#but yeah go forth and format text my children

[whodecidedweneedrealityanyway]

You can also do word-changes (for translations, usually) that function via hovertext (for folks with a mouse) or clicking (for folks with a touch screen or a mouse and the desire to click)

GUYS. DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN WRITE CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE FICS ON AO3

[thecloudstan]

I want to draw a short comic about a birthday party for Rufus this year but we have no information about his date of birth :(((((

So if it's OK, I would like to read a short story about our dear president's birthday with the Turks, Darkstar and Cloud too ofc 🥰

And if you don't mind, may I draw a short comic based on that story?

I don't mind at all!! Because Advent Children era is when my brain works most flexibly with them, this little moment slots into the NTYC timeline rather nicely. So it could be anytime between chapter 6ish and chapter 15ish. Due to this, I couldn't work in Darkstar, though. But please feel free to add the lil beastie into whatever art you decide to do (if you indeed decide to do it). She can be lying protectively at Rufus' feet in spirit for the story but for real in the comic (you could even just take this scenario and make it OG/Remake timeline if you want, 100% up to you and I will be happy with anything)! 😂 Because formatting is being hateful, I'm putting the blurb below a Read More.

Enjoy!

Cloud slips his cell into his pocket after trudging up the steps at Healen and shooting a quick, curt text to Reno to let him know he's waiting outside. The invitation had been out of the blue and uncharacteristically vague. The boss wants you here, he'd said. Tseng??? Cloud fired back. No, not MY boss, THE boss. Don't play dumb today, pretty boy, just make the appointment, yeah? Cloud still isn't sure why he agreed, but as Reno opens the door and chaperones him to Rufus' very familiar quarters—babbling incessantly all the while—his nerves start to subside. He can hear voices beyond the door before Reno even cracks it open. Upon entering, the room is aglow with warm light and voices full of tempered excitement. All the Turks are here and accounted for; Elena and Tseng nurse drinks while chatting back and forth off to the left of the little center table, Rude arranges small, festive bags and packages atop the counter beside the mini fridge.

And there, sat at the table alone with a smile on his face and some tiny confection before him, is Rufus Shinra. He fixes Cloud in place with eyes partially squinted by the force of his grin, offering a little nod and wave of hello. "Anyway, go say hi to the birthday boy," Reno says, snapping Cloud out of his moment of wonderment at the scene in front of him. "Birthday?" Cloud grouses, looking at Reno with a little knit in his brow only after Rufus has broken their gaze to ask Rude for something. "You could've at least told me. I got nothin'." Cloud throws both arms out wide in a gesture that reveals just how empty handed he is. As usual, Reno shrugs off any accusations as he backs away from Cloud and toward his partner. "Don't worry, blondie, your presence is present enough, trust me!" With an undeserved snicker Reno turns to meet Rude at Rufus' side. Cloud watches them in the doorway for an awkward moment before summoning the wherewithal to move his feet. As he approaches the former President, the other two slink away to find themselves a drink. Upon closer inspection, Cloud can see that the confection is some kind of cake from an upscale bakery, all perfectly round and encased in what looks like a hard, white and brown candy coating. Probably white and dark chocolate, but he can't be certain.

"A nice surprise," that velvet voice pours out syrupy sweet, sweeter than any birthday cake could ever hope to be.

Cloud levels him with a heavy but almost apologetic gaze.

"Hm? Wish I knew ahead of time so I could've brought you something but I think some details got lost in the invitation..."

Rufus only smiles, stifles a laugh. It's hard to tell whether he knew Reno tracked him down, or if it was his idea to begin with. That's not surprising, though. "Would you like a taste?" he suddenly asks out of nowhere, gesturing to the cake on the table. Cloud ignores the baser meaning behind the question and leans over the table to get a good look at the cake, making a bit of a show of it. He's not a die hard lover of sweets, but it looks good enough. He does notice there isn't a single candle is in sight, though. Feigning contemplation, he folds his arms over his chest, rests his chin on a fist. "Before the birthday boy? Nah. Besides...your friends here seem to have forgotten the candles," he teases, only now realizing how much of their relationship has progressed without him even knowing Rufus' birthday. "How old are you turning, anyway?" Rufus again only reacts with the slightest curl to the corners of his lips before reaching a graceful hand forward. He lifts a heavy cake knife from beside the platter on which the fancy little dish sits. With deft and nimble fingers he cuts through, but pauses before completing the slice. "Wouldn't you like to know..."

