#I wanted to try posting my writing for people to see since the fic itself is getting views but no feedback

[lovelytayforce]

The Amusing Novelty Of Photography - Chapter 2: Rush of Rain

Dot found herself moving before she could think her plan through. She pulled herself up and dashed upwards on what felt similar to the steepest hill she had ever hiked up! Her Ion blaster dangled and swung wildly at her side until she took it into her hand and didn’t hesitate to warm it up. “Megatron,” It was scorching, even the mist below that formed between their firepower seemed to slowly turn into a sauna between two hot-blooded machines. “I need you to trust me and move to the left.” She could almost hear his audible “What?” echo from below in her earpiece. Her brown eyes shimmered in the direct beam of the sun as she watched Starscream’s signature null ray attempt to outshine their own planet’s star above before she took a shot at Soundwave’s head. “Just trust me.” There was no moment of hesitation in those harsh few seconds as the smoke of her overworked blaster was blown to the wayside as Megatron made a feign of attack before backing away. Before the null ray could even flash their way, Soundwave’s optics met her eyes. It was strange being seen by him, noticed to the point of looking between each other’s souls. She could see even with his visor there was nothing there but unbridled rage, hurt, and something so recognizably human, that it almost pained her to keep gazing into them. Wistfulness. Her finger clicked on the trigger and she silently wondered what he witnessed within her eyes. Did he also feel as if they had connected, or was he too blinded by his pain to see who and what she was. ‘Because I saw the living being that you are…’ Dot thought. ‘Dr. Meridian was wrong…’ The shot missed his head by mere seconds, and the null ray caused a huge explosion of water and electronics in the area to spring to life only to stop in a frozen state. Dot stood up, never looking away from the blue mech as Megatron looked back up into the sky, putting the dots together for the eventual assassination attempt. “Which means you can’t use your signature move.” It was a risky but smart plan if Megatron had been alone, nullifying them all on equal terms with a two-on-one. The failure of their plan rained upon them. The sound that was usually comforting was eerie around the anger-induced smoke that spilled from Soundwave’s vents. Despite that, he kept pushing his frame to make noise even if it rattled his frame painfully as he kept staring holes into her person. Megatron for once, did not exist in his peripheral vision. It was just Dot and Soundwave. Her hands shook as she watched him, no one seemed to know what to do. It all depended on how he reacted. Through rain and smoke, Soundwave lifted his right servo, his sharp digits pointed toward her and she could see the shine of Megatron’s bright red optics reflected in the metal of them. They were in the form of a gun. Skywarp teleported in shortly and that was when Megatron moved. The sound of jet engines blasting off in the distance was loud. Soundwave made a gesture of shooting her with that servo of his and before Megatron could properly shoot at them. They disappeared. The rain stopped. And all the soldiers' guns slowly fell to the wayside to cool off for the day. Okay, cool,

And like that

We really mean it this time

I guarantee another era is upon us

~ Link for the full story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52059640/chapters/131659042

[coraniaid]

🔥 on fuffy's dynamic? or anything fuffy related

I think most Fuffy shippers – me included for sure – have a habit of making Faith seem a bit too … well, nice.

Don’t get me wrong: I like Faith a lot.  Not just as a character – and she is one of my favorite characters on the show, even if she only appears in less than two dozen episodes – but on a personal level too I have a lot of empathy for her.  I think she has a pretty rough deal in life.  I think she’s very badly let down by a lot of people, both before and after becoming a Slayer.  I think the narrative itself is often far less sympathetic to her than it is to other characters. I think she’s pretty miserably unhappy most of the time, and I think her redemption arc is genuinely very good, even with the little we see of her post-Sanctuary.

That said, it feels to me that a lot of Fuffy fanfiction is written by people who have decided, whether consciously or not, that the “real” Faith is the Faith we see awkwardly asking Buffy if she wants to go the dance with her in Homecoming since she already has the tickets, or showing up on Buffy's doorstep in Amends with some crappy Christmas presents, still not quite able to admit there was never any “big party” she could have gone to instead, however obvious it is at this point, and somehow managing to make a million different heartbreaking microexpressions when Buffy says she’s glad to see her. 

Yes, I like those moments too – I like them a lot – and I think that they are definitely indicative of a real aspect of Faith, one she tries hard to keep hidden most of the time.  But I think it’s an injustice to her character to make that the sum total of her personality.  If this were all there was to Faith’s character, she wouldn’t be half as compelling.

What about the Faith who, however troubled she looked at first, manages to shrug off the fact her new boss is planning to have Willow murdered when he tells her he’s also bought her a Playstation?  What about the Faith who attacks Joyce, ties her up and threatens to kill her?  What about the Faith who fantasies about stabbing Willow and taunts Tara by telling her how much Willow used to love Oz?  What about the Faith who, right from her first appearance, is perhaps a little bit too into beating up vampires and killing demons?  What about the Faith who threatens to torture Buffy, who tries to kill Angel, who definitely does torture Wesley and who kills Professor Worth while he begs for his life?  What about the Faith who probably was going to kill Xander? What about what Faith does to Buffy in Who Are You?

I’m not saying all Fuffy authors should exclusively write angst-ridden enemies-to-lovers in which for the first 100,000 words Faith really does seem to revel in being able to kill things without consequences even as she lets her obsession with Buffy Summers lead her into actively and deliberately trying to hurt her or bring her down to her level. (Though it would perhaps be nice if some of it was like this!)  I don’t have any moral objection if people would rather write fluff in which Faith and Buffy have an awkward first kiss at the Homecoming Dance, or AUs in which Faith never sides with the Mayor, or post-canon fic which takes for granted the fact that Faith is now redeemed and happily devoted to Buffy (it would make me a bit of a hypocrite if I did, since I’ve written all of these things).

But the sort of Fuffy writing and meta that I most enjoy, even if it doesn’t dwell on Faith’s worst moments or if it takes place in a continuity where they conveniently haven’t happened, always treats Faith as somebody who could do those things, if the circumstances were just a little bit different.  Always recognizes her as somebody who does have a lot of barely-suppressed anger in her, who is more likely to listen to an authority figure who tells her what she wants to hear than one who doesn’t, who is more than a little bit jealous of Buffy’s life, who does think, deep down, that being a Slayer makes her better than other people.

To me, that’s the appeal of Faith as a character and also of her relationship with Buffy. The two things are kind of inseparable.  Faith is a reflection of a lot of Buffy’s own worst impulses; she’s somebody that Buffy could have been if things had turned out differently (and if Buffy hadn’t had a certain inner strength and self-belief that Faith, for all her posturing, doesn’t quite ever have herself).  She’s the Buffy we’ll see hints of throughout Season 6, the Buffy we saw in Season 2’s When She Was Bad, the Buffy we see in Season 3’s The Wish. And, as a reflection of Buffy, she has some of Buffy’s strengths as well as exaggerated versions of some of Buffy’s flaws.  She’s not uncomplicatedly Evil, even at her worst, but she does a lot of things that are very hard to forgive, and she enjoys doing some of them more than some people like to admit.

I think if somebody’s going to try to write Fuffy, and get both Buffy and Faith right, that’s something they need to remember.  Let Faith have some jagged edges.  Let her be a little bit dangerous.  Let her be a little bit cruel. Let her be a little bit self-destructive.  Put simply: let her be Faith.

[tetitous]

Everyone, I have done it.

So, the post about Yugo and queerness in Wakfu is a 3 parter due to my use and abuse of pictures. You'll be able to enjoy part 2 here, and dw I'll add one at the bottom too

First, I would like to preface this by saying that, while I do believe they didn’t create or write Yugo with the idea making him queer in mind, I do not think the creators made things unintentionally either. What I think they actually wanted to do with Yugo, was to have a character that felt as gender neutral as possible, in order to make him relatable to the show's originally young audience, without alienating girls or boys. A character not leaning too much one way or the other.

But as such Yugo is a character that can be read within a queer lens without that much of an effort. I know a lot of people on this site hc him as on the aro and/or ace spectrum, some degree of nonbinary and in my specific case as genderfluid bi/pan, and I'm even considering possibly intersex.

Wakfu also happens to be the kind of show that, whether intentionally or not, just finds itself to have a ton and a half of queerness in it: from simple implications to actually out queer characters, the world depicted in the show is a diverse one, in that sense and more.

That’s why I genuinely think that it's not just random readings that come from fandom's typical queering goggles, I think there are elements in the show that do help these readings, precise elements as well as elements that need a little more digging.

So here's what this post aims to do: to find those elements and compile them in as clear a way as possible. Please do take into account that I am very easily prone to reaching so if you don't see it, that's totally fine, and I may end up structuring things in very chaotic ways, but I am doing my best.

I decided to separate my writing between the gender elements and the sexuality elements, with a listing format. One element, one dash. Since I am french and don’t know much about the english translation, I’ll be illustrating everything using screenshots as reminders, and will be adding some small notes and quotes translated by myself when needed. Well then, let's get started!

The gender category, or as I'd like to call it "this could have been an email- but make it about a trans character":

Yugo's name: first, this one is 100% due to a fic I read that made me reflect on a very interesting fact: in s1ep1, when Alibert finds Grougal's message, Yugo's name is never mentioned.

During that scene, he’s only called “this child” and “that small one”

What that means, given that Yugo's name has been "Yugo" since previous lives, is that either Alibert somehow picked the right name on first try, or, more logically, that he didn't. That Yugo got called another name for some years, until he got old enough to correct them.

And you would think the argument stops there, but in s2ep12, a character gets openly deadnamed and mocked for it by literally everyone, saying "his real name is…". There is one exception to this,

Yugo, who never mocks him and says "It’s not because your parents named you… ", which is a very interesting nuance in phrasing. It implies that, while to others the name their parents chose is a "real" name, an immovable fact of life, to Yugo it is a choice made by others for them, that can be wrong, that can be changed.

Yugo's relationship with femininity (and masculinity): Have you ever noticed that the Brotherhood of the Tofu very frequently separate themselves with gendered terms? You’ll often hear Tristepin and Ruel call Amalia and Eva “the girls” and Eva and Amalia call them plus Yugo “the boys”. Prior to the OVAs Yugo only does so in one episode, s2ep21, the one episode where he's magically seduced into being aggressive towards "the girls".

“You are so strong and smart, right guys?”

“If you aren’t happy you can go with the girls!”

Prior to this, Yugo never really plays into gender roles, and after it will be mainly due to his aging process, which we will discuss.

Yugo seems to treat socially gendered activities as if they weren’t, I believe it is also noticeable with his relationship to heroism, though that one can only be inferred in contrast to Tristepin's former very strict hero/princess binary viewpoint.

(Here I would have put an exception about the OVA and him admitting he always wanted to save a princess, but given that in the most recent manga the term is used as a pet name for him I guess I’ll let that one slide)

During s1ep4, Yugo crossdresses and not only is he comfortable with that fact, not only is he the one who came up with the idea (although Amalia gave him an unconscious push), he is thriving in it.

Look at the joy on his face upon putting a bow on.

I feel the need to remind everyone Yugo is 12 during s1, an age at which young boys are definitely aware of a gender divide and typically reject girly stuff like the pest.

Back to the Boufbowl episode once more, in s1ep10, you may have noticed Ruel calling being a cheerleader “being the girls”, and while Yugo may be on the bench as a substitute, he does participate in cheerleading right in the next episode.

Two three very motivated children and their unconvinced chaperone.

Actually he is the only character in the Brotherhood of the Tofu to be a cheerleader during both Boufbowl arcs.

His outfits are also not strongly gendered, especially compared to Tristepin's chest-out s2 design or Eva and Amalia's early short skirts, his most gendered character design might be his adult-form one, and even then, when compared to Nora's, you’ll notice Yugo is only ever wearing the same thing as her with added details (royal details?) and his own color palette. My take is he’s actually meant to look like the Eliatrope goddess, with his cape reproducing her hair.

S4 teaser Yugo because we don’t have a clean pic of his s4 design, and I did my best for Nora.

Yugo's aging process as a metaphor for transness: as we all know, from the OVAs until the last quarter of s4, Yugo is a young adult trapped within a child's body. He gets mocked and infantilized on the regular, his status as king belittled. The only thing that he maintains some form of respect for is his status as a hero. And you can tell it is weighing him down. For one, this body is an obstacle to his relationship with Amalia, not just due to the eyes of others,

"I grow slowly whereas she, she became a queen, a woman...", with the implication "and I'm not a man” or “I don't pass as one"

but also due to his own degrading self-perception.

“Let’s see who’s small!”

(notice how easily he gets tickled by a simple comment on his size, how the mere notion of his body being revealed becomes reason enough for violence in s3ep7).

Yugo gets angry and violent, a lot, and more than is typically expected of him.

“I tried thinking like Yugo, I’m sure he would have preferred this to the hit-you-in-the-face method.”

“Dear little brother, I don’t know what happened to you these last few years, but I don’t recognize you anymore!”

A result of trauma, sure, but if you're like me you may have noticed how turning into an adult made him feel very… relaxed, suddenly. In a way that can be compared to the disappearance of symptoms of body dysphoria with people who go through a process of gender-affirming transition.

As an aside, his s3 design really makes him look like he's wearing a binder, in addition to the turtleneck that would hide the absence of an Adam's apple, the look is very transmasc.

That one particular art of him is what really marked me, because of the slight shade under the chest. Doesn’t mean it is a binder, just means it could look like one.

Yugo's Eliatrope hat as a metaphor: There may not seem like there is much to say, but the fact is that this hat was very mysterious for a very long time. If you were part of the fandom before the s2 finale you may have been theorizing on a forum about what was going on behind that hat (I was on the "a second pair of ears but these are shaped like cat ears" team, but still slightly unconvinced), and you knew that there wasn't anyone more curious about this than Nox.

“We may finally get to find out what you hide under your hat.

-Even my friends never forced me to tell them!”

was a very iconic line, one that definitely could remind people of the infamous "what's in your pants" question.

Well the Brotherhood was curious as well, but mostly respectful and patient with their friend.

It was clear that there was discomfort with that part of him that he refused to reveal, so much so that he probably never washed with any of his friends. When they would hang around for days, when the girls wouldn't care between each other (and neither would Eva and Pinpin between each other, wink wink), when they would all sleep together, Yugo probably would still never take it off in front of them.

Overall my point is just that inthe rare times the hat gets discussed, it just doesn't sound cis.

the Eliotropes: they're coming back in the sexuality section, dw.

But, as Yugo himself says, they are "versions" of himself. The interesting question now is "in which way?" Since they are not "past versions" of him, and since they seem to "inherit" some of his personality/physical traits, I do believe them to be an expression of his own fragmented sense of self. Some of them may be men, as a reflection of his own perception of himself as one, but then some may be women for that same reason, and well some are women, some even are canonically enby.

Character on the far left is enby and character on the far right is a woman. Obviously Echo is not an Eliotrope.

One could even go as far as considering these traits can physically express themselves only because Yugo's anatomy reflects them, and in that case we can go into not just a gender reading, but into an intersex one. Pushing further into it, Yugo, being their creator, effectively gave birth to them, and as such they call him father, but the act of giving birth itself is typically associated with the feminine, sowe could argue that Yugo’s position is both one of father and of mother.

Of course they also have physical and mental aspects that are separate from Yugo, like none of the ones we met are the same sandy blonde as Yugo is for example, but the ambiguity of the existence of the Eliotropes is and will always be a matter of "where does Yugo end and where do they begin?".

