some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.
I've sat upon this throne
For a century it feels
But I know
Not a decade has passed
It is velvet plush
And silken smooth
Crafted of sunbeam golds
And starshine silvers
The jewels that adorn it
Are precious and lovely
From the deepest blues
That remind me of oceans
And the empty gaze
Of a devout follower
Stained by ink and blood
The shine of peacock teal
The glimmer of amethyst violet
The spark of sunset topaz
Devotion and adoration
Swirl and coil in irises glazed
A whirlpool of desire
That drags me under
Drowning me in their affection
They've crowned me honor
Exalted me above all
Their touches are butterfly light
Their words dripping with honeydew
Their bodies for me to use
Their souls for me to savor
A title
A crown
So light upon my head
A responsibility
Utter trust and loyalty
Heavy upon my heart
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely"
I've heard it said a dozen times before
But here in this world
Paradisiacal as it is
I can't seem to care
I am their God
It's only right I take my due
Happy Valentine's Day. I bring fluff, kind of. Not really but it's not angst.
Favors came in starshowers
Purple and gold hues
Surrounded in blues
Sometimes it was luck
Others not so much
But nonetheless it came
Believers yearned
Nonbelievers pleaded
One for approval
The other for forgiveness
Waterfalls of stardust
Swirl and coalesce
To lay blessings of power
Upon all who find themselves
Underneath your banner
Proudly bearing your name
For all to witness
A bit of a longer piece inspired by @flokali
In the quiet abyss of slumber
Stolen away from an empty home
Only to wake to familiar world
Not yours
Not quite
But close enough
You've been here before
Not as yourself
But as a traveler seeking their twin
Searching for their other half
They shouldn't know you
In fact
They shouldn't be alive
They should be codes and pixels
A world just imaginary
Just fantastical and nothing more
Yet here you were
In a bedroom not your own
Surrounded by people you've seen
You've played with
But by all means shouldn't be
You did not belong
No matter what they claim
And yet here you are
The world will change
Just as you already have
After all
Are you sure you've seen these people before?
Are you sure you do not belong here?
Do you remember your past?
Of your empty home filled with memories?
Memories you can't remember?
You don't recognize their names
And certainly not their faces
So how are you so sure you've met them before?
How are you sure you've been taken?
You're here aren't you?
They all seem so worried
And they know you so well
Hm?
Oh dear
Maybe you've been dreaming too long
You're starting to get everything mixed up
Don't worry
They'll take care of everything
And they'll take care of you
You shouldn't worry so much
I'm sure it's a little confusing
And I can sense your panic from here
Everything will be just fine
Besides
This life isn't so bad
I'm sure you'll grow to like it
It's all that you have now after all
The shatter of mirror fractals
Like the chiming of bells
A fog settles and sinks
Muddling memory and thought alike
A drop in an ocean
The ripples become waves
And the waves rise into tsunamis
As one life ends
Another begins
Stolen from a mundane world
To be exalted above all
And chained to a throne
Meant for a righteous God
Is this a blessing?
Or perhaps it is a curse
Either way
It's far too late
The die has cast
And it's already begun
No time for regrets
Not that you would remember any
Let's make the best of this
Okay?
As an adult you must cultivate the skill of “Gross! Oh, well. Not my business.”
I'm not looking to start shit so I'm not linking it or anything, but you may have seen a recent anti-dark-content post circulating with a lot of notes making rounds in the x reader sphere and while I have nothing against people posting their feelings in their own private spaces, every time I see these kinds of posts there's a lot of misinformation that gets regurgitated in the reblogs/replies and I saw what looked like a battlezone in the replies, so.
I know posts like that can be very jarring and affects people like my readers, so to combat misinformation/shaming for anyone who saw it, I'm going to share some of my information on combatting fandom puritanism/misogyny/kinkshaming in its most common forms.
The most important fact, if you read nothing else, is this:
62% to be exact. I think the most pervasive myth on this content is that consumers are "weird" for it, when the numbers don't indicate that. You're in the majority!
