#lgbt urban fantasy

[lou-wilham]

I don't remember if I've posted these pretty babies here yet or not. But @oblivionsdream created this absolute masterpiece of Az and Rus for Home is Where the Hex is and I'm still drooling over it!

Sometimes it’s not your own past that comes back to haunt you. Icarus “Rus” Ashthorne has been covenless her entire life, but after returning to Moondale she’s forced to face the fact that maybe starting her own coven is the best way to protect her family. Shame the Board of Magic isn’t going to make that easy on them. The task? Find two new coven members by the Centennial or lose their potential foothold in Moondale. Easy, right? Azure Elwood has always known her family’s Moondale roots run deep, but with the Centennial on its way, she learns maybe there is a little more to the Elwood connection to Moondale than she originally thought. Her plate is full with Centennial plans, classes, rekindling her relationship with Rus, and of course finding them two more witches to join their coven, there isn’t time for anything else. Not that fate has ever really cared. With new dreams taking shape, new connections being made, and a prophecy hanging over their heads, Rus and Az have no choice but to lean on each other and their friends to unearth the secrets Moondale thought long buried, and solve the mystery of who is trying to turn the Board of Magic against them. Home Is Where The Hex Is is the third book in the Witches of Moondale series, and fits neatly into The Bay of the Dead 'verse as a cozy LGBT+ urban fantasy set in a world of witches, vampire hunters, ghosts, and fae.

ADD TO YOUR TBR | PURCHASE

[find-your-wings]

"Your petty problems seem so small now... don't they?"

[anim-ttrpgs]

A quickly doodled fan comic from @umbraldame featuring a thing from beyond A.K.A. "The Blanket" and her ability to absorb not only nutrition but information from the people she digests! That would be pretty handy for investigating a mystery, if you could get past the question of morality.

This is one of the five playable monster types in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, and a fan favorite around here!

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is still crowdfunding on kickstarter from now until 2:00 PM CST on Friday, May 10th! Back it before it's too late!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[karlmarxmaybe]

The Purge but everyone stays at home bc they're scared except Gen z who go out bc they have no will to live and when they notice it's all empty they take the chance to party in the street and be queer in public spaces

(Fourteen-year old boys ransacking Gucci and running around the street in stolen 5000 dollar dresses)

(Trans kids taking over the deserted malls and cheaply recreating 90's music videos)

(The autistics climbing buildings)

(Older teen lesbian weddings in the empty church)

(The Minecraft kids make makeshift spears and go hunt boars. They manage to hunt zero boars but have a hell of a good time)

(Teen girls forsake gender-imposed dress code and wear whatever. Some people are just naked cuz it's warm)

(At least 1 mormon church is set ablaze)

[animentality]

You can't be an assassin and straight.

It's too homoerotic of a profession.

What do you mean, you're hunting other men?

You're bathing in their blood and hiding your identity from the world and you have bad relationships with your parents?

You're fighting other assassins who are holding their knives to your pretty throat and hurling chairs at your head and stabbing you in the thighs? You're bleeding and dying in each other's arms? Your dying breaths are commingling and your life force is dwindling, and all you can do is clutch each other tightly as you spiral into oblivion, but at least you're not alone, in the end?

This is the queer experience.

Diversity win, that man who tried to kill you is pansexual.

If you agree, check out my new novel series.

But if you don't, it's ok to be wrong.

Full description below, and it is free for download on the free kindle app from now until July 4th.

All hail homoerotic fights to the death.

Transcribed if the graphics don't load:

Twenty-three-year-old CEO Don Francisco wants one of the richest women in the world dead. Which one? Daphne Oakland: actress, model, heir to the Oakland financial empire, and unbeknownst to the general public, talented demon summoner. But since Francisco isn’t nearly as rich as the established Oakland family, he hires the only assassin he can afford: Sebastián Monterey, a down-on-his-luck, struggling demon summoner, the cheapest and lowest ranking one there is.

But Monterey is nothing like Cisco expected. He’s high-spirited, reckless, relentlessly cheerful …and worse, he’s a bit of a slut. The CEO is horrified to find out that Monterey has not just one, but seven angry exes in the killing business, who will stop at nothing to get in the way of an already impossible hit. Not only do they have personal reasons for wanting to see their former lover dead, they also have professional reasons: they are all currently employed by the Oakland family members!

