#content warning super soft sapphic time

[dr-monroe]

✨ (because i must) - what is monroe's favorite memory from hs with celeste?

Monroe doesn’t have a *favorite* memory, because she cherishes them all. So here is a handful of head cannons from their first Pride together in celebration of pride month.

1. Monroe and Celeste doing each others makeup and painting the bi flag on their cheeks Ala Rue and Jules.

2. Monroe hauling Celeste up onto her shoulders so she can see above the crowd and catch candy and beads and everything.

3. Breaking off from the parade and festivities for a quiet moment and getting an ice cream cone to share, racing to eat it all before it melts down their hands from the heat but also trying not to get a brain freeze.

4. Buying flags and cute matching pins and earrings and fun little pride merch things together.

5. Monroe and Celeste dancing their hearts out to all the music, Monroe a bit uncoordinated but with some solid moves, Celeste being the absolute gorgeous talented dancer that she is getting noticed by a float of drag queens and ecstatic gays and invited to jump up and join them and Monroe being the enthusiastic and supportive girlfriend shoving her to get up there and dance!

6. Getting invited to a lesbian bar and experiencing a completely queer environment for the first time and feeling totally comfortable and confident showing affection and being themselves.

7. Staying to watch a pride burlesque show and Monroe blushing horribly the whole time trying to hide behind her drink.

8. Monroe giving Celeste a piggyback to the subway home

9. Climbing up the fire escape of Celeste’s building and sitting out listening to the sounds of celebration, holding hands and sharing kisses and whispering sweet nothings to eachother.

10. Monroe telling Celeste she loves her, probably not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, and feeling safe and at home in their little bubble on the fire escape.

#c: monroe #ft. celeste #* that’s the story to tell * (headcannons) #* too busy saving everybody else to save yourself * (monroe) #content warning super soft sapphic time #I love baby Lennox and Celeste #I could write headcannons about them for hours #<3 <3 <3

[sailorportia]

Sleepover!!! Gay book recommendations pls Portia dear 💜💜💜

*cracks knuckles* Let’s see what I’ve got

(click titles for Goodreads links)

The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters: Set in the 1920′s UK, a story about a woman who falls in love with a married woman tenant at her house. I guess it’s a thriller of sorts? It’s kinda gruesome at parts but it’s a good one! Sarah Waters has written a few lesbian historical novels but I’ve only read two of hers so far.

How to Make a Wish, by Ashley Herring Blake: Bi girl protagonist who basically has to take care of her mess of a mother. She falls in love with another girl and there’s some pretty heavy stuff, raw emotion and all that, but it’s one of my faves.

Coils, by Barbara Ann Wright: A woman travels into the Greek Underworld to retrieve her aunt. On the way, she meets Medusa and gets a case of useless lesbianism Sappho herself would applaud.

Thrall: Beyond Gold and Glory, by Barbara Ann Wright: Viking-inspired fantasy. 4 viewpoint characters, all sapphic women. Including a trans lesbian! It’s a little violent. Content warning for references to people having sex while under the influence of mind control (yikes). Not a perfect book, but I’m biased in favour of it because of trans lesbian rep that didn’t make me want to gouge out my eyes.

Not Your Sidekick, by C.B. Lee: Asian-American bi girl rep. Need a say more? Ok I will. Superheroes and gay romance. Also it’s a series that has more LGBTQIA+ rep, including a trans boy and a-spec stuff (I haven’t read the rest of the books yet lol)

Annie on My Mind, by Nancy Garden: An oldie but a goodie. A pretty straightforward (gayforward?) romance between two teenage lesbians. It’s super cute and soft. Warning for le homophobia. 

The Abyss Surrounds Us, by Emily Skrutskie: Lesbian pirates! Sea monsters! Angst and romance! It totally has the sensibilities of a good fanfic. Part one of a duology, the plot isn’t the best feature, but the romance is wew. Also it’s basically Hamanda? There’s like a 90% chance that if you read this you’ll be telling me in all caps that you totally want to do a Hamanda AU based on it (”but alas, I have no time, for my mistress UCM demands all of my attention”) [that’s how you talk, apparently]. Also they share a bed.