The vast majority of people who have rape fantasies do not put them into practice in real life. A variety of factors can determine whether or not they do, particularly specific psychiatric disorders. (X)
To specifically address common harmful and pervasive myths:
the "go to therapy!" line
Generally any academic or professional resource will immediately tell you that consuming and engaging in "dark" fantasies is accepted and encouraged by mainstream psychiatry and part of the professional education for psychiatrists. (This also used to be pretty well-known until like the last 5 years or so, not sure why that changed.)
Here are some particularly insightful resources:
1) This article by Dr. David Wahl, in my opinion, hands-down does the best job of simply and thoroughly explaining why these fantasies occur and why couples practice CNC, as well as the fact that they are both harmless, psychologically beneficial to those with them, and not at all correlated to real-life rape.
2) Dr. Claudia Six has some of the best and most thorough material out there on the subject, specifically explaining why this is taught in mainstream academia psychology and how it is incredibly helpful to rape victims (X).
3) Lisa Diamond is a professional who focuses on this subject a lot, and was featured in the documentary "The Dilemma of Desire," in which she specifically focuses on how these fantasies are not correlated to real-life desires. (X)
4) Dr. Casey Lyle has specifically talked a lot on his socials about how fantasies, even in men/the perspective of the offender, do not correlate to actual risk of offending.
5) This article is not by a professional, but from the perspective of a survivor discussing how it is beneficial to survivors.
the "why would you want that?" line
The idea that fictional tastes = what you want to happen to you in real life is actually of misogynistic origin. I don't want to seek out or add links on this one, but if you're really curious, you can research about how the idea that "women read rape fiction, that means they secretly want rape!" was originally a classic "red pill"/MGTOW/4chan talking point that made its way into mainstream dialogue and thus the public mind in the last 15 years or so due to the incel epidemic popularizing those communities.
the "it's only valid for survivors then!" line
On one hand, yes it's very important to acknowledge that trauma victims use it to cope, however I feel that over-emphasizing that gives the impression that non-victims should be excluded from consumption of dark content, so to clarify, it's a very valid means for all women. Many women who have not personally experienced rape still fantasize about it, and that's fine.
The full explanation as to why this is true for many of them would be lengthy (and addressed in the aforementioned Dilemma of Desire documentary), but in the simplest terms, nonconsensual sex is the only context in which patriarchal society permits women to have sex at all without feeling guilt. For many women, particularly those in more heavily misogynistic or religious cultures, these fantasies are appealing because the idea of consensual sex may give them feelings of shame, guilt, "sin," etc. These fantasies allow them to experience the feeling of being desired without guilt of participation.
No society on earth is free of the psychological grip that cultural misogyny has on women, and shaming women for adapting to the conditions they are forced to exist under is as harmful as the misogyny that causes it itself.
ALL women experience a form of psychological trauma inherent to female childhood and female adolescence in a patriarchal world, and that is just as valid as coping with individual traumatic events.
Good resources on the subject of why women have these fantasies and how they are helpful in general:
(X) (X)
The "what you consume will make you do it in real life!" myth
Although the resources above already address this, it's important to establish why this myth is so prevalent and what its origins are.
The idea that consuming media with dark themes leads to or indicates desires to replicate those acts is a residual element of two major events:
1) Puritan revival culture, popularized in the US and UK in the 90s and 2000s (also known as "Satanic Panic"). A major facet of this movement was TV megachurch preachers making money off of exploiting well-meaning but paranoid parents into believing that your child playing Dungeons and Dragons or Pokemon would make them future serial killers and lure them into satanic cults. (X)
2) at the tail end of this, it was cemented in the public mind as a cultural ripple aftershock of the Columbine shooting, where this sentiment became popularized as the general public blamed violent video games like Doom and "dark" music like Marilyn Manson (whose life was temporarily completely upended by the events and took him years to recover/be safe from) for the 1999 shooting. This event had MASSIVE permanent and global effects in all sorts of ways that the public often underestimates the sheer scope of, notably that it solidified, prolonged, and, in the minds of many, "proved" the paranoias of the preexisting Satanic Panic. (X) This established a precedent, leading to virtually any major horrible event being blamed on the perpetrator's media consumption, including murder and sex crimes.
