I (bi ciswoman) keep running into the obvious problems while looking for adult queer romance/adventure literature:
If it’s mlm, it’s bl or yaoi, and the protagonist and love interest often fall into gendered roles and/or their queerness is misrepresented because the story is written by or for straight people. (E.g. The idea of one character being a top and the other being a bottom? I’ve never met a queer person who self-identified that way. The Over-representation of penetrative sex).
If it’s wlw, it’s very often gl or yuri, and it has the same problem, with the added downside that the straight men writing it see and present their characters as sex objects, sacrificing any meaningful character writing or diminishing the ever-important *yearning* levels necessary for romance. The women are often written too soft or feminine or submissive with few if any interests outside of love. And there is usually very little understanding of what actually turns women on.
If we’re looking for romantic queer literature with trans characters, there’s so little and a lot of bombs to dodge with fetishized&inaccurate depictions of trans bodies. Gender is also rarely portrayed for the weird, nebulous, and fun concept that it is, and gender in these stories is most often only a source of suffering instead of a potential for joy.
If it’s outright labeled queer literature, it can often fall into the seriousness of protest, over explaining queer experiences or suffering for the sake of trying to convince a straight audience that we’re worthy of having rights. Like, I don’t need to read that, I lived that and I’m not keen on repeating it.
The obvious problem with these forms of queer literature are that they’re made for straight audiences to consume, and even queer literature that’s made by and for queer people can shy away from certain depictions of queer characters because of the shadow of a straight audience’s potential gaze.
There are many gorgeous pieces of queer literature out there that are able to navigate this adeptly.
However, I crave trash. I crave rom coms and action adventure fantasy space operas with poor continuity and world building aspects that are cheap excuses to enact the only one bed trope. I want the same sort of depraved sexual creativity that exists in the trashiest bl and straight romances, but with lesbians and made for lesbians. No more fearing crass sex jokes involving women; let women’s nudity be played for comedy, let women be perverted little creatures for other women instead of sterile personalities. The romance genre could be so full of fun wlw trash, and it’s not, and this is a crime.
I once saw a post explaining why lesbians don’t make femme thirst traps -because of the straight guys in the comments. Which. Fair. But can’t we write it and put it on ao3 and tumblr instead where the straight guys usually don’t go?
Can’t we have kinky garbage? Can’t we have power fantasy literature, isekai, abo, femsemination, monsterfuckers, and immortal elf and vampire lesbians? Can’t we play with gender like a jump rope and use it in bondage? Can’t we have messy characters who’ve committed a few murders but are still sunshine incarnate? Let her be flanderized into fandom tropes that aren’t just “girlfailure,” “girlboss,” or “mom friend.”
I want to be obsessed. I want to write a forty page character analysis of my main lesbian blorbo and her love interest and what they mean to each other and how the circumstances of their world/personalities keep them from confessing their love.
My friends, my icons, I am not good at writing or drawing. I’m working on it, but one gal learning to write and draw is slow, and I want wlw smut to recommend my wife in the meantime.
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
jacobvanloon
germansingergirl
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
