I love me a pseudo-historical arranged marriage au but it always nudges my suspension of disbelief when the author has to dance around the implicit expectation that an arranged marriage should lead to children, which a cis gay couple can’t provide.
I know for a lot of people that’s irrelevant to what they want from an Arranged Marriage plot, but personally I like playing in the weird and uncomfortable implications.
So, I’ve been thinking about how you would justify an obviously barren marriage in That Kind of fantasy world, and I thought it’d be interesting if gay marriage in Ye Old Fantasy Land was a form of soft disinheritance/abdication.
Like, “Oh, God, I don’t want to be in this position of power please just find me a boy to marry”, or, “I know you should inherit after you father passes but as your stepmother/legal guardian I think it’d make more sense if my kids got everything, so maybe consider lesbianism?”, or “Look, we both know neither of our families has enough money to support that many grandkids, so let’s just pair some spares and save both our treasuries the trouble”.
Obviously this brings in some very different dynamics that I know not everyone would be pinged by, but I just think it’d be neat.
This is actually a really cool variant solution to a real historical problem, wherein either primogeniture or other profoundly shitty customs led to wealthy parents having insufficient resources to provide for all of their children in a manner consistent with their station.
Historically, the Church and its widespread monastic structure functioned as a dumping ground for second/third/etc sons and all the daughters one can’t afford to marry off adequately, with the military eventually picking up the slack for the former post-Reformation to the point where it’s been argued that the need for something to occupy these dispossessed sons played a role in Europe’s ongoing conflicts between its nations and the eventual push of imperialism and colonization over the rest of the world.
In a world where homosexuality were more accepted, it would offer a new option: spare a comparatively-small outlay of resources from the main family fortune to equip a house and accoutrements, which would be reabsorbed into the family as a return inheritance in a few decades, and contract a marriage which would be deliberately unable to produce legitimate offspring.
You get the advantages of creating marital ties with another wealthy family, the people married therein have a spouse and the status achievements that go with marriage, and the risk that your child goes off and marries someone unsuitable or inconvenient is removed entirely, as is the risk that they could marry someone and have legitimate, inheritance-claiming children with them. Sure, they can have affairs and thus get children if they’re married to a same-sex spouse, but those children cannot be passed off as legitimate issue of the marriage, and so they pose less of a threat to the the main body of the family’s wealth.
And, thus: perfectly reasonable reason why your pseudohistorical fictional characters can find themselves in a same-sex arranged marriage!
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#story ideas I will never write #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
[image description: screenshot of a twitter thread by user @CherryGryffon
thread says:
ATTN: ANYONE WITH NO HEATING OR POWER CURRENTLY
I know it’s cold, I have some tips for you, thanks to having been through this before, many times. (spool of thread emoji)
Please RT the thread if you know anyone without power currently! (black heart emoji)
-Choose 1 room to inhabit
-Move all furniture to external walls
-Move your mattress to the center of the 1 room
-Block pets from leaving that room, put all needs in it
-If your fridge is warming up, put all perishable items in a trash bag and place outside, form snow around
-If you have plants, move them in the room with you
-If you have a small space heater, move it in the room with you
-Hang thick blankets or large towels in all the windows
-If a sunny day arrives before power, open curtains when sun hits directly, then put back up
-Wear multiple layers of clothing
-If your pets are too cold, put socks on their feet and/or clothing you have that fits them
-roll clothing or towels and block all door and window gaps
-Throw all your dirty clothes on the floor, covering every space you can
Your body heat will warm that room if you remain in ONLY that room. You want to use anything you can to add insulation between you, and the outside. Hence covering and blocking all floors, windows, and walls. Now isn’t the time to have a clean house, it’s the time to survive.
Late addition thanks to a friend of mine:
If you have, or can get, bubble wrap, tape that to all windows, as it creates a kind of double insulation!
end image description]
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#101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #PSA #I still need to test whether it’s feasible to set up my mom’s tent indoors #failing that‚ I should brush up on my blanket-fort techniques #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
You guys want to play a game? REBLOG and put in the tags why you follow this person
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#her mental structure is deeply weird and it’s great #I’m glad she exists‚ and I’m glad I get to be friends with her #memes #the wondrous variety of sapient life #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
I will never get tired of how funny it is when people respond to the posts they don’t like by turning it into blackout poetry. What sheer fucking splendour, grabbing something you loathe and then turning it into art as an expression of your utter disrespect and disregard of this person’s stupid-ass opinions. It’s not simply contempt, but an elaborate display of how little it matters to you.
What a way to show that you find this person so beneath your respect that you won’t argue their stupid opinions, you won’t even gracefully ignore them like you would politely and tactfully turn a blind eye to the embarrassing mishaps of some fool who doesn’t know better. No, you choose to turn it into a plaything, making it your arts and crafts material.
The hilarious indignity of having someone pick up something you thought were bold and fine statements, the pinnacle of truth, and saying “this block of stupid text is as worthless as a rock, but allow me to carve it into art, so that it could perhaps be turned into something that possesses worth and beauty.”
