#queer review

[alexissara]

Baldur's Gate 3 - Amazing and Sometimes Awful [Quick Review]

Baldur's Gate 3 is a herculean feat of game development with amazing voice acting work spread across it's many many hours, fantastic character designs, interesting gameplay and more. It also suffers from D&Ds character progression systems, the way the games worlds are set up, and the system of true RNG that it is emulating. Beyond that the game despite it's own beauty is extremally buggy and faces significant late game performance issues. However, the game does some stand out things for queerness that a lot of other RPGs fail at. This game is a mixed bag that might also be game of the year.

With over 122 hours logged into the game I feel fairly confident in my ability to access what I experienced but given how big of an undertaking it is I genuinely think someone else's experience may be different. I chose to not side with either the grove or the goblins and moved onto act 2 without doing that and that may have added to the count of bugs but the fact that was an option means that it isn't "My fault" that I experienced so many bugs on my playthrough. I had party members despawning, quests saying I could do something that I couldn't do because the NPCs were not in the area they were supposed to be, getting ques for things that should have went into act 3 that were missing, in the end of act 3 characters missing from the end bits and at the very end textures just all vanishing for my last few hours.

I didn't really get to experience the romance the game had to offer. I started a fling with Lae'zel which apparently locked me out of most other romances but randomly gave me a Wyll Romance scene, a man I never deployed not once the whole game. I realized playing the game I didn't long rest enough and missed out on my chance to romance Shadow Heart whom I really wanted to romance and even though I broke things off with Lae'zel I could never progress a romance with Shadowheart, Karlache or Minthara. I want to feel this romances and see everything they have to offer but sadly the game denied me this.

The game lacks body diversity and the limited pallet of faces feels too limited in character customization. There is sadly no time in which despite being able to have a trans body I am able to talk to someone about being trans that I found not am I ever able to reject a romantic advance by stating my sexuality or disinterest in a gender. Instead it is taken as read that I am bisexual and that I am rejecting them for them and not because like from the onset they weren't on the table for my desires. I am however, not a bisexual but a lesbian and I would love to be able to say that.

That said this game does make strives to doing something I've not really seen other games do with playsexual characters which is to make them have queer history. I didn't get every characters backstories but I did get backstories for Astrian and for Shadowheart which both imply that previous to our adventures they had mostly been with their own gender. Astrian has a litany of male lovers which he courted and gave to his master, he seems to prefer men and he describes his attraction to them. Meanwhile, Shadowheart seems to have had a girlfriend before her memories were removed, perhaps an ex that was a Transgender Woman who turned to Sharr although this is more subtextual than Astrian's due to her memory loss.

These little bits of queer history make them feel much more lived and their sexualities not feel like it was because I am super special but because they are earnestly queer and I happened to have the kind of personality and body their attracted to. There is also some amount of queer NPCs not tied to our PCs although they are in the minority in a majority heteronormative cast.

The game does make some strives to fix some of the things that are terrible about D&D removing the alignment system allowing for characters to simply exist in a much more complex moral web than a box of 9 check marks for morality lets you do and a toning down of racial abilities which helps lessen D&Ds inherent eugenics. However, it does not escape D&D's racism problem with the game mostly having a lot of the characters be racist good and bad and not having counter examples of races like Goblins being good or like an important good drow or something. The companions "Racial" make up are very classic fantasy squad. 2 Elves, 2 half elves, 3 humans, 1 Drow, 1 Gith. In terms of race as we see it in the real world we got one black character and everyone else is pretty white or are a fantasy skin color and white coded maybe baring Lae'zel but idk what Lae'zel's culture is supposed to represent if there is a real world equivalent. Of course also everyone in the world able bodied and skinny or maybe if they are the right race buff. I haven't seen everyone fuck but it appears to me that everyone is cisgender. The game can't do everything but I certainty wish the game did more. The probably most offensive to me being the promoted and marketed Polyamory simply not existing and came from their own misunderstanding of the word, you can fuck around you at least in my experience can't be in multiple committed romantic relationships. That should be fixed given they marketed the game and I don't even need them to address each other just allow it to happen since it was sold to me on the idea I could kiss multiple girls romantically.

There is a total sense of wonder in doing the game thing in new ways and seeing all the ways you can handle situations and all the different outcomes. From multiple files to save scum stuff to hearing people talk about their runs I've seen tons of different ways even my highly buggy end game which did not run well I could see where if it wasn't having all the running issues I had I would have been blown away by all the options they gave me for the last 3 battles of the game. I still thought it was really cool even when it was bugging out. The game constantly threw fun new things at you, little challenges, great moments of roleplaying where it feels like your choices mattered and you could do something cool to get out of a situation. This game might be the game that has most successfully captured the magic of roleplaying in a video game.

