#<- GUY WHOS ON THE ARO SPECTRUM DISCLAIMER

[atlas-of-galaxies]

wansho double date

[romancerepulsed]

disclaimer: i am american and i can only speak for how it is here, but regardless this post is about online spaces

i have to say it. "romance negativity" is not a thing and you all look like clowns for saying it and placing it right next to sex negativity. sex negativity exists within a large system oppression. its a set of beliefs an individual can have, yes, but those beliefs in and of themselves are nothing without their institutional support. sex negativity, though it hurts queer people the most, negatively affects every person who desires to interact with sexuality in any way. sex negativity is major websites and apps banning porn for the sake of profit. sex negativity is restricting abortion access. sex negativity is absitence-only education. sex negativity is the criminalization of sex work. sex negativity is rape culture.

romance negativity does not exist in this way. the most romance negativity could possibly harm you is it hurting your feelings a bit when an aromantic person expresses their frustrations with amatonormativity. our institutions actively push for romance and partnering. our whole society is structured around it. all of our entertainment is infested with it. there is no significant cultural push to devalue romance the same way there is for sex, and thats why the discussion of the evil repulsed aros who hate romance and hate you for experiencing it is so fucking stupid to me. like, every romance repulsed aro i know is so painstakingly polite and supportive to the alloromantics and romance favorable aros around us. we are constantly gritting our teeth and working through it, because thats what we have always had to do.

ive also seen posts complaining that romance repulsed aros make the community feel unsafe for romance favorable aros, which... i have not seen any of the rumored aro elitism this implies at all. im sure there are some guys out there who exclude romance favorable aros, and they absolutely suck ass. but this is not a widespread problem at all. and i need you to put yourselves in the shoes of a romance repulsed aromantic person right now. someone who has just found the language for what theyve been struggling with all their lives, and theyre excited to find a community for people like them, a community thats supposed to be free from the talons of amatonormativity, only to find out most of the people there are still talking about their partners, their crushes, the romantic things they wanna do with their friends, etc. its isolating. this isnt to say aromanticism isnt a spectrum or that people shouldnt talk about their experiences as romance favorable aros, im just trying to get you to understand *why* repulsed aros can seem so irritable or aggressive at times.

so im sorry that romance repulsed aros expressing their frustration with the very fabric of society being against them hurt your feelings. but i think maybe thats just something youre gonna have to deal with. if you need tips on sucking it up then maybe ask a romance repulsed aro, we're used to it 👍

[thediamondarcher]

Do you headcanon Todd Chavez as aroace? He says he's romantic ace, but I relate to his experiences so much and it seems like he's quite resistant to romantic things, even when they're nonsexual. And just because he wants a significant other does not necessarily mean he is a romantic little guy.

TV shows and Hollywood (Hollywoo?)'s idea of aromanticism is very... um imperfect and I worry that writers may call characters like Todd non-aro without actually understanding what that means. End of the day, he's a fictional character, and real and fictional people can identify however they want... but he seems very aromantic to me. Am I projecting or do I have something here?

Disclaimer: it's been a while since I've watched the show all the way through, so I may have forgotten some important things.

tbh, i do headcanon Todd as someone who's also under the aromantic spectrum and i think him and Maude have a QPR. I think the asexual representation is amazing in BJHM but it would've been great

[kitten-kokomo]

new rule: stop gatekeeping what people can and cannot ship. Shipping is the time-honored tradition of taking two characters, even/especially characters who would not be attracted to each other ever in a million years, and having them make out and do laundry together.

You can ship a canonically straight character with someone of the same sex. You can ship a canonically gay character with someone of the opposite sex. You can ship an aro or ace or aroace character with anyone.

This is because they are not real people, they are fictional. Every work of fanfiction or fanart is another version of the canon reality, and in this alternate universe (technically, all fic is AU unless everything that happens in it is word-for-word from the source material), Jimmy Bob Joe and Jeremy the Ghost are in love, even if in canon, Jeremy the Ghost is aroace and Jimmy Bob Joe is straight.

The only way that shipping a character in a way that’s non-canonical is problematic is if you frame it as if *insert sexuality/thing* is bad. For example, let’s say Bobby The Snow Guy is canonically and explicitly homosexual in canon. But in a fanfic, he is in love with Wonder Woman. That’s fine! But if Bobby The Snow Guy starts telling Wonder Woman how grateful he is that she showed him the error of his homosexual ways, that is clearly homophobic. The qualifier is that being gay is treated as bad, not that Bobby is not gay.

Additionally, Bobby not being gay in a fan-made story does not detract from the fact that Bobby is gay in canon.

