Thursday Recs

[soc_puppet]

And my brain is fried again this week, whoops! Turning the recs entirely over to you again, dear community members!


Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

have almost eight hundred thousand words of plotty Valdemar fanfic exploring everything offscreen in canon about how Valdemar and Karse set aside their hundreds of years of feuding, involving vast amounts of expansion on Mercedes Lackey's worldbuilding, especially with respect to Karse, Karsite attitudes toward mind magic, and magical creatures best fought with fire, and occasional check-ins with canon characters; story 1 is set during Arrow's Fall and story 12 is somewhere in the Winds trilogy

this counts for this comm bc at some point in story 11, iirc, it is made clear that one of our two leads gets responsibility for explaining sex with women to their mutual protege because he's straight and experienced, and a particular secondary character gets responsibility for explaining sex with men to the said protege because he's gay and experienced and no longer worried about being outed; our other lead officially has primary responsibility for said protege, but he's not explaining sex of any sort to him because he hasn't had any and doesn't want to (which the author clarifies in comments is because he's aroace)

start here:

Enemy, It's Cold Outside (5121 words) by MueraRashaye
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Male Herald, Original Male Sunpriest, Anur Bellamy, Kir Dinesh
Additional Tags: Friendship across borders, Canon Compliant, War with Ancar, Tasteless jokes about Fires, Some timeline shifting
Series: Part 1 of Friends Across Borders
Summary:

Inns in Hardorn border towns are neutral grounds, so long as the Sunsguard don't see the Herald and the Valdemarans don't see the priests. Usually this works fine, but one evening found Valdemarans with a Herald and Sunsguard with a priest at the same inn. Two groups of guards signal their outliers, and their outliers reluctantly retreat to the stables for a frigid night.

Turns out, it's too cold to kill ancient enemies. Much easier to swap drinks and tales under a night-long truce, figuring nothing will change in the morning.

And it doesn't. Not yet. But, it just might.

[goatgodschild]

This week, I'm recommending Other Boys by Damian Alexander, about growing up queer (specifically gay, although the narrative is broadly queer) in a non-normative family.

[zero_pixel_count]

Oooh, and to add to this rec, the series is both sensical and compelling even if you didn't actually read the canon books. (I have no recollection of why I started reading given that, but that's why I haven't stopped!)

One of my particular favourite things is the way the relationship between the leads is given the weight of commitment and importance that is often socially reserved for monogamous-sexual-romantic relationships.

[hrj]

Definitely more "queer-adjacent" than overtly queer, but this week I'm recommending the Netflix movie The School for Good and Evil. It's your basic dark academia/fairy tale (fairly low budget) flick, but there's a lovely "intense same-sex friendship is more important than stereotypical heterosexual romance" twist that sticks the landing. Including a kiss.