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[ladygrey412]

Alright I'm going to add my extremely small list. Okay so that was a lie. 16 is not a small list. Some of these are romance, some of these just have really good polyam representation, and I added a 3rd section of honorable mentions down at the bottom which are books that I think do a really good job at not making monogamous relationships miserable to read. A lot of these are sci-fi or fantasy and I don't know if that is more a "me problem" or plus for sci-fi.

✨✨First up Monogamy is Dumb ✨✨

1)Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao Classic story of boy loves girl, girl loves different boy, first boy goes 👀. (Triangles are the strongest shape). Oh and don't forget the heavy sci-fi and giant Mecha. YA novel with enough intrigue for everyone. Rep: Disability

2) The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison. Not a romance novel but. It's big on digging into queerness and identity including a polyam relationship. Heavy fantasy and apocalypse vibes with an older MC. Rep: Disability, Trans

3) Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Wayfarer Series) by Becky Chambers. Also not a romance but it has a main sapphic romance and the alien partner is from a species that is exclusively polyam. It is all about the value of friendships and is quiet literally about how the real treasure is the friends we made along the way. Rep: Autism

3) Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. (Suggested by the Fiancee). "He is Poly and gay*. You find it everywhere in his books if you know where to look." *Sorry he's not technically gay because according to him that would mean straight people would have to exist.

4) Hunger Pangs by Joy Demorra. Good ol' classic vampire falls in love with a werewolf and they can't help but fall for a mysterious woman. This gets to sit here because it has a non spicy version but... If you want the spice it comes with all the fun of Vampires and BDSM. Rep: Disability, BDSM

🔥🔥🔥 Now for the polyamorous spice. 🔥🔥🔥

6) Sex Wizards Series by Alethea Faust. WHAT. I felt like i should start with the heavy BDSM sex magic book if I'm talking spice. No but seriously some of the best representation of BDSM and healthy polyam in many different ways. And plot somehow. Rep: Non-Binary, Asexual, Disability, Heavy BDSM

7) Rescued my Married Monster Hunters by Ennis Rook Bashe. What if you are a poor monster trying to be human and a sweet couple can't stop doting on you. No one would blame a lil monster for falling for that. Rep: Trans, Disability

8) Pack Saint Clair Series by Thora Woods. Reverse Harem gets much more interesting when the people the MC is getting involved with are an established Polyam Pack (ABO style). Sometimes falling in love with one person means you end up falling for 4. Rep: Mild BDSM, Trauma Recovery

9) Drag Me Up by R.M. Virtues. What if Hades/Persephone was healthy and T4T. Super sweet and spicy romance about defying expectations. Rep: Trans, Mild BDSM

10) In the Court of the Nameless Queen by Natalie Ironsides. A bunch of short stories around a Giant Spider queen and the many people who love her. Literally this is a bunch of sapphic porn about a clan of warrior women. It slaps Rep: Trans, Heavy Kink and BDSM

11) The Strongest Shape by Tessa Cardenas. This is in my liked books. And i distinctly remember loving the way it dealt with a new person entering a more established pair. I can not remember anything else besides it was spicy and gay.

Honorable Mentions

These books explore relationships in super queer and non-traditional ways. But might not be considered "polyamory"

12) Psalm for the Wild Built (and the Monk and Robot series) by Becky Chambers. Toe to Tip that's a QPR. It's just a really wholesome book about a robot and a human meeting. Lots of passive polyamory here too (expecially in the second book). To say the least Becky Chambers is great. Rep: Non-Binary, Robots (it/its), Anxiety

13) The City we Became by N.K. Jemison While I am expounding great authors I have to include Jemison's other book which is really all about queer friendship and the importance of have friends. On the backdrop of people becoming the city and fighting Eldritch Monsters Rep: Trans, Asexual Characters

14) The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Super casual background polyamory by murderbot's humans but it's not into any of that stuff. It is here to cause problems and make friends though. Rep: Robot (it/its), Trauma Recovery, Asexual, Autism

15) The Tarot Sequence by K.D. Edwards. I'm putting this here because it's currently just MLM but there are these big hints being dropped for a Triad. Lots of fun around being shoved into a position of power before you are ready and only having your friends at your back. Rep: Disability, Trauma Recovery

16) Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James. This book is literally indescribable but it tackles gender, relationships and African History in such a nice package I can't help but add it. Rep: Genderqueer/Non-Binary

17) Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly. No technical polyamory but it does such a beautiful job mixing the complex nature of being in love with the literal collapse of free government. It also has older MCs and a whole ton of Drama.

Do you have any book recommendations with poly relationships? Preferably fiction. I’ve been avoiding reading romance recently because everything is based on monogamous relationships and it gets tiring after a while.