#asks #cam #me calling cam out in the last one #i love these books #excellent gay content #lesbians and bi girls galore #books #book recommendations

[shiraglassman]

Review: Jewish lesbian paranormal (with happy endings!)

This review originally appeared in The Lesbrary.

Ellen Galford’s The Dyke and the Dybbuk is, for only being eighteen years old, fairly iconic and hallowed in the tiny subgenre in which I spend most of my writing time. In other words, it may very well be the first great piece of sapphic Jewish fantasy. If I’m wrong, I’d love to know about more! In any case, it was a pleasure to read–sarcastic, sardonic, hopeful, enthusiastic, both a love story to our culture and a sharp criticism of some of its more tiresome features.

The initial premise stems from a trope some people may find painful, but is all too realistic thanks to the way society overwhelmingly pressures cis women to marry cis men. Namely, two young women in historical Jewish Eastern Europe are in love, until one of them leaves to marry a man. The jilted woman (herself somewhat of an outcast for her mixed parentage) responds by cursing the bride with demon possession. Thus enter our “what if Loki was a lesbian” demon, the hilarious–and also sapphic–dybbuk of the title. But she winds up imprisoned in a tree instead of being able to haunt the married woman and her daughters and granddaughters per the curse’s instructions, so it isn’t until the ninth generation of offspring that she gets a chance to escape and begin her assignment.

And this ninth generation is a British lesbian film critic who drives a taxi for her day job.

Rainbow Rosenbloom’s more at odds with her Judaism than I am, but, firstly, the book was written in an earlier generation, and secondly, there are pretty much twice as many ways to be Jewish as there are actual Jews in the world. I am confident that her experiences accurately reflect many other people’s relationship with their Jewishness. She’s surrounded by paternal aunts and she’s over-aware of the ways her preference for women—as well as her self-chosen first name, and also eating treyf–puts her in direct opposition to the way they want her to live.

The dybbuk decides that Rainbow’s already weird enough and has already maxed out ‘acting out’, so she can’t possibly make her look any weirder by ordinary possession. Therefore, she decides as her project she’s going to give Rainbow a massive crush on–Riva, a married Orthodox woman with six children! So suddenly, she’s super interested in her faith in a way she never was before (the irony being that it’s only because of a demon’s influence.) In comes an intense crush that I totally recognized from various straight girls I’ve crushed on.

Now, I have a soft spot for pious women, so like the sucker I am, I did fall hook line and sinker for the Rainbow/Riva ‘ship in this book. Spoiler warning: the author went somewhere else, but that’s okay. The book does deliver happy f/f endings, and even the demon herself gets to have some fun.

As far as the issue of how the book made me feel as a bisexual woman — the line “trendy bisexual” was used at one point in dialogue, but I do feel like any criticism of bi women’s choices was intended as unreliable narrator because from what I can remember it’s followed up with a reminder that they don’t actually know if the olden-days bride was bi or if she just married a man to appease cultural traditions which is extremely possible, given the circumstances. I beg of those reading this review to please be gentle with me if your experiences lead you to feel differently, because the week after I read the book my spouse ended our thirteen year relationship and so 1. I am not particularly able to hold my own in discourse at the moment and 2. I am writing this a month after reading the book and after a considerable amount of pain, so my memory isn’t perfect.

Either way, if you’re a Jewish woman who likes women, it’s worth checking out even if you aren’t a fan of spec fic. The speculative elements are lighthearted and easy to process–among themselves, the demons’ society is a parody of modern corporate culture and office politics. It’s out of print right now but worldcat.org has it listed in libraries all over the place, and I had no trouble getting a hold of it through interlibrary loan, so if you don’t mind using the system—and plenty of librarians told me that using a library actually helps libraries and isn’t a strain on them at all—it should be relatively easy. Besides, used copies are not hard to find.

Content warning: I have vague memories of there being the g-slur (for Rromani) in there someplace.

#lesbian books #jumblr #jewish #sapphic #femslash #biphobia content warning #d slur #the dyke and the dybbuk