#queen of spy writers

[wolfythoughts]

Book Review: Pray for a Brave Heart by Helen MacInnes

A 1950s spy novel written by a woman that intermixes early Iron Curtain fears and post-WWII concerns about missing Nazi loot. Summary:It was 1953, and nothing could shake Bill Denning’s resolve to leave the army and return to the States. Nothing, except one of the largest diamond hauls ever – which, in the wrong hands, on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, was a potentially lethal force. In a…

[aethersea]

if you’re ever in doubt about what pov to write a scene from, a good rule of thumb is to pick the person who knows the least about what’s going on. lots of pros!

you automatically have some level of tension in the scene, as they either struggle to figure out what’s happening or completely fail to notice it

if they know as much or barely more than the reader, the reader is learning things alongside them, which will help make exposition feel more natural

if they know less than the reader you now have dramatic irony! great for humor and/or agonizing tension

helps you keep secrets from the reader longer, since your pov character doesn’t know them either. (I mean you could also just carefully omit major info and pretend you thought it was obvious. see the Queen’s Thief series for several examples that span a whole novel!)

helps add a fun little mystery for the reader as they try to figure out those secrets (fun little mysteries are great attention hooks!)

“what’s going on” can mean anything btw, it could be the plot or the worldbuilding or another character’s motivation or the location of the buried treasure.

for best results, think about what each character in the scene wants to get out of this scene, and then pick the pov of the person who has least control over/knowledge of whether they get what they want. failing that, figure out which character has the most important secret that’s affecting the course of the scene, and write from the pov of someone who doesn’t know the secret. (the secret can be stuff like “I’m in love with you,” “I’m a spy for the spider queen,” “I’m the one who stole the muffins,” just whatever’s adding an undercurrent of tension to the conversation.)

this rule won’t be right for every occasion and you should trust your gut, but it’s served me well for years, so I encourage all you writers to consider it when figuring out how to approach a scene :)

[queerism1969]

Notable transgender people from history

Here's the list I put together for when people on non-trans subreddits claim we didn't exist until recently:

Ashurbanipal (669-631BCE) - King of the Neo-Assryian empire, who according to Diodorus Siculus is reported to have dressed, behaved, and socialized as a woman.

Elagabalus (204-222) - Roman Emperor who preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, presented as a woman, called herself her lover's queen and wife, and offered vast sums of money to any doctor able to make her anatomically female.

Kalonymus ben Kalonymus (1286-1328) - French Jewish philosopher who wrote poetry about longing to be a woman.

Eleanor Rykener (14th century) - trans woman in London who was questioned under charges of sex work

[Thomas(ine) Hall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas(ine)_Hall) - (1603-unknown) - English servant in colonial Virginia who alternated between presenting as a woman and presenting as a man, before a court ruled that they were both a man and a woman simultaneously, and were required to wear both men's and women's clothing simultaneously.

Chevalier d'Eon (1728-1810) - French diplomat, spy, freemason, and soldier who fought in the Seven Years' War, who transitioned at the age of 49 and lived the remaining 33 years of her life as a woman.

Public Universal Friend (1752-1819) - Quaker religious leader in revolutionary era America who identified and lived as androgynous and genderless.

Surgeon James Barry (1789-1865) - Trans man and military surgeon in the British army.

Berel - a Jewish trans man who transitioned in a shtetel in Ukraine in the 1800's, and whose story was shared with the Jewish Daily Forward in a 1930 letter to the editor by Yeshaye Kotofsky, a Jewish immigrant in Brooklyn who knew Berel

Mary Jones (1803-unknown) - trans woman in New York whose 1836 trial for stealing a man's wallet received much public attention

Albert Cashier (1843-1915) - Trans man who served in the US Civil War.

Harry Allen (1882-1922) - Trans man who was the subject of sensationalistic newspaper coverage for his string of petty crimes.

Lucy Hicks Anderson (1886–1954) - socialite, chef and hostess in Oxnard California, whose family and doctors supported her transition at a young age.

Lili Elbe (1882-1931) - Trans woman who underwent surgery in 1930 with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran one of the first dedicated medical facilities for trans patients.

Karl M. Baer (1885-1956) - Trans man who underwent reconstructive surgery (the details of which are not known) in 1906, and was legally recognized as male in Germany in 1907.

Dr. Alan Hart (1890-1962) - Groundbreaking radiologist who pioneered the use of x-ray photography in tuberculosis detection, and in 1917 he became one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy in the US.

[Louise Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Lawrence_(activist)) (1912–1976) - trans activist, artist, writer and lecturer, who transitioned in the early 1940's. She struck up a correspondence with the groundbreaking sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey as he worked to understand sex and gender in a more expansive way. She wrote up life histories of her acquaintances for Kinsey, encouraged peers to do interviews with him, and sent him a collection of newspaper clippings, photographs, personal correspondences, etc.

Dr. Michael Dillon (1915-1962) - British physician who updated his birth certificate to Male in the early 1940's, and in 1946 became the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty.

Reed Erickson (1917-1992) - trans man whose philanthropic work contributed millions of dollars to the early LGBTQ rights movement

Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax (1916-1992) - early 20th century gospel quartet singer.

Peter Alexander (unknown, interview 1937) - trans man from New Zealand, discusses his transition in this interview from 1937

Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989) - The first widely known trans woman in the US in 1952, after her surgery attracted media attention.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (1940-present) - Feminist, trans rights and gay rights activist who came out and started transition in the late 1950's. She was at Stonewall, was injured and taken into custody, and had her jaw broken by police while in custody. She was the first Executive Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, which works to end human rights abuses against trans/intersex/GNC people in the prison system.

Sylvia Rivera (1951-2002) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer and community worker in NYC; co-founded STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women

Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) - Gay liberation and trans rights pioneer; co-founded STAR with Sylvia Rivera

[ham1lton]

another day, another drama.

pairing: lando norris x fellow driver’s sister!reader.

summary: the one where you think o/s is hiding something from you, so with the help of your boyfriend and his friends, you try to figure it out. too bad you find more than you bargained for.

author’s note: part of the nepo sister universe. i fear we might be coming to the end of the nsu soon…. also there is a poll at the end, help a struggling writer out and vote pls mwah.

— part one | part two (coming soon).

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liked by oldersistersbff, yourbff and 287,737 others.

yourusername: just saw these pics of my bf and burst into tears. fuck f1 for taking my bf and my sister away from me….

oscarpiastri: ur welcome ☺️

-> yourusername: SICK SICK MAN!!!! 😒😒

user1: not u acting like a war widow 😭

-> yourusername: my husband (boyfriend) has been taken as a prisoner of war (forced to do his job) thousands of miles away (no this part is actually real).

user9: i’m new to this. are they lovers?

-> user8: worse.

*liked by oscarpiastri.*

formula1: we apologise yourusername! but you’ll see him soon we promise! :)

-> yourusername: RETURN MY BF IMMEDIATELY….

-> user5: girl what about your sister??

-> yourusername: she’ll be fine 😘

user6: girl um did u see ur sister’s newest interview???

-> yourusername: no??!! BRB!

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liked by zendaya, simonebiles and 3,288,728 others.

vogue: the paddock’s princess came to talk to us about being our newest cover girl, winning her most recent championship, going viral, her love life and what her favourite smoothie combination is.

user3: shes so cute 🥺🥺

user1: o/s has been notoriously single since her breakup with paul like five years ago… why is she giggling and smiling when asked about a man???

-> user2: no i noticed that… omg is she seeing someone?

user7: face card never declines!

user4: when gav told her that she’d won and the first thing she did when she left the car was hug him and cry??? she’s so cute. i’m so glad i live in the y/n domination era.

-> user5: the edits with that video are sick… o/s is keeping the tiktok editors in business.

-> user9: have you seen the ones about her and lando to the song lacy??? INSANE…

-> user5: DM ME RN

user31: her saying she doesn’t ever want to be defined by her wins and rather by who she is a person. we love a charitable queen!

yourusername: love life… hmmm….

-> user4: oh no….. she’s plotting 😭

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liked by oldersistersbff, user72 and 2,833,617 others.

oldersister: family reunion.

yourusername: no credits for the pics??

-> oldersister: no. you take enough credit from my card.

-> yourusername: … fair.

user1: she’s deadass married wth.

-> user6: family reunion out of nowhere? talking about her love life suddenly after years of not even having one? photographed with two separate men?? shopping with o/s/bff in a bridal boutique and cordoning off the area?? it’s adding up sis ur not even delusional for this one….

user9: WHO’S UR MAN @/oldersister

user5: stop with the married jokes y’all…. i can’t lose my queen to some MAN….

user3: are you planning on changing ur surname from l/n.

-> oldersister: never.

-> user16: oh so you do see these comments…

————————————————————————

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SPYING TRANSCRIPT - THURSDAY, 6PM.

- written by LANDO NORRIS, for his boss Y/N L/N.

LANDO NORRIS - i think she’s dating carlos. i’m putting my cards out there.

OSCAR PIASTRI - put your cards back. no way that’d happen. i think she’s dating someone else. look at these photos. that guy isn’t carlos.

DANIEL RICCARDO - just tell y/n she’s dating me and we can all go to sleep. i mean look at my incredible good looks, it would be sacrilegious to not want me.

PIASTRI - if she was gonna go for the hottest driver on the grid she’d go for lewis or charles.

CHARLES LECLERC - oh thank you oscar! very nice.

NORRIS - you’re moving away from the point. wait… is someone knocking on the door?

(everyone looks at each other concerned)

RICCIARDO - oh i ordered pizza. i forgot. my bad!

LECLERC - how about her dating another athlete? someone who understands this life but won’t affect her position here.

NORRIS - smart… what athlete has she been seen with recently?

PIASTRI - according to social media, simone biles?

NORRIS - isn’t she married? nah, who else.

RICCIARDO - she was telling me the other day that she went to the psg game. i asked her why and she said she had a friend who played for them.

LECLERC - kylian mbappé? that makes a lot of sense actually….

NORRIS - do you feel a kin to him? i mean, you’re both frenchmen after all.

(OSCAR PIASTRI would like the transcript to include the following: — after this, charles hit lando. i laughed.)

PIASTRI - it could be that this is all a big misunderstanding. she could have been shopping for a bridesmaid dress. why would she get married and not tell her sister who she’s incredibly close to? that makes no sense to me.

RICCIARDO - anyways….

NORRIS - what about leonardo dicaprio!

LECLERC - she is under 25….

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taglist: @23victoria @luckyladycreator2 @mxdi0 @booksandflowrs @charlesleclercsonlywife @casperlikej @nichmeddar @decafmickey @evie-119 @ironmaiden1313 @d3kstar @blupblupfish @demvnsriot @raevyng @namgification (don’t see yourself or wanna be removed? send an ask!)

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[mamaclownhunter]

As a writer- I am turning SQH in my head like a rotisserie chicken.

He has a golden core but his spiritual presence is very weak (this makes for great spy work as he can move undetected)

He has a very short temper but fucking has killer customer service

This man can fucking multitask he has machinations on schemes on tasks and he is fucking good

While SQ has a better handle on the lore SQH made the world- idk if you ever world built before but even if you can’t pull it out of the top of your head it is there and I have a really fucking funny idea that like some times SQH BS’ stuff like he will be like “idk there is probably a “purple dragon fang” flower that like- makes you wanna bite people in this area- and sure enough there is bc SQH thought of it and it is his world.

SQH fucking knows his people- so funny he forgets demon cultures but that is what SQ is for (I love LBH pointing out MBJ’s crush but LBH was raised by human and goes to humans for advise on flirting with SQ so I don’t think he instinctively knows Demon’s courting rules- but MR I know fucking all the lore and how demons flirt bc that was Sha Hualing’s plot device to introduce Meng mo and also wife 20-29# Erica- plus he is a gossip monger- he knows all the details and knows MBJ is married to SQH and he is such an asshole he only tells LBH so he can keep getting updates for his husband to see)

LBH is the hero- but SQH is the creator. While he can’t beat LBH through brute force he has the ability to get around the plot armor. After all- all stories need the hero to be beat every once in a while! He can’t outright kill LBH but he does know all weaknesses and limits. That is his son

While the human realm (outside his disciples who are much more cut throat now bc of him) doesn’t really see the appeal of- demons are fucking intimidated by the King of the North’s consort. SQH made a fucking name for himself ordering demons, being untouchable outside consort SQ. But he is nasty and fierce and since they are demons SQH doesn’t feel as bad lashing out (not physically)

SQH knows his characters too. Mostly canon but I love that idea that to an outsider SQH knowing your name before anyone tells him is a red flag he has his invisible fingers in your pie- no one knows how he is so successful ofc (weak core) but no if he really knows someone by face it is bc he spent a week screaming in a pillow coming up with a voice and thought process.

The world of PIDW/SV is a complex beautiful world- per SY SQH is fucking talented but he had to eat- the man can tell and weave a story like a champion if put on the spot, he could be a DM. But SQH is very cautious bc he doesn’t know if he can accidentally make stuff

He doesn’t write much anymore which sucks bc that is a huge comping mechanism and reliever before it became his biggest stresser

That being said when he does realize he is a queen and has some time off- he writes again. For himself. For Mobei, never for SY but he gets copies all the same. But since he isn’t worried about food or money any more… he writes what he wants and lets that talent flow. He is annoyed the RPF is still popular smut but SQH had insane complex beautiful mysteries and fascinating war.

He brought up ripping off Harry Potter but make it gay and no fucking golden snitch. SQ fans himself and says “knowing you it will be done in three days I will be happy to read.”

He still writes shitting porn even after he loses his v card.

