#hey remember when this story was about lesbian necromancers in space?

[upside-down-uni]

Hey! Idk if this is too much t9 ask, but could you rec me 2, 19, 20, 45, 55, 63, 69, 71, 72, 75, 86, 104, 111, 116, 131? sorry if it’s a lot but thanks in advance if u can rec me some! :)

Hi, you're in luck! I have an essay to procrastinate on and this ask is just the right thing to distract me! Here you go, I hope you'll find something that you like:

2. a book with a blue cover

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. When i read it for the first time I was just on the brink of going to uni, still figuring out what I even wanted to study and this book just wrapped me in a warm blanket and said "it's going to be okay". I love the main characters Frances and Aled, their arcs and especially the really nice and quiet queer rep in this book.

19. a book that put you in a reading slump

The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. When I start a book I generally have the feeling that I can't put it away until I have finished it. With The Knife Of Never Letting Go my problem was that I did want to read it but it didn't fit my mood, so I couldn't bring myself to read it but also beat myself up about not reading it until I put it back onto my shelf. So, I basically pushed myself into a reading slump over this book.

21. a book with a red cover

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers. I enjoyed this book so much but probably not for the reasons most people would think I enjoyed it? The wlw romance was definitely nice and I really liked them being dramatic but also kind of mundane? What really got me though was the strong theme of found family of young adults and queer friendships, that really yanked the yearning hours wide fucking open for me. (I also liked that in the end the book wasn't as much about romance as it was about finding yourself after surrendering yourself to academia for ages and working through your issues.)

45. a book featuring the friends to lovers trope

The Priory Of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. I adore this book. It's so long and there's so much incredible world building and history in it that it made reading an untter delight! Coming in it was a bit hard to acclimate to the slow paste but after a while I just settled in and enjoyed the ride. It's a breathtaking story in a breathtaking universe and afaik there's a second part coming!

55. a book with a satisfying ending

Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi. Yolk doesn't really have an ending in the sense of a "happily ever after" but I really loved where the author chose to leave the characters and how she did it. The book is quite different from what I usually read, tonewise, but especially that ending made me leave the book with a warm feeling. (also the cover is yellow and really really gorgeous)

63. a book that actually made you laugh out loud

I would've reccd Red White and Royal Blue but judging by your url you've read that already...sooooo, it's Snapdragon by Kat Leyh! Super cute graphic novel, with a weird and adorable storyline and such lovable characters!

69. your favorite mythological retelling

I haven't read a mythological retelling in ages, so basic Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan will have to do.

71. your favorite LGBTQ+ fiction

now that's just rude how am I supposed to choose?? I'll say it's Every Heart A Doorway by Seanan McGuire and Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Loveless by Alice Oseman. I feel very strongly and very distinctly about all of them, if you can get your hands on them my only comment is READ. (and maybe make sure you're okay with gothic sci-fi horror for Gideon The Ninth)

72. a book with a gorgeous cover

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. It's her adult gothic horror debut after The Miseducation of Cameron Post and not only is the hardcover just stunning in black and red, it also got illustrations inside!! (And all teh women are queer and it's deliciously fucked up!)

75 a book featuring the I'm not like other girls trope

I think the closest I can come to that is The Lady's Guide To Piracy and Petticoats by Mackenzi Lee. The main character has to unlearn a bunch of stuff really fast if she wants to get along with the only other people that will help her. We have road trips in the 16th century, kidnapping and asshole husbands to be, piracy of course and friendship!

86. a book with an insane plot twist

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand. Sawkill Girls was my first touch with horror and I have to say I have no idea whether there was heavy foreshadowing. I think I remember thinking that there was something else to come but when the shit hit the fan I just sat there with big questionmarks over my head because I had read the book in a frenzy in one evening and truly did NOT anticipate it. As someone who did not read horror or thriller before this I have to say I was already insanely confused and disgusted by a bunch of stuff that went down. But then...uh. the thing happened and I was just lost. (In a good way though.)

104. a fluffy sweet read

Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. It's been a while ever since I read it but it's essentially a cute summer story about Alice who's a disaster bisexual when she sees people she finds cute. Which is a little inconvenient because the new guy at her job is really, really, really extremely cute and she ceases to function around him. There's best friend drama, eating pizza iirc and figuring shit out!

