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Sticky Post: Where Do I Start Reading?
I’ve just found your work and there’s a lot of it, where do I start? Welcome to my website! First off, my name is Johannes (Yo-Han-Ehz) T. Evans. I’m a gay, disabled, transgender man originally from Chepstow in the South of Wales, and I now live in Bradford in West Yorkshire, though for several years before now I lived in Galway, in the west of the Irish Republic. I’ve been writing for years, and you might actually already be familiar with my work – I’ve been on Tumblr under various URLs (before using my own name, JohannesTEvans, I was at…
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Why We Need To Write Essays
And more importantly, why they should be fun. Photo by the Pineapple Supply Co. via Unsplash. A thing I’ve become frustrated with in recent years is the increasingly prevailing idea that an essay is a piece of writing produced exclusively within the bounds of academia and/or on the pages of a broadsheet newspaper. An essay, at its core, is a piece of writing on a subject — typically, it poses an argument or interpretation by the author, especially in response to another piece of writing or media. Much of the time, these arguments and interpretations can involve critical analysis and consideration of a…
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A Man’s Choices Are Always A Woman’s Fault
Marty Robbins’ Devil Woman: an exercise in shifting blame. Devil Woman was first released in June 1962, written and performed by Marty Robbins, an American country artist. Even if you haven’t heard of Marty Robbins, you probably have heard his crooning before, either in Devil Woman or one of his other popular songs throughout the ’50s and ’60s. I love Devil Woman, it’s extremely catchy, but my absolute favourite thing about the song is the way that the narrator is actively attempting to manipulate and guilt-trip the recipient of the song — the titular Devil Woman. I don’t know anything about Marty Robbins’…
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I Want To Fuck The Monster
Monsterfuckery from a trans and disabled perspective. Content warnings in this post for discussions of gender dysphoria, especially body horror and pregnancy, and some chronic illness talk such as descriptions of an asthma attack. I don’t have the tweet and I categorically refuse to look it up, but when The Shape of Water was being discussed after its Oscar nomination a few years ago, I recall seeing a take from a heterosexual woman that was along the lines of, “Monster romances are appealing because they’re fantasies about taming (or maybe she said domesticating) a monster.” It was, I believe, one…
Event: Monstrous May, Kink: Pregnancy & Breeding, Theme: Body Horror & Transformation, Theme: Chronic Illness, Theme: Chronic Pain, Theme: Disability, Theme: Gender Exploration & Nonconformity, Theme: Identity & Personality, Theme: Monsters & Monsterfucking, Theme: Sex & Sexuality, Theme: Transgenderism, Theme: Transmasculinity -
The #MonstrousMayChallenge 2021
Want to make a monster? This is the full write-up for the #MonstrousMayChallenge — for every day of the month of May 2021, there’ll be a new prompt all to do with creating monsters and monster-centric stories! You can either go directly off of the prompts themselves, or if you want a little more inspiration, you can come check this post for more in-depth exploration of the idea in question. Feel free to pick and mix the prompts you like best, to skip any prompts that don’t suit you, or to swap in prompts of your own if you like — every 3rd day is…
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#MonstrousMayChallenge 2021 FAQ
Some Frequently Asked Questions for the #MonstrousMayChallenge! Help, I clicked on this out of curiosity and have no idea what the #MonstrousMayChallenge is! The 2021 #MonstrousMayChallenge is a series of creator prompts for every day of the month of May, from the 1st up to the 31st! Each day of the challenge has its own prompt themed about creating or building on monsters, whether they be new or classic, whether people are interested in making fiction, art, or something else entirely! Check out the write-up here, which includes further descriptions and alternatives for each prompt: Help, I want to take…
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The Boatswain’s Hook
Serial. Captain Hook and Smee are forced to retire after Hook becomes ill. Photo by Zoltan Tasi via Unsplash. In bringing new Lost Boys back to Neverland, Peter Pan brings something else, too, and Spanish Flu wreaks a deathly effect on Hook’s crew. In the aftermath, the Jolly Roger comes for the last time to England, and Hook faces the most frightening adventure of his life: retirement. The Boatswain’s Hook is a loose sequel following the events of the classic book by JM Barrie, Peter Pan, but it can of course be read standalone with little to no knowledge of the…
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Knotting
Erotic short. A werewolf ties with his lover. Photo by Engin Akyurt via Unsplash. I did a random Twitter poll thread asking people to choose between two kinks. Knotting won over tentacles. Will be doing a short for each of the winners! Explicit M/NB short between a cis werewolf and a nonbinary person who uses they/them pronouns. 1400 words. Kinks included are knotting, size kink and size difference, some emphasis on monstrous transformation in regards to lycanthropy (teeth, claws, hair, muscle changes), rough sex, sex face to face. Terms used for Fran’s genitalia are cunt and clit. “On your back?” asked…
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Comes In Threes
Fantasy short. Prince Arthur comes upon a boy in the woods. The meeting of my King Arthur and Myrddin Wyllt. It was a sunny morning, and Arthur sat alone in the palace gardens where the meadow stretched out ahead of him, the carpet of wildflowers and free-growing herbs disappearing underneath the shadow of the tree canopy. The forests about Camelot’s edges were dense and thick, and they made it almost impossible to invade from any direction, unless every member of one’s army already knew them, had grown up in them. Like any dense woodland, of course, they had their boundaries, there…
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Who said that?: A Dialogue Guide
Crafting unique, distinctive voices for each and every character. Writing individual character voices is one of those skills where the best way to learn is by listening, but the problem with advice that amounts to “Just listen!” is knowing precisely what you’re listening for. Dialogue in fiction, regardless of the medium, can be difficult in itself to craft — in writing a dialogue between characters, you want to write speech that reads as natural to how real people talk to one another, but also does what you need it to within the text, whether that’s to drive the plot forward, to show…
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Why is Aziraphale so gay?
