#terms we use. but she is aro ace and loves so deeply but its not romantic. she has a friend who is her life psrtner her most trusted her li

[eternally-tired-cryptid]

I am thinking so hard about my witcher OC and how she is very much human and will die of old age but she will have lived a life fulfilled and loved and she will die surrounded by those she adores and who love her

[lnkedmyheart]

We need to talk about Irene Adler

So correcting a huge myth about Irene Adler since I'm here in the YuuMori fandom and watching the world burn over idiots insisting Irene was canonically Sherlock's love interest and his equal in terms of genius because she fooled him.

A few points before I begin,

I will be talking about the seperate adaptations and their interpretations of Irene and her relationship to Sherlock in them.

I will not be using this post to hype up any ships because while this issue stems from the ship situation its also because people seem to misrepresent why she was an important memorable presence in Sherlock's life.

Irene is one of my favorite characters in the franchise as a whole to the point that Bond from the James Bond series despite never having been my favorite has become my favorite.

Some spoilers for yuumori, proceed with caution.

I stuck to she/her when talking about Irene as a character prior to *spoiler* for ease of understanding.

Onwards I guess.

The Books

Doyle had himself stated that Sherlock was never in love with her. Sherlock is canonically aro/ace in the og series despite it never being said in so many words.. He considers such things like romance and love to be abhorrent. Its part of why he has a hard time accepting Mary, not only because she makes Watson reconsider priorities but also because he doesn't really care for women much. To him, given his general behaviour and the society he lives in women were never really considered smart.

Irene on the other hand has absolutely no interest in him at any point in the og. She is deeply in love with someone and fools Sherlock and disappears with her husband. The reason Sherlock keeps her photograph as a keepsake is because he admires her as "the woman". She is the woman that changes his perspective on women in general. She vexes him and he admires her ability to fool him so thoroughly.

Another thing about Adler is that she isn't a genius like Sherlock, nor is she a mastermind like Moriarty. What makes her unique and allows her to one up Sherlock is a combination of factors. She uses everything at her disposal to fool him. Her charms, her ability to read people, she is street smart and cunning, a talented actress and most importantly, she knows that men underestimate her. So no, she wouldn't have been magically able to one up Sherlock multiple times like many people think she can. She isn't his equal because she can always one up him, she is his equal because she managed to one up him at all and Sherlock isn't foolish enough to ever underestimate a woman, particularly Adler, ever again.

RDJ Movies

Here Irene is explicitly Sherlock's love interest. Her role is expanded a lot more and she is Holmes' weakness. The only aspect that stays the same is that Irene can keep Sherlock on his toes once again using everything at her disposal however, Sherlock also loses his common sense around her. Anytime he falls for her tricks he is actively doing things he wouldn't normally do and his deduction seems to go kaput for the most part. Its not entirely because of plot related oocness but rather I think it implies that Sherlock makes mistakes when around her which would only strengthen the general idea Sherlock worked with where he sees romance as an unnecessary distraction. Again, Irene isn't as smart as Sherlock and Moriarty, but she CAN one up Sherlock.

The key difference being that a) she is explicitly his love interest and b) Sherlock is stupid around her and she knows that and OG Sherlock wouldn't have fallen for any of her actions more than once. Here she knows about his deduction skills so she overwhelms him with faked evidence because she knows him and he knows her enough to not underestimate her. Also here, Sherlock IS in love with her.

BBC

Listen...I heard Irene was supposed to be a lesbian but like from what I heard (and saw) she fell for Sherlock. Its probably the lesbian in me talking but I just don't get what the hype about Cumberbatch even is but I digress. Now IDK how much of what I know is out of context but from what I remember Irene chose to show up naked on their first meeting. She chose to not give Sherlock anything to deduce. Kinda smart maybe, but it ignores a lot of other stuff, clothes and accessories aren't the only things that could be used for a typical Sherlock scan. (Ignoring the fact that the sherlock scan isn't actually effective at all in modern settings with how drastically things have changed between 1800s and 2000s). I just don't have much to say tbh. I didn't watch the series, I just didn't vibe with it I guess.

YuuMori (this one gets long)

YuuMori actually does do somethings in a way similar to the og series while obviously deviating massively at its core. Similar to the og, Sherlock is irritated and vexxed by her for most of their meeting. He in general doesn't think much of women in the usual 19th century social structure way. Women weren't really considered very smart or great at the time y'know. Anyhow while Sherlock is never openly dismissive of women he does not particularly enjoy their company (outside of Mrs Hudson but that's cause of the whole pseudo family dynamic). He calls John a woman for being moody and (rightfully) upset, he says Mary is "smart for a woman", and while he isn't doing so because he hates them its pretty obvious he doesn't like them either. Hudson points out that Sherlock feels distressed around women and when John brings a friend over, he gets so uncomfortable that he ensures that she leave immediately. Sherlock also states that he has no interest in women and doesn't see why anyone would want to marry someone at all. He just doesn't give a shit about romance in any way shape or form. He only accepts Mary fully because he realises that marrying her would make John feel happy and fulfilled in a way that crime solving with him won't.

Irene herself is never interested in him at any point. She sees him as an out given her situation, she clings to him till she gets a better deal and escapes. She worries for him not because she is into him but because she caused him, Watson and Hudson harm by dragging innocent civilians into her mess. She only becomes fond of him when he comes to save her, that's when she finally starts to soften a little around him and yet she lies to him till the end because again, he never fully factors into her plans for herself.

Sherlock also shows no interest in her romantically at any point. He is initially interested in meeting this cunning woman that doesn't fit the definition of what he considers a woman, immediately losing all interest the moment she turns out to be like everyone else. They know each other for 1 day and throughout it he is mostly irritated by her and only feels intrigued again once he realises she is lying to him. His investment in her safety is because she is an innocent person who deserves to live. Sherlock for all his love of investigating corpses isn't okay with letting innocent people die. He never states a fondness for her at any point and in fact makes it a point to comment against the sentiment, keep in mind Sherlock doesn't mince words or lie and evade questions, it makes no sense for him to lie if he was infact fond of her. He does however begin to view her as a friend of sorts and is deeply impacted by her because of the way she changes his perception of women much like the og books. Moreover, the "he had special feelings for her" comment is made by Mycroft to John, who is pretending that Irene is actually dead and needs to get this info to Sherlock and does so by piggybacking off the false rumor that he was courting Irene (its in the manga).

