All I Ever Wanted was the World

A @carry-on-big-bang 2023 collab with @yellobb. View the full (amazing!) art here.

Simon finds himself at the Wank of England, Vauxhall’s infamous gay pub. Ruled by drag queen Baz Pitch aka Tyra Fangs, and staffed by lovable queer misfits, many lost souls have found themselves within its dark walls. But Simon’s not just another lost soul, and Baz is more than the sparkling gowns he wears as armour, and together they may build something better than a place to grab a pint.

[E, 1/8 chapters, 6k and growing, Enemies to Lovers, Third Places, Found Family, Drag Queen Baz, and more]

Read on ao3

Bonus: Playlist

weeesi:

mojoflower:

plaidadder:

violethuntress:

unreconstructedfangirl:

iwantthatbelstaffanditsoccupant:

welovethebeekeeper:

enjoytheelephant:

bandersnatchmycummerbund:

librarylock:

hubblegleeflower:

So I went to visit some friends in NYC some weeks ago, a good friend from uni and her wife. I am out to my friend, both as being bisexual (she’s my ex-girlfriend, after all, which I think helped tip her off) and as writing erotic gay fanfiction on the internet (a much harder thing to admit, in some circles). 

Both my friend and her wife were curious as to what it was about BBC Sherlock that engages my attention, and why I (and my online consorts) believe it is intentionally gay, so I showed them a few scenes from ASiP. They didn’t take much convincing. At all. (I wrote this post about that experience.)

Another thing my friends found intriguing was when I shared with them the fact that so many of the people I’ve connected with online are, like me, bisexual or otherwise queer women, many of whom are in relationships with men. And that I haven’t, as far as I know, come into contact with any men at all, at least none who were assigned the male gender at birth.

My friend’s wife asked for my opinion as to why that is. Why it is that this fandom (and many others) is full of queer women who ship gay pairings, hard and explicitly.

(And since it’s something I’d been thinking about, I ventured an opinion, in sweeping and unreferenced statements about gender relations supported only by the fact that they ‘sound right to me’. And now I’m going to share them with you, because Tumblr is always forgiving of this kind of ‘scholarship’.)

First of all, it’s compelling to envision a sexual encounter where neither partner expects automatically to be subordinate to the other. Not that there is no dominance dynamic, but if there is, the roles are determined by something other than the person’s gender. Both partners are ‘allowed’ to desire the sexual encounter to the same degree, and both partners (probably) have developed the expectation that their own pleasure and climax are important objectives in sex. 

You can’t count on any of those conditions if either partner is a woman.

Furthermore, I for one find it fascinating to imagine what sex would look like between people who have been taught to see themselves and their partner as fully realized, thinking individuals with complete agency and autonomy in all their relationships. What does it look like to write about sex where respect for the other person’s personhood is automatic? Of course that respect can exist between a man and a woman, but when it does, there’s an undercurrent of man, what a great guy, he’s totally treating her like a human being because it’s not a given at all. 

Even in female-only pairings, women have to struggle so hard growing up in order to see even themselves as fully human, and behave accordingly, so it is conceivably doubly problematic when there are two female partners. 

Whereas men - in general, this being a generalization - are conditioned to automatically attribute personhood to themselves, and to other men. That mutual acknowledgement can be powerfully erotic to people who rarely experience it.

And this isn’t to suggest that I am not treated as fully human by my husband, or that I feel dominated and/or belittled and/or infantlized in our sexual relations (which are just fine, in case you were worried, and feeling the benefit of my year spent reading and writing erotic fiction, in case you needed just a bit too much information). It’s just that I have had and seen and read about a great many man/woman relationships where those issues have applied. In my shipping, therefore, and in my writing, the connections I find engrossing are the ones where I can bypass many of those concerns simply by virtue of the gender of the participants. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the same factors were motivating many of the other people I’ve connected with online.

My friend nodded solemnly here, and we both pensively sipped our beers. (Yes, there was beer.) 

After a moment, she added, as if it were inconsequential, “And also, you’re all looking for sameness in a sexual encounter.”

Which hit me quite hard, for some reason.

