​a man who has never denied himself anything meets a man who denies himself everything and the hedonist tries to lure the self-abnegator into succumbing to the pleasures of the flesh and succeeds but their rendezvous makes accidentally clear that true pleasure is derived from the perilous destructive nature of intimate connection and eventually true actual love and so we come to conclude that in fact the hedonist is the one who has never allowed himself anything true while the self-abnegator has never strayed from the path of his want and then they put them on ice skates and gave them sticks

the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be a part of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.