#oh & one more bisexual man but his wife isn’t part of the network so it’s actually like 6/7 people? depends on how you categorize it lol

[queer-ragnelle]

If y’all can keep track of the massive family trees in mythology you can track queer networks with more than three people. Throuples are great. But what if there were more queers. Consider that.

[retvenkos]

🔥 - may i get a ship for hsmtmts and tlok please? i am a ravenclaw, infp, bisexual who leans more towards guys. i am described as someone who is artistic in the field of writing in many forms and music. i tend to get very passionate about my favorite subjects like criminal justice, sports, ships, etc. but i really hate when people invalidate my feelings or make me feel lesser than bc my hobbies are uncommon. congrats on this huge milestone btw !! you deserve it ❤️

HSMTMTS:

I ship you with Nini Salazar Roberts!

the artistic energy of you two together would be off the charts. nini would love that you love music and writing.

she would be a little nervous to share her songs with you, but if are nervous too she will feel better and you will honestly praise her, making her feel way better about her talents.

and since you’re a writer, she will 100% try to get you to collaborate with her on a song - you write the lyrics and she’ll write the melody.

and one thing nini would love about you is how generous you are - she, too, is a very giving person and being able to be on the receiving end of another’s generosity makes her feel very special.

nini would be a little impatient with getting to know you, but she’s also really emotionally intelligent, so if you let her know you need more time, she’d be able to hold on just a little longer.

nini just craves being known and being in love (and honestly, who can blame her?), so she’s rather quick to getting into things. i think someone who’s a little slower at opening up would be good for her. it would teach her that being in love is more about the process, than the end goal.

the good thing is that you are both passionate about what you love, so there’s a strong foundation for your love to rest on.

i think both of you are idealistic, to a degree, which isn’t necessarily bad, it just means that you two will be able to learn together how to bring your hopes down to reality.

but you two are dreamers, and being able to open up with the other about that is what makes your relationship so perfect.

and don’t worry about having weird hobbies - that is literally nini in a nutshell. this girl has so many interests in completely different areas, and she would support you 100%.

i foresee a lot of dates where the two of you go out to do the traditional “couple things” - movie dates, coffee dates, walking through the mall hand-in-hand....

nini convinced you to go on a tandem bike ride through the park and it mostly ended in scraped knees and uncontrollable laughter, but both of you thought it was perfect.

you know that nini has a highlight reel on her instagram of you - just you studying, singing, writing, laughing, telling jokes - like i said, nini loves being in a relationship and displaying that.

but more than being in love with love, she’s in love with you. she’s learned the difference between loving the idea of a person and actually loving them, and i think that was an important lesson for her.

Legend of Korra:

I ship you with Bolin!

first of all, bolin would  a d o r e  you and would fight anyone who ever made you feel bad about your hobbies

this man is the epitome of the “that’s my wife!” meme and i’m here for it, honestly

and i honestly think that bolin would adore your artistic side - writing is probably something he’s never dabbled in, himself, so when you introduce it to him he is (1) in awe of your skills and (2) very ready to learn

and if you give bolin praise??? he will love you forever. because literally when does bolin ever get praise? mako and korra like never give it to him and it greatly upsets me

oh, and while bolin is extroverted where as you are more introverted, i imagine the two of you getting along really well. if he ever pushed you out of your comfort zone he would immediately apologize and pull you out of there 

and uhh,,,, his brother is mako so he’s used to hanging with someone who doesn’t do well in social situations.

honestly, one of the best things about bolin is that he cares the most about other people, and when it comes to you, he is very invested

and honestly? bolin is a little insecure, even though he is literally a mover star, bro what??? so he’d never take you for granted.

and since you are so thoughtful, you will always remember to hype him up and that’s honestly very good for him.

give bolin a healthy self-esteem 2k21

and on the flip side of that, if you ever feel self-conscious he will tell you all about how great you are and how lucky he is to have you. he appreciates you so much, and that is so sweet.

you two are both pretty emotionally driven, which isn’t always a bad thing, but it does mean that you are going to have to work on slowing down and not letting your emotions get ahead of you. the good thing about this is that you guys can work on it together, and you have such a strong support network.

and the group of friends you are getting into is crazy, we stan - they will probably treat you like the baby of the group but they love you so very much.

and i think the best thing about you and bolin is that bolin is so goofy! he would be able to bring you out of your shell, and the two of you would enjoy so much together.

