which is notable in that the onstage deaths happen mostly to characters who are understood as het, or whose sexuality we don't know. Meanwhile all the characters who are explicitly gay/coded as gay survive the book just fine, if I remember correctly.

The Mask of Apollo is my favorite novel by Mary Renault. I have a talismanic copy—it's not the one from the used book store in Provincetown, because I gave that one to Dr. Fiveash, but it's a library discard I've had since high school. I keep vaguely wanting to write a poem about Axiothea, but I'd need to differentiate her from Renault's version. There's very little known about her historically.

The other one is The Silver Metal Lover, in which Gay Best Friend is kind of one-dimensionally campy but does make it to the end of the book alive and well after having had a sex life and all.

Clovis! I forgive him a lot for being seventeen and nowhere near as world-weary as he tries to sound. He's getting much better at friendship by the end of the book.

but the mainstays are Dirk and Duck from the Weetzie Bat series, and the title characters from Violet and Claire, and most of the characters in the short stories in Girl Goddess #9.

Okay, that's cool. I've read much less Francesca Lia Block than most people in my age/reading bracket, so thanks for the recommendations!

Tom and Carl from the Wizards books by Diane Duane--well, I know they're secondary mentor characters, but it would have been easy for Duane to kill one or both of them and send the protagonists out for revenge. Instead of which, they're still standing while many other secondary characters have bitten the dust.

Tom and Carl rock. And since I haven't read any of the novels past A Wizard Abroad, I'm glad to know they're still around!

So I'm conflicted. Do you ever feel this conflict?

I describe myself as queer; it's accurate. I also answer to bisexual. I am interested in people and that includes genderqueer people, but bi erasure is a thing and let's not have any more of it, thanks.

[edited for runaway italics]

I'm trying to figure out if it's OK for me to refer to people/characters as queer, or if I'm going to sound clueless or like a bigot if I do that.

I can't answer that question categorically. I can tell you that I won't assume you have suddenly transmuted into the Christian right if you use the word around me. There's always "quiltbag."