Ever wanted to see how your favourite lez/bi characters connect? Well, now you can ✨
BY SOPHIE GRIFFITHS
If you thought Alice had a hard job connecting all the lez/bi happenings in The L Word’s queer LA community, think again. Clémence Massimi has somehow completed the most mammoth task ever in lez/bi history *probably*.
Say hello to The Chart. It’s a brand new website which shows how every queer female character from a TV show can be linked to others. On top of that, The Chart is a great tool to discover new shows with queer female characters, or to discover all the other queer roles that an actress you like has played.
The creator of the chart, Clémence said: “They say it’s a small world… well so is the world of TV shows, especially when it comes to the queer female characters that are in it!”
Of course it is a nod to the famous chart created by Alice Pieszecki in The L Word, which used to connect queer women from Los Angeles, based on who had slept with whom. However, the world of queer TV is a whole lot bigger.
The project started quite simply: it was a prop idea for a photoshoot with actress Rachel Shelley (Helena Peabody in The L Word) during a TV show convention in 2017. The Chart was then just a little design connecting several TV show characters, printed on a large piece of cardboard.
Then some more characters were added, and the goal was to get it autographed by other actors who had played queer roles during other conventions.
While this paper version got signed, more and more characters were added to the digital version of The Chart, which was built in Illustrator.
Many fans at conventions gave positive feedback regarding The Chart, which then led to its publication on Twitter. But the updates were becoming more and more complicated using the software, so the idea to turn it into a website emerged.
The website was also built to be interactive: the user can zoom in or out of The Chart and move in it with the mouse, but you can also move the names of the characters, click on them to get more information, select all the characters from a show at a time, etc.
Someone you think should be on the chart missing? Let them know! Not every existing queer character is on the chart yet. It’s a long-term job and new characters will be added on a regular basis, so watch this space and keep the connections coming.
Follow updates on the project over at @thechartdotnet on Twitter and head over to the website for your very own fictional WLW bible. 👩❤️💋👩
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