#historical fiction but make it gay

[samuelsimauthor]

New Art Prints Listed. It took longer than expected to do all the product photos for the books, but they WILL be up by the end of this weekend. COMMENT OTHER ARTISTS YOU WOULD LIKE PRINTS FROM (Public Domain Only)

Van Gogh Art Prints

[prolibytherium]

Reverse is like when a (historical-ish or not) fantasy setting kind of implies itself to have a homophobic or misogynist societal outlook where like you get characters talking About being isolated or unaccepted for their romantic/sexual interests or how they're meant to be more than a housewife or etc, but you never really see much societal enforcement of these norms whatsoever beyond the broadest strokes of 'marriage is between men and women and women are supposed to be housewives, probably?'. Like it's just a vast open space for readers to project homophobia and misogyny on, but lacking in any real exploration or engagement.

Like I'm not saying like 'put in a gaybashing' and it doesn't have to be (and probably Shouldn't be) 24/7 pain and suffering and anguish, but if you want arcs about characters struggling with their sexuality or marginalized gender roles there should probably be more than just a loose implication of something they have to struggle Against.

[cosmic-walkers]

sometimes, i wanna talk about how Gregory cromwell was probably a closeted gay man, and was charged with buggery for more than likely being caught with a man, and the irony of the buggery act being pushed into parliament/law and more than likely drafted by his own father, thomas cromwell.

but then i'll have to deal with people trying to argue down and claim that, 'actually buggery didn't just mean sodomy, it meant cheating/rape/etc, so gregory wasn't gay he was just a rapist'.

and while cheating on your wife with a man wasn't an ideal thing to do, i do think there is more evidence leaning toward that, than rape/adultery - as rape/adultery would've more than likely been recorded and brought up explicitly, especially during the downfall of the cromwell family. i would go more into this, but i just dont have time.

whereas, it would make a lot more sense if a gay relationship was hidden because a.) this was thomas cromwell's son, and that would shame the family and b.) thomas cromwell, who came up with the buggery act - England's first unofficial anti-sodomy law - would not want anyone to know that his son was actually gay lol.

and the buggery act wasn't officially recognized as an anti-sodomy law until years later, however, it was basically viewed as such as it was drafted, because it did go after gay people in england.

i always thought thomas did it specifically to go after the catholic church, but never actually realized how it could impact his own son because well...he didn't know

[timelordian-disaster-126]

Something a lil different, some new original characters of mine that have been cooking in my head for a few days 👀

ALSO, HAPPY PRIDE EVERYONE!

New trope is dropping now because I said so, Dragon and Unicorn trope.

Can I explain this trope? Yes and no, am I going to? No, I wanna see what people make of it 👀

Their names are Eira (the fair haired one) and Noma (the short haired one) <3

I'll add more information to this and repost it when I get more proper research done for them! I've ALWAYS wanted to make more historically accurate characters, and I honestly adore the concept of these 2 sm-

Lemme know what you guys think!

[drinkthemlock]

just showed the first small draft of my br regency story to my teacher and he said: “well i think you need to reforce how problematic slavery is more often”. hello???? one would think the reader knows that slavery and sexism and racism and ableism are bad without the author having to tell them again and again! omg

[noahhawthorneauthor]

ah I better figure out what college these characters teach at, let's check out what programs were available in the US in 1930 for their respective fields

four hours later, researching lgbtqia history in Philadelphia and delightfully learning what gayborhoods are

I love writing.

[navree]

if fictional interpretations of the historical time period surrounding the ides of march and philippi and all that insist on going with the shakespearean framing of brutus and caesar having an almost father-son sort of relationship, they need to put their money where their mouths are and make the core emotion of the narrative be about octavian-caesar-brutus, sons who aren't really sons of the father who are on diametrically opposed sides of the conflict with two different versions of not only what they think is the right call but also of who caesar should have been. that's the only way.

