Short Writings

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.

a healer in a plague-stricken city discovers their apprentice is immune to the symptoms, but also a silent carrier that is actively spreading the disease

two friends running a small criminal operation are offered immunity if one testifies against the other, but both begin separately planning to take the fall to protect the other’s future

a successful warlord meets their former apprentice, who has become a pacifist negotiator

after growing up in an extremely toxic environment, one sibling wants to leave and the other doesn’t understand why

when one of the kids of a supernatural hunter family is turned into a werewolf, their sibling needs to dismantle their belief system to help keep them safe

finding out that they only got their job because a friend pulled some strings without telling them causes someone to reevaluate their skill and success

former roommates at an academy for muscle-for-hire meet again. one has become a bodyguard, the other an assassin, and both now have the same mark

after finding out their best friend betrayed them years ago, they chose to get revenge now, as the pain is fresh

a spirit becomes accidentally attached to a random disaster of a person and helps them tackle everyday life

How to write a character who just got wings

The extent on what happens depends on the span of the wings and if they can retract them. Some general ideas you can build on are:

1. Physical Sensations and Adjustment

Immediate sensations:

Weight or shift in balance, large wings pull the center of gravity backward.

Muscle soreness in the back/shoulders, especially along new muscle groups.

Hyper-awareness of the wings brushing against objects or catching air.

Itchiness or sensitivity if the wings "grew" recently.

Movement challenges:

Misjudging the wingspan and knocking things over.

Falling backwards because of the weight.

Learning how to fold them, awkward, slow, maybe painful at first.

Retraction (if possible) could feel like tensing very deep muscles or like closing a fist behind your back.

2. Clothing and Practical Issues

Clothing must be modified with slits, stretchy backs, or specialized harnesses. Jackets especially are a pain in the ass.

Backpacks don't really work anymore.

Sleeping becomes complicated, lying flat may be impossible.

Washing and grooming: preening feathers, drying membranes, accidental shedding, etc. maybe they need someone else to help them with this.

3. Emotional and Psychological Reactions

Internal:

Awe, excitement, disbelief, fear, claustrophobia (from a suddenly bigger body).

Feeling "larger than life" or feeling like a burden/monster depending on tone.

Social:

Depends on the worldbuilding and if this is a normal occurrence or not.

People stare, doors are narrower than they remembered, chairs become inpractible

Friends may react with fascination, jealousy, fear, or awkwardness.

4. Sensory Changes

Wings have nerves. Touch may be pleasant, ticklish, or painful.

Wind sensitivity, your character can feel air currents like a sixth sense.

Temperature issues: feathers insulate, membrane wings may get cold easily.

5. Learning to Use the Wings

Pre-flight:

Figuring out how to flare, beat, and angle them.

Overworking the muscles, leading to cramps.

Instinct vs. trial-and-error, do they feel intuitive or alien to the character?

First attempts at flight:

Running starts, panic flapping, short glides, messy crash landings.

Realizing flight requires technique (lifting angle, timing, wing power), not just force.

6. Realistic Physical Consequences of Flight

Flight demands big caloric intake, your character may become constantly hungry.

Stronger chest/back muscles develop, posture shifts.

Calluses or pads on feet if landing involves impact.

7. Daily Life & Worldbuilding

Will buildings accommodate large-winged beings?

Are wings common or unique? Does society have norms (wing etiquette)?

How does weather matter? Rain makes feathers heavy, wind can blow them sideways.

Also: If Wings Are Retractable

Retraction might feel like compressing or tucking away something huge, which may cause soreness or a sense of phantom wings when retracted.

Retraction could consume energy or rely on magic/technology.

There may be a risk of malfunction or partial transformation.

Retracting them can mess with the feathers, needing support to care for them when opened up again.

Hope this helps!

some people don’t deserve fanfics, much less for free.

also even if authors didn’t tag any specific warnings but they used the “creator chose not to use archive warnings” tag, then that is your warning.

One thing you could do is promote antipatriotic education?

