Stop reading this website and read Elfquest instead.
You don't know how serious I am. Long-running, independently-published fantasy/adventure comic Elfquest is free to read, online, on the official website, run by the author and artist team Wendy and Richard Pini. The same team that started writing it in 1978 and still does today. Everything I am about to tell you you can just go see for yourself, on the official page, for free, with the creators' blessing.
At least read the original quest. It's not THAT long.
Completely thorough. The Weird Sex in Elfquest is a fully realized and workable system.
Highly important. Several b-plots and a few a-plots revolve around the Weird Sex. It is so integrated into the soul of Elfquest that you would not even be wrong to start your pitch for Elfquest by calling it the 'sex-positive, queer-friendly, polyamorous Elf Comic,' which is how I pitch it.
It's weird! It's not Cenobite-weird, but there are several aspects of Elf Sex that are absolutely embedded into Elfquest and which do not exist/are not possible for humans on planet earth.
Elfquest is personally very important to me, it had significant cultural relevance in the comics world, and its 4-decade+ run has enabled the Pinis to get gayer and gayer with it as time goes on. What began as little hints of Homosexual Elf Activity in the mid-eighties are now beautifully, shamelessly full-blown. Thank you and thank God, Wendy and Richard Pini.
The elves of Elfquest live in small, diverse elf-societies on a planet dominated by caveman-age humans, who are afraid of the magical powers and stunning ethereal beauty of the elves. It is because they have to hide from the savage humans that the elf tribes have such low populations... and for one other reason. They can only reproduce through Recognition.
Recognition (always capitalized, which is a fantastic sign) is the magical and biological process through which elves 1. find life-mates (spouses) 2. have children 3. occasionally ruin the lives of everyone around them. You can have sex without Recognition (more on that later), but, for most elf tribes, you need Recognition to reproduce.
But what IS it? The text beautifully explains it as "heart meets heart when eyes meet eyes!" What happens is that two elves see each other. Maybe it's their first meeting. Maybe they met long ago, but now, on re-meeting, they are new people. Maybe they are exes who thought they broke it off forever. Maybe they are life-long friends that suddenly see each other anew. But they see each other again, and this time, they know. They feel Recognition: the overwhelming urge to have sex. Immediately. Passionately.
It's more involved even that I'm making it sound. Elfquest elves can converse in each other's heads, those mental conversations can change ro even harm someone physically, they can magically heal and change form; their magic gives them power over each other's bodies. When two elves Recognize, they find themselves physically, psychically bound, and only intercourse frees them of the intense hyperawareness of each other. Whether they they develop a steady relationship or go their own ways afterwards varies, but they are altered by their Recogniztion of each other whatever they chose after the fact. And almost any possibility of what could happen after the fact is explored in canon: Recognized mates that Recognize several times and have several children, friends who suddenly Recognize and reproduce in old age, enemies who fight Recognition as long as they can before fucking absolutely nasty, using the sexy sexy healing magic of a sexy healer to induce Recognition in a bonded couple that can't seem to Recognize. This place has everything.
Two things--yes, they can have sex without Recognition, and do that all the time. Barring some tribal differences (and fuck yes does the text get into how different tribes have slight biological differences that effect how fertile their members are, how often they fuck, how they fuck, and any other horny D&D player detail you would like to get into), most elves do have 'love-mates' and 'life-mates' (the difference is commitment) that they have sex with, it's just unlikely to end up with a child. Recognition comes with the assurance of a child and a higher liklihood of bonding for life, making it this sort of interesting sexual intensifier that is not proper soul-bonding but an intense experience that is life-altering... if you want it to be.
Second thing--wait, let me bold this.
Even though Recognition is literally, texually meant for having children, it still does happen to same-sex couples.
Here are a few panels of the cental protagonist Recognizing his male best friend when they're both elf-teens, sloppily edited together so you can get some of the effect:
Other than Recognition, there are a few fun things worth mentioning! One, Elfquest is gleefully polyamorous. The main protagonist has a wife, and a guy best friend he fucks, and also a completely different bonded male-female couple that he and his wife fuck together sometimes. They even pass the Bechdel test on that one as Leetah and Nightfall are seen talking (and amorously embracing each other) independently! Leetah still sometimes bangs her ex-boyfriend who has several other partners and you bet your ass they all have several partners too. Elves are immortal and nearly ageless, so it's totally possible that the daughter of someone you once knew intimately might grow up to be your lifemate someday. Who knows? It's Elfquest!
And like I said above, as the years wore on and it became more acceptable, Elfquest became gradually more queer. I tell people that Elfquest elves are 'standard bisexual', and while there's more nuance than that, it is BROADLY correct. In the most recent arcs there are more clearly queer characters and relationships. Cae in point, the wild and winding road to Elfquest's most stable male/male relationship, Dart and Mender, who have been hanging out independently in closely connected plotlines with multiple other partners spanning literally decades of print and have finally crashed together, has been an absolute treat to watch and would take me several lengthy paragraphs to explain if I were pretending I even could, and it truly makes me feel how much the team have wanted at least one of these character to be explicitely queer all along and they're finally in a world that can handle it.
It's just really nice to see (though I, too, have my complicated feelings about what this does to the Mender/Ember/Teir threeway potential which I will put aside).
Thanks again, Wendy and Richard Pini. I am yours to command.
