#this is not about grammer or punctuation or whatever else before people jump down my throat

[honeybuddhahoe]

“write this way to get more wow factor!” “write like this to get more audience interaction” “5 tips to make your writing better”

how about I write the story that I want to tell and that I think is meaningful. how about that

[onionsoop]

Blackmail /// Tendou Satori x f!Reader /// (+18)

Summary: During a game for Shiratorizawa, you plan to slip a love letter to Ushijima until Tendou catches you in the act. After stealing you letter, he blackmails you into cheering for the game without bra or panties and later fucks you the bathroom as one last request to get your letter back.

Length: 5k

Tags & Warnings: dub-con, exhibitionism, fingering, oral (fem receiving), unprotected sex, creampie, semi-possessive Tendou, praise (kind of) Tendou calls you a slut once

Authors Note: Hey, so this fic kinda doesn’t make sense emotion wise for Y/N with the soft ending, but its whatever. I had this idea for a fic and my brain refused to let me write anything else until I got it out, so enjoy. I just finished Season 3 of Haikyu and oml I simp Tendou so much I just had to write a fic for him. Regardless, sorry for any spelling or grammer mistakes and I hope you enjoy :)

Two days stood between you and the big game on Saturday. You had joined the cheer team for Shiratorizawa at the start of this year and it was truthfully one of the best decisions you had ever made. You had met so many wonderful and kind people during your time there, and most importantly, you had fallen in love. During all the times you had been in the stands cheering for the team, you had gotten accustomed to having your eyes fall to Ushijima, watching the way he moved and played— how his muscles moved under his uniform. Despite only truly speaking to him once or twice, his silent and brooding nature had utterly charmed you, leading you to the situation you were in now, waiting to give him a love letter.

You knew it was a bit of a cheesy thing to do, but you couldn’t imagine actually telling him in person. Your current plan was to slip it into his bag sometime before or after a game, but the idea of going through with it created a sinking feeling of anxiety in your stomach. So, you decided to pick a day, a day where a game was going to happen so he might be in a good mood. But, as each day passed and you got closer to Saturday you felt your choice to do it weighing on you more and more. How was he going to react? Maybe he didn’t even remember you… No, you had to stay hopeful, after all, you had already gotten this far.

The big day had finally come, and you were a nervous wreck. The entire time you were getting into your cheer uniform you couldn’t stop glancing at the corner of the envelope sticking out of your backpack. Thoughts of being rejected previous times by guys in elementary and middle school filled your head, and the more you thought about giving the note to Ushijima the less you wanted to do it.

You finished changing and looked at the clock— only ten minutes until it was time to head to the stadium. You picked up the envelope from the place in its bag and clutched it tightly in your hands. You felt like you were on a spy mission as you made your way through the hallways trying your best to seem unsuspicious. It seemed like everyone was watching you as you made your way to the boys’ locker room and your heart thundering in your chest was the only sound you could hear as you made your way there.

As you got closer to the entrance, the number of people was beginning to dwindle, sending a wave of relief over you. You didn’t want anyone seeing you entering in case word got around that someone had given Ushijima a confession. As the last few people in the hallway were leaving, you made yourself seem very invested in a poster on the wall, keeping an eye out for anyone approaching. Finally, the last person turned the corner and you darted over to the doorway, peeking inside. It looked completely empty, your eyes scanning the bags and towels strewn around the room.

Tip-toeing inside, you nervously looked for the bag with his name on it, finding it in the corner, zipped up and tidy. With shaky hands, you pulled out the envelope, trying to build up the courage to slip it inside. You felt a shiver go up through your whole body and suddenly you whipped around, coming face to face with Tendou Satori who was looming over your shoulder with a surprised sneer on his face. You jumped backward, scrambling to hide the letter behind you, and act natural.

“Whatcha got there?” he said, leaning over you and snatching the letter out of your hands. Panic was the only emotion you felt as he took it from your hands. You didn’t know where he had come from, you thought you had entered discreetly, but apparently you had missed him during your frantic search.

“N-nothing, give it back,” you said, trying to snatch the letter back but Tendou held it just out of your reach with his long arms.

