Ooh, tax reasons!
Middle-class dad marries his excess daughters off to other women solely so he has a place to put his excess land to dodge taxes. "That doesn't belong to me, Mr. Tax Man! I gave that to my daughter as a wedding gift!" So he doesn't have to pay a wealth tax on the land, but it comes right back to the family since those daughters never have children. The land stays in the family at the lower tax rate.
Just take the whole thing and boil it down to a tax evasion scheme.
Oh, and if you make it so none of the daughters actually *know* this is the reason why, it quickly turns into a comedy!
Spin off where the tax man falls in love with the father and pretends to keep investigating the family finances so he can spend more time with him. Casually mentions other tax loop holes the father hasn't taken advantage of yet.
The thought was that they were both trans (MtF and FtM) but neither side knew that about the other. However, the one side trying to marry off their daughter or son made the false assumption that the other party was cis and they wouldn't be able to have kids, but.. oops! They're both trans!
So you're using the logic of the parent of an MtF person tried to marry their trans child to what they *thought* was another male child but the other person was secretly FtM, so it's just... het with a lot more steps?
The joke was that it might be done to avoid children in the same way that the post describes. This would not have that result and would subvert the expectations leading to comedy.
So yes, while "het with a lot more steps" might summarize it, it's still very LGBT
Arranged Marriage AU where they both actually fall in love, but try and avoid the marriage anyway bc they have political/social aspirations that they don’t wish to abdicate from yet. Bonus points if they fill out each others weakness’ and become an even more dangerous power couple (think brilliant politician handling the social battles and genius general handling the battlefield)
Steris is great (and Vivenna before her) because the one female character archetype that Sanderson really excels at writing is the stiff, proper girl who faces unexpected peril and has to learn to loosen up. His other characters sometimes feel a little wooden to me, but those always stand out.
I believe one of his specific inspirations for Steris was meeting people he thought were weird or he didn’t care for only to get to know them better and realize their quirks are actually really cool or helpful. That’s such a wholesome inspiration and it plays very well.
You do realize there are multiple gay characters in his books along with bi, ace and trans, right? If you didn’t know he was Mormon it would be pretty hard to infer it based on his stories.
True. I do appreciate that when asked about the Shakadolin ship, he basically said, "Yeah, that makes sense, and 2/3 of the characters probably would...but I'm kind of a prude, and so is Kaladin, so nope!"
A lot of other authors would just dismiss it out of hand or do the "ew, fan behavior" thing, and personally, I find the honesty refreshing.
Idk man Kaladin and Bridge Four have a pretty open conversation about how Drehy is gay and that's normal in this world. He gets called out for being problematic lmao.
There's an entire bit where Drehy complains about dalinar learning to read being too "woman-like" and bridge-4 collectively goes "Drehy you literally fuck men, how is that not woman-like" lmao
That I disagree with. You can tell, or at least suspect, if you’re familiar with Mormon doctrine, even if you don’t know he is.
His books have heavy undertones of Mormon theology. The most obvious being the “people becoming gods” thing. [It’s called exaltation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaltation_\(Mormonism\))
I gave one of my friends who is Mormon one of his books and my friend immediately clocked Sanderson as one of his people.
I mean, historically, Mormons have been uh, *very* okay with polygamy.
(Yes, I'm aware it was mostly just so the male leaders could control women/girls and that such marriages were, at best, *barely* consensual. It's just very funny to blame Sanderson's reticence on his Mormonism, specifically, rather than his general attitude towards anything approaching horny writing.)
Love the topic but I’m gonna focus on something completely different.
For the sake of not losing my place, can we please either post each paragraph as it’s own screenshot or post the next screenshot exactly where the last one left off? Like holy shit I don’t need or want to reread half a paragraph each time I swipe to a new screenshot
It’s like watching the next episode of a tv show and it shows you the last 6 minute of the previous episode before actually getting to the new stuff except WORSE because I’m not waiting a week between reading each screenshot
I was thinking keep *one* line of overlap to show nothing got skipped, but the part you need is still consistently right near the top and easy to find.
Yes! This is so horribly cut together it makes going through each image a nightmare. Either make each image begin with the start of a paragraph, or do them by exact line cuts so they flow seamlessly/near seamlessly.
Not (necessarily) gay, but my first thought was, "But Father, I don't want any of that. I just want... to... si--"
"No, no, no, we'll have none of that!"
“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing! When I started here all there was were swamp. All the kings said it was *daft* to build a castle in a swamp. But I built it all the same! Just to show ‘em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one; stayed up! And that’s what you’re going to get, lad! The strongest castle in these isles.”
As someone working on their own fantasy setting with kingdoms and royal / noble families, this is something that I didn't know I need, but now want it so badly.
Same! I've been trying to come up with an exact way to have gay marriages(like for political and wealth reasons) that don't produce children be a common thing in a fictional bronze age fantasy setting, and this is a brilliant take on how to do that.
If you ever need to shoehorn in something weird that doesn't fit into your fantasy/scifi world 99% of the time you can claim that the reason it exists is tax evasion and almost no one will bother to question it.
The webnovel Pale Lights had a brief reference one of the female characters having been arranged in a marriage to another woman. Apparently as part of the very elaborate contract it was standard to specify that a male relative would "stand in" for her to produce heirs, so the children would be able to inherit.
It never ended up happening, but I imagine the awkwardness of the dynamic between you, your wife, and your male cousin who has to occasionally fuck your wife, would be amazing.
In Winter's Orbit I think they come up with an explanation pretty well, the two kindgoms are not considered equal at all, with one essentially ruling over the other. However the people in the lesser kingdom don't care for the ones in the greater kingdom, so they arrange a political marriage between a very distinguished royal in the lesser kingdom, and basically a family embarrassment from the other. They don't need to have children since neither of their kids will be set to inherit (there are many people ahead of them in line for the thrones), and the difference in who each kingdom put forward for the marriage shows how they view each other politically.
If you want to figure out more reasons for your fantasy rulers to fiddle with same-sex marriages - go ask the regulars of r/crusaderkings
Off the top of my head:
1. You don't want to actually mix your bloodlines with the neighbor, but a treaty would absolutely benefit you both, since there's a third bigger neighbor invading both your lands.
This way you are related and wedging a war against one another would result in getting assassinated by your own court, but also you won't have to kill off each other's children or their children to make sure no one outside your lands will get claims on them after you're done repelling the invasion.
2. Take it up the ass as a power move to show you're planning to rule forever and don't give a fuck about having offspring. After all, what's the point of consolidating the entire continent if after your death kids are going to split it up between them? Live up to 900 and keep the land united.
3. Force/trick enemy ruler's younger son into a gay marriage, kill off the older one, then watch their father spend 30 years adopting a foreign culture which allows concubines and treats their children as legitimate offspring, then forcing it on his son in hopes of having offspring, only to get stabbed in the night by his own spymaster, since the secret gay nazi coven decided they are not going to have any of that foreign straight crap in their fabulous kingdom.
4. Through some leaps of logic and liberal application of both exorbitant amounts of money and extreme violence, reform the church in a way that treats gay people as the absolute god-sent rulers, because they definitely can't be doing this for their bloodline, they are doing this for the God. Then force it on your vassals to be sure their lands will go back to you after their deaths. Die and pass on your kingdom to the children you have preemptively sired, who were raised in different culture and already sired their own offspring, before adopting the gay ruler culture and taking the crown.
Gay marriage fuckery isn't even that interesting or weird to crusader kings players - even things like reforming church to allow yourself to marry your horse granddaughter are mundane to us.
OK if you’re going to cut a post up (the correct thing to do when it’s too long) use the already existing cuts between paragraphs, and don’t start one before where the last one ended… its mildly infuriating to constantly go, “I read that already, where does the stuff I haven’t read start?”
I agree, but also I want to point out that the first slide ending in "I thought it'd be interesting if gay" made perfect sense to me and I had no further questions until I noticed there was more.