A little question mark for the road: In OVA2, as a joke, Rubilax “reveals” that Tristepin was actually a woman all along. This is a sample of everyone’s reaction:

1st, Amalia is so bi it’s insane, but that’s not my point here. Yugo’s reaction being of absolute shock, even more so than Tristepin himself always had me wondering what was going on in his head. Through a queer lens it remains just as hard to read through, so my personal take is that Yugo is amazed at how male-“passing” Pinpin is, so much so he may think “You mean to tell me I knew that guy for years and never realized he was trans too?!” I don’t know, I’d love to get some feedback on that one.

That first section was 2 pages-long without the pictures, so let’s take a tiny break and enjoy some Yugo cuteness as a breather.

Just the cutest. He doesn’t even need to try.

part 2

[rafeyscurtainbangs]

⭐ Rant Alert ⭐

This is all personal opinion and unedited

I've seen a lot of opinions, and I wanted to give my two cents as someone who writes fluff, angst, and smut and prefers to write angst and fluff. My thoughts are that if you are looking for fluff, angst, short stories, and full-length fics, you must treat that as if you're rooting for a dying fandom, even if the fandom itself is thriving.

If I was looking for fluff, angst, full fics, or short stories specifically, and felt there was a lack of content, I would check the hashtag daily. When I found a new fic, I would reblog and comment to boost that writer's work. Then, I might even drop into their inbox to tell them how much I liked it and make a request of my own. If you are already doing this, this is not directed at you.

Also, I don't know if the people posting “write more angst/fluff” are trying to do more than make a single post because that's all I can see on my fyp. I’m not going to do a deep-dive. That says all I need/want to see because it’s demotivating enough on its own.

If you are looking for more, It might help to be more specific. Go to a new writer or a writer that you enjoy and request something you are looking for. What do you want to see? What did you like about what they did write that you couldn't get enough of? Ask if they have any suggestions on other blogs that are similar that you may not have seen before. Maybe the have moots that have works with low note counts that may be motivated to write more if they are excited to do so. I believe that it's helpful for writers to let them know the interest IS there and not only IS it there, but it’s from readers of theirs. In my opinion, for me at least, this is not happening…

Some of us (me) prefer to write short stories, complete fics, angst, and fluff over smut, but the interest (based on engagement and numbers alone) is not there. I don't think anyone can be faulted for wanting engagement and good numbers when it is our only form of currency since we are doing this unpaid. The numbers don't lie. We want a sense of community which is why we are in a fandom space.

Maybe what you are looking for is already there. Is it supported like you know it should be? That would be a great soapbox to stand on. 🩷 Again, if you are already doing this, this is not directed at you. You could boost this to let people know more support is needed.

Finally, and probably the most irking part is that I am more than aware that you can write fanfiction without smut. Why are we trying to devalue the people we should be motivating? Why are we trying to devalue people putting out material to make our fandom thrive when we could just be communicating and supporting more even if all they write is smut... They’re enjoying themselves. They are writing something that they appreciate on their free time.

Just a thought.

[seyaryminamoto]

Fic-to-Art #39: Gladiator's ELEVENTH Anniversary! (+ BONUS: Fic-to-Art #36...)

And here we are! March 26th arrived and I did not forget about it, but I paid for my ambitious madness with my wrist and forearm. Somehow, I finished my intended pieces on time, but I do not advise that you ever try to make 9 artworks in 3 days. No, sir. Bad life decisions, that's what that was... but this fic, as anyone knows, moves me to do things I never thought possible, starting with writing the fic itself!

It's really crazy every time it hits me that I've been doing this for as long as I have. It's been a complicated, chaotic journey, with its many ups and downs, but ultimately, it has been our journey. For some people, this is just one more fic in the pile: for me, it's been the best adventure of my life so far. Everyone who has ever been touched by Gladiator, who has ever cherished this story, who's looking forward to the big conclusion, who wants to see how the chaotic war is going to end... you're all part of this crazy adventure along with me, and I can only thank you for joining me.

This year, I had no time to make as big a project as I usually go for. Thus, I did a sort of free-for-all edition of Fic-to-Art over at Patreon and challenged myself to draw as many scenes as I could, out of their suggestions. I even sprinkled in a few scenes I impulsively wanted to draw because I loved writing them or because I look forward to writing them... and this is the result!

In order, the scenes are as follow:

Sokka combing Azula's hair, a common occurrence throughout the story.

Azula watching over a convalescing Sokka in the Chase of Jeong Jeong arc.

The outcome of Sokka's final battle in the Superior Gladiator League, namely a moment where Sokka and Azula more or less gave away their relationship's true nature to the public by raising their hands towards each other...

And now, spoiler territory! Some were by my choice, some by Patreon requests:

An important moment shortly after Sokka and Azula reunite.

Azula confronting her father, with a LOT of backup.

Xin Long's long-awaited freedom.

The aftermath of the final battle.

The full-blown confirmation of their relationship to the general Fire Nation populace.

Sokka, Azula and Hotaru's first night together

And the big final one is ACTUALLY Fic-to-Art #36 but hahaha woops I didn't post it here on time because it was super hard to finish since I had a LOT of things going on... but here it is now! :'D it's a glimpse VERY far into the future of this fic's timeline!

Alright, that should be enough talking and explaining. Some things are vague, some things aren't, but ultimately I really hope you guys will be looking forward to the scenes you haven't seen yet, and to Gladiator's eventual outcome.

So now... with all this being said and done, I'm gonna go take a trip down memory lane and watch my Tenth Anniversary video once more! Feel free to do the same thing if you'd like to commemorate the fic, I think it's a good way to experience Gladiator all over again, hahaha.

Thank you if you read all this, and if you read all THAT: 5 million word landmark, here we come! Thanks for hanging out with me across ELEVEN years of Gladiator!

[beamtori]

𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐝 (𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐢)

nonidol!eric sohn x rem!reader

2.3k words, smut (minors dni), p in v sex, reader is on birth control for convenience of hitting it raw, swearing, kissing, fingering, creampie (such an interesting word...), my weird ver of aftercare cuz how tf do u do aftercare post-getting railed at a party 😭, pet names (baby, sweetheart, hon, pretty boy), he's sweet, i think i got it all skfnksndkd

a/n: this is a second part to this fic occupied on my main writing blog! reading part one is not mandatory at all !! for @mosviqu <3 i hope it's not cringy skdnksjd also special thanks to @ethereal-engene and @winterchimez (i feel like there's always a thank u section to these 💀)

You were wearing his cap—a muted red with a rip in the fabric on the side. It was nearly impossible to miss as you clinked your plastic cup against Han Jisung's and toasted to a night of whatever was to come. (Hopefully you.)

Just about an hour ago, you'd come to find your best friend at this party after departing ways with your university baseball team's shortstop, Eric Sohn. He had obligations and an emergency to attend to, so you were biding your time around the place in case he ever wanted to pick up where you two left off. Along the way, you'd found the red cap he was wearing somewhere on the floor and put it on. Maybe it could be a beacon or some shit.

"—that's crazy, man," Jisung chuckled, shaking his head from over the rim of his cup. "I know I said I didn't wanna cockblock you, but I really didn't cockblock you this time."

You rolled your eyes. The liquid in your cup was a bit of tequila watered down with orange juice for a makeshift margarita. It was a little liquid courage in case you needed it. "Yeah, yeah. It was important, so I don't blame him." Though, you could hardly hide the disappointment behind your words.

Your friend gave you a sideways grin. "Well, the night is still young, my friend. Plenty of hot people around to scratch your itch."

"Well, I hope out of all of them, you still choose me."

Startled, you swiveled on your heel and came face to face with one sheepish-looking Eric. He had his hand clasping the back of his neck, brown hair a little more mussed from whatever emergency had arisen. His white shirt was still clinging to only a couple buttons—you had both been in a bit of a rush earlier.

"Felix? What's that? You need to tell me something—?" Jisung made a very swift exit, shooting a pair of finger guns at you.

You arched your brows as Eric came closer. "I think I'm scoping out my options," you teased, lifting your cup to your lips and draining the last bit of the spiked orange juice. You placed your empty cup on the table behind you, watching his eyes trace the path your tongue took along your lower lip.

The corner of his lips curled upward and he set his hand on the table. "Any way I can sway your judgment?" He asked. "I'm getting a bit of déjà vu."

"You have previous references," you shrugged. "I think I can trust that you're the man for the job." Despite your nonchalance, your heart was throwing itself against your ribcage like it was ready for a prison break.

Eric's other hand caged you in, his low chuckle sending a zap down your spine. "Well since my previous references check out, I'll just make sure you like what you saw."

He leaned in closer to you, and you met him in the middle. Your kiss tasted like oranges now, with the slight sharpness of the alcohol. His brows creased as he cupped your jaw and massaged his tongue with yours, trying to figure it out.

You pulled away, and he lifted the brim of his red cap to see your eyes better. "This looks familiar," he grinned.

"Does it now? Well, I'm sorry to say, but finders keepers," you said, switching the cap from front-facing to backward.

His eyes gleamed in the low lighting, and there was a smug sort of curl to his smile. "You're way hotter in it anyways."

Heat rushed to your neck. "If you keep complimenting me…"

"Then what?" He asked, voice dropping. He was in your space, front pressed to yours, lips a teasing hairsbreadth away. The back of his knuckles found your cheek in a gentle caress, a lover's purr. "If I keep complimenting you, then what?"

This was the second time you both lost the hat. You couldn't remember if this was the same room or not—you didn't really care—but you were fumbling for the lock behind you with your brain turning to mush by the way Eric was kissing you. Clearly, you couldn't multitask. His hand slipped down where yours was to twist the lock and entangle his fingers with yours.

His shirt came off a lot faster this time, your fingers used to the slim buttons, but also because he literally only had two of them to undo. The shirt went missing, and Eric's hands roamed from your waist over your backside and to the backs of your thighs. Waiting for something.

"There's a bed," he said between breaths, kisses, laps of his tongue—

"Good to know," you mused.

He scooped you up, your ankles locked behind his back. Your back hit the cool sheets and you found yourself peering up at one beautiful man. Eric Sohn was a marvel in himself to look upon, but this was a nice angle.

He kissed you again, enough to drive you up toward the headboard, his body following after yours like a shadow. His arm dented the mattress beside your head to brace himself over you, the other tucking itself beneath the hem of your shirt to grab your side.

You gasped something sharp. His mouth latched onto the side of your neck, suckling the hot skin there until you were seeing stars. Your fingers tangled themselves in his hair until they were messy, messy, messy—

"Eric," you exhaled, the sound like a whimper.

He hummed against you. "Yeah baby?"

Your fingers tapped against the nape of his neck. "Let me get my shirt off."

"Good idea." He unattached himself from you for the split second it took to rip your shirt over your head.

For good measure, you reached behind yourself and unclasped your bra, tossing it over the side of the bed. Eric's eyes glued themselves to your chest, rising and falling with the breaths you were trying to regain. He licked his lips, and you found yourself smiling.

"What?" You asked, a nervous laugh bubbling up from your throat.

He swallowed and shook his head. His hand smoothed over the back of your head in a soothing manner. "You're just so pretty. Can I…?"

You might as well have gone into cardiac arrest. "Yeah," you nodded.

The last thing you saw was the glint of his grin. He ducked beneath your chin and you lost your breath at the feeling of his lips wrapping around your perked nipple. You clutched at his hair—swore something colorful when his hand came up to squeeze your other breast. It was the rough pads of his fingers against your skin, the nip of his teeth, the bite of the cold rings on his fingers.

He lifted his lips off your chest, your boobs glistening in spit. He gave them an affectionate squeeze and pressed his lips against yours. "You can say no," he murmured against you, "whenever you want. This train stops whenever you want it to."

"Okay," you said. You appreciated that from him. "I want you to keep going."

"Mmmh, atta girl." You could feel his smile against your lips.

His body pressed down against you, the weight present but comforting in a way. You moaned as his hips grinded into yours and you raised yours in a desperate attempt to gain friction. Both of your movements were frantic now as you fumbled for buttons and zippers and kicked away pants—out of the way.

You reached your hand between your bodies and cupped the outline of his cock through his boxers, drawing a sharp inhale from Eric's lips. He pressed his sweaty forehead against yours, rutting his hips into your palm. "Ugh, baby."

"I'm on the pill," you said and squeezed him.

His eyes screwed shut, and his fingers found the wet spot on the underside of your panties. "You're—you're on the pill? Fuck, you're so wet."

He pressed a hurried kiss to your lips, yanking the hem of your underwear down. Cool air hit the wetness clinging to your pussy, and you shivered. He lost the boxers, your underwear following suit.

"Spread wide for me," his voice rumbled. "There you go, baby." He swiped the pad of his finger down the middle, drawing a shuddering breath from you. "Sounds pretty, looks pretty—mmh, tastes pretty." His finger popped out from his mouth, and he used that same one to draw enchanting infinity signs over your clit.

"Fuck," you swore, your hand digging into his shoulder.

Eric ground his hardened cock into the mattress as he watched you fall apart. He bit his lip, replacing his index with his thumb and dipping a finger into your hole.

"Oh god—"

He curled his finger inside you. "C'mon, pretty girl," he drawled, lazily pumping his finger in and out of you. The ring adorning his finger bumped against your lower lips in greeting. "Say my name."

"Eric, please," you said and pushed your hips toward him, wanting and wanting and wanting more—needing more.

His kiss was softer this time. When he leaned over, you felt the heaviness of his hardened cock over your thigh, the precome beading at the tip dripping onto you. "Yeah, baby. I got you."

He pushed another finger into your weeping folds and dug his thumb down into your puffy nub. You felt the tension mounting in your stomach, the knot winding up.

Before you could reach a precipice, he withdrew his hand clean from you.

Your eyes shot open. "Eric."

"Yn," he teased. He adjusted himself slightly, then took the hand he'd been fingering you with to slicken up his cock with a couple pumps. The sight made your tongue dry. A muscle in his jaw feathered and he braced himself over you to line his cock up with your entrance.

His tip rubbed against your pussy lips and collected the juices dripping out—you held your breath, wrestling yourself onto your forearms to watch him sink into you, inch by inch.

Eric swallowed your moans with his mouth, your fingers digging into his bicep to anchor yourself. Your brain was melting and you grasped the back of his neck as his length filled you up, a muscle feathering so attractively in his jaw.

Once he was seated to the hilt, he guided you to lay flat on the bed again, his arms braced on either side of your head. "You good, baby?" He asked you, breathing shallow.

You nodded for him.

He buried his face in your neck and his sweat-matted hair tickled your chin, his hot breath against your skin. You fucking mewled when he started moving in you—at first, a gentle rocking of his hips to test the waters, his cock pulling out halfway before thrusting back in again. His breathing was heavy in your ear, the sound turning into grunts as his strokes lengthened.

"Let me hear you, sweetheart." His hand found purchase with the soft flesh of your ass, hiking your leg up and around his back. "Feel so good around me—squeezing me just right."

His knees angled his hips upward, and you swore you saw stars when his tip curved up slightly and hit a sensitive spot inside you. You cried out, "Shit—holy fuck."

"Is that the spot, baby?"

