#my dyke powers are growing……

[dumpsterfireofsubtext]

Hot tip!!! To enhance dyke powers by 100000% roll up your cargo shorts

[anonymocha]

finally coming out as a dyke in 2023 is realizing i dont need to pretend to simp that Guy just because everyone else in my friend group does

[moth--knight]

gender is a circus and I am its most pathetic clown

[gatheringbones]

[“Too many of us have chosen to live in sexually ambiguous, sexually boring, sexually dead lesbian relationships because it wasn't safe to talk about desire---desire for cock, desire for pussy, desire for leather, desire for diversity. Exploring my desire for men has led me in an interesting circle---back to my incredible passion for womyn. My queer world will have to stretch (again) to make room for my fantasies, and perhaps even an affair or two. It will have to stretch to make room for whatever I desire.

Finally I realize what I am so afraid of. I am afraid that men and penises have so much power in this heteropatriarchal world that simply desiring one can invalidate 25 years of deep womon-loving. I'm afraid that lesbianism is so fragile that it needs to be protected by an iron fence. I am afraid that by desiring a cock, I will be excommunicated, torn away from the world of womyn. I am afraid that if I allow myself to open, perhaps I will want more. This is why a lesbian wanting a man demands so much courage. Courage to stand outside of identity politics, to insist that our community grow to accept all of us.

My lesbianism is as sure and solid as the Himalayas, as predictable as the seasons and the phases of the moon, as familiar as a womon in my arms ("Wherever I go, there's one thing I know, I'm sure to have a womon around me"). My desire for men is as fleeting as good chocolate and ripe strawberries---not always available, sometimes bitter and disappointing, often intoxicating as nectar, somewhat allergic, and extremely tempting.

I can live with all these desires. I will not compromise myself again. Fitting in is less important than filling out. There is a revolution afoot, and it is stretching the parameters of the old gay life. The hundredth monkey. A friend says, "Oy, I'm not ready for this century." But she is. She is.

Just when I thought I'd made some sense of these desires for men and had come to peace with them, my ex-lover called. The butch who couldn't communicate and who could never fuck me right. She has something to share, something important, something very personal. She has decided to come out as a transgendered person---bi-gendered, s/he calls it. S/he has come to realize that s/he has both a male body and a female body. Hir language may be new, but the experience is familiar.

It was hir male body I always wanted. I'd called it butch. S/he says that when s/he is in hir male body s/he desires men; when s/he is in hir female body s/he desires womyn. In other words, s/he's as queer as a $3 bill.

Suddenly, a fog begins to clear. If I desired hir male body and hir male body desires men, and when s/he is in hir female body s/he desires womyn, then s/he must've wanted me womon to womon (or man to man?), while I wanted hir butch to femme (Dare I say, male to female?). Suddenly our sex problems become very clear.

I always felt hir switch. As I filled with desire, wanting hir hardness, her maleness, s/he would become soft, almost girly, and it was like someone pulled the plug on the bathtub, the desire leaked out of me, leaving me--us--empty.

This starts me thinking about the lover before hir. The one with the sweet curls in her hair, the big round belly, and the soft eyes. The kinky one, where anything goes. She loves my femme self, calls me bitch and desires to fell me with hardness, to force me into submission.

Somehow though, it never quite worked. I am beginning to see what went wrong. This one wanted butch/femme, boy/girl sex, and I wanted lezzie sex. I loved hir female body and wanted to touch her. S/he wanted to give me hir male body. When I tried to touch hir breasts, I was reminding hir that she was a womon and was therefore rejecting her power. The lover s/he picked after me identified as a heterosexual woman (although she too used to be a radical dyke). When my ex-lover told me this new lover wouldn't touch her (after all she did identify as straight), I thought, how terrible, such internalized homophobia. Now I am beginning to understand how, by ignoring the girl body, the boy could feel his power. It got old fast, but for a while it worked, fed the rejected boy place inside.

I began this piece saying I hadn't had a man in 15 years. I am beginning to suspect that I've had many men. They'd called themselves butches.

I suppose none of this makes sense if you just think about biological bodies. These girls definitely had female bodies, tits and ass, and oh, so lovely to touch. But there is no doubt that these womyn have also had dicks. I've never said this out loud before, because dick is a dirty lesbian word. But I have been filled by womyn's dicks, and no, they are not "just" dildos.”]

Lionheart, from wanting men, from genderqueer: voices beyond the binary, edited by Riki wilchins, 2002

[unnaturalequilibrium]

undefined number of favourite #mafin scenes [the stabbing]

We love our stories. Human beings are just made that way I think. Whether it’s watching the flickering flames play across the cave wall bringing the painted rhinos to life or if it’s being sprawled out on your couch with your laptop on your stomach watching a telenovela set in Franco’s Spain. Stories are a kind of lifeblood, like schadenfreude and finding kittens cute. And there is something about the way a story gets to be melodramatic and over the top, it’s just…it’s a little addictive. We want to see the high level drama, the lust, the love and the angst. Especially when it’s expressed in loud and bombastic emotions. We don’t want to live it (“may you live in interesting times” is the greatest curse of all time for a reason), but we want to experience it vicariously and at a great distance. Most of us at least, no matter what else separates or ties us together, we have that craving. I know it’s not just me. My grandmother and one of my co-workers follow/ed Emmerdale with the same kind of religious conviction a stockbroker follows the NASDAQ. So I don’t think it matters if you’re a Danish woman in her nineties, a Bosnian man in his fifties or a dyke chasing both. We are human and we love our stories.

