Speculative Fiction LGBT

aka: Sci Fi LGBT

The lesbian version of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Speculative Fiction with a heavy emphasis on LGBT themes.

Settings commonly used in Speculative Fiction stories typically fall into the Uncanny Valley — that is, they are similar enough to be accessible, but different enough to feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Because of (or in order to enable) this, there may be a larger or more prominent group of LGBT+ characters.

Also known as the "time-travelling lesbians", it is notable that Speculative Fiction is kind of the San Francisco of media genres — a much larger LGBT population than the rest of its kind, and with reason. The most widely acknowledged of these reasons is that the fantastical setting (as close as it may be to the society of its creation) is not 'Real', and therefore the creators have more room to discuss things that might be considered controversial or unusual. This may be used as a statement on the society in which the work is being produced, but is not necessarily. It is related to the Discount Lesbians trope, where a lesbian couple is deemed more acceptable if one or both (or more) isn't human and so they aren't really lesbians, though this would instead be where it isn't really Earth so it can't really be (or, so it's alright if it isn't) taboo.

Another reason to include non-heteronormative characters in Speculative Fiction may be to support theories of the future of humanity becoming largely bisexual, and also those that suggest potential alien civilisations may not even have sex as we view it.

It may also be, drawing back to the idea of the Uncanny Valley, being used as a marker in order to separate the Speculative Fiction world from the real world. There may be little changed in a humanoid alien civilisation or 20 Minutes into the Future, but a difference in view on gender and sexuality (whether global or just authorial) is a sufficient deviation from the norm that it would suggest somewhere very departed from current Earth's climate.

The use is also one way in which media connects the ideas of advancing scientifically and LGBT+ issues, making discussions of gender and sexuality a decidedly modern concern.

In short, Speculative Fiction settings feature LGBT+ characters and themes because they are distanced from the real world.

This trope's modern Ur-Example may be either Theodore Sturgeon's The World Well Lost (1953), acknowledging sexuality, or Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928), mostly regarding gender^note The Ur Examples for Lesbian Vampire may be older, but the early manifestations of that trope were very outwardly using lesbianism as a distinctly negative quality and to further create the monstrosity of vampirism. The latter is discussed on the Encyclopaedia of Fantasy's entry for "Temporal Adventuress", which includes many female time-travellers who deviate from conventions of gender and sexuality. Of all the variations upon the Other-ing nature of this trope, the time-travelling lesbian may be one of the most prominent as it allows for no fixed period to be set in which the acceptability is occurring, as well as for the issue to be discussed across past and future times, and perhaps also appealing to the presumed audience as a bonus.

Also note that, while some speculative fiction works project LGBT themes onto alien civilizations in order to explore them from a comfortably safe conceptual distance (especially a few decades back, when censors were a lot harsher), or exaggerate them to have fun with weird speculative space sex, others frame them around their hopes or thoughts regarding the progression of real-world civilizations. The latter group tends to present LGBT themes as relatable or commonplace, rather than as a matter of spectacle. Both are made possible because of the setting difference.

An authoritative work on the trope, Uranian Worlds: A Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror was published in 1983. The title is a Multiple Reference Pun to 'Uranian' meaning things pertaining to the planet Uranus, a euphemism for homosexual, and in some spaces a third gender.

This trope has, with the rise of podcasts, also become extremely popular in this medium, which has historically been more accepting and exploratory due to its grassroots nature.

Super-Trope to Discount Lesbians, Free-Love Future, Non-Human Non-Binary, Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous, and Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person. See also Bizarre Alien Sexes, Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?, Exotic Extended Marriage, Lesbian Vampire, Magical Queer, Immortality Bisexuality, Non-Heteronormative Society, Omegaverse, and One-Gender Race. Lady Land works may invoke this explicitly, or simply hint about what the ladies in question are doing for romantic and sexual satisfaction.

Compare Fetish-Fuel Future, when an author creates a futuristic setting where their personal kink is universally shared or tolerated.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Simoun: Set in the fantasy world of Daikuuriku, where everyone is born as a girl^note technically they're genderless, but the narrative flip-flops between referring to them as genderless and female, and they certainly all look female, then at the age of 17 they visit a magical spring and choose whether to grow up into a woman or a man. The eponymous Simoun are magical aircraft that can only be piloted by girls who haven't yet visited the spring, and the main cast are a troop of those pilots. So the question of how they'll decide when they go to the spring hangs over their head for the whole series.
• Vandread: Boys and girls live on two separate planets. It's mentioned off screen about 2 parent family of one of the girls and a boy and a girl being together is considered scandalous.

Comic Books

• The Island of Themyscira and its Amazon population has been subjected to an extensive variety of interpretations on how a female-only society would exist. These range from asexual to heterosexual-but-without-men to a fully lesbian society. Wonder Woman herself has ranged from heterosexual to bisexual to pansexual Depending on the Writer.
• Hollow Heart is a horror/romance comic which follows a re-assembled zombie (who identifies as male) who falls in love with a human man. Every other major character in the story is queer in some way.
• The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars: While neither Avatar: The Last Airbender nor The Legend of Korra explored LGBT topics in detail, Turf Wars does offer some clarity, since it explores Korra and Asami's relationship. In particular, the Air Nomad and Water Tribe nations are the most tolerant towards same-sex couples, due to their beliefs towards pacifism and personal autonomy respectively, while the Earth Kingdom is the most homophobic due to its emphasis on tradition. The Fire Nation used to be tolerant as well, but homosexuality became illegal under Fire Lord Sozin.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
  • The series, and later the rest of the IDW Generation One universe, takes the premise of Cybertronians (an alien race of robots) being both capable of romance and overwhelmingly male to its logical conclusion.
  • Cybertronians even having a concept of femininity is a result of contact with alien races that had female genders. Some of them realized that was the best fit for them, basically meaning all female Cybertronians are transfeminine.
• The Witch Boy: The main character Aster is part of a magical family in which boys are born to be shapeshifters and girls are born to become witches. Aster is a boy who wants to learn witchcraft but is forbidden by his family due to an incident in the past when his great-uncle learned witchcraft against tradition and caused chaos.

Fan Works

• Frozen fan-works often toy with how the Fictional Earth of the series would treat LGBTQ people, especially fan-works that write Queen Elsa as a lesbian/bisexual:
  • Subverted in Becoming Free. While Anna, Kristoff, and a few of the staff who noticed support Elsa's and Freya's Secret Relationship, it is made clear that same-gender romances are not acceptable in 1840s Arendelle. Freya was outright run out of her old town, in a neighboring country, because she fell for a friend and kissed her, without realizing that her friend didn't like her back.
  • In the 1840s Arendelle of The Cut of Your Love Never Hurts, Baby, same-gender marriage is legal, though not universally accepted. The queen trying to arrange a marriage between herself and a neighboring princess is unconventional but not something too outlandish.

