CCHARLOTTES

Hey, I live with a Japanese mother and a Polish dad in the Northeast US. My mother has lived in the US for 20 years, and both of my parents are nurses; I speak Japanese with my mother. When I was 8, I was diagnosed with autism, which frankly explains a lot. I have also been masculine presenting ever since I can remember (my parents have tried a lot to get me to try anything else, which has not worked), and am attracted to women.

Beauty Standards

I always wanted to look like a Disney prince, my standards were Humphrey Bogart movies that my dad showed me, Hirai Ken, who was a Japanese singer that my mom liked, and perhaps most fucked up of all, Groucho Marx. Honestly, even being AFAB and pressured to a certain degree, my parents were so busy with dealing with symptoms of my autism (ie, frequent meltdowns, refusal to socialize, difficulties with authority, taking me to get evaluated) that I either never felt pressure about my looks, or was oblivious to pressure due to my inability to recieve social cues. However, aside from this, I don’t know if had any reason to recieve pressure: while not white passing, I am light skinned, thin (? I’ve been described as “built like a tank”), and have features that’d be seen as conventionally attractive. My parents have always wanted me to grow my hair out, but I’ve always kept it at like, disheveled crew cut to chin length. Aside from that, I’ve always liked being muscular, and really like building upper body strength; whenever I’ve had the opportunity, I’ve worked out my arms, shoulders, etc. 

My sister is darker skinned than I am, has features that she has a lot of insecurity about, and has said she envies my features. With that in mind, either I haven’t received pressure in terms of my cultural beauty standards, or I was oblivious. 

On really special occasions, I’ll cut my mom some slack and let her put some makeup on me for a day. 

Clothing I dress like a dude going to an informal job interview. My mom and dad have expressed a lot of wishes for me to present more feminine, I used to get bullied for not presenting feminine, but I never really stopped dressing like this. On family holidays, or more formal events in Japan, my mom had my sister and I wear a kimono or a yukata. 

Culture My mom celebrates Hinamatsuri, where we just… put up the dolls, eat chirashi, have a good time. We also celebrate Shogatsu, which is literally the New Year, and on that morning we eat osechi. My mom used to have a big get together every year with all of her Japanese friends, where a bunch of Japanese ladies partied, ate food, drank alcohol, and live streamed this big music show thing that Japan has every New Years. I still don’t really know it, because the kids, including me, just goofed around, watched cartoons upstairs, and stole food. They’re really warm childhood memories, and I remember being really happy. My dad is culturally Catholic and celebrates Christmas and Wigilia; I like the beet soup, my sister hates the beet soup. Both of my parents put a lot of effort into the holidays they do celebrate, but they don’t celebrate a lot.

Daily struggles Middle school, or as I like to call it, that time I learned that people didn’t like me. I grew up around a lot of hicks, and I did get kind of picked on in elementary school, but kids mostly left me alone. In middle school, I was on the receiving end of a bunch of shit both stemming from the fact that I was the only racial minority, and the fact that I was so blatantly autistic. All I ever talked about was birds, and I got (weirdly) a lot of Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima jokes, because hicks are not creative, and threats to leave dead birds on my desk.

In high school, I was no longer bullied because I became violent and started intentionally playing up that persona so that people would leave me alone, which stopped in freshman year. Sophomore year onward, no one really talked to me, and I didn’t talk to anyone back. I thought this was normal and okay for me until I made friends in college.

Nowadays, in my workplace, it’s just day to day tasteless shit. I work as a line cook in a seaside restaurant, and line cooks are going to be line cooks. “Sorry I don’t speak Asian,” “Do you eat X,” nothing downright horrible, except those couple times where it was like, “You’re like a mix of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.” I don’t really get massively upset about it, but when I chose my crowd, that shit isn’t going to happen.

I get fetishized by people due to my race, which sucks, but I’ve been told that I come off as so brusque that it turns people off. And I don’t mean Stoic Asian Brusque, I mean crotchety old man who complains until people go away.

Dating and Relationships I’m attracted to women, but I don’t date, I don’t like dating, I’ve just started acclimatizing to having an actual social life. I am sexually active, and I never felt any insecurity about it. Sometimes my parents make snide remarks about it, but even then, I honestly just never could find it in me to care. 