But his other works are inspired and SQ is furious he could have had this as a story and not PIDW how DARE YOU

sQH refuses to write anything for the PIDW/Sv world. All his books take place somewhere else- in the “future”- fantasy- just not in this world so he doesn’t add more to their crazy world

I have more but I am so tired

[falllpoutboy]

the ritualistic humiliation of alicent this season was absolutely disgusting and the show constantly needed to remind us that she is the character we should root against all the time and never feel bad for her, everyone else gets a pass because they’re a slave to fate, apparently, but not her. nearly every single plot point this season regarding her is swiftly followed by a punishment, whether literally or narratively.

she starts this season by having clandestine consensual sex with criston cole her sworn sword. they are so bad at being clandestine that otto and larys have clearly suspected something is going on with them. after being stood up by her, larys then replaces her regular lady’s maids with some from his staff so that they can spy and report back to him which makes alicent uncomfortable enough to send them away. that’s punishment #1

she and criston are having sex when b&c happens and are interrupted by helaena and jaehaera running in. but remember, jaehaerys was not the original target of b&c, and the mastermind behind it, daemon is redeemed by the end of this season, so alicent is so much of a POS hypocrite that while she too busy having sex with the LC of the kingsguard, her grandson dies on HER watch. and as much as i loved alicole, i really hate that the writers used their relationship to seemingly punish the characters when they literally haven’t done anything wrong. and now helaena knows about the affair too. punishment #2

alicent is confronted by rhaenyra at the sept of baelor, who lets slip that she heard viserys push for aegon to be king as his last words to her. but oh no, silly alicent, rhaenyra is here to tell you about the song of ice and fire, this stupid prophecy that has been passed from Targaeryen king to heir for generations now. how would alicent have known about it when she is neither king nor heir? doesn’t matter, she’s stupid for believing his words to be literal and stupid for playing a part in crowning her son. punishment #3

alicent takes moon tea, as an abortifacient or as a late contraceptive, we’ll never know! but the very act of taking moon tea is now perceived by grand maester orwylle, who now also has reason to suspect queen alicent has been having an affair. punishment #4

bitter and disillusioned with herself for not knowing about a stupid fucking prophecy nobody told her about and letting her horrible son aegon be crowned (even though the council was planning on installing him anyways), alicent talks down to aegon by reminding him he’ll never be as good of a king as his father (L O L) and he should do nothing. such a rousing speech leads to aegon getting drunk, flying out into battle on his dragon and getting maimed because of it. why did you say such mean things alicent? now look what you did. punishment #5

back at the small council, alicent advocates for herself to be regent with only one person there to agree with her, grand maester orwylle but not even her lover and closest confidant advocates for her. the son she is scared of the most becomes regent instead. silly alicent, don’t you know you will never be respected in a room full of men? how do you like misogyny, something you have apparently never personally experienced until this day, now? punishment #6

alicent goes to the sept of baelor to pray with helaena when a riot mob happens and is forced to retreat. this mob is apparently so righteously angry at not having enough food, they throw fish in her face with such good aim and call her the queen of fishes, alicent trips and falls for leaving helaena behind momentarily, and she also receives a bloody gash on her arm before barely escaping with her life and helaena. oh alicent, didn’t you know that the blockade of ships that carries food into the city which has been enforced by rhaenyra and corlys has actually been your fault the entire time?? punishment #7

back at the small council, alicent confronts aemond and is relieved by her duty on there by him. maybe its because she brings up a theory that he is now avenging the bullying he went through when he was young, which one could argue happened on her watch, is why she gets the boot. oh well, there goes any little ruling power and say in the war effort she had left. punishment #8

alicent sees off her brother ser gwayne who makes mention that their father otto kept her closer to him than gwayne because she was his favored child. Oh! so because alicent was otto’s favorite, it doesn’t really matter that he sold her into marriage and marital rape at age 14 last season. why would you ever want to be otto hightower’s favorite child? punishment #9

alicent also asks about daeron, with gwayne saying how unlike to aegon and aemond he is because he was raised away from them in Oldtown and not by her.. she even says this and gwayne dissuades her of that opinion but honestly, once alluded to that alicent is a bad mom, it’s just her biased brother claiming otherwise. punishment #10

[loveshotzz]

fboy!eddie x fem!reader

Rude Boy

Summary: Alone in a basement at Reefer Rick’s party, you finally catch Eddie’s attention.

Word Count: 2.4k

Warnings: 18 + obviously this is an fboy!eddie fic so prepare for him to be smug, mocking and hot. Fingering (f receiving), dry humping, finger sucking, weed smoking, mentions of partying and a slightly angsty ending.

Authors Note: this is for @newlips #milestoneoflove celebration. I wanted to try something new in between working on bigger fics, I also just wanted to write something for you, cece. Thank you for always bringing us writers together on here 💗. Shout out to both cece and @carolmunson the queens of fboy!eddie. If you haven’t read The Sheep or Baby, As If I highly recommend.

Scanning the party over the top of your drink, your eyes search for the only reason you came to Rick’s in the first place. The rumor mill had let it be known that Eddie Munson and his main girl Cece had finally broken up, and you’d only dreamed of having that top spot.

Tugging down the short hem of your dress that you wore just for him, you were starting to get impatient. You had watched his messy head of curls disappear into the basement that was off limits for anyone that didn’t work for the man whose house you were in. No one had followed him in, and you didn’t notice anyone go before him. Sitting pressed against the wall you weigh the consequences of the choice you were about to make.

Pushing yourself off the wall you make a beeline for the door, weaving through the crowd you’re side tracked by a yank on your arm, falling slightly into the sea of dancing people you shove your empty cup into the chest of a handsy man who was trying to get you to dance. Ignoring the way he slurred ‘bitch’ after you yanked yourself free, all you focused on was keeping your breathing steady as you dared to be bold enough to get what you wanted for so long.

A manicured hand on the door handle, you got dark red just for tonight. The girls around town had always gossiped that color was his favorite. It doesn’t make any noise when you open it, the music upstairs immediately clashing with what he was playing downstairs. Closing the door the lighting is dim at the bottom of the stairs. A thick cloud of smoke creates a haze around the yellow glow and it tightens in your lungs with every breath you take all the way down.

The long wooden table with a lush bag of weed and a couple scales is what you see first, dark green crumbs dusting what was clearly a makeshift weigh station in the middle of it. Neon beer signs add a pink coloring to your forbidden surroundings as your eyes land on the worn couch in the center of the room.

The man you’d been looking for sitting right in the middle.

His long legs are spread wide with ease, and you catch a glimpse of the pale skin hidden underneath through the rips in his black tight fitting jeans. His simple white shirt wraps around his torso and arms the way you see on the models covering the packages at the store. The crisp cleanliness of it makes the ink that covers every inch of his toned arms stand out even more.

His face is hidden by a large hit blowing from between his plump lips adding to the fog that coats the room. You can still feel the heat of his stare and it makes your thighs press tighter.

“Lost?” His voice comes out deep with a teasing edge to it — a harsher rasp from smoking. Leaning forward - his elbows press to his knees, his handsome features reveal themselves to you when he pushes through the cloud of smoke. Straight white teeth shine on display in the kind of smile that ruins the thin fabric of your underwear. “Or just looking for trouble?”

It takes you a minute to find your words when the chestnut of his eyes darken as they take in the way the material of your dress hangs just right off every curve of your body. Thick ringed fingers come up to rest on the plush pink of his lips when they spy the dark red adoring your long nails, his smile widening even more almost like he knew you picked that color just for him.

“Trouble’s my middle name actually.” Biting into the sticky gloss of your bottom lip, mischief flashes behind his hungry gaze when he slowly extends the half smoked blunt in your direction. Daring you to take the bait.

He eats you alive with his eyes as your hips sway and your heels thud muted against the carpet carrying you towards him like a lion’s prey walking right into his den. The sound of Chevelle’s Send The Pain Below drowns out the noise of the party upstairs only intensifying the growing slick between your legs. Nerves vibrating from your fingertips the second hand smoke was already starting the job the blunt was going to finish.

You end up between his legs when you come to a stop and he doesn’t make any effort to leave your personal space. His hot breath fans on the exposed skin of your thighs when your delicate fingers brush against his when they take the blunt from his hand.

Your cheeks hollow when you take a drag, despite trying to keep a confident demeanor you can’t meet his eyes from this close. Black and hungry he doesn’t try to hide how his eyes roam all over you. The scent of his cologne is stronger than the weed burning, swirling around you it overpowers your senses.

His fingertips run a slow path up the back of your calf catching the way it makes you rub your legs together in search of friction. His lips ghosting against your skin as he starts toying with the hem of your dress.

“Didn’t anyone tell you not to talk to strangers?” He looks up at you from under his lashes and you try to ignore the sting to your ego that he doesn’t remember you.

“We went to High School together, Eddie.”

The squeal you let out when his teeth nip at the spot his lips had just been hovering covers the disappointment in your voice.

He just hums to himself giving you no indication if you jogged his memory or not. Squeezing rough with big hands at the doughy meat of your thighs he was focused on getting what he wanted, not the words coming out of your mouth.

Leaning back on the cushions of the couch, he watches you with narrowed eyes. Giving you another once over, he licks his lips watching the way yours wrap around the tobacco.

“Those cute feet of yours are probably sore from standing in those pretty lookin’ heels all night sweetheart.” Patting his lap, the smile on his lips twists like the devil before adding “Why don’t you take a seat?”

You exhale your last drag as he spreads himself out in anticipation for the choice he knows you’re going to make. With the blunt tucked between your fingers, you lean forward, hands gripping his shoulders letting him get a look at the lace that pushes your tits up earning you a squeeze on your sides in approval.

Straddling him with your knees against his hips, the heels of your shoes hang over the edge of the couch. Your dress sits rucked up at your waist — the new position giving him a view of the matching panties underneath.

“Wearing these ‘cause you wanted someone to see ‘em huh?” Plucking at the elastic edge near where you needed his fingers most, his smirk told you he could feel how they were already drenched.

“I don’t know what you’re talking abo-“

“Don’t let the blunt go out.” His tone is harsher than before and you hated how it only turned you on more. “You wanted my attention and now you got it princess, don’t be rude and waste my weed.”

You don’t argue with him bringing it back to your lips, putting your full weight down on his lap you could feel how hard he was underneath you despite his indifference. The silent victory has you smirking around your hit. The callouses that cover his fingertips catch against the smoothness of your skin as they grip and massage over the fat of your thighs.

The silver of his rings gleam against the soft light, the cool metal of the chain that wraps around his wrist leaves goosebumps in its wake with every glide against your heated flesh. Slow and teasing his hands make their way higher, clenching around nothing — he keeps his eyes trained on your face. Playing with the edge of your panties close to where you can feel a second heartbeat, he tuts when your hips give the slightest rock.

“Smoking my weed, breaking the number one rule in Rick’s house, and now you think you can be greedy while you soak my lap?” He lets out a low whistle before snatching what’s left of the blunt from your mouth. The glitter from your lip gloss stains the end when he puts it out.

Big hands on your ass, he pulls you forward when he leans back. A single grunt escapes him when your heat hits where he’s pressing against his zipper. A harsh smack followed by a kneading grip, he keeps one hand on your reddening ass while the other goes back to playing with the seam of your completely ruined underwear. He lets his two fingers dip inside, the fat tips tracing once over your slick lips.

“This is what you wanted isn’t it?” Pulling the offending material to the side his gaze darkens when he sees how you glisten for him, running the pads of his fingers down your slit he’s only partially satisfied when you mewl in response. Your long nails dig deeper into his shoulders when he does it again.

“I asked you a question, trouble maker.”

He doesn’t give you any time to respond before he pushes inside. Despite the lack of warning your walls give him little to no fight as they pull him in until he hits his rings. Eyes screwing shut at the stretch, all coherent thoughts get lost when he curls them to the side. Reaching your g-spot like he knew where it was the whole time.

“Yes! — Fuck, Eddie!” The coil in your stomach tightens when he starts setting a pace that has you clawing at his shirt, eyes rolling in the back of your head when he uses the pad of his thumb against your sensitive clit.

There’s a pang of jealousy when you think of all of the practice it took him to touch your body like he’d done it a million times before, but it’s short lived when he adds a third finger stretching your walls even further a pornogrpahic moan rips through your chest.

“Yeah? It’s like that huh?” His smooth voice is condescending as he mocks the way your mouth hangs open and your brows pinch together but you're too close to seeing god from just his fingers to care. The thought of how his dick would make you feel has you gushing all over him again, walls fluttering with a new wave of arousal. God, you hoped he’d let you find out.

All you can do is nod, your hips starting to meet the drag of his knuckles chasing the high that was threatening to consume every part of you. Too lost in the intensity of being so close you don’t see him lean in until you feel his lips on where the tops of your breasts are exposed from the low cut of your dress. Tongue lapping against the curve of your cleavage he bites down hard enough to leave a bruise, sucking for good measure he was marking you. No one else at this party was gonna touch you.

There’s a flicker of pride that ignites inside you at the thought of being one of his girls, and when the hand that's been firmly gripping your ass starts pushing your hips forward it’s just enough to send you flying over the edge.

White hot heat flashing behind your eyes, his name falls from your mouth in a way that will have your voice horse in the morning. Shuddering on top of him, you don’t think anyone has ever made you cum this hard before.

“Made such a mess of me darlin’, gonna need you to clean it up.” He doesn’t give you time to recover before the fingers that have you still trembling on top of him are shoved in your mouth.

The rough pads of his fingers press down on your tongue, the taste of your release coating your tongue — sweet and tangy. Wrapping glittering lips around them he inhales a shallow breath when you eagerly start sucking them clean.

“Such a dirty fucking girl, I’ve got something else you’d be good at suckin’ just like that.” Rutting his hips up, the over stimulation has you whining around his fingers. He pulls them out with a loud pop and a trail of spit still connects you, wiping the remains on the side of his jeans he gives your ass another spank before ushering you up.

“I’m gonna go get us something to drink then you can return the favor like I know you want to sweetheart.” Flashing you a smile that somehow has you hungry for more, you nod obediently with hot cheeks and a flushed grin on your gloss smeared lips.

“I’ll be waiting, Eddie.” Your voice is shy despite what just happened moments before, and it makes his dimples poke the sides of his cheeks.

You watch him head up the stairs you’d dare to come down, waiting to hear the door click you let out a little squeal. Falling onto the couch with a pleased smile, you toy with the bottom of your dress doing your best to ignore how soaked your were.

It had been ten minutes when you looked down at the mouth shaped bruise on your chest, and another ten when you opted to just lose your underwear for your own comfort. It was when it started pushing forty that the fear he might not be coming back finally set in.

Huffing with a shake in your throat, you finally will yourself to stand. Taking one last look around you finally decide to leave with whatever dignity you might have left after waiting almost an hour.

Your heels feel heavy with each step, the bruise to your ego from before growing ten fold. Turning the handle, it feels like all eyes land on you when you cross the threshold. Whispers and murmurs and stares falling to the mark on your chest, everyone knew who did that to you.

His loud laugh catches your ears and you should have known better than to let the lovesick smile light up your face like it was meant for you. It doesn’t take you long to find him halfway out the front door with his arm slung around a pretty brunette you’ve seen before. His main girl.

Throwing you a wink and less than guilty grin he knew he’d be able to see you again. You owed him a blowjob after all.

Throwing you a wink and less than guilty grin he knew he’d be able to see you again. You owed him a blowjob after all.

[hsficrecommendation]

Hello everyone! This is masterlist #4, #5 and #6 (Cont. Of June, then Sept, and Oct 2023!) for all the fics I have reblogged on this side blog I hold super close to me. Remember to leave feedback and reblog all the writings below!