[whirlybirdwhat]

Prompt: fusion (like two characters fusing with each other) please?

This one was fun! It’ll be up on ao3 tonight! No romance in this one, just pure platonic love. And Also Pacific Rim elements more than Steven Universe because like why not have to bare your entire soul to someone to fuse with them then ultimately forget that moment of vulnerability as the fusion falls apart as a semblance for how close you became in that untouchable moments. Also, pac rim names are cooler than ship names as fusion so heck yeah anyway!!!

*formatting will be weird after immediate posting, so apologies to those who are met with this block of text before i fix it. No warnings do apply, in case the tags don’t work!

Characters include straw hat pirates, asl brothers, and shanks as major parts/fusions

soul shines like gold (lets make it shine like the sun) (ao3)

(I can’t become pirate king without my crew! Luffy says, and after three years of sailing (after a day in the presence of their captain), the rest of the crew echoes it in turn. People fuse to become strong, but why can’t they fuse to become free?)

——

Usopp was minding his own business when he came up on the deck of the Merry, giving a hesitant hello to the sleeping figure on deck.

“Hey Zoro.”

“Mmph.”

Wait.

That wasn’t Zoro.

Usopp whipped his head around to stare at the sleeping figure on the deck – one he hadn’t seen before, but had a startling familiarity to them.

Four arms, two sharp-toothed mouths, dark sun spotted skin, a familiar straw hat on the head and swords by the side, gladiator sandals and dark trousers, with an open vest and a green belt.

Usopp couldn’t see the hair, but he would bet ten belli that it was some dark shade of green, and that there was a sloping scar underneath the eye.

Luffy and Zoro fused?

Fusion was not unheard of, even in the east blue. The weak banding together to fight the strong – now that was a theory the East could agree with. But to do so casually, to simply take a nap and bare your soul to another… that did not happen so leniently.

Fusion - the art of merging with another being so completely that you became one, two (or more) souls creating a body of power and might if done right. The cost being that one will was usually dominant, and thus typically happened only in battle, when the will was to win.

Eh. Just another quirk. Better introduce myself.

He tapped the fusions foot. “Hey, I’m Us-“

The head tilted up, revealing four eyes, two closed and two wide open like his captains, a scar sloping beneath it as Usopp had thought. “We know. King’s Sword,” The fusion said in a rumbling raspy voice.

Usopp hid a flinch.

There was power in that tone.  And the fusion was still looking at him expectantly.

“So, uh, when did you first fuse?”

“First day my parts met. Luffy grabbed onto Zoro and suddenly I was.”

“That’s it?” Usopp squawked. “Just like that?”

“Of course. Luffy is the man who will be pirate king – Zoro’s captain. Why wouldn’t he trust him to create me?” King’s Sword said it like it was fact, and Usopp supposed it must be, to them at least.

Zoro and Luffy were so cool… And the name too.

(Fusion names were odd. Fusions with children and people who were undecided of goals and such tended to have actual names, a simple merging, but as the parts grew, so did their character, creating a defining name for their fusion. The pattern tended to be for every fusion that wished it but… it was rare, to have it before your twenties.

Luffy’s trait must be King.

Usopp wouldn’t expect any less.

(And Zoro was obviously sword – seriously, the guy used sword as his signature!))

“Would you like to try?”

Wha-

“What?” Usopp’s eyes went wide as King’s Sword stood up and offered him a hand.

“Would you like to fuse? See what it’s like?”

They said it in the same tone of voice that Luffy said when he said “Get on. You’re coming with us, aren’t you?” Like it was already fact, despite Usopp having only ever fused with his mother before when practicing fusion dances.

Doubt fell away.

“Sure.”  He grabbed King’s Sword’s hand, and pulled himself into the dance.

Steps forward and back twisting in and out of tandem with the fusion, his hands flying up in down in chopping motions as his hips shifted back in forth. King’s Sword was everywhere he wasn’t, towering and fluid all at once. In one final movement, his hand shifts to be clasped around King’s Sword’s forearm, the fusion doing the same in turn.

The world grew bright, and Usopp became one with Luffy and Zoro.

A fifth eye opened, brilliant brown the color of unwavering oak trees.

King’s Sharpsight, they decided their name to be, had been born.

