#Total Experience attraction

[farmlesbians]

being someone who has been officially out for going on 8 years and who has known they're a lesbian for literally 10 but also being someone with very little experience actually dating anyone sucks shit cause i come off way too confident then goof it in the end

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

sometimes i want to make a post about a particular aroace experience but 2015 ace discourse fucked me up too much to feel comfy posting that here, especially because some people apparently haven't fucking moved on given that i saw a bunch of it in the notes of an unrelated post a couple of days ago

[shoechoe]

other people experiencing attraction/romance really does blindside me sometimes. i'll just be minding my own business in my friend group and then two of them will start showing obvious romantic affection or be like "by the way we're dating" and it'll be like... huh i totally forgot romance was a thing that happens in real life

[emlos]

im going through a lot of new things emotionally for the first time in my life and i dont like it

[invinciblerodent]

I snoopes around your old tags aand I am a little in love with Harwen

Aaaah, thank you, I'm so happy you like him! ❤️❤️

I've been thinking about him a lot this Veilguard eve too, kinda revisiting him (and some of my other, "non-canon" guys, especially vis a vis the Themes™ and how they continue through the new guys), and for what it's worth... I think that for a character I made when I was only like 22, he still works pretty well!

I would probably do a few things differently now, more consciously, but, I mean... I still think that the "reclusive, introverted, gray-ace-but-specifically-demisexual Dalish assassin-strategist Experiencing Cultural Divide And Alienation" is still a fun concept that I really like!

.... I have also been toying around a bit with mods for the BG3 cc, to try and make (among others) him an updated face for the Veilguard timeskip too, and um.

the "Vallaslin" and the nose on this one are not quite right (the Vallaslin is supposed to be Andruil's, and his nose is supposed to be a bit hooked, kind of aquiline), but in his mid- to late forties? There's no way Harwen isn't gonna be dilfy. A positively dilfy elf.

(This is, I believe, is Shadowheart's dad's face, and he's an assassin-spec archer rogue in Dragon Age canon, but I think he'd be more of a hunter-, or gloom stalker-subclass Ranger in real DnD.)

[unopenablebox]

ive made this post before but it's so annoying to read a good dc comics fic that is technically or more-than-technically set in the fucking movie universe. why on earth are you making me remember that one of the romantic leads of your fic looks like ben affleck

[critterchitters-closedcaptions]

funny thing about attraction is that i am Not at all interested in cis guys. right.

except for the literal worst fictional men you've ever layed eyes on.

this character is horrible and *will* harm my general health?

comfort character babey.

occasionally theres the just Regular Ass Guy right, but 90% of the time its either women or the literal scum of the earth (or both. lady villains. aaough <3 yes please)

[majorasnightmare]

sits here thinking about all the fic ideas i have for my durge and isobel and punches a hole in the drywall because i have unmedicated Cant Focus Disorder

[lesbiansupernatural]

I truly can't relate to all these people who have identified as bisexual and then start realizing they are lesbians, and that their male attraction was purely comphet (even though it's totally valid)

I realized I was a lesbian, not because I fell in love with a girl, but because I realized all the boys I knew of SUCKED, and I never had, nor ever would, be attracted to any of them

[vintage-bentley]

Have the “aspec” folks considered that if there are this many labels to describe being “aspec”…maybe it’s not actually a minority experience? That maybe the vast majority of people would fall somewhere on the “asexual spectrum”, which would be better described as simply the spectrum of how people experience attraction? That maybe they aren’t “queer” at all, and are just like everyone else? That maybe being like everyone else isn’t a bad thing, and that they need to stop running from it by creating endless labels to make themselves feel Special And Unique?

