Welcome back, and happy Pride Month! I’m so thrilled to present this year’s Pride Month Horror Spotlight! I’ve asked a group of amazing LGBTQ+ authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life? The answers are of course just as incredible as the authors themselves!
So without further ado, here’s part one in our Pride Month horror roundtable!
JESSICA GLEASON: I thought about this, pressing myself to find something poetic to say. As a teen, soaking in the more adult horror, representation was sporadic at best. Often, the queer character was the monster, a big reveal to villainize the othered. We didn’t have Mindy Meeks, a cynical horror-loving nerd, whose queerness is part of the whole. She’s a real girl instead of a plastic token. No Cole and Rust, gay heroes, not victims. For me, Willow Rosenberg is a standout, her sexuality fluid as she moves from her longing for Xander Harris to her relationship with the wolfish Oz and onto her love affair with Tara Maclay. She was imperfect and, at times, downright awful. I would never call her a role model or something to aspire to, but she represented possibility. Choice. Never once did I question her varied tastes, each partner made sense as she let her heart and not gender guide her romantic entanglements. Is she my favorite, though? No. That spot belongs to the alluring and unhinged Dr. Frank-N-Furter. So much of my youth and tastes were, in some way, a reflection of Tim Curry’s version of the character. Black clothing. Dramatic makeup. Tattoos. And, a love for Brads and Janets everywhere. “Don’t dream it. Be it.”
KASSIDY VANGUNDY: I know it’s a little basic, but my favorite queer character from a horror film is Jennifer Check from Jennifer’s Body. Although I’m probably more of a “Needy” myself, Jennifer and her gorgeous succubus ways had me rooting for her throughout the entire movie. It was so camp and transgressive. Her iconic “I go both ways” line made teenage me flip out as one of the few openly out queer kids at my Midwestern high school. Suddenly, I felt affirmed as a fellow bisexual femme who also had a bit of a toxic crush on one of her best friends at the time – a hallmark of queer adolescence really.
C.R. LANGILLE: I didn’t really become active in the LGBTQIA+ community until I hit my 40s after I transitioned. It was during this time that my egg broke, and when it did, it hit me like a cannonball. So, I don’t have a lot of influential queer characters that were a huge influence or that have changed my life. I will say, watching I Saw the TV Glow and what the character, Owen, endured by staying closeted was heavy to watch and a reminder of what a possible future could look like when hiding that side of yourself.
I am happy to see that queer horror is really starting to stand on its own two feet now. Representation matters, and seeing so much trans and queer horror coming out from different authors and presses has helped fill my little dark heart with love. I hope to see the trend continue to grow as more and more folks feel comfortable writing the stories that they need and want.
SIAN PENNY: Let’s talk about how entirely I vibe with Alexia from Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021). Not that I have all that much in common with a lesbian serial killer who gets herself pregnant with a cyborg baby after having sex with a custom car and goes on the run by pretending to be a dead teenaged boy. But the thing about Titane is that it’s not really a film about a genderfucky transhuman psychopath, it’s really a film about how genderfucky transhuman psychopaths are still human beings who absolutely, completely can be loved and adopted with a pure, unconditional fervour.
And in the eyes of so many people we’re monsters and we receive the treatment that people think are due to monsters. Many of the worst people in the cishet world have people who love them. So why don’t we get that?
Alexia is a messy, spiky character, who doesn’t conform to any idea of “good representation” — but that’s a domesticated idea anyway. Alexia is a monster, but she’s one of the most authentically human monsters in cinema. And people like us need that.
CHLOE SPENCER: For me, it’s gotta be Deena Johnson from The Fear Street trilogy. She’s badass, resourceful, and unapologetically queer. What’s also significant about Deena is that she’s a major queer character that’s headlining an entire trilogy. Yes, technically the 2nd and 3rd films focus on other characters, but she’s present throughout each of the films and is ultimately the one that propels the action throughout the interconnecting story. It’s refreshing to have a character who is confident in her sexuality and who she is.
SARAH GRAVEN WEIR: Having grown up in the nineties, Tara Maclay in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first queer character I truly remember seeing on television. A shy outsider with a gentle soul, Tara stood out to me because she felt different from the louder
female characters often portrayed. She was soft-spoken, emotionally intelligent, awkward, kind, yet quietly powerful, and she carried a strength that didn’t rely on toughness or clichés. Her relationship with Willow Rosenberg gave viewers a chance to see themselves reflected in horror during a time when queer representation still felt rare. As someone still
trying to figure things out, Tara resonated with me because she felt believable rather than
exaggerated or performative.