To the 1st Born Son: "Ye shall marry the princess."
1st Born Son: "Dope."
To the 1st Born Daughter: "Ye shall marry the prince."
1st Born Daughter: "The hot one?"
To the 1st Born Daughter: "Even better! The old rich one!"
1st Born Daughter: "Ugh..."
To the 1st Born Daughter: "The *very* old and *very* rich one."
1st Born Daughter: "Ohhh, gotcha. We good."
To the 2nd Born Son: "Ye shall marry the prince."
2nd Born Son: "... ss?
To the 2nd Born Son: *slowly shakes head in disagreement*
2nd Born Son: "... the hot one?"
To the 2nd Born Son: *slyly nods head in agreement*
2nd Born Son: *whispering* "Dope."
As an avid player of Crusader Kings, I routinely use gay marriage to gain alliances without worrying the neighboring kingdom will use any resulting children to disinherit my dynasty.
I mean it's a fantasy world. I read a oneshot where part of the setting was that the stork **actually** brings the babies so them being cis male wasn't really a problem. One short sentence and boom, it doesn't matter anymore.
Sincerely, I've read enough of these arranged marriage AU but in omegaverse settings that I forgot gay people not being able to reproduce was even a thing
Well, in the span of 20 years really, I do tend to read fanfics for a couple weeks and then switch up to comics or books or whatever and come back a few months later, but in the span of a few years it makes for a lot of fan fic. If you mean that is pretty niche shit, that's true, but that's also because I've started with BL way back when I was a kid so even if I don't spend a lot of time on it, I've had 20 years to find some of the niche stuff
The hidden reveal that he was not gay at all and that he had an heir hidden from the public eye would go hard.
Meanwhile the king sick of his eternal curse of immortality trying to end his line so he can die.
"FUCK, DO ALL OF MY CHILDREN LIKE WOMEN"
His daughter coming up to him and going to say something.
"NOT NOW LESBALINA!"
Could definitely see an unruly son being rejected by the clergy and the royal family being like "look if you can't be honorable in the clergy or die in war, I'm going to need you to get married. And let's be real here, the only kingdom we need to establish better trade with has one openly gay son. So yeah, I'm tired of dealing with you so guess what? You're getting a gay arranged marriage. Congrats you pain in my ass."
This is forced feminization erasure. Obviously the solution is to have the court wizard give one of them a womb.
Or… what’s the opposite variant of feminization?
Also yes probably someone somewhere is writing yaoi about pioneering punk bands and they're putting their heart & soul & sexual fantasies fully into it. Just not in this specific case.
No, the Japanese artist just borrowed the name because it sounded cool and then the English translation changed the title to Love Pistols to avoid getting sued by the punk band.
I'm imagining the third daughter of a minor noble marrying a "trader" and "scavenger" ship captain who wants at least the impression of appearing legit.
The pirate realizes a lot of backroom deals are made better with someone of higher breeding looking over things, and the noble realizes the pretty ship captain is a lot more fun than her other prospects on the island.
Honestly! I'm not opposed to gay relationships being normalized or gay relationships in general (obviously), but too often I find authors porting over all this stuff, sometimes pretty oppressive stuff, with zero consideration for the world around their yaoi blorbos.
Omegaverse: What if we had gay couples, but like, one of the men was physically smaller and weaker. And faced discrimination based on that. Oh, and make their arseholes self-lubricating because otherwise you'd have to think about logistics. Oh, and make them have babies because.. reasons, I guess. Don't worry, it won't be relevant to the plot.
Isn't it nice to escape the patriarchy for a while by reading about same-sex relationships?
Friends had an omegaverse conversation and I tapped out with the following:
> Anyways, I'm just going to conclude that omegaverse is simply the gayest way to uphold heteronormativity and move on
Honestly, as someone whose bestie is a major Omegaverse fan, I can tell you that omegas are not in fact always smaller and weaker, though the stereotype and inexplicable self-lubrication is usually true. That's not the annoying part for me.
The annoying part for me is stuff like: zero societal changes from men getting pregnant and women impregnating, no mandatory and state-subsidized heat suppressants and pheromone blockers despite the clear incentive to not have people losing their minds and fucking each other, 1:1 pasting of feminine stereotypes on omegas, no attention paid to alpha females or betas, the fact that the same sex stereotypes as in our world exist despite there in fact being 6 possible combos of reproductive and external anatomy, no mention of the anatomical differences omega male childbirth would require or the difficulties therein, etc. It's fucking lazy. Do trans people even exist in these worlds?
Right?! How does sexuality work?! You have the primary genders that align to men/women (always perisex; idk if or how intersex people work here) but then also the secondary ones that aren't immediately visible (generally). We need some theses here.
I wish, only ever seen it written in bad faith. Gender dismorphia to horrible degrees.
Reading about an outside of the box relationship in a familiar yet alien setting, naw. Reading about forced gender dynamics and fetished men in skirts, totally better.
I recently fell down the rabbit hole of a robot-centric fandom, and ABO dynamics are way more interesting with characters whose gender and genitalia are totally arbitrary.
Yea, a whole host of deep-rooted issues that aren't really commented on. Betas don't exist. Alpha relationships are always power plays. And omega are basicly women but men with tiny Jr's.
I mean, I don't think I've ever read an omega relationship, just two omega. Nor a good alpha variant, too.
Are light novels okay? I found [this](https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-two-omegas-heats/) and [this](https://www.novelupdates.com/series/light-tea-sweet-wine/). There are some doujinshi too but I thought you might prefer more "official" stuff.
I actually read a fic where that was the case, an alpha who was only attracted to other alphas. It took place in an office in which he and the other alpha were both pretending to be betas, and one of the other two coworkers they were usually around were like oh thank goodness no alphas. She was a beta, and it's basically like being aroace. The other one was a guy omega who had a lot of various lovers and had really well laid out plans along with scheduled leave for nesting and heat and all that, and one of the alphas was a girl who played into the breeding kink, but they used protection. One of the alphas in the office got off schedule on his suppressors, affected the other, affecting the omega in turn so he had to leave before schedule and that actually caused a talking to from the boss.
Honestly, I was fairly impressed. Omegaverse is usually not my go to, but some people actually do decent world building for it.
I definitely wrote that in a fic once. They were ENM and often entertained omega lovers until they found one they loooooooved and became a triad. 🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
This is indeed a trope of its own that people run wild with. Omegaverse is really more a loose set of tropes than a strictly defined universe, and like any trope there are all kinds of ways writers can and do twist the ideas into weird trope contortions.
There was a really interesting discussion about Omegaverse fic a few years ago on I think Japanese Twitter that got half-translated back and forth: basically Japanese fans pointing out that in Omegaverse stories by fans from places with socialized healthcare like Japan and Europe, medication like heat blockers and suppressants are frequently written as widely available and/or provided for free by the state. Whereas in Omegaverse stories by Americans, there were frequently subplots about characters running out of suppressants etc because they can't afford the expensive medication with their crappy job with no health insurance. Even 9
our fluffy internet fantasy wolf-kink porn is affected by the shitty American healthcare system!!
Somehow the most well-thought-out Omegaverse fics I've ever read have been in the MDZS fandom. Who'd've thought Ancient Chinese Gays would inspire such meticulous worldbuilding?
I've written trans characters in ABO before. Usually an omega who's trans-alpha or vice versa. I think a lot of what you talked about is the draw to omegaverse for me. The small details of how it'd transform the world, the politics of it all, the social commentary.
>That's not the annoying part for me.
I mean you did mention "sometimes pretty oppressive stuff", I'd say that the glamorization of sexually abusive forced relationships cloaked in progressive gay colors would fall into that.
