Pink Pony Club + Writing Updates for February

Al asked me to go to the Pink Pony Club event at kink night -- he said there was a guy who frequents those events who ghosted him recently (because the dude is straight) and he didn't want to go alone. So after work + a quick hangout with my parents + watching half of The Name of the Rose 1986 I walked down to the Pink Pony Club, which is just down the street from my house, five-minute walk. Cold as fuck though!

Al was wearing his pup mask and tail, and it was basically just like all the kink events I used to go to with my ex-wife. Socially awkward, weird mix of sexual bravery and social cowardice XD They had me sign a consent form/"I am not law enforcement, I will not record anybody" contract, though, so it was definitely more organized then the Hawaii kink events! Those were usually just casual hang-outs in somebody's house. There was a stage with a crossbar and sawhorse, plus tools and cleaning materials for everyone to use. I asked Al what he wanted to do -- like, meet some new friends? And he said yes, so we went over to a young trans guy named James and introduced ourselves, sat with him for a while and watched some trans girls do rope bondage onstage. 

Things were fun up until the stage cleared out. We had a pretty big group sitting with us -- not super talkative, but hey. And someone brought a cattleprod, so we all went around trying it out and seeing who was most sensitive. Then the stage just sat empty, and people started drifting into other groups. Al and I went up and tested out all the floggers and switches, and for the last 30 minutes or so, we stood alone in the corner, with Al resting his head on the cocktail table and me bopping solo to HOT TO GO. 

Of course, I didn't realize Al was literally CRYING AT THE CLUB at this point because he was wearing a PUP MASK. 

He asked to go, I mosied out into the snowy parking lot to smoke a cigarette, and the night ended with me awkwardly holding my cigarette aloft while Al cried on my shoulder in his pup mask because nobody would flirt with him. Then I walked home! Lol. 

February Writing Log:

- S17 E120, a short story for the Dr. Phil horror zine that explores Phil's abominable views on disability; 1500 words;
- Rabbit Hutch, for the Nuclear Family anthology, 2258 words;
- And Yet Your Heavenly Father Feeds Them, another for the Dr. Phil horror zine, this time about father/son incest, 1754 words;
- Shooting Deer, a random short story not earmarked for anything, 1187 words;
- Various poems;
- Autopsy on the Body of Christ, a Conclave horror fic, 4700 words.

AO3 Numbers Meme

Rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

Most hits: Such Brainsick Fantasies lmao! An old Harry Potter/Lily Evans fanfic where Harry finds an old hair of Lily's and uses it to make Polyjuice Potion, then masturbates in front of a mirror. It's got something like 17,000 hits and ~100 kudos, which is ... fair XD

Second most kudos: The Light Fails and the Fog Rolls In, a Broadchurch fic, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller hurt/comfort. NGL I haven't reread this fic in ages but I think it's a pretty solid choice. Worth noting here that at one point I orphaned like a whole year's worth of fics, including all my early OFMD fics - if those were still available in stats, I think this one would be way lower down. I was writing Gentlebeard like, right as Season 1 was coming out. You can imagine what that did to my stats. 1,280 kudos.

Third most comments: Signal Lost // Contact Regained, a gen Thrawn fic set after Star Wars: Rebels. My top three for comments were all big, meaty Thrawn multichaps. That fandom was absolutely great for comments. SLCR has 290. 

Fourth most bookmarks: This was also SLCR, so I went to fifth-most bookmarks instead. Lean On Me, an OFMD S2 fic, Izzy Hands/Lucius Spriggs. It's got 87 public bookmarks and 179 in total!

Fifth most words: From Grace, a Thrawn commission from NadiaYar, Thrawn/Hera. Super creepy, controversial, dark fic, but it got a ton of love from the community. 51K.

Least words: Blue Fire, an Azula-focused ATLA fic with only 13 words. It's a haiku!

BONUS:

Sixth most subscriptions: (checks AO3) (sees that the fic with the sixth-most subscriptions is from 2016 for Once Upon a Time) Nevermind :^)

What I Read in February 2025

 Total: 6 books

- Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath;
- Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling by Robert Kunzman;
- People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn;
- Dragstripping: Poems by Jan Beatty;
- Conclave by Robert Harris (reread);
- Thrawn: Chaos Rising by Timothy Zahn (reread)

All bangers. I also started or continued reading several books: Communion by Whitley Strieber, The Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson, Convulsive by Joe Koch, who worked on Slake House, Shame-Sex Attraction by Lucas Wilson (which I finished this month!) and Dancing in the Glory of Monsters by Jason Stearns, about the wars in the Congo. Plus still slowly reading The Dark Box about the history of confession, and Silence, that 13th Century French poem about a girl who's raised as a boy. 

I feel like I did way more reading than this in February but I guess that's because I spent so much time poring over textbooks. I don't FEEL like I spent a lot of time doing that though. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and realize I read 6 other books and forgot to log them on Goodreads, but I think the truth is I just picked up a different book every day, read a chapter or two, and then switched to something else.