Would-be players were discussing in the MMO's forums how the game might handle future gay and lesbian relationships - and Bioware freaked out, shutting down those discussion threads and banning the words "gay," "lesbian" and "homosexual." Says community manager Sean Dahlberg:

As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.

Thread closed.

Have these people learned nothing from the World Of Warcraft fiasco a few years ago? [Kotaku]

To make the episode, Gerrold teamed up with the fan crew behind Star Trek: Phase II, a web series that's intended to be the fourth season of the original series. He dusted off his gay-themed script, called "Blood and Fire," and also directed it. Originally, "Blood and Fire" was written for Star Trek: TNG, and approved by series creator Gene Roddenberry, but executives at the network balked. Gerrold says they told him they were worried they'd lose their advertisers because "mommies" would call in to complain that they'd seen gay people on Star Trek.

For the webisode, Gerrold re-wrote the script to bring it up to date with issues like gay marriage, and also to make the characters more openly gay. In the original, they were portrayed as friends - the only hint that they were gay was one character asking them how long they'd been together. In the new version, as you can see in the clip below, there's no question that they're lovers.

The episode is about the Enterprise responding to a distress call, and dealing with scary "bloodworms." It introduces a new character, Peter Kirk, the gay nephew of the captain.

According to AfterElton's Brent Hartinger, who has seen the full episode:

There’s tension between Peter and his famous uncle, who is determined to keep him out of harm’s way, even if it means treating him differently than the other crewmembers. Eventually, Peter reveals the real reason he requested a stint on the Enterprise: to be near his boyfriend, Alex Freeman (Evan Fowler). When the couple make plans to marry, Kirk agrees to officiate, but only “after the away mission” — which may or may not bode well for the future of this relationship . . . The portrayal of Peter and Alex's romantic relationship is treated no differently than any of the dozens of heterosexual relationships the various Star Trek incarnations have included over the decades. Indeed, the storyline is incorporated so naturally as to make the “official” Trek's inexcusable lack of gay characters even more obvious.

The first half of "Blood and Fire" goes online this Saturday on the Star Trek: Phase II website. The second half airs in February.

You can see more images and a longer clip at AfterElton.

Battlestar Galactica
Even though Quiznos is the official sponsor of lesbianism on BSG, which is kind of gross, nobody could watch Six and D'Anna in bed with Baltar without wanting to kick old sweaty-pants out and see our two lovely cylons get busy.

The Man Who Folded Himself, by David Gerrold
Gerrold is the author of the "Trouble with Tribbles" episode of Star Trek, and later he quit ST: TNG in a huff because the show runners had promised him repeatedly that they'd do a gay character but never came through. Instead we got that lame "planet of one gender" episode where the outcasts were people who wanted to make it with an opposite-gendered person. Lame! Anyway, Gerrold wrote this great novel in the early 1970s about a guy who travels though time and eventually meets so many of his alternate selves that they have an orgy. Funny and zippy, this book might make you say, "Hmm . . . is it really gay love if it's with myself?"

Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith
Planet of tough lesbians, packed with cool fight scenes and tribal war and desperate journeys and parthenogenesis. It's every girl's dream.

Liquid Sky A weird 1980s New Wave movie set in Los Angeles, this tale of bisexual artist/fashion models making the club scene is surreal and bizarro and sexy as hell. An androgynous lovely discovers she's being followed by aliens in a tiny spaceship who want to eat people during orgasm. Which for some reason pleases our hero, so she goes around having sex with lots of boys and girls just to watch them disappear when they come. Weird and pretty, this movie is a 10 on the "make you queer" scale.

Zerophilia
A bit of a mess script-wise, Zerophilia nevertheless wins for sheer plucky cuteness. A mutant discovers that he possesses the strange "Z chromosome" which allows him to switch genders when he has an orgasm. But then he's stuck as that gender until he can have sex with another Z. Or something. The point is there are a lot of cute people having gender-bendy sex and doing lots of running around and being pouty-grumpy about their gender-transcending natures. Even though the plot has gaping holes, it will still make you wish you could switch from an innie to an outie once in a while — and then go back again.

Socket
Gay boys get addicted to electricity, and install sockets in their arms so they can plug into each other better. No really, it's hot.

