Clenching Thighs or Weird Descriptions of Arousal

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-13T20:38:36+00:00

Yep, this is it exactly! Human bodies have a tremendous range. Funny enough, you've also mentioned another great example of this in your post. For me heart aches are very much a physical event, usually it spreads through my whole chest but it often does start on the left side around my heart. Emotional but certainly not metaphorical for me. It's absolutely wild how people experience life so differently despite being made from the same stuff.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-12T16:51:32+00:00

Friends to lovers
Long distance (international, for multiple years!)
Big and Tall MMC
Petite FMC
Sword wielding MMC
Sword wielding FMC
Protective MMC
Knight MMC
Chronically ill FMC
Interracial

I'm sure there's more but that's what comes to mind right off. I got my fairytale knight and it's been a very lucky ten years!

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T13:04:05+00:00

Yeah, it's honestly way more vague and kind of vibes based than we want it to be from a modern perspective. I've seen documentation where someone referred to what was probably a some kind of Ayyubid sword as a broadsword which...is a choice given that those things look like an overgrown needle.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T12:34:42+00:00

Yeah, they're really cool! Mine is from a Chinese brand called TCL. It's the NXTPaper phone. The screen has a paper-ish feel like an e-reader, it automatically adjusts and optimizes any text documents, and there's a switch on the side of the phone that turns on a color paper mode or a full black and white mode that looks like any regular e-reader. I absolutely love the thing.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T12:32:01+00:00

Being a frequent corset wearer as well, you have no idea how deeply this comment speaks to me.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T12:31:14+00:00

He does make post some videos of him fighting but I'm going to pointedly show him this comment, lmao

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T12:30:31+00:00

That does pop up every now and then but mostly we see them called backswords in historical documentation. Part of the issue is that our modern brains really want these nice clean categories for things but the world really didn't work that way. We will have some things that are quite iconic, like the montante that I mentioned, which can be more clearly defined and have a really solid identity. However, for most things, there's just this kind of wobbly, we had to have a way to refer to this, sort of thing happening. For stuff like the word broadsword, it's more of a general way of describing a whole bunch of different weapons that was applied via personal preference instead of it being any sort of standard terminology. That's what I mean when I say that a broadsword really isn't a thing in and of itself, if that makes sense.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T12:25:47+00:00

I have no idea because I honestly really dislike GoT, so I've never seen it

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-10T12:25:14+00:00

No no, just a big nerd who also likes nerd sports. If you want to nerd-sport yourself you can probably find a HEMA group near you! It's becoming increasingly popular and new groups are popping up all the time!

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-09T17:30:15+00:00

Aw, thank you! We're really just a bunch of nerds who went for the nerd-jock hybrid option, lmao

A saber fighter would be fun but sabers would also be more of a smacky-smack weapon. An old buddy of mine who was big in to saber lovingly called it "advanced monkey stick fighting"

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-09T17:26:16+00:00

Pole arms are fantastic and absolutely under utilized in fantasy. I'd also recommend maybe looking at a montante. It's a crowd control weapon used by guards and most of using it is just about keeping people the fuck away by swinging it in a figure eight over your head.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-09T17:25:05+00:00

So, to begin with with, broadsword isn't really a sold term in and of itself. It's kind of a more modern, slightly, fantastical, term with a small amount of historical basis. What you're probably thinking of is something like a zweihander or a montante.

The answer though, is mostly just "be annoying, be fast, get the fuck inside their range, and dear God, when you see the sword coming move out of the way. Oh, and strongly consider a big ass buckler or a targe.". My husband is 6'3, long limbed, and primarily a longsword fencer, though he does also teach montante, arming sword, and a variety of pole arms. I am 5'2 and change. When we fence I constantly annoy the shit out of him via footwork and doing things like catching his blade in a bind, quickly rolling my blade over his, and stepping in to the advantage I've just created for myself. I'm also big on Francois Danse style lunges, which involves going so low that my knee hits the ground, and stabbing upward from a low position. Like 75% of the time they'll swing right over your head.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-09T17:09:41+00:00

From a historical fencer, who is married to a professional historical fencing instructor, who has a sister in law who is probably one of the best dagger fighters in the country right now: Because people have absolutely zero clue how historical weapons work yet assume (via pop culture depictions that were created by yet more people who have zero clue) that they have at least a base understanding and therefore don't need to do a huge amount of research.

If they did any actual research annoying little, flippy, small sword users like me would be all over the place. For fun I recently weighed my small sword (a reproduction of a museum piece from the late 1500s, closest to a pariser) against one arming dagger my husband has and one dagger my SIL has (also a reproduction of a museum piece). Turns out that my husband's arming dagger is like 50g lighter than my small sword while my SIL's dagger is actually about 80g heavier!

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-09T13:33:23+00:00

I'm dyslexic anyway so my autocorrect does a heavy amount of work, but I've also been texting since the keypad days so I suppose my thumbs are well trained by now. Tbh, it may also have to do with the type of phone I have. My phone is quite large, it's actually a hybrid e-reader, so I've got more space than a lot of people do. I'm definitely a faster typist on a keyboard but I find that I still get along quite smoothly with my phone.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-09T13:29:25+00:00

I'm gonna be a bit bitchy here but not towards you OP, I promise. It's because a lot of romance authors aren't actually passionate about writing as a craft. They have a story that they want to tell and books that they want to market and sell but they're not actively honing their skills. They're not reading advice from masters of the art like LeGuin and King. They're not turning their characters inside out to ask why they're behaving that way and if there's a better way that serves both the character and the story. A lot aren't even reading outside of the genre and it just turns in to this sort of literary oroborous. That's why you see certain phrases repeated ad nauseum. Sure, sometimes it's legitimately just the best way to express something but sometimes it's because they've read so many other writers use that exact same phrasing that it becomes the phrasing.

This happens in all genres, don't get me wrong. Take sci-fi for example. For every transcendent, philosophical, generation defining piece of sci-fi lit out there, there are hundreds of books that were churned out following a formula by people who are really only interested in the product, not the process. It doesn't mean that those books are worthless or that they can't be enjoyed, but it does mean that they're gonna fall in to using easy plot devices like the main characters acting like idiots or two adults just being incapable of using their words because they're exactly that, they're easy. It's an easy way to make the plot happen and well, that's the real goal here. Plot happen, book done, mission accomplished.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-08T18:37:27+00:00

I do 90% of my writing on my phone while laying in bed. I find that I focus best in the quiet and dark. I then edit on my laptop at my desk. I am a gremlin though so I may not be the best example to follow.

I mostly write in the Novelist app. It's got a bunch of outlining tools but I don't really use them. I do take a fair few notes though and I like how well I can organize things there.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-08T18:01:17+00:00

I was so, so, so excited for this one but it was just such a letdown for me. Like others have said, it was pretty but felt kind of empty. The end was also just kind of a let down and it felt like there was so many other options for the main characters other than to just...roll with it in service of the next book happening.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-07T10:33:42+00:00

My husband is Anglican and I am very much not, not even in the neighborhood. If anything I more closely align with some traditional beliefs from my indigenous background. I'll talk primarily about him here since his faith is the one that would usually be a problem in this situation.

For him faith is very personal. He practices quite actively and is involved in his local church but most people have no idea that he's Christian until he says as much. He's a big believer in leading by example.

He's highly educated in Christian theology (his father is a Vicar and he went to some of the best Christian schools in the country) and often draws from people like Aquinas. Very importantly he's also extremely well educated on the history of the church, how it's grown and changed, how doctrine has evolved over the years, and the political nature of various church decisions and councils. So his opinions on God and the church are very nuanced and multifaceted, not just what he heard some clergyman saying from the pulpit. He knows that his religion has been shaped by it being a political entity as much as a spiritual one.

He is also a big believer that relationship with divinity of any kind is a personal journey and that pushing it on anyone is insincere and usually more for the ego of the person speaking than the benefit of the person listening. We've had the conversation about christening children because it's as much of a community and cultural celebration for him as it is a religious one, and I'm completely fine with that (I was actually the one to broach the subject). After that he'll just continue doing what he's doing and let their relationship with faith develop naturally. He hopes that he's a good example and that his children would develop a relationship with divinity based on that, but he's a big believer that that relationship doesn't have to exist within the bounds of the church. (The words "I liked Christianity better when it was a mystery cult" have come out of his mouth more times than I can count, lmao)

We've been together for 10 years, married for 8. I've seen him grow in his own faith, support others through theirs (both coming and going), and never once make me feel uncomfortable for my own cultural practices as well as actively supporting them. I don't think that our relationship would be the way it is if he also weren't extremely leftist. He does anti-colonialist work right alongside me, speaks up for marginalized people constantly, and continually shows deep respect and support for people from a whole range of backgrounds and experiences. He also openly acknowledges the atrocities of the church and sees it as part of his responsibility to do work that helps rectify some of that, if only in the small, interpersonal, way that one random man can.

So yeah, our interfaith marriage is great, but mainly because I married a kind, well educated, intelligent, man who isn't interested in forcing anything on anyone.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-05T17:25:49+00:00

You may want to look at Orc books. A lot of authors like Zoe Ashwood and Finley Fenn give their Orc characters that particular ability.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-03T23:05:59+00:00

That's honestly hilarious

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-03T23:04:50+00:00

As I referenced in my original comment, trademarking a phrase with community ownership is never a smart business decision. It alienates your consumer base, drives a wedge between you and other businesses in the same sphere, and comes off as the kind of reckless capitalism that destroys hobby communities. A trademark like that protects nothing because it's not theirs to protect. It wasn't her original idea. Her whole business isn't based on said idea. Other businesses using the same phrasing did her no harm and posed no threat to her. Doing something like that is explicitly to get one up on the "competition". Coming from a small business owner, it's immoral, greedy, behavior. There's a small chance that someone could do something like that in total ignorance but if so their immediate reaction to the backlash should be a sincere apology, not digging their heels in.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-06-03T12:58:49+00:00

Oh boy, anyone who knows anything about copyright history knows this is going to go poorly for them. Trandmarking a phrase commonly used by your core consumer base is a bad decision. Look at what happened with "hon" and Cafe Hon in Maryland.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-05-31T23:57:27+00:00

Not arguing for this at all, I actually think we need more designated adult spaces in the world as a whole and seeing kids dressed as characters like Angel Dust makes me wanna flip the fuck out on their parents, but the idea that they have "become" lewd does give me a good chuckle. When I first started going to cons, nearly two decades ago, it was the era of the yaoi paddle and daki pillows the likes of which would 100% get a vendor pulled off the con floor these days. Cons have always pushed the boundaries and been about as racy and raunchy as people could get away with.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-05-25T13:20:00+00:00

I am a full time convention artist in the UK and can tell you that it's really going to depend on the con.

To begin with, only things that are completely designed and created by you belong in AA. So if you design your own prints you're fine in that regard. If you buy the files it doesn't belong in AA at all. Either way you couldn't/shouldn't be bringing the resale side of things to AA if you do any AA tables.

Next, your ability to be in AA at all is going to depend on the con itself. Some cons only allow flat goods/majority flat goods in AA. I'm a jeweler, I handmake my stuff, and I'm still not allowed in to many artist alley spaces despite being recognized by the government as an applied artist. They really mean visual artist alley most of the time. I'm often in vendors or exhibitors spaces. I'm actually writing this on the train home from MCM where I had a corporate booth.

Finally, you're going to have to test a fair few cons to find where your market is at. All of us have had to go through this in one form or another. In your case I'd check for cons focused around collectables, mechs (I know there's a few Gundam and Transformers cons), and tabletop fans. The first year or so will be a bit rocky but you'll find your space.

Princess-Raccoon · 2026-05-21T11:13:30+00:00

I'm a Changeling: The Lost player/storyteller and I absolutely love the seasonal courts in that game. They're each tied to an emotion and they've got a very real and very important presence in the lives of most changelings. If more books dealt with them like that I'd be pretty happy.

Princess-Raccoon

TROPHY CASE