You clenched down on him and a sluice of curses engraved themselves into your skin. "Eric, that's the spot. That's the spot. Pleasepleaseplease—" Your nails dug into the muscles of his back as you held on for dear life. The headboard of the bed knocked against the wall in tandem with how he drove into you.

Pressure mounted in your lower belly like molten fire, begging to be fanned and fueled to erupt, goddamn it. You were begging to be pushed over the edge and you could taste it with the salty sweat on your tongue.

"Can you come for me, hon? You're close aren't you?" He grunted.

You nodded, head bobbing vigorously, arching further into him. "Close, Eric. So fucking close."

Eric reached down between your bodies and kneaded the pad of his thumb down over your clit. Your breath hitched as the stimuli crested over and you were crying out for him. He coaxed you through it, his strokes becoming more desperate as he fucked his way to his own high.

You squirmed from sensitivity and whimpered. "Eric, Eric, Eric—"

"Fuck, baby, where do you want me?" He rasped.

"Inside," you said while gasping for air.

His head hung until he came, swears tumbling out of his mouth as fast as his cum flooded into you. Your thighs trembled from the sensation, and he braced his forearms on either side of your head to thank you in a sloppy kiss.

Your bodies were slick and sticky with sweat and cum. His cock softened inside you, and you winced as he pulled out. Eric smoothed a hand over your hair, nose nuzzling against yours.

"You did good, baby," he murmured. He wrapped his arms around your body and rolled over onto your sides, holding you against him.

You gave a little laugh and shoved your face between his pecs. "Thanks, pretty boy," you said. "You too."

He chuckled, biting his lip. "Cute… say, Yn?"

"Hmm?"

"I know we've got it backwards, but can I take you out sometime?"

You smiled to yourself and your heart kicked up. "Sure, I'd uh—I'd like that."

Eric's expression lit up, and you got to see that beautiful smile of his. "Thank god," he said. He brushed the hair from the divot in your shoulder, ringed knuckles running down the lines on the side of your neck and over your clavicle. "Hey, you tired?"

Your eyelashes fluttered at the question. "Not super."

"Round two?"

"Round—" Your words cut off with a shriek as he yanked you back under him. And though you started off giggling, he had those sounds melting into moans again just as swiftly.

This room was going to be occupied for a while.

a/n: the amount of times i yelled while writing this... how do people write smut all the time, i need to know ur secrets 😭

tbz m.list

[fictionfixations]

the dawn knight in place of yuu

MAJOR JP BOOK 7 SPOILERS

(anyway i like calling him the knight of dawn but also thats too many words for a name im going to be repeating a lot throughout this post so dawn knight)

okay so. i was thinking about a fic to write where a character had a part of themselves appear somewhere else? like ive been getting into omniscient reader but i have a diff story im trying to commit to rn so i cant really write something with it when i dont really know shit that happens besides like end game spoilers lOl

but i find the idea of like the 49/51 (?) interesting? i think thats the right numbers. no context to people who dont know what that means but that part broke me even though all i know about omniscient reader is by reading a shit ton of orv fanfiction. my heart man... sob.

but so anyways my mind wandered to the dawn knight

kudos to that like one fic where the dawn knight's soul appeared and attached itself to yuu except i read it when i didnt even know who he was but i thought maybe he was a buddy of lilia so im just reading and getting confused on like no why you no like lilia what (also he doesnt remember iirc and i think that was just like a instinctual feeling cause yknow humans vs fae??) but uh i know context now lMFAO

but like

just imagine this person who looks like silver but blonde. who doesnt remember who he is (as hes kind of more of just a fragment of his soul? but like he appears in NRC and not RSA because he still has a lingering attachment towards silver. wanting to see him grow because he never got the chance to)

who worries over silver

is a little nervous around fae, but maybe this is ooc but like without all the pressure from what the fuck was his name henrik(??) and like the people around him who are all anti-fae, cause he wouldve liked it if they couldve been in peace and stuff yknow? and also without those memories so its not too difficult for him to get past that and see them as people who will probably not harm others (LOOK i just want twst characters to be happy man cause everything is so sad :((( )

anyway lilia has grown since then and doesnt hate humans. maybe he doesnt exactly know how to feel about the dawn knight (UM like cause meleanor. or is it maleanor? i think thats EN spelling but tbh if not for en i wouldnt know how tf to spell it. but uh ykNOW.. he kinda. uh. still killed.)

but then maybe it becomes clear that this dawn knight (who needs an actual name. dawn sounds too on the nose and i dont think lilia associates dawn with positive feelings considering when maleanor died didnt it turn dawn or something. and then they broke down because shes DEAD.???)

is not the same dawn knight he met so long ago.

like

idk

think about it in like a. okay im pulling out honkai star rail examples now. but think of it maybe like dan feng and dan heng where they're like reincarnations of each other? but not the same person? (some people think of them as still the same considering i think(? its been a hot minute since i went through story) those memories of those reincarnations are then shared to other incarnations to help them in high elder duty thingy whatever its called but i think of them as entirely different people who happen to look similar)

i guess you could view it as a 'i once was [this], but now im this and im not the same person who did all those things'

EDIT: I AM WRONG. 2.5 spoilers but its mentioned that someone made dan heng remember his past life so its NOT canon that they remember their past life. "...led her to perform certain healing arts on Dan Heng, who had just finished his hatching rebirth, so that he would regain the memories of his past life?" but anyway thats how it turned out so uh just pretend that i mean reincarnating/past life type deal but stlil having some of those memories of the former life

idk maybe theres some lilia treating him as another son since like. all three of them are orphans who were taken in???? like its implied parallel of lilia being taken in by the mal... dRACONIA family sorry i forgot the last name om. and the dawn knight being taken in by the whoever is in charge. like the dad of henrik(?) and that person whose name i cant remember i think it was leah who the dawn knight liked and married? but so anyway they both got taken in by a family and owe them a debt and fight for them (and care for them. although idk about henrik ew, but he was also like. wanting princess glow(???) which could supposedly grant wishes i think to like cure their ill father, and saying that the dawn knight should do it for leah or something? i cant remember but he convinced him with something something leah)

i dont know where im going with this thought but like. i remember the dawn knight said something like. if things could be different? but like it cant be because they've gone too far now to forgive each other? but like he wanted there to be peace.

i remember thinking about lilia's wish in the wish upon a star event, maybe it was similar i cant recall exactly

Lilia: My wish is... ...for humans, fae, and all other species to live in harmony. [Img of the wishing star] Trey: Haha, wow. That's a pretty ambitious wish. Lilia: To join joyous hands with one another is no simple feat, even for those among the same species... To say nothing of the difficulties across species divides. You've learned about our history, have you not? All the countless tales of our failure to compromise, and the resulting conflicts? I have no desire to see such history repeated. So I make the same wish every Starsending.

like the dawn knight expressed regret that it had to be this way and wanted things to change but it was far too late. but like. he never did that stuff now (well lilia will remember so poor grandpa but. he's also been really forgiving towards humans when doing it for someone? like he endures it? like when he was searching for a way to hatch malleus and these people were really against lilia for being fae when he just existed, and he didnt fight back because it would paint a bad picture for the draconias? there was another example related to silevr but i cant remember it im. not what i was thinking about but theres also when he contemplated killing baby silver but changed his mind because he'd been trying to teach malleus to like. 'walk in time with his neighbor' and so and so and i forgot what he said but that how could he do that when he should be like setting an example for malleus or something right?)

also silver learning who his parents are in a maybe less traumatic way (like NOT running away knowing malleus' mom might die and then oh shit the ceiling collapsed and IS THAT THE ENEMY oh god please dont let malleus' egg be hurt and then he shares the same face as me? and that ring-- cue silver hating himself and being dragged in by darkness and i am just sobbing my eyes out like no silver he loved you so much :((( )

and even if lilia still holds anything against the dawn knight. still has lingering feelings even towards this not-dawn knight. that he wouldnt want to condemn the dawn knight, and then have silver condemn himself for being of that blood even though he didnt even do anything yknow?

and then when lilia dies he can meet up with the ghosts of maleanor and raverne (is that spelled right? i genuinely cant remember the EN spelling but it was something like that. uhh.??) and i know thats sad but i want lilia to be able to spend more time with maleanor and raverne too yknow? but im not sure how to do that

maybe. like the. the the . council? i cant remember its name fshuidfh but those assholes who appeared when we made it to. blackscale(?) castle... ? i. forgor. maleficia(THATS GRANDMA RIGHT?? i get so confused by who is who in draconia) castle??

but like when we get there with malleus' egg and then maleanor dies

and theres just these voices of long dead old geezers who are bitches to lilia and i hate them and i dont know how they're still there and can talk but i dont want maleanor there because they're horrible. also they literally said her sacrifice was like noble or some shit like that and im just like BITCH- (also lilia is banned from the capital or something isnt he?? like i mean he can still visit the castle. but secretly. but still :( )

so i just think.

fully getting over stuff. heart demons. talking things out. lilia gets to talk about stuff for the first time in awhile (remember when like literally no one talked about the circumstances regarding malleus' birth or something so silver and sebek just had no idea what they were getting into??? and like i guess he could talk to baul? baur? idk which one is the one on EN i forgor. but idk man.)

not-dawn knight being a really good listener. being understanding, sharing his input where appropriate. and like he also gets some of his memories which put a lot of things into proper context. and so sharing thoughts of so and so. and just. basically this talk that spirals into moving on.

sharing frustrations, sharing things that never really got to be known.? like regrets, etc etc

since i think the last time they met was when silver father reveal, and time passed and he died so its just all these lingering things that never got to be said out loud for various reasons. like maybe because company is against so and so so to say something would be like idk maybe traitorous? i dont think thats the right word but words are hard and i keep forgetting words the moment i need them

its like. the unique point of view of talking about things between former enemies. like how they viewed things, etc etc

and then when lilias lived a full life, no regrets, he meets maleanor and raverne in the afterlife.

oh yeah also about his dorm i have no fucking idea. i honestly mostly forgot what each dorm represents but either ramshackle or diasomnia, which i know is like nobility or something? but anyway dawn knight married a princess, also i associate diasomnia with fae / briar valley which is related considering hes book 7 stuff so im pushing him there anyway

or maybe the mirror cant read him because his soul is fragmented. or maybe retcon and his soul isnt like that? idk but i like to think the other part of his soul is in the afterlife with his wife yknow? and eventually silver will be there and able to meet his mom and huggies, and acknowledging that these are who his parents are, but also that lilia is also his parent and the one who raised him yknow? there can be more than two parents in my eyes.

its just that his soul is like in half because of the part of him that wants to have seen silver grown. i think i said this earlier in the post but that since the last time he saw silver was as an infant (also he had blonde hair so-)

also wasnt infant silver asleep for like hundreds of years until it was either because someone who loved him came by (lilia) or because the spell finally wore off (which is what lilia thinks. i dont know where to put my two cents at tbh of which i think is right)

so dawn knight just sitting there in the afterlife like. ..man. my childs still not here. i mean. thats a good thing that they're not dead but like. i kinda wanna see them.

or well silvers the only one so i should be saying he but gidfhuj

also it was either leah or leia i am a dumbass? maybe leah was the EN one. idk i forgot.

anyway thats enough yapping for me

[agentstarkid]

This little story turns one year old this July 31st!

We hopped with Girlie on a rollercoaster of finding (true) love, being quarantined in a foreign country, lots of internet meanies, making new friends, angst, heartbreak, depresh sesh, finding love again and so much more to come -- What a wild journey it's been, and I'm so proud I took the leap!

Looking back a year ago, I can't believe how far this story and I have come. I remember being so full of uncertainty and nerves to post that first chapter, and now, a whole year later, I'm writing little blurbs and one-shots in a whole different language to my main one.

And to celebrate this milestone with you guys, the DAN-Y/N stans out there, and as a thank you for all these 365 days of support and love to Danielito & Girlie's love story—a.k.a. my baby—, I put together a list of dialogue prompts from where you can pick one—or as many as you'd like—and send it to me so I can write a little blurb to go with it!

You can request a specific moment on the fic you'd like to see more (c'mooooon, they were together for 2 whole years! Let's see if you've been paying attention hehe), or just make a general request with a quote of your choice (or you can suggest one! Can't promise much on this, but I'd try my best to bring it to life, unless it is smut. I can't write smut for shitzels yet soz).

I'll be accepting resquests for the next 2 weeks!

✧. ┊ Series Masterlist

P.S. Fingers crossed next month I can—finally—post a new chapter! Adult life has been kicking my ass these past months so please be patient with me! — But my inbox is always open to talk! :)

— All the dialogue sources are linked!

“These are way too many, omg, I’m being squeezed by these pillows, love!” “Well I just, you know, thought that since you like to hold on to me while you sleep but we can’t do that right now, I decided to bring you all these.” “Aww, I appreciate it, baby, but would you mind moving some? And even though I do have these, I will miss your warmth beside me.” 

“You weren’t uncomfortable back there, right? I just wanted to make sure you were all right.” “No, no, I wasn’t. Thank you for doing that.”

"You had no business looking that good back there."

"Those could be our kids one day." "What...?" 

“They don’t know you, love. They don’t know how much we love each other. Let them think what they want to. It doesn’t matter, you know why? Because you are enough. We are enough.”

“I don’t want you to be perfect, sweetheart. I want you to be who you are.”

“I…I wasn’t sure if you’d like this, so I just bought all the colors they had there.”

“Stoooop. Stop making me all…” “All… what?”

“Sorry. I just... like seeing that I have an effect on you, I guess.”

“Life would suck complete testicles if it weren’t for you.” 

“I like seeing you this way. so… at ease. makes me wonder how anyone could ever purposely put you under stress and live with themselves afterwards.”

"I know you're struggling right now, and it's okay, okay? We'll get through this."

“With you, I see a forever I’ve never envisioned before. Not that I didn’t want to, it’s more because I wasn’t able to… At least until I met you.”

“God, I really don’t want to leave”.

“I’m so deftly terrified of falling in love. Because what if I end up with a broken heart? That thought itself is just so scary to me. I want to, but I can’t get over that fear.” “Then how about you let me be that first step you take into falling in love? I can help you get over that fear, if you’d let me.” 

“People say they fall in love like they fall asleep — slowly, then all at once. But the way I fell for you can only be described as that feeling when you’re drifting off to sleep, only to feel like you’re falling, oh-so-suddenly. So suddenly that it ends up startling you awake; heart racing in your chest because it feels like you fell off the precipice of a cliff. It’s quick and sudden, and there’s no slowness to it. It’s a crash and burn type of love that I feel.”

“They say the second time’s the charm.” “Was the first time not charming enough for you?” “No, but the second time’s going to be even better, I promise.” 

“If people can hate for no reason,  then I can love for no reason too.”

“I dunno who taught you that love comes with conditions and limitations, but mine doesn’t. Not when it’s you.”

“I don’t know how to ask for help i just— I’ve never had anyone to ask for help from before.  so…this is me trying i guess.  I need it and i’m afraid to ask for it.  That's the best I can do.”

“You really think a relationship should be that hard?” “No one writes songs about the ones that come easy.”

“If you don’t kiss me, right now…” “Then what?” “Then I will have to do it myself.”

"I think destiny wants us to be together, and you should never argue with destiny.”

“What do you think is our song?”

“I can’t concentrate, when you look at me like that.” “Well, you should be concentrating on me instead, so…”

“Sing for me.” “What would you like to hear?”

“I feel like I can breathe better with you around.”

