Possible Rule Changes and Activity Ideas!

[Len]

Hey guys, I'm a very old writer from here back in the day who-to be honest-left because of the strict straights only on Crome, no female on blue or brown, etc. I so love that you guys are loosening the rules up. I just want to add that women on brown and blue, and LGBT on gold, brown and bronzes would make me so delighted.

[Heather]

A consideration for the Sexuality Rule Change Policy

Rather than rolling it out to only new characters, why not throw it open to everyone? That way, we can play it as something that's always been in our world, as opposed to "oh my gosh, that unicorn brownrider who is gay/bisexual, how NEW!" It can just be people being whoever they want. People grow and change in real life, so I don't think a past history on a persona sheet should keep a Pern dragonrider from growing and changing as well.

If it's kept to only new characters then I feel like there would be a marked delineation of "old rule personas" vs "new rule personas"

Just a thought. I'm happy either way, of course!

[halyonix]

echoing heather here since we were chatting about this on discord. in the books, brown and blue riders were often gay/bisexual and i think it would be fun to play out those men who ride male dragons but are weyrmates (ie: a brownrider with a bluerider). 

[Sia]

Yes!

I can see there being some concern about retroactively changing some characters, especially if they were originally another writer's character, NPC, or adoptable. But in that case I think we can reach out to the other players that have connections to those characters and have that conversation before making that kind of backstory change. There's lots of backdated stories that could happen that way (ie. coming out, first dates, etc) so I feel like many of those conversations would happen naturally anyway.

Another way we could go is that older characters can "lean into" the new sexuality rules, in a way-- older characters that were mostly straight before developing into LGBTQIA+ relationships. Love me an older person coming out story, or maybe this was the first queer relationship they decided to pursue. There's a lot of opportunity to build these kinds of stories so everyone is included.

Also, because this could be us:

[Devin]

Retroactively changing rider sexuality rules means our current personas have unfair restrictions. A queer male rider could only Impress green or blue. That character never had the chance for a brown, to be a Wingsecond or Weyrlingmaster. A bronze or brownrider could never have had a romantic relationship with another man - their history is limited to being heterosexual.

When I created characters I had to decide, for example, if I wanted him to be gay OR a brownrider. I can't go back and give my greenrider a brown instead.

So if we completely did away with any sexuality restrictions for both new and old characters, a Weyrleader could be queer (cool, cool) BUT an existing queer character can never be Weyrleader.

(we already have men on male dragons as weyrmates. I write blue/blue relationships allll the time!)

[Devin]

Ok I have another thought. Queer people are just people but that queerness shapes who we are. Our characters live in a homophobic world even if they've been in the safe bubble of the Weyr their whole lives. Queer male dragonriders could only have Impressed green or blue. Queer women couldn't Impress at all until just recently (per club rules must be new Impressions only).

We can choose to say "dragons don't care about rider sexuality" but the characters have lived in a world where that DID matter. It feels dismissive of both the characters and real life queer people to introduce 50 year old lesbian greenriders and 30 year old bi brownriders as if they've always existed and it's no big deal. It can and should make an impact on the world when a gay man Impresses brown, or a woman to blue, or for that matter a straight man to green. It forces everyone to reevaluate what's possible. It challenges stereotypes.

I write novels and in some queer characters are no big deal. In others being queer is a significant difference. Both of those are interesting and important in different ways. Given that Triad has been strict canon with rider sexuality up until now, I think it's far more interesting for characters to react to the changes as they happen, to have the dragons themselves change how they choose riders (with typical dragonic dismissiveness of WHY they choose the rider they do. They just know, that's all that matters to them.) The dragons, even the older ones, will be totally chill about it. The humans will freak out. LOL.

Hidebound folks thinking a dragon made the "wrong" choice. A gay boy realizing he could one day become Weyrleader. Older riders confused but happy for the younger generation. Harpers scouring the records to see if anything like that happened before. A straight boy utterly confused at Impressing green, insisting he only likes girls and no one believing him.

There's so much possibility for this to happen in character.

[aaron]

I think Devin makes a great point. There's a lot of narrative potential here, and we've already kind of started it with the first female bluerider.

[Heather]

So far I like Avery's explanation the most - that it should apply to characters who've Impressed within the last 10 or so Turns as dragons have seen the need for more riders/rider selection because of Threadfall.

