#also featuring: an attempt to begin exploring asexuality in my content

[kirkwallgremlin]

Watching

Alistair x Brosca, set in my multi-Warden AU (which is really only relevant bc one of the other Wardens is mentioned)

Swords met in a clash, flashing as they caught the light from the campsite fire. Alistair twisted, dodging to the side to avoid the follow up blow as Sten’s sword bounced off his shield, swinging a blow of retaliation as the Qunari adjusted to compensate.

These sparring matches weren’t an uncommon occurrence around the campsite. With the ongoing risk presented by the new normal of their lives, a risk that seemed to increase with every passing day, the need to keep your skills sharp was essential. The opportunity to break the monotony that started to creep in after day after day travelling was an added bonus.

Initially Frankie had sat by the fire to sharpen the edge on her sword as she watched but the environment had become a distraction, and sharpening a blade was not a safe task for distracted minds and hands. Her current job was ensuring her armour was polished to the meticulous standards she aimed so hard to maintain. While her hands worked, her eyes watched the way both men moved, the moves they made, the strategies they used to counteract the threat of the other.

“Wait a moment, how did you do that?” Alistair exclaimed as Sten almost forced the shield from his hand. “Come on, show me?”

“It’s a nice view, isn’t it?” Leliana’s voice sounded from beside her and she jumped.

“They’re both excellent swordsmen,” Frankie said, eyes still on the men as her hands fussed over the metal surface of her breastplate.

“Indeed they are.” There was a hint of amusement in Leliana’s voice. “But I suspect there may be one more than the other who catches your eye.”

Frankie tried to ignore the warm flush in her cheeks, even as she protested having any idea what the woman was talking about.

“There is no shame in looking,” Leliana continued. “Especially when he might be noticed looking in much the same way.”

“He wouldn’t be looking at me,” Frankie said softly, not exactly sure how to explain or define the feelings triggered by that thought. Did she want Alistair to be looking at her? What did she want him to be thinking if he was?

“You’re much too hard on yourself,” said Leliana, her laugh lighthearted, friendly. “But even if he does not, there is still no harm in watching or admiring. We all do sometimes, although some perhaps more than others.” Her head turned to look across the camp to where Zevran sat with Morrigan and Shayla*. Given the assortment of jars in front of them, Frankie couldn’t help but wonder if the elf was teaching them about some new poison or potion. No doubt she’d hear about it later if it were useful.

There was no doubt Zevran watched Alistair sometimes. Shayla did too, and Morrigan, but their watching was different - much more disdainful than admiring. But was Zevran’s watching the same as her own?

With that thought planted, Leliana excused herself to practice the lute she’d acquired at the last town, leaving Frankie to polish her armour alone as the faint music drifted across the camp.

Across the fire, Alistair managed to successfully disarm Sten, seemingly to the Quinari’s disgust. As he shouted his triumph, he glanced up around the fire. His face lit up in a grin as he met Frankie’s gaze and she gave him a shy smile back, raising her hands in a silent imitation of a clap, knowing he wouldn’t hear a real one.

The smile disappeared as Sten took advantage of his distraction, sweeping his feet out from under him. Alistair’s affronted cry echoed across the campsite as he hit the ground. Frankie tried not to laugh as she looked away, returning her attention to her armour. Satisfied with the standard of her breastplate, she turned her attention to her pauldron, determined to focus and stop letting the men sparing distract her. Footsteps sounded and she glanced up, checking to see who approached her.

“You’re looking very polished,” said Alistair as he reached her, cocky grin on his face at his own pun as he positioned himself beside her. “Oh look, I can see my face is that one.”

“Are you done losing to Sten?”

“I wasn’t losing! I won...some bouts. Well, one of them. Almost two.”

“Out of how many?” She gave him a quick sideways look to check that her teasing wasn’t bothering him but he had his usual good natured expression, with just a hint of mock offence.

“Hey! The important thing to note is that I didn’t lose all of them. Just… just most of them. Besides, it was a kindness, really. I wouldn’t want to make poor Sten deal with losing all the time if I unleashed my true strength, he might get upset.”

“How very noble of you to spare his feelings like that,” Frankie joked, enjoying the casual familiarity of the interaction.

“That’s me,” he grinned at her. “Noble through and through.” He winced slightly at the words, seemingly recognising it wasn’t the best choice of words considering their recent conversation about his heritage.

“What was Sten teaching you?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject as she set the pauldron aside, reaching for her next piece of amour.

“He had this cool disarming trick. You don’t see it coming and then bam, suddenly you’re standing there not holding a sword or a shield! Not ideal when it happens to you but useful, I imagine, if it’s a darkspawn or a bandit standing there in front of you suddenly all surprised and weaponless.” Alistair picked up her jar of polish and looked at it closely as though trying to work out something about the paste within.

“That does sound useful.”