The characters being a stand out factor in this in that I found several of the characters to be highly compelling even one man which if you know me is a massive accomplishment. I found Astrian's plot to be really captivating, I really loved Shadowheart's story, I thought some of the NPC stories were really well done too, as a character focused story teller I loved the character work that went into even characters I wasn't particularly in love with. Everyone feels like they can grow and grow in different ways too for bad or for good and often even pretending a pretty objectively bad choice can be flavored with enough deniability to understand why someone might make that choice as a character and not just like because video game let me choice bad choice. I think the characters stories make up a coherent theme I really wanna dive more into but will be restrained on here. They all deal with control. Everyone is dealing with different levels of someone's strings on them and a different relationship to those strings. How those relationships change and evolve over time is really compelling and how they compare to each other is really great. Overall, I love BG3, I think it might be my favorite game I played so far this year [but I do have a backlog, Stray Gods, En Garde!, Super Lesbian Animal RPG] and one of my favorite games in general. IF not for it's massive file size I think it's a game I'd keep installed all year round and just randomly jump into all the time. For now I am still playing, still enjoying but more than anything I am hoping by the time I beat the game a second time it is a lot smoother. If you enjoyed this kind of One Take review let me know, I wanted to try my Yuri manga format for a video game review because nobody reads my game reviews but I felt like I wanted to talk about the game. So instead of putting the huge amounts of work into the review like I normally do I wanted to just try this. If you did enjoy it one way to let me know is by supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi or you can just reblog or comment. I might revisit the game with a more in depth review or looks more in depth at how it handles queerness or about the story and other stuff like that.

#BG3 #baulders gate 3 #Quick Review #Review #Game Review #Queer #Queer Review

[snowtigra]

Remember this meme? Turns out it’s also a hilariously relatable manga.

Read my full review here!

#manga review #go for it nakamura #queer review #review #lgbtq

[milocelium]

Hello, it's been a while.

I've taken quite a break from most social media and intend to continue to do so, but I wanted to hop on and share a that I've made a blog where I will be reviewing queer books, movies, TV shows, music, etc. I would love some feedback and interaction, as well as any suggestions. I created this blog today (4/1/2024) so I only have one post up, but I recommend checking it out!

hope everyone is doing alright, until next time x

#seeing queerly #review #book review #tv show review #tv series #i cant reach you #i cannot reach you #kimi ni wa todokanai #movie review #queer review #lgbtqia

[mywitchcultblr]

This is what happen when people take the 'your brain doesn't mature till 25' pop-sci too literally and just ran with it, also transphobia

#england #britain #rishi sunak #trans #lgbt #lgbtqia+ #natalie wynn #contrapoints #queer #trans rights #cass review #cass report

[ellie-probably]

reblog this if your account is a safe space for polyamorous and non-monag people or is owned by someone who is polyamorous or non-monogamous

op is a monogamous person who felt they haven't seen enough posts acknowledging this part of the queer community outside of non-monogamous circles and blogs

#polyamory #nonmonogamy #lgbtqia #lgbtq #queer #safe space #peer reviewed #peer reviewed and approved

[floral-ashes]

My favourite part of the Cass Report is where she goes: “Florence Ashley and others have shown that gatekeeping doesn’t work and should be abandoned. We disagree, not based on any evidence but because it’s incompatible with the way we’ve already decided we wanted to do things.”

#transgender #lgbtq #trans #queer #lgbtqia #lesbian #gay #lgbt #books #trans lit #cass review #cass report #gender affirming care #gender affirming healthcare #trans healthcare

[k-wame]

violently spat out my oatmeal

#saltburn #barry keoghan #jacob elordi #emerald fennell #oliver quick #felix catton #queer #movie review #film review #lgbt #film #movie #queer media #letterboxd

[deancasforcutie]

The way Dean’s queer joy and revelation at others just being outside the stereotypical control images is also ours

Honorable mention:

#remembering reviewer Tess McGeer's post about ''this daunting undone softness from a character witnessing queer romance''... girl say that #what if instead of diminishing the healing and empowerment this lovingly crafted queer narrative has brought me I just didn’t? 🤯 #anyway a very happy Visibility Day to our resident bicon I'm so glad to have back 💕💜💙 #dean winchester #castiel #carlos cervantez #supernatural #spn #spnedit #the winchesters #destiel #dean is bi #spn is queer #mine