111. a book writing a book

I assume it's either "a book about writing a book" or I am literally supposed to rec a book that is writing a book...I'm going to rec a book that is about books! (because I can.) It's The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Féret-Fleury and it follows a young woman called Juliette wo gets sucked into an old bookseller's world of life saving, life changing books. A really quiet, really cute book.

116. a book with multiple povs

the Reckless books by Cornelia Funke! Simply divine stroytelling, a vibrant world and amazing characters! I have to say that I only know the German original so I don't know what the English translation might be like.

131. recommend any book you like

um. so knife gang members and people who follow my main, you'll once again be subjected to me being a mess because of lesbian necromancers in space! I've mentioned it before, it lives in my head rent free, it is the one, the only Gideon The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir! It's an insane sci-fi horror fantasy blend where Gideon has to play cavalier to Reverend Daughter Harrowhark I-love-being- an-absolute-pain-in-the-ass-to-Gideon Nonagesimus to help her become an uber-necromancer (like Harrow needs motivation to become even more of a nerd and shockingly good at necromancy) for the Necrolord Prime/Undying Emperor. There's BEAUTIFUL WRITING sprinkled with MEMES when you least expect it. There is incredible toxic codependency and repression. There's MURDER. There's fancy necromancy theorems and DUELS. There's enemies to begrudging allies to ??? Staple your socks to your feet or this book will blow them clean off!

[transfemininomenon]

hey alice I've seen you mention then before and they seem really interesting and I was wondering if you could tell us more about your dnd characters! (Whichever your favorite is or who you feel like talking about) or even a tag you have where I could read up more!

:O i would LOVE to talk about some of my dnd characters

my three main ones are my half-elf raven queen warlock gwyndolin (aka gwyn), my human swashbuckler rogue gertrude, and my life cleric alicia 

gwyn was the character i played when @speechjam was DMing who is a half-moon elf with Parental Baggage (because what’s a half-elf who doesnt have an iffy relationship with their parents) who is very gay and very trans and canonically Really Hot because she has a literally goddess gifted body. her parents raised her in an elf city where she experienced a lifetime of racism for being a half-elf, and that combined with not having a great relationship with her parents as well as dealing with dysphoria eventually led to her attempting suicide. however when this happened, she suddenly found herself before the raven queen, who told her it was not yet her time, and offered her a deal - a new body and some of her power in exchange for making a pact with her. she readily agreed, and was reborn as gwyndolin

since then she’s spent a few years acting as a servant of the raven queen, acting as a sort of soul bounty hunter tracking down people who had unnaturally escaped death and dealing with necromancers/undead infestations. eventually she happened to take a job that led to her meeting the party, including happening to bump into her elf druid cousin solira played by @lyssatbqh

she’s also a total Disaster Lesbian and cant talk to women to save her life which is a problem when Lots of women want to talk to her on account of being Really Hot. she has a thing for knives and has like 8 of them on her. she also has a spirit familiar in the form of a raven named crawford who she always makes keep watch for her at night instead of doing it herself

THEN gertrude is the character i play in @lyssatbqh‘s campaign, which is a homebrew campaign set in the dark souls world. gertrude’s whole life was spent believing that humanity didnt matter and only existed to serve the gods - lessons instilled in her from birth by her parents. often being left alone while her parents were off doing whatever religious things they were off doing, she grew used to wondering the city of anor londo by herself, exploring every alley and climbing every roof top, having just a dagger given to her by her parents as a form of protection 

as she grew older her parents tried getting her more involved in the way of white (the religious organization they were a part of), and gertrude never really quite got the whole “sit and study and pray” part of it, but she found ways to use her natural charisma and dexterity to instead serve the gods by acting as a spy against people who might speak out against the gods. this is how she met the party initially, being sent by one of the gods to spy on a book club founded by @speechjam‘s character brillin. long story short the party ended up encountering some of the witches of izalith, went to izalith right as the witch of izalith was trying to recreate the first flame, and they all fucking DIED 

some long period of time later the party all mysteriously came back to life, and have since came back to life any time they have died, always returning to whatever fire they’d rested at. the whole experience of dying and coming back forced gertrude to, for the first time in her life, have to think about being a human and what humanity meant and what her place in the world was, and she proceeded to go into a several week long existential crisis. during this time the party investigated some mysterious happenings around the city of new londo involving other people coming back to life, fought some demons, and eventually made their way back to anor londo

