#a fandom i used to be in literally had an aspec main character and people would say no actually i think they should be this

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

5, 7, 16, 18

OFC for Bryce & Jensen, but feel free to tell me about Kennedy, too.

And answer this one MF. lol JK JK

thanks for the ask lol (i think ill save kennedys for another time as im currently working more on their character)

5. How did you figure out your oc's identity?

none of my characters are cis/straight so for me its just a matter of figuring out What they are, not If they are. jensens was pretty easy to figure out ngl bc he has a very similar standpoint as i do. i gave him a label coming into the fandom, but as time has gone on i realized that he is just not a person for labels and just prefers to Be (like myself). his aspec identity took a little longer just bc i was trying to write him as allo and shocker i failed, so after admitting that maybe he wasnt the rest just fell into place

okay and bryces i knew since like,, book 2. i came into the fandom everyone and their mother was having a fit that bryce wasnt proposing to mc by book 1 but like,, did we ever consider that that was for a reason? maybe the fact that he took 3 books to even want a relationship had something to do with him being demiro? (but no, ofc not, bc god forbid we expect the allos and straights to willingly admit that characters might be aspec). n e ways hes so obviously demiro and to see that erased may hurt my aspec self a little but thats fine :') as far as him being pan, he will just flirt with anyone and everyone all the time and it is a threat. he doesnt give two fucks about gender, if he vibes w someone, he's interested, and thats been clear since day one

7. Is there something that could cause your oc to question their identity? What?

not really, no. jensen is still,, iffy on gender (its so hard for him to explain like he doesnt really relate to the idea of being a man but masculinity is fine but he doesnt quite feel androgenous or anything Else enough to go by they/them pronouns--its just a lot for him lol) so thats something that he def questions a lot. but as far as sexuality, hes perfectly comfortable going by queer/grayace and thats what feels right to him. same for bryce, hes comfortable and confident in his identities, so nothing would really make him question it

16. Did you ever change an oc's identity when they were already established? Why?

yes ofc bc they develop and evolve like actual people, not just stagnant character sheets. jensen wasnt aspec originally, nor did he go by queer. i changed it bc, as i got to understand and know this version of him better, i realized he 1. wasnt allo lol but 2. wouldn't have been too keen on labels, either

18. Do you prefer to give your ocs specific labels, or keep it unspecified? Why? If applicable, do you change their labels depending on circumstance?

it depends honestly. i think choices fandom (and people in general) is overly obsessed w character sexuality labels (considering how many straight creators there are and how few queer creators there are). honestly i wouldve loved to leave jensen label-less/unspecified because realistically i think thats just how he is (even if people ask, even about his aspec identity, he'll just say queer bc he doesnt really care), but coming into the fandom, that didnt really feel like an option. and for characters like bryce, im happy to label him because i feel that its an important part of his character, not just in my hc but should be important in all hcs. im happy to label him bc, not only do i find it important as an aspec person to see that aspec representation (considering that nearly everyone in this fandom would cry if they had to actually accept that characters in relationships can still be aspec--especially confirmed aspec characters, but thats for another time), but i also think its just a huge part of his character and something he would be really proud of

[onehundredgar]

Click for Palestine 🇵🇸 : https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

Hey! What’s up? Thanks for coming around!

Pseudonym’s Annie. I’ve got most of my quick info in my bio, if you ever feel inclined to skim it! I’m Bangladeshi and Muslim. I’m also aspec, omnisexual, and pangender. I also am very large and contain multitudes.

This is my main blog! I reblog a lot of stuff I find funny, stuff about the moon, about animals and nature but birds and fish in particular, about community and partnership and overcoming prejudice, about love and family and friends, and about identity and orientation and mental health.

I tag all my posts, replies, and reblogs as accurately as I can. If there are any issues with my tags, post contents, or anything else in my blog, please let me know so I can fix it and make it a more comfortable online space!

I love meeting people! If you'd like to, shoot me a message or an ask and you can be sure I'll respond!

Below is the alphabetically organised guide to my current fandoms and my relationship with them, and to my organisational structure for my tags. It's a long post; keep reading at your own risk!

Fandoms!

