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bakerstreet2013-05-15 11:26 pm
processions) wrote in bakerstreet2013-05-15 11:26 pm
The Nonsexual Intimacy Meme
The Nonsexual Intimacy Meme
Intimacy is NOT necessarily about full sexual contact. Intimacy is all about two people forming a connection and bond between them. That involves becoming best friends, trusting each other, knowing each other, understanding each other. Intimacy is grown and developed, it can't be rushed.
Nonsexual forms of intimacy can add a great deal of depth and variety to fiction. On one end of the spectrum, they provide extra steps to support the journey from meeting a potential mate through romance, sex, and marriage. In the middle, they convey the import of family and professional connections, distinguishing those from more casual acquaintances. On the other end, they form much of the glue in primary relationships for people who don't base their ties on sexuality. Sex and romance are valuable, but they're not everything.
RULES
- Comment with your character. Be sure to include preferences (ie, f/f for shipping, OTA for gen, etc)
- Tag others!
PROMPTS
- Hair care. Brushing, braiding, washing, cutting -- all of these involve a lot of careful touching in ways that many people enjoy. Hair braiding is a bonding experience in some cultures. In fact, grooming is a bonding technique for social primates in general. People without close ties to others often treat themselves to regular salon visits as a socially acceptable way to meet the need for touch and interaction.
- Shaving. This involves an unusually high level of trust, especially if the person is using a straight-edge razor or something else with an exposed blade rather than just a buzzer. Although it can apply to women, shaving is one of the few forms of physical intimacy that is most closely associated with men due to their facial hair. Initiaton into shaving is a major milestone for becoming a man, not just for boys during puberty but also for transsexuals during transition.
- Bathing. This varies by culture; in America most people bathe alone but some other cultures practice communal bathing. A bath is usually more intimate than a shower, although a public bath can be non-intimate and small shower stall can be intimate. It's also different when two people wash each other (an exchange of intimacy and affection) than when one person washes someone else (more of a caretaking or protective gesture).
- Feeding. A classic romantic motif involves lovers feeding each other, but it works as a way of providing and caring for someone in any context. Like bathing, it can also clue whether both parties are participating equally or one is taking care of the other (temporarily or regularly). This one has an existential flavor since survival depends on food supply.
- Seeing someone without their adaptive equipment on. This includes glasses, dentalware, prosthetic limbs, a wheelchair, etc. Adaptive equipment is part of one's presentation to the everyday world, and taking it off can be as intimate as removing clothing, for many people in many contexts.
- Holding Hands: There can be many reasons for this gesture. Physical closeness, offering comfort, or staying together in a crowd, all may have you reaching for someone.
- Undressing someone. This can be kind of a one-way experience if the recipient isn't awake, and is often awkward for both people if they are awake. Sometimes it happens because hands are out of commission, but a more common example is someone passing out drunk. Overheating is another good reason. Different circumstances can imply different levels of intimacy.
- Sharing secrets. This especially applies to talking about personal issues that aren't widely known. An exchange of secrets is a common ritual between "best friends" among girls and women, but appears elsewhere as well. Some things are only discussed among people with a common reference; veterans may be more comfortable discussing war memories with each other than civilians.
- Ordering for someone in a restaurant. Acquiring food, without asking the other person what to get, shows a knowledge of their needs and desires. Providing food is also a gesture of support and sustenance.
- Providing moral support at a major event. Helping someone get through a funeral, a trial, or other intense but not crisis situation is usually performed by a very dear friend. This is a situation where lovers or family members may be too close to the matter to be much use.
- Crying on someone. When you cry, you tend to let your guard down. Most of the people close to you will see you cry at some point, so that can be a milestone in a relationship. Actually crying on someone, letting them hold you, is even more intimate.
- Serving in a primary role for someone during a wedding. This includes the best man or maid of honor at a wedding, or stand-in for absent parents, etc. as well as the traditional family roles. One aspect of intimacy is sharing each other's lives, including ceremonies and transitions.
