✧ Representation Matters

As pride month is heading to its end, folks at Les Artisans d'Azure had a chat about queer representation in our favorite shows, games, and movies. It doesn't come as a surprise that we are huge fans of fantasy and science fiction. After all, we are a bunch of LARPers and geeks, and that's the kind of fiction we seek and love.

Fictional worlds are places where everything is possible, a perfect soil for LGBTQA+ representation to flourish, even while our current world is still forcing many queer people to hide their true self. Sometimes, we feel escapism can be emancipatory.

To salute the efforts of storytellers to create inclusive and diverse casts of characters, and to highlight the power of positive representation in fiction, we decided to give a little shoutout to a few of our favorite queer characters in fantasy and sci-fi.

Those a characters we loved to ship until it wasn't a ship anymore, then kept loving even more; characters who we related to, who helped us find ourselves, or who are simply awesome.

This list may contain spoilers for some media and video games, so be warned!

✧ Les Artisans d'Azure's Queer Favorites ✧

❧ Gobber from How to Train Your Dragon, a gay disabled viking mentor

❧ Vi from Arcane, a sapphic badass brawler from the undercity

❧ Amaya from Dragon Prince, a deaf lesbian general noble

❧ Fymryn from Dota: Dragon's Blood, a bisexual polyamorous elf with divine powers

❧ Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the bisexual god of mischief

❧ Iron Bull from Dragon Age: Inquisition, a pansexual fighter

❧ Twisted Fate and Graves from League of Legends, a roguish gay couple.

❧ Vax'Ildan from The Legend of Vox Machina, a suave bisexual rogue

❧ Gwyndolin from Dark Souls, a gender non-conforming game boss

❧ Anevia Tirabade from Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, a lesbian trans operative and redeemed criminal

❧ Shaun Gilmore from The Legend of Vox Machina, a gloriously gay merchant wizard

❧ Thane Krios from Mass Effect 2, a bisexual assassin with a tragic secret

❧ Camina Drummer from The Expanse, a bisexual and polyamorous Belter spaceship captain

Happy Pride!