I’ve never felt insecure about my attraction to women; it’s just always been something I was aware of, and my parents know. They don’t really care, but they both don’t really want to talk about it. Sometimes I wish I could talk about crushes and stuff, and on occasion I feel like I’m missing out on the whole “Talk to parents about your romance life” thing, but it’s no big deal. Food Uh, fish, rice, vegetables, sometimes mixed all together. Sesame oil, teriyaki, soy sauce mixed with some kind of oil, a lot of stuff. My mom mixes Japanese mayonaise with ketchup and dips raw vegetables in them. I do that with cauliflower. Also, she likes celery dipped in miso paste mixed with mayo, my sister likes cucumbers soaked in soy sauce. I have no goddamn idea if this is ordinary.

We go out for sushi on special occasions. Home/Family life/Friendships My family is isolated for a number of reasons; for various personal reasons, neither of my parents are in any real contact with their extended family. My mother is an introvert, and feels that she doesn’t always connect to her Japanese friends, and my father is a grumpy shut in. I have a very close relationship with my mother, though; she vents to me a lot, she accepts me in all regards, and she’s the most stable person in my life. She put a lot of time and energy into teaching me Japanese, tons of effort into making sure I got support for my autism (it didn’t work well, but she probably just, drained herself over me). My dad and I are very similar in personality, and so we’re very abrasive towards each other, but good friends. My father was physically abusive to me when I was younger, but he also essentially tutored me. 

My sister and I are polar opposites; she’s academically driven, I’ve always been hyper focused on one subject, capable in others but had ADHD/autism related problems with attention and motivation. She’s feminine presenting, I’m masculine presenting. She’s motivated, I’m like a garden slug with four limbs. She’s socially adept but highly anxious and dances around topics that upset her, I’m completely socially inept, but relaxed and blunt. She’s active in the community, I’ve just stopping being a shut in. I love her to pieces, even if she is pretty Type A. She’s got an amazing sense of humor, gets heated about defending her family, IDK everything about my sister is great. We’ve fought a lot, we’ve had a lot of funny moments.

Identity issues I know that my sister is insecure about her position among other Asian Americans, but a lot of my lack of issue flat out comes from how much I’ve isolated myself due to bullying. I don’t have a social frame of reference because I was deprived of one, and I’ve continuously deprived myself of one because I don’t really know how to go about getting one.

I still get anxious when I have to actually bring up how I was targeted for the things that made me different, because for a long time, it felt like acknowledging the lack of control I had in those situations. Being targeted for things that I couldn’t help made me a pretty angry person, but as of about a year ago, I feel like I’ve started to confront how that anger wasn’t unanimously a strength, and recognizing how my coping mechanisms affected me.

However, I also villainized myself a lot. I didn’t want to acknowledge my lack of control in being bullied for my race and disability, and through high school I started considering myself a naturally “bad” person, and after becoming violent stopped people from bullying me, I sort of developed this Scary Persona so people would unanimously leave me alone. I used that to justify acting violent, standoffish, loudly negative, and irate to most people. I also justified cutting myself off from people I liked to “protect” them. It took a lot of introspection to start recognizing that my anger based coping mechanisms weren’t a complete strength, but also that I wasn’t bullied because I was an inherently bad, dangerous person.

However, as a result, coming to terms with the fact that I was just targeted for my race and disability, not because I was scary and A Bad Person, has both made me more nervous and allowed me room to try to lower my defenses, and be more bubbly and friendly again. Micro-aggressions Assuming that my mom is homophobic, assuming my mom has an accent, assuming I’m an exchange student, getting mistaken for other Asians, people thinking I’m a tourist, “What are you,” “Wow your eyes are big for an Asian,” your general cuisine jokes, “Your English is AMAZING!” Misconceptions I’m a lot stronger than I look, mostly because I’m on the short side, and wear clothes baggy enough that my shoulders tend to get concealed. I know the misconception of Asian people being physically weak, so it’s always a little funny whenever I’m in a situation where I can startle people in that regard. I have been mistaken for an exchange student a loooot, to the point where people have remarked at how amazing they thought my English was. I may be good at math, but I hate it. I’m a Latin language major, I love Renaissance art history!

I’m not pale as shit because I’m half Japanese. I’m just like that.

