Let's support and celebrate inclusive authors

Heya!

With the conflicts around Hogwarts Legacy taking center stage this week in gaming, I figured now's a great time for those in the LGBTQIA community to share their favorite authors who they love and who in turn support them. I'd like to spend my money on good people's works and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Perhaps raising awareness of their books will someday lead to video game publishers saying, hey, we'd sure like to make games based on cool people's awesome worlds.

What this thread is NOT for:

Shitposting. If you're going to come in here and defend shitty people's shitty views, please don't. This is a celebratory thread. Also not the place to discuss your anti-LGBTQIA politics or views. There are other threads, preferably on other sites, where you can do plenty of that.

I don't read books too often, but if anyone's looking for an alternative video game about school-going witches and wizards right now, check out Ikenfell.

EDIT: Of course, there's always Alex Zandra, who has been on the site multiple times. She's always writing stuff about witches and cat girls.

Another video game recommendation: Check out Princess Farmer if you're looking for something created specifically by trans developers. I believe they just released a mobile port last week.

@brian_: That's an excellent idea. Anyone else, yes, definitely include games too.

Let's start with the basics.

Celeste is a cool ass platformer that's a meditation about coming to terms with your transness.

I'm reading "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan and love it so far. Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing curiosity about the music business.

Shoving my way into another book thread with more fantasy recommendations:

The Broken Earth series (N.K. Jemisin): Very nontraditional fantasy told from the 2nd person perspective. Absolutely loaded with queer and POC representation. I maybe don't think the 3rd book holds up to the other two, but still good and the quality of the first two alone make these a must read.

Malazan Book of the Fallen (Steven Erikson): Very dense epic fantasy with (IMO) some of the best storytelling out there. Textually very inclusive - more than anything else, this is a series about soldiers, and women are viewed as the equals (and sometimes superiors) of men in this area. Many textual gay/lesbian characters, plenty of POC representation, and subtext arguably exists for genderfluid characters.

The Lightbringer Series (Brent Weeks): More epic fantasy with pretty unique color-based magic. I'm spotlighting it here for having an overweight POC character as its central protagonist, literally the only one of those I know of in the genre.

Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive, tons more): Mentioning Sanderson because he has really grown a lot in this area over the years. He's Mormon and early in his career had made some statements about his personal religious beliefs vis a vis queer folks. In the last decade plus, he's made a big effort to educate himself, involve queer folks in his creative process, and really developed his queer representation in his writing. Is he the number one writer in the world for queer fiction? Absolutely not, but I thought it was worth mentioning because you rarely see a prominent public figure be this open about wanting to learn and progress in this area.

As already mentioned, Nora Jemisin's work is incredible and incredibly inclusive. And despite being written by a couple of cis, straight white dudes, The Expanse series is amazing on that front. It normalizes things that most (sort-of) near-future sci-fi still does not.

Octavia Butler's work holds up in myriad ways, even when it comes to discussions around gender and how rigid said things should or should not be (the Lilith's Brood saga illustrates this quite well).

+1 to Octavia Butler. Would love to see the Earthseed series adapted to a DONTNOD-style adventure game. Also, shoutout to the works of Ursula Le Guin, one of the most creative visionaries in sci-fi history and deserves far more video game representation.

Slightly outside the purview of this thread, but some awesome games from LGBTQ creators that folks should check out:

- one night, hot springs

- Get in the Car, Loser!!

- Depression Quest

- Butterfly Soup 1 & 2

All of these are free (I believe) and made my end of year lists when they released. Kick the creators back a few bucks if you enjoy them, but definitely check them out!

@shtinky:

Because you really meticulously research every little thing you spend your money on

I don't know if this is suppose to be some kind of "gatcha" but researching what you spend your money on is typically a normal adult thing to do, yeah, especially when something is making headlines. Changing up your spending habits based on your research is also something completely normal to do as well...

But to add to the conversation, +1 for the Broken Earth series. It's fantastic! Also out side of just authors, We're All Going to the World's Fair is a really great horror/drama movie about trans identity.

@shtinky: Very helpful, clearly in the spirit of the thread. 10/10.

For everyone else, RF Kuang's Poppy War series and Babel (novel) are fantastic.

If you want to hear great music you might not find otherwise, hyperpop is just loaded with trans creators (100 Gecs and Sophie come to mind,) more accessibly the album Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain is fantastic, and if you still have a place in your heart for ska like I do, We Are The Union is led by a trans woman. (Ordinary Life is a sort of coming-out album and it's great.) The bassist from the same band, Jer, is nonbinary and they put out a great solo album BOTHERED/UNBOTHERED.

I believe the developer of Citizen Sleeper, Gareth Damien Martin, is nonbinary. That game really resonates with a lot of trans and queer themes, while also just being a great story and visual novel built on TTRPG mechanics. One of my favorites from last year.

For movies and shows, Desiree Akhavan, a bisexual Iranian-American woman, made The Bisexual (on Hulu,) and Appropriate Behavior (a short indie film you can rent on Amazon,) and both are great explorations of messy queerness. A lot of inclusive Netflix shows tend to fall into the trap of portraying trans or gay people as Perfect Snowflakes who are just so wholesome and innocent and can never do wrong and are therefore boring.