Also, a huge thank you to all the writers mentioned, I adore you so very much and I hope you keep writing for yourselves <3

••• JUNE (Part 2!) •••

Stablehand!Harry x Princess!Y/n | Part 2 | Part 3 | Harry loathes Y/N and she's just a little tease. - @angelsanddaisies

Poetry In Your Mailbox | Part 2 | Part 3 | Y/N and the rest of her nosy neighborhood friends ogle at the man who just moved in next door — a man of mystery, silence, and someone who seemingly doesn’t want anything to do with his neighbors… until Y/N begins to receive anonymous mail. - @episkystyles

Changes | ♡♡ Harry returns home. Based on- Changes by Cam. - @hes-writer

Prince!Harry x Princess!Y/n | Harry is a prince, Y/N is a princess, and Harry is insufferable. - @novelistrry

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes | Every Rose has its Thorns | Petals and Prompts | Harry’s a prince looking for his princess… but perhaps she isn’t inside the ball. Includes: flowers and gossip and promises and true love’s kiss. - @jarofstyles

Out by the Docks | Underneath the Stars | ♡ A story of clandestine meetings, conspiracies, and stolen glances by the sea. (Princess!Y/n x Spy!Harry) - @fishnets-fingers

Dentist The Bad Boi | ♡ Harry’s a med-student and Y/N’s an art student, being neighbours with Y/N was already a living hell for Harry but when she fusses over his cat getting her cat pregnant – he mighty looses it. - @muffindaddystyles

The Empowering Hearts | ♡♡ In which you're a lonely model until you meet a baker. - @havethetimeofyourstyles

••• SEPTEMBER •••

Say It | in which a new relationship sparks up in the restaurant. - @havethetimeofyourstyles

The Joker and The Queen | In which Harry is a florist, has a crush on the baker next door and dreads his Birthday. - @harrysonlylover

Breaking the Ice | It's no secret that as a figure skater, you're fed up with the local hockey team being treated like royalty... and your ex's status as a player isn't helping much either. - @purplekiwis

Harry is a young professor and Y/N has never felt this kind of attraction before - @novelistrry

••• OCTOBER •••

Stop Thinking so Much | In which Harry teaches english and some poetry is hard to pick apart. - @meetevieinthehallway

Dog Days are Over | ♡ In which Y/n and Harry walk their dogs in the same park. Though, over the course of time, buying each other coffee turns into something more. - @nationalharryleague

The Witching Hour | ♡ Despite Harry being the witch in this situation, maybe his crush on gemma's new friend was going to be the most bewitching thing he ever encountered. - @moonchildstyles

Nest | Harry is y/n's best friend. He also happens to be an alpha. Spending a week at his place has her brain doing weird things. - @moonchildstyles

Pebbles and The Scarecrow | ♡ In which Harry doesn’t like Halloween until a certain pair of trick or treaters knock on his door. - @havethetimeofyourstyles

Banana Pancakes | Nanny!Harry falls in love with his little girl, and the mother of his little girl. - @ill-be-your-honey-bri

Golden | In which Y/n's life is dark but the Harry, The Fae King, sees she's golden. - @angelisverba

Better man - Harry and Y/n are famous and dating. Now, Harry is attending a party just 'cause he knows that Y/n would surely be there, and Y/n seems to be escaping her date so hard that she meets Harry outside the bathrooms. - @bopbopstyles

Masterlist for more recs! My Writing account - @0oolookitsme

[bobbin-buckley]

Wednesday Addams Headcanons

Wednesday Addams x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Fluff and Smut (aged up!!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SFW

-When you both met Wednesday hated you she only disliked you because you were better than her at lots of things

-She didn’t actually really hate you she was just mad because she actually loved you

-All she would do is ignore you when she discovered these feelings. Enid told her that she should put on her big girl pants and ask you out

-Wednesday was always blaming you for this feeling, it wasn’t partially your fault I mean you’re so goddamn pretty

-She finally accepted this feeling and asked you out on a coffee date at WeatherVane. It went nicer than Wednesday expected, you exchanged numbers (you had to help her), gave her a kiss on the cheek and planned another date

-Sooner or later you asked Wednesday to be your girlfriend and how you really liked her

“The feeling’s mutual” she’d say

-After not even a few months of dating Wednesday was pretty protective of you

-If a guy were to flirt with you she’d give them a death glare causing them to flee

-You didn’t mind the Over-Protective-Wednesday-Addams it was honestly sweet that she cared for you so much, even if she wouldn’t show it physically

-Wednesday wasn’t much for physical touch, she was rather more for words. Eventually she adjusted to some touching like pinky holding, hugs, kisses on your knuckles, a kiss on her cheek or forehead

-some physical touch is always behind doors, Wednesday hates pda. The closes thing to pda you’ll get is her pinky holding under a table. It’s quite cute infact

-Wednesday was never for pet names but she’ll call you “Cara Mia” “Mi Amor” “Mon Tresor” “mea vita” in Spanish, French or Latin

-Enid tended to tease Wednesday about you, how she was so head over heels for you without even realizing it

-You guys eventually get a room if your own together

-Fencing matches, watching/listening to her play cello, hearing her type on her type writer, going to the raven with her, investigating together, she offers to grave dig with you and you actually enjoy it

-You’ll give her ideas for her writing and sometimes she’ll write them in

NSFW (Everyone is Aged up)

-More dom for sure, if you’d fight her over it she wouldn’t be slow thats for sure

-Honestly most times you guys have sex she prefers it vanilla, unless she’s feeling kinky and mad then roughness will come in

-Sex at night, never usually during the day because she’s worried Thornhill or Enid will walk in

-She’s moderately quiet there’ll be groans and whimpers from her, while as you…she wants to hear you scream but in the environment you’re in it won’t work out

-Enid almost walking in on you guys

-She’d definitely do knife play and pain play, she won’t be crazy about it like actually stab you. She doesn’t wanna hurt you too much. (So she’s still soft even during intimate)

-probably owns a strap, a black strap ina box under her bed (uses it once in a while)

-Will throw thing out of the room and will lock him in a drawer if he ever attempts to spy

-She really tries to pleasure you, she’s never done nor thought about having sex with someone (obviously this is aged up)

-She loves pleasuring you, even if she likes to make you hold your orgasm or pulls away before you cum but other than that she likes to please you well

-I’d say she is the type to do queening (face sitting) she loves having you sit on her face, like actually sit she likes the thrill of not being able to breath while tongue fucking you

-She is soft during sex, making sure your okay if she does something different or if she accidentally hurts you

“This okay?”

“Okay…I’m going to put it in Amor”

“Shit, are you alright?” “Wednesday Addams apologizing? No way” “shut up…but seriously”

-Whenever you’re top (rare) she wants you to be rough with her she loves pain. You are always unsure about it but she claims she’s fine

-Aftercare is a meh for her. She’ll make you a bath but you’re kinda on your own from there (depending on how you feel) like if she went rough and you’re super tired and can’t walk she’ll help you to the bathroom but otherwise ur good

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where are my little gays at?

Sorry for a late upload I’ve been going through something and I broke up with my gf so it’s been hard for me to find motivation but I’m alive! I think?

Anyways, I’m starting something for Tara rn I think you guys will like it cause I love it

But have a good day/night! 😃

[annymation]

My Thoughts On Wish Deleted Scenes

Now that we got all the deleted scenes out, I thought it would be fun to share my thoughts on them... Mostly rant, yeah, I might get pretty heated with this heheh but it'll be fun.

Villain Couple

So let's begin with my personal favorite, the villain couple that we could've had

I am literally scared with how I nailed their characterization in my rewrite, like, that's them, that's King Magnus (Magnifico) of Rosas and Amaya (Amable) of Rosas right there. The dramatic, power hungry dude that can barely control his temper + a cunning, calm and collected queen that thinks before acting but is just as vicious as him.

AND THEY CALL EACH OTHER SO MANY PET NAMES! SHE CALLED HIM "GOOD BOY"!!! HE PULLED HER FOR A ROMANTIC DANCE UGHHH DISNEY YOU TOOK THEM FROM MEEEE!!!

Now let's talk about... WHY this was scrapped, according to Mark Kennedy, the head of story in Wish, he says in the Behind the Scenes documentary that the reason they changed this, and I quote:

"We didn't want people to know Magnifico was evil right away, we wanted the people of Rosas to love Magnifico, and have only Asha realize he's not as good as he seems"

... Okay? That's not a reason to not make him SECRETLY evil, just have the rebels be like a group of people who are considered ungrateful weirdos by the people of Rosas, and the king spreads rumors that they're a threat, since they think NO ONE should get their wishes granted. So we have Asha being part of this rebellion, that doesn't fully know what Magnifico does with the wishes, but they know he's doing something bad, so it's up to Asha to find proof and open the eyes of the citizens of Rosas who love Magnifico, easy.

"Also it serve the story better to have Amaya be a good person"

Why? Because she distracted Magnifico and told them about the pulleys they needed to open the castle's ceiling? Just have one of Asha's MANY FRIENDS be a spy of the rebels that became close to the king and queen, maybe the king's apprentice, let's say Safi, and he tells them that info and also distracts them if needed, there, no need for good queen.

This one is the cheery on top, are you guys ready? I don't think you are, but here goes... "Additionally we couldn't really answer the question of why Magnifico wanted a star, and what it would do for him."

............................. I don't know if I can put into words how ENRAGED this make me feel, but I will try.

Mark, my guy, I'm sure you're a lovely person, but I know for a fact that you are lying. Because in a room full of professional screen writers THAT MADE IT TO DISNEY there's absolutely NO WAY no one stepped in and said "Oh but why does the villain want power though?"... THAT'S LIKE ASKING WHY JAFAR WANTED THE LAMP OR WHY URSULA WANTED THE TRIDENT!!!! HE'S A VILLAIN!!! VILLAINS ALWAYS WANT POWER!!!

"Oh buT MaGNiFicO Is DiFfERRenT bEcAuSE He'S A kINg sO He alREadY HaS pOWeR" SO WHAT??? Villains are never satisfied! Magnifico says it himself in the deleted scene

"I can't take it, this wanting that is never satisfied"

THERE! That's your villain motivation, he wants to fill a cup with no bottom, he wants more and more than he already has! Which makes him a PERFECT FOIL to Asha, because Asha wishes for more to her people, because they indeed are struggling, she wants what they need! And she'll fight for it, while Magnifico will only lie, cheat and steal his way into more power! GAAAAH IT WOULD BE SUCH A NEAT CONFLICT I'M GOING FERAL!

Anyway, on to the next one

Wishing Tree

Deleted Sabino my beloved, you only get one scene in my rewrite, Tiana's father style, but I love you so much you sassy old man

I love this concept of the wishing tree so much, because this is actually a tradition here where I'm from, we take colorful ribbons, think of a wish, and tie them on a tree.

Would be lovely if Wish showed many types of different traditions of wishing besides just wishing stars, like blowing dandelions, throwing a coin down a well and soon.

But I digress, Asha has such an inspiring personality here, her writings show how she's fierce, longing for adventure

SHE HAS KNACK FOR SWEARING LMAO

She has an undying hope in her, and she wonders if it'll take Magnifico to DIE for her people to be free to wish, this is amazing, this is what I wrote my Asha into in Kingdom of Wishes

@uva124 joked the other day saying I might secretly be one of the disney writers just pretending to be a fan and sharing the original script, guys I swear that's not the case, they just communicated with me telepathically.

Jokes aside, this scene is so beautiful, Asha had everything to be an amazing protagonist.

Now for what Mark said in the documentary... Oh boy...

"The people of Asha's village keep their wishes a secret, and don't say them out loud, because if they do Magnifico will find their wishes"

Now THIS is very interesting, making Magnifico this almost omnipresent threat that even if you just SAY what you desire he might hear with his magic, maybe with a crystal ball or something Idk but regardless this is a great way to make him aware of who Asha is.

Cause think about it, Asha does make a wish, upon a star, so Magnifico would probably feel that wish, and thus he'd know Asha is the one who summoned a wishing star, so the chase would begin.

Heck, with this concept he could manipulate Asha into giving away star by promising that if she did so all her people would be free and he'd stop eating wishes all together because he wouldn't need more power anymore, obviously that'd be a lie, but it would make Asha have to choose between taking the easy way out and giving away her friend/love interest in exchange of her wish coming true, or risk it all and protecting him at all cost, ya know, a internal conflict.

"We wanted people to love Magnifico, and Asha to be the only one who finds out about his true evil nature, that way, when she tries to tell people, nobody believes her, and that's make fighting him much harder for her"

See Mark, that's a good idea, thing is, that's not what happened... Asha didn't try to tell people, and the times she did tell her family that Magnifico would never grant their wishes, they DID believe her, and Sabino got mad she wanted to tell him his wish. And when she told her friends, they didn't question her much about the fact she challenged the king, Dahlia just rolled with it like it was no big deal...

So yeah it would've been great if Asha tried to spread the truth but people didn't believe her, it really would, but that's not quite what we got

Star and Asha Chase Scene

And there it is, the closest thing we'll ever get of Star Boy, and I love him

Star can take shape of any animal in this version, and that made him too similar to Maui and the genie, well, dear Disney, riddle me this, why didn't you just scrap the idea of him being a shapeshifter? There are many ways for a being to embody magic and creativity that don't involve them turning into animals, maybe have them be- oh I don't know- ANIMATED IN 2D???

"The ability to change into anything made star very powerful"

Here's an idea, make Magnifico MORE powerful than star, by making forbidden magic Star's weakness

"We wanted Asha to be our hero, and we wanted her to solve all her problems by herself, without too much help from star"

Bruh, Walt Disney said himself "You can design and create, and bild the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make that dream a reality" Asha could NOT do this on her own, and that doesn't make her weak or less of a hero, it just means the threat was too big.

And if she was the one who had to make her wish come true, GREAT, just use Blue Fairy logic, she couldn't make Pinocchio a real boy right away, all she did was give him life so he could pursue that himself, same could happen to Asha, star gives her some magical intervention, but he can't do everything for her.

Also let me just say, that interaction between Asha and Star?

"Star we'll have to be very discreet" "Discreet? Got it, sounds like another plan, I'm getting pretty good at this planning stuff" "Uh you know what would help that plan? If you weren't so bright" "Oh-hoho thank you!- oh wait, you mean-" "Shinny, glowy, way too much light, turn it down"

I can SEE KOW!Asha and Aster having this exact same interaction!

And then that scene Star holds her hand under water! Bruh don't tell me they wouldn't be a thing Disney!

And all the sea creatures coming together to make a big spectacle, THAT felt like Disney magic, that WHALE!!!

That would've been so beautiful to see fully animated.

In The Dungeon

Can't believe that I also wrote a scene of the 7 teens and Asha going to the dungeon before this scene came out, like, it's such an specific scenario

Anyway, so once again we see this better version of Asha, that is caring, smart and inspiring.

And Magnifico being a freaking DESPICABLE monster, saying that Dahlia is a burden that no one would miss because of her disability, like DANG that's something I never considered writing because it's so heavy, but they almost did include it, and I think it would've been great to show just how evil he is, and in turn, how amazing Asha is because of what she says next

"He underestimates you, and that's a good thing. When you're underestimated, they don't see your power coming until after it changed the world"

Thank you Wish deleted scenes, I'mma take this line and fit it in my rewrite somehow cause WOW imagine that, the 100th disney princess teaching something very valuable for children of today!

