And dirtybadwrong this certainly is. The places fandom leads you... But what really shocked me writing this is how much easier it was to linger over Arthur's beauty than when I write Merlin/Arthur; even when they're viewing each other sexually the effect is so different and the power dynamics generally don't run in such a way as to make this particular kind of objectification available, to allow this kind of gaze to be turned on Arthur.
a sort of camaraderie and the way they joke around and act like stupid boys
Exactly. And for me getting Arthur to view Merlin sexually is always a bit of a challenge: he looks and all he sees is Merlin, this puzzling irritating person. The whole weight and texture of their attraction is so physical rather than visual: more gravitational. Even all of their amazing eye-sex (which I love with a love that passeth understanding) is at once too directly physical and too ethereal. And they're so pretty! As a writer, I want to go there.
Oh, and, uh, off-topic, but can I just say how glad I am that you warned for "coersed non-con"? You do not want to know how times I find myself ranting, "There can be no real consent in this situation, therefore it is non-consensual!" while reading a story that warned for "dubious consent" or something similar.
It is unambiguously non-consensual. Sadly, whether it's rape in the legal sense is debatable. And this confusion is compounded by how non-con carries the fannish connotation of violent rape, whereas dub-con generally means (as it's used) coercive sex at least part of which is non-consensual but which stops short of serious bodily injury. These are quite different tastes and so you have a signaling problem if you use non-con for nonviolent scenarios.
Violent non-con, coercive non-con, violent consensual sex, and a tiny category of genuine dub-con would be more accurate labels for these distinctions; but it's hard to change widely used terminology.
Those same blue eyes. And suddenly Uther needs this to be unrecognizably different. He locks away every memory, shoving them into the deep places that will always ache, and covers them over with fine-grained anger. He won't sully the past with this.
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special hell here I come
Don't I know it. <3
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Exactly. And for me getting Arthur to view Merlin sexually is always a bit of a challenge: he looks and all he sees is Merlin, this puzzling irritating person. The whole weight and texture of their attraction is so physical rather than visual: more gravitational. Even all of their amazing eye-sex (which I love with a love that passeth understanding) is at once too directly physical and too ethereal. And they're so pretty! As a writer, I want to go there.
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...Er, yes, sorry about that.
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Violent non-con, coercive non-con, violent consensual sex, and a tiny category of genuine dub-con would be more accurate labels for these distinctions; but it's hard to change widely used terminology.
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Those same blue eyes. And suddenly Uther needs this to be unrecognizably different. He locks away every memory, shoving them into the deep places that will always ache, and covers them over with fine-grained anger. He won't sully the past with this.
I kinda like it
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I kinda like it
*g* That's the really awful part, isn't it?
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