Self Esteem Honestly, in spite of everything, I never felt bad about myself as a person. I’ve always liked how I looked, presented, and how I acted. I’m coming out of an angry period in my life. My racial identity was never something I resented, because I love my mom, I love my culture, I love my looks, but the bullying that came as a result made me paranoid, closed, and socially isolated.   Things I’d like to see less of

If you aren’t an LGBT+ Asian person, can we please lay off the homophobic Asian parent trope?? Maybe it’s so personal for me because my mom has been such a pillar of support in my life, and because I’ve basically never seen a supportive Asian parent on TV in regards to that, and I’m not saying whether it’s truly prevalent or not, but the Homophobic Asian Parent thing is so deeply saturated in media about us that if I have to see it again from someone just using it as a plot device, I’m going to blow a fuse.

Submissive, quiet, stiff Japanese AFAB people. Even stoic. I like relaxed, suave, lazy, or visibly angry, impulsive, irate Japanese representation, and that doesn’t even mean disconnected from the damn culture. 

We don’t all speak with an accent.

Sometimes English is the first language. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you learn both at once and are at ease with both. Linguistic nuance would be appreciated.

Asians being an auto genius at everything.

Things I’d like to see more of

Japanese AFAB people being allowed to be angry. I mean scary angry, I mean massive, terrifying, monstrously angry. Not Dragon Lady graceful, I want to to see us knocking shit off tables, punching holes in the drywall, I want terrifyingly flawed. Don’t let other prejudice get involved, either; if your angrier characters are all inexplicably darker skinned, or not thin, that’s suspicious.

Not all of us are waif thin. I am pretty broad shouldered. In a similar vein, not all Japanese people are the same skin tone. There’s a tone of physical diversity.

Japanese AFAB Byronic Heroes! 

Japanese GNC people, particularly AFAB! Butch lesbians, NB people, transmasc Japanese people.

Japanese characters who express those without feeling isolated from their own culture! Japanese characters who love their culture without falling into the stoic stereotype, just being a person interacting with it. 

Happy Japanese LGBT+ people, or at least Japanese characters who aren’t that conflicted about that aspect of their identity. Bonus if they love their parents, and vice versa!

@mitzvahmelting asked:

You’ve said that with Chinese ESL speakers, a big difference between Chinese Mandarin and English syntax is that English has gendered third person pronouns and past/present verb tense. Could you discuss Japanese ESL speakers in this light? What are usually the biggest syntactical hurdles for Japanese ESL speakers? Thanks so much for your help.

Great question! 

Before I jump right into it, I will preface this with a huge warning. There are places where writing ESL english in dialogue is appropriate, and where it isn’t. Step 1 is to make sure of this before going into the specifics of a language.

One property of Japanese is that it’s a pro-drop language, which means certain types of pronouns can be omitted in a sentence, and referents can be figured out through inference. My mother says that as a result, she often messes up third person pronouns like she/he, because she’ll initially form the sentence in her head without pronouns, then has to mentally add the pronouns in as an afterthought. 

Another property of Japanese is that the nouns don’t require definite/indefinite articles (we have topic markers like wa and ga in the determiner category instead) so speakers might occasionally drop a and the. In addition, I’ve sometimes seen my mother forget which one is appropriate for the noun in question. 

There’s only one genitive construction in Japanese, as opposed to the two we know in English. The Japanese construction is [possessor] no [possessed], and unlike the English prepositional genitive [possessed] of [possessor], the arguments are flipped. So another thing my mother says she does is that she’ll sometimes get the wrong order. 

This one’s a semantic (rather than syntactic) difference, but I thought was an interesting one nonetheless. In Japanese, when we respond to a negative yes-no question, our response aligns with the logical polarity of the entire sentence; in English, it doesn’t.

For example, let’s say there was an individual John who was given a book but did not accept it. Given this question, here are the answers in either language:

“Wait, John didn’t take the book?” 

English: “No.”

Japanese: “Yes.” 

In English we respond “No,” because we’re negating the predicate “John took the book” (= FALSE: it is not the case that [John took the book]) rather than the whole question “John didn’t take the book.” (this can pose problems if the state of the world is such that John actually DID take the book—often speakers will have to still use “no,” but clarify: “No, he did take the book.”)

On the other hand, responses to negative yes-no questions in Japanese follow the logical polarity of the entire sentence “John didn’t take the book” (= TRUE: It is the case that [John didn’t take the book]). (unlike English, this makes it easy to respond the other way if John DID take the book; you’d just say the opposite truth value, “no”)

The yes-no thing messed with my poor mom’s head for a while, lol

This source by Bryant (1984) was also helpful in seeing what else was out there (in lieu of a real citation, FYI it’s JALT Journal, Issue 6.1; May 1984). There are a bunch more errors that I don’t talk about here. It provides good IRL examples of sentences! 