Film — Animation

• The Constructed World that the Frozen series takes place in, an 1840s Fantasy Counterpart Culture version of Norway called Arendelle, is shown to be much more accepting of LGBT people than the real life Norway was in the 1840s. The story Frozen II: A Forest of Shadows for example shows that same-sex marriage is legal in the kingdom, and one Anna & Elsa book has Anna picturing both males and females while trying to figure out who her sister Elsa's secret admirer is.

Film — Live Action

• Thelma parallels the titular protagonist's discovery of her terrifying powers against her discovery of her sexuality as she falls in love with another woman. As this is modern Norway, it's played much more discreetly and Closer to Earth than some variations on this trope.
• Frank N. Further, the antagonist of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a transgender alien scientist who's adept at seducing men who were otherwise straight.
• Jack & Diane: The film is about two lesbian girls in love dealing with the fact that one is a werewolf.
• Love Bites is a Romantic Comedy concerning a vampire hunter falling In Love with the Mark. Both characters are male.
• Bit: The film centers on a group of lesbian vampires, without stereotyping, while the lead character Laurel is also transgender. Duke, their leader, explicitly refuses to let them turn men, whom she hates. With her misandrist vision, it's explored whether it would be much different from the patriarchy she loathes, while the lesbian group is the focus throughout the film.
• Theresa & Allison: The lead character, Theresa, is a lesbian who's made into a vampire by a woman whom she slept with. It's the inciting incident for the plot, so her lesbianism is foundational. After this she also meets bisexual vampire Allison, whom she begins a relationship with, which leads into her having to make choices about what she'll do in her new life. Early on, Theresa feeds on many women whom she'd seduced and had sex with first.
• My Animal: Heather is a young werewolf living in a small town. She's a lesbian as well, facing the burden of not only her lycanthropy but pursuing the girl she likes, Jonny, because there's rampant homophobia. Heather embraces her lesbianism which is paralleled with her condition as a werewolf.
• Zerophilia centers around a rare genetic condition that causes people with it to physically change genders when sexually aroused. Unusually for a work with this kind of premise, it averts Trans Equals Hypersexual by treating it a Coming Of Age Queer Romance through which protagonist Luke's zerophilia gets him to reconsider his relationship with his gender and sexuality, and the fact the condition explicitly does not impact one's own gender identity means that his Trans Relationship Troubles largely mirror those in real life.
• Future World (2018): Ash, a very human-like android, shares a mutual attraction with Lei, a young woman she meets who has mechanical skills, and they sleep together. Later the pair are a couple.

Literature

Ancient examples:

• The description says "modern Ur-Example" because of Lucian's True History, written c. 160 CE. It's known as the first gay science fiction and, let's be honest, we'd be shocked if there was one before it. A typhoon takes the (male) narrator to the Moon, where he meets an all-male alien Proud Warrior Race who have declared war on the Sun. Coming from great military tradition, he helps out and is rewarded by the King of the Moon by being presented his firstborn to marry.
• Appears in unbuilt form even earlier (Archaic Greece, the 3rd century BC) in the works of Sappho. She wrote contemporaneously with Epic poetry, so her "elite" style of referencing mystical or fantastical abilities with her thematic lesbian romance was pretty unremarkable, with both (but especially the SF elements) being accepted in literature as effectively Omnipresent Tropes, that weren't really connected.

By author:

• Jacqueline Carey has two different series which feature bisexual women as the protagonists.
  • In Kushiel's Legacy the first and third trilogies are both focused on different bisexual women. Though their main relationships are with men, they also have significant female lovers too. Many other people in the main country where this Medieval European Fantasy is set also are bisexual. There are some gay supporting characters too.
  • Santa Olivia: The protagonist is a genetically enhanced young Latina in a future dystopian US. She's bisexual, becoming lovers with another Latina as they fight the oppressive government.
• Samuel R. Delany's works feature it heavily:
  • Dhalgren: Bisexual protagonist, gay friends, explore the discordian strange small town at the geographic center of the United States. Strange things happen. The town, and only the town, is somehow in an event horizon
  • Short story "Aye, and Gomorrah...": Astronauts get neutered and given the fact that it's all of them, and they're all off-world so can construct whatever identity they want, develop into being an undefinable gender. Aliens then become sexually attracted to them as this gender, creating a new sexual orientation. The Other Wiki even maintains that "the story allows readers to reflect on the real world while maintaining an estranging distance".
  • Babel-17: The protagonist is a woman in an extended marriage with all men.
• Greg Egan likes this trope, frequently either using it or at least paying lip service to it. His stories are rarely if ever entirely focused on LGBT+ issues, but rather they're folded into a larger concept of humanity and society. Overall, Egan's stories tend to advance a progressive viewpoint, with LGBT+ characters treated very sympathetically by the story. More often than not, the LGBT+ demographic in question has been completely normalized in the setting.
  • In Distress, the concept of someone being "traditionally" transgender has become a complete and utter non-issue; in addition, five entirely novel gender identities exist: ufem, ifem, asex, imasc, and umasc. Asex is what we would today refer to as gender-neutral, but the others refer to varying degrees of femininity or masculinity, ranging from "comically exaggerated gender-specific traits" for the u-genders to "extremely understated gender-specific traits" for the i-genders. Rather than modifying their bodies, a minority of trans people opt for neural gender reassignment to change their brains instead.
  • The main character of Teranesia is a homosexual man. Evolutionary development is a core theme of the novel, so of course the novel examines the question: if facilitating reproduction is the purpose of evolution, and homosexuals don't reproduce, then why does homosexuality occur naturally? The book doesn't offer a definitive answer.
  • A lot of the characters in Diaspora and Schild's Ladder are gender-neutral, although to be fair, that's because most of those characters exist as software and were created as such, having never been in an actual homo sapiens body.
  • Most of the Orthogonal trilogy is unusually silent on the subject of LGBT issues and characters (the trilogy instead examines issues of gender equality and women's rights), but by the end of the trilogy, the protagonists' initially two-gendered, male/female species has undergone a Singularity that has resulted in, among other things, a single-gender race that is explicitly considered neither male nor female.
• Tanya Huff, who's bisexual, features LGBT+ themes in her work very often.
  • Quarters: The countries where the action is set both have full acceptance of LGBT+ individuals and their relationships, with the lead characters in the initial three books both being bisexual women, while lesbians and gays are supporting characters.
  • Confederation of Valor: The series is set in a Free-Love Future, with most characters being bisexual and there's a Non-Heteronormative Society too.
  • The Fire's Stone features two men who fall in love, as well as an aromantic asexual girl in a kind of poly Love Triangle relationship by the end of the book—but the bulk of the plot is about retrieving a magical MacGuffin from a wizard.
  • Swan's Braid & Other Tales of Terizan: A collection of her short stories about Terizan, a lesbian thief, over various adventures in and around her home city state, Oreen. Terizan's lover is Swan, a tough Butch Lesbian mercenary captain (Terizan too it seems is butch). Further, she's best friends with Poli, a male sex worker who's almost certainly Camp Gay, though it's never actually said. Also, one of her Thieves' Guild superiors is called "androgyne" and isn't addressed by any pronouns. Like usual with Huff, there does not appear to be stigma against LGBT+ people at all in this society.
• Michael Moorcock's recurring character Una Persson, who varies between being bisexual and exclusively lesbian at different times and in different timelines. See in particular The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the 20th Century.