To make matters worse, Monterey finds out the Oaklands are each protecting a demon ritual artifact for Daphne. When brought together, all 7 can be used to summon a demon more powerful than any currently contracted on earth. If he is to carry out this hit at all, he’ll have to interfere with the summon by stealing every artifact, and maybe even summon the demon before Daphne can.

But that's only if none of his exes kill him first!

[thenightfolknetwork]

So, i was supposed to be an arcane nexus. The 7th son of the 7th son, my birth was supposed to 'bring about the restoration of my clans magical talents'. Only it didn't happen, and kept not happening for 20 years. My family thinks they got the math wrong and its gonna happen when i get my magic. But i recently figured something out Im trans. Meaning i was never the 7th son, im never going to get magic, not my dad's anyway. How do i tell him. I don't think he'll have a problem with it. But basically having to tell him he's gonna have to go make me a little brother, because i found the math error is gonna be really awkward.

First of all, congratulations! I hope you can find time to celebrate this moment of self-discovery and to delight in all the wonderful things yet to come as you embark on your life as a trans person. I understand that this throws your family's plans rather into disarray, but it's also rather affirming, in its way. The magic you “ought” to have inherited recognised your true gender before you did!

How you handle this really depends on your relationship with your parents. You said you don't think your dad will have an issue with your gender identity, which certainly makes things easier. There is plenty of advice out there on the matter of coming out to one's family. If you're not sure where to start, your local library will likely have some helpful resources to get you started.

On the magical side of things, I'm afraid you're quite right in thinking you probably won't be blessed with magical ability any time soon. If the inheritance calls for sons then sons it must have. However, as your own experience aptly demonstrates, magic responds to reality in a far more holistic sense than the merely biological.

You are not a man. You know this of yourself, and while your biology may have caused some confusion on the matter up to this point, it was not the whole story. Magic responds to the whole story.

As such, your parents need not scrabble around trying to have another child biologically. They might adopt a seventh son instead – and that son need not even be a child. In fact, there are some individuals who offer themselves up for adoption for a fee, fulfilling prophecies or magical inheritances to whoever makes them the best deal.

If your parents are considering that avenue, I recommend they secure the services of a solicitor with plenty of experience in liminal contract work. Look for any firm that advertises themselves as “good folk”, “honest neighbours” or similar.

You aren't responsible for the expectations other people place on you. Concentrate on celebrating your new identity, and leave the rest to your parents. After all, it was their failure of imagination that got them into this situation. Being trans is hardly as unusual as all that, and if they'd really wanted to secure the family's magical future, they could have given you a little brother as a fail-safe.

[For more creaturely advice, check out Monstrous Agonies on your podcast platform of choice, or visit monstrousproductions.org for more info]

[poopraven]

Hello! I'd like to tell you about a book I wrote. It'll be coming out on Friday the 26th of May 2023.

I'm extremely proud of this one. I'm proud of them all, of course, but I think in this one I let myself get angry for, well, pretty much the whole book to be honest. Previous books in the series have bursts of queer rage, but this one definitely sustained it.

At its heart, it's a book that demands to know just how long we're supposed to do nothing while fascists kill us.

Now, fair warning, it is book 9 in an ongoing series. It won't make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read the previous eight books. I'll get to that at the end of the post, but for now I want to stick with Runes of Fall.

No storm bows to reason.

Quentin's trip to the desert with his chosen family is supposed to be two days of testing the limits of their powers. Instead, a violent storm looms on the horizon, and nothing will alter its course.

The storm has a name: Nate Anderson. Demigod, supremacist, leader of a neo-Nazi Übermensch cabal... and father to Quentin's latest ward, Mel. He means to take her home, and won't let a ragtag group of "inferior" psychics get in his way.

Besieged and outgunned, Quentin is trapped in a no-win scenario. No matter which way he turns, one fateful night will change him forever.

Inheritance is a series best read in order, so if this is the first you've heard of it I strongly recommend that you start with Jack of Thorns, but keep going and I'll let you know how you can grab that for free. First, let me tell you more about it.

In Jack of Thorns, we meet Laurence and Quentin, two men with astonishing powers but little to no control over them. They are both adrift, traumatised, and doing what they can to get by one day at a time. Laurence is struggling to escape a toxic, abusive boyfriend who refuses to accept that their relationship is over, and Quentin spends as much of his time drunk as he possibly can.

