Drifting thoughts, part 6

An analysis of some old concepts, yet with a renewed perception shaped by new experiences

It has been a long while since I wrote one of those, as even though I've talked about several concepts and how I approach them through my work and my understanding of things, those little entries were done back then, when I was a different person. What I mean by that is that, of course, we are all shaped by the various experiences we go through in our life and thus we change and adapt constantly. Unless we are kept by routine or are unnaturally stable with our everyday habits, the person we are today and the person we were a year ago are different, sometimes vastly so, as due to events, projects and experiences that we go through. With this being said, I think it's time to use yet another chapter of Drifting Thoughts for me to get a grip on what is happening and what might happen on this page, but also in my life. I hope you're ready for another pseudo-philosophical ride.


20. Bisexuality

As the title pretty much reveals flalty, I'm bisexual. The term, for those who have no affinity for it due to very limited interactions with others or the Internet (or because of a lack of curiosity), means that I'm attracted to both genders, that is male and female. Now, I'm sure that some people would decry a lack of mention for non-binary and trans people, but that is a subject for another time (not that there's much to tell. These people are fine and, as such, should be treated like people). While I simply could have kept that for myself due to a desire to make sure my private life would stay just that, private, I thought it best to inform it so that the rest of this whole entry would make sense. Or at least it might have some.

This little revelation, which might be a little obvious to some if they paid attention to some of the stuff I wrote in the past, is made to push forth my main little questioning on the matter: should I treat myself and write more stuff focusing on men, or should I just push that aside to not lose my readership? While the answer would seem perhaps rather easy to find, there is always a fact that I've not often seen discussed in plenty of circles when it comes to coming out: the transition. We see that, in most media, the coming out, announcing that your sexuality is different from the established norm, is a huge deal, a true little event that change things. People go on and encourage the person, say how brave they are and sentimentality gets in on the whole deal. At times, it's the exact opposite, with bridges being burned, friendship lost and families being destroyed. Mine, when I came out to some friends and my parents a whole year ago, was a non-event. I just said something akin to ''hey, I like men and women'' and the basic reaction of many were just a big old '' 'kay''. Nothing dramatic, nothing huge, just an acknowledgment. It suits me fine, of course, as I did not want it to be something of cataclysmic importance, that would change everyone's life and all that stuff. However, despite me actually accepting this part of myself, it is still one that I have to learn how to deal with, which is something I'm doing one step at a time. Let's just say that, when you've lived in a hetero-normative manner for most of your life, it can be difficult to adapt to this reality, even if it's one of your making.

The reason why I'm still making progress, in my own way, is mostly because of two factors: the first being my definition of masculinity being shattered and being rebuild one piece at a time. We all know the stereotypes of men being handy with tools, being independent, strong and all that. For a while, I strongly believed in it too and this made me lose sight of possibilities, of things that I could do, that I could enjoy and that, in some minor way, I felt ashamed to like or even love in some capacity. The second one was that, in my teenage years, I was a rather big and stupid homophobe, disliking gay people (except women, because teenage hormones and all that). I was part of a group of people that seemed to enjoy bashing gay people and, to be a ''cool dude'', I joined in. This lasted for years and, unfortunately, came to paint my vision of how being gay was ''uncool'' and ''really dirty'' in some sense. It took a lot of time to deprogram myself out of these thinkings (funnily enough, two of those in that group have since come out.)

In the last year, I've begun to work a whole lot on my person, as to what I actually want to be, how I want to be seen. It was one of my many projects that made it so I began to write a little less here (the other being an actual writing project) and it occupied my mind close to every single days. I went to the gym and, instead of trying to be yet another man with big muscles, I tried to do things differently. Instead of just not caring all that much about my appearance, I tried to put a little more effort into it. What really helped a whole lot, though, was telling to someone that I love them (a man, for your information). It didn't work out, unfortunately, but that person was decent and understanding enough to know that you do not choose who you fall for and that they would still be friends with me even after that, a promise that has been kept up to this day. With all of that, I figured that I just needed to be a little bolder, to show more courage and determination about who I am and who I want to be. With plenty of other experiences helping me in that regard (Undertale actually helped a lot with some of my problems), I just need to go on with it and push myself even further until I can really be much more comfortable with all those changes in my life, implementing them everywhere as needs be.

However, despite all of this, there is one thing that kind of blocks my path in writing more stuff focusing on men, one tiny little thing that I've kind of touched upon in an older entry of Drifting Thoughts: my pride.


21. The artist's lament

It's not something that I particularly enjoy about myself, but it is true nonetheless: I crave validation. While self-sufficiency is a wonderful things, especially to understand your worth, it is not something that I've yet to achieve in terms of appreciation for what I do. While I do pride myself in never really taking requests and on writing what I want when I want, the reality of it is a little more complex and shameful than that.

When I write a piece, I try to appeal to the demographic that I've built for myself: people who enjoy hypnosis, belly dancers, corruption and many of the themes that I've come to experiment in my writing. While I do try new stuff occasionally, there is a certain repetition, a certain pattern that can easily emerge from my stuff. While repetition and routine can surely kill creativity, I do try to strike a balance between not rocking the boat too much, yet also to make sure I don't get bored into writing the same piece over and over. While there are themes and even settings that do get back again and again (the powerful, sexy and mischievous genie, seduction used as an hypnotic tool, the Shantae and Aladdin series and many more), I vary from time to time in order to keep myself happy, but I'd be lying if I didn't really try to please my readers too, to hook them in.