[arowrath]

i 100% trust a cishet gnc guy who wears skirts and does mutual aid and helps the queer community more than i trust a gay twitter user who gets mad at ppl for using the “wrong” labels and starts dumb infighting all the time. and i would 100% consider that first guy queer if thats the label he wanted to use

#text #thinking abt queerness as a political ideology #peer reviewed banger

[fandom]

Queer TV

This is a strange time to be writing an editorial on queer representation. While the past year has seen an incredible uptick in queer stories being told with humor and heart on the small screen, 2022 has seen a record high of 238 proposed anti-LGBTQIA+ bills in the US—nearly half of them targeting trans folks. Representation is important, though, and demand for more queer stories is growing (and, to some degree, being met), with a lot of good books and comics making it to our screens. With that in mind, think of this as your selective chronological tour of all the times we won in the TV landscape of the last year (October 2021–October 2022).

Our dataset year started off with the much-awaited adaptation of Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic, Wheel of Time. With such extensive source material (15 books if you count the prequel, which is where the seeds of the sapphic storyline in Rafe Judkins’ adaptation are to be found), the viewership, generally speaking, was divided into book fans and show-only fans, and both camps shitposted and meme’d and reviewed with abandon. 

The biggest queer-centric show we saw in the last year was the adaptation of @aliceoseman’s comic Heartstopper (@heartstoppercomic). Co-created by Alice Oseman themself, this adaptation was very sensitive to the much-loved source material. And, being native to Tumblr, these characters were bound to be welcomed with open arms when they hit the screen in an ebullient explosion of queer joy. 

A run-down of the past year would be incomplete without the incredible queerdos of the Revenge who swashbuckled their way into our hearts. We’re referring, of course, to Our Flag Means Death’s Gentleman Pirate and his merry band of (living-wage-paid, no less!) shipmates. Your favorites included genderqueer Jim ‘not-a-fucking-mermaid’ Jimenez and Oluwande, Lucius Sprigg and Black Peter, Frenchie who just hates cats, and The Swede, who keeps his heart but loses his teeth. Then, of course, we have Blackbeard himself, or simply Ed, who is struggling with his identity (villain or softboi).

Based on the story by @veschwab and produced by @belletristbooks, First Kill was another adaptation that fans of vampire stories got very excited about. Add to that the fact that this was very much a sapphic enemies-to-lovers scenario between hunter Calliope and young vampire Juliette, and the pre-show excitement was palpable. The post-season disappointment even more so as fans turned to their dashes to vent about the lack of good lesbian and wlw representation in 2022’s TV landscape.

Where the cancelation of First Kill left us reeling, the Rockford Peaches from A League of Our Own came in clutch and soothed our sapphic souls. You love the show which you affectionately shortened, in good old Tumblr fashion, to a silly little acronym: aloto. Whether you’re in it for the gal pal aesthetics, the butch energy, or Uncle Bert, or some good old fashioned baller drama, there truly was something for all of your wlw whimsies here. Let’s go, Peaches!

@neilgaiman’s The Sandman series finally came out to much acclaim, and came out so gay that armchair reviewers of the homophobic sort really struggled to wrap their minds around quite how gay it is. We got pansexual serial killing Corinthian! Pansexual, demon-hunting, women-kissing Johanna Constantine! Some very loaded moments between Morpheus and Hob Gadlin! This is what dreams are made of (sort of)!

This whole list would be nothing, nada, a crumb of zilch whizzing around a black hole, if it weren’t for the writers who created many of these stories in the first place. So thank you to them. And to you, Tumblr, for celebrating the good and standing up for each other through another year. Here’s to a kinder 2023. 

#year in review #queer tv #tumblr2022

[alexissara]

The Fed Up Office Lady Wants to Serve the Villainess Volume 1 Quick Review

In the world of yuri Isekai The Fed Up Office Lady Wants to Serve the Villainess stands out as being pretty different from the rest of the pack. This manga skips reincarnation as a plot element all together. Instead when pulling on her gacha she is pulled into the world by The VIllainess summoned to the world instead at the start of the story of the gacha game.

The office lady has the main heroine and villainess fall for her, fairly clearly inside of the first volume. While they are clearly in love with her and she clearly has some sort of feeling back she seems to be trapped in a heteroparadigm. When she has feelings about the villainess she thinks it is purely the feeling of being appreciated for her work and for the heroine she thinks she is just admiring her favorite character. The manga provides a lot of amazing art and panels of the art.

