#cross posted on dreamwidth

[dykeiism]

why are radfems against sex work?

i'd like to make a post to summarize my views on pornography, prositution, and other forms of sex work. it will be useful for me to have it all in one place, and i'll continue to update it as i learn more about the topic. i've broken down my arguments into three categories: demand, consent, and intimacy. there's a lot of overlap between the categories, but i still find it helpful to have it organized in this manner. ↶ೃ✧˚demand. ❃ ↷ ˊ- sex work creates a demand that will be fulfilled with sex trafficking.

let's imagine the best-case scenario: a woman doing sex work because she wants to. she genuinely enjoys this type of work, and her clients treat her well. this is understood by some to be "ethical sex work."

as a business, sex work must actively encourage the demand for sex work to keep increasing. porn industries want to create porn addicts. they want to create a pornsick society. that’s how businesses survive. it's horribly optimistic to imagine that every person who wants to use pornography or prostitutes will do so ethically (assuming that ethical sex work is possible). but let's imagine for a moment that ethical sex work exists, and that everyone who wants to consume sex work does so ethically. would there ever be enough women who are willingly going into sex work to satisfy this demand? as long as there is a demand, there will be sex trafficking to meet that demand. the “ethical” sex worker is a very very small minority of sex workers who throws every other sex worker and prostituted woman/girl under the bus for her own gain.

sex workers need men to use porn and prostitutes, and they will encourage men to do so. is this good for feminism? do you think these are good men? do you think these men respect the women in their lives? do they have healthy sexual relationships, or are they sexually reliant on static fantasies created by strangers who they have no personal connection or intimacy with?

↶ೃ✧˚consent. ❃ ↷ ˊ- consent can't be bought. consent can’t be bought--in fact, the mainstream conception of "consent" isn't one that respects women's sexual desires. it's a copout that allows men to do whatever they want to women, as long as the woman agrees to having it done to her. sex is something you do with someone, not to them. so many women (including myself) have uncritically consented to sexual activities in the heat of the moment because our minds were clouded by confusion, surprise, or anxiety, and we didn't feel like we could take a moment to think things through. think of it from the perspective of someone who uses a prostitute, in the best case scenario (in which the woman is pursuing prostitution of her own volition and not out of necessity): you found a woman who you're sexually interested in, but she isn't interested in you. instead of offering her a worthwhile sexual experience, you use your money to blow past her disinterest and buy her consent. you then begin to touch and penetrate a woman who wouldn't be interested in you if not for the money you offered her. you see no problem with this. since you are paying this woman, she is providing you a service. you have a one-sided sexual encounter where you use someone else's body to fulfill your own desires. think about the men who do this, and the men who consume pornography. how do you think they view sexuality? how do you think they treat their own sexual partners, after consuming so many static sexual fantasies that are devoid of any personal intimacy? ↶*ೃ✧˚intimacy. ❃ ↷ ˊ- i've decided to put "intimacy" at the end, because it is the most subjective of the three. upon reading this, it may become quite clear that these views are influenced by my personal experiences with sex work, sexual trauma, and christianity.

if you’re sex positive, you’ll be against porn. porn misrepresents sexuality by completely divorcing sexual pleasure from love, intimacy, and vulnerability. witnessing such intimate imagery of total strangers will inevitably mess up the way you approach your own sexuality, and the way you interact with sexual partners. porn puts a price on sexuality and makes it into something that can be bought and sold.  porn consumption encourages hookup culture

[regardstosoulandromance]

things i've been reading lately!

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang - Everyone said this book was intense and they were not lying. I'd previously listed to like the first third on audiobook, but had to return it to the library before I had finished. I picked up a used copy at my favorite indie and took it on vacation to read earlier this month. R.F. Kuang is an oddly polarizing author, people either think she's the best writer to ever exist or think she massively sucks and I've barely seen any moderate options. I thought The Poppy War was well done. I liked the characters, thought the world building and magic was cool, and enjoyed the character development. It was a war novel thought and very intense so I'm not quite sure if I liked the novel or enjoyed reading it? I think I want to read the rest of the trilogy, but I need a long break first.

