PIHM: My Current 5 Favourite Sapphic Stories by Dee

There are so many awesome stories out there right now focusing on LGBTQIA+ characters! I put together a list of my five fun sapphic stories for this Pride. While some of these are not focused on love or romance, they all feature sapphic leads! Most of these stories fall under the “supernatural” umbrella with some having a focus on horror while one is much more on the sci-fi spectrum. This list is by no means exhaustive or even recent, but I really enjoyed reading or watching them in the past year or so. Apologies if you have encountered these before! I will try to keep all spoilers to as much of a minimum as possible but there are minor ones throughout!

Nevermore

Do you like Dark Academia? Do you like Edgar Allen Poe? Do you like beautiful, creepy artwork? If you answered yes, this webtoon is for you! Nevermore, written by Kit Trace and illustrated by Kate Flynn (Red & Flynn), follows Annabelle Lee and Lenore, two young women who find themselves at the mysterious Nevermore Academy after their deaths. The two clearly are drawn to one another and are hinted to have known one another in life. Any student who can successfully make it past the final exams may be given a second chance at life! With that opportunity on the line, the two begin playing their game as feigned enemies. Annabelle joins the popular crowd and is one of the first students to manifest her “spectre”. Spectres are the alternate ghostly forms students can take and we see a wide array of forms coming from various myths or folktales. Many of the spectre’s forms loosely tie into Poe’s works, with a housecat cryptid recalling the Black Cat or a shadow man taking the form of the Plague Doctor inspired by the Mask of the Red Death. Some spectres are malevolent while others are benevolent and even the good guys’ spectres can be downright devious. We see spectres acting as guardians like Valkyries, chimeras like Baku, demoniac dybbuks, and of course, Annabelle’s White Lady. Lenore, on the other hand, cannot manifest and becomes the ringleader of the outcasts, gaining loyalty and friendship while Annabelle cruelly taunts her. Lenore wonders if Annabelle’s intentions are genuinely in her best interest or if she is just getting played. As the story progresses, we see more spectres, meet other interesting students, and learn about Lenore’s and Annabelle’s pasts. The series is beautifully drawn, and the story unfolds at a good pace, but will these two end up happily ever after or doomed to be apart? I know I’m rooting for them!

Nevermore is currently on episode 64 and can be found here.

Muted

Do you like witches and covens? Do you like when an MC overcomes generational trauma? Muted may be your cup of tea if you said yes!! Muted by Miranda Mundt follows Camille, a witch of the Severin coven, who must perform a summoning ritual alongside her cousin, Avaline. The ritual requires the Severins to summon a type of demon that will grant them any wish. Both Camille and Avaline are expected to use their wishes for monetary gain and obtain an affluent husband, have children, and continue the Severin lineage. However, Camille’s attempt does not go as planned when she summons a plant-based demon instead of the demon type she was expected to contact! She also briefly struggles with fulfilling her family’s expectations when she is a lesbian. Muted features staples of witch stories as we meet the various covens that have special abilities like demon summoning, plant manipulation, elemental manipulation, spiritual communication, and so on. The story takes place in NOLA, and the cast is just diverse enough to feel at home in that region. There is also some nice disability rep in addition to the LBGTQIA+ cast. At the center of this story is family trauma. Camille tries to understand her unique family history and struggles with the help of the plant demon, Dendrobium or Dendro, and another witch from the Dupre coven, Lilinyra or Nyra. These two “ladies” (can a demon be a lady?) are both interested in Camille and offer her their assistance with their magical abilities as well as genuine advice, empathy, and camaraderie. Avaline also has a powerful arc of her own, serving as a sort of deuteragonist to Camille. While the romance is absolutely sapphic and important for Camille’s growth, this story is full of action, drama, and magic. It’s about the ways we can make family as well as inspecting the isolationist divisions between the various witch covens that allowed the family abuse to flourish. The author is also pretty good about trigger or content warnings since there are examples of parental abuse, self-harm, and violence. Muted is a story about breaking the cycle of abuse through friendship, hard work, and love.

This webtoon is completed so feel free to binge read it here!

