Jyvur Entropy's Blog, page 2

2022 Goal

Well, here it is.

I really really need to stop. I need to stop using this blog, my youtube channel, my discord server as an emotional crutch.

It’s not even just an emotional crutch. It’s that I did so many ridiculous things over the course of 2019 and 2020 that I keep wanting to explain myself. It seems like every time I tell myself I’m a small beans creator and nobody pays any attention to me, somebody I’ve barely spoken to pops up to mention something I wrote on my blog or said on my youtube channel. So people pay attention. For who knows what reason.

Well, knowing that so many people witnessed the weirdness of those two years. Knowing that I made a fool of myself. Knowing I acted really obnoxiously and selfishly. Knowing that my desire to be edgy made me the absolute epitome of cringe. Knowing that I put all my mental issues on display for everyone. It keeps making me want to EXPLAIN MYSELF. Explain how much pain I was in. Explain why I interact with people so weirdly. Explain that the climax of this weirdness was not my fault and I was hurt and I was wronged and it wasn’t okay.

I mean…I’ve said everything. I have said everything and all that’s left to do now is stop talking about it. Because we’re past the point of processing and onto ruminating. I hit ruminating a really long time ago.

I sort of went through this with my mom years ago. I kept raging and raging and explaining why she was wrong to do all of the stuff she did. I wrote a lot of stuff on the internet deep down hoping she’d stumble across it and feel so so bad for everything. I said a lot directly to her too. I kept trying to find the exact right combination fo words to convince her that I didn’t deserve the things she did. But she always had an excuse and when she didn’t have an excuse she said, “You’re being crazy. You’re having an episode.” So, yeah…she would say that instead of saying, “Sorry I used to drag you out of bed by your hair and scream that I hated you” or “Sorry for the time I left cuts all over you and I’m sorry you still have the scars and it’s part of you forever.” She never said that. She only says “You’re crazy. Leave me alone.”

And I wasn’t able to cut her off until I really REALLY told myself that she would never be sorry. She would never see the situation the way that I did. She can’t face what she’s done, so she won’t. And the more I was angry at her, the more she spun it “Jen is crazy.” And I did act crazy. Nobody in my family would just say “Hey! That shouldn’t have happened! You didn’t deserve it!” and I kept getting so angry that everyone would talk about me being “emotional” but nobody would talk about the things my mom did. It made me feel crazy and I acted crazy. It didn’t matter to anyone that she did some really horribly violent things to me and my sisters when we were kids. All that anyone saw was how erratic and emotionally unhinged I was.

I think what happened in 2020 was a massive blow to my already really low self-esteem. And it brought me right back to all the awful feelings my mom used to give me. Which is why for the past year, I’ve alternated between ranting about someone on the internet who used a sock account to mess with me and then ranting about my mom. Sometimes in the same posts.

It’s like that in my head too. I’m mad about that sock puppet event. Then I’m mad about my mom.

It’s difficult to sort out exactly why on this weird emotional level my brain has linked these two hurtful things together. I can’t think about one without thinking about the other.

The best that I can guess is that both of these people were people I desperately wanted attention and approval from, and both of them saw that desperation and used it to hurt me, and both of them gaslit me (went out of their way to get a reaction and then acted like I was crazy for having a reaction), and both of them-this is the important part-will never ever be sorry.

So this is my very last time talking about it…I hope. I don’t have great impulse control. I’m really going to try though.

I’m trying to tell myself that it’s okay if my mom is never sorry. I accepted that once, but this event in November of 2020 kicked all that anger right off again.

There are a lot of people who like me. I think I need to figure out how to like me. Or at least not actively hate myself all the time.

I think I’m staying stuck by allowing myself to vent my frustrations and emotions publicly, and trying again and again to EXPLAIN, to convince everyone who might be silently watching that I’m more than a train wreck, that I’m not a joke, that I’m a person and I’ve been through some stuff that I’m trying to get over it, and sometimes I’m stupid and selfish, but I’m trying to do better and I want for people to not be watching this and laughing at me. I really hate the thought of people laughing at me.

But that’s something I can’t control. And if people are laughing, I guess i shouldn’t care what they think. Because I know I never laugh at people when they’re in pain, even if they’re acting wild. I always feel bad for them and hope they get it together. I shouldn’t care about the opinion of anyone who doesn’t respond that way to people in emotional distress. I have to get over it.

So this is it (I hope).

Only books and such from now on.

And if you’re out reading this and you’ve seen a lot of it go down and you can see that I’m a person and you’re not laughing at me, then thanks.

That’s it.

And I’m going to go to therapy, although I’m incredibly distrustful of therapists and will probably quit after one session. But I’ll try it.

Okay

Sad/angry posts deleted.

I’m good.

I’m back to trying to feel okay again.

I have another new collab project.

Seriously, if anyone ever sees me go off and wants to help; just ask me to write a thing and it helps a lot.

Last year, one guy kept messaging me for help plotting his story when I was feeling down. It was very helpful.

Anyway, I’m good. We’re good.

I need to come up with a better way of letting stuff go. I have an awful habit of just holding onto events I ind hurtful for ever and ever ever and periodically getting upset about them all over again.