“Is this a love letter?!” he said, peering up at the pink script you had written on the envelope and the heart sticker you had sealed it with. You could feel your face going bright red as regret about your decoration choices filled you.

“Oh-ho-ho, now this is good. This’ll definitely get a kick out of the team, especially Ushijima,” he said, giving you a sly smile, knowing exactly how he was making you feel. You felt tears pick at the corners of your eyes and your lower lip beginning to tremble. You knew Tendou was just saying it to get a rise out of you but the words still hurt. It wasn’t like him to tease other people so much, but the way he saw you guilty standing there, trying to hide your letter made him-- you were just too cute to not mess with.

“Give it back… please…” you said weakly, casting your eyes downward trying to regain your composure.

“Mm? And why should I do that?” Tendou said, finally taking his eyes off the envelope and shifting them to you. You hated the way that a smug expression still adorned his face, you knew that Tendou had a reputation for being a cocky and overzealous guy, which was why you had tried to avoid him any time you could, but now you regretted not gaining some good footing with him before now.

“Please… I’ll do anything,” you mumbled, desperation laced through your voice.

“Anything?” he said, punctuating the syllables as he said the word, “Now that's quite the offer.” He leaned back on his heels, letting out a “hmm,” pretending to think as he slowly waved the letter in the air between two fingers. His eyes shifted down to you again and the way you glared up at him through your eyelashes, clenching your fists at your sides. A smile grew on his face as he watched you, savoring how small and pathetic you looked trying to argue with him.

“I’ve got it. You’re on the cheer team, right? For this game I want you to go out there with no bra or panties.”

The shock was visible on your face as he said those last words. A playful grin was set on his face, but you could see that he was being serious in his eyes.

“You’re kidding… r-right?” you said, feeling your face start to go red again.

“Nope. But it's just one teensy request, I doubt anyone will notice,” he said nonchalantly, “Plus, you said you would do anything.” He still held the letter out of your reach, taunting you with it by waving back and forth, making a twinge of anger go through you.

You weighed your options, you knew you would be mortified if he shared that letter with the rest of the team, and it would probably get out to the cheer team as well making your life hellish, or you could do this. You looked down at your uniform, your skirt coming down to mid-thigh and your shirt only being the slightest bit cropped, no one would notice… right? You took a deep breath and answered, trying to keep your voice steady.

“Fine, now give it back,” you said, lunging for the letter.

“Ah-ah-ah,” he teased, “you’ll get this back later, now hand ‘em over.” He held out a palm and stared at you, shoving your letter in his pocket.

“At least turn around pervert,” you hissed, causing Tendou to let out a chuckle. He luckily obliged and you stepped into a corner while he turned away. You quickly slid your panties down and unclasped your bra, making sure to keep your eyes on him the whole time. Once you had them off, you felt so open and exposed, making you instinctively cross your arms over your chest.

“Here,” you said, holding out your undergarments for Tendou. He snatched them from your hand and went over to shove them in his bag, keeping an eye on you as you stood in the corner of the room. The annoying smile that never seemed to leave his face was still there as he looked you up and down, taking in your exposed form, but you could see an intensity in his eyes that wasn’t there before, making you shiver.

“Alright then, see you after the game,” he said, as he lazily waved goodbye, picking up his bag and bringing it with him. As the door shut behind him it took you a minute to calm down and fully realize what happened.

Panic rose in your throat as you thought about walking out there and cheering for more than an hour. You wanted to sit down and hide in this room until the game was over, but you knew you would have to leave. Walking out there would be embarrassing, but it would only be worse if the team came back after and found you in this sorry state.

You began to walk forwards, legs shaky and unstable-- you felt tears begin to fill your eyes again but you took a deep breath and swallowed, forcing yourself to continue.

Once you got into the empty hallway, you felt more exposed than before. The wide-open space and the bright fluorescent lights above made you feel like you were on display for anyone who happened to walk by. There were only two minutes that remained before the game started, forcing you to pick up your pace as you walked down the hall. You were hyper-aware of the way that your skirt and shirt moved as you walked, making sure that you were keeping covered as you passed by the last few people waiting to head into the gym.

