HAPPY PRIDE!
In honor of pride month, here are some canonically queer characters from our verse!
Jesse Turner - Demisexual, Panromantic
Jesse doesn’t really think of his sexuality in terms of labels (who has time when you’re running for your life?), but his heart will throw itself into battle for anyone with a pretty smile long before he thinks about sexy touching. By sheer chance, he’s fallen for more guys than any other gender, so he probably thinks of himself as “gay but I like girls too??” when he even thinks of it at all. Please someone hug this man.
Ben Braeden - Bisexual
Ben, bless him, probably has the most healthy relationship to his sexuality of anyone on this list. No one in his immediate family or friend group at school gave him any flack about it when he came out, partially because Katie had already paved the way by being so aggressively out once she left her mom’s place. Ben happily dated and/or hooked up with about 90% of his friend group in high school without much pushback, and because he never learned to feel insecure about that part of himself, his reaction to homophobia and biphobia is usually just an annoyed eyeroll rather than the strong reaction one might get out of Katie. The only important people in his life who he hasn’t officially told are Sam and Dean (though, especially after meeting Jesse, there’s no way they don’t suspect).
Claire Novak - Aromantic, Queer
Like Jesse, Claire doesn’t think much of trying to find a good word for her own sexuality. She utterly fails to comprehend the difference between being close friends with someone and being in love with them—if no sex is involved, it’s friendship; if you want to bone them, it’s romance. But Claire mostly hates feelings, so she has anonymous sexual encounters with dudes that she could not care less about whenever she needs to scratch that itch. She also tries to find guys who are down for her preferred activity of getting someone else off in quasi-sadistic (though ofc still consensual) ways while mostly keeping her own clothes on and not being touched. In Claire’s mind, sex is something you do to someone, not with someone, and she wants to be the one doing it. She feels a little strange when she thinks of being that ruthless in bed with the few people she is both physically attracted to and genuinely does let herself care about. For what it’s worth, Claire is interested in girls too, but feels equally weird trying to use her usual hookup persona with them—there are plenty she’s happy to eyeball, but she’s never acted on that attraction and doesn’t intend to.
Katie Doolittle - Lesbian
Katie is a big ol’ lesbian, and she wants everyone to know it. Katie has struggled with homophobia more than anyone else in our verse—her mom and dad divorced because her dad realized he was gay, and the little basic human respect Annette afforded for queer people flew right out the window. She thought of Katie as one kind of monster or another for as long as Katie lived with her. After Katie left home, she has viciously, spitefully lived life as out & proud as humanly possible. Every year in June she dyes the ends of her hair rainbow for Pride Month, and then chops it off when it starts fading so she can wear her trusty Wonder Woman costume for Halloween (she does not have the patience or cash to maintain it year-round). Katie’s biggest rule for herself going forward is that she’s not giving the time of day to any more homophobes, which is why she tries at all times to make it obvious at a glance that she’s a lesbian—thus the rainbow Superman-L tattoo on her wrist. Hopefully, if people immediately know what she is, a bad reaction will let her know what they are too. (She absolutely refuses to admit this was inspired by Ben’s monster-detecting bracelet.)
Emily Jorgeson - Gay
Emily doesn’t have a problem with the word “lesbian” or it being applied to her, she just tends to prefer “gay” for everyday conversation. She kept a lot of things to herself while living with her aunt and uncle in Indiana, her attraction to other girls among them, and they were happy enough to ignore any overly-friendly gestures Emily made to her girl friends and go right on saying things like “someday when you have a husband” and “when you meet the right boy.” It didn’t bother her as much as it should have—they never actually tried to get her to marry or date anyone she wasn’t interested in, and she liked life where she was, so why rock the boat? But after nearly being sacrificed with Dean, she sometimes wondered if it wasn’t a factor in deciding who in their little town got left on the chopping block. In college, she ran into a coven of real witches who were really gay and really didn’t care what other people thought about it and they helped her embrace that side of herself in a more positive way.
Hunter Birch - Genderfluid
“Genderfluid” might seem like an obvious choice for a shapeshifter, but Hunter actually went through a long period of trying to shift only into “boy” bodies, and insisted on being called “he” even when they didn’t get the form they wanted. Aaron was determined from the beginning to let Hunter decide for themself as much as they could—he wouldn’t question whatever choices they made about their gender or appearance or what they wanted to be called (they even named themself). So it took him awhile to notice the little longing looks they gave dresses and hairbows and dolls and anything else they thought of as girly. Finally, he caught Hunter in the Halloween aisle in a dollar store reverently stroking the fabric of a pink ballerina costume, and it all came out. Aaron bought it for them, and later they had a long talk about how it was okay to be a girl some days, too, if they wanted to be, even though Aaron was a boy (and Hunter wanted to be like him to make them more like a “real” family). Now Aaron calls Hunter “she” on girl days and “he” on boy ones, and “they” in general or when he can’t check with them first. The gender Hunter picks doesn’t always match up with the sex they might be assigned based on their body, and for all Aaron knows they might wind up sticking with one gender someday and they might not—he loves them regardless of what face or gender they have.
Ben Collins - Asexual & Aromantic
Because he’s never romantically dated anybody, Ben has definitely heard concerns from well-meaning loved ones that worry his life lacks intimacy, or connections with others. Thankfully, to the people that matter most (Haley and Tommy), he only had to explain it once for them to get the idea and stop worry-nagging him. (After all, you can hardly want for intimacy when one of your jobs involves touching souls.) One of his favorite jokes is telling anyone who asks that they aren’t his type.
Billie - Asexual & Aromantic
Not every reaper is aro/ace, but Billie is here to do her job and very little outside of it catches her interest. While she has some affection for her fellow reapers and the souls she sees to the other side, her closest friend is Ben Collins, however much she likes to pretend otherwise. Billie has been bound to him for the rest of his natural life, so luckily they make a good pair, but their relationship is strictly platonic. Her favorite joke is how Ben, specifically, is not her type.
Meg - Trans
Assigned male when she was born in New Babylon, Meg joined her father and brother in secret arcane rites that got their whole family burned at the stake before she’d even turned twenty. Millennia in Hell has been…unpleasant, especially during the old days, but the one upside to Meg becoming a demon is that now she can choose to wear whatever kind of body she wants. After centuries of being nameless, she chose the name Margaret for herself, after the medieval Catholic saint of expectant mothers—it has always been Meg’s secret wish to bear a child. When given the option, she always chooses hosts that are named Margaret or some variation thereof, and when the plans were being made for a demon to give birth to Lucifer’s cambion, she jumped at the chance.