Disclaimer: I am part of the asexual/aromantic spectrum, and am polysexual.

new rule: if you wouldn't ship a gay male character with a lady, don't ship aro characters with anyone

[skunked-up-kicks]

Omg... same... I don't remember my first reaction to that kevin-andrew staring line, but like for example, it took me a while to get why Nicky warned Neil not to look too much at Kevin. And when people interpret things sexually/romantically in the fandom I'm definitely surprised, like the cigarette pack in Andrew's back pocket turned into staring at his ass etc. I did find stuff like Andrew brushing Neil's back more telling, but I didn't read every moment from a sexual attraction lense u know

I don't know if my last ask made sense but basically same sometimes im like "oh you guys think this line is about attraction. ok. i didn't know that" i feel like i learnt to see the romance/attraction in most of it bc i remember i felt like neil for the longest time -- i didn't see the signs of 'attraction' a lot of the time, though i did see more blatant flirting

lil disclaimer thingy: i understand everyone reads book differently and is coming from different perspectives, and i'm not intending to shame anyone or anything, just wanna talk about my experience reading aftg.

so, if i'm being honest... i do genuinely find it so baffling that people read certain scenes (mainly book 1 scenes) as sexual. like you mentioned the infamous 'neil sussed the twins out by which one had a cigarette packet in their back pocket' scene that people have turned into 'neil was ogling andrew's ass'. which.. neil is a respectful king and would never, okay? i hate when ppl make him into a fucking creep :// but also it's a good example of an early moment in the series that showed how observant and clever neil could be so it also makes me sad that the moment got stripped of that in favour of it being sexual :(

anyway, besides sexual clearly not being how it's intended to be read, it's also weird to me because like... my mind was not at all in the place to be reading scenes as sexual when i first read that scene.

we've just been introduced to neil not that long ago, and he's been presented to us as a traumatized teenager who's been squatting in his highschool's gym locker room, seems to have a nicotine addiction, is really anxious, has seen his mum die, and i'm also pretty sure there's lines about how lonely neil is and about how much he's grieving his mum. not that long before the cigarette-in-back-pocket scene doesn't neil have a moment at the window where he thinks "one of us has to make it mum"??

what i'm very poorly trying to explain is that, at least when i first read the books, i was really attached to neil early on and more importantly i was really protective of him. cause he's a child really... and a very hurt and distressed one at that, who's in a new and clearly unsafe environment. andrew's group is not presented in a good light early on, so i was rightfully suspicious and untrusting of them. how people can be given a character like neil in a situation like that and be playing matchmaker almost immediately is... yeah.

like... my mind wasn't in the place to be going "oooo neil thinks one of them has a nice ass!!🥴🥴"... LIKE? the scenes before certainly aren't set up in a way that's leading you down that train of thought...

it's the same as the scene where neil puts andrew's hand under his shirt, people talked about seeing that as sexual too. but andrew's been raped literally like 2 or 3 pages ago??? when i read those kinds of posts i can't help but think "how is this what's on your guys minds right now??..."

plus, when people say they saw these moments as sexual attraction they are often also implying they were thinking "maybe they'll get together". which is why i mentioned that i didn't trust andrew's group, cause i assumed everyone else felt the same, so i also assumed that like me they wouldn't be thinking of neil possibly getting with any of them... cause if you don't think they're trustworthy... why would you? i just wanted to protect neil from them ngl :') the only other character i liked at the time besides neil was wymack cause he actually showed that he cared about neil's wellbeing.

even that scene where andrew runs his fingers also neil's back, i honestly thought andrew was trying to intimidate neil... cause i didn't fucking like or trust andrew! he had non-con drugged not that long ago and i was still pissed at him and his group at the time. plus, andrew had used touching neil as a way to try and intimidate him before that so. even if i had picked up on the fact that andrew was attracted to neil from that during my first read, i wouldn't have thought they'd be getting together, or even wanted them too lol.

also because, aside from what i've said, there was also the fact neil told us he didn't swing... some scenes happened before that but most that people talk about happened after. if i'm reading a book and i'm having moments where i'm thinking maybe someone is attracted to the main character it's because i assume something might actually happen!

but i believed neil was aro/ace and so i wasn't looking for moments of neil being attracted to people, or moments of others being attracted to him. i never really bothered trying to read between the lines, it never even crossed my mind for so long... cause i had already set my mind on "neil won't end up with anyone". i only remembering it occurring to me at the "doesn't mean i wouldn't blow you" scene.

and honestly, when that happened i remember thinking something like "andrew's gonna end up getting rejected". idk? i never doubted neil was aspec, i started off thinking he was aro/ace like i said but i never went "oh he's gay", i just went "oh so he's not aro/ace but he's somewhere on the spectrum of being asexual".

and also tbh... i liked that neil never thought of things sexually. it was nice :'( and seeing his own thoughts and actions getting interpreted in that way, especially after we should have been under the assumption he wasn't interested in things like that... it rubs me the wrong way.

