#and I can barely form coherent thoughts about my favourite characters normally

[paintedface]

my heart is his

summary: lance has always made it clear that one of his favourite things is sex, which leaves you scared to tell him about your sexuality.

pairing: lance tucker x reader

word count: 879 words

warnings: a lil angst, but mostly fluff

notes: this is the second in my ‘pride’ series! I thought that lance would be a really good one to do it with, considering his character. also ahhh, i’m not ace, so hopefully this is okay for y’all who are! 

also, I’m going away to europe in a few days, which is kinda starting my hiatus, but hopefully I’ll be able to queue some things!

Permanent Tags are OPEN | masterlist

You were scared to tell him. Hell, it was one of his favourite things in the world, and you were about to rip it away from him. But you need to tell him sooner rather than later. And if he didn’t want you after that...then that’s not your fault. Was it?

“Hey baby doll, I’m home.” Lance says, his eyes lighting up at the sight of you on the couch, curled up in a blanket.

“Hi.” You say shortly, your nerves almost cutting off your sentence. His eyebrows furrow as he drops his keys onto the hall stand.

“You alright, doll?” His voice changes from teasing to a little more gentle, coming to sit on the arm of the sofa. You tense instantly, because god, you really do have to tell him.

“I…” You pause, tilting your head up to look at him nervously. You can feel stupid tears pricking at your eyes as all you see in his is adoration.

He brushes a stray lock of hair from your skin, his face falling at the sight of tears forming in your eyes. “Doll, talk to me. What’s up?”

You have to get it over and done with before you start crying so hard that you aren’t coherent.

“I’m asexual. I-I don’t h-have sexual attraction to anyone and I hope that doesn’t change...” You trail off when you see his face begin to twist into something you can’t bear to see. Confusion, anger, betrayal, disgust, and your heart begins to pick up.

“I-I’m sorry.” You manage to choke out, before dashing out of the living room and into your bedroom, shutting the door with quivering hands. You didn’t want to see what his expression would develop into. 

Fuck, now he’s gonna dump you, you shut your eyes tight, clutching a pillow to your chest. You love Lance, so much, and it would hurt you so goddamn much if he left you. But you did sort of expect him to be unwilling to let go of one his favourite things in the world - sex.

A few minutes tick by, and there’s radio silence. What if he left already? a niggling voice says at the back of your mind, and you let out a soft sob at the thought.

Suddenly, a quiet knock sounds on the door and you jump, your breath hitching.

“Y/N? Baby doll?”

You sit up straight at the use of your pet name, before you hear Lance clear his throat.

“I...can I come in?”

You nod, before realising that he can’t see you. “Y-yes.” Your voice cracks a little, but he comes in regardless.

He doesn’t look angry, and doesn’t have that expression on his face that you had seen the beginnings of earlier. Lance sits next to you, and doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around you, to your surprise.

After a few moments of quiet, he tilts your head towards him. “Hey, I’m sorry I made that...that face earlier. I didn’t mean to look like I was disgusted, because fuck, baby, I’m not disgusted at all.”

“Really?” You can’t help but say, and he smiles, pressing a kiss to the tip of your nose.

“No, never. I’m just disgusted at myself, for forcing you into doing it when you didn’t…”

You shake your head vigorously. “No, you didn’t force me, Lance. You did nothing wrong, it was me that...that was wrong.”

He huffs, pulling you closer. “Baby girl, you’re not wrong at all. Asexuality is perfectly normal, so is aromanticism and all those other things. I was just a little...shocked, is all.” He gives you a rueful smile, and you can feel yourself relax, every second that passes.

“You seem to know a lot about these things.”

Lance shrugs, hand slowly carding through your hair. “Yeah, well, my gymnastics team is made up of teenage girls, I gotta know some things about it.” He says breezily.

“So...you won’t leave me?” You ask quietly, and you can see his eyes widen as he inhales sharply.

“What? Why the hell would I leave you, baby girl?” His voice is bordering on having an edge, as if appalled by the idea.

You drag your gaze away from his, looking down at your lap. “B-because I don’t really enjoy h-having sex, and that’s-that’s one of your favourite things to do. Also because I’m not...sexually attracted to you.”

“Oh, baby.” He breathes, at the sound of your shaky voice, and he gently kisses your hair. “Yes, I do like it, but it isn’t everything. I’d rather have you, my beautiful girl, than all the orgasms in the world.”

