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Make The Yuletide Gay 2021
What is Make the Yuletide Gay?
While introducing m/m and f/f content into an otherwise cishet canon is one of the many delights that fandom brings into the world, this mini-challenge is made with the purpose of bringing together those who love LGBT+ characters or canon same-gender relationships and who want to write, request, and read works centered around those characters.
What counts as a canon LGBT+ character or canon relationship? For the purposes of this challenge, we rely on the honor system. If your fandom was created in a time period or in a country where coded language/actions were needed we understand that it might not be as explicit and clear-cut as one without those limitations.
Keep in mind that this challenge is geared towards those who are actively interested in canon LGBT+ characters/couples. Including a request that falls more into the headcanon or fanon category may mean that it does not catch the attention of those who are into canon content, and those who prefer fanon will likely not check out this post due to the canon focus, e.g. you may be marketing to the wrong crowd and wasting your time!
(Language copied from the original mini-challenge and reformatted to fit the modern mini-challenge format thanks to YulePorn's example.)
While introducing m/m and f/f content into an otherwise cishet canon is one of the many delights that fandom brings into the world, this mini-challenge is made with the purpose of bringing together those who love LGBT+ characters or canon same-gender relationships and who want to write, request, and read works centered around those characters.
What counts as a canon LGBT+ character or canon relationship? For the purposes of this challenge, we rely on the honor system. If your fandom was created in a time period or in a country where coded language/actions were needed we understand that it might not be as explicit and clear-cut as one without those limitations.
Keep in mind that this challenge is geared towards those who are actively interested in canon LGBT+ characters/couples. Including a request that falls more into the headcanon or fanon category may mean that it does not catch the attention of those who are into canon content, and those who prefer fanon will likely not check out this post due to the canon focus, e.g. you may be marketing to the wrong crowd and wasting your time!
How Do I Participate?
- Leave a comment on this post linking your letter if you are requesting canon LGBT+ characters or a canon same-gender relationship.
- If you don't have a letter, you can still leave prompts here, but make sure to include your AO3 name and requested fandom information.
- Add any optional details you want in the comment -- link to a ship manifesto or fanvids or gifs, give the tl;dr dynamics of your character/requested relationship, whatever.
- When it comes time to upload your works, tag with "Make the Yuletide Gay" on AO3 so interested parties can easily find it.
- Even if your recip didn't explicitly "sign up" to this post, please still tag if you're writing about a canon LGBT+ character or ship!
- There will be a comment thread where you can promo your favorite characters/relationships in the tagset to perhaps signal other people's requests even if you didn't request a canon LGBT+ character or relationship yourself this year. The best thing about Yuletide is the gifts other people can feel like our own!
- Add participation to the app so that anyone browsing will know that you're signed up for this challenge!
- Have fun!
(Language copied from the original mini-challenge and reformatted to fit the modern mini-challenge format thanks to YulePorn's example.)
Canon Recs
Re: Canon Recs
Clears the challenge barrier probably for the last time for 2021, as Worldbuilding is the only tag that made it through, but, this is essentially a "pansexual unless otherwise stated" universe, and the most central canon relationships are LGBTQIA+ (Gideon/Harrowhark, Ianthe/Harrowhark, The Body/Harrowhark (all f/f), and John/Augustine/Mercymorn, m/m/f threesome (Dios Apate Minor!)).
Re: Canon Recs
Re: Canon Recs
Re: Canon Recs
Nominated LGBT characters are Lord Courtenay and Julian Medlock from the Turner series, and Will Sedgwick, Hartley Sedgwick, and Martin Easterbrook from Seducing the Sedgwicks.