“Maybe I could teach you! We could practice together.” He continued to inspect the jar of polish as Frankie’s hand stilled atop her armour.

“I’d like that,” she said with a smile. “Maybe tomorrow though. I didn’t spend all this time polishing this scuff it up that soon.”

Alistair beamed at her. She liked it when he smiled. She liked it even more when it was directed at her.

“Deal,” he said. “Do you want some help with this? Not to brag but I have spent a lot of time polishing armour in my life. I’m practically an expert by now.”

“I’d like that,” Frankie repeated, watching as Alistair reached for one of the gauntlets lying on the ground beside them.

She still didn’t know if Alistair watched her like she watched him, but he was her friend - her best friend, really - and she took comfort in that. As long as she had that, she wasn’t sure anything else was necessary.

[Also on ao3]

[brittanyyoungblog]

How Common are Fantasies About Eating (or Being Eaten by) Someone Else?

A reader asked:

“How common are vorarephilia fantasies?”

For those who aren’t familiar, vorarephilia (also known as vore for short) refers to a sexual interest that revolves around consuming or being consumed by other persons or creatures. Very little research exists on this subject, save for a study I blogged about here, which suggests that, for people who have these fantasies, they often begin around the time of puberty. They also tend to have pretty big elements of BDSM to them, especially dominance-submission and sadomasochism. 

In terms of their prevalence, I’m not aware of any studies that have specifically attempted to explore what percentage of the population has ever had a vorarephilia fantasy. However, in the survey of 4,175 Americans’ sexual fantasies that I conducted for my book Tell Me What You Want, I was able to go back and look at how many people said that vore was their favorite fantasy of all time. 

What I found was that just 10 people characterized their favorite fantasy as either “vore” or “vorarephilia.” In other words, about two-tenths of one percent of my participants explicitly described a fantasy along these lines, which would make it pretty uncommon relative to other types of fantasies. 

Unfortunately, I did not explicitly ask participants whether they had ever had a fantasy about consuming or being consumed by someone else, so it’s certainly possible (and likely) that a greater number of people have ever had this fantasy, even if it isn’t their favorite fantasy. Even so, I would expect the number to be relatively low because, in general, fantasies that appeared infrequently among participants’ favorite fantasies tended to be things that only a small number of people had ever fantasized about—conversely, the more people who described a given fantasy as their favorite, the more that other people reported having ever fantasized about it.

For example, when you look at something like necrophilia fantasies (i.e., sex with a corpse), just one participant described this as their favorite fantasy of all time, and less than one-half of one percent of participants said they had ever fantasized about it (this was the rarest fantasy on my survey). By contrast, about one-third of participants described their favorite fantasy of all time as group sex and more than 90% had fantasized about group sex before (this was the most common fantasy on my survey). 

With that said, what does a vorarephilia fantasy look like? Here are a few examples from my survey participants who described it as their favorite all-time fantasy:

"I have a recurring fantasy of my current boyfriend (who is about 350 lbs.) pinning me underneath him with his belly so that I can't move or resist (definitely a power play sort of thing) and telling me that I look delicious or some other vore-esque dialogue. Sometimes he'll ‘taste’ me just by licking over my face while I'm pinned. I'm a vorarephile, so the idea of being swallowed whole by another person is something I find very sexually arousing. My boyfriend shares this interest, so a lot of my fantasies regarding it surround him.” – Young adult who identifies as male and gay

“I'm into the giantess vore fetish. I find the female mouth extremely erotic, especially her tongue. I know it's impossible, but if there were a virtual reality game where I could be licked and swallowed by a towering, beautiful woman and feel everything, I would play it in a heartbeat. Just imagining the possibilities with a giantess is very sexy. I could be used for her pleasure. She could suck me off—all of me and not just my penis. I could be caught in the mouths of two giantesses during a French kiss, or one who is eating the other out and I go back and forth between tongue, mouth, and inside a vagina. Or I could just lay on her soft belly. I just love every inch of a woman's body, whether in real life or in a crazy fantasy. I would simply love to see more of it in almost every way and be used by it for her pleasure.”  - Young adult who identifies as male and straight

“My favorite and most occurring sexual fantasy has been the idea of me getting eaten by a creature unwillingly. I get picked up by the creature unexpectedly in their mouth and rolled about on their tongue and sucked on a bit like a piece of candy. Then I'm swallowed down whole and alive. Afterwards they usually eat something like pudding, which then makes me even more icky. At some point after struggling in their stomach, I pass out and get digested.” – Young adult who identifies as male and bisexual

“A large dog is introduced to a cat. The cat tries to establish itself as 'boss' but the dog responds with mounting. Eventually, the dog has sex with the cat, and his penis is around half the size of the cat's body. Afterwards, the dog eats the cat.” – Young adult who identifies as genderqueer and asexual