I’ll tag some smart people who can tell me what they think. Well, team? @platinumkoi, @cakepopsforeveryone, @librarylock , @gunshyvw, @weeesi, @thememacat, @sincerely-chaos, @ladymacphisto @may-shepard @hudders-and-hiddles @gaybrunchthreepwood @doctornerdington @seriously-mary-though

I have a lot of feelings on this topic that I can’t articulate right now because it has been a NIGHT, but I’ll say that for me as a queer woman(…ish), slash fiction does stuff for me both re: my sexuality AND my gender.

Without getting too TMI about my gender, which is an ongoing whirlwind of fuckery that I’m still trying to understand, let’s just say that reading about two men having sex helps scratch an itch that has a root in body dysphoria. From a sexuality standpoint, I think there’s a TON in the way of gender politics to be explored here, but when it comes down to it, I am just completely, utterly sick of the cishet romance narrative that has been shoved down my throat since birth. There are days where I feel like if I have to see another boy-meets-girl story, I will vomit up every organ in my body.

Also, it’s just REALLY NICE to see queer characters being happy and fulfilled, you know? I find it immensely more satisfying than yet another hetero couple getting to kiss. I can read the filthiest het sex in the world and shrug it off with barely a tingle, but johN and shHERLock helD HANDS SAVE ME.

*shrug*

(but yes this is definitely a topic that has been discussed professionally and there are articles and shit. There may have been a @threepatchpodcast episode with a roundtable that talked about this?)

much interesting stuff here… as pointed out above much of it has been said before but it’s interesting again. I always feel like all of these good points are true, but that also there’s …something missing. A hole in the middle of it all where some other explanation lies but I just don’t have a clue what it is. Even when people have answers to this question that really resonate (as some things above do)  I feel this way. But perhaps it’s just that there is  no one answer, it’s a swirling mass of factors that are constantly changing. But the number of queer women in this fandom is so outrageously high that I can’t help but feel that there is some kind of rosetta stone answer that we just can’t… quite… quantify.

For me, as I have said before, there is an element of taking myself out of the narrative– I want escapism and for that, I don’t want either of the characters to be “like me” physically. Not because of gender dysphoria, but I think it ends up being satisfying in the same way, to appreciate sexual content that doesn’t incorporate my female body. That’s not THE REASON but it’s a reason. 

I’m really tempted to get personal on this topic. think about this often. I’m cis and bi and with a man for decades. I’m happy about all that but it gets exhausting. Het fanfic is right out. That would be as exciting as reading fic about washing dishes and folding towels.

I do read femslash but not as often as I’d actually like to because then body image issues come into play. With femslash I really have to take a mental leap to keep my own troublesome body out of my head. With M/M slash it’s just so easy to inhabit a body that hasn’t had hundreds of periods, struggling to feel autonomous while having sex with men, various female medical problems, pregnancy childbirth and breastfeeding, mysterious weight fluctuations, and oh yes menopause. Did I mention exhausting?

At this stage, my female body, though healthy and cis, feels like a tire that’s been worn to much on one side and that side is the female side. So it’s nice to explore the male side of things in fic.

Agreeing with all the above. I like fantasing in the role of male with male. The power dynamic is different. In the female/male real life experiences I have had, the male felt entitled to be pleasured by me, if he returned it I was made to feel that he had done me a huge favour [actually I was doing a Harry met Sally act] In my real life female/female experiences it was more give and take, equal, tender, fond, considerate, patient, personal. I often wish I was a lesbian but my bi self finds the male form very attractive, probable more so than my attraction to females. So I am left with the fantasy coupling of male/male to meet that need I have without actually putting up with a man. With John and Sherlock I can almost visualise the dynamic, it’s being delivered by a writing team that is one half gay male, and so I am allowed in to that one type of relationship I can not enter myself. 

I too am at the point where I want very little to do with het sex; whether in film, TV, literature, just over it. I unashamedly enjoy two hot men together; just like Daniela in sense8 I could happily live with Lito and Hernando and just enjoy watching them be in love. I don’t question if that is a ‘problem’, I don’t immediately wonder if I am denying myself by not having a partner, I see it as a valid independent choice. 