You finally made your way into the stand above the auditorium and joined the rest of your team. As you walked in you were truly grateful for your place in the second row of the group, making it so that you didn’t have to worry about people looking up your skirt. You were finally starting to get used to the feeling of your nipples brushing up against the fabric of your shirt, but the uncomfortable drafty feeling between your legs took a little more concentration to ignore.

Being in such a large crowd of people did nothing to calm your nerves as you waited for the players to enter, constantly checking that the back of your skirt hadn’t flipped up. The whistles blew down below, making you jump in your anxious state. The players filed in, all taking their time getting organized and lined up— you held your breath as you looked at the front, where your head cheerleader was standing, getting ready to start your routine, and you took one more look at the stadium preparing for the long game you were about to endure.

By the time the last point was scored and the whistle blew you wanted to cry tears of relief. The entire game had been a nightmare, each set coming to a deuce and dragging on far longer than it should have. Shiratorizawa had lost in the end, but at this point you didn’t even care, you just wanted to leave.

Throughout the game, you had felt only a constant rush of anxiety. Every jump and cheer and shake had sent waves of worry through you as you thought about all the people standing around you. After the first fifteen minutes of the game, you had gotten used to the weird sensations of not having any undergarments on, but the thought of someone finding out had kept you on edge the entire time.

Being able to sit down and relax felt like a godsend. The rest of the crowd was depressed and complaining about how we had lost, but you hadn’t watched much of the game and didn’t really feel like participating in the pity party.

Once the crowd was starting to dissipate, you rushed down the stairs and back to the boys’ locker room, keeping your skirt down the entire time with your hands. You stood a good ways away from the entrance, so as to not draw attention to yourself, and fervorously scanned the crowd for Tendou. The rest of the team was starting to arrive, including Ushijima, who put your heart in your throat as he walked by, but Tendou was nowhere to be seen.

Finally, when you were beginning to consider running off and looking for him, Tendou stalked by, a tired and annoyed look spread across his features. Once he caught sight of you, standing patiently against the wall, he grabbed your arm and started pulling you down the hall.

“W-wait, where are we going?” you asked, trying your best to keep up with his large stride.

“What, you don’t think I’m gonna give you back your belongings here, do you?” he said in a playful tone, but he couldn’t quite hide the tone of displeasure under it. You kept quiet the rest of the time while he dragged you off into an emptier part of the building and into the bathrooms. You weakly tried to pull away from his grasp, but his grip was tight on your arm as he pulled you around.

A wave of surprise hit you though, when he shoved you into a bathroom stall, locking the door behind both of you. He stood in front of you, hand against the stall door near your head, towering over your small figure.

“You want your letter back right?” he said, staring you down. You quickly nodded your head, beginning to feel uncomfortable, trying to gauge what he was planning.

“You’d be willing to do anything for it right?” he asked, leaning in closer to you to where you could feel his breath against your ear. It took you a second, but you nodded again, this time a little more hesitantly than before.

“How ‘bout you do me one more favor then, hmm?”

“Y-you said you would give it back now though,” you said, shuffling backwards, trying to get away from him in the confined space of the bathroom. His large figure made it hard for you to find any place away from him and you felt your back hit the door as you leaned away. Everything felt very claustrophobic and you felt heat rush to your face from how close he was to you.

He took a piece of your hair between two fingers and began to play with it idly.

“I know, I know, but I think it’s only fair that you do a little more for me, after all, we just lost the game, and I’m in a bit of a bad mood,” he said, a playful smile spreading across his lips again, “plus, seeing you like that the whole time was a little distracting, so if anything you’re a little bit at fault too.” You felt your face begin to burn as the implications of his words hit you and the stall suddenly felt far too small. He shifted his head to look into your eyes, hand coming around to grip your chin and keep you in place.

“Come on baby, just one little favor and you’ll get your letter back.” His other hand came down to your exposed waist and started making its way under your shirt, his fingers drawing playful circles on your skin.

