Trigger Warning: Discussion of transgender identities and discrimination.
Research. Research. Research.
Even writing something as silly and intentionally anachronistic as Beach Knight, my intellect and conscience require me to do research. Early on I had to research the origins of different swimsuits and beaches as vacation spots. Now I’m digging into different gender identities and how they might have been perceived in different eras of history. I know it can be a sensitive subject for some, which is why I want to approach it with respect and care (a challenging thing to do in a goofy action comedy like Beach Knight).
In concept, I think LGBTQ identities might be more easily accepted in a place like Port Starfish than they might have been in, say, medieval England. The main world religions don’t have any particular condemnation against those sorts of things, and even if one of them did, this is a fairly polytheistic part of the world. The gods exist less as law and dogma than they do as powerful cosmic entities who directly intervene in worldly society.
My goal in creating my fantasy series was never to make a setting that was accurate to any one real time or place, but to strike a balance between being easily accessible to modern readers and having internal consistency.
I think even the most conservative of sources would probably agree that there have always been people who felt their experience aligned more with the “opposite” gender, even if there weren’t strict categories and terms for such things.
Anyway, that’s my rant for the morning. I might talk about this more or I might not. Until then-
Trans rights are human rights. Obviously.
paullang.blog 