Just adding that in the asexual spectrum and abuse history side of things, it’s not just nice to have that disconnect between the character’s body and my body-it is absolutely *essential*! Through a character, particularly one I can connect to emotionally, I can safely have sex without risk. Without risk of pregnancy. Without risk of it going farther than I want it to. Without risk of power distortions. Without risk of losing autonomy by liking sex too much or liking sex not enough. In short: without risk of anything that has plagued me every single damn time in reality.
Of course this would be possible in het fic as well, right? Well het fic lacks balance and begs me to place myself into the narrative. There is indeed a balance to having compatible bodies. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that to me, men are more sexually free in terms of feeling and responding to sexual reactions in *my head*. In there, men react to sexual desire more freely and obviously ( ie erections) than women, and I do still associate sexuality with a masculine type of energy. Is this dysphoric? Probably. Is it a gender identification issue? Possibly? (For all the credence I even give to the concept of gender-little to none, but that’s another topic-it surprises me.)
And beyond that, I always enjoy queer representation. It makes me feel safer to acknowledge that aspect of my self using a same sex paring I find less tainted by the heterosexual male POV that has so damaged my view of sexuality. Straight men stay the hell away from gay porn. Which is nice. They don’t mess it up for me through their influence.
So, there is a perfect storm. Guilt-free, problem free sexual expression, easily seen and easily reacted to, not contaminated, and so clearly Not Me. Unless I want to imagine myself as someone else. Someone either fresh and new without my issues and baggage, or someone with some of them but with better odds of working past them then I have.

Reblogging just to follow this interesting conversation.

This is all interesting. I just wanted to add–as someone who actually does ship a fair amount of het pairings– that I feel a sense of guilt (whether I should our not) imagining these things actresses unclothed and fucking without their consent. While with men, I feel like there’s a kind of justified objectification going on, a turning of the tables that feels righteous and good :P none of this actually prevents me from reading explicit fic with women, but I do feel this lingering “should I bee doing this?” Like I do with rpf. And that’s totally different again from reading explicit stories about people who are entirely fictional and not tied to a specific actress’s body, which then for me is not problematic at all.

Anyway, great conversation!

I have been having versions of this conversation since the 1990s, and it is interesting to me that the basic arguments about this haven’t really changed, and that many of them still have to do with the premise that female characters are not admitted to full subjectivity and that heterosexual relationships remain problematically asymmetrical in many ways, which makes this a slightly depressing conversation to be having in 2015. Nevertheless…

I’m a lesbian. I get attracted to men only very rarely; they’re usually actors, and they usually don’t look the way Hollywood thinks male actors should look. I actually did a post a while back about this. At any rate, this explains why my slash hardly ever gets above a teen rating: I can’t write about male genitals. Literally I can’t. Like, I was deliberately trying to put something steamier into “Prior Engagements” and I realized that I just couldn’t bring myself to type the necessary words. It isn’t just that I don’t know enough about them from personal experience. I just don’t want anything to do with any of that, literally or imaginatively. So in my m/m stories, the boys bascially don’t have any kind of sex that lesbians couldn’t have. 

Why not write about lesbians instead of turning canon male characters into honorary lesbians? Well, I have. I’ve even done it within the ACD canon universe.  And thus I wish to raise a point that I think often gets left out of this discussion, which is the question of audience. F/F doesn’t get the same kind of readership. Women who are mainly attracted to men don’t want to read it; there’s nothing there for them from a romantic/erotic point of view. F/F delights, mainly, women who are primarily attracted to other women; and numerically, we are a smaller group. I write m/m partly because that’s what most of the women in fandom want to read (apart from m/f, which, I just can’t with that). Whenever the “why isn’t there more femslash?” question goes round, I just say in my world-weary way, “Because there aren’t more people who read it.”

But I also think that for me there is something special about m/m pairings that I got imprinted on at an early age, before I knew I was a lesbian. This is true for both Holmes & Watson and Kirk & Spock. I don’t actually write K/S; I don’t think I have to, I think the show wrote it for us (am I really gonna come up with anything that makes it more obvious than “Amok Time” does? it’d be a challenge). But H/W (and S/J) is a pairing that has an enduring fascination for me, because I love both characters so much, and because I believe that at the tender age of 12 or 13 or whenever it was, I recognized their bond as something I wanted to have. I had never been to a fictional world, at that point, where two women lived on their own together, let alone living on their own together and solving crimes.

