#To be clear I think irl families are fine with normal family stuff that involves actual normal cuddling.

[vorefessions]

🍂

Hi everybody, I just want to remind you that this is, and has always been, an adult blog for adults to talk or give submissions about vore. This is not, was not, and never will be, a safe space for children, and it is also not a space for adults who talk to children about vore or any other fetishes/dicey interests like vore. (So no tickling blogs, feet, whatever who talk to kids.)

We allow and heavily encourage nonsexual content, but suggestive content is also OK as long as it does not trend to outright explicit sexual territory. Suggestive and sexual blogs are also fine to interact with this blog, as long as it isn't outright problematic blogs (proship, especially if they feature incest/pedophelia/bestiality/necrophelia) or ones that feature irl porn.

[mallowstep]

What are your opinions on forbidden relationships in Warriors? I've seen people label it as a "trope" because of how common this is. Some find the forbidden romance aspect intriguing, though others find it extremely repetitive and old

I'd like to know your thoughts!

hm. well, it is a trope. i mean, there's an average of one major one a series, right? greysilver, leafcrow (and others, but that's the big one), heatherlion (and implied others), tigerdove, idk i don't remember anything from avos but violetshine luv her but there's probably something, bristleroot. dotc doesn't count bc well it's dotc.

anyway.

definitely a trope.

but that's not a bad thing.

what i think people don't give warriors enough credit for is that these are not all the same forbidden romance. most of them are handled in different ways and bring up different conflicts. i understand why people are tired of them, but let's not discredit one of the only good things in warriors romance: that they make forbidden relationships different.

like, with grey and silver, it's about loyalty and responsibility. leafcrow is just bad idea central, both heatherlion and tigerdove are about responsibilities and young cats, and they have two different answers, and bristleroot is challenging the whole idea from the start.

so like. give credit where credit is due: we're not doing the same (forbidden) relationships again and again. i don't see enough people talk about that.

okay so it turns out i have um. a lot of thoughts about this. idk i just kept writing and now it's over 2k words. so you know. under the cut: matthew does half-baked media analysis to talk about why the code and cats' relationships to it are misunderstood. while actually staying on topic.

anyway from here on i'm just going to say relationship/romance, and understand that i'm generally talking about the forbidden kind. also i'm talking exclusively within the realm of warriors romance, which is, on average, bad. so when i say "X is good," i don't mean "X is good in general," i mean "given what we have, X is good." just to be clear.

right! basically, this is a tool. it creates tension and drama, and that's fine. warriors is a soap opera, remember. soap operas use secrets and relationships and all sorts of plot devices over and over again. warriors is not Serious. it can be dark. it has serious moments. but it is not a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids. it is a soap opera for Future Theatre Kids. yeah?

from that perspective, i'm a-ok with forbidden romance. (also, as a mini-aside, it creates some much-needed genetic diversity when kits are involved.) and again: all of the major relationships are different, so i think that's better than a lot of people give it credit for.

yeah, heatherlion and greysilver and tigerdove are all about the same general idea (loyalty and responsibility), but they all have different circumstances and different resolutions.

so like? yeah. sure. why not?

plus, like, who's reading warriors for the romance? i separate the concept of "romance" from a "relationship" here: i like the relationships in warriors (ivy and dove tension my beloved), but i'm not here to read about tigerheart wooing dovewing. (yes, i do love the tigerdove scenes in oots. no, that's not because i think they're very good at being romantic.)

but i digress.

if warriors was a Serious Book Series for Serious Kids, i'd have a different take here. having been in an IRL forbidden relationship, i have the Personal Insight and Experience to say they're this weird mash of "very much how it feels" and "not at all how it feels."

tigerdove is probably my favourite bc it's the closest to my circumstances, and i think dovewing is a good pov. i like how she breaks up with him because it's a bad idea, but that's not the same thing as not feeling for him.

(heh. twelve-year-old me reading oots like "this will never apply to my life" what did you know)

but to the point, if warriors was serious, i'd point out that the consequences always seem to be internal. we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions. and so on.

but warriors is a soap opera.

and here's my actual thesis: we haven't seen characters be punished for their actions, because "forbidden relationships" are a normal and expected part of clan society.

like no, fandom-at-large, you're kind of missing the point. okay, you know how like. people complain about. idk. ivypool and fernsong being distantly related?