(i know aro/ace ppl can have relationships and/or have sex, but the way neil presented his sexuality and acted when hit on. to me, it made it seem like he was completely uninterested in either)

i can understand going back through the book after reading for the first time and being like "oh andrew's actions or words here might have been partially motivated by his attraction to neil at the time!", but through the first read? and for neil?? it's weird to me...

this is quite long so sorry bout that lol, i think i'll leave it here. it's nice to see someone else feel a similar way anyway ;^;

again, i don't think it's wrong if people read it differently. it just confuses me cause it's so different from my experience reading it and what i would expect it to be like for others

[livingasaghost]

the foxes during pride let's GO

disclaimer: i know everybody has their own headcanons for what all the foxes' sexualities are so do not come at me if i give your character a different sexuality than you think they deserve! (except aaron that bitch is straight)

so obviously the foxes are Not Straight™️ (except aaron fuck that guy) which means the foxes during pride are just.....chaotic af....but also, it took them a while to figure out how not straight they are

they all decide they're going to the pride parade bc none of them have ever been and since they have so many Gays they need to support them and now that they're all friends it'll be way more fun

kevin does NOT want to go and argues about it for three days before andrew shuts him up

nicky is so excited that he asks erik to fly in just so they can go together

neil still doesn't really know a lot about pride since he didn't even realize he "qualified" since he "only likes andrew"

one night he shares his fears with renee because she seems like the only person on the team who understands his sexuality aside from andrew and she says that he seems like he's on the ace spectrum and that he definitely belongs in the community

neil spends the rest of the night on his computer looking up demisexuality and asexuality and a whole list of terms he never knew existed

the next day he shows andrew, happy to finally have a language to explain himself, and andrew just nods

as neil keeps talking and explaining romantic attraction, andrew starts to think that maybe he belongs a little on the aro spectrum...but he doesn't say anything. just keeps thinking.

eventually neil speaks up at one of the team's hangouts and shares that he's demisexual and he may also be questioning his gender

this sparks a huge conversation where everybody starts Questioning™️ and soon it's 2am and matt is sharing that he might actually be pansexual?

allison waves everybody off because "of course i'm not straight i never have been you guys just haven't noticed"

nicky gets very put out that so much of his team is Not Straight and they all acted like he was the odd man out for being gay

then allison decides to stir the pot a little more "actually, i've always had a crush on renee but i know that'll never happen"

which leaves renee and the entire team speechless

renee: "...i always though YOU were the one that was never gonna happen"

nicky: "WAIT? RENEE AND ALLISON LIKE EACH OTHER?"

matt: "andrew just won like $300"

nobody really knows what to do next, so allison and renee just kind of look at each other and the two of them silently agree to talk about it all later

nicky: "okay well y'all better spill the tea when you hook up because i want all the details"

dan shoves him off the couch

as the night wears on, kevin stays conspicuously quiet, and it isn't until almost everyone goes to bed that neil finally convinces him to open up

kevin: "the reason i told you that you shouldn't be homosexual is because.....i used to have a crush on jean"

even though neil doesn't really understand, he admits that jean does have a beautiful face and it's really really attractive when he speaks french

neil shares a little bit more about demisexuality and kevin wonders if maybe he falls on that spectrum somewhere...if maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if he wasn't entirely straight

after their Big Night of Sharing, dan talks with allison because "how did you know you actually liked girls?"

and the more allison starts to talk, the more dan realizes that all those girls she thought were pretty growing up.....weren't just women she admired

but she stills likes matt and she still finds some men attractive and she starts to realize that maybe she falls on the bisexual spectrum....or maybe just queer, she isn't sure yet

one day after practice wymack goes off on some tangent and eventually nicky spills that they're all going to the pride parade

wymack: all of you?

nicky, totally serious: okay, well, not aaron bc he's homophobic and he's also the token straight teammate

aaron: i am not homophobic

matt: i'm pretty sure you are

wymack almost asks about why they all want to go to pride because he's sure most of them are queer, but it's above his pay grade so he just tells them to have fun

almost everybody decides to dress up for the parade — kevin obviously refuses — and andrew surprises everyone by wearing armbands that are rainbow colored

neil tells andrew he doesn't care about dressing up but andrew buys him a rainbow shirt anyway

and then while they're getting ready allison insists on drawing a little demi flag on neil's cheek right over his scar and it makes neil feel like he finally belongs somewhere

nicky obviously goes all out and wears an outfit that matches eriks: short shorts, rainbow flag cape, rainbow socks, etc. he even wears heart-shaped pink sunglasses

the girls spend a few hours doing their make-up and they even convince matt to put glitter in his hair

renee gets a few disposable cameras for the occasion and spends the entire day taking cheesy photos of (and with) everyone to remember everything

halfway through the day neil looks over and sees allison and renee holding hands

at one point kevin gets recognized and people start asking him about his sexuality, wondering if he's just an ally and kevin almost bolts....but then he glances at neil, who's standing close to andrew...and he looks at nicky and erik....and then he notices allison and renee together.....and something in him just kind of snaps

kevin: "actually, yeah, i'm here because i'm bi. i'm bisexual."