In a way, Harry’s role in my Johnlock stories sort of represents my position as a reader of the Sherlock Holmes stories; along for the ride, identifying with the boys, ambivalent about that, getting some of her needs met but not others.

Anyway, my two cents. On with the conversation!

All of this.  So true.

Another thing that gets me about m/f as a female writer and reader is that everything they do gets immediately compared to me.  Is the woman fast to arouse and eager to have sex at the drop of a hat?  How does that compare to me?  Does that make me inferior to the person I’m reading about?  Is her body perfect?  What does that make mine in comparison?

I’ll tell you right now that I always come up short.  Especially since the media we draw from for fanfiction generally has physically flawless women while male actors have SO FUCKING MUCH MORE LEEWAY in their physical appearance.  Paunch.  Weird face.  Stringy instead of muscular.  Big nose.  Moles.  Things women simply aren’t allowed to be if up on a screen.  Can I substitute myself for Scarlett Johansson?  Nope, I sure cannot.

So one of the main appeals of m/m is that my body (and issues!) has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.  By no stretch of the imagination.  Which allows me to immerse myself completely in the things they’re doing, the sensations they’re feeling, the exploration that’s going on.

And yes, with the power dynamic.  Yes.  It’s so wonderful to be able to seek out a submissive character in a strongly D/s type relationship and know it has everything to do with personality and nothing to do with gender and social strictures.  No one is being taken advantage of, basically.  Or at least, not socially mandated advantage.

I added my thoughts to another version of this post and just found this one! What an incredibly interesting conversation with so much to think about.

marlinspirkhall:

notahorseindisguise:

midnight-revelation:

hiveswap:

notahorseindisguise:

mysticorset:

notahorseindisguise:

the “came back wrong” trope except like… they didnt. like this mad scientists wife died, and so he studied necromancy, brought her back, and she came back and it all worked. like she came back exactly the same as she was before with literally no difference. but the scientist guy is like “oh no… what have i done…. shes Different now!!!! she came back Wrong!!!!” and shes just like. chilling. reading a book. cooking dinner. shes just so so normal but in the guys mind hes like “oh shes soooo weird” but shes just normal

Peer reviewed tags from @somanyofthekids

NO its a JOKE and YOU DONT GET IT. ITS NOT THAT DEEP

While she was dead he put his memory of her on such a high pedestal that she could never live up to it alive

alternatively‚ she came back perfectly fine but he thinks she came back wrong‚ because the tragic reality is that he never actually knew his wife

im going INSANE thats MY POST.

It’s your post but the journey to posting it changed it to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to you. Sorry dude.

evie-carnahan:

HEARTSTOPPER 2.06 “Truth/Dare” | 2.08 “Perfect”

victoriaspriing:

mr. ajayi loves museum dates with his grumpy bf

littlewinnow:

He fell for the cute face smh 🤦

Extra ⬇️

ileadacharmedlife:

Posting starts today!

Posting: August 6-12

This is a fest to celebrate Christmas-related fanworks for the Simon Snow series. Since the holiday of Christmas plays such a central role in the story of Carry On, this fest is a place to encourage any works that want to focus on some aspect of the holiday within the Simon Snow universe. Ideas include: works inspired by holiday music, movies, stories, myths, traditions, or aesthetics.

Also note: In spite of the name and the theme, this fest is not meant to promote any particular religious practices, or exclude other traditions. If there is a fan work you wish to submit that centers around other holidays at this time of year, those works can also be part of this collection, if you wish. These include, but are not limited to: Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, etc.

How to add works:

on Tumblr:

post your art/fic/meme, etc and tag: COXA, COXA 2023, or Carry On Christmas in August

on Ao3:

add your work to the open collection COXA_2023, *OR* tag your work COXA, or Carry On Christmas in August, and I will add it to the collection.

Have Fun!

nightimedreamersworld:

THE END IS NEAR-SUNDAY

Thank you for tagging me today, friends @hushed-chorus @blackberrysummerblog @forabeatofadrum @ivelovedhimthroughworse @you-remind-me-of-the-babe ❤️

Ok rambling time: Recently I was really craving some Snowbaz kissing, and guess what - there’s a fic that’s like 90% JUST kissing. So the good news was, I could have all the kissing I wanted! So many kisses! Too bad it’s unfinished.