My favorite series of epic fantasy are Robin Hobb's Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies. Besides just having excellent writing and some of my favorite characters in all of fiction (Hobb is particularly revered for her character work), the books have a lot of queer themes, some explicit and others metaphorical. E.g., the character "the Fool" is explicitly non-binary; the Fool literally portrays themselves as male at some points and female at others. Also, the "Wit" magic that the main character possesses can easily be seen as a metaphor for homosexuality or general queerness.

FWIW you can get signed and personalized copies of Hobb's stuff here. There's no extra charge at all, you just have to pay the price for the new copy of the book (generally $8-$10 for a paperback) plus shipping. I actually just bought my mother and brother signed and personalized copies this past Christmas.

As always, ignore the trolls. Hey, reading's hard. Can't expect them to understand the gist of the OP.

No. Not Jim. His twitter account has some absolute clangers in it. Arguing is not a team sport. Lest something as nuanced and complex as the trans debate.

@navster15 I'm a big fan of that Hot Springs thing. It's nice to see a trans perspective that doesn't shy away from the realism of transitioning. All those internal fears of being accepted, the missed opportunities just to take the first step, etc. It shows the importance of a patient (and I mean patient) support group.

I'll never really be in a position to feel trans but little stories like that can at least give me a base understanding.

The Expanse definitely isn't queer focused, but there's definitely queer figures throughout the books and hey, queer/poly space pirates, so go start your journey into The Expanse.

@shindig: Just a note that Stephanie Sterling uses they/them pronouns!

It's a lot easier to make that mistake when they still use Jim as part of their branding. I'll bear it in mind.

Thanks, I was actually wondering about that, checked their Twitter and no pronouns listed, just when I want to know someone's.

I've really appreciated some of Sterling's work over the years, but fell off their content long before the transition happened. They kept skewing younger and it started feeling like a lot of the vids were kind of bloated, 30 minutes when they could have been better and tighter at 15. But Sterling also tirelessly hammered shovelware and the systems that produce it, along with atrocious F2P and "freemium" monetization models... they're worthwhile problems to keep pointing out. Also, I liked that Sterling was a Koei Warriors fan and so I could trust them for reviews of those games that weren't just "IDK it's another one of those!" And of course the whole Digital Homicide saga was epic.

One of the operators in Rainbow Six: Siege, Osa, is transgender, and more than one of them is gay. Osa's voice actress is a transgender woman named Nicole Maines.

...uh, that's kinda all I got, I don't know of anything else off the top of my head.

Duders, seriously, just don't feed the troll. They're transparent as hell, don't give them the satisfaction.

Seriously everyone! Just let them slink away like the little shit that they are. They just want the attention, which is sad, so let's just ignore it and let them starve. Anyway, has anyone here ever read "The Only Good Indians" by Stephen Graham Jones? My wife and I started a 2 person book swap "club" (we each pick a book, read them swap, and read the other persons, then talk about both), and that is next on my list for it. I know it's a horror book by a Native American author, but I've seen some truly mixed reviews.

@sethmode: Fair point, and to get back on track, I will also recommend “We Know the Devil” and “Heaven Will be Mine” as staples in the queer and trans gaming canon and should not be missed.

This is a neat bundle that supports trans creators ($60 USD):

https://itch.io/b/1712/trans-witches-are-witches

And another bundle for $10 if the above is too much:

https://itch.io/b/1713/trans-witches-are-witches-apprentice-edition

I second Butterfly Soup and Get in the Car, Loser! Both of those games are great.

I just want to point out that the previous bestseller author of British literature, Terry Pratchett, was a lot better at talking about people of all shapes and sizes being just people (specially in the Guard books), including characters of different inclinations struggling with identity and finding acceptance, without falling in one-note cliches.

@hermes: Pratchett was a great writer and an even better human being. And his magical worlds were actually internally consistent!

@hermes: Heck, the way Terry uses dwarves as a metaphor for transness is just *chef's kiss*.

Upon seeing the thread title, my first thought was Terry Pratchett as well. I read his biography recently (Terry Pratchett: A Life In Footnotes) written by his assistant Rob Wilkins, and it was a great read. It got surprisingly touching and was difficult to read near the end.

This thread made me think, because I actually haven't read much of anything by LGBTQIA+ authors (that I know of at least). Well, I read the graphic novel Fungirl by Elizabeth Pich recently which features a lesbian slacker main character living with a bisexual roommate. It's absolutely hilarious, but the characters are deliberately cartoonish and a lot of the comedy stems from the main character being a sex addict asshole (still a big recommend).

Another recommend from me would be the Monster Prom series (Monster Prom, Monster Camp and Monster Roadtrip). It is focused on comedy, but the games have great LGBTQIA+ representation, with trans, non-binary and other characters you can romance (or play as). I wasn't quite as fond of Monster Camp as the other two, but they are all a definite recommend if you want something inclusive, but also hilarious and raunchy. Hmm... actually, a lot of the humor here is also due to characters being sex addict assholes. I promise it's not the only type of media I consume (I'm actually an ace).

Since Get in the Car, Loser was mentioned earlier, I'm just going to point out that the second piece of story DLC for the game released today.

Not books or games, but Friends at the Table is a great actual play podcast that I guess most people here know about due to Austin Walker usually being the GM. A very diverse cast of wonderful people. They are starting their next sci-fi season soon, but if you want to listen to just one game the America's Playground game is one of the most hilarious things I have ever heard.

Someone, somewhere on here might have use for this, or know someone who has use for it: itch.io bundle gathering witches/wizards related stuff by or pertaining to trans people.