Think of all the disabled kids that would've felt seen in this scene! Instead Dahlia's disability is more of an after thought, and from what I've read, the way she walks doesn't even seem like she's disabled according to some crutch users.

"Also, Asha already had 7 friends, and we thought adding another one was too many"

I agree Mark, so here's a thought, make ONE OF THE 7 TEENS the apprentice that gets locked up in the dungeon, like Safi for example, and they find him by hearing him sneeze! There, suddenly the character whose only personality is sneezing get's something to do!

Magnifico breaking the wishes of people "No one would miss" is actually a thing in my rewrite, I didn't explore it that much cause it wasn't that important, but I'm glad I also got that right

Star was more useful in this clip than he was in the whole movie

Climax

Not much to say about this one, hot take, but I'm actually glad this one was changed, sure I like Magnifico eating a bunch of the wishes to get more powerful, but personally I'm not a fan of him turning into a giant muscular monster, but I understand if you're into that.

Though, it's still a funny scene, it's silly yeah, but it's definitely entertaining, which is more than what I can say about the movie

Also Valentino is cute here

I like how Magnifico uses the wishes to shine a spotlight on Asha

This face, lmao

"THATS JUST A GOAT!"

The thing about this scene though is that... I can't imagine where they were going with this, like, then what? Magnifico climbs the tower to get star and Star manages to defeat him somehow? If so then yeah no wonder you deleted star for doing all the work for Asha, what's Asha supposed to do now that the king is all powerful???

Star saying "We just need one more ingredient" YALL MAKING A POTION??? This feels weird, a magical being making a potion... Wait hold up, I thought of this in this second, was the last ingredient Asha? Like she goes up there to warn them and it turns out she was what they needed to figure out how to defeat Magnifico?... Probably not but who we will never know.

Wish Worth Making

This made me CRY when I first watched it, like WOW Disney, are you TRYING to make this movie as soulless as possible???

This is such a powerful moment that would make us actually CARE about Sabino, feel what Asha feels, and it's a calm and beautiful moment in this movie that never stops to just BREATHE.

Can you imagine Magnifico showing up after THIS?? It would've been so scary because it was the calm before the storm.

Imagine him breaking not only Sakina's wish but also Sabino's lute!

If I was Sabino's voice actor I'd be pissed to find out they deleted my song but kept the chicken dance song... That was a thing.

Anyway, hope yall had fun with this little rant, let me know YOUR thoughts on these scenes too! See ya next time!

Thank You For Reading!

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Some more obscure and / or underrated lesbian literature : An incomplete list made by a lesbian in hopes of making other sapphics happy

(I haven’t read all of them)

Sorted by years (this rapidly became a history lesson of lesbian literature sorry I’m a nerd)

Ancient times

(A good article about lesbians in ancient greece / rome)

Queen Zhuang Jiang 庄姜 (???- BC 690) / We know about Sappho and Enheduanna, but what about her? She wrote poems some of which were, uh, pretty gay. I learnt about her here. It is said than her poems are in The Book of Songs (which is a collection of ancient Chinese poetry). I couldn’t find a lot about her but I found enough to believe than (hopefully) she was a real person and the internet isn't lying to me.

Dialogues of the courtesans - Lucian of Samosata (somewhere in the second century BC) / Basically Dialogues of the courtesans is a collection of dialogues between well, courtesans (prostitutes). Either between themselves or between clients. One of the dialogues is called “The Lesbians”. Link to read (somehow finding a pdf of Dialogues of the courtesans is pretty hard but reading it chapter by chapter online it’s not??)

The Babyloniaka - Iamblichus (somewhere in the second century AC) / Lost novel, so all you need to know is here

Of course we can’t forget this Pompeii poem

1200s

Bieiris de Romans (somewhere in the first half of the 1200s) / Bieiris was a French poet, and we only have one of her poems with us because the others have been lost. We don’t know much (anything) about her, except that she was a woman, French, and who wrote about a woman called Maria. Some say that this mysterious Maria referred to the Virgin Mary, others than Maria was her gf, and others than she was writing in the perspective of a man (because obviously a woman writing about other women in a not so platonic way is unthinkable). Anyway, feel free to get your own conclusions, here’s the poem (translated)

1500s

The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena - Konrad Eisenbichler / So while this is a modern book, it is the only one I’ve been able to find than includes Laudomia Forteguerri’s poems (1515-1555). Some historians considered her to be the earliest Italian lesbian writer. “Although only six of her sonnets have survived, all are testaments to the love she bore for other women, and five are specifically dedicated to Margaret of Austria.”

The Maitland Quarto / Manuscript (1586) / So, this is a collection of 95 scot poems, and poem 49 is pretty sapphic. It’s technically anonymous, but it has been attributed to Marie Maitland (who transcripted the manuscript and is thought to have added her own poems there). The last lines mean “'There is more constancy in our sex / Than ever among men has been”, I haven’t been able to translate the rest of it. The poem.

1600s

The Flower's Shadow Behind the Curtain - Ko Lien Hua Ying (somewhere in the 1600s) / It is said this book was written towards the end of the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). It’s a erotic book, and chapter 22 includes an erotic story between two 16 year old girls. I found it in Sex in China: Studies in Sexology in Chinese Culture by Fang Fu Ruan (believe it or not, I don’t just randomly know all this books, I did research)

Aphra Behn (1640-1689) / English writer, one of the first female writers to live through her writing. She was also a spy. She wrote a lot about women. “Homoeroticism is standard in Behn's verse, either in descriptions such as these of male to male relationships or in depictions of her own attractions to women. Behn was married and widowed early, and as a mature woman her primary publicly acknowledged relationship was with a gay male, John Hoyle, himself the subject of much scandal.” (here). She wrote a lesbian love poem (in the link before, it also makes an analysis of it). The poem: To The Fair Clarinda

Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings - Juana Inés De la Cruz (1648-1695) / So the thing about Juana is than every single spanish-speaking lesbian knows her (and loves her), but hardly anyone who doesn’t speak spanish has ever heard of her, which is a shame, because she’s an absolute icon. She was a Mexican nun who was also incredibly gay. You know how Sappho is called the tenth muse? Juana is also called the (mexican) tenth muse. She’s also called the phoenix of America, which is incredibly badass. She learnt how to read at 3 years old, at 8, she asked her mother to send her to college dressed as a man (her mother refused). She learnt and studied by her own, because she wanted to learn. She studied by cutting her hair (if she got something wrong or forgot something, she cut a strand of her hair as a punishment) because she said that “a head adorned with hair is worthless if it’s a head naked of ideas”. When she was sixteen (important to note than she already spoke Latin fluently at 12, having mastered it in just a few lessons) the archbishop Payo Enríquez de Rivera heard of her, and decided to ask her to be the company lady of his wife (his wife and her eventually would have a relationship) and decided to test her intelligence. He got 40 (!!!) university profesor of all subjects, and they all asked her questions related to maths, literature, philosophy, etc. She answered all of them right. At around 21, she decided to become a nun (not out of faith, but because it was either becoming a nun and being able to continue her education, or marrying a man and stop studying. To her, the choice was clear). Also it is said she owned around 4000 books in her personal library. So yeah, an educated, extremely intelligent gal, who wrote lesbian love poems to her gf, and who was definitely not afraid to stand up for herself.

1700s

The Game of Flats - Nicholas Rowe? (1715) / Poem, “game of flats” was an 18th century slang for lesbian sex. Link to read <- that website includes lots of 18th century queer history and poems like this one

The Sappho-an - Anonymous (1735 or 1749) / When I first heard of this I couldn’t believe it. It sounds like an AO3 fanfic, or some modern erotic book (one of those than have a real person in the cover), or maybe a forgotten 1970s lesbian book. It’s none of that. It’s an anonymous poem written in the 1700s. The plot? The goddesses of Olympus are sexually unsatisfied because the gods keep on going after mortals (except Ares, he’s just too busy with war) instead of paying attention to them. The gods keep going after woman and male mortals, so Hera just says yknow what if they can sleep with men then we can sleep with each other. Sappho also appears. Link to read.

Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure - John Cleland (1742) / Ok fine, this one is not sapphic but the main character (female) does have sex with a woman at one point. This is basically an erotic novel. Very dirty (specially for the time period) and very banned in lots of places. The main character is Fanny, a prostitute. It includes lots of straight sex, some gay (mlm) sex, and two pages where Fanny describes in detail having sex with Phoebe, bisexual prostitute. Not sapphic, but thought it was worth mentioning.

1810s

Christabel - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816) / So, have you heard of Carmilla (1872)? If you’re reading this post, you probably have, if you haven’t, it’s a classic (vampire) book than is said to have inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. It’s also incredibly gay. Well, some say it was Christabel than was the inspiration for Carmilla. Of course we don’t know this for sure, but the similarities definitely are there. Review from a reader: “what if we were the protagonist and villain of a never-completed sensual gothic poem (and we were both girls) / alternately: when you meet a wickedhot girl only she's SPOOKY but that's SEXY and turns out your dad and her dad were also gay back in the day before having a sexy gay falling-out and she's like 'babe let's get naked and hold each other close' and you're like '—wait fuck I mean uhhhh I PRETEND I DO NOT SEE IT!'” I haven’t read this one, however for what it seems Christabel is not explicitly a vampire. Since the poem is unfinished we don’t know the end, and we just think she’s a vampire because so many things used in here were also reused for vampires characterization (like not being able to enter a house unless invited)

1830s

Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier (1835) / “A woman uses her incredible beauty to captivate both d'Albert, a young poet, and disguised as a man, his mistress, Rosette. In this shocking tale of sexual deception, Gautier draws readers into the bedrooms and boudoirs of a French château in a compelling exploration of desire and sexual intrigue, and gives voice to a longing which is larger in scope, namely, the wish for completeness in oneself.”

1870s

Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife - Adolphe Belot (1870) / “The sensational Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife tells of the suffering of a naive young man whose new bride will not agree to consummate the marriage. Eventually he learns from an acquaintance, to his amazement, that their wives are lovers.” In reviews it says than this is a homophobic novel (who’s surprised) but “Christopher Rivers argues in his introduction that the protagonist's homophobic attitude toward lesbianism is ironically linked to his intimate homosocial bonds with men”

1880s

Jill - Amy Dillwyn (1884) / “Jill is the story of an unconventional heroine—a gentlewoman who disguises herself as a maid and runs away to London in search of adventure after her mother dies and her father is pursued by a Victorian gold-digger. Once in London she uses her position as lady's maid to become close to her mistress. Her life above and below stairs is portrayed with irreverent wit in this fast-paced story, but at the centre of the novel is Jill's unfolding love for the woman she works for. On the surface a feminist manifesto, Jill is a poignant story of same-sex desire and unrequited love. A new introduction tells the autobiographical story on which the novel is based —the author's own passionate attachment to a woman she called her wife, but who she couldn't have.”

Mephistophela - Catulle Mendès (1889) / “Telling the story of Baronne Sophor d'Hermelinge, a woman as thoroughly martyrized by her creator as any other heroine in the history of fiction, in spite of the enormous competition for that title established by countless writers, male and female, it is one of the archetypal novels of the Decadent Movement, and one of the most striking, precisely because is it such a discomfiting piece of writing, the deliberately controversial nature of which has been further enhanced as its surrounding social context has changed over time. Highly influential, especially on the works of such writers as Jean Lorrain and Renée Vivien, Mephistophela, in placing lesbian amour in the foreground of the story, deals forthrightly and intensively with a literary theme that had previously only been treated with delicacy and indecision, mostly in poetry. It is essentially a horror story about demonic possession, about contrived and cruel damnation, devoid even of a Faustian pact, which merely employs obsessive lesbian desire as an instrument of damnation.” Goodreads review: “As a story it is quite straightforward. Girl has same-sex desires and the novel follows her various affairs up to about the age of thirty. […] More controversially, Stableford (and the books blurb) suggests that it is a novel of demonic possession. Now Brian has probably forgotten more than I will ever learn about the period but a few of the episodes show distinct Charcotian traits (an early childhood 'illness', two doctors in conversation etc) and a (really great) fantasy/visionary episode in the book seems to show, to me, the influence of Michelets book on witchcraft. If anything, the book seems even more subversive that Stableford suggests, as Sophie seems largely 'out and proud' and the author often says that she is 'is as she is' suggesting to me that it is 'natural' rather than demonic. I wonder whether the publisher asked Mendes to add some suggestion of the demonic to 'tone down' the idea that people were actually like 'that'.”

1890s

Avant la nuit / Before the dark - Marcel Proust (1893) / Short story (seriously, less than 10 pages). I read it the other day before bed and it’s pretty good. Talks about Françoise, a woman, revealing her homosexuality to her friend Leslie.

A Sunless Heart - Edith Johnstone (1894) / “Its first third focuses on Gasparine O'Neill, who shares an intense connection with her sickly twin brother, Gaspar. Living in poverty, the two struggle to live decently until Gaspar dies. Here gritty naturalism gives way to fantasy, as Gasparine is rescued from despair by the brilliant Lotus Grace, a much-admired teacher at the local Ladies' College. Sexually exploited from the age of twelve by her sister's fiancé, Lotus cannot love anyone, not even her illegitimate child. Gasparine devotes herself to Lotus, but Lotus finds her final brief happiness with a woman student, Mona Lefcadio, a passionate Trinidadian heiress. Exploring issues of race, sexuality, and class in compelling prose, A Sunless Heart is a startling re-discovery from the late- Victorian era. The appendices to this Broadview edition provide contemporary documents that illuminate the tension between romantic friendship and lesbian consciousness in the novel and address other debates in which the novel the nature of Creole identity, the education of women, and the dangers of childhood sexual exploitation.”

The Songs of Bilitis - Pierre Louÿs (1894) / Poetry. However, believe it or not, these were not written by a woman but by a man. Why add it then, well, the story is quite original. The author (Pierre Louÿs) published this verses as written in Ancient Greece by a “disciple of sappho” named Bilitis. He created this whole character, she was a woman, she was a poet, she was a sappho disciple, her work has been lost until now, and she was a huge lesbian. Of course, this is not true, but still, it’s an interesting read. “Between their open celebration of lesbian love and the eventual revelation of their true authorship—the verses actually were written by French novelist and poet Pierre Louÿs—they became a succès de scandale. Although debunked as a work of antiquity, The Songs of Bilitis remains a classic of erotic literature.”

1900s

A Woman's Affair - Liane de Pougy (1901) / "Despite her beauty and her riches, Annhine de Lys, one of the most notorious courtesans of 1890s Paris, is bored and restless. Into her life bursts Flossie, a young American woman, and everything changes. The love she offers Annhine is dangerous, perverse and hard to resist. Ignoring the warnings of her best friend, Annhine encourages the affair."

