beep

Desire (2025)

22.5 x 31.5 in

Sure! (And wow - I wrote a lot about this!

Writing a Kiss

1. Emotional context to frame the description2. Body/hands/physical descriptions3. Description of the kiss (The kiss is a journey! It has a start, a middle, and an end!)4. The feelings and emotions generated by the kiss.5. You can break up or frame the scene with dialogue and thought if needed.1. I start with emotions/scenarios to frame my kisses - is it a hungry kiss? Demanding? Gentle? Teasing? Loving? And I use these emotions to branch out into what kind of descriptions I’ll use. (Eg. a gentle kiss might have feathery light touches, while a desperately hungry kiss might have one person clutching the other to them tightly; their fingers digging into their shoulders with the force of their need.)

2. Next I’ll go with the body and hands. Are they pressed together? Is one person’s hands roving over the other person’s body? If so, what are they touching, squeezing, scratching, clinging to, etc. Are they  grinding together, pressed so tightly they seem to almost be one person? Or are they tentative and careful, keeping their distance?

3. Then I’ll describe the kiss. Sometimes the kiss starts slowly; a gentle press of their lips. Sometimes one person’s mouth catches the other’s. Does the kiss start chaste with lots of small kisses? Does one person tease the other person’s mouth open? Is it a tongue kiss? If it’s a really passionate kiss, are their tongues dancing against one another? Sliding? Swirling together? Do they tease one another with flicks of their tongues? Do they nibble? Do they pressed kisses along the jaw? To the tip of the nose? (Think very physical descriptions here - but very evocative and sensual too!)

4. What about their feelings? How does the kiss make them feel? Hot and bothered? Tingly? Melting? Burning? Repulsed? Lol. The way they feel is so important! Because it should dictate when the kiss ends and what happens afterwards.

5. Also, remember to think about how to break up the kiss if you need to. Eg. Are they speaking in between kisses? Thinking anything? You can include dialogue or thought to break up the kiss or direct where it goes. 

Although those myths may have been influenced later on by what we might today term either antisemitism or anti-Jewish hostility, as people saw a confluence between tales of dwarves and goblins and stereotypes of Jews as each evolved, I find it hard to fault Tolkien for using pieces of early European mythology while trying to create his own. When it counted, and despite many possible reasons not to (profit, fame, strong involvement in a pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, few if any personal friendships with Jews, certain common upperclass opinions), Tolkien unequivocably stood up for real Jews. In 1937, a letter arrived from a German publisher, asking Tolkien to confirm his Aryan ancestry in order to translate The Hobbit into German, which would significantly increase his book’s fame and sales. You can Google the letter; I’m on mobile. Either way, Tolkien politely told the German publisher to take his Nazi policies and fuck off, saying in no uncertain terms that he held great admiration for the Jewish people, and that he regretted that he could not truthfully tell the publisher that he was a Jew. (To clarify, Tolkien was in fact of German ancestry and was not Jewish).

Even if there were some unfortunate, seemingly “antisemitic” stereotypes of the Dwarf race within the narrative, if we take Tolkien’s inspiration for them to be partly Jewish, I would argue firstly that Tolkien himself was not consciously antisemitic and secondly that it is a matter of opinion whether the narrative actually supports such stereotypes. Bilbo is, after all, an unreliable narrator, and with the exception of Thorin’s gold-sickness (later linked to his lineage’s bearing of one of Sauron’s 7 rings given to the Dwarves), none of the Dwarves ever appear truly greedy or gold-obsessed when allowed to speak for themselves in dialogue or song. They may appreciate valuable objects of varying metals and gems, but I would argue that their love for these objects is most often explicitly linked for a love of craft and craftsmanship, not minerals and jewels themselves. Other stereotypical elements, such as beards and short, misshapen stature, can be linked to the early Scandinavian myths Tolkien used.

I should add, far too late in this long post, that I could find no actual evidence myself that the Tolkien goblins were based on stereotypes of Jews. As I said, if anything, there is some evidence of Jewish inspiration for Dwarves, and regardless of how we may feel about it today, Tolkien indicated in about three different letters and a radio interview (iirc) that he essentially meant Dwarves as a ‘compliment’ and held Jews in high esteem, as an 'ancient warrior race’. That claim may feel a little iffy in terms of modern social justice lingo, but I would remind you that at the time that he wrote The Hobbit and LotR (dovetailing historically with the rise of Nazis to power, the Holocaust, and the post-war crisis of Jewish survivors/refugees), the main European stereotypes of Jews were that Jews were weak, often cosmopolitan and disconnected from the land, and behind most of the ills of the modern world. The materialism aspect is tricky, and may result from unconscious anti-Jewish bias, faithfulness to the original Norse myths, or a little of both. But it is clear, at least, that within our world, Tolkien’s view of Jews directly opposed the main antisemitic claims of his day, and he went directly against his own interests to tell a 1937 German publisher in quite strident terms that he opposed Nazi policy and admired the Jews, when he could have easily made himself a small fortune by simply admitting what was already true (his “Aryan” ancestry).

