This collection is for creations that are a good introduction to what it means to be queer in general, or has a focus on more than one queer topic, or on a queer topic that I haven't made a specialized collection about yet.
This collection is part of my directory of other people's creations on itch.io, Curated Collections of LGBTQIA, where you can find more collections about other topics. I personally select and review each creation in them, even if they are different than my own views or experiences as a queer person myself.
Content: Rated G.
Medium: Physical game. Multiplayer. The instructions are in the form of a mini zine that you can print and fold from a single sheet of paper.
About: "They say, the first pride was a riot. Today, pride is about buying the rainbow. We can make a better parade. In this game, players work together with friends to create the pride parade that we want. The objective is to create queer joy for our community."
Content: Rated PG-13.
Medium: Zine. Designed for reading on screen.
Genre and subject: Nonfiction.
About: An introduction to what it means to be femme. Femininity is a rigged game against women, so femmes create their own.
Vibe: Defiant. Empowering. Queer positive.
Content: Rated PG-13. About police violence and discrimination against LGBTQ people.
Medium: Zine. Full color. Designed for reading on screen.
Genre and subject: Nonfiction. History.
About: The history of movements for LGBTQ rights, especially those connected with Stonewall, and the history of LGBTQ being seen as mentally disordered. Science is finding more and more that being queer is natural and healthy. Western society tends to see any difference as sickness. Oppressors use that as a weapon against anyone who doesn't conform.
Vibe: Queer positive.
Content: Rated G.
Medium: Zine. Full color. Designed for reading on screen.
About: An introduction to what bisexuality is. It corrects common misconceptions, points out the perks of being bi, and gives a list of some bisexual men in current events, history, and fiction.
Vibe: Lighthearted, slightly silly humor, and very queer positive!
Content: Rated PG.
Medium: Zine. Full color. Designed for reading on screen.
Genre and subject: Nonfiction.
About: "This short, 9-pages zine presents you some design tips so you can make your very own pride flags!"
Content: Rated G. Friendly for all ages.
Medium: A tiny little computer game created in Bitsy.
Duration: Three minutes. One ending, no choices, so one play through is enough.
Accessibility: No words. Simple directional controls. Some scenes have low contrast graphics, but you can feel your way through them.
Story: A trans masculine person grows up.
Vibe: Terse. Powerful. A punk haiku written without words.
Content: Rated G.
Medium: Personal zine. Designed for reading on your computer screen.
Genre and subject: Nonfiction. Self help.
About: They have social anxiety, but they found ways to connect with others. For example, through TTRPG groups on the internet and volunteering. Something that TTRPGs and volunteering have in common is that you imagine the world that you want to live in and then work together to build it. Their zine offers some tips on how others with social anxiety can do that too.
Queer themes: The zinester is aroace and genderfluid. The community and movement that they want to support and participate in is queer.
Vibe: Real, hopeful.
Content: Rated PG-13.
Medium: Personal zine or comic book.
About the illustrator's personal experiences as a questioning butch.
Content: Rated G. Warnings for homophobia, transphobia, bullying, and depression.
Medium: An interactive prose piece created in Twine.
Length: About five minutes.
About: Queer sadness, queer fear, and ultimately queer joy.
Content: Rated G.
Medium: A tiny computer game.
Genre and subject: Puzzle. Nonfiction. Memoir.
About: The author tells one part of her life story, illustrated with simple puzzles for you to solve.
Queer themes: Coming out.
Content: Rated G.
Medium and about: These are cards you can print, fill out, and give to businesses and organizations as an easier way to speak up to them about how they are excluding people who are transgender, nonbinary, or intersex.
Content: The "Stonewall Riots" zine is rated G. The "Bisexual Manifesto" zine is rated PG.
Medium: Two mini zines, each of which are designed to be printed on a single sheet of paper.
About:
Stonewall Riots: "The Stonewall Riots were a huge part of LGBT history. Learn about it in a short zine!"
Bisexual Manifesto/coloring book: The bisexual manifesto was published in 1990 in response to biphobia.
Vibe: Celebratory, educational, defiant, proud.
Content: Rated PG-13.
Medium: A tiny computer game created in Bitsy. It runs in your web browser.
Duration: You will be able to see everything in one play through, within 15 minutes.