Artemis Fowl

I can be safely critical of it nowadays since it's geared towards a younger audience but I respect the solid worldbuilding it portrays, especially for a children's book. Good stuff- I'd still recommend it.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared

Again, got into it when I was younger and it kind of burrowed its way into my brain where it rotted, forgotten, for ages until the sudden new season. Not necessarily emotionally invested, but the Three Of Them have my whole heart for sure.

Dungeon Meshi

I got into it VERY recently by binging the manga, and now I'm keeping up with the Netflix adaptation! Obsessed with the solid worldbuilding.

Gravity Falls

Top fandom ever everrrrr. Got obsessed with it as a kid and I’ve never let it go since. I know all the sordid fandom history, all the best and most popular headcanons of current day, and some the most based fanartists and fics. I do a lot of recreational multishipping in my dark and evil mind palace.

My Little Pony

Come on come onnnnn. It's a classic. I have an encyclopaedic and philosophical understanding of the MLP universe. No I will not talk about it.

Percy Jackson

Hey I mean it was pretty formative for me when I was younger. Got me into mythology! I'm critical of it nowadays but I cannot deny the positive impact it had on me. Good stuff! Haven't and probably won't watch the new live adaptation.

The Wind-Up Chronicle Bird

Read it VERY recently. Super surreal, and as always, Murakami never misses. However, the books I am emotionally invested in change on a monthly basis. Expect the title to switch in a little bit.

Welcome to Night Vale

I got into it half a year ago and it literally changed my brain chemistry. One of my forever fandoms for sure, though I must admit it fell off after "Father Kevin"...

Tag Organisation Guide!

Annie’s Anomalous Affairs:

#annie’s aberrant abominations - there’s very little content in this tag. OC tag; I don’t reaaaally talk about my OCs though so don’t worry about it. It’s mostly stuff I reblog to help character build anyway. I’ll list the subtags for individual OCs below as they appear on my blog.

#abomination: Danny #abomination: Hannah #abomination: Hedon #abomination: Lola #abomination: Spring #abomination: Teresa

#annie adores advice - there’s a LOT of content in this tag. Advice or awareness spreading I reblog that I think will help me live easier, or to signal boost so people who need it can use it.

#annie argot - posts of mine where I think I utilised especially clever wordplay, which I archive under this tag for future writing reference.

#annie attempts art - my art! At least up until now I’ve drawn purely on Procreate so it’s all digital medium.

#annie awakened - a tag specifically for answering asks and mentions!

#annie awkwardly articulates - my posts! I talk about my thoughts and experiences, or I’ll be archiving a chat I had here online.

#authentic annie appearances - screenshots of text conversations with my IRL friends.

Annie Appreciates…:

#birdposting - just the same; reblogging cool and/or funny posts about birds! I love birds. Love their behaviour, love how they evolve, love eating them. I try to include the species of bird in the tags whenever I can!

#boys will be boys - I use this tag whenever I am appreciating masculinity! This includes folks being silly, being kind, being geeky, and all around being. Often accompanied by the “girl moment” tag (elaborated on below).

#classic - tag for infamous Tumblr posts that I archive for myself! Gotta collect those heritage posts, man. Can’t have a blog without the colour of the sky.

#classic + #to me - iconic Tumblr posts that feel like they should be infamous but aren’t for some reason.

#fishposting - you guessed it; reblogging cool and/or funny posts about fish! I love fish. Love their biology, love how they look, love eating them. I try to include the species of fish in the tags whenever I can!

#girl moment - I use this tag whenever I am appreciating femininity! This includes folks being silly, being kind, being geeky, and all around being. Often accompanied by the “boys will be boys” tag (elaborated on above).

#later gator - the tag I use to save things (usually videos) to look at later when I’m scrolling tumblr at double-time (or have my volume on), probably because I’m at work.

#my romantic wife - that’s the moon! I adore the moon, it’s unmatched (tag not to be confused with the term I often use, “my platonic wife”, elaborated on below)!

#number - tag for things that I think are attractive, ranging from blatant thirst trap art to standard-ATX motherboards.

#take me out to dinner first - tag for scheduled posts that have something to do with the date of the day.

Annie’s Associates:

#DNA double felix-cipher - tag for tumblr user @toytanks, Felix-Cipher. The tag is a play on the term “double helix structure”.