A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston - Read this in one day (both by the pool and in the pool) and it was SO GOOD. I've read quite a few of Poston's book before- both her YA geeky modern fairy tale retellings, and her adult romance The Seven Year Slip (also I tried to read Dead Romantics but was VERY annoyed to realize it was R*ylo fanfic in disguise, the mmc's name is Ben Andor of all things like cmon.)-  but I think this one may be my favorite. I just adore the premise. The main character gets stuck in her favorite unfinished book series and ends up falling for the grumpy bookstore owner who is the only one who knows they're in a book. It's funny, heartwarming, and just so so good. (My only complaint is that K*lo R*n shows up at the end for a cameo)

Elizabeth of East Hampton by Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding - I've read another book by this author duo, Emma of 83rd Street, which was an Emma retelling and liked it quite a lot, so I was very excited to get an earc of this new book which was a Pride and Prejudice retelling! I read it in basically one sitting (a five hour plane flight home) and greatly enjoyed it. It's set in the Hampton's where Lizzy's family owns a bakery and Will Darcy rents a house for the summer. I really enjoyed some of the changes, including changing the Wickam arc, but was sad that Georgiana Darcy was cut from the story. Lizzy and Will's relationship was very cute, very true to the source material, and it was fun that they bonded over surfing of all things. Fun novel, very summer-y! Recommend if you like Jane Austen retellings.

[divinekangaroo]

Does that script still exist which crossposts from dreamwidth to tumblr…

[pizzaqueen]

Why didn’t I cross post my tumblr fic to AO3 when I posted it here? Now I have so many to upload 😭

(I mean, I know why! I didn’t want to deal with summaries or titles or the anxiety of waiting for interactions on two different sites lol but still!)

[kijiboop]

So, today I learned that I am too old for energy drinks. I'm 41. I got a free sugar-free energy drink from GoPuff yesterday and figured, what the hell, I'll give it a try. This morning, I missed my usual coffee, so I grabbed the Ghost from the fridge and started driving.

I drank about four ounces. It tastes oddly like Sour Patch Kids, which was the advertised flavor. Considering it's supposedly sugar-free, this concerns me.

I hit work after my 35-minute commute and I feel like someone fired me out of a cannon. This is terrifying. I can't hold still and I feel like I've been strapped to the back of a bucking bronco only I'm the bronco and my brain is the rider unable to cling on for dear life. I can't make eye contact with anyone. I'm spontaneously shouting "wheee!" when given new information. This is bad. I'm an adult and I'm acting like a sugared-up toddler.

Thankfully, my coworkers are all about the same age as me and recognize the signs of Bad Decision Making. They're giving me as much benefit of the doubt as they can while I shake-dump the remainder of the can down the staff room sink.

[insecateur]

the exchange fic i'd been talking about for a while is unanoning in like 2 hours so i'm very much looking forward to that

[that-dreaming-dragon]

My experiences with kardiatype/emperiatype

As someone who uses the term kardiatype (also called emperiátype) regularly, the distinction between me-the-concurrent-self (dream dragon) vs the past life non-self (eastern dragon), is very helpful. Because on the broader stroke, me and that ancient one are both dragons. 

My personal experience with the spiritual type of otherkinity is that, there is still a very heavy tone of one’s kintype = past life or vice versa. It makes discussing about myself rather difficult. I love to talk about that dragon, and I love to explore more about myself. But I’m not that dragon of my past, I’m my own different dragon. Although my preference for food, my hearthome, and perhaps some of my instincts, are all from that dragon. (I am learning to differentiate which is that dragon’s and which is my own)

Another thing from my personal experience. To me, my kardiatype have a larger “presence”. I know I have one human past life, and potentially another one, and very likely many others of various species, but the presence of the eastern dragon past life is the brightest.