“You’re much better off without me.” “You’re not the judge of that.”

“I love you, okay?! And I can’t stay in your life when I’m just ruining it.” “You can’t just say that and don’t wait for me to answer.”

“Your mom is coming over today.” “Tell her to bring fried rice or she’s not invited.” “You tell her, she’s your mom.” “But she likes you more!”

“Wait, you can’t swim?” “I was always more into sports on land where, you know, I can’t drown.” “I will teach you!”

“Every night before bed I write three good things that happened to me. And every night I find myself writing down your name.”

“God, don’t do that. You’re going to make me go on Santa’s naughty list tonight.”

“This heart belongs to you, and only you. And I’d hope you want to keep it for a very, very long time.”

“What matters isn’t the place, but the person you’re with at that place. So this is to say, being with you is enough for me. So long as you are there, then all is well.”

“If you don’t wanna spend the night in a empty house, you could always come over to mine.” 

"Hey, i think i can fit over here in this corner." "What are you, a plant?" "Maybe. you shine on me every day, after all."

“I don’t know what the future holds. all i know is that i hope you’re in it. “

“Annoying you is what I’m best at.”

“You get to curl up in my lap, and I get to watch a cinematic masterpiece in peace and quiet. i think this is a pretty sweet deal.”

“This is your home, just as it is mine.”

“That was your master plan? Really?” “No, my master plan was having no plan actually.”

“When life gives you lemons, squirt the juice into your enemies’ eyes and watch them whimper.”

“Maybe i'm too late to be your first, but right now, i'm preparing myself to be your last.”

“Over everything, I choose you.”

“You’ve given me so many memories, I'd hate it if you become one”

“I hope you heal from the things you dont wanna talk about”

“I was gonna marry her…”

“Because you always been my ticket home…”

“Have you ever gone stargazing?” “yeah, i’ve seen your eyes a few times.”

"Oh God- why are you half-naked?" "nothing you haven't seen before, love" "it's freezing, go put on a shirt-" "Nah, you can warm me up." 

“You never have to fear that you’re losing me.”

“Aw, you brought out the smile.” “Which smile?” “The one reserved for the people you love.” “How could you even tell?” “Because that’s how you smile at me.”

“No, you’re not allowed to smile at me like that.”

“This is not some predestined soulmate shit or fate or whatever. I love you all on my own. Because you’re awesome and because I want to.”

“You know, I prefer you naked, but that dress also looks breathtaking on you.”

“Believe in the me that believes in you”

“Work can wait. You need rest.”

“I got the recipe from your mom, i hope i did it justice.”

“I think i deserve a cuddle for letting you stick your icy little feet on me all night.”

“Ok…so, umm I made this playlist for our first month anniversary. I hope it’s not too bad!” “Omg, this is- I can’t believe it! I always wanted someone to make me a playlist!” 

“You already are a handful. Together, you guys are insufferable.”

“I’m right here.”

“Careful, or I will fall for you.” “You’ll be fine. I’ll buy you some knee pads.” “Knee pads but no helmet?” “If you’re falling for me, you’ve already taken a hit to the head.”

“Uh-oh.” “What’s wrong?” “That’s their ‘oh, you messed with the wrong bitch, bitch’ face.”

“You look like an idiot.” “You know, other people would say it’s nice to see me so happy. Or that I have a beautiful smile.”

“I’ve never seen you this happy before.”

“(Congrats.) You’re one of us now.”

“Please, never apologise for wanting to be loved.”

“Come on. I’ll show you how to dance”

"Are you still mad at me? I mean, it's okay if you are. I'm mad at myself, too."

"Put your head on my lap and sleep a little."

 “I don’t want to go to bed angry…can we please talk about this?” 

“Your cheeks are really soft.” “Stop squishing them!”

“You didn’t have to do anything…” “But i wanted to.”

[drarrily-we-row-along]

Hey everyone.

Maybe some of you have noticed that my writing's been super sporadic since like June (if you haven't that's very okay) but I just wanted to write a little bit about what's been happening in my life because it's had a pretty big impact on my writing.

It turns out that I'm actually ace.

So, if you happen to notice an uptick in me writing fics with ace characters who still get to be loved, I'm just trying to process a thing.

Please feel free to skip the rest of this post if you're not interested in the harrowing journey of self discovery. I am absolutely giving too much information about my life, I'm just really working at processing everything and I'm hoping writing it out will help. And honestly, there have been some beautiful souls in the Tumblr community who have given me some beautiful encouragement (including but not limited to @basicallyahedgehog who answered an anon ask I sent them the other day with so much kindness and encouragement because I'd bawled my eyes out about one of their fics featuring ace Harry/Draco.).

(Anyway. If you want to read a ramble about all of the things I'm struggling with at the present moment, I'm gladly accepting advice and kindness at this time. Please read below the cut and chime in if you have anything hopeful to add.)

For most of my life I've pretty comfortably called myself a "picky bi" and in the past couple of years have labeled myself "demisexual" because I'm not sex repulsed; I've had sex, it was fine/good when it's with someone who I'm in love with. I moved on from the labeling, content with the label I'd given myself and whatnot.

It's been a minute (read: 8+ years) since I've been in a relationship that got to the point where I've considered having sex but I didn't really think all that much of it. In retrospect, I think this is largely because I've grown a lot in terms of self respect and honoring my own autonomy. Somewhere around 25, I started saying no when I didn't want something and if the other person didn't respect that decision they were not worth my time.

Anyway, it didn't really occur to me that perhaps going nearly a decade without thinking about/wanting to have sex with anyone (and without experiencing even vague aesthetic attraction to someone with only the odd exception here and there- some of you saw that post a couple of months ago, apparently just having the thought that someone is pretty isn't the same as attraction that allo people experience- so that panic now seems pretty unnecessary. It literally boggles my mind that people can just see a person they've never met and want to have sex with them. Anyway, I'm digressing.) Apparently, it's not a common occurrence even among demisexuals to go that long without thinking about sex if you have emotional intimacy with people (which I do). So fast forward to June when I went to a conference for lgbtqia christians and started listening to people talk about attraction.

To say that my experience of attraction and desire for sex is profoundly different than that of nearly all of the people that I talked to at that conference would be an understatement.

After that conference, I started talking to a lot of friends about their experience of attraction and their desire for sex (eventually this also included some new friends who are demi/ace) and have been a little flabbergasted by their responses. Suddenly, in light of the fact that my body doesn't interpret a lot of things the way that other peoples' seem to, a lot of things started to make sense.

I've been called a flirt (at best, and a [cock]tease in more unpleasant moments) my entire life because I always want to give people gentle physical affection; I love holding hands, touching people on the arm while we're having a conversation, playing with peoples' hair, hugging, leaning, the list is long- none of those things have ever felt like flirting to me. Every one of those actions was the end in itself, there was no artifice in my touches, no desire or even thought for more, but APPARENTLY that is not the thing that happens in a lot of peoples' bodies. It is incomprehensible to me that simple, affectionate touches are not something that everyone just wants to do to anyone that they harbor platonic affection for. This also applies to the way that I communicate with people. Again, I've been called a flirt, been told that I'm intense, been told that I'm trying to 'steal' peoples' boy/girl friends simply by being friends with them. APPARENTLY, showing "too much" interest in other peoples' lives and hobbies is flirting. APPARENTLY, getting really excited for people who are excited and doing cool things is flirting. Because (or so I have been told) the emotional energy I expend is too much to just be friends; surely, I have another angle.

Next, in terms of attraction, I experience attraction to beautiful things in nature in the same way that I experience it to people. If I'm being honest, nature makes my heart sing in a way that people usually don't. I can get caught up in the beauty of the world; the vastness of the ocean for literal hours, in the majesty of the mountains, the strength of trees, the way water carves a path through the rocks in glens and waterfalls. The world takes my breath away, it makes me weep just to exist in nature. Apparently, this in not everyone's experience of nature and apparently, many people who want to have sex don't think that trees, or bodies of water, or mountains have as much (or more, in my humble opinion) appeal than humans.

It's come to my attention that even the way that I have experienced heart break from relationships where I was "in love" and having sex is not the way that people typically experience heartbreak. All heart break feels the same to me; grieving leaving a job, grieving the death of a loved one, grieving horrible things that happen to my students, grieving the loss of friendships, and grieving the loss of a relationship feel like the same heart break. (Like some of those things hurt worse than others but the heart break over the loss of a relationship isn't worse.) One of my friends mentioned that I grieve the passing of summer into autumn (I fucking hate the winter) like the loss of a relationship and I wish I could say that she is wrong. I've been told my whole life that I experience my emotions too big and I just can't help but wonder if there is some sort of correlation there, but I digress.

The literal dream for my life is to have someone who wants to get in the car or on a plane and travel with me. Someone who I can make coffee for in the mornings and who wants to cook me dinner at night. Someone who wants to sit on the couch after a long day at work and talk about nothing, or watch a show, or just exist together. Someone who wants to dance with me in the kitchen, and hold my hand while we walk, who wants to smile at me while I ramble about nature. I want someone who wants to hold me when I cry, who wants to listen to me when I'm mad, someone who will remind me to take a break when I'm working too hard. The only thing that I actually want from a partner is just someone to do life with. It's not that I'm opposed to sex, it's just that it literally doesn't matter.

(So many things in past relationships, so many fights, so many of the reasons that I was left, so many things that I JUST DIDN'T UNDERSTAND make sense now. Or at least they're starting to.)

So. In the process of understanding this complete fuckery, of trying to put all of the pieces that haven't quite made sense in my life into order, in the end of July my best friend told me that she's in love with me.

And on the one hand, I'm fucking over the moon, delighted, honored, speechless, crazy-happy. She's literally the best person I have ever known, she's the kindest, sweetest, most loyal, loving, amazing human being to ever exist. She loves me so well, so completely, like all of the things that I said above that are my dream; that is her. We road trip together, and she lets me braid her hair, and we snuggle on the couch and watch movies, and we talk for hours (literally hours, when we road trip we go for 7-10 days at a time and I like do not shut the fuck up for more than like 5 minutes total the entire day and she loves me; loves listening to me talk about whatever is in my brain), and when I'm going on and on about how pretty things are in nature she looks at me like I'm the pretty thing (when I say, 'oh my gosh. that mountain, tree, lake, ocean, etc. is so beautiful.' she literally says 'you're so beautiful' and I am deceased, my heart can't take it, I can't fucking stop smiling- I don't even want to), and she lets me info dump about whatever I'm learning, and she loves my brain and my stupid adhd, and she plays me sappy love songs and sings them to me (and she sings in my car, sings to me even though she doesn't sing in front of people) and and and... she makes me feel like I'm good. She makes me feel like I'm all of the things that other people have said I'm not.

And I am constantly terrified of hurting her.

There are a variety of reasons we're not planning on having sex (partially because it's not really something that I want) that I'm not going to get into but I'm afraid of being what I've been to other people. I'm afraid of her feeling like I'm pushing her buttons because I just always want to be touching her (very platonically) like just having our shoulders bumping while we walk, or putting my head on her shoulder when we're on the couch, or letting our elbows press against one another while we're in the car. BUT what happens in our bodies when we're touching like that is really different. Like I described above, for me any type of touch is really the end goal in and of itself (if I'm braiding her hair, it's safe to assume that that is all I want to be doing. If I'm leaning against her on the couch, that too is what I'm wanting.) But that's not always how her body wants to interpret touch, even if she logically knows that I'm not intentionally teasing (she would never say that she feels like I'm trying to tease her, for the record, it's just the easiest way for me to articulate what it feels like could be happening).

And I love her so much, like so much; I'd do anything for her but it's not the same kind of love that she feels for me. By which I mean that she is just really gay and actively attracted to me emotionally/physically but for me if she started dating someone else, I'd be actually fine with that. If she was dating/having sex with someone I wouldn't be jealous, as long as we still get to be friends. (And maybe her dating would necessarily change the dynamic of our friendship and that would be really hard but that's a different mental exercise.) This isn't the way that she feels.

She is so special and important to me but even the way that we are aware of the other person's presence is different. For me, if I'm in a group of people and she's there, I'm aware of that on some level but it's not at the forefront of my mind. My brain is always sort of 'triaging' the people around me when they're my friends; who's being too quiet? who has been going through a rough patch with work/family, etc? who has an exciting new thing they need someone to squeal about with them? who hasn't been included in the conversation in too long? (see the paragraph above about flirting. haha.) She's there but she often isn't the first person I'm thinking about because I talk to her almost every day, I get to love her every day, and odds are good that we either drove together or will talk on the phone our way home from the event- I see the other people there less, so my brain just prioritizes them since I have less time to love them. (This is actually really good, healthy progress for me in terms of healthy attachment and not forming a codependent relationship. My therapist and I are really proud of the work I'm doing, but I'm digressing again.) For her, though, she always knows exactly where I am. It is work for her to pay attention to other conversations, work to be in a different room. In most situations, I am the person she defaults to thinking about and wanting to be near and she has to actively choose other things if she wants to. (And I don't mean to sound like an absolute asshole, it's not like I ignore her or anything, and I'm delighted for us to be in the same conversations, it's just a different way that we engage with the world.)

I love her so much. And I'm afraid of messing everything up. Of hurting her. Of asking too much of her without asking for anything at all. I try to let her be the one to initiate physical touch (or I ask first) because sometimes it's too hard on her body and that's fair. I feel frustrated with the different ways that we experience love for each other because the way that she loves me feels so good and safe to me and it makes me feel so happy. I'm afraid that the way that I love her doesn't feel as nice for her, that it feels less than, that the way I express my love and devotion isn't as good. I'm afraid that the way she loves me is going to wear her out. She always says she knows I love her just as much as she loves me, it's just different. She says she's okay, she says that the way I love her is good for her and she's happy. But it's hard to believe.

I'm afraid that she'll fall in love with someone else who can love her the way she loves and I won't matter to her anymore (partially because that's been my experience of people who have said they're in love with me). I'm afraid.

Is it even fair to entertain the idea of maybe having a whole life together? (we're already entertaining the ideas, already daydreaming about 'what if we lived together', where we're going on our next road trip, etc. And I'm terrified.) Is it asking her to give up too much? I would spend the rest of my life with her. I'd be good and kind to her, I would love her with so much tenderness. But is it enough? Am I enough with just the things that I have to give? Is it actually possible for someone to love me for just me and not for the ways that I could contort myself to be something I'm not?

I recognize the irony in what I'm asking. I know that that's what all of these hundreds of stories I've written here say, it's what I want to believe. But is it even possible when it's reality?

I don't know. Does anyone have any good advice? Any ace people out there living with a person who's in love with them? Does anyone have something that's lasted?

[feedthefandomfest]

I have a question because I want to comment but I feel nervous. It is very foolish but it is seriously something that prevents me from commenting-

So English is not my first language and I suffer from a disease known as 'fuck you all English leaves your brain when you tap on the comment box'. Like I'm fluent enough to write a fic but the comments break me and I can only do basic 'subject verb complement' and forget half my vocabulary because I'm so nervous, so it often ends up being broken English.

I back out of posting comments except 'i love this this is amazing thank you for writing I love it' because I'm too scared the author will take it badly ? Like, what if they find it annoying ? What if they believe I think they write bad English and I'm mocking them and they don't want me to ever read their works ever again ?

Anyways, my question is : Does it actually bother anyone to receive broken English comments? Do people find it annoying ?