[end-orfino]

what is it with shows and media and all that and the obsession with taking things you should treat SO carefully, i.e. ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES THAT LIVED AND WERE PEOPLE AND ARE REAL, and turning them into basically fictional characters. It's so stupid. And so far nothing good came out of it.

Like I understand a cameo or a minor role (like idk, the van gogh scene in doctor who seemed to pull off what it wanted to do pretty well?) but i mean when it's like. a major part of the story. and all. I am not being subtle about what this is about am I.

[samuelsimauthor]

TL;DR: Seeking help/donations to lease a space for my bookstore. :)

I've thought about posting this several times in the past few weeks, but have always felt kinda guilty asking strangers on the internet for money, but here I am.

Who am I? I'm a trans man and y/a author from the Canadian Prairies. I write, edit, and publish my own books (and hopefully other people's once I get a proper store). I have wanted to run my own bookstore for a few years, but the time never felt right. I've spent the last year and a half trying to get this off the ground to no avail (where I live is dumb about small businesses)

I run an Indie Queer/Used Bookstore out of my home and am looking to rent a storefront in the coming year. Any amount helps, and I know that times are tough. If you don't feel right donating, purchasing something from my shop also goes towards helping me with this. I'm working on getting the rest of my inventory photographed and listed this weekend. :) Links to donate and to the shop are below.

Thank you, if you decide to donate or purchase.

Samuel Sim

Owner of Mischief Raven Book Co.

P.S. if you know of any resources that are actually helpful, feel free to comment or reblog.

Kickstarter for Store Opening Mischief Raven

[the-crooked-library]

Nuance, Narratives, and Nosferatu

As of today, Robert Eggers' Nosferatu (2024) has only been in theatres for 4 full days; and, coincidentally, that is about as long as I am able to let my thoughts marinate before they demand to be communicated. Before going into any further detail, let it be known that this film was made by freaks for freaks; it exists for the goths, the gays, the monsterfuckers, the historians, and for all those who delight in moral and thematic complexity.

With that being said - spoilers under the cut!

There are two principal narratives running through the flesh of Nosferatu, both of them rooted heavily in the cultural and literary origins of the story. It is a nightmare; it is also an erotic fantasy. It is horrifying, and it is also achingly romantic. From what I've seen so far, the vast majority of discourse that has already emerged around the film is caused by people misunderstanding or deliberately ignoring the relationship between these different lines of analysis; so please trust me when I say, from the bottom of my heart, that this duality is the very lifeblood of the movie.

The reason for that is, quite simply, that Nosferatu is a gothic horror film, set in 1830s German Confederation; and its plot relies on the same (sometimes contradictory) complexities often displayed in Victorian gothic fiction.

From the beginning of the movie, we are given to understand that Ellen Hutter met Count Orlok - the eponymous nosferatu - psychically, when she was very young. They spoke, she pledged herself to him, and was horrified to realize what she had done when he revealed his true visage to her in their first visual (and sexual) encounter.

Here, under the lilacs, the paths diverge.

The first reading of the film is perhaps the more straightforward. A young girl is essentially catfished and groomed by a much older, dangerous man. When they meet for the first time, she is a teenager; the lilacs that bloom where it happens become a trigger. He is the source of her madness and "melancholy" (depression), she has nightmares about him regularly enough that her husband is aware of them, and it is implied that she has been institutionalized in the past. Thomas Hutter is the physical representation of her one desperate hope for a normal life - but as the story progresses, she finds herself being denied even that. Orlok's psychic connection with her verges on demonic possession; in chilling, The Exorcist-inspired sequences, she writhes and mutters, prophesying a city-wide reign of death and terror. In pursuit of his claim on Ellen, Orlok terrorizes her husband, murders her friends - and, eventually, she gives her life to take him with her to the grave, saving the city from the plague he caused.

That is the horror element of Nosferatu; it deals with an exploration of childhood trauma, of PTSD, of difficulties maintaining a social life after the fact. It is easy to understand even from a modern viewpoint, and it pushes the film to its conclusion with a bleak, heart-wrenching punch.