100%, you guys go on walks through republic city at night, stopping to get food and having conversations that are really deep one minute and then full of laughs the next.

bolin is just such a great character with such range, he deserves the world.

take part in my 2.5k celebration

[newbi-ginning]

The day I came out to Her

Gather round for a heartwarming tale about the day I came out to my wife that I was a bisexual man.

Seriously. It’s sweet. I wish more people were as lucky as I am.

Background...  a few months ago, we had been talking about threesomes, and that working from my desire for her to be comfortable with her needs, I said it was ok with me if she wanted to try sex with another woman, without me present, or with me in another room, available for emotional support. I didn’t want her to be under any pressure to perform for me. I was also ok if we wanted to try an MMF threesome, as straight MMF play was something she had described to me in one of her fantasies.

You see... I had assumed, incorrectly, that she was bi-curious or bi-flexible based on some things she had said. And while she could absolutely understand where I misunderstood her, she said she didn’t have any desire to go down on another woman, any more than I had a desire to go down on any man. (Oh, how surprised I would be on that account!) She also wasn’t very comfortable with threesomes, but would think about it. She wasn’t saying no, just not yet.

We talked a bit more, mostly on the Kinsey scale, and while it isn’t perfect, it was good for our discussion. We both agreed that we were 0.5s. Put the right dick (for me) or pussy (for her) in front of us, and importantly, the right person attached to those parts, and either of us could probably go for it, if we had permission from the other. I wasn’t going to push it. If she didn’t have any interest, that was that. Unless consent was enthusiastic, we would stay right where we were.

I told her that I appreciated her honesty, and that I wasn’t hurt that the kind of MFF threesome I had fantasized about was not in our future, and reassured her that my wanting something was a lot different from needing something that she couldn’t give. I also said that it meant a lot that she hadn’t reacted negatively to my being on the edge of bisexuality, as it was much more socially acceptable to be a bi woman than a bi man. Of course, that itself was a mixed bag, due to the fetishization of bi women in the media. She didn’t care what was socially acceptable, though. 

If our interests were swapped, bros would absolutely be trying to give me high fives and propositioning her or us for sex. Not as likely for what our future will hold now, but that is not acceptable either way.

Fast forward several months... I was watching Netflix’s GLOW, which is campy as hell, fun, but has a lot of sucker punches for those of us who lived through the 80s... and still see the holes left by those that didn’t survive. 

***Spoilers for 3rd season of GLOW, which you honestly should have watched already, and for 1st and 2nd seasons, too, I suppose.***

There is this scene towards the end of the third season where Rhonda (stage name Britannica) tries to reignite the flame of her very convenient and very recent marriage to Bash (the producer of the women’s wrestling show), not through communication, but games and deception. She hires another wrestler’s boyfriend (also a gigolo/sex worker) to just be in their room to play the part of a hotel plumber, who is so very good with his hands, chatting and flirting when Bash comes back at the end of the day, which she expects to make him jealous enough to stop sexually neglecting her. 

We know that Bash is pursued by men and women alike, that he has some homophobic responses to some of those men, and that his butler/best friend Florian has died from AIDS related pneumonia, so what happens next is not completely unexpected. How it progresses was. 

Bash seems nonplussed (that glorious word that means both annoyed and not annoyed at the same time) by this, and suggests that Paul the Plumber kiss his wife, touch her, caress her. I liked how this was going, and really hoped it wasn’t going towards cuckoldry roleplay, as GLOW does tend to drop current buzzword topics into scripts, but I just don’t like that dynamic. No shade on those that do. Rhonda seems to melt at finally getting the affection she has been needing, despite being unsure where this is going.

The bedroom is where this is going, at Bash’s suggestion, where Bash and Paul make a Rhonda sandwhich. Both men kiss Rhonda... then each other... and then put their hands down each others very 80s underwear. Rhonda is a little confused, but she rolls with it as the scene ends.

Except, it wasn’t weird. Just surprising. 

Moment of clarity.

I wanted Rhonda and/or Paul. 

The story continues, and takes a very 80s turn, because this side of Bash scares him. He doesn’t want to die like Florian did. We don’t know if Bash is bi or gay at this point, and I’m not certain that Bash knows. I hope he develops as bi, and that he and Rhonda can have a good relationship, especially as the 80s progress and people better understand how to safely be themselves.

