Wishing all LGBT+ folk a safe and joyful Pride month this year! And of course I made pics for the occasion!
SPOILERS for more or less all of Divided. Also content warning for limited discussion of -phobias.
In Divided, there's plenty of LGBT+ stuff, as there is in all of my SimLit, but it's a slightly different experience in this story. In my modern stories, it's all completely accepted, and no-one really thinks twice about it. Even one of the most evil mothers I've ever written had no issue with her son being trans (though she took issue with literally everything else about him, but you get me).
However, the story you're currently reading takes place 300 years before any of that. Whilst this kind of thing is far from uncommon, it's also far from understood or documented. In the story, most regular people have no issue with anything gender or sexuality-related, but nobility, upper classes, and people who have their noses three miles up nobility's asses have a problem with that sort of thing. Nobody has a particular word for this sort of thing in-story, it's just a thing that doesn't really have a name, though people have a few euphemisms here and there.
In the eyes of the nobility in Divided, everything in life was about money, legacy and having children, and not 'bringing shame' upon the family. Everything had to stay exactly the way it was and had always been, and any deviation is shunned, as is the case with Eli Annorin, who Samuel disowns due to the fact he found out he was flirting with men as well as women, eventually ending up with a male partner, which thankfully Samuel Annorin doesn't know yet (I don't think).
Whereas Daniel Reyes, Gideon's son, is less concerned about such a thing. I think he came to his own realisation a little later than Eli did, and wasn't really thinking too deeply into what he saw in men as well as women. They live a comfortable life, and Gideon couldn't give less of a shit about nobility, so he's happy for people to do whatever's best for them. He knows his father would be more than happy for him to be in love with a man...though he'd be less happy to know he's in love with an Annorin, but that's a separate point. : P
I decided to use both the gay men's Pride flag here and the bi flag as well.
In early Act Three, even with all of Eli's playful flirtatiousness in the past few years, his father's words still echo in the back of his mind, and he always finds himself holding back or second-guessing himself because of Samuel Annorin's attitudes. He doesn't really care about being disowned, since he no longer considers Samuel his father anyway- but as there always is with shitty parents, I think there's still something in the back of his mind that keeps telling him 'what would 'your father' think of this?' Eli has to keep telling himself to put his happiness and his true self first.
Thing is, even in a supportive environment, the constant stream of negativity from either people around you or the media has a habit of making you second-guess yourself or essentially gaslighting you into thinking you're lying to yourself about your identity. The truth is, you know you better than anyone else does.
I don't really like writing about the negativities of anything LGBT+ -related. There's enough fiction out there about LGBT+ misery- not being accepted, rocky coming-outs, and the like. The stuff we all deal with IRL and wouldn't mind getting away from in fiction now and again. But given Eli's father is one of the richest people in Henford, who has standards he feels he has to uphold, I couldn't see it being a positive situation for him.
For Dan, Dan is very much your character who is young and just wants to enjoy himself and doesn't care what other people think about him. Sadly, the situation with Lord Volpe has made enjoyment very difficult, but hopefully there's a way out sometime...
Though, for a mostly more positive experience than Eli's, we have Kat and Ellie.
Kat fell in love with Ellie almost straight away. I'd never written 'love at first sight' before, but it seemed like a funny idea to have it crop up somewhere, and Kat struck me as the type who would fall for someone straight away. XD Ellie's easygoing nature and Kat's more chaotic nature seem to be a good match.
Something I've noticed especially about lesbian relationships is how weirdly obsessed people are with the idea of one falling apart. People are either obsessed with an excuse to disguise misogyny as concern, or so they can go on a mile-long rant about how 'see? this wouldn't have happened if she got with a man!' and it's tiring.
I'm not entirely sure about Ellie, but Kat figured out a while ago that she only liked women. I don't imagine she ever was in a relationship back home, but she probably admired a few people from afar. I feel she'd say she's 'too busy' for a relationship when in reality she was probably too nervous to say anything! You know the jokey stereotype about lesbians always holding off on making the first move. : P
So here we have a lesbian relationship where both of them are more than
happy with each other, they're supportive of each other, and think the
world of each other. I love them writing them both because they're both the epitome of LGBT+ joy. Kat doesn't want to kill anyone, sure, but anyone who would try to do anything to harm Ellie would not be getting away with it lightly.
