❓Week 1 (June 1-7) - "Is sexuality suppressed or celebrated in your setting? Is the setting erotic in its own right?"
(All my answers are for my story, "how can Heaven love me," which you can read a bit about here: https://vsitante.neocities.org/heaven )
- Uhhhhh, I. Guess it depends...?
I feel like I might be moving a goal post of sorts but it's neither suppressed or celebrated, it's just there. It's more suppressed or celebrated depending on the location where the story takes place.
If I were to write about Astemar's mixed childhood (in a certain era) in two countries, it's a mix; with Puerto Rico in her time being a "nobody wants to know" vibe (suppressed?) while simultaneously everyone being okay with little girls *sometimes* wearing skirts so short, you see their panties, and then when asked about, you know, maybe consider wearing short pants, you get the whole BUT IT'S (weather) HOT spiel. In a country where most ppl wear long pants all year. Sure.
Or you get pegged as a prude for some reason because you're suppressing someone's expression. That has its limits imo but I've always been a boomer, so.
Nothing to do with sexuality to be fair, but it's more in that vein of "be consistent about appearances that cross over into it"? Idk this is a hard question lol. Because I'm also seeing this as, eg, Magnus is very private about his bisexuality but he's not ashamed of it. He wouldn't yell it out on the streets in Puerto Rico or Cuba but you might see him at a seedy underground bar in any country lol. His buddies from old days know. But nobody SAYS it. Part of it IS influenced by two axis points in his childhood (libertine parents in the US vs grandma in Cuba)...but who knows, really?
Whereas Astemar will never tell anyone what she is because lmao what are you, nuts, that can be used against her, why would you even entertain the notion.
(She's had a lot of... stuff...happen...at too early an age that she just keeps personal things hidden a lot. Plus, she's ace/demi, so it's also "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE ACE, YOU CAN'T BE ACE, YOU HAVE KIDS AND ALSO LATINA, AREN'T ALL LATINAS SEX-STARVED")
(pants after capslock)
Astemar wouldn't suppress sexuality expressed in her asteluxe group or adjacent, which is why she lets Magnus' expressions fly by lol. This is half influenced by her friends being a variety of backgrounds, including outer space ones, and half influenced by how far asteluxe has reached, music-wise. A real live and let live lifer.
(I haven't mentioned Max or anyone else mainly because Magnus and Astemar, for me, are the two ends of a spectrum that better fit questions like this.)
The setting isn't really erotic unless the characters make it so. That said, whenever Astemar has to transform into her beast form as a last resort in battle, if she finds herself with Magnus afterwards, it's immediately erotic. Tensions swivel between "I hate her (form)" and "please mommy let's fuck" 
Magnus was originally attracted to her because of her immense power as a magical girl (term used for reference, she's an adult by the time she meets Magnus), but cannot grok with the twisted version of that power. But Beast!Astemar is Astemar without even less filters, so she knows exactly how to wind him up into a tizzy--almost payback for how "pushy" sexually he can be with/at her at times.
#EroticMusings #howCanHeavenLoveMe
Viy Sitante @ health "break"
/jokingly
Well, technically the second and third picture are about 3-4 months old...which is already "too old," right? XD
