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tailsrevane · 1 year

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my favorite queer relationships in media

this was another patreon-exclusive post that i'm posting here now because i'm not on patreon anymore. this one was a belated pride month post from july of 2022 where i listed my favorite queer relationships in media. i would probably list some of these in a different order today, but i'm just gonna share the post in its original form. enjoy!

what up, gay nerds!

today i’ll be talking about my favorite queer relationships in media. we’re talking couples, we’re talking throuples, we’re talking polycules, and we’re also talking non-romantic queer chosen family. this is obviously a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart, so i’m super excited to talk about it!

also, because of the relative dearth of queer relationships in mainstream media, i’m also going to talk about characters i ship. this will be in a separate section, though, so let’s start with the main event.

my favorite canon queer relationships

14. piper/alex (orange is the new black)

i’ve only seen the first few seasons, but yeah, at the time having actual gay relationships on a tv show i was watching was such a blessed relief.

there’s a line early in i think season 2? where piper and alex are being all domestic together and piper says, “this is so nice, and so gay!” and it more or less sums how i felt about the whole thing.

13. david/keith (six feet under)

six feet under is a very slice of life show, and the romantic relationships it depicts are accordingly presented with an aching realism. david and keith have their issues but they deal with them responsibly, engaging in couples counseling and doing their best to get better.

it’s a very healthy portrayal and it doesn’t seem like the show is going for brownie points or anything, they’re both just valued characters whose stories the show wanted to tell.

12. lady tohru/kobayashi (miss kobayashi’s dragon maid)

this would be higher, but tohru and kobayashi have never really been the main draw for me? i’m hella into the family vibes between the two of them and their adopted child kanna. kanna is just a gloriously adorable child and she’s so sweet and her family is so good and argh. feelings!

the show (and presumably the manga it’s based on) is so well-written, though. they always put kobayashi in a position to just be the sweetest butch mom and it’s so freaking good.

11. violet/allie (her story)

this was rather by the numbers, i get it, but seeing a trans girl in a healthy lesbian relationship helping escape from her abusive boyfriend was super life-affirming to me for… reasons.

actually, just seeing another trans person on screen was so what i needed at that exact moment in time, it actually helped light a fire under me to get started on hrt.

10. ivanova/talia (babylon 5)

literally the only thing holding this back from being higher on the list is that thanks to 90s homophobia it had to be largely implied, and that it ended tragically.

in her last appearance on the show, talia slept with ivanova, and in a later episode when everyone on the crew has to tell a deep, personal secret ivanova says that she loved talia. so it’s more than you might expect given the limits it had to work within. and ivanova is my favorite character on the whole show and always has been, so yeah, this meant a lot to me.

9. nomi/amanita (sense8)

the joy of seeing actual transgender people on screen in a mainstream streaming series directed by two trans people is matched only by the joy of that trans character getting absolutely railed by the best/prettiest doctor who companion with a strap-on in her first scene. fuck yeah.

and then their whole first arc is about nomi’s bodily autonomy being threatened and amanita coming to her rescue and she rescues her in the most emotionally satisfying scene ever and oh my gosh you guys it’s so good.

8. dev/lee (out of position) & volle/xiller (argaea)

at my first furry convention i discovered that there was a thriving small industry publishing specifically furry books. we’re not talking zines here (though those are also awesome in their own right), we’re talking novels, anthologies, short story collections, etc.

at the time i was still hella into sports, so i was immediately drawn to one that had a buff tiger in a football uniform hoisting a fox femboy onto his shoulder with one arm. ironically at the time i was a tiger (though certainly not the dumb jock musclegod dev is), and today i’m a fox femboy? funny how things work out.

anyway, turns out the author of that book is one of the most prolific (and definitely the most popular) furry writers, and i actually liked his argaea series even better than the football nerd one. argaea is set in a fanciful renaissance-ish world and full of palace intrigue and mystery and kidnappings and whatnot. very fun stuff there.

7. baz/simon (simon snow)

there’s been a harry potter-shaped hole in my heart for years now, so when i heard about this series i was immediately in.

the way magic works in this certainly doesn’t really square with how i think about it, but it’s definitely a creative approach. and i super approve of how these books handle the enemies-to-lovers romance of the two dumb gay boys, as well as how it depicts one of them having crippling depression and how they navigate the relationship difficulties this often results in. extremely good stuff here.

