#who are in a mutually destructive qpr

[ame-emberlea]

CyLuka's dynamic is hilarious now that I think about it

Who would win? A homme fatale or an asexual? More at seven

-

pre-timeskip CyLuka having a whole There Are Other Ways moment

Cyrus, taking off his coat to reveal a form-fitting outfit: Show me that you're willing to burn~

Luka:

Cyrus:

Cyrus: You know, that usually gets a bigger reaction

[rotten-zucchinis]

Rotten Zucchinis Zine #3 (re: harm in non-normative relationships) Last Call for submissions-- December 31, 2024 Email: rotten.zucchinis@gmail.com Zines take time and after a while, there are finally enough submissions to compile this zine. So I'm putting out a last call for submissions, not that I know this is happening soon! Submissions are welcome from anyone but with several submissions already from anarchist ausitic folx that is turning out to be the focus.

What kinds of content?

personal stories, reflections, poetry, art, etc. (non-fiction; black-and-white)

for prose, approx 300-3,000 words (flexible)

Harm in what kind of relationships?

Any personal or intimate relationship that is NOT a romantic / sexual partnership or “couple” (or triad)

Any personal relationship that is somehow “outside the box”

These might include:

QPRs that are not “couples”

organising & comrade relationships or affinity groups

chosen family

roommates in a collective house

cross-generational relationships between adults that are not typical in the dominant cultural context

co-parenting situations with multiple parents who aren't romantically involved

relationships in the context of accountability or TJ work, etc.

What do you mean “harm”?

Some forms of harm are about power & control and have a perpetrator wielding that power & control over another.

Some forms of harm are not about power/control, and can be mutual (or go in more than 1 direction).

This zine is about any/all of this

Why this zine / topic?

So many of us have been doing our important relationships without any road maps or “how-to” guides, often having to fight for other people to take them as seriously as we do.

But we don’t have the tools to talk about when they're harmful or go wrong. Often we don’t even have the space to admit they sometimes do.

Rotten Zucchinis is a zine about harm and destructiveness in “non-normative” relationships.

This relational territory is messy! (It includes but is not limited to forms of violence and abuse.)

Some optional guiding questions:

What has harm (or violence or abuse) looked like in your non-normative relationships: what are your stories? How did you make sense out of this?

What is “non-normative” about these relationships?

Did society's norms promote that harm or make it harder to recognise or talk about? Did they make it harder for people to believe these harms happened (or were actually harmful)?

How do the harm from our non-normative relationships play out with other parts of our identities and lives?

How do things like power, oppression and social expectations matter?

When it comes to non-normative relationships, what do we still need to keep quiet about… and why?

Contributors will receive a printed copy of the zine but will not be paid.

The zine will be shared online for free. Hard copies may be sold on a pwyc basis (in-person).

[panthera-tigris-venenata]

My fic recs

...yes it is just my ao3 bookmarks but anyway.

Hunger Games

Now we're all the chosen ones

Hunger Games & Six of Crows crossover - well, you get six of crows in HG setting. I think the author did a great job at making up the characters background so fits the world and the characters as well.

Not all of them are in one games, which is great, cos all your faves can stay alive, and the series is longer <3

Each of the arenas was very unique as well, it never felt repetitive.

Mag's War/Mag's Trilogy

Basically, the revolution and the aftermath through the eyes of Finnick Oddair, Mag's protege.

What I really like about this series is the worldbuilding that goes into fighting a war, winning it and reform the country, but more so, I like the relationships in this series.

The relationships are really a driving force for Finnick, his love for Mags, Annie, later Cashmere and Johanna. My favourite is Finnick and Johanna (qpr) in the happy end version - "this might not be the perfect ending for everyone, but it is for us"

Phoenix Fire & Mockingjays

Once again, briliant worldbuilding. Even the encyclopedias are fun to read, and the whole thing is rereading material.

There is one story from the series that is my favourite though:

My Eyes Dazzle

Absolutely horrific story of President Snow, his young wife- his obsession and paranoia that runs so deep you can feel it.

Mind the content warnings, though.

Harry Potter

Bonds of Grey

Very elaborate canon rewrite including soulmates – soulmates of choice, platonic soulmates.

You could argue that the characters are overpowered, but it's so fun to read, on the battle field and on political courts as well.

Prince of Slytherin

It'd just feel weird not including Prince of Slytherin, I've read it multiple times. You can also see the writing style improve through the books.

Also, there's a scene of professor Snape eating popcorn at a wizangamot meeting. I think.

Oh god, not again!

Very funny time-travel fix-it. Well, fix it. (Barely anything gets fixed and several new problems are created.)

