#-how romance works

[spotsupstuff]

JGKSLDMCKLSDMGKLSDM?????

[umblrspectrum]

happy solvermas

[swordmaid]

back to the shadows 🌑

inspired by the storm by pierre auguste cot, shri’iia and astarion running away from the sun bc he’s a vampire and she has sunlight sensitivity.

please zoom in to see the details! 🥹🫶

[nhura]

QUICK NO ONE'S LOOKING

(See readmore for thoughts, cope, bonus, etc.)

Anyone else up thinking about Ratio's big, strong, secure arms and how warm and all-consuming they could be in a hug or embrace. :/ Anyway

I just wanted to draw them being cute and seizing a sliver of a moment where they could have some PDA silly time without actually having any eyes on them. They're public figures and working adults with very clear boundaries between public persona and private life (to varying degrees of "in a sad way"), so while it may be in Aventurine's nature to constantly blur lines for various agendas and self-preservation (read: play "the flirt" without an aligned goal), I believe that in an actual relationship they'd be fairly private.

It's kind of fun to break your own rules, though! Ratio would be more upset about the consequences, though. He's a little bit of a hypocrite, which is devastating for someone of such discipline, but nobody's perfect.

I'm of the mentality of, "If you're tired of working on it, then just post it!", so here are some fun peripherals that I didn't feel like adding:

Some staff in the background sweeping up to evoke a blended sense of fragile privacy and liminal time.

A laptop on the aquarium/bar/counter because there's something fascinating about seeing people on their work laptops in public.

The rest of their clothes (casual friday)

[pricetagged]

fool's gold (pyrite)

Got inspired by gougie's executioner asks and cloth's egging hehe 💖 have some pirate au simon breeding kink~

Content: 18+; breeding kink; dubious consent*; mean Simon; pirates; captured-by-the-crown reader; barest implication of potential soap/reader and future ghoap/reader; POV shift

*in a 'get out of jail' way, so take that how you will.

---------------------------------

It fluttered in your stomach. A nebulous, squirming little thing.

Not the baby, no. The lie.

You felt it, restless and hot. Kicking your ribs from the inside. It made you flushed, it made you sick-

It bought you at least another few weeks to slip the noose, to slide away in borrowed shoes meant to dance a gallows' jig. Maybe it would buy you more, if the stress held back your monthly the way it often did on the ship. Great, long stretches of time with too much work and not enough food.

You wore the lie like you wore your borrowed clothes, a too-tight bodice and heavy skirts. Impractical, sweet. Modest. A poor little dear caught up and brought low. Fallen woman, sunken to the depths before the law fished her out. 

Your thighs stuck together, warm and bare under the skirts. It was sweltering, damp. Clammy in the cell with its stagnant air and earthy, unfinished floors. The wood of your bench –and bedcot–was warped with age, woodlouse burrowed deep into the pulpy grooves. It was enough to make you shudder, sweat dripping down your spine until it soaked into the cotton of your shift.

It did little to cool you.

Nine months aboard The Watcher had spoiled you, coarse rope and sharp, sea air warping you into something new. Something wilder. It was hardtack and hard work, yes. But it was freedom. To toil under a flag of your choosing, to trust the waves and the Captain to take you to new ports and newer treasures–

You'd left your papa's place with little more than ill-fitting breeches and a pocketed purse. You'd passed the scars on your hands and the patches on your shirt as evidence of experience – hardy little stowaway, aren't ye–. The morals didn't bother you the way stolen scraps didn't bother a dog. Street rat or ship rat; at least this way you could put miles between you and your father. Nautical miles, bobbing away with the wood of the ship's log. You watched it often, knots of rope and grains of sand. Hourglass and paper in hand while you stood on the stern.

It was you who first spotted the English Man O'War, sluicing through waves with colours hoisted high. Three gun-decks, at least, and coming into port.

"–plead the belly–it'll spare ye the choppin' block. Might even get lucky and be sent t' the reformatory– ah heard they do that f'r expectant mothers–" you couldn't quite hear him over the ringing of the cannons and the ringing in your ears.  "–plead the belly, and I'll try tae come back for y–"

They echoed now in your sweltering cell, suspended in the humidity. The boatswain's last words before he was violently wrestled away.

You remembered him as you counted the bars of your cage. Iron-wrought and cruel. As cruel as the chain tethering you to the wall, cold metal biting into your bare ankle.

