TV & Film Awesome shows with LGBT characters!

[Dokkalven]

What are some of your favorite shows/movies or other media with LGBT characters? I didn't have much exposure growing up and was pretty sheltered from everything, though I knew full well my identity at a young age. As a bi person I've been trying to consume more media with characters I can relate to now that I have the freedom to do so. So far some of my favorites are "The Owl House" (main character is bi, her love interest is a lesbian, and there are other kinds of queer characters throughout the show) and "Good Omens" (one of the protagonists is *maybe* gay? and has feelings for his best friend, there is no confirmed relationship yet in the show! Hopefully in the next season.) I'd like to know what kinds of media y'all love that have LGBT characters, any recommendations are appreciated. They don't have to be the main characters, even side characters is fine! Any kind of representation is cool. I do love cartoons, fantasy, sci-fi, and all kinds of Indie themes.

 

[shrikebird]

i really like yellowjackets but it is rated tv-ma for a reason! pretty bloody and mature sometimes but if that’s your thing its a really good show!

it’s about a girls’ high school soccer team whose plane crashes in the canadian wilderness during their flight to nationals. it follows both them in the wilderness and their adult lives while they try and fix themselves, and its also got quite a few queer characters (one of the main characters is a black lesbian politician, and her plotline is really interesting, and there’s a slightly less important character who has some plots about being a gay man in the 90s and loving and losing and regret. and it’s really good)

also brokeback mountain but that one’s also for an older viewer base haha. but gay cowboys !!

 

[Dokkalven]

i really like yellowjackets but it is rated tv-ma for a reason! pretty bloody and mature sometimes but if that’s your thing its a really good show!

it’s about a girls’ high school soccer team whose plane crashes in the canadian wilderness during their flight to nationals. it follows both them in the wilderness and their adult lives while they try and fix themselves, and its also got quite a few queer characters (one of the main characters is a black lesbian politician, and her plotline is really interesting, and there’s a slightly less important character who has some plots about being a gay man in the 90s and loving and losing and regret. and it’s really good)

also brokeback mountain but that one’s also for an older viewer base haha. but gay cowboys !!

Thank you! I'll look into it ^^ And hahaha I know about Brokeback. Always love some good Westerns. Also, I'm near 30 (so I AM the older viewer base lmfao XD)

 

[shrikebird]

oh thank god lol. i was so scared i was recommending the cannibal soccer lesbians show to some poor 13 year old or something

 

[Dokkalven]

oh thank god lol. i was so scared i was recommending the cannibal soccer lesbians show to some poor 13 year old or something

LMAO oh nono, I did mention that I was already grown in my original post XD or at least implied it haha, so all good!

 

[AaronMk]

Spongebob - That sponge is asexual
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - By the transitive property, everyone's a lesbian or bi
Trailer Park Boys
Aquí No Hay Quien Viva

By virtue of Omar, The Wire

Breaking Bad
Better Call Saul

 

[hellfyre]

I enjoy The Dragon Prince! It's an animated series and has a lesbian character as well as a trans character in later seasons... and others scattered throughout the show.

 

[Charismeur]

Here are some of my favorites:

• Arcane (Lesbian relationship).
• Bojack Horseman (Asexual main character).
• Brooklyn 99 (Married gay men, a bi main character is later revealed).
• Schitt's Creek (Slowburn gay relationship).
• Ted Lasso (Gay character, bi main character).
• The Legend of Korra (Lesbian relationship, mostly expanded in the comics).

I'm mostly definitely forgetting some too!（＾ω＾）

 

[MxKit]

Fantasy cartoons:

If you haven't seen the movie Nimona yet, you should! One of the main characters is a shapeshifter and that's played as a very nonbinary thing, while the other main character is in a gay relationship that's very important to the story. It's very heavy and made me cry, as a warning, but it's so so good.

I also recommend She-Ra and the Princesses of Power for a lot of reasons! There's a central F/F relationship, a side one that's blatantly canon, and another side one that's eventually hinted at, a very minor male character is casually mentioned to have a crush on another male character, another minor female character is shown blatantly flirting with a barmaid, one of the mains has two dads, and it's all just treated so normally. It's wonderful. Plus there's Double Trouble, one of my favorite nonbinary characters ever.

Horror-fantasy "books":

Okay, they are books, but they were pulled from self-pub as the author is working on getting them professionally published, so they aren't available right this moment. But you can still read all four books of the How to Survive Camping series by fainting--goat (aka Bonnie Quinn) on Reddit, just missing a couple of bonus chapters. And I highly recommend it! It's a creepypasta published on r/nosleep, probably my favorite of all time, and it's super good. Two side characters, a man and a nonbinary being, are textually in a relationship. Less outright text but still very much purposefully nodded to by the author is the main character's aromantic asexuality. I would also argue that another major character, while nonhuman, is very trans feeling in some direction, either nonbinary or transmasc.

