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The stories you've been looking for all your life
11 months ago
General
*** Direct from the keyboard of Jeeves the Bunny, providing literary lewdness for the furry fandom to enjoy. ^^ ***
When I was 13-14 years old, I read a story. A story that has stayed with me for the last 22 years (yup I'm 36 now lmao) not because of how good it was, but because of how fucked up it was. In it, a good, sweet, innocent character was treated brutally and unfairly, and was powerless to stop any of the bad things that happened to them, and it was written that way with the intention that the reader sadistically enjoy the punishment and torment the character was experiencing.
After that, I started writing for the first time with one simple goal. To undo the feeling, the horror and the disgust and the utter misery reading that story had made me feel. I wanted to write stories about happy things, about characters who even if they had bad things happening in their life, could find ways through it to good things in the end, or who already had those good things in their lives thanks to the kindness, love and support of those around them. At their core, I feel like the vast majority of the stories I've written ever since then, with a few rare journeys into darker topics, try to capture that sense of warmth, or love, or hope, or just enjoyment of simple, good things happening in a character's life.
And of course, even though I was trying my very best ever since those first inexperienced and fumbling attempts at fiction to write good and wholesome stories of my own, I kept looking for other stories like that too. Stories that were sweet and comforting and light-hearted, that would make me forget all about that vile, horrifyingly cruel story I'd encountered before. I looked for them online, being much, MUCH more careful to check tags and avoid stories that seemed to deal with more dark or unappealing content, and I looked for them in the wider world of fiction too. Starting in my mid teens, I looked all over in many genres from many different authors for stories I could read and become wholly absorbed in, without having to subject myself to needless torment and sadness and bitter, unnecessary drama. And as a result, much as I loved to read... I kept finding myself shying away from it, because y'know what's true of a whole, vast swathe of popular literature, both modern and classical? It's depressing as fuck. Almost every "rom com" is filled with misunderstandings, lies and just ridiculously bad communication between people who claim to love each other, only for some contrivance to occur at the last minute that allows them to realise their idiocy and enjoy five pages of happiness before "the end". Every adventure story has characters who only get to learn through loss and suffering. Every crime story glorifies and takes great pains to show you just how smart and brutal and cruel not just the perpetrator, but so many of the suspects along the way can be, with possibly the person trying to solve the crimes being the most twisted and fucked up of all.
Even when I started to read sci-fi based on series I'd loved when I was younger, like Star Trek, I found myself faced with authors who wanted to put a darker, edgier, more morally ambiguous spin on characters I knew and loved for their optimism and progressive, open-minded attitudes towards any mystery or people they encountered.
And so time and time again, I tried, and tried, and tried so hard to find stories that were as full of optimism and hope and warmth as the stories I was writing, and the stories I longed to read. And I failed, and I stopped reading basically any printed fiction (just reading the occasional wholesome online piece I found, or my own stuff that I knew was light and fluffy) until I heard about some new author or a different style of book I could try which might just be what I was looking for.
And then, a few months ago, after my frustrations with the amount of time I was spending online either playing games I was frustrated by or randomly browsing the internet out of sheer boredom boiled over, I began that cycle all over again. I told myself I could use my PC less, way less, if I just read more. WAY more. But in order to do that, I'd need to find stories I actually wanted to read. Books I wasn't just curious about, but ones I could dive into day after day, hour after hour without ever feeling depressed or scared of what dreary, miserable drama I might find within their pages.
I already knew I liked manga. I'd been reading My Hero Academia for a couple of years already and even in its darkest moments (well okay Tomura Shigaraki's backstory chapter was pretty horrifying) I still found myself eager to read more. So, I thought... okay, I'll invest some more time and money in manga, and expand the range and kinds of manga I'll try in order to find some new things.
So, I got a few volumes of a couple of different manga and... whoa, what the fuck?? These stories weren't full of depressing and unnecessary drama. Those stories definitely exist in manga, it spans all sorts of genres after all. But, I'd never before encountered a genre or sub-genre of fiction that just... didn't have those frustrating moments of idiotic, purposefully heart-string tugging drama and sadness built in to force you to feel something. And with that, my consumption of "slice of life" and "iyashikei" (a term meaning 'healing', in the 'heartwarming' kinda sense) genre media began to rise. And from there, I started realising I could search using those few stories I'd found as a baseline for other stories like them. And more like those. And more like those, and...
And now it's a few months later. I haven't logged into Steam in almost a month. I play animal crossing for... idk, 15 minutes a day? Post on bluesky maybe once or twice? My PC is on while I work, post stories and contact commissioners. And then I turn it off, and I read. And I read. And I go for walks and bake and listen to music and think about how I can't wait to sit down and read some more, because... the stories I've been looking for all my life? Well, for the last 22 years of it at least? I've found them.
I'm surrounded by them, quite literally, in three bookcases I now have set up in my office to house the growing collection I've amassed (turns out if you suddenly change your plan to buy a new gaming PC in the new year, you can buy a lot of second hand books/manga with that money). I've got an entire shelf of just first volume light novels that I'm going through one by one, and so far? Out of over a dozen? I've wanted to read more of every single one of their series.