What this myth ignores in the cases it references (the slenderman stabbings, columbine, sasebo slashing, batman shooting, etc) is two crucial facts: that hundreds of millions of people consume the same media with no negative effects (helpful effects even), and that in every single case cited as "evidence" to the claim, the perpetrator had a preexisting psychiatric condition correlated to acts of violence (which usually went ignored, downplayed and even accelerated/worsened by those around them rather than the help they needed).
Sorry for the wall of text, but I feel an ethical obligation to combat this kind of misinformation, and I hope these resources are helpful for those who may be negatively affected by common misunderstandings.
You are not abnormal or wrong for the fictional content you consume or the fantasies you have!
Starshine glimmer in dark oceans, the flicker of familiarity that truly made no sense yet still persistently existed. He does not linger on the memories he knows are not his, and yet they surface in his mind time and time again. He tips his head, bowing his head in submission as he is pressed onto satin sheets. He does not understand the ramifications of his remembrance, but he falls back into its embrace, willingly drinking from the truth that only he knows. He moans your name, gratitude lacing his every word and love flowing in his veins. Breathless whines and keening whimpers at the feeling of butterfly kisses across his skin, his eyes glazing in ecstasy. His mind falls, pleading and sobbing into quicksand, drowning in the memories that are not his, and yet they are all the same.
Each person he sees, he knows, is him, and yet he can not fathom how. For each iteration of his being has you by his side, steadfast and ever loving. His mind and his body wars with the other, pleasure overtaking the confusion blooming in his mind. His breath stutters, catching in his throat as he lets out a quiet but heaving sob. Tears glimmer in his eyes, beading on his eyelashes like the first of morning's dew. And for a moment, his world whites out, silence echoing in his ears like the death knell that he remembers hearing but never experiencing. When he comes to, he waits for a moment to catch his breath, and he smiles up at you. Wistful and longing and far too knowing.
The one who survives in the face of time and the tides of the seasons, and the one who lives and dies and lives again, to be mortal and not. They are doomed to fail, but that is the price of a live that was never meant to be. For eternity, they are sworn, but it is a tale of heartbreak and an ache soul deep.
His hands twitched, his skin rubbed red and raw, his breaths escaping his chest with a rasping wheeze. Apologies carved into his chest as he claws at his arms, the stain of gold stark on his skin. He had not left the cell in days, scrubbing at the stone bricks in vain. Glowing faintly in the dark, he sobs tearless cries at the cruel reminder of his mistakes, as the waters bleed crimson. His blood over his God's, though now he began to doubt his claim of fervent devotion, he has no right, but he is far too greedy to offer its sacrifice just yet. Cradling his vision close, bloody streaks tracing the engraved constellation he knew was his, proof of his status even if he were to fall from grace. Memories with jagged edges that tear and spill open the truths he wished not to see. Iron to his eyes and thread through his lips, he can not hear and no longer can he feel, penance for his sins. A warden of a prison that holds only one. He burns alone, deep beneath the dark waters.
A small piece based off of some of @i-put-the-yan-in-polyandry's works.
When your blood runs gold
Who will you run to?
When your wounds fade
Into shining star silver
Who will you trust?
When the world hunts for your head
For a crime you did not commit
Who deserves your favor?
When the world is kind
Where its people are not
Where will you turn?
When you are scorned
Turned away with glare and blade
Will you return to its cradle
Be embraced in its loyalty?
The world knows and will never turn
You will find safety here
Amongst the fauna and the flora
Your reign is undisputed
The world knows
Its people shall know in time
So I wonder
Where you'll end up next
| Serial fandom hopper | Poetry and snippets | Vicenarian (20s) |
58 posts