@shadowedlove97​ asked:

Hello! I’m writing a fanntasy au fanfic where the 3 out of the 4 main characters are PoC while the fourth is ambiguous. Thing is, I’ve been having trouble keeping the 4th character consistent design wise - I know he is a demon, I have specific ideas on his abilities, and I know his origin, but other than that I draw blanks. Recently I have been particularly inspired by Japanese youkai (specifically oni and oni masks, along with Noh plays and their usage of masks to denote youkai). This has been the only inspiration that has really stuck, but since this character is ambiguous when it comes to race, I’m unsure if this is appropriate? Any thoughts?

Since you’re working in a written medium, your character’s coded ethnicity is going to be just as important as any physical description of race. You said you knew his origin—is he from Japan? If he was born outside of mortal Earth boundaries, does he relate to Japanese culture at all? Nationality would be one example of coding. This also depends on your lore—were your demons once human? If so, then you can add to his backstory that he was once a Japanese human. 

How necessary Japanese coding is depends on the degree of your inspiration. One thing I’ll mention is with Noh theatre is that masks are used for not just youkai but all other kinds of character archetypes. In general (for me, at least) there’s not a particularly strong association between masks and youkai except for a particular kind of youkai, kitsune. If your character has the horns, the red/blue skin, carries a studded club or wears tiger-skin or something like that, I would definitely see him as an oni or oni-adjacent character, and he should be coded Japanese to reflect that. But if he’s just a Western demon with a mask motif, you can say that of supernatural entities from other countries as well (hell, the Phantom of the Opera is an example, in some sense). 

TLDR; you may need to be more specific about all the traits your character has for me to properly make a judgment. 

General advice for those making characters inspired by Japanese supernatural entities: 

Code as Japanese if you’re: 

Working in a visual medium and there’s clearly visible inspiration based on Japanese artistic depictions (see the second bullet point for possible motifs). Here’s a great resource on drawing East Asian faces. As I mentioned above, you can also write it into their backstory if applicable. 

Using Japanese cultural/aesthetic motifs in your writing, including onibi/hinotama (spirit orbs in the form of fire), haunted Japanese lanterns, other haunted Japanese traditional household objects, racoon dogs/foxes/twin-tailed cats, any physical description/character designs that borrows singularly from a specific kind of youkai or other entity

Using the Japanese language OR using a fictional language that borrows from Japanese

Describing the character with Japanese clothing, using a Japanese name for them, etc. 

You may not need coding if you’re:

Using more generic traits like wearing a mask, having red skin, will o’ the wisps, pale ghosts with no legs, etc., especially in isolation. As always, defer to the opinions of beta readers. 

(2/2) colonialism from it’s realistic brutal history, as even if colonizers tried to take over natives and exploit them for resources, they simply wouldn’t be able to conquer/subjugate them and their entire land, which makes me wonder how I should portray colonization/worldwide expansion at all(especially since trying to represent future developments like Afro-American culture or poc with European religions/names divorced from their violent original history seems like whitewashing colonialism)

Monsters and Fantasy Colonization

It is whitewashing colonialism, but perhaps not for the reason you think. And that reason is that colonizers thought the lands they colonized were uninhabitable untamed wilderness due to “monsters”: Indigenous peoples.

A major goal of colonialism was to hunt and kill and enslave and generally “cleanse” the “monsters” in order to make room for white Europeans. It’s one of the reasons the concept of race was invented: to classify not white-Europeans as less human, therefore more monstrous, therefore perfectly fine to hunt and kill and enslave.  

You legitimately cannot make this scenario not hurtful the way it is. If they really are monsters and lack sentience, then you codify the concept that colonizers are justified in taking over everything to “civilize” the “wilderness” (hint: colonized lands were never “untamed wilderness” and were actually very carefully curated, constantly-managed ecosystems. Yes this is anywhere humans lived). If you give them even a little bit of sentience, then you have 100% recreated Earth colonialism. And all animals have some degree of sentience, working under their own rules for how they behave.

