What Does Pride Mean To You?

[AluraMist]

KingsIsle posted on their social media site:

What Does Pride Mean To You?

We reached out to several of our team members and community leaders to share their stories of diversity and support.

Here is what they had to say!

KingsIsle Blog - What Does Pride Mean To You?

[Dylan Windwalker]

To put it simply: It's the ability and freedom to acknowledge your identity and feeling comfortable being just as one truly believes they are without negative consequences or judgement/persecution.

Happy Pride Month!

[JaredSpellFrost]

Pride to be means freedom of expression. I can still vividly remember attending my first ever Pride event two years ago, and being able to be myself without fear of repercussions was incredibly freeing. My hope is that one day everyone can experience that feeling of freedom no matter where they may be in the world.

[Pegasus Unbound]

Pride goes beyond the traditional community.

It is the ability to fully accept and embrace yourself, no matter who you are, the color of your skin, your religious beliefs (Or lack thereof), any disability, etc.. Although this may seem like a simple idea, it becomes almost impossible when those around you point fingers and judge you, especially "family and friends" who will not even try to accept.

Even if you disagree with others, you can still go beyond being simply human and become humane by accepting them as they are and getting over it. At least try to see things from their view point, and if you still don't agree, then agree to disagree and again, move on.

Look at Mardi Gras, it's not about costumes (Which are fun, especially on Halloween) but the celebrations behind them.

Pride is about each and every person on this Earth living in peace and harmony. Pride is the future IF there is going to be a future, because without Pride we will all perish.

[edward sky]

Pride is taking a deep breath and being happy with yourself, I'm proud of me!

"Let’s now talk about action. There are several ways we have planned to expand freedom of expression in Wizard101 over the next year and beyond. First of all, we’re evaluating chat and communications options. KingsIsle’s mission is to remain family friendly and a safe place for everyone to play, but we believe we can make some improvements in this regard and have some future plans to do so.
Second, we are actively working on some new outfit options. Over the last two milestones, we’ve been developing behind-the-scenes tech to allow for a much larger color palette for NEW dyeable outfits (yes, this includes pink for boys, the burnt orange color for girls, and much more). These efforts have proven more complicated than expected but we are working on it! Sometime in the next year, we would like to roll out a few outfits as a test and then incorporate this new color wheel tech going forward. As we can allocate art and design time, we may retrofit some existing gear to use this as well.
Speaking of art and design time, we are also looking to provide some of the early holiday gear (hello, Hallowe’en Robes!) as options for all wizards. There’s more in our long-term plans, but we want to take steps as we can to make sure that everyone feels as represented and included as possible in the Spiral!” "

I'M SO STOKED to see that they're actively working towards some changes and not just making it a one and done post, it's huge to me. Thanks again KI team, I'm glad you can also be yourselves at work I'm sure that brings alot of peace.

[Sonorous]

My parents have been a part of the community since the 1980's, and growing up as a child of queer parents, I was afraid of backlash I would receive due to the particular area I lived in. It was hard to know who I could trust as a kid and often did not discuss my parents at school with anyone, so seeing today's love and acceptance spread has been truly wonderful. To me, pride is being able to be openly yourself and being proud of who you are despite other people's opinions of you. Though I am not a part of the community myself, I've always admired those who are unapologetically themselves. It takes a lot of courage to be who you are, especially with the amount of prejudice and judgement within our world. It is so refreshing to see all the support nowadays and I hope future generations will continue to love themselves for who they are.

Happy pride everyone

[SeptenaryRavens]

To me pride means rebelling against the institutions that created this unhealthy societal normalization of binary relationships and rejecting gender neutral, gender fluid, and same gendered relationships. The people before me had a harder time expressing their true selves because of the hurdles these institutions put in place over millenia. I haven't had to fight for my rights the same way past generations had to. I am priviliged to have grown up in an era where me being me is more accepted than ever, without having to worry about the majority of society rejecting who I am. The digital age that we've been seeing over the last 20 years has really helped give a voice to so many marginalized people who weren't given a platform to express themselves in the past. I hope that we can continue moving in a positive direction, away from the hatred of the past and into a new day and age where we don't even think about these things anymore. Normalization is the goal we all want.

I'm glad KI is taking this route to support our community, rather than selling pride related things. It's miles better than selling a box of pride cereal and profiting 25% from the boxes (Yes this is actually happening).

Happy pride to all my fellow community members out there!

[Autumn Shadowsong]

For me, Pride is realization, understanding, and acceptance. Pride is the courage to question things you've been taught and allowing oneself to be brave enough to grow comfortable in who they really are, no matter the social repercussions they might face. Pride is opening one's mind and one's heart. Pride is learning to love yourself.

All of this regards my own personal relationship to Pride, though I suspect is overlaps with other's experiences as well. I'm not going to elaborate further, except to say that I am so happy to see KI's efforts, and that the blog post brought a big smile to my face.