(third aside/very long ivyfern rant, i put a nice big "rant over" after it if you want to skip past it: they're third cousins. they share, max, 2.2% of their genetics. they are fine. do you know your third cousins? do you? yeah. and like. they live in a closed society. there is no one new.

i've never seen someone complain about forbidden romance and ivyfern at the same time, and i do generally agree we should have more mystery fathers, altho for a different reason, but like. idk. this bothers me.

their last shared relative was nutmeg. that's so far back. god. i get it, there was a prophecy saying they're related, but if you remember my rant about how dovewing shouldn't be a part of the prophecy because of how distantly related to firestar is, you know how i feel about that already.

complaining they're related and that's a problem is. deep breath here. it requires demonstrating that warriors has kept track of kinship all the way back to firestar's mother. and even if you wave that requirement, you still have to convince me they would care about that. this isn't a "they're cats, harold" situation, this is a "you would not know your third cousin even if you lived in the same town" situation.

i mean maybe you would. some people do. but my hometown has generations of people who married within its borders. you get as far as "cousin," maybe "second cousin" if you're feeling fancy. i'm not trying to make an always true statement, i just. every time i see someone complain about ivyfern being related, it strikes me as not understanding how extended families work?

i know third cousins isn't technically classified as a distant relative, but you have, on average, 190 third cousins. i feel so strongly about this i looked it up.

like i'm not. okay if you say, "I don't ship ivyfern because they are third cousins and that makes me uncomfortable" you are Valid. in general, you are all valid. i do not think you have to, on a personal level, be okay with ivyfern. you are free to do as you wish.

but. if you want to argue "ivyfern is a Bad Ship because they are third cousins" you have a hell of a burden of proof. simply saying "they share a great-great-grandmother" does not meet that, because like. yeah. we're all pretty damn related.)

(ivyfern rant over)

IVYFERN RANT OVER

right so. anyway. if you remove forbidden romance? you're forcing a lot more of those situations.

i've been messing around with modelling some small-scale fan clan-adjacent stuff to double-check the ratios for wbcd, and it's. it quickly becomes a necessity, is what i'm saying.

but i got distracted like. researching how related third cousins are. my point is not about that, that's like. a different topic. that i crammed into here because i have no self-control.

no, no, what i was trying to get to is: oakheart straight up tells us that cats have half-clan kits all the time, it's not a problem, no one talks about it. and that? that is exactly what we see modelled by warriors.

the only reason greystripe and silverstream have a problem is that silverstream dies and greystripe claims the kits. i feel very strongly that if she had lived, the kits would have been born and raised riverclan kits, that might, maybe, one day, guess who their father is.

we haven't had any half clan kits in a while, which yes! i think is a problem, but like. the fact that the three are medicine cat kits seems to be a bigger issue. which feels right.

and i'm not trying to argue what i think should be, i legitimately believe the text of warriors defends this, even in newer books which throw out a lot of the older world building in favour of more human-like conflict.

as readers, we are naturally following protagonists. we are following the interesting story. but imagine you're just a background riverclan cat. minnowtail, if you will. do you think, do you honestly think, anyone cares about minnowtail?

not in a bad way, just. if she's meeting up with mousewhisker at night, do you think anyone cares? of course not! no one cares. she's not a Protagonist. her kits aren't going to be prophesized about.

heck, finleap switches clans! and it's barely a big deal. it feels like one, but when's the last time anyone bothered dealing with it? that's what i thought.

(also i forgot like all of avos so that very last point might be a bad one if it is my argument stands i just literally do not remember anything in avos but violetshine. none. zero.)

but it's easy to get caught up with characters like hollyleaf and bristlefrost and forget that like. not everyone cares about the code. most of our protagonists do, because it's become mostly equivalent with being moral. and i have an essay draft titled "the code as religion vs the code as law" where i want to expand on this more, but i think like. that idea, that we as readers should use the code as a way of evaluating cats' behaviour, is flawed.

like, i'm not talking about being inconsistent with how that is applied. if you want to say, "the trial leafpool goes through for having half-clan kits is legitimate because of the code," i still think your approach is flawed.

because the cats themselves don't seem to think that way.

the code doesn't, to me, feel like the ten commandments. it does not feel like "you must do this to be a good cat."

rather, it feels like aesop's parables. "here are mistakes cats made and what we do instead of that."

i don't think the cats know the code the way we do. i do not think they memorize a list of rules as kits. i think they know what is and is not part of it, but i imagine they know the stories far more than the rules.

