Come at me scrublord, I'm ripped.

arranged political marriage narratives are for me similarly fraught to unplanned pregnancy in that they tend to skew towards a conservative, anti-choice sentiment regardless of the author's intentions or ideology, because the end goal is typically the realisation of an apparently empowering and subversive romantic fantasy where the characters involved experience compellingly turbulent and sexually charged conflict between normative expectations and their own desires, but ultimately find themselves fulfilled in and even healed by the acceptance of undeniably important and worthwhile but conventional (and oppressively gendered) roles like that of the loving husband and wife or parental figures. which is a shame because i Do think that there's some interesting and worthwhile commentary to be explored through these kinds of kinky fantasies that reflect the anxieties surrounding very real and enduring sociopolitical issues regarding autonomy and consent, but when that tension is ultimately resolved by settling into a role that's always been what's expected of you, even if it does allow you to manipulate certain social power dynamics in your favour, it just rings kind of hollow. all of which is a very long-winded way of saying that i wish there were more arranged marriage narratives where the participants never fall in love, but still come to care for and respect one another, and perform the marital duties expected of them out of that affection and desire to both help each other advance their sociopolitical countermoves to subvert the status quo and to survive, using the legal and social trappings that come with their marital status to their advantage to protect each other.

like i really Cannot stress enough how imperative it is that they never feel anything like romantic love for one another - nor are they really friends, although they may like each other's company and even actively prefer it to anyone else's. rather their relationship is comparable to that of two people covering each other's backs in a fight, or two prisoners in the same cell, and there's as much of the beauty of human connection to that as there is tragedy that those are the circumstances that brought them together. and they can absolutely have sexual tension and even consummate a sexual relationship and enjoy it, but it will be unavoidably dubiously consensual at best by design. no flinching from it.

arranged marriage where you love each other so much that you'd both shove the other person through a crack in the wall the moment it opened up in front of you while screaming at them to go, go now, run, and don't you dare look back

*lying in bed next to a corpse of someone i loved and stroking its hair in a way that makes you hesitant to point it out to me, either because i haven't realised yet and you'd be forcing me to confront a level of grief that you're not sure you can handle, or because i might smile calmly and tell you that i already know and you're not prepared to deal with that either*

Domming a guy i hate and convincing him good puppies like to be named Hubert then getting his name legally changed to Hubert then ghosting him

I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot

Bean soup mentality: it's not that it's not for me, it's just bad.

Y’all can be screaming every time you see a gorilla

Why don’t we let the guy whose every plan could be reasonably construed as an abstract suicide attempt take a crack at it

pls god where is the fourth of julie goodbye 2007 hello 2008

@skimble-shanks-the-railway-cat

I truly don't think there's anything worse than an artsy theatre kid band trying to do a dark edgy song about domming someone. like it's giving dr horrible. I don't believe you.

it's the same problem every booktok dark romance D/s fantasy has, which is that it's written by a sub projecting what they think they want that guy to sound like. there's nothing sexy about someone sweatily pointing out to you how dommed you are right now for fear that you weren't aware you're totally subjugated and definitely 100% under their control. also they're feeling very possessive btw. are you listening. though actually now that I'm typing it, this is also the problem with 90% of cishet maledoms irl so maybe they're cooking. post cancelled.

did u know that sesame street did columbo parodies where he is a sheep and his name is colambo

we desperately need sex 2

i just know someone's going to mention kink. girl that's still sex 1. we had to invent BDSM cause we didn't have sex 2. tis but a pale reflection. but it's coming

kink reaches mayyybe like sex 1.3 if it hits just right

when sex 2 comes out what sorts of quality of life updates will be included to help draw in people who never really got into sex 1

more pleasurable. more intellectually stimulating. higher skill ceiling. more dynamic metagame. optionally more mental-emotional alignment between parties. less cleanup. more intuitive. more variety in sensation and activity to match diverse sensory tendencies. smoother integration with parties' coupled emotional processing. and so on

Fishing minigame.

Fishing minigame