Hair, long and gently curling fell over shoulders tied by a bandana under a straw hat. A single sword had been replaced by a slingshot, and a backpack lied over their shoulders. Gladiator sandals lied under overalls with a green sash around the middle, and a red vest underneath them. Shoulders were bare and dark, and their face had a longer nose and five eyes. Two mouths still smiled, less sharper than before, with a bigger hint of mischief towards them.

King’s Sharpsight was slightly smaller than King’s Sword, but just as stronger.

“Wow!” They said, looking at their hands and peering at themselves in the reflection of the galley’s window. “I look great! This is going to be awesome!”

All five eyes look out at the world as hands fiddled with their own rubbery texture.  “Amazing… Hey! Maybe Nami wants to join!”

She doesn’t, but she does take the time to talk to them (their first conversation!! Cool!) and show them the canon, which in typical fashion, they aim precisely at the one thing that could cause the most damage.

A big ol’ rock with two bounty hunters underneath it.

As the fusion falls apart, Usopp realizes that he doesn’t feel any less or more. He just feels… happy, as if he had gotten to know his friends more than he did already. As if he had gotten to hold their dreams and hopes in a palm, with the upmost trust.

(Because Luffy did not do anything but trust his nakama. If he asked you to do something, you did it, because anything else would be a betrayal of that trust, even if it would completely okay to him.)

(Because in a fusion, everything becomes one – bodies, souls, hearts and minds.

Which meant, memories became one.

King’s Sharpsight knew of little girls who never grew up to be great swordsman and mothers who died waiting for a man who was never coming home. They knew of brothers dead and living, and grandfathers who didn’t care for impossible dreams and wills. They knew, but didn’t think it was special, because this was just the experiences that shaped them, not anyone else.

And when they fell apart, the individuals did not remember the memories of before only the familiar comfort of I know.)

Usopp hoped they would fuse again one day, perhaps in battle, to see what they could truly do, when three minds became one.

(King’s Sight, Weather Sight, Sharpsights, Cook’s Sight, History Sight, Metal Sight, Healing Sight, Music Sight, Sea Sight, King’s Crew – Usopp fused and became one with his crew, and closer and closer and closer, until fusing was a way to talk without talking and love without speaking.)

Usopp, who had never merged before, learned to dance in pattern and fuse, like he belonged.

(It was a great feeling)

-

The first time Luffy fused was with Shanks. Gramps had always told him he was to young for it, as he showed him what it was like with his closest marine companion.

Shanks had only laughed when Luffy asked him to do it, and swept him up in his arms without question, throwing Luffy into the air and catching him on his shoulders. A warm light overtook them in the midst of Makino’s bar, and then there was Child Captain, standing proud and short and scarred.

(For Luffy did not know he would be king yet, did not have his dream, and Shanks knew who he was and who Luffy was so he took the lead.)

(Later, Child Captain would become Straw Hat, the bonding focus between their two parts.)

Child Captain was rambunctious and unstable, lasting only for a minute, but enough to give Luffy a taste of what it felt like to be not alone for the first time – to have a part of you that would never leave, like everyone else did eventually.

The next he fused, for Makino had banned Luffy from fusing with anyone else because fusing tired children, was with Ace.

Accidentally, and in battle, where Luffy’s clumsy movements went in tandem with Ace’s and the outstretched hand for Luffy to rocket with created Brother’s Sun – who quickly went supernova and fell apart the minute they were created.

Ace didn’t speak to Luffy for the rest of the day. And Luffy didn’t come back to the treehouse that night.

Sabo was the one to fix it, the only one who had had an explanation of fusion besides Luffy.

(Sabo, the nobles had said, fusion is for the fighters, for the rough housers, not for people of our esteem. Take note of that, alright boy?)

“Ace,” Sabo said to his brother. “Fusion just means you – at the very least – care for each other when you do it accidentally like that. And when you do it purposely that means you love each other, right? We’re brothers, aren’t we?”

(Sabo’s a good liar, but it doesn’t mean what he says isn’t true. In the Grand Line, marines and pirates’ fuse to become stronger, to fight without restraints. It’s not always a thing of love and beauty, but of pain and despair.

Sabo’s sure that isn’t the case with his brothers though.

Did you know that when men drink together they become brothers? This way our bond can never be broken!)

“Yeah,” Ace says quietly from where he’s curled at the foot of a true. “Brothers.”

Sabo decides to take a risk, and sticks out his hand. “Come on. Let’s do it, and find Luffy.”

