as it gets warmer let's all remember the two most beautiful accessories a girl can have this summer are hairy legs and a bunch of bruises from bangin around
Athren grew up in a culture where casual same-gender sex is normal (although not serious same-gender relationships; the societal expectation is that you'll settle down with someone of “the opposite” gender.) Consequently, he never had a self-discovery experience around his sexuality. When he was a teenager, what he wanted to do with boys was what plenty of other boys around him also wanted. Although tbqh, most of his sexual experiences, both one-offs and consistent friends-with-benefits, were with women.
It's interesting to me that since he moved to the surface, that's shifted to mostly be men. Something to be said about how Athren's gender performance reads as straight in Menzoberranzan but queer to the average Sword Coaster.
13. Would your OC be open to a poly relationship? Why or why not?
Ari hasn't fallen in love before Renata, and there's been nobody quite like her in their life ever since. When Ari's in love with someone, there's a level of intensity and devotion that they truly do not have time or capacity to offer to more than one person at a time lol. They're definitely open to having sex with other people as a couple, but in terms of a relationship commitment, I can only ever imagine them monogamous.
Meanwhile, Athren's not open to a monogamous relationship. It's a combination of factors:
Not interested in romance. (He's never going to have a self-discovery experience about being aromantic, either. He knows exactly what he's about, it's just not an ~identity~ to him)
Generally commitment-phobic
Styles himself as cheerfully selfish and not interested in sharing his private life with another person
Athren feels genuinely more comfortable when someone he's fucking also fucks other people. And he'd never sleep with someone if they expected him to be monogamous.
3. How did your OC discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?
Personally, I headcanon that Ferelden's culture is a bit homophobic, at least when it comes to men (we see no same-sex relationships in DAO besides... Wade and Herrin?? and I take cues from Zevran's caution with a male warden + some of the ways a warden can respond to his advances). So Edric did grow up in Kinloch Hold expecting to be attracted to women, and having to discover that he was attracted to men. His first crush on a boy that he didn't suppress/ignore was Anders. In a place as insular as the Circle Tower, word got around that Anders flirted with both girls and boys, so that inspired Edric to try to act on his feelings.
4. Is your OC's environment supportive about their identity? How does this impact them?
In Ferelden, Edric wasn't closeted, but he was Discrete. I think that Antiva has more permissive sexual attitudes than Ferelden (like a lot of other people's HC + supported by DAV and that nonbinary governor I suppose lol), so when Edric eventually cedes his Warden-Commander role to Nathaniel and goes with Zevran to live in Antiva, his environment becomes more supportive.
[Aristide Lucarno]
3. How did your OC discover themself?
You could call Ari the opposite of Lydian, in that Ari's the wish fulfillment fantasy of "I always knew I was trans since I was a small child, and nobody has ever given me shit about it my entire life."
I wrote Aristide into a world where their abusive Crow mentor tortures them "to build discipline" but never falters over their pronouns. Homophobia and transphobia are just not issues I'm interested in exploring in their world. Ari has enough problems without adding all that!
12. Does/did your OC ever wish they could change the way they are? Why? If it's in the past, how did they get over the feeling?
Ari is without a drop of angst about their gender or sexual orientation. They have rock-solid confidence in being an androgynous, genderfluid, slutty bisexual. Honestly, they're also just not very introspective about that kind of thing. (Asking them whether they wish they could change to stop being a mage? THAT'S a question with some weight.)
[Beatrice Cousland]
3. How did your OC discover themself?
Beatrice knew she was attracted to both men and women since she was a teenager. She pursued the objects of her affection casually and discretely, as befitted a young noble. She understood that her dalliances couldn't be serious, because the matter of her marriage and children would be political, not a personal choice. Falling in love with Morrigan was the first thing that ever made her question her narrative for her own life.
13. Would your oc be open to a poly relationship? Why or why not?
Beatrice? Not her natural inclination, but sure, maybe. Her wife Morrigan? Absolutely not lol. Canonically jealous and demands a certain sort of fierce loyalty. I see them as being happily monogamous for their whole relationship.
A watercolor painting of a swimmer encoutering some sapphic mermaids, edited slightly for tumblr. (The titty-out version is over on my bluesky at juliedillon.bsky.social )
9. Are their cultural or lore-specific aspects to their identity? If applicable, does their species affect it?
Pandering to my predilections!
There are cultural aspects to ALL our identities, right? 😉 Baked into Athren Dahana's DNA is an excuse for me to think about just how radical it would be to grow up in a cis-sexist world that marginalizes men and centres women. Canon Forgotten Realms has never gone REMOTELY far enough with this shit.