#my froinds :3 - I talk about or reblog posts that remind me of my IRL friends! My friends are very important to me and I love them so so much.

#sarufiyyun - tag for tumblr user @biblicallyaccuratepigeons, Seraph-Chim, who’s angelkin. Sarufiyyun is the Islamic term for Seraphim.

#the coworker - this very specific colleague I have who who is pretty eccentric. She stalks my blog. You can find her snarky remarks under the reclusive @annielover69420 handle.

#the spouse - this is “my platonic wife” (not to be confused with the tag “my romantic wife”, elaborated on above)! My best friend who I’ve known for nearly two decades. I have a special tag for her because I have a special relationship with her. Sometimes I will be a little sulky about her, but hey, marriage has its ups and downs!

Annie’s Avocations:

#art reference - what it says on the tin. Step by step guides or simple diagrams of art tips; whatever helps me draw!

#recipes - I feel like I should throw this tag in here now that I have at least two or three reblogs for it. Cool recipes for cool food I’d like to make one day.

#tutorial - tutorials for anything at all! I eat life advice for every meal. Sometimes these won't be strictly tutorials but something adjacent— I tag as such anyway so I can find it later under that label if necessary.

#writing - yes, I have nothing to show for it on here, but I’m a writer! Tag for writing tips and also inspiration.

That's all, folks! Have a good one!

[rolaplayor101]

After searching about, I've found others who've had and thought about the same issue that I did, which is that the Kingdom Hearts fandom has a HUGE amatonormativity problem. Which, yeah, most fandoms do, but the difference here is that the KH fandom is pretty small, which makes it way more prevalent.

There's a good amount of people who think Sora is aroace, grayromantic, or alloromantic asexual, but they keep it to themselves for risk of being harassed by shippers. They have to protect themselves with "aphobes DNI" on the few posts they do post about it. They have to continuously reblog their own art or go to a confession blog to lament about it.

And it's sad! This is saddening! And the thing is, I do ship SoRiKai. At least the minimum amount, enough to be fully invested in what's going on in canon. Because, canonically? They do care about each other intensely enough to usually go beyond the bounds of typical friendship. Especially Sora. The way he thinks, the things he does, it's all so grandeur in comparison to the things people do in real life for their friends. He flat out says he wants to be with Riku and Kairi forever in one of the first games.

The problem is that people still think being aroace means being apothi and aplatonic, but that's not the case. Sora feels platonic attraction so quickly, frequently, and intensely that it even puts off new characters he meets in the game. He's affectionate, uplifting, and confident(most of the time). But people can't see aroace people as a whole as anything but negative and loveless. Which is just plain not the case for all of us. Aspec people post about the different ways aspec people think all the time! It's mostly the only thing in the aromantic and asexual tags, and I frequent those a lot! So I'd know!

This is an issue thats brought up over and over and over again, and it's that being aroace-- feeling exactly zero romantic or sexual attraction-- does not mean you also feel zero platonic or queerplatonic (or sensual or alterous or any tertiary) attraction. It does not mean you can't feel attraction that is just as intense as allos feel romantic or sexual attraction. Sora has always attributed his strength and confidence to his friends, to his heart that belongs to all of his friends. He feels platonic attraction so intensely that it literally powers him up. It's the main theme of the entire Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Saying that Sora feels queerplatonic attraction towards Riku and Kairi does not mean he'd feel any less than if he were romantically and/or sexually attracted to them.

Thinking that queerplatonic and/or platonic attraction is less than romantic and/or sexual attraction is incorrect, aphobic, amatonormative, and exactly contrary to what Kingdom Hearts the franchise is partially trying to do.

Kingdom Hearts normalizes healthy, platonic, life-long relationships, which wasn't well represented in the early 2000s. Most media represented friendships as on the back burner, especially when pit against romantic relationships. Affectionate arospecs watched shows and movies when they were younger seeing the main character dismiss their friends, grow out of them, or outright hate them, and then have their problems be solved by a romantic partner. Toxic or unhealthy friendships (and also sibling relationships) were the norm, so having Kingdom Hearts, and a few other media I can't think of right now, be made where there's no romance outside of background characters and established ones fron Disney Movies, and where friendship is treated as equal and as the most important, was revolutionary.

