Heya Everyone, new Mega time and for it, I'm gonna advertise a TTRPG system called Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
A sword duel can end in kissing, a witch can gain her power by helping others find love, and an entire campaign can be built around wandering matchmakers flying from system to system.
Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a roleplaying game for telling queer stories with friends. If you love angsty disaster lesbians with swords, you have come to the right place.
In this book, you’ll find:
Flirting, sword-fighting, and zingers in a system designed for both narrative drama and player safety.
An innovative take on the Powered by the Apocalypse family of games.
Nine character types, each focusing on a particular emotional conflict: Beast, Chosen, Devoted, Infamous, Nature Witch, Scoundrel, Seeker, Spooky Witch, and Trickster.
Guidance and support for running the game, including how to make appealing adversaries, set the tone, pace the game, and structure play.
Tools to create your own settings and stories, alongside a dozen pre-written options including the cyberpunk Neon City 2099, steamfunk poets battling oppression as Les Violettes Dangereuses, laser swords and intrigue in the Starcross Galaxy, and more.
World building worksheet for custom scenarios and starting scenario seeds to play with: Best Day of Their Lives, The Constellation Festival, Gal Paladins, and Sword Lesbians of the Three Houses Variant rules to highlight different identities, emotional connections, and setting elements.
Strategies to adapt any setting where swords cross and hearts race for Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
Here's a link to their website, I did copy everything over directly from it because I put off writing the Mega this week. I was drawing a blank on what I wanted to talk about. 
https://evilhat.com/product/thirsty-sword-lesbians/
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I feel like I should write a romance novel despite having so little experience. I feel like I'd be good at writing the coyness and angst. And it just seems fun.
nsfw
Not to mention how apparently I'm quite good at writing smut...You could start off with a short story or a novella if an entire novel seems a bit too daunting. Probably a good way to gain the experience you’re lacking.
Neither can capture the depths of the slow burn romances I thrive off of. I need 200+ pages before they realise they like each other and then at least another 500 going through their relationship slowly building up. The courting period alone ought to last 300...
More seriously, by experience I meant romantic experience. I've only had one relationship turn official and even it only lasted a few weeks. I'm a pretty good academic writer so the size isn't daunting, though I do definitely need to get better at fiction writing.
In that case, what about a romantic story that doesn’t involve humans, but a different species or even supernatural beings, whose romance manifests itself in a different way than ours? That way, your lack of experience isn’t such a handicap, and you can let your imagination go wild.
And also: You totally got me with the first part.
One of the ones that's been floating around my head for years now has an android as one of the romantic leads. I came up with it while on a classic scifi kick and I wanted to play with a lot of themes from stuff like Frankenstein in regards to artificial persons. Said android is also trans because I thought it would be a fun vector for that too. Exploring how a being created without a set gender might nonetheless have one due to their desires, and how that would develop as they gradually develop their sense of personhood, all pulling from Butler among others.
🤭 The first bit might not entirely be a joke...
Oooh, a trans android being in a relationship with a human trans person would be an interesting set-up. Imagine what kind of discussions they would have about what it means to be trans, and how they could use their respective experiences to support each other.
The initial plan was to have the other lead be cis but I never quite ended out developing her.. The t4t potential is definitely there and could be super fun though! Might end out doing it lol. Really depends on how I want to emphasise things, like if I'm trying to really build on the Frankenstein stuff having a cis partner is better because it increases the distance between the two for Talis (android) to eventually recognise and get past. Kinda like how Paradise Lost is used in Frankenstein proper, where it becomes a big focal point for the monster's view of the world, but also a way to emphasise his distance from people after he was rejected by Victor in contrast to God's treatment of humans. As a being who was rejected, does he have any space in society at all? And what I wanted to do with this initially was write a story where the answer is an emphatic yes, despite the differences and difficulties. All the while also playing into the emergence of an identity and consciousness and how that interacts with gender.
Really shows how interesting and complex trans characters can be. It’s such a shame that this potential is completely wasted on mainstream media reducing us to stereotypes.
Yeah, there's a lot that can be done with trans characters that just. Isn't. And so I kinda want to do a little bit of it, for fun