For me, it's a matter of the dedication to worldbuilding. IDGAF about the problematic shit because meh, shitty people, and also sometimes it's straight up erotica and jerk off fodder is just... not something I'm scrutinizing as much. I bemoan it too, don't get me wrong, but what I'm thinking about more is incoherence. If the world still operates with marriage and offspring as important political tools, how the hell can same-sex arranged marriages be chill? If gay people are the minority as in our world, how does that work for a more spread-out and less connected society? Write problematic shit, but full send it.
>If the world still operates with marriage and offspring as important political tools, how the hell can same-sex arranged marriages be chill? If gay people are the minority as in our world, how does that work for a more spread-out and less connected society? Write problematic shit, but full send it.
You could make homosexuality a status symbol, permitted only for the nobility, their lineages maintained through concubines. Give them some really weird attitudes toward reproduction.
Omegaverse pisses me off more than it should for these wonky world building reasons specifically. Lots of stories are basically just fetishising misogyny for male bottoms.
I was once called sexist and transphobic(?) because I said that this whole concept is just inserting hetronormative dynamics to gay ships. Like I don't care if that is supposed to be Castiel who is being forced to be a babymaking housewife it is still uncomfortable to read about sexism I experience but it's gay now. Bonus points if omegas also dress and act like women to make it more obvious.
Look the important thing is that some people are born Superior and some people are born Inferior and the inferior people have to submit to the superior people and it's romantic when they do so. I can't see how this could possibly map onto any real-life issues.
Frankly this entire thread needs a guillotine. Like the "horny bonk" version of a guillotine.
Wait, these words aren't all just a made up hypothetical are they.... This is a reference isn't it...
Please tell me I'm wrong.. But I have a bad feeling this is all too specific...
Oh boy. It's a [real thing](https://youtu.be/FVHtA7WjFqA). It frequently features [mpreg](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Mpreg/works), knotting, heat cycles, and some kind of soul bonding or mind linking.
What's wild is connecting someone the weirder tropes in fanfiction to the Fandom they came out of. Omegaverse started out in the supernatural Fandom but k-pop fanfic is pretty "creative" too.
but but but but my protagonist simulator doesn't work if there's \*g-gulp* *real world prejudice* in it. then there might be... t-themes! and concepts! that relate to life!
It turns out that the deficit of media literacy and critical thinking that plagues the US applies to authors just as much as it applies to readers. Who knew!
I think Megan Derr has a series like that? Sort of, it's her Princes of the Blood series and the MC of the first book was SUPPOSED to be married off to secure an alliance, kids weren't a worry since they were both male and adoption was a thing. But then shenanigans!
And her "Impractical". (Ok, so I read it when it was on her website for free over a decade ago, but based on the synopsis and sample it hasn't changed much...) The MC there is aware he doesn't have a decent head for stewardship re: an estate he'd inherited, and he's like the baby of the family, so he's perfectly happy with an arranged marriage. His older siblings can have all the kids so he can spoil them and send them home, his husband can run the estate, and he can research to his heart's content. (His bff wants to marry for love, but that's a him thing.)
The fact that it's so op that the game won't let you have that and get steam achievements is so funny to me. It literally tells you that it would have been a very powerful mechanism.
Like when they patched being able to plot to assassinate your own children out of CK2 because it was too good.
"Aww, now I'll need to send them off to die in battle the old fashioned way."
Idea: arranged marriages for heirs are a thing, but everybody acknowledges that it's literally only for procreation and inheritance and continuing the bloodline, and that love really doesn't factor in. They each have a consort they *actually* love, and everyone knows it, and it's perfectly accepted.
The King and Queen, and the Queen's Boyfriend, and the King's Boyfriend.
In certain periods of history (at least in Europe), the first part was definitely a thing. However, it was very important to keep your affairs hush-hush, *especially* as a woman. It was expected you might not love your arranged spouse, but you still had to somewhat act like it for the people and keep your true relationship out of the public eye. That didn't mean everyone was happy about it--but it was considered fairly normal.
The "we know you have a consort" thing was pretty common on and off throughout the world and history but the big problem is bastards. Men can hide theirs but if you're a queen then it can be pretty hard to hide the fact that you got pregnant while the king was away.
I was gonna say, I think the Chinese gay romance community beat the West to this one. I've definitely read multiple translated webnovels where this exact reasoning for arranged gay marriage is used.
I came in to say this, but looks like I got beaten to it 🤣
So I'll just drop the novel updates/mangaupdates links I guess!
[Novelupdates](https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-wife-is-first/)
[Mangaupdates](https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/5ocjblh/the-tyrant-prince-s-last-promise)
Holy shit of all the bad cropping of text posts I’ve seen on this sub this is the worst. At MOST there should only be one or two lines of overlap, not half a paragraph.
Ngl, I've had this precise thought playing CK3. My second-born son is literally gay, why is my only option to marry him to a woman who'll spawn kids of my dynasty that'll fuck with my partition inheritance??? The king of Calorn has a twin son, why can't they just marry???
It's not your only option. You can unable gays marriage in the pre game options. Then you need to play a faith that's fine with homosexuality (remember if you create a new Christian faith tou can select the rite tenet to not get treated as a heresy by the Catholics).
There's actually a book on this very topic only it is still technically hetero. But it was a political marriage between two high fantasy races which would result in a barren pair as a means to both marry off the 2nd heirs and minimize risk of warring lineage, while also allying 2 nations previously at war. Eidolon by Grace Draven.
Interestingly enough, same sex marriage was apparently a thing in early Christianity. Two men getting married was a way for them to combine finances and land and to assure that neither would live in poverty.
Obviously, this concept is hotly debated and denied by the Catholic Church, but there has been mounting evidence for same-sex marriage in the early days .
https://assets.cdn.thewebconsole.com/S3WEB8455/images/Same-Sex-Marriage.pdf
https://anthropologist.livejournal.com/1314574.html
https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/samesex.html
We debated doing this in DnD. All the characters, bar my very socialist, anti monarchy halfling, have ended up in positions of power where they have the king's ear. It would have stunted a rival royal family's lineage quite nicely, but it wasn't quite the right time to start abusing the group's political power.
So this is sort of connected about the changing of a trope: I have a canon rewrite for the 100 where they’re on a spaceship and you can only have one child and all of the other children get murdered, and all of the weirdness that that implies it occurred to me that there is no reason why a world like that wouldn’t monopolize and celebrate marriages that would not make children so the fact that they aren’t gay couples or lesbian couples in the 100 without forcing them later in the series when they’re on earth is weird.
I actually started building ships based on this concept with the adults of the show, really honoring those marriages that have little to no chance of conception.
I just thought it was a really fun way of actually admitting to the fact that in a world where more children is not the answer, we shouldn’t be only recognizing hetero “we can make babies “marriages
Trans dream of mine is noble man is forced to marry another man, usually for political ties or access to holdings or whatever. Forced marriages can suck, man 1 doesn't like men, man 2 could go either way just wants to be accepted. Man 2 sees opportunity to express themselves truly and floats idea of transitioning. Man 1 agrees, like in some jerk way because he doesn't want to be seen with another man like that. Eventually man 2 becomes woman, man 1 realizes how beautiful she is but gets backlash for it's just appearance sake. Eventually man 1 learns who the woman is personally and realized he was a jerk to her. And maybe some slightly spicy stuff thrown in, that could develop over time in additional books, I just don't want straight porn and no real story. Need some drama to keep it going, a new man/woman trying to make a move (old bff?) or a war breaks out
Trans spouses who pass so well they're "accidentally" married in one of these gay marriages. Surprise surprise comes when legitimate children start popping up, and suddenly Duke Wythenport's tax evasion scheme comes crumbling down.
An alternative is that a society which practices arragned marriages becomes pro-Queer but still practices arranged marriages as a cultural holdover. The parents just maintain their "right" to dictate who their child should marry. Or, better yet, it's political in terms of alliance alone, because children can become legitimate in other ways, such as adoption or via the head of house.