I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary MacLane (1902) / “Mary MacLane's I Await the Devil's Coming is a shocking, brave and intelectually challenging diary of a 19-year-old girl living in Butte, Montana in 1902. Written in potent, raw prose that propelled the author to celebrity upon publication, the book has become almost completely forgotten. In the early 20th century, MacLane's name was synonymous with sexuality; she is widely hailed as being one of the earliest American feminist authors, and critics at the time praised her work for its daringly open and confesional style. In its first month of publication, the book sold 100,000 copies--a remarkable number for a debut author, and one that illustrates MacLane's broad appeal.” She’s pretty sapphic and claims her (female) lit teacher is her true love. Also an excerpt from a Goodreads review: “She awaits the Devil to come and marry her and bring happiness if only for three days, meanwhile rehearsing suicide. She prays to the Devil to deliver her from “unripe bananas; from bathless people; from a waist-line that slopes up in the front" but offers sensuous instructions on how to eat an olive, and enjoys porterhouse steaks and fudge she makes with brown sugar. It's quite a ride. Many recent reviewers pigeonhole her as an ahead-of-her-time Goth or emo, simply transcribing an eternal and universal teen angst.”

Q.E.D. - Gertrude Stein (1903) - Autobiographical short story about a love triangle between three women; Adele (Stein), Mabel, manipulative and wealthy, and Helen, who seduces Adele.

A Woman Appeared To Me - Renée Vivien (1904) / I have no idea how to explain this book other than it's all I ever wanted and it has an absolutely breathtaking prose. Think of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s writing style and descriptions, the character's philosophy, and the queer toxic relationships in the book. Now make it lesbian and even more explicitly queer. Also I'm pretty sure the main characters want to fuck Sappho. On the second chapter the main characters + some side characters (all women + one guy) are having a discussion (a symposium of sorts) about how much they love sappho and how believing she married a man is stupid and how they don’t hate men, just really dislike them, and the guy says: "Mademoiselle, you are trying to hide from the irresistible seduction of the male. You will certainly finish your love-life in the arms of a man." And our main character being an icon finished the chapter answering him this: "That would be a crime against nature, sir. I have too much respect for our friend to believe her capable of an abnormal passion!". It’s so good. I have seen mixed opinions on this one, but I’m just gonna say: the girls than get it, get it. Everything by Renée Vivien is so good, but this is her only full novel I think (she also wrote poems and short stories). If you have to read only one book out of all the books in this post, let it be this one.

Zezé - Ángeles Vicente (1909) / Not translated (I think) but it’s the first lesbian novel written in Spanish which is pretty cool (even cooler than it was written by a woman who, in 1909 (or around it) divorced her husband and lived through her writing). The plot is basically, the narrator (the author) is on a ship and shares the cabin where she’s staying with another woman, Zezé, a cuplé singer, who tells her about her life (her childhood in a religious school, where she discovered her sexuality with had a relationship with another (female) student, her life in Madrid as an adult and living life as a woman, etc)

1910s

Despised & Rejected - Rose Allatini (1918) / A gay man and a lesbian are friends during WWI, which they are against (an anti-war novel). I think the book is in the perspective of the gay man, but his friend is also a main character.

The Scorpion - Anna Elisabet Weirauch (1919) / A review by a reader: “This book felt more like historical fiction than a novel actually written in 1919-1932, considering the explicitly lesbian relationships and coming of age and coming out style narrative. The story follows the life of Metta, a lesbian who grew up with a controlling family in Berlin. The narrative follows her from her first crush on her manipulative governess, to her first love the older and intelectual Olga, and her foray into the gay scene in Munich and beyond. The story isn't without suffering and it isn't just a love story despite how much you might want it to be. Definite trigger warnings for suicide (not Metta), poor mental health, homophobia and general cringe comments due to the time of writing. But the point of the book is for Metta to find a way to be, a way to live her life comfortably and happily, essentially to find herself.”

1920s

The Bacheloress - Victor Marqueritte (1922) / “Monique is an emancipated French woman who leaves home to escape a marriage of convenience to a man whom her parents have forced on her. She then succumbs to all sorts of carnal temptations including a lesbian love affair with a singer. The scandal provoked by Victor Margueritte's La Garçonne, here translated as The Bacheloress, led to its author having his legion d'honneur revoked, which only propelled this novel about a brazenly independent "new woman" to best-seller status. What was shocking then was not so much the reckless behavior of its heroine, who is depicted as the victim of psychological torment, but the portrait of the corrupt post-WWI society in which she lives. Authentic as Monique is, the types of love she encounters, set against the hostile and contemptuous portrayal of her peers, only amplifies her struggle.”

Yellow Rose - Nobuko Yoshiva (1923) / This is the only book than has been translated by this author, she was a lesbian who wrote Class-S romance (a Japanese book genre of the time, which focused on lesbian / homoerotic relationships between women [so-called romantic friendships], than usually take place in an all-girls boarding school). This specific story talks about a teacher-student relationship. She has other books, one called Yaneura no nishojo (two virgins in the attic) (1919) which isn’t translated, but sounds good, the story “is thought to be semi-autobiographical, and describes a female-female love experience with her dormmate. In the last scene, the two girls decide to live together as a couple. This work, in attacking male-oriented society, and showing two women as a couple after they have finished secondary education presents a strong feminist attitude, and also reveals Yoshiya's own lesbian sexual orientation”.

Freundinnen: ein Roman unter Frauen / Girlfriends: a Novel among Women - Maximiliane Ackers (1923) / Only in German, not translated. Review from an English reader: “This novel—which went through several editions in the 20s before being banned by the Nazis—is uncompromisingly, heartbreakingly queer. The novel tells the story of the love between two actresses in Wiemar Germany, Ruth and Erika. Both women struggle to support themselves on the stage, to live independently, and to come to terms with their love for each other and how they might live and express themselves and their desire.”

Surplus - Sylvia Stevenson (1924) / Review from a reader: “This book should be included in lists of seminal lesbian fiction. Published in 1924, Surplus is the story of Sally Wraith's young adult adventures after the end of WWI, during which period she served as an ambulance driver. The novel is not explicit and dos not detail a physical relationship between Sally and her romantic friend Averil but Sally refers to Averil as her "dream girl" with whom she wants to spend the rest of her life. This novel was published before Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness , which is often hailed for its early negative portrayal of homophobia. But I find it compelling that Sally's love for Averil is not treated as deviant. It's just tragic for any babydyke to fall in love with a straight girl!”

The Captive - Eduard Bourdet (1926) / Theatre, “Irène is a lesbian tortured by her love for Madame d'Aiguines, but pretending engagement to Jacques (man). Though Irène attempts to leave Madame d'Aiguines and marry Jacques, she returns to the relationship, saying that it is "a prison to which I must return captive, despite myself". Madame d'Aiguines is not seen in the play, but leaves behind nosegays of violets for Irène, as a symbol of her love.” Read here

Women Lovers, or The Third Woman - Natalie Clifford Barney (1926) / “This long-lost novel recounts a passionate triangle of love and loss among three of the most daring women of belle époque Paris. In this barely disguised roman à clef, the legendary American heiress, writer, and arts patron Natalie Clifford Barney, the dashing Italian baroness Mimi Franchetti, and the beautiful French courtesan Liane de Pougy share erotic liaisons that break all taboos and end in devastation as one unexpectedly becomes the "third woman."

HERmione - H.D (1927) / “This autobiographical novel, an interior self-portrait of the poet H. D. (1886-1961) is what can best be described as a find, “a posthumous treasure”. In writing HERmione, H.D. returned to a year in her life that was peculiarly blighted. She was in her early twenties—a disappointment to her father, an odd duckling to her mother, an importunate, overgrown, unincarnated entity that had no place... Waves to fight against, to fight against alone... “I am Hermione Gart, a failure” —she cried in her dementia, “I am Her, Her, Her.” She had failed at Bryn Mawr, she felt hemmed in by her family, she did not yet know what she was going to do with her life. The return from Europe of the wild-haired George Lowndes (Ezra Pound) expanded her horizons but threatened her sense of self. An intense new friendship with Fayne Rabb (Frances Josepha Gregg), an odd girl who was, if not lesbian, then certainly of bisexual bent, brought an atmosphere that made her hold on everyday reality more tenuous. This stormy course led to mental breakdown, then to a turning point and a new beginning as her own true self, as Her"

Lucia Sánchez Saornil (1895 - 1970) / Spanish poet, putting her here because she’s part of generation ‘27. Read her Wikipedia page because she’s literally iconic (I can’t put the link here for some reason). I love her so much. She was an anarchist and very revolutionary. She wrote under a pen name to be able to explicitly write about women and lived with her partner (América Barroso) until she died. I haven’t been able to find an English translation of her writing, but I do have found a French one, so better than nothing

Dusty Answer - Rosamond Lehmann (1927) / Coming of age story of Judith Earle, sensitive, lonely, who grew up as an only child, but with 4 neighbors (all cousins) to make her company (and eventually harbor romantic feelings for). Then she moves to college, where she meets Jennifer and enters a relationship with her. Although the relationship is not explicitly romantic.

Ladies Almanack - Djuna Barnes (1928) / “Written as a medieval calendar, Ladies Almanack is a clever parody of the crazy sapphic circle of Natalie Barney and her Académie des Femmes. Sharp, biting, witty and transgressive, it is also a modern and pioneer in his vision of lesbianism and the issues surrounding relationships between women. The emotional endogamy, transvestism, motherhood, marriage or differences between sex and gender are already presented in the book with a charge of irony and acidity that is rare in the treatment of the topic. And it is also a breath of fresh air, an essential reference to know the world of lesbian women in all its breadth and diversity.”

1930s

The Angel and the Perverts - Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (around 1930) / "Set in the lesbian and gay circles of Paris in the 1920s, The Angel and the Perverts tells the story of a hermaphrodite born to upper class parents in Normandy and ignorant of his/her physical difference. As an adult, s/he lives a double life as Marion/Mario, passing undetected as a lesbian in the literary salons of the times, and as a gay man in the cocaine dens made famous by Colette." Technically not lesbian, but it’s “set in the lesbian cercles of Paris”

Broderie Anglaise - Violet Trefusis (1935) / Technically not a lesbian novel, but by a sapphic author. Do you know about Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West? Of course you do, everyone does. However, do you know than Violet Trefusis used to be Vita’s lover? They dated as teens and again as adults. There’s this whole gay toxic romantic circle between Violet, Vita, and Virginia. Violet wrote this book where she’s basically adding Vita, Virginia, and herself into the characters and dissing them. The plot centers on an encounter between Alexa, a celebrated English writer (Virginia), and her rival, Anne (Violet), and their discussion about their mutual lover, Lord Shorne (Vita).

Summer Will Show - Sylvia Townsend Warner (1936) / Sophia Willoughby's husband has a mistress who he cheats on her with. So she grabs him and packs him up to Paris with his mistress. She'll raise their children and he can have his mistress all day long if he wants, what she wants is to not see him. Sadly, her children die, and she goes to Paris, where she'll find her husband's mistress, and the two of them start an affair with eachother.

Diana: A Strange Autobiography - Diana Frederics (1939) / “«This is the unusual and compelling story of Diana, a tantalizingly beautiful woman who sought love in the strange by-paths of Lesbos. Fearless and outspoken, it dares to reveal that hidden world where perfumed caresses and half-whispered endearments constitute the forbidden fruits in a Garden of Eden where men are never accepted». This is how A Strange Autobiography was described when it was published in paperback in 1952. The original 1939 hardcover edition carried with it a Publisher's This is the autobiography of a woman who tried to be normal. In the book, Diana is presented as the unexceptional daughter of an unexceptional plutocratic family. During adolescence, she finds herself drawn with mysterious intensity to a girl friend. The narrative follows Diana's progress through college; a trial marriage that proves she is incapable of heterosexuality; intelectual and sexual education in Europe; and a series of lesbian relationships culminating in a final tormented triangular struggle with two other women for the individual salvation to be found in a happy couple.”

1940s

Hidden Path - Elena Fortún (somewhere around the 1940s) / Maria Luisa grows up on 1910s/1920s Spain. She is a peculiar girl, one who despises wearing dresses and wants to dress as a sailor, who could spend all day reading, who loves painting, and who swears she will never marry. Oh, and she's also a lesbian. Based on the author's life Maria Luisa is kind of the author's alter ego, and it follows her from childhood to adulthood while dealing with a world not created with people like her in mind. (Not published until 2016)

El Pensionado de Santa Casilda / The Boarding School of Saint Casilda - Elena Fortún (somewhere around the 1940s) / This book is not translated, but if you know spanish I recommend to pick it up. A group of 14/15 year old girls who go to the same spanish all-girls boarding school, and they are all in love with each other. It follows them into adulthood and how they navigate their lives being women and lesbians in the past (Not published until 2022). Messy lesbians at its finest. Like, seriously. Lesbians still in love with their ex and not over their first love, dating their friends and their ex friend, and the ex of their friend, and having sugar mommies, etc etc

1960s

Winter Love - Han Suyin (1962) / “As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, a jealousy, and a sense of self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. Set against the rubble of the bombed city, in a time of gray austerity and deprivation, Winter Love recalls a life at its most vivid.”

The Chinese Garden - Rosemary Manning (1962) / “A "very intelligent, sensitive, and compelling" novel of adolescent rebellion and sexual awakening at a girls' boarding school (Anthony Burgess). Set in a repressive British girls' boarding school in the late 1920s—where not only sexuality but femininity is squashed—the novel is the coming-of-age story of sixteen-year-old Rachel, a sensitive, bright, and innocent student. Rachel finds refuge from the Spartan conditions, strict regime, fierce discipline, and formidable headmistress at Bampfield in a secret garden. She also finds friendship there, with a rebellious girl named Margaret. As Margaret has her mind expanded by a scandalous tome entitled The Well of Loneliness, she engages in a bold, forbidden act—the ultimate transgression at Bampfield—and Rachel is drawn into the turmoil. Confronted with the persecution of her friend and troubled by a growing awareness of her own sensuality, Rachel faces an imposible choice that drives her to desperate measures.”

The Microcosm - Maureen Duffy (1966) / “At the House of Shades, Matt, a bar-room philosopher, tries to make sense of the disparate lives which cross here -- of Judy who saves herself and her finery for a Saturday night lover, of Steve the gym teacher who dreads a chance encounter with a pupil in this twilight environment, and of Matt herself, who needs these vicarious exchanges despite the security of her relationship with Rae and her sense that this lesbian sanctuary is a prison too, enforcing the guilt and estrangement of the city streets beyond. Elsewhere there are women such as Marie, trapped within an unwanted marriage and unable to admit her sexuality, and Cathy, for whom the discovery that she is not 'the only one in the world' is an affirmation of her existence. With its innovative structure and style, perfectly mirroring the voices and experiences of women forced by society to live on the margins, The Microcosm remains as powerful today as when originally published in 1966.”

1970s

Beginning with O - Olga Broumas (1977) / A poetry collection by a lesbian, greek writer.