“Basically, I fantasize about being swallowed by a women and being digested—for the most part—alive. This would be accomplished in the same manner as a snake or a frog consumes their meals, physics be damned. After that, there's this fantasy that she carries my remains for a week or so with her bowels masticating them into nutrients and gaining something like 25 lbs. before returning to normal…In the relationships I have had, this is clearly impractical. It's all in the foreplay. The girls I've been with suck at dirty talk, but biting and licking and scratching is all it really takes to actualize this fantasy.” – Middle-aged adult who identifies as male and heterosexual

As you can see from these sample fantasies, vorarephilia can take a lot of different forms. However, based on my limited data, it seems to be primarily male-identified persons who fantasize about being consumed by other persons or creatures in a scenario that features a lot of domination-submission themes, consistent with other research on this subject.

Certainly, more research is needed, but the available data suggests that vorarephilia is probably a fairly uncommon sexual interest; however, at its core, it may simply be a unique variant on BDSM, which is an extraordinarily popular sexual fantasy. 

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

Image Source: 123RF/Andrey Alyukhin

You Might Also Like:

The Psychological Origins of BDSM: 8 Things That Draw People to Kink

I Fantasize About Getting Shrunken Down and Eaten by Another Man: What Does It Mean?

Feederism: Why Some People Are Turned On By Erotic Eating And Weight Gain

from Meet Positives SMFeed 8 https://ift.tt/36sDtWE via IFTTT

[ellenlucasonlinedatingblog]

How Common are Fantasies About Eating (or Being Eaten by) Someone Else?

A reader asked:

“How common are vorarephilia fantasies?”

For those who aren’t familiar, vorarephilia (also known as vore for short) refers to a sexual interest that revolves around consuming or being consumed by other persons or creatures. Very little research exists on this subject, save for a study I blogged about here, which suggests that, for people who have these fantasies, they often begin around the time of puberty. They also tend to have pretty big elements of BDSM to them, especially dominance-submission and sadomasochism. 

In terms of their prevalence, I’m not aware of any studies that have specifically attempted to explore what percentage of the population has ever had a vorarephilia fantasy. However, in the survey of 4,175 Americans’ sexual fantasies that I conducted for my book Tell Me What You Want, I was able to go back and look at how many people said that vore was their favorite fantasy of all time. 

What I found was that just 10 people characterized their favorite fantasy as either “vore” or “vorarephilia.” In other words, about two-tenths of one percent of my participants explicitly described a fantasy along these lines, which would make it pretty uncommon relative to other types of fantasies. 

Unfortunately, I did not explicitly ask participants whether they had ever had a fantasy about consuming or being consumed by someone else, so it’s certainly possible (and likely) that a greater number of people have ever had this fantasy, even if it isn’t their favorite fantasy. Even so, I would expect the number to be relatively low because, in general, fantasies that appeared infrequently among participants’ favorite fantasies tended to be things that only a small number of people had ever fantasized about—conversely, the more people who described a given fantasy as their favorite, the more that other people reported having ever fantasized about it.

For example, when you look at something like necrophilia fantasies (i.e., sex with a corpse), just one participant described this as their favorite fantasy of all time, and less than one-half of one percent of participants said they had ever fantasized about it (this was the rarest fantasy on my survey). By contrast, about one-third of participants described their favorite fantasy of all time as group sex and more than 90% had fantasized about group sex before (this was the most common fantasy on my survey). 

With that said, what does a vorarephilia fantasy look like? Here are a few examples from my survey participants who described it as their favorite all-time fantasy:

"I have a recurring fantasy of my current boyfriend (who is about 350 lbs.) pinning me underneath him with his belly so that I can't move or resist (definitely a power play sort of thing) and telling me that I look delicious or some other vore-esque dialogue. Sometimes he'll ‘taste’ me just by licking over my face while I'm pinned. I'm a vorarephile, so the idea of being swallowed whole by another person is something I find very sexually arousing. My boyfriend shares this interest, so a lot of my fantasies regarding it surround him.” – Young adult who identifies as male and gay

“I'm into the giantess vore fetish. I find the female mouth extremely erotic, especially her tongue. I know it's impossible, but if there were a virtual reality game where I could be licked and swallowed by a towering, beautiful woman and feel everything, I would play it in a heartbeat. Just imagining the possibilities with a giantess is very sexy. I could be used for her pleasure. She could suck me off—all of me and not just my penis. I could be caught in the mouths of two giantesses during a French kiss, or one who is eating the other out and I go back and forth between tongue, mouth, and inside a vagina. Or I could just lay on her soft belly. I just love every inch of a woman's body, whether in real life or in a crazy fantasy. I would simply love to see more of it in almost every way and be used by it for her pleasure.”  - Young adult who identifies as male and straight