Additionally (and on a totally different note in every way but “canon LGBT characters”), Oliver Appropriate, an album by American alternative/ emo band Say Anything, is about a man who falls in love with another man. It’s not clear textually whether they’re gay or bi (you can make a read for either imo), but both nominated characters (Oliver and Karl) are canonically LGBT. it’s a much darker canon, but also maybe half an hour to listen through (and less to read the lyrics / supplemental materials on the promo post)
Re: Canon Recs
(Anonymous) 2021-10-22 01:46 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Canon Recs
So yes, those two are canonically LGBT characters as well (I believe both gay but it’s been a while since I’ve read their book)
Re: Canon Recs
And all of these in a fantastic near future horror series featuring a SyFy type network doing mockumentaries on cryptids that accidentally finds real mermaids... only instead of Disney's version they are deep sea murder mermaids in the Marianas Trench. I repeat DEEP SEA MURDER MERMAIDS, y'all. Seriously even if you don't plan to write/request it, I totally recommend the series for horror fans!
Re: Canon Recs
The Arden St. Ives trilogy (How to Bang a Billionaire and its sequels) by Alexis Hall is a m/m kinky billionaire romance. Think "50 Shades but make it queer and not awful or creepy".
For Real, also by Alexis Hall, is a BDSM m/m romance. A jaded sub who is sick of the scene meets a young, would-be dom who he just can't resist.
Docile, by K.M. Szpara, is near-future speculative fiction. Debt has been made heritable and debtors' prisons have been reinstituted. To avoid prison, debtors can sell themselves into service contracts as "Dociles". Elisha sells his services as a personal Docile (aka sex slave) to Alex. What follows is a sexy, sometimes disturbing, but fascinatingly layered examination of the meaning of consent and what happens when true consent is impossible. cw: noncon.
The Charioteer, by Mary Renault, is a perennial Yuletide m/m fandom. A soldier in a hospital recovering from his injuries at Dunkirk meets and falls in love with an idealistic conscientious objector, but also stumbles onto the local gay scene where he meets some much more experienced men. This was written shortly after the war so it is very circumspect in its language but rewards close reading.
Seven of the eight K.J. Charles works in the event are queer (almost all m/m, one m/enby, one f/f) historical romances. Charles consistently includes POC rep, trans rep, and an actual engagement with historical events in her work. Band Sinister is a standalone Regency m/m romance with a significant poly (m/m/m) component. The England Series is Edwardian with one f/f and one m/m volume. The Will Darling Adventures is a delicious post-WW I spy romp (m/m with an f/f side couple). The Charm of Magpies series is Victorian m/m fantasy. The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting is a Regency m/m standalone. The Lilywhite Boys series is Victorian with one m/m and one m/f work. The Sins of the Cities series is Victorian melodrama, 2 m/m volumes and one m/enby and includes POC, neurodivergent, and disabled rep among the romantic leads.
Re: Canon Recs
Sleepless Domain:
Zoe Blecher is a trans girl, a magical girl who was pushed out of the closet a little more quickly than she'd planned when she got her powers. Everyone accepts her as a girl, though (hard to argue when you've got magic confirmation on your side), and she's slowly adapting.
Revolutionary Girl Utena:
A queer classic anime, one of the most famous of the 90s. The heroine, Utena, is a non-gender-conforming girl who is torn between her desire to be seen as 'normal' and her growing attraction to a girl, Anthy. Most of the other cast is queer to some degree: Juri is famously in unrequited love with Shiori, Mikage's major motivation is his love for Mamiya, Touga and Saionji are implied to have had a fling, and Akio uses sex as a weapon against anyone he wants to control, including Touga, Utena, and even his own sister, Anthy. (Definite content warning for that.) Also applies to the movie, 'Adolescence of Utena,' which was nominated separately, since it forms a different continuity. The movie focuses more tightly on Utena and Anthy's relationship.
A Summer's End -- Hong Kong, 1986:
A visual novel about the romance between Michelle, a young professional in Hong Kong, and a girl she falls for, Sam.
Arcade Spirits:
A visual novel where the player character can be male, female, or non-binary, and has romances available with the male and female patrons of the video arcade they work at.