(i'm working on my lore stories to replace code of the clans.)

and even if that's my thoughts, i do think this is supported by the text. no one ever teaches the warrior code, cats just learn it in pieces. "don't waste food because we don't have enough to spare" is taught, not "there's a rule about food and starclan on the code."

that's why the whole arc of the broken code even works: the reason the imposter is able to manipulate things is because cats don't treat the code as a rigid set of rules and commandments, but guiding principles.

the parts of the code that we tend to focus on the most are relationships, apprentices, and battle. or that's my perception. i didn't do a poll to obtain that. there's also the leader's word, but readers don't usually think of that as a good rule, so i'm not including it.

but the parts the cats focus on most are food, territory, and the leader's word. which makes sense: those are basic needs: food, security, and...i don't want to say authority so much as some kind of social system. explaining it would be a whole thing. just trust with me, if you don't mind.

i don't think we have any real reason to believe cats care about half-clan relationships half as much as we do. yes, apprentices are chastized about it, but that's not really the same thing as being punished.

and it's hard to tell, because apprentices being punished has really fallen off, and that's kind of the problem with any argument i try to make about warriors, but.

wow.

i'm actually still on topic? i'm 2k words in and i'm still on topic? a day i never thought would come.

let's wrap this up. cats seem to care about half clan relationships in that: a) they lead to conflicted loyalties, b) they mess with borders and prey, and c) they are in the code as bad. in that order.

and again, if the code was some high and holy religious doctrine, we couldn't have the broken code as an arc. it does not work if the cats are already following it to a t, and know it word for word, because it's signfiicantly harder to manipulate people if they do.

not to the level the imposter does, at the speed he does.

and yes, you could argue that it's more bad writing, but. i think that discredits warriors. yeah, it sure has its fair share of bad writing, but i don't think that's in the way the imposter works. instead, he seizes on a big important doctrine that's nebulous, and uses that to control people.

and that? that feels much more interesting.

so with that in mind, i don't think the cats would care about your typical, non-protagonist forbidden relationship, and i don't think we should, either.

as far as a plot device, i think we're okay with what we have. don't get me wrong, i understand why people are tired of it, but i think we also should remember that warriors is not repeating itself. having multiple forbidden relationships is not repetitive. now, if medicine cats were having half-clan kits every series, i'd make a different argument.

but all of the major forbidden relationships have different outcomes, lessons, and circumstances, and for me, i think that's signficantly interesting.

i didn't really check sources and quotes for this, so like, if you spotted something wrong, feel free to correct me. my overall point stands, but there's a lot of warriors and i have a bad memory, so i could have missed somthing major.

[lovestillaround]

Thoughts about Phil’s last video (Draw My Life: Part 2)

So, it’s been two days and I still have trouble processing all the information from Phil’s newest video - that’s why I’m writing my thoughts down, hoping that it will give me more inner peace. Disclaimer: following text includes critique of the video, so if you’re sensitive to that kind of stuff/ not in the mood for hearing my negative opinions, please proceed with caution or stop reading. Love ya <3

So, Phil starts the video saying that he’s aware that we know what’s been mostly going on in his life during the last six years and that he’s gonna share with us all the behind the scenes facts. And that on itself is fine, but oh boy, nothing would prepare me for the amount of negativity that I was going to endure (and no, I’m not talking about the subjects of death and illness). I said it to my friend and I still stand by that opinion - the video was for me more like “20 minutes of complaining about/listing every bad thing that happened in my life” than actual “draw my life”. And well, obviously Phil has the right to reflect on his life in whatever way he wants, but as I was watching the video, I couldn’t help getting more and more frustrated with his lack of awareness, especially regarding the massive privilege that he has and has always had. (Also, I’m not trying to call him out for being rich and being able to afford things that I can’t afford - that’s not at all what this is about, it’s about the attitude and the way he chose to speak about those things).

While I do think that the video was full of lovely and cute moments, I’m going to focus mainly on what I found annoying or upsetting, just to keep it (relatively) short. So, I was talking about how in my opinion the video was filled with negativity. You might ask - where is it, Daria? Or more importantly - why is it bad? The response to the video is (at least from what I saw) overwhelmingly positive. Well, I’ll try to explain how I see it.

