#i liked so much this trope in nimona it inspired me for one of my next books

[aevyk-ing]

Yep.

[acecorvid]

Do you have book recs? Especially queer book recs, both fiction and nonfiction. Thank you!

Why yes I do friend! A whole list under the cut because I added descriptions and it’s rather long, but also if you’d rather: here is my queer book list on goodreads (some of the books I haven’t read yet but the ones I have read have longer reviews from me).

Fiction: 

All For the Game (aka The Foxhole Court three book series) by Nora Sakavic - fake sport, total drama university, demisexual character, gay characters, slow burn, lots of violence unfortunately, dysfunctional found family

The Raven Cycle (four book series) by Maggie Stiefvater - a magical game of hide and seek with an ancient buried king, gay and bi characters, found family filled with more love than you thought possible

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Court Stevens - queer characters, found family of somewhat delinquent friends (but they’re good Christian delinquents), finding yourself and exploring your sexuality under the watchful eye of religious people

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (I recommend the audiobook) - beauty queens crash and trapped on a desert island what could go wrong, gay and trans characters, a lot actually goes wrong but a lot goes right

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz - I’ve reread this book so many times I’ve lost count. Slow burn. Boys falling in love. Boys who will do anything for each other. Written in the most loving way I’ve ever seen.

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero - teen detective club all grown up and still traumatized by the eldritch horrors they saw in their youth, Scooby type gang and the gals are queer

 The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee - this book has so much I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s delightful and all the characters are so good, slow burn, too many wonderful tropes to count, at one point there’s a pirate ship

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera - ahaha this one hurts. The world building is phenomenal though and so are the boys and their love. 

It’s Not Like It’s a Secret by Misa Suguira - delightful wlw story of a queer girl, her family, and how she grows up with secrets

George by Alex Gino - a kid’s book about a trans kid, very sweet and informative, audiobook read by Jamie Clayton

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli - one of the best coming of age/coming out stories Ive read, inspired the movie Love Simon

More Than This by Patrick Ness - existential crisis of a book, queer main, all around beautiful story

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo - trans main, acceptance, growing, and dating

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan - two characters of the same name, several gay characters, a delightful journey of finding friendship and oneself

The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz - father of main is gay, from the author of Aristotle and Dante, beautiful tale of a young boy coming of age, figuring out his identity with his past and his present and his future

Comic/Graphic Novel:

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal: Omnibus by E.K. Weaver - this sits on my shelf and it is HUGE, read it first as a webcomic so if you can’t find it in stores it’s online, long ass road trip that melts my heart every time

Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson (and more) - the best camp experience you will ever have

Take Me with You by Andrea Gibson - beautifully queer poetry

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson - everyone is queer, magical and misunderstood, bad guys need assistants too, sometimes the good people aren’t the best people

Non-Fiction: 

Revolutionary by Alex Myers - a historical retelling of Deborah Samson/Robert Shurtliff from a trans perspective

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock - autobiographical, trans, sex work, sex positivity

Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded by Hannah Hart - autobiographical, positivity in the face of anything, family with mental illness, difficult relationship with parent

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (also graphic novel but it’s autobiographical) by Alison Bechdel - also a broadway musical, broken family, coming of age

Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster by Joanne E. Passet - the life story of a lesbian librarian/teacher who needs more credit, very long and detailed but worth it, has a lot to teach you about the queer history in general

Not Explicitly Queer but Can Be Read as Queer:

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng - one of the main characters is ace and I will fight for that

Romeo and/or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure by Ryan North - there’s an ace joke and plenty of queer subtext

[sanvitheartificer]

Dear Yuletide Author,

I've never managed to make sign ups before, so this'll be my first year doing Yuletide, and I'm really excited! Here's some things.

General things I like in stories:

-queer characters and headcanons; spectrum sliding of all kinds (so, could be skin color, mental health, anything – diversity is exciting!). If you’re not comfortable with doing this, I get it, take care of yourself! {if you’re not sure what I mean, basically: taking a character who’s canonically white and implied to be straight and writing them as bi and black, for example.}

-Personal things you enjoy having a place in the story you write (so like if you know a lot about making dresses in the seventeenth century and it comes up in the story that's always really cool)

-Clever headcanons that explain and recontextualize canon.

-magic, whimsy, and bittersweet endings

-happy and hopeful endings

-Found family, and coming together and surviving difficult situations with your found family

-Hopeful apocalypses; the conflicts of the story no longer matter and everyone has to work together to survive, but there’s a sense that everyone will survive and things will get better over time, even if they suck now

-Things that are on the edge between dreamlike and not-dreams, and maybe sometimes they have real effects but you can't quite tell.

-Alternate universes or settings with more fantasy

-Time travel, fix-it fics: I'm not sure this applies to any of my fandoms but in general I really like it. Any kind of time travel: loops, inhabiting younger body, older you shows up and younger you is still a thing, living as a time-displaced wanderer... all of this is great. Even if I didn’t mention it specifically I’m pretty much always down for a time travel AU.

-Language differences having an effect on the story

-Clever wordplay and riddles and mysteries that matter to the story

-Children allowed to be children, but also having wisdom that matters

-Characters being self-aware and working to improve

-Stories where romance is not the focus, and friendship and family are valued highly. Gen stories.

