i feel like something that's missing from some people's understanding of kink fiction and fantasy is, like... in fiction and fantasy, everything is in-scene.
when real people do kink in real life, you gotta do all that good out-of-scene stuff like discuss boundaries, set limits and expectations, check in with each other, do aftercare, et cetera et cetera et cetera... but in fiction, everything can be in-scene!
the people in that fanfic don't exist any more than, like, the make-believe sexy football star and make-believe sexy cheerleader in a couple's roleplay exist. that couple doesn't need to get into character and then pretend to be a sexy football star having an important consent conversation with a sexy cheerleader, because that's a conversation that's already happened out-of-scene and out-of-character. (i mean, if you're into in-character negotiations, chase your bliss.) when they're in that scene, they can just pretend to be a sexy football star having sex with a sexy cheerleader. that's okay.
so like. when fiction does kink in a way that would be unsafe or harmful irl... just keep in mind that you're not watching actual people neglecting check-ins or ignoring their set contract or genuinely harming each other. you're watching a scene without the behind-the-scenes bits, and that's okay.
this has gotten a couple replies along the lines of "yeah, you can just assume the characters worked all the important consent stuff out when you weren't looking!" which is true in some cases, but not the point i was trying to make, so please bear with me while i try to rephrase myself.
when i say in fiction, everything is in-scene, i mean that the fiction IS the scene.
if someone went up to their partner and said "hey, wouldn't it be sexy if we pretended you were manipulating and controlling me in an unethical way for sex reasons?", and then they talked through all the good and necessary consent and risk-awareness things, and then they played that scene out - that's a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm, right?
now, if someone writes a story where one character manipulates and controls another in an unethical way for sex reasons... that, too, is a made-up scenario where pretend bad things happen, but no real-world people come to real-world harm.
kink fiction doesn't have to be about characters consciously and conscientiously Doing Kink. kink fiction can be stories where the kinky things people fantasize about or roleplay (but wouldn't want to happen in real life) do happen in the universe of that story. because the story is a scene.
#Yeah this is THE thing that drives me crazy the past couple years#like imagine if u were a kid playing playing with dolls and other kids prefaced every idea you had with “but the dolls are just PRETENDING”#“the dolls arent going on an adventure theyre just in their backyard and soon their mom will call them in for snacks and water :)”#like im going to end u- you're taking all the fun out of imagination by anchoring it into real life#“well why would u want to pretend the dolls are in danger instead of pretending to be in danger for their enjoyment? Suspicious :/” ughhh#kink discussion#consentception
I've been using this tool called tumblr-utils to back up my tumblr blogs. it creates a locally navigatable archive of a given tumblr url's posts, which is more convenient than the post soup you get from tumblr's native blog export feature.
what that means is that I have a folder on my computer with the name of my url with an index.html file in it, and when i click on that file to open it in a browser I get a simple page with a list of years and months. selecting a specific month will send me to a list of the posts i made or reblogged in that month, similar to tumblr's own archive page. the contents of the post including images are stored locally on your machine.
It can also make a separate index file that organises posts by tag, which is great if you're a consistent tagger, but it will list every single tag you've ever used so it can take a while to find the tag you're looking for in the list if you're a habitual tag commentator. generating the tag archive also takes a while depending on how many posts have to be processed.
you can make it back up any blog as long as it's not set to private. I have backups of both my main and sideblogs and it keeps them in separate folders.
it's had some trouble going all the way back to the start of my main blog in 2012 just by sheer volume of posts, but by making it fetch posts from one month at a time I've been able to go back to 2015 (that's tens of thousands of posts), which was good enough for my purposes.
it might be a little scary to use if you've never touched the command line before, but there's both text and video instructions to set it up and using it is just a matter of typing the command and letting it do its thing in the background.
This document has a really good guide for setting it up, along with some other options for backup. I've been using tumblr utils for a while myself, and I run an incremental backup once a week.
Kyle in a survival horror scenario where he falls in love with you through the notes you’ve left behind.
He’s entered the research facility that ended the world. He failed to stop the apocalypse from happening, but anger and purpose and guilt drive him to find a way to end it. Even though the building is barely standing, lockdown procedures are still in place, so he searches for any intel that will help access the lower levels, all while dealing with the deadly creatures lurking around every corner.
