For you - 7. Chapter 7

Your comments to self in the text seem both innocent and profound.  We're following the lead character through exploration and discovery.  I'm enjoying every minute of it and wait for his conscience to make another comment to itself.  It's like the duality of self opening up before our eyes.  Can't wait to see what he finds next!

I like when first person POV characters talk to themselves in their head. It's one of the major benefits of this narrative, and you use it well.

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“I’m only gone for five minutes, and you are already looking for a replacement on Grindr,” Rhys teased me.

No way, he could have seen my phone’s screen from where he was standing.

“Was I that bad?” he added.

“I thought, a little competition would ensure upholding its high quality,” I replied, sticking out my tongue.

This is the first time I think they're cute together, but it's also bittersweet. Our protagonist being ace becomes apparent, yet Rhys is most likely the opposite, caring about sex more than anything else. I like that you're exploring the fact that even marginalized gay people are often very close-minded when it comes to sexuality, is our protagonist aego?

I hope that Rhys' intense focus on sex doesn't become an issue.

Thanks for posting, please continue. This chapter reads much better and more personal than the previous ones. Feels like we're in the moment now.

10 hours ago, James Baxter said:

both innocent and profound. 

@James Baxter I'm afraid, I have to ask: What do you mean by that in this context?

6 hours ago, drown said:

you use it well. […] This chapter reads much better and more personal than the previous ones. Feels like we're in the moment now.

@drown Thank you ☺️

6 hours ago, drown said:

This is the first time I think they're cute together, but it's also bittersweet.

I'm glad, I was able to write characters, you can emphasize with Oh, and bittersweet is the best taste 2 in 1, so to speak 😜

6 hours ago, drown said:

I like that you're exploring the fact that even marginalized gay people are often very close-minded when it comes to sexuality

I think, that's a topic not talked about often enough. And gay men, while being marginalized in terms of their sexual orientation, are privileged in terms of their gender. Another eye-opening thing, I read in a fascinating book, is that gay people, despite having had the chance to create a community from scratch, decided to model it closely after the cisheteromononormative society, they were ostracized by.

While rereading my own chapter, especially the last paragraph, I thought, it would be fun to turn it into an audiobook, but then I thought back to Rhys' announcement only a few lines above that or the sex scenes which were uncomfortable enough to write 😅

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I scrolled a little further and encountered a retweet of another “expectation vs reality” picture, this time showing a kiss from Heartstopper on the left and a grindr chat message, reading “Can we have a phone wank now please”.

The tweet in question: https://nitter.net/SHaedrich/status/1526161700097085442#m

6 hours ago, drown said:

is our protagonist aego?

I should have known this, but I had to look it up. I won't tell my protagonist, what his labels are and he hasn't told me. I don't think so in terms of what is based on me, but beyond that, who knows … 🤷‍♂️

6 hours ago, drown said:

I hope that Rhys' intense focus on sex doesn't become an issue.

What would be a story without drama? 😜

22 minutes ago, Zuri said:

Another eye-opening thing, I read in a fascinating book, is that gay people, despite having had the chance to create a community from scratch, decided to model it closely after the cisheteromononormative society, they were ostracized by.

We’re all products of the society we grew up in, to an extent.

But monogamous homosexual homoromantic gay men exist, and I would not like to invalidate their existence. It only becomes an issue when they fail to see the other shades of the rainbow.

Oh btw, one of my favorite shifter series, the Green Creek series by TJ Klune, includes both ace and aro characters. The author himself is asexual. More representation is always good. Life is never as simple as the established labels lead us to believe. We need loads of empathy to understand each other.

4 hours ago, drown said:

But monogamous homosexual homoromantic gay men exist, and I would not like to invalidate their existence.

They do. I never intended to erase them. But they have their share of representation. Others getting it too, doesn't mean, taking it away from the aforementioned. What I meant, was not that they can't be monogamous, homosexual, and/or homoromantic, but that they have stereotypical thinking like "top" and "bottom" as defining, often exclusive and dividing traits for example.

4 hours ago, drown said:

Oh btw, one of my favorite shifter series, the Green Creek series by TJ Klune, includes both ace and aro characters. The author himself is asexual. More representation is always good.

Sounds interesting 🤔 I might check that one out, too 👍

11 hours ago, drown said:

aego

It was an epiphany when I first read a novel (written in German) where the protagonist turned out to be aroace, and focuses on more platonic relationships, which she experiences more intensely.

I don't know, where you asked this, but yes, I'm also asexal. I just didn't want to spoil you ^^ So, even though, story-wise I can't relate this much to my protagonist, character-wise, I definitely can.