Queer Romance

Works that have a same-sex and/or transgender romance as a major theme.

In the West, gay and lesbian romances aimed at LGBT readers have existed as a publishing niche since the 1950s, but are still relatively obscure (and Sturgeon's Law applies to what can be found). Most broadly-known Western same-sex and LGBT romances are aimed at general audiences, and have a tendency to be tragic.

In Japanese media, these have more well-defined genre expectations and usually fall into the Boys Love (m/m romance for a female audience), Bara (m/m romance for gay/bi men), and Girls Love (f/f romance generally, although there is a separation between works for men, for women in general, and for lesbians in specific).

Sub-genres:

• Bara
• Boys Love Genre
• Girls Love
• Slash Fic

Examples of Queer Romance include:

Advertisements

• This ad for a gay help line.
• This ad for AIDS prevention.

Anime & Manga

• Arashi no Yoru ni was always this, but became most obvious after the 2005 animated film, when both lead characters were cast with unmistakably male voices.
• Boku no Futatsu no Tsubasa is a Romantic Comedy with an intersex protagonist.
• Wandering Son is a Slice of Life revolving around two Transsexual children. While Takatsuki (a trans boy) doesn't seem to have had a crush yet, his mostly-lesbian trans girl friend has had quite a few crushes on girls (including Takatsuki himself). It doesn't work well considering the objects of her affection think of her as a boy.
  • Aoi Hana, by the same author, has a predominantly straight cast overall, but the main characters are mostly lesbians.

Comics

• The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green Book website. (Also made into a movie in 2005)
• Ralf König's comics, such as Konrad and Paul, The Killer Condom and The Most Desired Man.
• Dykes to Watch Out For is about lesbian romance, mixed with drama and political commentary.

Fan Works

• Many fan work of Non-LGBT (Straight) characters as a "couple" (even though they're just friends in the actual shows, movies, video games, Etc.
• There's also a fan fiction of Non-LGBT (Straight) characters who fall in love to each others, but in reality, they're not.

Film

• A Roomin Rome
• AKA is a 2002 drama film, the first by director and writer Duncan Roy. The film is set in the late 1970s in Britain and deals with the story of Dean, a 18-year old boy who assumes another identity in order to enter high society. Dean then meets David, an older gay man who desires him and Benjamin, a young Texan hustler. Much of the film deals with Dean's search for his true identity and his coming to terms with his love for Benjamin.
• Bedrooms and Hallways
• Bent, a movie about gay Jews in a concentration camp falling in love.
• Better Than Chocolate
• Big Eden
• The indie bluecitrushearts, is summed up as the story of a boy who loves a boy.
• Bound
• Brokeback Mountain
• The Bubble
• But I'm a Cheerleader
• D.E.B.S.
• Eating Out A trilogy of movies that are the gay version of the American Pie movies.
• Fire, a 1996 film from India.
• Fucking Åmål (Show Me Love)
• Gray Matters
• Heavenly Creatures, a fairly disturbing example really.
• Japanese movie Hush.
• I Love You Phillip Morris
• Imagine Me & You
• The Incredibly True Adventure Of Two Girls In Love
• Latter Days, involving a Mormon missionary and his relationship.
• Les Biches
• Losing Chase, starring Helen Mirren and Kyra Sedgwick. You can retreat to your bunk now.
• Lost and Delirious
• Love My Life
• Make the Yuletide Gay
• Pariah
• Plan B
• Saving Face
• Two films by Shamim Sarif, I Can't Think Straight and The World Unseen.
• Spider Lilies
• The Trip 2002 romance set in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Velvet Goldmine
• Wedding Wars John Stamos is a wedding caterer for the governor's daughter but goes on strike when the governor bans gay marriage. Also stars Eric Dane and Sean Maher
• Were the World Mine is about an entire town falling into a Love Spell that makes half the cast gay.

Literature

• Affinity
• Annie on My Mind, a lesbian Young Adult novel. That rare thing: one with a definite happy ending for the lesbian couple.
• At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill
• Boy Meets Boy, a queer high school romance (and possibly the most cheerful and adorable one ever at that) by David Levithan
• The Bookof All Hours, where the central story is Jack trying to save his love Thomas from dying by finding the one fold in the multiverse of the Vellum where he isn't murdered. Also, a brutal criticism of the trope Bury Your Gays.
• The Catch Trap by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• A fair number of British boarding-school stories written by Dorita Fairlie-Bruce and Angela Brazil, among others. Just to what extent these reflect overt lesbianism is up to you, but kissing between best friends (implied to be several kisses in a row, delivered with feeling, and not just a hesitant stolen peck) occurs in the canons of both the above authors and would appear to satisfy this trope.
• Some of Edgar Pangborn's post-holocaust stories feature strong same-sex friendships, often implied to be gay ("Tiger Boy") if not stated outright ("Harper Conan and Singer David", "The Night Wind"). And yes, most of these friendships/romances are doomed, one way or another.
• Empress of the World
• Fingersmith
• Giovanni's Room
• Havemercy, at least for half of it. And that's not even the tragic side of the story.
• Hero
• King And King is a children's book about a prince who falls in love with another prince, rather than any of the princesses presented to him. Caused quite a bit of controversy...
• The Last Herald-Mage trilogy of the Heralds of Valdemar series has The Hero Vanyel's homosexuality as a primary plot element. His first love, Tylendel, awakens him not only to his sexual orientation but also to his mage powers, and his sexuality and the reactions of others to it is a defining part of his characterization.
• Maurice: The 1987 film is better known than the novel (written circa 1913 but only published in 1971).
• The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault
• Slave World has many relationships that breaks with heteronormativity in many ways, from being same-sex relationships to having a power dynamic that isn't at all based on gender.
• Tipping the Velvet

Live Action TV

• Lip Service
• The L Word
• Queer as Folk
• South of Nowhere
• Sugar Rush (TV)
• Tipping the Velvet
• Xena: Warrior Princess has Les Yay as a core story element. Since Xena and Gabrielle are soul-mates, they get together in many different incarnations. In the twentieth century, they end up with their clones getting together, their reincarnated selves getting together, and their suspiciously familiar descendants getting together. Therefore, this could be considered a happy-ending, even though the original characters, onscreen, don't get one.

Music

• Gay Pirates by Cosmo Jarvis
• "The Soldiering Life" and "On The Bus Mall" by The Decemberists.

Theater

• There are several romantic pairings in the play The Miracle At Naples, but possibly the most adorable is the two male best friends who fall for each other.
• Among other themes that were considered subversive at the time, there is a gay romantic pairing in the play Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind (you may know it from the recent musical version).

Videogames

• The Freeware Game Calamity Annie.
• The Interactive Fiction game Gun Mute.

Web Comic

• Khaos Komix focuses on romance between a cast of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans characters.
• Punch an Pie's main characters are a pair of bisexual women who end up getting involved with both men and women.
• Sandra K. Fuhr's comics. Boy Meets Boy deals mainly with a male/male romance. Successor comic Friendly Hostility focuses more on the wider life of a same-sex couple, but keeps romantic elements. However, newest entry to the universe Other Peoples Business relegates same-sex romance to background details (albeit important background details).
• Venus Envy deals prominently with the romantic love life of a bisexual MtF Transsexual.

Web Original

• Anyone but Me