The video literally starts with Phil saying that London was (is?) 5x more expensive than Manchester, and that if their career in London didn’t work out, they would have had to move back to their parents. I have enough compassion to understand that it must have been hard for them to feel insecure about their finances (I know this feeling damn too well) - but I also think that people should, idk, be generally aware that their actions have consequences? They took a risk, and it was hard to live in uncertainty - I get that - but people having to live with their parents is a reality for so many people! So many young people don’t even get a chance to start an independent life, for various reasons. And I’m not saying that he doesn’t have the right to talk about his struggles - just for me, in the light of the rest of the video that is played on a similar note, it becomes clear that Phil isn’t aware of how much luck he’s had in life and how he has already started his life from a much better position than - can I say that? - probably the majority of people. So for me, what lacks in the video is, idk, maybe just one instance where he acknowledges his privilege? Or just generally him using a different language while talking about his experience, choosing his words more carefully, but I’ll get to that later.

The negativity continues when Phil talks about how he could not work out how to operate the radio control panel, how it was a bad decision to say yes to everything (although I admit, this one is just Phil acknowledging sth that he has learned over the years, which isn’t really negative but let’s still keep it on the list of bad things), anxiety, lack of sleep, stress, juggling responsibilities, people that they used to work with getting more from dnp than dnp did from them, dnp doing things out of obligation, not being able to fully create things how they wanted to, people being cynical about youtubers doing projects/not understanding youtube and media’s negative reactions, loads of office work, risking all their life savings to go on tour, heteronormativity of the interviewers, lots of work related to creating gaming channel videos, overworking themselves during gamingmas, frustration with people not realising how much work happens behind the scenes, people cancelling projects, losing money because of Manila. 

On the other hand, the positives that Phil talked about were getting job at the radio, getting 1 million subs, interviewing people being a cool thing, everything about his relationship with family was very positive, getting a new team of people to work with and dropping some responsibilities like the radio show, success of the books and tours and games they created, creative freedom, positive relationship with his audience, improvement of the press over the years and people in traditional businesses becoming aware of what youtube is, creating and expanding irl merch, having fun on tour. 

Then comes the moment when I got genuinely quite confused, aka the moment when Phil talks about not having a life. Like.... really? He has every right to feel what he feels but honestly, not that many people would count themselves lucky enough to be in a long term relationship, having a loving family, four friends that want to hang out with them, going out to dinner dates and cinemas on the regular, regularly going on vacations, being able to take private yoga or boxing lessons etc. 

When I heard him saying “and I didn’t do any normal stuff people do, like getting a house or a dog”, that’s the point when I’ve lost all my hope. Like, I’m sorry Phil, but are you really gonna complain about not having time to get a house because of the life choices that you’ve made? Just… think about it. I’m not an expert on the standard of life in the UK but I personally can think of exactly zero people that I know who bought a house in their 20s. And I have to say, it’s upsetting that he seems to be so detached from what is the reality for many many people. 

Sharing personal stuff on the internet requires courage and I don’t want to be the one who takes all this knowledge and uses it against him. But I’m genuinely upset with the way he handled things this time. As I was watching the video for the first time, at the end of it all I could think was - wow, you’re really that entitled, aren’t you?

And it makes me sad, because I see two possible reasons for him being like that:

a) He is not in the best place mentally, so that he can only really focus rn on the negative aspects of his life, regretting his past choices, being disappointed in how his personal life looks like. This could be supported the fact that for basically any major thing that happened in his life he decided to share with us and elaborate mostly the negative details attached to it, rarely the positive ones (see the list of positive and negative things that I included above). 

b) He is completely unaware of what’s the average threshold for a “good quality life”, and he’s not aware of his own privilege. 

To elaborate a bit more on the point b): one could see Phil’s video as maybe a reminder that everything comes with a prize and that even though a youtuber’s life might seem super easy, there’s still a lot of stress and work involved that we just don’t see. But… I’ve been aware of that. Nobody’s life is one-dimensional, and everyone has struggles. And of course they have to edit their videos and do the business stuff. But when Phil says how he sometimes wishes people were aware of his personal struggles, I can only think that this is the reality for many many people, not only celebrities on the internet. Idk, maybe I just wasn’t the target of this whole segment in the first place, but for me it sounds borderline patronising, and again, entitled, because as I mentioned, everyone has their own struggles.