This whole melodramatic stabbing is just further proof of that. It is perfect hurt/comfort. If this had been a well written +50k fanfic I would have rubbed my palms together and licked my lips when I got to this part. Protective instincts on display and a reason to confront the depths of the love developing between them. It’s fucking delicious. Fina being a brave little toaster and stepping in between Marta and the danger. And Marta with her arms full of unconscious Fina, trying to keep it together as the corn syrup slowly trickles across the floor. Hurt is the perfect imposed deadline of any story when it comes to having to deal with feelings, when there’s suddenly a reminder of how this could be taken away from you, what you want and what you feel usually becomes a bit more clear. And with that clarity the roads in front of you become easier to distinguish and separate. You’ve faffed about for long enough, now the Universe comes to collect and literally tells you to get your shit together. She’s important to you?  You love her? You want her? *snaps fingers* then yalla, take action! Pick a path!

An honuorable mentioning is also the next scene in which Marta is left alone in the shop and sinks down onto the floor next to the remnants of Fina’s blood smeared across the tiles. There is something about that visual that plays on my heartstrings. Marta might not physically be a large person, I’m pretty convinced I could fireman carry her around my morning run without too much effort, but she’s got the presence of the fucking Potemkin. She is in control, shoulders stiff, back straight and she wields power with the same kind of cool aloofness which the Grim Reaper coasted through Europe with during the 14th century. But in this scene, the way she crumbles and becomes so small as she is curled up on the floor; she looks more like a lost and hurting child than anything. I like that, because I am a bit of a bitch and I like to see my fictional favourites suffer and grow. So the juxtaposition of a pre-dreadnought battleship with a tiny child with tear stains on her cheeks is very much something I get a kick out of. A slab of concrete becomes a crumpled up tissue and you hurt for her as much as you hurt with her as you realise that cement has feelings too it’s just really good at keeping its shape and showing no weakness.

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Sword gays showdown, final round of bracket three

Propaganda:

For Gideon:

she's incredibly good w/ her two hander and less good with her rapier but she's still pretty good!! she is a horny lesbian who's taste in women seems to exclusively be "girls who have tried or are going to try to kill her". she's a redhead. i love her

Gideon’s a HUGE Butch lesbian and literally always wanted to use a broad sword. Specifically a broad sword. She said fuck rapiers. Uhhh literally dies to save the girl she cares for and the sword she uses then becomes like an altar for said girl. Gideon Nav Supremacy <3

oh she is the most badass swordswoman lesbian in media. she’s her gf’s cavalier, defends her in battle, she’s incredibly butch and buff

C'mon shes THE sword lesbian like... canonically 

Loves her broadsword more than anything on her home planet and practices whenever she can. Spoiler it’s possessed by her mom. Gave everything so her best enemy could eat her soul and become the new saint. The character of all time child of two separate threesomes, child of the god emperor, she’s dead, she’s butch, she’s a dork, she’s doomed by the narrative. She’s my favorite.

girlie is literally the swordswoman supreme. she’s the cavalier primary to her necromancer. she has a fuckoff huge longsword. she gets absorbed into another person SPECIFICALLY to swordfight for them. in a gay way too.

While everyone else was developing common sense, she studied the blade. This dyke's main weapon and true love is the long sword, but she's also passable with a rapier. The sword is, in her own estimation, pretty much all she's good for. That and her smoking hot bod and terribly charming sense of humor. 

"While we were developing common sense, she studied the blade." (Direct quote from the book). She's the most useless lesbian to ever exist, and she's obsessed with an absolute wet cat of a woman. Learned longsword mostly on her own and is such a genius with the sword she learned rapier in a few months (by personal experience, it's really really hard)

Most badass broadsword wielding lesbian easily slaying bone monsters and evil space wasps

The cavalier to her necromancer. very gay. in a complicated codependant lovehate relationship with the only other person her age she knew growing up.

For Adora:

Finding the sword kicks off the whole show. She transforms into a giant magic lady and is now in charge of saving everyone from the  big bag guys (which she used to be a part of). A bunch of stuff happens, but eventually her identity is now tied to having the sword. She is fully convinced that w/o the sword (and therefore She-Ra) she’s worthless. This culminates in having to destroy the sword or the world ends. She’s super depressed bc her whole self worth was tied to the sword and being she-ra. On the way to save her gf, she turns into way cooler she-ra (her own version of it that is not controlled by the sword which was made by her colonialist ancestors). Her sword is now part of her identity instead of her identity revolving around the sword. 

lesbian chosen one who was given a sword that activated her powers and made her into a living weapon, but she destroyed the sword to save her planet - and then made her own sword with her magic and saved the entire universe

[tirfpikachu]

sometimes i feel like, in certain cases, "detrans woman" and "nonbinary woman" ain't too different. and could even be used simultaneously by the same person without much issue. after all, isn't processing internalized misogyny and escaping the gender roles box for womanhood also a way someone can at the same time not feel like a binary man, not feel like a binary woman, but not feel like a not-woman either? after unlearning all the bullshit male society taught us, it can be destabilizing and create distance between us and other women. we might no longer feel like a normie woman. we've been awakened. we're no longer a gender roled woman, rolled up in everything she was taught she needed to be or she would fail at womanhood. we're an unfailible woman, we can't get a bad grade in womanhood bc we don't care about gender grades. we know it's all bullshit. we took back the power patriarchal society had over us. in that sense, we're not willingly binary anymore. and i think, over time, it's only going to get harder and harder to find women who are happily into the gender roles, the gender box assigned to them.