I recommend checking the notes on this post where someone else asked. There are a lot of things recommended by others that I haven't gotten around to reading. 📖 I totally feel you with the mono romances being a drag sometimes. Its real bad when jealousy is a major point :/

[ladygrey412]

We know there's a lot of weird spots that the strawhats have traveled through and I was thinking about what things would be super creepy out on the open water.

And I thought the sea is always moving, right? There's almost always going to be the sound of waves and water, even if it's quiet. There's almost always going to be the sway that comes from being at sea, the smell of salt, the harsh line of the horizon, etc.

But what if there wasn't? What if the water goes silent and the ship goes still? What if the horizon disappears in a night that's too dark to be normal and the moon is the only light but it sits in the sky more like a gaping hole than the usual nighttime companion?

Dark

Quiet

Still

Something where Luffy and Zoro are out on the ship in the middle of the night, the moon too high and too bright but everything much darker than it should be. The water and sky around them is all a wrong sort of black.

Luffy sits ridged on the figurehead and the frown is clear from the lines of his body even though he's facing forward. Zoro standing on the deck right behind him, the muscles of his back drawn tight and he has his hands on his swords. They're both almost swallowed by the dark.

The moonlight cuts across the deck in a harsh, sterile light.

Sanji leans against the mast towards the back, the very edge of his shoes teasing the cut of the moonlight. The red glow of his cigarette lights up his face just enough to see the harsh slant of his brow and the tightness of his jaw. The smoke is white as it leaves him and then gets swallowed by the dark.

Robin off to the side, arms crossed and hip resting against the side of the deck. She looks like stone in the low light, shoulders back and a blank look on her face.

All of them hyper focused on where the horizon should be, but is instead it's just endless, wrong dark.

Everything still and silent. The water doesn't move and there's no breeze.

The world is holding it's breath.

Quiet.

The only sound is their heartbeat in their ears and shallow breathing that's almost soundless. Chopper clings tight to Nami who's pressed side to side with Usopp. Franky and Brook are both on the other side of the room, keeping watch and braving the edges of moonlight that come through the little window. They're motionless, Brook blends into the shadows and leaves only the occasional white bone for the moon to catch. Franky is especially menacing and huge in the near nonexistent light.

They don't go out, terrified of making a noise that would break whatever silence is currently blanketed over them, terrifed that they'd make Luffy and the others lose focus and take their eyes off whatever they're watching or waiting for.

They stay curled up and silent against the wall that separates them from the moon and the night. It's dark inside the cabin but it's softer than whatever is outside. It's almost comforting, like children hoping a blanket keeps away the monsters.

They stay like that all night. When the first splashes of color spill across the hoizon it seems like a blanket has been ripped off. Suddenly air comes easier into their lungs and their muscles relax enough to flex fingers that had been clenched for hours and roll shoulders that had gone tight.

Zoro is back to his normal napping spot of deck, chin already dropping down to his chest and swords laid across his lap.

Luffy is still on the figurehead but he looks like he's humming to himself and looking towards the horizon with ease.

Robin is sitting down on the stairs, tired but relaxed as she leans into the morning breeze.

Sanji is already making his way towards the kitchen with a lazy stroll, the smell of his cigarettes lingers over the ship.

They don't ask.

Chopper scampers over to Zoro and carefully nudges the swords aside enough that he can climb onto his lap. He finally relaxes as Zoro wraps an arm around him, he's in one of the safest places on the ship.

Nami lets Sanji flutter around her longer than normal, sitting beside Robin who also seems content to indulge their cook a little extra today.

Usopp tails Franky, being careful on where he looks even though he knows there's no risk of him seeing anything terrible anymore. Franky asks something and Usopp launches into a story, eyes brightening up and a smile back on his face.

Brook goes to sit near Luffy and starts to play something warm and welcoming to greet the day.

It never happens again, at least not like it had that night.

Sometimes Luffy or Zoro seem to stare off at the horizon with a sharp intensity, but it breaks quickly.

Sometimes Sanji stands on the deck and smokes until there's a pile of ash at his feet, brow furrowed as he looks out over the water until he seems to blink and break himself out of it.

Sometimes Robin sits on the deck and wears the face she make when she's working on a puzzle, going though everything she knows and trying to make everything fit together.

That endless dark and haunting moon never reappear though. The dark only brings stars and the moon glows like a warm candle.

[ladygrey412]

Back to reading One Piece ���

[ladygrey412]

one piece saved my life man

[ladygrey412]

I don't care as long as we include the movies because nothing is ...

Better?

Worse?

Bisexual?

than his film Gold outfit.

Ugly Outfits tournament - question

For the upcoming tournament, I was wondering how many media we should include for this, as there are a lot of outfits to choose from if we include everything.