Contains this quote: HP: „Come on! Do you think if I was the heir of Slytherin, I wouldn't be merchandising it?!“ „...fair enough.“

Lucius Malfoy and the terrible, horrible, no good time

...okay that's not the official title but that's what's going on. It's incredibly funny, I sent this to my roommate and she was laughing out loud.

Lucius is so funny in this, obsessed with his hair, slughtly (rightfully) afraid of his wife, and pissed that the deatheaters keep breaking his fine china.

Next two are from @thistlecatfics

Nymphadora, Nymphet

First of all, mind the content warnings. Really, do. It's the Blacks.

Second of all, this is very beautifully written, and I find myself thinking back at it, remembering some quotes. It's haunting.

Icarus

I've only read this one once, but it stayed with me, it's just so vivid. Dealing with the war ending when the war is the only thing you knew.

Also, the definition of mutually destructive relationship <3

Once again, read the tags, though.

The Locked Tomb

Crawl home to her

I lack the words to describe this, but this fic was what made me actually use the ao3 bookmarks function for the first time. Let that speak for itself.

Descendants

Okay first of all everything that my mutuals wrote <3

So I'm gonna write just few that I really like:

From @tiredflowercrown

There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

Ivy/Claudine. Ivy being the self-destructive diva she is and causing chaos at the pirate crew meeting.

...you know, I just really need to throw Ivy de Vil and Harry Hook into a room together and study them. For the greater good.

Dirty

I just think Harriet should get violent more often, that's all <3

Oleander petals

And Anthony deserves to give in to the darker side. You know, as a treat <3

Does it cross your mind to be slightly sorry?

„Oh so that makes it okay? You had faith that your cousins, who you had never put in positions of power, and the boys who love you so much that they would stop breathing if you asked them to, would be able to care for an entire crew! Harry shut down when he realized you had left! You think Harriet is an alcoholic, you should’ve seen Harry!”

That was a quote and I have nothing else to add.

@humaforever 💞

Seven Deadly Sins

Okay funny story about this story: I just started rambling about this ship in dms, completely drunk, and when I woke up the next day, (hungover), there was a story!

A miracle!

(thank you)

Innocent bystander

Sammy Smee is suffering, forever and ever. It's fun to watch.

Secret Santa

This one is great cos it's all my faves! Together! Being happy! Causing only moderate amount of chaos!

Look I'm pretty sure that I could write it down from memorory with like, fifty percent accuracy. It's just good, and I'm rereading stuff a lot.

@shellyseashell

Heart made of glass

Claudine! Pirates! Theatre nights!

What else can you wish for?

No, really, I really love this story. It's amazing with the friendships Claudine is slowly building, with Isle kids that shouldn't care but do.

Our finest gifts we bring

Anthony fretting over what to get his Girlfriends for christmas.

Every character that appears feels so real and true, and I like the gifts that they got.

@theamityelf

The worst is now the victor

Descendants kids in Hunger Games setting cos apparently I like hurting myself-

Really though, it's so well written, and there's a ton of comfort in there as well. And Uma always trying to do the most!

Where the angels used to be

Another crossover, this time Good Omens, with Uma and Audrey taking on the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale respectively. (For those interested, Core 4 are horsemen of the apocalypse.)

I really like watching Uma and Audrey through the ages, but my favourite is them with Harry and Gil. Uma just. Let them follow her everywhere. She forgot that humans are supposed to age and die, okay?

And Harry didn't really feel like telling her.

The scene when Audrey tells her is probably my favourite, Uma's just like: "Harry? Do you wanna die?" "Nah I'm good." "Okay."

@nocturna-iv

A path to an answer

... I'm just gonna leave the link there for this one.

Blue Domain

Complete AU. Some politics, Evie and Uma friendship, Harry/Uma, what more could a girl want.

Okay last ones probably, without tagged author:

Anchored

Ladies and gentlemen, behold, the first smut fic I managed to read. (That's not on the author btw, that's on me, I don't really like most smut scenes. This is very sweet tho)

Til the storm comes

The pirate crew. Not just Sea Three, the whole dead. Bonny, Desiree, Jonas, Gonzo, Claudine, Marya, whole bunch of others.

This fic is great, very raw-like. They're Isle kids to the core and it's so real.

Plus, the party scene is great.

That concludes my fic recs for the day, thank you for your attention <3

[pyrrhicraven]

Hi! I love your TMNT headcanons! Can we have some more, please?

