As Pride Month draws to a close, we also want it to go out with a bang—of rainbow glitter confetti. Last year’s Pride was all about The Babadook. Which surprising characters are carrying on his rainbow mantle?Over at Racked, Rebecca Jennings wrote a brilliant response to a skeevy review of Incredibles 2 that turns into a celebration of Elastigirl: “May Elastigirl forever be inaugurated into the sexy queer character canon — right alongside Waluigi, Hela, the Babadook, and Ursula.”Waluigi’s been in the news recently for his unjust exclusion from Nintendo’s new Super Smash Bros. But is he a true member of the “sexy queer character canon,” or is he just a blank slate for us to project our various fantasies and interpretations onto? In a collection of “Critical Perspectives on Waluigi,” Jenny Powell argues for a queer reading of our favorite underdog: “Waluigi is the negative stereotype: the cowardice curdles to malice and spite, the cuddly curves become jutting sharp edges – he is aggression without machismo.” He’s also, hands-down, the best character in Mario Kart. And he does wear that jumpsuit with a lot of flair.Where Waluigi is a spiky anomaly in the round cheerful world of Mario, there’s another video game universe that seems really, really queer, through and through: Zelda. In a delightful twitter thread, Adam Moussa (@adamjmoussa) wrote “a list of indisputably queer characters in the Legend of Zelda series.” A few of our favorites:
Of course, queer readings of characters who are canonically straight or undefined are fine, but they’re not true representation. Check out Autostraddle’ssummer TV preview, this list from them, and BuzzFeed’s list of Books You Need To Read During Pride Month, According To LGBT Authors. (They’re good to read year-round.) And of course, we’ve got you covered right in here at Serial Box: Autostraddle calls our own Tremontaine “a Paradise of Queerness and Chocolate” and “the gayest thing I have ever read in my life.”
via GIPHYHappy reading, and happy Pride!P.S. Lucky timing! Season one of Tremontaine is on sale for just $1.99 through July. Click here to get your copy at this relatively insane price!
