Are you already behind our list of your favorite LGBT + characters in fantastic comics and series and still not enough? We encourage you to read books and games.
Characters or plots that we would define today as LGBT + have appeared in myths, legends and stories since forever. Apollo, the Greek god of art and poetry, did not shy away from men and women, as did Heracles (Hercules). Skipping to the (proto) fantasy that is closer to us in time, we can even mention Carmilla, a vampire-lesbian, the title character of the short story of the same title. A novel by Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish writer, predates Dracula’s story by about 25 years. Even closer (proto) fantasy is incl. Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando , which was the prototype for the comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen , described in the first part of the list. It could be so for a long time, but there would not be enough time.
The first games with LGBT + characters appeared in the 1980s. Poison, a transgender player in the series of Final Fight and Street Fighter games , has been appearing since 1989. If you like RPGs in pseudo-medieval climates, you probably know the Dragon Age series very well. But are you looking for new inspiration?
Therefore, we encourage you to reach for books and games with LGBT + characters that are especially remembered by us. If that’s not enough, we also encourage you to reach for the comics and series described in the first part of the list.
LGBT themes in the works of Victoria Schwab
The writer Victoria Schwab, also known as VE Schwab, has been openly speaking about her orientation for years and calls herself a queer person. In one of her tweets, which is a response to a fan’s question, she writes that in the case of her books, it should be assumed that each of her characters is queer / LGBT, unless an excerpt describes it otherwise. In almost every book of hers, we can find an example of the fact that Schwab knows LGBT issues well and tries to describe his characters in the most natural way.
The Shades of Magic trilogy
In the first volume – A Darker Tone of Magic – we meet Prince Rhy Maresh, the heir to the throne and the brother of the main character. According to the canon, Rhy is bisexual and does not shy away from partners of different sexes.
In the sequel – The Shadow Gathering – the mysterious Alucard Emery, a noble and captain of the Nightspire , appears. As the story unfolds, we learn that he and Rhy had a deep affection in the past. However, the princely heart was broken when Alucard left London.
Their thread develops also in the last part – Conjuring Light . Alucard tries to rectify mistakes and asks Rhy’s forgiveness.
Their relationship evolves slowly over the course of their reading. Schwab perfectly describes the complicated feelings between both men. We get to know the reasons why Alucard was forced to leave his beloved, and we also get a satisfying (though open) ending to their plot.
According to the canon, confirmed by Schwab’s tweets, Alucard is gay.
Villains Trilogy
In this series, everyone has a chance to acquire supernatural powers – such as resurrecting the dead, inflicting pain with a single mind, or immortality. Provided he dies and comes back to life. Schwab shows that this is how mostly villains are born, and that morality really lies in the gray area.
One of the main characters is Victor Vale, a former medical student and fugitive from a maximum security prison. Victor’s main goal in life was to find and cause as much suffering as possible to his old friend – Eli Ever, whom he treats as a traitor and blames him for arrest and imprisonment for many years.
Only in the second volume – Vengeful. Vengeful – we learn that Victor is asexual, although the more observant ones will see some clues in the first book – Vicious. The wicked .
Asexual characters described as such do not appear very often in books, and yet such representation is equally important.
Verity’s World Dylogy
In this series, Schwab creates a simple but terrifying world. Every act of violence breeds monsters. Literally. Some take pleasure in inflicting suffering, others struggle with it.
In the second volume of the series – The Dark Duo – we meet Soro. He is the youngest of these “good” monsters, although he looks old.
Soro does not consider himself neither a woman nor a man, but Sunaju (Sunaj is that good monster). In the original language version it uses the pronoun they , while in the Polish version the translator decided to use the neuter gender. – Aleksandra “Mags” Kozłowska
Chloe Price – Life is Strange
Knowing the subject of this list, you can guess that Chloe Price is not exclusively heterosexual. One of the dialogues in the first part tells us that he has had experiences and even relationships with both men and women. By playing Life is Strange, we can lead Max and Chloe’s relationship so that it ends in a romance, and the focal point of the prequel is the rapidly developing relationship between Chloe’s outsider and the school star, Rachel Amber, which we can also quickly turn into a relationship.
