ig 🏳️‍🌈

#WritingPride 6. Have you written a character's queer awakening?

Lucifer's coming of age is told in flashbacks throughout the story, and this includes queer and trans awakenings. one section of the book concerns her first mission trip to Earth, which is supposed to be a rite of passage, though Lucifer gets up to some characteristic mischief on the side. after a brief hookup in a bathhouse, Lucifer's clothes are stolen, and she must choose between swiping a set of men's robes (on a clothesline to the right) and a set of women's (to the left), so that she can make it back to camp. she ends up choosing the women's robes, and successfully passes. epiphany ensues.

'Certainly the men’s robes were the obvious choice. And yet, something about the other option niggled. She wavered. ... Finally she returned to the chamber and fetched up her sandals, holding them out evenly in front of her so that one was on the left, the other the right. She then released them both at the same time, and observed that the left shoe hit the ground first. Very well, then—fate had decided. She would go to the left. (Though if one were of a mind to look closely, one might have noticed a small twitch, perhaps, of the left hand as she let down the shoes, which may cast doubt upon the true randomness of the exercise.)'

Jun 11 at 12:39amWeb
Show threadig 🏳️‍🌈1d ago

(finishing the transcript)

Several minutes later, after winding her way up to the clothesline between lines of coarse shrubbery and snatches of shade, Lucifer was walking with a hesitant stride down the middle of an avenue on the way back to the camp, twitching at her new set of robes and trying not to look too far out of her element. For a time, the feeling of self-consciousness was uppermost. Is this how they walk? she was thinking—is this how they carry themselves? But after meeting a few people on the road, who took only the polite amount of interest in her that she was used to getting as a foreigner, she began to relax. It was working, she realized; she was passing. And as her preliminary nervousness faded, it was replaced by a curious contentment, a feeling of being one with one’s congruent self. It was, in essence, the absence of a discomfort that had become so routine that she had, until now, ceased to realize it was there. Every greeting, every "madam" and "young lady" and "grace to you, sister" was a balm doing its small part to ease a historic insult. She felt as though she were breathing clear air for the first time in an age.

Show threadig 🏳️‍🌈1d ago

re: queer awakenings

i don't really get why people are being disparaging about this. bildungsroman / coming of age is an established and legitimate literary subject, where you are queer or straight; and coming of age means realizing important things about who you are.

and queerness is an important thing. in the real world, it is not some neutral difference like hair or eye colour. it affects every aspect of a person's life, from identity to career to family to community. to act like this is somehow illegitimate to explore is bizarre.

#WritingPride