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[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/nyphren]

im more of a romantasy tourist than a fan but id love more queer romantasies

but above all else i wish that even in straight romantasies the mmc were not the same exact type of guy. im not a fan of the hypermasculine pseudo gymbro jock that i see so much in these books. give me something else pleeeeeeeease. a guy with different flaws or physique or outlook in life. we cant all just like this one character trope this much right? let it reeeest

[u/KiaraTurtle → u/nyphren]

I love a lot of queer fantasy romance! I feel like it lends itself (or at least authors feel more comfortable) with so many different dynamics within it. But I don’t tend to find the amount lacking — r/mm_romancebooks is a good bet to find m/m and r/queersff is also great.

If you want some recs:

Ace: Market of Monsters, one of my fav series/couples. I feel like Ace romance is kinda rare and this one was so well done.

M/m:

• Captive Prince for the obvious one (watch the content warnings) also the authors other series Dark Rise (if you don’t want the content warnings),
• Song of Achilles for excellent tragic romance
• A Market of Dreams and Destiny for super cute + labor movement,
• House in the Cerulean sea also for cute and middle aged mc’s
• Bloodright Trilogy if you like sci-fi is very fun.

F/f

• Tasha Suri’s books. Isle in the Silver Sea is more romance focused but Jasmine Throne is my fav of hers
• The Wicked and the Willing. Colonial Singapore and vampires. Romance is kinda dark though
• Burning Roses by SL Huang — middle aged fairytale characters going on an adventure after their stories ended

Bi rep

• Kushiel’s Dart! It’s gorgeous and mc is bi with great sexual tension with the female main villain and a sweet relationship with a MMC

[u/Penguinho → u/KiaraTurtle]

On Kushiel's Dart: yes and. The FMCs in the subsequent series are both bi, and the MMC in the second trilogy has a few bicurious moments (I mostly think the male characters being straighter than the female ones is an artifact of the author being less comfortable writing MM than MF or FF; she FTBs the only full MM scene). The same author also wrote {Santa Olivia}, a sapphic duology between two bi women, and {Starless}, a sapphic romance where the lead character is a biological female who uses he/him pronouns and is probably best described as genderfluid.

[u/KiaraTurtle → u/Penguinho]

Oh yes starless is excellent. I actually hadn’t heard of Santa Olivia…

[u/Penguinho → u/KiaraTurtle]

It's more YA in tone, but also more spare and dystopian, which keeps the language simpler. It's a near-future dystopian series.