#queer worldbuilding

[mantischatters]

I’ve been working on some worldbuilding, I came up with a gender system I’m pretty happy with and wanted to share

The worldbuilding project is inspired by the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, the rough idea is that there’s these anthro sheep people who treat this magical parasitic species of flower as their god/leader. 

I’m using actual sheep behavior and sheep farming as inspiration, and also wanted to do something fun with the genders. So heres what I’ve got so far 

The sheep people culture has 2 genders, Ram and Ewe. They associate rams with males, and ewes with females, but its not a strict ‘gender=sex’ thing. It’s like how summer tends to have hot days, hot days tend to be in summer, but it’s not a clear cut 100% thing. 

Ewe is treated as the default, and they’re stereotypically practical, agreeable, and cautious, which are all things their culture encourages and values more. They typically wear more simple practical clothes, and work a wide range of jobs. 

Rams are treated as a deviation, and are stereotypically confident, loud, and eccentric. Typically wear flashy clothes, work mostly entertainment and social type jobs, and are more sexualized. 

About 80% of the population is ewes, and 20% is rams, even though they’re still about 49% male 49% female 2% intersex like humans. By default, most people align more with ewe stereotypes (since they’re generally raised to act like that), and grow up to identify as ewes. Usually only those who deviate more by having a lot of ram traits grow up to identify as rams. Gender identity is kinda seen as a choice.

It’s pretty common for female rams and male ewes to go on HRT as early teens (or later) to get those traits, but they don’t always. They’re still treated as entirely their gender, they’re not discriminated against. 

Nonbinary, trans, gnc, intersex, etc people do still exist. I’m still figuring it out, but they do struggle with not fitting into the expected norms. I’m also still figuring out how they treat sexuality and relationships (and whether they have a concept of romance at all).

Thanks for reading :) 

[aromanticsky]

For you queer culture ask game; Norve and Senki!

Norve:

The Norves have five genders- child genderless, man, woman, holy genderless, and mixed man+woman. (Pronouns for these are, respectively: ey/em, he/him, she/her, ze/hir, and they/them.) Each one has their own role (except mixed, which takes on a combination of men's and women's roles). Gender norms are becoming less rigid but transgressing them is still notable, especially for holy people; Daanah is trans because she is expected to be holy-genderless as a Divine Scribe and instead insists upon being a woman. Upon coming of age, people generally gravitate towards (and are expected to choose) the adult gender most aligned with traits they already exhibit or at least desire to exhibit. They have three terms for types of marriage and related desires: solo-partnering (monogamy), which is the norm, and multi-partnering and non-partnering, which- at least in Daanah's village- are generally fairly accepted but non-normative. A marriage is a declaration of loyalty, a physical and financial merging of households, and a legal guarantee of financial rights and recognition of parents' relationship to children regardless of biological relation. A marriage of one man and one woman is seen as the most balanced and complete; mixed people can fulfill either role in a relationship and holy people are expected to partner with a mixed person or with no one in order to maintain the female-male balance in the relationship.

Senki:

There are many, many variations of the Senki religion and its traditions, but something common to every Senki culture that assigns gender to its children is that transition is considered a type of rebirth. Trans people are called twice-born, and re-named, re-blessed, and re-prophesied by gods and priests. (Senki infants are taken to priests for a prophecy and in many sects named based on that.)

[bronte-deserves-better]

I was reading some of your fics (Ancillary Verse)

I love the balefire coding. Its awesome

would there be anything else other than the asymmetrical balefire jewellery and the phoenix necklaces/is there anything else you would/could elaborate on

nonetheless, im a fan of the headcanon/idea and I would love to use it in drawings and/or fics (with creds ofc

Ooh another Ancillary verse fan- I'm slowly converting the fandom to my Bronte&Tiergan agenda. Anyways, thanks so much for the ask! I'm glad you liked the ideas about queer signaling in the Lost Cities (and yes, absolutely use any of my worldbuilding ideas in fics/drawings with credit! I would love to be tagged as well if you post anything using my ideas because I love to see cool art/fics.).

As for other ideas about queer signaling in the Lost Cities, I know I have some more lying around somewhere:

In general, I think fire/pyrokinesis has a strong association with queerness. As you can see from the ideas used in my posted fics, fire is a prevailing theme in how queer elves signal, from balefire to phoenixes. In my headcanon, this is because of one of my ocs, Alera Pyren. She's an original Councillor, pyrokinetic, and one of the first and most visible openly queer elves of the Lost Cities. (The Council of the time was very upset about this, but given that Alera was one of the most powerful pyrokinetics ever to live, there wasn't very much they could do about it.) Fintan, who was not as openly queer but still very much known as a queer figure in the Lost Cities, furthered this association during his own tenure on the Council.