The Same Sea as Every Summer - Esther Tusquets (1978) / A stream-of-consciousness type book, by an author who has been compared to Virginia Woolf. “Poetic and erotic, El mismo mar de todos los veranos ( The Same Sea As Every Summer ) was originally published in Spain in 1978, three years after the death of Franco and in the same year that government censorship was abolished. But even in a new era that fostered more liberal attitudes toward divorce, homosexuality, and women's rights, this novel by Esther Tusquets was controversial. Its feminine view of sexuality (in particular, its depiction of a lesbian relationship) was unprecedented in Spanish fiction. The disillusioned narrator of The Same Sea As Every Summer is a middle-aged woman whose unhappy life prompts a journey into she past to rediscover a more authentic self. However, events force her to realize that love or trust will inevitably be repaid by betrayal. This pattern assumes various forms in a story that moves forward as well as backward, playing out in Barcelona among the haute bourgeoisie. Richly textured with allusion, The Same Sea As Every Summer is also a commentary on post-Civil War Spanish society by an author who grew up during the repressive Franco regime.”

Así es: Mi vida 3 - Victorina Durán (somewhere in the late 1970s) / So, not translated but has great historical value. Basically, this is the third book out of Victorina’s memories that she wrote in the 70s. Victorina (1899 - 1993) was so cool. She was an icon. She was a sceneographer, a painter, a costume designer, writer (aside from her memories, she has some theatre plays), etc. She actually wanted to be an actress. She was part of the Círculo Sáfico de Madrid (the sapphic club of Madrid, a club made out of her and her friends, who were sapphic) among others. She never hid her sexuality. She was friends with almost all the importante well known people in 1920s / 1930s Spain. This book is the third one out of her memories, and it’s focused explicitly on her relationships (all with women). She said she wanted to focus on them and give them a book of their own, so this is of great historical value, giving insights into the queer spaces, lesbian scene, wlw relationships and being gay at that time. I need to read it so bad if someone has a pdf please tell me I’ll send them my fanfic wips

1980s

On Strike against God - Joanna Russ (1980) / “A lost feminist masterwork by feminist and speculative fiction icon, Joanna Russ, about a young lesbian's coming-to-consciousness during the social upheaval of the 1970s. When Esther, a recently divorced professor, has her first lesbian love affair, the fallout brings her everyday miseries into focus and precipitates a personal crisis. She flees her small, upstate New York college town, grapples with gender confusion and the ghosts of therapists past, and fumbles her way through comedic sexual self-discovery, oscillating all the while between visionary confidence and debilitating self-doubt. Confronted with the homophobia of straight feminists and the misogyny of gay men, Esther is left to forge a language for her feminism and her burgeoning lesbian desire. On Strike Against God is quintessentially experimental but accesible, alternately wry and earnest, poignantly didactic, playful, and emotionally charged.” From a review: “For anyone like me who's unfamiliar with the quote which inspired the title: A judge was sentencing a picketer from the early twentieth century shirtwaist-makers strike (the first large scale strike by women), and he told her, "You are striking against God and Nature, whose law is that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. You are on strike against God!"

Faultline - Sheila Ortiz Taylor (1982) / “An outrageous, zesty, funny Lesbian novel; the adventures of a Lesbian mother with six children, three hundred rabbits, and very relaxed attitude."

The Swashbuckler - Lee Lynch (1985) / "Frenchy Tonneau leaves her closeted home in the Bronx for the bars of New York City, the freedom of Provincetown, and the liberation of Greenwich Village in the 1960s and 1970s. Her hangouts, her women, her small yet universal world tell the stories of the times - and the stories of lesbians today. A timeless journey and a riveting read, The Swashbuckler is heart-wrenching, heartwarming, and unforgettable." Butch main character, lesbian life in the 60s/70s, lesbian-feminism, butchfemme, etc.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - Fannie Flagg (1987) / listen, LISTEN, I know this book is not obscure, absolutely not given it even has a movie adaptation, but people do not give this book the love it deserves. I'm constantly thinking about Idgie and Ruth, they are one of my favorite fictional couples ever, and also my favorite lesbian fictional couple. They are such interesting characters with such an interesting dynamic and I just love them so so much. A femmebutch couple in 1920s Alabama, who go through many hardships but still find eachother, still end together, and even have a restaurant, live together, and raise a kid. And not only them, but the book is made out of 4 main characters (or 3 depends on if you see Ninny as a main character or not), Idgie, Ruth, and Ninny and Evelyn. Evelyn, an 80s depressed housewife in her 40s finds solace and a true friend in Ninny, a 90 year old woman staying at a nursing home (not ‘cause she needs it, but to keep a friend company). Ninny tells her the story of Idgie (her, kind of, sister) and Ruth, her best friend and lover. Evelyn finds feminism and hope through the memories, getting inspired by Idgie and Ruth's story and becoming happier in her life. It has several points of views and it jumps between years (first 1980s, then 1920s, then 1940s, then 1980s again, etc) and it also talks a lot about racism in 1920s Alabama, and i'll just stop because I love this book so much and i could go on forever. Oh, and also they murder a man and feed him to a police officer.

Lovers' choice - Becky Birtha (1987) / A collection of eleven short stories about lesbian women.

1990s

Out Of Time - Paula Martinac (1990) / Susan finds an old photograph album with pictures from the 1920s, all pictures being of a group of women (four in total). She's told it's not for sale, but she steals it anyway. After some digging, she finds out than two of the girls from the photos were lovers! And not only is Susan trying to navigate the details of her life and of her relationship with her own girlfriend, but she obsesses over the women in the picture, and eventually, the spirits of the girls start to haunt her.

The Gilda Stories - Jewele Gomez (1991) / Gilda escaped from slavery in the 1850s, until she's taken by a vampire who (consensually) turns her into a vampire too. Gilda moves through the decades finding community and connections and helping people, and slowly builds a place for herself in time. (Fine, not actually obscure since I’ve seen it all around the internet, but it just sounds so good)

Annabel and I - Chris Anne Wolfe (1996) / Plot summed up by a reader: “Half-orphaned Jenny-Wren spends her summers at her uncle Jake's fishing lodge on Lake Chautauqua. One summer day when she's twelve years old while boating with her uncle, she finds a girl on the end of a dock reaching futilely for her escaped model boat. Jenny swims over and rescues the boat, meeting the orphaned Annabel, spending her summers at her grandmother's summer estate. This begins a friendship that endures and grows for years as the two girls spent each summer together, only to be separated at the end of summer. As the two grow older, they realize a magic is at work that keeps bringing them together, despite the near century between them. As the summers come and go, the two young women discover their love for each other, and the realization that their love is imposible. Can their love persist beyond those fleeting summers and flourish, in the face of time?”. Review from a reader: “The foreword says this book is for all wlw, and that, "Because there are as many different ways to love a woman as there are women who love women; it's the loving, not the label, that really matters." That really captured the core of what this book does, it treasures the love we create with our bare hands for and with another woman.” A time travel romance (Jenny is from the 1980s, Annabel from 1890s)

Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice - April Sinclair (1996) / Bisexual mc. “Jean "Stevie" Stevenson, the indomitable heroine of "Coffee Will Make You Black," is back—somewhat older and wiser, with some experience and a college degree -- diving headfirst into the hot tub, free love, yoga, and vegetarian lifestyle of 1970s San Francisco. In this liberating new world of raised consciousness, mind-expanding, and disco-dancing, a soul sister with passion and daring has room to experiment with life and love to find out who she "really" is.”

Beyond the Pale - Elana Dykewomon (1997) / “The story of two Jewish women living through times of darkness and inhumanity in the early 20th century, capturing their undaunted love and courage in luminous and moving prose. The richly textured novel details Gutke Gurvich's odyssey from her apprenticeship as a midwife in a Russian shtetl to her work in the suffrage movement in New York. Interwoven with her tale is that Chava Meyer, who was attended by Gurvich at her birth and grew up to survive the pogrom that took the lives of her parents. Throughout the book, historical background plays a large part: Jewish faith and traditions, the practice of midwifery, the horrific conditions in prerevolutionary Russia and New York sweatshops, and the determined work of labor unionists and suffragists." While it is a romance, it's also more than that, it's about the life of Jewish women in the 20th century.

Crystal Diary - Frankie Hucklenbroich (1997) / “Frankie Hucklenbroich's razor-edged, compelling, often wryly humorous story hustles us from the blood-and-beer-drenched corners of her St. Louis meat-packing district '50s youth, through the sex-soaked Hollywood alleys of her '60s baby butch years, into the druggy metropolis of '70s San Francisco. Moving relentlessly from one woman to another until faces and bodies blur, scamming her existence, learning what the street has to how to make a buck, how to make it with a woman, how to court the dangers of crystal meth, how to survive.”

Hers 3 - Terry Wolverton (1999) / Short stories

2000s

Valencia - Michelle Tea (2000) / "Valencia is the fast-paced account of one girl's search for love and high times in the drama-filled dyke world of San Francisco's Mission District. Through a string of narrative moments, Tea records a year lived in a world of girls: there's knife-wielding Marta, who introduces Michelle to a new world of radical sex; Willa, Michelle's tormented poet-girlfriend; Iris, the beautiful boy-dyke who ran away from the South in a dust cloud of drama; and Iris's ex, Magdalena Squalor, to whom Michelle turns when Iris breaks her heart."

Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir - Lillian Faderman (2003) / “Born in 1940, Lillian Faderman is the only child of an uneducated and unmarried Jewish woman who left Latvia to seek a better life in America. Lillian grew up in poverty, but fantasised about becoming an actress. When her dreams led to the dangerous, seductive world of the sex trade and sham-marriages in Hollywood of the fifties, she realised she was attracted to women, and that show-biz is as cruel as they say. Desperately seeking to make her life meaningful, she studied at Berkeley; paying her way by working as a pin-up model and burlesque dancer, hiding her lesbian affairs from the outside world. At last she became a brilliant student and the woman who becomes a loving partner, a devoted mother, an acclaimed writer and ground-breaking pioneer of gay and lesbian scholarship. Told with wrenching immediacy and great power, Naked in the Promised Land is the story of an exceptional woman and her remarkable, unorthodox life.”

Her Naked Skin - Rebecca Lenkiewicz (2008) / Theatre. “Militancy in the Suffragette Movement is at its height. Thousands of women of all classes serve time in Holloway Prison in their fight to gain the vote. Amongst them is Lady Celia Cain who feels trapped by both the policies of the day and the shackles of a frustrating marriage. Inside, she meets a young seamstress, Eve Douglas, and her life spirals into an erotic but dangerous chaos. London 1913. A crucial moment when, with emancipation almost in sight, women refuse to let the establishment stand in their way.”

The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe (2008) / “A story of three generations of women whose destinies reach from the English countryside in World War Il to London, Toronto, and southern France at the turn of the new century. Evacuated to Shropshire during the Blitz, eight-year-old Rosamond forged a bond with her cousin Beatrix that augured the most treasured and devastating moments of her life. She recorded these memories sixty years later, just before her death, on cassettes she bequeathed to a woman she hadn't seen in decades. When her beloved niece, Gill, plays the tapes in hopes of locating this unwitting heir, she instead hears a family saga swathed in promise and the story of how Beatrix, starved of her mother's affection, conceived a fraught bloodline that culminated in heart-stopping tragedy—its chief victim being her own granddaughter. And as Rosamond explores the ties that bound these generations together and shaped her experience all along, Gill grows increasingly haunted by how profoundly her own recollections--not to mention the love she feels for her grown daughters, listening alongside her-- are linked to generations of women she never knew. A stirring, masterful portrait of motherhood and family secrets, "The Rain Before It Falls" is also a meditation on the tapestries we weave out of the past, whether transcendent or horrific.”

2010s

When We Were Outlaws - Jeanne Cordova (2011) / "A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women's Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s. Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Cordova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is "to the revolution".—to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians."

Call Me Esteban - Leila Kalamuié (2015) / “With unapologetic vividness, Lejla Kalamujic depicts pre- and post-war Sarajevo by charting a daughter coping with losing her mother, but discovering herself. From imagined conversations with Franz Kafka to cozy apartments, psychiatric wards, and cemeteries, Call Me Esteban is a piercing meditation on a woman grasping at memories in the name of claiming her identity.”

Jigsaw Youth - Tiffany Scandal (2015) / “Lose your best friend because you finally Came Out. Spend days driving aimlessly because there's nothing to do. Serve your rapist breakfast because you need your job. Fall asleep to gunshots and sirens because that's the only sense of home you've ever known. Hold hands with ghosts. Your life is in pieces, but you can't be broken. Wipe off the blood. Tired of being told who to be, what to wear, how to act and who to fuck. Break the rules and learn fast how to never get caught. All you need is nothing, but you're happy with your car, guitar and camera. Throwing around polaroids of tits like they're money, you swap stories about adventures and realize that we're all running away from something.”

Creatures of Will & Temper - Molly Tanzer (2017) / Recommended as a sapphic picture of dorian gray retelling, it tells the story of Dorina (hedonistic, art lover, and woman-kisser), her older sister Evadne (fencer and responsable), Lady Henrietta (suit-wearing, cigar-smoking lesbian who is a horrible influence), and Basil, Dorina and Evadne's uncle, and who's character has not changed much. They also summon demons.

The Adventures of China Iron - Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (2017) / “1872. The pampas of Argentina. China is a young woman eking out an existence in a remote gaucho encampment. After her no-good husband is conscripted into the army, China bolts for freedom, setting off on a wagon journey through the pampas in the company of her new-found friend Liz, a settler from Scotland. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina's richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to the ruthless violence involved in nation-building. This subversive retelling of Argentina's foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.”

2020s

Thirst - Marina Yuszczuk (2020) / “Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. It is the twilight of Europe's bloody bacchanals, of murder and feasting without end. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet. In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women-and they cross a threshold from which there's no turning back. With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.” Lesbian vampires!

The Lives We Left Behind - Olivia Bratherton-Wilson (2021) / I read this one so long ago and I don’t remember everything with detail, just than I really liked it. “1943. Seventeen-year-old Dorotea Miller is given the responsibility of managing the family farm when her father and brother are conscripted, leaving her with only her distant mother and the unfamiliar Land Girls for company. Angeline Carter and her four younger brothers are evacuated to the Welsh countryside to escape the bombings; the Miller farm is nothing like they've seen before and certainly more than Angeline bargained for when she meets the surly, unwelcoming farmer's daughter. Despite their rocky start, misunderstandings and tragedies, Dorothea and Angeline realise that their friendship may run deeper than either of them had prepared for.” There is also a sequel! That one I haven’t read tho.

Agatha of Little Neon - Claire Luchette (2021) / "Agatha has lived every day of the last nine years with her sisters (the other nuns) : they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life. But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a formermill town now dotted with wind turbines. […] Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone, to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she will have to reckon with what she sees and feels all on her own. Who will she be if she isn't with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home--or has she just been hiding? […] It is a novel about female friendship and devotion, the roles made available to us, and how we become ourselves." Lesbian nuns

Burning Butch - R/B Mertz (2022) / A butch lesbian memoir of their life growing up catholic and surviving in the world, while dealing with faith and what it shape it takes to them.