The fact that the asker claims that goblins are “formed from Jewish caricatures,” unless they can produce actual evidence of this, seems to me unlikely. Dwarves might have been a better argument, but the record on that is mixed at best and far from a purely ill-intended “caricature”. Either way, the argument over “reclaiming goblins,” especially over Tolkien’s goblins, seems to me altogether ludicrous, to be frank. If they are in fact discussing Tolkien, his record on antisemitism in real life is pretty good. In terms of his fantasy races, the Dwarves are the ones most likely inspired in part by Jews, and generally with positive authorial intent, although the net effect is, of course, a matter of personal opinion. The goblins, as far as I can tell, had nothing whatsoever to do with the debate. Tolkien’s use of race and colonial theory is largely a different topic, and one in which I feel the “goblins” are more heavily implicated.

There are tons of genuinely racist takes on goblins in the fantasy world. (Tolkien and D&D did us no favors.) Plenty of them are antisemitic, although mostly in terms of how they’re physically presented – George MacDonald’s 1872 novel The Princess and the Goblin, for example, often has illustrations that fit the bill, but their characterization is not, and again is conflated with gnomes or dwarves from northern European folklore. However, the idea that “goblins” as a concept are historically always an antisemitic caricature is just not true, and isn’t even true in most modern fantasy media, with the notable exception of Harry Potter. 

(Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the conception of goblins that “goblincore” is trying to popularize sounds more like Stitch, Entrapta, or the Doctor – chaotic, a little manic, and easily distracted by the next shiny object, but definitely not the antisemitic caricature of a miserly, manipulative financier. The wiki page for “goblincore” sounds like a pitch for button collecting more than anything else!)

Ah well, the safest explanation when an entire country’s people are stereotyped as rude is that they have their own culture with different criteria for politeness than the ones you are used to. It’s probably easier for Americans to forget this than for the rest of the world, because they consume less foreign media than the rest of us (from literature in translation to foreign films) and are less exposed to aspects of foreign cultures that could inform them about different norms of politeness (online interactions happen in their own language and follow their own (anglo) social codes.) With this insular worldview it's easy to take it for granted that American good manners are universal. They are not!

A very common gripe against American tourists in Paris is that they talk so loudly in public spaces, which is definitely rude here but I assume that in the US, people just have a different threshold for what constitutes 'loud' (I wonder if it is due to being used to having more space than Europeans). I also remember a discussion I had with one of my translation professors about the American concept of ‘active listening’ and how negatively it is perceived in France. It may be that in the US it is polite to make 'listening noises' at regular intervals while someone is speaking to you, ‘uh huh’, ‘right’, ‘yeah’, ‘really?’, and that you would perceive someone who just stands there silently as disinterested or thinking about something else. In France it is more polite to shut up and listen (with the occasional nod or ‘mmh’) and it's rather seen as annoying and rude to make a bunch of useless noise while someone is speaking.

There are of course countless examples like that. The infamous rude waiters in Parisian cafés probably seem a lot more rude and cold to people who have a different food culture... People from other cultures might consider a waiter terrible at his job if he doesn’t frequently check on them to make sure they don’t wait for anything, but the idea that a meal is a pleasant experience rather than just a way to feed yourself (esp when eating out) means we like having time to chat and just enjoy our table for a while, so we don’t mind as much waiting to order or for the next course. French people would typically hate if an overzealous waiter took the initiative to bring the note once we’re done with our meal so we don’t have to wait for it, as it would be interpreted as “you’re done, now get out of my restaurant.”

The level of formality required to be polite is quite high in France, which might contribute to French people being seen as rude by people with a more casual culture. To continue with waiters, even in casual cafés they will address clients with the formal you and conversely, and won’t pretend to be your friend (the fact that we don’t have the American tip culture also means they don’t feel the need to ingratiate themselves to you.) I remember being alarmed when a waitress in New York introduced herself and asked how I was doing. “She’s giving me her first name? What... am I supposed to with it? Use it?” It gave me some insight on why Americans might consider French waiters rude or sullen! It might also be more accepted outside of France to customise your dish—my brother worked as a waiter and often had to say “That won't be possible” about alterations to a dish that he knew wouldn’t fly with the chef, to foreign tourists who were stunned and angry to hear that, and probably brought home a negative opinion of French waiters. In France where the sentiment in most restaurants is more “respect the chef's skill” than “the customer is king”, people are more likely to be apologetic if they ask for alterations (beyond basic stuff) as you can quickly be seen as rude, even by the people you are eating with. 

And I remember reading on a website for learning English that the polite answer to “How are you?” is “I’m fine, thank you!” because it’s rude to burden someone you aren’t close to with your problems. In my corner of the French countryside the polite thing to do is to complain about some minor trouble, because saying everything is going great is perceived negatively, as boasting, and also as a standoffish reply that kind of shuts down the conversation, while grumbling about some problem everyone can relate to will keep it going. (French people love grumbling as a positive bonding activity!)