“Lance!” You exclaim at his words and he chuckles, rolling his eyes.

“You get my drift. But honestly, baby, I literally do not care less about sex, when I have you in my arms. You’re more than enough. And I don’t know why you’d think otherwise.” He says softly, pulling off his track jacket to wrap it around your bare shoulders.

“Thank you, Lancey.”

Lance’s smile widens. “Don’t thank me, thank you for telling me, doll. I wouldn’t survive without you.” He kisses you, his lips moving against yours and you sigh contently.

“I think you would.” You breathe, after pulling away.

He shakes his head, grinning. “No, I would not.”

permanent tags (possibly closing): @vibranium-arm​ / @gallifreyansass​ / @omalleysgirl22​​ / @girlwith100names​​ / @buckysinthesinbin​ / @petersneds / @buckyofthemyscira​​ / @iamwarrenspeace​​ / @alohabucky / @cuddlysteven​​ / @buckybarnesappreciationsociety​​ / @debbielovesbucky​​ / @metal-armed-dino​​ / @helloitscrowley​​ / @sebastian-stans-thighs​​ / @fantastic-fantasy-fanfics​​ / @lorna-danee ​ / @feelmyroarrrr​ / @mjuikoli​ / @megan-atthedisco​ / @yoyolovesbucky / @sebbies / @carriefish-er / @jurassicbarnes / @ssweet-empowerment / @shieldagentofthemonth / @palaiasaurus64 / @i-love-superhero / @andiewinneris / @ailynalonso15 / @bywonater / @vanillaicecrusher / @titty-teetee / @breezy1415 / @the-geeky-engineer / @mercedesbarnes / @bioticgoddess / @thewonderfulworldofafangirl / @realgreglestrade / @memory-of-a-goldfish / @amynotsantiago / @bandbooktvaddict / @edgyroses / @buckysmaingirl / @thefridgeismybestie / @cumonbucky / @untimelyideasforstories / @ridingmoxley / @jadalecki-jackles / @peters-vlogs / @em--z / @hdthdthdt / @thefridgeismybestie / @jamie-leah / @heyrogers / @ivy-16-18 / @marvlemarvlemarvlemarvle / @nephilimseb / @saveyourbucky / @wonderless-screwup / @rashinyx2002 / @httpmcrvel / @thunderous-flower / @buckys-newarm / @cordysblog / @swanky-batman / @bythebloodofafangirl / @disneymarina / @whyisbuckyso / @katiekitty261 / @plaid-skirt / @stan-by-me / @samwinchxtr / @mypage-myfandoms / @its-daydreamer23 / @goldenkillmonger / @savonid / @ohhhotstan / @softlysgtbarnes / @perksofeatingbacon / @sweet-barnes / @clever-theorist-painter / @thesergeantandstevie / @hewassortapunkroque / @rosescentedblood / @swtltlmrvlgrl / @thisismysecrethappyplace / @sydm15 / @jitterbuck / @impossiblyteenagestudent96400 / @winters-beauty / @marvel-biatch / @ultimategalaxyprogram / @southsidesserpent / @pamskkyy

(strike through means I couldn't tag you, sorry!)​

[miasswier]

own voices and mlm fandom

I’ve been thinking a lot about mlm fandom and what an interesting phenomenon it is, and how that translates into original LGBTQ fiction. This is long and rambly and maybe not that coherent, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I just need to get it out.

For a very large amount of my fandom life, I exclusively shipped slash ships. I mean, my first big fandom was Glee, and Darren Criss joining was the reason that I started the show in the first place, so I sort of fell into the Klaine ship and the adjoining fandom pretty easily. They were my first official ship, and honestly, I’m still really fond of them. They’ll hold a special place in my heart forever.

The thing is, I never really realized it at the time, but for my first few years in fandom I always found myself gravitating toward mlm ships. Klaine, Wennet, Sterek, Fervid. I used to watch hours of clips on youtube detailing the storylines of mlm couples on TV shows. There were several shows I watched exclusively because I knew there were mlm couples on there (The Carrie Diaries is one example, where I only sought it out after seeing gifsets of Wennet on my dash). It wasn’t even a conscious thing, it just happened.

What’s interesting for me, thinking in retrospect about this all, is that I identified very strongly as straight at this point in my life. Oh, sure, I was questioning, but I was in a bit of a boy crazy period, and to me that implied that I had to be straight (there was also the fact that I didn’t think I could ever see myself dating a girl; I later realized that I couldn’t see myself dating a guy either, because I just couldn’t see myself dating anybody).