[ladygrey412]

“Children don’t need to earn their humanity. Children aren’t humans in training, they are humans right now. They’re not waiting to live their life, this is part of their life in this moment. Society treats children as though they’re preparing for a time where they’re allowed respect – and not before then. Until that time it’s acceptable to treat them as sub-human under the guise of parenting and education. For many, parenting is synonymous with punishment and learning is synonymous with schooling which are both so far off the mark. This all comes down to childism and it is so deeply sewn into the fabric our society. So much so that talking about it creates such cognitive dissonance that I know I’ll get defensive, even angry comments sharing these thoughts. People who genuinely respectfully parent and speak up for the injustices towards kids are so often ridiculed. Like I’ve said in the past, I don’t want to be viewed as a ‘good parent’ by a society that thinks so little of children.”

— How Many Well Intentioned People Dehumanise Children | Racheous

[ladygrey412]

Hot take but Usopp is the only straight Straw Hat and he’s like the comfortable-in-himself, token Support Straight.

[ladygrey412]

Okay no.

I may not forget to breath but my fiancee does. And so sometimes I'll just be going about my things and my brain will tickle and I just go "babe ya good?"

And get *gasp* "yup. Just forgot to breathe."

hold on, re: the "breath they didn't know they were holding" trope - I assumed that everyone forgets to breathe sometimes. I do! All the time!!

for science, I must know:

[ladygrey412]

I am *dying*

👁️👁️🔴

Mingo aggressively goes down on crocodile with no warning

Gets pharaoh's curse

[ladygrey412]

Since July is Disability Pride Month

(as opposed to every other month when we're all demure about disability rights /gentle sarcasm)

I wanted to highlight one of my favorite artists: Liberal Jane.

[ladygrey412]

“I could never marry you, Gracewood. The world––“ “Forgive my language, but […] fuck the world. I will change it for you if I have to.” ~ A LADY FOR A DUKE by Alexis Hall

Behold, the winner of the Trans-cendental Stories Fanart Poll on my Patreon! 🏳️‍⚧️I was so smitten by this beautiful story about love and second chances and living your truth in the face of a society that would rather not accept it. It was clever, funny, steamy, and gosh, it just ticked all my historical romance boxes. I adored it. 💕 Thank you, patrons, for your votes and your support, and I look forward to unveiling some secrets in the weeks ahead! 👀

[ladygrey412]

As someone with Mobility issues New York City was awful to be in. There was no benches anywhere. We were in a train station where the only seats were behind a paywall.

I absolutely love this.

And on top of that a lack of benches doesn't "fix" homelessness it just moves it to the floor.

[ladygrey412]

ONE PIECE COLORSPREAD 1084

[ladygrey412]

End OTW Racism: A Call To Action

A fan protest against the lack of action from the OTW on addressing issues of harassment and racism on AO3 and within the organization

This is a Call To Action for Fans of Color and Allies

AO3 has acknowledged that they have a harassment & racism problem that its parent organization, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), needs to address. Currently, people can use AO3 to harass others through fanworks, comments, and tags. Just a few examples include: racist Untamed “spitefic” that used anti-Indigenous slurs and was written specifically to lash out at fans of color; a Transformer fic that used its Black-coded character to reenact George Floyd’s murder in July 2020; someone naming a fandom scholar who criticized their Nazi omegaverse fic in the tags of the fic specifically to incite harassment to the scholar; writers using racial slurs against commenters who pointed out racism in their hockey fic; and so much more.

In June 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the OTW committed to addressing these issues. It has been nearly three years and they have not yet implemented any of the changes they promised, other than a blocking/muting tool that was already in development before 2020. We need to hold the OTW accountable to their own promises. (See the section further down on “Why Are We Doing This” for even more detail.)

As fans, together, we are powerful. We are organizing to protest the lack of action on promises made by the Organization for Transformative works to deal with issues of racism and harassment on their platform, Archive of Our Own.

We call on fans to do any or all of the following actions any time between May 17 to 31, 2023 to send a message to AO3 and OTW that we will hold them to their promises.

On AO3

Change the title of ten (or more!) of your most recent or most popular fanworks to include ‘End Racism in the OTW’ in the beginning, and provide a link to this post in your summary or first/top creator’s note

Post a new fanwork any time between May 17th to 31st with “End Racism in the OTW” either as the title or at the beginning of the title. The fanwork does not have to be long - it can be a 100-word fic, a quick sketch, a podfic of a ficlet, a 20-second vid/edit, a short piece of meta, etc. In the summary or first/top creator’s note, provide a link to this post

If updating any WIPs with a new chapter, add ‘End Racism in the OTW’ to the title and provide a link back to this post in your summary or first/top author’s note

Update your AO3 icon using the profile pic graphic in our Social Media Toolkit

Plan to maintain these changes until May 31, 2023, or longer if you wish

Send a message to the OTW asking for an update on their 2020 commitments!