Tons of Shounen anime do this, too. Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, Hero Academia, most sports anime. Then there's other stuff like most magical girl anime, Soul Eater, Little Witch Academia, Promised Neverland, Lucky Star, Baccano, most Miyazaki movies. A lot of popular anime are popular because people love the friendships between characters. And I bet most people in Kingdom Hearts love it specifically because of the friendships too. They like that they're friends. Because their friendships are wholesome, and healthy, and good. They make us feel good. KH isn't "Queerbaiting"(which is only ever brought up for mlm ships and never for aspecs or wlw) for having Riku and Sora care about each other and get along. Just because pop culture has forced f/m relationships start specifically because a girl and a boy get along(if even that happens), doesn't mean that all characters in all media that get along are romantically into each other. Both of those are bad and thinking that its not is a double standard. Platonic chemistry and romantic chemistry are not the same (even if pop culture media continue to try and make it seem like they are). But so many posts trying to prove Sora is actually canonically secretly in romantic love with Riku and Kairi only have evidence of him just being his regular old self, doing things he canonically sees as platonic-- things that are platonic.

It's not an issue of people headcanoning Sora with romantic/sexual attraction (or otherwise) for the other characters, it's about the harassing of other people that it's canon and the blatant aphobia and amatonormativity. All that's canon right now is that Sora cares about his friends, which includes Riku and Kairi, and the fact that I got so much negativity back for saying he's aroace and feels queerplatonic attraction for them only proves that some people in this fandom think aroace people can't care about anyone strictly because they don't feel romantic or sexual attraction. The aphobia in the fandom needs to be addressed, and the aspec content should be allowed to be post freely without push back.

TLDR; Once the main Kingdom Hearts fandom stops seeing every little interaction between certain characters as canonically romantic, it'll finally be a more open and healthy community that people won't be afraid to engage in.

I want this to be helpful to read and for someone to learn something. And if aphobia shows up again, maybe take that person to the side and say that's not cool? Defend us aspecs, please? Cause all that..really makes me feel bad about and put off Kingdom Hearts completely. (And again! I ship SoRiKai! But people that don't ship it shouldn't have to go through this either!)

[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

[absynthe--minded]

please may I hear about The Wife... no judgement at all I just love hearing what everyone thinks

Okay. So.

(obligatory disclaimer: all headcanons are valid, and all fanworks are valid, and my opinions are my own and based on what I see in fandom around me, which is not the full breadth and depth of Tolkien fandom and is only a tiny piece of the greater puzzle. this is salty, and somewhat bitter, and very frustrated, but it’s not aimed at any specific person and it’s not just my negative feelings due to being a Russingon shipper. I’d actually really like to continue conversation about this, with people on all sides of The Wife Debate - I enjoy talking with people!)

the tl;dr is that I really cannot stand how the fandom treats the potentially-existing character of Fingon’s wife.

first off, it’s basically up in the air as to whether or not she exists - we have reference in the published Silmarillion to Gil-galad as Fingon’s son with Christopher Tolkien saying later that he was acting in error in confirming GIl’s parentage that way, and we have a line from The Mariner’s Wife that’s the beginning of a letter sent to Tar-Meneldur (Ereinion Gil-galad son of Fingon to Tar-Meneldur of the line of Eärendil, greeting: the Valar keep you and may no shadow fall upon the Isle of Kings.) in which Fingon’s parentage is claimed by the then-High King, but we also have writing from The Shibboleth of Fëanor that Fingon had no wife upon departure from Valinor and no biological children at that time.

For a long time it was assumed that Fingon’s wife was a Sindarin woman named Meril, but ‘Meril’ is the name of Finrod’s wife as recorded in The War of the Jewels and in this draft Gil-galad is Arafinwëan. The confusion there is easy to understand, as Gil-galad’s departure to the Falas and early life spent with Círdan is present in both the published Silmarillion and the unpublished footnotes of WotJ, but ultimately the canon holds two things to be more or less plausible: first, Gil-galad is Fingon’s son; second, he has no stated wife.

of course the absence of a recorded wife doesn’t mean there was no wife - we only need look at Orodreth’s child/children, or Elros’s, or Isildur’s, to see that Tolkien has a habit of giving men biological offspring without recording the names of the women in their lives who must have birthed and helped raise those offspring - but this actually brings me to the first issue I have with how fandom treats this particular quasi-character (let’s call her Nís, for this little ramble - it’s easier than dancing around the fact that she has no name of her own): she’s assumed to be necessary for the existence of Gil-galad the Nolofinwëan.