I try various techniques and approaches for this: putting a picture as a header, trying to switch up from raunchy and sexy work to more ''general audience'' pieces from time to time, switching from original work to fan fiction...The list goes on. These days, I try to at least always include a picture in my stories in the hope that more people will pay attention to the piece I just submitted, hoping that they take the bait and then try to read some more of my stuff. As I've said in a prior entry in this series, I tend to put my fetishes on the page and, seeing as many people enjoy those things, it gives way for a certain ego boost that validates what I'm doing and let me tell you: validation is one hell of a drug.

It's pretty normal for artists to want their pieces seen, to see that what they've done earned a little moment of reflection and appreciation, that people do actually care about their work. If you share something on the Internet, it is with the implicit desire that people react in some way or the other. Otherwise, it would not have been posted in any form. While this problem vary from one person to the other, it also come with a certain pressure, as more people pay attention, the more pressure you get, mostly from yourself. You've got to at least do something of even quality or better than the last one, you've got to innovate, to make it look like you're worth your audience's time. Another thing that might happen is that you can stagnate and go on with what you believe the audience will like, never straying too far off the path that you've built on expectations. With this method, you can get bored rather easily, or you restrain the diversity of your audience, which means that you can get complacent or lazy in what you do. It's a strange enigma in this situation that I find myself in, as it relates to the point I brought up earlier: how would people react if I wrote gay male erotica in a much more overt and repeated manner?I did write a few in the past, yet nothing that really brought in readership and the validation that I'm ashamedly craving in the same way that some of my other pieces (which features heterosexual characters, or lesbians) did.

You see, behind all of this diatribe that seems more like a complaint (and a craving for a different kind of validation, let's be honest), I've figured a certain formula on how I can figure out a certain success on a piece and how I can feel like that it gives me what I want. When you see the stats on a piece, you can see how many views it's received, how many people added it to their favourites and how many people commented on it (you can also see how many downloads it got, but that's not really relevant here). To me, there's a hierarchy in place here and I'll try my best to explain it in my own terms. Views, however nice they are, are the less-important factor here, as even though it's nice to see that a few thousands of people deigned to read my stuff, it still doesn't tell me whether they enjoyed it or not. It weights in how many people were curious enough to venture through the piece, yet that's pretty much it. Favourites, though, come in a much more important position as it means that people enjoyed it enough to make sure they can access it anytime. It's a badge of merit of some sort, a testament to enjoyment that shows a reaction, that some paid attention to the work. The very best, the kings of them all, though are comments. When a person writes in response to my stories, it basically means that they had a reaction strong enough to my work that they had to voice it out, to let me know about it. While comments are not always positive (and can be a little strange or annoying), it does show a reaction that is palpable, that is of a known quantity. When you get views, you don't know if the person like it or not. When it gets added to favourites, you have no idea if the person merely liked it a little or if they adored it. When you get a comment, you know if the person liked the story or not. Comments are the opium of the artists, as far as I know. They push forth critiques, they make you know what worked or not and sometimes they're just words of encouragement, prying you to push yourself further and to produce more. Comments can be flawed, but as far as I'm concerned, I can't get enough of them.



22. The future, or at least how I perceive it and how I want to shape it.

With all that said and discussed, what does it actually mean? Why did I write a whole entry about all this stuff? Surely it was not just to discuss about my life and my worries?

What it means basically, is that, for all that I've said earlier, I still believe the same things about my belly fixation, about how hypnosis, corruption, humiliation and other such concepts are all related to dominance and submission and that, in some ways, my writing is an external representation of my fetishes and how I view sexuality, how I envision my fantasies and live them through my writing. That all still rings true. The only thing that has changed, though, is the fact that I can now see through it in a more diverse fashion, with me realizing some of the potential of men in these terms as well. Does it mean that I'll write more gay erotica in the future? Most probably, yes. At least, I'll try to indulge myself a little more in this regard. It may turn off some people, make them go away as I've built my reputation on portraying female dominance in a large quantity of my work. It does not mean, however, that those kind of stories shall go away. Bisexuality means that I am attracted to both women and men, after all, and I can't say that the appeal of a womanly and sexy belly dancer is lost on me. It just means that readers might come to expect more variety and that it'll be a period of change on this account, for better or worse. After all, considering how smitten I am with Link in Breath of the Wild (that Gerudo costume is lovely~), how could I not indulge myself?

What I want, basically, is to tell people that I will try to make some more progress in understanding who I am and what I want through my writing, much like I always did in the past. When I discovered and explored some of my kinks in the last few years, I did so with a certain passion and enthusiasm, even when dealing with subjects that some would deem questionable (hypnosis is still kind of morally wrong, though I've discussed the dichotomy between fantasies and reality in a previous entry). This means, of course, more of the same, just with more variation to add experimentation in my writing.

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And here comes the end of this much more personal entry in this series, one that has a very erratic schedule, yet works a little like some form of written therapy for me. I hope you've enjoyed it and, if you wish to discuss some of the things mentioned earlier or if you want to share a few notions of yours, please feel free to comment.

I'd be glad to converse with people on the