BlueSwallow2020

The torturer stepped back instinctively. Not out of mercy. Out of surprise. The prisoner laughed. Not loudly. Worse than loudly. Softly. Like he had just remembered a private joke older than civilization.

“You still think pain is a language,” he said.

Another blow. This time across the mouth. Teeth cracked. Blood sheeted down his chin in long ribbons.

The interrogator hissed through clenched teeth. “Tell me where God went.”

The prisoner turned his head slowly. There was blood in his smile now.

“There are organisms,” he said, “living beneath Antarctic ice that have never seen the sun and have still learned how to eat.”

The room had gone very still. Somewhere in the dark, machinery groaned.

The interrogator grabbed him by the jaw hard enough to bruise bone.

“You think this makes you immortal?”

The prisoner spat a clot of red onto the floor between them.

“No,” he whispered.

“I think it makes you temporary.”

The torches flickered.

For one impossible second, the interrogator became aware of his own pulse. The heat in his veins. The soft wetness of his eyes. The damp animal electricity inside every living thing. The prisoner watched realization bloom across his face and smiled wider, blood running between his teeth.

“You cannot threaten a creature from the dirt,” he said, “with returning to the dirt.”

I haven't written in years. Decades, probably. I know I don't do it for the "right" reasons, and anyway, nobody ever seemed to be able to find the time to read anything I sent them.

But when I do write, I sound like this. I always have. Because I wrote to impress my father, an unempathic and unhappy man who admires literature but believes he knows more about it than he does, and so my writing was tailored to his taste. It was the only thing I ever got praised for, even though it always came paired with unsolicited critique.

I recognize now that I only ever wrote so that I would be told I was good at something.

Sometimes when things are bad, I liked to imagine I could write again. After all, we live in a time where people are reading often and all kinds of books - maybe this time, I could find readers.

My career was the only other thing in my life I was ever told I was very good at; It collapsed in 2021, and I haven't heard anyone say that to me since. Sometimes I liked imagining that writing could be a way I would get to hear it again.

Again, I know that's not the right reason to make art. I should be content to make it for nobody except myself, and that should be enough - i should be satisfied that the story is now extant in the world, that I have read it should be enough for me. Alas I am a flawed person; I need to feel like I am doing a good job at something.

So, in a way, I am grateful to OP for this post. I can't imagine how destroyed I would be if I had taken a chance and posted a story, only to have eight thousand people all agree that its some kind of eye-melting slop. I would rather write and share nothing, than have thousands of people all casually laughing about how bad my writing is. OP has spared me from that.

if you look through the replies and tags, you'll find you're far from the only person who felt personally targeted— but you'll also find plenty of people saying they genuinely liked the original excerpt and wanted to read more. that's a good thing!! clearly, there's an audience for that style, and i don't have any interest in arguing otherwise!

what bothers me isn't the vocabulary, or even the (imo overly) lyrical prose itself. when i say “tumblr prose” i mean a particular trend where nearly every sentence feels optimized to sound profound rather than communicate something. beautiful prose isn't the problem! ambiguity isn't the problem either. my issue is when atmosphere begins cannibalizing the storytelling instead of supporting it.

with the original sample, even as the author, i came away knowing very little beyond the mood. i don't really know who these people are, why god is apparently gone, why the antarctic organisms are relevant, or what materially changed over the course of the conversation. there are lots of striking individual lines, but they don't really build into a coherent or particularly interesting whole. it feels like each sentence is trying to be The Line people screenshot and say "this goes hard," rather than working altogether to tell a story. that's ultimately what i was parodying, not people who enjoy this style, and certainly not people who just wanna write! just a trend in online prose that i personally find frustrating as an avid reader

And for a while, reading his posts started to make me really paranoid about my own writing, and to think anything I wrote could be dissected to that level. I almost never saw him compliment a cover, either - those he tended to only post when he disliked them, and it was a lot of covers where I actually liked the style.

Anyway, then one day he posted two covers he'd made for his own WIP, and I'll be honest lads, I thought they were dog shit. Bland, tonally mismatched to the genre, just bad. Absolute casserole. And instantly I was like, oh yeah. You're eloquent and passionate and good at critique, and you're also one person with human opinions that are going to diverge from mine. And that's okay.

And instantly, I no longer felt any insecurity about my own work from him lol.

Sexual fantasies are, by their very nature, transgressive. Yes, even the fluffy, romantic ones. As long as general culture remains negative about sex and sexuality in any form that isn't cishet procreative sex within the confines of matrimony with the woman not as an equal actor but an object sex is performed onto, this is going to remain true.