Perhaps an older brownrider discovering they're bi could be a Member Reward option?

OK, now I'm going to go play with Google and FRIENDS as Sia suggested xD

[Duskdog]

I'll admit that I don't feel right about the idea of bi brownrider (etc) discovering his sexuality being something you have to purchase. I don't think there should be a pricetag on internal character development. Rank, and things of that nature, that are external forms of advancement/change? Sure. But a personal, internal emotional journey like discovering your own sexuality? There's something that feels a little wrong about placing that behind a paywall of sorts.

For context, I am speaking as someone whose own journey of personal discovery took literally decades, because I grew up in an environment that did not acknowledge people like me and never spoke about it. I didn't even know there was a word for it, let alone how to determine that this is what I am (and people still to this day deny that I exist -- Anne's Impression rules don't acknowledge people like me, either). This is always who I was, but I didn't have a full understanding of it, or realize that this is what fit what was always "weird" about me, until I was nearly forty. I would hate the idea of us shutting out the very concept of some older dragonriders being able to discover who they always actually were inside. Or ignoring the reality that sexuality, for some people, is fluid and can change over the course of their lives.

And while I understand Devin's point and think it's important to consider, I also think it's doing queer people a disservice in a different way to continue to give power to any of Anne's incredibly flawed and frankly offensive ideas about biology and sexuality in particular. That's why I personally would prefer to wipe the slate clean and pretend it never existed. Because if we acknowledge that it did, we're also saying that Anne was right -- at least in our canon past -- about a lot of the really gross things, about homosexual men in particular, that she used as a basis for her Impression rules.

That said, I acknowledge that I don't have any established characters who would be impacted by what amounts to a retcon of club past the way that Devin and others do, so it's probably much easier for me to feel the way I do about it, with an eye towards what I personally want to be able to play in the future. The idea that, if I were to write an adult bronze or brownrider in the future, he would still be required to be straight despite the kiddos queering it up all day makes me really sad. But my intention isn't to diminish the concerns that others, with a different perspective, have.

(Personally, I blame Anne herself for giving us such a difficult problem to unravel, not you guys. Reconciling the established history of the club with what's actually biologically and realistically true -- and sensitive to the representation of queer folks of all ages -- may be an impossible task.)

[Devin]

Yeah that's the sticky thing for me. Anne's sexuality rules and ideas were always awful -- but we had to follow them up until now.

All of my dragonriders were limited by that. The dragons they could Impress, and therefore the kinds of leadership positions they could hold. The kinds of relationships they could have based on what color dragon I wanted them to ride. My queer characters always knew they could never be Wingleader or Weyrleader, and in some ways I had to shape their personalities around those limits.

If Anne's terrible rules don't apply to anyone anymore then . . . what? Do we retcon everything?

Do I give A'dryn a brown instead because he has strong leadership skills? Do I write about D'ren having an ex-boyfriend in the past because I like the idea of him being bi?

If this was a new club we were building I would 100% want the sexuality rules gone for all characters.

[Duskdog]

Bi people don't have to have had an active relationship with the same gender in the past in order to "justify" being bi. (Just like straight people don't have to have been in a relationship in order to earn the right to call themselves straight, and gay people don't have to have been in a relationship with the same sex yet in order to know that they're gay and have the right to call themselves that.) So no, you wouldn't have to make up an ex-boyfriend for D'ren to have. He could have been bi the entire time and just never acted on it, or just recently realized that he might be attracted to men, too. That was the point of my previous post -- to point out that some people don't realize or develop these feelings until later in life.

Or... well, yeah, you could just make up an  ex-boyfriend for him. Why not? Unless your character entered the game as a shiny, brand new virgin, and has only had all relationships on-camera, isn't it just assumed that most of them have probably had relationships in the past? Why is it okay to assume that an adult character has had opposite-sex relationships in the past, but not okay to assume same-sex ones, if that were to become an option? The greenrider I just submitted doesn't have any lovers listed on his sheet, but do I have to do that in order to "prove" that he's gay? Of course not.