Analysis of Aziraphale’s characterisation in Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. This meta essay was originally written and published on Tumblr and Ao3 in 2019 — it’s silly and written as much for humour as it is for textual analysis, with curse words and sarcastic comments, and I’m afraid it’s not terribly academic, but I came across it as I was digging through other stuff and thought it’d be fun to repost. I tried in vain to hyperlink my footnotes, but unfortunately Medium refused me at every turn, and it would be too dense to embed all my citations in the…
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Letters to the Dead
A tale from a gravedigger. This is a work of horror fiction in four parts, written to resemble diarised blog posts. Originally published on /r/NoSleep. CW for homophobia, grief, potential mental illness. Part 1 This story has been a long time in the making. I’ve been meaning to write it down for years now, because it still… Well, I suppose to say that it haunts me is the wrong word, or maybe precisely the right one, but I’ve been meaning to write it down, and it’s just never been the right time, or I’ve never been able to sit down…
POV: First Person, Publication: /r/NoSleep, Theme: Cats, Theme: Christians & Christianity, Theme: Diaries & Epistolary, Theme: Disability, Theme: Family Dynamics, Theme: Getting Old, Theme: Ghosts & Necromancy, Theme: Gravediggers & Executioners, Theme: Homophobia, Theme: Men Who Love Men | Homosexuality, Theme: Mental Illness, Theme: Messengers & Postmen, Theme: Obsession, Theme: Priests & Clerics & Devotees, Theme: Scars & Permanent Injuries, Theme: Temples & Places of Worship -
Letters from Ganymede: Friday 28th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Friday 28th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, I wish, you know, that I could save the sound of the rain on the glass roof of the studio here, and send it onto you, that you could play it from a music box or suchlike, Mr Smith. It is better to be out in it than to have the glass between its sweet kiss and one’s skin, but the sound it makes really is…
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It’s Your Responsibility to Kill Yourself
and other interesting viewpoints in The Haunting of Bly Manor. A still from the opening credits. From Wikipedia. Before I get on with this review, I would just like to note that this will, of course, be incredibly spoiler-heavy for The Haunting of Bly Manor, Mike Flanagan’s spiritual sequel to the The Haunting of Hill House, and you should not read on if you want to go into it without any prior knowledge. I would also note trigger warnings for themes of suicide and murder, particularly murder of sick loved ones, violence, mentions of CSA and societal attitudes toward it, and…
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Writing Dialogue
A technical primer denoting some rules and conventions. For many of us, we internalise the rules of writing by reading — by sheer osmosis, we take them in, and we replicate them in our own work, often without even realising. When it comes to technical rules, though, it can be difficult to grasp them intuitively because they’re tethered to other rules of grammar we might not entirely understand, and dialogue is one of those difficult things to get. For years, I struggled to understand a lot of dialogue rules, and subsequently stuff I’ve written as recently as two or three years ago…
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Letters from Ganymede: Monday 24th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Monday 24th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, I fear you will think me a terrible slut, sir, but I have spent the whole of the day in bed. Since my marble arrived Tuesday morning, I have spent every day in a sort of desperate fervour — I have filled at least fifty or sixty pages with sketches of my marble, imagining what I can bring from beneath its surface. You have sent but a block…
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Letters from Ganymede: Tuesday 18th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Tuesday 18th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, I do not recall asking for a bath to be run for me, you know. I think I must have murmured my intentions aloud at some stage, or perhaps somehow made known my desires without meaning to, observed and not realising the fact, and at no point did I leave a note or some such for the servants. I had intended to run the bath myself.…
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Close Your Mouth & To The Blind Man
Two poems. Close Your Mouth (for G.) Close your mouth.Your teeth are showing, sharp as moonlight,And you will cut yourself on them. Close your mouth.Once again, the bar is closing,The lights turning off one by one,The coins rattling in their tray as Holly tocks them up.Your lips are parted as you finish up your drink and droplets,clinging to our lip like so much nectar catch the light beforeyour tongue draws them in. Close your mouth. Do you ever stop talking?Word after word drips from your mouth:You talk of mead halls and old songs,Traffics and tax fraud,Polished swords and nursery rhymes.Are you so…