Freelance worker lives in huge, gorgeous house/apartment in expensive area despite never seeming to be working
Characters work 8-5 office job with hour-long commute, but go to bed no earlier than midnight and get up in time for morning sex and long, leisurely cooked breakfasts every day
Do these characters even have jobs?
Single parent has way more communication with child’s teacher than is normal; leads to dating; administration somehow has no problem with this.
“I know I could never afford this mansion, but it’s OK I inherited it. No, paying property taxes isn’t difficult on my salary. I don’t even know how much the place is worth. Are property taxes a thing?”
There are two levels of cooking skills: gourmet food every time no recipe, and sets pot of boiling water on fire somehow. No one is ever in between these two skill sets. People on each level always end up dating each other.
Despite the gourmet meals described needing like seven pots to cook, no one ever does dishes.
Character shares a bottle of wine with their date (2 and half glasses each), and they both get falling-down drunk.
Later, one of them drinks an entire bottle of whiskey by themselves and does not die.
So last week I tried moaning every time I ate something delicious.
It was vaguely uncomfortable and unnatural
I actually love the idea of doing this trying out fanfic/literary cliche’s out in real life, kinda wanna make up a list and undertake it as a challenge.
don’t forget to make your butthole flutter today
Guess someone’s eye color from 20 feet away.
Be careful with these. I started reading fanfiction three years ago and now I have to toe my shoes off to get my feet out.
But do you pad across rooms?
Yes but I often give away my position when I huff.
FYI, I’m smirking at all y’all.
I’m resisting the urge to card my fingers through everybody’s hair.
This is as good a time as any to admit that right now I smell like coffee, sandalwood soap, and something uniquely myself.
Ah, but are you holding a breath you are unaware of?
I just stretched lazily and showed a strip of pale skin where my t-shirt rode up but there was no-one here to stare at it, speechless, so I don’t know if it even counted
I sigh thousand times a day. Hope that is enough.
I was forced to tear my eyes away, yet drawn toward this by my body’s own volition.
i have ghosted my fingertips across countertops, along my own jawline, down the curtains’ edges. i am ghosting them across the nape of your neck, right now.
i’m looking at this post through my eyelashes and it’s too much and not enough.
Mature is ‘and then they made love.’ Explicit is ‘and here’s how they did it exactly.’
To wit: mature.
He looked at the envelope, spread out before him.
God, he’d never been this hungry.
Could he be gentle enough? Slow enough? He didn’t want to damage it, didn’t want to do anything he’d regret… but no, no, it seemed the envelope wanted this as much as he did. It slipped into his hands, it folded as he asked. When it was time for more, the card was waiting, and he somehow knew exactly what to do. He moved with his correspondence in a dance as old as the mail system, and when it was over, he was smiling and the envelope was completely, thoroughly sealed.
Explicit:
The envelope waved its flap in the air slowly, gently, and he could see the faint shimmer of the adhesive traced along its fold. It was like a taunt, a dare: won’t you? And he would, oh, God, he would, lifting the envelope firmly to his lips, licking slowly at first, then faster, more firmly, tasting the envelope’s essence, the faint bitterness, the sweetness to follow—
Oh, he couldn’t help but smile at how it felt in his hands. It was so perfectly folded. Its paper was rough against his fingers, and its crossed folds shifted slightly as it opened for his eager tongue. Yes, yes…
Now the card, and his hand trembled as he lifted it, as he held the envelope, stretching it wide. Would it fit? Oh… oh, yes, it would fit, it slid in smooth and quick and filled the envelope to bursting, oh, made for each other, and he smiled in delight at how perfect it was.
He was ready. Now, now, now: with one swift movement he folded the flap over and he pressed, yes, he pressed the flap down and it stuck, God, it stuck perfectly, and he closed his eyes in bliss.
Afterwards, he stroked the envelope, and thought about addresses.
omg THIS MADE MY MORNING.
well, this is something I didn’t know i needed till I had it.