You didn’t know what to say, the urge between getting away and retrieving your letter were warring with each other inside your mind, keeping you frozen where you stood. Having people find out about it would be humiliating, but the thought of having Tendou use you like this was almost worse. You opened your mouth to respond but nothing came out, your body refused to act. His stare still bored into your eyes, waiting for an answer, but you couldn’t respond.

“I’ll take your lack of protest as a yes then,” he said, brushing a thumb across your cheek before hiking your shirt up. You felt his lips slam into yours, pinning you against the door in a deep kiss and in that moment everything else seemed to fade away-- all you could focus on was the feeling of his lips invading yours. They were warm and inviting and almost made you feel as if you wanted more, but the rational part of your brain was still screaming for you to run away.

Tendou’s hand moved from its place on your face and slid down to your ass, pulling you into him. Your hands went up between the two of you and rested on Tendou’s chest, feeling the sculpted muscles underneath his shirt. It had been so long since you had been touched like this and your body craved more but remembering who Tendou was and what he was making you do caused you to hesitate. You weren’t sure if you wanted to push him away or not, but you at least kept your hands there to keep some distance between you as your brain scrambled to try and make a decision.

You felt Tendou swipe his tongue along your bottom lip, asking for entrance to the rest of your mouth, and you reluctantly opened your lips to let him inside. He was rough and demanding with his movements, making heat creep down to your core.

The hand that was under your shirt crept up and roughly squeezed your breast and you felt a small noise slip out of your throat as it happened. You knew you were touched starved, but this was absurd, you shouldn’t be enjoying this. Tendou had blackmailed you into those slutty actions during the game, and now he was blackmailing you yet again into this— but you were enjoying it, you were even beginning to reciprocate with your lips and tongue.

Your head was too adrenaline-filled for you to think properly, and no matter how much you tried to concentrate on being rational, the feeling of Tendou pressed up against you with his tongue in your mouth brought you away every time. You could feel his movements getting rougher as he groped you, and he pulled away from your lips, a grin returning to his face as he looked down at you.

“Bend over for me baby, will you?” he said, not giving you a chance to respond before grabbing your hips to help turn you around. You placed your shaky hands against the door and sucked in a breath as you felt his hands slide up your thighs and under your skirt. Your hands felt hot against the cool plastic of the door but all you could feel was Tendou’s fingers creeping closer and closer to the wet heat between your legs, pulling on your skin and spreading your folds.

“Look at you, already soaked and I’ve barely even touched you,” he said, making your face go red. You tried to stutter out a protest, but you knew you were completely guilty. A small part of yourself felt ashamed at the way you were getting wet over Tendou’s touches— you shouldn’t be feeling this way, it was wrong, but your thoughts were quickly interrupted at the feeling of Tendou’s fingers brushing up against your entrance before pulling away, causing you to let out a small gasp. A wave of heat rushed through your body, making your head fuzzy— leaving only the desire for more pleasure in your mind.

Tendou could feel the tent in his pants growing larger as he viewed your supple thighs and ass in front of him. He had thought about this scene so often, thinking about how good you would look bent over for him, ready to take his cock, but he had to stay patient. Both of his hands grabbed your ass to keep you stable before he bent down and gave a slow lick to the inside of your thigh, making you shudder.

You could feel your hands beginning to get slick against the door as you prepared for the sensation of Tendou’s mouth against you. Once you felt his tongue swipe up against your cunt you felt your back arch and couldn’t contain the small whimper that you let out. All rational thinking was out the window and all you wanted was the feeling of him all over you.

The feeling of him lapping at your folds was tortuous, and every time you felt his tongue brush up against your clit it made your legs tremble beneath you. Despite the fact that Tendou could feel your legs beginning to get shaky, he only wanted to see you submit to him more. He tentatively slipped one finger inside of you, causing you to let out a high-pitched whine.

All you could focus on was the stretch of your insides from Tendou’s finger. He had sheathed it inside you suddenly, not letting you adjust to the feeling, and was now starting to rub against that spongy spot inside of you. You could feel your eyes beginning to go glossy from pleasure and you felt like your knees were about to give out. Tendou wasn’t giving you any time to adjust to the sensations and you could almost feel the hungry smirk on his face while he was playing with you.

