My Purple Coffee Dragon Cave

“Too many words, I give up.”

this was left on chapter 9 of my novel-length fanfiction.

I want to walk you through the ao3 experience, just so we’re all on the same page.

when you search by tag, ao3 shows you the word count. right there. in the browsing results. before you click anything.

when you click on the story, ao3 shows you the word count again. on the main page. listed clearly under the title.

when you open a chapter, ao3 shows you the word count again. at the top of the chapter. in plain text.

this person saw the word count a minimum of three times, opened the story anyway, read through to chapter 9 — which, for the mathematically curious, is not chapter 1 — and then left a comment to let me know that there were, in their view, too many words.

in a novel.

that they had navigated to deliberately.

using a website that told them repeatedly how many words were in it.

I genuinely do not know what was expected here. a novel-length fic that is also somehow very short? a different kind of novel? fewer words, arranged more sparsely, in a larger font perhaps?

the premise is good though, apparently. so that’s nice. I’ll be over here, using words, at novel-length, as advertised, as signposted, as clearly indicated by a website that tried its absolute level best to prepare you for this moment.

Why shouldn’t she be the reason I find truly odd typos exclusively AFTER posting a chapter or a story?

Of course, while I blame her for her mischief, she is entitled to perform her queenly duties of interrupting my life with the sole objective to ensure all my attention is on her at all times.

the fic is called Little Prince, Kneel.

I’m going to need you to really look at that title.

the commenter then explained, at length, that Harry is engaging in “emotional manipulation” and “an insidious plan” involving “sexual denial” and that this made them deeply uncomfortable from an SSC standpoint, and that Harry “constantly sells himself as a paragon of self control” while engineering a situation in which Draco will be emotionally unable to pull away.

I need you to understand what Harry is actually doing in this story.

in chapter 10, on a dinner date on a boat on the Thames — a boat on the Thames, I’m leaving that detail in — Harry tells Draco directly: “I pull away because I want you so much that it scares me, and because there are things about me, about who I am and how I love, that you don’t know yet, and I won’t let us go further until you do.”

he is not manipulating Draco. he is waiting until he can tell Draco the truth about who he is.

in chapter 19, Harry watches Draco slip toward subspace — without a scene, without negotiation, without Draco even having the language for what’s happening to him — and instead of leaning in, instead of taking the advantage, he thinks: the sheer responsibility of that pressed against his ribs. he pulls back. he grounds Draco. he brings him back. because Draco has no framework for it yet and Harry will not go there without one.

the manipulator. the insidious schemer.

here is a man who watches someone he wants fall into a state that would give him everything he desires and deliberately does not take it.

in chapter 21, Harry lays out, in full, the ethical framework of his practice. consent — explicit, informed, continuous, revocable at any moment. negotiation. communication before, during, and after. care. and then the fourth principle, the one he calls the one people forget or ignore or convince themselves doesn’t apply:

“power must never be exercised in anger. not in punishment, not in correction, not in the heat of a moment when your own emotions are running high. if I’m angry, if I’m frustrated, if I’m hurt, I do not touch the dynamic. I step away. I sort myself out. and I come back when I can be trusted with the power someone has given me.”

that is a man explaining his ethics out loud to his partner before anything happens. that is the opposite of manipulation. that is someone building consent architecture from the ground up so that when Draco eventually enters the dynamic he does so with full information and full choice.

in chapter 27, Draco asks whether Harry would have punished him for something he did. Harry’s response:

“punishment isn’t about venting frustration. it’s not my chance to throw my weight around or prove anything. and it never, ever happens in the heat of the moment.”

and then, when Draco says he thinks he deserved it:

“if you think you ‘deserve’ punishment, I’d want to know why before anything else. guilt isn’t consent either.”

guilt isn’t consent either.

this man is on the page, in black and white, telling his partner that even if Draco believes he deserves discipline, Harry will not proceed until he understands that Draco’s agreement is free from guilt and self-punishment. he is protecting Draco from his own internalised shame. he is doing this unprompted. he is doing this because it is who he is.

in chapter 33, in the middle of a scene, Harry stops to ask for a colour check. Draco is trembling. Draco says green. and Harry’s thumb makes one slow pass across Draco’s hip and he says “I know you can. and I’m so proud of you.” and the narration notes that Harry felt everything he was feeling and would not allow it to compromise the scene.

in chapter 35, Harry tells Draco directly: “I want what you want. you make the rules; I just reinforce them. nothing you don’t want to happen will ever happen to you.”

I could go on. I have thirty-five chapters (the remaining aren’t edited yet) of this man being painstakingly, almost exhaustingly careful with someone he is falling in love with.

“I don’t feel this is sane, safe and consensual.”

you have looked at the most consent-forward Dom characterisation in this entire fandom and filed a safeguarding report.

you have watched a man build the conditions for SSC with his bare hands, brick by brick, chapter by chapter, and complained about the construction noise.

I also must return — I must — to “I’m giving this story a chance.”

you are not a grants panel. I did not submit an application. there was no review board deliberating my worthiness. you found a fic on ao3, for free, that is tagged exactly as what it is. the ao3 tagging system did not fail you. you opened the door that said BDSM power exchange, read the sign correctly, and then filed a complaint about what was on the other side.

anyway. Harry took Draco to the zoo for his birthday. gave him flowers. took him on a boat on the Thames. the boat on the Thames is in the text. I put it there on purpose and I stand by it completely.