Ace takes ten seconds to respond. Sabo counted – it had felt more like infinity. “Okay,” is the final quiet response, and they join hands.

The dance is quick, rushed, but put together in the quiet moments of their fights. Sharp movements flowing with wide arms, a final double hand clasp that brings them together chest to chest then –

Warmth.

And Elder Brother breathes in the jungle air.

Tall, black stretched blond with glowing freckles and wide eyes, they smile with two mouths and four eyes. Sturdy boots rest upon their feet with shorts and a simple tank top upon their chest, arm holes wide to make room for four arms. A fancy jacket is wrapped around their waist, and twin pipes rest upon their back. Goggles hang around their neck, shining in the dim light, and every step is filled with power despite the softness of childhood to their face.

Elder Brother goes forward, because they aren’t complete, not yet.

-

Luffy is found on the cliffsides of Goa, looking out into the distance like he always does when the ocean is in view. The only time that he can stay still.

“Luffy,” Elder Brother rumbles in a child pitch. Luffy gasps and turns around, not even hesitating to recognize his elder brothers.

“Ace! Sabo!” He calls then starts crying. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry-“

“Elder Brother,” the fusion corrects him gently, “I’m not upset. C’mon.” Four arms open wide, and their young brother wastes no time to lunge into their embrace and fuse.

The sun shines upon the fusion laughing happily in the sea breeze.

ASL, they call themselves, like their own dream, their own flag.

Six armed, four-legged, strong as a monstrous child could be, with a straw hat upon their head and three pipes on their back. Gladiator sandals dig into the earth and simple childish shorts and tanks are slung across ASL’s body. The fancy coat, now tattered and torn, rests upon their shoulders like the captain’s coat they all envision themselves to have in the future.

Together, ASL thinks, as brothers, at last.

They charge for the city, ready to use their new height to buy their way into a free meal, a troublemaker as always.

-

The strong did not stand alone – this was a rule the most powerful of the seas knew. Emperors had big crews, some close, others only underlings, and Marine Admirals had countless underlings beneath them.

There was strength in numbers, yes, but most importantly was the close bonds formed with your closest circle.

For only with them, could fusion emerge – the dance of souls between each other, so that one being could form.

A dangerous art, and only for those who could trust (or who had no choice) to be lead along.

In the place of those once separate bodies would be one – ten times more powerful and ten times more useful, especially in battle, when one’s opponent would outlast you.

A common tactic in battles was to divide and conquer, so no fusions could form and something resembling equal footing would be allowed. Marines often used this, in favor of fusing as most pirates did, the marines claiming equality and the pirates truly uncaring of rules.

They were pirates after all.

Any advantage in a fight

-

There are legends, passed down and shifting over time, that the fusion between the King of the Pirates and Dark King Rayleigh was one of the most powerful to walk the earth and only rivaled by that of Garp the Fist and Sengoku The Buddha (and perhaps only because the latter had a devil fruit.) The fusion, called King’s Treasure, had seldom been seen, but was said to tower over giants and kings, to trample islands and swim the ocean as if it were a lake.

A fusion is, of course, the voice of two wills surging into one. The Will of D and that of a Conquerors could never be a small fusion after all.

In modern times, when Whitebeard and Roger have fallen (who were said to have fused exactly once, and never again, as Whitebeard rarely fused) fusions were much more visible, striking fear into every soul.

Big Mom made a habit of fusing with her compatible children, trying to create more creatures to add to her menagerie with her children’s powers. Kaidou’s men were often ordered to fuse, to overcome any odds.  Red Force, the force of the emperor Shanks and any one of his men, could be seen in a smaller state, partying on any given island.

The last time any Marine Admiral had fused had been at Marineford, when the clash of giants had cause Whitebeard to fuse, springing the giant admiral and pirate fusions to life.

The Strawhats are a legend now. Or rather, King’s Crew, the Strawhat crew fusion, is a fusion legend (though that isn’t to say the Strawhats don’t make headlines every other week.)

For every member of a crew to have a bounty is incredibly rare. To have more than five in a (stable) fusion is even rarer. To have the entire crew in one… well, it’s unheard of to say the least.

When King’s Crew rises from the ashes of the battlefield, gods learn the meaning of the human fear.

(for when emperors’ wills collide, one must dominate, leading to one will bigger than the other. But when wills become one – when dreams become one – fusions such as King’s Crew occur, shaking the very dirt of the Earth for centuries to come)

And what a Beautiful fusion they were.