And the thing about fantasies is that our brains like to take the things we crave the most and mix them up with our fears, anxieties, pain, and trauma into a melange of, sometimes, truly epic levels of fuckery.

But here's the secret - things we fantasize about, from the most wholesome to the bizarre to seriously fucked up? They are very, very often NOT what we literally want.

Being into dubcon or noncon doesn't mean you actually want to be raped or rape. Being into monsters doesn't make you a zoophile. And fantasizing about violent, obsessive men doesn't mean you wouldn't run as far the fuck away from a man like that the second one of them set their sights on you.

If you're really interested in the subject, I recommend reading My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday, a compilation of anonymously submitted women's sexual fantasies. And, as it turns out, women fantasize about a lot of really violent, uncomfortable, and just plain screwed up stuff.

And, for most of them, even when they don't actively realize it, it's about reclamation. Of fear, of trauma, of loss of power. It's about THEMSELVES and how THEY feel. As weird as it's gonna sound, the men featured in those fantasies don't really matter, they're just a vessel, a manifestation of the extreme version of what you're dealing with and/or crave. A safe, cathartic way to experience something profoundly unsafe, unwise, and terrifying.

For women fantasizing about criminals, villains, monsters, and anti-heroes, it's very often about the idea that someone like that - intense, violent, with single-minded focus, and immense power - would love her, want her, always put her first, go against all his instincts/training for you without a second thought and be a clear and present danger to everyone but warmth and safety for her and only her, and burn the world itself down for hurting her in even the slightest of ways. It's a sexual version of the fantasy of having a pet tiger, one that would never, ever attack you or hurt you in any way.

And just like the people who want to boop the forbidden snoot, the women fantasizing about their fantasy Mafia Boss Lover are very well aware of the fact that 1) men like that don't actually exist, 2) the criminal world of their fantasy has all but nothing to do with reality, and 3) that the thing they're actually fantasizing about is being loved, wanted, and safe... just in a REALLY intense, exaggerated way. And, let's not mince words, there's also often a more or less strong D/s dynamics at play in the scenario, too.

Now, you can choose to be judgy bitches about it (goodness knows plenty of you in the replies, comments, and tags are), in which case I would suggest you examine why you're feeling such a profound need to shame women for enjoying themselves in their own little world, or you can apply the YKINMKATO mantra and understand that straight women, living in the constant state of preyhood, sometimes consciously or subconsciously reclaim power over that situation through transgressive sexual fantasies.

Also, fuck this idea that queer people only fantasize about healthy and wholesome relationships, romantic, sexual, or otherwise, as if at least half of Tumblr isn't simping for, oh, for example, Hannibal fucking Lecter. Do you have ANY idea how many Mafia and Thug BL content there is out there?! FFS, Tom of Finland, a WWII veteran who fought against Nazis, drew art of exaggeratedly masculine men in Nazi uniforms in pornographic situations as a way to dissociate himself from those traumas and fascists themselves as far back as the 1950s!

prev tags, text ver. below the cut

a horse fantasy is something that is theoretically possible. I do not currently own a horse, and the reality of owning a horse would involve boring stuff like paying for its food and mucking out its stall, but it is something I could do in real life. like, horses exist and can be owned by humans. lots of fantasies can fall into this category: traveling to a foreign country, living in a cute house with just you and a cat, winning a marathon, basically anything that is technically achievable even if it would be difficult to do so in real life.

a unicorn fantasy is something that is definitely (or almost definitely) impossible. I do not currently own a unicorn, and there is no version of reality where I could own a unicorn, because unicorns are not real. the actual logistical issues that might arise from owning a unicorn, like paying for its food or mucking out its stall, are completely immaterial because it's not something that could ever actually happen. and like, it's in my brain! I control it! I can imagine a unicorn that only eats marshmallows and shits potpourri if I want to!

I think the disconnect comes in when people assume that a unicorn fantasy is actually a horse fantasy. to use the tiger example from upthread: you can own a tiger. you can't have a completely domesticated tiger that would never hurt you, not even by accident. so saying "I want a pet tiger" is a unicorn fantasy, because everything necessary for that fantasy to work (it being completely domesticated and incapable of harming you) are not things you can have in real life.

now, serial killers/war criminals/normal criminals/etc. are all things that exist. and there are definitely people in relationships with them in real life! so it's tempting to assume that something like "I want to fuck a serial killer" is a horse fantasy: something you would want to do, and could do, if given the opportunity.

