Imma be honest with y’all. The sole reason I started shipping SakuOro is because I found it really funny that a main theme in the fics was literally just that Orochimaru’s pussy was good enough to make Sakumo rethink suicide.
Another thing I won’t apologize for is my old writing—the stories, poems, essays, et. al. I wrote from the age of twelve on. In his poem “I Am 25,” Gregory Corso wrote of:
...old poetmen / who speak their youth in whispers, / saying: —I did those then / but that was then / that was then—
The lit world is rife with writers shunning their juvenilia, and I refuse. There are old pieces I still think are pretty damn good. And much like my youthful experiences shaped me as a person, all the writing I did back then made me the writer I am now. I think of my juvenilia the same way I think of my tattoos. There are pieces I wouldn’t write now had I not already written them, and there are tattoos I wouldn’t get if I didn’t already have them. But I have love for them, all of them. Even the wonky, faded stick n’ pokes; even the shoddily researched anarcha-feminist rants and the cheesy odes to Sid Vicious. I would only retract something I wrote if it were harmful in its language or viewpoint. Disavowing my old writing because it’s clumsy or embarrassing would be like spitting in the face of any success I’ve had. Would be like asking to have my future words snatched by a younger, braver writer.
In the penultimate stanza of “I Am 25,” Gregory Corso wrote about befriending those endlessly retracting old (poet)men, offering them reassurance that their genius can live on through him. The final stanza shows his real motive. He’d ingratiate himself to them:
Then at night in the confidence of their homes / rip out their apology-tongues / and steal their poems.
—Jessie Lynn McMains, from “rip out their apology-tongues” (Pussy Magic, April 2019)