Runaways, by Brian K. Vaughan and Joss Whedon
In this comic book about a team of teen superheroes, Karolina is a lesbian alien with superpowers thrust into an unwanted, arranged betrothal to Xavin the Skrull. When Xavin falls in love with Karolina, he uses his shape-shifter powers to turn into a cute girl. Yay for shape-shifty, tranny lesbian love! OMG srsly awesome as ponies no joke.

Fledgling, by Octavia Butler
This tale of a polyamorous, bisexual mutant/vampire re-discovering her powers after a catastrophic accident is pretty much the most awesome bit of erotic non-erotica ever written. Sadly, Butler died before she was able to write the sequels to this book. Still, just reading about the sexy relationships our heroine creates will make you wonder if maybe going both ways is the right way.

The Man Who Fell To Earth
In this crazy-ass David Bowie flick, there are no queer scenes at all. But Bowie, as an alien who comes to Earth seeking a way to bring water back to his parched planet, manages to make straight sex look somehow queer. He tries to raise a bunch of money by selling alien technology, and then spend that money building a ship that will take him home. Sadly, his plans are derailed and he falls into a life of debauched 1970s sex and alcohol with a lady friend who is only marginally more feminine than Bowie. Which is awesome, thanks.

Enemy Mine
Maybe it's just man-love, or maybe it's kinda gay, but the very intense both that develops between genderless alien Louis Gossett Jr. and macho dude Dennis Quaid on an alien world is definitely full of sparks. Especially when Gossett gets pregnant and Quaid has to protect him and the baby. This movie makes it seem cool for men to "marry" each other, even if they aren't into each other THAT way.

Hey, Happy
A Canadian prairie boy triggers the apocalypse with his lust, and somehow decides that sleeping with 2,000 guys will fix things? I'm confused by the plot, but amused by the boppy surrealism of this sweet homage to apocalyptic teen lust.

Torchwood
This all-bisexual, all-the-time spinoff of Doctor Who has basically been two seasons of the immortal Captain Jack (briefly the Doctor's companion) leading the secret alien-tracking group Torchwood into sex romps in Wales. Queer sex romps. With aliens, or sometimes cross-temporal beings. Come for the sex, try to ignore the awful plotlines, and stay for the sex. It will not only turn you a little queer, it will make you want to go to Cardiff. Which is really perverted.

Orlando
Scaldingly hot Tilda Swinton plays the title character in this adaptation of the time-traveling, gender-bending novel by Virginia Woolfe. Orlando starts out a snotty boy during Queen Elizabeth's reign, mistreats his lady lovers horribly, and grows into a misogynist prick in the 18th Century. Then, abruptly, he turns into a woman. Who has to deal with misogyny, sexual awakening, and war throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Swinton plays boy half and girl half with sexy aplomb, and will definitely tempt you into a little tranny-chasing.

Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin
This is Le Guin's classic gender-bender, homo-sorta novel of the late 1960s. A lone emissary comes to study the society on a planet where nobody has a gender. They go into "kemmer" or heat once in a while and take on gendered characteristics in order to mate. When the emissary gets stuck on a dangerous mission with one of the natives, who suddenly goes from seemingly male into a kemmering female, our hero has to confront his confused feelings about gender and sex. More sociological than sexy, the book will definitely force you to question your assumptions about gender, even if it doesn't turn you queer.

Mysterious Skin, by Scott Heim (also a great movie)
Two boys grow up together in a small Kansas town — only one becomes gay, and the other becomes convinced he's been abducted by aliens. It turns out their two stories are inextricably linked, and only when they finally meet as adults to they figure out the secret of the aliens. The book is haunting and delightful, and the movie version (with Joseph Gordon Levitt) is superb. You can't look at Levitt's broody face and not want to feel a little man-on-man with him for just a nanosecond.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

10. Most of the colors in Speed Racer are sparkly pastels, not the hard reds and butch "gold titanium alloy" of Iron Man. What is this? Queer Eye for the action hero?

9. Speed Racer dresses in a shiny purple suit at one point, and in a scarf at another. He wears a lot of white, and is just as pretty as Trixie, his girlfriend who drives a helicopter and repairs engines in the shop. Gender bending in an action movie not directed by Ridley "G.I. Jane" Scott? Not allowed.