-Crossovers and AUs

Things I don't want in stories (starred ones are 'hard' rules; others are preferences)

-Hopeless endings

-Things that are dark for the sake of darkness*

-Demonizing a character; changing/removing core character traits

-Unhealthy relationships portrayed as healthy or desirable

-Explicit porn (Not for Yuletide. Thanks!)*

-Eye gore. Please just don't describe things touching eyes.*

-Gore in general is not great

-Slice-of-life fics without any kind of fantasy or magic aren't my favorite

Thank you so much for signing up! I'm so excited to see whatever you come up with! Feel free to get inspired and ignore these ideas, beyond the hard rules! I consider all of this more of a bouncing-off point, and I trust your judgment. I'd also love to talk more after Yuletide if you want to? I like talking to people who are enthusiastic about things I'm enthusiastic about, and brainstorming can be really fun.

Here's the copies of my specific-fandoms requests:

Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin and Hobbes grow up but they hold on to the magic that existed when they were kids, although it's a rocky road at times.

I would prefer that you avoid stories where Calvin comes to live entirely in the real world, *and* stories where he lives entirely in a new fantasy world. Calvin and Hobbes' world feels to me one with feet on the ground and head in the clouds, and I would love if you could preserve that sense.

I like queer headcanons (aro or ace or both Calvin would be super cool!)

I really love crossovers for Calvin and Hobbes, and I'd really like to see one(s) with Lilo and Stitch. 

I’d prefer gen and I don’t like Calvin/Hobbes as a pairing.

Nimona: How do they end up where they are, and where do they go after the story is over? I'm really interested in backstories and worldbuilding for this universe; I do kind of ship Ballister and Ambrosius, but please don't ignore the ways in which their relationship (in the general, not-romantic sense of 'relationship') is and has been unhealthy in the past if that's where you go with this.

I'm also down for AUs where they're all a happy family or something; it's not something I'd normally want to read, but dragon shapeshifter baby and two harried dads sound hilarious.

Also, the woman with the device (I haven't read it in a while; forgive me I do not remember her name). I would love to see more of her. What's going on with her life?

Megamind: Oh man I have so many different ideas for this. You don't have to do all of these; really you don't have to do any of them, but here's my list of ideas:

AU in which Roxanne is an alien (whether she's the 'Megamind' parallel or the 'Metroman' is up to you, but I'd love to see Megamind as her counterpart and then they kiss)

-Gender fuckery

-Minion focus (how old was he when the planet was destroyed? How does his mind work?)

--On that note, how do the brainbots think?

--What was life on Minion's and Wayne's first planets like? What did their parents do? What did those societies look like? How did it cope with imminent death -- did other babies get propelled out into the world? If not, why Megamind specifically?

-Wayne eventually growing up, after the movie, and doing something meaningful with his life

-Apocalyptic AU in which they all have to work with each other (I'm imagining that the movie didn't happen in this circumstance, but I'm okay if it did, and apocalypse happens after)  

Feel free to focus in on one character and not include all of them :)

The Breakfast Club: The Breakfast Club always felt relateable to me, because I've also had those kinds of microcosm friendships -- and they've often faded away once the moment passes. Does the Breakfast Club hold on to their friendship during the stresses of high school, and after? If not, do they ever reconnect? What does this thing that happened mean to them, later in their lives?

I'm also down for ridiculous AUs with superpowers or time travel or crossovers or fusions. 

Princess Princess Ever After: I want to hear about their adventures without each other, and adviser guy: what does he get up to? How do their parents respond; how do they all end up where they are? And maybe what happens when they're married and they have kids what do the kids do? What happens next? What's Amira's brother doing?

Also, also: I really, really want them to kiss. But honestly just give me moooooar of anything about this beautiful story.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire: There's a lot of stories I really want to see within this fandom.

One is an epic tale rewriting the whole thing where the white savior trope is less of a thing, Atlantis makes sense as a society, full of political intrigue and history and worldbuilding. honestly this isn't quite my cup of tea, but I also really want explanations where this world makes sense, so if you're pulled towards this I would love to read it.

Second: a couple hundred years in the future Atlantis decides to reveal itself. What does that integration look like? Maybe space is involved! Stargate crossover could be cool because it has another linguist.

Another is just... give me anything with Audrey and Vinny and Sweet and Helga and Mole and all these people, dealing with returning to the world, maybe Milo returning much later. They're immortal, or something close; time is strange and they have adventures and it's hard to adjust to this world but they have to, so they do. They have adventures, they create things; they live their lives, affected by this brush with the fantastical but stuck in a normal-ish world. I feel like Sweet, Mole, and Wilhelmina get overlooked a lot, and I’d especially like to see more of Sweet, but I also love Audrey and Vinny so. Anything goes. 

I'd also like to see any of their lives growing up, or Milo's ... uncle? Whoever it was? and his adventures.

I'm also a linguistics geek so I'd really love to see more realistic language problems, and I'm actually down to read an entire story that's just 'Milo studies things', esp. if you convey the mystery and excitement of a good problem. He’s a geek and I love him. 

Or Kida's life growing up! What is Atlantis like? Worldbuilding this fascinating place. Or ancient history; what's Kida's mother like? Or life of random Atlantis urchin or why did the Atlantians forget or highschool AU that’s Kida/Milo or really... anything that's got at least a touch of magic in this setting.