#pride oc asks

[memento-morri-writes]

9 for Rook and Carrion for the OC pride asks from @samplewriting

oh, hello!! Thank you for the ask! (And for putting a new face/username in my inbox!!)

9. Are there cultural or lore specific aspects to their identity? If applicable, does their species affect it?

Unfortunately this does SUPER apply to either of my beloved boys, (partly because I didn't create the worlds either of them live in) but I do at least have some semi-related stuff I can talk about! Rook is a bastard (literally), which makes him an embarrassment and a problem for his father (a nobleman on the governing council of a country). However 1) Rook has no interest in either the title or a relationship (my touch-averse king), and 2) the council positions are not inherited (though noble titles are). So Rook's existence isn't quite as bad of a thing as it could be from Lord Shitwood's POV. (However, I do have my beloved Evil Rook AU where he kills his father and maneuvers his way into replacing him on the council. Since the council titles are not inherited, he technically wouldn't need to kill all his half brothers or otherwise secure the title of Lord Lockwood in order to sit on the council.) In Carrion's case, I have an AU where Nothing Bad Ever Happens (aka, the entire campaign and all of the events of the last 10+ years leading up to it never happen), where Carrion follows in his father's footsteps and becomes a cleric. I like to imagine him eventually becoming High Flamekeeper of the same cathedral where his father worked, but the title of Flamekeeper is typically reserved for women. So Carrion being a man and ending up in that position would be certainly a bit of a burning question for the rest of the church. Also, both of my boys have very complicated relationships with physical touch, which certainly plays a role in their disinterest in sex or other kinds of physical intimacy/contact. (I mean, hell, Rook more or less turned into a statue out of panic just getting a nice gentle hug from the person he trusts most in the world. And Carrion pretty much only touches people when he's fighting. Or, I suppose recently when he's been carrying Valeska... Not since their fight, though.) (I think Carrion would be aroace in every universe, but there's certainly a universe where a less traumatized Rook is normal enough about touch and human relationships/social interactions to be the disaster bisexual pirate he was originally intended to be.)

Sorry for the kind of disappointing / disconnected answer. But I hope it's interesting nonetheless!

[morrigan-sims]

hiii! happy pride, friend!

4 & 5 for the ask prompts, any character of your choice! and 17 for you!

Hello!! Thank you for the ask, friend! 💖

4. Is your oc's environment supportive about their identity? How does this impact them?

Considering that all of my D&D characters live in fantasy worlds in games where in every single group at least 1/2 of the group is queer in some way (me included), generally they don't end up facing a lot of queerphobia. The closest I can think of is probably Cyra's mother being extremely opposed to her dating Eris, but that's mostly because Eris is a member of the rival sun cult (and thus "the enemy"), not because she's a woman. Cyra and Eris ended up plotting a Romeo and Juliet-esque trick to get away from their respective families/cults. It ended in disaster (as was (kind of) Eris's plan, unbeknownst to Cyra), and Cyra ended up alone in the desert. She believed (and still believes) that Eris was captured by her own cult and forced to return to that life. (In reality, however, Eris was doing the whole thing in order to gain trust and approval from her cult.)

Putting the rest under a cut because I talk too damn much. (Especially about #17. I can yap for AGES about my weird perspectives on gender and sexuality and how that (and my decades-long assumption that they were the default) bleeds into every character I create at least a little.)

5. How did you figure out your oc's identity?

For most of my characters, their identity just kind of pops into my head along with the rest of the character. It's not usually something I spend a lot of time dwelling on. For example, Morana being aroace was one of the first things I knew about her. Same with Cyra being lesbian, Val being nonbinary, etc. Sometimes it's based on my own personal experience / wanting a character that I can relate to (e.g., Morana), other times it's a vibes-based thing (e.g., Rune, who is a changeling and can change their body at will. Why wouldn't they want to experiment with that?). Occasionally it just kind of strikes me on a whim, like "Hm. It would be cool if [character] was [identity]" (e.g., Luca or Kai being trans). There are sometimes where I don't even really think about a character's identity until either I'm asked about it, or it becomes relevant to the story or for a bit. (For example, I decided Odynia was ace and sex-repulsed because that makes the fact that she was the bodyguard for an extremely slutty (affectionate) bi guy much funnier. Carrion and Avra, on the other hand, just kind of inherited my default aroace-ness from me, because their sexuality is of no relevance to their stories.)