Do they start out likeable? Opinion varies. But they learn, they grow, and they put in the work to improve themselves. They do their best, and sometimes they make mistakes, but the Laurence and Quentin in Runes of Fall are a world away from the Laurence and Quentin you first meet.

Heads up, there are some content warnings to take note of. In random order, they are: sexual intimacy, addiction, drug use, sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, incest, gaslighting, bullying, coercive control, kidnapping, domestic abuse, bigotry, classism, torture, post-traumatic stress, therapy, violence, peril, and death.

If you're still here, thank you for reading this far. I'd like to give you some links if you're interested in finding out more!

Jack of Thorns: https://books2read.com/jackofthorns

Runes of Fall: https://discoverinheritance.com/books/runes-of-fall

Discord server: https://discord.gg/reYUyTH9DJ

And, if you'd like, you can get all nine books at once - whether as ebooks, paperbacks (signed or unsigned), or audiobooks - from Kickstarter:

Thank you so much for your time. Please feel free to ask questions if you have them!

- AK.

[problematicraccoon]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ hi !

i've never actually posted anything on tumblr before as i'm mainly just an observer, but i figured i should probably join the public at some point- so hi! i'm Alyssa, or Aly, or AJ, or Lisle, or whatever you wanna call me. my pronouns are she/they, my mbti is infp, i'm 19 (and i never fuckin learned how to read), my birthday is January 7th, i'm a Capricorn, i'm Polish-American, i'm a reality shifter, i'm an impassioned aspiring writer of pretty much any genre i can get my dingy little hands on, i'm obsessed with Stray Kids and TXT, Breanna Casey enthusiast, overly fixated on quantum jumping/meta physics/quantum mechanics/spirituality/numerology, i'm fascinated by human behavior, im a member of the LGBT+ community, angry little feminist, and my dms are always open to anyone who feels they have no one to talk to or are in pain :) i will always reply and you can vent to me about anything if you need to <3

my current wip is a sapphic romance/urban fantasy entitled "I'll Be Quiet When I'm Dead" and i'm gonna be posting a lot about my lil made up people for that book because i love those stupid little fucks like my own children and i hope you all will too <3

i love to write little short stories to practice writing and work out the kinks before actually hunkering down to work on a full length novel, so if anyone has any short story (or one shots as the kids are saying these days) requests, feel free to contact me and request <3

✿⋆.˚⋆₊ ⊹ some of my favorite musical artists + favorite song...

Stray Kids - "Winter Falls"

Melanie Martinez - "Death"

Ashnikko - "Miss Nectarine"

Girlhouse - "Concussion"

TV Girl - "Lovers Rock"

LE serrafim - "Perfect Night"

RM - "Wild Flower"

Lilyisthatyou - "Intimacy Issues"

✿⋆.˚⋆₊ ⊹ some of my favorite movies...

Renfield (2023)

Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Megamind (2010)

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (2011)

✿⋆.˚⋆₊ ⊹ you can also find me on...

Discord: gayanarchist222

AO3: soobzgyu

Pinterest: problematicraccoon

[eggcatsreads]

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕺𝖚𝖙 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖔𝖋𝖋𝖎𝖓 and its sequel by D.A. Holmes are fun, campy horror novels that expertly weave the real struggles many of us face within the community, along with the more specific ones faced by our vampiric main character - Vlad Radu.

Faced with the decision to come out - both to his parents and the world at large - while he tries living a "normal" human life with a minimum wage job (and a massive crush on your neighbor) is no easy task. This is made even harder as he keeps getting caught in more and more dangerous (and sometimes ridiculous) situations. Together with his coworker and best friend Alison Grady, they have to learn how to survive Vlad’s new life as a vampire living with humans.

I really recommend these novels if you were looking for a bit of fresh air in the vampire genre with a lot of moments of hilarity - as well as a good dash of danger (and a little romance) thrown in. Both of these books were super fun reads, and I finished them both in like a 2 day span that helped me start to break my most recent reading slump.

(Also, I love the cover art for these books 😍).

[lou-wilham]

Have I been really bad about posting here? Yes. Will that change any time soon? Maybe.

But in the meantime, it's cover reveal day for my "cozy" fae mafia book An Offer Fae Can't Refuse!