the whole team just stares at him, most of them wearing proud smiles, and when the fans leave (inevitably about to share this news with the internet) they all gather into a group hug — even andrew — and congratulate kevin

and even though kevin keeps telling them to "GET OFF!" he's also secretly glad that he finally has people to accept him and love him no matter who he loves

andrew doesn't say anything the entire day, looking entirely unimpressed by the crowds and the parade, so neil pulls him aside at one point

neil doesn't expect him to say anything, just wants to give him space to breathe, but then andrew speaks up

andrew: i never thought it could be like this

neil: like what?

andrew: colorful

[thatlastdanceofchances]

Torchwood fandom survey results - part 1

Thank you once again to everyone who didn’t get scared by that horrendous promotional photo-manipulation and participated in the Torchwood general survey last month. The survey ended with 155 participants! I wasn’t expecting so many, you all are amazing!

As you can imagine, that’s quite a lot of data to go through so I’m making at least two posts. This one is about who the people in the fandom are and the next one(s) will focus on canon and fandom.

All the demographics results are under a cut to save your dashboards!

Disclaimer 1: This is a survey promoted almost exclusively on tumblr and the results are therefore necessarily biased by the demographics of tumblr users.

The first question was Where are you from.

No surprise in the results given that this is a BBC show: the UK comfortably leads the poll. If I’m not mistaken, there are people from all 5 continents, which is nice!

The next question was What is your primary language. Once again, no surprise: English is dominating with 80% of the 155 votes.

Salut aux 6 autres personnes dont le français est la langue principale! :-)

Next, What is your age. This one surprised me a bit.

Given the content of the show (especially some of the Big Finish stuff *side-eyes Corpse Day and Hostile Environment*), I wasn’t expecting so many people under 18.

Also, given that the show is almost 15 years old, I wasn’t expecting the fandom to be more than 60% under 25. I think this can be explained by both the fact that tumblr fandom tends to be in that age bracket and the fact that, as you’ll see in the next set of results, the number of new Torchwood viewers increased significantly after 2018. As @capnjackharkness​ figured out, it’s when the show became available on a famous streaming service. And it apparently worked in bringing in a new audience that was too young during the original run.

The next two categories were about gender and sexuality.

Disclaimer 2: I am sorry if anyone was offended by the fact that their identity was not mentioned in the survey. I used lists provided by a teen health site and added the option to add your own identity. Still, I definitely understand the frustration of being ignored and you were right in calling me out on this and I’m truly sorry.

Disclaimer 3: You have no idea how much joy it brought me to see so many diversity in the results! Out of the 155 participants, there were 29 unique answers on gender and 44 unique answers on sexuality. That’s amazing news for our fandom. Unfortunately, this means I’m going to have to group the answers to be able to present something other than raw data. I hope that the choices I make do not hurt anyone. If it does, let me know and I’ll take down the following results and only link to the raw data. Also let me know if something should be phrased differently. English is not my native language and I may not be aware that certain terms/phrases have a negative connotation.

For both questions (gender and sexuality), 1% of the 155 participants declined to answer.

The first question was: What is your gender identity? You can pick multiple answers. The list is from a teen health website, feel free to add your own identity.

First of all, 8% used the available Questioning label (alone or with other labels). Given the ages of the participants as seen above, I’m impressed! You guys have your shit more together than I had at your age! :-D

In terms of use of binary genders:

69% selected Woman with or without any other label

7% selected Man with or without any other label

2% selected Cisgender without specifying man or woman

21% didn’t choose either Woman, Man or Cisgender.

Once again, I think the overwhelming majority of people being women is to be tempered by the fact that this is mainly a tumblr survey. But I think the fact that 21% are not represented by the binary genders show the diversity and I hope the tolerance of the Torchwood fandom.

If we look at the data a bit differently to see if and how the binary genders represent the community:

39% selected Cisgender with no other label that falls outside of the binary genders

3% selected Transgender with no other label that falls outside of the binary genders

30% selected either Man or Woman as their only label

25% selected labels that falls outside of binary genders (agender, demi-girl, genderfluid, gender neutral, genderqueer, non-binary)

2% selected Questioning as their only label.

Take that Greeks bearing gifts!

The second question was: What is your sexual orientation? You can pick multiple answers. The list is from a teen health website, feel free to add your own orientation.

Similar to the gender question, 9% used the available Questioning label (alone or with other labels). Again, I’m impressed.

21% selected the Queer label, when 77% didn’t.

As for the ace/aro spectrum, 29% selected labels that fall on that spectrum. This includes: aromantic, asexual, demisexual, grey-aromantic, grey-asexual.

As for who the participants are attracted to:

11% exclusively selected labels that imply attraction to the opposite gender only (heterosexual)

19% exclusively selected labels that imply attraction to the same gender only (homosexual, lesbian, gay)

43% selected labels that imply attraction to several genders (bisexual, pansexual)

26% didn’t select any label that gives an indication as to which gender(s) they are attracted to.