Here's some headcanon from my TMNT Pac-Man universe :)

Mikey is always the 'party guy' in pretty much every interaction for my PM AU he was the party harty guy. Drugs, booze, bad choices, etc. Eventually, he pulls himself out of it by becoming something more. By becoming the thief Soot. Mind you this was completely accidental, the exhilaration he gets from being an amazing thief is worth every second to him. He crosses Pac-Man and walks away knowing that Pac-Man is his brother Donnie. At first, he doesn't say anything but of course, it eats at him so he asks Donnie one night when they are patrolling together. Donnie freaks out because he has no clue how Mikey found out. They bond over their shared illegal activities lol It really helped them get close because they knew they could trust each other, mutual destruction after all. Leo and Raph are left in the dark until the events of my fic Pac-Man, Just because Donnie and Mikey didn't want Splinter to know.

I really struggled with Splinter, on one hand, I love reading fics where he's this really loving father but on the other hand, I really wanted some discord in the family. So I headcanon this version of Splinter to be Hamato Yoshi and he was taught that LGBTQA+ people are wrong. He will not budge on that, it is too ingrained in him despite how much he cares for his sons he will never accept that about any of them.

Not all of them are, but they all support each other. Mikey likes a lady who basically works as a receptionist/medic for Shredder, Raph is most certainly gay for Casey, Leo is in a QPR(Queer-Platonic Relationship) with two guys, and Donnie well...I think most of them would be accepting of him being gay but who he's seeing is the point of contention for the brothers and extended family. Venus and April are a pairing I never actually expected to write, but I thought it was fitting for the PM Universe. They bonded and started to secretly date, they had planned on telling the guys but well people get busy and April is a reporter after all, I imagine she's busy all the time.

Shredder. The big bad, He is a pain in my butt. I made this version of him gay and Tang Shen was his best friend, and Yoshi he considered a brother. He knew Yoshi found LGBTQA+ people to be abhorrent and hated them. Knew that if his 'brother' was to ever find out they would forever be separated. Yoshi found out that Saki was gay, and with a few others completely shattered Saki's trust. Then everything goes to hell, Saki loses his best friend-takes her child because he doesn't want her to grow up with Yoshi, to hate people just because of who they love. But in that, he alienates Miwa because he's well-him. The warrior, the mobster, still has a vendetta against Yoshi for killing his bestie!

[zorlok-if]

Your Blog looks so freaking cool holy moly- also. Could you tell us a little bit about the poly romances? like what kinda vibes/flavours/themes are they?? I am very excited to put my grubby poly hands on all of them

Okay, I've been working on this one for a while now cause it made me realize that I had to think about these more. I think when I originally put the poly route options in the masterpost I'd just copied and pasted them from a list called "potential Z poly routes?" So, here's an answer and list that I've actually put a lot of thought into:

🌹 Dev and Adam/Eve: Finally resolving years of hatred and misunderstanding, their mutual feelings for Z are the common ground they need to also find each other once more. Lots of pent up tension (and you get to enjoy all of it).

Intense emotion, tender, forgiveness, warmth, fluff, passion, (re)discovery, curiosity, understanding

Can be: romantic + asexual, romantic + sexual, platonic + asexual, or platonic + sexual

🌹 Dev and the Celestial: Friends w/ benefits turned poly QPR. Just a couple of people who want to have fun, cause trouble, engage in mischief, and not take existence too seriously while being with and supporting the people they love.

Mischief, chaos, adventure, indulgence, exploration, curiosity, pranks, respect, encouragement, schemes

Can be: romantic + asexual, romantic + sexual, platonic + asexual, or platonic + sexual (romance just between Z and Dev)

🌹 Danny and Adam/Eve: Protectors protecting each other. Individuals who are concerned with morality and have a tendency towards self-sacrifice. Very emotional, deep care and understanding. The sweetest and most adorable coupling (+ moments of intense angst).

Caring, healing, inquisition, fluff/angst, heroism and martyrdom, protection, safety, help, gentle

Can be: romantic + asexual, romantic + sexual, platonic + asexual, or platonic + sexual

🌹 Adam/Eve and the Celestial: Develops from a fascination with one another and an immense respect for the differences between you all. Challenging each other intellectually and morally, posing questions each other never thought to ask. (Also can involve lots of discussion on gender and identity.)

Respect, understanding, ideals, searching, mystery, discovery, debate, morality, challenging

Can be: romantic + asexual, romantic + sexual, platonic + asexual, or platonic + sexual (romance just between Z and A/E)

🌹 Danny and Ciel: Forced. Proximity. A relationship that deals mostly with helping one another, understanding each other, and working through parallel situations with care, respect, and understanding.

