Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon): 2015 Edition

Usually everyone here at LGG&F gets along really well. We bond over our mutual love of justice and all things geek! But once in a while, chaos comes to our serene nerd community. When all of the good we try to do is abandoned and our writer’s room deteriorates into madness…

Actual depiction of our writer’s room.
(gif via imgarcade)

I am, of course, speaking about Valentine’s Day, that heinous holiday that sends us all into a shipping frenzy as our authors nominate and then vote on ships for our Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon) list. It is now my duty as Empress of LGG&F to present to you this year’s bloodstained list. So put on your shipping goggles and prepare yourself for the 2015 Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom!

(gif via gillianeberry)

Sexualized Saturdays: Queer Stories are Tragic Stories

Popular media is making teensy tiny strides in queer representation, but it’s still light years behind where it should be. One of the many issues in today’s portrayal of LGBTQ+ people in media is that their stories are often tragic. Queer characters may exist in a universe, but in all likelihood their relationships, if they’re lucky enough to initiate them, will fail, and they themselves may very well die or disappear.

The ubiquity of this trope occurred to me recently when I was listening to Part 2 of Welcome to Night Vale’s 2^nd Anniversary episode. As part of the conclusion of the episode, which wrapped up the recent Strexcorp invasion storyline, everyone and everything that wasn’t from Night Vale was ejected from the town. Unfortunately, this included Carlos, Cecil’s boyfriend, who’s now trapped in an alternate dimension. Their relationship has mostly been smooth sailing up to this point, and I can’t fault the WtNV writers for introducing some new conflict into the storyline now that Strex is gone and a mayor has been elected. But still, I was kind of sad because Cecil and Carlos’s problem-free relationship, while somewhat unrealistic for any humans, queer or not, was a safe space of angst-free queer love. I certainly haven’t found anything like that in other media; in other media being queer is apparently the equivalent of using a black cat to break a mirror underneath a ladder on Friday the 13^th.

Spoiler Alert: Batwoman: Elegy Is Just as Great as Everyone Says

We all remember DC Wedding-gate, right? When DC’s editorial department decided that Batwoman and her girlfriend Maggie couldn’t get married out of some misguided belief that marriage makes characters boring? When they seemed to believe that forbidding a same-sex marriage had the same weight as forbidding a straight one, and their Eisner-winning creative team walked off the project, citing irreconcilable creative differences? I stuck with the series for a while after that out of a desire to not be unsupportive of DC’s only queer headliner, but it finally broke me. I dropped the ongoing comic a few months ago as the storytelling drooped from fascinating down to mediocre and episodic.

Just recently, however, my birthday rolled around, and I found myself missing Kate Kane. It being my birthday and all, I decided it was time to treat myself: I bought Batwoman: Elegy.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Jewish Representation

Happy Chanukah (Hanukkah), everyone! Chanukah is the spelling preferred by Jewish traditionalists, but Hanukkah is also fine, because Hebrew is a bit difficult to transliterate into English. The tradition of celebrating Chanukah comes from an event about 2,100 years ago, when, after reclaiming the Temple in Jerusalem, the Jews only found enough holy oil to light the sacred lamp for one day. The oil miraculously lasted eight days, until more oil could be pressed and ritually purified. The festival is about the triumph of light, purity, and spirituality over darkness, compromise, and materialism. To learn more, here’s a rather good website with information about all things Jewish. This year, the eight-day Jewish festival began November 27 and ends on December 5, and in honor of it we’re taking a look at Jewish representation in pop culture.

DC Comics Bans Batwoman’s Same-Sex Marriage

This is not the post I thought I’d be writing today, but after scrolling through my dashboard on Tumblr I saw an upsetting post from ‘DC Women Kicking Ass’ that stated that Batwoman writers Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III were leaving the comic due to constant interference from DC asking them to change or rewrite storylines at the last minute. The final straw seemed to be when DC prohibited the marriage between Batwoman and her girlfriend, Maggie.

Sexualized Saturdays: The Non-Homophobic Utopia

I’m trying to create a world where there’s no racism, there’s no sexism, there’s no homophobia. And I know it’s not real life, but I kind of don’t care. I’d like to create a world where none of that matters: you have the supernatural creatures for that to work as an analogy. In my mind, if you can create a world like that on TV, maybe life starts to imitate it.

—creator Jeff Davis, about Teen Wolf (x)

Welcome to the non-homophobic utopia, everyone. I don’t necessarily mean a utopian society; moreso, I mean a society where there are absolutely no built-in social mores about same-sex relations, to the point where discrimination based on such is unheard of and even confusing when outsiders bring it up. If this society is an alien race in a science fictional work, that race may not even have a concept of sexual orientation and instead be universally pansexual.

What I want to talk about is this: in terms of fictional queer representation, is it better to show a society where there is literally no discrimination against characters who experience same-sex attraction, or is it better to show characters dealing with the same prejudice a young reader might also be facing? Let’s consider the pros and cons of each.

DC’s Essential Graphic Novels Essentially Screws Over Women

(picture via dcwomenkickingass)

DC Comics recently stated that they will be releasing a free essentials guide to their graphic novels. This guide will be sent to fans, comic shops, and libraries. It is also notably lacking in women.

Certain characters have received multi-page spreads in this book. Most of these characters are the ones that you’d expect, such as Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and, weirdly, Green Arrow. Perhaps Green Arrow was given his very own spread because he is currently a popular character due to the TV show Arrow, but Green Arrow has never been a part of the main lineup of DC superheroes.

You know who is, though? Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman, who is an Amazon, member of the Trinity, and one of the main leaders of the Justice League, does not get her own multi-page spread with her fellow superheroes. Neither do any other female superheroes—not even Batwoman, who is one of DC’s top selling female-led comics along with Batgirl and Wonder Woman (source).

So where are the women in this “essential” guide? In a two-page spread called “Women of DC”. The only women featured in this section are Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Batwoman, Catwoman, and Huntress. Yes, the ladies have been screwed over.

(picture via dcwomenkickingass)

Furthermore, no women or men of color are being featured. There’s no sign of Cyborg, Cassandra Cain, Mister Terrific, Static Shock, Katana, or Vixen.

This book says a lot about who DC Comics are trying to promote and sell to. Remember, this guide is going to be used not just by fans but by comic shop owners and libraries to determine what graphic novels they should order. It has often been said by creators and companies alike that ‘for some reason’ the comics which don’t feature white heterosexual male characters don’t do as well. Well, maybe that has less to do with what DC’s readers want and more to do with how they promote their characters. Just a thought, DC.