I don’t call the Japanese prince a kardiatype, because that one’s a “oh, I acknowledge your has-been”. 

I also like kardiatype more than emperiatype, for I have a rather heartedness sort of connection with my kardiatype.

Cross-posted from dreamwidth. Read more about me and my kardiatype in my dreamwidth tag

[happyfunzies]

I’ve been blogging more on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal recently for more “professional” things, I suppose.

It’s certainly a new experience, for sure, and I hope I’m getting some things down. I’ve decided to only tag my stuff when I deem necessary since there’s ZERO point in trying to tag for things that won’t get seen in the first place. (I do tag NSFW & “inappropriate” posts, keep in mind — I’m just failing to see why I should tag casual posts ig (maybe ‘cuz I’m lazy).

Anyways, to keep y’all up-to-date, I’m currently attempting to draw more in Adobe Fresco & Photoshop! It’s a lot of fun once you get used to the software, I have to say. I wouldn’t recommend for beginners to use Photoshop, but Fresco could be good! Depends, I would say, because you’d have to be at a good understanding of general art programs to understand this. FireAlpaca has improved drastically, and I would argue that it’s extremely fit for beginners! It even has a Timelapse feature now!

[laughingmagi]

Watched Velvet Goldmine again and I feel creatively refreshed and reset. I've legit seen this movie well over a hundred times, and it still hits that emotional and aesthetic cord just right for me. Even more so as I've grown older. I think, though it did shape me in deep, fundamental ways as a person, at sixteen or seventeen, whenever it was I first watched it, I was nowhere near mature enough to properly appreciate it.

[fiabex]

Fic In A Box 2024

Schedule

August 9-16: Nominations Pre-Gaming (participants can load tags from last year’s tagset into this tagset)

August 17: Tag Nominations Open

August 24: Tag Nominations Close

August 25-26: Nominations Cleanup

August 27: Signups Open

September 1: Swap requests open

September 7: Signups Close

September 10: Assignments Out By This Date

September 11: Swap requests close

October 20: Assignments Due

October 27: First Extension Due Date

November 3: Final Extension Due Date

November 10: Last Day To Submit Makeup Assignments

November 16 28: Work Reveals

November 30 December 12: Creator Reveals

All times 11:59pm Eastern

What is Fic In A Box

A gift exchange is an event where participants create fanworks to gift to each other. Fic In A Box is a fanwork exchange with a large minimum gifting requirement and several unique features. Gifts can include fic, art, audio, video— and much much more.

How It Works/The Nitty-Gritty:

All participants in Fic In A Box are requesting 10,000 words of fanfiction by default, but can opt in to other mediums to give their gifter options. Mediums can include writing structure things like "in-world rpf" for your gift, or include creative formats as far away from fic as different types of art, knitting patterns, logic puzzles, and so on. There were 288 mediums to choose from last year, and we add more every year.

For mediums other than the written word, pretty much any medium will be accepted, as long as it can be digitized for delivery and we can agree on a clear and easily checked equivalent to 1k of written fic. Participants who primarily work in non-writing mediums are very welcome and will get specially matched (as long as they give the mods a heads-up) so they'll have an assignment they can complete. If your art form is fannish cross-stitch? We'd love to have you join us.

Participants have the option to split the 10k words (or equivalent in an opted-into medium) that they owe between several separate works (say, one fic of 3k and a another of 7k) to reach 10k total. The minimum word count per work is 1k by default, but lower wordcount works will count if your recipient has opted into receiving them. (Drabble is a medium that can be opted into!) And initial assignments are 10k for one person, but at the start of the exchange the mods run Swaps which will give you the chance to split that 10k into multiple shorter assignments for multiple recipients!

So when it comes time to turn in gifts, you might turn in 3k worth of art, 4k in fic, and 3k in typesetting a fic (10k total), and then you receive 8k of fic and 2k of map design (10k total). Last year 265 people signed up, and we exchanged 993 gifts at the end of the creation period, everything from fic to reddit posts to logic puzzles to museum catalogues to CYOA stories to colouring pages!