Once James comes into the picture, the dynamic changes, James is devoted to William. He has no particularly note worthy reaction to Sherlock's name or presence at any point outside possibly being seen or recognised because it can mess up William's plans. He is never seen reminiscing about Sherlock or anything of the sort and even their reunion doesn't feel particularly romantically driven. In fact James' has a realistically more intense reaction to the news about William than to his reunion with Sherlock. The reason James even shows up after Sherlock finds our about Irene's death is probably to ensure that Sherlock doesn't actually open the envelope cause he's smart enought to realise that the person who passed by was the same one.

Okay god that was long. Anyway onto why Irene/James is different in this version and why Irene not immediately one upping Sherlock isn't a huge issue. For starters, Irene does infact one up Sherlock. Sherlock is fooled a couple of times by Irene and James but unlike the og version where Sherlock would never fall for her tricks again and the RDJ version where he actively stops thinking straight around her, here he is fooled by the fact that Irene/James never puts all his cards on the table. Things that Sherlock uses to guess things about Irene are things that Irene is deliberately planting and has been planting for the entire duration of their meeting.

Conclusion

Firstly, Irene wasn't Sherlock's love interest in the og books, Sherlock was never in love with her but rather admired her deeply for one upping him at all. He wasn't in love with her in yuumori but was definitely in love with her in the movies. Idk what the hell bbc is.

Secondly, Irene wasn't Sherlock's match at every step. She beat him once and the fact that Sherlock was even beaten at all was why she was so memorable a person to him which is why he refers to her as "the woman". Irene was in no way a match for Sherlock and by extension Moriarty long term. Those two were each other's perfect match cause they were meant to be each other's death. Irene was instead supposed to be the person that used Sherlock's biases and self assuredness against him.

[kaimactrash]

Okay first and foremost: if this flag is wrong lemme know! I have been googling but obviously, it can only go so far in trustablity since pages can be boosted.Anyway, heres my crew of lesbian OCs,

realise I have very few gay men ocs bc I've been in a real drawing fems mood lately, but theres a few there

info below on the ocs

other than Lith none of these women were born on earth, or even lived on it, so they don't have the exact same gender and physical sex rules we do, so this is more the closest term that fits all of my ladies who love ladies&enbees.up in the top left we have Lottie, she's not really into sex that much, but shes all about the romance, shes a very loving person, but deeply scared from several events leaving her with intense PTSD. She's a Frenrar native would was recruited as a demon, she was much more anthro as a human, but lost some of it on the transition to demon. She starts her story being rescued, while greatful, within a few months of world trecking she realised that this isn't what she wants to do anymore, she decides to hang out at Valentino, Skye, and Pipers traveling bar, called The Turkeys Tail. There she studies endlessly to solve a few magic issues on Franrar with the help of Valentino, it takes time but she ends up being the demon to be able to break the Elders curse, in the form of cuffs binding all lower (Hokey) demons, which prevents them running of flying away. She's a pacifist & would really like if there were no wars going on, but since she can't stop them herself, she tries to do so with her experiments. She's growing a lot as i write her and get to know her which is cool, I love when you can just almost hear a character coming together in your mind. all the inspo! Sorry for the ramble! it's good to get this stuff down when I'm in brain storming mind! Across from Lottie, top right, is lith! If you've followed me for years you know lith a bit, she was once a middle aged woman from earth, she made the transition over to demon at the end of a long fight with respiritory illness. Shes very busy lady being one of the two first primary protagonists, while she has some time to adjust to demon life, it didn't come with its own issues, and she ws soon through into a resistance for a place she arrived in not that long ago, she works it out over time. She also works out her sexuality, as a human, she pretty much burried her sexuality but the freedom of a while new world, one filled with many more queer people like her, haha.below her the giant elder Galo stands, due to her bullish attitude and hard headed focus, she struggles with this and the power battles in the Demon realm, often failing to see the wider issue as rilo refocuses her everytime she get close to figuring them out. Shes a bit new so a little under developed but shes going to be apearing quite a lot at the start of the story, then return later, so I'll have some time to get to know her. that tiny lil green triclops like thing, is Shihosu, my most precious and special baby, I wanna protect her even thou i'm the one writting the conflict in her world. She actually dies before she even apears, but shes brough back by octo ( the gold and purple octomaid lady.) and this essentially makes her speicies see her as some blessed chosen one, she has a big repuatation and after seeing and hearing other members of her speices die, she goes on the hunt for octo to find out why she was chosen...she has plenty of fun nights out during  this, so she has a good life work balance.   Shihosu is checking out Elviras butt. Elvira is basically an effigy brought to life by her father Emesh, She's a romantic at heart and can't help but coo and awe at any acts of love. Her father is very over protective and it takes a long time for her to be given true free reign of her life, shes thousands of years old by that point, so she gets out and finds the area outside her home is a semi-apocolyptic waste land filled with strange speicies and creatures, she quick decides she has left because she's to help. Her father is actually aware that he was to let her go off on her own as soon as she'd ask. He was inspired to create her while tripping hard, and the voice told him how to make her, and why he should....*mystery music.*Lastly we have the aforementioned Octo, and her wife, Beefy. By the time we meet them, they've been married a few years and they are obnoxiously in love. Beefy was earth child some how snatched onto Frenrar, she doesn'y know who did it, why, or even how, even though she meets others like her over time, none of them seem to know who did this, and no one on frenrar seems to know who could even do that. She was found in a box in the woods, no older than a year, and the Fleetfoots, a rabbit like spieces with multiple varients across frenrar, the spieces are known for strength, mentally and phsyically, hardiness, and determination, which ended up feeling perfect for Beefy, until Octovar arrived, Not immediately though. Octo was there over a summer at her father request, as she had gained a reputation for making scenes at big public royal family events, so as it is so oftem the rebelious princess is sent off out of daddys way, while he does his old boring bussiness. Beefy spent a lot of her time building and training physically, and Octovar would often be around. She's very curious as someone who lives mostly in the sea, being so far from the ocean, the lifestyles felt completely alien to one another. Over time awkward stares and little comments evolved in to longing looks and full on flirting. Always very opinionated, Octovar opened up to beefy about why she was here, why she was fighting them, and why she needed to leave before her father came back to collect her, Beefy agreed and talked about a Fleetfoot called Piper who had been here, but left after a visit from a powerful mage, beefy had kept contact via letters, so was now aware, Piper was an active member of the resistance. Beefy said her goodbyes, their culture never saw one set of parents, everyone raised everyone basically, so it was scary, but the elders reccomended beefy go try it out, reminding her, her burrow will always be there for her when or if she ever comes back.While we meet them at wives I'm 100% planning a prequel comic on them from meeting each other, to when they meet lith landon and the crew.OOf woops sorry these are meant to be silly cute lil pieces but I get all focused on lore! I'm still planningon doing more even though pride is over, I'm planning on doing one with gay men, then aro/ace. I may also do one with other mspec idnetities, but I do not have many ocs in those categories, YET! I will defo have more as more characters are created, I gotta make a whole planet of people. so theres gonna be variety.I may try and put all my trans characters together for a trans flag, but i may use the art I already made of them! Happy pride Lesbains*! (*and all the groups simailir or under that lable)        