(also i’m almost done with the last book and i’m pretty sure there’s a couple of useless lesbians happening!!! exciting!!! there’s also one het couple in the last book if you’re into that kinda thing.)

6. galo/lio (promare)

what if we were a dumbass himbo and a powerful femboy and did an enemies to lovers thing to become an incredible anime power couple and just kicked all of the ass. all of it. what if that?

5. harley quinn/poison ivy (dc comics)

honestly the only reason this isn’t higher on the list is because i’ve seen very little of their actually in a relationship stuff, and that’s a me problem that i really need to fix asap. but i’ve shipped them forever, basically ever since that animated series episode. you know the one. so when i heard they were canon i squeed so loudly.

4. luz/amity (the owl house)

the owl house feels like it was made specifically for me. this show also saw the harry potter-shaped hole in my life and came along and was like “okay but what if we made something drastically better and more imaginative instead and also basically everyone was gay?” and uh, yeah! obviously!!

so obviously it’s being canceled because some dumbass homophobic executive had a problem with it and omfg disney is the fucking worst. can they please just stop.

but yeah i’m so glad kids get to grow up with stuff like this and she-ra and etc, but also i’m so glad i get to watch it too okay? witchy gay bullshit is entirely my jam.

but yeah amity and luz are the sweetest useless lesbians and i love how flustered they get around each other despite having no problem having badass magic fights and just ugh they’re so good i love them so much.

i also want to give a shout-out to lesbian wine aunt eda and her ex-enbyfriend/hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-ex-enbyfriend raine, i’m really rooting for them!!!

3. adora/catra (she-ra)

no big deal just the main hero and main villain of a science fantasy swashbuckling magical girls show who swordfight like literally all the time and are super blatantly gay for each other the whole time and have emotional turmoil over each other and constantly try to assert their dominance over each other.

also there’s a prom scene in the first season where the villain shows up in a messy tux and dances with the hero girl while verbally needling her and dips her really low and it’s so gay and i’m so jealous because i want a villain like that to be all homoerotic with.

and then in the last season of the show catra finally switches sides and apologizes to adora and then adora comes and rescues her and she has this badass transformation scene and it’s one of my favorite scenes in television history and ugh i am so gay and in the last episode they kiss and confess their feelings for each other and fuck i love these two and this show.

there’s also another canon lesbian relationship between netossa and spinnerella, and the series creator said rogelio, kyle, and lonnie are a polycule! and they’re all such good boys and one of them is a really hot lizard boy and aaaaaaa.

2. basically every relationship (dragon moms)

so uh yeah one of my partners is an author and basically all of her characters are queer (with a few exceptions) and a lot of them are trans or nonbinary and i love her writing so much, if you have similar tastes to me you’ll probably like it too. everything is just very emotionally satisfying and character-driven and just… she’s the best, guys. i’d be a fan of her writing even if i weren’t dating her.

anyway her most popular and probably best work is dragon moms which she serialized online but also published as an ebook with extra content and it’s so good and so gay and yeah, she also has a lot of other short stories and stuff on her website and a few other ebooks available and i unreservedly recommend anything she’s written she’s so good.

1. star trek: discovery’s queer chosen family

i’ve gushed about them a bunch in my discovery reviews so there really shouldn’t be any surprise here, but yeah. when lieutenant stamets and dr. culber were shown as a couple in season 1 of discovery it belatedly fulfilled an almost 31-year-old promise by gene rodenberry. in season 3 of the show, they also introduced gray (a trans guy) and adira (an enby) and made them gay for each other on top of that, and i love them so much, i would die for them. and on top of that they all came together as a surrogate family with stamets and culber just being amazing surrogate space dads and jet reno popping in every now and then as their weird butch lesbian aunt and i am so, so glad i lived long enough to see star trek get this gay, guys!!

while i’m talking about star trek i do want to mention that i didn’t forget about seven and rafi, and i do love them, but i don’t love that them getting together basically happened off screen? like they get plenty of screentime in season 2 but that was in full figuring their shit out mode and idk i just don’t like that all we got for them becoming a couple was them holding hands at the end of season 1 like it feels like you skipped the whole romantic part of their relationship and that kinda sucks?

queer relationships i ship

(cw: some of these characters will have canon age gaps and/or are minors in some canons, just assume there's an element of au-ification here. cool? cool.)