'–I've got the keys, girlie, if you want freein' from it. Don' have to sit against that wall, all shy. C'mere an' I'll make you a deal–'

You stayed silent, stone-faced. Weathered the taunts and jeers of your gaolers like a battered old rock. The guards took it as arrogance, the other prisoners took it as invite.

The priest took it as shame.

You let them all believe it, lips pressed tight lest you let loose sobs–giggles–something– as days passed and your sentencing drew closer.

You'd heard about him before you saw him. The Ghost. The last face you'd see before facing the faceless. The pitch-black eyes that would watch as you jigged to the jeers of the crowd.

It was the last face you'd see and it was only a mask. More macabre than the usual executioner's hood– a skull motif, bleach-white bones and empty sockets. A nasty minikin mockery of the reaper. It was gristly; it was sick.

But so was he.

A butcher, some said. Fingers caked in blood no matter to which job he attended. A pirate, according to others. One pressed into service, earning his freedom by sending others to the pits. 

And now you heard him for real.

The low, resonant whistle. The heavy tread of his boots.

It had you curling your fingers into your palms, nautical superstitions and fishwives' tales nipping at you like fleas.

–quit yer whistlin', you'll anger the winds and summon a storm–

                                                 –it's good luck, don't worry. It'll make the winds blow strong and steady, you'll see–

–I wouldn't do that if I were you. Cap'n'll think it's code between mutineers–

                                                                                                                                    –taboo–

The whistling stopped, a cheery solitary note wavering in the air before silence. Even the gaoler's dog had scarpered off, keys jingling around its neck until you couldn't even hear the echo.

A gravel-rough voice cut through the swirling tempest of your mind.

"Was told 'got a pregnant little birdie caught in the cage."

That pulled you from your reverie, neck-stiff as you turned towards the voice. It was more of a twitch than a conscious motion, a sudden flaring of deadened synapses as his voice rasped over them. Still, you didn't speak. Didn't even look at him fully, the hulking thing in your peripheral.

It was silent, now. Eerily so, like all the air had been sucked from the prison. Sitting in the eye of the storm, too calm and too quiet. You could hear the drag of his boots as he shifted closer. The rolling clank of iron scraping against itself, your cage creaking open.

The shadow in your peripheral became mass, then man as he stepped closer.

You risked a glance up.

He'd still be large, sturdy, even without you curled up on your dank, spongy bedcot. Tall enough to duck as he sauntered into the cell. Broad enough to block out the flickering oil lamps by the warden's desk. In the lambent glow of dusk it was already dim, hazy with sea-spray and the oppressive heat of wet season. But with him in front of you it was pitch-dark. A pall cast by his sheer size, all light swallowed up until you could just about make out his blurry edges.

The ghostly white of the bones bleached onto his mask moved and his voice rumbled out.

"Well, g'nna show me?"

You stretched out weakened muscles, unfurling as slow as a wind-battered sail. Joints creaked alongside the iron of your shackle, tight from where you'd clenched hard. Dug your blunt little fingernails into the pulpy, malleable fibers of the aged ironwood below you.

Standing was like finding yourself unmoored, sliding off the buoyant driftwood keeping you afloat. Your legs got tangled up in your borrowed clothes, damp petticoats and overskirts clinging as your feet finally touched the straw-strewn earth of the cell floor. It was cumbersome, made more difficult by the sliding of the heavy chain against the bench. You felt the weight around your ankle, anchoring you down.

Though you could barely see it, you felt as he studied you from top-to-toe. Flat, dead eyes followed every curve and dip of your body as you stood before him, your traitorous chest rising and falling in a way that made you grit your teeth. You used that force to steel your jaw, to look straight ahead and keep your arms lax and loose by your side.

Let him look his fill. Let him– your judge, jury and executioner.

He hummed. Circled you like a shark in a balmy waters. It was funny– you'd never felt more exposed than now in all your layers. Not even under the punishing sun in your loose, men's clothes. No, his eyes stripped you bare. More than cotton and linens, he peeled the flesh from bone. Flayed you open, eyes slicing through your skittish guise. Through your rabbity gaze hopping around the walls, the way you tried to arch your back and poke out more of your soft belly.

"You a liar, then?" You could hear the low, mocking note in his voice. "Or got a case of wishful thinkin'?"

That had you looking up, meeting him dead in the eye. Your hands hovered above the slight swell of your stomach, fingers twitching in an abortive gesture–

–you wanted to cradle it, the fluttering in your empty belly. Push down the sick, swirling terror and face the ghost you'd summoned, because you had summoned it–

He grabbed by your wrist, meaty paw pulling you close enough to brush against his expansive chest.

