hi! my name is Salem Szarek, and this is my brand new writeblr. I'm 35, a trans guy, and my pronouns are he/they. I live in the midwest of the usa with my family, my mischief of rats, my crested gecko, and my small collection of invertebrates. I'm currently an undergrad student with an undeclared major, and I work at a public library. I write mostly high heat romance and erotica featuring trans characters, and I want to make my stories as accessible as possible!
My fiction is for adults only. This blog may have content inappropriate for minors, so if you're under 18 years of age, please do not follow.
— links
fandom sideblog (mostly the pitt) | bluesky | instagram | archive of our own
— wips
summaries below the cut.
the dragon's treasure
Prince Olivar has plans to take his throne back from his scheming uncle, who has been Lord Regent since his parents died years ago. His plans certainly don't involve being forced away to marry a neighboring prince, but his uncle doesn't seem to care. When Olivar is kidnapped by a dragon on the treacherous journey, however, his plans could be back on track — if he can convince his new "husband" to leave his hoard, and their wedding bed.
out of the depths
21XX | Matthaios is a hacker — but freelance hackers, even skilled ones, are nothing special in the city of Detroit. So why has one of the richest women in the world contacted him for a job? What is in the labyrinth below Argyris Inc?
the prince's boy
Finn has been the spoiled prince's whipping boy since he was young, taking his punishments for him. In return, he's had the education of a noble, and opportunities given to him that few common born ever dream of. Prince Bertram is a grown man now, and will soon no longer require him — but what will Finn do when he's released from the prince's service? After all, he's considered a traitor for bending his knee to colonizers from the west.
The choice is taken from him when, along with the prince, he's kidnapped by rebels intending to sacrifice their blood to open the path to the land of the Fair Folk.
antivenom
Offering himself as a sacrifice to the Goddess of the Valley is the easiest choice Mireyn has ever made. He will either please Her, and be rewarded with the body he's always meant to have — or his suffering will be at an end.
test subject
A trans xenobiologist finds himself woken from cryosleep to research a newly discovered life form. Soon, however, he finds himself on the other side of the glass.
But the horror... The horror was for love. The things we do for love like this are ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret. This love burns you and maims you and twists you inside out. It is a monstrous love and it makes monsters of us all.
Single-session sketch, ink and watercolour
Yeah so I rewatched Crimson Peak again and I'm feeling soooo normal about it.
This Juneteenth I want people to know and remember Alfred Irving who was finally freed from chattel slavery in 1942 and Mae Louis Miller who was finally freed from peonage slavery in 1963.
Slavery was not "200 years ago," the last living former enslaved african american passed away in 2014 at 70 years old.
Chattell slavery in America did not go away, it adapted. It became peonage, sharecropping, vagrancy laws, "chain gangs" or convict leasing, and continues into the modern day prison system and the systematic incarceration of black and brown people and expanded to forced detention of immigrants in modern day America.
Do not believe the common narrative that the emancipation proclamation freed every slave. There are many more who were unable to tell their stories out of shame or fear of harm.
I reccomend that people read Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon or watch the 90 minute documentary / film adaptation
If nothing else please remember the names of the two people that American society wants you to forget.
the worst part of summer is that people get sooo comfortable expressing their disgust at having to see other people’s bodies. they’re always complaining about wrinkly old men at the nude hot springs or fat women in bikinis at the beach. I hate that shit. if you’re not capable of being normal about bodies you personally don’t find attractive, just turn your head to look at something else! and if you’re not smart enough to do that, then at least do the rest of us the courtesy of suffering in silence, because we don’t wanna hear your weird comments. thanks.
you have to love trans women more than you hate transmisogyny, you have to love jews more than you hate antisemitism, you have to love Black people more than you hate white supremacy, you have to love Indigenous people more than you hate colonialism, you have to love the disabled and mentally ill more than you hate ableism, you have to love. you have to love.
It's actually so fucking weird that your identity is absolute these days. like, it's been normalized to the point we don't think of it much, but until a hundred years ago, hell even less, you could just kinda. go somewhere else, and be a new person. and that's not a thing anymore.
like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.
“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.
“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.
person typing into google search bar: obfuscate meaning
google ai overview: Understood! From now on, all meaning will be hidden from you, and you'll be forced to wade through the dreary vastness. Whether it's things you've always held dear, or new ideas you've yet to discover, nothing will make sense or appear to have any real value. This could be the beginning of a fascinating journey!
most fantasy books or fics i’ve read that contained a desert biome fell back on real world prejudice and misconceptions in place of authentic worldbuilding for a place and people, and it is so telling that the trope seems to repeat itself
things like
the desert as a lifeless wasteland where ‘life is crushed underneath the shifting sands and blazing sun’ blah blah blah. deserts are full of life and they are beautiful and people have lived and prospered in them for eons. please read a book
the desert as an ugly or barren terrain where everything is harsh and threatening
the desert as something scary
the inhabitants as backwards religious zealots
the men as overly violent and oppressive
the inhabitants in need of outside instruction/intervention, i.e. “civilizing the savage”
the “harem” and women as exotic, sensual, mysterious
writing tribalism with no knowledge of how tribes actually function
djinn (or for the westerners, genies)
Islam Lite (the aesthetics or spiritual practices appropriated and stripped of meaning)
sprinkling random arabic words for ✨flavor✨instead of expanding your worldbuilding to include language as well
clothing as oppressive or mysterious, instead of serving its actual purpose (protecting you from the elements, which should be obvious but i guess it isn’t. covering your skin keeps you cooler and safer in most deserts)
people who live in deserts as ignorant, superstitious, uneducated
this isn’t worldbuilding, it’s just ignorance and bigotry
I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture.
All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line?
The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy?
Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess.
I want the fat left it.
I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence.
Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."
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