JRA Podcast Episode 23 – Queer Fans vs Corporate Media

Join Chris, Ronnie, and Alex as they travel the rainbow road to queer fandom, and discuss growing up queer, why fictional characters carry huge meaning to LGBTQIA+ people and allies, and how it all clashes with the current corporate media environment. We discuss how current companies that produce animation have done well, and…not so well at representation. It’s a lively discussion!

 

Content warning: We discuss many topics related to recent harm against queer people by Disney, JK Rowling, etc.
In the episode, we forgot to mention a book series that is near and dear to many queer readers from the ’90s, and that is the Tortall series by Tamora Pierce. The series begins with the “Song of the Lioness” quartet, followed by “The Immortals” quartet, and then the “Protector of the Small” quartet, with other books in the overall series as well.  Tamora Pierce also wrote the “Circle of Magic” series, which features several queer characters as well!
You can listen to several of these over at the Fantasy Audiobook Channel!

The Immortals 

All the orphaned Daine wants when she comes to Tortall is a job. What she finds is magic in many forms, an ongoing war with creatures from legends and nightmares, a new home and, eventually, her unknown father.  Hired by the Queen’s Riders to help with their horses, she learns her knack with animals is a rare magic which helps her to communicate with the animal kingdom.  With that discovery she becomes the student–then friend and sometimes protector–of the great mage Numair. He also helps her to develop her second magical skill, the ability to sense the presence of the immortals, fabled creatures who have come to mortal lands after a long imprisonment.  All these changes in Daine’s life bring her new human friends as well as animal ones: Tortall’s rulers, Alanna the Lioness, the heir to the throne of imperial Carthak, a pygmy marmoset, and the badger god. Often she comes into contact–and sometimes conflict–with Stormwings–half human, half steel birds; dragons; spidrens–giant furred spiders with human heads and an appetite for human flesh; griffins; and the clawed, winged horses called hurroks.  Daine is kept on the move as she grows into adulthood and her power, coming to terms with her world and her strange, mixed parentage.
Set in a different universe than Tortall, this quartet centers around four unusual young mages. Sandry, a noble whose parents died recently, has power with thread, from spinning and weaving to simple knot-tying. Daja, a Trader, is the only survivor of a shipwreck in which her family drowned. Declared to be bad luck and banned from life with other Traders, she is free to learn to work metals and, through metal, to work magic. Tris, the merchant’s daughter, is no orphan, but her family doesn’t want her. Briar is a street rat, a thief and convict. Only at the temple city of Winding Circle does he learn that his strange love of growing things is more than a need to garden.  Brought together in a house inside the temple city’s walls, watched over by the mages Lark, Rosethorn, Frostpine, and Niko, the four struggle to be friends, to exercise their magic, and to survive. Each book centers on one of the four, but make no mistake: they are bound tightly together, and the events that affect each of them also strengthen their connections to one another.

Find Alex on Twitter @paperdollprince
– Play their dress up games over at https://paperdollprince.itch.io/ 
* * *
Discover more! Join Chris Kanther, Ronnie Delmar, and the Circle of Friends as they explore the world of the 1995/1996 animated series Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders. Subscribe to our PodBean #podcast: https://jewelridersarchive.podbean.com/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.