Unbelievably tall and towering over giants, with rainbow black hair that stretched down to their low back. Seventeen eyes, some closed and some open, the widest being that of their Captains, and not all on the face, scattering across shoulders and necks. In place of one eye was a sloping scar, familiar to all who knew the face of Strawhat.

A smile, stretching wide across their face, sharp-toothed and half-feral half brilliant. Dimples and freckles decorate cheeks that are slightly too see-through, as if to see bone lying beneath them.  Six arms and four legs extend from their torso, dangerously half metal, fire and strong muscle. Their feet are clad in black roman sandals as black shorts are slung about their hips, and bracers decorate their clawed hands. A half skirt, made of the Straw Hat flag, ties around their waist with a wide-open slit, while their chest has only an open, printed suit vest covering it, displaying the mass of scars in the center of the chest. Spiraling tattoos of oceans and friends and jolly rogers scatter over arms as the ever-iconic straw-hat rests upon their head.

Magic seems to surround them. Fire at their feet, rubber in their skin, a demon in their heart, fur running down their back with metal and bone, extra limbs at any moment and a storm trembling overhead. Gentle fish scales slide over shoulders, glinting in the moonlight.

Demon would be the word for them, if that was able to encompass all that was King’s Crew.

Another word would be legend.

But the Straw Hat’s prefer just to call it love.

(A fusion, in its truest sense, is a symbol of a friendship beyond friendship, of a love beyond love. It has been corrupted, to mean power over the weak, for the sea is dangerous to those alone, but those like the Straw Hats, like King’s Treasure, know the truth.

To fuse is to place your soul in someone else’s hands and trust that they will regard it with nothing but love in turn.

This is why the Straw Hats fuse, and why King’s Crew is nothing but an act of loyalty and devotion to something greater than themselves.

This is fusion.

Love.)

King’s Crew, while stable, is bold and daring and rash. They are unhesitating, unwavering, and treat every decision as if fact.

They will win the battle.

They will sail to the end of the Grand Line.

They will become the pirate king (greatest swordsman, great warrior, will map the world, find the All Blue, the True History, an old friend, the cure to any disease, see the ship of dreams to the end of the line, find adventure in a world of hardship.)

They will do that.

Because with their crew, there is nothing King’s Crew can’t do.

(I can’t become pirate king without my crew! Luffy says, and after three years of sailing (after a day in the presence of their captain) the rest of the crew echoes it in turn. People fuse to become strong, but why can’t they fuse to become free?)

[patricianandclerk]

Anonymous asked: pls write about the nature of kink. It would be an interesting essay

sorry trying this as a text post to see if it’s less fucked up this way, fuckin tumblr i stg

Hhh, I admit, I don’t think I’d want to write about it in an actual essay format because I’d feel pressured to include sources and so on, whereas all of my thoughts and ideas are like… purely anecdotal and based very much on watching and studying how different people react to kink and interact with kinks and fetishes over the years.

It was super useful to have that background as a phone sex operator, and just as a dude who fucks, and like… I don’t know, I’m really interested in it, but I’m very much not smart or intellectual enough at all to go come at it from a genuine sexological or psychological perspective!

Okay, this got long, so the bulk of it is behind a cut, but… yeah. Basically I think as a society we need to embrace YKINMKATO (Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay) more as a philosophy, but also I need everyone to tell me what their kinks and fetishes are and why they think they’re into them because I want to dig into everyone’s brains and understand what makes them tick all day long because I’m just Like That.

The basic premise I work from is that like…

So, we use the word fetish to describe something that is imbued with a lot of like, sexual focus for someone? A fetish is a sexual thing, and people link like, sexual gratification to this focus, but the thing is that I think that’s… kinda stupid, because if it was specifically about sexual gratification, or even sexual drives, asexuals who aren’t interested in sex wouldn’t have them.

And I know plenty of aces who have fetishes - specific fixations which give them pleasure to pursue - that never have sexual gratification on their mind whatsoever.