–Hadn't you? Bad luck. Malefic omen, having you on the ship. No prophets, no redheads–

There, in the cradle of his arms, you were frozen. Your wrist felt fragile, bird-like under the firm grip of his thick-knuckled fingers. You weren't weak, you'd rigged topsails in tempest winds with those wrists. But that was then. That was weeks ago, when you were part of a crew on the open seas. Here, it was just you and the beast that had sent stronger than you to their graves. The warnings from persnickety old seadogs tolled death knolls in your mind–

–no women. And now the sea had swallowed you up. Sent you down to the belly of the beast. A Jonah, locked behind something stronger than whalebone. Trapped. Unless–

Wishful thinking.

He chucked at your chin, calloused fingertips arching your head further back until your neck strained. Your heartbeat rushed past your ears, sending your head spinning. Dizzy, docile. An artificial calm; buoyant lifeline in the raging currents. He turned you slightly, left then right. Like he was measuring you up, the line of your throat. The fluttering of your pulse. That treacherous throbbing, sending oxygen to your brain that you were too erethic to feel.

He spoke again, rough and coruscating. You noticed that he didn't blink, just stared down at you. Dead-eyed as a fish, blond lashes spiked around dark irises. He kept you arched, unable to escape as every syllable struck you like a storm. You balanced on bare tip-toes, butterfly-soft fingers spread across his hairy forearm.

"The Beak's happy to let ya swing if it means 'e can catch the rest of y'r crewmates. And, 'round here, the only good pirate is a dead pirate," he must have felt how your fingers tightened, a futile brace against his butal strength and harsh words. "So, I tell him y'r a liar, get paid to do my job, and keep the governor happy."

He shrugged, bulky shoulders popping as he rolled them back. He shrugged like it meant nothing to him, just a matter of fact. The fisherman, fingers deep in guts and gristle. The butcher, hands stained copper and hardened on cannon bone. The executioner, calloused from rope neckties and the deadweight of the condemned–

But you catch the way his eyes follow your flinch. The way his lips move under his mask too as your mouth opens and closes. Hesitant. Dry.

You could only look up at him with wide, naïve eyes, dilating in the dark. The jejune jailbird. Doe-eyed. Caught.

The jig was up.

"Please," the words stuck in your throat, cracking and broken. "Please don't–"

He lets you go. Not a gentle action, no. No careful caress; he lowers you abruptly, chuckles as you scramble to face him. Stunned, you rub at your throat. Still there, still unadorned with the necklace of rope you swear he wants to place there. Coarse twine and hessian brown, constricting tighter until– no. You can't think on it, anathema to the lie you've worked hard to maintain. If he doesn't believe the plea of the belly, you'll– you'll–

You'll make it so.

As he settles his massive frame on the thin, wooden slat against the wall you wonder. Why did he come here in cover of night. Why did he need to see for himself what the priest confirmed as a priori truth? The seal of confession melts away, your moribund admittance flakes and crumbles under his heavy hand. He knows.

Solid legs spread wide, he makes himself comfortable. You follow the bulge of his thighs, easily as thick as your skull–more–, as the bench groans and creaks worse than the brig in a storm.

You worry that it can't handle the weight.

Even sitting, he dwarfs you. Stepping up between his thighs is like willingly stepping off the stern into still waters. It's terrifying, thrilling– your belly swoops and head feels light. You know there must be something lurking in the depths, some undulating hydra ready to slide its malignant limbs around your ankle and wrench you down–

He clamps a filthy boot down over the length of chain across the floor. Keeps you tethered to him, unable to pull back even if you wanted to.

"Clever enough t'come up with the scheme, clever enough t'get out of it." It's an offering, albeit a twisted one. Alms tainted by the greedy slap of his palms against his thighs. Rough, scarred hands frame the growing bulge between his legs.

Even in the dark, you see it. Heavy, perverse, Fattening enough to strain against the seam of his trousers. You can't look away, can't escape the muggy heat in the air and the scorching burn of his eyes on you. Incendiary, it sends heat pooling to your own belly. The damp, stickiness between your thighs seems cool now, sweat superseded by the slick gathering in your core. It's filthy, it's wrong–

It's blazing hot, shame seared away by a want that is not entirely born of desperation.

At first you think it's a tit-for-tat, your mouth stuffed full in exchange for his staying closed. Kneeling before him, you're suddenly grateful for your skirts. Matchsticks of dried straw and dusty smithereens dig into your knees, legs bent awkwardly as he keeps his boot on your chain. He's content to let you paw at him, to tug at the drawstrings and fumble with his waistband as he offers no help.