About: Walk through a museum of charts and graphs that show the facts we know about transgender people, debunking some common misconceptions. The web page for this game cites sources for this information.
Queer themes: trans men, trans women, trans youth, intersex people, transition, transphobia, detransition, and restroom access.
Vibe: Serious, academic, yet approachable.
Content: Rated PG-13. Some essays have content warnings at their beginnings because they talk about trauma and having survived sexual assault.
Medium: Zine.
About: An anthology of essays about learning martial arts as a tool for moving past trauma, and how martial arts instructors can teach it in a way that is suitable for students who have survived sexual assault or who are sex workers, who need this instruction the most.
Queer themes: Written by a community of queer and trans people of color.
Vibe: Serious. Painful. Direct. Useful.
Content: Rated G.
Medium: A computer game created in Bitsy. You can play in English or in French.
Duration: About ten minutes long.
About: This game is sort of like an interactive bibliography. You go to a library for your research project about HIV and AIDS. The librarian helps you find some relevant materials in each section, which are titles that you can check out in real life. The next room of the library happens to be showing an exhibition about the history of AIDS.
Queer themes: The game itself doesn't talk about being queer, or anything in detail about the virus or its effects, though the books and organizations that it mentions do.
Vibe: A sense of calm, nonjudgmental camaraderie organized around sharing knowledge about this.
Content: Rated PG.
Medium: A full color book, hand-lettered, with cartoon illustrations. 11 pages, with cover.
About: Short, easy definitions for some LGBT identity words. The definitions themselves are accurate, it's just that the tone is tongue-in-cheek in response to quarrels that people have had about how to define them.
Queer themes: The queer identities this covers are asexual, aromantic, bisexual, pansexual, lesbian, gay, trans, questioning, and queer.
Vibe: Queer joy. Choosing not to let the haters waste your time.
Content: Rated PG-13.
Accessibility: No audio. Black and white high-contrast 1bit graphics, so colorblind friendly and low vision friendly.
Medium: A zine created in Decker (a program inspired by the Hypercard software from the 1990s).
Genre and subject: Nonfiction. Manifesto.
About: A personal zine about how some people will clutch their pearls no matter how you present yourself, so you may as well be your whole real self.
Queer themes: Transgender.
Vibe: Raw, vulnerable, defiant.
Content: Rated PG because of how one of the definitions of terms mentions some sex organs.
Medium: A full-color zine, designed to be printed out on a single sheet of paper, cut, and folded. One version is in English, the other version is in Japanese.
About: A tiny zine that gives definitions for what the initialism LGBTQIA stands for, and then a few other relevant words.
Vibe: Cute, cheery, simple.
Content: Rated G. Friendly for all ages.
Medium: A computer game of the type called kinetic fiction or a visual novel, because it's mainly dialog with character portraits. This one is a prototype, so it feels like only the first chapter of a story, but it demonstrates what it's supposed to do, and it's fully playable without any problems.
Duration: One play through is about ten minutes. There aren't major decisions or other endings, but you can replay it to experiment with other gender expressions for your character to see how you feel about them as a player.
Story: You help your friends plan a wedding.
Queer themes: A game where you can choose your gender expression, including nonbinary options. The purpose of this game is to be a sandbox where you can safely try out different names, pronouns, and other words for yourself, to see how you feel about being called by them in real life.
Vibe: Encouraging, friendly, companionable, hopeful, cozy, cheerful.
Content: Rated PG. Specific content warnings are in the front of the book.
Medium: Book. Fantasy novel.
Story: A company invented cleaner sources of power for the city. Why is someone stealing them? Because she discovered that the power comes from the stolen souls of witches like herself. She can't safely come forward with this information yet, and a police officer is hot on her trail.
Queer themes: Pretty much every character has one or another queer identity. Its focus is on characters who are genderfluid or on the asexual spectrum, and how they have feelings for one another.
Content: Rated PG-13. Mentions of sex organs, medical discrimination, misrepresentation, and non-consensual sex reassignment surgeries, all of which are necessary topics when explaining about what intersex means. It doesn't depict or go into graphic detail about any of these.
Medium: Nonfiction zine, designed for being read on a computer screen.
Duration: About a ten minute read.
About: An introduction to what intersex means, written by someone who is intersex, portrayed as a cartoon dog.
Representation: Intersex.
Vibe: Informative, a touch of humor, some heavy topics.