The horror is not the only element of Nosferatu.

To contextualize the alternate - though just as correct - reading of the film, it is essential to understand that Ellen’s society was extremely sexually repressed, especially in regards to female and queer sexuality.

Both were severely medicalized, demonized, and restricted; and as such, when these topics do make an appearance in contemporary fiction, they are often inextricable from disgust and fear.

Dedicated as always to historical accuracy, Eggers maintains the same setting-based narrative coding.

In anticipation of morality arguments vis à vis monstrosity, depiction, and modern purity culture, let me clarify: this is something that works within his chosen genre. Horror, and especially gothic horror, invites a deeper analysis in regard to morality and motivation, and in this case, Eggers' homage to the origins of that genre grounds the narrative in its time and location, as well as fleshing it out much further than a purely modern cultural lens would permit. In this context, the details of Ellen's connection with Orlok become paramount to the understanding of the film.

As bits and pieces of their background become revealed, the audience realizes that her psychic gift did not begin with him - and neither did her melancholy, or her isolation. She was born with her abilities, and throughout her childhood, she was a bit of a tomboy by her contemporary standards, running wild in the woods near her father's property; however, once she foretold her mother's death, and once she was too old to get away with eccentricities, her father became frightened of her abnormality. She was isolated, confined indoors, and that is when her melancholy had begun. Painfully lonely and aching for some form of companionship, she called out into the ether; and Orlok responded.

Over the course of their story, he becomes the physical manifestation of everything Ellen perceives as dark and sinful about herself.

He is psychic, he is vicious, possessive, and blatantly sexual; her sensual affection with Anna parallels the evident and physical attraction he displays towards Thomas; and the social power he so easily commands is the same that she lacks, being a woman in a rigidly patriarchal society.

In the end, the severely questionable age gap, the murders, the coercion, the betrayal - all of that comes down to respect. Throughout the film, that is the one thing that Ellen is consistently denied. She is young when she meets Orlok, yes; but she is aggressively infantilized by her surrounding society even when she is a grown, adult, married woman.

It starts from the beginning of the film, when the Hutters visit the Harding family. During those scenes, the men are shown talking business - while the women play with children in the parlour; and the same social framing persists into the body of the film. When Ellen is suffering from what appears to be some form of mental illness, she is referred to as a child by multiple different characters; and when the condition progresses, she is swiftly diagnosed with hysteria and drugged - thus being forcibly removed from the discussion of her own illness. The general reactions to that illness - which is, in fact, a display of her psychic abilities - range from annoyance to fear to curiosity; it is seen either as a disability or a curse, rather than anything entirely innate to who she is. Her fears are dismissed. Harding tells her to learn some deference. Even closer to the finale, when Von Franz admits that she could have been a great priestess in another age, he does so with pity rather than anything else; in their industrial era, he cannot help but see her only as a tragic sacrifice - horrible, but necessary to save the city from a plague. Brought in to heal her, he instead guides her to her death.

All these aspects of Ellen's circumstances find a direct opposite in her relationship with Orlok. Unlike all other characters in the film, he only ever sees her as his equal, which is made even more evident when his interactions with Thomas and Herr Knock are brought into consideration. With both men, Orlok insists on being addressed by his lordly title, "as his blood demands it"; and yet, Ellen never calls him by any title at all, be it "My Lord" or even a simple "Herr." She argues with him freely, and there is a familiarity between them that he is demonstrated to never tolerate from anyone else. Similarly, while he disguises the covenant he makes with Thomas, the terms of his covenant with Ellen are laid out clearly, in full. He does not hide from her; she already knows the worst of him, the same way he knows that she is intelligent, that she is powerful, and that she is not meant to be demure and deferring. Again and again, Orlok insists that Ellen is not meant for humanity - and the true horror, the horror she cannot bring herself to face, is that he is right.