I used to say some really iffy things, which again, retrospect. I was a budding little feminist, and I was just becoming a sexual being (I was… fourteen or fifteen when I joined fandom?), so I was all about normalizing girls as agents of their own sexuality. A big thing for me was this totally false stereotype that women didn’t watch porn. I remember so many conversations I’d have with male friends that would always end up the same way – “but porn isn’t aimed at women, so why would they watch it?”. I, being completely self-taught and very young and naïve, always had the same response (which I thought was oh-so-clever): “gay porn. Porn aimed at women is gay porn.”

YIKES. But as I’ve been thinking a lot about the issues I’ve only seen within mlm fandom since somewhat distancing myself from it, this is actually a really common thought for a lot of straight women. Because the thing is, a really strange thing has happened with mlm fandom, and it’s not something that I think anybody could have ever predicted.

Somehow, mlm fandom has become about women. To the point where it’s almost exclusively about women. I mean, think about it. I don’t know any major mlm fandom that isn’t at least 90% female. Even when I think about the Klaine fandom, I think I can think of… four? Maybe five? Klaine fans that aren’t female. And it’s one of those things where because so much of mlm fandom is female it begins to just be thought of as this female thing. I mean, geez, how many conversations have I had with people in fandom where I discuss whether Kurt or Blaine is the top in their relationship. All of those conversations happen amongst females. And honestly, most of the women in mlm fandom are straight.

It’s gotten to the point where mlm fans are almost excluded from mlm fandom spaces. I recently saw a post (which is what sort of formed the connection between several thoughts that I’d had floating around for a while) where a mlm fan was requesting that mlm authors specifically tag the fic they write with “mlm author” so that they could find stories written about mlm by mlm. I went on this person’s blog and they’d made a post that it was gaining traction, and thus far there were about 21 fics on AO3 tagged “mlm author”.

Let’s think about that. Twenty-one fics. That’s it. I know it’s a new tag and all, but jeez. Twenty-one fics. Out of how many fucking mlm stories out there? Like, holy shit. That is an infinitesimal number. It’s actually really embarrassing.

And it’s not mlm authors fault. How could it be? I mean, I remember reading one Klaine fic forever ago, and it really challenged the way I saw Kurt and Blaine. They weren’t written the way I, or most other authors wrote them. They were a lot more nuanced, a lot more complex, and the author explored issues within their gender and sexuality that I had never seen explored in fanfic before. And like, I remember reading that story and genuinely feeling like it wasn’t for me. I wasn’t the target audience for this story, because the target audience for it were mlm’s. It made me feel uncomfortable, and so I stopped reading it.

(A small side-note here, I did try and pick this particular fic back up a few months ago, but stopped once again because the author included several references to Kurt’s situation as a white gay male being worse off than Mercedes situation as a black female. The way it was written didn’t feel like “Kurt feels this way but he is uninformed”; it was more “Kurt is gay and Mercedes is straight and therefore she doesn’t understand oppression at all”, and it really felt like that was how the author felt. It was especially iffy since the story was set in like, the 1960’s.)

The point is, mlm fandom content has become this thing that is created by women for women. A lot of it comes from straight women, too.

The biggest issue with this is that it becomes inaccessible to actual mlm individuals. It’s been made so clear throughout years and years and years that mlm fandom isn’t for mlm. How fucked up is that? And like, I’m sure that anybody who may see this who is deep in mlm fandom would instantly protest. No it’s not!!!!!!!!! I am so accepting!!!!!!!! I am an Ally!!!!!!!!!! But really, think about it. In all your time in fandom, how many mlm people have you actually interacted with? And of those people, how many have you had positive interactions with? Because holy shit, I remember one mlm fan who got into so many fucking fights with straight fans, where the straight fans would shut him the fuck down. He criticized how they portrayed a mlm couple and they wouldn’t have it. They told him he knew nothing and blocked him. Let me repeat that: straight women told a mlm fan that they knew more about mlm relationships than he did. Like, what the literal fuck!!!

And like, here’s the thing. I actually know of quite a few wlw who are very deep in mlm fandom. In fact, a lot of the Klaine blogs I still follow are run by wlw because a lot of the ones run by straight women just make me too damn uncomfortable (I know I still follow a few, though). Most of these wlw do present more nuanced views of mlm relationships, in the way that only fellow queer people really can, but, I mean, at the end of the day we’re still wlw. We’re not mlm.