people fucking hate that, ofc. especially male people, and doubly so cis/bio men. they hate that we're awakened women. they hate that we found feminism and sisterhood and go detrans or use nonbinary in addition to woman, bc we reconnect with our body type and our upbringing. and by they, i mean both sides btw. the patriarchy hates that we found our power, of course. non-feminists scoff at us.

and... mainstream trans activists hate that our journey got us here, and hate how we make dysphoria seem curable in unmedical ways and transness more complex than they like to think. we complicate things. they hate that they found power in changing themselves (whatever makes them feel at peace ofc), while we tried to as well, but in the process we found our power was within us all along. we found that just being neutrally sexed animals, just female humans, female animals, girls the way that one calls a cat a sweet girl, cat first girl second, human first girl second... our bodies, our gender category, don't define us. anymore, anyways. anyone who defines us by our womanhood is a bigot, and we scrubbed our brains free of all the shit patriarchal brainwashing left in us. and for us, personally, it was enough to free us. that's not the case for anymore. some folks need more than that. some folks need to modify themselves beyond recognition to feel at peace with themselves. but i do hope they know that deep down, they were always good beings all along. i hope they know that gender is bullshit and sex says nothing about anyone's worth, personality, goals, interests, etc. it says fuckall about any of that. i don't care if i get a male or female rabbit. a rabbit is a rabbit. if i feel affection for a new pet, our connection is what matters [*]. i would never assign someone gender roles based on their sex. but it's sadly done way too often by parents and male society. if you're trans, temporarily or forever, you gotta clean up all your internalized misogyny and sexism/gncphobia. find kinship with other female people, or male gnc people if you're male. just check off some boxes. clean everything up. deep-clean your mind and your heart first.

[*] insert tras here being like, "why can't you be like that about dating? you dirty close-minded terfy homo dyke? why can't you love beyond genitals? beyond just bodies?" and these days i laugh and laugh and laugh at that shit because wow they have zero clue!! they don't know the sense of peace at having my female/afab body against another female/afab body, at knowing we were born the same, at knowing we went thru the same growing up, at knowing we understand eachother so, so deeply without saying a word bc she is what i am, she is where i have been, and i have suffered as she has suffered, and we are a love born of the connection all female beings share, the connection of bio dick havers treating us as prey. not knowing we're more powerful than they could ever dream of. do bodies like ours not hold the godly powers of creation itself? are we not gods in the literal sense, born creators, who get to choose if a new life should be made? do we not hold the future in the palm of our hand? to the dismay of penised beings? and do me and my beloved not love eachother only the way two gods could love one another, knowing the struggle, knowing the power? is the patriarchy not fighting tooth and nail to control us, wrestle us into submission before their phallic altar? do they not know it's impossible, for everything in us would dry up at the sight? do they not know that we can rely on sisterhood to get us through fucking anything? do they not know we masculinized ourselves and found ourselves happily female anyway? do they not know that i'd love her with a beard and five eyes, but if she was reborn male we would not be the same people to begin with (tho ofc i like to think the bodyswapped versions of us would have a love story too, we would not be us anymore, not this timeline's love story, she would be a different version of her and i would miss our og love)? because what is anyone without memories, and aren't childhood memories, puberty memories, some of the experiences most affected by one's body type (under the patriarchy), some of the most developmentally significant memories of all? is female just genitalia and estrogen puberty to tras, to "hearts not parts" type folks?

is female just a meat suit and not also the life experiences linked to it, our upbringing, a rich female culture one is born into? trans women might be immigrants into this female culture if they pass post-transition, they might get the exact body, but they just don't know the culture the way born into it do. any transfem will admit being transfem is hard, it's hard to merge into female culture when they self-admittedly don't know much about it. anyone not having been born into this culture, not being fluent the way only a native resident of femaleness can be, will show signs of it even if it's been 50+ years. you can't just wipe someone's upbringing clean, your past always leaves traces, and a transfem wouldn't be able to bond with other female4female lesbians on basic female upbringing things... when those are the things that make being into other female ppl so attractive for many of us! we just get eachother. we understand without even saying anything. we understand female body issues. there's a warm sense of peace emanating from that knowledge in my heart, knowing me and my girlfriend were born the same. we went through so many of the same things, all the good and the bad sides of growing up female. and i find that attractive as hell, and it brings me immense joy in life. there's so many inside jokes a transfem just wouldn't get the way my gf can. and i unfortunately need to add, since people get defensive, that this isn't shaming the transfem for not having those experiences. i hope the transfem will come to terms with not being female too. she can be a woman in society, but she's not born this way, she's an immigrant into womanhood, and that's okay. she still needs to let lesbians who are only into people raised female enjoy our unique sexuality that she just can't understand. i can't understand the transfem4transfem experience either. so what? isn't lgbt or 2slgbtqia+ or whatever culture all about inclusion and diversity in sexuality and gender expression? what about those who are girls the way animals are girls? we hate gender roles but we're personally definining cis womanhood as being female animals, female humans? what's so twisted about that? what about female4female lesbians? transmasc4transmasc can exist, why not us? why make everything so stupidly complicated for no reason? why shame us for how we were born, for being into others like ourselves?

i pity them, honestly. watch them bring girldick and male upbringing experiences to female4female lesbians, watch as we'll all dry up like the dying succulents on our windowsills and sip drinks laughing at the naked male bodies before us because they're so unsexual to us homodykes. watch as we raise eyebrows at the male's lack of misogyny in her upbringing, her lack of expertise on female culture, and just... everything that's so fundamentally unappealing to us. we can be friends. we can be allies. thankfully though, sex and marriage isn't activism. you can't play woke in the sheets. if you do, that's honestly sad. love isn't political. heteros made it political, but love is just love. and the love between two female people is normal. boring at times, even. we're normies. and if mainstream tras can't see that, well, maybe they have issues to work through in therapy. idk.