What is a fetish? A fetish is usually like, a focus on something, an object or an action, so like… You fetishize, say, spanking, or stockings and high heels, or bondage, or stuffing (eating so much you’re full/being overfed). And people treat these things as sexual at their core, but like…

As a child, like, an actual small child at like, I don’t know, six, seven, eight, some of the things that featured in all my pretend games and my imaginings are now things that I would probably hang up on the wall with my fetishes, you know? I absolutely had fetishes in the sense that I had certain concepts upon which I fixated, and that I got way more excited about/fixated on more than other things, and that were way more satisfying to pretend about or be interested in - I know as a child I definitely thought about stuffing (which I obviously didn’t call that, then), but also about my interest in piracy, which like… Now, as an adult man, I would say that the extent of my interest in pirates, sexual or otherwise, is absolutely fetishistic, but as a child, there was obviously no sexual element to it at all, and I wasn’t even aware of it being like… a hyperfocus or fixation at all.

And if you talk to a lot of people who are into stuff like bondage talk about bondage, they often talk about childhood games where they were interested in being escape artists or whose childhood imaginings often involved being tied up and stuff like that, or people who really focused on certain cartoons and are now really engaged with furry fandom and so forth.

I’m not saying that kids have like, kinks, but I do think there must be an element to our behavioural development as children that leads to these fixations and focuses which we later carry into our adult lives, and while we call fetishes sexual in nature, I think that’s an oversimplification, because I think that while sex can absolutely be tied up in it, the actual… Gratification, if we call it that, the satisfaction that comes from taking these ideas to their end - performing a fetish scene, watching or reading a piece of media that focuses on that fetish, for example - is an intellectual one. It can be pursued sexually, but I think that to refer to fetishes as a purely sexual thing is kind of disingenuous, and very much an oversimplification.

A lot of fetishes aren’t just things that appear overnight when you go through puberty - some have their roots much sooner, far before any sexuality is even a concept on the horizon, and like…

To expand on that, we as a society “accept” (or expect, perhaps) a lot of sexual fetishes as par for the course in a lot of films that are made and filmed with the male gaze in mind. We aren’t surprised by upskirt/panty shots, or the fetish of women in wet t-shirts (which is very much a fetish, in that it’s a ritualised thing of semi-nudity, in public, etc), or like, voyeurism, especially in the frat/sorority setting. I mention these three because they’re very common in mainstream comedy films, and because they’re so common in those films as to be like… Almost expected as the norm?

Our treatment as a society of human breasts in general is hugely fetishistic, because they aren’t inherently sexual things, and yet we’ve made them into something much more significant than they are.

But there are common fetishes on pornography sites, like incest or what the industry calls pseudo-incest (with adopted or step-family), which like… You know, are hugely common on these porn sites and are so common as to be like, the subject of mockery by those that don’t share those fetishes, because they’re so common as to be difficult to avoid. Schoolgirl fetishisation is also terrifying, and again something that’s like, made into a thing by the mainstream male gaze…

But the thing is, a lot of people are growing into this society with these fetishes in the mainstream, and these fetishes develop like, you know, watching the clues to them show up  in mainstream television, to such an extent that it’s not even called a fetish?

But the thing that I’m interested in is like… the non-mainstream fetishes.

Like, for example, the stuffing thing, or like… There are people who are super interested in like, inflatable/balloon porn, or bimboification, or furries (as in anthropormophised animals as hotties etc), or that fucking guy who’s into Wonderbread, and like, a lot of these focuses start in childhood. You talk to people about their kinks, and they might mention, off-hand, oh, even as a child, I was interested in X narrative, but obviously, at the time it wasn’t a sexual thing, and to be honest, even later on, it still isn’t necessarily a sexual thing. Where do these concepts come from? Why do we fixate on them? Why do we then carry them into adulthood?

Like, people are always like “before you know it, if you get into porn, you’ll get suddenly way into really weird stuff”, but I’ve not personally had that experience - what I have had is seeking out a certain umbrella of fetishes that kinda scratch that internal itch that I’ve had since I was ye tall, and not in a way that’s like, specifically a sexual thing. I don’t know that I subscribe to this popular belief that fetishes are like… a side-effect of porn addiction, where you get into a weird thing because you read too much about it, or that a fetish is, in itself, an unhealthy/bad thing to have.

The problem is that we have like, such a taboo of sex, I think, that as soon as a conversation feels like it might possibly be about sex or sexual response, we shove it under the table, and we don’t want to talk about it, but like.

There are plenty of people who just get satisfaction - intellectual satisfaction - from say, narratives about inflation or about stuffing, or most of the furry content (which people make out to be WAY more sexual and inherently sexual than most furry content actually is), or whatever.