“and thought about addresses” oh my
I never thought I’d say this but it’s too early for this level of porn.
MAIL PORN
Does that make this m/m, or
Yes. This is male/mail.
📩📧
And he’d have to live with the consequences of that act, for afterwards he realized – he forgot to put on a stamp.
okay, oh my god, I was just gonna reblog this, but EVERYBODY GO LOOK AT THESE DATA. The charts are color-coded (and interesting to look at), and I might have done a little bit of finer analysis (especially in platforms – they were check all that apply questions, but how many folks are using only one platform to look for fanfic, and, if so, are there trends in the platforms they use), but the data here are richly detailed and fascinating and THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF RESPONDENTS?! (i incorrectly read that as over a million before, my bad!)
also, to the people who ran the survey, can I play with your data? in all seriousness, can i? I’ll use it in Tableau Public, but can you IMAGINE the cool visualizations you could do? the story you could tell with these data?!!?!?!??!?!
“Surprisingly, 35% of our respondents didn’t check off “gen”—meaning that 35% of the respondents never read stories that don’t feature ships!”
LOL. As someone who both writes and reads genfic – I am actually NOT surprised by that at all. In multiple fandoms I’ve been in genfic was basically guaranteed to get less traffic than shipfic. Very cool to have an actual number though.
Also, I didn’t even know what a “Cinderella moment” was until this. Huh. Though that chart of terms ppl were least familiar with is fascinating. I hadn’t realize “woobification” was so unknown to many!
THIS was my favourite observation though:
But this idea doesn’t tell the whole story. Canon-divergent alternate universes (#2 most-liked). Fix-it fic (#12). Missing scenes (#14). Minor character focus (#32). Point of view shift (#34). What do these have in common? They all fall in the top quarter of most-liked tropes and themes—and all of them are absolutely intertextual, requiring the reader to understand the original story
Oh my god I was staring that forever like why the heck do people hate centaurification so much that it’s in the top ten most hated tropes that’s so weird
and so I looked at the actual survey they used and…
The sun was
shining on a calm sea when the small band of novices set sail. Harry Styles gazed at
the rippling waves and remembered the difficult path that had brought them
all to this point: the years of prayer and study, the vow of chastity that
confirmed their renunciation of the material world. Now, as the final step on
their monastic journey, he and his comrades had only to navigate this narrow
sea.
As Niall, Liam, Louis, and Zayn adjusted
sails and consulted maps, it seemed to Harry that their handsome faces were
exalted. Surely the gods themselves had blessed their journey. But then the
ship lurched sharply, and he fell to his knees. What was happening? The ship
lurched again, and tilted sickeningly. Niall screamed. The wind picked up, and
the sky seemed to darken before Harry’s very eyes.
Then he saw it. A
dark, pulsating mass at the side of the ship. As Harry watched in horror, it
extended itself, wormlike, down the bulwark. Louis and Liam joined hands and
started to pray. Another feeler appeared, this one to starboard, and began its
own creeping progression toward the band of terrified young men.
“A sea
monster!” Harry called as a third tentacle curled itself thickly about a
mast and the ship began rocking from side to side. He staggered to his feet
again. “The gods are testing us! We must be strong!”
And yet a
longer, narrower tentacle was even now quivering barely a foot from Harry. It
seemed oddly purposeful, as if it knew where it was going. Harry looked wildly
from side to side. The number of tentacles had multiplied, and the ship was now
riding impossibly high in the water, as if enclosed in the monster’s vast
embrace.
“I have
studied such creatures,” Niall said, his voice shaky. “The ancient manuscripts,
they say–” A tentacle prodded insinuatingly at Niall’s sandal. Zayn pushed
Niall behind him and picked up a stick.
“What
does it want?” yelled Louis.
“It
wants––I fear it wants––there was an illustration in the manuscript––”
Zayn clapped a
hand on Niall’s shoulder. “Tell us, Niall.”