***Spoilers over***

The entire scene showed me something. I was bi. Like I said, moment of clarity. Couldn’t argue with that. A lot of stuff made sense.

I spent the next two weeks grappling with this (and my erection), read some, watched a couple youtube clips on what being bi meant, and watching a lot of bisexual male porn. Which I really liked. A lot. I fantasized about a lot of man on man fun, and how much fun it would be to share a man with Her. I read up on safer same sex. 

And about a week ago, when She asked how my day had been, and mischievously asked if I wanted to share anything sexy with her. I decided that this was as good of an opening as I would have, and I didn’t want to hide this from her any longer than I needed to. It hadn’t gone away like previous urges had. It was fully formed and it was real.

So I said, “Maybe. Can we do facetime?”

Yeah. Facetime. 

Maybe I hadn’t mentioned that I’m putting the finishing touches on our house before we sell it, and She is living in another city, since Her job there has already started? This might seem a bit fucked up, dropping a bomb like this on video chat instead of face to face, but I believed in us.

I told her that I had seen a really hot porn scene (the Glow connection had slipped my mind at this point), and followed it down a bit of a rabbit hole, and that this did not change anything about my commitment to her, but the scene included two guys fooling around. And I had realized that I was bisexual. 

I hadn’t done anything, but that didn’t matter. Bisexuality is about attraction and desire, not actions. A gay person can be a virgin, and if I never have sex with another guy, I’m still bisexual. 

She said that was fine. She loved me, and this didn’t change that. We were strong, and that she accepted me unconditionally

Yeah. She really is that wonderful. I had expected that result, but after about an hour of discussion, not instantly.

I continued to say that watching a guy suck another guy’s dick was really hot, and - 

She interjected, “Well, yeah! Of course it is!”

I knew that there were a couple bi MMF scenes she had talked about being really sexy in various shows she had watched, Sense8 was one, and that she occasionally watched gay porn, and liked it. I just didn’t realize that she thought gay porn could be as hot as I thought lesbian porn could be (and yes, we both realize how problematic it is to consume porn that reduces wlw to entertainment for men, or mlm for women).

Checking to make sure that I hadn’t lost my teeth, I continued. 

I wanted to try giving oral to another man, but not without her permission, as safely as possible, and preferably with her present for emotional support and/or even to join in to whatever extent she was comfortable with. 

She said that she definitely wanted to talk more about it, and that this conversation needed to be truly face to face, but that she would support me, and wanted me to be fulfilled as a person. Until then, I was expected to keep my hands, mouth, and dick to myself. She did say that with love in her voice, but we understood each other. It would hurt her if I went outside our relationship without talking about it. 

And then she said, “Love is love.”

We have talked for hours every day since (so nothing has changed there), and the day that we list the house is getting closer. She says that I’m sounding happier, more confident, and she loves hearing what I’m learning about myself. She has started looking for support groups for spouses of bi people in our new city, and promptly rejected the Straight Spouse Network as coming across as way too toxic and fatalistic from its website. She wants this to work, and I do to. 

And we will.

I’m not just with someone that I want to be with more than all the other women in the world. 

I want to be with her more than everyone else, man, woman, or GNC person. 

I know that not everyone will have a first coming out as positive as this, but we hear about bad ones, and my fellow bisexuals are more likely to be in the closet than most other parts of the rainbow, and have higher rates of mental illness and self harm than gay and lesbian people. The closet is a coffin for us, too. Being as out as you safely can be will show people that biphobia is just as groundless as homophobia. 

I’m not ready to be completely out. That will happen with time. But there are people that are at the top of my list. She wants to be with me as I begin that process, in case anything doesn’t go well. I’m strong, but sometimes a bit delicate.

We still won’t be welcome in many circles, especially conservative and religious ones. And some LG parts of the LGBTQ+ family will still push us away, and I’ll never tell someone that doesn’t feel safe around men that they have to put up with me in their space (I’ll go stand somewhere else, but I AM coming to community events that are open to bi people). 

I’m as much a part of the larger community as they are, and for each of us that is out, it makes it safer for others to be out. It shows we are trustworthy. We aren’t dangerous. We aren’t any more likely to cheat than straight people are. We aren’t spreading STIs. We just see more potential partners in the world than they might. This difference is part of life. 

