Desire
Motivated pull toward intimacy, beauty, or more contact—not mere preference.
30 passages tagged with this primary in the Penwright corpus · 6 published pairings shown below.
Study and magazine
Long-form guide in the magazine
An essay on how this word lives in language, in the tagged corpus, and in figurative art when curators pair passage with image — not a list of stages, not permission to feel.
Read the guideEntry resolves to the emotion-tagged sequence when published (ASN-933); until then you may land on a placeholder or the main player.
Passage and image
Curator-published pairings — the human claim between text and artwork.
PDS-RC-021
Beth hadn’t thought of Ed as big before that moment. She was on the tall side, he was five foot ten or so, and in her dangerous heels she looked him straight in the eye. More important, Ed didn’t usually put himself out there to be noticed. He was the grumpy, scruffy guy in the corner. Presence simply wasn’t his thing. Or so she’d thought. Now he was standing up for himself, and it made all the difference in the world. He’d become an immovable object, which made her perverse self long to become the countering imm…
Winter Morning, Unguarded · View unit
ASN-931 anchor seed — replace with curator rationale or retract if unsuitable.
TWT-RC-041
Sloane didn’t want or need a man in that way. But she did want more from life than what it seemed one person could give her. She wanted bigger experiences. She always wanted an evening to evolve into something more complex. She brought Erika over to Vong to work as a server. Sloane had always mixed her worlds. She didn’t fear contamination; if anything, the potential chaos was exciting. After work they would all get together and drink and go over the failures and successes and, being in thrall to the energy of the…
Curtain of Gold · View unit
ASN-931 anchor seed — replace with curator rationale or retract if unsuitable.
DOV-RC-096
Pierre’s double would turn over on his side, and Kay would hold her breath. If he awakened, he would find her with her hands in a strange position. Then suddenly, as if he had guessed her wishes, he would place his hand between her legs and leave it there, so that she could not move. The presence of his hand aroused her more than ever. Then she would close her eyes again and try to imagine that his hand was moving. To create a sufficiently vivid image for herself, she would begin to contract and open her vagina, r…
One Small Clasp · View unit
ASN-931 anchor seed — replace with curator rationale or retract if unsuitable.
A2-RC-115
Another rule for those browsing on behalf of their partners: The rule of sex-clothes is that, if you particularly like a certain style of clothing, shoe, or toy that your person doesn’t already own, you buy it for them—the prime technique if you want to annoy me with your fetishes is to expect me to furnish them, when springing for an article of lacy fabric that I know someone is particularly into is reserved for days when I want to show them that I’ve gotten them a gift. If a person wants their partner to experim…
BLM-RC-018
I never wanted to be an actor, but I always wanted to be a rock star. Even when I was a magician I wanted to be a rock star. When I was young I would listen to the radio and pretend I was the singer and thousands of people were in the audience, all the girls I knew in the front row. I would wave to them while I was singing, and they would scream like their heads were going to explode. I wanted to be a rock star, but I never wanted to be an actor. [image "9780785263708_0039_004" file=Image00007.jpg] I’ve been to …
Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000), Gustav Klimt | The Met · View unit
ASN-931 anchor seed — replace with curator rationale or retract if unsuitable.
TWT-RC-206
They are quiet for another while and then Aidan says, So what’s this thing you brought? Lina is in control now or at the very least she feels that she is. She says, Get in the back and take off your pants and your shoes. He gets into the back of the Suburban and she follows. She undresses herself and doesn’t let him touch her just yet. She slips her hand into a pocket of her pants that are on the floor of the car and she pulls out a Cadbury Crème Egg. You took so long before meetin’ me, she says, I almost ate i…
One Small Clasp · View unit
ASN-931 anchor seed — replace with curator rationale or retract if unsuitable.
Crowd-tagged images
Images attested as carrying this emotion — through curator pairings, the illustration corpus, or the cumulative picks of readers using Connect. Not a verdict on the image; a record of what others have said it holds.
Often arrives with
Secondary emotions tagged alongside this primary in the same passages (co-occurrence in loom_passage_tags).