In a sense, he is a mirror held up in front of her own face. Ellen is painfully aware that she does not fit in, and that she never has. The "normal" society, epitomized by the Hardings (wealthy husband, pretty blonde wife, 2.5 kids), has no place for her - and actively dislikes her.

The film makes this ostracism impossible for the viewer to ignore. As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the other human characters - even those that do sincerely care for Ellen - never truly know her. Anna loves her, but wishes she would not talk of dreadful things - and lashes out as a result of that discomfort, scolding her. Sievers finds himself bewildered by her; Knock sees her as an object to trade; Von Franz pities her, Harding hates her, and Thomas cannot truly satisfy her, even after being touched by the supernatural himself.

Seeing a flash of a monstrous face while they are together, he flings her away. To him, his experience with Orlok is merely traumatic, and he wishes for nothing more than to leave it behind. However, to her, it is something she cannot help but crave; and she continues to wear her lilac perfume.*

All that to say - Count Orlok is, simultaneously, everything Ellen wants and everything she is terrified of being.

That specific dichotomy reaches its climax during their mutual finale. As it is to be expected from a vampire wedding night, they rejoin in a sequence of sex, blood, and renewed vows - and what is particularly notable is that (unlike Murnau) Eggers makes it clear that this Orlok never intended to kill his Ellen, despite his inability to resist her blood. Though he drinks from her through the night, he stops at cock-crow; and she guides his head back down herself, distracting him long enough for the sun to rise. It is a duet of accident and intention. He drains her; and she holds him as the sun drains him. They cling together as they end - on a bed that serves their wedding and their death.

It is romantic. it is unquestionably romantic. However, that does not mean that the horror isn't also present; Ellen's consent, under these circumstances, is highly debatable, and Orlok is cruel, amoral, and murderously possessive. At the same time, the characters are also acting out folkloric archetypes, with precious little adjustment to that framework - which further removes them from a modern understanding of morality. He is Death, a Koschei the Deathless, a monster; she is the Maiden, a Vasilisa, a damsel. I hesitate to liken them to the Beauty and the Beast, largely because in the original premise of that story, the Beauty falls in love with the kindness that the Beast consistently displays; and it is essential to stress that Orlok has none. He does care for Ellen, in his own way, but he admits to being incapable of love as she defines it in human terms;** and, curiously, that seems to be her primary concern when it comes to the idea of accepting his proposal - rather than all the blood and carnage.

What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that there are multiple ways of following a story, and multiple different stories in a film as nuanced as Nosferatu. Yes, it is about grooming and trauma. Yes, it is about finding love outside of the cage that is "polite society." I'm sure that it is many other things besides, with as many meanings as there are people in the theatres; after all, I am only one person, and the film grossed something over $40M in its first three days. The point is, really, that this is a story in which a rotting vampire is woken from centuries of deathlike slumber by a lonely voice asking him to be her friend; and whatever these two strange and aching souls do with that can go down any myriad of paths. The film trusts the viewer to interpret the narrative they choose.

* LILAC PERFUME - in fact, it is such a consistent favourite of Ellen's that Orlok smells it on her hair in the locket she sends with Thomas to the castle. Thomas never really learns the reason she likes that scent - even though he knows that preference well enough that he gifts her lilacs in the beginning of the film.

** ORLOK'S OBSESSION - this is a side note, but: the vampire wedding sequence reminds me strongly of the third season of NBC's Hannibal. I suppose that was to be expected, considering that Hannibal is also a Dracula offshoot, much like Orlok himself. When Ellen snaps at Orlok that he cannot love, he responds that "no; but only with you, I can be truly sated." Similarly - "Is Hannibal in love with me?" asks Will; and Bedelia responds - "Could he feel a daily stab of hunger for you, and find nourishment at the very sight of you?" I'd say if you liked that series, you should try and see the film. It works with a familiar blend of aesthetic horror.