Viva la difference!

[thecaffeinebookwarrior]

Internal Conflict:  Five Conflicting Traits of a Likable Hero.

1.  Flaws and Virtues 

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but characters without flaws are boring.  This does not, as many unfortunate souls take it to mean, imply that good, kind, or benevolent characters are boring:  it just means that without any weaknesses for you to poke at, they tend to be bland-faced wish fulfillment on the part of the author, with a tendency to just sit there without contributing much to the plot.

For any character to be successful, they need to have a proportionate amount of flaws and virtues.

Let’s take a look at Stranger Things, for example, which is practically a smorgasbord of flawed, lovable sweethearts.

We have Joyce Byers, who is strung out and unstable, yet tirelessly works to save her son, even when all conventional logic says he’s dead;  We have Officer Hopper, who is drunken and occasionally callous, yet ultimately is responsible for saving the boy’s life;  We have Jonathan, who is introspective and loving, but occasionally a bit of a creeper, and Nancy, who is outwardly shallow but proves herself to be a strong and determined character.  Even Steve, who would conventionally be the popular jerk who gets his comeuppance, isn’t beyond redemption.

And of course, we have my beloved Eleven, who’s possibly the closest thing Stranger Things has to a “quintessential” heroine.  She’s the show’s most powerful character, as well as one of the most courageous.  However, she is also the show’s largest source of conflict, as it was her powers that released the Demogorgon to begin with.  

Would Eleven be a better character if this had never happened?  Would Stranger Things be a better show?  No, because if this had never happened, Stranger Things wouldn’t even be a show.  Or if it was, it would just be about a bunch of cute kids sitting around and playing Dungeons and Dragons in a relatively peaceful town.

A character’s flaws and mistakes are intended to drive the plotline, and if they didn’t have them, there probably wouldn’t even be a plot.

So don’t be a mouth-breather:  give your good, kind characters some difficult qualities, and give your villains a few sympathetic ones.  Your work will thank you for it.

2.  Charisma and Vulnerability

Supernatural has its flaws, but likable leads are not one of them.  Fans will go to the grave defending their favorite character, consuming and producing more character-driven, fan-created content than most other TV shows’ followings put together.

So how do we inspire this kind of devotion with our own characters?  Well, for starters, let’s take a look at one of Supernatural’s most quintessentially well-liked characters:  Dean Winchester.

From the get-go, we see that Dean has charisma:  he’s confident, cocky, attractive, and skilled at what he does.  But these qualities could just as easily make him annoying and obnoxious if they weren���t counterbalanced with an equal dose of emotional vulnerability. 

As the show progresses, we see that Dean cares deeply about the people around him, particularly his younger brother, to the point of sacrificing himself so that he can live.  He goes through long periods of physical and psychological anguish for his benefit (though by all means, don’t feel obligated to send your main character to Hell for forty years), and the aftermath is depicted in painful detail.

Moreover, in spite of his outward bravado, we learn he doesn’t particularly like himself, doesn’t consider himself worthy of happiness or a fulfilling life, and of course, we have the Single Man Tear(TM).

So yeah, make your characters beautiful, cocky, sex gods.  Give them swagger.  Just, y’know.  Hurt them in equal measure.  Torture them.  Give them insecurities.  Make them cry.  

Just whatever you do, let them be openly bisexual.  Subtext is so last season.

3.  Goals For the Future and Regrets From the Past

Let’s take a look at Shadow Moon from American Gods.  (For now, I’ll have to be relegate myself to examples from the book, because I haven’t had the chance to watch the amazing looking TV show.) 

Right off the bat, we learn that Shadow has done three years in prison for a crime he may or may not have actually committed.  (We learn later that he actually did commit the crime, but that it was only in response to being wronged by the true perpetrators.)  

He’s still suffering the consequences of his actions when we meet him, and arguably, for the most of the book:  because he’s in prison, his wife has an affair (I still maintain that Laura could have resisted the temptation to be adulterous if she felt like it, but that’s not the issue here) and is killed while mid-coital with his best friend.

Shadow is haunted by this for the rest of the book, to the point at which it bothers him more than the supernatural happenings surrounding him.  

