My New Religion Is Heathen

Hi, I’m Saika, and I’m obsessed with queer comics.

(Chorus of readers: Hi, Saika.)

(via Vault comics)

I didn’t intend to write this post about yet another queer comic. I didn’t even intentionally buy one, not that I’m complaining—the guy at the comics shop just described Heathen to me as a re-imagining of Norse mythology similar to ODY-C. Since ODY-C is a trippy and beautiful comic re-imagining the entire Odyssey with a cast of only women, you can see why I might be interested. Of course, given its almost entirely female cast, ODY-C is also preeeetty gay, so the comparison probably should have tipped me off.

Heathen starts with a bit of lore-building: the Valkyrie Brynhild, formerly leader of Odin’s immortal warrior women, was cursed by the Allfather after refusing to follow his orders. She must live her endless days in exile and must marry a mortal. Brynhild, however, was able to parley that she would at least be able to choose said mortal. (This exchange entirely lacks gendered language, heyo foreshadowing.) Odin agreed, and sent her off to await her erstwhile suitors.

Enter our heroine (and prepare for spoilers.)

Sexualized Saturdays: If It Looks Like a Duck, and Quacks Like a Duck, Is It Stereotyping to Call It a Duck?

(via inverse)

Cheers, love! The cavalry’s queer!

If you haven’t already heard, Blizzard Entertainment revealed to the world last month in their holiday comic Reflections that Lena “Tracer” Oxton, the mascot character for its acclaimed multiplayer game Overwatch, was a lesbian. Given how omnipresent she is in the game’s marketing, it was awesome to see this first step for queer representation within the game’s universe.

Within the statement that followed the comic’s release, in which they clarified that Tracer’s particular flavor of LGBTQ-ness was the L, Blizzard also confirmed that Tracer would not be the only character in Overwatch who identified somewhere within the alphabet soup of non-hetero sexualities. This, of course, led to immediate speculation about who else in Overwatch was queer.

My guess? All of them. We flock together. It is known. (via visitantlit)

In these discussions, Aleksandra “Zarya” Zaryanova is a frequently heard name. Indeed, Zarya’s bulky build, pink hair, and overall aesthetic seem to fit the common idea of what a butch lesbian looks like. That, however, is exactly where the discussion becomes tricky.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Twife or Death

Despite working in a bookstore, the release of a genderswapped Twilight rewrite titled Life and Death accompanying the 10^th anniversary edition of the original story came as a surprise to me as well. (We weren’t even allowed to open the boxes it came in till last Tuesday morning, in fact.) While Stephenie Meyer claims she wrote it as a challenge to those who critiqued the stereotypical gender roles in Twilight, a quick perusal of the reimagining seems to show that they’ve just been reversed.

When you see the two versions of the same story compared to each other, the changes suggest that Meyer should’ve ignored complaints about Bella being a stereotype and maintained the value of what was undeniably a successful franchise. Instead, she ended up adding slight variations that feed into traditional gender stereotypes: Females receive more unnecessary physical description than their male counterparts did in Twilight and Bella almost cries where Beau doesn’t. (via Entertainment Weekly)

Thankfully, fandom is always there, and a group of dedicated fans have stepped in to create a reimagining that’s actually more progressive than either of these books. Twife or Death, originally titled the Twilight Lesbians Project, has sprung up in the last week on Tumblr, spearheaded by Tumblr user tallulademetriou.

If There Are No Lesbians Then I Don’t Care

I have noticed an upsetting trend recently. No one seems to care about queer ladies being represented in the media. Seems that any time a show announces that they will be including gay characters, or any time someone critiques a show for not having gay characters, more often than not those characters tend to be male. Gay men, despite also not having much representation on television, seem to at least currently hold the market on representation. Why is that? According to GlAAD’s most recent Where Are We On TV Report, there are fifty LGBTQ+ characters on broadcast TV. 61% of those characters are gay men, while only 20% are lesbians, though there are more bisexual women (14%) than bisexual men (4%) on broadcast TV. And of course only one of those characters is a transgender woman. Thank you, Elementary! 

I think the lack of queer female characters largely has to do with with how society has sexualized queer women. When I was younger, I remember hearing that queer men are less accepted in society because straight men are uncomfortable with queer men, but queer women are more accepted because straight men find them attractive. Yep, that’s right, there is this misconception that because queer women have been heterosexualized and fetishized, they are somehow more empowered than queer men. If that’s empowerment, then sorry, I don’t want it.

So you know the stats, but how many queer female characters are there in our geek wheelhouse? This is including both cable and broadcast TV shows.