the whole time gertrude was hoping returning to anor londo would get her some answers from the god she had been working for by the name of flame god flann. however, upon returning he offered no real help, and seemingly didnt even remember that she had worked for him. this furthered her growing crisis and fear and doubt, and eventually the party confronted her about her sneakiness and dodging questions, and she confessed the nature by which she’d originally joined the group, and asked for their forgiveness and explained that she’d suddenly had a Lot to think about and that a lot of things she thought she’d known had been thrown out the window. the party was initially hurt, especially brillin, and gertrude suddenly found herself for the first time Caring about other people and how her actions had effected them, but they eventually forgave her and they continued to all work together to maybe figure out a little more on what was happening

encountering two strange people known as skin man and skeleton man, the party worked with them and eventually learned that skin man also was coming back from the dead, but also seemed to be fading away more and more each time he came back - becoming less of himself and more just a blank husk. eventually skin man went missing, and the party found him by a mysterious machine that could answer questions for them - in exchange for memories

gertrude used it to ask two questions, choosing first between the memories of her time working for flann, her time with the way of white, and her memories of brillin, who she had grown increasingly close with throughout their travels (because gertrude is a Fool and JUST kept jokingly flirting until she fooled around and caught real feelings), eventually choosing the way of white. she then had the option of flann, brillin, or her forgetting the memories and associations that her daggers had with her, eventually choosing daggers

her questions were if the gods cared about her, about people, and then the second was if she, too, was gonna steadily fade away the more she died. she received a simple answer for both - no, and yes 

initially going into another crisis, she soon shock that feeling off and decided on a new course of action, a flame suddenly lighting in her as she realized that she couldn’t rely on the gods anymore, and that it was people, and her new found friends, that she had to rely on. the gods were seemingly uncaring about their current plight, and she would find answers on her own. no longer being shackled by the gods, she would suddenly live as she was meant to - as a person, as a human 

the party eventually fought a couple more demons and, with the help of skeleton man, defeated them. in the aftermath, gertrude and brillin FINALLY smooched and it was RAD, and they later had a roof top discussion about everything and about Them. they came to the conclusion that neither of them really knew what was happening, or what their place in the universe was, and the weight of the inevitably of them both hollowing was ever present, but they wouldn’t focus on that - they would focus on the now, on living as best they could in the moment, and deciding that they would eventually figure things out, and they would do that Together 

dang i didn’t mean to do just a plot summary of that whole campaign so far but i got TOO into talking about gertrude i just……………….. love her so much guys she has learned and grown so much she literally started off as half a joke character i literally threw her concept together 10 minutes before the first session started and she became so!!!!! much more than i could’ve ever expected

anyway my other character is alicia aka the Divine Lady who i cant talk about TOO much because i just started playing her and friends in that campaign follow me and there’s #spoilers but she’s a life cleric who was once a shy awkward little boy named joey who has grown in to a slightly less awkward but no less shy but STRONG woman. she’s a life cleric and JUST wants to help people she’s really caring and is always worried about someone and i love her she’s such a change of pace from my usual edgy characters she is TOO good for this world and has two beautiful lesbian blacksmith moms and a million adopted “cousins” who she all loves dearly 

she’s surprisingly Buff, enjoys blacksmithing (she made all of her armor and weapons), is a big fan of beauty in all forms, is an avid reader, and is constantly writing letters home to her family and keeping a diary of her adventures. she worships lethandar (aka god of birth & renewal) as well as sune (aka goddess of beauty), with the symbol of sune crafted into her shield and her mace designed to have a sun motive for lethandar, and she has big dorky glasses because she’s blind as a bat

some other side characters include primrose my college of swords bard who is JUST primrose from octopath traveler, ailce my water genasi druid that i usually play in one shots who in the most recent one shot i played her in adopted a wonderful child who has bat ears and was NOT appreciated by their parents and she loves them with all her heart, and ari “the banshee” who is a city cleric in a modern space based campaign who is an anarchist and part of a punk rock band 

oh! also i have a tag for gwyn (which is just #gwyn tag) and TWO for gertrude (#former gertrude tag and #gertrude tag, former being for dagger related things since she lost her love of them) and im sure i’ll get an alicia one going! its all just like aesthetic stuff or things i relate to them but you can get a good sense of those characters through those