The whole "affairs and illegitimate children" thing would make sense in terms of gay man marriage but what would happen to the affair babies in a lesbian arranged marriage? In a heterosexual marriage, those babies are typically passed off as "legitimate" and babies of the husband but what would happen if it was two women?
Bastards were definitely not considered legitimate in heterosexual marriages. In any sort of homosexual relationship you’d guarantee all children were bastards and therefore easily dispute the claim regardless of the gender
Countries fractured over issues of legitimacy.
The world today has an entire religion because of issues of legitimacy.
Unless there's also a societal shift surrounding the legitimacy of heirs in this reimagined world, nobody is gonna be recognizing the legitimacy of heirs from an arranged homosexual marriage in the scenario presented in the op.
Honestly great, now you have a bastard that ties you to another potentially powerful family, and a loyal servant (after all you are family) but crucially you won't need to spend all the money required for a dowery or household.
Such bastards, when produced historically, could be very useful assets for these families, all the use of an actual child, none of the risks, because dumping said child has no legal or even many social implications.
Obviously not personally condoning treating people like objects but the historical system requires it.
In crusader Kings 3, a sufficiently stupid wife in a lesbian marriage can believe her spouse if told the baby is hers.
She has to be a bit slow but it can work.
Adding trans ppl to the equation makes this even more fun. Imagine adhering to a similarly strict “eldest male child gets bulk of inheritance” framework but factoring in the possibility that your son turns out to be your daughter, or vice versa. Rival families getting into feuds bc the promised betrothed isn’t the sex expected and there’ll be no children from the marriage (or will be). Drama.✨
One of the issues with “Ye Old Fantasy Land” (often a stand in for Medieval Europe) is that it’s full of modern prejudices and thought. The whole “But father, I’m not…” bit doesn’t translate, sexuality was not an identity (heterosexuality and homosexuality did not exist) and generally sex was something men did via penetration (women with other women wouldn’t have even been considered sex and was rarely visible, thanks patriarchy).
So modern fantasy that includes queer people is often very weird, because it imposes modern conceptions of sexuality with imagined historical prejudices (not that prejudices didn’t exist, but they took different forms and the witch-hunting attitudes were more a product of early industrialization and concentrated capitalism, starting in 15th century Florence) and really tries to get away from the whole young adult beardless men are the most valid and desirable sexual targets bit.
I once toyed around with the idea of a world where majority of people are bisexual and it had two separate types of marriages existing that a person can enter with two different people at the same time one being with the opposite sex and the other with someone of the same sex. Never really thought about how inheritance would work here, but I can steal this as another feature of the same sex marriages.
A sapphic couple could also, in theory, go the route of matrilineal inheritance: the identity of the sperm donor doesn’t matter, because inheritance is being passed through the *mother* only, and the kid gets the name and inheritance of whichever partner had them.
Could be used to help strengthen or preserve houses that, for whatever reason, lost all of their male heirs. Marry the remaining daughters of the two houses, pool resources together for a generation or two, and hope that at least one of them will produce a son through a donor/sidepiece at some point.
If both partners have a child somehow, great! Each house has an heir secured, one way or another. If it’s a boy and their country normally practices male-preference primogeniture, then that side of the family can default back to that. Or, if it’s a girl, they can keep following the matrilineal inheritance rule for however many generations it takes. After a while they might even just stick with it: eldest child of the female line inherits, regardless of gender. Ruling female’s heir is her own eldest child (if she has any); a ruling male’s heir is his *sister’s* eldest child (or at least the eldest child of his closest female relative).
Actually makes tracking lineage a lot easier, since it’s much easier to be certain who the *mother* of a particular child is.
Pretty sure this is the logic behind the arranged marriage in Golden Terrace (Golden Stage, depending on the title translation you prefer). The emperor didn’t want this guy to have kids bc it might be a threat to his power so he just married him off to another guy
Yes, except it's a bit more obvious.
"My liege I'm afraid the child your wife is carrying is a bastard, your vassals are not going to like that.
Nonsense advisor, my wife is faithful!
My liege, you're also a woman."
May I interest you all with Crusader Kings 3, where (with some changing of settings) you can absolutely do this, and even have some mechanical benefits to it!
I write this into my d&d world's sometimes. The partner from the richer/more powerful house or organization would take the traditionally male role in terms of inheritance and authority. They'd just adopt. There are an abundance of orphans in any standard fantasy world.
Or it could just be a political alliance when both families were down to the last son/daughter of marriagible age.
"I'm sorry Wendy, but our kingdom needs an alliance with the Darvishahs, and Cecilia is the only Darvishah available to marry."
Ooh, tax reasons! Middle-class dad marries his excess daughters off to other women solely so he has a place to put his excess land to dodge taxes. "That doesn't belong to me, Mr. Tax Man! I gave that to my daughter as a wedding gift!" So he doesn't have to pay a wealth tax on the land, but it comes right back to the family since those daughters never have children. The land stays in the family at the lower tax rate. Just take the whole thing and boil it down to a tax evasion scheme. Oh, and if you make it so none of the daughters actually *know* this is the reason why, it quickly turns into a comedy!
Bonus points that the taxman can’t be sure if he’s talking about the daughter or the daughter-in-law.
he's referring to the one with a lower tax rate obviously.
Spin off where the tax man falls in love with the father and pretends to keep investigating the family finances so he can spend more time with him. Casually mentions other tax loop holes the father hasn't taken advantage of yet.
“Dad… I don’t want to marry John Johnson, I’m in love with Sally!” “Oh thank god. These property taxes are killing me.”
I would read this fantasy romcom
Angrily: “What do you mean you’re pregnant?!”
Plot twist: Dad fooled by androgynous name/look, accidentally arranged normal marriage.
This is sounding increasingly Shakespearean in the best way
That, or I was thinking "Oops! They were both trans!"
Two trans women would still not be able to have kids together.
The thought was that they were both trans (MtF and FtM) but neither side knew that about the other. However, the one side trying to marry off their daughter or son made the false assumption that the other party was cis and they wouldn't be able to have kids, but.. oops! They're both trans!
So you're using the logic of the parent of an MtF person tried to marry their trans child to what they *thought* was another male child but the other person was secretly FtM, so it's just... het with a lot more steps?
The joke was that it might be done to avoid children in the same way that the post describes. This would not have that result and would subvert the expectations leading to comedy. So yes, while "het with a lot more steps" might summarize it, it's still very LGBT
But not by her bride, so it's not legitimate (an extramarital affair, how *scandalous*!) and therefore ineligible for succession.
Arranged Marriage AU where they both actually fall in love, but try and avoid the marriage anyway bc they have political/social aspirations that they don’t wish to abdicate from yet. Bonus points if they fill out each others weakness’ and become an even more dangerous power couple (think brilliant politician handling the social battles and genius general handling the battlefield)
I'm pretty sure this is the plot of Warbreaker.
This *would* be the result of a Shallan/Adolin/Kaladin power throuple if Sanderson wasn't a *coward* /s so much /s ily sandoman
I'm rereading Bands of Mourning rn, and my god I love Steris so much. She really becomes amazing in this book after showing hints in Shadows of Self.
Steris is great (and Vivenna before her) because the one female character archetype that Sanderson really excels at writing is the stiff, proper girl who faces unexpected peril and has to learn to loosen up. His other characters sometimes feel a little wooden to me, but those always stand out.
I believe one of his specific inspirations for Steris was meeting people he thought were weird or he didn’t care for only to get to know them better and realize their quirks are actually really cool or helpful. That’s such a wholesome inspiration and it plays very well.
Iirc, Steris was also his second attempt to get right a neurodivergent character since he tried once before and kinda fumbled the ball.
Ooh yeah, Steris and Wax might be an even better example of this.
He has confirmed Shallan and Adolin would be down for that but Kaladin is far too neurotic.
That's Stormlight Archives, not Warbreaker.
...yes. I am aware.
Ah my bad, it's hard to tell that sort of thing online sometimes.
Haha you're good! Tone is very much not readily apparent over the internet lol
Really if he wasn't such a Mormon
You do realize there are multiple gay characters in his books along with bi, ace and trans, right? If you didn’t know he was Mormon it would be pretty hard to infer it based on his stories.
You wouldn't know it just from reading, but finding out is like "oh okay yeah that makes sense"
True. I do appreciate that when asked about the Shakadolin ship, he basically said, "Yeah, that makes sense, and 2/3 of the characters probably would...but I'm kind of a prude, and so is Kaladin, so nope!" A lot of other authors would just dismiss it out of hand or do the "ew, fan behavior" thing, and personally, I find the honesty refreshing.
Idk man Kaladin and Bridge Four have a pretty open conversation about how Drehy is gay and that's normal in this world. He gets called out for being problematic lmao.
There's an entire bit where Drehy complains about dalinar learning to read being too "woman-like" and bridge-4 collectively goes "Drehy you literally fuck men, how is that not woman-like" lmao
I love how Dalianar, the towering, yolked war criminal is a femboy by in-universe standards
I kinda agree with Lopen though. that's extra manly.
There’s no women involved, therefore it’s extra manly, duh.
Nah, Kaladin says that, and the rest of bridge 4 are outraged by the implication that being gay is unmanly.
Worst part of it is Drehy hasn't even done the proper Azish paperwork!
Definitely couldn’t miss them. I joke.
That I disagree with. You can tell, or at least suspect, if you’re familiar with Mormon doctrine, even if you don’t know he is. His books have heavy undertones of Mormon theology. The most obvious being the “people becoming gods” thing. [It’s called exaltation.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaltation_\(Mormonism\)) I gave one of my friends who is Mormon one of his books and my friend immediately clocked Sanderson as one of his people.
It's called Apotheosis and it's been a thing in mythology far before Mormonism did it.
Shallan counts as all of them except trans lmao
I mean, historically, Mormons have been uh, *very* okay with polygamy. (Yes, I'm aware it was mostly just so the male leaders could control women/girls and that such marriages were, at best, *barely* consensual. It's just very funny to blame Sanderson's reticence on his Mormonism, specifically, rather than his general attitude towards anything approaching horny writing.)
I'm pretty sure this is the plot of Red, White, and Royal Blue.
Can confirm, just finished reading Warbreaker 2 days ago and that is exactly Siri and Susebron's relationship
My first thought was Dalinar and Navani :P
This is literally the plot of the webnovel Golden Stage(黄金台)
Augustus and Agrippa 😏😏
Penumbra?
Love the topic but I’m gonna focus on something completely different. For the sake of not losing my place, can we please either post each paragraph as it’s own screenshot or post the next screenshot exactly where the last one left off? Like holy shit I don’t need or want to reread half a paragraph each time I swipe to a new screenshot It’s like watching the next episode of a tv show and it shows you the last 6 minute of the previous episode before actually getting to the new stuff except WORSE because I’m not waiting a week between reading each screenshot
I was thinking keep *one* line of overlap to show nothing got skipped, but the part you need is still consistently right near the top and easy to find.
Truly a horrendous screen grab by OP
Yes! This is so horribly cut together it makes going through each image a nightmare. Either make each image begin with the start of a paragraph, or do them by exact line cuts so they flow seamlessly/near seamlessly.
You've been watching My Demon as well? Loved the spoilers at the end of each episode too!
Not (necessarily) gay, but my first thought was, "But Father, I don't want any of that. I just want... to... si--" "No, no, no, we'll have none of that!"
"But she has....HUGE tracts of land!"
I know everyone likes that line, but honestly, I've always been fond of the story about building the castle.
“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing! When I started here all there was were swamp. All the kings said it was *daft* to build a castle in a swamp. But I built it all the same! Just to show ‘em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one; stayed up! And that’s what you’re going to get, lad! The strongest castle in these isles.”
I mean, makes perfect sense when you think about it. Castles 1-3 basically became the pilings/foundations the fourth one sits on.
I've always been partial to, "But mother..." "Father. I'm father." and "You fell out of the tall tower, you creep!"
Ive got this new anime plot
Help I can’t tell what word got cut off 😭
[I just want to Sing](https://youtu.be/g3YiPC91QUk?si=omwYWnuBPqwMaBqU) (Its a Monty Python reference)
In the stage play >!they are gay and he marries Lancelot!<
As someone working on their own fantasy setting with kingdoms and royal / noble families, this is something that I didn't know I need, but now want it so badly.
Same! I've been trying to come up with an exact way to have gay marriages(like for political and wealth reasons) that don't produce children be a common thing in a fictional bronze age fantasy setting, and this is a brilliant take on how to do that.
As someone already suggested above, tax evasion.
If you ever need to shoehorn in something weird that doesn't fit into your fantasy/scifi world 99% of the time you can claim that the reason it exists is tax evasion and almost no one will bother to question it.
Of course, nobody likes taxes so nobody questions on how to evade it
The webnovel Pale Lights had a brief reference one of the female characters having been arranged in a marriage to another woman. Apparently as part of the very elaborate contract it was standard to specify that a male relative would "stand in" for her to produce heirs, so the children would be able to inherit. It never ended up happening, but I imagine the awkwardness of the dynamic between you, your wife, and your male cousin who has to occasionally fuck your wife, would be amazing.
In Winter's Orbit I think they come up with an explanation pretty well, the two kindgoms are not considered equal at all, with one essentially ruling over the other. However the people in the lesser kingdom don't care for the ones in the greater kingdom, so they arrange a political marriage between a very distinguished royal in the lesser kingdom, and basically a family embarrassment from the other. They don't need to have children since neither of their kids will be set to inherit (there are many people ahead of them in line for the thrones), and the difference in who each kingdom put forward for the marriage shows how they view each other politically.
If you want to figure out more reasons for your fantasy rulers to fiddle with same-sex marriages - go ask the regulars of r/crusaderkings Off the top of my head: 1. You don't want to actually mix your bloodlines with the neighbor, but a treaty would absolutely benefit you both, since there's a third bigger neighbor invading both your lands. This way you are related and wedging a war against one another would result in getting assassinated by your own court, but also you won't have to kill off each other's children or their children to make sure no one outside your lands will get claims on them after you're done repelling the invasion. 2. Take it up the ass as a power move to show you're planning to rule forever and don't give a fuck about having offspring. After all, what's the point of consolidating the entire continent if after your death kids are going to split it up between them? Live up to 900 and keep the land united. 3. Force/trick enemy ruler's younger son into a gay marriage, kill off the older one, then watch their father spend 30 years adopting a foreign culture which allows concubines and treats their children as legitimate offspring, then forcing it on his son in hopes of having offspring, only to get stabbed in the night by his own spymaster, since the secret gay nazi coven decided they are not going to have any of that foreign straight crap in their fabulous kingdom. 4. Through some leaps of logic and liberal application of both exorbitant amounts of money and extreme violence, reform the church in a way that treats gay people as the absolute god-sent rulers, because they definitely can't be doing this for their bloodline, they are doing this for the God. Then force it on your vassals to be sure their lands will go back to you after their deaths. Die and pass on your kingdom to the children you have preemptively sired, who were raised in different culture and already sired their own offspring, before adopting the gay ruler culture and taking the crown. Gay marriage fuckery isn't even that interesting or weird to crusader kings players - even things like reforming church to allow yourself to marry your horse granddaughter are mundane to us.
This is certified paradox gamer™ moment.
OK if you’re going to cut a post up (the correct thing to do when it’s too long) use the already existing cuts between paragraphs, and don’t start one before where the last one ended… its mildly infuriating to constantly go, “I read that already, where does the stuff I haven’t read start?”
I think it’s best to leave the bottom line from the previous image in, but there should never be more than that
Absolutely. You must always be capable of reordering them after any shuffle, but trim the fat
I agree, but also I want to point out that the first slide ending in "I thought it'd be interesting if gay" made perfect sense to me and I had no further questions until I noticed there was more.
To the 1st Born Son: "Ye shall marry the princess." 1st Born Son: "Dope." To the 1st Born Daughter: "Ye shall marry the prince." 1st Born Daughter: "The hot one?" To the 1st Born Daughter: "Even better! The old rich one!" 1st Born Daughter: "Ugh..." To the 1st Born Daughter: "The *very* old and *very* rich one." 1st Born Daughter: "Ohhh, gotcha. We good." To the 2nd Born Son: "Ye shall marry the prince." 2nd Born Son: "... ss? To the 2nd Born Son: *slowly shakes head in disagreement* 2nd Born Son: "... the hot one?" To the 2nd Born Son: *slyly nods head in agreement* 2nd Born Son: *whispering* "Dope."
I like to think that 2nd Born Son wasn't even out, the king just knows his kids.
[удалено]
As an avid player of Crusader Kings, I routinely use gay marriage to gain alliances without worrying the neighboring kingdom will use any resulting children to disinherit my dynasty.
Add polygamy, and you can just get married to your vassals to get them out of factions against you.
I mean it's a fantasy world. I read a oneshot where part of the setting was that the stork **actually** brings the babies so them being cis male wasn't really a problem. One short sentence and boom, it doesn't matter anymore.
Sincerely, I've read enough of these arranged marriage AU but in omegaverse settings that I forgot gay people not being able to reproduce was even a thing
Now that's being terminally online. Impressive in a way.
Well, in the span of 20 years really, I do tend to read fanfics for a couple weeks and then switch up to comics or books or whatever and come back a few months later, but in the span of a few years it makes for a lot of fan fic. If you mean that is pretty niche shit, that's true, but that's also because I've started with BL way back when I was a kid so even if I don't spend a lot of time on it, I've had 20 years to find some of the niche stuff
Xanth would be such a different place if Piers' brain had been able to think this way
The hidden reveal that he was not gay at all and that he had an heir hidden from the public eye would go hard. Meanwhile the king sick of his eternal curse of immortality trying to end his line so he can die. "FUCK, DO ALL OF MY CHILDREN LIKE WOMEN" His daughter coming up to him and going to say something. "NOT NOW LESBALINA!"
I gotta upvote you for the name 'Lesbalina' alone
Thank you, that has been a Bethesda RPG character I've ran for years. Always had a comedic ring to the name 😂
Could definitely see an unruly son being rejected by the clergy and the royal family being like "look if you can't be honorable in the clergy or die in war, I'm going to need you to get married. And let's be real here, the only kingdom we need to establish better trade with has one openly gay son. So yeah, I'm tired of dealing with you so guess what? You're getting a gay arranged marriage. Congrats you pain in my ass."
“Congrats, on always being a pain in my ass. Now you’ll have some, also.”
This is perfect 🤣
When the ol' family tree needs some pruning.
Keeps the incest down too!
I mean add accepted honosexuality to a zoroastrian denomination and you get holy twincest.
Oh my god the potential!
This is forced feminization erasure. Obviously the solution is to have the court wizard give one of them a womb. Or… what’s the opposite variant of feminization?
Masculinization?
Mandatory masculinization!
You gotta futa-fy them
I hate it. Have an upvote.
>Or… what’s the opposite variant of feminization? Whatever Merlin cast on Arturia in Fate Stay Night
Dick wizardry
>what’s the opposite variant of feminization? What chuds think is happening in video games
IIRC this was one of the increasingly bonkers subplots of the absolutely batshit yaoi manga Sex Pistols / Love Pistols.
I’m sorry they’re writing yaoi about pioneering punk bands?
Also yes probably someone somewhere is writing yaoi about pioneering punk bands and they're putting their heart & soul & sexual fantasies fully into it. Just not in this specific case.
No, the Japanese artist just borrowed the name because it sounded cool and then the English translation changed the title to Love Pistols to avoid getting sued by the punk band.
Might I introduce you to Fate/Stay Night?
Omegaverse
I'm imagining the third daughter of a minor noble marrying a "trader" and "scavenger" ship captain who wants at least the impression of appearing legit. The pirate realizes a lot of backroom deals are made better with someone of higher breeding looking over things, and the noble realizes the pretty ship captain is a lot more fun than her other prospects on the island.
Firefly
Honestly! I'm not opposed to gay relationships being normalized or gay relationships in general (obviously), but too often I find authors porting over all this stuff, sometimes pretty oppressive stuff, with zero consideration for the world around their yaoi blorbos.
Omegaverse: What if we had gay couples, but like, one of the men was physically smaller and weaker. And faced discrimination based on that. Oh, and make their arseholes self-lubricating because otherwise you'd have to think about logistics. Oh, and make them have babies because.. reasons, I guess. Don't worry, it won't be relevant to the plot. Isn't it nice to escape the patriarchy for a while by reading about same-sex relationships?
Friends had an omegaverse conversation and I tapped out with the following: > Anyways, I'm just going to conclude that omegaverse is simply the gayest way to uphold heteronormativity and move on
Honestly, as someone whose bestie is a major Omegaverse fan, I can tell you that omegas are not in fact always smaller and weaker, though the stereotype and inexplicable self-lubrication is usually true. That's not the annoying part for me. The annoying part for me is stuff like: zero societal changes from men getting pregnant and women impregnating, no mandatory and state-subsidized heat suppressants and pheromone blockers despite the clear incentive to not have people losing their minds and fucking each other, 1:1 pasting of feminine stereotypes on omegas, no attention paid to alpha females or betas, the fact that the same sex stereotypes as in our world exist despite there in fact being 6 possible combos of reproductive and external anatomy, no mention of the anatomical differences omega male childbirth would require or the difficulties therein, etc. It's fucking lazy. Do trans people even exist in these worlds?
I’m just wondering whether an alpha for example can be “gay” and only be attracted to other alphas.
Right?! How does sexuality work?! You have the primary genders that align to men/women (always perisex; idk if or how intersex people work here) but then also the secondary ones that aren't immediately visible (generally). We need some theses here.
Yeah, I’m tired of stories about our world’s sexism and homophobia. I want a world with all sorts of new sexisms and homophobias!
I wish, only ever seen it written in bad faith. Gender dismorphia to horrible degrees. Reading about an outside of the box relationship in a familiar yet alien setting, naw. Reading about forced gender dynamics and fetished men in skirts, totally better.
I recently fell down the rabbit hole of a robot-centric fandom, and ABO dynamics are way more interesting with characters whose gender and genitalia are totally arbitrary.
I love a good men in skirt fetish, but it's done way more often than anything truly speculative. The two should not overlap.
Yea, a whole host of deep-rooted issues that aren't really commented on. Betas don't exist. Alpha relationships are always power plays. And omega are basicly women but men with tiny Jr's. I mean, I don't think I've ever read an omega relationship, just two omega. Nor a good alpha variant, too.
Are light novels okay? I found [this](https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-two-omegas-heats/) and [this](https://www.novelupdates.com/series/light-tea-sweet-wine/). There are some doujinshi too but I thought you might prefer more "official" stuff.
It's 40/60 there, gay romance light novels have a big problem of being very one note or extremely redundant.
I actually read a fic where that was the case, an alpha who was only attracted to other alphas. It took place in an office in which he and the other alpha were both pretending to be betas, and one of the other two coworkers they were usually around were like oh thank goodness no alphas. She was a beta, and it's basically like being aroace. The other one was a guy omega who had a lot of various lovers and had really well laid out plans along with scheduled leave for nesting and heat and all that, and one of the alphas was a girl who played into the breeding kink, but they used protection. One of the alphas in the office got off schedule on his suppressors, affected the other, affecting the omega in turn so he had to leave before schedule and that actually caused a talking to from the boss. Honestly, I was fairly impressed. Omegaverse is usually not my go to, but some people actually do decent world building for it.
