Hey tumblr friends, in case I haven't told you lately, I have no idea what the FUCK half of you are on about and I WISH I didn't know what the rest of you are on about. Great work. Keep it up.
my favorite thing in the world is how every single human culture, together or independently, created its own version of Pancake. everyone took one look at frying pans and were like “holy shit i have the BEST idea”
Worldbuilding, because I’m in the mood to overshare instead of actually sitting down to fucking write: The religious orders of Abarak are, as a norm, relentlessly gay.
As a matriarchal society, women do not necessarily need to marry in order to have an heir, and many choose not to. Most marriages are arranged to at least some extent, and the groom’s family offers a dowry, but unless there’s either big money, political connections or true love involved, many women of wealth just don’t bother - companionship or sperm are not scarce resources. For the working classes, men are an irreplaceable part of the work force - there’s a saying that a farm boy’s dowry is his hands and shoulders - and it makes sense to marry.
But among the wealthy merchants, nobility, and even royalty, there is a remarkable number of “excess men”, who often opt to head for priesthood or monasteries. While the Empire is rich with all sorts of cults and religions - for as long as your methods of worship don’t intervene with anyone else’s worship or break the laws of the land, you’re pretty much free to do fucking whatever - there is a handful of the most popular gods and goddesses to serve.
The monasteries are meant to be places of silent contemplation. Monks who serve in them pray, sing hymns, copy manuscripts and and do various highly elaborate handcrafts that take years and decades to master, free to close off from the world, away from politics, to do gardening, brew wine, grow coffee or silk, or whatever it is that this specific monastery does. Many older men of wealth or status choose to withdraw to them, either after being widowed or simply accepted that marrying a wife and having a family was never written in their stars.
But the younger and more enthusiastic a new aspiring monk is, the more likely it is that he’s here because he heard there’s a chance to get dicked down. And they’ll find others like themselves, who also ended up here either out of a wish to avoid marrying a woman, or simply because they heard there’s other gays in monasteries. Because they simply cannot be stopped, most religious orders have come to define “life of chastity” to simply mean no heterosexual affairs, because to be fair, it’s not like these specific monks, priests, or other devoted Holy Men are breaking any other rules.