17. Do you share identity with any of your ocs? Which ones?

Yes! Many of them!! Since I'm aroace (and especially since I spent a solid portion of my life assuming my lack of attraction was the default experience and romance was something made up for fiction), a lot of my characters end up being on the ace/aro spectrum, even if I don't intentionally design them that way. (For example, Carrion and Avra.) Even for characters who I didn't intend to be aro/ace, my own disinterest in sex/romance does tend to bleed into them on occasion. A good example is Rook, who is technically bisexual, but has never once displayed an ounce of interest in anything or anyone, past or present, simply because it feels weird to me. (I'm too attached to him, I think. At least it does make sense that give his backstory he's more than a little bit traumatized and thus reluctant/unwilling to trust people, as well as emotionally unavailable in that way.) There are some cases where me projecting my aroace-ness onto my characters is very intentional, though. Morana is probably the best example of that. She was very much designed to be a lot like me in many ways (Autistic, no empathy, aroace, etc.), but pushed to the extremes. No empathy, hyper-logical, and struggles with understanding human emotions and relationships, but not uncaring or unkind... You can perhaps see why the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories were so dear to me as a child (and still are!!). Somewhat similar to the unintentional aroace default that a lot of my characters have, due to my own experience with being agender (and again, about two deacdes assuming that a complete and utter ambivalence to the concept of gender as a whole is the default) a lot of my characters also experience a lack of strong views/feelings about gender, regardless of their canonical gender or pronouns. Like, sure Carrion and Rook are cis men, Avra and Cyra are cis women, etc. But they don't really have strong feelings about it, nor does it really impact their character all that much. (This was actually part of how I realized I was agender. I realized that of my TTRPG friends, I played the widest variety of genders/pronouns. Doing a bit of thinking, I realized that was because I didn't actually perceive the characters as different from each other (or myself) in any way. Sure, I may not use he/him pronouns, but there was nothing that felt fundamentally different about doing so for a character, or that made it harder for me to connect to / RP as them. Which, apparently most people actually do feel a connection to SOME gender, be it their assigned one or not, and find it difficult or awkward to act as another, even in a fictional setting. Wild!!!)

[toadifylackoffantasy]

Hey Toad, I was wondering about the answer for number 17 and 20 on the pride ask thingy you shared. I think those two questions go well together :)

17. Do you share identity with any of your ocs? Which ones?

I actually don't. I guess Bianca is a bit of a self-insert in the 'it breathes and that's good enough' way in retrospect, but she is very hypersexual, and I am...Well let's just say I thought I was ace for a while in my late teens (partly due to the unrealistic hypersexual representation of teenagers in media + all my classmates talking about relationship and sex stuff and me completely not relating, but more so due to me being a social klutz with zero experience rather than not being interested in it all ) and while I am attracted to a wide variety of people WHEN it happens, it doesn't happen a lot.

Bree is 100% lesbian so that isn't it, there is Flo's halfsister Demi who is aroace, ofc Finnie and Floflo but I think it's obvious why that's a nope, and everyone else is mostly straight or similar to already mentioned.

20 has been answered ;)

[nrcsfavoriteshrimps]

(for the pride oc questions, perhaps Silas?)

Does/has your OC struggle(d) with internalized homophobia? How have they learned to cope, if at all?

9. What/when was their first queer relationship? How did it go? If they're aro, have they tried a romantic relationship before? Or only QPRs?

29. If your OC plans on getting married one day, what are they, (and their partner(s)) wearing on their special day? (Feel free to elaborate on the whole event if you want to)

Thanks for the ask!

1. Silas technically does not struggle with internalized homophobia because he was never really told about the LGBTQ+ community in the first place? It’s kinda like in The Owl House where the Boiling Isles just sees queer relationships as regular relationships and thus not really needing a label (ACCORDING TO MY MEMORY!)…if that even makes any sense—

9. Silas has not previously dated anyone!

29. Now, Silas isn’t ENTIRELY sure about marriage, but if he were to get married…

[mxanigel]

21. Free ramble card wee for NERI MY BELOVED

ahahaha I HOPE YOU'RE READY FOR THIS 💜💜💜 (thank you for asking about Neri~)

Neri originated as my first-ever DAO OC over 10 years ago (!). I'd never played a Bioware game before and had no idea what I was doing in so many ways. A cis female mage, that version of Neri accidentally flirted with and then rejected Alistair, declined Morrigan's offer, and made the ultimate sacrifice against the Archdemon.