If you cannot complete the full 10k (or other medium equivalent) but are still able to post one or more smaller, complete works, you can default on just the remaining wordcount. You will then be guaranteed (via finding a back up gifter-- "pinch hitting"-- if necessary) a gift equivalent to the amount you were able to submit (rounded down to the nearest 1k). There are also options to "earn back" guaranteed minimum amount by taking pinch hits or completing your original assignment.

Questions?

For more information about Medium rulesets, signing up, nominations of fandoms, relationships, or medium forms, swaps, or much more (questions about how pinch hits work? we have documentation about that), check out the dreamwidth blog!

If you have questions, feel free to ask them here, check the dreamwidth blog for much more documentation, email the mods, or join our discord server. The discord server has a lot of experienced participants happy to answer questions, and you are also welcome to join just to hang out!

Note: you must be 18 or older to join FIAB.

Links

Email: ficinaboxmod@gmail.com

Ao3 Collection (sign up here once signups open)

Tag Set

Dreamwidth Blog

Discord (includes question channel)

Current Pinch Hits

[fourormore]

[Image description: A polyam flag with the words “four or more Valentine's Flash Fiction Madness" in distorted letters on it.]

AO3 COLLECTION | SQUIDGEWORLD COLLECTION

Happy New Year! I'm already looking forward to creating about the complicated relationship dynamics that come up when you have four or more people in a polycule. What are you looking forward to this year?

Well, hopefully, you're looking forward this event.

Let me introduce to you: the 2025 Four or More Valentine's Flash Fiction Madness collection!

What's this? It's a writing-focused challenge, however all mediums are welcome in the collection. The idea is to purposefully create in smaller chunks for your favorite relationships with #fourormore people with the intent of promoting your favorite ships and populating those tags of polyamorous goodness.

This event will run from February 7th to February 21st.

This is a low-stakes, personal challenge. There's no penalty for going over the limit. In fact, if you manage multiple works that go over the limit, you have my admiration.

GUIDELINES

Any medium! Any rating! As long as your work focuses on a relationship with 4 or more people, it's allowed!

All works must be your own and not previously posted. AI generated works will be deleted from the collections.

You may combine these with other events, as long as the other event allows it (such as @polyamships PolyamShippingDay or @febuwhump)

Small fandoms and complicated relationships more than welcome!

Don't forget to comply with the community guidelines.

MEDIUM SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

Minimum wordcount for fics is 100 words. Maximum is 2000 words.

Minimum for art is a sketch (digitally or traditionally drawn. Figure sticks allowed!). There is no limit to the quality or effort you want to put in your fills.

Minimum for moodboards is a 2x3 grid (6 images individually or edited in one image). Maximum is a 3x 3 grid (9 images individually or edited in one image).

Minimum for podfic is a 100-word fic. Maximum is 2000 words. There is no restriction on length or special effects.

Minimum for fanvids is 30 seconds. Maximum is 1minute and 30seconds.

Other mediums don't have a minimum nor maximum. Do you want to make an in-universe magazine for your ship? A cross stich pattern? A sculpture? Go ahead and do it! I look forward to all the things you can create.

FAQ

Q: How much do I need to create? A: As much or as little as you want! Even one more work in your ship tag is better than none!

Q: Why isn't X allowed? A: Just because.

Q: I don’t have a Dreamwidth account. Can I join? A: Of course! You don’t even need an AO3 account if you wish to post only on tumblr.

Q: My work contains [INSERT WARNING HERE]. Can I still participate? A: Yes. This is a CNTW (Choose Not To Warn) space.

Q: I don’t want to see [X] content, can you please remove it? A: No. The only content that will be removed will be that that does not comply with the rules.

PROMO POSTS

Please promote your works! Create reading lists! Send us on a treasure hunt to unlock a secret fic! If you are posting on tumblr please @ us @fourormore and/or use the tag #fourormore, and your work will be archived to the blog.