But for me, Phil doesn’t seem to be aware that he was only able to make some of the life choices that he’s made because he already had a good start in life in the first place. He’s always had a safety net in form of his parents, so he could make a choice of risking everything and moving to London for example. And yes, coming back home and asking his parents for money could have been embarrassing for him and emotionally hard, but so many people could not take such risk, or any risk, in general! Because they have families that they need to take care of. Because they have not enough money to move to an expensive city, no matter the circumstances. Because they have no one left who would help them financially if something went wrong. And so many other reasons!

On one hand, I can empathise with his frustration. I know how it is to work my ass off just to be able to go to uni, while many people that I know get money from their parents, go to a couple of lectures and then party/do nothing really. And then having other people thinking that everything is easy for me because idk I’ve always had good grades so according to them I don’t need to work as hard. Is it frustrating? Yeah. It’s hard to be misunderstood, or having your work belittled. But I would never blame other people for not being aware of how much work comes with the lifestyle that I’ve chosen. And I’m aware that dnp were working their asses off to create good things for us, but also, obviously, they were hoping to make financial profit out of it. It might sound awful but they did not have to do most of those things. In many instances, they totally did not have to overwork themselves, because it was not like they were making money to survive, they were making money just to make more money, basically. Nothing evil in wanting to make money but honestly Phil, most people work super hard, and they don’t get millions for it. While I do acknowledge that they’ve been working hard, and that a part of their audience might have not been aware of that, I think that complaining about that seems quite… inconsiderate? Complaining about the lack of private life seems inconsiderate too, especially because most people aren’t privileged enough to just decide to put their work aside and focus on their private life whenever they want. Many people I know are overworking themselves too, simply because they don’t have another choice. 

So, I’m quite upset. I don’t know what my point is. It seems to me like in that video Phil comes from a place of deep frustration, and well, I’m frustrated too. Fair game, I guess?

I want them to have a good life. I want them to do whatever the hell they need to do in order to be happy, I want them to get a goddamn dog and a house. But I also hope they’ll continue to grow, and that maybe next time Phil will be more considerate, and more careful with words.

[ihadthisdreamwhere]

The Psychic Adventure Trilogy

Okay- so I actually had three dreams last night but they were all pseudo connected (except maybe the last one).

The first one started out with me trying to drive home in some heavy rain but the temperature just kept dropping, and dropping, and dropped until it became all snow.

Well it got to the point where I basically couldn't drive- wind pushing the car, the wind howling so loud I couldn't even hear the radio, just covering the road and the car.

I got to my house but I couldn't even leave the car safely so I just stayed there for the night despite ring like, 20 feet tops from the door to my house.

I wake up and everything is quiet but the snow fell HARD. Anyways, I wake up and it's early morning. The snow had fallen for a few feet and everything was completely still- not even the train that runs through here I live was running. Everything was silent.

So I got out of the car and this little girl who's pale with short hair and dresses in rags starts saying this crazy gibberish and trying to give me her toy and instantly I'm like, "That's a spirit." So I start saying a spell or a passage in Latin to ward off evil spirits.

She backs up and I keep doing it as I get inside but she leaves me her doll. I take the doll inside and everything is fine.

The next day I wake up to kids outside playing and it's a whole family but my mom is there with them. This family had like, 10 kinda and all of different ages between 2-20.

I go out there and am talking with them and see my mother holding the little girl in her lap except I've noticed the little girl is the only one not talking. I try counting the kids but theft move around too fast and they see me so I say, "Sorry, I'm just trying to count your kids! You have so many you could have a T.V. Show haha."

And they reply with, "Oh well, thank you haha. But we used to have more."

"More, what happened?"

"Oh never mind that-"

"Did one die?"

As Soon as I asked that everyone got quiet and started listening to us. The woman said, "Well, kinda. In a way. Some people claim to see her."

And I look at my mother and point at the girl in her lap. My mother's like, "What?" The woman says, "Yep, to most people there's nothing but air sitting there."

So I say, "What happened? What's is it?" They look offended. "Not 'It', sorry, what is she?"

Then their tone shifts to laughter and forced smiles and they're like, "Oh she's fine! Just a joke. Haha."

I'm not buying it. So later that night I'm sleeping and hear a little girl laughing and this night some snow has fallen.

I got outside and there are hare footprints in he snow leading down the road from there house to my porch and then off my porch down back that way. I follow them but then they just stop and there a picture of a little girl with her Barbie doll.

I take the doll from my pocket and notice her head is heavy. In the head is an Opal Stone (the one I actually own IRL). Anyways, I basically am like, "I've got to cleanse her."