By work:

• The Afterward: The protagonists Olsa (bisexual) and Kalanthe (lesbian) live in a High Fantasy setting, with both having been part of the seven companions, the heroes who banished the evil Old God from the world in the past, becoming lovers during their quest. Additionally, two more of the companions were LGBT+, as Terriam is asexual and Banathear's a trans woman. Their society accepts everyone LGBT+, so this at most garners mild interest.
• Black Dogs: The series, set in a medieval fantasy world, features elven lesbian couple Sinai and Jacyl, who have a committed relationship that gets significant attention.
• The Captive Prince trilogy is a Low Fantasy series with a romance between two men - both princes of rival kingdoms - as a central plotline and almost every major character is bisexual. The trilogy falls more towards the mundane side of things with very few fantastical elements, although it does take place in a secondary world where the two cultures most focused upon are highly accepting of homosexual relationships; in Vere in particular it's considered normal for people to have same-sex relationships (serious or casual), whereas heterosexual relationships are restricted to marriage (having pre-marital or extra-marital relations with someone of the opposite sex is a huge no-no, especially because illegitimate children are stigmatized).
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: A High Fantasy trilogy with its protagonists being a bisexual woman and a lesbian. Though not the main focus, their relationship gets explored heavily.
• Both parts of the Cityverse released so far have been queer romances involving personified Cities.
• Deeper Up the Tower is a queer fantasy zine about the mysterious knight Florian and their climb through the strange, mind-bending Tower. A trippy and surreal tale told installments with illustrations. Florian encounters mythical creatures, colorful adventurers, and magical queer weirdos as they seek an uncertain goal.
• The Doctrine of Labyrinths is a Dark Fantasy series is about a gay man, Felix, his brother, and their adventures. Felix is not the only gay character, either, and sexuality is heavily explored.
• The Factory Witches of Lowell is Historical Fantasy LGBT, featuring a union girl and a reluctant witch falling in love as they become involved in the American Labor Movement in the early 1800's.
• The Forever War has this as an unintended side-effect. Sending an army several light years away to fight a war then retrieving the survivors afterwards means, inevitably, that the time-dilation effect applies and those soldiers have returned to an Earth several centuries older than the one they left. After the second or third jump to and from a war-front, heterosexually inclined veterans realise in their absence that the social mores of the world have reversed — being gay is now the norm and a small population of diehard heterosexuals are now the "queer" ones. The inevitable happens and several formerly straight ladies travel on their next jump into time and space as active lesbians.
• In From the New World, the humans that remain After the End are a society of psychics. They use sex to relieve stress so that their mental powers stay under control. Bisexuality is considered normal, and same-gender relationships are nearly mandated during adolescence in order to avoid teen pregnancy.
• In the Gaea Trilogy by John Varley, all of the protagonists are bisexual, with the two main characters a lesbian couple trying to fight a sentient alien planet. John Varley's Eight Worlds Series features many bisexual and homosexual protagonists, and centers on a universe where changing sex and gender is commonplace, and most people change at least once during their lifetimes - therefore, almost everyone is bisexual. The protagonist of Steel Beach, Hildy Johnson, changes sex and gender halfway through the book.
• Girl: "Who are you?" Alien: "Er, I'm an alien.": The alien's species, due being advanced enough to switch from one physical body to another and even live the majority of their lives without a physical body, is largely asexual and aromantic. Procreation is largely sexless so their sexual needs have significantly dwindled, as have their romantic needs, but a minority of her species still engages in sexual activity purely for pleasure with no indication this as seen as abnormal or even wrong. When faced with the prospect of entering a romantic relationship with the girl, the alien's only qualm about it is that they will not be able to have children due to being same-sex but this doesn't bother her at all, implying that the alien's species has no issue with gay relationships in general. On top of this, gender roles have largely been antiquated and sex is treated as little more than a minor biological difference, as the alien has a pretty nonchalant view of gender and she doesn't even mention that she's a woman until she's asked, initially leading the girl to speculate that her species doesn't have the concept of gender.
• The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, set in a parallel dimension in which there are three distinct genders that also function as guilds/houses that one may be sorted into (logicals, emotionals, and parentals). One of the main characters is Dua, who is split between the genders and so a version of non-binary (which in the setting is also naturally divergent).
• [[The Harem Protagonist Was Turned Into A Girl!! And Doesn’t Want To Change Back!!!?? is a parody of the Harem Genre in anime and manga where a hapless everyman gets alien girlfriend/s and other suitors after finding out he is somehow special - in this instance heir to the Galactic Empire and the focus point of an intergalactic war. However, after an incident with a Gender Confirmation Ray that one character was trying to "punish" him with... she very quickly decides she's much happier as a woman and had wanted to be a girl for as long as she could remember but hadn't figured out she was trans.
• In the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie, the Radchaai Empire has no societal concept of gender, their language's Translation Convention defaults to female pronouns, and no mention is ever made of Radchaai basing their choice of partner on which anatomical features they might have. The main character's asexuality is acknowledged and accepted by her crew. Meanwhile, marriage isn't used in the Radch; personal relationships are one thing, while patronage/clientage and adoption into a House are separate institutions, aside from a degree of social stigma against people who are believed to be Sleeping Their Way to the Top.
• The Kingston Cycle is a Gaslamp Fantasy series featuring all queer protagonists.
• In The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, the planet Gethen is inhabited by androgynous humanoids who only get a specific gender during kemmer, their analogue of being in heat. The gender they get is random (unless they use hormone therapy). Therefore, their analogue of LGBT folk (and about as common as real-life LGBT folk) are "perverts", people who tend to be a particular gender for longer than usual. One can guess this creates some problems when they encounter an Earthman.
  • Short stories have another planet in the same universe named Planet O, where Everyone Is Bi and marriages consist of four people and thus anyone in love with one gender (straight or gay) is considered unusual. "Mountain Ways" has a lesbian disguising herself as a man to complete a marriage, then finding out to her relief that her future husband is straight and has no interest in her.
• Lucifer's Star and Space Academy are a Free-Love Future where bisexuality, homosexuality, polygamy, and other relationships are normal without comment. It is commented on that spacers have a far more relaxed attitude to such things than humans who live on planets.
• The Machineries of Empire is set in a Galactic Superpower where Gender Is No Object; same-sex and polyamorous relationships, including marriages, are entirely unremarkable; non-binary gender identities are accepted; and transgender people are free to choose anything from a social transition up to a complete medical Gender Bender.
• The Man Who Folded Himself, in which time-travelling Daniel ends up in a relationship with himself after travelling alongside various realities of himself, as well as with a woman called Diane — who may also be a version of Daniel from another reality.
• A Memory Called Empire: In the series the main characters lesbian relationship and another character's polyamourous relationship with a man and woman are not treated as remarkable.
