My Current Queer Masterlist of Sapphic- and/or Trans- Focused (Mostly) Fiction Media (Tragedy Can Go Suck Eggs)
Are you sick of bleak, heartwrenching, violence-filled, bury-your-gays queer representation in media? I am.
For the last few years I put myself on a queer media diet: I tried to consume mostly sapphic media (and over the last year I also branched out into media with trans characters and/or creators) with happy endings, or at least endings that are not completely wrapped up in turning the queer characters into devastating cautionary tales.
The main reason I started this was because my teen years were spent on the hunt for any hint of queerness I could find and a lot of the narratives that cropped up were tragedies. Side note: Anyone else still scarred from watching Boys Don't Cry waaaay too young, or thinking about Piper Perabo jumping off a roof?
My depressed teenage self felt very alone and negative about the future; I was in dire need of seeing non-tragic queer futures modelled in media. So now that I'm older I'm collecting those stories.
Here's what I have so far:
Notes: I don't necessarily agree with absolutely everything from each of the following movies, TV shows, podcasts, or books. The list is a map of my search for non-tragic queer stories, not an endorsement.
I've starred (*) my favourites and I've added a superscript 1 (¹) to indicate that I included an item for trans/genderqueer factors that made my little heart go pitter-pat.
Movies:
*¹Nimona
The Half of It
*Do Revenge
Bound
Anne + the film
*Dating Amber
*Desert Hearts
*Carol
Saving Face
But I'm a Cheerleader
D.E.B.S.
*Fried Green Tomatoes
The Handmaiden - the director's cut
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
*A New York Christmas Wedding
Better Than Chocolate
Gray Matters
And Then Came Lola
*Nina's Heavenly Delights
*Summerland
So My Grandma’s a Lesbian
A Secret Love
The World Unseen
*¹Shinjuku Boys (documentary, 1995)
¹Mutt
*¹Runs in the Family
¹Beauty (documentary, 2018, Christina Willings)
¹MnM (documentary, 2023)
¹3 Generations
*¹I Saw the TV Glow – Not really a happy ending, but so amazing I added it anyway.
The Fear Street trilogy from Netflix (all 3)
Heard these movies are great but haven't watched them yet:
Girls Like Girls
The World to Come
Christmas at the Ranch
Watermelon Woman
TV shows:
*¹Heartstopper
*Steven Universe
*She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
The Legend of Korra
Tales of the City (the new one with Elliott Page)
*¹Sense 8
DC’s Harley Quinn
Atypical
The Owl House
Trinkets
One Day at a Time (the newer one)
*San Junipero from Black Mirror
Tipping the Velvet (BBC, 2002)
¹Wayward
Podcasts:
*Alice Isn’t Dead
*¹Within the Wires
Cruising
¹Travelling Light - I haven't finished this yet but so far I'm enjoying it!
*¹The Silt Verses - Has some tragedy but said tragedy is not centred on queerness, well worth any pain it may cause imo.
Books:
*I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde
Carmilla – J Sheridan Le Fanu - Not a happy ending but absolutely iconic.
*High School – Tegan and Sara
*Gideon the Ninth, #1 in the Locked Tomb series
*Harrow the Ninth, #2 in the Locked Tomb series
*Nona the Ninth, #3 in the Locked Tomb series
*Tipping the Velvet
Fingersmith
¹Pet
*One Last Stop
*The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry
*The Priory of the Orange Tree
Malice, #1 of the Malice duology
Misrule, #2 of the Malice duology
The Luminous Dead
*The Colour Purple
The Vagina Monologues
Sweet & Bitter Magic
To Break a Covenant
She Who Became the Sun
*The Last True Poets of the Sea
The Lost Girls
Who I Was with Her
¹Detransition, Baby
*The Falling in Love Montage
Wilder Girls
*Into the Drowning Deep
The Dark Tide – Alicia Jasinska
Honey Girl
*We Set the Dark on Fire, #1
*We Unleash the Merciless Storm, #2
The Midnight Girls
¹I Wish You All the Best
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
The Never Tilting World
*Written on the Body
Of Fire and Stars
*Stone Butch Blues
Crier’s War, #1
Iron Heart, #2
All The Things They Said We Couldn’t Have: Stories of Trans Joy
Orlando
*Legends & Lattes
Our Wives Under the Sea - Okay the whole book is reeeeally sad in tone, but the tragedy isn't directly related to the queerness.
Chlorine
*Sunburn
Her Name in the Sky
This Poison Heart
*We Are Okay
Triple Sec
Big Swiss
Mrs. Victoria Buys a Brothel
¹What Moves the Dead
¹What Feasts at Night
¹What Stalks the Deep
¹Hell Followed with Us
Upright Women Wanted
This is How You Lose the Time War
¹A Psalm for the Wild-Built
¹A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
*¹Light From Uncommon Stars
*Mrs. S
*¹Idlewild
Queer as Folklore: The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
Been thinking about the circumstances that tend to cause Simon to act out, and what the perfect storm of circumstances would be to make him and Grace like each other as LITTLE as possible. :) At first.
I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.
Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.”
She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”
And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”
She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea! The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn. I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did. So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”
My moms a sign language interpreter, and she’s signed with people from all over the US. According to her, when she signs with people from the south they sign with a “drawl.” They have slower hand movements and exaggerate certain parts of the sign. People from the Midwest sign very fast and people from the south sign very slow.
So we were at a restaurant once and my mom started interpreting for someone who was trying to order and she was like “oh you’re from the south!”
And they were like “how did you know that?”
And she said “you sign with a drawl.” And they were really surprised that it came through that much.
It’s really interesting that even when not speaking verbally accents and heritage come through.
I love linguistic stuff and saw this post screenshotted AGES ago and have been halfheartedly searching for it again because no one believes me when i say sign language has accents AND I FOUND IT
i understand why the ‘grizzled loner who slowly melts & improves their outlook on life when forced to take care of a kid’ trope is a male exclusive role, bc the optics of a grizzled loner woman healing by becoming a mother are maybe not so good, but every time i think abt a hypothetical female version of that trope i black out instantly. could we maybe just do it one time and all agree to be cool about it
I think they should do this to Aloy in Horizon 3 because she would be such a fucking mess in this situation. like I say this with great love but my girl can barely handle having friends. when Forbidden West made her an older sister she was a trainwreck about it. now as of Burning Shores she's being a gay disaster with Seyka who is also an outcast loner trainwreck. just imagine the two of them trying to look after a kid. imagine how many explosions there would be
pure shite like @breadkween - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