As for A'dryn... I don't think that having strong leadership skills guarantees a brown. Even in canon, the books constantly hammer home that Impression is impossible to predict. Putting aside the fact that this flies directly in the face of the sexuality rules in the first place (seriously, you'd think that if dragons only Impressed strictly to certain sexualities, it would be way easier to predict who's getting what), I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that dragon choice isn't flawless, and/or that human interpretations of it are also flawed. There are probably plenty of great potential leaders who have unfortunately been overlooked because they Impressed greens and blues. And there are probably plenty of people ill-suited to leadership who have Impressed brown or bronze. Can a baby dragon, who's new to the world, panicking with urgency to pair up, and not even intelligent enough to know when to stop eating, really choose so perfectly? And even if they can, are humans really so perfect? Can we really be reduced down to a list of separate and distinct qualities which are rock-solid and will never change in our entire lives -- particularly when we're teenagers, as the Candidates are? And even if that were true, do the dragonets pick based on immediate qualities, or on potential? Potential is not really a thing that can be measured, but if it were, how can a dragon predict the future? Can it take into account the cultural bias about dragon colors that will undoubtedly affect the weyrlings? Does it understand that the very act of Impressing bronze automatically confers with it the cultural perception that you're special and suited to lead, and is probably an immense confidence boost? Can it take into account the fact that the brown and bronze weyrlings will be actively encouraged as leaders, and supported in learning those skills, while the greens and blues won't? Can it consider the fact, in that split-second of Impression, that the 12-turn-old shy boy that it's looking at is going to grow in confidence and become someone entirely different by the time that he's 30? How does it even determine what "leadership skills" means? Is it being strong-willed? The ability to see the bigger picture? Being unafraid to make decisions? I would argue that plenty of blue and greenriders have those qualities, or certainly could develop them... if they had the opportunity and were supported in doing so.

(My personal belief is that dragonets choose based on personality-match first and foremost, rather than with some grand design about the future of the Weyr in mind. Maybe it's possible that bronzes tend to be stronger-willed, and tend to seek riders who are similar -- but that doesn't mean that they might not also seek other qualities, or that a green can't also be strong-willed and pick a strong-willed rider. Or choose the opposite, and be a complementary pair who enhance each other, rather than samesies. This is just my personal view on it, though.)

Regardless, though, my main concern is the idea that "people had to suffer this in the past, therefore it's not fair to them if we change that thing" is an argument that forestalls all positive progress. Forever.

So I suppose the big question is: is that what we want?

[Devin]

I'm not saying nothing can ever change because of past rules I'm saying we shouldn't retcon the long history of Triad.

Whatever our ideas of who dragons choose to Impress -- WE in the club before now HAD to follow Anne's rules. It sucked! I had to build my characters, their personalities and limits, entirely based on stupid rules about sexuality of riders. Our characters have always said and thought certain things about who can Impress what color -- because it was true!

If a brownrider can have romantic relationships with men, that . . . would have been discussed before. If there are straight men riding green that . . . would have been discussed before. If other colors were open to me at the time I might have had A'dryn Impress brown. Most of my characters would have been written differently - how they thought of themselves, what their potential futures could be like, who they flirted with, who they could have relationships with.

The changes should be for new Impressions. We've already established something has changed in dragon choice -- Kadira Impressed blue. Or do we change that rule so women have always been able to Impress blue and erase Kadira's storyline because it wasn't that shocking after all?

[aaron]

Duskdog makes a great point, and I have a similar personal experience. I think it's incredibly plausible that there have been bi people who didn't ever have it figured out because they'd always been told it was impossible because of the color of their dragon's hide. That can still comport with the narrative we've written so far without having to retcon anything.

[Devin]

Well yeah that happens all the time in real life.

But again, if we say that gay characters could always Impress brown and someone even makes a 43 year old gay brownrider . . . that changes the history. It changes what other characters even think is possible. Representation matters. A gay boy knowing he could Impress brown might change his whole outlook on life.

Or are these older riders all suddenly figuring it out . . . now? At the same time? Does that mean that any boy that knew he liked boys before Impression was locked out of brown and bronze, but if he didn't know then he could Impress brown or bronze? And then brown/bronze riders never realized any romantic attraction to other men until . . . now?

[aaron]

Well, we're saying that the dragons were the ones making these choices, right? So if the rider wasn't aware of it, then the dragon might not have been, either. I think the idea is that it could have already been a change in progress that people didn't notice because the dragons started choosing more fluid people first. Or if they did notice, they just assumed the people were lying or confused because of flights, etc.

It's pretty impossible to deny that a girl Impressed a blue, but folks dismiss people's sexuality all the time if it's not what they expect or are used to.