8. Monkeys are gay.

7. When there's a ninja fight, Racer X pulls the ninja's pants off and we see that he's wearing big white boxers with a cute pattern on them. What kind of counter-ninja pulls off the ninja's pants? And what kind of ninja wears big white boxers?

6. One of the semi-good guys, Taejo (Rain), dresses up like a woman as part of an elaborate scheme for revenge. And he looks seriously hot in lady clothes.

5. Which reminds me of director Larry Wachowski, long rumored to be fond of lady clothes himself — or perhaps even on the road to becoming a woman. I can't believe how many people writing about Speed Racer have mentioned Larry's gender. Who the fuck cares about whether Larry is a he or a she or a bug person? Unless you are worried that this movie is too GAY for you.

4. One of the bad guys wears fake snakeskin and yells "ooohhhh!" a lot.

3. Several other bad guys are giant hairy men dressed in furs and Viking helmets. I think some of them might even have been centerfolds in Bear magazine.

2. Trixie's outfit matches her helicopter.

1. Speed loves his mother and is super-nice to his girlfriend. Obviously a homo! A true straight dude would be like Iron Man, obsessing over his dead dad and abusing every woman in his life.

I feel like most yaoi art is fantasy-oriented. Is your work more oriented towards fantasy or science fiction?

A lot of my art is ambiguous as to whether it's fantasy or sci-fi, but I think I gravitate more towards fantasy. Lately I've been doing more steampunk themed art, which I guess falls more into the sci-fi category... So the scifi vs. fantasy might even be around 50-50 at this point. I've often tried to break out of the scifi/fantasy niche and just draw something completely mundane, but I can't seem to manage it.

How big is the yaoi audience in the U.S. now? Is it as big as it is in Japan?

I won't claim to be an expert on the yaoi market. I'm pretty sure the Japanese yaoi market still far surpasses the American created/produced yaoi scene. They've just been doing it longer, and most of our popular yaoi media is imported from Japan. I think many of the bigger publishing houses are not so quick to pick up yaoi as they have been to dive into general audience manga, so that keeps the market small. It's difficult for the small presses to to make it in the business, and that's where most of our American yaoi is coming from - small presses, independant publishers, and self-publishing.

When did you get involved in yaoi art?

I discovered rather early in my teenage years that having two guys together is just hot, so when I first found yaoi on the internet (it is for porn, after all) it was like coming home. I didn't join the yaoi art scene until much later, circa 2004, but it really only coincided with graduating from college and suddenly having more time on my hands. Moving to San Francisco helped also, because that gave me my first chance to attend Yaoi-Con and meet the community in person. Having a group to share the artwork with just gave me more reasons to draw yaoi-themed art.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

In Ken MacLeod's novel Newton's Wake, characters can get a sexual orientation modification if they want to, using various post-human technologies. Often, it's just considered the polite thing to do.

And orientation-bending drugs are a staple of scifi erotica. The short story "Blue" [nsfw] is a classic example. An undercover cop takes a mysterious drug called "blue" that makes her want to fuck anything that moves — including a nice lady porn star.

Our favorite moment in gay-making drugs, however, was an article that appeared in New Scientist several years ago about how sperm is an anti-depressant. In one of those head-clutching moments of scientists talking about shit they know nothing about, the researcher involved in the study, Gordon Gallup, said:

I understand that among some gay males who have anal intercourse, it is not uncommon to attempt to retain the semen for extended periods of time. Suggesting, of course, that there may be psychological effects.

Famous names: John Barrowman, Russell T. Davies, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman

Crunchy goodness: 2

Sights you'll never unsee: Carolyn Chikezie as the "cyberwoman," stalking around in a discofied half-naked version of a Cyberman costume from Doctor Who before getting killed. Runner-up: the scene where Ianto, the cyberwoman's bereaved boyfriend, seduces her murderer Captain Jack, using only a stopwatch and some very odd innuendo.

Life lesson: It's okay to shoot your boss and unleash a time-storm on the human race, if there's even a remote chance of bringing back your long-lost girlfriend.

Most painfully dated moment: The swooping cityscape views and hero-on-rooftop shots looked awesome... on Angel. In general, the show often seems to be straining mightily to drag British science fiction into the 1990s... only seven years too late.

Torchwood.TV - News, Commentary and Secrets