[bestworstcase]

hey could i just ask you abt your thoughts on cass and whether she and rapunzel were lowkey queerplatonic in tts? bc a lot of their relationship in s1/early s2 maybe can be read as crushes but at the same time i get the feeling they'd maybe stumbled into a qpr w/o either of them fully being able to process what that is, so they're still calling each other best friends when they're. not really?

hm

ok i need to preface this by saying 1) im aro, and 2) i dont engage with the aromantic community at all because 3) i find this specific concept to be very alienating, so my personal feelings here are a bit negative.

but that being said if you’re someone for whom the qp terminology resonates and you see that personal experience reflected in cass and rapunzel’s relationship i think it’s a fair reading of the text? the overt canon is that they love each other but there’s a lot of room to interpret precisely what the shape of that love is. like def please don’t take this as me going ‘you are WRONG’ bc it’s not.

further elaboration on my thoughts under the cut. the tldr here is i don’t…personally use qp terminology for reasons™️, and my feelings about ‘qpr cassunzel’ align roughly with my feelings about ‘requited romantic cassunzel’ ie i’m not keen / my read on them tilts hard toward cass having unrequited romantic feelings.

re: qp terminology in general, i can kinda conceptualize romantic feelings as ‘friend + sexual desire;’ but i was loosely active in the aro community back when qp terminology was coined and i still don’t know what the distinction…is, particularly outside the context of a committed platonic partnership. it’s ‘friendship + ??’

so i disengaged from the aro community when qp terminology got popular, bc it sort of… defeated the purpose for me. like i can’t even distinguish the subjective feeling of ‘romance’ from that of ‘friendship’ and suddenly the broader comm was pushing this concept of a new subjective feeling distinct from both romance and friendship and somehow even more arcane and incomprehensible in what the difference is supposed to be 🙃

meaning, also, i’ve never and probably will never go ‘i think these characters have qp feelings for each other.’ it’s just a subjective experience so alien to my own that i genuinely cannot wrap my head around what on earth it entails gkvjvhd

but also. assorted thoughts:

1 - i may be out of date here vis a vis how qp terminology is used *now* (see previous re: i disengaged due to its popularization) BUT a qpr as it was defined when it was first coined is, regardless of the subjective feelings being felt or the reasons for using that label vs dating vs platonic partnership, a committed partnership and like. cassandra and rapunzel are emphatically not in a committed partnership. i am firmly in the camp of you cannot have a committed partnership by accident; you can’t accidentally date someone; you can’t accidentally have a qpr with them. (if i had a friend come to me and go ‘i feel like we are dating/life partners/qpps’ i would drop that whole relationship so fast their head would spin. it’s a big transgression of boundaries. i feel very strongly about this.)

2 - i read cassandra’s feelings for rapunzel in s1 and early s2 as explicitly romantic (she absolutely wants to kiss rapunzel there is not a single doubt in my mind), and then getting slowly warped into this…mingled resentment/servile devotion as the friendship grew more and more toxic for her. and i read rapunzel’s feelings as platonic with an intensity that she might, were she less sheltered and were she not already dating eugene, experience as a ‘crush.’

3 - i also kind of read rapunzel as not being an especially sexual person. (not ace, because i think a lot of it comes from being young and very sheltered and just not really ready for intimacy beyond the very chaste expressions of physical affection with eugene that we see in the show.) which is what makes the platonic/romantic divide so wibbly in my reading of her feelings vis a vis cass, because like i said, the way i distinguish romance from friendship is it’s ‘friendship + sexual desire’ and i don’t read rapunzel as having anything but very fleeting or weak sexual desire for anyone at this point in her life, including eugene. but at the same time rapunzel is someone who feels affection very deeply and intensely and she clearly adores romance as a concept so… i take it as a given that she does get the, like, tropey ‘butterflies in stomach’ crush-style feelings regardless.

4 - when it comes to post-series i’m ambivalent for the same reasons i’m ambivalent about requited cassunzel, namely a] it wasn’t a healthy friendship for cass, b] i’m not a fan of the ot3 in any configuration, and c] the options for post-canon cassunzel essentially boil down to “cass comes back to settle down in corona because it’s her ✨home✨” (which i don’t care for) or “cass has a long-term long distance relationship with rapunzel, who is married” (which i hate) or “rapunzel abdicates, dumps eugene, and goes off to adventure with cass” (which is okay but also doesn’t feel like something rapunzel would do imo).

[madzilla84]

hi i went through your ace tag and it was rlly comforting in a way. can i ask when u knew or how to deal (if its not to invasive!) thx

Hi anon! I’m glad you liked the posts - I know I can be pretty iffy at tagging so I’ll make sure to keep everything there if I can :)

It’s not invasive at all! The answer’s very long though, lol, because it’s me, so I put it under the read more.

I talked a bit about this in my post last year with the clumsy metaphor for my II denim jacket as sexuality, so if you read that then I might be repeating myself a bit, apologies.

The very short answer is that on some level I’ve always known, and I handled it Extremely Badly lmao. Don’t do what I did. Which was mostly nothing. XD

The longer, proper answer - I knew I was in some way Different when I found myself completely bewildered by the crushes my friends developed when we became tweens/teenagers. Like a lot of queer people, I selected my Pretend Crush and dutifully put up his poster in my locker (Noah Wyle from ER; I thought he had pretty eyes). I thought everyone else was just doing it to be cool, as well, in the same sort of way everyone pretended to love [insert name of popular band here] to save face at school.

But like, we got older, and people started making out and hooking up with Real Boys at parties, and still - I felt nothing. You’re a late bloomer, many people told me. I thought maybe I could be gay, if I had no attraction to men - but then I wasn’t attracted to women, either, so couldn’t be that. So what, then, I wondered? You can’t be nothing.

OR CAN YOU??? XD

I got to university-ish age, and around that time I went online and heard the term ‘asexual’ for the first time, and stumbled across AVEN; read the definition and thought, yep, that sounds very familiar. But the problem is, finding something out about yourself doesn’t mean you accept it, or like it, or even really believe it. I wondered then if it was actually a real thing, and not something someone on the internet had made up to make themselves feel better, because there was actually something wrong with them, and thus, with me?

