These are OLD. But let these lesbians be visible, you know.

harrow definitely thought they were like dating and in love after the pool scene meanwhile gideon is like shit she’s in love with a dead body not me i guess i’ll kill myself (for her)

the empire’s most genetically perfect beautiful woman: [nude and posing and showing off and talking about the figure of the seductress in art]

baru: [started making a metaphor about finance and got so hard she got nauseous] i think i hauve Kettling

Every time I remember that Pyrrha has never seen Palamedes’s face I suddenly want to jump into a trash compactor.

my absolute favourite FAVOURITE thing about john/alecto is that they are both each other’s fucked up little science project that got Very out of hand.

they are both simultaneously victor and the creature to each other at all times. they love each other they ARE each other, they are divorced and married at the same time. they (literally) can’t live without each other and each will be the other’s end. they still love each other despite this.

sharing is caring

happiest girl in the whole entire world

thinking about my favourite kind-hearted eldritch horror trapped in the body of my favourite traumatized goth girl

(+ purple variant)

the other thing baru is always doing is like . simultaneously forgetting everyone around her has personal motives of their own AND assuming motive as applied to herself where there isn't any, like 'why would they send me a person who resembles me complexion-wise for this task? are they trying to get on my good side?' like maybe it's just a coincidence. a lot of things are. but because she's so paranoid she's always reading into every little detail assuming it has relevance while at the exact same time missing relevant details because they have to do with things and people that are not her

Think about Harrow's AU Bubbles

Thinking about Harrow's AU bubbles, not as fanfic references, but as expressions of her subconscious fears and desires, is so fascinating.

The Harrow Nova one is pretty obvious. Harrow's parents were obsessed with her being a necromancer, were willing to kill for it. It's only natural she'd wonder, "What if I hadn't been?"

And the answer Harrow gives herself is: Your parents and everyone would reject you (except, wildly, for Crux). Also they'd be alive cuz you'd never opened the tomb, and you'd be an unpopular orphan they'd abuse (Just Like Gideon). And you'd still be just as devoted to serving the Ninth with a blade. There's a lot there. But the other really telling bit is her relationship with Gideon. Harrow Nova professes to hate the reverend daughter even as she seeks to (re) create the necro-cav bond with her. But that hatred doesn't seem to be mutual. And the bit about the daughter intervening when Harrow was whipped…

That's Harrow's subconscious saying if their roles had been reversed, "Gideon would have treated me better than I treated her. Gideon would have protected me."

The Ball AU also seems like a reasonable extension of Gideon's childhood query: "What if my other parent is the most important guy in the universe?" Answer: Emperor Dad would throw a big party.

But also… it's a bride-finding ball! That's so very telling. It could have been anything, but Harrow invents another scenario where she's fighting, competing to get to Gideon, to be awarded the role of her sworn partner (first cav, now bride), while outwardly claiming not to want it.

Now The BARI Star AU often gets described as a "coffee shop" one, but it's actually set in a cohort cafeteria. And normally I wouldn't split hairs over that, but I think the cohort setting is actually really significant. The Cohort was Gideon's dream, and also Harrow's rival for Gideon's attention. It's what she kept trying to leave Harrow for.

So now Harrow dreams that she's left Drearburh to join the cohort and will meet Gideon there. Not fight or compete for a role where they're bound to each other, but just meet her there. That feels like yielding. Like compromise. It makes me think Harrow's subconscious has matured past trying to keep Gideon with her always and is instead looking for ways that SHE can be with Gideon. Meet Gideon where she is.

(Also this may be a stretch, but I always find it low-key funny that Harrow imagines Gideon in the cafeteria… I like to think her brain is skimming lists of hypothetical military jobs like... what sees the least action... ah, coffee-adept, she'll be perfectly safe there...)

ianthe's poker fantasy

"Her fury had nothing else to eat and so it began to eat her."