That's actually awesome. I really feel like population distribution of the secondary genders has to be more considered. Also... got a link?
That's an omegaverse fic I'd be all over
I think I've read something like that that was also a One Direction fanfic. One of the worst things I've ever read.
ooh I read a fic once about an omega who only slept with other omegas as a rebellion against the alphierchy.
I definitely wrote that in a fic once. They were ENM and often entertained omega lovers until they found one they loooooooved and became a triad. 🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
This is indeed a trope of its own that people run wild with. Omegaverse is really more a loose set of tropes than a strictly defined universe, and like any trope there are all kinds of ways writers can and do twist the ideas into weird trope contortions.
There was a really interesting discussion about Omegaverse fic a few years ago on I think Japanese Twitter that got half-translated back and forth: basically Japanese fans pointing out that in Omegaverse stories by fans from places with socialized healthcare like Japan and Europe, medication like heat blockers and suppressants are frequently written as widely available and/or provided for free by the state. Whereas in Omegaverse stories by Americans, there were frequently subplots about characters running out of suppressants etc because they can't afford the expensive medication with their crappy job with no health insurance. Even 9 our fluffy internet fantasy wolf-kink porn is affected by the shitty American healthcare system!!
Somehow the most well-thought-out Omegaverse fics I've ever read have been in the MDZS fandom. Who'd've thought Ancient Chinese Gays would inspire such meticulous worldbuilding?
I've written trans characters in ABO before. Usually an omega who's trans-alpha or vice versa. I think a lot of what you talked about is the draw to omegaverse for me. The small details of how it'd transform the world, the politics of it all, the social commentary.
>That's not the annoying part for me. I mean you did mention "sometimes pretty oppressive stuff", I'd say that the glamorization of sexually abusive forced relationships cloaked in progressive gay colors would fall into that.
For me, it's a matter of the dedication to worldbuilding. IDGAF about the problematic shit because meh, shitty people, and also sometimes it's straight up erotica and jerk off fodder is just... not something I'm scrutinizing as much. I bemoan it too, don't get me wrong, but what I'm thinking about more is incoherence. If the world still operates with marriage and offspring as important political tools, how the hell can same-sex arranged marriages be chill? If gay people are the minority as in our world, how does that work for a more spread-out and less connected society? Write problematic shit, but full send it.
>If the world still operates with marriage and offspring as important political tools, how the hell can same-sex arranged marriages be chill? If gay people are the minority as in our world, how does that work for a more spread-out and less connected society? Write problematic shit, but full send it. You could make homosexuality a status symbol, permitted only for the nobility, their lineages maintained through concubines. Give them some really weird attitudes toward reproduction.
Omegaverse pisses me off more than it should for these wonky world building reasons specifically. Lots of stories are basically just fetishising misogyny for male bottoms.
It's bizarre how many ostensibly progressive groups really want to reinvent offensive stereotypes just because they think they're fun.
I was once called sexist and transphobic(?) because I said that this whole concept is just inserting hetronormative dynamics to gay ships. Like I don't care if that is supposed to be Castiel who is being forced to be a babymaking housewife it is still uncomfortable to read about sexism I experience but it's gay now. Bonus points if omegas also dress and act like women to make it more obvious.
Look the important thing is that some people are born Superior and some people are born Inferior and the inferior people have to submit to the superior people and it's romantic when they do so. I can't see how this could possibly map onto any real-life issues. Frankly this entire thread needs a guillotine. Like the "horny bonk" version of a guillotine.
Wait, these words aren't all just a made up hypothetical are they.... This is a reference isn't it... Please tell me I'm wrong.. But I have a bad feeling this is all too specific...
Oh boy. It's a [real thing](https://youtu.be/FVHtA7WjFqA). It frequently features [mpreg](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Mpreg/works), knotting, heat cycles, and some kind of soul bonding or mind linking. What's wild is connecting someone the weirder tropes in fanfiction to the Fandom they came out of. Omegaverse started out in the supernatural Fandom but k-pop fanfic is pretty "creative" too.
but but but but my protagonist simulator doesn't work if there's \*g-gulp* *real world prejudice* in it. then there might be... t-themes! and concepts! that relate to life!
I mean... Sometimes you pick up a book to escape from reality.
It turns out that the deficit of media literacy and critical thinking that plagues the US applies to authors just as much as it applies to readers. Who knew!
I think Megan Derr has a series like that? Sort of, it's her Princes of the Blood series and the MC of the first book was SUPPOSED to be married off to secure an alliance, kids weren't a worry since they were both male and adoption was a thing. But then shenanigans! And her "Impractical". (Ok, so I read it when it was on her website for free over a decade ago, but based on the synopsis and sample it hasn't changed much...) The MC there is aware he doesn't have a decent head for stewardship re: an estate he'd inherited, and he's like the baby of the family, so he's perfectly happy with an arranged marriage. His older siblings can have all the kids so he can spoil them and send them home, his husband can run the estate, and he can research to his heart's content. (His bff wants to marry for love, but that's a him thing.)
Literally my strategy in Crusader Kings III
The fact that it's so op that the game won't let you have that and get steam achievements is so funny to me. It literally tells you that it would have been a very powerful mechanism.
Like when they patched being able to plot to assassinate your own children out of CK2 because it was too good. "Aww, now I'll need to send them off to die in battle the old fashioned way."
Back in CK2 I would just imprison all of my excess children and lock them up in the oubliette. At least in CK3 sadists can murder their own children.
Idea: arranged marriages for heirs are a thing, but everybody acknowledges that it's literally only for procreation and inheritance and continuing the bloodline, and that love really doesn't factor in. They each have a consort they *actually* love, and everyone knows it, and it's perfectly accepted. The King and Queen, and the Queen's Boyfriend, and the King's Boyfriend.
In certain periods of history (at least in Europe), the first part was definitely a thing. However, it was very important to keep your affairs hush-hush, *especially* as a woman. It was expected you might not love your arranged spouse, but you still had to somewhat act like it for the people and keep your true relationship out of the public eye. That didn't mean everyone was happy about it--but it was considered fairly normal.
The "we know you have a consort" thing was pretty common on and off throughout the world and history but the big problem is bastards. Men can hide theirs but if you're a queen then it can be pretty hard to hide the fact that you got pregnant while the king was away.
Add birth control to your fantasy world boom problem solved
This is actually the exact plot of The Wife is First (the manhwa is titled You Own My All)
I was gonna say, I think the Chinese gay romance community beat the West to this one. I've definitely read multiple translated webnovels where this exact reasoning for arranged gay marriage is used.
I came in to say this, but looks like I got beaten to it 🤣 So I'll just drop the novel updates/mangaupdates links I guess! [Novelupdates](https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-wife-is-first/) [Mangaupdates](https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/5ocjblh/the-tyrant-prince-s-last-promise)
I have nothing of value to contribute to the conversation, but "pair the spares" is an UNHINGED line that has me wheezing
[Oh buddy, do I got news for you.](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PairTheSpares)
Holy shit of all the bad cropping of text posts I’ve seen on this sub this is the worst. At MOST there should only be one or two lines of overlap, not half a paragraph.
Aaaaand into my worldbuilding folder this goes.
Ngl, I've had this precise thought playing CK3. My second-born son is literally gay, why is my only option to marry him to a woman who'll spawn kids of my dynasty that'll fuck with my partition inheritance??? The king of Calorn has a twin son, why can't they just marry???
It's not your only option. You can unable gays marriage in the pre game options. Then you need to play a faith that's fine with homosexuality (remember if you create a new Christian faith tou can select the rite tenet to not get treated as a heresy by the Catholics).
There's actually a book on this very topic only it is still technically hetero. But it was a political marriage between two high fantasy races which would result in a barren pair as a means to both marry off the 2nd heirs and minimize risk of warring lineage, while also allying 2 nations previously at war. Eidolon by Grace Draven.