In the spirit of FR's ur- wordbuilding pervert, Ed Greenwood: imagine if in Undercommon, the active verb "fucking" doesn't describe penetration, but engulfing. A vagina fucks a penis. On a fundamental level, drow metaphorical touchstones should focus on yonic imagery: caves, dripping water, devouring mouths, the enveloping shelter of darkness. Begging R.A. Salvatore to read Ursula LeGuin's The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.
ANYWAY. Athren is a Menzoberranyr man—a natural follower, passive, pursued-not-pursuer, object-not-subject. Physically, he is a member of the smaller, weaker, more delicate sex. Men who excel as warriors or wizards are exceptional; in Athren's City of Spiders, the heads of Melee-Magthere and Sorcere are women, as are the majority of the instructors and pupils. Men's natural domain is the home.
Athren's quite comfortable with all this!
Before his abrupt departure for the surface, Athren fully expected to marry a woman and devote the prime years of his life to caring for their children, as his father did for Athren and his brother Adinar. (Although Athren likes kids, he *is* aromantic and uninterested in monogamy, so this bit didn't quite gel for him.)
7. Is there something that would cause your OC to question their identity? What?
I wouldn't say "question his identity" but recontextualize his identity, sure. Since coming to the surface, Athren's gotten to see many different ways of being a woman or man, plus learned that trans and nonbinary people exist! His world is bigger than ever :)
[Mixolydan]
12. Does/did your OC ever wish they could change the way they are? Why? If it's in the past, how did they get over the feeling?
Lydian was more interested in getting a change of scenery (moving away from home) than changing anything about himself.
Lydian wasn't the kind of kid who asserted "I'm actually a boy!" from a young age. He's naturally people-pleasing and likes to conform to a group, so it's hopefully not a surprise that he was a feminine little girl and young teenager. He didn't even act on any of his crushes on girls while living at home (although it took starting on fantasy-HRT to be attracted to anybody besides women.) Only when he entered his late teenage years did some things about his gender presentation (and gendered expectations his family had for him) start to feel bad.
Although Lydian primarily went to Elturel to pursue his dream of becoming a Hellrider, a strong secondary motivation was to start presenting as a different gender in a way he really never could have explored while living with his rural hobbit farm family.
[Galsariad]
7. Is there something that would cause your OC to question their identity? What?
This is a funny question for Galsariad, because I believe in his own head, he doesn't really have an "identity" as much as he has experiences. For his sexual orientation, he has the embodied physical/mental experiences of falling in love (and in lust) with women, men, and nonbinary people. In his view, what could ever cause him to question things he experienced firsthand? He has his own senses for empirical evidence!
For his gender... yeah idk what could make him care more about having a gender, either 😂 I call him "gender agnostic" for a reason. He's quite comfortable operating as a drow male in Rosohna, with all the cultural assumptions that entails. At the same time, I think if he spent extended time somewhere else that had radically different gender concepts, he'd feel fine about being labelled something else.
5 of the pride asks for your netherdeep characters please 👀
IDK if you were interested in module NPCs I highly customized, or NPCs I invented wholesale, but I'm happy to share a handful from both categories!
5. How did you figure out your OC's identity?
The short answer for everybody is "vibes." I usually don't invent specific details for NPCs' backgrounds as session prep, because I'd rather focus my attention on whichever NPCs the players decide are important. That said, I did write backstory for Ayo's party in advance, because they were gonna stick around the whole story by necessity.
Ayo - Cisgender, bisexual (decided from the outset that she recently left a serious relationship with an orcish man because her true love is, of course, the sea)
Dermot - Cisgender, sort of aroace vibes but mostly he's just got other things more important to him than romance or sexuality
Maggie - Cisgender, heterosexual (I'd call her GNC straight representation, but I think she's actually gender-conforming by ogre standards 😌)
Galsariad - Nonbinary/gender agnostic, bisexual (2 of my 4 PCs used they-pronouns, so I wanted one of Ayo's party to do the same for symmetry. Our Gal uses he/they)
Irvan - Cisgender, gay but he doesn't know that yet (I think this literally never came up lol)
Module NPCs that got expanded roles in our story + NPCs I invented:
Question, the Cobalt Soul researcher - transgender, probably a lesbian, possibly asexual. I also gave her full monk levels
A different PC was an Aurora Watch veteran who served at Bazzoxan. Thus, an important NPC for us was Tarsenna Mazul, Verin Thelyss's second-in-command. Tarsenna is nonbinary (they/them) and bisexual
A different PC was consecuted and semi-hiding from their previous life's noble family. Their shitty drow uncle's assassin bodyguard (also a shitty drow) slept with our warlock for reasons that are too confusing to explain here. But this impulsive decision forced me to decide that Anil Khatri is cisgender and heterosexual
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