there's only like three hanahaki fics for this fandom at all, it's criminal

the pining is built right in! you're halfway there already!

do iiiittttt

You could be doing this right now, after you convinced me to read it

ofthreekingdoms:

I have to work tonight and I'm gonna be wobbly all weekend for reasons, but I can certainly start working on it after I get home

no one writes chronic hanahaki ever because they do not love me

i love you and therefore I will write chronic hanahaki

I realize I don't actually know much about Cherry Magic other than "if you are a thirty-year-old virgin (by some definition) you get telepathy"

it's a BL office romcom

the virgin telepathy is the mechanism by which the depressed introvert MC discovers the high-performing office hottie is catastrophically down bad for him

it's cute and soft and silly and has become my new comfort series

High performance hottie has the perfect poker straight face of a teenager reading porn fic on the family computer

ahh I see

I mean I would prefer the telepathy over the man

but, y'know, it's me

can you read people's minds for useful things or just for horny thoughts?

(I'm assuming you stop being a telepath if you stop being a virgin?)

Touch someone, read their thoughts.

not me tapping someone on the shoulder at the right time to get their bank passcode

Use it for evil, why not

it's not like I would use it for love

you can absolutely read people's minds for Anything they happen to be thinking about, and it's a genuine problem for Adachi (the MC)

Brush someone's leg at the poker table, win Vegas

and yes you stop being a telepath if you stop being a virgin

one thing I think the drama does better than the original manga: the fujoshi coworker is rewritten as just, aroace

I have questions about the social construct of "virginity" given that in the more traditional definitions men can't be either virgins or nonvirgins, and BL generally means no hymen involved either way, so-----

I have already read a quite good fanfic about Adachi giving her a heads-up about the telepathy before she turns 30 so she can decide what, if anything, she wants to do about it

The most basic version where "no sex ever = virgin"

but what, I demand, is sex?

the series is much more interested in soft romcom shenanigans than hard-hitting definitional questions about "how EXACTLY does this power activate and deactivate"

is mutual masturbation sex? is frottage sex? is it sex only if you both orgasm?

I know

but I am who I am

indeed

I would argue all of those count as sex, given our main character has never even been kissed

neither have I he's not special

this is the closest to an explanation we ever get

we can probably assume "if it Feels Like Sex, it probably counts as sex"

that is not experimentally rigorous!

But it's fine, the office hottie made him feel special

idk I just think I would be wanting to know exactly how far I could push it and still be a fucking wizard

If we deconstruct it down to "sex is 2+ people who get off to and with each other,"

honestly I think it's fun that it's so undefined because it lets you set the line wherever you feel like for any given fanfic

And we further get to enjoy "I could read their thoughts the whole time that made it more intense"

but I also appreciate the frustration with getting No canon answer

the thing is of course that I can't help but come at Romance Plot Contrivances from the wrong direction

hashtag just aroace things, yeah

Pushing The Limits is a fic i would read

"how can you get out of having to kiss/fuck/marry"

honestly the thing I keep coming back to is "who did Kurosawa fuck and when, that he's not a virgin anymore"

because he's just shy of a year older than Adachi

...hiring a professional presumably counts? I guess?

I mean he thinks about having girlfriends and trying to make them happy

(I have no idea who this guy is)

kurosawa is the guy who has it bad for adachi

AH gotcha

Trying To Be Straight?

probably that yeah

it gives you all your teens and twenties to make questionable decisions in

he and adachi both seem to be bisexual in the manga - honestly it's a bigger question in the drama because in the drama it comes off like he has NEVER had a relationship that went past confession

The manga says that Adachi is the first one he fell for "first" so he probably just went along with girls because that is What One Does

truly mediocre straight sex with some girl from college then probably

fic writing update: not happening tonight because class was A Lot and I have no energy