This text is a visitor publish by writer Journey Galey. Journey is a author, a health care provider of the educational persuasion, and a researcher of all issues pursuant to bargains, exchanges, and compacts of a faery nature. It’s inadvisable to try to make a cope with him. He has been, up to now, a reluctant cowboy, an Ivy League collegian, and an itinerant advertising skilled. Principally innocent. Try the Kickstarter for Journey’s newest work: The Fall of the Home of Valenziaga.
Once we take into consideration queerness in worldbuilding, it’s usually by way of the social elements of a world: is homosexuality accepted?; are there roles for various gender expression?; and so on. Nevertheless there are a large number of the way to include queerness into your world on numerous ranges exterior of the social layer. Listed here are two that I used when writing The Fall of the Home of Valenziaga, my queer, post-apocalyptic science-fantasy household drama.
Queerness is a Collective Expertise
Fashionable queerness usually carries with it the concept of solidarity, of a collective. LGBTQIA+, the colors of the rainbow coming collectively on one flag—we’re distinctive in our experiences, and a part of quite a lot of communities, however we share a standard place that exists exterior the cishet (usually white) patriarchy that in any other case dominates the world.
You possibly can take this basic facet of queerness and replicate it all through your worldbuilding in a number of alternative ways. Within the case of Valenziaga, you possibly can see it mirrored within the core setting, a metropolis referred to as Twixt, which exists past the bounds of time and area and is a mosaic of fragments from already-destroyed worlds. Just like the queer neighborhood, Twixt consists of various realities and experiences, all certain collectively as a part of a higher complete. However this isn’t the one method to categorical this facet of queerness.
Think about you wish to inform a narrative about resistance towards a robust, invading power. Fairly than create a world with a single nation or people who find themselves resisting, you can also make it a narrative about coalition and alliance, about totally different folks coming collectively beneath widespread trigger to defend themselves and their numerous methods of life or experiences. And this works on smaller ranges as effectively (politics inside a court docket or metropolis, cliques inside a magic college, and so on).
Queerness is Private
Queerness can also be, at its core, a really private factor because it touches immediately on one’s id. Many people have related experiences, and shared joys and ache, however the private elements of queerness stay plain. And it may be very inspiring and satisfying to weave a few of that non-public queerness all through the worlds we construct!
Possibly there’s a sure singer whose work carried you thru the exhausting occasions that typically accompany being queer, and also you wish to incorporate that into your world by making music central to the magic of your world, even perhaps as a present from a mysterious and glamorous goddess. Otherwise you had a very significant relationship or old flame that you just wish to quietly embed into the mythology and storytelling traditions of your world. Your queerness and your life is a boundless font of inspiration and creativity.
For Valenziaga, one factor I did was take a few of my favorite queer songs and switch them into worldmotes (items of the town of Twixt) and hidden references for others to search out. For instance, there’s a disco in an deserted church that’s run by a small red-and-white unicorn (IYKYK).
The choices, nonetheless, are limitless! Take into consideration how your individual expertise(s) can encourage the worlds you create, then seize your queerest hammer and go worldbuild!