I came home for Christmas during my first (only. lol whoops) year of college and brought up the subject with a small group of acquaintances at a New Years party (I’d had quite a bit to drink), and the reaction was - depressingly predictable.

That’s not a thing.

I can’t imagine that.

That sounds awful.

God, no sex? I’d rather be dead.

Have you even tried it? You need to try it.

That can’t be natural.

Okay, I get it, I thought, not bringing that up again.

And, the thing was, because I wasn’t in a relationship, or dating, or looking to, it was sort of - a non-subject. I had no prying family members asking about my love life. My true friends were unfazed by whatever I did or didn’t do (and still are, they’re good eggs), so it was just - something I never had to think about. In my mind, it was just another thing about me that made me weird and an outsider and that I didn’t belong anywhere or with anyone. (All not true! But that was then.)

And unfortunately it took me about 15 years to start to properly deal with it. Yikes. Such a long time - it’s not even about missed opportunities for dating because I’m still not looking to do that, but more about - accepting that it’s a real part of me and is okay and *good* actually and not just a peculiarity to avoid thinking about at all costs. Acceptance seemed unattainable, let alone the idea of being *proud* of it? Ha! Unthinkable. The best thing to do was just to - pretend it didn’t exist. Why poke that bruise, I thought?

I was always in this weird kind of limbo with the LGBT community - like, I felt on some level like I should be there? But at the same time, I felt like an outsider. (For many of the same reasons people to this day will tell you aces/aros don’t belong. All wrong.) I got really into queer films etc as a teen, I went to gay bars with friends and joined the uni LGBT society … and felt uncomfortable almost all the time. (I know *now* that’s because I was *still* trying to be something I wasn’t and wasn’t being honest with myself or anyone else, on any level. And a lot of the club nights we went to were basically about hooking up, which is fine and all but absolutely Not what I was looking for, and made me feel even more out of place. Why don’t I want to do that? What’s wrong with me?)

But fortunately, the world is quite a different place now, and I don’t think it’s quite so bad now for younger folks because people are talking about it *so* much more; there’s so much more help and support. And I know everyone bitches about social media but it didn’t exist when I was a teenager and there are so many ace/aro people and resources to connect with now!! We’re still made fun of almost constantly *at best* and excluded a ton and erased etc etc, but it *is* getting better. Even for us older folks still figuring it out. :)

I don’t mind admitting that Dan’s video was a huge help. (Albeit a very painful one. Part of why that video was so tough for me to watch, and still is, is that some of it hit a bit too close to home, you know? I didn’t experience the bullying he did, nor the fame, but many things were deeply recognisable.) That sort of tore the scab off (bit gross, sorry), whether I liked it or not, and made me look at it properly for the first time … well, ever, really. The period of time directly after that was - very raw, for me.

The phandom really helped, too; it’s a very accepting and welcoming community and there are actually lots of ace people! Which is awesome! Maybe I *am* a real person! ;)

So many little things helped too. I met a friend for lunch in January and she got me a glass ace flag pendant as a gift; I couldn’t believe it. I’ve felt able to bring it up with a few people outside my closest friends - eg. a couple of colleagues - and was heartened by their responses. I know they didn’t 100% get it, and that’s okay, but they were interested and open to listening and that meant a lot. I went to Pride last year and had a great time, and the first person who spoke to me there asked me where I got my ace pin. :_) (I’d been once before, in 2015, and I hated it; I felt uncomfortable and disingenuous and like I didn’t belong there, and yet I knew deep down I wasn’t technically just there as an ‘ally’.) Even Dan’s little tiny offhand mention in his mermaids stream! I was like, yeah, we do exist! 

It’s all sort of had the fringe benefit of feeling happier and better about being open about it, like joining the LGBT network at work and - you know, just taking little steps. (anyone wanting to start with me that aces/aros don’t belong in LGBT spaces can catch my tiny hands) I saw an ace lanyard at Vidcon and thought ‘yay!’ rather than being uncomfortable to wear it, partly because I thought about how happy I would be to see someone else wearing one.

I don’t know what the rest of this ‘journey’s going to look like, I just know that over the last year I’ve gotten mostly to a place where I can say I *like* being ace, because it’s actually just what I am in the same way I have brown hair or am short, and not some weird deviance from Being Normal that I Must! Hide! At All Costs! That might sound simple but it was a hard place to get to. (thanks Mr Fire, I guess)

I hope this ramble made *some* sense and answered your question in some way! Feel free to send any more questions :)

[groundramon]

I don’t really know how to word this without immediately knowing that tumblr could accuse me of a fuckton of different buzzwords, but I’m going to try to anyways - and hopefully if any hyper-woke people find me, they’ll tell me how I should better word myself in the future instead of immediately calling me an abuse apologist or some shit.

But anyways, here’s a hot take - people of minority groups can be abusers.  Sometimes, they can abuse people for their minority status.  Sometimes, people lie about sexual assault.  Sometimes, people use their mental health or identity or race or whatever as an excuse for being a despicable human being.  How do I know?  Because I’ve had it happen to me, over and over and over.

I am: a trans, LGBT+, mentally disabled + ill, DFAB person.  I am also: a white, able-bodied fuckboy who lives in California, one of the most progressive states in the country, even in its conservative areas.  I am on both sides of the spectrum, and the times when I see minority statuses being abused are usually from the groups that I’m a minority of.

For example, I was harassed (and arguably sexually abused, however because I couldn’t find those comments that could’ve made him face legal consequences for all he’s done, I struggle to say that this is the case - additionally, I was never his target, just my art) by an autistic man online when I was younger.  It’s the reason why I can’t interact with the HT/TY/D fandom and why I won’t be seeing the third movie (keep in mind this happened right before the second movie, and I went to see that one because it legitimately interested me - this one seems heterosexual AND reminds me of my abuser’s dragon OC, which he guilt tripped me into drawing for him as his form of porn).  He ruined an entire franchise for me because he harassed me so badly.  He guilt tripped me in about how hard it was being autistic (and threw in some comments about how teens think they have it “so hard with their anxiety and depression” when “they really have no idea”, to a teenager struggling with identifying anxiety and depression - i didn’t believe that bullcrap but I did fall for his autism sob story) and convinced me to do art trades with him which were just redraws of my own stuff, and he’d repeatedly spam me and yell at me and guilt trip me to finish his work if I so much as read his note without responding.  He drained my motivation for DeviantArt along with my love of a franchise.  This man was also a serial harasser/spammer, he did this to MANY people, including other minors.  I wasn’t a specific target - honestly, I think I was pretty low on his priority list, considering he only tried to come back a few times.  The kicker?  I’m pretty sure I’m autistic, even though I had no idea back then.  At least, I sure do have a lot of symptoms of autism now that I look back.