Even before that, the more we learn about Shadow’s past, the more we learn about the challenges he faced:  he was bullied as a child, considered to be “just a big, dumb guy” as an adult, and is still wrongfully pursued for crimes he was only circumstantially involved in.

But these difficulties make the reader empathize with Shadow, and care about what happens to him.  We root for Shadow as he tags along with the mysterious and alternatively peckish and charismatic Wednesday, and as he continuously pursues a means to permanently bring Laura back to life.

He has past traumas, present challenges, and at least one goal that propels him towards the future.  It also helps that he’s three-dimensional, well-written, and as of now, portrayed by an incredibly attractive actor.

Of course (SPOILER ALERT), Shadow never does succeed in fully resurrecting Laura, ultimately allowing her to rest instead, but that doesn’t make the resolution any less satisfying.  

Which leads to my next example...       

4.  Failure and Success 

You remember in Zootopia, when Judy Hopps decides she wants to be cop and her family and town immediately and unanimously endorse her efforts?  Or hey, do you remember Harry Potter’s idyllic childhood with his kindhearted, adoptive family?  Oh!  Or in the X-Files, when Agent Mulder presents overwhelming evidence of extraterrestrial life in the first episode and is immediately given a promotion?  No?

Yeah, me neither.  And there’s a reason for this:  ff your hero gets what they want the entire time, it will be a boring, two-dimensional fantasy that no one will want to read.  

A good story is not about the character getting what they want.  A good story is about the character’s efforts and their journey.  The destination they reach could be something far removed from what they originally thought they wanted, and could be no less (if not more so) satisfying because of it.

Let’s look at Toy Story 3, for example:  throughout the entire movie, Woody’s goal is to get his friends back to their longtime owner, Andy, so that they can accompany him to college.  He fails miserably.  None of his friends believe that Andy was trying to put them in the attic, insisting that his intent was to throw them away.  He is briefly separated from them as he is usurped by a cute little girl and his friends are left at a tyrannical daycare center, but with time and effort, they’re reunited, Woody is proven right, and things seem to be back on track.

Do his efforts pay off?  Yes -- just not in the way he expected them to.  At the end of the movie, a college-bound Andy gives the toys away to a new owner who will play with them more than he will, and they say goodbye.  Is the payoff bittersweet?  Undoubtedly.  It made me cry like a little bitch in front of my young siblings.  But it’s also undoubtedly satisfying.      

So let your characters struggle.  Let them fail.  And let them not always get what they want, so long as they get what they need.  

5.  Loving and Being Loved by Others

Take a look back at this list, and all the characters on it:  a gaggle of small town kids and flawed adults, demon-busting underwear models, an ex-con and his dead wife, and a bunch of sentient toys.  What do they have in common?  Aside from the fact that they’re all well-loved heroes of their own stories, not much.

But one common element they all share is they all have people they care about, and in turn, have people who care about them.  

This allows readers and viewers to empathize with them possibly more than any of the other qualities I’ve listed thus far, as none of it means anything without the simple demonstration of human connection.

Let’s take a look at everyone’s favorite caped crusader, for example:  Batman in the cartoons and the comics is an easy to love character, whereas in the most recent movies (excluding the splendid Lego Batman Movie), not so much. 

Why is this?  In all adaptions, he’s the same mentally unstable, traumatized genius in a bat suit.  In all adaptions, he demonstrates all the qualities I listed before this:  he has flaws and virtues, charisma and vulnerability, regrets from the past and goals for the future, and usually proportionate amounts of failure and success.  

What makes the animated and comic book version so much more attractive than his big screen counterpart is the fact that he does one thing right that all live action adaptions is that he has connections and emotional dependencies on other people.  

He’s unabashed in caring for Alfred, Batgirl, and all the Robins, and yes, he extends compassion and sympathy to the villains as well, helping Harley Quinn to ultimately escape a toxic and abusive relationship, consoling Baby Doll, and staying with a child psychic with godlike powers until she died.

Cartoon Batman is not afraid to care about others.  He has a support network of people who care about him, and that’s his greatest strength.  The DC CU’s ever darker, grittier, and more isolated borderline sociopath is failing because he lacks these things.  

 And it’s also one of the reasons that the Lego Batman Movie remains so awesome.

God willing, I will be publishing fresh writing tips every week, so be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future advice and observations!