• In The Migax Cycle, most of the important protagonists are LGBTQ+, with Leafsong being bisexual, Summer being a lesbian, and Moonwafer being asexual.
• The Murderbot Diaries: It's presented as a background detail of the setting that Polyamorous marriages/group communes are common and non-binary gender identities are accepted without question. The titular artificial Cyborg is Intrigued by Humanity but considers this completely unremarkable.
• The Neanderthal Parallax: The trilogy involves opening contact with a parallel world wherein Neanderthals instead of Cro-Magnon humans are the dominant species (with our species long extinct there, just as theirs died here). Among the many differences they have, bisexuality is apparently universal for Neanderthals, with every person shown having a male and female spouse. They largely live with their same-sex mates as a form of Population Control.
• The Nightrunner series takes place in a society where same sex relationships are entirely normalized and rarely commented on, and the main characters are two men in a romantic and sexual relationship.
• Not Your Backup: Sci-fi novel with superheroes and supervillains, featuring a budding queerplatonic relationship between a trans boy and an aro ace cis girl.
• Not Your Sidekick: Sci-fi setting with superheroes and supervillains, and a romance between two queer girls.
• Not Your Villain: Sci-fi novel with superheroes and supervillains, featuring a budding relationship between a trans guy and an aro ace cis girl.
• Of Fire and Stars: Dennaleia and Mare, two young princesses, live in a world with powerful magic based on the elements. However, in Mare's country of Mynaria, magic is banned. Dennaleia has magic, and falls for Mare while she's struggling to control it. Their relationship too is forbidden-not as a result of both being girls (they come from societies wholly accepting of same-sex relationships), but since Dennaleia's engaged to Thandilimon, Mare's brother. Dennaleia pursuing both her magic and their relationship despite this are major arcs. The prequel Inkmistress centers on Asra, a bisexual girl, whose relationship with Ina (a bisexual girl like her) is explored, though not as focused on.
• Orlando: A Biography: Orlando is born a heterosexual male in the 16th Century, wakes up a woman in the late 17th century, and continues to live as a woman to the present day, never having to define or justify their existence. Though the concept of gender is wholly linked to biological sex, it is an early example of using the genre to discuss very untouched issues and may be opening a discourse on the possibilities of living as transgender.
• Post-Self: Two different POV characters in the first book, set in 2112 and 2305, are non-binary and use the neopronouns ey/eir/em. Another 2305 character's preferred pronoun is "it" and is one of several divergent copies of an uploaded person whose "clade" includes copies of a variety of different gender identities.
• Proud Pink Sky is a cyberpunk alternate history set in the world's first gay state.
• The main characters of Ravelling Wrath are a young lesbian couple living in a polytheistic Urban Fantasy setting, and the main plot involves them trying to maintain a healthy relationship with each other despite being chosen by different gods who are enemies of each other.
• After the first book of The Red Vixen Adventures, the action switches from the straight romantic couple of Rolas and Melanie, to Rolas' sister Salli and her romance with her bodyguard Alinadar. Notably while Salli's parents object to her love of Alinadar, it's because Ali is a convicted pirate and ex-child soldier, not because of her gender. Later it's revealed that Rolas briefly had a same-sex relationship that ended badly, and that one of Ali's aunts is married to a Sex Shifter.
• The Rise of Kyoshi and The Shadow of Kyoshi go deeper than the show and comics they're based on, explicitly showing Kyoshi's relationship with Rangi.
• The Second Mango by queer author Shira Glassman is set in a fantasy world where the concept of a lesbian or bisexual queen is treated as normal.
• Shatter the Sky: The protagonist, Maren, is a bisexual girl while her relationship with her girlfriend Kaia sparks the plot as she goes to rescue her after Kaia's taken captive. Further, their society is wholly accepting of same-gender romance, as they're quite open about it. Apparently nonbinary people are accepted too, with two supporting characters being called by they/them pronouns. Maren uses her bond with dragons to fight the Empire holding Kaia, which itself is upheld by elite dragon riders.
• So This is Ever After: It appears that Everyone Is Bi, since no character is ever shown as having a gender preference. The story is set in a Heroic Fantasy setting, with the protagonist having a slow-burning romance with one of his male comrades after they complete a quest. Some nonbinary people are supporting characters too.
• The Spare Man: Gender freedom is expected to the point that people introduce themselves with their pronouns as a matter of course, absolutely no one cares what your sexual preferences are, and Shell uses "Husband" as a fake surname on his honeymoon as a historical joke that no one else gets; "spouse" is far more common. The chief of security is treated as a sexist fossil for constantly assuming gender (even though by all appearances he mostly guesses right), and it's implied that he's doing it on purpose because he's just that much of a Jerkass.
• Spellster: The story focuses on Dylan, a spellster (magic user) who realizes his bisexuality in the first book due to finding elven male Tracker attractive and becoming his lover. Several other characters are LGBT+, and their society lacks any taboos against this (aside from some mild biphobia that Dylan encountered in the tower). Even minor characters are often identified as LGBT+, whether bisexual, gay or transgender.
• Star Wars: The late Legends books then newer canon ones show the galaxy as a whole lacks prejudice toward LGBT+ people (even the Empire doesn't care-two high-ranking officials are a bisexual woman and a lesbian, with an openly gay lower-ranking officer too). Several are main characters in these works, such as lesbian archeologist Dr. Chelli Aphra, who's a fan favorite while Star Wars: The Aftermath Trilogy has the gay main character Shevek, his sexuality being established over time. The jump has now been made to live action with Andor where the lesbian couple Cinta and Vel are the two main rebel female characters, among the only survivors on a mission in the first season. LGBT+ characters are beginning to be highlighted by Disney with each Pride month having images released with them plus their corresponding Pride flags.
• Tales of Inthya: The stories are set in a world with a bisexual majority. Given this, same-sex relationships, including marriages, are totally acceptable. Nonbinary people called neutroi (who all use they/them pronouns) are also honored, accepted members of society (even one god is neutroi, with their clergy mostly neutroi as well). Sex can be changed by magic temporarily (so a same-sex couple can have children) or in the case of trans people, permanently if they desire this.
  • The first book, The Queen of Ieflaria, centers on two princesses who were arranged to be married (although there are also other candidates initially), falling in love as the pair face dangers together. Esofi is bisexual like most people. Adale is only shown as attracted to her.
  • The second, Daughter of the Sun, is focused on Orsina, a female paladin. Aelia, a chaos goddess, and Orsina are drawn to each other, with their romance developing across the story. Orsina pines for another woman starting out as well. She doesn't think she's got a gender preference however.
• That Irresistible Poison: Set on the planet Calluvia, where inhabitants have telepathic powers. Same-sex couples are just as accepted as opposite-sex couples. They also have artificial womb technology, which lets a gay couple conceive a child biologically related to both parents. This book stars two princes who are engaged to and later fall in love with each other.
• The Vorkosigan Saga novel Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold is the story of "homosexual obstetrician" Ethan, who is sent to find out what happened to a shipment of vital ovarian tissue cultures. These are needed for his people to reproduce because Athos (named after Mount Athos in Greece, which has been off-limits to women for millennia) is a single-gender planet of almost entirely homosexual men.