Not good enough for you?  Okay.  How about the fact that a relative of mine tried to convince my aunt that she (my aunt, not the relative) was sexually abused by my paternal grandfather as a child, sending my aunt into a mental breakdown because she couldn’t remember anything like that and had no idea?  My aunt is the weak link in our family, she’s adopted and felt othered for it, and lived away from the rest of our family for a long time.  She recently started getting involved and just happened to be attacked by a known financial and mental abuser in our extended family right when she started getting back involved.  I’m thankful that my dad and my uncles were able to help her get a better picture of her father.  Keep in mind that I don’t have a positive image of my paternal grandfather, because he smoked and gave my dad + uncle health problems due to it - and I personally consider that an accidental form of child abuse, in a way.  But he was NOT a fucking incestual pedophile.  It infuriated me to hear that, despite never meeting him, and having a negative overall impression of him.

How about another?  My step-step-grandmother (long story) has accused my deceased uncle of being a money-hungry monster and stealing all of her rightful money after his father/her husband died.  We’re in a court case to get the inheritance we deserve from her now, but she only ever brought this up AFTER he passed away.  When informed about his dead, she bitched about how he made her loose money, and how she was struggling despite using up all of my mom’s inheritance (from her step-father AND her mother).  Because you know, that’s what you do when someone dies.  My uncle was the only uncle on my mom’s side to make it to my birthdays, his family gave my mom and I a place to stay when we ended up stranded down south due to a bad head injury my dad got (also long story) and we didn’t have time to make it back home and we didn’t want to just leave my dad there.  My uncle was probably the nicest, kindest family member I had.  His funeral was the first funeral I went to, and there were TONS of people.  He was a Christian man who lived by true Christian values, and plenty of people testified this at his funeral.  People I’d never even met before.  This old woman accused him of stealing her money (where did it go?? his wife is fucking broke now that he’s gone!), never caring enough to visit her, ect.  This old woman, who never even responded to my birthday invitations let alone came, who never made any attempt to make a mutual outreach to us.  She expected us to do all the work, and when we decided it wasn’t worth her ignoring and rejecting, we stopped.  And then she accused us of abandoning her.  This is an old woman, but she’s still an evil person - or an evil person who is now just a shell of evil, unable to even remember a time when she didn’t believe these lies that she told herself.

And don’t get me started on how this applies to ace discourse.  Heaven forbid I compare the ace/aro experience to another LGBT experience!  It’s only okay if I compare it to the straight experience (which i do btw, because i KNOW we benefit from homophobia unless we’re also sga) even though it has 99% more in common with the LGBP experience than the straight experience.  This isn’t an inclusionist vs exclusionist thing - this is just COMPARISONS.  It’s like saying murkrow looks like a crow - like yeah, no shit sherlock!! doesn’t mean murkrow is just the same as a real life fucking crow!!!  And god, haven forbid you talk about real aphobia and how it affects real aspec people.  Immediately every allo in the area will jump on you about how that’s just misogyny and rape culture and blah blah blah.  Then what about when it happens to men?  What about when it happens to nonbinary people?  What about when it has literally nothing to do with gender or being forced to have sex, and is just a constant feeling of being othered and excluded?  Forgotten and not believed?  Constantly doubted that your experience is real?  And then to be told that the very bigotry you suffered was just a part of a bigger issue, instead of specifically about a part of your identity....bullshit.  There IS overlap in certain social issues.  Race affects how homophobia and transphobia affects a person deeply.  Same with misogyny and race.  So of course there’s overlap.  But to say that aphobia doesn’t exist, I’m sorry - I don’t say this lightly, but that’s unconscious gaslighting. (there is no better term than that - believe me, I looked.  My point is that I don’t believe it’s intentional, but LGBP people, trans or not - you NEED to stop doing this.  You ARE unconciously gaslighting aces and aros.  This is not anecdotal, there are statistics and you refuse to believe them, despite pointing at just as credible statistics to prove your own points.  You say we can’t use anecdotal evidence, but then go on to use it yourself.  Intentional or not, you need to quit it.)

I really don’t want to talk about how race and this stuff intertwine because I really don’t have any experience with that as a white person.  All I know is that groups of POC can be bigoted towards other groups of POC, and they can even be bigoted towards people of their own race.

Which leads me to the most important part of this post: The fact that minorities can abuse majority groups, even if its on the basis of their minority group, does NOT mean that minority groups are not oppressed.

Just because a few women lie about being raped, doesn’t mean that all women who say they were raped are lying.  Just because an autistic person abused me, doesn’t mean that all autistic/mentally disabled people and mentally ill people are scary.  Just because aphobia is real doesn’t mean that non-SGA aces and aros don’t benefit from homophobia to a certain degree.  Just because homophobia kills doesn’t mean that aphobia isn’t just as real.  Just because the LGBT community has a habit of gaslighting victims of aphobia doesn’t mean that the LGBT community oppresses the aspec community.  Just because POC can discriminate against or even hold systemic power over another POC doesn’t mean that they aren’t both oppressed by white people.

Abuse is not oppression.  Oppression is a repeated, prolonged offense of cruel and unjust control.  None of my anecdotals “prove” that oppression for these groups isn’t real.  Because I’m part of these groups, and it’s my opinion that it IS real.  But my anecdotals are also still valid.  It is not problematic to point out when someone uses their minority status to abuse and manipulate others.  It is not problematic to call bigoted, cruel mentally disabled people problematic for being manipulative and abusive.  Their disability is not an excuse.  Their identity is not an excuse.  Their experience may be a reason, but not an excuse.  But neither is your experience.  Let people talk about their individual experiences AND the wider issues of oppression as a whole.  They don’t have to be opposite faces of the same coin, and it’s sad that we act like they do.

[the-seas-song]

Tolkien Gen Week Day 5

DAY FIVE: diversity How does diversity affect Tolkien’s characters and your interpretations of them? Does a disability or orientation affect relationships with other characters? Have you lost sleep thinking about hobbit race relations? This is the day to consider all the other factors that go into a character’s life.

Work has been insane lately, so unfortunately I wasn't able to write everything I wanted to for this amazing week, but I really wanted to make sure I got this one done.

This is mainly a thank you post. First, I want to give a big thank you to @starlightwalking for creating and running this week. A lot of time must have gone into it, and I've had a great time.