Politically this manga so far fails to try anything particularly exciting. It has a story of commoners rising against the nobility in the plot but it's not even the part of the plot our hero cares about, the event she is trying to stop is her getting killed for trying to wipe out the anti-noble movement with stolen magic. So far it's totally avoided talking about queer ID, our hero, Natalie just wants to be appreciated for her work, she is very basic in her desires. Natalie likely considers herself a totally average woman. In this volume at least there isn't really commenting on anything.

The romance dynamics are fairly cute but they run into one big issue. Our main character is 25 years old, it's stated multiple times explicitly and the main girls who are in love with her are 15. I don't care about age gaps normally, as long as everyone is an adult it's fine but here that is not the case. Like they are gacha game characters, intended to be appealing to adults, intended to functionally function as adult in the plot but regardless it is a little weird. To be fair that weirdness is in many gacha games so I guess as a love letter to gacha and classic VNs it is weird in exactly the way those games are.

I found the manga charming and a fun read with great art but I am hoping there is something more in further volumes. I'm In Love With the Villainess had a weaker first volume for it's manga although I doubt this series will reach the heights of that series. I am also not sure how things with the romance will go comfort wise. Regardless, I would say it's an enjoyable read and if you like really subby women in your sapphic romance, this might be the one for you.

[If you enjoy this review consider sending me support on Patreon so I can make more gay art and read/review more gay art.]

#The Fed Up Office Lady Wants to Serve the Villainess #Yuri #GL #Lesbian #Quick Review #Yuri Review #Manga Review #review #Queer Review #GL Review #Girls Love

[snowtigra]

I know everyone’s out shopping or sleeping off that turkey, but it’s still Friday and I have a new review up for The School For Good and Evil….

#the school for good and evil #movie review #queer #queer review #lgbtq #well are they

[kindgreenape]

i get that he was probably just agitated with klaasje at this point but he went really went straight in for the kill here. kim put aside his discomfort with matters of the heart to go up to bat for lesbians

#kim subbed to a queer lit review newsletter on a whim and now he can sense the predatory lesbo card from a mile away #disco elysium #mine

[kebbopulos]

In my data collection, I was also curious how many of tumblr's top 100 ships were queer!

Out of these queer ships, I also broke them down to see what percent were wlw and what percent were mlm:

Keep it Queer Tumblr <3

#year in review #tumblr year in review #year in review ships #year in review 2022 #tumblr 2022 #lgbtq+ #lgbtqia+ #lgbtqia #queer #queer pride #wlw #mlm #mlnb #wlnb #nblw #nblm #wlwlw #gay #lesbian #nonbinary #There's a detailed reason I didn't color code the second graph and I would be happy to tell you if you asked

[yurimother]

'I'm in Love with the Villainess' Anime - Episode 1 Review

An astounding and hilarious first outing for the series with the power to revolutionize Yuri

We are finally here, the long-awaited and much anticipated first episode of Platinum Vision’s I’m in Love with the Villainess anime aired on Tokyo MX and is streaming everywhere outside of Asia with a plethora of dubbing options, including English, on day one on Crunchyroll.

The first outing covers most of the events of the light novel’s first chapter, or the first three chapters of the manga, at a rapid but steady and not overwhelming pace. At this rate, the anime should be able to cover much of the series’ first arc, or the first two out of five books, in a single cour. Perhaps a bit less, depending on which of the story’s various adventures it elects to include. This is an exciting possibility, to be sure, as the story is a character-driven, socially mindful, and expertly written and, despite its fantasy setting, an exceptionally relevant tale of romance, socio-economic inequality, and of course, queerness.

While the first arc of Villainess is a triumph, it would be a shame not to see at least some of the developments from the extra chapters that lead into the second story, like (spoilers for the end of volume 2) Rae and Claire’s wedding and their adopted twin daughters May and Aleah. If we are lucky, perhaps they will appear in the final episode or, dare to dream, a second season (end of spoilers).

Now, onto the show itself. For those who, for whatever reason, have not read Inori’s masterpiece, I’m in Love with the Villainess follows Rae Taylor. A salary worker who dies and is reincarnated as the protagonist of her favorite otome game, Revolution. However, Rae has no interest in any of the game world’s three eligible royal bachelors and has eyes only for the game villainess Claire François. Armed with exceptionally magical ability, Rae sets out determined to secure a happy ending for her beloved Claire against the coming revolution and perhaps win her heart in the process.