• The Wayfarers series includes several alien races that include nonbinary or nongender members, as well as non-heterosexual couples. In the first book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, main character Rosemary Harper begins a sexual relationship with the female Aandrisk Sissix. This is in part because she has some affection for Sissix and to help her feel more like part of the Wayfarer family.^note Aandrisk's are very physical beings with showing physical affection and free love being an important part of their culture.
• When the Angels Left the Old Country is an Urban Fantasy novel about an angel, who is male-presenting Non-Human Non-Binary, and a demon, who is male but specifically by choice. The two of them have been companions for centuries and care deeply for each other. The tritagonist Rose is a human lesbian.
• Who Needs Men? features a Lady Land where lesbianism and Homosexual Reproduction is the norm, and men are treated as an undesirable foreign race. The military Action Girl protagonist finds it a very painful experience when she falls in love with a man — both due to shame at being abnormal and because her society treats this in roughly the same way as conservative 1950s Americans would handle a male homosexual in her position.
• Theodore Sturgeon's 1953 short story "The World Well Lost" is a Gay Aesop featuring a pair of inhumanly beautiful alien refugees from Dirbanu who gain brief popularity and sympathy on Earth, but who are then promptly deported when Dirbanu identifies them as fugitive criminals. The copilot of the ship deporting them learns that the refugees are a same-sex couple (which is illegal on their home world), helps them escape extradition, realizes that the Dirbanu's distaste for humans comes from Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism that makes all human couples look same-sex to them and is revealed to the reader as a deeply closeted Straight Gay man himself.
• World Without Men: Several thousand years into the future, men have been extinct since the 20th/21st century when feminists forced sterilisation and began reproduction through artificial means. This has left an entirely female population, most of which are blindly satisfied with their world. The main women, though, are a lesbian couple who have seen the truth that this is unnatural, and treat a man that has been created as a Messiah.
• The 1972 children's book X: A Fabulous Child’s Story is about a child who is raised free of strict gender identity as part of a top-secret scientific experiment. X's parents, the Joneses, receive instruction to give X a mix of boy and girl things and never hold X to gender-specific expectations. X's schoolmates are mocking at first, but eventually come around to X's example and begin rejecting gender norms. This draws the ire of Moral Guardians, who demand an examination to determine whether X is a boy, girl, or "mixed-up misfit". The results conclude that X is plenty secure and well-adjusted despite not identifying as either.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: Dr. Stephen Franklin and Marcus Cole pose as newlyweds on one mission, nobody calls attention to their both being guys in the slightest. Earlier Susan Ivanova and Talia Winters were hinted to be in a relationship, but the network didn't allow them to explictly state it in 1995, though later says she "I think I loved Talia" (though without anything specific).
• Doctor Who:
  • As of Steven Moffat's run, the Time Lords have been established as an all-pansexual and non-binary race, since they can regenerate into other sexes. Of note is that the most famous Time Lords, the Doctor and the Master, have both done this, the show openly skewing the idea of fixed gender.
  • Madame Vastra and Jenny, an ancient reptilian warrior and a Victorian maid who are married. They solve alien crime together, sometimes assisting the Doctor.
  • Also River Song, the Doctor's wife in the Moffat era, who hasn't been depicted on screen with anyone who wasn't a male version of the Doctor, but has made remarks strongly implying that she's bisexual, confirmed by Word of Gay.
  • Bill Potts, the lesbian companion of the Doctor's, with mentions of her sexuality happening in every other episode, and being a plot point in a few, as well as leading to discussions of views on sexuality with a Roman Legion. The only negative thing that happened to her because of her sexuality was that her date freaked out when the Pope walked out of her bedroom in an angry huff. This incident was actually in a Lotus-Eater Machine so didn't actually happen. When Bill tells her date about this, the date actually laughs at the whole situation... and then UNIT agents raid Bill's apartment. Bill's sexuality is particularly significant in the first episode she features in, where her attraction to a female student (Heather) is what causes her to end up traveling with the Doctor. Heather then ends up resurrecting Bill, because she's been absorbed by a water-alien but kept her own mind so can do that somehow, in the final episode of the season.
  • Ace, one of the Seventh Doctor's companions. Though they couldn't be open about it at the time, later sources confirmed she was into girls. This would seem to defy the trope, but the presentation of her on-screen was decidedly bi in all but name, which showed it off at a time when the BBC wouldn't have allowed any explicit mention of sexuality at all to air. However, this aspect of her is largely omitted in the Expanded Universe, which focuses on her interest in men.
  • Captain Jack Harkness, an Extreme Omnisexual from the future. It's stated that in his native era, the 51st century, hang-ups about sexuality no longer exist, as humanity has spread across half the galaxy and is happily "dancing" with other species.
  • On spin-off Torchwood literally Everyone Is Bi.
• Legends of Tomorrow:
  • It seems to be exploited in Sara, who is taken from sister show Arrow, where she was canonically bisexual but ever since joining the time-travelling legends has discussed more and more how she exclusively "prefers girls". Sara's sexuality spills over into the stories, with her various romantic entanglements through history being aligned with the plot of that episode.
  • One episode takes the fantasy setting of Camelot and makes Guinevere gay as she prefers fighting alongside Arthur to being romantic with him and falls for Sara Lance, a lot. The romance of Merlin and Arthur also features, with Stargirl as Merlin and so transcending gender.
  • Also used when the bisexual John Constantine joins the cast, including making minor character Gary bisexual by revealing they're exes. John's driving force in season 4 is the death of his lover Desmond.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Jadzia is the host for the Dax symbiont and has the memories of the previous hosts, several of which are male. It's expressly stated that Jadzia is a unique personality and can access the memories of the previous hosts, and as such is not bound by obligations of the past host, which is included in an episode about Jadzia meeting another female Trill whose previous host was married to Jadzia's previous male host. The two women start to "rekindle" their relationship, which is a taboo on Trill... not because they are two women in love, but because they are two joined Trill in love, with the Trill concerned that lingering bonds between two joined Trill carrying over to their next host would result in rulership by an elite The Nth Doctor class. The fact that they were both women at the time is never called upon, though the taboos and the pressure against the relationship do parallel many LGBT issues. Given that the woman was not physically the woman Dax remembers, it's quite possible that joined Trill take on the sexuality of the host, but leave the emotional attachment to past lovers, regardless of sex, which could be a form of pansexuality (they are attracted to the person for reasons beyond traditional binary gender attraction). Her comments as to why she let Worf plan the wedding with little input from her indicate that at this point in the symbiont's life, the wedding had been experienced from both the point of view of the bride and groom several times and was pointless beyond the happiness of the spouse.
• Supergirl (2015):
  • When Alex comes out as a lesbian to her and Kara's friends in season 2 (an example in itself), Mon-El is the only one not to have a reaction. He makes sure to note that on his admittedly hedonistic home planet of Daxam, sexuality is a complete non-issue and "the more the merrier!" She becomes a superhero.