One would think that the pyrokinesis ban and associated stigma around pyrokinesis would end this idea, but in fact most queer elves took up fire as a symbol even more strongly, as it was now just like them: banned and scorned by the Lost Cities.

Young elves who aren't able to use phoenixes or balefire to signal come up with a variety of replacements. Balefire is rare and expensive in the modern day, so aquamarine, which is similar in color, is sometimes used. Other options include drawings or tattoos of fire, often on the underside of the wrist or other easily hidden places.

Fire-related slang: a 'spark' or 'phoenix egg' is someone who hasn't yet discovered/is newly discovering their queerness. 'blazing' is openly/obviously queer. 'much like Alera' is a polite way to call someone a lesbian.

To some degree, since the elves are all about light and crystal, I think darkness gets associated with queerness as well. Darkness conceals queer elves and keeps them safe. 'In the dark' or 'under cover of night' is similar to being in the closet, though most queer elves are what we would call closeted given the bigotry of the Lost Cities.

This imagery is also seen in some of the places queer elves meet: a midnight ball is a late-night ball in one of the hidden ballrooms around elven cities, which is specifically for queer elves and provides a safe place to meet. As seen in my fic Chiral, these balls are often masquerade balls, as it helps protect people's identities.

Atlantis has gay bars. You can identify them by balefire crystals set specifically into the doorframe- all Atlantis is lit by balefire, but balefire in specific places on a storefront means this place is queer.

[vinguist]

Ok but my favorite worldbuilding thing is when characters are queer, but the terms or ways they are queer are specific to the way the way that fantasy culture/species works. Like if a species had 6 sex categories, how would that affect transition, how would it affect gender/gender roles.

Only specific example I can think of is in some misceverses/omegaverses there will be people who are trans-dynamic/trans secondary gender, or people that are nonbinary (nontrinary?) of their dynamic/second gender.

Or like Kanaya in homestuck is considered queer by human standards for dating women but by troll standards (a mostly pansexual species) the notable part of her sexuality isn't that she dates women, but that she specifically doesnt date men, so itd be seen more like being partially asexual since she doesnt experience a part of typical attraction. But trolls also don't have terms for queerness so they don't categorise Kanaya or her attraction as anything.

[the-floral-skeleton]

Writers who try to include non-binary identities by introducing a third option have the spirit, but imo often miss the mark. Many of us aren't really a third option, and even those that are, a third option will never really cover all the third options we can be. Bottom line, a trinary isn't much better than a binary.

If you've got a binary of warriors and poets, adding witches isn't going to fix it. Some people who don't fit warrior or poet will be witches, yeah, but they may also be bakers, princes, or wild boars. There are going to be people who flow between or simultaneously occupy multiple of these. Or people who mostly feel like poets but don't want to be boxed into those expectations, and don't really fuck with iambic pentameter. And those who don't resonate with any of this, and think it's kind of weird we're basing so much of our identity on our jobs anyway.

My point being is, the solution for non-binary characters is not a trinary system. It’s a system that has the flexibility for people to blaze their own path right through it. If the world you created doesn't have that flexibility, that's okay, but you're going to have to accept it won't be easy for your non-binary characters, and you have to consider how they deal with that.

[kiff-kiffington]

I need some help, I got a worldbuilding project taking place in a general 20th century inspired setting. I need a term for "transgender" that works in a world where gender dysphoria seems to be poorly studied and understood. Not due to bigotry but due to sort of lack of interest since many people experiencing it hardly seem to open up about it. Anti Queer bigotry is relatively uncommon in this world and I'm struggling to find a historic term that isn't designed to insult queer folk in someway.

[badassbutterfly1987]

Thinking about White London worldbuilding again.

So I've been consistently writing Holland as trans in my fics but not specifically calling him trans in the text of the fic because I don't think alternate universe 1819 London would use the word transgender.

But for worldbuilding purposes I'm curious what the White London version of the concept would be. Would they have individual terms or an umbrella term for trans/intersex/genderfluid/nonbinary as a third gender? Would it get a separate pronoun or trans Holland just referring to himself as a man? (also depends on individuals either being openly trans or trying to pass) If it is acknowledged then what would be the overall cultural treatment? My own thought was that it's treated as a bit of an oddity but hardly deviant, though some bastards will absolutely try to weaponize it.

Mind you I haven't actually got into adding to the Maktahn conlang because I wouldn't know where to start. (there was a post by one of our fandom locals that indexed Maktahn words but it's buried somewhere deep in my likes page)