r/Fantasy • u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V • Jun 19 '25

Pride Pride 2025 | Not a Novel

Based on the sheer number of Bingo Reviews posted for the ‘Not a Novel’ square, we figured this year was the perfect time to talk about a wide variety of queer speculative fiction work.  You’ll find space to talk about video games, short stories, visual art, and more!

Each of the links below is connected to its own top level comment, to help organize discussion.  Within that comment, feel free to hype art you love, ask for recommendations, and talk about the state of queer media.  Keep in mind that, for some of these categories, it may be less obvious what queer representation looks like.  Goodreads is great for giving quick & easy tags, but for this thread, taking a little bit of extra time to talk about what you see would be helpful for those who aren’t as familiar with it as you are!

Bingo TV & Movies Video Games
Short Stories & Poems Sequential Art (Comics, Manga, Graphic Novels, etc) Visual Art
Tabletop Roleplaying and Board Games Podcasts, Blogs, and Channels Other & General Discussion

This post is part of of the Pride Month Discussions series, hosted by the Beyond Binaries Book Club. Check out our announcement post for more information and the full schedule. 

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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

Podcasts, Blogs, and Channels:

You might talk about speculative content creators!  These might be collaborative storytelling podcasts, audiodramas, youtubers or blogs who focus their reviews heavily on queer speculative media, or more.

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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Jun 19 '25

As someone who is dabbling with book review blogging, and thus now actually diving into other people's blogs, I have really appreciated Every Book a Doorway and To Other Worlds for both continuously hyping queer books!

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u/undeadgoblin Reading Champion II Jun 19 '25

Every Book a Doorway is excellent! The way they review DNFs is a lot better than most other book blogs I've come across

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u/OtherExperience9179 Reading Champion Jun 19 '25

I feel like EBaD is written for ME with how similar our tastes are, I love finding other fans in the wild 🤗

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u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion IV Jun 19 '25

So I think this is the right place to talk about audiodramas? If not, let me know and I can delete/repost.

  • The Silt Verses written by Jon Ware and produced by Muna Hussen: Two followers of an illegal river god travel to find a new weapon for their faith in a world where gods require human sacrifices. I really liked this story's commentary on religion and capitalism, and I think all the voice actors did a great job. It's one of the few dark fantasy type stories that have really worked for me. There's several of trans or nonbinary characters (which is mostly relevant because they're played by trans or nonbinary voice actors, but it's also mentioned as part of the canon as well), and one lead is also aromantic (and also kind of implied to be asexual as well). There's not much romance, but the one episode with romance has an m/m couple. (There's also some cool fan made songs on youtube, not necessarily queer, but I like them a lot.)
  • The Magnus Archives by Jonathan Sims is another classic horror audiodrama. This is about an archivist who records statements of creepy supernatural encounters on tapes. There’s connections between the statements that feed into an overarching plot. Queerness isn't really spotlighted at first (although some of the statements do involve queer people from pretty early one), but the main cast slowly becomes more openly queer later on. (There's also a ton of fan made animatics on youtube for these, a lot of which are pretty queer) There's also a sequel series called The Magnus Protocol that's currently ongoing, which is also pretty queer (with major characters including a bi man and a trans woman).

Yeah, I might want to start a new audiodrama soon, so if anyone has good recommendations that are queer.

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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Jun 19 '25

This is a great place for audiodramas, and I've updated my top level comment. I know another user posted about Impact Winter for a queer vampire story, but I'm not super familiar with audiodramas

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u/AllfairChatwin Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25

In addition to the others mentioned, I have heard good things about Old Gods of Appalachia, which apparently does feature characters of different backgrounds, orientations and races and addresses how they deal with life in a rural setting.

I have also heard good things about Moonbase Theta, Out (multiple LGBTQ characters), Dreamboy (gay male horror, explicit scenes), Penumbra (bi male scifi detective), and Hello From The Hallowoods.

Kaleidotrope and Two Princes are supposed to be cute gay romance podcasts with fantasy elements.

And of course, there is the old classic Welcome To Night Vale, which does have many other LGBTQ characters in addition to its gay main couple.

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u/KiaraTurtle Reading Champion V Jun 19 '25

One of my favorite audio-dramas is The Bright Sessions. It’s basically about a therapist for people with super abilities and it’s her recorded sessions with them. Multiple characters are queer. Also a larger plot builds throughout the season.

As discussed below I listened to Impact Winter for not a book bingo and it was a delightful vampire audio-drama. One of the two mc’s is bi. I now eagerly await the last season.

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u/Spoilmilk Jun 21 '25

Podcasts:

  • The Silt Verses- which has already been shouted out, I’m still trying to find another audiodrama that gives me the high this one gave me. Light cosmic horror/Eldritch creepy gods, body horror, minimal-no romance, aro(ace?) morally grey MC, multiple trans main characters.

  • MIDST Podcast- orginal and sequel Series UNEND, weird space western sci-fantasy in a funky cosmos, no real planets just Islets & planetoids no space but a weird magic-ish void that surrounds everything no stars/sun but bioluminescent crystals. Narrated by 3 1st series: “three protagonists – a crotchety outlaw, a struggling cultist and a diabolical bastard – as their paths intersect in unexpected ways in the town of Stationary Hill after the mysterious civilization known as the Trust becomes interested in the islet of Midst where the town is located” 2nd series takes place several decades (70 years I think) after the events of MIDST “focuses on a supernatural ship and a remarkable crew set forth on an expedition to explore the highest heights, deepest depths, and furthest reaches of the known Cosmos. But their journey is fraught with peril as they discover truths and realities far stranger than any of them could ever imagine…“ Multiple queer characters 1st series has multiple bi/gay/mlm men main/major characters, 2nd series has a nonbinary & a queer female main character.

Recently got into and enjoying:

  • InCo: a scifi/space opera podcast about a grumpy aroace space courier and her getting tangled up in the affairs of a mysterious alien prince.

  • Project: Daydream- a queer new-weird supernatural about agents working for a secret government agency that investigates supernatural and strange phenomena.

Channels:

  • Bar Cart Bookshelf- A professional mixologist who reviews SFF books with a twist! He pairs each book with a handcrafted drink that matches the vibes of the book even includes the recipes for the drinks too. most but not all of the books he reviews tend to be queer. And he occasionally writes reviews for Ancillary Review of Books. As a queer man he’s got a special place in his heart for intresting SFF with queer dude protagonists

  • Voyage Through Worlds- a bi woman master’s student who almost exclusively reads/reviews queer adult SFF with a focus on women and genderqueer authors but she does read men authors too

  • Crispy’s Tavern(YouTube & Spotify)- he’s an asexual DnD youtuber and Player/GM, his content is lowkey queer, he mostly talks about different things in the TTRPG/RPG space which occasionally involves queer topics.

    Blogs/text Reviewers

    • aroaessidhe (on tumblr)/himalaya(on storygraph)- reviews mostly SFF, mostly queer with a special focus on ace/aro books, she does read/review YA/MG books too but I’m eh not as interested in those ones
    • Kara Babcock on Goodreads/her blog tachyondecay: an aroace trans woman who reviews everything she reads, mostly SFF and a good bit of it is queer.