Horror-fantasy video games:

First: Bugsnax is a great cute-looking game where you hunt bugs... that are also snacks! To help out the muppety-looking people in your little muppet society. You also act as their therapist as their little society struggles to stay together and also while things take more and more a turn for the horror, and inspect the mysterious disappearance of their former leader. Two of the characters are in an F/F relationship that's very cute and definitely important to the story, two of the characters are in an M/M relationship that's not important to the story as much but is very blatant and very cute, and one of the characters is nonbinary and I really adore them. Highly recommend.

Second: Night in the Woods. Absolute banger of a game where you play as a young woman in a world where everyone is animals, returning home after quitting college and having to deal with the conditions in her tiny small town and also everything that led her to being a drop-out. Also, people are disappearing and something horrifying is happening. The main character is interested in both men and women, and her best friend from high school is a gay man and he and his boyfriend are great together. If you haven't played this one or watched a playthrough already, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Indie visual novels and interactive fiction:

As the lightest of these recommendations, if you're at all into slice-of-life visual novels, the Our Life ones are really good. Only the first one, Beginnings & Always, is fully out, but the second, Now & Forever, has a beta up and already looks great! They can be played as romances but also entirely platonically, and the first game is entirely free to play, just with paid DLC (anywhere from $3-5 each, entirely unnecessary). The main character of Beginnings & Always can be played as any sexuality, as nonbinary, as trans (including transitioning over the course of the story if you feel like it); the main potential romantic interest is asexual (and, iirc, pansexual); and it's easy for games with romances where you can choose your character's gender to feel player-sexual instead of bisexual/pansexual, but because of the rest of the game's whole thing it does feel more like the latter; one of the secondary romanceable-with-DLC characters textually is bi/pan, as he flirts with you, your female friends, and your male main love interest. The main character also has two moms, and one of their closest friends turns out to be a trans man later in the story! Now & Forever already looks to be continuing with all of this, with the same "you can choose any pronouns and trans identity" ability for the player character, and one of the two main possible love interests being genderfluid. Both games take place over many years, iirc maybe a decade.

The second visual novel I have to recommend is, uh, not as light. XD Scarlet Hollow is a horror visual novel with multiple optional love interests, and it's another visual novel where you can choose your character's pronouns, though it's between she/her, he/him, or they/them here. One of the love interests definitely isn't straight (she used to date your cousin, Tabitha), while one is nonbinary (they/them). The game is not quite finished yet, being released in chapters, but it's over halfway there and is super fun (and spooky) already! The game takes place over the course of a week, with each chapter being one day.

Finally, a piece of interactive fiction -- a bit more like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book than a visual novel -- called Fallen Hero is one of my favorites of the medium. It's going to be a trilogy and the first two games (Rebirth and Retribution) are out, with the third (Revelations) being actively worked on, and it has some really neat LGBT aspects! Again, you can choose details about your character's sexuality and gender, as well as those of an extra body you can possess to pretend to be someone else. (Yeah, this one is sci-fi, and you're playing as a former superhero turned up-and-coming supervillain...) You also get to choose whether two of your possible love interests are male or female, no matter your own gender, but one of them is always trans (a trans man if you chose to make him male, a trans woman if you chose to make her female); one of the possible love interests whose gender you don't get to choose is just flat-out a gay man (and you can't romance him if you choose to play a female character). It is really twisty and a ton of fun and I can't wait to see how it ends.

 

[Dokkalven]

Here are some of my favorites:

• Arcane (Lesbian relationship).
• Bojack Horseman (Asexual main character).
• Brooklyn 99 (Married gay men, a bi main character is later revealed).
• Schitt's Creek (Slowburn gay relationship).
• Ted Lasso (Gay character, bi main character).
• The Legend of Korra (Lesbian relationship, mostly expanded in the comics).

I'm mostly definitely forgetting some too!（＾ω＾）

Oh my gosh, yes! I loooooove Arcane and Brooklyn 99. I don't know why I forgot about these when I made the post originally haha

 

[Dokkalven]

Fantasy cartoons:

If you haven't seen the movie Nimona yet, you should! One of the main characters is a shapeshifter and that's played as a very nonbinary thing, while the other main character is in a gay relationship that's very important to the story. It's very heavy and made me cry, as a warning, but it's so so good.