  • Later, Nia Nal (Dreamer) comes out to multiple people about being a trans woman, and this is equally accepted. It's even explicitly tied to Nia's power, which is a Gender-Restricted Ability, validating her as a woman.
• The Flash (2014): In the dream-world induced by The Music Meister in season 3, dream!Iris has two gay dads — this also being The Roaring '20s — and it is treated as normal. It seems to, therefore, discuss the trope, with the dream world being an SF setting in itself and also conjured up between the minds of Barry, Kara, and the Music Meister, who are a meta-human, alien, and fifth-dimensional being, respectively. Both the setting and all the minds that it was created from are not (at least not entirely) earthly and so of course being gay is fine in 1920s America. (Closer to the truth, at least in some of the more freewheeling and bohemian parts, than you might imagine.)
• Dracula (2013), an In Name Only adaptation, has Lucy as a lesbian pining after Mina. Mina isn't so open to her best friend's advances, but is never horrible about it, even deflecting away from it when her boyfriend wants to know what's wrong with Lucy. At one point Lucy does mention how "it's perfectly natural for a woman to fall in love with another woman". Lady Jayne is also a bisexual woman who encouraged Lucy to act on her feelings for Mina.
• Caprica: Homosexuality is treated as completely unremarkable in Colonial society, even among hardcore Tauron gangsters; Sam Adama is happily married to a guy named Larry. Sister Clarice Willow is also part of a group marriage, though this is treated as a quirk among monotheists, and isn't really seen among the mainstream polytheists.
• Defiance: Post-apocalypse humanity seems to think nothing of homosexual relationships, bordering on Everyone Is Bi. Though at least one of the Votan species, the highly patriarchal Castithans, take a dim view of either lesbianism or women cheating on their husbands (it's not entirely clear).
• Black Mirror: San Junipero:
  • The Hugo-nominated episode plays with the Bury Your Gays trope like a cat with yarn, with this likely being one of the episode's social commentaries given that it's Lighter and Softer than the rest of its series. It takes the dream beach from The Zero Theorem, and allows people to infinitely upload their minds there during death, letting wives Kelly and Yorkie have the life together after passing that they can't whilst alive.
  • One review also points out that the setting as created with the San Junipero technology as a norm legitimizes and justifies homosexual relationships, as theoretical "salvation" is possible without the need to live through children (also enforced by Kelly's daughter's death), and it prioritizes individual enjoyment. The moral philosophy arm-in-arm with the SF setting has normalized and even promoted homosexuality, which might be more the allusion that Kelly makes when she tells Yorkie that nobody cares anymore (rather than just that it is around 2030).
• Vagrant Queen: Both female main characters are lesbians. Amae was shown to be from the beginning (in fact, she's introduced just after having had sex with another woman), then Elida is too when she reciprocates Amae's feelings for her (neither one ever shows attraction to men). Both are also members of species that look very close to human, but come from another galaxy (where the action is set). The pair act on their attraction eventually. Nobody bats an eye at this.
• Motherland: Fort Salem: The story is set in a Non-Heteronormative Society where witches exist. Nearly all of the cast are witches, with magic as the main focus. LGBT+ people or relationships are viewed no differently here by most people than heterosexuals/opposite-gender pairings. Raelle and Scylla, two of the four protagonists, are lovers whose dynamic is a continuing theme.
• Intergalactic: Ash and Verona get involved, with their relationship getting continuous focus, while Donnie is revealed as having a husband. In the imagined future of the 2140s, there's no sign anybody cares if somebody's LGBT+.
• Don't Look Deeper: Aisha, who's an android indistinguishable from a young human woman at least in her appearance, is attracted to human women, and had been involved with Jenny. She also compares her struggle for acceptance as a person to a trans man's difficulties regarding this with his gender.
• Humans: In Season 2, Niska is now dating a German woman named Astrid who she genuinely cares about. However, Astrid doesn't know Niska is a conscious synth who has the form of a young human woman. Astrid accepts Niska as being a person after she finds out, despite her shock initially. Although dire circumstances eventually drive them apart, both profess their love for each other to the end.
• Utopia Falls: Set in a post-apocalyptic future, one continuous subplot is Sage and Brooklyn's romance. There is no indication that anyone cares if people are attracted to the same gender or not.
• Carnival Row: Vignette (a female fairy) is bisexual, having been involved with her friend Tourmaline (who's also a female fairy). In their culture, this seems to be open and acceptable. The Burgue society though echoes Victorian England in not only its style but norms, so a gay coroner has to stay firmly closeted, and must act like his deceased lover is a stranger while performing his autopsy.
• Two Sentence Horror Stories: A horror anthology series where several protagonists are LGBT+ and deal with fantastic situations (e.g. one half of a lesbian couple revealed as a vampire).
• First Kill: Juliette, a teenage girl who's a lesbian vampire, falls for her lesbian classmate Calliope, who's human and a vampire hunter, who also finds her attractive. The couple naturally turn into Star-Crossed Lovers as a result. Juliette's sister Elinor too is a bisexual vampire who's murdered dozens of men and women after seducing them without remorse.
• The Orville:
  • The Moclan species is (nearly) all male and homosexual, reproducing somehow without females. As a result, they're highly misogynist and heterophobic. Any female Moclans are typically "corrected" by getting forced sex reassignment surgery following birth. The heterosexual minority is persecuted quite like LGBT+ people on Earth have been, and a Moclan male having sex with anyone female carries a life sentence. One Moclan child who'd been "corrected" coming to realize she's still female despite this and having a second sex reassignment parallels not only intersex (who frequently suffer involuntary "corrective" surgery if their genitals are deemed "ambiguous") but also trans people since her gender doesn't match what she'd been assigned.
  • The future human society is indicated to be a Free-Love Future with no prejudice toward LGBT+ people. Charly, introduced in Season 3, it turns out is into other women.
• Star Trek: Discovery: Several explicitly LGBT+ characters are added, in contrast to more coded portrayals by previous works within the universe. This includes an openly gay married couple on the titular ship, a pansexual woman, later a lesbian and finally a nonbinary crew member as well (whose deceased partner it turns out was a trans man). In the case of the gay charaters' their relationship gets focused on, with the nonbinary character's Coming-Out Story being a brief subplot. Additionally, the show confirms that the Federation society does not care if anyone's LGBT+.
• In From the Cold: Anya/Jenny, a bisexual spy, is capable of shapeshifting via an implant in her body. Her relationship with another woman in her youth is a large part of her backstory, with her just being divorced from her husband when the story begins. She gets blackmailed into becoming a spy again and tracks down terrorists using mind control to make random citizens engage in attacks against others.
• The Power (2023): Roxy, one of the main characters, is a bisexual girl. Ryan turns out to also be intersex, and gets the power as well. It's a plot point as only cisgender women and girls develop the ability otherwise.
• The Rising: Neve is the protagonist, a young woman who recently was murdered and finds she's a ghost. In a subplot, as she seeks to find her murderer Neve falls for Alex, her ex-boyfriend's female cousin, revealing she's bisexual. They start up a romance in spite of their states.
• Siren (2018): Human woman Maddie and mermaid Ryn get into a trio with Maddie's boyfriend Ben. Along with this, all merpeople have been born female. As a result, the males are those who'd shapeshifted for reproduction and maintaint this afterward, showing that among them all to be transgender (or analogous anyway).