- Comforting someone after a bad breakup. Moments of great vulnerability can bring people closer. While this role sometimes falls to family, breakup repair more often goes to a woman's female friends or a man's male friends.
- Listening to someone's heartbeat or breathing. Close body contact, enough to carry soft personal sounds, tends to be comforting as well as connecting, as it touches on positive childhood memories for most people. It is shared between parent and child, sometimes between siblings, and later between lovers. Tight nonsexual partners may also do this.
- Putting someone to bed. Interestingly, this activity can happen among people who are just getting to know each other -- most often if someone passes out drunk, but exhaustion can have a similar effect. It's a gesture of caring to put someone to bed rather than leave them where they drop. A milder version involves draping a blanket or coat over a person asleep on a couch or the like.
- Sleeping in the same bed. This is an act of shared vulnerability and intimacy. Lovers customarily do this; so do some siblings or friends, especially as children. People may also be driven to share a bed, sleeping bag, etc. for warmth or lack of other accommodations in challenging circumstances.
- Watching someone sleep. There is more vulnerability on the part of the sleeper, and more intimacy from the watcher, when only one person is asleep. Parents often watch their children sleep. Lovers sometimes do this with each other, which can be cute or creepy. It's also a guard position, useful for showing that one character seeks to protect another.
- Waking someone up from a nightmare. A subtler form of rescue than more physical actions, this is still a gesture of protection and caring. It often leads to comfort afterwards. A typical courtesy between parent and child, or lovers, this can also be an early threshold for characters thrust together unexpectedly if one of them has sturdy daytime walls and a lot of issues. It is common, but often unspoken, among war buddies or veterans, many of whom have nightmares.
- Sharing clothes, jewelry, other personal items. This is common between siblings or close female friends. Sometimes roommates do it too. Wearing someone else's shirt or bathrobe is typical in romantic relationships, so can suggest a similar level of intimacy even in the absence of sex.
- Cleaning someone else's living space. This shows care and knowledge on the part of the cleaner, and trust on the part of the recipient. You have to know what NOT to throw away or move. It's typical of family members and roommates. Coworkers may clean each other's desk, office space, etc.
- Living together. This is a big step, even if it's just for a little while. Housemates are in each other's pockets; it's hard to keep secrets. Family members and lovers often live together, but housemates who are family-of-choice form a category of their own. If you don't want a romantic partner, a permanent housemate is a good choice for someone to share your life with.
- Childbirth. Attending the blessed event entails providing a lot of moral support for hours under high stress. It can create a bond with the baby as well as with the mother. When planned, this opportunity is only offered to the closest family members or friends, barring professionals. But it can happen by surprise in very awkward circumstances, a popular motif in fiction.
- Saving someone's life. Quick action in a life-threatening situation demonstrates how much one person values another. This can create a strong sense of connection, and sometimes obligation. It often, though not always, entails personal risk for the rescuer. This is fairly typical for military buddies or police partners, etc.
- Risking your life for someone. Placing someone else ahead of your own life shows their importance to you unequivocally. This often, though not always, involves trying to save or protect another person. While it can create a sense of gratitude, it frequently causes anger as well -- someone who loves you will generally object to you endangering yourself, even to protect them. Military and police buddies protect each other regularly.
- Making emergency decisions for someone. This reveals both how well you know the person, and how much you care about them -- whether you know what they would want, and act on it even if it differs from your personal preference. Unlike some of the other options, in this one the initial action is often outweighed by the aftermath. Both characters have to deal with the results of the decisions, good or bad.
- Deathwatch. Dying can be as intimate as giving birth. Staying with someone while they pass is an act of love; so is providing moral support to someone sitting deathwatch for a family member or other person. Many soldiers and police have done this for someone.