Yep, for the Torchwood fandom, that makes sense! :-D

That’s it for the demographics! Again, given the amount of data, this is an overview of the results. If you have any specific analysis you would like, feel free to ask!

See you in the coming days for results on when we discovered Doctor Who and Torchwood, which extended universe stories we’ve consumed and liked and how we live our best fandom life!

[streetsteel]

Leave a ship in my ask and I’ll reply only with an emoji — Accepting

A lil disclaimer: Opinions in here. Can get sexual. Can differ from other people’s opinions/headcanons, as these heavily rely on my own HCs and what I’ve experienced over the years in the Pokémon fandom. Viewer discretion advised.

@alolua​ sent:  jay/spark, jay/archie, and jay/matt

JAY/SPARK

😍 - otp

Hey @stxrmcatcher​ we’re talking about you :>

Okay so honestly I’ll say this first, this one entirely blindsided me. Didn’t expect to fall this deep into it. 

But again, it plays into my love for sun/moon, light/dark, peppy/moody archetypes. And we do love the good nerd jock/goth jock aesthetic. But when it comes down to it, they’re actually... pretty healthy, which is surprising from Jay’s side. They’ve shown that they were able to communicate, the sex is great, their sense of humor and love for chaos mesh well, they’re both active early birds and they HAVE JUST RECENTLY been very emotionally vulnerable around each other. They’re in no way perfect and they both have things and issues they have to work on, but they’ve shown that they can be a good support for each other and that they can actually talk.

Which honestly is like. God especially the emotional vulnerability it makes me so fucking soft.

JAY/ARCHIE

🙂 - I ship it but it’s not on my otp list

IT’S HOT AND UNPROFESSIONAL AND VERY PHYSICAL, LOW-EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT KIND OF. Friends with benefits at most. I feel like it’s something that can be unhealthy due to a power imbalance and many, so many secrets, but the Aesthetic of it though. Unf. Jay knows Archie a bit more than your usual Aqua employee due to being an Admin himself and just being good at reading people, and they both can respect the other’s cold intelligence. 10/10 would spend a day out at sea with and be half into it, half terrified of getting keelhauled. It’s a tango with two smartasses who will have a smoke in bed after they’re done with their fun.

JAY/MATT

�� - I don’t ship it but it’s not on my notp list

Let’s be real. Jay has eyes. He can see that Matt is one tall, buff, attractive dude. But Matt is also very sensitive, and Jay, more often than not, is looking for something that is physical and doesn’t include emotional proximity, which would probably hurt the big guy. And the big guy doesn’t deserve to be hurt that way. 

**BONUS ROUND (EXTREMELY SELF-INDULGENT) SINCE WE’RE ON TEAM AQUA’S CASE**

JAY/SHELLY

😍 - otp

LOOK. IF WE’RE TALKING ABOUT AQUA THIS PANSEXUAL MAN HAS TO JUST WILL-SMITH-GESTURES-AT-WIFE-ON-RED-CARPET AT SHELLY BECAUSE DAMN. ANYONE WHO HAS EYES TO SEE KNOWS SHE’S A BOMBSHELL LADY. 

So. Shelly. She’s Extremely Clever. She’s snarky. She’s terribly, terribly hot. She’s got emotional intelligence out the wazoo. The banter never ceases with her and it’s always just. Perfect. To be fair, Jay is Very Happy to count her as a friend, but wouldn’t be opposed to being more. As well, as Jay is grey-aro and I headcanon Shelly as somewhere on the aro spectrum as well, there is a deep understanding that is hard to obtain from someone who hasn’t lived the same experiences/had the same conflicted thoughts. I can see them having late night talks on the beach and so on. They just make great friends and confidantes, and would also be an absolute power couple as partners. 

[supercasey]

I Think I Might Be Ace/Aro: A Rant

Disclaimer: I'm really uninformed when it comes to Ace/Aro stuff, so if I come off as really scared/stupid then that's why. ALSO, if you fucking message me about this Natalie (you know who you are and we already cut ties, stop trying to PM me) I'm seriously gonna block you. Anyone still here? Okay, let's go.

So yeah; I think I might be ace/aro. Figured out I was some kind of ace awhile ago, but I've never really known where I fit on the spectrum. Still not sure, but based on a few things, I'd say I'm pretty sure I have a fully functional libido, but I'm just not physically attracted to anyone.

These last few weeks have been hell. My family is moving in about two months and in general my life is chaos. I have two days of my work left, and my ex-best friend online "broke up with me" ((I said bye first but I'm not getting too into the details. Still figuring it out)).

Like I mentioned, I've never really felt sexually attracted to anyone. Oh, sure, I masturbate, but I've never felt the desire to Do It with anyone. No one's ever actually made me want to have sex with them. I've tried convincing myself that it'll come in time, that a strong enough friendship will make it happen, but no, nothing has ever sparked my interest. A person alone has never turned me on.