Attack on Titan as example

A really, really good example of how subtle but how insidiously evil this “the only safe place is this small area” attitude can be is Attack on Titan. If you’re unfamiliar, Attack on Titan has people live in walled cities because outside of the walls are full of “monsters”, the Titans, who eat people. A major goal of the cities’ government is to kill as many of these “monsters” as possible, to make sure humans can expand back out and stop living in walled cities. This is even after it’s revealed Titans have human forms.

Now toss in the knowledge that the author is a Nazi sympathizer and the “monsters” stop being monsters and start being Jewish (as the series progresses, all people who have the ability to shift into Titans are marked with star patches on arm bands. I should not need to explain why this is bad).

Dehumanization and Eugenics

The concept you can’t co-exist with monsters is a very… colonizer thing. It’s rooted in various xenophobic attitudes that colonizing nations around the globe have perpetuated to justify their goals of taking over everything. There’s a reason that one of the steps for genocide is dehumanization: colonization leads to genocide. So by setting up this world as “out there is nothing but monsters, we can’t go there unless we destroy things and make this safe”, you’re living up to centuries of colonizer attitudes that have been passed down through culture as “necessary”. When it’s not.

The fact you use the word “cleanse” is very much a dogwhistle for Nazi (/generally eugenic) ideals. I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way, but when you start using such clinical, dehumanizing, genocidal words… marginalized people especially are going to draw parallels to various supremacists who have used that word in the past. A “population cleanse” is eugenics, full stop.

Co-existing with the monsters

You have the option to make it so they learn to live with the monsters and treat the monsters as part of the world, a necessary part of the world, and have rules in place to protect everyone the majority of the time. Maybe always have a fire roaring at camp so they know to stay away. Maybe leave out offerings so the monsters don’t feel the need to hunt you and learn it’s better to leave you alone because you help. Clear paths that make it easier for everyone to navigate the world. Hunt only what you need, making sure to leave plenty to go around, both plant and animal.

You don’t have to see outsiders as monsters. They can just exist, under their own rules, and all of those rules can coexist. Because monsters or not, they are part of the planet’s biodiversity, and just for that sole reason, they deserve respect.

~Mod Lesya

More on this Story’s Parallels to Colonization 

I need to ask this question - are these colonizers the protagonists, or in any way portrayed as the “good guys”? Because in that case, I’m sitting here wondering why the word “colonial” needs to preface the idea of “era of exploration” at all.

As Mod Lesya so thoughtfully and thoroughly explained above, the current scenario is very hurtful. The very idea of “uninhabited wilderness” existing is rooted in the idea that if some place doesn’t have the “humans” aka colonizers living there, then it’s unoccupied and free real estate. This is frankly untrue if anything is living there, even if said inhabitants are seemingly monstrous. That place is not wilderness and is not uninhabited, it is already occupied and the territory of others and humans are the guests at best and intruders at worst. That should give you perspective that this is not people just taking over free land that no one else is using, this is people taking over with force a land that the natives were already living on, and it’s hard to see this as anything other than an aggressive takeover with dehumanization and genocide.

Plot and Characterization 

If these humans want or need to explore the world and spread out due to sympathetic reasons (aka they are supposed to be the good guys), then take out colonialism. People can leave their homes and go to different continents and make a place for themselves without colonialism. Let them be immigrants, let them be travelling merchants, let them be ambitious explorers, whatever you want them to be, as long as they respect the natives. Let your humans remember that they do not have any inherent right to what the land has to offer. If they’re going out to the world, they should learn that they have no right to take over and “fix things” to their tastes, and instead must learn how to be part of what is already there.

Rebloggable version, as requested by davrosbro. :)

Oooh!  Yes!  I love kisses.  Kisses are where it all starts ;).

Okay, first, remember that kiss is much, much more than just lips.  It is lips, but also tongues, teeth, eyes, faces, hands, noses, bodies, heartbeats,  breath, voice- and most importantly, a kiss is emotions.  A kiss without emotion is just wet mushy lips stuck together.  Ew.  Gross.  The most important part of a kiss isn’t the how, but the who- because of the emotions between the two people.