Niezależnie od mojego sentymentu do tych tytułów i opowiadanej w nich historii sądzę, że Chloe jest świetnym przykładem dobrze napisanej postaci LGBT. Moje uznanie budzi przede wszystkim jednoznacznie pozytywny przekaz. Dziewczyna w pełni akceptuje ten aspekt siebie i nie uważa go za nic niezwykłego, zaś potencjalne wątki romantyczne z Max i Rachel są dopracowane i wiarygodne. Autorzy gier nie zdecydowali się tu na roztrząsanie kwestii inności tego rodzaju związków, lecz wręcz przeciwnie, ukazali je jako całkowicie normalne – pełne ciepła, bliskości i realnych uczuć… takie, jakich wiele. Takie, jakimi powinny być. Tego rodzaju podejście stanowi dla mnie najwłaściwszą realizację hasła „Love is love!”. – Krzysztof Dzieniszewski
Liara T’Soni from the Mass Effect series
Canadian BioWare studio is known for spreading openness in video games. Their productions not only repeatedly mention intolerance and discrimination, but they can also boast a fairly broad representation of LGBT + characters. Due to the numerous opportunities for establishing relationships with NPCs, the creators give players the opportunity to determine the orientation of the protagonist with whom they eventually identify themselves in some way.
When it comes to a particularly interesting example of a non-heteronormative cast, Liara T’Soni from the space opera series Mass Effect should definitely be mentioned . Both the male and female versions of Shepard are able to establish a deeper relationship with the Asari researcher, and it’s worth it, if only for very well-written dialogues. The character of Liara is also important in the very context of her origin. We have an interesting example of introducing LGBT + characters, not so much as representatives of the minorities of the presented world, but as a community integral to the Mass Effect universe .
Although Asari at first glance resemble humanoid women, they are same-sex creatures and do not perceive representatives of other races through the prism of gender, as they are not distinguished. It is not a determining factor for an emotional or romantic bond, so we can define them as pansexual. Moreover, according to the canon, the use of feminine pronouns by Asari is merely a simplification for translations into foreign languages. Some characters, however, prefer to use masculine or gender-neutral pronouns. – Krzysztof Olszamowski
Seregil and Alec – The Nightrunner series
At the end of the 1990s, the first two volumes of the (now seven-volume) series The Nightrunner , heroic fantasy by Lynn Flewelling, were published in Poland . The main characters are spies: Seregil and Alec, a new apprentice he meets in prison. Two bisexual men whose relationship with the master-apprentice turns into a partner relationship at some point. What many readers liked is the complexity and full blood of the characters (including the fringe). The author created their story for almost 20 years and, as she says herself, was inspired (not only when creating characters) from the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. – Sambor Mika
In the first part of our list, we also forgot about a very important comic.
Petrichor (Saga, Brian K Vaughan i Fiona Staples)
Love, sex and family (not only biological) are the most important themes of the Saga . The key words of this comic book are undoubtedly diversity and tolerance, its characters belong to different races, they represent a wide spectrum of orientations and the entire gray scale when it comes to morality. Vaughan does not hesitate to say love is love , stigmatize pedophilia or show how politics uses all differences to divide and rule.
In the Saga , therefore, a pair of reporters from the planet appear, where their homosexuality is considered a crime, and thus – becomes an occasion to blackmail and gag their mouths. The boys still manage to maintain a healthy, strong relationship. One of the characters introduced in the comic book as a person hunting for a faithless fiancé turns out to be bisexual. Importantly, this thread does not define her at all, nor does it affect how her relationship with the woman turned out. This is a very mature use of LGBT + characters. Vaughan used a similar procedure in Paper Girls , where the “problem” of the characters’ orientation, initially a source of stress for them, pales in the face of the fragility of human life. In line with the philosophy also present in the Saga – it’s better to use each day in harmony with yourself, because we never know how much time we have left.
The comic also features a beautiful, broken, very imperfect heroine – Petrichor. We meet her in the women’s prison where Hazel and her grandmother end up. Like all female penitentiaries, she belongs to the horned race, but speaks the Wieniec language very badly. This is not the only complication in the character’s identity – his body does not have a clear gender, as we would probably say from the perspective of a binary division. Petrichor looks like a gorgeous, slightly gothic woman of mature beauty, but she started out as a man, but stopped for the time being somewhere in the middle of the full gender reassignment process. She is like balancing on the border of worlds, perfect for herself Lola from All About My Mother. As you can imagine, being with her will be an important lesson in self-definition for Hazel, whose body also incorporates a seemingly impossible combination of traits. Importantly, her role in the comic is not limited to being an example and a metaphor, she is a full-blown supporting character with her own story. – Agnieszka Czoska