I would never be annoyed by such a thing and I'm positive that's true of others as well. On the contrary, it kinda blows my mind whenever I stop to think about how members of fandom for whom English is not their first language are so often working in translation. Like the trickiest barrier I have to contend with when writing anything is sleep deprivation and your average writer's block 😅 so to imagine also rendering those words in a different language?? 🫠

To varying degrees, the tragic disease of "empty comment box = empty brain" can strike anyone, regardless of language. On the plus side, some of the tricks to break through the blankness are also broadly applicable, such as

drawing from a list of sentence starters like the ones offered here or here (the beginner bingo card also has similar tasks!!)

installing this handy script that generates a positive comment on demand, which you can modify or expand on as needed

using the floating comment box to track moments or quotes you want to compliment specifically, even with just a string of emojis 💕💕💕

I can recall a couple comments I've gotten where the person apologized or gave a sort of disclaimer that English wasn't their first language, and honestly it just made me even more appreciative of the comment? Because there are so many reasons that a reader doesn't comment, and a language barrier is the most understandable!! And yet here they are, making me smile with their words. I always want to reassure them in my reply that an apology/disclaimer isn't necessary, but I don't always know how. (And there's nothing wrong with acknowledging something you're self-conscious about, after all.)

The concept of "broken English" has also got me thinking, though... And since it turned into a bit of an essay I'll leave it under the cut. 💛

Because the term "broken English" has a lot to unpack, seeing as it's always unfairly positioned those who speak English as a second language imperfectly as lesser (broken = defective). And that strikes me as a bit ironic, considering the degree to which English is a Frankenstein's monster of a language—this conglomeration of every language it encounters and subsumes. In that sense, English itself is a broken language? Or rather the shards of numerous languages held together with duct tape and gum and a whiff of imperialism. Its usage is always in flux, always evolving as speakers adapt it to new circumstances, and those adaptations become dialects in and of themselves. There is no one English language.

I teach high schoolers, and I'm consistently struck by the growing chasm between the kinds of English I can speak and the kinds of English they can speak. And technically my job is to train them in how to use American Standard English and read literature written in American Standard English, but really I find that pretty limiting.

Take the tone of this response, for instance! The more I've leaned toward trying to articulate these complicated issues of language, the more formal my speech has become. Contrast that with the first paragraph, where I'm trying to get across this awkward earnest admiration for the extra effort required of some fans just to engage in fandom, and so I ended up using more casual phrasing and emojis in a way that (hopefully) conveys a certain warmth and self-deprecating humor and whatnot.

If I were to leave a comment on a fic that blew me away, left me in a state of awe or delight or anguish—just a puddle on the floor—I'd find American Standard English quite lacking. Downright restrictive. The unique jumbled babble of fandom-speak functions on breaking the standard rules in order to evoke an intensity of emotion that meets the demands of the moment.

Another thing about commenters who really commit to throwing the rules out the window in favor of vibes is that I get such a strong sense of personality beaming through. A distinct voice that's generated, an intense impression of there being an individual on the other side with a particular shape. And there's something delightful about that.

...I suppose this is all a very roundabout way of saying that if there's anywhere to just unleash, vocab and mechanics be damned, where it's more than okay to string together whatever words you can in service of how you're feeling, it's the AO3 comment box. 💛

[bigskydreaming]

So, been awhile! Apologies for that - took a step back from most social media sites for a few months because the accumulated stresses and everpresent urgency to most things I've been dealing with for the past five plus years finally caught up with me and I kinda just....crashed, and needed some time to get my head on straight. Or whatever the non-obvious-pun version of that might be for a Known Bisexual. Everything was getting to be too constantly 'stop and go' for me, if that makes sense.....like I'd TRY to be more present on here, TRY to work on things like my patreon and fic and meta and stuff like that because I've really wanted to get back to creating actual stuff that people enjoy instead of being like My Issues: The Latest Installment and the like, but then something else would crop up and kill my momentum before it even really got going and I'd have to duck away yet again, and rinse and repeat.

HENCE! I took a more dedicated, extended leave to try and get into a headspace and build a buffer that better lends itself to me getting back to the kinds of posting/writing conditions I've thrived under in the past. It took longer than I thought, but I've never been good at accurately estimating things lol. I've still been on twitter somewhat sporadically, since a huge part of why I hate that site is its format makes it all but impossible to really get to ranting at length...y'know, as I do, my tried and true time-suck method of procrastinating...and with everything going on in the world these days I didn't want to disconnect entirely even though I did need time to work through some shit. BUT I DIGRESS.

Point is, felt like I needed something more substantial than the optimistic-but-lacking-in-actual-energy-and-planning measures I've attempted in the past couple years in order to get on top of things and achieve a measure of consistency and stability again. Less shooting for the moon because I just WANT to be back to my older, happier/more content patterns, more....putting some actual time and thought into how I can realistically make that happen instead of just trying to will it into existence through sheer stubbornness. Because obviously, THAT always works.

ANYWAY. It'll still be a couple days before I get back to regular posting/reblogging patterns or much of any of that at all.....don't be confused if you see some blink and you miss them temporary posts from me over the next day or two. I'm testing out the formatting and layout of a bunch of posts and graphics made for my patreon and original fiction stuff, since the preview post function doesn't always work with read mores in a post and they're all gonna need that lol. If anyone's up for it, I am finalizing the price/reward tiers of my patreon and could use some thoughts on the different levels - I think I have them mostly figured out but wouldn't mind some additional perspectives on how I broke things down and if I'm missing some alternatives. Just message me directly if you'd like to weigh in or lend me your thoughts!

I've never wanted my tumblr to be all about fic or just original content or anything like that, so the patreon's meant to kinda keep all that separate beyond just generalized update announcements on here. The blog will remain just a regular multi-purpose smorgasboard of my reblogs and thoughts on other posts and meta about my various fandoms and all that jazz. The patreon discord will have spaces having to do with my various fanfics, but they'll never be exclusive to it in any way, and every fic update I make will still be on my blog same as always. I've been building masterlists of all my Dick Grayson meta and all my Teen Wolf meta, as well as headcanons and writing snippets/scenes that never got posted elsewhere because I didn't consider them full fics, and I'm starting a series of posts that lean directly into my tendencies to be an Overly Opinionated Asshole who - historically speaking - has never been, uh, shy, shall we say, about Having Thoughts about various fandom patterns or trends.

So....look out for the upcoming "Kalen Vs Fandoms" post series. What? It sounded catchy to me. First up:

"Fandoms' tendency to pick one character per fandom to have every other character introduce as the dumbest person they've ever met, but no its okay, they're actually really fond of them and universally defaulting to a judgmental or patronizing shot at their intelligence every single time they're the topic of conversation among other characters just naturally happens to be part of every single other character's love language - is this perhaps NOT as endearing or affectionate as fandoms tend to treat it as?" Aka "How many people can actually say they'd be comfortable with the idea of every single person in their family or friend group leading with "I genuinely think they're stupid but I love them anyway" each time they talk about them to someone else, and if you don't think that's a normal conversation starter for people to have about a loved one, why do so many fandoms attempt to treat it as such?"

.....the length of post title should not be taken as an indicator of how long each post is. If people want to draw their own conclusions about post length based solely on the fact that they're, well, by me.....I mean. That's totally your prerogative. Nothing I can do about that!

Post topics will run the gamut, if for no other reason than gamut is an amazing word that doesn't get used enough and I wanted to use it. From "Its totally valid to project onto characters and use fic as a way to work through various issues via that projection but how much does this have to do with how defensively people react to the slighest criticism of character choices in their fics as though personally attacked - discuss" to "Criticizing and condemning the writers of source material for specific things - to rave reviews from followers - only to then do the exact same specific things in your own fics - to rave reviews from followers - while claiming that the mere fact of being a fan not getting paid for writing those specific things somehow makes them less worthy of criticism.....are we all seeing the problem here."

There's a slight chance those titles are perhaps....somewhat unnecessarily asshole-coded, but like, in a whimsical way! I think. Whatever. I'm sure it'll be fine!

Will either rhyme OR reason be involved in the order of post topics? No. Not even a little bit. Next question.

Aside from "Kalen vs Fandoms" I've been putting a lot of thought into what other topics or content I can expound upon at length, to the possible interest of people. I'm good at writing and editing and analyzing narratives. Not claiming to be the best, just not trying to fish for compliments or anything. I think my analysis of narrative and character choices has generally been of interest in most fandoms I've been in, but when I'm IN a fandom, I do personally invest in favorite characters and stories that inevitably put me in opposition to takes from fans of other characters and stories within that fandom, and when that happens, the Horseman of Discourse inevitably follows and I....do the discourse. Look, I am who I am. I see the discourse, I engage with the discourse. Unless I don't care about the topic of discourse, in which case I don't, because that discourse doesn't matter. Obviously.

SO! In the interest of posting about narrative analysis and breakdowns of writing choices, character arcs and the like but WITHOUT engaging in The Discourse, I'll be making an easy-to-find post of fandoms or source material whose characters and narratives I'm familiar enough with TO have opinions or analysises of, but for whatever reason, the fandom has never clicked for me and I've never actually felt a desire to be part of it. Thus I'm not likely to be invested or compelled enough to follow up on anyone disagreeing with my personal thoughts or analysis or various character arcs or narratives, because its literally just like, my opinion man, presented for no other purpose than to potentially be of interest to anyone who might be interested in it. No actual follow up needed on my part because I'm not particularly chuffed if people have different takes, they're totally valid, mine don't exist for the purpose of being defended there, they just exist because Opinions, I Had Them, Here Look. Or Don't. Its Totally Whatever.

Because I don't feel as strongly about these pieces of media as I do fandoms I'm personally invested in, it is trickier to come up with a comprehensive list of ones I can weigh in on. So please feel free to hit up my inbox with any fandoms, narrative or character arcs you're curious about my take on, and I'll let you know if they're fandoms I consider myself a participant in, and thus not really right for this series, or if they're something I'm just not knowledgeable about.....but if they're not an actual fandom of mine and I AM familiar enough with them to have an analytical take or response, I'll add them to the masterlist/post as a potential topic.

This series will be called and tagged "Kalen Vs Writing Choices" (That I Personally Don't Like Or Think Could Be Better). The parenthetical part is there solely to be a disclaimer clarifying that my ego is not so great that I think that My Subjective Take on the writing choices made or not made is the only one that matters. I mean, I don't intend to include the disclaimer as part of the actual tag and will mostly leave it as y'know, like, something IMPLIED, but the disclaimer still exists and thus counts. That's totally how that works.

And that's how I've chosen to awkwardly segue into the final intended-of-three post series.....Dramatically Abrupt Tonal Shift Ahoy!

This next part will get long, but I would truly appreciate it if you gave it a read despite its length and even if - especially if - the next topic isn't one you typically look for my take on, or even avoid my take on, because I don't think I'm likely to ever express my thoughts on this matter any more genuinely or directly than this. Like I'm not trying to guilt anyone or anything like that, its more I'm just trying to say if you ever read ANY single post of mine when it comes to the next topic or pick a post to base your decision on whether or not TO wade into something I have to say on this subject, I would appreciate it if you made that this next part here, as I think it best conveys where I'm coming from when it comes to most any post I make along these lines.

So. The thing is....most people who've followed me long know that in the past I've frequently been extremely vocal on topics of rape, incest and abuse, specifically through the lens of being a male survivor. These absolutely are personal for me. This has led to me having a lot of Overly Opinionated Takes on these topics and how they're talked about, depicted and treated within fandom conversations, fics, and social media spheres and conversations at large. I've also pretty obviously not posted on these topics nearly as much in recent years as I once did - but not because I feel any less strongly about them.

And that's one hundred percent because it's frustrating as hell to see a very good portion of the posts I make about any OTHER topic in my usual fandoms go on to accumulate hundreds of notes....while NONE of my posts on these topics ever break out of my direct circle of mutuals. I don't say it to be egotistical - look how many notes I get on stuff - I say it because its literally objectively factual, and the disparity is dramatic, and the disparity is a PROBLEM. Especially given how much the topics of male rape and abuse - in SPECIFIC - tend to be, within most of my past fandoms.

This disparity has a very clear reason for existing too: people have never been shy about citing that they refrain from reblogging or referencing my posts on these topics because they feel like I act like I'm the only opinion that matters on them, the sole authority to be listened to here, that I use my status as a male rape survivor as a cudgel, to shut down opposing takes or points of view.

Which I would totally be fine with or understand if not for the fact that I've always gone out of my way to express that I don't want or expect my opinions on these matters to be taken as anything other than my personal opinions born of my personal experiences, which I cite because they're relevant. I don't think that survivors should have to disclose their status or personal history or details in order to have their opinion heard on these topics, but I deeply resent how often survivors making the choice TO disclose their personal history or relationship with these topics in order to directly unpack how that informs our perspective....is weaponized AGAINST us, in order to shut down and discredit OUR takes even while literally accusing us of only disclosing in order to do the exact same thing to others.

Something that I've posted about a LOT in the hopes of getting it spread throughout fandoms that regularly talk about male rape is for literal decades I've seen people harp on about how men can be raped too, believe male survivors, don't believe the myth that men can't be raped, etc. Which like, I appreciate the sentiment, but the thing I've tried to express for years is that in my personal experience, and those of a lot of other male survivors I've talked to - this is not really the biggest or even ONE of the biggest issues most male survivors face.

And the fact that for all that there are many survivors in fandom who have made the difficult choice to be open about their traumas and recoveries - which I ALWAYS respect, as that is never easy for any of us - a huge part of why I've always made a point to disclose my own history as a male survivor is because there just flat out aren't a lot of perspectives from MALE survivors in specific, being circulated in pretty much any of the fandom spaces I've ever been in over the past twenty years. I don't even slightly think I'm any more of an expert or authority on topics of rape or abuse - beyond how they pertain to my own personal experiences - than any other survivor. But as long as the topic of MALE rape and abuse in specific, how men are affected by these things, how society reacts to us and treats us in the aftermath....as long as these are the topics explicitly being discussed.....I do think my perspective as a male survivor is pretty fucking relevant, and admittedly, I tend to get pretty heated about pushing BACK against attempts to invalidate it or shout it down as though I somehow have LESS of a stake in or right to be heard in these particular conversations. And I get how this has at times come across as attempting to dominate a given conversation.

But like.....I'm also going to point back up to the part where I said earlier....I'm an Overly Opinionated Asshole. I say it somewhat deprecatingly, for the lulz, but also not. I'm very passionate about conversations and topics I feel strongly about and I don't make apologies for it. And for the most part....this has NEVER stopped people from reblogging or liking posts I make about pretty much any other topic....despite me not really coming across that differently in most of them, compared to how I come across in most of my past posts on topics of rape and abuse.

See....I'm in complete agreement with everyone who emphasizes that rape isn't a gendered issue. That it can and does happen to individuals of any gender or identity. But the reason why I've always found the focus on 'remember that men can be raped too' more performative than helpful is because for almost twenty years, I've been posting on these topics in various fandom spaces and trying to express that in my personal experience, something that REALLY deserves to be talked about more is the fact that rape is not gendered. But rape CULTURE very much IS.

