Absolute gamer #3078122

Being attracted to any kind of body is normal. Fat bodies. Trans bodies. Disabled bodies. All normal. Being extra attracted to a specific kind of body is normal too. Totally normal to have a type.

Not unlearning the societal stigma attached to those kinds of bodies, the people who inhabit those bodies, and the people who fuck them, to the point where you do any of the following:

Only want to date/fuck the person in secret.

Reduce the person to the feature that you desire and ignore the rest of who they are as a person.

Expect the person to be a walking porn fantasy instead of a real person with their own sexual preferences and boundaries.

Would no longer love the person if the stigmatized aspect of their body changed.

Consider yourself superior to the person, think the person should be 'grateful' that you love their body, etc.

See the person as a temporary adventure while planning to eventually settle down with someone whose body isn't stigmatized.

Is bad and harmful and you shouldn't be dating anyone until you've worked on your shit, because this makes you a very terrible partner. This doesn't mean you are a bad person with bad-fetishist-desires who can only desire people badly, it means you need to unlearn societal stigma so you can be a better partner to the people you desire.

Imagine what it means to tell a person that sexual attraction to their body isn't normal.

linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)

the american psycho guy is now into tf2 who coulda guessed

your f/o would care about you btw ^^

your f/o would remind you to brush your teeth in the morning. to drink some water and grab a bite to eat. to take your meds. your f/o would ask to walk with you if you're feeling crummy today. your f/o won't judge you if you need help with something "minor" like washing the dishes.

your f/o understands how difficult it can be to get out of bed and they'll let you take your time. doing one thing today is better than doing nothing and they're more than willing to help you.

proship do not interact/repost ! dividers by @/keeyum !

if you've read any romance or fanfic in the past twenty years (i know you have), you know that there are a certain number of scents associated with hot dudes. you can probably recite the list of Things Men in Fic smell like in your sleep: leather, black pepper, pine, sandalwood, "something uniquely him", clean sweat, and if the character has ever fucking been within 50 yards of a firearm, something called "cordite".

here's the thing.

NO ONE SMELLS LIKE CORDITE.

cordite was a highly specific type of smokeless gunpowder developed in the 1890s by england specifically and used mostly in wwi.

if your good-smelling guy is not (a) english (b) using a very specific type of british rifle (c) dying in a trench in flanders, he does not smell like cordite. technically even if he does meet all those conditions he still doesn't smell like cordite because he smells like trenchfoot.

the point is, cordite is so far from universal that no one but the most hardcore gun nerds give a single shit about it. making your Sexy Hero smell like cordite is like naming a cassette-only bootleg live recording from the 1970s as your favorite grateful dead album. everyone at the party hates you immediately and knows you're doing it for clout. also, it's just factually... wrong. please stop. i know everyone else is doing it, but you can do the right thing here, i believe in you.

so what do people who are using guns smell like?

well if your story is set before the late 1880s, the smell of a fired gun is black powder, which, unfortunately, smells like seventeen flatulent cows have been shoved in a tire factory. trust me, you do not want your Hot Dude to smell like black powder. it's b a d.

if your story is set after the late 1880s, guns are using some variety of modern 'smokeless' powder - which speaking broadly doesn't really have a ton of scent when used. it does have some, but it's sort of non-descript: the best way i can describe it is the sweet, ozone, hot-plate smell of popping your car hood with a warm engine.

people who use guns a lot don't smell like fired guns all the time anyway, so while those scents might work in a fight scene, they're not realistic all the time. but there are some things that your Sexy Shootist will smell like basically 24/7 and that's metal and gun oil. metal you can go and sniff (i recommend non-stainless steel), but if you want a reference, most gun oils have a sharp, organic smell that's not dissimilar to canola oil but muskier and with a tang overtop. it's not unlikely leather is in the mix as well due to routine handling of leather equipment and gear. modern gear also tends to have a certain smell although it varies by production country and storage conditions - lots of opportunities there.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.