I’ve had a change of viewpoint

In 2020, I had my very cool public meltdown posting crying videos in my car. It’s not like I didn’t know I looked stupid and my feelings were not proportional to the situation. I tried to get it under control and in the end, I just didn’t, because I felt very very bad and for whatever reason, crying in front of a camera brought me some momentary relief from that emotional distress.

One thing I want to say about that whole period: I got some very mean comments from members of a certain community, a community I have since realized was never worth feeling any sympathy for (obv aside from the very small number of people from that community I’ve befriended-there are very few exceptions to the rule).

Like…I made videos crying about the extreme physical and emotional abuse I suffered as a kid. I talked about how my mom almost beat our dog to death with a chain in front of me when I was nine and how sometimes it feels like that is STILL happening. I talked about how my mom burned my two year old sister and Mary’s skin kept peeling off until finally my mom called an ambulance and we all had to lie about what happened.

I talked about all of that, openly, for the first time (yeah, I know I haven’t shut up about it since) and was told that I have female privilege and y’all actually have it worse, because you don’t have girlfriends….It didn’t hit me right away, but that was my first “Holy shit, I’m backing the baddies” moment.

I couldn’t believe that anybody would listen to me talk about some of the most terrifying and traumatic events in my life and respond with anger that a woman dare complain about anything. They were angry that a woman had anything to suffer over, because it detracts from the whole ‘female privilege’ narrative. It made me realize, I’d been trying to defend and offer sympathy to a community of people who don’t even view me as human. Suffering is human and to act like deeply traumatic things shouldn’t bother me, because I can get laid…People who have not experienced the level of trauma that I have telling me that as long as I can have sex, there’s nothing for me to complain over. All while they complain about stupid shit, like mild bullying in middle school. For that community, male emotions are valid and serious and female emotions are all worthy of derision. Because women are not fully human to them.

There were those comments, along with one other event that really shook me up. One of them that I thought was really great used a sock puppet to mess with me. I’m still mad over that. I was just so taken aback by that. I couldn’t believe that someone I’d thought so highly of would think so little of me that they’d go out of their way to mock me and mess with me. And then when called out, “She’s not a big deal to me.” Translation: “She was entertaining to fuck with, but I’m not gonna apologize for it, because I don’t care that she’s hurt. Hurting her was the point. It was fun. I’m not sorry. I enjoyed hurting her.”

That’s all I wanted to say.

Everybody who was worried and told me I was backing the wrong horse was completely right.

And I’m sorry to everyone who had their head bitten off by me in 2019/2020, as I Literally defended a group of people who made it their mission to hurt me when I was at my most emotionally vulnerable. Said “I’m having a moment, I need to get myself under control”-he used a sock puppet to mess with my head and laughed at me for getting upset about it. Posted very raw emotionally vulnerable videos was told to shut the fuck up, because women aren’t really human so have no right to any pain or trauma.

It’s taken a while to completely digest how very wrong I was about that community.

I feel bad for lonely people.

I do not feel bad for anyone who identities with a certain i-word. Anyone who calls themselves that has adopted a plethora of despicable attitudes and women can not help them, feel compassion for them, or seek to engage in sexual or romantic relationships with them, because they are so far gone and see women as the enemy so much, that all they want to do is hurt women. They also want to keep whining that women don’t like them. If women DO like them, they hate it because it gives them less to whine about. They’ve gotten to the point that they’re so addicted to their own misery, they don’t actually want relationships with women. They want to keep whining about how they don’t have relationships with women. They like being victims. Being kind or holding any of them in high esteem will be taken as weakness. They will be cruel if you try to interact with them positively.

What’s most annoying about having come to this conclusion (finally) is that it’s exactly what they wanted from the start. They want people, and especially women, to go full anti-incel. That’s why they’re so damn mean. They want everybody to hate them, so they can whine about how everyone hates them.

When I was eight, my mom came home with a bunch of fuzzy ...

When I was eight, my mom came home with a bunch of fuzzy cheetah-print fabric. I think she bought it at AC Moore. She spent the next two days ripping all the wallpaper down in her room and she covered the walls in this fuzzy craft store fur instead.

I think I was ten when she decided she would paint all the windows with images from Beauty and the Beast. They looked okay. But she still decided she hated them a few months later. She scraped the paint off most of the windows. But the ones in the back of the house, she just painted over them with black paint.

She bought a canopy bed when I was in 4th grade and she hung a bunch of feathered boas from it.

She would get into her mind out of nowhere that she needed something up in the attic. She’d pull the stepladder down and tell me to go up and find whatever it was. I’d spend hours crawling around in the dust with her getting increasingly irritated that I hadn’t yet found whatever trinket or piece of costume jewelry in the piles and piles of nonsense.

She had a cardboard cutout of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She kept it in her bedroom next to the computer.

She also had a bar light with Elvira on it. She’d gotten it from an actual bar, because that’s just the sort of person she is. She walked into a bar in Seaside Heights New Jersey, saw a neon bar light she liked and talked her way into taking it home. She also talked herself into being an extra in a music video once. She has no fear and just does and says whatever she wants.