And then I had a moment like that meme: “man this fic is really great! I wish I could find out how it ends!” *realizes you’re the author*

ANYWAY rambling over. That’s all just to say: I’m going to finish every little helps. Like I’m this close 🤏 to being done after over a YEAR writing this thing. I just need to wrap up the last chapter and write a neat little bow of an epilogue and then boom, done.

Here’s a bit from chapter 8 (coming to an ao3 near you as soon as I’m done beating it out of my head):

He snorts against my skin, a little laugh among the breathy kisses. “Think I’m a bit like a vampire, now.“ 

I just hum. I really hoped he wouldn’t try to open that can of worms right now. It’s bad enough that I had to take him down to the Catacombs with me. At least he stopped kissing me long enough so I could drink blood. 

(He did help me catch a few rats—stepped on one, then offered it up to me like a single-stemmed rose. Absolutely ridiculous.) (I was swooning.)

“How so?” I ask.

“I mean, like, the hunger.“ 

“Your hunger makes you long to drink the blood of small mammals?” I frown. “Wait. Do you want to drink my blood?“ 

"You smell so good,” he whispers against my jaw. “Wanna eat you." 

"I’ve already said I don’t eat the rats." 

"Said I wanna eat you." 

I tsk at him. “Cannibalism isn’t sexy, Snow.”

Alright, this post is long enough. Idk if anyone even remembers this fic, but in case you still care, the end is near, friends.

Tagging: @cutestkilla @artsyunderstudy @facewithoutheart @captain-aralias @martsonmars @aristocratic-otter @fatalfangirl @confused-bi-queer @stitchyqueer @letraspal @prettygoododds @valeffelees @larkral @palimpsessed @whogaveyoupermission @ionlydrinkhotwater and anyone who’d like to share!

ebbpettier:

background character headcanons are the best

ivelovedhimthroughworse:

What have I been working on lately? Mostly I’ve been recording podfics and learning how to edit them. (Whoa, editing is a lot) For months I’d been dreaming of doing something like this and then a group of people whom I like and respect gave me encouragement - so here I am!

I’m really excited to share my work, so I made up a new banner: Sonic Sunday. See the clip for thirty seconds of the project that I’m almost ready to post!

There’s a podfic fest coming up in the fall, so maybe more people will be trying their hand at a mic. (Link if you’d like to learn more) If you are participating, feel free to join on a Sunday and tag me. For now, I’ll tag my usual fandom crew:

Keep reading

orange-peony:

Thanks for tagging me in the past two weeks @hushed-chorus, @artsyunderstudy, @blackberrysummerblog and @j-nipper-95.

I’ve been working on a fic for an anon fest, so I can’t share that unfortunately, but I also made a bit of progress on my snowbaz speed dating AU:

“And what is it that you do for a living, Simon Snow?” I ask, pretending to be particularly interested in my nails for a second, but inevitably staring back at his freckled skin, my eyes wandering like avid explorers.

“I work in a café,” he replies, a challenge in his eyes, as if I were about to belittle him for his job. I fucking love tea and the occasional coffee. I adore pastry. It’ s a bloody match made in heaven. “I bet you would hate it,” he continues. “I bet you would say it’s too small or too cramped or too loud.”

“Unquiet meals make ill digestions,” I say with a shrug, quoting The Comedy Of Errors, and he freezes.

His blue eyes grow big and his lips part. He stares at me for a long moment, as if paralysed, but then, to my utter horror, the bell goes ding.

Our time is up.

I didn’t even manage to find out what he likes and dislikes. Where he lives. If he would like to spend the rest of his life with me.

Tagging @avenueofesc, @bubble-gumhead, @pato-roldnart, @martsonmars, @artsyunderstudy, @j-nipper-95, @imagineacoolusername, @cutestkilla, @captain-aralias, @crazybutgood, @thewholelemon, @littlewinnow, @letraspal, @ebbpettier, @tea-brigade, @fatalfangirl, @ivelovedhimthroughworse and @facewithoutheart.