COMING OF AGE
YOUNG MUNGO by Douglas Stuart
Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars (Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic) and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends. (TW abuse)
LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB by Malinda Lo
Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
RAINBOW MILK by Paul Mendez
At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity.
HISTORICAL FICTION
THE GREAT BELIEVERS by Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman is about to pull off an amazing coup. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. The AIDS crisis and how it affects a group of Chicago friends and the survivors who meet decades later in Paris.
STILL LIFE by Sarah Winman
A sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms. A group of english outcasts used to meeting in a London pub end up in Florence.
SWIMMING IN THE DARK by Tomasz Jedrowski
Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide.
A TIP FOR THE HANGMAN by Alison Epstein
Christopher Marlowe, brilliant aspiring playwright, is pulled into the duplicitous world of international espionage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I. A many-layered historical thriller combining state secrets, intrigue, and romance.
TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME by Carol Rifka Brunt
A moving story of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become the unlikeliest of friends and find that sometimes you don't know you've lost someone until you've found them.
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
THE GOLDEN SEASON by Madeline Kay Sneed
A love letter to the places we call home and asks how we grapple with a complicated love for people and places that might not love us back—at least, not for who we really are.
JUST BY LOOKING AT HIM by Ryan O’Connell
A darkly witty and touching novel following a gay TV writer with cerebral palsy as he fights addiction and searches for acceptance in an overwhelmingly ableist world.
REAL LIFE by Brandon Taylor
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses.
SKYE FALLING by Mia McKenzie
Told in a fresh, lively voice, this novel is a relentlessly clever, deeply moving portrait of a woman and the relationships she thought she could live without.
FUTURE FEELING by Joss Lake
An embittered Trans dog walker obsessed with social media inadvertently puts a curse a young man—and must adventure into mysterious dimension in order to save him—in this wildly inventive, delightfully subversive, genre-nonconforming novel about illusion, magic, technology, kinship, and the future.
GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Bernardine Evaristo
Follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.
MEMORIAL by Bryan Washington
Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston, and they've been together for a few years -- good years -- but now they're not sure why they're still a couple.
THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS by Laurie Frankel
Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.
ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS by Ocean Vuong
a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born.
DETRANSITION, BABY by Torrey Peters
A whipsmart novel about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.
EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM WILL SOMEDAY BE DEAD by Emily Austin
Gilda, a twenty-something lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace.
SHORT STORIES
FILTHY ANIMALS by Brandon Taylor
It’s a tender portrait of the fierce longing for intimacy, the lingering presence of pain, and the desire for love in a world that seems, more often than not, to withhold it.
THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES by Deesha Philyaw
Explores the raw and tender places where black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good.
NON FICTION (MEMOIRS)
IN THE DREAM HOUSE by Carmen Maria Machado
About the complexities of abuse in same-sex relationships. (TW abuse)
ALL BOYS AREN’T BLUE by George M. JohnsoN
Weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.
THRILLERS & MYSTERIES
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES by Anna Bailey
When a teenaged girl disappears from an insular small town, all of the community’s most devastating secrets come to light in this stunningly atmospheric and slow-burning suspense novel.
BATH HAUS by P.J. Vernon
Oliver Park, a young recovering addict from Indiana, finally has everything he ever wanted: sobriety and a loving partner. With everything to lose, Oliver shouldn't be visiting Haus, a gay bathhouse. But through the entrance he goes, and it's a line crossed.
DEAD DEAD GIRLS by Nekesa Afia
Set in 1920s Harlem featuring Louise Lloyd, a young black woman caught up in a series of murders way too close to home.
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it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.
yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.
it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.
how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.
chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?
how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.
"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.
i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.
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Have you heard of the "Crowley is Malleus' dad" theory going around? Where Prince Levan (or whatever his name is) didn't actually die and just went out to get some milk and is now known as Dire Crowley, the silly man? The implications of that theory is absolutely hilarious when you think about it
hold on, we can figure this out, we just need LISTS
PROS THAT CROWLEY IS SECRETLY REVAAN/LEVAN/LAVERNE/WHATEVER:
unspecified fae of some kind, with similar coloring to Mal
the animal masks are apparently a Briar Valley thing
has some kind of big blackmailable secret that was alluded to in episode 4, and then as far as I know never brought up again
(unless this was just Azul bullshitting, which is extremely possible)
based on Diablo, which...maybe means something?
has canonically worn Dad Shorts
CONS:
(gestures to Crowley's entire personality)
NO LISTEN Revaan was the guy they sent off on diplomatic missions and to take care of delicate political situations, and...look, I love this dweeb, but would you trust Crowley to be in charge of negotiating your war treaties
despite my brain insisting on reading his name as "Raven", Revaan's title does imply that he was also a dragon (or super into longan berries, I'm not ruling that out)
currently unclear why Lilia "my closest friend Revaan...he is no longer with us...I used to make fun of him for being kind of a priss about eating jerky..." Vanrouge has somehow not noticed or said anything
Malleus' Aloof Anime ~Aristocrat~ vibe had to come from somewhere, and by all accounts it was NOT his mom's side of the family
???:
turns into a bird in the opening, I don't know if that means anything but it's kinda cool, I guess
all that aside, if Malleus and Yuu are any indication, then the Draconias have...questionable taste in their social choices. so anything is possible!
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