btw i love when dubcon is used in fiction as a way to explore characters. i love when characters don’t understand how to “properly” ask for consent because they have never had their consent respected in their lives. i love when traumatized adult characters make potentially unwise choices about what to do with their bodies because they have the autonomy to do so. i love when characters make choices that i personally wouldn’t make, but i can totally understand how they got there. i love when characters have complex, fucked up, unhealthy dynamics, but still care about each other and want to do better. i love when writers trust audience members to read between the lines instead of spoon feeding them moral lessons. i love when characters are allowed to actually fuck up and have mistakes to learn from!
Sex scene as character study is so good. What is your relationship to your body? What is your relationship to your partner? What lessons have you absorbed from the culture about yourself as a sexual being? How much do you have to trust someone before being comfortable with intimacy? What fears and insecurities come to the fore for you when you take your clothes off? It's so good.
the thing about d/s is that for virtually any ship i can be sold on either character in either role. arguments about whether a given character could or would dom are virtually always deeply silly and tend, when they lean into the idea that a given character could never dom because they're just too weak-willed, incompetent, naive, or helpless, to be the product of unexamined biases percolating up.
would this character dom (or sub) is almost never an interesting question. how would this character dom (or sub) is much more interesting. what do they get out of it? how do they feel about it? how experienced are they? are they confident or awkward? what kinks do they enjoy? what are their limits and how do they communicate them? what is the dynamic with their partner like? does it shift in the bedroom, or does it stay the same? et cetera. the same as any good erotica, it's got to be about these specific people, not faceless automatons filling the prescribed roles, or it's boring
I think I am officially Fandom Old. I am so worn out from the arguments on who's the top or the bottom (who cares), what is allowed to be written (anything you want, bejeebus), what is Problematic (I know, just tag it), what other people Should Do (they Should live their lives free of judgment). There isn't a Right Way to do things. Tag your stuff appropriately, don't read stuff you don't want to read, and leave other people (me) alone.
There is nothing quite like the freedom of having gone through all of the Discourse and come out the other side into the promised land of Not Giving A Fuck.
shane and yuuri met and became friends while yuuri was training in detroit.... victor and ilya have each others' numbers and have drunk called the other on several different occasions... this is what divine winds have told me 😌☝
brooding men who cannot communicate their feelings if their life depended on it are only hot when they're fictional. if i have to deal with one in real life i will curse him and pray for his downfall every night before i go to bed
It's because the writer communicates their feelings for them. If people wanna pull that off in real life they need to hire a guy to walk around behind them narrating.
You can have harmful beliefs and harmful impulses and harmful urges and not be evil. You can make yourself aware that these things are harmful and take steps to correct yourself and not be evil. You can walk around with the urge to kick puppies all goddamn day and as long as you are capable of redirecting that impulse to something benign then it doesn’t matter. I don’t know how else to say this
Finn: Your Jake wants us to-??
Fern: ?
(in background
Finn: I mean. Technically I've already-
Fern: that doesn't count, you were hallucinating, dumbass. You're too much of a wuss to do it forreals.
Finn: whuh-
Fern: You friendzoned yourself before trying that "even closer" line on me,)
Fionna: CAKE! ohmyGod- you NEED to stop asking people to mack on themselves!
Cake: no.
Fionna: why are you like this
Cake: I'd do it...
(said at the same time in background
Finn: you were listening??
Fern: total wuss mov--!?)
Cake: FIONNA-- FIONNA!
Fionna: does that man have two tongues?
Cake: it finally worked
7 times Shen Qingqiu reached out to Binghe and 1 time their hands touched
Or: You keep pretending you're playing a first-person videogame but you can't stop reaching out to Binghe and breaking your imaginary 4th wall.
3 more under cut (NSFW). Would love concrit since I also want to properly color some of these. Also: does the cycle of colors look good/make sense?