(taken from here)
26 because this is Pandora Hearts and everything is sobbing
The Will of the Abyss is no more; and that broken toybox has returned to its golden state. The eternal soul of Glen Baskerville has been set free to flit through the skies and find peace. Gilbert has found his smile. Alice is alive, a human girl once more (the Will's last gift), her memories of Sablier returned and then fading away, as if they were just a bad dream.
Jack is no more, his soul demolished for good this time. Oz is a real boy. And Vincent - well, he's still a sewer rat. Some things never change.
All of which means... ]
Mmm.
I want some candy.
[ Xerxes Break can die now. He's in a bed at one of the Rainsworth estates, propped up on fluffy pillows and surrounded by stuffed animals, courtesy of Sharon. She had been sitting with him as he slowly fades; but even her devotion has met its limits of exhaustion. She is resting, for the moment.
Is there someone else in the room with him now? He can't tell. Even his hearing has begun to go... ]
this is terrible
it's a lesson learned from the depths of the abyss; that there are no true endings, not really, that peoples' souls journey and purify and let go for a hundred years before returning to the world above. even children of misfortune like lacie, forever lost, live on in bits and pieces, echoes of melodies and children whose hearts still thrum and imprints left by memories (now these, these truly are eternal for no cosmic power can erode away these indelible marks, and even if the minds forget the souls remember). even jack - even his loving, mad, horrible, pure-minded desperation - isn't someone who'll be forgotten by those whose lives he touched (twisted, mangled, molded carefully as one bakes a delicacy).
and, oz finds, he doesn't want to.
forgetting is a messy business, and ignorance may be bliss but prolonging it only makes the final blow all the more painful. lessons learned from experience are valuable and hard-earned, and losing them only obscures one's way in the end. it's something even an insignificant plush rabbit can understand.
realness isn't something his mind's wrapped around yet, and likely won't except slowly. fifteen years of experience helps of course, but it's only now that he can fully comprehend all the little things that had always been a little off, a little wrong, and a little off-balance. being properly balanced means emotions are all the more deeply rooted, threaded into thoughts and experiences even more strongly.
right now, in a brightly-lit room full of soft and pleasant things for the dying, they're overwhelming. )
So you are awake.
( he laughs in a way he doesn't really feel, pitching his voice for especially audible though he's taken sharon's seat, a chair drawn near the bed. )
no subject
No.
[ He stirs, shifting over on his side to face Oz. One of the multitude of stuffed animals (a little white cat, which Break might have just recently thrust in the face of a certain depressed, useless person) rolls off, hitting the floor with a squeak. ]
It's that creepy--
[ He coughs once, wet and rattling. With effort, however, he manages to muster a grin. ]
No, hang on. You're not creepy anymore. Stuffed bunnies are cuuuute, aren't they?
no subject
( he chirps it as break moves, noticing the descent of the toy cat. it's not hard to imagine the sort of use it may have been put to already - it wouldn't be like sharon to place it there unaware, either - and he leans over to pick it up, eliciting a few more muffled squeaks as he sets it on his lap. pressing fingers into its soft sides is easier than wincing at that cough, and hopefully less revealing to boot. )
For you to say I'm not creepy almost sounds like an insult.
( wryly. he's used to being called a creepy, uncute brat by now, and if he's not any of that - who, exactly, is he?
it's still a work in progress, that answer.
there aren't any rabbits among all the toys on the bed, and he can't help but wonder at sharon's foresight. hers and break's acceptance of his real identity were less surprising than gil's or his uncle's in those fraught, dark hours, but it still seems unreal sometimes, even to someone who wasn't real in the first place. )
If you wanted a stuffed rabbit, you should've asked! I could've found you one somewhere.
( likely nowhere on this estate, though. )
no subject
[ His hand emerges from from under the covers and pats the space next to him. Another stuffed animal - a bear - falls off, also squeaking. ]
I don't think there's room, milady has--
Oh.
[ Break has a false smile that he wears for every occasion. But now there's another expression lighting his features. ]
There you are, Oz.