People like her. She’s interesting and chaotic and people gravitate to her.

When she chaperoned my school field trip when I was ten, she had purple and black hair. She wore Black jeans and Harley Davidson boots and a belt with chains on it. Her black t-shirt had a big white pentagram on it. All the kids wanted to be in my group. Weirdly, they all listened to her. It was a really easy, fun day.

She loves Cher and Tina Turner. She would have moods when she put Cher or Tina Turner on and come find me and dance me around the house. But I always felt very tense and on edge when she did that. I really didn’t like when she was happy.

It felt so awful when she was happy, because I had to be so so careful not to mess it up. I always did. Always did something to set her off. I could never ever keep her happy.

She would get angry over things I’d never imagined could be a problem. I was always trying to guess what the rules were and the rules were always changing.

And everybody loved her. She laughs a lot and smiles a lot and she’s incredibly spontaneous.

She also screams a lot and cries a lot and breaks things a lot and, back then, used to berate me a lot. Used to get my younger sisters to berate me too. And I know there were times when she got me to berate them and I did it because I was glad it wasn’t me for once. I just don’t remember those moments as vividly.

She liked to watch old silent movies and sometimes I would watch them with her. I was always tense and I would tell myself in my head, “Don’t mess this up. Don’t say anything stupid. Don’t say anything wrong.”

I usually did though. It was impossible to predict what might be the wrong thing to say on any particular day.

I’m only sad because I know nothing will ever be fixed when it comes to my family, and I can’t just shut up and get over it. Other people get to be attached to their pasts. It’s like I’m not supposed to be. Like I’m supposed to forget the first 18 years I existed.

So many bad things happened and I have to think, at some point, this was still salvageable. At some point, we could have all moved past it.

I could forgive so many things. I’m not really a forgiving person, but I am with her. I could forgive all the times she yelled, told me she hated me, woke me up in the middle of the night to clean the house, threw me into walls, dragged me around by my hair, hit me in the face, kicked me, all of that I could forgive.

I really just can’t forgive that she, and everyone else in my family, keeps telling me I’m crazy. I’m not crazy, I’m traumatized. I just don’t think anybody who grew up like that would be emotionally stable and I think for everything I carry around in my head all the time, I actually do pretty well.

How do you raise somebody like that and then constantly make them feel bad that they aren’t the most emotionally stable?

It’s really really hurtful.

I can only control me and I can’t keep fixating on stuff I can’t change.

But I guess if I could change things; I’d just wnt everyone in my family to forget the past and treat each other well moving forward. So that we could all talk again. So we could see each other for holidays and be around each other.

That’s never going to happen though.

And it just makes me feel like nothing means anything. If family doesn’t mean anything and we all just never talk now, like what DOES mean anything? If that was nothing, then it seems like everything is nothing.

I haven’t talked to my younger sisters in years. And earlier this year I talked to my mom, but it was just like when I was kid, just sitting there tense, waiting to do something to set her off.

Everything feels very fake and awful. Everyone smiles when everything is terrible. That’s how it feels right now.

No Good Solution

I’ve been estranged from my mom for years, but I haven’t blocked her phone number. I have her blocked on all social media platforms. not that I use my real name online, but that’s paranoia I guess.

And the times that I’m not paranoid, something pops up to make me paranoid. Like the time in 2017 when I followed one of my paternal uncles on wattpad. Within hours my biological dad (his brother) had followed me. I have never met my biological dad. I’ve only spoken to him by email and over the phone a handful of times as a teenager. He’s an obnoxious, self-involved, superior sort of person. I don’t enjoy interacting with him, so I don’t.

For whatever reason, my lack of a relationship with him does not consciously bother me. I’m sure somewhere deep down in my subconscious, I’m all fucked up from not knowing my dad. But at a conscious level, I experience no emotional pain from not knowing him. I feel no gaping absence in my life. I just don’t care. And that’s not me putting on a brave face or whatever. Have y’all seen how much I whine about my mommy issues? Promise if I had daddy issues I was consciously aware of, y’all would hear all about it.

That being said, I don’t want to invite his energy into my life. What if there’s an emotion bomb ticking away in my head somewhere and interacting with him could set it off? Better not to risk it. Especially since I think he’s an obnoxious dickhead and I don’t enjoy speaking to him at all. That’s an all risk no reward situation. At the very best, a relationship with him would be draining and annoying.

So he was blocked on wattpad and so was my paternal uncle and to this day I don’t interact with that side of the family much online.

I don’t want a relationship with my biological dad. I never plan to meet him, and this does not make me sad. It doesn’t make me feel anything.

My mom on the other hand…I can not stop wanting her to love me and be proud of me. It’s really pathetic. I know it is. I know it is.

Well, I blocked her email. I have her blocked on everything. Except for my phone.

I mean, there were a few years she was blocked on my phone and I went a solid few years without talking to her at all.

Then one day I got a text from an unknown number. The text was very friendly, asking me how I was and if I was still writing. I figured it was a friend who got a new number. I answered and then said, “Who is though? lol sorry, I don’t have this number in my phone.”

The number kept chatting at me and didn’t answer the question.

I said. “No, seriously, who is this? I need to know who I’m talking to.”

They still did not answer. Only replied, “Glad you’re doing well. I miss you.”

I did a little bit of sleuthing (ie-calling my grandma to find out if my mom got a new number) and it was her.

Ever since then, she texts me from that number every year on my birthday. I usually ignore her. But every few years, I text back.

This year, I texted back.

We swapped pie recipes and she told me about her job and her pet bird and I started to go a little crazy.

We could really be close, like real mother-daughter, like in movies when people love each other, and she only lives like an hour away, we could see each other all the time and I could go visit her and we could go shopping and we could really really love each other and I could call her for advice.

And while all this was happening, I started to have these VERY STRONG feelings for a female streamer. Like not romantic feelings. But these awful platonic crush feelings that I get sometimes. And I joined her discord and tried to talk to her and spent literal hours trying to write some pithy, charming message that I could superchat to her during a stream.

I looked at all her pictures online and read every post I could find about her. One afternoon was devoted exclusively to reading horrible kiwi farms threads about her and getting irate on her behalf. I came pretty close to making an account specifically to whiteknight her.

The thing about this weird fixation on this woman was that as it got more intense, I was able to pull back from interacting with my mom. It was like the more I cared about this para-social thing, the less I cared about this very real thing.

Well, anti-climactic resolution: some very smart people told me to ease off creeping on this streamer AND to stop texting my mom. And for once in my life, I listened.

That was a tough week emotionally. Making myself stop looking at this streamer’s content, it felt like I was experiencing some real loss, even though logically, I knew that I wasn’t. Having that platonic crush felt so nice. I wanted to keep walking around with those warm, fuzzy butterflies. Brains and feelings are so irrational.

But now I can see that streamer without my feelings spinning out of control or ruminating on how to get her attention. And I’m back to ignoring my mom.

I haven’t blocked her yet. I think I’m going to.

Who knows though? I don’t know why cutting that last thread is so difficult for me.

It seems like everybody else has family they love and I don’t. I have no relationship with either of my parents or any of my siblings.

Sometimes I get really sad around this time of year. Some years I don’t get too sad. Some years I read a bunch of Christmas romance and watch a bunch of Hallmark movies and pretend everything is okay.

There is no good solution for people born into toxic families. You can either let them treat you terribly your entire life or you can cut them off. Either way, you never stop feeling like something really important is missing, or questioning that the choice you made was the right one.

Anyway, I’m sad this year.

I think I’ll be okay if I can just get a few more projects up and going. Keeping busy is the best thing to do.

Vella Updates! Gentle Femdom Time Travel Romance

Two people. Two ruined lives. One timeless romance. Shy, sarcastic, and smart, Cole is a sensitive heart and Ingrid feels a pull to protect him. Confident, take-charge, but sweet under all her bluster, Ingrid has a charm that draws Cole in. Leaning on each other, Cole and Ingrid must navigate the Middle Ages and their budding romance in a tumultuous tale of desire and destruction.

You can read the first three episodes for free (after that I get monies).

If you like erotic romance and time travel romance, but you’re not into alpha males and would rather see a cute little cinnamon roll man, here is this.

Sealed with a Kiss: The Least Masculine Shit Ever

Okay, this book….sigh Zoe Chant books are usually so cute and fun, but some of them really miss the mark for me. I think that’s the risk you run when a pen name is actually a collective of a bunch of authors. There are definitely a couple of them who have some real internalized misogyny to deal with.
Or maybe it’s just one-no idea. But Dancing Bearfoot, The Tiger Next Door, and now this one…ick, I have some venting to do.

What’s most upsetting about this book is that there really is so much to like about it, or at least…there’s so much that had the potential to be liked.

Let me explain, this book has role reversal/gentle femdom vibes.

“Cool, Jyvur, that’s your thing, so you loved it, right?”

Nope.

Because here is the thing: a submissive man should still be a man.

And look, I know some people don’t believe in gender and that’s fine. Live your life and do you. But I want to make it clear from the get-go that’s not the reality that I live in. I live in a reality where science has proven that trans-women have brains more similar to those of a cis-woman than a cis-man: therefore gender exists and affects the biochemistry of the brain.
There is a gender binary and trans people are a valid and real part of that gender binary, and non-binary people are also valid and should be respected, but just because some people don’t identify as being on the gender binary does not mean the gender binary doesn’t exist.
Just trying to save everybody the headache of telling me arguments I’ve already heard and do not agree with.

Now, why bring all of that up?

Because, while some people take this too far and don’t understand how broad categories like “masculinity” and “femininity” can truly be, a man should still be masculine. He should ahve core masculine traits. That doesn’t mean eating meat or having bulging muscles or holding frame or whatever other bullshit.

Even in a role reversal/femdom relationship, there are masculine qualities a man should have. For example, the most important quality a man should have is being a problem-solver not a whiner. When people read my gentle femdom romance, specifically women who aren’t into GFD, they often say things like “Wow, I liked this more than I thought I would. The hero was still…a man.” I might want to pin a man down and tell him he’s a good boy (and wash his hair and shave him and coo over him) but aside from all of that, he’s the man and I’m the woman.

Men provide women with security. That doesn’t mean being rich. That doesn’t mean you have to be a rippling 7 foot Chad. It only means being the sort of man that others can rely on. And yes, even guys who want to feel small and soft and get pegged can be the sort of man you can rely on. That’s masculinity: taking charge of situations. Being stoic about the things you can’t change and a go-getter about the things you can. Wallowing in self-pity is the least masculine thing a male could possibly do (if anybody paid any attention to my internet adventures of 2019/2020, you’ll know exactly which community of men I’ve had a revelation about, but we can’t talk about them because they’re the most Beetlejuice motherfuckers the internet has ever seen).

Why am I bringing all this up about a Zoe Chant book?

Because that whiney, pathetic little simp of a male lead….retch

Take a note, gentlemen. Nobody likes simps. Even women who want to dominate men don’t like simps. Have some fucking dignity. You’re a man.

The guy in this book just whined and cried in his head “Ohhhh poor meeee! She likes another guy!” and it’s one thing to be a little disappointed, but holy fuck, dude. That shit was nauseating.

And this has nothing to do with the book, but since I went and explained the least masculine shit ever, let’s talk about the least feminine shit ever.
I didn’t come up with this. I went to a man whose opinion I trust and I asked him, and after he explained it to me, I fully agree.

The least feminine shit ever is when women are super entitled and expect to be put up on a pedestal and have no appreciation for men. Ever check out the subreddit r/whereareallthegoodmen?
I think the reason men have such utter disgust for the women posted there is because they are behaving in so utterly un-feminine a way. “Must be 6’5 must spoil me. I don’t have time for games. You’d be lucky to have me.”

Dudes usually want to pile on those women for being old or overweight or having kids and expecting 7 foot Chads to come leaping out of the ether to sweep them off their feet and take them on adventures.

I’d argue (and the man whose opinion I trust agrees) that these women who, objectively, are not the best looking, and often have a good deal of baggage (debt, kids, exs, etc), could probably get a very decent man who fulfilled many of their desires, if they were a tad more feminine. That would mean respecting and admiring the men they date. Being thankful for what the men bring to their lives and not just expecting it like something owed to them.

That’s what men want from women, respect and admiration. So simply expecting men to kill themselves to please you, feeling entitled to it, and having no appreciation for it and thinking you’re owed 5 star meals and luxury vacations, THAT is the least feminine thing ever.

Women want men to give them physical security. Men want women to respect, admire, appreciate them.

Literally in a (sort of) GFD relationship and that is how it be. That’s the core of a hetero dynamic. Gender roles are certainly more fluid than trad-cons pretend, but not fluid enough to get away from that. So men gotta stop crying about the provider role and women got stop crying about “emotional labor.” Or I guess cry about it and be unhappy and possibly alone. I don’t care. I have thoughts that you can all ignore if you want.

Well, I’ve gotten all kinds of off topic.

Back to this book.

I liked that the heroine won the hero a prize at the fair. Absolutely adorable and right up my alley. I loved that in the piggyback race, she carried him. Super cute!

Role Reversal/GFD vibes is definitely off-brand for Zoe Chant, but I didn’t hate it. I did, however, really dislike the hero, because he was a spineless, whiney little simp and he did not have even an infinitesimal dose of masculinity.

His character felt like a female for the whole book. Which would be fine….if I wasn’t a hetero woman who likes to read hetero romance and thought that’s what I was signing up for.

The male lead doesn’t just whine and cry and simper, but he talks shit about women. Like…ew. What sort of a man gossips? Not just gossips, but about a woman? Gross.
If there’s one thing I don’t want to see in a man it’s cattiness.
Cat ears? Maybe. Cattiness. Gross. Yech yech yech.

Sorry, but no. I like that when I’m bitching to my husband about other women, he offers very neutral responses and listens to me vent to him, but doesn’t get sucked in. He isn’t one of my girlfriends. I don’t want to have the same relationship with him that I’d have with a female friend. I want masculinity around him. I’m hetero because I am sexually attracted to masculinity. Masculinity is much more broad than the trad-cons like to act. But it’s also just not quite as fluid as my fellow sexual deviants like to pretend.
I’m cool with men being shy, not making the first move, crying, wearing makeup, or taking it up the ass: but I’m gonna throw-up a little if you’re gossiping or whining. Those are incredibly un-masculine things to do. Being masculine is about being fairly stoic, calm, and problem-solving. Those are core masculine traits.
It’s not an insult to be feminine. But if I go to you for male-ness, then I’m going to be disappointed by female-ness.

The biggest issue with this book was how very female the male hero felt at every step of this plot. Even in a book with role reverse vibes, I need a man.

The other problem was that (just like in Dancing Bearfoot) we had two women competing for the same man.
First of all: stop that shit, I’m sick of seeing it in romance.
Secondly: over THIS GUY?? Over this pathetic, whiny simp? Wtf, why??

So he’s tall and has muscles. I’ll take a short man who doesn’t gossip or feel so fucking sorry for himself any damn day of the week.

The reason why women don’t want men who feel sorry for themselves is because we need to know we can rely on you. If I have a baby and my guy loses his job, I know he won’t let anything bad happen to our baby. He won’t throw himself on the couch and feel sorry for himself that he lost his job. He won’t come up with a slew of self-pitying excuses if I tell him I need him to find a new job. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even have to tell him. I can rely on him.
Women don’t want to end up stuck caring for infants AND men who can’t get their shit together. That’s why complaining and self-pity are such massive red flags and why confidence is such a green flag.

So I don’t even think this book was realistic. This guy was way too pathetic to garner the interest of even one female, let alone two.

Also, WHY is there always woman on woman hate in romance? I’m so damn sick of the bitchy/slutty arch nemesis who pops up to slingshot her pussy at the male lead just for manufactured conflict. Just so he can bat it away and shout “BEGONE THOT.”

Literally, I hate it. Throw the whole trope away.

To summarize, this book was one long pile of nonsense. It tried to do role reversal but fails, because the hero is spineless and gross and gossips like a high school female, not a grown man. We have more of the woman-on-woman competing for male attention hate that we see in a lot of romance (and a number of Zoe Chant books).

However, I did enjoy that the writer at least tried to get creative with the gender roles. There were a few funny jokes. I liked having a fair as a setting.

Two stars.

The Bookish Blog Tag

I snagged this tag from Reading by the Moonlight.

Top 3 Favorite Books of All TimeTremblay really disappointed me with Survivor Song, but HFOG is still one of my absolute favorite novels. It’s incredibly multi-layered, complex, and eerie.

Gruesome body horror blended with magical realism, existential angst around the burden of being in the provider role, and the general malaise that came with Modernism and the end of the 19th century: Kafka’s novella is brilliant and I could never get sick of reading it.

And here’s another writer who really disappointed me recently. She said something really ignorant about the harm caused by the pharmaceutical corporations in The Whispering Dead, a book I was disgusted to see has been nominated for the Goodreads Choice Awards 2021.

I probably won’t read any Darcy Coates books after seeing how careless she is about spreading ignorance. She literally makes a flippant joke about “Big Pharma” being a conspiracy theory. Yeah…I don’t think the thousands of people who have died from the opioid epidemic is a joke (many of them people who followed instructions and recommendations given to them by their doctors-who unfortunately had been influenced in a number of direct and insidious ways by the terrible and unethical practices of the pharmaceutical corporations).

Anyway, I really really loved The Haunting of Leigh Harker, but I’m way too disgusted by the way she was shilling for pharmaceutical companies, who are responsible for countless deaths and harm the most vulnerable populations, to ever read another book of hers again.

Top 3 Favorite Authors of All Time

Kafka, Anne M. Martin, V.C. Andrews.

I am combining questions 2 and 3, because I find unnecessarily focusing on gender condescending at best and harmful segregation at worst. New question is: Favorite Character of All Time

Gregor in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

Favorite Mythical World

Harry Potter’s magical world. I always wanted to go to Hogwarts as a kid.

What Book Has Your Favorite Cover?

I like basically all Zoe Chant covers, but Sealed with a Kiss might be my favorite, only because the seal looks so darn bashful.

What is your favorite book to movie adaptation?

I almost never watch movies if I’ve already seen the book. I might be the only Harry Potter fan who hasn’t watched the movies.

I do the reverse too. If I’ve seen the movie, I usually don’t want to read the book.

I think the only time I’ve ever wanted to watch an adaptation of books I’ve read is the recently released Wheel of Time series on amazon Prime. I dunno, I guess Daniel Green got me hyped for it. I don’t have amazon prime though *sobs*

If you could make any book into a movie, what would it be?

I don’t think books should be made into movies most of the time. Books aren’t movies in rough form. They are their own totally valid media.

What was your favorite childhood book?

The Babysitter’s Club. I had tons of these books and read and reread them over and over.

Okay, I tag anyone who feels like doing this tag.

WWW Weds: I Published Two Books This Week

This is a weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

What Did I Recently Finish Reading?

Does a collection I’m included in count? This week I had two anthologies launch. While we worked on these books over the course of 2021, I got the chance to read many of the stories at various points in their creation, but I didn’t get to read all of them, and I hadn’t read any of them in their final form (except for mine obviously).

I just finished reading through the entire collection. It’s awesome and I’m so glad I was included alongside so many talented authors!

I think my favorite is Pixie Stormcrow’s. It’s an erotic short set in her Playgrounds universe. I’ve read a number of different books set in the Playgrounds world. All of the characters’ stories intertwine and I think that’s why I love Pixie’s work so much

The safe word was “Prometheus” XD That had me dying. So clever.

Overall, this was a bit too brutal for my taste. I prefer gentle femdom and this is just femdom.

However, for the humor alone, this erotic short is worth the read.

I read another Zoe Chant book. I love these books and how wacky they are. This one had a whole subplot with alien crop circles and alien chasing youtubers. Chant books are like a Hallmark movie, except they have sex scenes and they’re on some complete other shit. Chant gives no fucks. All 12 of her give no fucks. She’ll throw whatever into a plot and all the readers better be here for it.

Mikayla Whitaker is a newish writer who has improved a great deal just in the short time I’ve known her. The world-building in this story is really interesting and this has the potential to be a really great story.

Since she’s a newish unestablished writer, I’m opting not to post my criticisms of the story publicly. I sent them to the author privately and, as always, she heard me out very graciously.

I think the biggest problem with the book is just that it isn’t ready to be a book yet. It needs more time to cook.

This isn’t a situation where I think the story is flawed down to the very foundation. It’s the opposite: I think the bones are very good and I think Whitaker has a lot of imagination and talent. However, it’s raw talent right now and in time, when she’s spent some years polishing that raw stone of talent, I think we’ll be looking at some really innovative oceanic fantasy.

What Am I Currently Reading?And now I’m on to this Zoe Chant book. I started out really NOT liking Zoe Chant. And then for some reason…I read another of her books. Then I was sort of torn on her. I kept reading and now, well, I’m hopelessly hooked.

They’re cute and formulaic enough to get the Hallmark effect, but they also always have some surprises in them. You might be able to predict all the basic plot beats, but Zoe Chant has no chill when it comes to the subplots.

In this one, for example, the hero was bitten by a hellhound and now blacks out and shifts into a hellhound and fucks his own life up. All while the heroine is cursed by a witch and can’t touch anyone without feeling intense pain.

I just love the combination of wholesome and wacky.

I’ll probably binge the rest of this book later today. Because I’m in a really bad mood today. For no good reason. I mean, I have a reason, but it’s stupid. So if anything will get me out of a really stupid bad mood, I think a Zoe Chant book will.

More about the terrible problems of the psych industry. Here’s a reminder that you’re not a mental health advocate if you aren’t talking about how to reform the mental health field and educating yourself on the rampant conflicts of interest.

The most vulnerable patients don’t need to be reminded about self-care. They aren’t middle class white ladies with a plethora of social and financial resources. What they need is to stop having their human rights violated. So shut up about bubble baths and taking “mental health days” and other privileged nonsense. Instead look into the standards of care in involuntary in-patient facilities, the overlap between the homeless and mentally ill, or how often law enforcement is involved with mental health interventions.

If you want to start somewhere easy, please spread some awareness about this page: This page consists of actual psych nurses mocking and saying vile things about psych patients.

A while back some folks on reddit came across this page and realized that many of the women mocking the mentally ill on this page were doing so with their real legal names. They tracked down linked in pages, passed them around, found facebook accounts-you get the picture.

I didn’t participate in this, but I did enjoy watching it go down.

If you’re gonna say evil, vile shit about a vulnerable population that you HOLD POWER OVER, then yeah, you deserve to get harassed and have your workplace called.

Also, whoever runs the page makes merch. MERCH. They make merchandise around the concept of mocking the mentally ill.

And they make memes like this-mocking traumatized children and reveling in them being restrained. Disgusting.

Burn out is not an excuse to act this way. If you are burnt out, quit.

But I’m starting to think a lot of nurses are just those catty, cruel sorts of women who enjoy punching down and abusing those they have power over.

I can’t think of any other reason why Involuntary Psych Memes would exist.

Yet, people want to roll their eyes when I tell them the nurses further traumatized me when I was in-patient for the first time at 14. They were horrible, nasty bullies. But I thought I just had an outside-the-norm experience. Now that I’ve seen this, I’m wondering if something about psych nursing attracts vile people.

Anyway, if you really care about mental health (and not just mild middle class mental health) then we could use a lot more awareness around the human rights violations taking place in-patient.

Just like with the erotica anthology, I didn’t get the chance to read every story while we were working on the book, so now that I have a physical copy in my hands, I’m reading the whole collection through. Again my favorite from the collection is Pixie Stormcrow’s story. It’s such a cute paranormal romance. The hero is Death and he falls in love with a dying human. It’s very cute and unique.

This book is very different from the types of books I usually read. It’s a story based on the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It’s very complex and layered, with a wide cast of characters and multiple POVs.

What Will I Read Next?

I need to finish reading Dracula. I took a break from it, because I’m struggling with this classic.

And I’ve got to jump back into reading Dark Lover, as I’m reading it for a discord book club.

And I have this arc I got from Booksprout that I need to read and review.

And lastly, I need to get back into reading the 4th book in the Bloodlines series, which I’ve been slowly making my way through for way too long now.

That’s it for me! Have you read any of these books? What are you reading this Weds? Let me know in the comments.

Open Submissions for a GFD Antho

Good Boy: A Gentle Femdom Anthology

Heya writer people! As a lot of you know, I was recently involved in two anthologies: Secrets and Love at First Sip. 

I had a really hard time of it in 2020 and early 2021 and I needed projects to work on so much. Keeping busy is so good for my mental health when I’m struggling. I’m so glad that Emily Hurricane invited me to take part in these projects, because I really believe having these collaborative opportunities helped me sort myself out and get back on my feet much quicker. So probably because these projects were such a lifeline for me during a really hard time, of course I have really positive emotions around the whole experience. I’m glad the books are published, but I’m also sad the project is over. 

Which is why (after talking it over with Emily Hurricane because let’s be honest-this was her idea and she has generously allowed me to use it myself) I’ve decided to run my own anthology project!

I really hope some of the writers who were involved with the original anthos will want to jump into this one. But I’m also opening this up to writers outside of that group. I want to fill a hole in the market. There is a lot of femdom smut, and of course there is sweet, tender romance. It’s very very rare that I find sweet, tender gentle femdom romance. All that “you pathetic little worm” stuff just isn’t my speed. 

If you need a quick overview of what gentle femdom is, here are some subreddits you can check out:

r/gentlefemdom

r/extragentlefemdom

Femdom is a power exchange with a woman in the dominant role. GFD differs from the sort of femdom that gets most often portrayed in mainstream media in that it isn’t brutal and usually doesn’t include pain, humiliation, or any extreme punishment. Although what counts as “pain and humiliation” can be subjective. Personally I think a bit of impact play (like light spanking) is okay and a teensy bit of tender humiliation (like “lay across my lap” or “kneel for me”) is also okay, depending on the sub. The point isn’t to arouse the male through feelings of shame/degradation. So if being spanked or asked to kneel makes a man feel shameful or degraded (which it would for plenty of men) then this isn’t GFD, it’s femdom. If it just gives the guy a little thrill and makes him feel more nurtured/treasured/taken care of then it’s GFD. It depends on the man and what his boundaries are. Same goes for pegging. If a man feels intense pain or feels degraded by being pegged, then we’re back to femdom. If a guy likes being pegged because it feels nice, makes him feel small and treasured in a really nice way, then it is GFD. 

Does all of that make sense? I’m saying you have some wiggle room with how intense the actual bdsm “scenes” can be, but it all comes down to the character motivations for engaging in those scenes and how they feel in the moment. 

Again, nothing wrong with getting off on extreme pain or being degraded. That just isn’t what gentle femdom is and if you want to write that then you’re aiming more for the regular femdom category. 

So listen, there is SO LITTLE romantic gentle femdom fiction! I say we write it

Want to apply to have a story included in this anthology?

Write a GFD erotic romance between 10k-25k words. Clean role reverse romance is also acceptable, as long as you’re okay with your work being included alongside more x-rated content. 

Standards for content:

-No dub-con: This means no irl power differentials. I’m aiming for clear, unencumbered, enthusiastic consent. 

-Absolutely no non-con. Nope nope to the rapemances. 

-Keep extreme sex acts out of the mix. While I did say there’s some wiggle room with impact play/humiliation, as a general rule if it requires a special sex tool it’s usually not GFD (pegging is the one clear exception to this). Please no sounding. And while other GFD lovers are fine with it, I’m going to have to say to cock-cages (edging and orgasm denial is fine as long as it meets the tone/vibe of GFD otherwise). No penis-shaming/humiliation. And no to cucking. It squiks me out too much and I can’t imagine that particular sex act being anything other than degrading. Obviously I can’t name every single sex act that can’t be included, but general rule of thumb: Does it require speciality tools you have to buy from a sex retailer? Does it have a degree of risk or draw blood/leave bruises? Probably too extreme for GFD in that case. 

–NMK, but feminization and cross-dressing is okay. Again, as long as it’s more of a tender thing, not a degradation thing. 

–There is some wiggle room with gender. Non-binary characters and M/M couples will be accepted if it otherwise meets the GFD criteria and we can alter the title/marketing accordingly. 

Hetero couples with a male dom will not be accepted. 

-the most common couple pairing for GFD is m/F. Next would be f/F. But I think we can get creative with gender and still keep true to the spirit of GFD. 

Deadline to submit story proposal: March 1st 2022. 

Completed stories would be preferred, but you also have the option to submit 50% of your first draft, along with an outline of the remainder of the story. 

Email it to jyvure@gmail.com by March 1st. 

Want to get involved before that and plan your story in a collaborative environment? DM Jyvur on discord for a link to the collaboration discord. I will be setting up channels specifically to chat about this project. 

If your story is not selected for the final anthology, you’ll still get the chance to plan your story with other writers and you’ll always have the option to self-pub your creation yourself. 

Wait wait wait….what do I get out of being involved in this antho?

Royalty splitting. We will split the royalties from the book among all contributorsWe all get to pool our resources together and combine our audiences (looky how well Secrets and Love at First Sip are already doing! We got reviews and sales! That’s the power of collaboration).The chance to learn from more experienced authors. If you’ve never self-pubbed before, you’ll get to see the ins and outs of the process and be guided through it, rather than fumbling blindly (like I had to do when I self-pubbed my first book)Help with marketing. Y’all see how solid the marketing was for Secrets and LAFS? We had a plethora of guest posts cross-promoted every which way. We had super sleek graphics (made by the very talented Pixie Stormcrow). It was just tight AF. One of the coolest aspects of being involved in those anthos for me was that the work of marketing for the launches was split up and never felt overwhelming. You won’t have to pay for the cover or editing

So there you have it!

Want to get involved? I’m pretty easy to get in touch with (I have no life). DM me wherever and I’ll be around to answer questions. 

Okay! Hope to see some sexy and sweet submissions come March!