Early during the pandemic, I picked up DAO again and decided to try an OC I headcanoned as agender. It, uh, didn't work. Gendering is everywhere in that game. And it helped me realize just how damned uncomfortable it was, how much I personally hated being gendered all the time. Somewhere in there, I also first played DA2, which prompted me to try Awakening for the first time. (No idea how I managed to have Awakening all these years without playing it.)

On a whim, I decided to use updated agender Neri as my Awakening Warden since even a Warden who died at the end can still be loaded into Awakening. I'm so glad I did. Neri felt more sure of themself after surviving the Fifth Blight, an outcome only made possible by Loghain's sacrifice (since they still rejected Morrigan's ritual). Their post-Circle experience ensured they had a foundation from which to function as a noble and a Warden. And they found a family among the new Wardens and other inhabitants of Vigil's Keep, family they grew to trust more than their Blight companions.

Plus, with DA2 Anders fresh in my head, Awakening Anders threw me for a loop. As did his interactions with Neri. I started to think that perhaps he was someone who could accept Neri for themself, as themself, in part because he intimately knew what Circle life was like and what it could do to a person.

Because that kind of acceptance, something Neri never had in the Circle and barely found before the Archdemon fell, is what they needed to begin embracing who they are. Their Harrowing was delayed which fed into their insecurities, they were thrust into the role of Warden with little information or training, they fumbled through diplomatic tasks with the weight of nations on their shoulders. Yet, despite the horrors in Amaranthine, they also found peace and belonging and friendship. A place they could call home. A place to safely navigate their own identity, their strengths and weaknesses, their loves and fears.

All that rambling and I didn't really talk about Neri's queer labels. 😅 They're agender (they/them pronouns), pansexual, demiromantic, and struggle with gender dysphoria. Their title is "arlen" rather than "arl" or "arlessa." If they could change one thing about their body, they'd be flat-chested. Their queerness is an essential part of who they are. Neri has pushed me so far out of my comfort zone writing-wise and helped me discover my own labels along the way. 💜

Original list of Pride OC asks!

[cebwrites]

3 and 8 for the Pride OC questions. >:3c

hehehe of course! >:3 cw for ED in the 8 section

3. How did your oc discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?

I wouldn't say that Kirin "always" knew, but there were small hints even when he was really young that his gender probably didn't align with the rigid parameters that the people he was around expected him to stay in As a kid he had crushes on both boys and girls but that was just a state of being for him, no actual labels needed to be put on that feeling, but once he started getting older and things became more complicated along with his feelings it got a little messier and more difficult for him to express who he was

8. Have they had struggles with their identity, be it due to internal or external reasons?

Yes! A lot! Taking the OPverse as how Oda presents it, I'm assuming the general populace is mildly accepting but overall still very conservative when it comes to things that are "too queer" so environmental issues be it from the house he had to grow up in to other pirates/people he'd meet posing safety issues would come into consideration

I mentioned it in a previous ask but Kirin started having a particularly rough time around 14 when puberty hit and his body was suddenly going through all these changes he absolutely hated, at one point even skipping meals because he didn't want to look more "feminine" no matter the cost He struggled between identifying as a man because it felt like he didn't "look" the part "enough" so he went under the enby umbrella for a bit (his time as nonbinary is valid and queer timelines are rarely linear anyway) during his tenure at Baroque when he'd gotten closer to Bon-chan and allowed himself a bit more leniency with his gender

He came out of it ultimately identifying as a guy but he's a little bit more loose with the definitions, more on the gender spectrum sliding scale than just switching from one box (nonbinary) to another (man) The same goes for his sexuality, he likes guys the majority of the time and girls sometimes, whatever label that falls under doesn't really matter to him :>

[mxanigel]

Pride asks: 9 for Raven and 11 for Heather!!

Squeeee~ thank you for the ask! 💜

9. Are there cultural or lore specific aspects to their identity? If applicable, does their species affect it?

Raven: This question gave me lovely food for thought! For a while, Raven saw herself as a member of the Carta first and everything else came second, so her gender identity developed as I don't care just call me whatever. She identifies as female but really doesn't have strong thoughts about being female; that's just the physical body she happens to have. Her sense of self isn't affected by others' perception of her gender, though she does get annoyed by both race and gender assumptions/presumptions placed upon her by the Inquisition.