[art]

Meet the Artist: @nooskadraws

Greetings! I’m Aleksander (he/him), also known as nooska, and I’m a trans gay illustrator from the U.K. Historical fiction, fashion, and fantasy are my cup of tea. I’m currently working on my first ever graphic novel entitled “Ancestree” set to be published by Oni Press: a queer Victorian gothic tale filled with plant ghosts. My hope for my art is to draw more beautiful trans people with inspiration drawn from my Belarusian upbringing and its folklore. When not making art, I can be found curled in an armchair reading, taking a nature walk in the hope of being found by the Fey, or rolling dice with friends.

Pleased to meet you, Aleksander! Check out some of the art he has picked out to feature below.

For more of Aleksander’s work, head over to his Tumblr, @nooskadraws, and give it a follow!

[moonlightsapphic]

Releasing Nimona on the last day of pride month 2023 was such a great move because it’s a really needed piece of media right now. Lots of countries that legalised gay marriage years ago have been grappling with this rising TERF narrative of “if you’re gay it’s whatever but if you’re trans, non-binary or gender non-conforming in some way you’re a PERVERT! A MONSTER trying to GROOM CHILDREN!” The outrage against simple things like pronouns and drag events, and the movement against gender affirming healthcare have reached a terrifying peaks for contemporary times.

So a kid’s movie set in a fictional country with controlling government officials with personal agendas, with an openly gay couple but also a shape-shifting kid who cannot even be afford to be out is our reality in the US today. Nimona’s feelings about her vibe, body and form, her insistence that she is only “Nimona” no matter what she looks like and her aversion to “small-minded questions” together forms such a beautiful allegory about trans, genderfluid individuals.

Ballister asks her to be a girl, but for whose sake? It’s only for the comfort of people who refuse to understand her, and would rather see her die than let her be herself. And it’s this widespread rejection and loneliness that has eventually made Nimona indifferent to pain, that makes her feel suicidal.

In the end, it is another member of the LGBTQ+ community that truly sees and accepts Nimona for who she is. And that should be a reminder that we cannot let them divide us. Trans people stood up for the rest of us and made historical change happen, and we need to do the same for them. Besides, cis queer people are only the “good ones” until they’re done with trans people and then will turn on us.

[beamorgan]

Favourite Reads of the Year

I will not be ranking these, because that would hurt my heart. Buckle up folks, there are a lot of amazing books out there

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I know, I KNOW, I'm late to the party but omg this whole series is just as good as people say!!! I know I said I wouldn't be ranking, but if I was these would be fighting for the top spot. I have already relistened to all the audiobooks. I anticipate rereading them literally every year from now on. I would die for Murderbot, which it would think is a stupid thing for a human to do when there is a SecUnit right there. [adult, scifi]

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Sequel to last year's fav Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, this follows a bullheaded academic trying find the magical door that will let her faerie boyfriend back into his faerie kingdom. Chaos ensues in the Alps. It's fabulous, and the author's approach to using folklore is very similar to my own writing, which I love and also get imposter syndrome about. 10/10 recommend [adult, historical fantasy]

Model Home by Solomon Rivers

Would you like to be repeatedly punched in the gut? Look no further than this story of racism and child abuse in a Texas McMansion, with gorgeous prose and a genderqueer protagonist and the laundry list of content warnings you can expect with the genre. It hurt so good. [adult, contemporary gothic horror]

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

This love affair between a baseball play and a sports reporter was recced to me by the lovely @colubrina and boy was it worth the two-day binge it inspired! Romance can be very hit-or-miss for me, but this knocked it out of the park (please enjoy my pun). I didn't even have to know anything about baseball to love it! [adult, historical (1960s) romance]

The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir

Another tumblr fav, FOR A REASON. Gideon is hilarious. Harrow is an absolute mess. Nona is BABY, my beloved. (Camilla and Palamedes have my whole entire heart). Also, the audiobook narrator is fantastic. In the words of the author, the buns are also fried chicken. [adult, sci fantasy]

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

This one is @elodieunderglass's fault. Historical buffoonery on boats. The main characters are ridiculous. The sailing jargon is incomprehensible. It's great. [adult, historical fiction]