The fantasy is that here is a powerful, aggressive, even violent man, and he wants you and needs you so much that he would burn the world down for you. The central fantasy of the romance novel is that the heroine is so desired and loved by the hero that he is both metaphorically and literally forced to his knees for her. I'm not with my books or notes right now so I can't remember the exact quote, but I think it was Jayashree Kamblé who said that this aggressive/Alpha male subtype of romance heroes is "a lion among men who is a lamb before his woman". That's the fantasy. It's really powerful! If your life experience has told you to expect to do all the care work and to minimise yourself and your needs to be palatable to others and to be grateful for any crumb of attention because you're too fat or too outspoken or just generally not perfectly feminine enough, the fantasy of someone going absolutely feral because they want you so much is really powerful and empowering!

The effect is something like when you've got a persistent unwanted suitor doing "romantic" shit like sending you flowers at work and lovebombing you and otherwise making a big deal out of his feelings and your coworkers or your family or your friends are all encouraging you to give in because "it's so sweet" or "he wants you so badly, it's cruel of you to deny him" or "I wish my boyfriend did that for me, you're so lucky" and none of them will understand that a) what they want isn't what you want and b) the persistence, the control, the disregard for your wishes all make him the romantic equivalent of food that's been pissed on---and neither does he.

The whole effect is viscerally uncomfortable, and even the echoes or memories of coercion taint the whole concept.

And I think a key factor in the fantasy is a variant of that unicorn situation up above, to wit:

Your church, family, repressive upbringing, and/or purity-focused socialization will never approve of you dating a mob boss or a monster

Therefore

Your church, family, repressive upbringing, and/or purity-focused socialization will never force you to date a mob boss or a monster.

Therefore

Your fantasy about the mob boss or the monster is effectively free from the coercion you're used to in your real life and trying to escape.

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)

they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)

they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)

they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)

they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)

they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)

they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)

they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)

the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)

being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)

random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)

you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a

~*Spiritual Experience*~

I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.

Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.

He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only BARELY enough space for the fireworks and certainly none for his truck.

So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand. This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.

He begins, and this is crucial to what happens next, by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it unsecured on his lawn.

Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.

He asked: "Oh, was she the only son or something before *waves hand*?" and I was like, warily, no she has two brothers. And he responded with a great deal of confusion: "Then what's their problem?!?!"

When he found and married my mom, he was nearly 45 and they had so much trouble conceiving that he went to a Guanyin temple supposedly "magical" for praying for children. When I was born (not a son, also an only child until now), my mom said, "when you prayed at the temple did you ask for a son?" He said, "Aiya, everyone is asking for sons, so I said any gender is okay. If I asked for a son, maybe we wouldn't have gotten a child because Guanyin's son quota is already used up. Do you want that to happen?" My mom laughed for days about "son quota" and continues to tell people about it today, but her honest answer was: "Any child is okay."

Jokes on them. They didn't specify a gender, so Guanyin Ma gave them a non-binary child!

More seriously: my dad doesn't care about sons. When I told my parents that I wouldn't marry or have children, I thought he might be disappointed, but he wasn't. Then again, maybe I should have expected that, given he tried to become a monk at 18 🤪 I think he said the thing about sons to poke fun at people who care too much about sons because he frankly thinks it's all a bit ridiculous. In his eyes, a child is a child, so what's the point in caring about gender? If the child "changes" gender, does it make a difference?

Dean and Castiel go on a wild goose chase to Purgatory the same episode, looking for a Leviathan blossom for the spell to trap Chuck. but we find out in 17-Unity that there never was any way to trap him, the spell was something Chuck made up for the story. Continuity errors be damned, the only logical conclusion is that he wanted Dean and Castiel go to purgatory.

Chuck wanted Dean and Castiel in Purgatory, where Dean feels his emotions purely and can express himself. Dean prays to Castiel (which Jensen called Dean's confession) then goes to tell Castiel something. If Dean told Cas he loved him, Castiel would have gone to the empty, completely breaking Dean's spirit in a perfect same-episode-parallel to Eileen and Sam.

But he didn't. He didn't because Castiel stopped him.

Some people in mental hospitals now are crazy. Some of us are psychotic. Some of us are aggressive. Some of us are a danger to ourselves. Some of us are a danger to others. And we are still humans, who deserve human rights, which we legally do not have.