14. finn/poe (star wars)

look i don’t care about star wars anymore but wow how could you not make these guys gay come on.

13. bella/alice (twilight)

again i don’t really care but especially in the movies alice is literally the only person that seems right for bella like seriously their relationship is so much better than her relationship with either of the two boys.

12. kota ibushi/kenny omega (professional wrestling)

to be super clear this is very much about their characters, not them as a people, i don’t ship real people that’s creepy.

their characters have this amazing wrestling love story and i just want it to be even more explicitly gay than it already is, but also it’s already kinda explicitly gay??? and that’s amazing.

11. femshep/jack (mass effect 2) & pc/kaliyo (star wars: the old republic)

this one is moreso about two times bioware queerbaited me, like i met both of these characters while playing female characters and was immediately like “wow okay they are totally lesbian doms like you can tell me they’re bi and i’ll believe you” but i was just so sure they had to be romanceable for my female characters and then i found out they weren’t? and in both cases i was just like, what the fuck guys, this is cultural appropriation.

10. riker/worf (star trek: the next generation)

this started out as a joke but i’m kind of firmly committed to it at this point. there is at least as much reason to think that riker and worf are hooking up on the regular as there is that riker and deanna are, and riker and deanna got married later sooooo…

9. georgiou/burnham (star trek: discovery)

i mean, burnham has more feelings about georgiou than she does about any of her actual on-screen romantic partners, whether it’s for her gentle mommy domme prime universe georgiou or her badass mean domme mirror universe georgiou.

8. dick grayson/jason todd (dc universe)

i literally wrote fanfiction about these two when i read nightwing: year one and jason kept bratting the fuck out of dick to the point where dick literally tied him up.

jason is a bratty power bottom and dick is a service top. i will not be accepting questions or feedback at this time.

7. garak/bashir (star trek: deep space nine)

i don’t even give a shit about bashir when he isn’t interacting with garak. he might as well be a non-character.

i fucking love garak he is such an amazing bratty dom. i love watching him play with his food (his food being bashir).

6. legolas/gimli/aragorn (lord of the rings)

it’s that thing where you take a very homosocial book and add expanded roles for some of its female characters to make it less homosocial but you change exactly nothing about how emotionally intimate the homosocial relationships are and y’know whoops they’re clearly gay now, we decided.

5. bruce/clark (dc universe)

how is this not canon? there is so much blatant textual support for it, holy shit, look at literally any interaction they’ve ever had with each other.

4. neo/trin (the matrix)

yeah they’re on-screen canon, i just mean i headcanon both of them as enbies. so like. they aren’t actually queer in their portrayal onscreen (but like, come on, this is the gayest “straight” couple ever), but they are in my headcanon? if that makes sense.

3. tim drake/jon kent (dc universe)

yeah, they both have boyfriends who aren’t each other, but tell me you didn’t immediately think about these two cute superhero boys kissing the second you heard they were both openly bi. i don’t believe you.

2. flick/cj (animal crossing)

i actually questioned whether to put this as a canon relationship considering that the game frequently seems to stop just short of saying it and i’m reasonably certain that the creative team considers them an item. but i’ll leave it under this section because they don’t just come right out and say it.

1. sonic/tails/knuckles/shadow

i mean, this is a pretty obvious one right? i mean okay polycule shipping is pretty rare, but like, sontails is obviously correct and sonshad is obviously correct and sonknux is obviously correct and knuxtails is obviously correct and shadtails is obviously correct and i’ll grant you there isn’t as much on-screen evidence for knuxshads but still just put it all together and there you go. like i said. obvious.

please don’t ship sonamy it’s so creepy she’s literally a stalker it’s not okay. i mean do what you want but i’m judging you. my favorite interpretation of amy’s feelings btw is a comic i saw on twitter once where amy is coming out as a lesbian and she apologizes to sonic for being all weird and overcompensating by being over the top into him and he’s super understanding because he’s gay and he gets it and idk it just feels so real and good to me.

anyway, yeah! happy belated pride! i love gays and being gay.

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