When his other hand moved down to your clit it almost made you fall to your knees, but he made sure to hold you up, keeping you in your humiliating position for him to view. Almost every time he pushed his fingers into you you had to bite your lip to keep moans from coming out— any more and you didn't think you would be able to hold back.

Tendou let out a small chuckle as he watched you struggle to maintain your balance and keep quiet. He knew that you were in a secluded enough area where you could be loud, but seeing the pathetic attempt you gave only made you look more adorable. Seeing you in such a pitiful state was making it hard for him to keep his patience, but he knew he needed to stretch your tight little cunt out more before he would be able to fuck you how he wanted to.

Tendou slipped a second finger inside of you, making you clamp a hand over your mouth, and began scissoring inside of you, making sure you would be ready to take his cock.

“Good girl, you’re doing so well, you know that right?”

You felt a wave of heat go through you at the praise along with the feeling of your pussy tightening up around his fingers— earning an approving “mm” from Tendou.

“Do you think you’re ready to take me, sweetheart?” he said, beginning to go rougher on your clit, causing you to let out a gasp. You desperately nodded your head and let out a small “mhm,” wanting to have him fill you up completely.

“Come on baby, use your words for me,” he said, stilling his motions until he got an answer from you.

“Y-Yes Tendou, p-please,”

“There you go, see you can do it,” he said, pulling his fingers out of you and standing up. It took all your strength, but you turned your head to look up at him and got to watch as he stuck his fingers in his mouth, greedily sucking off the residue from your cunt. The sight made you clench around nothing and made your head go fuzzy at the thought of him enjoying the taste of you. You eagerly watched as he quickly pulled down his shorts and boxers, revealing his hard cock which already had a bead of precum at the tip.

“W-Wait T-Tendou we don’t have protection!” you said, collecting just enough consciousness to remember basic sex education.

“Shh don’t worry, I’ll pull out,” he said, placing a hand on your ass, rubbing soothing strokes with his thumb. You knew that you shouldn’t continue and that it wasn’t safe, but your pleasure-filled brain didn’t care. All you wanted was to feel him filling you up and stretching your tight little cunt out— you could worry about the consequences later.

The feeling of the tip of his cock pressing up against your entrance was enough to make you whine out his name, begging for more. Waiting was causing you too much agony and you began to buck your hips against him, trying to push him inside you.

“Eager aren’t we,” he said, his voice more strained than before. He slowly began to push his dick into you, causing your eyes to roll back and a needy moan to fall from your lips. You could hear his breathing getting ragged behind you as he got further into your tight cunt, filling you up more than you had ever been before. He was only halfway inside of you by the time he hit your cervix . The pain of having him so deep inside of you was masked by the utter ecstasy you felt from thinking about how much he was stretching you out.

Tendou was leaning over you, one hand gripping your hip while the other was wrapped around your waist pulling you up against him. You could hear his ragged breathing next to your head and the way his breath hitched as he pulled out of you before ramming back in.

He didn’t give you nearly enough time to adjust to his size, and the pace he was fucking you at was ruthless, causing a dull pain to form in your cunt as he began to bruise it. Eventually, though, you adjusted to the feeling of your walls being stretched so far and began to only feel the pleasure as his cock dragged along your slick insides.

You were unable to keep your mouth shut and had resorted to letting it hang open, allowing all your moans and whimpers to fall out. Your hands were beginning to slip against the door as Tendou continued to rail you and you scrambled to keep supporting yourself.

“Fuck baby, you’re so tight… so, so tight, just for me…” Tendou mumbled, his eyes shut tight trying to concentrate on not cumming inside of you. The way you felt around him was better than he ever could have imagined. He had to make sure you came before him, he wanted to cum with you so badly— he needed to feel your walls flutter around his cock as you moaned his name.

“How does it feel, sweetheart? Does it feel good? Tell me it feels good. I wanna hear you say it,” he rambled, his movements becoming more sloppy as he continued to fuck into you. His hand moved down to your clit and began to roughly play with it, causing you to tighten up around him.

