#aosb

Hi! Thanks for the ask! We’re really happy to answer questions about representation because it’s so, so important. This is obviously a really sensitive and complex issue, so we wanted to give it a thorough answer.

This series has arisen from both a desire to see some genuine LGBTQ+ representation in a Trojan War story and certain ways of creating said representation that have evolved in the literary-inspired webseries community in general over the past few years.

When we say that we have a female Odysseus, Diomedes, etc., we mean that we have taken these characters, originally cis men, and reimagined them as women. This means taking the traits of the character and creating a new interpretation, genderwise. Since the series also takes place in a different setting from the source text and several characters will have different ethnicities, there will naturally be other changes as well. 

There are, however, several characters who our showrunner has been envisioning as trans, and if casting permits, there will be several trans characters in the series. This includes some of the “gender-bent” characters previously mentioned. We use this term despite its antiquity and controversial status only because of the lack of other terminology to use. The most likely challenge we will face is the fact that we are filming at a small, insular liberal arts college whose queer population includes several trans men but almost no trans women.

If you would like to see how other similar series have handled issues of gender representation, we can point you toward a couple good ones. Twelfth Grade (or whatever), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, created most of its queer ships out of the existing character dynamics but also adapted the character of Sebastian into a trans man rather than a cis man and created the character of Tammi, a cis lesbian, based on Sir Toby. Hamlet the Dame also does a lot of creative gender-bending: Francisco becomes a trans woman named Frankie, Ophelia becomes a trans man named Alex, Horatio and Marcellus both become cis women, and Hamlet herself is an afab nonbinary demigirl. 

If you’re looking for a show with a trans woman lead (and lots of POC rep), we highly recommend The Adventures of Serena Berg. Recent shows that gender-bend more conventionally to create some great representation include The Emma Agenda and Middlemarch: The Series. These shows all vary in film quality, but they should give you a good idea of what our series is going to be going for. 

Our head writer and showrunner is a cis woman, and she realizes that she isn’t the most qualified person to speak on the topic of trans representation and what is and isn’t appropriate in the gender-bending department. She is lucky enough to have some wonderful trans people on board as advisors and a backdrop of good and sensitive representation in other LIWs to draw from.

web series +  asexual & ace-spec leads

[middlemarch: the series, the march family letters, away from it all, the blair goddess project, the glad game, the adventures of serena berg, hamlet the dame, all or nothing, the adventures of jamie watson (and sherlock holmes), nothing like the sun]

made possible by @lgbtpluswebseries​‘ list of lgbt+ web series characters [x]

Endless list of webseries femslash ships: 19/?

Roxanne Roberts/Deena, The Adventures of Serena Berg

“I need something that will entrance both guys and girls.”

In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, back in 2013, there was exactly one queer character. He was a side character with an offscreen love interest created solely so that people wouldn’t ship him with Lizzie at that pivotal point in the story.

2014 was when LIWs really took off, and it was also when there were the greatest differences in LGBTQ+ representation (though no one was very good at it yet). Series like Emma Approved and Green Gables Fables (we’re talking Season One here) had none. Other series, like From Mansfield With Love, made a side character who didn’t have a love interest be gay. So far, no one was really gender-bending or reimagining anything to make it gayer.

But Shakespeare is about the gayest off-copyright source material there is, so it was pretty much impossible to correctly adapt Shakespeare and make it end up totally straight.

From our 2017 standpoint, NMTD looks pretty heterosexual, but it was actually about as queer as any LIW can be without departing from the source material (though we’ll get to Twelfth Grade a little later on). Hero’s moms, though absent, are accepted by everyone, as is Balthazar, who is of course very gay despite never using that word in NMTD (The Candle Wasters really don’t like actually saying things, do they?). But it was Pedro’s coming out that really changed the tides. Goodbye queerbaiting, hello to the possibility of onscreen characters entering into non-heterosexual relationships.

2015 was a transition year in many ways. It was no longer acceptable to make an LIW without some form of queer representation, but the methods were all over the place. Some LIWs put a queer pairing center stage – Pedrazar being the prime example, however you feel about LLL – while most series started to create queer side pairings, either through gender-bending or through creating new arcs for the characters. A few examples of this from 2015 would be George Squared from Call Me Katie, Smarling from The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy, and Jamie and Isabella from Northbound. Of course, some LIWs still did LBD-style representation – The Misselthwaite Archives comes to mind – but it was now because the creators wanted queer representation and not because they wanted to avert certain het ships.

Then 2016 happened. We, the viewers, were no longer willing to tolerate entirely cishet shows. 2016 saw the rise of trans and genderqueer LIW characters at long last – Puck in Bright Summer Night and Serena in The Adventures of Serena Berg being the prime examples – as well as multiple characters on the ace spectrum. And with the rise of young, bisexual webseries creators, the number of bisexual characters skyrocketed.