“My favorite and most occurring sexual fantasy has been the idea of me getting eaten by a creature unwillingly. I get picked up by the creature unexpectedly in their mouth and rolled about on their tongue and sucked on a bit like a piece of candy. Then I'm swallowed down whole and alive. Afterwards they usually eat something like pudding, which then makes me even more icky. At some point after struggling in their stomach, I pass out and get digested.” – Young adult who identifies as male and bisexual

“A large dog is introduced to a cat. The cat tries to establish itself as 'boss' but the dog responds with mounting. Eventually, the dog has sex with the cat, and his penis is around half the size of the cat's body. Afterwards, the dog eats the cat.” – Young adult who identifies as genderqueer and asexual

“Basically, I fantasize about being swallowed by a women and being digested—for the most part—alive. This would be accomplished in the same manner as a snake or a frog consumes their meals, physics be damned. After that, there's this fantasy that she carries my remains for a week or so with her bowels masticating them into nutrients and gaining something like 25 lbs. before returning to normal…In the relationships I have had, this is clearly impractical. It's all in the foreplay. The girls I've been with suck at dirty talk, but biting and licking and scratching is all it really takes to actualize this fantasy.” – Middle-aged adult who identifies as male and heterosexual

As you can see from these sample fantasies, vorarephilia can take a lot of different forms. However, based on my limited data, it seems to be primarily male-identified persons who fantasize about being consumed by other persons or creatures in a scenario that features a lot of domination-submission themes, consistent with other research on this subject.

Certainly, more research is needed, but the available data suggests that vorarephilia is probably a fairly uncommon sexual interest; however, at its core, it may simply be a unique variant on BDSM, which is an extraordinarily popular sexual fantasy. 

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

Image Source: 123RF/Andrey Alyukhin

You Might Also Like:

The Psychological Origins of BDSM: 8 Things That Draw People to Kink

I Fantasize About Getting Shrunken Down and Eaten by Another Man: What Does It Mean?

Feederism: Why Some People Are Turned On By Erotic Eating And Weight Gain

from MeetPositives SM Feed 4 https://ift.tt/36sDtWE via IFTTT

[robbiemeadow]

How Common are Fantasies About Eating (or Being Eaten by) Someone Else?

A reader asked:

“How common are vorarephilia fantasies?”

For those who aren’t familiar, vorarephilia (also known as vore for short) refers to a sexual interest that revolves around consuming or being consumed by other persons or creatures. Very little research exists on this subject, save for a study I blogged about here, which suggests that, for people who have these fantasies, they often begin around the time of puberty. They also tend to have pretty big elements of BDSM to them, especially dominance-submission and sadomasochism. 

In terms of their prevalence, I’m not aware of any studies that have specifically attempted to explore what percentage of the population has ever had a vorarephilia fantasy. However, in the survey of 4,175 Americans’ sexual fantasies that I conducted for my book Tell Me What You Want, I was able to go back and look at how many people said that vore was their favorite fantasy of all time. 

What I found was that just 10 people characterized their favorite fantasy as either “vore” or “vorarephilia.” In other words, about two-tenths of one percent of my participants explicitly described a fantasy along these lines, which would make it pretty uncommon relative to other types of fantasies. 

Unfortunately, I did not explicitly ask participants whether they had ever had a fantasy about consuming or being consumed by someone else, so it’s certainly possible (and likely) that a greater number of people have ever had this fantasy, even if it isn’t their favorite fantasy. Even so, I would expect the number to be relatively low because, in general, fantasies that appeared infrequently among participants’ favorite fantasies tended to be things that only a small number of people had ever fantasized about—conversely, the more people who described a given fantasy as their favorite, the more that other people reported having ever fantasized about it.

For example, when you look at something like necrophilia fantasies (i.e., sex with a corpse), just one participant described this as their favorite fantasy of all time, and less than one-half of one percent of participants said they had ever fantasized about it (this was the rarest fantasy on my survey). By contrast, about one-third of participants described their favorite fantasy of all time as group sex and more than 90% had fantasized about group sex before (this was the most common fantasy on my survey). 

With that said, what does a vorarephilia fantasy look like? Here are a few examples from my survey participants who described it as their favorite all-time fantasy:

"I have a recurring fantasy of my current boyfriend (who is about 350 lbs.) pinning me underneath him with his belly so that I can't move or resist (definitely a power play sort of thing) and telling me that I look delicious or some other vore-esque dialogue. Sometimes he'll ‘taste’ me just by licking over my face while I'm pinned. I'm a vorarephile, so the idea of being swallowed whole by another person is something I find very sexually arousing. My boyfriend shares this interest, so a lot of my fantasies regarding it surround him.” – Young adult who identifies as male and gay