I’ve always found outsider characters far more intriguing, particularly within gothic and supernatural horror because they often carry vulnerability and more hidden depth beneath
the surface.
Although I wasn’t keen on the way Tara’s story ended, especially during a time when
queer characters rarely received happy endings, her death became a turning point for
Willow’s darker storyline surrounding grief and addiction. Even so, Tara’s impact lasted long
after the show itself ended. She also helped challenge stereotypes that not all queer people
look or behave the same, and opened the door for more layered LGBTQ+ characters within
the horror genre.
During my final years at school, I also had the pleasure of meeting Amber Benson at a
signing in Forbidden Planet in Birmingham, UK, which made Tara feel even more
meaningful to me personally.
GAYNOR JONES: Can you say you were in the closet if you didn’t even know you were? The question’s lingered since acknowledging my bisexuality in my 40s, and I thought it often while watching Daniel Molloy in AMC’s Interview With The Vampire adaptation. Here, the interviewer has aged; he’s in his 70s, he’s ill, but sharp, astute. Though perhaps not about his own sexuality. Early episodes give glimpses – in the way he shifts when Louis comes close, and especially the way he gazes at Rashid. Indeed, when Louis feeds on Rashid in front of him, Daniel wonders what he tastes like.
Daniel’s sexuality is more explicit in flashbacks, where young Daniel tells Louis, “I mean, if something happens, you know, I’m cool”, then removes his shirt to “[fulfill his] side of the social contract” with an expectant grin wide on his face.
I kissed girls when I was younger, I collected clippings of female celebrities, paused and rewound certain films at certain times – but I was straight, right? I used to drink heavily then, Daniel did drugs; maybe we were looser, or maybe categories just didn’t occur to us.
Back in the present, when Daniel is jokingly propositioned by Louis, he blinks and swallows but doesn’t answer. He presents as a man who is clearly queer, but amongst openly queer people can’t quite acknowledge it. I think of myself – married to a man, doubted by friends, still in the closet to most people – and I fully understand why I relate to him so much.
HAILEY PIPER: I wracked my brain for a more direct choice, but I can’t deny the Gillman. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a classic, but specifically the third movie in that trilogy, The Creature Walks Among Us, was the one that hit me in a unique way. After a fire burns the Gillman, it’s discovered he has traits that make it possible for him to live on land, and the other characters attempt to make him part of the human world. It goes disastrously because the key theme of the trilogy continues to be: this creature was doing just fine before humans decided they needed to have their way. Much of the movie disgusted me as they try to change the Gillman, and though I didn’t have the phrase as a closeted queer child, it read as conversion therapy. “Who you are, how you are happy, these are wrong. We will make you right.” I’d seen attempts to tame and cage movie monsters before, but I’d never seen attempts to fundamentally change who and what they were until then, and it was disturbing. Perhaps that’s projection to some extent, but that’s just how art works sometimes.
ROBERT LEVY: One of my all-time favorite protagonists is Cass Neary, Elizabeth Hand’s mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know bisexual photographer who first appeared in the novel Generation Loss. I’ve long been attracted to damaged characters, and not only is Cass herself damaged but she also has a preternatural ability to spot this trait in others; in fact, it helps fuel her art.
Hand once described Cass a kind of alternate, frayed version of herself if she’d had her brakes cut, a concept that’s stuck with me over the years. There’s something inherently uncanny about queerness—ostensibly appearing normal, but in fact being different or somehow “off”—and the idea that as writers we can create fictional versions of ourselves on the page with varying fates is a natural extension of this same queer uncanniness.
NICK AUCOIN: While perhaps more horror-adjacent, the first queer character I remember having a big impact on me was Willow Rosenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Watching her character realize that she’s developing feelings for another woman, explore that, come out to other characters on the show, and then grow into a relationship she hadn’t considered before meant a lot to my younger self.
AZZURRA NOX: My favourite queer character in horror is Lestat de Lioncourt from The Vampire Chronicles. I discovered the series when I was thirteen, and up until then I hadn’t really encountered queer characters in the books I read. What made Lestat so important to me was that he existed with complete fluidity in his sexuality. Many people place him under the bi umbrella, and I understand why, but what resonated with me was that he never seemed confined by labels — he simply was who he was.
