queer representation in alternative media

Hi Charlie! It's me, Theo, rising up from the depths of my queer little room to bring you another blog article. 

The title of this article already gives my subject away- I'm going to be talking about queer representation in alternative media. The media I will be writing on include: comic books and podcasts!

The first media I'll be talking about is comic books. 

Okay, okay, I know you're probably waiting for me to talk about Mystique from the X-Men, or, I don't know, Billy and Teddy from the Young Avengers- but I won't be. I'm concentrating on alternative media, which is less-known about!

So, here we go!

The first comic book series I'll be talking about is the Sandman series, written by Neil Gaiman. 

Firstly, the Sandman is already incredible by itself in terms of storytelling.  If you like Neil Gaiman's books, you'll like this! He's the author of the comic books. 

The world in which the Sandman takes place is very similar to our own, but has the Endless. 

The Endless are seven not-so-human immortal beings who regard themselves as family, and often look out for each other. These comic books are centred around Dream- also known as Morpheus, or the Sandman. To be frank, the story makes sense when you're reading it until you've finished a comic and you go 'Ooooh. So that's what all that was about.'. You'll catch up, I promise. 

The queer characters in this story are mainly side characters, except for Desire. They're a part of the Endless. All of the Endless can change their appearance and gender at will, although most of them stick to one. However, Desire is gender-fluid, adapting to the sexual or romantic preference of the person they're around. If you're wondering why I put them with the trans flag, it's because trans is an umbrella term! 

Next up, we have Foxglove and Hazel, the lesbians on the left. They appear several times throughout the comics, notably in Doll's House along with Wanda, the trans woman on the far right. They're all complex, lovely characters, and I just strongly recommend the Sandman as it's an incredibly nice read! If you're not a comic book person, that's fine. They're adapting the comics into a TV series (although.. I'm not sure what Netflix is going to do with it. Should I be scared? Noo. Am I? Yees.).

Here's some art from the comic books, to hypnotise you into reading them encourage you to read them! This features a lot of art of Delirium (my favourite character). I'm deeefinitely unbiased here.

(C'mon, she has a dragon. You can't tell me you don't want to read this now.)

The second alternative media I'll be talking about is the media of podcasts! These are generally less known, and difficult to listen to if you have an auditory processing problem or attention problems, but there are transcripts that you can read that are just like reading a play! Usually, they're linked to the podcasts. Because this branch of media is less well known, queer creators and characters often tend to thrive here.

The first podcast that I'm going to be talking about is The Magnus Archives. At first, this podcast might not seem like much in terms of queer representation, as it's very long and it takes a while before you get to know the main characters, plus the main couple hates each other at the beginning. But, it's worth it. The genre of this podcast is more gothic-horror-esque, so if you enjoy creeping horror, this one's for you! There are exactly 200 episodes (I know, I know, I first listened to it whilst moving out of my childhood home to pass the time so that definitely helped). Here's a brief summary: this one guy, Jonathan Sims (who coincidentally also has exactly the same name as his voice actor and creator. Hmm....), scores a job at the Magnus Institute as the Archivist. Along with his archival assistants (who aren't introduced till around episode 20 something), they investigate spooky stuff. It's great. A lot of monsters. Also, mind the content warnings before you listen to an episode! 

You can also skip some episodes if they're really dull but you might miss some foreshadowing. God, there's so much foreshadowing. Anyway, there's canon bisexual, queer, lesbian, asexual and gay representation. Some really minor characters who feature in only one or two episodes are non-binary/trans, although it's quite subtle. 

If you didn't bother reading all that but still want to know what it's all about? Queer (British) horror. 

Have some out-of-context quotes from the transcripts to get you to listen to it.

(This makes it look like a workplace comedy and boy, I wish it was, anyway.)

Let's keep going! Camp Here and There my beloved. I cannot describe how much I adore this podcast and its characters. Literally every single character is queer in some way- for example, the main character (and narrator), whose name is Sydney October Sargent, is a gay trans man in a relationship with Jedediah Martin. There's just so much representation in this and it makes me happy every time I listen to it. There's transfem and transmasc representation, and it's just, great.                                               This podcast is so funky and weird (in the best way possible), and the soundtrack is composed by Will Wood (who also made the song I/Me/Myself if any of you know that one). It's pretty short too, with 34 episodes, but there are more in the making! I have no idea how to describe the storyline except for, it's all Very Weird and you just get used to it at some point. 10/10 would attend the summer camp Camp Here and There. Remember to check the content warnings before listening to the episodes! Have some more transcript quotes!

The sheer amount of flags I had to add on top of the original logo of the podcast already shows you how queer it is!! It's amazing: The Penumbra Podcast is sci-fi, but make it gay. We're in the future, the main character is a non-binary bisexual private eye (if you've already listened to it. if you know you know ;)) named Juno. The only thing I have to say about this podcast is the sheer visceral anger that the kiss sounds elicit inside of me. There are so many endearing characters- for example, Rita, Juno's secretary who is literally the coolest character in the history of characters? For the rest, it's amazing, it's lovely, pretty sure that the villains are the only straight characters (I'm joking. Or am I? Guess you'll have to find out.)  There's also good representation of mental health issues, and healing. This podcast is for the burnt out queer ex-gifted kids who look for a bit of sci-fi escapism. It's lovely, amazing, I could talk about it for hours?Anyway, yeah. There's a double queer wedding inside of it. Please listen to it. 

More transcript quotes because I love them!

That's the end of my article! I'm sure I made the title sound very professional, but secretly it's just me ranting about the things I'm really into right now. Anyway, bye Charlie!