After a bit, I told myself I was greyace. Rarely turned on by others, but someday I would be! It would happen! I had a minor crush in high school on the nicest guy I ever met and thought, yes, okay, this is love. This is me in love. Now I will finally Get There and Be In Love and Fuck. But no, nothing changed. The crush came and went in an instant, and I was left wondering why I thought it was anything more than that.

Had another Thing that couldn't even be called a crush- told myself that I was in love with a girl in my theatre class, because she had a similar, almost mirrored fucked up childhood to my own. But unrequited love turned to idolization, which led me to figuring out that no, I wasn't in love, I just loved her as a person. Strike two, still waiting on something to work.

And then I made an online friend. She liked my stories and she liked my headcanons. We chattered and wrote each other stories, until we were friends. I thought that this would have to lead to love- it worked for my brother, it would work for me. But no, I never fell in love. And you know what? For the first time, I didn't mind that. I didn't want to be in love. I couldn't be in love.

I will not got into why that friendship eventually broke off (I honestly think it had something to do with all of this confusion on my end and failure to read signals properly) but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm aromantic as well as ace. I'm not sure. The only reason I'm posting this is because I've had a shitty day and need some answers, so if there's anyone reading this that's ace/aro and thinks they know what's going on with me, please let me know. I've supported asexuality/aromantic stuff since I understood the definitions, but I'm no saint. I know that I'm bigoted in this department and I'm scared of the results. So I'm sorry for cluttering your dashes with this nonsense- I'm just freaked out and unsure of my identity.

((Again, if you fucking PM me about this Natalie, I'm gonna lose my shit. Please leave me alone.))

[ophexis]

Can you talk a little about being aromantic and how you came to realise you are?

Ooo hi anon!! ;w;

I put this under a cut cause it’s ended up accidently being a huge wall of text for something that isn’t super interesting to a lot of people but thanks a lot for the ask anon! ;w;

also this is probably not very coherent sorry about that ;w;

(disclaimer: also this is my own personal experiences and does not represent the experience of every single aromantic person on the spectrum)

aromanticism is simply just not feeling or experiencing romantic love.

For me being aromantic is…well nice, cause I didn’t have a word for it before I got in college. It’s also a bit strange. For one a lot of other aromantic people are very into physical intimacy anyway, and I’m….extremely repulsed by the idea of physical intimacy, so even in the aro communities I felt a bit out of place :’D (I eventually stopped looking at aromantic communities completely…it was….i dont really have a word for it aside than alienating)

But it’s also very freeing. I was never really convinced of romance, I went along with the whole ‘someday you’ll find someone’ thing cause….that’s what everybody does right? But nope. I can just be myself, on my own, and live my life to the fullest. No need to force myself to find a guy to spend all my time with, no need to have children….my life is my own, and it will always be. And it’s a nice way to think with how bad my anxiety, social anxiety, lack of self-worth and what everybody tells me is depression making me feel like honestly, I know be a fuckin awful mom. Kids deserve better, and I deserve to live my whole life how I want to. It’s a bit of a selfish way to see things, but I spent most of my childhood basically being owned by my shitty abusive friend who never let me live my life and do my things, and I intend to live for myself from now on. 

It’s also a bit alienating in fandom settings. Ships are the most important aspect of a fandom in most of them, shipping drives most of fandoms. Most shipping stuff makes me pretty uncomfortable, from the very aggressive way people push their romantic ships and ideas, and how you basically don’t exist when you don’t really ship anything, and how you know that nobody will ever really enjoy your aromantic headcanons, because “b-but muh ship”. You have people saying how obvious a ship is, that you’re stupid if you don’t see it, but hell you watched the same serie, played the same game, and….never saw any of the romantic subtext. You saw friends being good friends, and never really realised it could be romantic until you stumble on the fandom. I am so oblivious to what people see as romantic subtext TwT; I feel bad sometimes with how people scream IT’S SO OBVIOUS!! IT’S CANON!! and I’m like….idk man. I basically need the author to spell it out for me before I see anything romantic. It’s not because ‘oh no you hate that ship you big meanie so you say they’re just friends!!’, I just legit never saw anything in it that I’d interpret as romantic actions. I’d be really okay with ships if shipping didn’t turn a lot of fans into rabid animals tbh >3>;; I can easily warm up to ships when I stay away from the fandom. 

i have a few aro headcanons…Shaundi from Saints Row, Y’sthola in ffxiv, Sailor Mars (her manga personality mostly), Peridot and Lapis (people would hate that one), Rey from Star Wars…and all my ocs, unless specified otherwise, tend to be aromantic by default. Yuri is demiromantic. Towering Hound and Pupuri Puri are aro as fuck.

finding out there was a word for it was very liberating and made me feel like all this discomfort about romance and everything related to it wasn’t me being a lonely weirdo but was just something valid that other people experience as well.

And I still love my friends lots. I love my family. I love all of them very deeply and I care for them and wish them the best. I’ll just never love someone in a romantic way and that’s ok.