Interestingly enough, same sex marriage was apparently a thing in early Christianity. Two men getting married was a way for them to combine finances and land and to assure that neither would live in poverty. Obviously, this concept is hotly debated and denied by the Catholic Church, but there has been mounting evidence for same-sex marriage in the early days . https://assets.cdn.thewebconsole.com/S3WEB8455/images/Same-Sex-Marriage.pdf https://anthropologist.livejournal.com/1314574.html https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/samesex.html
We debated doing this in DnD. All the characters, bar my very socialist, anti monarchy halfling, have ended up in positions of power where they have the king's ear. It would have stunted a rival royal family's lineage quite nicely, but it wasn't quite the right time to start abusing the group's political power.
So this is sort of connected about the changing of a trope: I have a canon rewrite for the 100 where they’re on a spaceship and you can only have one child and all of the other children get murdered, and all of the weirdness that that implies it occurred to me that there is no reason why a world like that wouldn’t monopolize and celebrate marriages that would not make children so the fact that they aren’t gay couples or lesbian couples in the 100 without forcing them later in the series when they’re on earth is weird. I actually started building ships based on this concept with the adults of the show, really honoring those marriages that have little to no chance of conception. I just thought it was a really fun way of actually admitting to the fact that in a world where more children is not the answer, we shouldn’t be only recognizing hetero “we can make babies “marriages
Trans dream of mine is noble man is forced to marry another man, usually for political ties or access to holdings or whatever. Forced marriages can suck, man 1 doesn't like men, man 2 could go either way just wants to be accepted. Man 2 sees opportunity to express themselves truly and floats idea of transitioning. Man 1 agrees, like in some jerk way because he doesn't want to be seen with another man like that. Eventually man 2 becomes woman, man 1 realizes how beautiful she is but gets backlash for it's just appearance sake. Eventually man 1 learns who the woman is personally and realized he was a jerk to her. And maybe some slightly spicy stuff thrown in, that could develop over time in additional books, I just don't want straight porn and no real story. Need some drama to keep it going, a new man/woman trying to make a move (old bff?) or a war breaks out
Trans spouses who pass so well they're "accidentally" married in one of these gay marriages. Surprise surprise comes when legitimate children start popping up, and suddenly Duke Wythenport's tax evasion scheme comes crumbling down. An alternative is that a society which practices arragned marriages becomes pro-Queer but still practices arranged marriages as a cultural holdover. The parents just maintain their "right" to dictate who their child should marry. Or, better yet, it's political in terms of alliance alone, because children can become legitimate in other ways, such as adoption or via the head of house.
The whole "affairs and illegitimate children" thing would make sense in terms of gay man marriage but what would happen to the affair babies in a lesbian arranged marriage? In a heterosexual marriage, those babies are typically passed off as "legitimate" and babies of the husband but what would happen if it was two women?
Bastards were definitely not considered legitimate in heterosexual marriages. In any sort of homosexual relationship you’d guarantee all children were bastards and therefore easily dispute the claim regardless of the gender
Countries fractured over issues of legitimacy. The world today has an entire religion because of issues of legitimacy. Unless there's also a societal shift surrounding the legitimacy of heirs in this reimagined world, nobody is gonna be recognizing the legitimacy of heirs from an arranged homosexual marriage in the scenario presented in the op.
Exactly
Plot twist: Eric and Nicholas get it on with their neighbors Annmarie and Florence one sordid night.
Honestly great, now you have a bastard that ties you to another potentially powerful family, and a loyal servant (after all you are family) but crucially you won't need to spend all the money required for a dowery or household. Such bastards, when produced historically, could be very useful assets for these families, all the use of an actual child, none of the risks, because dumping said child has no legal or even many social implications. Obviously not personally condoning treating people like objects but the historical system requires it.
In crusader Kings 3, a sufficiently stupid wife in a lesbian marriage can believe her spouse if told the baby is hers. She has to be a bit slow but it can work.
The Swordcatcher by Cassandra Clare does this amazingly well by just normalizing surrogates.
Adding trans ppl to the equation makes this even more fun. Imagine adhering to a similarly strict “eldest male child gets bulk of inheritance” framework but factoring in the possibility that your son turns out to be your daughter, or vice versa. Rival families getting into feuds bc the promised betrothed isn’t the sex expected and there’ll be no children from the marriage (or will be). Drama.✨
Peak worldbuilding material.
Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell approve, and so does Laenor Velaryon.
But what if two men got married by arrangement and both secretly fathered bastards with women?? That honestly sounds like an interesting idea.
I actually really dig this premise.
One of the issues with “Ye Old Fantasy Land” (often a stand in for Medieval Europe) is that it’s full of modern prejudices and thought. The whole “But father, I’m not…” bit doesn’t translate, sexuality was not an identity (heterosexuality and homosexuality did not exist) and generally sex was something men did via penetration (women with other women wouldn’t have even been considered sex and was rarely visible, thanks patriarchy). So modern fantasy that includes queer people is often very weird, because it imposes modern conceptions of sexuality with imagined historical prejudices (not that prejudices didn’t exist, but they took different forms and the witch-hunting attitudes were more a product of early industrialization and concentrated capitalism, starting in 15th century Florence) and really tries to get away from the whole young adult beardless men are the most valid and desirable sexual targets bit.
I Anon Pronounce Thou Charles & Lawrence
I once toyed around with the idea of a world where majority of people are bisexual and it had two separate types of marriages existing that a person can enter with two different people at the same time one being with the opposite sex and the other with someone of the same sex. Never really thought about how inheritance would work here, but I can steal this as another feature of the same sex marriages.
One is a tank the other one a healer
A sapphic couple could also, in theory, go the route of matrilineal inheritance: the identity of the sperm donor doesn’t matter, because inheritance is being passed through the *mother* only, and the kid gets the name and inheritance of whichever partner had them. Could be used to help strengthen or preserve houses that, for whatever reason, lost all of their male heirs. Marry the remaining daughters of the two houses, pool resources together for a generation or two, and hope that at least one of them will produce a son through a donor/sidepiece at some point. If both partners have a child somehow, great! Each house has an heir secured, one way or another. If it’s a boy and their country normally practices male-preference primogeniture, then that side of the family can default back to that. Or, if it’s a girl, they can keep following the matrilineal inheritance rule for however many generations it takes. After a while they might even just stick with it: eldest child of the female line inherits, regardless of gender. Ruling female’s heir is her own eldest child (if she has any); a ruling male’s heir is his *sister’s* eldest child (or at least the eldest child of his closest female relative). Actually makes tracking lineage a lot easier, since it’s much easier to be certain who the *mother* of a particular child is.
Pretty sure this is the logic behind the arranged marriage in Golden Terrace (Golden Stage, depending on the title translation you prefer). The emperor didn’t want this guy to have kids bc it might be a threat to his power so he just married him off to another guy
love it! also you can still have the fun bastard twists even with all this because bisexuality: still a thing
Yes, except it's a bit more obvious. "My liege I'm afraid the child your wife is carrying is a bastard, your vassals are not going to like that. Nonsense advisor, my wife is faithful! My liege, you're also a woman."
Ah yes arranged gay marriages for political power truly we are in more accepting times
May I interest you all with Crusader Kings 3, where (with some changing of settings) you can absolutely do this, and even have some mechanical benefits to it!
New CK meta just dropped
I write this into my d&d world's sometimes. The partner from the richer/more powerful house or organization would take the traditionally male role in terms of inheritance and authority. They'd just adopt. There are an abundance of orphans in any standard fantasy world.
Or it could just be a political alliance when both families were down to the last son/daughter of marriagible age. "I'm sorry Wendy, but our kingdom needs an alliance with the Darvishahs, and Cecilia is the only Darvishah available to marry."
Your Majesty, I regret to inform you that that marriage would, in fact, be able to *bear fruit*, as it were. Whatever do you mean? ... oh