I love all forms of love, and one of my favorite things about Tolkien's works is that he highlights a large variety of emotionally intimate platonic relationships. Thank you Tolkien. And also thank you to everyone who worked on the films, for not only portraying those in the texts, but actually adding and expanding the amount of deep platonic relationships.

As someone who is gray aro/ace, another one of my favorite things about Tolkien's works is the diversity in racial sexualities.

Elves only fall in love once in their life (technically it is possible for them to fall in love a second time, but we are only given two cases in all of Tolkien’s works, and both times there was a greater power at work). The foundation of elven-kind is memory and emotion. Their souls control their bodies. Elvish memories remain crystal clear, no matter how many decades or centuries pass. They never fade, even the slightest bit. Connected to memory is emotion. Elves feel things in a clearer way. They are ruled by emotion. They can literally just lie down and kill themselves with their mind, if they wish. Also, because of this clarity, they know from the beginning if they are feeling romantic-love or friendship-love for someone. There is nothing more important to an elf than their relationships, of any kind. Their anti-possessiveness goes so far that they will not even say 'I have two children’.

Tolkien says in LACE that almost all elves marry, and marry young. However, the entire legendarium contradicts that. Over half the elves we meet very marry/are never said to be married, and almost all of those that do marry do so well into their centuries and millenniums. Feanor and Nerdanel are literally the only elven couple that we are told married young.

Also, who could ever forget the tragedy of Beleg's death? “Thus ended Beleg Strongbow, truest of friends, greatest in skill of all that harboured in the woods of Beleriand in the Elder Days, at the hand of him whom he most loved; and that grief was graven on the face of Túrin and never faded.” - The Silmarillion

We are also given a tantalizing hint of one deep female friendship: “Fingolfin’s wife Anaire refused to leave Aman, largely because of her friendship with Earwen wife of Arafinwe (though she was a Noldo and not one of the Teleri). But all her children went with their father.” - The Shibboleth of Feanor

Another thing I rarely see people mention is Tolkien explicitly separating sex and gender:

According to the Eldar, the only 'character' of any person that was not subject to change was the difference of sex. For this they held to belong not only to the body but also to the mind equally: that is, to the person as a whole. [cut] Those who returned from Mandos, therefore, after the death of their first body, returned always to the same name and to the same sex as formerly.

[cut]

For the [souls] of the Elves are of their nature male and female, and not their [bodies] only. - LACE

Because their souls control their bodies, there are no trans elves. However, the fact that Tolkien took pains to explicitly say this for elves, throws the door wide open for all of the other races!

We're also told that about two thirds of dwarves are naturally aromantic, and those who aren’t only fall in love once. So, another gray aro/ace race!

There are so many amazing fanworks out there that diversify Tolkien's works even more.

Throughout my years of being a fan I've met a fair amount of purists, and there's nothing wrong with being a purist. Most of them are lovely people. I am, however, a firm believer in Roland Barthes's The Death of the Author (found here) theory. The great thing is Tolkien was too:

The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to please. It is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I find from the letters that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short.

As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical. As the story grew it put down roots (into the past) and threw out unexpected branches: but its main theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Ring as the link between it and The Hobbit.

[cut]

Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.

An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences. One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead. Or to take a less grievous matter: it has been supposed by some that 'The Scouring of the Shire' reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic situation was entirely different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Young miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman. - LotR Foreward

And:

The Lord of the Rings as a story was finished so long ago now that I can take a largely impersonal view of it, and find 'interpretations' quite amusing; even those that I might make myself, which are mostly post scriptum: I had very little particular, conscious, intellectual, intention in mind at any point.* Except for a few deliberately disparaging reviews – such as that of Vol. II in the New Statesman,3 in which you and I were both scourged with such terms as 'pubescent' and 'infantilism' – what appreciative readers have got out of the work or seen in it has seemed fair enough, even when I do not agree with it. Always excepting, of course, any 'interpretations' in the mode of simple allegory: that is, the particular and topical. In a larger sense, it is I suppose impossible to write any 'story' that is not allegorical in proportion as it 'comes to life'; since each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time and place, universal truth and everlasting life. Anyway most people that have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings have been affected primarily by it as an exciting story; and that is how it was written. Though one does not, of course, escape from the question 'what is it about?' by that back door. That would be like answering an aesthetic question by talking of a point of technique. I suppose that if one makes a good choice in what is 'good narrative' (or 'good theatre') at a given point, it will also be found to be the case that the event described will be the most 'significant'.

* Take the Ents, for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called 'Treebeard', from Treebeard's first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading some one else's work. And I like Ents now because they do not seem to have anything to do with me. I daresay something had been going on in the 'unconscious' for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till 'what really happened' came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life.

[cut]

That of course does not mean that the main idea of the story was a war-product. That was arrived at in one of the earliest chapters still surviving (Book I, 2). It is really given, and present in germ, from the beginning, though I had no conscious notion of what the Necromancer stood for (except ever-recurrent evil) in The Hobbit, nor of his connexion with the Ring. But if you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things on the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the comer at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlórien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there. Far away I knew there were the Horse-lords on the confines of an ancient Kingdom of Men, but Fangorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22.1 knew nothing of the Palantíri, though the moment the Orthanc-stone was cast from the window, I recognized it, and knew the meaning of the 'rhyme of lore' that had been running in my mind: seven stars and seven stones and one white tree. These rhymes and names will crop up; but they do not always explain themselves. I have yet to discover anything about the cats of Queen Berúthiel.8 But I did know more or less all about Gollum and his pan, and Sam, and I knew that the way was guarded by a Spider. And if that has anything to do with my being stung by a tarantula when a small child,9 people are welcome to the notion (supposing the improbable, that any one is interested). I can only say that I remember nothing about it, should not know it if I had not been told; and I do not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them. I usually rescue those whom I find in the bath! - Letter 163

Tolkien's loathing of allegory is well known. However, most don't talk about the fact that his fundamental reason for loathing it is because it enforces the domination of the author over the freedom of the reader - “I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

So, as we continue to love these works and create our own, let's never forget that Tolkien himself believed in our agency.

P.S. I have to share this quote from Letter 66. It's too funny!

A new character has come on the scene (I am sure I did not invent him, I did not even want him, though I like him, but there he came walking into the woods of Ithilien): Faramir, the brother of Boromir – and he is holding up the 'catastrophe' by a lot of stuff about the history of Gondor and Rohan (with some very sound reflections no doubt on martial glory and true glory): but if he goes on much more a lot of him will have to be removed to the appendices — where already some fascinating material on the hobbit Tobacco industry and the Languages of the West have gone.