if two dysphoric ppl working through really hard shit end up feeling at peace with being female animals, female humans, and loving one another, if that's threatening, if that's bigoted, if that's twisted, well...

we detrans chicks and homodykes will find our own place to hangout. and we'll be nice to your faces, of course, but behind doors we're having a blast with others like ourselves. people like us have done this for as long as humanity has been alive, anyways. we always go underground and make it work anyhow. radblr is proof of that. idc if i have to go door to door checking if any homodyke is there, or if i have to comb thru tra spaces to find cool detrans folks, i will find others like me. that's what the marginalized have always done.

we're like lizards. we'll just find a cooler rock to party under🦎✌️

[genderqueerdykes]

how can someone be a lesbian and a man at the same time? and a traswonan and transman too

hello! thanks for your question!

while people broadly interpret the term lesbian to mean 'woman who loves women', there is a far broader nuance to the identity and label that goes beyond a simple description.

lesbians have a nuanced and complicated experience with gender. butches and femmes both have unique experiences with gender and presentation. nobody likes to talk about us, but some butches *do* identify as men. there are a lot of trans men who start out in lesbian spaces because they are safer, and don't want to leave the community and live as lesbian men. drag kings also are often lesbians. genderfluid lesbians, polygender lesbians, multigender lesbians, genderqueer lesbians, all types of trans lesbians are lesbians regardless of whether or not they are men all the time, or part of the time

lesbians also have a complicated relationship with nonbinary identities and a lot of us find that we fit somewhere under that umbrella. many lesbians find that pushing the boundaries of gender and expression are necessary for survival. i would recommend reading stone butch blues by leslie feinberg to gain a better understanding of lesbians who live this way, or, you are free to visit my lesbian and dyke tags!

as for your second question, i am an intersex person, meaning i was not born with a body that fits into the strict "male" or "female" binary. after i hit puberty i was routinely told i wasn't a "real girl" by someone then told i wasn't a "real boy" by someone else. i was completely stripped of the ability to be gendered correctly by anyone because my body has such a strong mixture of both "masculine" and 'feminine' traits like growing a full beard, having broad shoulders, buff chest, flat breasts, big arms, etc. and an hourglass waist and long shapely legs, high pitched voice, etc.

i am trans "both" or sometimes trans 'everything' as i call myself. my ability to identify as a boy or a girl was completely taken away from me and i am resisting that actively every day. i am a boy and a girl! i'm some type of nonbinary creature, sure, but i am in fact a woman and a man at the same time, but i've had to fight and claw tooth and nail to be seen correctly due to things that weren't under my control.

HRT was kinda my big power move. after i get top surgery and find a good quality packer, i think people will finally understand me and how i identify, but basically, the answer is intersex people, and some other folks can live experiences that make it so they can be both transmasculine and transfeminine at the same time for a multitude of reasons. my experience is just one of many, but it is possible, and we exist!

hope that answers your question! if you need more help, feel free to ask again! take care, stay safe!

[fabuladorah]

My top 5 fave DBDA charachters

1. Crystal Palace

2. Charles Rowland

3. Night Nurse

4. Niko Sasaki

5. Jenny The Butcher

Honorable mention: Tragick Mick and Edwin Payne.

WARNING LONG RAMBLING!!

1 - Lemme be superficial first, her looks are simply iconic, i worship her hair and witch-core clothes and the way her powers are potrayed (those white globes, the three eyes, quick flashed) just make me go brwwww. And then there is hee character arc... which is *chef kiss* so, so good: she doesnt know who she is, she thinks people didnt really like her, she is sure her parents are looking for her, her first instict is to be mean, but then for what is she being mean for anyway, so she stops. She drags the boys from Big ol' London all the way to an small town in America just to save a little girl, because she is alone and scared. Her abusive demon ex, even after exorcised, is still haunting her. She offers her life to save an stranger she had just met (an stranger who had been kind, an stranger who had understood her, an stranger who had a place while she didn't). Her abusive demon ex shows that maybe she wasnt a good person after all. She misses her mom. She give away her powers (her strenght, her core) to be free from her abuser. She gets her power back, she buries her abusive demon ex alive in her mind (the place where he had her prisoner) with the help of her FAMILY (she didn't know who she was, she didn't know were she was from now she knows) she wrestles a thousand-year olds witch seconds after gaining her mind power back because she CAN AND SHE WINS. She has her memory back, she was an horrible person, her parents weren't looking for her (she missed her mother) and now she needs to go back home and she needs to make things right. Seriously what's there not love about her? Crystal Palace, please understand, you'll always be famous.

2 - Wait one second *close the door* *inhumans sounds* *open the door* okay now lets start. He is not the brain, he is the brawn, he is the protector. He couldn't protect himself. He died defending a boy he didn't even know, he died because he hated senseless violence, he died by the senseless violence. He fears being a bad person — he think he is a bad person, his father's son. He is terrified, so he'll lie, he'll smile. He was just a boy, he died young, he wanted to grow old, he hates to be dead, but he loves Edwin. He chose Edwin over Heaven — this boy, alone, died young and had been his light during the darkest, final, moment of Charles' life. It was an easy choice. I just really, really love Charles, because of all that, but also because he is charismatic af (all Jayden's hard work) and funny and he foes around with a fucking cricket bar, I should've started with that... he has a cricket bar, your Honour, I rest my case. And and I just love charachters with this """savior complex""", this responsibility of being alright to take care of others, of smile and lighting the mood because no one else will do that.