——–

and now for boring life story:

I am pretty sure I have always been aromantic (I just never knew that was A Thing before tumblr). It was in a childish way earlier, kinda, but I remember I refused to watch a lot of Disney movies with princesses in them cause I thought they’d just be love stories, and I thought it was boring as heck. I went along with the whole “girls wanna find boyfriends!!” stuff to fit in but I was never really much into the idea?

In high school I never had a crush on anyone, to the exasperation of my friends. My shitty abusive ex friend basically pushed me into the only “romantic” relationship I ever was in, with a guy i met on a Sonic forum (yep). he was a nice dude, but honestly I was never really….like I never felt any different than with a friendship you know? My friends also mocked me endlessly for this relationship so that was eeeeeh…Eventually we fell out of contact and he assumed we weren’t a thing anymore and he went in a relationship with a guy and I kinda found out accidently, it was awkward but then again I was just kinda….”welp i guess that’s that” (also cue my friends mocking me and saying I was such a bad girlfriend I ‘turned him gay’ even tho he was probably bi in the first place anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

I always just thought at that point that I’ll just wait and someday “I’ll find someone” cause that’s what everybody tells you no matter how uninterested you are.

Then in college I joined tumblr at some point. I do not remember who reblogged the picture with various orientations on it, including romantic ones, but thanks so much. I didn’t even know there were romantic orientations!! I saw aromantic, and something clicked. Like “holy shit that exists? That’s a thing??” I felt a bit bad initially to grab the label cause im still just a straight cis girl but I read more into it, and into other aro peep’s experiences, and I realised that yep. That’s me, that’s how I’ve been feeling all my life and it’s totally okay if I wanna remain single all my life, if all this shit makes me uncomfortable its not cause im a weirdo. 

being aro is a bit like standing on the sidelines while a bunch of people are screaming about how great this one thing is but you’re kinda “meh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯“ about it. Or kinda like when you don’t like booze (I don’t like booze) but everytime you’re at a party everybody’s trying to make you try all the booze “It doesn’t even taste like alcohol you’ll like it!” “oh try this one, I’m sure you’ll like this one”. It’s a bit like that. It probably doesn’t sound nice to people who experience lots of romantic love, but its nice and cozy for me if that makes any sense, and I don’t want to try it. I’ve tried it before, I didn’t like it. I’m done. (this statement applies to both romance and booze lmao)

my current life goals is to live in a nice lil cozy appartment with some kitties, on my own.

[corvidprompts]

Hello wise and mighty birb, I have a question. I have a character who is asexual, but I'm not 100% sure how to write this properly..

Hi!

Disclaimer:…

I’m asexual so??

EDIT: this has been edited for clarity of language, adding information in I either forgot or decided to cut initially for length or because i thought it was too technical for a how-to-write post, and all around been checked over for errors. I’ve also put in an effort to look for any internalized biases I may have had that gave this post a skewed feel, and the post has been edited in an attempt to make it more inclusive.

A big Thank You to the user who brought up these errors to my attention! I don’t claim to be perfect, and I know my posts aren’t the end-all-be-all of information. If you guys ever spot any errors in my posts, or have extra info, always feel free to reblog it with the information, or bring it to my attention. I feel like working together with your guys is one of the most important features of this blog to make sure everything is as accurate and detailed as possible, like the chain posts we’ve had on usa flag discourse and emetophobia. I really do want you guys to message me if you’ve feel I’ve messed up somewhere- I’m 18, I’m still learning, and I promise if you feel like there’s something you feel I need to learn, I will listen.

This is still written for the purposes of a how-to-write post

Asexuality is defined by a person having low or no sexual attraction to another person! This doesn’t mean that an ace person is blind to physical attractiveness, it just means the ace persons thought process might work a little differently

She was a shapely woman, with a slender waist and large, firm breasts. Her hips swayed as she walked, straight-backed and seductive

vs

She had really large breasts and they looked fantastic, but man oh man, they must hurt when she walks down the stairs or something. I wonder if she uses some kind of corset to hold them up- it would explain her stiff posture.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that an ace person is entirely blind to sex appeal, though. An ace person will probably notice more revealing outfits or the stereotypical femme fatale red lipstick, but they’ll likely focus on describing the aesthetic of the person, rather than the sort of ~emotions~ evoked by it. 

Say you have a succubus trying to seduce your ace person. Sure, most ace people (though not all) are capable of getting physically aroused. But it’ll be less like a seduction and more like

ace person: well.

ace person: time to go eat popcorn aggressively

succubus: don’t you wanna fuck?

ace person: lmao popcorn

i mean, sure. Some ace people have sex. Some don’t. It’s all a personal decision.

Asexual people tend to fall into one of three categories- sex repulsed, sex neutral, and sex-favourable.