“I-It feels so good Tendou mm- I-I love it so much,” you whined, only halfway aware of what you were saying.

“I’ve wanted to fuck you like this for so long. I’ve been interested in you for so long too— but you only want him, you only want Ushijima don’t you, you fucking slut.” His words mixed with his harsh tone confused you as you tried to decipher the meaning of them. It was so hard to think with him pistoning into you like this, making you go loopy.

“Tell me that you love me, not him, I wanna hear you say it so badly,” he said, his fingers digging into your hip, sure to leave bruises.

You weren’t sure why you said it, but it slipped out of your mouth before you could truly think about it, “I-I love you Tendou, I-I love you more than anyone else.” Those words were enough to bring him right to the brink of orgasm, making him have to fully concentrate on fucking you as hard as he could to get you to cum first. The combination of his fingers rubbing your clit in tantalizing circles and the feeling of him ramming into your womb was what caused you to finish. You felt the tension in your stomach snap and you let out a loud moan as your walls spasmed around him. You heard Tendou mutter a string of curses, trying his best to remain calm and in control.

“Fuck, baby you’re so tight, I don’t know if I can pull out,” he said, his grip on you digging into your skin. In your fucked out head the thought of having him cum inside you was almost too much— despite your safety you wanted to feel it.

“P-Please, please cum inside me, please I want it so badly,” you moaned out, not even processing what you were saying. Even though he knew he should pull out, hearing your cute little voice beg for him to fill you up was too much for Tendou, making him ram into you a few more times before cumming with you. You could feel his hot cum spilling into your pussy and dripping out the sides, making your legs weak.

As you were both coming down all that could be heard was the heavy breathing from both of you echoing in the bathroom. Tendou pulled out, letting the mixture inside of you begin to drip out. He held you tightly, making sure that you didn’t fall over or hit your head on the door in front of you.

You felt so worn out once you came down from your orgasm. The only thing you wanted to do was to lay down next to him but you knew you couldn’t in such a confined space.

You slowly moved your arms, trying your best to maintain your balance as you turned around to wrap your arms around his neck. You both sat down, and Tendou cupped a hand behind your head, running his fingers through your hair. The thoughts about Ushijima and blackmail had completely left your mind and the feeling of him beneath you, strong and warm, was the only thing you wanted to focus on.

After a few minutes Tendou broke the silence, tilting your head up to look at him, “So, do you still want your letter back?”

You scowled at him, receiving a small laugh before you nestled back into his chest, ready to fall asleep.

[not-poignant]

As an American, US grammer pisses me off to. What in particular is bothering you?

Actually I have no problems with US grammar in general. (I’m sorry anon, but it’s not my grammar, and aside from the habit of removing inoffensive letters like ‘u’ from colour, it’s awesome). I mean if you’re raised a USian, it’s a perfectly fine set of grammar rules to follow and that’s the way it should be?

So there’s my short answer :D US grammar gets a thumbs up.

The longer answer is more complex. So that’s being shoved under a cut.

What bothers me is the culturally imperialistic attitudes that US grammar should be applied to english-speaking authors from the UK, Canada, Australia and other english-speaking countries. We all have our own grammar rules, they are also each perfectly fine sets of grammar rules to follow, and each have a lengthy history behind them. Not only that, but it‘s what we see in our published books (US folk may not know this, but books written by US authors are often re-’translated’ into Australian grammar (or UK grammar and so on) before being reprinted here under whichever publisher or imprint handles it - this, the job of localisation, is almost always the job of the in-house editors that a publisher hires), it’s what we see in our newspapers, in our dictionaries and thesaurses, and so on.

The internet clouded that a little, with globalisation you get the callous hammer of cultural imperialism. Suddenly most of the blog posts you’re seeing on the internet are in American English, for example. But that’s cool too, that happens - you’ll get marked down though, if you dare to let that slip into your essays or fictional writing at university or highschool or even primary school; so our localised grammar is very much taught strongly to us. It means that the inherent spellcheck for my browser flags words that I know are correct, like colour, globalisation and localised. I have to jump through some hoops to change that, but as long as it stays away from my word processor, I’m okay with it, lol.

