curiosity and the handful of beings (off screen) who want to make a big deal about stuff seem to be shut down.
I almost want to live there