fic post: In The Service Of Life

[psocoptera]

New 30fic!

In The Service Of Life. Young Wizards, Nita/Kit, 4500 words, sexual content. Asexuality, sex pollen, making babies.

"Nita is well over the line into the territory of things they don't really do any more."

This is the one I mentioned the other day that never had a throughline. I don't know why, after seven years of part of one scene of this sitting around in my head, the story-solving hamsters decided to run on this particular wheel, but I'm not going to say no to a sudden inspiration about what kind of story something wants to be.

Comments

[irilyth]

I have a hard time with asexuality and terminology. I feel like there's something pretty different going on between (a) they find each other sexually attractive, but neither of them has a very high libido, and they're colossal geek intellectuals anyway, so they get distracted easily and it's just not a priority for them so they don't end up doing it very often; (b) they are madly romantically in love, but are asexual in the Orientation TM sense, and thus aren't sexually attracted to other people, and thus don't have sex with each other. And I feel like I've heard both (a) hey, asexuality is a big tent, and covers any sort of "isn't having sex with other people", in whatever form, for whatever reason (hmm, now I can't find a link for this); and (b) asexuality is an Orientation TM, and is thus fundamentally different from celibacy, abstinence, etc (http://www.asexualityarchive.com/asexuality-and-celibacy-whats-the-difference/).

Anyway, not necessarily related to your story, but I liked it. :^)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I definitely don't feel like I have a good handle on the various labels of the asexuality spectrum and what they actually predict a person or character will or won't be likely to do.

On the other hand I'm the sole and final authority on my version of Nita and Kit, so I can say that for them, their situation is a little more complicated than a clear-cut case of A or B. Canonically, Nita meets Kit when she's 13 and he's 12; in my 'verse, neither of them has experienced any sexual attraction to anybody yet at that point but they both assume they will when they're older. Using the Sternberg triangular theory of relationships, their relationship is very intimate and committed from early on (canonically so, actually; Nita is willing to die for Kit by book two), but not passionate. In my verse, they start feeling romantic about each other around the same time that they're really feeling the effects of physical adolescence, like easy frequent arousal. And are curious people inclined to try new things. So they have sex for awhile, until the novelty wears off and they realize they're just as happy to quit, and they also sort out around the same time that they intend to be partners for life - their relationship sort of settling in to a stable state on multiple axes. So... were they ever sexually attracted to each other? What the hell is sexual attraction? Would they themselves be able to tell it apart from limerance (in the "intense desire for reciprocation of affection" sense) plus affection plus sex drive? I don't think my Kit and Nita would, themselves, care much about coming up with the right label - they're just themselves, they're fine with it, and in the original original timeline where SYWTBAW is taking place in 1988, Nita is 30 in 2005 and might not even have heard the word "asexual" yet.

[crystalpyramid]

This is awesome. The only problem is that ccommack hasn't read Young Wizards so he won't appreciate it properly. (And I'm not sure if Young Wizards works right when you read it as an adult.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed! Josh just listened to the first one as an audiobook and was not super into it - I think he enjoyed it okay but was not interested enough to want to read more of them.