3 - she's an overworked work and that's my kinda shit. The whole point of her job is to protect and care for the lost children, and being honest to god I know she would shoot a kid right in the head if it meant finish her job and thats so fucked up and hyprocte of her and i just absolutely worship her. Also, her whole life views being changed because of a funny man she met inside of a whale is just--- I think she is underrated, and people are missing her angst potential, but I will not be the one to tell you how to write her because dude my english is going to shit as we speak.

4 - I know this is kinda dissapointing, but my whole reason is that she is Niko. That's it.

5 - She is a dyke running a butch shop, thats actually so cool I could die. On her first appearence I thought she would kill Crystal and the boys (again) and thats how I like my women. Also its really refreshing to seen that there is an adult who cares about these kids... the talks she had with Crystal and Niko, yk, she is so mature and smart and wants to help and she is like so cleary trying not to get attached and failinh tremendously, cmon she saw Crystal going to meet her abusive ex and was like "Nuh uh u aint going alone and I AM TAKING THIS MF CLEVER WITH ME" based af. Local lesbian accidentaly addopts four kids (two of which are dead)

Bonus: okay I feel like I gotta justify myself: I DO NOT HATE EDWIN, okay? I love him, he just didnt make the cut. And about Tragick Mick, cmon he is a goddammned (LITERALLY) seal and runs a funny little shop and saved Niko's life. We love him. We adore him. Tragick Mick may not have the sea, but he has the people!!

[lesbianboyfriend]

can i ask for lesbian book recommendations 🥹🕺

yeassss ofc my love <3

erm and obligatory disclaimer for any who might read that i don’t think “queer” or “lesbian” is a necessarily coherent category of books or adequate descriptor for a novel which is why i’ve also provided the actual genres here (sorted into which ever one i felt best fit) and descriptions. and these books have much more going on than just being about lesbians. however all books are undeniably awesomer with lesbians so yayyyyy

FANTASY:

-the salt grows heavy by cassandra khaw: fantasy horror; murderous mermaid and plague doctor come across a cult of children (could be read as not lesbians bc one character is nonbinary but i choose to read as. lesbians)

-the empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo: political fantasy; monk unravels the tale of exiled empress’ rise to power

-when the the tigers came down the mountain by nghi vo: political fantasy; monk unwinds the tale of a tiger and her scholar lover to prevent other tigers from eating them (stand alone sequel to empress of salt and fortune)

-ship of smoke and steel by django wexler: ya fantasy; girl has to steal a ghost ship to save her sister’s life

-the mermaid, the witch, and the sea by maggie tokuda-hall: ya fantasy; pirate falls in love with one of the ship’s hostages, a girl being sent to an arranged marriage against her will

-tremontaine created by ellen kushner: political fantasy; there’s a lot going on in this one okay just trust me that it’s really good esp if you love political intrigue (this was released serially and is easiest to acquire an electronic version)

-the deep by rivers solomon: fantasy/spec fic; African slave women thrown overboard gave birth to mermaid-esque descendants. one holds these traumatic memories for her whole people and must grapple with that pressure

-wild beauty by anna-marie mclemore: ya magical realism/fantasy; a family of women who can create flowers and whose lovers always tragically vanish fight to keep their land and to unravel the mystery of a strange boy who appeared

-siren queen by nghi vo: historical magical realism/fantasy; girl’s rise to stardom amidst the monsters of hollywood back in the days of the studio system

-gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir: sff; um. how to explain briefly. gideon wants nothing more than to leave the ninth house, but her nemesis harrowhark needs her sword skills to pass the emperors trial and become immortal. sure. (caleb i know you’ve read this just adding for any other viewers yayyy)

HORROR:

-white is for witching by helen oyeyemi: horror fantasy/magical realism; a house with women in its walls calls to miranda silver while the people she leaves behind struggle to make sense of what happened to her

-plain bad heroines by emily a. danforth: historical horror; when filming a movie about the macabre history of a boarding school, its past starts to become the reality for the stars and author of the novel it’s based on

LITFIC:

-girl woman other: contemporary litfic; the intersecting stories of Black british women told in verse

-nightwood: classic literary; i feel like i can’t describe this one well but nora and jenny are obsessed with robin, whose penchant for wandering and inability to commit drives them crazy. toxic dyke drama at its best

-the thirty names of night: lit fic; transmasc syrian american unravels the history of artist laila z who encountered the same rare bird his mother saw right before her death and realizes their pasts are intertwined

-under the udala trees: historical lit fic; coming of age set against the backdrop of civil war in Nigeria, two girls from different ethnic communities fall in love

-everyone in this room will someday be dead: contemporary lit fic; that moment when your ocd lands you a job at the catholic church even though you’re an atheist and also your relationship is falling apart

-stone butch blues: historical lit fic; butch lesbian realizing and grappling with her identity throughout the 40s-70s

-the color purple: classic lit fic; story of two sisters separated in their youth—one is forced into an abusive marriage and falls in love with her husbands mistress, wondering what became of her sister

-oranges are not the only fruit: semi-autobiography with slight fantasy elements; exploring growing up lesbian in a deeply religious pentecostal sect

SCI-FI:

-the weight of the stars: ya sf romance; aspiring astronaut is forced into friendship with a girl who waits on the roof every night for radio signals from her mother in space

-the seep: sci-fi/spec fic; what if aliens invaded and formed a hive mind of everyone and also your girlfriend turned into a baby again. wouldn’t that be fucked up

-the stars are legion: political science fiction; an awakes with no memory amid a group of people calling themself her family who claim she is the only one who can save their world

