YAM blogathon - Fantasy books

[jana_denardo]

For my first post for the blogathon, I decided to look at my first exposure to LGBT entertainment

Comments

[evil_little_dog]

I guess it depended where you were in ElfQuest fandom, as I remember openly gay characters who were more or less celebrated in some of the groups. Of course, those were usually written/drawn by BNFs (Big Name Fans), and people would suck up to them to get their characters to be friends with the BNF's characters and it was probably a vicious circle.

I do remember the 'gay' dragonriders and how their green dragons were 'broody' and it affected their riders.

Did you see that McCaffrey and her son have a new Dragonrider book out, with a female character riding a blue (I think) dragon?

[jana_denardo]

oh yes i know the openly gay characters you're talking about (since we're both friends or were at the time with their creators) but there were other groups far less open, sadly.

Yes and sometimes the homosexuality was questionable in Pern since they were mostly controlled by their dragons. Whoever was the rider of the dragon being flown would end up lovers more or less.

They do have a new one but I got rather tired of that years ago. I'm sure it's mostly written by him. Maybe the library will get it.

[evil_little_dog]

Yes, I remember someone who was in one of the EQ groups I was, who freaked out immensely when he joined a group with the aforementioned gay elves, and immediately asked for his money back/wasn't happy/started saying nasty things around (prior to the internet, that was just letters to mods and his friends in the groups, of course).

Yeah, I kind of understood why McCaffrey did it that way, but it always kind of bothered me, too.

[jana_denardo]

that doesn't surprise me at all

Yeah it was a little weird thinking that these dragon riders might not actually be having fully consensual sex with each other

[winters_queen]

I've been having an itch lately to read all of the Herald books from Lackey lately. I loved them so much. When i had first gotten them and read them, I was in high school but I really didn't have any exposure to anyone admiting to being gay. Even though I read it, it was just a small part of the character that just made Vanyel him. I didn't care about it. I was more interested in the story.

[jana_denardo]

That is true. It wasn't the main part of the story but at the time, it was absolutely huge. I haven't read those books in over 20 years though so if I were to pick them up today it would be like new