--

If you have any questions, send us a message!

Have fun and bon appetit!

[anghraine]

I knew I'd written a screed explaining my actual perspective on why there's such a disparity between Faramir's aspirations for Gondor in victory and what Aragorn as king of Gondor actually does. I remembered feeling even at the time that it was a harsher rant about it than I'd normally post, but I didn't want to write it again from scratch.

Finally! I did manage to find where I put that rant—it was actually embedded within a friends-locked Dreamwidth post dealing with an "original" short story I'd written about the convention of a fairy-tale hero getting rewarded with the hand of the king's daughter. The story involves the hero's evolution into a conqueror who I had envisioned as a cross between post-LOTR Aragorn and Cesare Borgia, and eventually my post went off on this tangent that, yeah, is pretty much my opinion:

The point isn't "this is what Aragorn and Faramir are really like" or "this is what they actually do in LOTR." It's more about how Tolkien frames Aragorn as a good and noble and heroic warrior-king and kindly, merciful overlord whom we're expected to believe has good, noble reasons for the distant military campaigns he and Éomer go on until Éomer (aged 28 in LOTR) is an old man. To go by Faramir's speech about wanting Minas Tirith to be a "queen among other queens" rather than a ruler of other, subjugated cities, and going by so much else that Tolkien wrote, it's not that JRRT is broadly uncritical of overlords and kings and empires, but that the rules are kind of broken for Aragorn specifically. This is what George RR Martin's notorious tax policy quote misses IMO. His argument is that Aragorn's arc represents Tolkien's general perspective on leadership, which I think is a very narrow way of viewing Tolkien's work, and why the quote seems so inadequate as a way of understanding leadership in The Silmarillion. And good intentions making good kings is a baffling way of understanding (say) the Númenórean kings of the Second Age. Aragorn gets relatively special treatment because he, personally, is so special. He can become a benevolent and merciful overlord of his enemies, and noble king who brings prosperity, and a victor in far-flung battles, without ever doing anything wrong.

This is a sharp contrast with someone like Tar-Aldarion, whose dream of building Númenor into a naval superpower is far from pure. It's partly motivated by basically good intentions (he recognizes the very real threat that is going to rise long before most people do, and is trying to prepare for when it comes), and yet it's made clear that this entails destructive, terrible actions that cause a lot of needless suffering, and that Aldarion himself is a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed motives.

Essentially, Aragorn gets the glamour of empire without having to do actual imperialisms in the story. The reality that imperial power necessitates doing imperialism is both kind of denied with regard to Aragorn, because he is the most special boy and a magic exception to this somehow, and also kind of vaguely acknowledged in a way that's shunted into euphemistic summaries and references in the Appendices and such. So the point for me was less an argument that Aragorn actually committed specific imperialist actions, but more about pushing back against the idea that that kind of power is achievable without the moral baggage of imperialism and autocracy.

[regardstosoulandromance]

I've been on a DNF spree lately so here's my little post about it as to feel Productive

Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake - Both the characters were boring, annoying, and bad for each other. Their relationship was toxic but not in a fun way and I did NOT want them to get back together. This was a very disappointing read as I loved AHB's first two books, but her latest two have fallen flat for me.

If I Told You, I'd Have to Kiss You by Mae Marvel - I got one page into it before realizing that the main character's names are YARDLEY and TABASCO. I could not take that serious. Yardley???? and Tabasco??????? Who are spies???????

Book of Night by Holly Black - Read five chapters and was both bored and did not care about anything happening. It kinda reminded me of Ninth House but less interesting (and even Ninth House was just okay). You should at least be able to hook me by chapter five.

[who-is-page]

After encouragement from my friends and polycule, I've finally made a Patreon! It has a free membership option, as well as multiple paid membership options with perks.