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #poetry #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #rickrolling #discourse cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
ok, translated and polished into a less deranged form:
content warning: sexual assault. i am wondering wether rol playing a sexual assault is permissible if i am a female non-binary person? my boyfriend is biologically male, so it has to be up to me to pretend to be the sexual assaulter, because he is male and i am female so if we were to rol play a sexual assault with him as the assaulter it would be actual rape. oh, by the way, i use masculine pronouns to refer to him because we rolplay a relationship between a girlfriend and a boyfriend. my thoughts on the matter are that this is all fine because i am neurodivergent.
translated without polishing into a less deranged form:
content warning: sexual assault
okay, timeline, so be for real. is sexual assault roleplay okay if i’m an XX-chromosome nonbinary? my boyfriend or significant other or whatever is an nonbinary white trans woman so i know it is up to me to do it if we do do my noncon roleplay because he is XY-chromosome so if we do an XY on XX noncon roleplay it maybe noncon-noncon i.e. for real sexual assault. oh yeah to me he is my ‘he’ because we do boyfriend on girlfriend rp, my 2 cents is it is okay because too-long-didn’t-read i’m neurodivergent, XD
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#incredible #language #the humour of my people #(I managed to understand everything but ”yt tw” without checking the answer sheets) #(but I had to start over a couple times because later letter-pairs recontextualised earlier ones) #rape tw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#that one post with the thing #music #juxtaposition #long post #death tw? #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Not even joking, y’all, Scarleteen is an amazing resource that deserves attention and (if you’ve got the cash for it) donations so they can keep providing thorough education about sex, consent, relationships, etc to folks of all ages who need it.
Here’s a rundown of their general policy, from literally the first article I clicked on just now:
As you might be getting from that, they’re pretty intersex inclusive, too. Here’s a sample of something that’s a little more directly about sex-specific stuff in case you’re thinking “well but they said that was just about pleasure tho”:
They have a lot of sections on their site, but number two is Gender:
“That’s probably just like hetero gender dynamics stuff tho…” Nay nay! Here’s a few of the articles from the first page of their “Gender” section:
Scarleteen was a huge help to me as a trans person. They have a live chat that has sex-ed type folks giving real-time answers, and even just the staff+volunteers who happened to be attending to the live chat were able to help me with weird niche trans problems – a decade ago, when trans people, it seemed, damn near didn’t exist. They are EFFING AWESOME and want to help you!!!!
They have a disabled section with stuff for chronic pain. There was a link about navigating consent with non-verbal partners. This is an awesome resource, I’ve never felt so included.
As a parent this is an invaluable resource because lets be real. No matter how close you are to your parents sine things are UncomfortableTM to talk about with your them
So acknowledging that and telling my kid “You can ask me anything but if you’re too embarrassed to ask me something this is a trusted source you can go to” is super important
Yeah, honestly I don’t even think it’s embarrassment as much as just… boundaries and privacy, that means teens don’t want to walk up to their parents like, “Dad, what should I keep in mind if I want to give oral sex to my partner?”
Sexuality is one of those areas where kids should be developing the ability to figure out their own tastes and preferences beyond what their parents have defined for them. it’s also part of them building relationships outside the family home, and generally learning to operate autonomously. It’s great if kids have a good base of support to fall back on, but honestly it’s healthier for parents and caregivers to say, “I’m going to give you the tools and resources you need to explore this on your own, so you can practice independence, though you can come to me any time you want.”
Like, this whole process of forcing kids to rely 100% on their parents for knowledge about how their bodies work and what sexual pleasure is like is in itself really unhealthy and creepy. It commonly forces kids to secretly go to sources of dubious reliability or trustworthiness, which makes them really vulnerable, especially if telling their parents about any problems they encounter means they need to confess that they broke the rules. It is so much safer to let kids know where the good resources are, and that they’re allowed to access them.
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#endorsed with two caveats: #(1) it’s been around a decade since I was there and things may have changed #and (2) I viscerally hate Scarleteen #I wouldn’t say that I actually *blame* them #they held themselves to an impossible standard: of course they failed to meet it #they’re correct that said standard is worth asymptotically approaching #but the more someone emphasises that they do their uttermost to be inclusive of everyone #the more it hurts when it inevitably turns out that they don’t mean you #sexuality and lack thereof #recs #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #nsfw text #venting cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #drugs cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Asked for a doctor’s note to show to the airport staff if necessary for an upcoming flight where I need to bring my T with me and they were like “yeah sure no problem” and then sent me a note that makes it sound like I will literally die if I go one day without my testosterone LMAO
Me: man it would suck if I got my T confiscated by customs so I should get a note explaining that I have it for legitimate reasons just in case
The note in question: this man may or may not fucking die if you take his medication away from him. This medication may or may not be integral to his daily survival. Do you want his blood on your hands yes or no
Help that’s so funny
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#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #medical cw #embarrassment squick #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Brinens and Things 