“I'm into the giantess vore fetish. I find the female mouth extremely erotic, especially her tongue. I know it's impossible, but if there were a virtual reality game where I could be licked and swallowed by a towering, beautiful woman and feel everything, I would play it in a heartbeat. Just imagining the possibilities with a giantess is very sexy. I could be used for her pleasure. She could suck me off—all of me and not just my penis. I could be caught in the mouths of two giantesses during a French kiss, or one who is eating the other out and I go back and forth between tongue, mouth, and inside a vagina. Or I could just lay on her soft belly. I just love every inch of a woman's body, whether in real life or in a crazy fantasy. I would simply love to see more of it in almost every way and be used by it for her pleasure.”  - Young adult who identifies as male and straight

“My favorite and most occurring sexual fantasy has been the idea of me getting eaten by a creature unwillingly. I get picked up by the creature unexpectedly in their mouth and rolled about on their tongue and sucked on a bit like a piece of candy. Then I'm swallowed down whole and alive. Afterwards they usually eat something like pudding, which then makes me even more icky. At some point after struggling in their stomach, I pass out and get digested.” – Young adult who identifies as male and bisexual

“A large dog is introduced to a cat. The cat tries to establish itself as 'boss' but the dog responds with mounting. Eventually, the dog has sex with the cat, and his penis is around half the size of the cat's body. Afterwards, the dog eats the cat.” – Young adult who identifies as genderqueer and asexual

“Basically, I fantasize about being swallowed by a women and being digested—for the most part—alive. This would be accomplished in the same manner as a snake or a frog consumes their meals, physics be damned. After that, there's this fantasy that she carries my remains for a week or so with her bowels masticating them into nutrients and gaining something like 25 lbs. before returning to normal…In the relationships I have had, this is clearly impractical. It's all in the foreplay. The girls I've been with suck at dirty talk, but biting and licking and scratching is all it really takes to actualize this fantasy.” – Middle-aged adult who identifies as male and heterosexual

As you can see from these sample fantasies, vorarephilia can take a lot of different forms. However, based on my limited data, it seems to be primarily male-identified persons who fantasize about being consumed by other persons or creatures in a scenario that features a lot of domination-submission themes, consistent with other research on this subject.

Certainly, more research is needed, but the available data suggests that vorarephilia is probably a fairly uncommon sexual interest; however, at its core, it may simply be a unique variant on BDSM, which is an extraordinarily popular sexual fantasy. 

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

Image Source: 123RF/Andrey Alyukhin

You Might Also Like:

The Psychological Origins of BDSM: 8 Things That Draw People to Kink

I Fantasize About Getting Shrunken Down and Eaten by Another Man: What Does It Mean?

Feederism: Why Some People Are Turned On By Erotic Eating And Weight Gain

from Meet Positives SM Feed 5 https://ift.tt/36sDtWE via IFTTT

[neioo]

Here it is! The second edition to Are We Humans? no one ever asked for!!

As a kind of thank you—I’m currently giving away some FREE COPIES. Message me if you’re interested, and we can work out the details. I can afford to give about 5 away (all gone! if you want to pay cheaper than the $11 listing price, just message me and maybe we can work something out)

Pictured above: me holding the book awkwardly and hoping my roommate won’t ask what the hell I’m doing, my hand, the book up against my dorm window so everyone can see the dumpsters right outside of it, and my shameful bookshelf (where the rest of my hetalia DVDs are hidden *coughs*)

THE BOOK is available for purchase (HERE), and it can be read for free on AO3 (HERE)

SUMMARY: Nation Avatars. They’re immortal beings who represent a country. They look human, feel human, but are they really? That’s the question they strive to answer after faced with extreme cases of dehumanization during the Second World War. Just when they think the worst is over, the Cold War strikes, and they’re challenged with new obstacles. It’s these obstacles that lead them on their own paths of self-discovery. Are they their own person or their country? Most would say their country. Others would disagree…

RATING: Mature

SHIPS: rochu, ameripan, frying pangle, fruk, hints of spamano

TAGS: Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Dehumanization, Torture, Warfare, Gore, Mafia, Cold War, World War II, Slow Build, Eventual Romance, Platonic Relationships, Historical Hetalia, Asexual Characters

Thanks so much for everyone’s continued support o//

UPDATES AND MORE RAMBLING UNDER THE CUT

What prompted this? Well…Don’t Forget Us is going to be in a different format from the first printed version of AWH, and I just couldn’t stomach the thought of having the two next to each other

(Like…you know when you get a book series and suddenly the fucking cover design just. changes and then the spines don't line up??? I couldn't have that.)

Also, there are some other minor changes:

I deleted over 200 uses of the word ‘fuck.’ I wish I were kidding. There’s still profanity, but now it’s…better limited

I deleted two cringey conversations that have been haunting me for a while now (one in the beginning, one towards the end).

Minor, minor plot adjustments to some scenes to better sync up with Don’t Forget Us

Also! I added some goodies at the end. I included some of my OC works and a bit of commentary :o

And any edits I did to AWH are always reflected on AO3

But basically, I’m giving away the free copies because I won a $50 Amazon gift card for a contest I didn’t enter, and I didn’t know what to spend the money on. 

