Tag: star trek

This is not the Gay Future I Imagined

Several months ago, I posted about imagining gay futures through science fiction. That vision also includes more gay content in all settings, not excluding roleplaying games. While we may be having more LGBTQ+ media representation these days, much of it paints us in the same tired light as an American 1940s cautionary tale.

I touched on Star Trek: Discovery in the previous post, which features a male/male couple (with on screen kissing!!!). [Spoiler alert] One half of the couple dies. After the traumatic murder at the hands of a Manchurian candidate of the most bizarre variety (who we’re then supposed to forgive completely), the Emperor is introduced when the Discovery is thrown into an alternate universe.

The return of Michelle Yeoh was triumphant, especially when her character is triumphantly revealed to be bisexual when she decides to have a mixed gender threesome in the middle of a Starfleet mission. However, this triumvairing (I tried?!) ends when the Emperor pulls a weapon on the two she just made love to and coerces information out of them. The extreme use of force, and implied brutality of the character it cruelly offset by the revelation of their bisexuality.

Instead of fleshing out a more complex personality (which we were granted flashes of during her development with main character Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green), the Emperor seems without real motive and instead follows their gut down a disastrous path. Every possible shortcut is taken to show them as bad, including painting their bisexual tendencies in an amoral light when they jeopardize the mission to follow their own fancies.

Depicting bisexuality as an accessory to a lack of morality is not exclusive to science fiction. Games published Wizards of the Coast made waves when they rereleased the notorious adventure, “Curse of Strahd”, including LGBTQ+ subtext. Many reporting outlets picked up the story that the adventures for Dungeons & Dragons‘ 5th edition would be more gay, more diverse, more queer. But that’s proven, and continues to be, problematic.

Taylor of Riverhouse games threw a quote from Curse up on twitter and commented on the depictions of bisexuals in media:

Don’t get me wrong. Complex LGBTQ+ villains of all identities are really important. I want to see them. Other genres are already giving us these. For instance, the terribly sexist show Versailles features one of the most well depicted homosexual relationships and complex bad guys I have perhaps ever seen on television in Philippe and the Chevalier (also named Philippe).

Varied depictions are also not completely absent from Fantasy. The wildly successful A Song of Ice and Fire adaptation, Game of Thrones, wisely decided not to remove the complicated love affair of Lord (KING) Renly and Loras Tyrell. I think we’ve come far enough to where we should not longer have to grasp at straws. I think Wizards of the Coast and other games publishers can make our future roleplaying a hell of a lot more postively queer.

What Do Gay Futures Look Like?

I had the great pleasure of attending a few of the Sunday blocks of Otherworld Theatre’s Paragon – a Science Fiction and Fantasy Play Festival this past weekend, November 12th.

The day opened with a reminder that break up conventions and rejection transcend all relationship types, and species. In “The Day the Earth Stood By,” Writer Joe Janes and director Logan Toftness use a monologue to explain that Earth needs to stop dialing out- intergalactically. Another highlight was the eco-feminist dystopic future depicted in “Construction Time Again” by writer Aaron Adair and director Shellie DiSalvo.

The one that hit me hard was “Speaking of Mars” by Jonathan Cook and Iris Sowlat. In this constantly nearing future, potential colonists are tested for a planned one way trip to Mars. They are also being paired up for repopulation once there. Scientist Adam meets his future mate, Evelyn, for the first time, and has his new found hopes for love and companionship dashed when she explains that she is a lesbian.

If this were to come to light, she will be kicked out of the program. After some explorations of what their loving, but aromantic relationship might look like (We can still be sexual, she says at one point), Adam agrees to travel to Mars with Evelyn as a couple.

While Evelyn’s willingness to do what is expected of her (procreate with a man) initially sounds like so much of heterosexual history and forced child bearing by otherwise unwilling wives, she continuously asserts her agency. As a scientist, she will not miss this leap forward for humanity. Unfortunately to do this, she must hide her identity.

It is a valid question: Where do LGBTQ+ identities fit into our view of the future and space travel? Up to this point, while we’ve seen far less LGBTQ+ folk than we ought to in NASA, space agency work does not require any specific orientation or identity.

Does gender and heterosexuality only exist in the first place because of our limited view of repopulation? Generally speaking, stories of space exploration are framed within the same colonizing lens as pilgrims to what is now the United States. In order to survive and thrive, the population must duplicate and expand itself by heterosexual means.

This got me thinking about other depictions of sexuality in recent Science Fiction media:

Meanwhile, in a new era of space explorations, the Star Trek: Discovery Starfleet has apparently not put into effect the ship fraternization laws removed by Janeway in Voyager after being stranded 60+ years from home, as the ship’s doctor, Hugh Culber, and astromycologist Paul Stamets are married and live in shared quarters. While we have not yet reached the procreation question in that series, and the ship is generally within or adjacent to Federation space, we have yet to see what family units and life is like in this human future.

The film Alien: Covenant sidesteps the reproduction question by providing a ship full of embryos. Instead the traditional pairings can be read as a means of supporting traditional values about relationships and providing for the crew’s emotional needs. It is interesting that a series about the fears of procreative necessities sidesteps the natural biological processes required for it in humans, but ultimately it is unsatisfyingly without further exploration.

On the other end of extreme space faring, Thor: Ragnarok introduces two bisexual characters without mentioning their bisexuality. An earlier cut of the film referenced Valkyrie’s sexuality directly, and Loki’s entanglements with the Grandmaster are hinted at, we never truly explore what romance or family making is like at this far corner of the universe.

While our heteronormative present limits representation in contemporary media, I am hoping that these small dips into a more expansive outerspace leads to better depictions. I want us to imagine a gayer future together.