-not your sidekick: ya sci-fi; superheroes are real and they fucking suck

SHORT STORIES:

-sarahland: contemporary/spec fic short story collection; various stories about people named sarah

[beatingheartbutch]

Started cutting by own hair recently and I can feel my dyke power growing

[lesb0]

A Treatise on Pop Celesbians/bis 🌈✨

(by someone who only listens to music from the 15th-16th century)

I'm super happy that tiktok is making it possible for small artists to breakthrough and blow up BUT when it comes down to chappell, sabrina simply slays more and is the better artist. She genuinely loves being a pop princess, has so much fun on stage, and started serious singing lessons back at Disney ages ago. her work is more cohesive and better produced, her stylist is doing really well with establishing her silhouettes, her vocals are stronger, and she also naturally has the adorable Disney girl look that the industry eats up which propelled her career so fast

chappell is purposely drag "ugly" which is very fun and will def get her some Halloween costumes this year, her fun little songs are so catchy and cute, but the production and style and her skill level needs a lot more work. Beyonce wasn't good at first either, remember when she was just solanges off key pretty little sister? I love that she's a successful rags to superstar story and she is really bringing the community together rn, it feels good. but, she doesn't know how to be famous. It's making her extremely depressed and miserable. She sings improperly for a soprano and it's going to ruin her vocals. quickly. she HATES having a fandom. she was reeeally lucky the pandemic algorithm picked her up right before the great tiktok boom but that doesn't have longevity. also I know she's freshly out but I can't be obsessed with a new lesbian who totally disregards lesbian culture. it's just so blah to see another drag queen appended onto male culture. I just want to see Dykey Dykes who are super proud to be one of us, cultural-historically and all, not a sad hag adopted by gay boys.

Billie adores her craft and has the strongest vocal signature out of anyone on the charts by far, she's an incredible artist and is the most mature performer. She is so protective of other famous women in general even though she started out as a baby in so many precarious positions herself. I know shes going to keep making good catchy music about loving pussy. I hope she puts some effort into learning production because obviously her brother doesn't want to do her sex songs LOL

Muna Absolutely EATS at vocals, punchy beats, they have such a strong sound and the butchfemmebutch thing is so, so powerful & sexy & real. They are thee perfect band imo. but the stylist is so inconsistent with branding that I couldn't recognize them as the same band I learned about from my gay friend in 2020. they're constantly serving cunt. but only the good taste lesbians are there to eat it.

Zolita has released some absolute bangers but her vocals haven't kept up with her high production standards and the rebranding from vampire to nun to barbie to cheerleader isn't helping her establish a solid pop artist identity! she should've stayed in the indie zone, dark and whispery and gothic was her thing. But I love that she's never shyed away from aggressive out and proud lesbian aesthetics and marketing, I still have her lesbian sex stickers on my laptop!

peach prc sacrificed getting 1m+ views early on in her career to be an out lesbian. she's a good singer, but she's stuck singing about her ex boyfriend because that's what got her the #1 single. I love her adorable fairy femme4butch aesthetic even if her music isn't good

As for JoJo I don't know WHAT she's doing with the whole troll cringebait thing but it's funny and shes rich enough to take care of generations... It's very responsible that she's keeping the new annoying dyke brand away from her little girl brand at target, she's growing into a good woman which is rare to see.

King princess CAN be a good pop artist but she's too inconsistent. she has a billion dollars and doesn't need her career anyways she's just having a good time.

I still think Hayley kiyoko could've been the queen of dyke pop if she would've dropped acting and modelling but she really is such a triple threat in talent and has the right looks that there's no way she shouldn't come out really successful but she is a woc so there's a whole different standard and many darker elements at play when considering the racism to killing her career.

I don't know why st Vincent moved into doing pop for 5 seconds. but Los ageless is my jam. Annie has been disappointing for a long time!

[filmsoftheflesh]

I would prefer that people speak the word “death” and acknowledge the death that comes along with this disease, I mean we’re not all asymptomatic muscle boys and kickboxing dykes fighting this epidemic, there is a tendency in the face of media images of AIDS, you know that we’ve been fed over the years… there’s a tendency to try to fight those images, so that there were created statements like people living with AIDS, people fighting with AIDS… which I find nothing wrong with and I agree with trying to dismantle those media images, but then I think at times in the activist community there’s a tendency to go into total denial about death which society has always done anyways. I always felt as a teenager and growing up that if this society even could for five minutes deal with mortality, on a coast-to-coast level, I mean in education and our institutions and our schools, that most of us would never be doing the things that we’re doing, that we wouldn’t care to live in and support the social structure if we really understood something about our mortality.

To leave the bed of a friend who can’t even put a spoon in his own mouth and then go to some public gathering where somebody makes a statement that “AIDS is not about death”... is outrageous to me. It’s no less outrageous than what common media will do. [...] You know, I think it brings up other issues, too, you know, that I’ve experienced over the last seven, eight years, of buzzwords like courage and strength, that… he or she was so courageous as they came to their death, or he or she had so much strength and uh, they’re just buzzwords for politeness, and I’m not gonna crawl into the media grave of AIDS and just die courageously or politely. You know, I have no desire to be polite in the face of being slowly murdered.

[...]

I know that, you know if I die I’m not gonna die simply because I got fucked in the ass without a condom or swallowed some stranger’s come. I know that I’m gonna die because of the way that this disease has been handled by those in positions of power.

[...]