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

This is a gorgeous memoir of an interracial adoptee trying to make contact with her birth family while pregnant with her own child. It grapples thoughtfully with reconnecting to a lost culture, the complexities of family history, and the social and legal barriers adoptees face to learning about themselves. [adult, memoir]

Death in the Spires by KJ Charles

I devour everything Charles writes, so I was EXCITED for this mystery. She made it very clear on social media "It's not a kissing book!!" (it's kinda still a kissing book). She wrote a stonking book, as usual, with an underdog protagonist revisiting the murder that happened during his toxic time at Oxford university. [adult, historical mystery]

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

My favourite literary fiction read of the year, this meditation on Iranian diaspora identity is written by a poet and you can tell. I would suck the prose up through a straw if I could. The protagonist is an addict and also quite suicidal. It was fun :) [adult, literary fiction]

She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan

and the sequel, He Who Drowned the World. I don't even know how to sell this, all I want to do is flail incoherently about how amazing it is. IT'S AMAZING. JUST READ IT. (wait I know: this satisfied the part of me that was obsessed with Mulan as a kid) [adult, historical fantasy]

A Little Trickery by Roseanna Pike

The voicey-est book I've ever read. I screenshot like every other page. It follows an orphaned girl trying to survive in Tudor England through various means, such as faking a miracle in the church where her gay best friend is priest. [adult, historical fiction]

At the End of the River Styx by Michelle Kulwiki

My friend wrote a book! It made me cry!!! They were delighted with this!!! Please give this to any teenager in your life who needs to see thoughtful representation of grief and depression and boys in love. [YA, contemporary fantasy]

[fluentisonus]

also I realize this is maybe not what most people care about, but for me if I'm reading historical fiction I really want to see the characters thinking in a way that's visibly connected to the culture & period they exist in, even if they're consciously rejecting elements of it. so like if I read a historical gay romance (even one with no angst) I still want to see how their brain conceptualizes their experiences with gender and sexuality as a part of their historical context, be that in the language they use or how they think about dynamics or what they worry about -- that's part of what makes it meaningful to me. if they're thinking & framing everything exactly as a modern person would what's the point

[guessthatrec-poll]

Welcome to the Guess That Rec tournament!

Do you like enemies-to-lovers? Non-stereotypical queer rep? A cyberpunk setting with dragons in space about friendship, family, and the dangers of capitalism?

Well, this isn't any of those things! This is Guess That Rec, a tournament by the mod of @besttropeveershowdown where we'll be voting on media based entirely on bad, Booktok-style recommendations. Inspired by @guess-that-ship and this post, the rules of the tournament are simple: submit a recommendation for your favorite piece of media, and we'll vote on which ones we like best, BUT, here's the kicker: You may not mention anything about the actual plot of the story. Instead, we will be voting based on promo-post-style recommendations, which can include tropes, representation, setting, genre, very general theme, and anything else, as long as it doesn't describe anything that actually happens in the story!

Round 2 just wrapped up- check the #rec revealed tag to see the results! Round 3 will be out on Saturday 2/8. Guesses are encouraged, but I'd prefer you post them in the replies rather than the tags so your followers don't see the guess before they read the recs.

Example:

Do you want a high school story about a neurodivergent protagonist working through their trauma by going on adventures in the big city? Queer-coded side characters? Male characters breaking through their toxic masculinity and expressing their feelings? Wholesome sibling relationships?

Then you'll love Catcher in the Rye!

The tournament will work similarly to the way @guess-that-ship does. Each rec will be assigned a number for the poll with the rec itself going in the body of the post, and each round, there will be a poll pitting 2 recs against each other. Vote for whichever piece of media sounds most appealing based on the rec alone. At the end of each round, I will reveal the identity of the loser. Guessing what work each rec is for in the comments is encouraged!

THE RULES:

Any type of media is permitted. Both fiction and nonfiction are allowed, but everything must be presented as if it's fiction.