“It wants
one of us,” Niall said, his face a mask of revulsion. “I mean, not to
keep. Just to––”
“Oh my
god,” said Harry, beginning to understand. “It wants us to give it
pleasure.”
“Sort
of,” said Niall. “But more like…the other way around. The visitation ceases when a man give up his
seed to the beast,” he recited.
“Absolutely
not,” said Louis.
“Our vows,” Liam agreed.
The ship rocked
violently. Dozens of tentacles were twining about the masts, the tiller, the
capstan. A tentacle pulled at the mainsail, and it ripped clean through. Harry
stumbled, and realized that another feeler had wrapped itself about his ankle
and was stroking at his calf. “Surely the gods would not wish us to
die,” he whispered.
Zayn grabbed him
by the shoulders. “Harry, no! There must be another way!”
“Don’t you
understand?” Harry gritted out…
(credit to @solo-harry for the gif, credit to @dulosis for tagging it ‘fuck or die’)
title is a literal description of the story (”5 times x did y”, “first kiss”, etc)
perfect formatting, title is evocative of the story’s main themes
song lyrics
3 feet long all lowercase (overlaps w/ song lyrics)
one word. only one.
title seemingly has nothing to do w/ the content of the story until it gets dropped during a high-tension dramatic scene 70k words in, making you feel like the world meant for you to be born in time to read it
You have blond hair, he has brown hair. You always have blond hair, he always has brown hair. You dye your hair brown, but suddenly his hair is blond, and you feel as though maybe you are him, and he is you, and you have blond hair again, and he has brown hair.
His gaze is impossibly fond, his eyes are impossibly blue, he pulls you impossibly closer, your heart beats impossibly fast, the bulge in his pants is impossibly hard, he should maybe get that checked out.
You don’t remember ever working out and yet you look down and see you have a six pack. When you next see yourself in the mirror you have an eight pack. When he takes of your shirt you have ten, twelve abs. You’re scared to look again in case there are more.
His eyes change colour depending on his moods. At first you thought it was a trick of the light, but now you’re not so sure. They switch between blue, green and grey. Once you thought you saw a flicker of red. You make sure to kiss with your eyes closed now.
You’re white, and so is he. Sometimes he’s your enemy, but you still love him, don’t you? Of course, it makes sense. You’re not sure what you like about him, exactly, but there must be something, right? There’s this intangible thing between you, isn’t there? You feel like you may have more chemistry with your non-white friend, but that can’t be right.
You don’t remember taking your clothes off but you’re naked now. Well, all you remember is toeing out of your shoes. You always toe out of them, although you don’t quite know what that means.
Your pronouns mix into a blur and you no longer know where you end and he begins… You reach out your hand to his hand on his arm… your arm… his… You are sitting and he straddles you but is facing away… There are hands everywhere…
THE ACCURACY HURTS.
You smell like sandlewood. You don’t know what sandlewood even IS.
Once your shoes are off, you pad everywhere. You try to walk, but you can’t, your feet don’t comply. Your only option if you want to get from room to room is to pad.
Your tongues battle for dominance. There can be only one victor. One tongue is not walking away from this battle. Will it be yours?
He tastes like smoke and wine, whatever he had for dinner, and something distinctly him. You don’t know what that taste is or where it comes from… only that it is distinctly…him…
Is he The Smaller Man? Or The Larger Man? Are you The Pale Man? Are you The Slender Man? The Blond Man? You no longer have a name… you are just an epithet.
You thought you were about the same size, but, the clothes come off… and he’s The Larger Man. So large. He’s got six inches on you. You can tuck your head under his chin. Ten inches now… is he growing? Are you shrinking?
It’s weeping. OH GOD WHY IS IT WEEPING?
His cock is a little bit longer than yours…but yours is a little bit thicker. Longer. Thicker. Longer. Thicker. Your grotesque penises no longer fit into your pants.
326 Miles 