So let’s talk about Twelfth Grade for a minute. I won’t lie and call this series the gayest thing I’ve ever seen, but it is probably the biest. All three of the leads are bisexual, and no one is straight. Literally no one. And no matter who you shipped, it was likely a possibility if not a reality. Again, this was made possible by the source material, which is just about the biest thing ever written, and by the new LIW atmosphere, which was demanding – and getting – the queer representation that just doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Gender-bending skyrocketed in 2016, both with side characters and with mains. And now, in 2017, cishet characters are starting to be the minority. The Emma Agenda and Middlemarch: The Series, my two favorite currently-airing LIWs, have both gender-bent logically and competently all over the place in order to keep canon mostly intact while also making it much, much more diverse. Very few current LIW ships are m/f, and of those, even fewer characters are completely heterosexual.

We’ve come a long way since the days of LBD. and we couldn’t have gotten here without a lot of hard work and thinking and the bravery to tell stories the way we wanted them told. I’m not saying heterosexuality should vanish from LIWs, but I think that the direction we’ve come in is the right one. When a series like NLTS or MMTS gives the same amount of drama to queer pairings as to straight ones, when characters like Roxanne Roberts or Bathsheba Everdeen struggle with their identities in relatable ways, it normalizes every part of the human experience and continues to make LIWs the most representative form of media I know.

While I know I skipped a lot of important moments and didn’t mention several very diverse series, I used examples that I hope most people will be familiar with and that won’t be too spoilery. 

Hello there! Here are some cool web series (webseries?? Ugh I can’t decide if it’s one word or two. The struggle continue) that you should watch! Here’s the what & the why: 

Middlemarch: The Series: 

“Middlemarch: The Series” is a modernized vlog-style web series adaptation of George Eliot’s “Middlemarch.” 

This show is a delight. It has an innovative format (vlog + documentary), it is beautifully filmed with a gr8 aesthetic, and it’s a story you can really sink into. Right now I’m hearing Billie’s words about how it’s difficult to define what you like about a piece of art. I’m trying here! There’s also a lot of ANGST and FEELINGS and I’m LIVING for it. 

The Emma Agenda

"The Emma Agenda" is a modern adaptation of "Emma" by Jane Austen, created by Quip Modest Productions.”

This is a real fresh and fun take on Emma! I don’t wanna spoil it but the way *certain things* are being adapted is fantastic and it’s charming and cute and I can’t wait for the Emma/Jordan relationship to really blossom. Eep! Plus, I mean, it’s another series by Queen Jules. So. 

Away From It All

“A modern web series adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 'Far from the Madding Crowd', told in a multimedia format.”

Okay I am definitely biased because I worked on this show but it has a special place in my heart, ok?? The setting of fictional Weatherbury is its own characters in the show; it feels like a real place that you can visit just by watching Liddy’s vlogs or Gabe’s Facebook videos to his friends. The characters are wonderfully flawed and interesting and if you’re looking for a wee bit of drama, you’ll find it in AfitA. 

Horizons 

“Horizons is an original young adult web series created by the collaborating young creators at Betwixt Productions.”

This. Show. The writing is TOP NOTCH, the romance is sweet, the characters are funny and complex. While it feels like a YA dystopian novel, the issues that are discussed are (unfortunately) very relevant to real life right now. Basically, Horizons made me feel all the feels. Plus the costumes and makeup are really cool! 

The Adventures of Serena Berg

“A new LGBTQ+ literary webseries based on Cyrano de Bergerac.”

Roxanne is an adorable nerd and I love her and if you watch the show for anything watch it for Roxanne. Or Serena, who describes herself as “your favorite transgender asshole.” As you can tell, she is sassy AF which I always appreciate. AND it takes place at college which is my fave setting. Bonus: the closed captions are a hoot. 

Ellipses

“ELLIPSES is an original sci-fi webseries about love, friendship, and the scientific method, told through the main character's in-universe vlogs.”

This is such a fun (and funny!) original series. Science + time travel + feelings = love. (This is not a proven statement. I don’t know how to do the science good. Sorry, Dot.) I’ve learned a lot of science-y things while watching this, and Dot is one of those characters you want to slap/shake and hug at the same time. 

The Better Strangers

“The Better Strangers is a web series adaptation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It and is the sequel to ‘A Document of Madness’.”

So I know this is a sequel to ADOM, but I actually haven’t watched that one yet! Still, this series stands on its own. It’s fun and college-y and also touches on important topics like abusive relationships. Rose and Orlando are unabashedly my faves, and I wish Orlando’s vlog wasn’t fictional. Plus: lightsabers!!