ngl i think part of why welcome to night vale and discworld both appeal to me so much is that im a slut for things that draw you in with goofy ridiculous humour and then with no warning slam you over the head with chunks of philosophy shit that gives you a fucking existential crisis for like 2 minutes and then diffuses the tension with a stupid pun
i didn’t wanna reblog this just cos it doesn’t deserve to get seen but:
a) dwarves don’t share the gender binary that humans use, heterosexual versus homosexual is meaningless to them
b) gnomes have such a predilection towards illusions that gender is primarily based on presentation. because of consistent interaction with humans, they tend towards visually hetero relationships just for sake of public ease but gnomes all know gender is an ilusion
c) halflings are super community oriented. they would be incredibly accepting of homosexuality because frowning on someone for liking a particular gender is counter to community building
d) goblins don’t believe in sexuality they believe in food
e) orcs are 100% butch lesbians and bears. they are totally gay with a small side of being attracted to muscles and soft hairy bellies “but if they’re all gay how do they reproduce?” magic rituals motherfucker it’s a fantasy world
f) tieflings never have a predominant culture and tend to ascribe to human values, with a bit of “i’m already an outcast, so anything goes”. i don’t wanna say tieflings are super gay just because there is a lot of baggage that comes with the evil demon race being super gay but tieflings are super gay
g) dragonborn carry a lot of draconic values, one of the most notable being vanity. if a dragonbron is gay, they will literally be the embodiment of that “move, i’m gay” video. taboo my ass just try to stop that dragonborn, they’ll show you the meaning of flaming
bottom line here is really that if you thought the dnd races were straight you were so wrong. i am going to find you and rub my gay ass on your player’s handbook
Terry Pratchett had what I thought was an interesting take where Dwarfs were traditionally genderless, until influence from humans made female Dwarfs want to try experimenting with openly presenting female.
Presenting as female is resisted by the conservative Dwarfs as a sign of “kids these days” becoming too human and un-Dwarfish. Thematically, in the books, it’s contrasted with female characters in the human world who, conversely, would prefer that the world STOP seeing them as “just women” and let them participate free of gender restrictions (Monstrous Regiment, Fifth Elephant).
There’s a lot more interesting stuff you can do with fantasy races than “everyone’s straight and cis the end".
i’m not sure about that reading bc i thought the women dwarves in Discworld were an analogue to real world trans women
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