I am so excited to wake up every morning because it means that I can work, and then, when I've finished my work, I can read the books that this wonderful job of mine will allow me to keep on getting, so eventually I'll have a collection big enough that by the time I've read them all? I'll be eager to start over and re-read the same wonderful, wholesome, light-hearted tales of adventure and friendship and kindness.
Call it a happy place. Call it a special interest. Call it a straight up weird hyper-fixation. I am SO fucking happy right now, and I just wanted to share that, partially because as my "ever enthusiastic" moniker has always made clear, this sort of joy and eagerness is something I've always wanted to put forward in my online interactions. But also in part because I wanted to tell y'all that if you're struggling to find media that speaks to you, and makes you feel fulfilled and engaged and enthralled by every page/note/picture/frame? It's out there.
The stories you've been looking for all your life are out there. And when you find them, I hope with all my heart they bring you as much joy as the stories I've found have brought me. <3
After that, I started writing for the first time with one simple goal. To undo the feeling, the horror and the disgust and the utter misery reading that story had made me feel. I wanted to write stories about happy things, about characters who even if they had bad things happening in their life, could find ways through it to good things in the end, or who already had those good things in their lives thanks to the kindness, love and support of those around them. At their core, I feel like the vast majority of the stories I've written ever since then, with a few rare journeys into darker topics, try to capture that sense of warmth, or love, or hope, or just enjoyment of simple, good things happening in a character's life.
And of course, even though I was trying my very best ever since those first inexperienced and fumbling attempts at fiction to write good and wholesome stories of my own, I kept looking for other stories like that too. Stories that were sweet and comforting and light-hearted, that would make me forget all about that vile, horrifyingly cruel story I'd encountered before. I looked for them online, being much, MUCH more careful to check tags and avoid stories that seemed to deal with more dark or unappealing content, and I looked for them in the wider world of fiction too. Starting in my mid teens, I looked all over in many genres from many different authors for stories I could read and become wholly absorbed in, without having to subject myself to needless torment and sadness and bitter, unnecessary drama. And as a result, much as I loved to read... I kept finding myself shying away from it, because y'know what's true of a whole, vast swathe of popular literature, both modern and classical? It's depressing as fuck. Almost every "rom com" is filled with misunderstandings, lies and just ridiculously bad communication between people who claim to love each other, only for some contrivance to occur at the last minute that allows them to realise their idiocy and enjoy five pages of happiness before "the end". Every adventure story has characters who only get to learn through loss and suffering. Every crime story glorifies and takes great pains to show you just how smart and brutal and cruel not just the perpetrator, but so many of the suspects along the way can be, with possibly the person trying to solve the crimes being the most twisted and fucked up of all.
Even when I started to read sci-fi based on series I'd loved when I was younger, like Star Trek, I found myself faced with authors who wanted to put a darker, edgier, more morally ambiguous spin on characters I knew and loved for their optimism and progressive, open-minded attitudes towards any mystery or people they encountered.
And so time and time again, I tried, and tried, and tried so hard to find stories that were as full of optimism and hope and warmth as the stories I was writing, and the stories I longed to read. And I failed, and I stopped reading basically any printed fiction (just reading the occasional wholesome online piece I found, or my own stuff that I knew was light and fluffy) until I heard about some new author or a different style of book I could try which might just be what I was looking for.
And then, a few months ago, after my frustrations with the amount of time I was spending online either playing games I was frustrated by or randomly browsing the internet out of sheer boredom boiled over, I began that cycle all over again. I told myself I could use my PC less, way less, if I just read more. WAY more. But in order to do that, I'd need to find stories I actually wanted to read. Books I wasn't just curious about, but ones I could dive into day after day, hour after hour without ever feeling depressed or scared of what dreary, miserable drama I might find within their pages.
I already knew I liked manga. I'd been reading My Hero Academia for a couple of years already and even in its darkest moments (well okay Tomura Shigaraki's backstory chapter was pretty horrifying) I still found myself eager to read more. So, I thought... okay, I'll invest some more time and money in manga, and expand the range and kinds of manga I'll try in order to find some new things.
So, I got a few volumes of a couple of different manga and... whoa, what the fuck?? These stories weren't full of depressing and unnecessary drama. Those stories definitely exist in manga, it spans all sorts of genres after all. But, I'd never before encountered a genre or sub-genre of fiction that just... didn't have those frustrating moments of idiotic, purposefully heart-string tugging drama and sadness built in to force you to feel something. And with that, my consumption of "slice of life" and "iyashikei" (a term meaning 'healing', in the 'heartwarming' kinda sense) genre media began to rise. And from there, I started realising I could search using those few stories I'd found as a baseline for other stories like them. And more like those. And more like those, and...
And now it's a few months later. I haven't logged into Steam in almost a month. I play animal crossing for... idk, 15 minutes a day? Post on bluesky maybe once or twice? My PC is on while I work, post stories and contact commissioners. And then I turn it off, and I read. And I read. And I go for walks and bake and listen to music and think about how I can't wait to sit down and read some more, because... the stories I've been looking for all my life? Well, for the last 22 years of it at least? I've found them.
