#i mean he only shows up to share portents of doom and occasionally help w raising their 4 children but they still love him

[the-elderly-are-evolving]

OK SO i read like. FUCK TONS of fantasy in middle school (unfortunately don't remember most of it bc my brain bad lol)

BUT i've been going back to it and rereading the titles i can remember really liking and let me tell you, it is INSANE the amount of queer ppl rep hidden in some of these older books (which probably informed my own queerness without me even realizing it isn't that WILD)

anyways, tamora pierce is one of my favorite authors for this, if you're looking for suggestions. She's got lesbians she's got trans women/ nonbinary ppl (w a very candid discussion of what this means too, esp in the face of marriage to a very prominent govt official dude), she's got a twink w two girlfriends who's looking for a third girlfriend...

and the best part is, it's all like. intertwined very casually within the narrative, which i absolutely LOVE. like it's mentioned and then it's not picked apart or scrutinized or commented on a bunch, it's just like "oh woah his husband is actually this drag queen.... sick nasty i love ur makeup, anyways can you help me catch the killer??" like it's never really the main focus of the narrative, and it's awesome to see queer people as just a normal facet of life, esp in this fantasy setting.

People who object to trans people being in fantasy are wild. As though some silly-hatted alchemist wouldn't simply invent Almazar's Gender Fluid in an afternoon and distribute it to every dungeon chest in the land. It's Common on the loot table and half the goblins drop it. You can brew it yourself with three mushrooms and eight snail shells. It sells for 1 copper at the merchant because the supply is so abundant. You fool. You melon. You absolute buffoon. The limits of what you are willing to imagine are an epitaph you wrote for your own freedom.