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drabble_zone, using Challenge 68: Blue.
badly_knittedbadly_knittedtorchwood100. lightbirdsunshine_revival challenge I presented my first completed needlepoint project. It wasn't bad for a first try (and it's a cute design), but I wasted a lot of thread (did a lot of removing and re-doing, lol) so I didn't have enough thread left to do the finishing border.
badfalconThere’s just something deeply compelling about watching two characters navigate uneven ground - whether it’s age, experience, authority, or institutional power - and still manage to build something charged and intimate between them. Not despite the imbalance, but through it. That slow burn of restraint. The ache of wanting something they shouldn't. The negotiations of trust, timing, control, and care.
This is especially compelling when both characters are competent in their own right, but operating from different registers: mentor/student, coach/player, commander/civilian specialist, master/apprentice. The imbalance isn’t about helplessness - it’s about the impossibility of an even playing field, and the intimacy that arises anyway.
These dynamics can be messy and complicated and so emotionally satisfying when done right. They let fiction stretch into questions of loyalty, respect, control, vulnerability. What does it mean to choose closeness, when there are rules saying you shouldn’t? What does it cost, to reach for someone who could say no with a word?
Some personal favourites:
Jannik Sinner/Simone Vagnozzi – restrained affection, a coach who holds himself too tightly, and a player who sees straight through him
Jannik Sinner/Darren Cahill - built on loyalty, history, and the kind of attention that feels more like possession if you look too long
Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi – power wrapped in devotion, connection shaped by discipline, love made sharper by its impossibility
Jim Ellison/Blair Sandburg – the sentinel and the grad student who never stops talking, thrown together by biology and staying for each other
Jethro Gibbs/Tony DiNozzo – command and obedience with a side of locker room banter and unspoken everything
Jack O’Neill/Daniel Jackson – sarcasm vs sincerity, orders vs ethics, saving the world one lingering look at a time
And yes, this is entirely about fiction. These dynamics let us explore things that might be fraught or even dangerous in real life but that, in the hands of a good writer, become vehicles for emotional tension, character growth, and that delicious blend of intimacy and restraint.
Give me the power imbalance that heightens the stakes. Give me the age difference that adds weight to every decision. Give me the mentor figure trying not to fall. Give me the younger one pushing every boundary, knowing exactly what they're doing. Give me the slow unravelling, the look that lingers too long, the moment someone steps just half an inch closer than they should. Give me the ache of wanting what they shouldn't - and wanting it well.
I want characters who should know better - and want it anyway.
I want stories where love is inconvenient. Where it’s earned. Where it burns, quietly and ferociously, just beneath the surface.
I will never be over it
michifuguForgive me for posting something political, BUT this is something I cannot ignore, it concerns me greatly.
Man, seeing the news that Steam and Itch.io are banning a lot of NSFW and incest games while releasing guidelines that are openly hostile to adult content—all because of payment processors and right-wing activists—is just fucking bleak.
( Read more... )
thisbluespiritosprey_archer did a picture books one, and there was a discussion in the comments about US vs UK picture books, so I did a UK one, with the best/most popular/influential picture book illustrators I could think of (up to 2010 when I stopped being a children's librarian and, indeed, anything much), but it took ages to try and make sure I wasn't missing people and put all the covers on, and then I kept forgetting I'd made it.ysabetwordsmith
ysabetwordsmith mxcatmoonvocab_drabbles 
cornerofmadness
comment_fic prompt and I don't normally go for Aus that radically change canon) only a handful of stories existed then.
dialecticdreamer
ysabetwordsmith ysabetwordsmith brithistorianI read a news article today "K-pop trainee ordered to pay damages after tattoo and dorm exit led to canceled debut". In the article, the trainee was referred to as A, in an effort to protect their privacy — they even used "they/them" pronouns throughout, thinking that concealing their gender might have further helped in concealing their identity. However, they referenced the company involved by name and gave the debut date of the group that A didn't debut with, which meant that 30 seconds at the Kpop Wiki was enough for me to find A's identity. Definitely sub-optimal anonymization.
I'm also not too keen on the headline. To me "canceled debut" sounds like the group that A was to have been in didn't debut, but instead it was just that A didn't get to debut with the group.
Also, if you're curious, according to the contract, the damages in question should have been 60 million won (approx. US$43K) for 2 violations for contract terms (once for leaving the dorm without permission, once for getting a tattoo without permission). For some reason, though, the company sued A for 80 million won (approx. US$58K). The judge ruled that this amount was excessive and ordered A to pay 5 million won (approx. $US3600). The agency is appealing the ruling, though, which just has me eye-rolling. (It seems significant to me, though I don't know if a court would feel this way, that the group that A was prevented from debuting with has already disbanded.)
mxcatmoon
ysabetwordsmith badly_knitted - FAKE Double Drabble: Curious Parentbadly_knitted - Double Drabble: Delicate Jobmaevedarcy - Sense8 Week 2025 Contributions Masterlistlightbird - Et Voilà - I'm Getting Better at This Needlepoint Thingtarlanx - Fortune Wheel Week 11 - Revenge and First Contactbadfalcon - 🌿✨ Shoutout to my enduring love of age gap and power imbalance relationships in fiction ✨🌿michifugu - Payment Processor bullshitthisbluespirit - A postysabetwordsmith - Violin vs. Fiddleysabetwordsmith - Philosophical Questions: Utopiamxcatmoon - Good Omens ficlet - "Perfection"cornerofmadness - Day 1 of Pool timedialecticdreamer - Thinking Things Through (part 1 of 1, complete)ysabetwordsmith - Forest Greens Designysabetwordsmith - Green Energysoc_puppet - Esperanto Dreamsheepbrithistorian - Not so anonymous as they might have thoughtlinky - 2025 Sunshine Revival Post #7 (+ Fannish Fifty #37)mxcatmoon - Trying to hold onto a shred of hopeysabetwordsmith - Birdfeeding