BLURB: Welcome to the Family.

Grief is a vicious thing. Mal would know, it’s been his constant companion for the last four years. After losing the love of his life—Sage Nocturna—Mal did the only sensible thing, he got revenge. The trouble is, one got away. And he can’t rest until he’s found her.

Mox would follow her twin brother—Mal—into the darkest depths, but what she can’t do is take away his pain. Not that she hasn’t tried. So when she stumbles upon Sage, her only thought is she has to tell Mal.

Aidan “Corey” Corwin wasted no time in seizing the opportunity for a quick exit. All she had to do was save Sage, take their money, and start a bakery in a different gang’s territory. It sounded easy enough.

Death is a transient condition, Sage Nocturna has learned. They’ve also learned that if someone is trying to kill you, the best thing to do is stay dead. But Sage has never been able to turn down a friend in need, and with their anti-iron medication running low, they’re left with only one option: return to Eventide.

But that return will upend Eventide’s Court of Families, and maybe, just maybe, Sage will find once and for all that you can’t run from Family.

RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2025 SERIES: Fae of Eventide: Book One GENRE: Adult paranormal/urban fantasy REPRESENTATION: achillean, sapphic, trans fem, non-binary, gay, lesbian

Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/u/m22WNr

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218192679-an-offer-fae-can-t-refuse

[monstrousproductions]

🤩 Episode One Hundred and Ten is live! 🎉

[Image: The Monstrous Agonies logo, teal against a black background. The logo is a complex puzzle cube with M on one face and A on another in a gothic font. End description.]

This week, a listener trying to handle sudden changes in their relationship; and someone finding it hard to communicate…

Listen on our website, on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full transcript available online.

Tonight’s letter was submitted by Darla and this week's advert came from Bug. Thanks, friends 💖

Lots of thanks to get through this week because we have been blessed with a glut of guest voices! First up, the gorgeous Dom Guilfoyle returns as the voice of The CEO! 🥰

Dom is the creator of @the-mistholme-museum, which takes its listeners on a tour of a museum unlike any other, and @tales-from-the-low-city, an anthology series about a strange underground city and the people who call it home.

We also have Elizabeth Plant reprising her role as Mab, and doing it with as much aplomb as always! See more of her work at her website, at www.elizabethplant.com, and find her on Twitter @CelestielleVA.

This week also features a little cameo from everybody's favourite wine ant, The Understudy, voiced of course by Sophie B. When they're not sploshing about in the bath whittering about Cats (1998), Sophie is a fabulous artist and illustrator. Find them on tumblr @aestheticcluttercore and on Twitter and Instagram @trashlordbarbie

Finally, this is the episode you've all (or at least, some of you) have been waiting for, which features the voices of Monstrous Agonies listeners! Thank you so so much to everyone who contributed, it was a surprisingly emotional process and I'm so glad to have been able to include you in the show! 💞

If you're enjoying the show, remember to sign up for a monthly pledge on Patreon, or make a one-off donation at www.ko-fi.com/hrowen. And if you're not in a position to support it financially, it's always a huge help to share your love of the show and help us get more listeners tuning in! EDIT - and in all the excitement, I forgot to say! The inbox is now OPEN for your questions for the end of season Q&A. Send them in via DM on Tumblr or Twitter, by email, through the website, or send an Ask right here on Tumblr - though if you send an Ask, please specify that it's for the Q&A and let me know what your pronouns are! See you next week at the season finale!

[find-your-wings]

"But then I take off, and I'm free."

[loverofwhump216]

CaFae Latte Fanfiction

[anim-ttrpgs]

How Snoops are Designed for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

(written by @theblackwarden one of our team artists, not the usual person who runs the A.N.I.M. blog.)

First, here are the restrictions when making Snoops. Restrictions are not bad; they make it so that you can focus on a few specific elements and experiment with how those interact with each other. When you only have a few colors, you discover all the ways those few colors can interact, as opposed to knowing a few ways that all possible colors interact.

The body is split into two, like a coat. Usually, these two piece should not be "the exact same but flipped"; they should be two different pieces in contrast with each other.

There is a hat or hair above the coat, and a pair of eyes in between.

Nothing can be "behind" the eyes, the "face" must always appear as a solid color the same color as the background, otherwise they look like they are literally just a pair of floating eyes rather than just a minimalist character design.

