I Am Undone Without You

To literally no one's surprise, I wrote smut. Here ya go 😁

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Look, selling drugs to humans sucked ass most of the time, and barely paid enough to make ends meet.

But.

Barbie had a human disguise now. Not many imps could say the same. And she just so happened to have a hair-pulling kink. And a girlfriend who loved having something to tug at while getting her tits sucked.

“Fuck, babe…” Kendra moaned, fingers curled around the base of Barbie’s long ponytails. Her nipple was soft from Barbie’s ministrations, her thighs a vice around Barbie’s waist. “That human tongue is magic.”

Yeah, fuck, Barbie’d definitely do her best to keep this job.

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this has as much thought as i can muster up at the apex of bedtime

no make character should be free from scrutiny of the authors motivations behind their ideology/behaviours, it’s important to recognise that these are not people doing actions but narrative choices to elicit effect. andrew minyard read as permissive toward gendered inequality to me.

as much as i could debate about allison’s abuse, the framing of tildas death etc i feel that did not shape my understand of andrew character half as much as his emphasis of dominance. again! this is a story and i understand why caustically he is written this way. it is an exhibition of very human, yet very disconcerting behaviour. on one of my rereads i altered neil’s perspective to be of a woman (whilst i know this is not a simple gotcha as men are socialised to communicate via differing social norms) and started to understand why i was so uncomfortable, even after the make up and kiss moment in the kings men. andrew exerts his control through threats and through violence, through withholding and deceiving. this in itself is not sexism. but it was an all to familiar echo of real world experiences. nora has written andrew in a position to both take others autonomy and to protect the autonomy of those he loves. and she’s done a damn good job of it.

think this is called sympathetic misogyny. (?)

i have no issue with authors writing sexist characters, infact i found andrews portrayal quite refreshing. would much rather acknowledge societal pitfalls in a text than some glossy man is on a quest to apologise to every woman he’s wronged feminist retelling. but authorial intent doesn’t always match to audience reception. and i think that’s where i hold issue. yes, that’s you’re favourite white man, but maybe feed his liver to the vultures sometimes! pick his character faults apart! research patriarchal narrative perspective bias! read some literary feminism theory!

few closing words before my eyes shut for good

Love goes like this: unlocked doors, open windows, cherished bruises to serve as the only memory of his fleeting presence. Love goes like carving unilateral devotion into his own body where no one will notice the fissures. It embarrasses him. It starves him. He can’t stop. Once a month, his room has the whole world inside it. He will never want anything ever again. It would be asking too much.

THE CRAFT