Now, the opening of I’m in Love with the Villainess is the series' weakest moment in all mediums, which, considering episode one’s outstanding quality, only highlights just how superb the Yuri masterpiece is as a whole. Even with its need to establish the setting, characters, and premise of the series, the premiere managed to be an excellent introduction and set the bar high with lots of laughs, entertainment, and service between our two leads.

I watched the Japanese audio, and Yu Serizawa and Karin Nanami are fantastic in these roles, with Serizawa playing up Rae’s teasing adoration and borderline masochism at full blast, and Nanami explicitly giving voice to Claire’s arrogance and frustration. She even manages to deliver a perfect Ojou-style laugh to seal the character’s elite status and lean into the show’s use of otome tropes. And having the leads sing the excellent opening and ending themes is just icing on the cake.

Speaking of tropes, while Ironi’s original work is a genre-defying masterpiece that broke the Yuri mold, it is never afraid to play with the genre’s iconography and its otome game setting. Every other scene had another allusion, including to the book’s cover. As always, I am likely overeager to see connections, however intentional they may be, but the academy’s halls harken to otome staples, the bells and strings of the first scene's soundtrack conjured blistering memories of Strawberry Panic (perhaps a sacrilegious comparison to make but I digress), and even an areal shot of the campus was another check mark on my “Scenic Yuri” theory.

Now, as mentioned, I’m in Love with the Villainess has to establish the groundwork here, and narratively, these are the weakest moments, often direct exposition, with a few exceptions like Rae’s conversation with her roommate Mash about maintaining Claire’s attention. The narration is at least accompanied by relevant and creative, if perhaps limited, animation. But to their credit, these moments are succinct, existing only as long as they have to in order to provide the necessary information and get out of the way for what matters most: the characters.

Rae and Claire are front and center from the very get-go, and there is little time wasted in showcasing Rae’s intense bottom energy or establishing Claire’s elitism and bewildered anger towards Rae’s excitement in the face of Claire’s carefully calculated cruelty. It is a montage of silly and fun competitions between the two that had me laughing and smiling all the way through, as the Yuri was present in full force, and gives glimpses at the mutual obsession the women have for each other that will soon blossom into a wonderful romance.

These early story beats have a light tone and focus on the bullying, teasing, and rivalry between Rae and Claire, a dynamic that previously and understandably made a subset of readers somewhat uncomfortable. However, assuming the anime unfolds in a similar manner to the manga and light novels, the narrative will explore meatier, heavier subject matter and a far deeper lesbian romance, all without losing its sense of fun and adventure. The next episode or two will be incredibly telling - as the source material is perhaps the most profound and forthright depictions of LGBTQ identity in Yuri, and that all starts with a pivotal conversation that, if it is included, will be coming up shortly.

Overall, I am incredibly excited for this series. The first episode is everything I had hoped for out of an adaptation of one of my favorite works of all time, save the animation, which is average at best. While there is a lot more to see, and we will have to wait to know if I’m in Love with the Villainess lives up to its incredible potential and source material, I am extremely hopeful. We have one of the funniest, most thoughtful, and queerest works of Yuri transformed into a stunning anime project unlike anything that has come before and offers the chance at not just a new Yuri “gateway” but to continue the work of its source material in revolutionizing the genre.

Ratings: Story – 8 Characters – 10 Art – 5 LGBTQ – We shall see… Sexual Content – 3 Final – 8

I'm in Love with the Villainess is streaming on Crunchyroll with English sub/dub.

Review made possible by Avery Riehl and the rest of the YuriMother Patrons. Support YuriMother on Patreon for early access, exclusive article, and more: patreon.com/yurimother

#yuri #Reviews #girls love #lgbt #anime #i'm in love with the villainess #ILTV #lgbtq #gay #gl #queer #lesbian #manga #yuri anime #gl anime

[barrowsteeth]

The Queer Review: "Was there a scene that you did in season two that you were particularly proud of?"

#young royals #young royals cast #omar rudberg #edvin ryding #i love how much they love simon and wille #i love hearing omar confirm what we all knew #omar's face and gesture when he talks about marcus #hahaha #he hates marcus as much as we do #and edvin's face when omar talks about their moment with the fish #just leave me here to die #omar and edvin in ny #friends best #omar is really out in the world #looking like beauty personified #the queer review #interviews #barrowgifs