It was my brother who came down and gave me the brilliant idea with:

So yeah…

MORE STUFF

Don’t Forget Us

I have finished the first read-through, which involved heavy formatting and adding relevant plot points. (Also deleting excess profanity) All the changes are reflected on AO3

Plot points include: fragrant kimchi stuff, Robert and Kazimir tweaks, more fleshed out relationship between Juhaina and Dalia

(so nothing major, but the changes I did make do improve flow A LOT)

I’m currently on the second read through, which involves heavy grammar editing. I first print out a chapter and do paper edits, then transfer those digitally. I also listen to the entire chapter

(But I’m also doing small plot points as well)

It…still looks like it’s going to take 6 months for me to finish. I would like it to be quicker, but this semester I’m taking one more class than I did the last, so…

But there’s a preliminary cover design!

(Prussia, South Korea, Kazimir, Robert, and Juhaina)

*jazz hands*

What Do We Want?

Whelp, this is going to be a thing

After deliberation, I have a solid plan on how to tackle the entire story. A main feature will be a lot of time jumps, and also POV switches. I’m 90% certain it’s going to be Prussia, England, Japan, and Russia now

Though Romano and Hong Kong’s POV were fun to play around with, I really want to explore Russia and Japan’s characters by themselves without the context of America and China’s relationship with them. Also, I just…don’t know enough history about Italy for Romano’s POV to really work.

What I currently have on AO3 will probably be deleted when I’m ready to write and post chapters of this

…Which won’t happen until Don’t Forget Us is finished, meaning a minimum of 6 months. I’m also going to China this summer for a study abroad program, so that could severely hinder my ability to write during the summer.

Which means, look for it next school year if you still like hetalia

But at this point, who knows what’ll happen in the future. In the meantime, I’ll just keep daydreaming about it

Things to look forward to that’ll be in it: D-Day, France being broken out, the Allies’ month in London, the situation in Asia, Russia pining after China (heavily)

Yeah so in terms of ships, there’s going to be basically no ameripan content. Rochu, however—if you like fics where someone’s developing a massive crush on the other person, that’s what you’ll get here. There’s…going to be hints to usuk in order to keep the plot consistent, but there’ll also be hints of fruk. In terms of frying pangle, pruaus is going to be more of a thing, but there’ll be little pruhun and aushun (for obvious reasons). Fragrant kimchi and hongtai are obviously a no. And spamano…

I…don’t ship spamano as much as I once did (which is another reason why I’m scrapping the Romano POV) so I’m kind of going to glaze over it…

Other things.

OC’s will not be a big part like in Don’t Forget Us. It’s going to be like AWH again—they’ll play small but important roles. Frank, Kazimir, and Aida will make appearances—Aida especially

Also, I’m not gonna try to do a commentary on racism in this like I was trying to with the first attempt, but I’ll still include important elements of it

In addition, I’ll try to dial down…Scotland, but still keep him an asshole. (There’ll also be redeeming scenes with him, especially in D-Day, but also…some not great scenes with him.)

Hong Kong’s ‘story’ or what I was trying to originally write will be shown in flashback scenes.

The whole fic is gong to be very spliced up like that—no two POV will really coincide at the same time (but fret not, every chapter will be marked with a date)

So yeah. That’s p much it

Here’s the song that will play in the final scene 

I’m thankful for all those who’ve offered to help with this stupid thing when I ranted about it in the beginning of Don’t Forget Us. My biggest issue was that I didn’t know enough historical wise, so basically I’m fixing that by just…not writing about those historical things *finger guns*

I know a fair amount on Japan and Prussia as countries. My knowledge on the UK and Russia is…more iffy. WW2 and up? Yeah, I know the basic details. Things before that? Lmao. No. My interest area is East Asia, not Europe…But I’ll try my best

[recentanimenews]

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Manga of 2019

Welcome to the first post in our annual “Staff Picks” series, in which the Ani-Gamers team selects some of our favorite anime, manga, and video games of the past year. As is the custom, we begin with manga.

2019 was a year of transition for the manga industry. The breadth of manga available in North America is larger than ever thanks to an array of seemingly thriving publishers. Japan-backed veterans Viz Media and Kodansha Comics continue to pump out great books, Seven Seas is more active than ever, and Square Enix has now thrown their hat into the ring with a new US-based subsidiary. But the biggest news of the year is the rise of digital manga services. In late 2018 Viz launched their revamped digital Shonen Jump experience (simulpubs and the full back catalog for some of the most popular manga in the world for the absurdly low price of $1.99 a month), followed shortly thereafter by Shueisha’s Manga Plus, a competing free manga service offering major titles from Viz’s Japanese parent company (go figure). Meanwhile, third-party services like MangaMo are starting to explore the digital subscription space. 2020 may just be the year that manga has its Crunchyroll moment.

