Queer/GLBT SF/Fantasy

[aishabintjamil]

Good morning,

I've been giving some thought to one of the panels I'm doing at Conbust next month, on the topic of Queer/GLBT SF/Fantasy/anime, etc. I'm not sure where exactly the topic will go, since I haven't seen a description of the panel beyond the title. So I thought it might be a useful thing to have a list of examples to pull things out of. Anything in books/media/gaming/anime is fair game. Here's what I've managed to come up with so far, with help from a couple of friends.

* Marion Zimmer Bradley - there are a bunch different examples in the Darkover books.
* Mercedes Lackey - the Herald Mage trilogy.
* Elizabeth Bear - multiple books
* Tamora Pierce - several examples in the Circle books
* Jacqueline Carey - lot of bisexual characters in the Kushiel series

What else should I be remembering? I'm sure there are more.

Comments

[gabrielsknife.livejournal.com]

I've yet to read it, but Ursula le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" has gender issues (possible homosexuality/gay issues as well) along with it's alien/human interaction.

Also, Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" has a lot of gay and/or bisexual poetry. Really, really good, imho.

Here's some of the more mainstream animes that come to mind. There's tons of yaoi/yuri (probably trans too) manga out there, but I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for or not. Most of it's just straight up porn lol.

"Monocrome Factor": a really, really light (nothing sexual but a few kisses and a lot of "love me please!" dialogue) yaoi about a high school student who is the King of Darkness reborn. Kind of a cock-tease, if you gotta know, but it's cute, well drawn, and light enough in the yaoi department that anyone can get into it.

Junjou Romantica and Sekaichi Hatsukoi (listed together because they're made by the same artist): Two rather popular series; the first about three seperate but interconnected couples, while the other is about three different couples interconnected through the manga publishing house they work for. Rather good, but should carry a small warning due to the soft-core sex scenes it has.

Hourou Musuko Wandering Son: Probably one of the few anime I know that involves transgendered characters. It follows a character who is in middle-school (I think; been a while since I've seen it) who identify as a male-to-female transgender. I didn't see all of it (kinda hit some personal buttons for me, so I had to stop) but what I did see was really good.

Persona 4 the Animation: Based on the Persona 4 videogame for the Playstation 2, it involves several different highschool students who are investigating a murder. The central theme of the anime seems to be focused on forming bonds through friendship and accepting one's inner self. It's praised for it's two alternative lifestyle characters - one being a gay biker-type guy and the other...I hesitate to call "him" a trans-man, but that's what "he's" kinda introduced as. Really well handled in my opinion (the gay character just wants to be accepted by society and his peers, for example.)

Games -

Dragon Age Origins and 2 - Has bisexual romance options (can have gay or lesbian romances,) but no central LGBT themes. Kind of a "oh, this is here too if you want to pursue it, but you don't have to" kinda thing.

(I'm not sure, but I think it's called) Jade Empires: probably the first RPG to have a gay/lesbian romance option. It's the first one I can remember hearing about. It's based on an Oriental-like setting; I think it was for PC and PS2, but I'm not sure as I never got the chance to play.

I know there are more games, I just can't think of them off hand right now. If there's anything else you'd like to know, please don't hesitate to ask ^_^ !