(Another side-note is how interesting I’ve found it to see all these wlw Klaine fans go from mlm fandom to mlm fandom. They’re just as deeply stuck in mlm fandom as women are, which absolutely blows my mind. I think there’s maybe two wlw run Klaine blogs that I follow that seem to have any interest at all in femslash. It’s honestly the weirdest phenomena.)

What’s interesting to me about all of this is how it plays into the writing of original fiction, which I know feels like I’m swerving a bit, but bare with me.

So, if you’ve been following me long enough, you’ll know that I’ve had some very serious issues with a publishing company called Interlude Press. I haven’t spoken about them a lot lately because the last time I made a post it garnered the attention of someone who informed me that the IP family had recently suffered a death, and this person believed that I was trying to “hit them while they’re down”. That wasn’t the case at all, as I am very removed from IP and don’t follow any of their authors, or people who buy their books (I think there may be a few that I still follow, but like with the straight female mlm fans, they’re rare). Still, I wanted to be respectful, so I backed off.

Why am I bringing up Interlude Press? Because they’ve come back into my radar recently in a totally different way than before.

See, over the past year or so I’ve started following several LGBTQ book blogs. I think I follow four or five. Recently, some of IP’s books have started to make appearances on these blogs.

Here’s the interesting thing about it: it’s only the books written by their wlw authors about wlw characters that make it onto these blogs.

My biggest issue with IP was that they called themselves an LGBTQ publisher, but only published books about cis gay mlm. I think it was a good year into their publishing career before they even published a book that featured a cis bi mlm protagonist. Like, it was really, really obvious that they were not an LGBTQ publisher; they were a cis mlm publisher.

The thing about that is that almost every single author they brought on board? Female.

I’m serious. That publishing company is filled to the brim with female authors. Yeah, some are wlw, but a lot of them aren’t. So, here you have an LGBTQ publishing company that only publishes novels about mlm couples, but all their writers are female. Do you see why I had issues with them?

In a way, though, they came by it honestly. IP started because the people who run it wanted to publish some of their favourite Klaine fanfictions as original novels. We’ve already established that mlm fandom is this woman-run operation that gets to the point where it almost excludes mlm fans. Is it really that surprising that all of their authors were female, and all of them wanted to write about mlm’s?

But now, here they are. They’ve finally started publishing wlw stories written by their wlw authors. And guess what? Those are the stories that are making it only LGBTQ book blogs. Those are the stories people are hearing about. I recently saw a post on one LGBTQ book blog about a talk some authors are doing, and several of IP authors were on there. The one the blog singled out? C.B. Lee, a wlw whose wlw story is the one that has put her back on my radar (she is also the one who wrote the first bisexual mlm character for IP).

What I’m getting at throughout all of this is – Own Voices. Although there are quite a few mlm original stories that are written by women, the one’s that I’ve found I enjoy the most, the ones that actually make me feel connected to the characters, are the ones I’ve read written by mlm authors. It’s the same with wlw original stories. Because here’s the thing -- mlm authors are always going to understand what being a mlm individual is like WAY more than female authors (even wlw ones) will.

Fandom is a strange place, a place where mlm content is produced and consumed almost entirely by women. But original content? That’s a different ball game. And sure, there are a lot of women who exclusively read and write mlm stories, but often those stories aren’t the ones that make splashes within the LGBTQ community. At least not as far as I’ve seen.

This is honestly such an incoherent mess, and I don’t know if I’m even trying to make a point with all this, but I just had to get it all written down.

One final note before I go to take a nap. For the past several years I’ve found myself drifting further and further into femslash fandom, to the point where I barely ship any mlm couples anymore (I think Klaine may be the only one atm). It’s been tough, since there’s a lot less content than there is for mlm couples; even the popular wlw couples get way less content (I know I bitch and whine about holtzbert a lot, but even they have an abysmally low amount of fic considering they’re the biggest ship in the GB fandom – especially when you compare them to popular mlm ships like Sterek or Johnlock or Destiel). But honestly? I feel so at home here. Almost every person I’ve met through femslash fandom is also a wlw. Do you know how wonderful it is to exist in a fandom where you’re writing about characters like you, and reading stories written by people who are also like those characters? You would not believe the difference it makes reading wlw fics written by wlw, as opposed to mlm fics written by wlw or straight women.

Own Voices, man. They’re important as fuck.