Music

• David Bowie — especially as Ziggy Stardust, where he uses Glam Rock and Science Fiction together to push the boundaries of gender, sexuality, and human experience.
• Janelle Monáe's concept albums, where she is an android alien, deliberate used the sci-fi themes to allow her to explore bi- and homo-sexuality in the '00s and early 2010s before it became a much more prevalent topic.
• The lyric of Terpander (7th century BC Archaic Greek father of music and poetry) is notably playing with the trope, but ultimately reinforces why it would later be invented in the first place: it features themes of speculative fiction, and themes of homosexuality, but not in the same places.

Podcasts

• Most of the main characters of EOS 10, a Medical Drama set on an interplanetary space station, have shown interest in characters of multiple genders.
• Hello from the Hallowoods is a horror podcast focusing mainly on LGBT characters.
• The Penumbra Podcast has both the Juno Steel episodes, which take place on a futuristic Mars, and The Second Citadel episodes, which has a fantasy setting. Both have LGBT characters, though they are treated differently in each; in the Juno universe, fluid genders and sexualities are accepted, while in the world of the Second Citadel, same-gender relationships are considered childish things to be put away.
• Night Vale Presents has multiple speculative podcasts with gay protagonists.
  • The flagship series Welcome to Night Vale is narrated by Cecil, a public radio host who gleefully gushes about his boyfriend later husband Carlos, the scientist.
  • The narrator of Alice Isn't Dead is a truck driver looking for her wife Alice, who is presumed dead for all of the first season but whom she insists is still alive somewhere.
  • Within the Wires is a sci-fi found audio podcast that often features gay characters.
• The Strange Case of Starship Iris is aggressive on this topic, to say the least. One couple in the series comprises a human trans man and an alien who finds the concept of a gender binary hilarious.
• Unwell Podcast is a Gothic horror/mystery with several LGBT characters.
• The crew of Wolf 359 are pretty chill about sexual preferences.

Tabletop Games

• Thirsty Sword Lesbians, as the title suggests, is meant for playing through queer stories about "angsty disaster lesbians with swords." While it's setting-agnostic, any campaign with this system is going to have some speculative element to make the Cool Swords work. The pre-made settings and adventures check off the list of sci-fi and fantasy genres.
• Visigoths vs. Mall Goths harkens back to the campiness of zany 1990s films, especially with the premise involving Visigoths arriving in 1990s Los Angeles through the power of time travel. On top of that, there are a lot of bisexuals, with most of the NPCs being LGBT in some respect, and the system amounts to a queer reclaiming of 1990s media.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: Set in the Sword Coast setting of Dungeons & Dragons, the game is firmly as speculative fiction as you can get, being a high fantasy setting dealing with an alien invasion and a city being policed by robots. It's also very queer, as not only is the world depicted as being largely free of homophobia and gender/sex based discrimination, with two important side characters being a same-sex couple while many more can be encountered among the idle chatter of crowds, but the player character is able to romance any of their romanceble companions regardless of their chosen gender and sex. The player character's gender identity can also be highly customised, first with having both masculine and feminine body types, the option of male or female genitalia, multiple options for masculine and feminine voices, and the option to choose your pronouns, including they/them. The only restriction with gender is that some clothing looks different depending on the body type, with some outfits on larger masculine bodytypes ending up shirtless while some clothes become more feminine on femme bodies.
• With a Cast Full of Gay and a deep dive into the intersection of queerness and the supernatural, Moonrise definitely fits this trope. The player takes the life of an ordinary medical student in the instant the student gets turned into a werewolf. Through the novel, the player discovers the supernatural underbelly of the city they inhabit. Vampires and werewolves try to balance their humanity and the beast within; just as two factions war over whether the Masquerade should be maintained. The player can use they/them or she/her pronouns. The three love interests are all queer: Rosario is a pansexual nonbinary person (they/them), Chika is a cis lesbian woman (she/her) and Ishara is a trans lesbian woman (she/her). The player can enter a romantic or queer-platonic relationship with all, none, or some of the love interests. The city and the surrounding large forest have a hazy, fairy tale aspect to them, which is partially fueled by the ambiguity of location.

Web Animation

• According to Word of God, the World of Remnant from RWBY is largely free of homophobia and transphobia.