And because people have a difficult time envisioning that someone could be into like, talking animals (no one’s ever seen Disney Robin Hood or Zootopia?), or stuffing (no one’s ever seen any cartoon ever where a someone eats a comical amount of food?), or whatever else as being non-sexual, like… People fetishize tropes. People a lot of the time search for specific tropes, and I mean hyperspecific tropes, because reading them gives them more satisfaction than other tropes, but it isn’t necessarily a sexual thing.

I’m sure that a lot of people have been in the position where they search by like, a set of several tags to try to find a specific premise and execution of that premise on Ao3, because that specific premise just lights up the pleasure centres in their brain in a way that other premises just don’t, and they keep coming back to those premises for years and years.

If I talk to someone about stuffing or whatever, it’s almost impossible to imagine that it isn’t based inherently in sexual gratification for me, even though I might write or read a lot of non-sexual stuffing stuff, and is instead about the comfort of that fetishistic focus. And yet if I talk about my fixation on piracy, even when it is bordered by a lot of aesthetic attraction and engagement to pirates, and even when I’m explicitly saying shit like “yeah Captain Hook was my sexual awakening tbh”, people don’t view my interest in pirates as inherently sexual, even though my engagement with and interest in pirate tropes is… literally the same as the way I treat my engagement with and interest in stuffing.

In terms of definition, I would make the distinction that a fetish is a hyperfocus or fixation on a specific object, activity, or premise. Sometimes it’s sexual, but it’s not inherently about sexuality, but about some form of gratification, whether it be intellectual or sexual. A kink, in my own personal lexicon, I would generally define as being about control or access to a fetish.

And kinks…

I think I’d be hard-pressed to name a kink, I think, that isn’t somehow about control, whether it’s about losing/giving up control, having control taken from you, or taking control/taking it from someone else.

And like…

Especially when it comes to the kinks most people would call crazy even within fandom - stuffing is one of them, but like, vore, unbirth, bimboification, knotting and A/B/O, impregnation, tentacle sex, oviposition, body transformation, inflation, xeno sex in general, blah blah, like… A lot of these involve an unrealistic element to them which is nonetheless intellectually stimulating/gratifying for people to think about and write about or draw, or even, yes, to wank over! And I really don’t think that just because someone wanks over a thing it becomes like… somehow elevated or lowered than if it was a non-sexual fetish? If that makes sense?

Like, the actual behaviour is the same, it’s still about an internal gratification. Just because you find the gratifying element, sexual or otherwise, of it icky personally (God knows shit like vore, unbirth, and a lot of the stuff to do with A/B/O and pregnancy evades my understanding), doesn’t mean it isn’t like…

I don’t know, valuable, interesting?

One of the things I’ve learned about kink over time is how completely unexpected kinks can be shared by two very different people.

For example, some people are super into watersports/pissplay; other people find piss kind of gross, but might be very interested in power dynamics, control, and so on…

And so both the pissplay people and the power dynamic people might share an interest in omorashi, which is a kink to do with having a full bladder, and a lot of the time involves holding someone down until they wet themselves, or there’s a threat of wetting themselves.

The fact that this specific fetish exists, but that for two groups of people it’s satisfying, because of two completely different elements, is fascinating to me!

Like, loads of people are into A/B/O, but what part of it do they find exciting, or sexually appealing, or intellectually gratifying?

the implicit rape fantasy

the loss of control inherent when entering a state of heat/estrus and/or rutting?

the idea of a big, rugged figure overpowering a smaller one

is the animalistic, bestial element, which is often hugely racialised?

the body transformation element of a self-lubricating asshole?

bulbis glandis/the knot?

are you just a size queen? is it the size of the insertion that’s exciting?

is it the way that the two figures are knotted/tied together during/after sex, adding to the control thing?

is it the amount of come/slick involved? the fluids and mess?

is it the pain/overstimulation element?

is it the emotional catharsis?

is it the soul bond element?

is it the gang mentality in an a/b/o setting, where you’re “at threat” from multiple partners?

is it the power dynamics of a society?

is it because A/B/O allows someone to act out fears/worries we have in a male/female society where the lines of gender are equally fake and equally fictional but with a degree of separation because we actually do live with people trying to enforce a male/female society, but there’s a degree of separation in this fictional equivalent?

Or is it one of the other dozens of elements and fetishes that add to an A/B/O setting?

Like, there’s so many things that make up your average kink, and even your average fetish can come with like… completely different contributing factors that make it attractive to some people.

And I’m fascinated by that! I really am!