Eventually, he must grow bored.

"Don' need me to tell ya that's not how it works."

"What–?" He has you frozen, tableau vivant of a wanton grisette. Pupils-blown and lips-parted, you tremble up at him. Try to read the desire that he hides beneath harsh words and heavy breaths.

"Tryin' t'make me a liar, too?" He grunts, brushing aside your confused, hurried protestations. "Gonna make me a liar when I go out'nd tell them there really is a pregnant little birdie caught in the cage?"

He pats at his lap, palming at himself and hissing through his teeth. Sound is muffled by that grotesque mask, but you catch it all the same. Every flash of the man beneath– of the desire wrought by your artless, ingenue fumblings– sends you reeling. You are not a creature of flesh and blood, not when both are fever-hot and itching. You can't breathe in your body under sweltering layers and sultry air. And he can sense it, too. The beast you let into your cage, bars bending as easily as your will to his.

And, through messily-tugged drawstrings, you see it. Tugged through the opening you'd hastily torn open. The thick, ruddy head of his cock is already leaking.

And as you slide into his lap, it all slides into place.

You think of– no, not now. You can't think of him now. When he comes back for you, if it takes, you could pass the baby off as his. He was sweet on you, you know it. A breezy, comfortable kind of affection. Small, just barely burgeoning but still there. He's a good man– You'll claim that you were telling the truth at your capture– that you and he already– He's a decent man– maybe you wouldn't even have to lie. He'd take you in, little stray and the seed that kept her off the scaffold–

Thoughts slip away, sea spray in the wind, as you work yourself open in his lap. You're drenched beneath your skirts, slick running down your thighs and into his. You're spread so wide across him that it burns, pinned open by his bulk. You can feel the power of his frame, coiled muscle holding you up from the worn wooden bench. The soft pudge of his belly presses into yours as you lean forward, shakily lining up with the swollen head of his cock.

It's already weeping, thick globs of his slick mingle with yours as he slides between your folds. Like he can't wait to be inside you, leaking his spend at the barest touch of your cunt. Like he can't wait to put it inside you, to make good on his word and yours and put a baby there.

You shiver, biting back a gasp as he nudges the aching pearl at the apex of your thighs. His chuckle rumbles through his hulking chest into yours. It jostles you, hitching you just right over his length until it notches against you. You press down, hole clenching against the initial pain, until you feel the throb of his slit inside. It's deep, sending your back arching as you grip his shoulders with white knuckles. And there's still more–

"Tha's it, tha's it, birdie," his voice is impossibly thicker, desire dragging it down until he growls at you. "Gonna have t'take more, gotta make it all fit if you want this baby–"

"Yes, yes, please," you babble at him. Voice high, whines catching on every breath you work yourself lower. You can feel him in your stomach, every inch sending sparks dancing along your spine until they're all you can see when you close your eyes. The sparks, and the spectral imprint of his ghostly mask.

He grunts below you, swallowing back groans behind a jaw that you know is clenched tight. Avaricious brute, he needs you closer. Hands that were meant to measure you for the drop dig into your hips, working you lower and lower. He forces you down to the root, bare thighs on hessian cloth, until you cry out. Shaking at the spread– the stretch– you pant in his ear. Hot little breaths, heady against the crook of his neck.

You can hear it, the obscene squelch of your greedy cunt. The creaking of the bench beneath you as you ride him with shaking legs, chasing pleasure that's already beginning to pool in your belly. You feel heavy with it, moaning behind your clenched fist. Through bleary eyes you catch his, cimmerian and heavy-lidded. His head is thrown back against the wall, guttural filth spilling as he waits for you to come undone.

"Want it, don't ya? Want my baby so fuckin' bad, just look at ya," he growls it, frothing with a hunger so biting it reads as rage. "I'll put one in ya, keep you stuffed full. Keep this chain around y'r ankle, too, keep you shackled to me–"

Eyes-watering as you lose yourself in it. In the sounds that that send blood rushing to your head, the deep ache in your core, the desperation– make him come, make him come, want to come, need to come–

---------

At first, he was happy to watch you. To sit back and watch you work yourself up, to perform for him until he sees you drop the mask. You wear the mantle of captive soubrette so well, sweat-damp petticoats clinging to curves that he wants to trace with his tongue. With his teeth. He saw the craft in your sweet, open face. You're a flighty thing, aren't you? Trying to slip the noose and slip past him. Luckily his grasp is strong.