So it's the next day and I collect a huge mason jar of rainwater and then I get some fairy sugar (???). At night fall I take the jar outside in the cold and mix some fair sugar into the solution. Then I take the rock and attach it to a string and dip it in there (like making rock candy). It sits under the moon light alllll night getting all magical and when I take it out the inside is hyper opal-like. If you've never looked through a clear-ish opal stone, google it because it's like that but time 50.

Anyways, sunrise is almost here and I talk to my mom and she's like, "You can't harness the powers of the moon to cleanse something. It's basic for most but too hard for you."

So this pops into my head as I'm trying to pull some power into this stone and I accidentally grab the power of the sun which is supposed to be dope or something?? Anyways, now the inside is all cracked and fractal-like since the rock shouldn't be able to hold that much power but your boy made it happen.

I place it in the doll's head and give it to the ghost girl and she thaws out and becomes like a normal girl but then walks off into sunlight even though it's night and leaves the rock behind.

-----------

Dream 2 is this huuuuge island thing where me and my mother are on a mission for something and basically we got stuck in this part where skeletons would reanimate at a certain part along our path and we'd have to flee back down to the lower shores where this old house was??

Hard to explain geographically but basically pirates have trapped us and it SUCKS. We try multiple, I mean MULTIPLE, ways of escaping and none work. It's mostly blurry but we end up getting chased to some sand dunes and Gavin to lay down and blend in while this skeleton looks directly at us since it can't tell if we're alive or dead.

Meanwhile it's crew mates are in their Fort tossing grenades and tomahawks into the dunes (WHERE WE'RE AT) out of sheer boredom and we have to hope and pray it won't hit us but we can't move either.

Literally I had grenades fly over my head, land next to me and just barely roll far enough away to not affect me- a tomahawk even grazed my face. It was intense but they notice I'm alive when I pull away and get up but I slingshot a rock into the skeleton near us's pelvis knocking the bottom have off and we ran for it.

---------

The third dream involved school and we're all part of this new school program or field trip- it's basically birding school though and far away from home.

So we're all assigned roomate's, classes, and groups to be in for after activities and stuff.

My roomate's are fine, classes are normal, but it's my free time group that sucks. Basically they fecked up my application and made my free time group the volleyball group or something like that?

Anyways, the girls were great and we were all friends, but the guys HATED ME. Basically because I was gay they just tormented me.

They made me mow the school lawn (??), they made me do their laundry, they had this sports game where if I failed they kicked me in the balls, it was actual torture. They also kept sexually harassing the girls.

I finally asked to quit since it was lunch and they just filled my plate with grass shavings and we're going to make me eat it but I came up with a distraction!

Basically I started talking to the girls like, "What the hell? Haven't you told someone? Pressed charges?" And basically the staff doesn't care, they're blocking communications with our family as well as with local authorities. The main boy's dad is also the town sheriff or something.

So I get caught and I start saying we were talking about a new plan for the next game and basically I DEAD UP MAKE A SONG UP IN MY DREAM, ON THE SPOT, WITH VERSES AND A CHORUS AND RHYMES AND ALL.

The lyrics make sense, they also have SECRET MESSAGES FOR THE GIRLS which make sense, it's in a singular key, and when I got done I think I impressed myself because everyone in the dream was looking at me in shock and just let out in huge applause. Also, I felt super embarrassed because I thought it sucked in the dream- accurate to real life.

It was a bop and the dream ended there.

[rachello344]

I’m going to tell you all a story. I don’t really know who all will see this, but I think it’s important for me to make my position and my history clear, so I’m going to write it out anyway.  This will probably have some level of TMI, so your mileage may vary, but I don’t want to censor myself for this.  Includes frank discussions of sexuality, sex ed, etc. so it’s relatively NSFW.  Nothing especially graphic, but again, ymmv

This is... much longer than I meant it to be, so tl;dr: Fiction is meant to be a place to explore.  Being afraid of sexuality or intimidated by it is normal, but trying to control the people around you because of that is not.  The only person whose sexuality is your business is your own, and potentially your partner(s)’.  Policing the sexuality of other people will not give you anything more than the illusion of control.  Illusions, however nice, don’t generally last long.  Be kind to others, and be kind to yourself.