She developed a reputation in the Carta for being efficient, responsible, and focused in part because she was never "distracted" by relationships beyond camaraderie. (I headcanon that's why Raven was chosen to go to the Conclave.) She wasn't interested in sex but still tried it to figure out what the fuss was about, and it was fine but not something she craved (though she preferred women to men). An unexpected crush on Blackwall made her think more deeply about her identity, and her teasing remarks to Cassandra helped her realize she only wanted something physical with another woman. I'm still sorting out Raven's official romantic entanglements, but she's romancing Josephine in my (currently paused) playthrough!

11. Is your oc open about their identity? Are they more lowkey or more blunt about it? Why or why not?

Heather: Ohhh yes. Heather doesn't wave it in others' faces, but she doesn't hide her bisexuality and will discuss it when the topic comes up as long as such behavior won't cause diplomatic incidents. The strong bond she forged with her mother while growing up gave her a safe haven to talk about her evolving sense of self, which Eleanor listened to without passing judgment. Though Heather doesn't directly specify that Anora is the target of her feelings, Eleanor figures it out and quietly supports them from afar because that relationship makes Heather happy. (Aaaaand I am back in my Cousland family feeeeels~)

Original list of Pride OC asks! Send me one if you'd like more rambles about my queer OCs~

[memento-morri-writes]

Also for the pride asks, 21 about any topic you like! If you want to pick another character and just tell me your thoughts about them, feel fre!

Thank you for the ask, Exe!!

As you might have been able to tell based on my last set of responses, my own autism and aroace-ness (as well as my agender-ness) plays a huge role in not only my real-life perception of sexuality and gender but also the way I play my characters.

[putting this under the cut because I ended up rambling about my own experiences with gender and sexuality and how that has been in conversation with my OCs, especially my D&D OCs and it got a little bit out of control with regards to length, lmao.]

I grew up under the impression that "love" was something that they made up for movies and tv and books, not something that happened to real people. (My parents were no help in that regard, as I spent a good 10+ years subconsciously waiting for them to divorce before it finally happened.)

Not only that, but even once I realized I was autistic and aroace, I was really confused by the way people talked about gender. Like, I knew a few friends who were trans in one way or another, or otherwise gnc. And while I respected and was proud of their journeys, I was kind of confused about the whole thing.

I more or less thought "How can you tell that you're not the gender you were assigned at birth? Why do you even have strong feelings about it in the first place? I mean, I understand the body dysmorphia, but the actual gender feelings? What is that? Where does that come from?"

It wasn't until after years of seeing and relating to tumblr posts about "My gender is red shirt in target. I just work here." and "My pronouns are I/me, it's your problem how you refer to me." that I started to consider the idea of being agender. I'd heard the word before, but didn't really understand what it meant because, like with romance and sexuality and all kinds of other human social things, I assumed that my lack of strong feelings about gender were the default.

Finding out that some people (cis and trans) actually really do feel a connection to the concept of womanhood/femininity or manhood/masculinity was honestly one of the biggest revelations of my life.

Actually, I have D&D characters to thank for that realization, hahaha. I realized one day while talking to friends that I'm the only person out of my many, many D&D friends who has no strong preference for gender/pronouns among my characters. I play relatively even amounts of characters who use she, he, and they pronouns (or some combination thereof). (I actually made a whole spreadsheet about it, which is very autistic of me, if I do say so myself.)

Thinking on it more (and talking to a few friends about their own feelings about playing characters of a gender different than their own), I realized that the reason it was so easy was because every gender just felt the same to me: nothing. (Like the bi → aroace pipeline where "I'm attracted the same to everyone" but "the same" is just nothing. Which, is also something I did, lmao. Are you sensing a theme here?)

I play every character based on their backstory, not their gender, and pick gender more or less at random based on vibes or the whims of the universe. So realizing that it's that complete and utter lack of any kind of feelings (positive or negative) about gender that made that so easy for me was a little bit of an OH moment for me, hahaha.

I've gone on long enough, but I'll end by saying: I use she/her pronouns because they're comfortable and familiar, like a pair of shoes worn in just right. But I don't actually think of myself as a woman, and don't mind being referred to by other pronouns. Despite that, I'm fine with being referred to as a woman / classifying myself as a woman with regards to society, because that's how I'm (generally) perceived. It's not grating to be called one, but it doesn't feel accurate. But neither does any other gender.

So yeah. To extrapolate on a joke from one of my friends, I'm powered by two AAA batteries: anxiety, adhd, autism, and aromantic, asexual, agender.