Like it or not, we live in a very gendered society still. While yes, men can be raped too.....for a number of reasons - most of them born of sexism and misogyny in specific - the conditions, catalysts and reasons for men being raped are NOT interchangeable with those at work in instances of women being raped, as an example. Because the way society treats men and women in pretty much EVERY situation is different. Similarly, the way society REACTS to men and women disclosing they've been raped is different. And so on and so on.

So 'remember that men can be raped too' has some basis in societal claims that men can't be raped or that rape IS a gendered issue....but not as much as I think most people tend to believe. And twenty years after I first started searching out perspectives of other male survivors in online fandom spaces, beyond just real world physical support groups, I'm STILL hearing 'remember that men can be raped too' dominating all conversations about male survivors just as regularly and repetitiously as it was twenty years ago....as though the world has not changed at all, and the needle on this particular facet of male survivorhood hasn't changed an inch in the past two decades when no, actually, it very much has.

The reason why I feel so strongly about offering up my perspective as a male survivor in a relative absence of seeing other male survivors' perspectives circulated is I honestly believe the reason this is so consistently upheld as the biggest problem facing male survivors is its a carry-over from women attempting to be heard and believed when disclosing....which makes sense and is completely understandable....as long as there's a complete absence of male survivors offering up any perspective that's to the contrary.

But the fact that we live in a gendered society where rape culture, not rape itself, still very much IS gendered due to being a product of....living in a gendered society....means that the differences in how society treats and reacts to men and women affects every aspect of how society treats and reacts to men and women survivors. And that starts with disclosure itself. In my personal experience - and fully acknowledging that I don't speak for any other male survivor in this moment, and I absolutely do believe there are those who have experiences to the contrary, and that matters too - MY experience, which also matters, is that not once in the twenty years since I've started disclosing about my own rape, or the csa I experienced as a child - have I actually had an issue being believed.

With full acknowledgment of how unfair it is, how gross, the reality of living in a sexist, patriarchal society where male privilege very much exists, is that while men can be raped too, this traumatic thing that happened to us does not in any way actually invalidate or negate our male privilege. It doesn't turn it off for the duration of our experience or any time its relevant to our experiences going forward. We carry that privilege with us through our recoveries and the rest of our lives just as much as we did before it, because its an inalienable result of being in a society that allocates privilege solely on the basis of being born a man who identifies and presents as a cis man (with respect to trans individuals having another axis of experience that very much differentiates all matters pertaining to rape culture, in comparison to cis men, just as much as in the case of cis women, albeit in different ways).

And the gross unfortunate reality of our society is that it ALWAYS prioritizes believing men over women, in all matters......especially cis white men like myself.

So the simple fact is....even the act of disclosure - and the likelihood of being believed when voluntarily choosing to share the information that we've been raped - means that a cis white man like myself does not receive the same reaction as most women receive when attempting to share that same information. Society preconditions a lot of people to be more receptive to taking cis white men at their word, comparative to affording anyone else that basic respect.

Getting people to believe me when I say I was raped has never been the issue for me that other individuals face.

But that doesn't mean that my disclosure doesn't result in issues for me.

Because while being raped never invalidated or negated any of my cis white male privilege, neither did having cis white male privilege negate the possibility of me being raped - OR the fact that society ALSO preconditions people to be really fucking shitty about survivors.

(Hell, ANY kind of living victim....with this also being very relevant to abuse survivors, survivors of physical assault, etc. Much like people can be overflowing with empathy for unborn children who can't offer up any take to the contrary to whatever people want to say "in defense or support of unborn children," only to turn around and cease caring about most of those babies the second they're born, people tend to be just as overflowing with empathy for deceased victims of abuse, rape, assault and the like....who, y'know, also can't offer up any take to the contrary of whatever they say or claim about what they WOULD want, what they DO deserve, etc. Present those same people with a living child or a living victim who can and DOES have an opinion that doesn't match what those people feel it SHOULD be? Watch attitudes shift VERY quickly, as allllll that empathy hurriedly flushes down the drain as though it was never there).

But the point is, my cis white male privilege is always here regardless. But that doesn't mean rape culture isn't shitty enough that it can't find a way to circumvent even that in pursuit of discrediting/invalidating/ignoring survivors, just like that privilege can be circumvented in order to create the situation where a man is raped in the first place.

Its just....the gendered nature of rape culture means HOW those attempts to discredit/invalidate/ignore male survivors manifests.....doesn't look the same as when it leads to just outright disbelieving other survivors when they attempt to disclose.

And that is how I can be listened to and reblogged on most any other topic, no matter HOW I go about presenting myself in those posts or conversations - ironically in no small part BECAUSE of my cis white male privilege - while only getting crickets when I post on these topics, BECAUSE people only choose THOSE posts to make my presentation or level of intensity a dealbreaker, and thus their very reason for ignoring anything I have to say there. Not because they don't believe me, but because the WAY I say it is too aggressive, too biased, too emotional, too intense....its an attack on their autonomy, an attempt to override whatever they previously thought or believed about the subject and just force them to adhere to my take.

Because the thing about living in a sexist, patriarchal society is.....that IS a thing that cis white men often do, and a lot of society is structured to make it easier for us to achieve this in most instances, frankly. This just happens to be a rare exception, because for a lot of reasons that would make this post even longer - and that again, I've often posted about before - upholding and reinforcing rape culture on a society wide level supersedes the usual focus on accommodating INDIVIDUAL cis white men in having their opinions heard and circulated.

I'm trying to be as frank as possible here about the intersection of privilege and experiences of being a male survivor because I don't believe its to anyone's benefit to be disingenuous about it, and I do think that it doesn't actually supplant the fact that male survivors do have just as much right - and NEED - to be heard and listened to about our experiences with rape and perspective there, and have those ACKNOWLEDGED, as anyone else.

Its just....the existence of privilege and how that differentiates most experiences in a gendered society matters, and thus.....it needs to be part of the conversation rather than just treating all responses to rape and survivors as agendered, just because rape itself can and does happen to people of all genders.

There's actually a fair amount to get into when it comes to differences in a lot of mens' disclosures vs womens' in my experience, but just as an extension of what I'm talking about here, one of the specific elements in my experience is that men often don't have a problem being believed about having been raped or abused.....but one of the predominant responses is society is heavily preconditioned to view male rape and abuse survivors as almost inevitably feeling they need to exert a similar power over someone else in order to claim back their own feelings of pride and safety in their masculinity. Effectively.....most every male rape or abuse survivor I've ever talked with at length shares a similar experience of being believed when they disclose about being a survivor....but noting a clear and direct shift in how whomever they disclosed to interacts with them....with EVERY expression of anger or outrage - particularly in the matter of their rape or abuse - being viewed as evidence of us being ticking time bombs who are inevitably primed to explode and take out what happened to us on someone else.

There's being cautious around cis white men, for example, because we're cis white men, which I totally get and am not expressing an opinion on. I'm just saying even with that acknowledged, there is a SHIFT in how people interact with me after I've disclosed to them personally, in how they....scrutinize me, for lack of a better way of putting it, in very noticeable ways and areas. Like its consistent. And think about how its not totally true that media doesn't portray men as being capable of being raped or abused, typically. Think about how often you've seen procedurals where the backstory of the rapist or abuser of the week is specifically THAT they were a rape or abuse survivor themselves, usually in childhood. Its NOT that society doesn't believe or accept that men can be raped too. Its that society is primed to default to viewing the very act of men being raped as an indicator of the shift from them being a man to being a man who is likely to become a predator themselves.

Rape appears all the time in regards to male survivors in media. Its just it usually just appears in the context of men who arent presented AS survivors, but rather as predators or aggressors themselves, and their past victimization treated as a catalyst rather than a trauma. This is not to excuse any such character or depiction of course, its simply to emphasize that the very angle from which male survivorhood is approached in most contexts is different from that of other survivors. Just like the angle from which their survivorhood is approached is different from that of male survivors. And thus the issue most men have with disclosing in my experience is NOT that we're afraid we won't be believed....its that we're afraid once we disclose, we'll be viewed as inherently more dangerous because our victimization primes us to be that much more likely to inflict ourselves on others in some attempt to reclaim our masculinity.

And its categorically NOT about any group of survivors having it better or worse than others, which is why I LOATHE people saying variations of 'you wouldn't say that about this if it happened to a woman' because anyone attempting to pit male survivors against other survivors en masse is NOT doing so for my benefit or with my endorsement. The point is just that each way society and rape culture interacts with a different group of survivors presents different problems and issues that need addressing, and aren't interchangeable.

There is a REASON why the subject of Dick Grayson's anger - usually in the context of things that have happened to him - is so important to me, specifically in terms of ensuring that its treated as something he's allowed to have....rather than an indicator that he's going to messily explode his life in a way that impacts everyone around him negatively.

Now.....if you've never considered that aspect of rape vs rape culture and how it can differently affect and shape the experiences and recovery of cis male survivors versus trans male survivors and nonbinary survivors and survivors who identify as women.....I ask that you consider what else my perspective might be able to add to actually productive, meaningful conversations about rape, rape culture and survivorhood, that you never would have thought TO think about before, without male survivors bringing it up based on it having played a role in personal experiences.

And then I just ask that you please think about the implications of someone known for being a vocal presence in certain fandoms, with a fairly sizable number of posts widely circulating throughout them......never having posts about male rape and survivorhood circulated to any noticeable degree, despite writing DOZENS of them, in all kinds of different moods, ways and intensity levels.....and all of them while active in fandoms where male rape is regularly discussed or focused on due to certain characters or storylines......and ask yourselves if it maybe seems a little off for the disparity to be THAT large. Again: I have written DOZENS of posts on this topic. All with less than twenty notes. I'll be composing a masterlist of them in the near future as well, but for now I'm just saying. Please just think about that.

While I'm going to make an effort to be more deliberate in how I approach this topic in posts going forward, tonally and in terms of word choice, I do have a right to be just as passionate about it as any other topic, and it is FUCKED UP to think that my personal experiences here should be pointed to as the very REASON I should need to be LESS passionate than I am anywhere else, in order to be heard or listened to. Still. I am not actually trying to override anyone else's viewpoint, present myself as some kind of ultimate authority, or shut down other survivors in any way....I'm just trying to uphold the relevancy and importance of adding my own perspective to the conversation.

I don't want to be the only voice listened to here. But as long as my voice is relevant, and I don't see or hear a lot of other voices speaking from a similar standpoint, I would like to be a RESOURCE on topics of male survivorhood, rape and recovery, from that particular standpoint. And even if and when other male survivors might perchance add their own perspectives with experiences and takes contrary to mine....I welcome that! Because mine is not the only one, cis white male survivors are no more a monolith than anyone else, and none of that will in any way actually invalidate my own perspective or experiences or render them no longer relevant at all.

Being a resource on a topic that has always been everpresent in most fandoms I've gravitated to - which has often been a reason FOR me gravitating to those fandoms in specific.....that has always been my ONLY goal with these kinds of posts. NOT an authority.

So, having my posts - which for all my willingness to write them, has never been easy for me and probably never will - reframed in such a negative way, dismissed and even weaponized against me - has over the years demoralized me and made it harder to find the energy TO tackle these topics, as much as I'd like to. But I do feel that I've found a second wind when it comes to this and think I'm ready to wade back into being Overly Opinionated on these topics as well.

So that's the third of the three post series I'll be starting, "Kalen vs Topics of Rape, Rape Culture and Survivorhood As Perceived Through A Singular Personalized Cis White Male Lens, Presented By (and With) My Middle Finger At Any Attempts to Subvert Or Undermine My Thoughts On Them By Reframing Them As Me Trying To Gatekeep Male Survivorhood No Matter How Many Times I Use The Words IN MY EXPERIENCE or IN MY OPINION, Which I Do A Lot, Because This Has Been Happening For A Very Long Time, And I Am Tired, But Still Very Opinionated, And Still Very Here, So Bite Me I Guess."

.....I'm still workshopping that one's title. Its a process.

ANYWAY. At the moment, I'm aiming to make one post of each once a month, and if I do more than that great, but not trying to pressure myself to do any more than that at the moment in the interests of Realism. We'll play it by ear. If I have more free time or energy than expected, maybe I'll do more. Its not like I have a shortage of Very Opinionated Opinions, after all. You've met me.

BUT I DIGRESS.

So in the interest of not making this long ass post any fucking longer, not that anyone really expected otherwise from my first post back in months, like could I REALLY even claim to ACTUALLY be back if all I had to show for it was some weak little lackluster drabble that wasn't even 3,000 words? Methinks the fuck not -

Well, have an abrupt and anticlimactic finish that comes out of nowhere despite giving myself literally 4,900 words to build to something appropriately profound or meaningful or whatthefuckever. Y'know. Your standard Kalen Classic. The abrupt and anticlimactic wrap up I mean, not the profound and deeply meaningful one. Eh. You get it.

Did ya miss me? I missed you!

PS - I was Informed that we are almost to the end of Tommy T's Tenure, is it almost safe to come back to Nightwing comics? Does anyone know when his last issue is? Have we planned the party yet? Who's on balloons, we definitely need balloons.

[cosmicjoke]

As an eruri shipper I wanted to thank you for your callout post. For nearly a year now I have gotten so much hate on my fics that I thought about deleting them, I haven't tho, thankfully. I found out about the spiteful troll and so I did my best to ignore it. However, the hateful comments my work was getting was beyond me because I hardly ever care what people ship or do and was simply minding my business writing what I like only to be told that I'm a jealous loser and I should stop writing Levi together with the "ugly bitch" (referring to Erwin) and that I should touch grass or slit my throat ... which?? And they made it sound like shipping Levi with a man was illegal or that the ship was inappropriate in some way.

I don't know who is really behind those hateful comments but if it's really her I hope karma hits her way very hard. Don't tell people to kill themselves over fiction EVER. That's common decency.

And about some eruris seeing you as an anti shipper. I'll admit I thought you were one as well. It didn't bother me as everyone is free to do whatever they want, but it's a pleasant surprise to know you actually like the ship and write fics for it. If anything, I admire how you can put your shipping goggles aside to write your analyses. It's very impressive.

Don't know if this is relevant but self shippers scare me a bit. Some of them have mean girls energy and I don't want to be attacked so that's why I'm staying on anon🙏🏻

First of all, let me truly thank you from the bottom of my heart for reaching out. It means the world to me, and I admire you for sharing your experience too. I'm super glad to hear that you didn't let the person leaving hateful comments on your stories drive you to delete them. I understand completely where you're coming from, as I've deleted stories of mine in the past due to an overabundance of negative comments. But I've never had anyone actually leave me death threats, or wish for harm to befall me on any of my stories, and to do that is truly the lowest of the low. Not just because it's over something as harmless as a piece of fictional writing, but just in general, it's never okay to wish harm on someone who's never harmed anyone else, or over something as ridiculous as a disagreement.

And yes, given what I've seen from this person on twitter, claiming Erwin is some "old man", they seem to think shipping him and Levi is tantamount to pedophilia, which is so absurd it doesn't even warrant a response. Erwin is at most maybe 5 years older than Levi? If even? They're both in their 30s. Shipping them is totally normal and healthy, lol.

I just think this person has some sort of raging, disgusting prejudice against gay relationships, and they view all gay relationships as perverse in some way. It's truly their problem, not anyone else's. I don't know either if it's the same person I got into an argument with here on tumblr, but so much of the language is the same, and the things they say are so similar to what was being said on twitter and a03, that I'm more than inclined to believe it is the same person. I can only hope my post helps inform more people about them and what a toxic, horrible person they are. Hopefully it will lead to them being blocked so that it isn't so easy for them to harass others. Though I already know they have multiple accounts here on tumblr, since they saw my post and started ranting about it on their blog, even though I had them blocked.

