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In case anyone is confused or in doubt: I fully support Queer-Coded by @deathbybadger. I made the image used for the cover and one more image that hasn't been revealed yet. I don't know what the book contains, but years of collaboration and friendship mean I trust him implicitly.
I actually pitched the ideas to Ollie, not the other way around. We talked gleefully about pushing designs, including discussing examples of queer-coded villains that were offensively stereotypical. We cackled together, we plotted. I went off and designed.
And I've loved every second of working on this art. Because it's silly in its gayness, it wears it on its sleeve (er, eyestalks).
Queer-coding didn't start because the cishets were aiming to villify us. It started because queer-coding villains was the only way to sneak in (otherwise illegal) queer representation.
Many of us grew up seeing ourselves in those villains, who live on the fringes and see society differently, who walk to the beat of their own drum and give no fucks that they don't fit in.
There's a reason tieflings are so popular in 5e among queer folx, and it's not because they're "evil" or "demonic," but because they're seen as misunderstood outcasts. It's something many of us relate to.
Queer (or queer-coded) villains often exist on a different scale to villains that stick to heteronormative tropes. Their goals are small, confined to a community, a search for power or revenge. And because of that, their motives are often more nuanced, their morals more grey.
A book of queer villains is not a list of gays to kill. It's a tome full of NPCs to let your players explore, to spar with, to foil or ultimately to assist.
I haven't read it, but I don't need to, to know what Ollie has in mind.
I haven't read it, but I don't need to, to know what Ollie has in mind.
Thanks to Uncaged and countless other books, D&D has evolved beyond just "meet villain, kill villain." Especially on the DMs Guild. To say otherwise is ingenuous and disrespectful to the years of hard work of countless creators, many of them queer.