[hoodlessmads]

Bloom Into You Series Personal Thoughts (Whoops It’s Way Too Personal)

When I discover a new series that I really like, I tend to become obsessive. I have an obsessive personality, or something almost bordering on ADD where I can find it extremely difficult to even pay attention to people talking to me or to focus on or care about just about anything, but when the one thing comes along, it’s all I think about for like 72 hours straight. So that happened with Bloom Into You, and I want to wait a while until the initial honeymoon phase wears off, maybe even until post-series, before I really sit down and write a detailed analysis of it. I only sat down to watch the first episode of the anime like two weeks ago.

But the stories that I obsess over rarely have nothing to do with what’s going on in my real life at the time, and Bloom Into You is no exception.

I sat down and started watching it because I had heard it was one of the standout anime of the season, because I wanted a cute innocent romance, and because it was notable as one of the only positively represented queer anime I had seen in a while. As a huge advocate for LGBTQ characters and stories in media, I was highly intrigued. And it’s true that the love story at the core of it all is incredibly precious and adorable and it turns my heart to mush.

But what I got out of it was much deeper and more personally affecting than I signed up for. And to be honest I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Most people are freaking out about Bloom into You because lesbians, and I don’t blame them. Lesbians in anime, positively represented, with wholesome and non-fetishized relationships. That’s huge and it more than deserves to be celebrated. Loudly. But for me, it wasn’t really that, persay. I’ve never identified as a lesbian or even as someone who likes girls. I’ve always said I was straight, because it’s easy, but I’m not convinced that’s the whole truth either. For me, Bloom Into You hits close to home because of the aromanticism of its main character and the inner torment that she faces because of it.

Speaking with complete transparency, I don’t think I’ve ever had romantic feelings for anyone. And any sexual feelings I’ve ever had towards anyone were limited at best. I just really don’t know. On top of that, I took an SSRI for over four years while I was in college, which managed to mute both my emotions and my sex drive even more than they already were. And having recently finally gone off them, I still can’t tell what’s the meds and what’s me.

At some points in the last four years, and even now, I finally got to a place of inner peace about it. I was like Maki. I accepted that I didn’t experience those feelings and I was totally fine with that—I mean, sure, it sucked a little, but think of all the bullshit I would never have to deal with. I wasn’t interested in anyone like that or in relationships like that and that suited me just fine.

At other points, I wasn’t like Maki at all. I distinctly remember one point early on in my college experience where I realized that I just wasn’t feeling it in general, any of it, and found myself curled up on the floor of my dorm, alone, sobbing over the fact that I would never experience romantic or sexual attraction. I did all sorts of research on asexuality and aromanticism. Is this normal? I would ask myself. Is it normal to be ace and aro and for it to still hurt this much?

In chapter 39, Bloom Into You posits that, perhaps, the distinction between truly ace people like Maki and people like Yuu is that, unlike Maki, Yuu wants to participate. Maybe that is true. It’s just an idea the manga suggests, not a statement. But since I want to participate, does that automatically mean I’m not aro? Am I like Yuu? I’m still not convinced that reality is so clear cut.

Bloom Into You is an incredibly emotional journey for me because it sees Yuu, someone who is either on the ace spectrum or emotionally repressed or a late bloomer or what have you, gradually fall in love in spite of it all. And getting to watch that process play out for her is so incredibly satisfying. Everyone experiences love differently and at a different pace—in many ways that is the inspiring message of Bloom. On the one hand, for Sayaka, love hits her like lightning. We see this at multiple points, whether it’s getting sucked in by that she-demon of a senpai or when she sees Touko for the first time at her opening ceremony and Sayaka reaffirms that she’s gay as shit. Then there’s Touko, who has never experienced attraction before, and again it may be due to lying somewhere on the ace spectrum or perhaps (I find this more likely) due to her crippling fear of getting emotionally involved with others or accepting affection from anyone. But when she meets Yuu, who she instantly recognizes she can open up to and has no reason to fear, it hits her quick. She has all the symptoms of infatuation.

Yuu’s love is different, though no less lovely. In chapter 40, Yuu explains to us and to Touko that she was always waiting for a love that wasn’t her own to just drop in on her, but that her own personal experience of falling in love was much different. She reached out and Touko was there. She chose her, because she was the one that she wanted to love. And that’s how love blossomed between them. It wasn’t instantaneous. It was slow, gradual, touch by touch, moment by moment, oftentimes painfully so. But Yuu’s love for Touko is just as real as Touko’s love for Yuu. It is so moving. It presents a concept of love that is active rather than passive, as something that the heart chooses rather than something that chooses the heart. (Touko even says this to Sayaka while sobbing in chapter 38.) It shows that love can come from anywhere, even from nothing. It makes me wonder, could I do the same? Could I, too, choose love?

Yuu goes on a journey from feeling nothing to feeling something, from apathy to heightened emotion, and watching that lately has forced me to confront the emptiness in my own life. Not just in terms of romance, but on all fronts. My reading of Yuu is that she is depressed…my reading of Touko is that she (is also very much depressed) has severe anxiety, among other things. Both of them struggle with crippling loneliness. But in this touching love story slash coming of age classic, they find and support each other.

I wish that for me the issue was something like, I’ve actually been gay this whole time, and I just didn’t want to admit it, so I convinced myself that I felt no emotions. And once I liberate myself I can go be freely gay and experience love at last. Problem solved. I wish I could just meet someone like Yuu meets Touko, be it a guy or a girl or whomever, and finally feel something. I wish sexuality was all it was.

But what terrifies me is that the reality is much more complicated.

That my issues run much deeper. Maybe all of the shit that’s happened to me over the course of my life has stunted my emotional and sexual development to the point that now it would be a miracle if I ever felt anything again. Maybe it was always there, it just needs to be unearthed from all of my crippling trust issues and emotional repression. Or maybe I really am bisexual and I just need to open myself up to the possibility of romance with women (though I’m not convinced that would be any more successful at making me feel something than my forays into romance with men). Or maybe it just plain isn’t there. Maybe I am truly asexual and aromantic and I have to learn how to live with how much it hurts, how lonely it feels.

At the end of the day, Yuu may lament that she’s never experienced love before, but she really is only like sixteen years old. And as the story goes, she does end up experiencing it.

But me, I’m already twenty-two, and it’s starting to look like it’ll never happen.

Alas, for all of these deep ass themes as well as in spite of them, Bloom into You is an utterly adorable love story that I deeply enjoy and that has touched my heart. Stolen my heart, rather. It is a feat of storytelling and character writing pulled off in a succinct 8-volume, 23 episode (I assume) run. It’s already notable for how well and how normalized it pulls off a wlw romance for an anime of its genre, and it could have stopped there and just given us typical cuteness and fluff and still been great.

