Certified Silver-Penned Devil

Happy Black Fae Day!

I did this as part of a collaboration post with many other wonderful black creatives over on IG. My theme was Warrior Fairy.

Creative Direction and editing by me

It is possible to find both sapphic SFF and M/M fantasy. It is significantly harder to find, say, aro urban fantasy. Or trans romantic suspense. Or intersex mystery.

A lot of the advice above only really works for trad published or popular books and for identities/subgenres/content that aren't too niche.

So here's some advice if the advice above isn't working for you (either because you can't find books with what you want or because the books you are finding don't end up being the vibe you want), from someone who reads a few hundred books a year:

Find websites or lists dedicated to the specific thing you are looking for. They will generally have more variety and will post you to examples that don't show up in regular rec lists. (ex: aro book recs, ace book recs, intersex #ownvoices database, sapphic books). Goodreads lists can (sometimes) also be your friend.

Get comfortable reading self-published and small press books. Trad publishing has its blind spots.

Check Reddit for recommendations

Start figuring out what it is specifically that you like and then start making your searches more specific. This can be subgenre (if you want urban fantasy, you're rarely going to find it just searching "fantasy"), tropes, plot devices, vibes, etc.

Look at the "readers also bought" on Goodreads/Amazon, similar books on Storygraph, etc. if you read a book you like. Even if you don't end up reading the one you click on, it can show you similar authors (similar to looking at the blurb on a cover), especially because far fewer books have blurbs now.

Because at the end of the Thrawn campaign (~9.5ABY), Luke gives her his father's lightsaber.

Which he treats as a normal coworker interaction / gentle encouragement to join his Jedi Academy.

This is, for the record, COMPLETELY INSANE behavior.

Sir. This woman VERY recently had an inescapable psychic kill command for you lodged in her skull courtesy of the Emperor. And your response to resolving this situation is apparently:

“Here, take my dead father’s laser sword.”

:)

Luke is operating on spiritually earnest farmboy logic here, but Mara — who is bad at emotions in general and especially bad at affection directed at herself — is nevertheless, like many women, dimly aware of this thing called BOUNDARIES and decides maybe she should not immediately go do Jedi training with the incredibly intense blond man handing her meaningful family heirlooms after one shared military campaign.

Now, the Doylist explanation for all of this is obviously that the EU authors in this era were barely coordinating.

But the Watsonian result is hysterical.

Because while the rest of the cast is dealing with assorted disasters with the Imperial Civil War and Dark Empire Trilogy, Mara quietly kriffs offscreen to pursue Jedi training.

Not with Master Skywalker.

No.

With Kyle Katarn.

And if you know the timeline, this is SO funny because circa 9.5–10ABY Kyle is basically an independent-study self-certified Jedi Master whose primary qualifications are:

surviving

owning a lightsaber

and aggressively tomb raiding Sith ruins

This is peak Jedi Knight era Kyle. His entire educational and life philosophy is basically, “I found this in a crypt and it probably won’t kill me.”

So Mara, in an effort to avoid one emotionally complicated Jedi, accidentally apprentices herself to another Jedi whose emotional range is approximately that of a very honorable brick.

And naturally this culminates in Mysteries of the Sith, where Kyle immediately gets too cocky poking around Sith artifacts on Dromund Kaas and falls to the dark side.

Which means poor Mara spends her gap year dragging THIS IDIOT back from corruption.

(Should this perhaps have given her an early warning sign about the Exar Kun situation brewing at Luke’s Academy in the Jedi Academy Trilogy? You would THINK.)

But WAIT. Because this is ALSO the year of Dark Empire, my very favorite and absolutely deranged year of the Legends timeline.

So imagine this from Mara’s perspective.

You flee the emotionally earnest not-quite-love-interest Jedi by going to study under another Jedi who immediately starts having Sith Artifact Problems.

And then somewhere in the middle of this nonsense you get the news bulletin:

“By the way, Luke Skywalker got yoinked away by some kind of inexplicable Force storm and has apparently resurfaced as the military commander of the Reborn Emperor’s Operation Shadow Hand.”

And Mara’s just standing there like:

“... the REBORN WHAT.”

So during the events of Mysteries of the Sith, Mara successfully drags Kyle back from the dark side through what is, functionally, the Power of Friendship.

Like yes there are Sith artifacts and Force visions and actual mechanics involved, but emotionally the plot is basically:

“Kyle, stop licking cursed tomb walls.”

“No.” *lick*

“Kyle PLEASE.”

And somehow it works.

So Mara presumably exits this experience going:

“Great. Wonderful. Fantastic. I have now personally managed one emotionally constipated Jedi man having Sith Problems. Time to go talk down or put down Skywalker.”

And she’s probably mentally preparing herself for the world’s worst intervention road trip.

Like:

“Apparently if I don’t supervise Jedi personally they start freebasing Sith artifacts within thirty business days.”

Except then she gets back and —

Oh.

Luke already came back with his sister's help.

Apparently it was a phase.

Wonderful.

Excellent.

I DON’T have to solve every problem myself.

But then the VERY NEXT YEAR, 11ABY, the New Republic looks at this man — this VERY RECENTLY RECOVERED FROM A SITH APPRENTICESHIP man — and decides:

“Yes. We should give him government support to found a religious boarding school for Force-sensitive children.”

Insane institutional decision-making.

And Luke, who has learned absolutely nothing about normal interpersonal pacing, immediately circles back around to:

“Hey Mara :)

“do you want to come train at my Jedi Academy :)”

SIR.

From her perspective you vanished into evil hyperspace weather, joined your dead fascist dad’s evil wizard cult, and got government funding to open a school less than a year later.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

It's like how a bunch of celebs were big on body positivity and fat liberation...until Ozempic dropped and it turns out no, none of them ever believed any of that! They just pretended to bcs up until now healthy, long term weight loss was impossible so they had no choice but to cope by learning to love themselves no matter how they looked...but now that it's here we can go back to the truth! Being fat is ugly and gross and unhealthy and you should starve yourself and take experimental meds right now so you can be skinny which is what ALL humans are clearly supposed to be!! Yeah that body positivity stuff was fun, but come on. We know you actually just wanna be skinny and think being fat is a fate worse than death.

That's what it feels like to me. Every single time. Honestly in a lot of other areas too, one of the big issues with the left is that they really do seem to think that Republicans are right about how things work and should work but we just pretend otherwise because it's the right thing to do and it reduces suffering. Which seems fine, but you cannot be an effective leftist like this. You do actually have to deconstruct your beliefs and biases and world systems, you can't go around like "well yeah we aren't gonna kill disabled people that's eugenics and it's wrong" when you clearly don't actually think it's wrong. You think eugenics would work but implementing it would be uncivilized, and it shows. You have to actually understand that racism and ableism and all other forms of bigotry are not just cruel, but entirely incorrect.