There seems to be this sort of aversion to anger, and it’s not just, I mean just in society in general, anger gets the same treatment as mortality, which is people just go into denial about it, or, somehow, anger as an emotion is yet another taboo in this country: we should suppress our anger, we shouldn’t speak angrily [...]. Anger is an emotion that I think is extremely valuable, it’s a transitory emotion, it’s something that leads you out of one place and into another, whether it’s out of inactivity into activity… and it somehow catalyzes a series of reactions to events that one experiences or one contains or one carries. I’ve had people try to explain away some of the things that I’ve said or done by saying “oh, he’s angry because he has AIDS”, and I don’t think you need to be carrying this virus to have a reaction to how this epidemic has been handled. I think everybody has a right to be angry and I feel like I’ve come to a place in my life that… if people prefer to see me as a monster at times because of what they witness of my anger, then I prefer to be seen as a monster. It’s actually comforting, because it just gives me more room, and allows me more room to express the range of things that I feel. If I come to a place where I feel hate [...] and that starts translating itself into activities I think that’s perfectly good for myself, it’s where I am, it’s what I see and perceive and respond to. [...] rage is a really interesting tool to dismantle this whole illusion of things like one tribe nation or general public or what’s acceptable and not acceptable. The things that I loved in experiences of activism were not so much the media revolutionaries or the photogenic revolutionaries or activists who, you know, most get attention or press or airtime on some spot on the TV news; the people that I’m most enthralled by or that I feel the most responsive to is, like, the lesbian waitress from New Jersey who, with her frightened girlfriend are for the first time laying their body on the line where they’re choosing to get arrested, and what I love about them and what I’m really impressed with [...] is that they actually are approaching a wall of illusions called law, and they’re dismantling that wall for the first time in their lives. And once you cross that line you realize that these religious institutions, these public buildings, these institutions of government, you realize they’re just made of stone, or series of stones placed together. You realize that these people, especially those responsible for this epidemic, [...] are just made of blood and muscle and bones. And those buildings and those people can be dismantled just as easily as anything else, once you break through that wall of illusion called law… I have no traditional moral reaction to the idea of murder, in terms of what I was fed growing up in this society. I don’t see the slow murder of myself and the people I love as being any more acceptable or less acceptable than the murder of others in order to either protect ourselves or to take revenge. And the only thing that occurs to me in those thoughts of murder… is wondering if the planet will spin a little bit faster once these people are gone.

David Wojnarowicz monologuing in the short film Bust (1991, 15'), directed by Richard Morrison. Partial transcription and emphasis mine.

[whatvilecreature]

TELL ME ABOUT VIVIENNE

YES! OKAY! Viv's an oc I have in a universe with @tg-headcanons, which operates by their headcanons about the garden - wherein children from the garden, such as Arima, are actually half-ghouls without full expression of ghoul traits. As such, they possess high physical ability and are often sought out or bred by organisations such as the CCG to raise as soldiers. More info below the cut bc I went on a RANT

Viv is one such half-ghoul, born to a ghoul father and a human mother, whose parents were murdered by 'ghouls' when she was around four or five. Of course, the CCG, which had been keeping tabs on her family, were behind the murders, but when Vivienne wandered into the scene, she was told they were murdered by ghouls. Being far too young to remember all the details, and far too traumatised to question, she spent the rest of her childhood years in a CCG orphanage (such as some of the children who were sourced for the Oggai in :re). She was groomed from a young age to want revenge against ghouls for the unfair death of her parents, and due to her ghoul heritage, swiftly outstripped the other children. She was accepted into the CCG as a low ranking investigator at age fifteen, and it spiraled from there. She became obsessed with the notion of revenge, rising through the ranks and killing more and more powerful ghouls, hoping to get to the one which murdered her parents.

At the present of the story, she's Vivienne Mallory - the American branch of the CCG's top investigator, working on Project Headlights, an investigation to take down a rank SSS+ ghoul named Roadkill (ask tg-headcanons about Ahiga eheheh). Despite her killing prowess, though, the years of being trained just to kill have left her living like a hamster. She doesn't have many interests outside of work, or friends, being quite socially challenged and appearing naive. Outside of the actual work itself, she's quite unassuming, the kind of person you'd gloss over. She cares deeply for those she holds close, and tends to put the rose-coloured glasses on for them - as is the case with her coworker Jonah, or the fact that the ghoul she's hunting is lying right under her nose. She genuinely believes that the genocide she's helping commit is a beneficial thing - not just for her, but for keeping those who she loves safe. She's blissfully unaware of even her own discomfort within her living situation, and of any greater issues, but at the heart of it, if she were allowed to grow up normally, she never would have caused so much harm. It's a concept she has to grapple with once she finds out about her heritage.

She's very much got the demeanor of a quiet, slightly strange woman you'd see working at a run-down second-hand bookstore. Genuinely a nice person with a bit going on behind the scenes, until you realise her job is slaughtering innocents with fervor you didn't think possible for someone like that.

Other Viv facts include -

she lives in a one-bedroom studio apartment and sleeps on a mattress straight on the ground. she's happy like this :)

She has a budgie named Bruce (after the shark in jaws) whose cage is somehow cleaner than the entire apartment WITH his shit in it

she loves sharks. so much. her one hobby is re-watching her favourite shark doco over and over.

She's a dyke and eventually falls in love with a ghoul who was OBSESSED with her (also tg-headcanons' oc)

I don't have any recent Viv doodles but here's some from my uni notes. she's very round (fun to draw)

[neathyingenue]

Rotating the Striking Captain in my head some more. Wrote up a loose bio/timeline for her >:)

Brigid Byrne (she/her, occasionally he/him (?))

Moniker: The Striking Captain

Age: 31 or 32

Species: Human

Gender: Butch

Sexuality: Aromantic dyke

Timeline

1872

Born in London to a working-class Irish Catholic family, who had been in London during the Fall.