I'm surrounded by them, quite literally, in three bookcases I now have set up in my office to house the growing collection I've amassed (turns out if you suddenly change your plan to buy a new gaming PC in the new year, you can buy a lot of second hand books/manga with that money). I've got an entire shelf of just first volume light novels that I'm going through one by one, and so far? Out of over a dozen? I've wanted to read more of every single one of their series.
I am so excited to wake up every morning because it means that I can work, and then, when I've finished my work, I can read the books that this wonderful job of mine will allow me to keep on getting, so eventually I'll have a collection big enough that by the time I've read them all? I'll be eager to start over and re-read the same wonderful, wholesome, light-hearted tales of adventure and friendship and kindness.
Call it a happy place. Call it a special interest. Call it a straight up weird hyper-fixation. I am SO fucking happy right now, and I just wanted to share that, partially because as my "ever enthusiastic" moniker has always made clear, this sort of joy and eagerness is something I've always wanted to put forward in my online interactions. But also in part because I wanted to tell y'all that if you're struggling to find media that speaks to you, and makes you feel fulfilled and engaged and enthralled by every page/note/picture/frame? It's out there.
The stories you've been looking for all your life are out there. And when you find them, I hope with all my heart they bring you as much joy as the stories I've found have brought me. <3
It's only partially connected by the bridge of media vis a vis stories/manga/video games
But there are slice of visual novels as well that I feel may fit into that desire as well. And if it's okay, I feel like I could recommend 2 Visual Novel games that meet that exact feeling you describe having looked for for 22 years.
The first is called Our Life: Beginnings and Always and is a very sweet endearing story about growing up with a neighbor after starting over in a new life. It's got a lot of very personalization elements that really adapt perfectly to player choice and presentation and with it's very idlyic presentation I can't help but feel like you'd enjoy it just as much.
The other one I'd like to recommend is called Coffee Talk, a very cozy modern fantasy setting where you serve coffee to various characters and talk with them about their day to day lives and maybe give them some good solid advice or just that right cup of coffee that can change their day for the better.
Life can be hard, and your story is a great example of just how powerful these stories you mention (and the ones you write 😊) can be in helping us heal and give us hope ❤️
And y'know, not to change the subject, but I find myself agreeing with you that plots and stories end up so shoehorned and rushed in order for it to fit whatever genre the library shelf it's trying to jump on. There was an e-book I downloaded—I'm not going to bore you with the details—but the writer made the suspense point physically impossible in order to 'happily ever after' an ending. It. was. horseshit. 🙄
Anyway, back to your point—sometimes, stories do stick with us like that for ages, if not forever. Both in bad ways and good. All of us are looking for that perfect story, and that feeling to chase when gobbling up literature. I'm happy you found yours, even after so long! I can feel your joy and excitement through this journal, and it's so awesome that you've already found enough material to encompass your heart with!
I'm glad my excitement has come across, coz truly I feel more enthused and eager about my daily life right now than I have in literally decades, and all due to something as relatively simple for me as finding the right kind of books to lose myself in. <3
Eitherway, i'll spare you a full listing of it. Just glad you found something to finally bust your drought of stories and writing that wasn't matching what you seeked!
But yeah, I know the vibes I'm looking for aren't the same as what other people want/need to entertain and occupy their minds. It's incredible and great that there is such a wide variety of media out there, so that way hopefully there are those perfectly fitting stories for everyone, regardless of their preferences!
Fwiw one of your stories was a very positive influence on my early kink writing ages ago. It's nice reading stuff where everyone is enthusiastically into it because a lot of the kink content in the fandom goes the other way.
Also it's really touching to hear that a piece of mine could do that for you! Thanks. <3 <3
That said, I pretty much exclusively like my porn to be light-hearted (of course, you've done enough story commissions for me to know that!). Porn is, among other things, a way for me to decompress and relax, and having it be grim and dramatic would run counter to that.
I've got my own itch I've been trying to scratch for a while now, and that's stories where humans live with sapient non-humans as equals in an integrated society.
Mercedes Lackey's Black Gryphon trilogy fit the bill nicely, being about an egalitarian society of humans and gryphons (among other less-mentioned creatures), but I finished it quite a while ago and haven't found anything else in that vein since.
Re: humans living with sapient non-humans, it's a bit of an older series but have you heard of Dinotopia? That definitely fits into that genre, from what I remember of them.
I checked out of consuming mainstream media (books, tv, movies, etc) and I haven't checked into replacing it with manga instead, mostly because I just have too many other non-consumption hobbies that fill my time.
Also, I definitely understand not wanting to fill your time with 'media consuming' hobbies. For my part, I'm looking at it less as a consumption thing and more about amassing something that can be a long term benefit for my brain-space. Getting physical copies that I can own indefinitely from this point onward, rather than digital downloads that will keep me reliant on some specific service to access it, or, at the very least, tethered to yet another electronic device that's required for my use of the media. That sense of ownership and freedom from technological limitations in our ever more fractured media landscape has been lovely. <3