Webcomics

• Alice and the Nightmare is a dark fantasy with sci-fi elements, taking place in the alternate dimension of Wonderland. The protagonist is Alice Heart, a cadet training to be an Oneironaut, a job dedicated to controlling the Dreamscape and protecting Wonderland from Nightmares. In addition to the main characters, Alice and Edith, being bisexual and a lesbian respectively, there are several other LGBT+ characters in the cast. It's all but outright stated that homophobia and transphobia are largely non-issues in Wonderland, with gay relationships and casual flirtation between two people of the same gender being treated as normal, along with nobody questioning openly trans or nonbinary people.
• Always Human is a lesbian romance story that takes place in a future where most people modify their bodies at will using nanotech "mods". One of the main characters is the daughter of a gay couple and at least one side character is non-binary.
• Arthur, King of Time and Space has elements of this in the contemporary and space arcs, including making Tristan female but still in a relationship with Isolde, making Bedivere a trans man in a relationship with Kay, and making Galehaut's hero worship of Lancelot explicitly a romantic longing stimmied by Incompatible Orientation (the baseline arc also has this, but mostly leaves it implicit, which some would say is exactly the same as the source texts). Also it turns out Arthur loves Lancelot in the same way as he does Guenevere.
• Crimson Dark: A Science Fiction comic centering on Kari, a Space Fighter pilot and participant in an interstellar war. It turns out she's a Butch Lesbian and has a girlfriend named Ren. They, along with their friends, become involved in many more dangerous adventures.
• Darkest Night: A Magic Realism comic that's set in California about Latina Butch Lesbian Magdelena Herrera (almost always nicknamed "Mags") who is mystically connected with a murderous creature. Her girlfriend Nessa is a feminine bisexual trans girl, becoming a main character. Before her Mags had also been with closeted bisexual girl Ava.
• Homestuck is a Science Fantasy comic where (nearly) Everyone Is Bi. The teenage characters play a video game where they work to create universes. Personal growth is a requirement to play the game successfully, so it is both a metaphor and mechanism for growing up/self-discovery, which of course often involves gender/sexual identity. The most clear-cut example of this trope is the Trolls, an alien race who are hermaphroditic and bisexual by default; many of the human characters change their views on gender/sexuality after interacting with them. There are also the Cherubs, for whom the Masochism Tango is an essential part of their romance system. Parodied with the Leprechauns, a homosexual race with nine forms of romance.
• Kochab: Fantasy story about the developing romance between a human girl named Sonya, and a djinn named Kyra.
• Leif & Thorn: Part of the fantasy-culture worldbuilding is that "same-gender relationships are seen as unremarkable, and sex-related dysphoria is seen as a medical condition to be treated without stigma," one or both of which is demonstrated with most of the characters.
• Magical Boy is a Deconstructive Parody of the Magical Girl genre; the titular magical boy, Max, is a transgender boy who comes out on his 16th birthday, which happens to be the same day he becomes the latest to succeed the previously female-exclusive role of a Goddess, a divine role dedicated to saving humanity. The series explores how he navigates his life as a trans teen, on top of handling his job as a Goddess.
• My Impossible Soulmate is a Fantasy Romance comic that centers on Chiaki Koizumi, a demiromantic lesbian who has an unrequited crush on her childhood friend Fumiko. Her troubles with confessing her feelings are made even more difficult when she’s suddenly transported to another world. In this fantastical world, she makes friends with a group of demi-humans and other humans, all of whom are queer.
• Neo Kosmos takes place in the distant future, where Earth had been destroyed and the only remaining humans are children raised by alien scientists for their research. Those aliens are a One-Gender Race who use gender-neutral pronouns in most situations and leave the children to identify however they want. Most of them settle on being agender and use neutral pronouns as they have little interest in the whole "gender" thing, except for Iris. She, after research into old Earth culture, realizes that she's a girl; everyone, including the aliens, respects this. The fact that she's a "human type XY" and by modern standards transgender is a non-issue for them.
• The Queen and the Woodborn: The story is fantasy based on Serbian mythology, with a focus on the relationship between mortal Danica and goddess Morana. The latter was also previously in love with a fellow goddess.
• Runaway to the Stars: Most human cultures are accepting of non-majority sexual orientations or gender identities. Gillie and Idrisah's lesbian marriage isn't anything unusual, though it confuses some aliens◊ that don't have a cultural equivalent to marriage, and Gillie herself was raised by two dads who referred to her in gender neutral terms◊ until she asserted that she was a girl. Shyam, a late coming character, considers herself a woman despite being a tailed spacer, a Human Subspecies designed to be hermaphroditic. Shyam later develops a same-sex romance with Talita.
• Stellarscape is a sci-fi comic featuring personified stars, namely Rigel, Adhara, Procyon, Algol, and Vega, who are all a part of a space crew known as the Orion Unit. All of the main characters are nonbinary, and many are also on the multi-gender attracted spectrum and/or asexual/aromantic spectra (for example, Rigel is panromantic demisexual, Adhara is polyromantic, and Algol is demiromantic asexual). Additionally, Procyon is implied to come from a species who has no concept of biological sex, and canonically identifies as agender.
• Val and Isaac is a space Science Fantasy story with a variety of species from different settings and mostly LGBT main characters.

Web Original

• Hamster's Paradise: In one subspecies of the naturally aggressive and sadistic harmsters, the matriarch harmsters, nearly all recreational sex consists of same-sex pairings while heterosexual mating is only done for reproductive purposes. The reason for this is because harmster mating in general is very violent and since matriarch harmster females are much larger and stronger than the males, breeding between the two frequently ends with the male severely injured or even dead.
• Serina: It's stated that homosexuality exists among all sapient species and we see multiple same-sex relationships among various different ones but there are some of note.
  • The woodcrafters are an elk-like species (distantly descended from guppies) whose males develop a bright red mane and more robust features when they reach maturity. However, some males chose not to undergo this process and become more feminine in appearance while some females will develop more masculine traits, effectively making them transgendered.
  • The pelagans are a culture of a species of orca-like marine birds known as the daydreamers who inhabit the open oceans. About half of all couples are homosexual as their culture encourages such unions since the ever worsening ice age is shrinking the open sea and depleting their food supplies as gay couples don't produce more children that can strain already dwindling resources. They also have a strong asexual culture, ace individuals are known as clearwaters and they are believed to have far greater insight thanks to their minds being undistracted by sexual desires, they often become sages and shamans that are sought out for their wisdom.

Web Video

• Critical Role is a Dungeons & Dragons Actual Play with the usual trappings of tabletop fantasy, set in the original-creation setting of Exandria, which as the series goes on becomes increasingly clear is a queer-accepting world, both with a variety of queer NPC characters with the players, both the main cast and many of their guest players, also experimenting with characters who are on various places on the queer spectrum. Sexual identities are explicitly a thing, as some characters have explicit sole interest in the same or opposite gender, but otherwise the world seems to be Everyone Is Bi, while trans and non-binary identities are common.

Western Animation

• Steven Universe is about a team of extraterrestrial warriors who have No Biological Sex and feminine coding, reflective of creator Rebecca Sugar's experience as a non-binary woman. The show makes extensive use of the Discount Lesbians angle to explore themes about identity and relationships beneath its action-adventure veneer. For example, the character of Garnet is a Romantic Fusion between two Gems who fell in love when defecting from a home world that values perfection and efficiency above self-expression. Homeworld only allows fusions between two gems of the same type, meaning that Garnet (a fusion of a Ruby and Sapphire) is a taboo relationship. Steven himself, being The One Guy by way of also being a Half-Human Hybrid, develops the ability to fuse with another Gem or his Implied Love Interest, said fusions having an Ambiguous Gender and identifying with singular "they" pronouns (since they aren't exactly singular). Even the circumstances of Steven's birth can be viewed as a loose transgender metaphor, due to his mother (frustrated with her role and nature in home world society) being well aware that birthing Steven would cost her physical form, and several antagonists initially refusing to see Steven as his own person. Peridot deciding not to fuse is a metaphor for asexuality and aromanticism.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: One of the core conflicts in the show is that two extremely close childhood friends, Catra and Adora, are on opposite sides of the Horde-Rebellion war, until the former's Heel–Face Turn in season 5, which is also when they get a Relationship Upgrade. In addition, several explicitly same-sex couples are featured throughout the show (Netossa + Spinnerella, Bow's dads, etc.), and there is an explicitly non-binary character who is never misgendered (Double Trouble). The fact that ND Stevenson, a transmasculine queer person^note although they identified as a a non-binary lesbian at the time of production, was running the show has absolutely nothing to do with it.
• Urbance is set in a future where a virus kills anyone who has heterosexual sex. Therefore being gay or asexual is the norm.
• The Owl House: In the Boiling Isles, Word of God states that the word "witch" is a gender-neutral term as both male and female characters in the show are referred to as such. One episode has a character referring to a possible crush with they/them pronouns, and the character of Raine Whispers uses they/them pronouns without a single character trying to misgender them. Also, same-sex couples such as Willow's dads, two male students dancing together at Grom, and Luz and Amity's entire romance arc are never treated as out of the ordinary, though Luz still had to come out to her mother while on Earth, as queer experiences there are about the same as they are in real life.

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