Black and white.

No limbs; any held items appear to hover near the chest.

You will note here that even with these rules, they are sometimes broken.

Here, the two sides of the coat are perfectly symmetrical, but this is so attention is not taken away from the real focus of the picture - the two guns. At the same time, the hat and eyes are unsymmetrical so the picture is not a perfect mirror image, making it a little more interesting to look at.

A major aspect of Snoop design is the contrast of disparate elements, especially straight lines and curved line.

This is a very simple snoop, the Bumbling Detective. Here, you can see that the left side of the hat is a curve, while the right side is a mix of straight lines and curves. The same is for the coat, the left side is a curve and the right side is two straight lines. Similarly, the top of the hat is an uneven two humps. These are small details, but adds interesting variety to a very simple black/white design.

Usually the irises of the two eyes would be the same, but I made them different in this one, along with the size of the eyes, to make it look like a raised eyebrow or an eye bulging out. Many snoops have different size eyes to add more variety and a sense of expression.

Overall, it is a mix of uneven and different elements for interesting flavor.

Hard Boiled has a lot of conflicting lines of motion.

The character is not a perfect perpendicular to the table; the table is more tilted while the snoop stands upright.

This is to create, again, more contrast and motion by the feeling of things moving against each other, as seen below:

The curve of the coat goes vertically towards the back, while the curve of the hat goes more horizontally, and towards the front.

This contrast, even if small, makes the motion more pronounced through exaggeration.

Here, you can see much variety being done through the only things that can be edited about the Snoops:

Height

Curved Lines v Straight Lines

Hats/Hair

Eye Shape/Size

Line of Action/Motion

The smoking Burnout snoop and the snoop right above it are the same "character", but the latter just had the shape made much more curvy; everything else is generally the same, but it still leads to a great contrast.

Many of our snoops are inspired by well known characters from dectective and mystery fiction, so some of them are done with some sort of reference. All snoops are hand-drawn first so that I can experiment with the feel and motion of a piece. This takes many attempts, many erasings, and a lot of repetition.

For references in particular, my main advice is this:

Do not try to perfectly capture the exact details of the reference -capture the feel of the reference. When drawing the lines, don't try to make it mimic the line of the reference. If you look at a picture of a face and you think the cheekbone looks really round on it, draw a very round cheekbone in your drawing of the face. Not the exact roundness in the pic, but just the feel of "a very round cheekbone".

This is the same principle I use for art in general, such as when i made these portraits based on references:

For example, when it comes to the wrinkles around the eyes of the bottom old man pic, i wasn't trying to get down the exact angles/lengths in the ref pic, just moreso going "it looks like there's a lot of downward curving lines, I'll draw some of that".

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[aroacephotographer]

Anxiously Writing

I feel unsure as a writer currently. Which fills me with anxiety. However, it also means I'm paying attention to more things.

Paying attention to what I'm reading and what I want to write especially.

I feel like my first draft (which is a completely different version of my book from a year ago) is a complete mess. I have an outline, but when I write I still feel like I'm pantsing/exploring. It's a pretty tumultuous time for this book I'm getting through.

I've also taken in a ton of writers conferences recently. And I might be part of a writing group that reads/reviews our works. And I'm starting to write short stories (something I've pushed against for the longest time for some reason).

But I've zeroed in on the comics I like the most -- just read the first issue of Spider-Society and I'm really excited with the direction the series is going. As well as the kind of books I like the most -- for whatever reason I've entered the "cozy mystery with a punny title" demographic if you like authors such as Ellie Alexander.

Likely the thing that gives me the most anxiety is that what I'm writing is a queer piece of fiction with a supernatural twist. And I'm most anxious about representing the LGBTQIAA+ Community.

How do you represent a community that's a mix of other cultures?

Not sure in the slightest. But I'm willing to find out. I have story ideas and I want to write them.

The kicker is that I'm averse to some kinds of action violence. For instance a verbal fight between a couple that might turn into a one-sided physical fight. I know all too well how scary that is, and yet I decided to have an abuse victim as one of my protagonists (who survives and gets a good ending).

How does one represent these struggles? How does she move on and make a better life for herself and make new friends?

I'm not sure I can live up to the standards I've set for myself, but this is just the first draft. Hopefully I'll be able to reign things in for the next draft.