Instead, it goes a step (or a mile) farther. Everything about it packs an emotional punch. It grips you and doesn’t let go. It presents a much more complicated view of romantic love between two people than one you expected or probably asked for. What even is love? What is love for you and what is love for me? What is love for Yuu and what is love for Touko? What is the concept of the self, anyway? How do you even begin to process and move beyond the painful past? How do you become you? It begs all of these questions but never quite provides solid answers, because there really aren’t any. All we know is that Yuu and Touko love each other, and it doesn’t matter how or why, and it’s beautiful.

[bryrosea]

Dear Yuletide Author - 2017

Hello dear Yuletide Author! 

I'll start as I always do, by saying that I am genuinely and truly going to be happy with anything you produce: shippy or gen, smut or no smut, canon or AU. If you’ve already got a story idea that you signed up for this fandom hoping to write, please stop reading this letter now and go write it! If you’re interested, though, I’ve listed a few things below about my general likes/dislikes and about each of the fandoms I’ve requested.

My general likes: in-world fics, missing scenes, AUs where all of the changes result from one canon alteration, hurt/comfort (all the hurt/comfort, seriously, whether of the emotional, physical, or sickness type), soulmarks, accurate history, romance, realistically rendered domesticity, unrequited-but-really-requited longing, alternate POVs of canon scenes. 

Usually I just say “smut” as a like (minus the few exceptions below) but this year my fandoms lend themselves to smut more than usual, so I'll expand out to say my smut likes particularly include: any kind of consensual full intercourse two adult people can have, toys, first times with new sexual scenarios, risky locales, PWP (as long as the characters shine through, I don't mind no plot), or a plot-filled romp with one sexy scene, sexual inhibitions lost via “sex pollen” or similar magic-y plot contrivances. I actually had a bit of a hard time filling out this list because, uh, I pretty much like most of it smut-wise, so don't consider this exclusionary at all. 

My general dislikes: The only things I’d specifically request that you stay away from are non-canon major character death, unrealistically happy!teen pregnancy, OC kid characters, and plots that are relentlessly sad with no redeeming ray of hope or potential to lighten them.

Smut dislikes: Please no non con, underage anything past a G rating, animal sexual kinks (A/B/O, knotting, etc.), ‘daddy’ scenarios, adultery or cheating in a committed relationship, or degrading talk during sex (”slut, whore” etc.)

I've been on a major M/M Reading kick this year, for whatever reason, so there's a definite theme to my requests. Feel free to mix and match--I'm a glommer, so I've read everything by all of these authors--or even reach back into past years' letters in this tag if you want! There are no characters in any of these canons I'd be unhappy to see in a fic, so feel free to have walk ons!

Think of England - K.J. Charles 

Characters: Any

Like I mentioned in my sign up, this book is BEGGING for a sequel. Begging. Our classic odd couple have just gotten together at the end of the story - with many delicious problems still-to-be-worked-out - and are embarking on a shared career of espionage. I mean, come on, there are so many plot possibilities. If you'd like to take time forward and check in on our characters' next adventure, that would be wonderful. 

One of the reasons this book is a favorite of mine is Archie as the narrator - he's such a good, solid presence, so confused and yet so stalwart. More of his observations on the unfolding relationship with Daniel and its importance to him would be beautiful. I love his baffled tenderness and his chivalry and his big berserker self. 

I also love the glimpses we get of Daniel’s POV of Archie (who could forget “built like a brick shithouse and hung like a horse”) and how much those feelings fluster him. I’ve read the free short story “Love Song For A Viking” and loved it and would be happy to see any scene in the novel from Daniel’s POV. What did HE think of their first meeting? When Archie read his poems? In the cave? 

If you're heading in a smut direction with these two, this canon seems ripe for a "first time doing X” fic, since there is so much ground yet to be explored. 

If you signed up to write Fen and/or Pat PLEASE DO, with or without the boys. I love me some femslash smut and I'm very curious about their background - how they got together, what they're doing at the infamous house party to begin with, private moments, either or both of their POVs on events of the book. Anything! 

DNW for this fandom: Any breaking up or mixing up of canon couples. 

Lynes & Mathey series - Amy Griswold & Melissa Scott

Characters: Any

I delight in watching Julian and his deeply awkward self try to come to terms with his feelings and the expression thereof. He and Ned have that wonderful combination of a new relationship they're still exploring the boundaries of and yet a long, shared history,

I feel like this canon has lots of little set up hints for possible bombs still hidden in their back stories - particularly Julian’s - so if any of those intrigue you and you'd like to run with it either as a prequel or flashbacks go for it! No explicit underage though, please (kissing and feelings is fine).

The authors of this series leave us at Ned and Julian’s bedroom door generally, and leave a lot of the relationship development to oblique moments. It's deliciously slow-burn-y (and super well-written) but I certainly wouldn't mind a more in depth exploration of any aspect of their relationship. Quiet times, domestic times, sexy times, fights, etc. What is their first Christmas like? Does Julian interact with Ned’s alluded to but not yet on page family at all? Smut-wise - What is on Julian’s list??? Dear god, do enquiring minds want to know. 

If you want to tackle the still unplumbed waters of one Miss Cordelia Frost, either solo or as part of the ensemble, that would be amazing. She's such a competent enigma and anything canon or not from her POV would be a treat. I'm curious about her investigations, about her opinion of our main couple, about her inner world and what she goes home to each night. Any sexuality headcanon you have for her - ace/aro, wlw, straight - is fine with me, since I have no fixed feeling on that for her. 

The Gentleman's Guide To Vice And Virtue Series - Mackenzie Lee

Characters: Percy Newton

I loved the utter romp-y abandon of this fun story--Kidnapping! Pirates! Alchemy!--and fell in love with the relationship between our emotionally moronic narrator and the love of his life.

I specifically requested Percy as a character because I want more, more, more of him navigating his incredibly difficult world and his new relationships. Any interaction between Percy and either/both of the Montagues would be amazing. I'd love to see Henry from his perspective, or his thoughts on the siblings in contrast to his own family. When and why did Percy decide to keep his fits secret from Henry? When did he know he loved him? He's necessarily the oblique one in cannon, so I want to pry into Percy's inner world and find out what is really going on for him (before, during, or after canon).

If you have questions for me or want to run something by someone who knows my taste, you can drop a PM to @ghostcat3000, a fabulous fandom friend and amazing writer who has graciously offered to serve as a go between to maintain anonymity. 

Have fun writing!

Bry