I also recommend She-Ra and the Princesses of Power for a lot of reasons! There's a central F/F relationship, a side one that's blatantly canon, and another side one that's eventually hinted at, a very minor male character is casually mentioned to have a crush on another male character, another minor female character is shown blatantly flirting with a barmaid, one of the mains has two dads, and it's all just treated so normally. It's wonderful. Plus there's Double Trouble, one of my favorite nonbinary characters ever.

Horror-fantasy "books":

Okay, they are books, but they were pulled from self-pub as the author is working on getting them professionally published, so they aren't available right this moment. But you can still read all four books of the How to Survive Camping series by fainting--goat (aka Bonnie Quinn) on Reddit, just missing a couple of bonus chapters. And I highly recommend it! It's a creepypasta published on r/nosleep, probably my favorite of all time, and it's super good. Two side characters, a man and a nonbinary being, are textually in a relationship. Less outright text but still very much purposefully nodded to by the author is the main character's aromantic asexuality. I would also argue that another major character, while nonhuman, is very trans feeling in some direction, either nonbinary or transmasc.

Horror-fantasy video games:

First: Bugsnax is a great cute-looking game where you hunt bugs... that are also snacks! To help out the muppety-looking people in your little muppet society. You also act as their therapist as their little society struggles to stay together and also while things take more and more a turn for the horror, and inspect the mysterious disappearance of their former leader. Two of the characters are in an F/F relationship that's very cute and definitely important to the story, two of the characters are in an M/M relationship that's not important to the story as much but is very blatant and very cute, and one of the characters is nonbinary and I really adore them. Highly recommend.

Second: Night in the Woods. Absolute banger of a game where you play as a young woman in a world where everyone is animals, returning home after quitting college and having to deal with the conditions in her tiny small town and also everything that led her to being a drop-out. Also, people are disappearing and something horrifying is happening. The main character is interested in both men and women, and her best friend from high school is a gay man and he and his boyfriend are great together. If you haven't played this one or watched a playthrough already, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Indie visual novels and interactive fiction:

As the lightest of these recommendations, if you're at all into slice-of-life visual novels, the Our Life ones are really good. Only the first one, Beginnings & Always, is fully out, but the second, Now & Forever, has a beta up and already looks great! They can be played as romances but also entirely platonically, and the first game is entirely free to play, just with paid DLC (anywhere from $3-5 each, entirely unnecessary). The main character of Beginnings & Always can be played as any sexuality, as nonbinary, as trans (including transitioning over the course of the story if you feel like it); the main potential romantic interest is asexual (and, iirc, pansexual); and it's easy for games with romances where you can choose your character's gender to feel player-sexual instead of bisexual/pansexual, but because of the rest of the game's whole thing it does feel more like the latter; one of the secondary romanceable-with-DLC characters textually is bi/pan, as he flirts with you, your female friends, and your male main love interest. The main character also has two moms, and one of their closest friends turns out to be a trans man later in the story! Now & Forever already looks to be continuing with all of this, with the same "you can choose any pronouns and trans identity" ability for the player character, and one of the two main possible love interests being genderfluid. Both games take place over many years, iirc maybe a decade.

The second visual novel I have to recommend is, uh, not as light. XD Scarlet Hollow is a horror visual novel with multiple optional love interests, and it's another visual novel where you can choose your character's pronouns, though it's between she/her, he/him, or they/them here. One of the love interests definitely isn't straight (she used to date your cousin, Tabitha), while one is nonbinary (they/them). The game is not quite finished yet, being released in chapters, but it's over halfway there and is super fun (and spooky) already! The game takes place over the course of a week, with each chapter being one day.

Finally, a piece of interactive fiction -- a bit more like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book than a visual novel -- called Fallen Hero is one of my favorites of the medium. It's going to be a trilogy and the first two games (Rebirth and Retribution) are out, with the third (Revelations) being actively worked on, and it has some really neat LGBT aspects! Again, you can choose details about your character's sexuality and gender, as well as those of an extra body you can possess to pretend to be someone else. (Yeah, this one is sci-fi, and you're playing as a former superhero turned up-and-coming supervillain...) You also get to choose whether two of your possible love interests are male or female, no matter your own gender, but one of them is always trans (a trans man if you chose to make him male, a trans woman if you chose to make her female); one of the possible love interests whose gender you don't get to choose is just flat-out a gay man (and you can't romance him if you choose to play a female character). It is really twisty and a ton of fun and I can't wait to see how it ends.

These are amazing recommendations, thank you! I'll look into the games!