"VIII. Vers" is a post-canon scene: SQQ finally letting Binghe bottom. It's the end of the cycle because at the end of SVSSS Bingqiu have defeated the narrative of the stallion novel but SQQ had mentally replaced it with the BL narrative and kept acting out the role of shou, and he is only just beginning to fight against that new narrative in the extras. (See essay for details.) Only when he finally accepts that both he and Binghe don't have to follow those rules will the main themes of SVSSS be resolved. That's the only one where I colored in their skin and hair, because SQQ finally fully sees both of them as real people with full agency beyond their narrative roles.
"VII. Dream": This is the moment in the Deep Dream extra where SQQ sees Binghe's memory of caring for SQQ's corpse and saying "Shizun, if you don't wake up soon, I don't think I can hold on for much longer."
But Luo Binghe would hold that ice-cold, lifeless corpse and hold on for almost two thousand more of these days and nights. His heart ached with an overwhelming pain, so much so that it exploded within his chest. Shen Qingqiu saw a hand stretching forward, futilely trying to touch that stark-white face of Luo Binghe’s. He watched that hand as it trembled, unable to touch anything, then suddenly realized, with a shock, that it was his own.
Acknowledgements
Thanks for the super helpful art tips to @lavendrya, @kamikazeworld, @herbofthyme and @cumplanecrash, to @fothetinyotter for the initial idea and encouragement, to @folding-fan for drawing the Hua Yue City scene because I literally couldn't see it in my head before that art, and to everyone who voted on the sketch poll!
Why this?
I think "SQQ reaching out to Binghe" is a good way to chronicle their relationship
because he does it at so many pivotal moments.
because he kinda treats his transmigrated life as a 1st person videogame
because he doesn't realize he's also part of the world, not actually separated from it by the 4th wall, not hidden behind the camera - but he can't stop reaching out towards Binghe anyway!!
because him reaching out towards Binghe is the most important part of SVSSS! That's what changes the narrative!
Will there be more?
I'd love to add a #0: SY reading PIDW. Visually, I think him opening a physical book would be prettiest. But realistically it should be him reading on a phone or angrily typing on a keyboard, right? But like I have NO idea how to make that visually appealing?
I might draw some suggestive post-canon scenes in this format and might accept suggestions...
Did I miss any important canon scenes? Feel free to remind me!
I'm also working on a Bingqiu Tarot series, any Tarot nerds wanna talk about that?
So many modern detectives have tried to emulate Sherlock Holmes, and none of them have even come CLOSE to touching Benoit Blanc. That man is Holmes' true spiritual successor. He's a silly little guy. He's gay. He's a drama queen. He has impeccable fashion sense. He loves music. He works with the cops but refuses to work for them. His voice is both goofy and incredibly fun to listen to. He sucks at playing Clue and Among Us. He mopes in the bathtub for weeks when he doesn't have a case. He loves hanging out with The Girls but gets incredibly uncomfortable when women flirt with him. The only reason he can afford his gorgeous downtown apartment is because his husband works a real job.* The only thing he hates more than Rich Assholes are Stupid Rich Assholes. He solved a double (attempted triple) homicide and the thing that made him most upset was plagiarism. He supports women's rights and women's wrongs. He refuses to break the law himself but actively encourages his client to commit arson.
And, most importantly, he and Holmes would fucking love each other. If most of the modern day detectives inspired by Holmes ever met him, he would probably want to kill them with hammers, but he and Blanc would probably end up being penpals and sending each other newspaper clippings about crime or some shit. And I can absolutely envision a teenage Blanc reading the Holmes stories and being like, "Wait, being a silly little gay private detective is a viable career option? Well, I guess I've finally found my calling in life."
Anyway I love the Benoit Blanc movies and I hope they make a million of them
I’ve been obsessed with this idea since u first read the new SVSSS extra because it’s SO MESSY. (I know we don’t know how old SY is but I’m making the decision for the funniest outcome)