[ His eye is shut. ]
I never could see you before.
no subject
it's a testament to how much has happened since then. his entire world was shattered, with a literal attempt at it made possible with his own power, and now memories of past and present and past are still there, waiting to be properly sorted out. )
You couldn't?
no subject
[ More coughing, a quick paroxysm. Emily takes over (she's perched near his head): ]
STUPID GIRL WAS RIGHT!
[ He has a handkerchief somewhere, which he reaches for with trembling fingers; but he can't find it. Instead his hand closes around a miniature plush penguin, which he uses to wipe the blood from his chin (despite its indignant squawks). ]
You're right here.
no subject
in any case, he remembers what break's referring to now. )
It seems like Alice always knows what she's talking about - even when she doesn't.
no subject
[ A small noise of assent, as his body relaxes from his fit of coughing. His fingers uncurl, and his head drops down and settles into the pillow. His features smooth out.
Quietly, he murmurs. ]
I've got to get up, get dressed. Got a tea party to attend.
no subject
I bet everyone would enjoy a tea party. It's been such a while since the last one, too.
( the last one before everything started to spiral and people started dying, before the truth came out, painful to think of but in a way sweet rather than bitter. a perfect memory of bright sunlight and things that might have been, even if they ultimately weren't. )
no subject
[ His eye drifts open, gazing at some fixed point past Oz's shoulder. ]
Just me. And Lady Shelly. And Lord Oscar and... hmm. If he brings his wife, we can play cards.
[ His chest twitches; a little huff escapes his lips. It's too much effort now, even to cough. ]
no subject
Then... ( pauses before his voice can break or something equally awful. ) ...you'll have to tell Uncle hello from me.
( if he'd want to hear it - but that's a reflexive thought, not at all fair to his last moments. )
no subject
[ It's his pitiful attempt at a giggle ]
I'll do that for you. But, in return, you've got to do something for me, isn't that how the deal goes?
no subject
Ah, you're right.
1/2
[ He had told her everything he wanted to say. She had wept and held his hand and kissed him (on the lips, silly girl) and then he'd laughed at her. It was a perfect moment. It's the one he wants her to remember... ]
2/2
I don't want to go.
[ All pretense fails. He convulses, clutching at his chest, his face distorted with terror. ]
Even like this... I... I'd rather stay.
no subject
it's the worst thing about humanity, how lives seem to pass in the blink of an eye - so full but so short, and so very very easily ended.
(that's - not how a human thinks, is it.)
oz stays still as though frozen and then practically lunges for one of break's hands because maybe that's something, and it's confirmation someone else is there whether or not he can hear or see it; and because he doesn't know what else to do so please let it help somehow. he should say something, he thinks, but anything he can think of would just be horrified empty meaningly babble. )
1/2
He gasps like a drowning man, his chest shuddering and rattling. He can't get enough air, he can't get any, but he has to cling to this last shred of life because-- ]
2/2
Oz is there, warm and human, with the brightness of his soul shining out against the dark. It's enough to make the crisis pass; his breathing stills, as his fingers twitch around Oz's hand and hold on. His fear is gone, disappearing as quickly as it had come on.
He'd wanted to spare Sharon - and everyone - this, and slip off quietly on his own. But Sharon was right. So was Gilbert. And Reim. Faces he should think of, people he should call on for help, even in this moment. ]
Thank you, Oz.
[ He mouths the words; there's no breath to support them. Presently his grip on Oz's hand relaxes.
He's gone. ]
no subject
but thankfully the panic abates and one of them is able to relax, the other scarcely able to move for fear of -
it's quiet, though. the gratitude, the way break's breathing steadies and slows; keeps going until it's impossible to hear and there's an exhale followed by nothing at all, easy as anything.
very different indeed from alice or elliot or uncle, from everyone else who went violently and early, and even if it scarcely soothes the grief starting to well up like blood it'll mean something later.
but for now, it'll be some time before he lets go. )