#romance diversity

[amaranthdahlia]

they are teenage lovers, they are girlfriends, they are old man yaoi, they are ancient yuri, they are nb4nb, they are a situationship, they are married, they are divorced, they are remarried, they are forbidden lovers, they are best friends to lovers, they are biblical partners, they are queer, they are eldritch abominations in love

[bookshelf-in-progress]

I love how a well-written romance is so often structured as a mystery. A person starts with a certain idea about another person, and over the course of the story, they uncover more evidence that gives them a fuller picture of who the other person truly is. They learn about layers to the personality and backstory that give the other person more depth. They learn how the other person's personality meshes with theirs. Even the third-act misunderstanding fits the mystery structure--it looks like they've uncovered the final secret to the other person's identity, which is that they're not the worthy person they seemed to be, but then discover that they misinterpreted that evidence, or the other person takes steps to apologize and repair the level of trust. When the mystery is resolved, they've reached a full understanding of each other and know they've found a partner they can trust their whole future to.

[whisperwillyou]

Listen.

Y’all can ship whatever you want,

But Luz Noceda did not hurt her back carrying Hunter’s entire rescue and redemption arc for people to claim that WILLOW is Hunter’s Evelyn.

My girl strolled in from a different realm and adopted Hunter like he was a rescue pitbull from a fighting ring that everyone else thought was vicious but really it just had so much anxiety and was in desperate need of some tender love and care.

Luz is Evelyn’s parallel.

She’s a girl from another world, one who embodies everything he was raised to see as dangerous and evil. She literally introduced him to Flapjck (best friend/emotional support palismen) and planted the initial seeds of uncertainty in his mind. She reaches out to him, protects him, and saves him from Belos, spiriting him away to be a part of her family instead. Belos literally said to her face “But thanks to you, I'll have to make another one.” Cant get much clearer than that. Evelyn corrupted Caleb. Luz corrupted Hunter.

Just because the relationship between Caleb and Evelyn was romantic doesn’t mean that a parallel for Hunter has to ALSO be romantic. It’s about love in general. Love and Family.

Do you know how rare it is for one of my favorite platonic pairs to be treated with the same level of importance as the romantic pairs??

You aren’t stealing this from me.

Platonic love wins this round 👊

[poeisatransfemmelesbian]

'Luther is aroace so doesn't have sex', 'Luther is the horniest man alive' NO NO THERE'S A THIRD BETTER OPTION

Luther is aroace by human standards but loves making his cats happy, so is more than comfortable to pet them and give them affection

He finds it adorable when they react to physical stimuli (including sexual) so helps them with that when they need it :(

He's done so much research about bdsm related stuff for them because, let's be honest, Nyon's freak is unmatchable and he thinks it's cute

[thatchickmaya]

Character art commission for @authorlilaherron (on insta) of Jillian, the FMC of her spicy dark romance book Red My Lips.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

community that has only seen themselves represented in a small handful of romance stories that aren’t explicitly about their real-world oppression, watching a new show or movie where they are represented in a romantic story that isn’t explicitly about their real-world oppression: getting a lot of “that other show with a queer romance that isn’t explicitly about real-world homophobia” vibes from this

[gabibookworm]

Here are some fiction books by Palestinian authors about Palestinian characters that I've read and enjoyed! Whether it's about living under the occupation or teenage diaspora falling in love, it's important to support Palestinian authors and read their stories, especially as attempts at censorship increase Let me know if you have any recs for me to add to my tbr!

[insinirate]

🐅🐍.

[bonobochick]

Rose & Dimitri say goodbye (for now). 💋 ❤️

Vampire Academy, ep 1x10

[amaregames]

Announcing the Amare Games Festival 2024

Amare Games Festival 2024

Join us in April for the 2024 Amare Games Festival, a celebration of love and diversity in story-focused games!

For this festival we invite you to create or update a game that you believe falls under the Amare Genre tag!

What is Amare?

Why a festival?

Jams are an awesome way to get the creative juices flowing and challenge yourself to create a game in a short amount of time. However, there are already a lot of amazing projects in progress, so it's important to celebrate those and give people the opportunity to focus on setting and achieving goals with their existing projects as well.

Examples of Submissions

A new game.

A new demo or Vertical slice.

A new chapter update to an existing game.

Adding new features or content to an existing game.

The festival has fairly relaxed rules, but in general, we would like all participants to keep these in mind:

Rules:

You must Release or Update during the festival period. Work can be commenced before the start of the festival.

Please clearly label demos or first episodes as such. - This is to help us organise the entries

Please clearly state the exact update or new content that was added during the festival.

Submissions can be Free or Commercial.

NSFW must be properly labelled, but is fine as long as it adheres to Itch.io's TOS

No hate speech, (i.e. speech that promotes hatred, violence or discrimination against groups of people based on ethnicity, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.) or content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers.

Content Warnings are needed (Here is a link to help you with those if you need it!)

We currently do not support AI-generated games or games that make use of generative AI writing and art. Until legislation is put in place to ensure ethical training models that respect artist and creator copyright and regulate transparency on the use of AI in creative content, we will not allow the submission of games that utilise generative AI.

We kindly ask that you tag your game with the 'Amare' tag here on itch.io. This will ensure people who are watching the tag instead of just the jam page will see your game.

Join the discord to find others who are looking for festival partners, and to talk with other Amare Devs!

Sign up for the Festival on the Amare Games Festival Itch Page.

[healymatthews17]

Hello!

My 🖋 name is Healy Matthews. I'm an up-and-coming author who enjoys writing queer romance novels, usually of the historical and/or fantasy varieties.

I've decided to take the leap and dive into the early stages of self-publishing my debut novel WIELDER. I'm still deciding precisely what the next steps will be, but it's likely that I will be initially publishing through a Kickstarter campaign sometime this summer.

