Eyes - at least the cornea/iris/pupil part technically are optics. The actual light sensors on a robot would similarly not be... 'Optics' is a pretty weird word to use, and is certainly not romantic.
I vividly remember someone complaining years and years back about someone who in a long string of violently purple prose used "oculi". I don't remember anything else about what they said, just that. An oculus is "a circular opening, especially at the apex of a dome" or "a design representing an eye", not an actual eye unless you're speaking Latin.
That awkward moment where you find the sweetest cutest fluff ever but when you check the author, every single other fic is explicit BDSM and/or ABO and/or sex pollen.
Well, as I said, I'm intending to restart Hivefled once I have a computer which DOESN'T SHUT ITSELF OFF FOR NO REASON EVERY FIVE MINUTES AAAAARGH and context in that would be appropriate for Equius to say that.
Working on another old fic, and I had set it up from the beginning to be a self-fill for a particular pairing in one quadrant and intended to include another specific quad which is an OTP of mine, but a fourth-party character is barging her way in and could shove into either. I guess I need to either go poly or quickly introduce more characters for her to go interact with? Ship-tease is fine but I don't want to end up making the pairing I didn't mean look better than the one I was trying to do. Problem is the specific story requires one of the characters in the intended pairing to be thoroughly awful to the other for a while and the intended quadrant is not blackrom. Also everyone is bi including the non-trolls but I need some non-cis characters in there otherwise I feel I'm just doing heteronormativity in a slightly skewed way and I dunno who.
Yes hello. You rang? I'm not personally horrified or offended by other people taking the Lord's name in vain, but I do actually feel uncomfortable doing it myself unless I actually am intending to invoke some sort of request to be witnessed by God himself. (Weird example: watching Handmaid's Tale. It was so upsetting in a very specific way, with a lot of religious themes explored. The experience felt relevant to my own religious life. Like going, hey God could you take a look at this please because I'm shook.) I do swear quite a lot, though. And I've noticed that most people don't seem to notice that I'm avoiding invoking God if I take it up another notch and say "fuck damn" instead.
My urge to include silly shout-outs to things nobody will get in fics which are supposed to be dark and serious. Okay, so basing a darkfic's climax on the ending of an infamous Furaffinity gore comic made sense, but in a creepy fic involving slavery and Game of Thrones shenanigans it's probably not appropriate to have a character singing a silly song from a kid's book about talking mice. (An Ampora drunkenly singing this would be all hells of entertaining though.)
Too bad that song's from an audiobook and doesn't have separate music without the singing, or I'd be commissioning an Ampora voice actor to sing it.
Spoiler: A/b/o shit I initially thought this fic jabbing on about male omegas being naturally more appealing than female omegas was, like, a "subtle" way of getting across that our big macho manly man Alpha MC is a raging gay, but as it turns out that's just. A world building choice they made. Male omegas are better in every conceivable way but they're rarer, so some unlucky dipshits get stuck with girls.
Spoiler: Rape mention "Phantom Load" is a pretty ungood title for a fic about someone finding out about his brother's childhood sexual abuse, but it's a worse title if the story is simultaneously about ghosts.