Contribute to an anarchist library, whether by uploading something you have access to or translating into a different language

Support or offer your voice to Audible Anarchist to provide audiobooks of anarchist texts

If your area has an infoshop, anarchist bookstore, or anarchist bookfair, volunteer and donate! There’s no comprehensive list of these things so you’ll have to do your own duckduckgoing

Support anarchist news media like CrimethInc, It’s Going Down, Unicorn Riot, and Indigenous Action

Put up stickers or posters around your area

Print off or order some zines, books, or other reading material and stick them in local little free libraries

Slave Narratives (x) (x) Linked to one I own, and the search results since there’s seriously a LOT

Preaching with Sacred Fire:  An Anthology of African-American Sermons, 1750 to the Present

Autobiography of Malcolm X

Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr

Our Non-Christian Nation (because these chuds have a hard-on for theocracies)

The Four Voyages: Being His Own Log-Book, Letters and Dispatches with Connecting Narratives.  (Because you can’t deny what he says in his own words)

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About…American History

Word prompts to use for doodling or writing

fairytale

garden hose

fruit stand

radio

block party

tattoo

ice cream

postcard

festival

skating

barefoot

night walks

pride

fries

stream

flower crown

outdoors

cocktail umbrellas

playing cards

sailboat

karaoke

dandelions

buttons

pearls

midsummer

universe

neon sign

dragonfly

birch tree

Word prompts to use for doodling or writing

fairytale

garden hose

fruit stand

radio

block party

tattoo

ice cream

postcard

festival

skating

barefoot

night walks

pride

fries

stream

flower crown

outdoors

cocktail umbrellas

playing cards

sailboat

karaoke

dandelions

buttons

pearls

midsummer

universe

neon sign

dragonfly

birch tree

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

and no, this isn’t me saying “write that messed up, disgusting thing” because while, yes, write it if it’s what you want (I myself enjoy writing dark fics, something I believe would be considered “vile” to a lot of people), this is me saying in a world of censorship and capitalism, ao3 really is a treasure.

Who's sleeping with who. Who's fallen out with who. Who's got a new car..

Unfortunately, they're completely oblivious to the supernatural creatures causing chaos right under their noses.

I'm writing a story about glamorous drag queens, deadpan goths, folklore monsters, unexpected romances and a town that's convinced it knows everything.

so if she should lay a trap and lure the king of the underworld out of his realm and into hers? it might take a while to notice he’s gone. she has the world’s worth of beautiful sights and smells and sensations to dazzle a god whose subjects are dampened souls and cold metal. who could bring themselves to mind the dead when a goddess is brushing rich petals against your cheeks? when she’s as warm as the sunlight you rarely rise to see? when she appreciates you so much more than anyone else has ever feared you, and twines herself around you like a strangler fig?

Non-human vessels can’t approach within a dozen light years of Sol without their crews being driven mad by the corrosive psychic resonance emanating from Earth’s deepest oceans, and we’re wandering around living our lives and not noticing. Aliens can never travel on human ships because our FTL drives kind of maybe tunnel through Hell, a process that horribly warps non-terrestrial life, and we just think it looks pretty when the n-dimensional hellfire coruscates across the viewports.

This sort of thing kept humanity uncontacted for a long time, until the aliens’ observers eventually figured out that we weren’t a bunch of weirdly normal-looking elder thralls, we just straight up weren’t aware there was a problem. It’s only then that they arranged first contact – remotely, of course – to basically ask “dude, what the fuck?”

I don’t remember it really well but one of the aliens got caught outside the mental/psychic shielding as the ship jumped and they were hit with the reality of infinite space and realized how meaningless and pointless all life was and that there was no reason to keep on living in the face of that.  And they asked the human pilot how they managed and I think the response was something along the lines that humans compartmentalize their truths/reality.  We can recognize something and yet still work right around it and keep on Doing Stuff despite recognizing what we’ve seen.  Basically its so hard-wired into our make-up that we mentally go:

Like,

    look,

               I recognize what reality is trying to tell me

                                              - but I got stuff I gotta do.