Hi, I'm Page (he/him)! I'm primarily an artist and writer; you can find most of my written work on my system's website, Three Dragons and a Dog, though in the past I've also run the comic Shenani-kins and I occasionally publish TTRPGs on my itch.io. I'm the founder of the Alterhuman Archive, creator and co-owner of the Nonhuman National Park forum, and convention chair of the Centaurus Festival convention. I'm also the organizer behind the annual Inky Paws collaborative fiction anthology, which is free to download from my itch.io!

I've started a Patreon which you can join ✨ for free ✨ or, if you like what I do and want to financially support me, there's also three tiers of paid memberships: $1/month, $5/month, and $10/month. Folks in the $5/month tier and above will get free download keys for new releases on my itch.io, and folks in the $10/month tier will also get shout-outs at my lectures at OtherCon, Centaurus Festival, HowlCon, and etc. as a perk!

I'll be posting art, lectures, stories, and non-fiction writings on alterhumanity, plurality, religion, and queerness onto my Patreon. Most of what I make will also be cross-posted onto Tumblr, Dreamwidth, and/or my website. In the future I might have some member-only posts, but I want to make the bulk of what I do accessible to everyone.

A lot of what I do, I do for free-- and I'm glad to be able to share so many of my projects with the community! With enough support financially, I'd be able to dedicate a lot more time and energy to making really cool things, and maintaining the cool things I've already got rolling. If you've ever gotten enjoyment out of something I've made, consider joining and throwing a dollar my way. Or, if you want to support me without any commitment, consider tipping me on Ko-Fi. Thank you so much!

[androxys]

A Catalog of Collections - Reading Batman from 1986-2011 in Trade/Omnibus Formats

So here’s the thing about Batman: he’s got a lot of comics published about him. Like, a lot. DC Comics has been publishing a comic under the Batman title continuously since 1940, and that doesn’t even begin to touch his history in the Detective Comics title (published since 1939) or any of the many other stories that bear his name.

If you want to read Batman comics, it can be intimidating! I get it. That’s a lot of single comic issues to find and read. This is an updated guide to a list I made a bit over a year ago, which aims to catalog collections of the Batman title published between the Crisis on Infinite Earths story (which concluded in 1986) and Flashpoint (which was in 2011). This era is called, with some interchangeability, “New Earth,” “post-Crisis,” “pre-reboot,” or “pre-Flashpoint.”

You may look at that and have a few questions. Just the Batman title? And why only a 25 year span? The first answer is practicality. If I tried to list out every Batman story, we’d be here forever. We’re going to start with his main, self-titled comic and move from there. As for the time period, Crisis on Infinite Earths was a company-wide effort to give characters new histories and stories. This ushered in a new status quo for Batman that set the stage for some of his most iconic stories. Flashpoint was another one of these company-wide reboots, completely resetting Batman (and the whole DC universe) in The New 52. A lot of what we now consider “classic” Batman stories come from this period in between the two resets. This is not to disparage current comics, but merely to comment on the fact that once an era has ended it’s easier to evaluate… and to collect into trade.

Because the (subjective) truth is that collections make it easier to read comics. Why track down five to twelve individual parts to a story when you can buy one book that puts it all together? This is doubly true if the story crosses over with other comics. The trouble is, some stories and their collections are quite famous, while others are less so. That is why this guide exists.

Ultimately, this catalog aims to help present the most complete list of collections of the Batman titles, published between 1986 and 2011, that I can provide. I subscribe to the fourth law of library science, to save the time of the reader, and I hope this list can help make the density of Batman more approachable.

The full list is currently available on my Dreamwidth. I'm currently fiddling with the format so that tumblr will let me post it here too.

[lokius-kinkmeme]

Filled Prompts Masterpost

AO3 Collection

All participants are welcome to anonymously (or not anonymously) submit their fills to this collection on AO3

Fills cross-posted on Tumblr can also tag this account and we will be happy to reblog

At the end of every round, we will also post a complete list of all fills on the Dreamwidth comm and cross-post that list here

FAQs/Pinned Post | Ask a Mod a Question