London on My Mind - Clara Alves (2022) / So, the English translation just came out! Funny thing is, I started this in 2022 even tho I don’t know Portuguese (translating paragraph by paragraph with google translate) and it was pretty good. I haven’t finished it (translating a whole book with google translate is definitely work) but I’m so ready to read it now that it’s translated. Dayana (seventeen, black, plus size, and Brazilian) is forced to move to London with her father (who abandoned her mother and her) and his new family after her mother died. She’s having a pretty horrible time, until, on a walk, finds a redhead girl… escaping Buckingham Palace?? So of course, she helps her escape. Who exactly is this girl? Why was she escaping?? The answer, her name is Diana and she’s sort of (super) the princess of Wales. Huh.

Helen House - Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya (2022) / “Right before meeting her girlfriend Amber's parents for the first time, the unnamed narrator of Helen House learns that she and her partner share a similar both of their sisters are dead. As the narrator wonders what else Amber has been hiding, she struggles with her own secret--using sex as a coping mechanism--as well as confusion and guilt over whether she really cares about Amber, or if she's only using her for sex. When they arrive at the parents' rural upstate home, a quaint but awkward first meeting unravels into a nightmare in which the narrator finds herself stranded in a family's decades-long mourning ritual. At turns terrifying and erotic, Helen House is a queer ghost story about trauma and grief.”

Promises in Pompeii - Violet Morley (2022) / Set in Ancient Rome, it tells the story of two girls, Octavia and Helvia, childhood friends, and their journey through life as women and through their feelings. In the author ig, she said it includes: adventure/survival, against the odds, brothels, butch/femme, coming of age, disguised as a man, first love, friends to lovers, opposites attract, etc. I’m currently reading it, and I really like it so far.

Nettleblack - Nat Reeve (2022) / “Subversive and playful, Nettleblack is a neo-Victorian queer farce that follows a runaway heir/ess and an organisation of crime-fighting misfits as they struggle with the misdeeds besieging a rural English town. The year is 1893. Having run away from her family home to escape an arranged marriage, Welsh heiress Henrietta “Henry” Nettleblack finds herself ambushed, robbed, and then saved by the mysterious Dallyangle Division - part detective agency, part neighbourhood watch. Desperate to hide from her older sisters, Henry disguises herself and enlists. But the Division soon finds itself under siege from a spate of crimes and must fight for its very survival. Assailed by strange feelings for her new colleague - the tomboyish, moody Septimus - Henry quickly sees that she's lost in a small rural town with surprisingly big problems. And to make things worse, sinister forces threaten to expose her as the missing Nettleblack sister. As the net starts to close around Henry, the new people in her life seem to offer her a way out, and a way forward. Is the world she's lost in also a place she can find herself? Told through journal entries and letters, Nettleblack is a picaresque ride through the perils and joys of finding your place in the world, challenging myths about queerness - particularly transness - as a modern phenomenon, while exploring the practicalities of articulating queer perspectives when you're struggling for words.”

Sunburn - Chloe Michelle (2023) / In Ireland, the early 1990s, Lucy feels out of place in her small town. She falls in love with her best friend and she has to find a way to find herself, make a meaning out of her feelings, and hide the truth from her conservative small town and religious peers.

Lucky Red - Claudia Cravens (2023) / "A vibrant and cinematic debut set in the American West about a scrappy orphan who finds friendship, romance, and her true calling as a revenge-seeking gunslinger." Lesbian cowboys

Neon Roses - Rachel Dawson (2023) / “Eluned Hughes is stuck. It's 1984 in a valley in south Wales: the miners' strike is ravaging her community; her sister's swanned off with a Thatcherite policeman; and her boyfriend Lloyd keeps bringing up marriage. And if they play '99 Red Balloons' on the radio one more time, she might just lose her mind. Then the fundraising group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners comes down from London, and she meets June, a snaggle-toothed blonde in a too-big leather jacket. Suddenly, Eluned isn't stuck any more - she's in freefall. June's an artist and an activist, living in a squat in Camden. With June, Eluned can imagine a completely different - and exciting - life for herself. But as her family struggles with the strike, and her relationship with her sister deteriorates, should she really leave it all behind? From the Valleys to the nightclubs of Cardiff, London and Manchester, NEON ROSES is a heartwarming, funny and a little bit filthy queer coming-of-age story with a cracking '80s soundtrack.”

Tale of Three Ships - Darcia G. Laucerica (2023) / “In a world under the thumb of an empire, pirates sail away searching for a breath of freedom. But even the ocean is tainted by the powerful nation that has spread lies about women being bad luck at sea. Glenlivet has never cared about the fear-mongering. Her ship welcomes those who are rejected and need a home. For all the sailor' s superstitions and "codes" of piracy the captain mocks every day, not leaving the docks when it's dark is a personal boundary she swears by ever since acquiring The Outsider about eight years ago. She just might have to break her own rules to protect her crew, escape the claws of a king who wants her dead, and murder the man who raised her.” I’ve heard so many good things about this. Lesbian main character, with mlm and trans side characters. Author in social media said it includes: Chosen pirate family, sirens, indigenous and latine inspired characters, anti-colonialism, and people fighting injustice and abuse.

How to Breathe Ash - Alex Nonymous (2023) / “Eleanor Perrault doesn't know if there's a right way to handle being suddenly orphaned at sixteen, but it's definitely not the way that she's been coping with it. It's been two months since her parents died and despite her autism normally causing her to be even more emotionally volatile than most of her peers, she still hasn't even managed to cry over them yet. On top of trying to learn how to grieve properly, Eleanor's juggling starting a new semester in a new town with an aunt who seems eternally disappointed in her and a cousin who's randomly decided to start hating her. And a crush on the incredibly pretty president of her new school's QSA. How to Breathe Ash is a contemporary YA Cinderella retelling following Eleanor through elaborate dances, anonymous chat rooms, and learning the right way to not be alright.” Autistic mc! While I haven’t read anything from this author (yet) they have lots of wlw/nblw/nblnb books with autistic main characters.

War and Solace: A Tale from Norvegr - Edale Lane (2023) / “A battle-hardened shieldmaiden. A pacifist healer. Can the two find love amid the chaos of war? From Edale Lane, the award-winning, best-selling author of Sigrid & Elyn, comes a new Tale from Norgevr! Tyrdis is a stalwart warrior raised to value honor, courage, and military prowess. When a traumatic injury renders the powerful protector helpless, she depends on the lovely, tender-hearted Adelle to restore her from the brink of death. Is it merely gratitude or true love that draws Tyrdis to the healer? Defying cultural norms, Adelle despises violence and those who propagate it, but when her shieldmaiden patient saves the life of her beloved little girl, she must reexamine her values. Could Tyrdis be more than a stiff, efficient killer with an amazing body? In a kingdom steeped in conflict with their neighbors and internal strife, shocking secrets are revealed, and both women strive to ensure justice prevails. Can they overcome their differences to safeguard their friends, end the war, and fall in love, or will fate prove to be a cruel sovereign?” Historical fiction set during 643. The author also has another two sapphic books set in the same time period.

Maddalena and the Dark - Julia Fine (2023) / “A novel set in 18th-century Venice at a prestigious music school, about two girls drawn together by a dangerous wager Venice, 1717. Fifteen-year-old Luisa has only wanted one thing: to be the best at violin. As a student at the Ospedale della Pietà, she hopes to join the highest ranks of its illustrious girls' orchestra and become a protégé of the great Antonio Vivaldi. Luisa is good at violin, but she is not the best. She has peers, but she does not have friends. Until Maddalena. After a scandal threatens her noble family's reputation, Maddalena is sent to the Pietà to preserve her marriage prospects. When she meets Luisa, Maddalena feels the stirrings of a friendship unlike anything she has known. But Maddalena has a secret: she has hatched a dangerous plot to rescue her future her own way. When she invites Luisa into her plans, promising to make her dreams come true, Luisa doesn't hesitate. But every wager has its price, and as the girls are drawn into the decadent world outside the Pietà's walls, they must decide what it is they truly want—and what they will do to pay for it. Lush and heady, swirling with music and magic, Maddalena and the Dark is a Venetian fairytale about the friendship between two girls and the boundless desire that will set them free, if it doesn't consume them first.”

Greasepaint - Hannah Levene (2024) / “Set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, this experimental novel follows an ensemble cast of all-singing, all-dancing butch dykes and Yiddish anarchists through eternal Friday nights, around the table, and at the bar. In one of many bars, Frankie Gold sings while Sammy Silver plays piano after a day job at the anarchist newspaper. The Butch Piano Players Union meets in the corner next to the jukebox. Laur smokes on the back steps, sweaty thigh to thigh with Vic. Frankie's childhood sweetheart, Lily, turns up at yet another bar to see a second Sammy play every Friday night. And before all that, there's always dinner at Marg's. Fabulated out of oral histories, anthologies, as well as the fiction of the butch-femme bar scene and Yiddish anarchist tradition, Greasepaint is a rollicking whirlwind of music and politics- the currents of community embodied and held inside the bar.”

Perfume & Pain - Anna Dorn (2024) / “A controversial Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. Having recently moved both herself and her formidable perfume bottle collection into a tiny bungalow in Los Angeles, mid-list author Astrid Dahl finds herself back in the Zoom writer's group she cofounded, Sapphic Scribes, after an incident that leaves her and her career lightly canceled. But she temporarily forgets all that by throwing herself into a few sexy distractions—like Ivy, a grad student who smells like metallic orchids and is researching 1950s lesbian pulp, or her new neighbor, Penelope, who smells like patchouli. When Astrid receives an unexpected call from her agent with the news that actress and influencer Kat Gold wants to adapt her previous novel for TV, Astrid finally has a chance to resurrect her waning career. But the pressure causes Astrid's worst vice to rear its head—the Patricia Highsmith, a blend of Adderall, alcohol, and cigarettes-and results in blackouts and a disturbing series of events. Unapologetically feminine yet ribald, steamy yet hilarious, Anna Dorn has crafted an exquisite homage to the lesbian pulp of yore, reclaiming it for our internet—and celebrity-obsessed world”

How It Works Out - Myriam Lacroix (2024) / “Surreal, darkly comic and achingly tender, Myriam Lacroix's debut sees a queer love story play out in many alternate realities. What if you had the chance to rewrite the course of your relationship, again and again, in the hopes that it would work out? After Myriam and Allison fall in love at a show in run-down punk house, their relationship starts to unfold through a series of hypotheticals. What if they became mothers by finding a baby in an alley? What if the only cure for Myriam's depression was Allison's flesh? What if they were B-list celebrities, famous for writing a book about building healthy lesbian relationships? How much darker-or sexier-would their dynamic be if one were a power-hungry CEO, and the other her lowly employee? From the fantasies of early romance to the slow encroaching of violence that unravels the fantasy, each reality builds to complete a brilliant, painfully funny portrait of love's many promises and perils. Equal parts sexy and profane, unsentimental, and gut-wrenching, How It Works Out is a formally inventive, arresting, uncanny exploration of queerness, love, and our drive for connection, in any and all possible worlds.”

All the Painted Stars - Emma Denny (@a-kind-of-merry-war) (2024) / “Oxfordshire 1362. When Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna's hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo's hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily's control, Jo must help her escape. Finding safety with a local brewster, Lily and Jo soon settle into their new freedom, and amongst blackberry bushes and lakeside walks an unexpected relationship blossoms. But when Jo's past caches up with her and Lily's reckless behaviour threatens their newfound happiness, both women realise that choices must always come at a cost. The question they need to ask is if the cost is worth the price of love…” The cover of the edition coming out in November is SO pretty and lately I’ve been looking for medieval sapphic books like crazy.

Gentlest of Wild Things - Sarah Underwood (2024 - out august 15th) / So this book is by the same author as Lies We Sing to the Sea, and I’m in no rush to read that book (a so-called odyssey retelling even tho the author has admitted to never actually reading the odyssey??) but this one looks compelling. “On the island of Zakynthos, nothing is more powerful than Desire-love itself, bottled and sold to the highest bidder by Leandros, a power-hungry descendent of the god Eros. Eirene and her beloved twin sister, Phoebe, have always managed to escape Desire's thrall. Until Leandros' wife dies mysteriously and he sets his sights on Phoebe. Determined to keep her sister safe, Eirene strikes a bargain with Leandros: if she can complete the four elaborate tasks he sets her, he will find another bride. But it soon becomes clear that the tasks are part of something bigger; something related to Desire and Lamia, the strange, neglected daughter Leandros keeps locked away. Lamia knows her father hides her for her own protection, though as she and Eirene grow closer, she finds herself longing for the outside world. But the price of freedom is high, and with something deadly-something hungry- stalking the night, that price must be paid in blood…” The author said that “Gentlest of Wild Things is a sapphic vampiric twist on the story of Eros and Psyche”

The End Crowns All - Bea Fitzgerald (2024 - out on July 18th) / “Princess. Priestess. The most beautiful girl in Troy. Casandra is used to being adored - and when her patron god, Apollo, offers her the power of prophecy, she sees an opportunity to rise even higher. But when she fails to uphold her end of the agreement, she discovers just how very far she has to fall. No one believes her visions. And they all seem to be of one girl - and the war she's going to bring to Troy's shores. Helen fled Sparta in pursuit of love, but it's soon clear Troy is a court like any other, with all its politics and backstabbing. And one princess seems particularly intent on driving her from the city before disaster can strike... But when war finally comes, it's more than the army at their walls they must contend with. Casandra and Helen might hold the key to reweaving fate itself - especially with the prophetic strands drawing them ever closer together. But how do you change your future when the gods themselves are dictating your demise?” Sapphic retelling of the iliad where Helen and Kassandra end up together

If asked, I’ll also do one with gay books

(No 1950s lesbians because I don’t like pulp fiction :( )

[roguestorm]

It’s become standard to talk about Ororo as having had many roles and been many people across her life (thief, goddess, queen, regent, hero). The promotional material for Storm v4 does it and Storm v5 opens with it. Storm v3 mentions it. That’s become one of her defining traits, being open to so many different roles.

But it’s not actually unique in comics. Betsy’s been a model, a pilot, a spy, an assassin, and the living embodiment of Britain. Dazzler is always reinventing herself. Kitty’s been a bartender and Rogue’s been a bike mechanic. Hank and Logan were Avengers long before Storm was. Hank’s also been on the Defenders, working for the Inhuman royal family, and one of the Illuminati. And Logan is Logan, his list of roles is longer than his short hairy arm.

Comics characters (especially but not exclusively Claremont-written characters) love moving between roles. It’s what writers do to keep things interesting. So why do we single Storm out as being particularly interesting in this way?

