I love that so many lesbian books deal with extreme acts of love--cannibalism, disassembling, tearing off and regrowing limbs, becoming a single being, that sort of thing. Cathartic acts.
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The sapphic urge to murder God, to topple His throne, to bring ruins to His works, to upend the heavenly spheres and all that came before, and finally to open a little bakery you run with all the friends you made along the way.
So have you heard of "Hades Calculus", a book I have sincerely described as "Wittigian" despite the protestations of one of its uncultured weeb authors
No! Interesting. I used Wittig's Lesbian Body in a grad class in my mfa. I was writing about the Frankenstein-y rebuilding of love objects in cavalier and troubadour poetry, mostly. It was an unsettling project! [Must we destroy and rebuild in order to love/understand who/what we love?]
I mean in a world where lesbian romance in mainstream fiction is incredibly sanitized and usually male oriented it makes sense that most lesbians would take it to the extreme…for catharsis and a hearty fuck you to general books
One of my favorite parts of Otherside Picnic is like this, esp with the MCs responding to it like "just calling ourselves girlfriends or lovers is not enough now, we need a new name for this kind of relationship because normal people are simply not as close, not as inside each other, as we get"
(I also really love how one of the characters' supernatural corruption of her body starting with the tips of her fingers from touching her love interest and it slowly spreading until it's her entire hand up to the wrist is in retrospect foreshadowing, lmao)
(these aspects are also why I was utterly unsurprised to see quotes from the "male" author like "of course like any man I'd love to really be a woman")
playing out an interminable string of test chambers with someone you murdered, in an endless cycle of death and rebirth so profound she promises to kill you and bring you back to life too, even though she doesn't even know how.
Or what about the high-stakes toxicity of running a village bakery, or being a vet for cute little animals? Don't forget the hand-holders! #BanalLesbiansRepresent
I'm in the weird category of "cannibalism sounds so hot but I'm not into bodily injury" which leads to the logical conclusion of liking stories with toilet play and eating dead skin and earwax and snot and spit, because like... consuming parts of your lover their body is shedding anyway? Yes please!
And I think it's interesting to dissect why that's hot for some but not others, maybe revealing how waste products feel disconnected from bodies and bodily essence in some people, but feel connected for others — or how realism vs unrealism in fiction plays into how people enjoy things (or don't)
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normal stuff, you know
Why are these recurring themes
I enjoyed this weird sapphic novel, Paradise Rot, which falls into the category of which you speak.
(I am not going to be normal about it)