Change, health, saving people from themselves, caring, fluff/angst, mystery, curiosity, complexity

Can be: romantic + asexual, romantic + sexual, platonic + asexual, or platonic + sexual

❤️‍🔥 Ciel and [Secret RO]: An intense, passionate affair. A power triad looking to bring the world to its knees.

Heat, fire, passion, strength, resolution, wild delight, overindulgence, burning, conquering

Can be: romantic + sexual or platonic + sexual (secret RO only interested in bringing Ciel in as a sexual partner, never has feelings for them as they do for you)

Poly routes I'm also considering adding:

These may be added or swapped for some of those above if I decide they make more sense or would be more compelling.

🌹 Danny and Dev: Another heavy mystery and intrigue one, big on discovery, mutual respect, and helping one another through grave trials

🌹 Danny and the Celestial: Slow burn for the Celestial to finally trust Danny, built out of immense personal respect and great trials

🌹 Adam/Eve and Ciel: Only like a darkest timeline kind of situation, falling from grace, solace (highly unlikely to implement just a kind of evil AU that lives in my head)

🌹 Dev and Ciel: Same as above, The Darkest Timeline's Sexy Mad Love Triad™️, corruption, destruction, power and hunger, supporting one another unconditionally

🌹 Adam/Eve and Danny and Dev: Little sleuth polycule (probably won't implement because it's just a lot to code but this is super cute to me and has a positively lovely little vibe)

[rybonucleic-ket]

awh dude thank you for the tag!

3 ships: uhh uhm ok let's see...steddie, geraskier, maybe hanbrough atm I'm currently obsessing (perhaps horrance instead of hanbrough but people really don't like me shipping two fictional characters who are not related and also were raised more like a squad of superhuman sharpshooters than a family so)

First ship: tbh probably zukka I loved those mfs before I knew what gay people were

last song: Symphony of Destruction - Megadeth

last movie: Avengers (2012)

currently reading: I'm rereading a number of things - The Stand, Fahrenheit 451, 1984. also a lot of fanfic and Fairytale by Stephen King

currently watching: rewatching: tua, stranger things, death note - finishing: merlin (yes, I am just now watching it, shut up), Bungo Stray Dogs (I started a long ass time ago)

currently consuming: peppermint brownies (the food has weed in it)

currently craving: ice cream, a qpr (I miss snuggles)

tags (no pressure) sorry if this is totally random but if I tag you you're a mutual and I don't know how to talk to people

@vacantseance @infinite-orangepeel @reddiesetbyler @hey-there-benerino @trashmouthtalks @ibringthepoptothecinema @kolcheks @luciferdreaming @xjuliazlx

tag 9 people you’d like to get to know better

thank you @louwhose for the tag!!

3 ships: zelink (who else), victuuri, midzel specifically twilight princess

first ever ship: me and link tbh i was like 9 and just discovered twilight princess

last song: orgy for one by ninja sex party

last movie: not sure if this counts as a movie but the documentary “fantastic fungi” on netflix

currently reading: various fanfictions, but just started rereading Alone With You by the lovely @deiliamedlini

currently watching: whatever game grumps compilations come up in my recommended on youtube

currently consuming: idk if this means food or media so i’ll answer both. for food i just got a sausage and egg breakfast burrito (no cheese i dont like cheddar cheese) that i’m about to demolish. for media i’ve been playing minecraft like it’s 2012 and they just added ocelots

currently craving: breakfast burrito so like good thing i just went and got one

tags: i don’t know 9 people so @cityofperpetualgloom @feralratkid @niobiummm and anyone else who wants to participate!! <3

[golbatgender]

The Homestuck quadrants didn't even have asexuality. The point was that the quadrant system (itself a satire of fandom shipping culture) required several different kinds of relationships simultaneously if fully realized, two of which were explicitly sexual. The other two were interpersonal management roles (as implied by the term "conciliatory")—moirailegiance has some similarities to a non-sexual QPR, but its main purpose is to provide a buffer for individual personality trajectories; in short, the members are supposed to mutually prevent each other from engaging in mass murder or other destructive courses of behavior. (As one can see in the text, this is not always successful, especially when both parties are teenagers dealing with the apocalypse.) Meanwhile, the auspistice role involves doing much the same thing, but one-way with entire relationship pairs. Both exist partly because trolls are an extremely aggressive species that need highly structured interpersonal management in order to live in proximity to each other and not murder each other constantly (as opposed to "pretty frequently" and, among adolescents, "recreationally"), and partly because the reproductive roles (the concupiscent ones) were based primarily on sexual attraction and also legally mandated to a degree that de-prioritized long term stability without the conciliatory quadrants to pick up the slack and wrangle the social system into groaning, lurching, bloodthirsty motion. That is, if it actually works at all, because it's pretty obvious that the perfectly filled quadrant system is the Alternian version of a heteronormative ideal, and very few trolls actually manage to make it work properly (though they might have the required relationships on paper).