So you have this thing called localisation editing. It is a process of editing something to fit local grammar - because if you open up to global english-language submissions (and most publishers do), you also open up to getting a whole bunch of texts following different (but perfectly sound) grammar rules. Usually you can stipulate a couple of rules yourself - times new font in pt 12, margins of whatever width, paragraph indents and not tabbing. Etc. Simple things that authors just about anywhere can generally follow fairly easily.

Localisation is not an easy process. Think about how long you spend learning the grammar of your country, and then think about how jarring it is sometimes to come across obvious differences. Then think about all the things that are invisible to you because you take them for granted. Think that there are huge, encyclopedic compendiums of grammar rules, that people can go to university and study for three years - just that one set of grammar rules, not for any other country - to become an editor, and still be considered a ‘newbie editor’ because there’s so much to learn and so many ways to apply it to texts.

What bothers me is when US publishers forego paying their editors by asking for authors to do this form of localisation editing labour for them for free. It takes money from people who have trained as editors to know how to do this. It forces authors into an uncomfortable position of trying to apply what they know of another country’s grammar rules to their own grammar - sometimes this is easy, a search replace for colour to color? Sure. But for punctuation, sentence structure, or even word differences, or the commonality of some cursewords over others for example, no. Is it an em-dash here or an en-dash? Is it a quote or a quotation or something else? Is this italics or underlined? 

That level of localisation is a job for the professionals. Professional authors are professional authors, but they are not professional editors.

So it bothers me when US publishers in the m/m industry in particular, offload this burden so they don’t need to hire as many editors, and foist it upon authors outside of their country.

Also, generally speaking, I just like writing in the grammar rules I was taught. I enjoy Australian grammar. I’m glad that I know our spoken dialogue in fiction is enclosed in these: ‘ ‘ instead of these “ “ and that the latter will get you marked down for ‘Americanisation.’ (The former will get 15 year old Americans coming into your AO3 comment box to explain how you’re ‘doing it wrong’ because of the ubiquity of US grammar rules lol). As far as I’m concerned, outside of arguments over the Oxford comma (for the record, I’m against, lol, even though I think the memes in favour of it are hilarious), I think they are a logical set of rules that help improve the readability of what I write, and they aren’t impenetrable to people who don’t live in Australia. This is proven by y’know, all the people who read my fics who aren’t in Australia. Which is pretty much almost all of you.

(Hi folks you’re all awesome).

So it’s not really US grammar on its own that’s the problem, on its own it’s just an innocuous set of grammar rules. There’s a great book on the subject of American language by the way, by Bill Bryson, called Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States which is awesome and very entertaining.

Also, there’s places where I do actually Americanise my writing a little. I use pants instead of trousers - that doesn’t come naturally to me and it jars me every time I do it. I tend to use yard instead of garden, I often use sweater instead of jumper, and I occasionally use trash instead of bin. These things - if I had used them as a kid - would have earned a disapproving glower from any adult nearby along with a sharp ‘you’re not an American, don’t use that language!’ Lol. There’s a few others that are probably so invisible to me now I don’t know what they are anymore. Needless to say were I submit that work to an Australian publisher all that stuff would get corrected back to appropriate Australian grammar.

Anyway, mostly, I find it frustrating that there are publishers in the insular m/m publishing bubble that place the burden of localisation editing on authors (which is inappropriate, and also a very incomplete process, and it shows - it’s why m/m editing often comes under fire; probably because they expect authors who haven’t been trained in formal editing to do so much of it for no compensation, while asking editors to do too much for little pay.) It’s also why a lot of m/m authors are turning to self-publishing. It’s not just me that finds this infuriating; I’m not alone. There’s editors and authors aplenty out there who hate it, and are often outraged to find that this is the way it’s done in this particular genre.

But hey, it’s no skin off my nose, self-publishing is a new and incredible frontier, and I know plenty of Australian editors who can look over my work before I publish it (and US betas who can go ‘um what’s a ute?’ - utility vehicle btw and help out on that side of things).