Meet Mona and Pippa, the main characters!

WIELDER is a sapphic fantasy novel that walks the line between young adult and new adult. The summary is as follows:

Time is fragile. It is cracking, breaking, and coming apart at the seams, and Pippa Pennippa has no idea. As an aspiring journalist from Chicago, Pippa sees the past as her muse. She draws inspiration from it, looking to its stories to forge her future. Little does Pippa know that nearly two hundred years earlier, another girl is looking to forge in her own future. Mona Spirea’s dream is to be a Forger- a blacksmith who creates weapons for supernatural cult of time-travelers that call themselves Wielders. It is her sacred duty, along with others of her race, to utilize their magic and the weapons at their disposal to prevent time from collapsing in on itself. Mona enjoys the rituals and regimen of the Wielders, and she believes in her mandate. She certainly does not expect Pippa, a girl from the future, to break into both her home and her heart. As Pippa discovers her identity as a Wielder, the Anarchists, a group of rogue time-travelers, begin to close in. Both Mona and Pippa must fight through betrayals brought by those they love. They will need to overcome oppression from those taking advantage of their own authority if they want to keep time itself from disintegrating… and save countless lives. But it seems that Pippa must face another obstacle as well: the fact that she is unwittingly in possession of one of the most powerful - and dangerous - magical talismans in existence.

If you're a fan of weapon-obsessed Vicrorian autistic lipstick lesbians, bisexual accidental-time-travelers who really just want a cup of coffee, pretty dresses from different time periods, disaster sunshine musicians from 1920s Harlem, stories that explore trauma, general timey-wimey weirdness, or gossamer-and-gothic vibes, this book is for you.

[guzhufuren]

gmmtv diversely yours, huh. and is gmmtv 2023's diversity in the room with us right now?

[the-bi-library]

With new year here, I present bi books of January!

Books listed: 💖A Reckless Oath (Heartless Fates, #2) by Kaylie Smith 💖The Atlas Complex (The Atlas, #3) by Olivie Blake 💖Voyage of the Damned by Frances White 💖The Timeless Legion (The Everlands Cycle, #2) by J.C. Rycroft 💖Lulu Sinagtala and the City of Noble Warriors by Gail D. Villanueva 💖Don't Look Down (Best Laid Plans #1) by Jessica Ann 💖A Fragile Enchantment by Allison Saft 💖The Summer Queen (The Buried and the Bound, #2) by Rochelle Hassan 💖The Knowing by Emma Hinds 💖Breaker of Fates by Vaela Denarr, Micah Iannandrea 💖Honeybloods by I.S. Belle 💖All Things Beautiful by Alaina Erdell

Let me know of the books I didn't include here 💖

Here is the goodreads list of these books

[margaretthotcher]

Queer Book Recommendations

It's pride season in Wellington, New Zealand and my local library has published its second "Teen Staff Picks" zine! In that spirit, I bring you, a collection of lesser-known queer books featured in the two that have been released so far! I've narrowed the lists down to books that have 1000 or fewer reviews on Goodreads as of posting (though I actually use Storygraph personally). I haven't read most of these, they're new to me as well but looking forward to getting into them.

Sapphic

Trouble Girls - Julia Lynn Rubin

Planning Perfect - Haley Neil

Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches - Kate Scelsa

The Meadows - Stephanie Oakes

Never Trust a Gemini - Freja Nicole Woolf

This Is All Your Fault - Aminah Mae Safi

The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet - Jake Maia Arlow

Youngblood - Sasha Laurens

In the Role of Brie Hutchens - Nicole Melleby

Achillean

We Are Totally Normal - Rahul Kanakia

Two Can Play That Game - Leanne Yong

Blaine for the Win - Robbie Couch

I Like Me Better - Robby Weber

The Language of Seabirds - Will Taylor

The Feeling of Falling in Love - Mason Deaver

Charming Young Man - Eliot Schrefer

Emmett - L. C. Rosen

Pages I Never Wrote - Marco Donati

Trans Characters

Across a Field of Starlight - Blue Delliquanti

Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure - Lewis Hancox

The Borrow a Boyfriend Club - Page Powars

If I Can Give You That - Michael Gray Bulla

Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic - G. Haron Davis

Jess, Chunk, and the Road Trip to Infinity - Kristin Elizabeth Clark

Magical Boy - The Kao

Kisses For Jet: A Coming-of-Gender Story - Joris Bas Backer

Between Perfect and Real - Ray Stoeve

Featuring Queer People of Colour

Ander & Santi Were Here - Jonny Garza Villa

The Loophole - Naz Kutub

Spell Bound - F. T. Lukens

Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues - H. S. Valley

Rise to the Sun - Leah Johnson

Never Kiss Your Roommate - Philline Harms

Rainbow! - Bloom & Sunny

Other Ever Afters: New Queer Fairy Tales - Melanie Gillman

Anne of Greenville - Mariko Tamaki

[bouquetstatue]

debates around sara's eyes are getting old tbh.

yes, mixed poc can have eurocentric features. i'm someone who has hazelish eyes and i'm mixed. some poc who aren't mixed can also have lighter eyes too!

but it's the fact that saraswati likely isn't mixed, doesn't have a drop of blood that is british or european and all of her family has dark brown eyes. the dozen are noble nationalists, they have a selection to pick from that doesn't involve their colonizers.

doobays have lighter eyes and i don't understand why there was the need to make basus have lighter eyes too.

at the end of the day, it's not that serious but it is strange! could've just made her have lighter brown eyes because to push eurocentric features on a person that likely has less than 1% of non south asian ancestry (and her whole family has brown eyes) is... so odd.

[triviareads]

Liana de la Rosa calling this wave of "feminist" heroines in historical romance a new marketing tactic is hard facts