That’s all the business side, though! Now it’s time to talk about the comics themselves. This year we’ve got three staff members participating, showcasing stellar manga stories across the genre spectrum, from whimsical fantasy to gothic horror to understated romance. Enjoy, and feel free to chime in with your own 2019 picks in the comments.

David Estrella

#3: At the Mountains of Madness

Quick disclaimer: H.P. Lovecraft was a big-time racist and I’m very aware of the contemporary re-evaluation of his works in the context of the man’s politics. That said, Gou Tanabe’s adaptation of Lovecraft’s novella is still an incredible work that should be taken with the illustrator’s own merits in mind. It’s Tanabe’s own talents that really elevate an old story that has been mined for parts and made relatively obsolete by other creators. As an artist, Tanabe’s visuals paint a perfect picture of alien desolation and dread, and his approach to pacing has few parallels among his peers. It’s a manga that doesn’t read like a typical manga and as far as graphic novels go, Tanabe is comfortable pulling from as many Western influences as needed without losing sight of his own identity and ideas. It’s simply a good comic from an artist that’s probably better than Lovecraft deserves.

#2: Bakemonogatari

Having rewatched the TV series innumerable times before reading the novel, I was convinced there wasn’t much new ground to break with Bakemonogatari. Oh!Great proved me wrong. The manga artist’s career-defining works had their moment before I was aware of them so I came into this unprepared for what I would find. Not content to simply rely on Nisioisin’s prose to carry the familiar story of a boy, a girl, and the crab spirit that stole her physical weight, Oh!Great pushes the imagery to extremes that not many artists would dare attempt. It’s almost overwhelming to see the ambition in every page that features some wild shifts in angles and perspective and yet remains totally comprehensible. The kinetic energy of the manga does override some of the finer, subtler points of the source but I can respect it as its own creation separate from the original.

#1: Nicola Traveling Around the Demon’s World

Nicola Traveling Around The Demon’s World is the best manga that I’ve read in 2019, rising above even my Monogatari bias on the virtue of being a completely new and fresh title, drawn with an infectious sense of joy and wonder that you can’t find in much of anything these days. I tend to fly through manga as quickly as I can read it, to the dismay of any hard-working comic artists reading this, but Nicola is worth the time to slow down and properly take in all the details inked onto the pages. It’s not Asaya Miyanaga’s desire to show off their skills when the panels are brimming with character, but instead it’s their love for their creation. Nicola might have run in a magazine explicitly marketed at adult readers but it would be unfair to place it in a box that would discourage young manga fans from reading this.

Ink

#3: Kino’s Journey – The Beautiful World

As someone who remains 100% in love with the 2003 anime adaptation of some of Keiichi Sigsawa’s Kino’s Journey novels and someone who found the 2017 anime adaption reboot largely soulless and hugely disappointing, I am fully prepared to defend my claim that this manga not only carries the very essence of the 2003 adaption but successfully builds on it in a few ways. First off, the stories, which include new and established chapters, are by Keiichi Sigsawa, so everything’s right from the source (via translator) there. Secondly, illustration by way of Iruka Shiomiya offers everything one could ask for in a title with such disparate situations as Kino’s Journey. Gone is the bishi Kino of 2017, and the more androgynous design returns. Heavy detail is placed into Kino’s motorad, Hermes, as well as weaponry and other machinery, but more detail is also placed on gore … which is a lot more prevalent and, as one might expect, not illustrated in detail to evoke a feeling of pleasure. Each volume also begins with a lovingly drawn, two-page spread overlain with a translation from Sigsawa’s original novels. This manga is only #3 on my list, because it’s another, albeit fantastic, iteration of something I already love, and that puts it at an unfair advantage over the other two in my list.

#2: Girls’ Last Tour

When the anime adaptation of Tsukumizu’s Girls’ Last Tour manga aired, the series of successive vignettes seemed the spiritual successor to the 2003 adaptation of Kino’s Journey. The episodes, like the source material, focus on moe blobs Chito and Yuuri exploring a stratified, post apocalyptic landscape via kettenkrad in search of, well, anything. While the episodes sometimes feel like a platformer video game with regard to how characters get from point A to point B, the human elements of observation and imagination are ultimately what make the series so enthralling in portraying the means necessary for maintaining sanity in the face of desolation. The anime, however, does not adapt all of the manga; the last two volumes are (as of yet) not adapted, and they are worth reading to the very end. The manga sports a style that melds the industrial with the abstract/absurd to simultaneously isolate humanity and show the ways in which it thrives. The chapters are often pensive think pieces which exploit innocence as a lens to both denounce the destruction of an inherited world and praise that which is found therein. The art, despite being hyper-mechanically and -pasturally focused, is admirably minimalist; a few lines often define landscapes, and the resulting emptiness is of the utmost importance for atmosphere and tone. Panel progression and related mastery of visual metaphor are so very important to the interpretation that I question whether dialog is necessary at all. That said, the charming, often (but not constantly) comical relationship between the odd couple MCs does help move moments along in the more stagnant bits while providing enough chuckles to press on.