It also means the world to me to know that I've been able to clear up with you my stance on eruri and shipping in general. That was big of you to not be bothered by me when you did think I was an anti, but I'm glad I was able to show you that I'm not. I'm really, really not, lol. I love eruri. It's my favorite ship, and all my favorite AoT fanfics are eruri fics, lol. You can find comments I've left on too many to count at this point. I just try to keep it out of discussions which focus on "Attack on Titan" itself and Levi's role within the story, because I just don't see his relationship with Erwin in canon as romantic. I just think you have to keep the ship separate from canon because if you're going into an analysis of the narrative and Levi's or Erwin's role in it with some preconceived idea that their relationship is romantic in nature, then that's going to color one's ability to objectively analyze the motivations and the reasoning behind both Levi's and Erwin's actions. But I was never, ever against the ship, or against the idea of them being shipped. I think I got the reputation of being an anti because for a long time, I was being inundated with anon asks basically accusing me of being homophobic for saying eruri isn't canon, or anon asks trying to "prove" to me that it is canon and then getting angry at me when I disagreed, or when I lost my patience with them for simply not accepting my stance on this issue. And I think this small group of people then went around to other eruri's and spread to them that I was some sort of aggressive eruri hater. But again, I never was and never will be. I talk more about Levi's relationship with Erwin than any other character, and I find their canon relationship to be incredibly moving and powerful, and further, I love Erwin as a character. One thing I hope all of this will also do is make it clear to other eruri shippers that I'm not against them or their ship at all. I really don't want to be anyone's enemy, least of all eruri shippers. That was never something I set out to do, haha.

But yes, I'm right there with you regarding some self-shippers. Obviously, most of them aren't like this person. Most of them are normal and understand what they write and do is just for fun. But after "Bad Boy" came out, it seemed like the most push back against analysis of that story and its implications came from the self-shipping community, particularly people that seem to actually labor under some sort of delusion of actually, truly being with Levi in a romantic, sexual relationship. I don't understand that at all, because Levi isn't real, lol.

But they seem to get so upset at any discussion of Levi's trauma, or of Levi being affected by his trauma, because acknowledging that trauma and the impact its had on him ruins whatever fantasy, dom-daddy version of Levi it is that they've concocted in their heads. They like to claim Levi is some hard-ass, stoic, unaffected, domineering sex god, because that's what turns them on, and any discussion about what the actual reality of Levi's sexuality would likely be, due to the sexual trauma he's been exposed to, needs to be shut down, because it ruins the fantasy they have. They can't claim that the way they characterize Levi is objective or accurate to canon if Levi's sensitivity or vulnerability as a person is acknowledged, so they like to claim he's not affected at all by his past trauma, that he's just too hardcore to ever succumb to or be profoundly impacted by the things he's lived through. They like to imagine he's just come out the other side totally a-okay and that his stoicism and rudeness is 100% just a product of him being kind of a mean person, again, because they like the idea of being treated meanly by him in a sexual setting.

But Levi isn't a mean person, at all. He's literally the opposite of mean. He's the most thoughtful and considerate character in the series, constantly going out of his way to express his gratitude and ease the suffering of others. He's just awkward, like Dimo Reeves says, and isn't good at filtering his words or expressing himself. That some of these people refuse to acknowledge that the way Levi grew up, the environment he grew up in and the way he was raised, didn't have an impact on his ability to navigate social situations is patently absurd and stupidly unrealistic. It also undermines the severity of abuse Levi suffered in his upbringing, to deny that it had any sort of negative or harmful impact on his ability to interact socially with others. He was raised by a serial killer, for Christ's sake, lol. He wasn't ever taught how to talk to people in a way that would make them more comfortable. He was only ever taught violence and how to kill by Kenny, and he was too young when his mother died to learn anything from her, and he was also abandoned and left on his own at the age of ten, in the most cutthroat, dangerous environment there is inside the walls, surrounded by criminals, rapist, murderers and human traffickers, as well as just desperate people who would resort to plenty of bad shit just to survive. He probably didn't have a single, normal social interaction in his life until he met Furlan and Isabel. I would like these people to explain to me, then, how it is they think that didn't have an impact on the way Levi interacts with others?

He's an exceptionally honest person, too, and he also isn't someone who's concerned with being well-liked, so he doesn't try to ingratiate himself to others by acting friendly. But Levi never sets out to hurt anyone's feelings. He isn't malicious or cruel. He just says what he's thinking and sometimes it comes out sounding unkind. And we see, when Levi realizes it, that he tries to explain himself, again, not because he wants to be liked, but because he doesn't actually ever intend to hurt anyone's feelings. This idea that Levi is a mean person is totally wrong.

Anyway, I went off on a bit of tangent there, lol. Sorry about that. But again I just want to reiterate how much I appreciate you reaching out like this! And don't let these freak shows get you down.

[i-am-beckyu]

I've made a decision

Okay first up, thank you dingbatnix for making your own post on this because it makes me feel a whole lot better about this.

I am going to continue writing dsmp g/t. To be honest I don't think I ever really cared too much about the actual dsmp story itself but was more in love with the characters and the way they interacted.

As I have said before the stories I write are based on the content creators characters and not the creators themselves. I want to be clear when I say I do not support abusers and all my support goes out to Shelby and others affected by William Gold.

The thing that has probably been bothering me most though is how a lot of creators have been going forward since hearing the news. Most writers have been changing the names of characters or changing their designs in different ways and I think that's fine and I'm glad other people have found ways to move forward in their own ways. What I've been stuck on is not wanting to change how I write. I like referring to the characters in my stories as they are and I don't want to do any rewrites or name changing.

To me, they are their own characters and again, the characters I write are NOT the real people. They are fictional and should be treated as such. But the more I try and force myself to change the characters, the more I hate the idea and lose motivation to finish stuff. So I'm not going to.

What will most likely end up happening is that when I've finished the fics I'm working on, then I will probably stop writing them and create my own oc's, but for now I want to keep creating what I still enjoy.

If you don't like that, that's fine, but I don't want to hear it or see it in my inbox or comments. I'm doing me, so deal with it.

Time framewise no clue, but I just wanted to share this and get it off my mind. Thanks if you read the entire thing.

-Beckyu

[moralina]

Family reunion | Eddie Munson

Summary: Eddie atends your annual family gathering, and for no ones surprise, he fits right in.

A/N: am i allowed to post a christmas fic a month after christmas? anyway trying to write again for eddie. not sure if i really captured his personality. anyway last time i wrote for him it was a flop, hope this is better

warnings: none, just fluff and reader's family loving eddie. Fem!reader. My english (it's been a while since ive done anything in english).

There was a light breeze flowing around you, coming from the slightly open window to your left. The cold weather of December made itself present in every joint of your body, making it impossible for you to work on your current task.

The sound of the oven clicking brought you back to your senses, your eyes moving from your frozen hands to the - hopefully -  appetizing lasagna, ready to be set on the table and enjoyed by your whole family.

As clockwork, you heard a weak knock at your front door, a smile making itself present on your features as you knew exactly who was at the door.

"I got it!" you screamed at whoever was there to listen - your family was all in the living room enjoying the nice warmth of the fireplace while you were left to freeze in the kitchen.

There was a tradition done every year one week before Christmas. Every member of your family would get together at someone's house, a game would take place, and the loser was assigned to the main course of the night in the following year. It would be a weekend event, and it was just a big excuse for everyone to see each other. Every year, you'd be excited for this one weekend, happy to taste every food on the table and every dessert your body would allow you to eat.

This year, though, you wanted to jump inside the oven and stay there with the lasagna. It was too cold, and you were extremely tired from all the events of the previous week.

One of your colleagues at work chose to quit in one of the most tumultuous weeks of the month so far. You were dreading the days before Christmas, already knowing people would go on a last-hour shopping spree. Every single thing that needed to be done at the store was thrown your way.

"Welcome to my humble abode, young gentleman." You bowed down after opening the door. As you expected, Eddie was standing - rather awkwardly - on the front steps of your house. He looked terrified - and cute, as always.

"Hi, baby. Hi." His voice soft, as if he was scared to speak any louder.

"Where's my kiss?" you asked after a long, silent 30 seconds of just staring at each other. Your voice calm, and smile gentle, trying to give him as much comfort as you could.

"Sorry." He mumbled, a breathy chuckle left his lips before he closed the distance between the two of you. "So?" he asked, arms open while he did a little dance to show off his clothes, "how do I look?"

"Pretty." You kissed his nose, "like you always do, Eds." Your hand grabbed his, pushing him closer to you. Before closing the door, your eyes traveled to the dark sky above you; heavy gray clouds adorned its splendor. "I think it's going to snow." You mumbled more to yourself, but Eddie heard you. With a shine to his eyes and hands going around your figure, he rested his chin on your shoulder before whispering in your ear.

"You do? Maybe we can build a snowman later."

You sighed, your hot breath creating clouds when coming into contact with the chilling weather. Despite his chattering teeth - due to the night’s cool temperature cutting through his clothes, - his heart was warm against his chest. Never in a million years did Eddie Munson think he'd feel so... domestic with someone. So safe and belonging.

"Oh my god, Y/n. Let the boy inside, he's freezing!" your aunt urged you both inside "c'mon honey, we have some hot chocolate waiting for you." She ended her sentence by dragging Eddie to the living room, his eyes wide. Before disappearing into the corner, he looked your way, and you sent him a teasing smirk. You could see his face relax a little, but his big brown eyes were still as wide, as if they were gonna pop out of their sockets. You couldn’t help the amused chuckle that left your mouth.

"Are you coming to our Easter treasure hunt, honey?" You could hear your aunt ask him as you approached the living room, her voice so sweet and tender. Eddie had never felt so welcomed before, especially by adults, - they usually considered him a bad influence on their kids - and these people barely knew him and still, were treating him as a part of their family.

it all felt so weird but so good at the same time.

"um" he didn't really know what to say. You haven’t invited him, and he didn’t want to intrude on your family’s activities. Being here tonight already felt like too much, so in his head, it was better not to overstep. He didn’t want to ruin everything with you by being too clingy. He settled with "I’m not sure." and a shake of his shoulders.

"Oh, don't be silly!" she rolled her eyes at him and waved her hand. "You're definitely invited; maybe with your help, Y/n will be able to win."

"Hey!" you exclaimed, hand on your heart, "I won in ‘82."

"Yes, indeed." she slowly nodded her head. You knew she had more to say. "Because you cheated."

"I didn't cheat!"

"oh! as if i wouldn’t know. You’re the worst liar in the family!" you huffed and crossed your arms in front of your chest like a grumpy child. Eddie could see the small twitch of your lips, definitely holding a smirk back. At that, he had to laugh, and it was quite loud, making everyone turn their attention from you to him. He coughed, trying to hide it as if no one had just heard him.

"Well," she spoke again, "if y/n thinks she’s too good for a partner on the hunt, you can be mine." she stated simply.

"you’d love that wouldn’t you?" you huffed a laugh.

Before sitting down, you glanced at Eddie. His lips turned upward, and he eyed every member of your family with admiration and curiosity. You nodded towards the comfy sofa, and after gripping his hand, you pushed him down to sit with you.

"Sorry for her, she’s a lot sometimes." you whispered to him after your family settled back into their previous conversation.

"Are you kidding me? She's great!" he exclaimed, bright, dark eyes looking at you adoringly.

Like you knew he would, Eddie fitted just perfectly with your family, and after his initial shyness went away, he was able to be himself, his dramatic way of storytelling amusing your relatives, who listened intently to him while he told them about the time you almost hit an old lady while he tried to teach you how to drive.

It was not a funny story to you

"That did not happen like that."

"it definitely did!"

"I’m sure Eddie is telling the truth." your aunt spoke again, making you glare at her while the whole family nodded their heads in agreement. Your younger cousins holding their laughs, but failing miserably.

"you’re all traitors!" you exclaimed, making Tyler, an 8-year-old little devil, smirk and say

"You know, Eddie, i like you" he squinted at you and nodded his head, as if satisfied with his conclusion, "maybe we can trade you for him."

"ha ha, very funny." You stuck your tongue out at him, but before he could respond, your eyes widened, and you stood up abruptly, "Oh my god, the lasagna!" your voice faded as you made your run to the kitchen.

"she’ll definitely not be in charge of the dinner next year."

"Remember me again," your aunt sighed, "why did we let the kid in charge this year?"

A/n: Yeah, idk 😭😭😭

If you enjoyed please consider leaving a like and rebloging, it helps a lot 🤍🤍

[monstersinthecosmos]

I have no confidence writing smut, so, smut writing advice?

HELLO yes of course, writing smut is my favorite hobby lol. 🥹🥹

I’m gonna break this into two sections, because what I’m about to say up top is more important (to me LOL) so I wanna lead with it, and if you’re still with me by the end I’ll discuss a couple technical things that help me a lot personally.

But first thing I wanna say, and I’m a broken record because I say this literally every time anyone asks me about writing, my 100% absolute Number One Rule is :

Write what you want to read. 

And when it comes to writing smut, what that means is: DO YOU THINK IT’S HOT? IS THIS A DYNAMIC YOU WANT TO SEE EXPLORED? DO YOU WANT THE CHARACTER TO GET OFF IN THIS SPECIFIC WAY????

Because something that I think a lot of fic writers struggle with, especially breaking into smut, is we have shyness about it. And like, it doesn’t matter how polished your fic is, it doesn’t matter if it’s the most gorgeous prose and most satisfying character arc—when you’re writing smut, you have to ask: Does this make me horny? Is this an idea that I find horny? Can I approach it both bravely (by admitting I thought of it in the first place) and sincerely (knowing that people might jerk off to it without judging them)? You absolutely cannot be afraid to share this idea that you had, and I think that’s baked into a lot of us. I think it’s pretty common in our varying cultures and it can feel taboo and vulnerable to talk about. And honestly like, no matter what else you worry about in the writing itself, that first hurdle really is just being brave enough to write it down at all, and if it’s something you want to share or post you have to build on that, as well.

A lot of writing advice out there focuses on like technical things and language and prose and tbh, that stuff doesn’t really matter to me. (I do have a few things I’ll share at the end though!) Like, I think we can all learn and there’s no harm in thinking about our technical style, but I also think that we can’t hold ourselves back just because we don’t feel ready. You have to practice, and no one peaks on the first try. And I think there’s a lot of elitism (even ableism, classism, & racism/xenophobia) in snobby writing circles about skill and language, when I really think that storytelling is so much about being able to communicate. If you can communicate your idea, it doesn’t matter how polished it is. It’s not a contest. 

I’ve read some incredible smut fics that were the SLOPPIEST writing I’ve ever seen in my life and I still admired the IDEAS so much. The writer communicated ideas to me and the filthiest kinks I ever saw in my life, so I didn’t care that they weren’t doing line breaks for new speakers, I didn’t care about the run-on sentences, I didn’t care about the constant tense switches. 