My guess is that it has to do with real-world publication history. Up until she was moved over into the Black Panther series, she had always been an X-Men character, and she’d always been at the center of a team. She’d had one solo series, a 4-issue limited series from 1996 (it’s fine but not particularly interesting; it does have some fun early Terry Dodson art). This would have made her far more attached to the X-Men than someone like Wolverine, who was on his third solo series by the time of the wedding.

Storm couldn’t be understood outside of the X-Men, until suddenly they were pulling her out of the X-Men and dropping her into Wakanda full-time. Part of how they justified this was by revisiting her backstory and inserting a teenage romance with T’Challa. In so doing, they also highlighted the different identities she’d had before the X-Men, as thief and goddess, trying to emphasize the shifting phases of her life.

We get what I think is the first statement of her many different roles in X-Men: Worlds Apart:

I am a woman, a mutant, a thief, an X-Man, a lover, a wife, a queen. I am all these things. I am Storm, and for me, there are no such things as limits.

This comic is specifically about Ororo trying to balance her responsibilities to Wakanda and her responsibilities to the X-Men and managing to do both at once. It’s no longer a question of her changing one role for another but rather embracing more than one at once. The text is reflecting on and making sense of the patterns in publishing.

It’s definitely true that Claremont laid the foundation for this understanding of her when he just kept giving Storm new backstories and skills and relationships. But I think her specific publishing history and the editorial choice to move her from the X-Men to Black Panther and then to both really solidified that as the way to think and talk about her.

[lookingfts]

Friday Fic Rec 11/1

Thanks as always for your submissions! Titles are links to each fic. Just a heads up that I’m going to move this to every other week now that I’m also busy with the @kanthonyprompts account. (Check that out if you’re interested!)

if the shoe fits, walk in it (til your high heels break) by @newtonsheffield

“Molly is rightfully one of the most popular Kate and Anthony writers in the fandom, and I wholeheartedly believe this is her most underrated story. It was one of the first Kate and Anthony fanfictions I read, and the first one I reread. I literally finished it, scrolled back up to the top, and read it again. This is uni Kate and Anthony captured perfectly. Pure fluff, a sweet, funny, engaging love story. I adore this story so much and think that if you're a fan of Molly's writing in particular and haven't read this gem, do it, now! You must!”

Description: Anthony Bridgerton is everything Kate Sharma hates about being at Oxford. Rich and entitled and cocky, so why does she keep ending up with her skirt rucked up around her waist with her fingernails digging into his back.

Complete - M - 14k words

there be fury on the waves by @rosycheeked

Description: Kate means to sail and win the Fastnet Race with her sailing partner, Benedict. Or, if not win, do well. Unfortunately, he comes down with mono the week before, and Anthony volunteers to take his place.

Complete - T - 14k words

open up your heart (like the gates of hell) by penny_loaf

Description: Kate is just trying to get food after work when she runs into her sister on a first date. A first date with Anthony Bridgerton.

Complete - E - 4k words

Safe Houses by Amerna 

Description: When CIA agent Kate Sharma first meets Viscount Anthony Bridgerton, it doesn’t take her long to figure out that beneath the carefully constructed cover of a profligate wastrel playboy he is actually a British spy. What follows is a game of cat and mouse all over Europe as the two battle for the same intelligence, the same sources, and the same material to remain one step ahead of each other – all while they go from rivals to begrudging allies to friends.

Complete - M - 16k words

LFTS rec: Nautical Skills by @juniper5x5

Juniper is one of my favorite Kanthony authors - just so many unique and creative plots and such simple but visceral prose. But this is high on my list - pirate queen Kathani and simp Anthony on the high seas.

Description: She was the captain of the pirate crew. She had to be. He had no way of knowing this for certain, of course, but to him it was obvious, plain as day. The way the others acted in deference towards her, the way she carried herself, how she lifted her chin high into the air – well, it made her look like the bloody queen of England, is what it did.

Complete - E - 17k words

Thanks to those who submitted! If I don't include a submission, it's because that fic has been recommended in previous weeks. You can find them all under the "lfts fic recs" tag!

[froggibus]

Hi there! If requests are still open, would it be alright if I requested HC’s for D.Va, Mei, Sombra, and Mercy with an S/O who’s a writer?

Thank you!! You rock! Keep up the amazing work!

Writer S/O Headcanons - D.Va, Mercy, Mei & Sombra

Genre: fluff!

Pairing: D.Va x gn! reader, Mercy x gn! reader, Mei x gn! reader, Sombra x gn! reader

CW: mostly fluff, some canon/implied canon things (we love our doctor/science women), i'm horrible at writing sombra (sorry)

been a while since i did an OW request, haven't touched the game since the beginning of Dec since i don't play for a team rn & hate the direction the game is going :( but i love the characters so its a dilemma lol anyway enjoy!!!

(also!!! i am once again bothering you guys to vote in this poll if you haven't already. your input matters to me vv much & would love to hear about what you want for our valentines event this year!)

D.Va:

literally your biggest fan

she always supports your writing no matter what & definitely shares it on her stream

will probably just game while you’re writing 

she gets loud sometimes but she tries her best to stay quiet so you can focus

does her best to read your writing but she has such a short attention span she just can’t sometimes

will write little hearts and stars on her favorite passages in your writing 

brings you lots of snacks and drinks!! makes sure you’re always hydrated and that you don’t work too long

honestly probably gets really distracting sometimes

like reading your writing over your shoulder or tapping her nails on the desk really loudly

“Hana…”

“sorry,” she’ll say sheepishly. “you just have me on the edge of my seat.”

Mercy:

your proofreader/beta reader

she LOVES to read so you know she’ll pick up anything you write and devour it

will lay on the couch with you after work while you write and listen to the taps of your laptop 

“hey, Ang, do you know the word? like the one—the word for—ugh”

“luminescent.”

you’re not sure how she does it but she always manages to read your mind & know exactly what word you’re looking for

also super helpful when you have random medical questions

she’ll break down exactly how you treat a stab wound in a dingy motel for you without batting an eyelash

queen of overworking so she won’t judge you too harshly if you work all night 

but will definitely be there to chastise you with a glass of water in one hand and some plain toast in the other 

Mei:

literally the sweetest ever

always tells you how amazing your work is & recommends it to all her friends

working in the science field she’s always reading scientific journals so your work is a breath of fresh air 

she’ll have a glass of rosé and settle down with your book after a long day

NEVER critiques your work because she thinks you’re the best ever 

probably annotates it with her thoughts while reading it and voices her excitement about it 

asks you a million questions about your work and nods along while you give long winded explanations 

cooks you yummy food & brings you 5 spice hot chocolate to keep your energy up 

snuggled up to you on the couch and listens to you think outloud 

Sombra:

absolute best research buddy

you open your mouth to ask her a writing question and she already has it pulled up in four different browsers 

thoroughly explains everything to you too

through her work she knows a lot about violence and other things

so she’s always willing to answer questions—especially spy + stealth related things 

if anyone ever tries to criticize your work online she’ll literally doxx them

probably hasn’t read much of your work but she makes it up for it in undying support 

you could be writing about murdering a public official and she’d support it 

lets you sit at her desk with her while she works and hums soft songs to you

(if you enjoy content like this, interactions go a long way! comments, likes & rbs are always greatly appreciated ^-^ !!)

masterlist | overwatch masterlist

[yourtwistedlies]

❝ women’s hearts are lethal weapons ❞

val ! ✩ she/her ✩ minor ✩ jason grace’s gf (REAL) ✩ speak now obsessed ✩ gracie abrams lovebot ✩ summer baby ✩ certified procrastinator ✩ professional listener ✩ pathological people pleaser ✩ general amaya’s #1 fan ✩ fitz vacker defender ✩ honorary grammar police ✩ kpop stan (mostly ggs) ✩ my moots’ cheerleader ✩ under the illusion i can write ✩ somewhat smart ✩ cabin 13 girl ✩

dni: if you are racist, homophobic, xenophobic, support kill all ___, sexist, 18+ only, religiophobic, creepy, toxic, or literally just a jerk, please leave!

byi: i swear sometimes!! i also adore using cute nicknames and pet names for my moots!! if you don’t feel comfortable w/ that or anything else, please let me know <33

moots - wattpad - ao3 - carrd - follower event (coming soon ⁉️) - save the children!

•̩̩͙⁺ the basics ₊˚. ↴ ·˚༘

call me valerie/val or twisted!!

she/her, straight (heterosexual), minor (18+ only acc’s please do not follow), 18+ do not interact unless i interact first or we are moots (on my list or to be added- i am the judge of who is to be added), cancer (zodiac, but i don’t believe in them), Christian (i post about it sometimes), << summer baby, entp (mbti), 8w7 (enneagram), ambivert, slytherin, cabin 13, shade (guys i swear i wasn’t trying to be edgy or smth with the past two and this 😭😭 i took the official quizzes i promise lmao), swiftie, kpop fan, staying up writing until 4am gives me life, purple is the best color (this is not up to debate, only yellow even comes close), proud notes app writer, CATS > DOGS (occasionally my verdict changes), bunny lover, chronic platonic sofitzer, i’m either hyperactive or extremely tired (there is no in between), people say im smart, but sometimes i feel like the biggest idiot ever lmao, and ofc dex dizznee’s much needed publicist (my favorite role of mine ever)!!!

•̩̩͙⁺ music ₊˚. ↴ ·˚༘

taylor swift, olivia rodrigo, sza, conan gray, alicia keys, emei, gracie abrams, maisie peters, sabrina carpenter, laufey, queen riri (rihanna), adele, beabadoobee, tiffany day, le sserafim, ive, newjeans, itzy, nmixx, stay-c, aespa, everglow, txt (baby fan), illit ＆ more kpop, lizzy mcalpine, pheobe bridgers, nessa barrett, pinkpantheress, claire rosinkranz, lyn lapid, alessia cara, reneé rapp, mckenna grace, and more!!

as i hope you can tell, i like a lot of music :)

•̩̩͙⁺ books ₊˚. ↴ ·˚༘

pjo, hoo, (never read toa, but yes, ik what happens in tbm), the rrverse, kotlc, city spies, ss (spy school), alex rider (not done with rr), the academy for the unbreakable arts,

and my many other fandoms i’ve forgotten about (dead magisterium fandom oop-)

i’ll add more fandoms as i remember them lol

•̩̩͙⁺ ships ₊˚. ↴ ·˚༘

rayllum, clauderry (stfu they’re adorable), percabeth (otp energy), sokeefe, dexiana, tiana (yes i know im the most indecisive bitch ever shut up you toad /jjjj i actually love u platonically), jason grace x ME (/j but i do love him lol), and more!!

•̩̩͙⁺ blogs ₊˚. ↴ ·˚༘

side blog: @yourtangledpromises

taylor blog: @iknowplxces (guys this is so abandoned + has my old intro 🤮 ignore this js trust - august 15 2024 val)

and perhaps more?? (muahahaha)

•̩̩͙⁺ side note ₊˚. ↴ ·˚༘

if you’d like to be added to my moots list, or talk, please tell me (by wonder girls)!!

if we’re moots we’re actually bffs now (you just don’t notice it yet)

if i don’t respond to your ask/tag/rb/literally anything immediately i am not ignoring you!! i’m just lazy or busy and will do it later <33

im your biggest fan btw

1 Corinthians 16:14

with love,

valerie

[briarvalleyarchives]

ꜱᴀᴠᴀɴᴀᴄʟᴀᴡ

╰┈➤ ❝ the lands once overseen by the mighty king of beasts are as vast as they are vibrant. many stories of kings and queens have found their way into the history books, even in the furthest corners of the world, before their voices joined that of the stars. ❞

[f.], [m.] → female / male reader respectively | [pl.] → platonic | [g.] → general / no reader | [sug.] → suggestive | [hc] → headcanons | [os] → oneshot | [sh.] → short scenario | [s.] → part of a series | [a.] → angst

ʟᴇᴏɴᴀ ᴋɪɴɢꜱᴄʜᴏʟᴀʀ

"aw, did you miss me?" [m. | sh.]

"i demand cuddles" [f. | sh.]

2am [a. | os]

anchor [os]

a surprise visit [os]

boyfriend headcanons [hc]

calling him cute [hc]

celebrating christmas [hc]

cheering you up when you're not feeling well [hc]

cuddle time [hc]

dancing with him [hc]

domestic headcanons [hc]

doodles of us [hc]

eating instant ramen at 2am with him [hc]

easily flustered s/o [hc]

everyone loves you (at least i do) [os]

finding doodles of him in his crush's notebook [hc]

finding solace [os | hurt/comfort]

from the eyes of the beholder [os]

hanahaki au [hc]

how he loses you [a. | os]

if he said something insensitive to his s/o [a. | hc]

in a crowd of thousands [hc]

i want to hold the hand inside you [hc]

joining him in the hot springs [hc]

kissing his s/o [hc]

late night driving [hc]

leona as a "bad guy" and reader as a "soft girl" [f. | os]

love languages [hc] [@pyroxeene]

love languages [hc] [@animusicnerd]

mornings with him [hc]

new year's eve [smau]

on your side [os]

poly relationship with jamil [hc]

receiving a rose from the reader [sh.]

redamancy [os]

relationship headcanons [hc]

relaxing with him [hc]

s/o having a nightmare about his overblot [hc]

s/o suddenly being transported back to their world [sh.]

sopping wet cat & love confessions [os]

spy!reader au [hc]

spending valentine's day with him [hc]

study date [hc]

teasing him [hc]

there was only one mystery shop [os]

trouvaille [os | g. | a.]

we just now got the feeling that we're meeting for the first time [os | hurt/comfort]

winter time [hc]

when his s/o tells him he's their favorite [hc]

when you faint because of the heat [hc]

wild roses [os]

with an asexual s/o [hc]

with an s/o who has ptsd [hc]

with an s/o who has social anxiety [hc]

with an s/o who is a vampire [os]

with an s/o who is a writer [hc]

with an s/o who loves rock and is super athletic [hc]

with an s/o who's competitive and fences [hc]

ʀᴜɢɢɪᴇ ʙᴜᴄᴄʜɪ

cuddle time [hc]

easily flustered s/o [hc]

finding out their s/o has cheated on them [a. | hc]

hanahaki au [hc]

having a crush [hc]

love languages [hc] [@pyroxeene]

love languages [hc] [@animusicnerd]

reacting to a sudden ambush [hc]

reacting to s/o sitting on his lap [hc]

sitting on his s/o's lap [hc]

tackling overworked s/o [hc]

with an s/o that blends perfectly into any shadow [hc]

words in the wind [g. | os]

ᴊᴀᴄᴋ ʜᴏᴡʟ

au where he plays twst [g. | hc]

dealing with the bullies who beat up s/o [hc]

doodles of us [hc]

easily flustered s/o [hc]

hanahaki au [hc]

if only you had stayed [a. | pl. or romantic | hc]

love languages [hc]

racoons interrupt your date [hc]

relationship headcanons [hc]

spending time with him [hc]

when he falls in love [hc]

when mc turns into a baby [hc]