Yellowjackets

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz! This show is creepy, campy, and queer! Yellowjackets, the “maybe magic, maybe mundane” survival and supernatural horror tale seems to have skyrocketed in popularity by the time its second season premiered. YJs follows the members of a New Jersey High school girls’ soccer team following a plane crash leaving them stranded in the wilderness for over a year. We focus on the events during the immediate aftermath in 1996 as well as the characters in middle age in 2021, where the focus is how the survivors are handling their lives and the lingering trauma from the crash. It's also got cannibalism. That’s the opening scene of the series; the YJs ritually murder a girl before bleeding her, butchering her, cooking and eating her bedecked in a mishmash of ragged 90s clothing, animal furs, antlers, and skins. It’s a wild and entertaining show with many twists and turns, a cast of stars doing amazing work in both timelines, and a rapidly growing fanbase rabidly examining every clue. The ensemble show focuses on four characters as teens and as adults in season 1 and six characters in season 2. Two of the six leads are canonically lesbians with another gay character and potential for other sapphic characters in the 90s timeline. Fans were delighted with canon the pairing of Tai and Van in the teen timeline. The warm reception their coming out received in universe filled many with queer joy as coming out in the mid-90s may not have been as easily accepted in reality. Fans wonder what eventually leads to their falling out as Tai is married to another woman, Simone, in the adult timeline. There are also many fics out there about other potential pairings. Shoutout to all the LottieLee, Lottie x Nat, and/ or Jackie x Shauna fans & fanfic authors. Quite a few members of the cast are in the LGBTQIA+ community or are staunch allies. This show is a blast and a good watch for anyone who likes female led or puzzle box shows! Another show with canon sapphic characters and a similar premise in theory but is very different in practice/ execution was Prime’s original series The Wilds.

Yellowjackets S1 and S2 can be streamed on Showtime.

First Kill

I feel like this show has probably been seen by most sapphic fans already, but I had to talk about it since I was away last summer when it first aired on Netflix. First Kill follows Lettie/ Juliette Fairmont, a vampire, and Cal (Calliope Burns), a vampire hunter, as they both try to make their first kills, duh! This show is cheesy, goofy, and great fun. I loved the Romeo x Juliet style melodrama of teen romance and how we get a strong focus on both Cal’s family of hunters and Lettie’s vampire family. The focus given to the hunter family is particularly interesting as I feel these types of shows tend to spend more time with the vampire side of the story. The girls’ siblings and parents have minor storylines of their own, including the deliciously sociopathic vampire big sis, Elinor, and the competitive but ultimately loving dynamic of Cal’s older brothers, Apollo & Theo. Both Lettie and Cal must navigate through their desire for one another and the troubles their relationship have caused their families. Expect shoddy special effects and nonsensical plots as a backdrop to the love story and supernatural antics! First Kill generated a lot of discussion as it seemed to be quite popular, but was not renewed for a second season. I’ve seen some lament losing another sapphic show, when the streaming giant had failed to renew I Am Not Okay With This, and occurred around the same time that Prime announced cancellation of two of their sapphic shows, The Wilds and Paper Girls. Others were sad to lose the rep of Cal, a dark-skinned lesbian lead, and how the show portrayed the tight-knit Burns family compared to the squabbling, manipulative Fairmont family. If somehow you missed this show, it’s still worth a watch if you are a fan of campy, teen romances! The showrunner is hopeful it may get picked up somewhere else since it has a passionate fanbase.

First Kill is available on Netflix.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

If you enjoyed the bride/ groom duels of Utena plus giant robots, revenge, and political machinations, you might enjoy the latest installment of the Gundam franchise. This story focuses on Suletta Mercury, a trainee gundam pilot from Mercury, and Miorine Rembran, a wealthy Spacian girl (someone who is from a space colony) once they meet at Asticassia Academy, a technologically advanced school catering to the children of CEOs of various megacorporations. Miorine’s wealth and political clout makes her a desirable fiancée for the other wealthy Spacian students, who will duel their mechs for the chance to be her fiancée. However, we first meet her as she attempts to flee to Earth and choose her own fate instead of following in her father’s footsteps and becoming the leader of their company. Suletta unwittingly duels her current “holder” (or fiancé) and replaces them, becoming her new fiancé. The two decide to team up so Suletta remains the holder until Miorine turns 18 and can obtain her freedom. Suletta is clearly smitten with Miorine but the latter is a bit harder to read. It’s unclear if Miorine is using Suletta for her own gain but it is implied what began as an engagement of convenience may have led to her falling for the Mercurian girl. The show focuses on their dynamic and the duels between students at first. It branches out though to show the corrupt politicians and brutal capitalists who want Suletta’s gundam for themselves as well as the growing tensions between Earthians, those who were born on Earth, and Spacians. The first season is quite light, but the manipulations, violence, and serious battles ramp up more by the end of S1/start of S2. I hesitated to add this show in since it’s not quite clear if Suletta and Miorine will end up together or how genuine their love is. Some series like this can be infamous for queerbaiting but hopefully this show will commit. Regardless, this is one of the few, if not only, Gundam series to have a female character as the lead.

The Witch from Mercury can be found on Crunchyroll Premium.

There are so many great stories that I could have talked about here, but these were the ones on my mind as I wrote this. I’m always on the lookout for more stories of this nature so please send any recs of your own my way!!!

By Dee

Twitter: @sirenofscience