Though we haven't had much mention of Kat's family back home yet, they both want the best for Kat, and I think if her mother knew she had a girlfriend she'd want to know every little detail of Ellie's life. I can imagine Kat and her mother being very similar, only I imagine her mother being twice as chaotic as Kat is. XD
And of course, it wouldn't be a bnuuy SimLit without a character that mostly wears dark colours who has some Gender Stuff going on, would it? Enter everyone's favourite vampire, Oskar (Violeta didn't hear that I hope : P ). The worst thing is, nobody really talks about this sort of thing much at this point in history in-universe, so he very much feels on his own about it, though he's felt like that about plenty of other things in his life as well.
One of the biggest 'themes' of Oskar's character in general is the fact that not everyone is easily defined, nor should they be. I think the closest word that would describe Oskar is probably genderfluid, or maybe bigender, but I went for the genderfluid flag. Thing is, if those words were known or common knowledge at the time, I don't think Oskar would bother with them. I don't think he'd personally care at all for any sort of label. He still uses his usual pronouns and refers to himself as a man, mainly because it doesn't occur to him that he could refer to himself differently if he wanted- but it works for him, so he rolls with it.
On top of that, in the modern day he'd likely be considered aromantic and asexual, or at least something close to it. He's never been repulsed by the thought of either, he's just never had any interest in either throughout his life.
And it also plays into his friendship with Dinah, and the complexities there that perhaps in another story might be a source of drama or awkwardness, but I figured I'd put a positive spin on it. Oskar doesn't feel romantically for Dinah, but she does for him. However, there's no awkwardness because boundaries are respected and Dinah knows that Oskar thinks the world of her, and that's all that matters. Though there were experiences before this that made him wonder, it was during the scene where he drinks her blood (yes, that one) that he realised he had a sort of envy about women, which he didn't realise why until later. Dinah thankfully is very affirming with his feminine side, and they can often be seen wandering Henford in dresses together. < 3
Again, the only character that gives him shit for it is Annorin, for the same reason as before: it's something only nobility have a problem with. A lot of the everyday folk's reaction to Oskar is actually emphasised based on my research on trans folk in history, and how some of the reactions are surprisingly positive. The one I remember the most is, I read some bits of a newspaper article about a trans woman in the 50s, and the article seemed fascinated by her transformation, as opposed to the sort of negativity, 'woke' this and 'agenda' that that you'd see nowadays. It was refreshing, but also sad to think about the way things are now. It was good to see trans joy in a historical context, so I amped it up for the story.
Most people don't pick up on anything about Oskar when he's out in one of his fancy dresses. Those who do know of Oskar and his genderfluidity consider it fascinating how well he seems to blend into both, not to mention how he seems to get along well with both men and women. There's never any 'panic' about anything behind 'hidden' or 'trickery' or any of that annoying 'trans panic' type stuff. It's just 'oh, cool, so Oskar is a guy who has connection to femininity and likes dresses?' Everyone is a bit surprised at first, but only because they aren't used to encountering people like that.
Nobody's really considered a possibility of anyone changing gender before, so to them it's all new in a good way. It's only touched on in-story, but he does mention in passing on how as much as he valued the men he fought with in the Bloodmoon, he always felt he didn't have much in common with them. One has to wonder if that's something Alistair ever picked up on, but maybe there'll be more development on that later.
Maybe that's part of why people often call on Oskar's wisdom (and part of why he loves giving unsolicited advice.) He's lived a lot of different lives- the life of the living, the life of the dead, the life of a man and the life of a woman.
And lastly, onto Clem and Violeta.
As for Clem, I decided to make her a lesbian purely because of an offhand comment she makes about Áine in one of the chapters, which to me sounded pretty sapphic, so I figured I'd roll with it. Who doesn't love a sword lesbian? It's not likely she'll get with anyone, though. She's been too busy stabbing people being a High Shepherd that she's never really thought about the possibility of being in a relationship, and though she isn't aromantic in any sense, I don't think it's anything she'll bother with in the timeframe of the story.
Clem is pretty closeted about herself in this sense, but that's mainly because Jacoban High Shepherds generally don't fall in love or have children or anything. So love has been something she's had to more or less force to the back of her mind.