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Can I be controversial for one sec

kyr is a fascinating character to follow because it's been some time since ive read a book in which the protagonist was so just flatly incapable of connecting dots. the information is all there, the reader picks stuff up in bits and pieces and while still not having the full story, can glean most of the circumstances at any point in the book by, like, inference, but kyr has been trained since birth not to think too hard because thinking is how the enemy gets you, while ALSO having been taught from birth that she's better than everyone else, so when she uses as small a fraction of her brain as she can possibly get away with to produce one single conclusion, she's like yes! i have figured you all out, you hopeless traitors! you miserable hypocrites! you quislings! my superior intellect and i will always see through your lies! and then the conclusion she's come to is completely, patently incorrect

shout-out to the absolutely horrid vibes on the Victrix in the time between Jole killing Elora and Jole killing Ursa's dad. Ursa's dad like me n my bro who was psychosexually obsessed with and murdered my wife... yeah her blood is still there.. yeah weird little shrine situation. couldn't have done this mutiny without him [killing my wife]

Sapphic vampire fiction mini reviews, ranked from least favorite to most:

House of Hunger: Bland characters, a story that barely scratches the surface of the implications of its premise, and a central relationship with nothing underpinning it make for an aimless story with a climax that hits like a limp noodle. If the dynamic between a vampire and her indentured maid appeals to you, try The Wicked and the Willing instead.

An Education in Malice: For a Carmilla retelling, the titular character really lacks bite. Laura at least has some interesting contradictions in her, and De Lafontaine could be quite compelling if we saw things through her eyes, but the central relationship isn't built on a lot, and Carmilla herself is really disappointingly bland. The prose comes off as overwrought and melodramatic in the first act, and the constant leaning on poetry feels gratuitous, but it picks up steam and becomes appropriately gripping by the one-third mark, and it carries the book enough that I had an enjoyable but rather shallow experience. I struggle to think of a reason to recommend this over In the Roses of Pieria, which plays with similar thematic and aesthetic elements much more adeptly. Also, it's a pet peeve of mine when a story makes a point to establish a specific historical era for its setting but has characters that feel utterly modern.

The Deathless Girls: This book does a much better job with its sense of time and place, and the characters and their motivations are quite strong. I only rate this one low on this list because the main characters don't actually deal with vampirism as a condition until the very end of the book. On its surface, the premise might seem quite similar to A Dowry of Blood, but there's actually very little thematic or narrative overlap.

Ex-Wives of Dracula: An excellent exploration of the queer teenage experience in conservative small town ~2015 USA along with some pretty novel twists on vampire and horror movie tropes. Strong, vibrant characters with a rich, messy, and compelling relationship carry a solid mystery plot and some pretty pointed critiques of its setting, but the actual climax and resolution don't quite hold up to the quality of the rest. Also I simply must warn anyone who didn't grow up in the time and place this book explores about the profound and casual bigotry and nastiness of that setting, which this book replicates to a T.

The Wicked and the Willing: A thrilling and compelling dark romantic drama centered on a British vampire in 1920s Singapore, her newly hired and desperate to escape poverty personal maid, and her majordomo who is struggling to keep her conscience under control after years of aiding and abetting her mistress's dark appetites. Extremely strong character writing pairs with deft exploration of themes of colonialism, entitlement, class divisions, sexism, and the ways in which certain types of status can and cannot afford one leeway to be nonconforming in other ways. Intermixes diagetic and non-diagetic BDSM very organically also, if that's your thing.

In the Roses of Pieria: Rich prose dripping with atmosphere follows an obscure academic as she digs into a series of ancient correspondences and discovers a millenia spanning love story between two vampires. The character writing is solid, if not quite as impressive as some other entries on this list, but the quality of the prose more than elevates it. The text makes elegant and powerful references to Sappho throughout, and the whole experience is heady and compelling in ways that I struggle to describe in greater detail. Funnily enough, the vampires are the least interesting part of the world building. This one has a sequel coming, and I can't wait.

A Dowry of Blood: A darkly enchanting epistolary novel that takes the form of letters written by the first of Dracula's wives to him as she attempts to make peace with killing him. She unpicks a delicious and horrifying knot of feeling and history as she revisits their millenia together, recounting and reckoning with the manipulations and abuses that defined the good times and the bad. The characters are evocative and rich, the narrative voice by turns sparse, longing, furious, contemplative, and mournful, and the story simply springs to life. It accomplishes an incredible amount in approximately 200 pages, and I absolutely cannot recommend this one enough.

In one of life's great ironies, S.T. Gibson has managed to write one of my favorite sapphic vampire novels as well as one of the ones that I found most disappointing. I stand by A Dowry of Blood as a masterful character study and deep exploration of vampirism as abuse; however, as much as An Education in Malice wants to be about cycles of hurt and obsession and loves turned bitter viewed through a lens of poetry, it doesn't do anything that In the Roses of Pieria doesn't do better.

Ianthe 😔 feel free to hold my hands in girlish solidarity 🌈✨