Writing is Hard

“Fuck,” he breathes, and his thigh shakes.

Ilya looks down at Shane looking up at him, staring with dark glassy eyes. The corners of his puffy pink lips quirk up from where they’re wrapped around the head of Ilya’s cock.  He pulls off and nudges him with his nose, content and unhurried while Ilya squirms before him.

“Shane,” Ilya says, half-request and half-warning, and Shane grins at him before he takes him in his mouth again.  He’s soft lips and light, unhurried lapping, and Ilya wants to just grab his face and fuck it.  He weaves one hand down into Shane’s hair instead, and braces the other on the headboard.  His hips buck up on their own a little anyway, and he bumps against the back of Shane’s throat.  Shane moans, and he absorbs the vibration.  

“Shane,” he repeats with more urgency, and Shane pulls off with his shiny, sinful smile again.  Ilya huffs, and it sounds like he's whining. 

“You wanna come?” Shane asks, and No I want to throw you over the back of the bed and fuck you, make you feel as ruined wrecked obliterated as you’re making me.  I want to hear you keening like a starving, desperate animal.  Then I want to come.

“Yes,” he grits, instead of all that.  And still, Shane takes his time, rubs Ilya’s twitching, spit-slick cock against his cheek, until Ilya grunts and pleads, “For fuck’s sake, Shane.”

And finally, finally Shane gives it to him, gives him pressure and suction and fast wet heat.  He comes groaning with Shane’s nose buried in his curly hair, so hard he still sees stars when he opens his eyes again.  

Shane cleans his mouth with the back of his hand, and comes up to lay beside Ilya, flushed and smirking with self-satisfaction.  Ilya can’t wait to wipe it off his face.  He’ll make it torture, endless, agony and bliss.  Just as soon as he can feel his legs again.

--

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

Before I started writing in earnest, I did not understand how much writing was going to eat into my fic reading time. We joke about having too many tabs open, but I have a different problem: the amount of tabs I have open on new fics is way smaller than it used to be. My ao3 wrapped would be a sad affair. Unless I’ve subscribed to an author or come across something on my dash, I basically don’t see it

Which has really driven home for me how much fandom cannot just be creators. You have to have people who want to read fic and meta discussions and joke posts. You have to have people who want to look at art and gifs. It has to be mutual.

Community thrives on flow. You have to have that movement of people sharing things with each other for a community to exist

if you report fanfiction to police and tell them they should “investigate this because fictional children are being harmed in these fanfiction and I don’t like it!!!!!”, you will get either of these outcomes:

the police will laugh at your face

they will investigate fanfiction, and while they waste their time investigating fanfiction and victimless “crimes”, real children are being hurt elsewhere, and you are taking the police’s time and resources away from these real children. so instead of doing something to actually help save real children, police are too busy trying to protect fictional ones that exist only in fantasies

also ao3 abides by american laws, so actually everything that is posted on the site is legal in america. and no, it’s not “child abuse” or “rape” or “csem” if the “victims” are fictional characters who were harmed in a fictional world (I believe that’s why it’s legal and allowed).

you don’t have to like it. you can find it extremely disgusting. but whether or not you like it, your personal discomfort is not law. for the record, anything that involves (fictional) children in sexual situations makes me super uncomfortable. so I just… don’t seek out fics that I know will make me uncomfortable. it is in fact that easy.

if you are allergic to peanut butter and you swallow a spoonful of peanut butter, knowing damn well that you are allergic, then the one who’s to blame is you. peanut butter alone will not and cannot hurt you unless you shove it in your mouth.