Spoiler a/b/o as a trope has such interesting implications for human society and biology and whatnot and yet every time i find a fic in the fandoms i like it's literally just alpha-dom omega-sub cookie-cutter romance-novel stuff. I really want to write my own version, but i'm having one of my no-can-write episodes and it's so frsutrating. I just want some interesting worldbuilding, guys. :(
Spoiler: A/B/O whining Man, I can't recall if I whined about this on kintsugi or just in pm, but I'm... fairly sure I didn't do it in this thread. But I really love all the things you can do with A/B/O if you're doing it right, and it's hot and fascinating and different and fun. And then when I open a fic about A/B/O featuring a ship between the most uptight, controlling, demanding asshole (who I love) and a character who is... not laid back exactly, but he's all about freedom and independence. And they're both frighteningly competent and good at getting what they want. And the society they're put in is highly, highly structured and rigid, where omegas stay home and make babies and that's about it. I'm expecting something at least a little subversive :/ Tl;dr, Prowl (controlling asshole, omega) is on the wrong end of an abusive relationship. Abusive spouse dies in an accident, and because omegas are like expensive, fancy livestock, he gets passed along to abusive spouse's brother, Jazz (mister independence) for continued baby-making purposes. Prowl is a timid, submissive, afraid, deferential, motherly who-the-heck-even-is-this version of himself. Jazz is pretty usual, except for cheerfully conforming to societal roles that he even realizes are unfairly restrictive and shit all over this person he is nominally supposed to be falling in love with. The story frames it like wow!!! so gracious!!!!!!!!! when he tells prowl that prowl can make food from his hometown and jazz won't mind. And he's so super gracious that he even offers to get prowl... craft supplies. Classically, Prowl is the second-in-command of the autobots and an intelligence officer and strategist. This is just sad to watch. And the thing is!! It could have worked!!!!!! It could have worked if Prowl was viciously abused and responded by pulling into himself and becoming cold and hard and doing what he has to do just to survive, while tallying up all the wrongs and refusing to admit that the way he's being treated is just. He can parent his twins and raise them in a... nurturing way, but strategically nurturing. He's raising them to be the best they are in whatever area their talents lie, but he's teaching them to respect him and listen to him and do what he says. He can be quietly, viciously glad when husband one dies (and maybe even have had something to do with setting that up), and instead of being timid and terrified of husband two, he can be detached and cautious and refuse to open up (because he saw what happened last time) and assert ownership over as much of the house as he can, because this is his home and it is HIS, and he can be telling himself that it doesn't matter if Jazz is terrible, he already survived one abusive husband, he can survive another. And I don't want to see a relationship that's so revolutionary and influential that it dissolves all the toxic societal structures 5ever. It's too much, I won't believe it unless the story is epic enough to support those stakes. BUT. Why not just have Jazz adore his bossy, demanding omega partner and be happy to let him control the household and take care of all the decisions that go into running it. And eventually, the family business, which Jazz is set to inherit. Jazz's omega parent is already influential in the main part of the family, just imagine her mentoring and encouraging Prowl and getting him to push the boundaries even further. Society might be too restrictive to let it grow past there, but imagine an extended family where Prowl parented like half of them, and he might technically be restricted to the household, but now he sits at the middle of this big business web, pulling all the strings and steering this large organization, just like he always knew he'd be able to do. And Jazz being the public alpha face of the family who isn't saddled with so much responsibility it's suffocating him, who adores his spouse and respects Prowl's independence and skills enough that it wins Prowl's trust, despite that ugly past. Ahh, sorry, I genuinely set out intending not to get that much into the plot :p But the eventual point is that none of that works if you just slot your character into Blandest Possible Omega Personality, without even any of the optional sass, just a lot of timidness and submission. It could have been so, so, so cool with just a little twist. Anyways, between that, and between my friend's complaints about plots like 'oh no I am an omega in my first ever heat and oh look here is this sexy alpha here to take good care of me :)' I'm somehow writing A/B/O, which I genuinely never expected to do??? And it's superheroes, which is another weird surprise. Originally it was just to jar myself out of writer's block, which has happened, but now I'm a couple thousand words deep, so I've gotta finish :ppp
Spoiler a/b/o is one of those tropes that is either totally my thing or violently not. I really loved fucked up worldbuilding and I absolutely fucking love pack dynamic shit. It helps that most of thr a/b/o in my fandom is for my ot4? But there is still some shit thats. Fucking horrifying (hey can we not with the TREATING YOUR OBSTENSIVELY ROMANTIC PARTNER LIKE A CHILD????) I still wanna story about an all omega pack who kicks ass in a shitty world
For what it's worth, it's a real solid fic. It just. Every once in a while I'd look up from the text proper and think droppin phantom loads and it sorta.
Spoiler: big yes I agree with all of this so much. Comics Prowl canonically would rather not get his hands dirty and seems totally satisfied to pull the strings from afar. Also “strategically nurturing” is the best phrase I’ve heard applied to Prowl, maybe ever. I did try to read this story but found it too depressing, which is saying something if it’s me.
I'm trying to do more on some old fics but my old writing suuuuuuuuucks and rereading it is awful and waaaaaahhhh :( :( :( Someone reassure me.