I started reading fanfiction when I was 12 or 13, which I think is about the average.  Everyone around me was starting to talk about dating and the like, and I wanted to figure out what they were talking about without asking anyone I knew.  As an avid reader, the only way I knew how to get contextualized information was through stories.  So I did what I think a lot of kids online inevitably do:  I looked up stories about sex and romance.  The site I was using at the time was DeviantART.

Any of you who have used the site are probably recoiling right now, as you should be.  I have seen so many terrible things written in fiction from such a young age that a lot of the stuff people complain about here seem legitimately tame.  But that’s not the point.  The point is, I was a curious kid looking for answers, and I turned to stories to find them.

I started with original fiction.  Imagine that.  A 13 year old girl online reading effectively hentai-style fiction about OCs she had no connection with.  I learned about my body through badly written dA hentai fic.  I figured out things that felt good.  I experimented quietly when my family left for my brother’s baseball games.  And then, at some point, I found my first fanfiction.

I’d technically written fanfiction of Sonic characters when I was 8 or 9, but they were all just fairy tales with Sonic and Amy as the leads.  I didn’t start with Sonic fanfiction, though.  No, the first fanfiction I remember reading was Naruto.  It was a badwrong Uchiha-cest fic.  I was probably 13 at this point.  I’d never watched Naruto, but I absolutely knew that those characters were related.  Morbidly curious, reluctantly fascinated, I read the fic.

It was short, but it was definitely hot, to my 13 year old standards.  I mean, most things were.  I was 13.  I didn’t exactly have standards.  And then I realized:  If this exists, shouldn’t there be stories with characters I actually know?  Granted, I still read SasuNaruSasu fic because it was SO easy to find--I preferred Naruto topping at the time, but now I’d go back and forth, I think, I just hated the characterization of bottom!Naruto--but I also discovered slash for things I actually knew.  Sonadow was a revelation.

It does not escape me that I got my start in fanfiction reading incest and furry porn, btw.  I mentioned earlier that I was curious, and that was my driving force.  I wanted to see where the limits were.  I would read anything.  And then once I figured out the tags, I could look for the things I liked and avoid the things I didn’t.  I didn’t much care for a lot of things where romance was concerned, but for a PWP those limits evaporated like rain in the desert.  And through this process, I developed standards.  Things I will read, things I won’t, writing styles I prefer, things that I won’t read no matter how well written, writing unskilled enough that I wouldn’t touch it regardless of the kink depicted.  And on and on and on.

I feel like it bears mentioning that the demographic of my junior high and high school was predominantly Mormon and Fundamentalist.  Not all, but a significant number.  We were mostly white, mostly well-off.  I was in as much of a bubble as I could be.  But that meant that until my friends started coming out in high school, I didn’t know any queer people IRL.  I had one friend, Avery, who told me she was Bi in eighth grade, but until about tenth grade, she was the only one who’d told me.

Our sex ed was abstinence only.  Heteronormative and absolutely the kind of thing that we all speak out against.  There were no websites that I could find with reliable info.  I was using google image searches to figure out what genitalia looked like, and I wish I were kidding.  All I’d ever seen was stuff with diseases and sores.  I was told that a girl who has a lot of sex is like an old pair of gym shoes.  I was told that boys will be boys.  I was not told that boys could love boys or girls could love girls.  I was told “Just say no,” instead of any kind of way to tell when it was safe for me to say Yes.

Luckily I wasn’t interested in sex for me, personally.  I was interested in it intellectually.  I wanted to know how it worked, why people chose to do it, what it might feel like, what kinds of sex you could have.  I was arming myself with knowledge in case I ever needed it.

When I was 15, I stumbled on a kinkster’s blog.  She was a writer, and she specialized in BDSM practices and culture, specifically in explaining it to the uninitiated.  I was too young to be there, but the information I got was invaluable.  Again, scarleteen might have existed?  But I’d certainly never found it.  This was the first time I saw someone talking about consent, about condoms and dental dams, about safe words.

It was life changing.  I read her blog avidly.  I spent about three weeks there, researching BDSM.  When I found something that seemed interesting, I’d return to deviantART to see if I could find it in story form.  I’d google terms I wasn’t familiar with or cross check online.  I googled so many things that it’s lucky that my parents let me have my own computer (an old desktop from my dad’s boss).  It’s even luckier that my parents generally let me have free reign.

When I was 17, I found the word Asexual.  It was the best word I’d seen for how I was feeling.  Sex positive asexual.  “It would be fine if it happened, but chastity isn’t exactly a punishment.”  I could make do on my own without much trouble, and I didn’t really like any boys.  Not like that.  (Whether or not I ever liked girls, I’m still trying to puzzle out.)