Sex repulsed (or sex averse) asexuals find sex disgusting, upsetting, or otherwise associated with negative emotions. Sex repulsed aces might avoid places associated with sexual context, like bars, nightclubs, or comedy movies- not all of them, of course, but comedies that rely heavily on sexual humour might be out (Spy with Melissa Mccarthy for example!). Sex repulsed are the least likely group of aces to have sex at all, especially if they are also aces with low/ no libido or low/ no physical arousal.

Sex neutral aces have no strong feelings about sex, the same way one might have no strong feelings about unloading the dishwasher. It’s something one might do if their partner or friend is into sex, or if the person in question has a higher libido. Sex neutral aces might not be bothered by sexual content in low doses, but still might seek to avoid things containing a great deal of sexual content.

Sex favourable aces are usually fairly on board with sexual jokes and references- essentially, while a sex favourable ace doesn’t feel attraction, they’ll probably be just fine with engaging in sexual humour. Sex positive aces are the most likely aces to have sex, especially one night stands or those sort of things.

Another thing to note is that asexual=/= aromantic. With most sexualities, you can kinda assume that the romantic and sexual preferences line up, but not with aspec stuff!! that’s why you hear phrases like ‘ace lesbian’ ‘aromantic bisexual’ or ‘aroace’. This isn’t a post on aromantic people who aren’t ace, so I’m only including info on or applicable too aroace folks

A non aro ace person can still feel crushes and romantic love! Hence non-aro. There might be some stress on the ace character to feel sexual, or they might feel underdeveloped or not ready despite knowing they’re ace. There’s also a lot of pressure from the media and societal norms to have sex once in a relationship. Even if the relationship is healthy and loving and full of good communication, the ace person might still feel like they ~arent doing enough~ since there’s no sex. 

An aromantic ace person won’t have crushes at all! No romantic tension, no sexual tension. Some aromantic people feel alterous attraction, which is often described as being like friendship, but more intense and deeper, with the added desire to touch (like holding hands or snuggling), but not as passionate as romance. Some aroace people might think that it is romance, and end up in a relationship that they’re uncomfortable in. Some aroace people can also be aplatonic, which means they don’t desire any kind of companionship. It depends on the person my man

a ~bad~ example of an aplatonic aromantic is voldemort. Often times villians are aromantic and that’s used as a~motivator~ of their ~evilness~. please don’t do this.

Aromantic people also fall on the romance repulsed/neutral/positive spectrum

A lot of ace and aroace people struggle with microaggressions like ‘You’re just a late bloomer’ ‘people just aren’t people without love and sex’ ‘unmarried people must be so unhappy’ and the fact that nearly all media involves a romance plot and the majority include some kind of sexual references if not a blatant sex scene. 

You know how everyone is touting wonder woman as god tier? Yeah, I loved it, but man I’m so sick of that kind of moral lesson of ‘love taught me goodness’. A very aro-unfriendly movie. (see the voldemort comment above)

A lot of language is full of microaggressions that are tough to notice. These things can also be subjective- when i first wrote this post i used the phrase ‘non aro aces can feel crushes fine’ to mean than non aro ace people would still feel crushes, but the phrasing is confusing and subjective, and can be hurtful. The phrase ‘just friends’ irks me, and I know I still use it since it’s such a common phrase and view of platonic relationships. It’s extremely tough to cut such phrases from your vocabulary, especially if you aren’t in a place where you can be open about your id and have to perform heteronormativity in order to ensure your safety.

lastly: JOKES!!!! jokes r the cornerstone of an ace character. Cake jokes, food jokes, exaggerated flirting between friends ect ect. Jokes make a character!!!

I was given these links by the user who asked me to edit this post, and I definitely think they’re worth checking out. This is one on asexual people with no libido or arousal and this is one on the ace experience

Hope this is helpful!!

[feifiefofum]

i've never understood the whole ace discourse thing. of all the sexualities there are, they're the least, like, invasive. the introvert of the sexuality spectrum. like, ew, everyone else is all about that swapage of bodily fluids and aces be '...no?' and then everyone has to pile on? and not just from the heteros, oh no, it's got to be everyone? it's 'unnatural'? get off the internet if that offends you. you can't get over how weird they are for not having a sex drive? well guess what, they are literally surrounded by weirdos who like to swap fluids from all kinds of orifices. aros are the playboys that actually disclaim the fact that they don't want you getting attached. that they're in it for the casual fling if they're not asexual. you know, the people that half of tumblr's all about. that don't lead people on. they literally tell you that they're not going to catch feelings but if you wanna have a good time and not worry about the hookup catching feelings, you're good??? like, guys, help me understand. what about flipping the script and having a working imagination and fucking empathizing is so fucking hard? like two seconds of thought and you can exorcise the hatred that dwelleth in your soul. as marie kondo would say, bigotry does not spark joy.

Isn’t it wild how on this website you can ask somebody something simple such as “do you support aces?” And they’ll reply like “I don’t want to get into discourse :/“

Thats! not! discourse!!

But it does really show how much people see ace and aro people as debate topics rather than actual people