For Readers: leave encouraging comments on fanworks with the "End Racism in the OTW" title to show your support of this initiative.

On tumblr

Reblog this Call to Action with the tag #End OTW Racism

Update your profile pics and banners using the graphics in our Social Media Toolkit

Follow this account for updates and signal boost our posts

On Twitter

Follow @/EndOTWRacism (remove the backslash) and signal boost our pinned tweet

Update your profile pics and banners using our graphics, and change your display name to include #EndOTWRacism

Use sample tweets and graphics from our Social Media Toolkit to tweet about your fanworks, and use the hashtag #EndOTWRacism

Help us make this a long-term campaign - sign up to help with other anti-racism projects and future actions!

What Do We Want?

Since their June 2020 statement, OTW has been working on updating their Terms of Service (TOS) to address racist and bigoted harassment, but with little transparency and only the vaguest of updates. It has been three years since their commitment to this update - we want to see the results of their work implemented in the next 6-12 months. Their TOS updates and complementary policies should include:

Harassment policies that can be regularly updated to address both on-site harassment and off-site coordinated harassment of AO3 users, with updated protocols for the Policy & Abuse Team to ensure consistent and informed resolutions of abuse claims

A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content; by abusive, we are talking about fanworks that are intentionally used to spread hate and harassment, not those that accidentally invoke racist or other bigoted stereotypes

These points are not particularly new and are not our own innovation; please refer to Stitch's article written over two years ago, asking for several of these very things.

OTW has also already committed to various process-based actions for longer-term works towards centering antiracism, including hiring a Diversity Consultant. The last update that OTW published said that the consultant would be hired within the next five years (after already having had three years to work on it since their original commitment). That is not soon enough. We want to see the following process-based actions implemented:

Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3-6 months

Committing to a policy of transparency on this topic, with quarterly updates on the progress of these projects including challenges and their plan for overcoming those challenges. These quarterly updates should be published on OTW News page and newsletters, not solely discussed in Board meetings

Why Are We Doing This?

16 years ago, Astolat famously published her manifesto calling for a fandom Archive of One’s Own. In that time, AO3 has grown to be a central pillar of fandom, likely far outstripping its founders’ original vision. It is more than just an archive now; it is a central hub of the modern fannish experience. AO3 and the OTW must continue to grow and evolve with fandom over time to remain a healthy and functioning pillar of fandom. To that end, there are several areas in which the organization, as it admits itself, is lacking.

In June 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter Movement, The OTW published a “This Week in Fandom” referencing the works of Dr. Rukmini Pande and Stitch, among others in which they discussed ‘making change for a better society’ through ‘conversations about race and racism’. In response, Dr. Pande and Stitch submitted a letter to the OTW calling for a more formal public statement than an offhand reference in a News Roundup that only served to call for thoughts and discussion without any indication the organization intended to do anything, policy wise, to address the issues being raised.

Eventually, the organization did remove the references to the works of Dr. Pande and Stitch and then made an official statement on the issue of racism within the organization and AO3. In it, they identified several things they would be prioritizing to combat harassment and benefit users. Some of those have been implemented (notably those that were already under development). However as of this writing, little else has been done especially in regards to:

Improving admin tools for the Policy & Abuse team

Reassessing the current mandatory archive warnings with the possibility of implementing others

And, most importantly, reviewing the Terms of Service (TOS) to allow the Policy & Abuse team to address harassment that is currently not covered by the existing TOS

By their own admission, the current tools and policies of the OTW are not sufficient to deal with issues of harassment and racism.

Several people who were involved in the founding of the OTW, including previous OTW Board members and staff on the original OTW Content Policy Committee, acknowledge that the founding of the OTW in 2008 and early board iterations failed us as a fandom by not doing enough, and by not even considering the way racism is perpetuated in fannish spaces, despite a long history of racism in fandom.

It has been nearly three years since the original commitment by the organization with little visible, measurable progress on these three crucial issues and a complete lack of transparency on where they are in regards to even beginning to deal with these issues. In fact, in Q&As, it was heavily implied by a member of the board that those calling for OTW to deal with issues of racism (which OTW had already acknowledged as a problem!) were not really fans but outside agitators.

This has cast significant doubt on the organization's sincerity and commitment to their stated goals, and on their position as leaders of a central fan tent-pole. Fans of color are not outsiders. They are right here, members of our community, and they are being harassed and targeted and driven out while space and platforms are being given to racists.

We, as fans of color and our allies, find the current state of fandom and current actions (and lack thereof) unacceptable. Fandom is our space, all of ours. We, as a fandom, have a right to a racism-free space and have a duty to our fellow fans to create that space. Unlike so much of the world, this is a space we can control and make better. It is a space we must make better. To read even more about this movement, visit our FAQs.

[ladygrey412]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading