The SIMS

I find this game to be slightly creepy. First of all, the player creates these characters, gives them families, personalities, jobs and if you can figure out the code, unlimited funds. The player then begins to control every aspect of the SIMS lives which, I believe will give those playing it a bad case of a G-d complex.
However, through this game, the player has the opportunity to "Queer" the traditional static family. For example, when I was going through my stint at playing this game, I created a family called the Machines. That's Mac-hines. He was in the army and she was a movie star. In the course of the history of this family, Laura Machine became friends with the lady next door, let's call her Becca. Friendship quickly led to love and Mr. Machine got in on the scheme, then he fell in love with Becca and proposed. Then the three of them were living together and they had a baby.
This game allows players to create any world they want. Most of the time it is centered on Soap Opera like drama and occasionally it is unintentionally "Queer".

NYPD Blue

The manly mans show, NYPD Blue. While the show is filled mostly with uber straight men and women dealing with stressful situations there is one gay light. That is the police secretary, John Irvin. He takes the place of Donna when she goes on some R&R.

He is a very effeminate man and it is very apparent that he is there to add the soft "feminine" touch to the shows hyper-masculinity. TV.com has this to say about this character;
"There had been other gay characters on TV series before public administrative assistant John Irvin on ABC's "NYPD Blue", but perhaps none to whom the audience had so quickly and easily warmed, with his sweet smile and peppy attitude, the openly gay blond with boy-next-door good looks. What followed during two seasons of recurring appearances was a chance to see not just Brochtrup's fine acting, but the character of Det. Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) finding he could relate to a gay male as a human being and not as someone who made him uncomfortable."

Demon Flowers

This is a manga that I have become addicted to. It tells the story of demon/human hybrids and the people that are bent on destroying them. It isn't Queer, but it does have gayness in it. The Hero of the story, Ushitora, falls in love with the boy that he rescued, Masato. What really drew me to the manga was the fantasy storyline, it was really surprising to find out that there was also a gay love story hidden inside.

Neverwhere~ Neil Gaiman

Again Neil Gaiman takes reality on a spin. In Neverwhere Gaiman shows us an underworld London that we would have never thought of...

Neverwhere's protagonist, Richard Mayhew, learns the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. He ceases to exist in the ordinary world of London Above, and joins a quest through the dark and dangerous London Below, a shadow city of lost and forgotten people, places, and times. His companions are Door, who is trying to find out who hired the assassins who murdered her family and why; the Marquis of Carabas, a trickster who trades services for very big favors; and Hunter, a mysterious lady who guards bodies and hunts only the biggest game. London Below is a wonderfully realized shadow world, and the story plunges through it like an express passing local stations, with plenty of action and a satisfying conclusion.

- from Amazon.com

Fight Club ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Here is another author that presents a Queer view of the world. I have added comments to the synopsis in bold.


From Publishers Weekly
Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic (The men in this novel are embittered by a world they see as "run by men raised by women") first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Mayhem ensues, beginning with the narrator's condo exploding and culminating with a terrorist attack on the world's tallest building. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice.

This is the perfect Chuck Palanuik novel. Most of his novels deal with distruction of an element of popular culture; magazines, models, porn. But this is queer because of it's look at the depression of the modern man. I don't think that in this age men are seen as depressed at all, just because of all of the resources that are out there for their success. But we don't realize that so many men can find themselves in similar situations to Tyler Durden.

Neil Gaiman~ American Gods

I have fallen in love with this author!! Neil Gaiman is so good at taking the standard view of the world and turning it completely around. He is so good at imagery. The dream scenes especially are vivid.

Her is a synopsis of American Gods:

From Publishers Weekly
Titans clash, but with more fuss than fury in this fantasy demi-epic from the author of Neverwhere. The intriguing premise of Gaiman's tale is that the gods of European yore, who came to North America with their immigrant believers, are squaring off for a rumble with new indigenous deities: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon." They all walk around in mufti, disguised as ordinary people, which causes no end of trouble for 32-year-old protagonist Shadow Moon, who can't turn around without bumping into a minor divinity. Released from prison the day after his beloved wife dies in a car accident, Shadow takes a job as emissary for Mr. Wednesday, avatar of the Norse god Grimnir, unaware that his boss's recruiting trip across the American heartland will subject him to repeat visits from the reanimated corpse of his dead wife and brutal roughing up by the goons of Wednesday's adversary, Mr. World. At last Shadow must reevaluate his own deeply held beliefs in order to determine his crucial role in the final showdown.


I find him to be a Queer author because of his mixture of the old world concept of Gods and Goddesses, a "dead" concept, with modern day technology.

A Queer Jew

Matisyahu is a reggae playing Hasidic Jew. He started his career in White Plains, New York. His childhood was typical of any teenager in the early 90's. He listened to heavy metal and tested recreational drugs. That all changed when, at 16, he spent a semester in Israel as an exchange student. When he came back to the U.S. he adopted Orodox Judaism, this has changed in later years so that he now subscribes to the Chasidic movement, a very spiritual branch of Judaism. After that he became much more involved in his religion. After finishing highschool he joined a Jewish band called Pey Dalid.

In his music, he mixes reggae, some rap and rock to perform the meaningful lyrics of his songs. He says, "All of my songs are influenced and inspired by the teachings that inspire me. I want my music to have meaning, to be able to touch people and make them think. Chasidism teaches that music is 'the quill of the soul.' Music taps into a very deep place and speaks to us in a way that regular words can't."

I find him to be Queer because he doesn't use "traditional" Jewish music to accompany his lyrics(klezmer is considered traditional Jewish music. It uses fiddles, clarinets, xylophones and other woodwinds depending on the group). I find this combination very refreshing. It brings the some of the ideals of Judaism to young people without the burden of the Melancholy sound of klezmer music.

King Without A Crown - Matisyahu