[carbonateddelusion]

there's part of me that worries that it's weird I'm putting so much thought into pre-transition Mari, but 1. I'm ALSO a trans person 2. it's a big part of her character so I think it's natural that it needs to be developed

[allthegothihopgirls]

i think i sit in a very narrow middle-ground where i'm not a die-hard swiftie, but i also wouldn't say i'm a casual enjoyer of her stuff. i have a lot of fond core musical memories that involve taylor swift, and i know a large portion of her catalogue, and i still do enjoy her music. but i'm not super duper insane about it most of the time. but did i also go to eras tour and scream and cry a lot and fangirl? yeah. but i still wouldn't say i'm 'die-hard' about her

[grahamdollton]

[mantisgodsdomain]

Ok we realize we just wrote like a whole tag essay about this but we just realized that we can pare it down to "either no or no but in a way where people probably still talk about thinking theyre hot anyways".

[lakewinnipeg]

much has been said abt this phenomenon but it does suck emotionally to have the gender/presentation mismatch of feeling good about how you look but the way you look gets sorted by default into just being a Woman but then that causes other problems cuz the interior experience absolutely does not buy into any narrative of womanhood or girlhood

[thehealingsystem]

was just going to comment but I figured this deserved a more in depth response. so now I ask users of tumblr to STOP MAKING POLLS LIKE THIS

for warning there is rampant aphobia in the notes, as expected but really fucking sad because I thought most of our community moved past this shit. but apparently not

asexual and aromanticism is inherently part of the lgbtq+ community. no ifs ands or buts. not on the condition of being queer in some other way, not on the condition of how much oppression they experience. and from reading the comments, people need some reminders

gatekeeping who is "lgbt enough" based on how badly a group is oppressed is bullshit. first off, a bunch of you obviously haven't read into any discussions or research on aspec folks and the experiences they've had with this. because I can assure you that we ALSO are on the receiving end of the harm from heteronormative views of society and having our orientations questioned, criticized, and rejected. just because you refuse to even LOOK at what aspecs are saying about their own lives and don't experience that yourself doesn't mean you can completely deny that we aren't oppressed.

and to be fair, I am queer in other ways and being aspec isn't the most important part of my identity for me BECAUSE I've been a lot more hurt for those other parts, such as being lesbian or being trans. but I obviously don't speak for the entire community

but secondly, it's not the best thing in the world to base whether or not someone is allowed in the Exclusive Minority Group around how badly they've been hurt. this has been done to hell and back and has shown to only be harmful. transmedicalism bases itself off of this, and I see it in a lot of transmeds to this day. that they're hurt and suffering due to being trans, therefore anyone else who is trans has to be hurt and suffering too or else they're not REALLY trans. Not REALLY a part of the group. Because if they're not oppressed enough obviously they don't belong here right? literally the logic people are putting in the comments right now

And by god, people NEED to get normal about alloaros. if a guy doesn't experience romantic attraction and is just sexually attracted to women, that is it. he cannot choose his orientation. he can't change anything about who or who he isn't attracted to

seriously there's replies saying with their full chest that he's just trying to distance himself from women while still being sexually active with them in order to use it as a scapegoat for his misogyny. which also shows that we still see asexual and aromanticism as an ACTION rather than an actual valid orientation. what the hell do you want this hypothetical man to do??? suddenly gain romantic feelings??? pft

so many have problems with split attraction for so many reasons that go straight into basic plain old queerphobia. towards non-aspec sam and aspec sam alike. that the labels aren't valid and we would just use something else, to that no one can actually have attraction like that because romantic and sexual attraction are always the same definitely (/sar), our labels are useless and there's no point in them, we're trying to invade some sort of community, that we're literal predators and trying to make people attracted to us, the list goes on and on

please stop giving these people a platform to spout their queerphobia. I've seen so many polls like this asking questions of whether they think xyz identity is valid, and while I may have let loose with the contradictory identities one bc it was mostly positive and I just wanted to express pride in it, there's so many that go all wrong, asked in bad faith meant to bring out hateful discourse

this is a poll with 15980+ votes so far with 4746+ voting no. are you kidding me. aphobia? in our year 2023, nearly 2024? literally just stop already