1872-1886

Brigid grows up as the 2nd oldest of 4 children; has several cousins and a large, loving family. Gets a bit of an education, as much as a poor kid in London would. Loves to listen to wild zee-ztories and play with urchins. She's athletic sibling/cousin who will beat up a bully for you.

1886-1890

Starts working at the docks as a dockhand with her uncle. Gradually starts to get jobs on fishing boats, then on longer voyages when she’s in her early 20s. Her family worries, but it’s the Neath, and her other siblings are just as wild.

At this point everyone knows Brigid is a lesbian. It’s not even a big deal. What’s a bigger deal is that this is London, this is the Bazaar, and Brigid just doesn’t get why everyone bangs on about love stories so much. She loves women, femmes, enbies, she loves to protect them, to make them feel valued and special, to have sex with them, to help them, share with them, be friends with them—she even loves flirting with them. But that doesn’t translate to having the kind of feelings that everyone is calling romantic.

1890-1899

Brigid draws recognition as a manager and leader. She works as a boatswain, quartermaster, even sometimes a first mate. She becomes a union organizer and is hailed as a hero of the Wolfstack Docks uprisings. She acquires the moniker ‘The Striking Captain’ because of how during a strike when she was serving as a strike captain, she led her union members to victory. Also because her personality, her voice, her manner is very striking!

She develops chronic pain and starts to use a cane when she can.

Her siblings and cousins start having kids. She’s the best auntie in existence.

1899 (1902)

Brigid’s activities finally catch the ire of the powerful. She’s briefly thrown in New Newgate. She decides to move out of her family’s house because if she’s going to have enemies, she doesn’t want them anywhere near her nieces and nephews (who she considers ‘her kids,’ not in the sense of she’s their parent, but like. They are kids. And they are hers, and she is theirs.)

There she hears some people muttering about the Vake. And she thinks—damn, if I caught him, how sick would that be? I’m already well-respected in Wolfstack, people know not to mess with me there. But this would show the rest of the city that I am NOT to be fucked with. My family is not to be fucked with!

Quirks/ characteristics

-Catholic but in a gay, superstitious, syncretistic cultural way, not in a I-stan-the-hierarchy way. (Wears a medallion of St Brigid on her carabiner, or whatever the Neath equivalent is)

-Curious. Will try anything once

-Brave and protective

-Tends to be a loner. Very social, has lots of acquaintances and admirers, but very few friends. She’s especially close to a cousin or two but that’s mostly it, and she thinks she doesn’t really need friends.

-Uncharted levels of rizz

-Occasionally overbearing and not good at listening

-Avoidant (get it bc Brigid Byrne burns bridges. Hahhahehehe)

-Physically powerful, explosive and strong—but what you don’t see is the bad days where her chronic pain flares up and she takes laudanum; or all the recovery time she needs after a grueling day or taxing fight.

-So obsessed with appearing to be strong that she is bad at asking for help.

[son-0f-sappho]

Who wants to see some neat stuff I found poking around the Bi Women Quarterly archives

"Bistory at the Lesbian Herstory Archives"

"I talked with Joan about the principles behind the LHA and her vision of its future. She said that the LHA is dedicated first and foremost to being a lesbian space.

When I asked her what she meant by "lesbian" she offered "any woman who has at some time in her life loved another woman" She also remarked that she would rather err on theside of inclusivity than be too exclusive, which explains the large collection of materials relevant to both lesbians and gay men(such as the Gay Community News), feminist materials, and a small but growing collection of materials on bisexuality. For Joan, the mission of the LHA is "to preserve the multiplicity of lesbian presentations." There is something of interest here for any woman who identifies herself as a dyke, a feminist, a mother, a butch or a femme, a prostitute, a worker in a traditional or a non-traditional occupation, a practitioner of S&M, a woman of color, a Jew, a witch, a teenager or an olderwoman, a closeted woman or an activist, a bisexual, an artist, and the list goes on. The sheer amount and variety of the stuff is testimony to the diversity of the lesbian experience and the vitality of lesbian communities"

A poem "Here I Am" by latina bi dyke Laura Perez

"we dream a world

which bridges the barriers,

i, this

bi-coastal, bisexual

dyke of color

have living proof

the distance is

not so great"

Here's the whole thing go check it out

I also found a bi femme and trans lesbian butch couple- and my freakin heart I wish them the most wonderful things wherever they ended up in life

"How I Learned to Love My Femme Self, Butch Dykes, and Transgender Warriors" by Liz Nania

"Laurie honored my bisexuality and I honored her proud trans butchness. We often felt like poster girls for Bi-Trans Unity. She stood up for me to her separatist-lesbian friends who were disapproving of her dating a bi woman; I stood up for her when I heard trans-phobic remarks- We both know bisexuals and transgendered people are truly natural allies and need to celebrate and further develop our bonds i the community"

And here's a lesbian identified bisexual talking about assumptions

"Dont Assume Anything" by Amy Wyeth.

"They say, "Don't Assume Anything" and "Question Au- thority." No one, including gays, bis and hetero- sexuals, should assume anything about someone's sexual preference based only on the way that person looks. Everyone should question the notions defined or perpetuated by those in positions of authority (e.g. the media, certain powerful icons/members of gay culture, and cer- tain dangerous bigots) as to what a lesbian or bisexual woman looks like. Not all of us feel we are well represented by such narrow definitions."

Just goes to show how timeless the bi witticism of Assume Nothing! really is. I highly recommend just perusing through the archives or even the current isues there's loads of interesting history