He saw the scheme slip away as he got you speared open on his length. He can see it in your eyes, feels the way you suck him in–. You're dripping down into his breeches, sloppy and squeezing him so tight. Desperate, wanton little naiad. Riding hard like your life depends on it. He huffs out a laugh as he squeezes you tight, rough fingers digging into peach-soft flesh.

He doesn't tell you that you're already free, that the Royal Navy is already in hot pursuit of The Watcher and the pregnant, little skivvy is of as much importance to them as the ship's rats. No, you're a nuisance they're willing to hand off to him. Too big, too blunt, too bloody to find a respectable wife.

(There was a time, once, when he had no need of such comforts. Lieutenant aboard The Larimar's Revenge, he'd docked in many-a-port. But he'd always come back to those blue eyes. The haircut that had even the natives of Port Royal looking twice– Cheeky, cocksure pirate.

He'd thought about him, sometimes. On that godforsaken island with just a pistol and one shot for company. 'Mutineer', he was branded. Traitor to King and Crown. Lower than scum, not worth even a keelhaul. But not even grapeshot can kill a ghost–) 

He feels you reaching your end, thighs trembling from more than just exertion. His mask is damp, sultry air mixing with your musk into something that scatters his desultory thoughts. His belly tightens as he feels you clamping down, whining behind the knuckles you’ve got stuffed between your teeth.

When you're home, together in his bed, he'll bite down on those knuckles. Show you what real toothprints look like. Or maybe he'll let you slip his hand into your mouth instead. Let you whet your blunt little teeth on something with more gristle. His appetite for you cannot be satiated on mere flesh. He's got to pierce you, taste you, feel you from the inside and leave a part of himself there–

For now, he holds you down. Forces you to ride out the wave of pleasure-pain as he sets his own pace. Your thighs tremble, whole body seizing around him. He can feel the fluttering in your cunt, the way you shudder and drip until his cock is soaked and his coarse hair turns sticky with your release.

He ignores your whisper of another man's name– John, or Johnny, it's hard to catch with the way you swallow your whimper–it doesn’t matter. Not when he's the one pumping you full of his spend. His belly clenches hard, balls tight and heavy with the come he's going to give you. Going to force it in, plant his baby in you and still leave thick, white, globs leaking out of your poor, abused hole.

He's filled you up, is going to fill you up again. He'll take you back to his house and do it as many times as he wants. Make you grateful for it, for saving your life and giving you the baby you’ve been begging for. Keep you stuffed so full of him that the only name he'll hear from you is 'Simon'.

(And if you help lure Johnny back, well. It's been a long time, but good dogs come home when called.)

---------------

Well, there is it. Shoutout to my beloved stelle and woolie for listening to me whine about pirate ship names 💖💖💖

[deecotan]

anyway here's wavewave

[inchwerms]

EXPLODES THANK U GUYS 4 LIKING MY ART ‼️‼️ still getting used to tumblr but I’ll try and post often! :) here’s some more MCR drawings !! 🐛

Just a heads up, I do have multiple ocs and I WILL be yapping about them soon … :D

[earlycuntsets]

photos from mychemicalromance.com 2004!

[timethehobo]

Hearing news that he’s confirmed romanceable (and described as intimate and sensual) got me so giddy I might just expire.

[kiivg]

.😳.

[altschmerzes]

honestly i just think I will fundamentally never understand the very common (and sometimes posited as universal which i don’t love) sentiment among aromantic people/communities that like. oh one part of aromanticism is Not Understanding Or Caring About Or Getting The Point Of the line between friendship and romance, the distinction of different types of relationship. because for me as an aromantic person that line and distinction is actually Extremely important and clear and it feels… weird and bad to consistently see it posited as this like. Prominent Aro Thing to not understand/care about that.

ACTIONS will never inherently be allotted to one type of relationship or another, and the only feeling that is inherently romantic is romantic attraction/love, but the like. labeling itself of relationships and feelings and actions based on the person or people involved… idk. THAT is very important to me. it is Very Important to me that it’s extremely clear that none of my relationships or actions or feelings are or ever will be romantic and it’s important to me that those labels are seen and respected. it’s important to me in my personal life, and it’s reflectively important to me in the stories i tell and the ones i interact with.

idk. people are obviously welcome to the sentiment and i dont begrudge them having it and maybe im misunderstanding what this means when people say it. but it does make me feel a little anxious and once again the odd guy out in my own community to constantly be seeing this posited as like. An Inherently Aromantic Quality to not understand the difference between types of relationship or the point in differentiating. it will always be critically important to me that romance has and will have no place in my life or relationships. once i learned it was possible not to feel romantic feelings or attraction - and i accepted that it was true for me - everything became very clear to me at that point. ‘how do you Know’ i just know. I Just Know. and that matters to me.