#1: Happiness

Despite being a huge fan of Shuzo “Your Mental Discomfort is My Middle Name” Oshimi, this manga is about vampires, and I am very much burnt out on vampires and werewolves and zombies and the like. To be fair, however, Happiness is just as much about vampires as most vampire movies are about vampires. That is to say they are about (a) hunger. More to the point, and more to Oshimi’s forte, this 10-volume deep-dive into a youth mentally dealing with his newly awakened, biological need to feed is a visual feast from which Oshimi wants readers to catch the warm coppery waft of life. I fell in love with this title with Volume 2. The initial concept in the visual depiction of hunger - a swirling and distortion of character POV that increases in magnitude with the length of abstinence - feeds right into Oshimi’s Francophilia; post-impressionist landscapes and portraits are definite influences, and other European styles are invoked as well for jaw-dropping art used mainly in chapter breaks. Oshimi’s visual style has improved by leaps and bounds since Flowers of Evil, and that’s saying something given how much I love the visuals in the latter volumes of that title.

Evan Minto

#3: Bloom Into You

It’s been a pretty quiet year for Bloom Into You, with only a single book (volume 6) released in the US. However, 2019 was the year I discovered this wonderful manga, so here it is on my list. Bloom Into You is a yuri manga with an unlikely premise: its main character, Yuu, has never had feelings for anyone, boy or girl. Even when Touko, the seemingly perfect student council president, confesses to her, Yuu feels nothing, but as she spends more time with her she finds a hint of something growing in her heart. Bloom Into You is all about the slow burn, the uncertainty and furtive glances of young love. But what especially sticks out to me is the way it captures — intentionally or not — the experience of asexuality. Where most manga romances follow characters seeking love from others or obliviously stumbling into it while the audience cheers them on, Bloom Into You is about the process of introspection and overthinking, as Yuu tries to figure out if she is even capable of love. Nio Nakatani’s character designs and realistically stylish costumes are a delight, and come to life beautifully in her flowing, evocative art style. I can’t wait to see how this series wraps up next year.

#2: Witch Hat Atelier

It’s rare that I find a manga that I want to read for the artwork alone. Kamome Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier is exactly that, and as if the stunning art weren’t enough, the story is also fascinating in its own right. Coco is a village girl who dreams of magic, but rarely gets the chance to interact with the mysterious witches of her country. When a grave mistake causes Coco to unleash a dangerous spell on her village, she gets taken in as a witch’s apprentice and discovers her country’s long-held secret: magical power isn’t innate, but is called forth by drawing magical signs with special ink. Anyone can draw, and thus, anyone can make magic. That direct metaphor for art would be pretty inspiring if Shirahama’s illustration style weren’t so intimidatingly beautiful. Everything from characters to backgrounds is painstakingly rendered in a style that’s halfway between a woodblock print and the textured drawings of Kaoru Mori (A Bride’s Story). The world of Witch Hat Atelier feels tangible, weighty, lived-in, yet simultaneously light and whimsical. I’ve only just started on Coco’s journey, but with art like this I will read just about anything Shirahama puts out.

#1: Chainsaw Man

Viz launched their Shonen Jump app in late 2018, offering easy access to dozens of currently running and retro manga series from Shueisha’s flagship boys magazine. As for me, I jumped into the app and skipped right past One Piece and its ilk to find the most dangerous Shonen Jump manga of all: Chainsaw Man. Denji is a horny 16-year-old boy who makes money by selling off his organs and hunting monsters called “devils.” When he dies (spoilers), his pet chainsaw-dog devil merges with his body, turning him into “Chainsaw Man,” which is basically just “Denji but with chainsaws growing out of his arms and head.” Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga is an unhinged, action-packed spectacle of blood, guts, and bone-headed idiocy, fueled by the antics of Denji (number one goal: “touch some boobs”) and his unstable devil-hunting partner Power (a devil possessing the body of a dead girl). The series is heavy on the comedy, bouncing a cast of morons and psychopaths off of each other in increasingly destructive ways, but it also takes turns into heavy drama and even romance, all of which Fujimoto handles with a surprising amount of sensitivity. The art is scratchy and high-contrast, but full of unforgettable action set pieces including a giant fox demon taking a bite out of a building and a high-speed car chase with a devil who can turn anything she touches into a bomb. Chainsaw Man is the closest thing we’ve got to reading a Hiroyuki Imaishi (Promare) doujin manga in English, so naturally it’s my manga of the year.

Staff Picks: Our Favorite Manga of 2019 originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on January 6, 2020 at 6:53 PM.

By: David Estrella