For me, that was incredibly liberating. I was growing up in a deeply homophobic environment: a Sicilian town and a private American school where being queer was treated like a character flaw. I remember people I considered friends saying things like, “If my child was gay, I’d feel like I failed as a parent,” or reacting to Madonna and Britney’s MTV kiss by calling it “disgusting.” Against that backdrop, Lestat felt radical. He was unapologetic, expressive, and entirely free in the way he loved and desired.
That freedom shaped the way I think about sexuality myself — as something fluid rather than rigid or boxed into a single label. While “bi” is probably the closest term for me, what I connected to most in Lestat was his refusal to be limited by definitions.
SUMIKO SAULSON: Like many young goths in 1983, at fifteen, I was obsessed with vampires. My most recent cinema crushes on Irena Gallier (Natasha Kinski) and Paul Gaullier (Malcolm McDowell) in 1982’s Cat People, made me aware of my bisexuality, but I was still closeted. Then The Hunger hit the big screen. A perfect vehicle for my adolescent fantasies: from the minute the Bauhaus started performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in the opening credits, I was hooked.
It’s a steamy love bloodsucking love triangle where Miriam Blaylock is the hinge. Powerful, sophisticated, immortal, and eternally young, the charismatic Miriam sucks in her human companions with promises of immortality. Once changed, they live for hundreds of years before suddenly, rapidly aging. To our horror, they don’t die. The book’s author Whitley Strieber is heterosexual, as is Catherine Deneuve, who plays Miriam, but both David Bowie, the actor who plays her husband John, and Susan Sarandon, who plays his would-be replacement Sarah, are bisexual.
Because the characters were openly bi, and Bowie was already out at the time, it served as a platform for discussions with friends and family about bisexuality, and I came out to my cousin, Gina, during a conversation about the movie. Sarandon came out as bi many years later.
The AIDS/HIV Pandemic deeply impacted our young lives at the time, and made The Hunger important as a queer cinema of the era. Gay and bisexual men were being prohibited from donating blood, and vampires were an obvious metaphor.
SEREN LEE: As my 2014 Instagram bio can attest (“Don’t Dream It, Be It!”), The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Frank-N-Furter had a life-altering effect on my creative development. Call me Brad and Janet (asshole! slut!), but as a closeted theater kid with a cookie-cutter framework, Tim Curry’s audacity and fishnets embodied a version of authenticity I had never seen before. Though murderous and imperfect, he loves big, loves freely – and it’s that determined self-assurance that infects all mere mortals who dare to enter his castle. May we all stand in our power, follow our desires, and leave the critics shaking with an-tici——pation!
NICOLE GIVENS KURTZ: My favorite queer character in horror that changed my life was when I first watched Ruby Baptiste (played by the astounding Wunmi Mosaku) sing in episode one of Lovecraft Country, I not only fell in love, but also changed my life. Here, for the first time, was a Black woman who wasn’t rail thin, blonde, or racially ambiguous. Ruby was confident and independent, sexy and queer.
Initially, she’s wooed by a white man named William, but she later discovers that it is a disguise for the treacherous white woman Christina Braithwhite. The discovery of the betrayal doesn’t stop their now bisexual relationship. As noted in A Guide to Watching Lovecraft Country, Ruby and Christina’s relationship is intertwined with body horror. When Ruby is temporarily transformed into a white woman to get a taste of privilege she’s missed out on as Black woman, it’s Christina’s potion that provides the means to do so. Her lover grants her wish, but it serves only to remind Ruby of the great width between their stations.
Moreover, it isn’t stated what happened to Ruby at the end of Lovecraft Country. It isn’t necessary, because I know what effect she had on me. Watching Ruby’s fall into her bisexuality was confirming to me. I didn’t discover I was bisexual until I was 24 and falling in love with a woman for the first time. Upon reflection, I realized I’d fallen for women many times before but due to society and religious pressures, I denied them. It wasn’t an open acknowledgment but rather, a “I love this person who happens to be a woman…”
The same was the case with Ruby. She fell for William, but when it was discovered that it was a woman, she still stayed. Because she loved the person, gender didn’t matter.
And for me, it still doesn’t.
And that’s part one of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight. While you’re here, consider checking out part two and part three of our spotlight as well!
Happy reading, and happy Pride Month!