Women are underrepresented in the media — that’s no secret. It should also come as no surprise that queer women are among the most marginalized groups on-screen. To add insult to injury, when they are depicted, they are often tragic symbols instead of fully realized characters.

In recent years, a trope called “bury your gays” has even been coined to describe the recurring pattern in which LGBTQ characters, particularly queer women, are deprived of happy endings in television. Queer characters are being disproportionately killed relative to the deaths of cis, straight characters. “Bury your gays” shows how rare it is for queer relationships to have fleshed out characters with full arcs and fulfilling narratives — instead of serving as expedient vehicles for drama.

With this month’s VOD and web series picks, we seek to slightly tip the balance by showcasing nuanced queer relationships not typically included in mainstream stories. In the intimate animated short “I Like Girls,” four women discuss their lesbian first loves, while “Devi (Goddess)” is a love story about the hurdles that an Indian couple must face when one of them is employed by the other’s family. Finally, our web series pick for this month is “Same Same,” following a group of queer women and their romantic relationships via a dating app.

Here are Women and Hollywood’s VOD and web series selections for October.

VOD

“I Like Girls” (Short) – Written and Directed by Diane Obomsawin

“I Like Girls” is a short animated film by Quebecois author, illustrator, and filmmaker Diane Obomsawin. As an author, many of her works have focused on lesbian first love. Her graphic novel “J’aime les filles” (“On Loving Women”) is a collection of many personal stories from queer friends of Obomsawin, which she made into a short. From the 10 narratives in the book, Obomsawin pulled four for the short — “the most romantic, the funniest, the saddest, and the most autobiographical.” Here, Charlotte, Mathilde, Marie, and Obomsawin herself each discuss their experiments with first love; their stories are depicted through anthropomorphic animal characters. As a result, the simple visuals cut out all of the background noise that would be present in live-action.

Obomsawin emphasized: “It is important for me to show a form of love that is still marginalized in cinema and culture today, but I think I also made a film about first love and emotions to which we can all identify.” Surprisingly, these anthropomorphized animals do this work of making her stories all the more intimate and emphatic. In only eight minutes, the film manages to touch upon the heartwarming, the heartbreaking, and the tiny nuances of first love. The attention to detail about the eroticism and confusion of sexual awakening is both a comfort and a joy to see.

“I Like Girls” has screened at more than 40 film festivals. It has won eight awards, including the Grand Prize for Independent Short Film Animation at the 2016 Ottawa International Animation Festival.

You can watch “I Like Girls” on YouTube.

“Devi (Goddess)” (Short) – Written and Directed by Karishma Dev Dube

In “Devi (Goddess),” Devi (Priyanka Bose) is a young woman living in her upper-middle-class home in India. Her secret: a relationship with her family’s housemaid, Tara (Aditi Vasudev), in a country where homosexuality is still criminalized and opposed.

Writer-director-producer Karishma Dev Dube expressed that she wanted to make a short that unpacked the familial relationships fostered between families and the domestic help in India. Not only does the short explore a queer relationship, it also questions the boundaries between employer and employee, particularly when Tara’s mother, Lata (Tanvi Azmi), becomes aware of the intimacies between her daughter and Devi.

Dev Dube is an Indian filmmaker based in New York who was introduced to the craft through her production assistant work on documentaries and independent films. She is currently a thesis MFA student at NYU. By writing a film about class and sexuality removed from Western influence, Dev Dube explores the dynamics of tradition and their power from a different, nuanced perspective. This short is a must-watch thanks to its challenging script, strong performances, and lush cinematography.

“Devi (Goddess)” has been shown at film festivals including the BFI London Film Festival, LA Film Festival, Palm Springs International ShortFest, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Check out “Devi (Goddess)” on Seed&Spark.

Web Series

“Same Same” – Created by Lauren Augarten

In the web series “Same Same,” three queer women — Emily (Kelly Sebastian), Aviva (series creator Lauren Augarten), and Sam (Alisha B. Woods) — all interact through a dating app called Same Same. The series tracks not only their romantic and sexual relationships, but extends to their circle of friends as they all navigate the complicated worlds of intimacy — romantic, Platonic, and otherwise.

Augarten’s experience resembles that of her character, who is just entering the queer dating scene. “When I first started dating women, this whole new world, this whole new culture opened up to me,” she said in an interview. Because of this, Augarten tried to find all of the queer content about women she could to learn more — but was disappointed to find that there wasn’t much out there. As such, “Same Same” was created partly as a response to this paucity of queer women’s narratives on-screen.

Further, Augarten noted that “Same Same’s” cast and crew is mostly queer people, and that the improvised nature of the show is therefore heavily influenced by real experiences. She also argued that putting content made by and for an underserved community behind a paywall was counterintuitive — so they have released it online for free. There’s therefore simply no excuse to not start binge-watching this charming series as soon as possible.

Watch all episodes of “Same Same” on Vimeo.