Okay so:

lips- Lips can slide, glide over each other smoothly, or they can be chapped and rough and dry and get stuck on each other.  They can match, top-to-top and bottom-to-bottom, or they can overlap, with one person’s top or bottom lip captured between the other person’s lips (yummy).  If there is lipstick or chapstick there is lipstick or chapstick flavor, otherwise, lips don’t have a taste (can you taste yours?).  Lips also can smack- the sound of two of them coming together or pulling apart, because they’re wet and warm and soft. 

tongue- Tongues are always wet, and always warm.  They’re very versatile.  They can trace over lips, teeth, or another tongue.  They can be smooth and graceful or teasing and flicking.  When tongues are involved, there is drool.  It’s only sexy when you like the person you’re kissing, or else it’s kinda gross. :P

teeth- teeth can clack together awkwardly, or teeth can bite down sensually.  A person biting their own lip is cute, a person biting another’s lips is sexy.  A person biting gently is sensual, a person biting roughly is sexual. 

eyes- Eyes can be wide open with surprise, half-lidded with desire, fully closed with pleasure.  Eyes can gaze lovingly, lustfully, wistfully, hungrily, seductively- it all depends upon the emotions of your characters.  Have them do whatever you like, but don’t leave them out- give them at least a mention!

faces- Faces are what the lips are attached to.  Noses bump, cheeks flush, ears turn red, foreheads either wrinkle or relax.  Kisses can leave lips, quite easily, and become kisses on chins, cheeks, noses, foreheads, ears, necks, throats.  Kisses on noses or foreheads are cute and adorable, kisses on cheeks are sweet, kisses on chins, ears, and throats are very sexual.  And a kiss on the lips can be all of those! <3

hands- Hands are super-important.  In order to describe a kiss, usually you want to also describe the hands.  Where are they?  Does one character have on on the back of the other’s head or back, holding them close?  Are they on someone’s shoulders pulling them near, or pushing them away?  Fingers brushing someone’s cheek or palms grabbing someone’s ass convey two very different kinds of situations, even if the kiss itself is exactly the same.

noses- Noses are annoying.  They easily get in the way, especially for first kisses!  People have to tilt their head to one side or the other, and if they don’t, noses bump.  I’d only mention noses if a kiss is supposed to be awkward or uncertain or nervous.

bodies- bodies are either close together, or far away.  Someone can be surrounded comfortingly by someone’s arms, or terrifyingly trapped by them.  Bodies are warm or hot, they are calm or nervous, relaxed or tense.  Body language says a lot.  Is your character pulling away, or moving closer?

heartbeat- Hearts can beat fast or slow, and that’s about all they can do- but there are lots of reasons why they do!  A heart can beat fast with fear or excitement or nervousness; a heart can pound with lust or race with terror or sing with joy.  Hearts can glow, cower, or shatter.  When you really want to drive the emotions of a character home, mention the heart.

breath- To me, the most consuming part of a kiss is the breath.  The air that someone else has just breathed going deep into your lungs is very intimate.  Lips and tongues don’t have a taste, but breath does.  Each person’s breath tastes different, smells different, and surrounds a person differently than anyone else’s breath.  Breath can be warm and sweet, breath can be hot and sexy, breath can be hot and frightening.  It is something that is very present and should not be left out.  A lot of writers leave breath out.  And it’s so important; it’s the most intimate part of a kiss.  Someone else is breathing into your lungs, and it’s either heaven or it’s hell.

voice- Voice conveys much, even without words.  A voice can groan, whimper, gasp, moan, catch, whine, scream, sigh.  Voice can convey emotion powerfully, and while some kisses are silent, usually they’re not. 

emotion-  Emotion is the most important- and the thing you try not to say.  You want to describe it, through all of the things above, so that it’s perfectly clear what your characters are feeling, without you ever using the “feelings words”.  If they’re in love, their bodies will lean close, their eyes will smile, their voices will giggle softly.  If they’re nervous, their palms will sweat, their noses will bump, their voices will shudder.  If they’re afraid, their muscles will be tense, their faces will grimace, their lips will not open.  Emotion is the color that you keep inside your mind as you write; it’s the base line that drives the description behind everything else you say.

Wow, that was a lot!  Gosh I hope it wasn’t too much!  Keep in mind not every kiss has all these things- this is just a list of things to consider when writing a kiss, and based on how long of a kiss you want to make.  Keep in mind that typing “they kissed for a long time”…that’s six words, it takes half a second to read, so that’s a short kiss!  If you want a long kiss, you need long sentences that make the reader linger. 

“♪♫ Somewhere over the Rainbow ♪♫” via u/QueGettingShitDone on reddit

“Stop asking me how to type on these, i just like making cases for them – Collide39″ via u/QueGettingShitDone on reddit

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