You may NOT mention anything to do with the actual plot or premise of the story. You may, however, mention:

Tropes (ex. enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, unreliable narrator)

Representation (ex. disabled protagonist, gay side character)

Character dynamics and relationships (ex. dysfunctional siblings, grumpy x sunshine lesbians)

Setting (ex. in space, in the Old West)

Genre and subgenre (ex. historical fiction, whodunnit, workplace comedy)

Comparisons to other media (ex. if you liked Avengers you'll love this, it's Twilight meets Hunger Games)

General themes (ex. love, grief, family)

General elements (ex. murders, adventures, road trips)

Anything else that has NOTHING TO DO with what the story is actually about!

3. You may NOT make anything up: everything must be technically true, or at least up for interpretation. So, in my Catcher in the Rye example, I can't say that there are "canonically gay characters" because there aren't, but I CAN say that there are queer-coded characters. Similarly, if there's a character in your piece of media who exhibits autistic traits but has never been confirmed autistic, you can't call them "autistic", but you can call them "autistic-coded" or mention their specific traits. The use of weasel words (ex. describing a mentally ill serial killer stereotype as "neurodivergent", or a gay villain as a "major queer character") is allowed and encouraged.

4. Do not include any identifying details (ex. title, character names, identifying place names) in your rec.

5. Funnier submissions will be given higher priority. Submissions are funnier if A) they're of media that most people have heard of, and B) they are technically true while not at all capturing the vibe of the media.

5a. Additionally, remember that this is meant to be BAD recs: don't just use this as an excuse to recommend your favorite media! If a Booktok-style rec actually provides a good picture of what your media is, consider either rewriting or not submitting it.

6. Should the same media be submitted by two different people with different recs, priority will generally be given to the first submission, unless a later submission was significantly funnier by the guidelines stipulated in rule #5.

7. There is no banned media: go nuts!

Tagging @tournament-announcer!

[overkill-max]

Cruz x Aaliyah Fanfics:

Here is a shameless plug of my Cruz x Aaliyah fics by order of popularity on AO3:

1. Duty and Desire aka The Bodyguard AU

Aaliyah is an FBI agent that does interrogations. Cruz is assigned to protect her.

2. The Arrangement aka The Fake Marriage AU

What starts off as a fake marriage with only one bed, turns into something real for them both.

3. Hard To Forget aka The Canon Adjacent Fix-It AU

Where Cruz makes different choices that ripple into her admitting who she is to Aaliyah before the wedding.

4. Love and War aka The War Correspondent AU

Aaliyah is a war correspondent and Cruz is a Marine that protects her.

5. Second Chances aka The Man on Fire AU

Aaliyah is a rich milf that wants her daughter to be safe, she hires Cruz to protect her and sparks fly.

6. Brave Enough To Love aka The Rescue Me AU

Cruz chooses Aaliyah over the mission but Aaliyah gets married anyway. It's a mistake and she asks Cruz to come rescue her.

7. Tutor Me aka The Learning How To Drive AU

College AU where Aaliyah and Cruz help each other become better and fall in love in the process.

8. The Lost Mask aka The Sexy Treasure Hunter AU

Cruz and Aaliyah go on an adventure and fall in love.

9. Your Country Needs More aka The Speculative Futures AU

Joe uses Aaliyah to manipulate Cruz back into doing her bidding. Written before season 2 aired, so it was wild speculation.

10. First Date: Take Two aka The First Date AU

A fluffy take on Cruz and Aaliyah getting a second shot at getting things right.

11. Queen of the Sun aka The Warrior AU

The no plot, just vibes Cruz is an ancient warrior and falls in love with Aaliyah after being captured fic.

12. Announcement No. 746 aka The Mail-Order Bride AU

Historical fiction where Cruz is a mail-order bride and Aaliyah sugar momma's her way into her heart.

13. Once, We Were In Love aka The Last of the Mohicans AU

Another gay take on a classic movie. Cruz is a frontierswoman and Aaliyah is a gay lady trying to love another lady while action happens around them.