So yeah, this is not the Voltron fandom and you can't bend it to your shitty little hatecourse. Any Homestuck fan will more or less agree with the basic points of the above, because it's spelled out like that in canon, and acting like Homestuck is somehow responsible for asexuality is pretty ridiculous considering the quadrant system was first published in 2010 and AVEN was founded in 2001 (and asexuality existed long before AVEN, but the point is that it existed before Homestuck). So I don't care if it was just a joke or whatever; it's hateful, and there are thousands of people who know exactly how you're wrong and won't put up with it.

[rotten-zucchinis]

Call for submissions (zine): harm in non-normative relationships (deadline extended: Jan 2023)

There’s been some interest in a new issue of “Rotten Zucchinis zine” about harm non-normative relationships. So I’m extending the deadline to January 30, 2023 and inviting people to share the call for submissions!

Inviting submissions:

personal stories, reflections, poetry, art, etc. (i.e., basically anything other than fiction)

What do you mean by “non-normative relationship”?

Basically any personal or intimate relationship that is NOT romantic, NOT a “couple” (or a romantic/sexual triad), and not a “standard” friendship: a personal relationship that is somehow “outside the box” and not adequately or properly described by the term “friendship”– especially relationships for which there are no good specific labels. (The people involved do not have to be arospec and/or ace even though almost everyone who contributed to the first 2 issues was.)

These could include queerplatonic** (QP) relationship but they also might include relationships people don’t typically think about when we talk of “non-normative relationships”– for example, organising/comrade relationships insofar as they are personal relationships, chosen family, roommates in a community house, etc. They might include cross-generational relationships between adults that are not typical in a particular cultural context, or co-parenting situations of multiple parents who aren’t romantically or sexually involved, etc. Could even be relationship in the context of accountability work gone wrong... So many possibilities.

More info:

In terms of context, this might be helpful:

So many of us have been doing our important relationships without any road maps or “how-to” guides— these relationships aren’t romantic relationships, but they aren’t typical friendships either. And we’ve been fighting for years to get our friends, families and communities to take these relationships seriously. We finally have some language to talk about these “non-normative” relationships existing…

But we don’t have the tools to talk about when our “non-normative” relationships are unhealthy or go wrong. Often we don’t even have the space to admit that sometimes they do. Rotten Zucchinis is a zine about violence / abuse and harm and destructiveness in “non-normative” relationships. This relational territory is messy. Some forms of harm are about power and control and have a perpetrator wielding that power and control on another. Some forms of harm are not about power/control, and can be mutual (or going in more than 1 direction).

Some optional guiding questions:

What does harm or violence or abuse look like in non-normative relationships, and what are your stories? How did you make sense out of this? (and what is non-normative about the relationship in question?)

How do the problems we have in our non-normative relationships play out with other parts of our identities and lives?

How do things like power, oppression and social expectations matter?

When it comes to non-normative relationships, what do we still need to keep quiet about… and why?  

Please include a contributory bio 

Submissions / questions, etc.: rotten [dot] zucchinis [at] gmail [dot] com

_____________________________

** Note: The term queerplatonic was coined and adopted with particular intentions of expressing relationships that were not romantic but that otherwise could not be named (also along with the word “zucchini, hence the title of this zine).

Increasingly (and for a long time now), people have been reshaping the language of queerplatonic in practice, deploying it for (aro) assimilationist purposes, undermining its radical potential, etc. and categorically erasing its ace-specific roots. [In 2019, Coyote wrote a couple posts presenting “A Genealogy of queerplatonic” and discussing (and fact-checking) the political mess of false-history claims in the non-ace aro world, while attempting to make sense of their political context “QPR misinformation is not an appropriate avenue for aro advocacy”.]

In short, people have been using the word “queerplatonic” to mean a lot of things that don’t necessarily have a much to do with non-normative relationships.

I’m not going to get into an rant about neoliberalism here. I just wanted to note that indeed these days, language of QP relationships is often used to refer to relationships that are “just like most people’s partnerships except not romantic or not as romantic”. (That’s not the meaning of queerplatonic in which the “zucchini” in the title of this zine was grounded.)

This zine is about non-normative relationships, under any name. By “non-normative”, I mean by definition relationships which are NOT “just like most people’s partnerships”-- instead, they are basically *anything* else.