What I’m trying to say is that my best online experiences were via kinksters.  Fic at the time did NOT go into safer sex details.  They were either implied, glossed over, or outright ignored.  Fantasy doesn’t need to jive with reality, so it’s hardly wrong of them to ignore it.  But that information was truly incredible to me.

And I know I’m an odd case.  Someone who’d never felt sexual attraction to her knowledge researching every kind of sex under the sun sounds strange, I know.  But I’ve always been a researcher.  When I come across something I don’t understand, I look it up.

I guess, the point I was trying to make is that... for me, without all the “bad” erotica and porn, without kinksters, without slash ships, I never would have figured things out for myself.  I had no sexual education to speak of, no context for anything I did no, no one to talk to, and I definitely didn’t have any queer role models or examples in media or in my real life.  The first time I met a lesbian was when I was 13; she was my gym teacher.  And she was the absolute first queer person I ever knew about.  And until college, I’d never met another queer adult that I knew of.  Never.

We had a gay straight alliance in high school, but I didn’t want to get involved.  The cultural climate wasn’t outright homophobic, but I’d learned to keep my head down for being “too much” a feminist.  Like hell was I going to put a target on my back.  I doubt I would have been bullied--no one had come after me yet--but I didn’t really want to tempt fate either.  I stood up for the people around me, and I called it good.

When I hear people say “Kink is unhealthy and glorifies abuse” I think back on my sex ed, on learning that women who sleep around are dirty.  I think about the first time I ever even heard about consent being on a blog about a woman who loved BDSM.  When I hear people say “X fic trope condones Y behavior” I think back on the absolute sewage that I was reading as a young teen.  It’s safe to say that I’ve read just about every kink there is.  I read vore on accident by the time I was 15.  And I didn’t even remember it until I had a visceral flashback to it about a year ago when the jokes first started getting popular.  And despite all of the abuse and rape and badwrong incestuous fic that I’ve read, never once have I knowingly harmed another person.  And that makes the arguments feel a little odd.  Like “violent video games make teens more violent,” the argument that violent erotica and porn makes teens more violent is absurd.

So, for those of you still reading, if you promote anti-shipping or kink critical anything, I think you should look at it a little more closely.  Do some more reading on the other side, within your limits.  Do your own research and figure out where you stand.  I know that sex can be intimidating and scary, especially when you’re young, but something can be scary without being harmful.  Only you know your limits, but there are plenty of places to do research that have reliable information.  I’d be happy to help you find them.  For general sex ed, scarleteen is definitely my go-to.

Policing other people’s sexualities is not the way to make things feel safe again.  I know it seems like a suitable answer, and it makes you feel like you have power and safety, but think about how you feel when people tell you what you are and aren’t allowed to like or do or feel.  Think about how you feel when people accuse you of all kinds of things simply because your views are different.  That’s what anti-culture is doing.  And just because you don’t agree with someone doesn’t mean you have the right to tell them how to feel or how to think.  Because that opens the door to them returning the favor.

“But incest--”  “But CGL--”  “But--”  No.  It doesn’t matter.  If you know it isn’t for you, then avoid it.  That’s the end of it.  Do I think some things are weird or even kinda gross?  Sure.  But that doesn’t mean no one is allowed to like those things.  If that was the case, no one would be allowed to write fic where people have sex in a kitchen or otherwise involve food in the process.  That squicks me out, but that doesn’t mean people don’t want to get off to it.  I avoid the tag and move on.  Don’t waste your time on things you don’t like.  Period.

Life is too short to waste your time on things that turn you off.  That’s time better spent finding the things that turn you on.  And hey, tastes change.  Maybe someday I’ll decide I want to read people having sticky food sex (doubtful).  Maybe someday I’ll decide that I cannot read another tentacle fic ever again (unlikely).  I won’t know until that day does (or doesn’t) come.  But I’m not gonna waste energy worrying about what other people think about my fantasies.  They’re no one’s business but my own, and theoretically a future sex partner should I find one.

Fiction is for exploration, so explore!  Find ways to keep yourself safe.  Figure out what you need to avoid, and how to do it.  Find the things you want to read and read them.  Consume the media you want to consume.  And if anyone bullies you for it or tries to make you feel bad, you block their ass on sight.  They don’t deserve even a second more of your time.