Black Closet:
A mystery game set at a girls' school. Elsa Jackson, student council president, must solve a series of mysteries with the help of the five girls on the student council; each of them is romanceable, but each can also be a traitor working against her.
Butterfly Soup:
A visual novel about four Asian-American girls who join the baseball club in their first year of high school; each of them is somewhere in the LGBT continuum, and how those identities affect their lives is a significant part of the plot.
Hellfire - annapantsu and Yamz Animatics (Animatic):
A video set to a female cover of the song 'Hellfire' from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it focuses on a nun and her struggling with her attraction to a young Romani woman.
Hot Goth Lady and Himbo Witch and Fair Maiden (Tumblr Post):
Inasmuch as there's a canon to something that's just a few Tumblr posts, this is definitely it -- the Fair Maiden is pointed to the Hot Goth Lady by the Himbo Witch when she's seeking romance.
On a Sunbeam:
A science-fiction comic just filled with queer characters, including the main character (whose crush on a girl she knew at school is a major plot point), a married couple of women, and a non-binary character.
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017):
A movie about the creator of Wonder Woman and the two women he loved -- the movie shows their polyamorous relationship, where each of the participants loves the other two, and though it takes some liberties, it's largely true to what we know. Significant BDSM elements as well.
Yuri Kuma Arashi:
A very surreal anime that explores Japan's stereotypes about lesbians by dividing them into two groups: schoolgirls who indulge in chaste affection, and predatory bears in human form who devour innocent girls. (Yes, seriously.) It then mercilessly tears those stereotypes apart, showing the ultimate humanity underlying both the schoolgirls and the bears, and how no one on either side really fits in to the stereotypes. Hard to describe, but very worth watching.
Astra Lost in Space:
A manga where a group of teenagers are stranded in deep space, and must use an ancient spaceship to hop between planets and learn how to survive there in order to get home. One of the major characters is intersex, nonbinary, and bisexual. As a teenager, they're still trying to sort out their identity, which may be fluid to some degree.
Re: Canon Recs
Inside Daisy Clover is a 1965 film about the horrors of the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s. It's notable for being one of the first post-Hayes-Code films in which a queer character (in this case, the bisexual husband of the main character) was neither ashamed of his sexuality nor died in the end. Natalie Wood plays a poor girl (Daisy Clover) with a mentally ill mother who gets a movie contract and thrust into fame and fortune. Robert Redford plays Wade Lewis, the actor who befriends her and whom she marries. Christopher Plumber plays the evil Hollywood studio exec who uses and manipulates her. One of the things I enjoy about the movie is that Daisy is allowed to not only get upset but get physically violent in her own defense, and the movie doesn't condemn her for it.
Re: Canon Recs
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is an RPG with interesting NPCs and strong romance options. Daeran is a cynical oracle who will go all out to romance your character of any gender, including rooms full of roses. Wenduag is an evil part-spider part-cat all woman who is into rough sex and bondage, and wants to be your character's minion, in and out of bed. Sosiel wasn't nominated, but he's a canonically gay cleric, very idealistic and artistic.
Re: Canon Recs
Darius the Great Series – Adib Khorram – main character is gay (and dates boys in the second book of the series)
John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme Season 9 – Gally/Susanna and Russ/Alex are a historical f/f relationship and a present-day m/m relationship respectively; Newt is canonically asexual
This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone – f/f main pairing
His Royal Secret Series – Lilah Pace - m/m romance (only one character is nominated in the tagset, but he's definitely gay!)
Exit West – Mohsin Hamid – one of the two main characters is a woman who starts dating women later in the book
Loveless – Alice Oseman – haven't read it yet, but the main thing I know is that the MC is asexual! Alice Oseman is also generally really good at representing a diversity of relationships
God’s Own Country (2017) – m/m romance
The Other Two (TV) – one of the two main characters (Cary) is gay; I haven't watched season 2 yet so I'm not sure about other characters
Saturday Night Live RPF – Kate McKinnon <3 <3 <3 and Bowen Yang!