It starts as a hopeless endeavor. Most of the computers he comes across are useless, either broken or not on the emergency power grid or password protected. He focuses his energy then on combing through file cabinets and desk drawers.
Your desk was his first stroke of luck. You were training a new hire, so you put together instructions and guides for various procedures—one of them is how to override the ground floor lockdown. It’s well written, explaining the steps in detail while keeping in mind that this would be read by someone with little context. Your documents are typed and printed, but you’ve also stuck handwritten post-it notes on several of them. Kyle peels one off and holds it in his hand.
Good luck!
As he traverses deeper into the facility, battling monsters and madness, he keeps coming across your documents and your notes, picking up vital information with words of encouragement stuck to them.
You don’t have to rush!
He finds himself seeking out what you’ve left behind. Initially, it’s because your papers have been the most useful, but on this solo, self-appointed, suicidal mission, he can’t help but also cling to this connection. Everything fell apart so quickly. His team is gone, his home is gone, his world is gone. There’s nothing left, especially not down here. Nothing but your words.
You did great!
Take it easy every once in a while!
It wasn’t your fault! You did your best!
He keeps that last note. Whenever he’s secured a location to rest, he reads it again and again, taking care not to get blood and grime on it. It keeps him sane, or so he thinks.
After he routes power to the servers that host the organization’s research journals, Kyle searches for yours first. The logs are mostly professional, but you have casual entries mixed in as well—notes to yourself that you probably thought no one else would see. They give him a more candid picture of what you’re like. He reads them all, even the ones unrelated to the world-ending event, taking longer than he should when there are monstrosities lumbering outside the barricaded door to this office.
He risks a detour to where the personnel files are stored. It’s worth it to know the names and faces of the people who destroyed the world, that’s all. When he comes across yours, it has a photo of you. He keeps that too, stashing it with your note. The rest he commits to memory.
Level by level, Kyle descends. He’s still pursuing salvation from the nightmare that was unleashed here, but he’s also chasing your ghost. Your notes continue showing up all the way down. He already knew this from your file, but you had a surprisingly high clearance level. He tells himself that you didn’t know what you were signing up for when you joined the research team here. You didn’t know what sinister plots were being carried out, or even if you did, you probably couldn’t just walk away without consequences.
By the time he reaches the lowest floor, what little hope he started with has run out. He’s found no magic cure for this plague of monsters, no secret weakness revealed. All the information he’s come across indicates that the worst case scenario has come to fruition and this disaster is irreversible. He shifts from searching for a panacea to searching for a way to burn everything here to the ground.
There’s only one sealed section of the facility left. He almost doesn’t bother, but maybe what he’s looking for is just behind that door. (Don’t give up! It’s hard work, but it’ll pay off in the end!) When he manages to open it, it reveals a bunker with survivors.
And you are one of them.
He almost can’t believe it. Out of the hundreds of people who worked here, you managed to be among the half a dozen that made it to this safe room. Since Kyle still has his SAS gear on, your fellow survivors think he’s here to rescue them, as if there was anywhere safe left to take them to. They seem flippantly dismissive of the fact that their actions set humanity on a crash course to annihilation.
You know better, though, warily shrinking back to the edge of the bunker, and Kyle feels a swell of pride. You can recognize that it’s not a savior that’s arrived, but a judge, jury, and executioner.
The rest of the room is a mix of top level executives and researchers. In a previous life, he would have seen this as an opportunity to interrogate them for more information. But that Kyle is long dead, so they’ll meet the same fate. He shoots the others before they can even try to defend themselves. You scream in despair, but Kyle is numb to screaming by now.
Your legs have given out, though you still scramble backwards when Kyle approaches. He knows how he must seem to you with gore and blood all over him, some of it painted on by your colleagues. So he smiles and takes out your post-it note and lets you know it wasn’t your fault. He didn’t find what he came here for, but he’ll settle for taking you back with him.
Fanfic is a great way to practice self-indulgence while writing. It doesn’t even have to be good, it just exists purely for your pleasure, be a little freak about it. Worry about quality and what other people think when it comes to works you intend to publish in a formal setting
you will never be morally pure enough for the fandom cops and even if you do somehow achieve perfect morality you will be miserable and anxious and you will wonder why fandom isn't fun anymore
stormborns
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
izzy806
dededos
