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NEW RELEASE: Twisted – J.S. Frankel

Twisted - J.S. Frankel

QSFer J.S. Frankel has a new queer YA LITRPG Fantasy book out: Twisted. Chivalry isn’t dead. It just wears a skirt. High schoolers Charlie Matthews, Martin Anderson, and Sharon Collins win a contest to play an interactive-interfacing type of medieval game as the avatars of their favorite characters. Their mission: fight monsters, storm the castle, and capture the evil king. Things go terribly wrong, though, when Charlie wakes up as Angella of Avernon, the lead female character in the game. While she happens to be the most powerful avatar around, he also finds out that they’ve been infected with a … Read more

Asta’s Annotations: The Trickster God as Queer Icon

Trickster gods occur in many cultures and often demonstrate a certain gender and/or sexual fluidity. For today’s post I will concentrate on one: Norse trickster Loki.

Loki practices forms of magic which, in Norse culture, mark him as effeminate. He’s also a gender-bending shapeshifter, as demonstrated in the following tale….

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For Writers: The Difference Between Transgender and Gender Bending

Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Matthew J. Metzger: For trans: the difference between trans stories and genderbending stories. This could be a dicey one. Gender discussions often are, so let’s try to talk this in a respectful, polite way. As Matthew points out, gender bending and being transgender are two different things, though to the outside observer, they may have some similarities, in that both challenge our traditional conceptions about gender. And in addition to transgender, we can also add the gender fluid category. So here are my thoughts – and feel free to tell me if I am … Read more