[fuumiku]

It was Maid Day today yesterday a week ago so I got struck by inspiration to draw the worsties, and it ran away from me into a whole AU where they’re coworkers at a maid cafe. She’s a med student & this is just a part time job, and this is his depression job while he gets his life back together. He needs something he can be workaholic about to forget what it’s like having a personal life and personal issues. He’s actually the accountant, but the new hire janitor (Izutsumi) doesn’t show up for half her shifts and is a sloppy worker, so he gets the extra work of doing her job on top of his because he’s undervalued and overworked. Of course, janitors also have an uniform to keep the aesthetic cohesion as they go about cleaning the place, of course.

Senshi’s the part time cook you only see slivers off, he’s kind and warm when you do see him and have a chat but most shifts he’s in and out the kitchen without a trace. Laios and Falin are regulars because Falin and Marcille are besties & in the same med school, Laios accompanies Falin as she visits her friend at work and gets hooked on the food. Chilchuck has to remind Marcille to work instead of chatting with Falin for an hour, and next thing he knows she’s distracting him from work too. That’s it that’s the AU. Inspired by this idol AU fanart a bit <3

This was not meant to be birthday gift but well…… Happy bday Chil!!!

Read from left to right

[four-unwell-lesbians]

Thinking about the way dungeon meshi does queer horror. Using horror to tell queer stories is already subversive, but dungeon meshi subverts it even more

Normal queer horror is like. A monsterous desire and immortal love of something isolated/hated and the uncontrollable but suppressed need to consume someone to live and they only die if you break/pierce their heart. its great.

In dungeon meshi, the group is STARVING. they do things the way they're expected to and they're so deprived that eventually, one of them is consumed by that monsterous desire.

Then when Falin becomes a monster, she doesn't eat Marcille because she doesn't NEED to, Marcille already offered herself up as part of Falin by mixing her own blood with the dragon's for the resurrection.

Also Marcille is a monster too!! She doesn't need to be turned by Falin. She's a 'witch' doing black magic for one but she's also very vampiric

Her name is super vampirey especially given one of the translation spellings was Marcilla, an annogram of Carmilla*. And Marcille is very similar to Marceline from Adventure Time so it's a name with heavy connotations to me. Also her staff is Ambrosia which means immortal.

*ps Carmilla is the original modern vampire that inspired Dracula and also a lesbian. she used annagrams of her name (Marcilla, Mircalla, Millarca) to disguise herself across hundreds of years.

Marcille is like. a vampire in that death is a big part of her theme. She can breathe that immortality into someone else using her resurrection black magic and death is a huge part of her character. She wants them to live as long as she does. To make them immortal. Like. Like a vampire. Vampires which are unholy when her love interest is a cleric.

But once again this is subverted!! she doesn't 'turn' Falin, she makes her undead by giving her own blood instead of taking Falin's. Falin becomes a monster not because she's attacked or turned, but because her DNA, something INHERENT about her is now intertwined with the monster. so a god-like figure merges them. Then the only way to free her from that frenzy and grant her autonomy again is to finally consume her. something inherently lesbian about all that i think idk about you

[paranoiac1963]

when are we as a society going to nut up and stage a genderbent production of the producers. i have never seen two characters who deserved to be morally bankrupt middle aged women more than bialystock and bloom.

[deoidesign]

Ray of sunshine

(pre-launch page for their comic)

[notbecauseofvictories]

also I've spent the last couple weeks reading some older historical romance novels, and my made up, wholly unverified hypothesis that in the 2000s romance authors finally grasped that the old-fashioned "no, don't! stop, you brute" etc. scenes were not really landing with audiences anymore. So they faced a conundrum about the future of the genre. Ultimately, I think they chose to quietly stop writing those heroes, and switch them out for a more sensitive model. Still dark and brooding! But with limits, often a Heart of Gold, and more general emotional intelligence.

Still, somewhere out there is a parallel universe where these authors decided to take the opposite approach---to write heroines as unhinged, cruel, impulsive, and emotionally ignorant as their heroes. I don't know if I want to live there, but I wouldn't mind a trip to their library sometime.