Articles
Vela essays that take this emotion as subject. Articles are ordered by tagging weight (the editor's read of how central this emotion is to the piece).
essays
Centrally about
Augustine, or How the West Learned to Be Ashamed
The bishop who fused shame, desire, and original sin — and what Latin Christianity overwrote to do it
What Augustine of Hippo actually taught about sex, how his biography and opponents shaped Latin doctrine, and what was lost when the West received him as normative.
32 min read
fiction
Centrally about
Life Drawing
A story in five images.
He signs up for the advanced class because the intermediate class doesn't have a live model and he is twenty-two years old and he has been drawing figures from photographs for three years and he wants to draw from life.
6 min read
Research
How Vela holds this emotion as a research object — historiographic, ethnographic, and empirical. The full thread sits sibling to the desire program and the Christianity-sex-shame thread.
- Public introduction — What We Mean When We Name a Feeling. The program essay: what naming does, what disappears when a name disappears, and why the work matters for editorial honesty.
- Literature map — claims keyed to coordinates across historiography of emotion, the basic-vs-constructionist debate, cross-cultural ethnography, and the empirical psychology of named emotions.
- Bibliography — ~110 entries grouped by section, with verified DOIs and stable URLs where available.
- External research runs — index of the 36-run deep-research bring-back that underlies the map and bibliography.
- Vela research surface — index of all research threads (desire, Christianity-sex-shame, text-aesthetic, emotion, Boudoir Studios, museum diversity, artist studies).
Passages
Page 2 of 2 · 20 per page
30 tagged passages
- DOV-RC-096From Delta of Venus (1977)
Pierre’s double would turn over on his side, and Kay would hold her breath. If he awakened, he would find her with her hands in a strange position. Then suddenly, as if he had guessed her wishes, he would place his hand…
- DG-RC-620From The Decameron (1353)
Master Priest was so enthralled by all these talents of hers that he was driven to distraction, and spent his whole time loitering about the village in the hope of seeing her. Whenever he caught sight of her in church o…
- TWT-RC-041From Three Women (2019)
Sloane didn’t want or need a man in that way. But she did want more from life than what it seemed one person could give her. She wanted bigger experiences. She always wanted an evening to evolve into something more comp…
- MSGW-RC-238From My Secret Garden (1973)
My husband left some of his clothes behind when he was last here, and the other thing I like to do is dress up in them. I especially like to put on his underwear. The fly front just fascinates me. That’s when I like to …
- EEBS-RC-043From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)
“I’m taking you home,” he announced, leading Cinderella out of the tavern and lifting her onto his horse. She went with him willingly enough, and without a word. As they rode toward the castle she wiggled closer to him …
- HDGE-RC-021From Hot Daddies: Gay Erotic Fiction (2011)
“The noises you make when you get fucked sound interrogative, boy.” Dad chuckles. “‘Uhhh? Ummmm?’ Sounds like you’re asking me a question.” “I’m saying, ‘Please, Daddy, would you plow me harder and faster?’” I say, head…
- 2CRO-RC-330From 250 Contemporary Romance Outlines: Complete with prompts, settings, blurbs, conflict, character development and story arc (2024)
1. David Sterling - A renowned divorce attorney known for his ruthless efficiency in the courtroom and his high-profile client list. Behind his professional success hides a man who has become cynical about love due to a…
- BLM-RC-018From Blue Like Jazz (2003)
I never wanted to be an actor, but I always wanted to be a rock star. Even when I was a magician I wanted to be a rock star. When I was young I would listen to the radio and pretend I was the singer and thousands of peo…
- MSG-RC-178From My Secret Garden (1973)
I am twenty-nine years old, have been married for eleven years to a merchant seaman, and have two children. My husband is at sea for almost six months of every year, and during one of his trips about three years ago I w…
- PDS-RC-021From The Principle of Desire (2013)
Beth hadn’t thought of Ed as big before that moment. She was on the tall side, he was five foot ten or so, and in her dangerous heels she looked him straight in the eye. More important, Ed didn’t usually put himself out…