So I say all this to say that like, all writing takes some confidence, some bravery, SHARING IT CAN BE SCARY, but like, YOU GOTTA LOL. The way out is through, babe!!! And it will get easier with practice and repetition, but I really do believe that it takes bravery at ANY level. And I think if we all didn’t have some little voice inside telling us that we could get better, we would have no interest in getting better, and the moment you become OVER confident is when your work stagnates. Like, I’ve been writing & sharing fanfic since I was like 13 years old and I still get really anxious every time I post something! I still find flaws in my writing and I still have goals I’m trying to meet! So you gotta start somewhere, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not polished and perfect. What matters is that you start. And I don’t think it makes a difference if it’s a smut fic or not, like all writing needs this bravery, but I think sometimes there’s that extra barrier with smut because people get squeamish about it.

But like your writing, and your VOICE, is not just the words you’re using and your prose and your sense of style; it’s your IDEAS. It’s your sensibility! It’s the lens you have! Your worldview! Things about characters that you might notice because of your background, that someone else might not notice! So like, marinate in your IDEAS and think again “What would I want to read?” because that’s your TASTE, and that’s your voice. And when it’s time to write smut, you don’t need to make it formulaic to some fandom trope if it’s not sincere. If you don’t like reading about prep and foreplay — DON’T WRITE IT. That’s your take, it’s your taste! That’s your voice !!! 

At every point of your story keep asking “Is this what I would want to read?” And if it’s not, don’t do it!!!! 

So I mean. I think that’s very wishy washy and it’s sort of a non-answer, but I don’t think anything else matters until you conquer that part. At least, that’s how it was for me!!!! And since you asked ME, and this is *my* experience, aka my voice, my take, etc, that’s the answer. If you asked other smut writers they’d likely say something different!

But I do have a few technical things I can advise on, so that’s the second half of this. 

And ALSO in between these two things I also want to mention some GENERAL STUFF that I have written about, because aside from blah blah YER VOICE (qotd!movie tough cookie quote), my other biggest writing advice is like, having the discipline to actually write LOL. And if you’re neurodivergent like I am it kinda helps to like figure out what works personally for you; I listed a bunch of stuff that works for ME in these posts but if one size fit all we wouldn’t be neurodivergent LOL. So like before you can even WRITE you have to like allow yourself time and space to write or it’s never gonna get done in the first place. So here's some other posts I've written in the past and I apologize if I've repeated myself lol --

On burnout & writer's block ADHD Writing Tips!

On Editing! (but really on outlining bc if you outline you won't have to edit so hard!)

OKAY OKAY OKAY sorry for the preamble, here’s some more points:

1. READ SMUT! TAKE NOTES!

“Write what you want to read!” I said, but ! What do you like to read? Read some smut, figure out what you like! Figure out what you don’t like! I have a laundry list of stuff I don’t like, so I try to avoid repeating it in my fics. Learning what not to do is just as important. 

Literally I started doing a thing when I was hitting some walls with smut writing where I copy & pasted some of my fav smut fics into a new document and I just started like, highlighting things that I found effective while I was reading, so that I could kinda study it and see what it had in common. And it helped me figure out what I like! Because sometimes reading it kinda like nebulous or you’re just trying to nut or whatever and don’t really think about stuff like that HAHA so it made me think more deeply about like “oh I enjoy when we mention our feelings” “I enjoy sensory details” etc. So that makes me think about the way I would want to write, ie: copious amounts of feelings and sensory details. 

2. INVISIBLE WORDS & FIRST DRAFT VOCAB

There’s certain words that become invisible in porn, the way people’s names do. It’s the same way people commonly get squeamish about saying a character’s name over and over and wind up using cheesy epithets for no narrative reason lol. Same for words like “cock” “hole” “nipple” “pussy” etc. I think there’s one or two words for the basic parts and it depends a lot on your own preference, like maybe you like the word “cunt” more than “pussy” or you prefer “dick” to “cock”. Make those decisions!

But do NOT get squeamish about using that word over and over. The reader does not care. I guarantee you have read smut fics where you didn’t even notice. It’s an invisible word.  (I s2g go ctrl+f on your fav smut fics to see how many times the author says “cock” you’ll be amazed lol) 

Because when you start overcomplicating it, and start using cheesy floral analogies or something, people notice that! If you’re getting desperate and squeamish to mix up your genital vocab, someone will notice you saying “tight ring of muscle” but won’t notice you saying “hole”. It’s the type of thing that makes the reader stop and go “oh no lol”. AT LEAST, IT DOES FOR ME, SO I DO NOT WRITE THAT WAY. 

Not to say that you can’t pick like, a handful of words you like! I usually rotate a handful of dick words but like, it’s just words I don’t mind, but I don’t go out of my way to say something unique about a fucking penis because the person reading is trying to jerk off and it’s just not necessary. 

On the other hand, I do believe it’s good to mix up sensory and action words. I try not to use the same verb more than once every few paragraphs, so I’ll mix up words like fuck/thrust/plunge/rail. Etc. Also words like heated/blistering/burning. Again, don't go so crazy that you sound bizarre because people WILL notice when it's becoming unnatural, but mixing up the rest of your vocab helps the cadence, I think, which I will always suggest in general for writing. Try not to be too repetitive. But I promise you can say "cock" as many times as you want, it's invisible, no one will care.

Don’t get too stressed about your vocabulary on your first draft, though. I really recommend just banging out the first draft as it comes to you and stay in the zone because you’ll notice stuff like that when you (or your beta if you use one) read it to edit. But thesaurus.com is your friend and you literally can google like “words for writing erotica” and you’ll find tons of lists!!! 

3. SEX POSITION BETA READ

I really really really suggest on your reread for edits to do a SPECIFIC run through JUST to check everyone’s positions and parts. Nothing takes me out of reading a scene faster than someone on their back and suddenly they’re on their knees, or someone’s limbs being somewhere that don’t make sense. After you’ve worried about all the other stuff you’re checking, just go back and look one more time for stuff like this, because it’s so easy to miss, especially when you’re worrying about hunting for typos lol. 

4. PLAN THE CHOREOGRAPHY AND WRITE AN OUTLINE

Do you think I don’t outline my smut scenes? YOU’RE WRONG! 

I have a certain way I like to outline, and like, I know outlining isn’t for everyone!, (and I linked a post talking about it above). Anyway, your fic outline might look like 

-beginning -middle -smut scene -end

Even if you don't outline the whole fic, I find that it really helps to just sketch out what you want the scene to be like so that you have a reference to work from. 

For example, maybe you get to "smut scene" and expand it to:

- they make out on the couch - “I really wanna fuck you right now” - oral  - move to the bedroom - start in missionary - flip the bottom over to do from behind

Etc !!! Do whatever you want. But I think planning those steps out kinda helps to visualize what you want the scene to be, and when you start writing you can take it a point at a time.

And BE PATIENT!!!! 

There’s no reason to rush through. And again you gotta ask like, what would you want to read? Do you like when there’s a lot of attention given on prep? On foreplay? DO YOU HATE WHEN THERE’S TOO MUCH PREP? This is all very subjective and you have to make those decisions. Don’t feel like you need to squash in a sex ed lesson to your porn scene if you don’t want to. OR DO IT, IF YOU DO WANT TO! Personally, I don’t really like ~sexposition~ where I feel like the author is ticking off a bunch of boxes so that Tumblr won’t get mad at them. I don’t want to feel like I’m in a sex ed class. I don’t care if they’re not wearing condoms, I don’t care whether or not you tell me if they showered, I don’t care if anyone douches first. Look, it’s porn lol. 

And for some folks, those details are hot! It’s part of the RITUAL, baby! So INCLUDE THAT if it’s what you like! But this is all so intuitive and subjective; just do whatever you want! It’s your story! You’re in charge!

But I think like doing that planning beforehand can be really helpful when it's time to get down to it because it gives you a guide, and it helps stretch the scene out. I don't rush through scenes when I have an outline, because it forces me to stop and think about each step and give each step its own space. I think sometimes people rush through their smut scenes, which especially gives me blue balls if it was a slow burn, like again thinking about what I would want to read—if I get slow burned I want it to be WORTH IT. I want them to FUCK for like EVER once the dam breaks. 

Another thing, regarding choreography LOL, and this isn’t for everyone!!!, but if you’re someone who isn’t repulsed by watching porn, check porn videos for reference!!! I do this frequently LOL especially bc most of my ships have size differences LOL so sometimes I need to know if certain positions work, like, can they still kiss in this position, etc. It helps me to look at real people. Artists use references, too, so writers are allowed to! 

Do NOT feel pressured to look up IRL porn if that grosses you out LOL but it’s a tool that’s available if you’re into that! I do it all the time. I even can tell you specific videos that I based fics on HAHA. And it can help when you get stuck, if you're not sure how you want to choreograph, literally just watch a video and describe what you're seeing.

5. DON’T FORGET SENSORY STUFF

Not just the sexy parts, but like. What does the blanket feel like? Are they cold? Is the position uncomfortable? Are they getting sweaty?

I like when people tell me stuff like this!!!! I wanna know!!!!! 

I don’t want to just read “They were fucked over the arm of the couch”, I wanna read “The cushion was scratchy on their knees as they were bent over the arm of the couch”.  Tell me that stuff!!! It’s immersive!!! 

6. MAKE IT WEIGH ENOUGH

This goes towards being patient, too, but, think about like, what’s the ratio you want in your story of plot:smut. And it’s okay to have any combination of this, it depends what you feel like writing and what’s the story you’re trying to tell. Because a story could be ALL SMUT, like a PWP, or it could be a sprawling epic with a teeny little smut scene as a treat. But make that decision and try to be intentional.

I don’t like to think about my work in terms of word counts, like I never aim to make the smut scene a certain numbers of k’s or whatever, because I think forcing myself into those boxes is going to make the work insincere, but if you wrote an outline or at least know all the points you want to hit, you can start working through those points and it’ll get said when it gets said. 

But for arguments sake, if you wanna write smut, but you wanna give it a little setup, think about it like, do you want it to be 3k of setup for a 500 word blowjob? Or is it a 500 word intro for a shameless smut PWP? Is it equal? Is the smut and plot intertwined??? Completely up to you, but I think you should decide stuff like that before you start the scene, just so that you have a roadmap of how you want it to go and what you want the reading experience to be. When you’re in the mood to read smut, do you need to bond with all the plot and feeling before you’re interested? Or do you like to just jump in? And once you get to the smut, do you want to spend time with it or should it burn out real fast? 

And don’t get me wrong, because you can like all of those things! We all contain multitudes. I’ve written all combinations !!! LOL. So it also has to serve the story you’re trying to tell. What’s the goal here? What’s the smut for? Is the smut the whole story? The main event? A subplot? Decide that, and be patient when you get to writing it, and don’t rush through it, and make sure you say everything you want to say. Make it weigh enough in your story! 

7. ADD SOME CHARACTER EMOTIONS AND 🔥THE SYMBOLISMS🔥 IF YOU WANT TO

This last bit is just me personally so like, take it or leave it LOL, but personally I REALLY love porn with feelings, and I love hurt/comfort especially when the comfort is SEX LOL. If that’s not you, PLEASE IGNORE, YOU’RE AT THE END OF THE ROAD, THANKS FOR STOPPING BY.

If this IS you, think about stuff like this, too:

Are there kinks in your story? Do they align in some way with the character arc in the story? Is your main character feeling vulnerable and needs to be comforted in a specific way? Are they overwhelmed with making decisions so they want to be dominated so that they can turn off? 

Does the smut dynamic mirror the plot of the story in some way? 

Are the characters using sex to resolve an interpersonal problem? Will this bring them closer? Will it create confusion?

Does the character use sex to deflect from their actual feelings, and are they not completely present emotionally??? 

I like to think about stuff like this!! I think it can really add an extra layer to smut fics that make them SO DELIGHTFUL to me, so personally I always try to infuse this into my own writing. :) I want it to hurt! I want us to think about their feelings! I want to ask what does sex do for the character, how does it move the story, how does it change them??????? 

And stuff like this doesn’t have to be confusing and nebulous, you know? Like you’re the one writing it LOL, just make that decision!!! 

AND IF YOU’RE WRITING AN OUTLINE YOU CAN LEAVE YOURSELF NOTES. Like 

- they make out on the couch (character A is nervous) - “I really wanna fuck you right now” - oral  (character B worries they’re gonna catch feelings)  - move to the bedroom - start in missionary - flip the bottom over to do from behind (character A doesn’t want to look into character B’s face anymore because it feels too intimate) 

And that way you can kind remember to mention stuff like that and keep reminding us of everyone’s feelings.

Anyway okay this is like 3k of fucking RAMBLING, I hope something in here was useful! I think all writing advice is so subjective, it might be so catered to me personally that it doesn’t apply to anybody else LOL, so take what helps and leave the rest!! :D

[mint-yooxgi]

Why you should tag authors in your fic rec posts

Hello again. It's me. Honestly, I've felt this way for years, but I've never wanted to say anything until now, but honestly, I think it's time someone does. Every author is different, I recognize that, but with the uprise in reposters and plagiarism in the writing community on Tumblr, I feel like this post is important to make.

Keep in mind this is vastly a post regarding my own opinions of this matter, but if you are an author, or even a reader that agrees with any of the points here, feel free to share this to spread awareness.

So, without further ado, here are a variety of reasons you should tag and properly credit authors on your fic rec posts.

Believe it or not, fic recs are actually a very great source of feedback. When we're tagged when someone recs our fic, we get told, 'hey, this person likes our writing enough to tell other people about it, and share it with others who might like it as well!'. Without that tag, we have NO IDEA that you liked it enough to share it with others. Instead, our fic just gets reduced to the name or title we've labelled it as, and not the writer - the person, the human - who spent hours, days, weeks, months, or sometimes even years writing said piece that is linked to a recommended post. Supporting authors is so important, especially if you want them to continue writing!

That being said, and I don't know how many others will agree with me on this point, but I've always personally felt that people that don't tag authors on fic rec posts are almost trying to take credit for those particular stories. By not putting the author, it gives the allusion that the person making the post could have been the author of said story. Like, you can spare enough time and energy to link the post, but not hit a little @ key which takes about a third of the amount of time to do as it does to link the post? Given the amount of reposters and plagiarizers that are also on the rise lately on Tumblr, it just never sat right with me. The author put in the time and effort to create that story you're recommending. The least you could do is credit them with a proper tag.

Additionally, I just feel like it's common curtesy. Without a proper tag, to me, you're saying that the finished product is more important than the person behind said product who worked hard to create such a work for you to enjoy. If you can spend the time to make your fic rec post 'look nice', you can spend the two extra seconds it takes to tag the author. It shows you respect the person behind the writing as much as the writing itself. At least, to me.

Not tagging the author is essentially the same to me as if you never made the post in the first place. We have no idea about it unless we're lucky enough for it to pop up on our dash and we recognize our own piece of writing. I can't speak for others, but it literally makes my day when I see someone has tagged me in a fic rec post! Like, you cared enough to share my stories! You cared enough to tell people about me. It's one of the biggest compliments you can possibly give someone.

I know there are probably a plethora of other reasons as to why you should credit authors on fic rec lists and the like, but I've said the main points I want to here. If any other authors want to add any more reasons as to why you should tag them on fic rec posts, then by all means! Please, be my guest!

This post isn't meant to be a debate. I just felt it needed to be said, again, due to the rise in reposting and plagiarism that's been going around Tumblr recently, and also since it's just something I've always believed in.

Stories are meant to be shared. It's just nice knowing that our stories are being shared.