Fingon adopting a child, or taking an heir for legal purposes, or fostering someone else’s son, are perspectives on family life that are more or less entirely gone from the fan conversation surrounding this interpretation of Ereinion’s parentage, as is the idea that Fingon might have wanted or had a child without the help of a woman. (and like - not to bring prejudices into this, because I don’t think they’re entirely the motivating factor here, but... sex-repulsed people exist? ace and aro people who don’t want conventional romantic relationships exist? I’m 100% on the “Fingon is grey-ace and 100% gay and only wants Maedhros” train but aspec/arospec, single Fingon is also a valid headcanon and assuming he had to have a wife for the sake of having a child uh. bothers me because of its implications?) and all of this comes down to my larger point of frustration which -

Nobody really cares about this character in her own right. Nobody looks at Nís, or the gap left by her in the text, and becomes invested in her and in what happens to her without some external factor making her a necessity. She’s Gil-galad’s mother so she has to be there, or she’s Fingon’s wife and therefore something that isn’t Russingon so she has to be there. She’s not a personality that anybody gives a damn about outside of what she can do for the men in the narrative, and that pisses me off like nothing else and is the main reason why she’s basically the only woman in the Legendarium I can’t stand. I love Tolkien’s women! I think they’re all great! I’m a lesbian and I’d love to see more ladies hanging around! But she doesn’t matter, in my experience, outside of propping up really narrow-minded ideas of family and giving weight to homophobia.

I would at least be able to grudgingly tolerate and understand and even respect her presence in the fandom if people liked her and respected her and treated her like her own person with weight and import! But she’s not in any of the textual ghost fanworks, she’s never given a shoutout in fanart, she barely registers on anyone’s radar. There are twenty fanfics on AO3 tagged with her relationship to Fingon in them, and eleven of those left when you filter out fics that also include Russingon in some capacity. “Fingon/OFC” yields ten stories total. Out of over sixteen thousand. Nobody - and I mean that seriously - treats her like she matters, even people who believe she exists. She’s not a fundamental part of serious headcanons - I’ve seen more love given to OC wives for Maedhros than this woman who a large subset of the fandom seems to think must have been real in some capacity!

(Just for fun: we have 40 works tagged for Orodreth’s wife, 40 works for Caranthir’s wife, 18 works for Elros’s wife, and 112 works for Maglor’s wife. Branching out into ‘named but with very little known about them’ we have 35 for Eldalótë, 135 for Amarië, and 199 for Elenwë. Everyone else in this story matters more than Nís does. It’s a little absurd.)

basically I’m done taking claims of loving this character or caring about her seriously. I’ve had to fight people using her like a bludgeon for so long that I cannot stomach her; my personal opinion is “I don’t want to see content made for this character who Tolkien himself said didn’t exist” but I’m a firm believer in ship and let ship and in the idea that all fanworks have a place and a purpose so like. people interested, y’all can do what you want if you stop resenting the hell out of Russingon shippers for no reason and keep things cordial? but in the meantime stop pretending you care about Nís for literally any other reason but ulterior motives, you clearly don’t! she’s a convenient person-shaped battering ram and literally nothing else.

(Also, I want to know what exactly Russingon shippers have done that makes us so worthy of everyone who doesn’t ship it hating our guts, you know? Homophobia is obviously part of it in some circles but what the hell happened that makes non-homophobes so damn resentful of us? please do give thoughts on that if you have them I want to know and that is even more salt.)

[arokaladin]

i kinda skirted the edges of the vld fandom because it was Large and Scary but what were the aphobic things that it perpetuated? i was less aware of aro stuff back then and i'd like to know if i was swallowing aphobic rhetoric without realizing.

hey i am very dumb can you explain the voltron post in like,,, baby terms? i don’t really understand it but i’d like to because i think you’re making a good point

(Quick note: I’m gonna talk about acephobia and arophobia in this post because a lot of it overlaps, or is applicable to all aspecs, or was referrred to as an ‘ace’ problem but effected aros too. I also think it’s important to building a full picture of aphobia in this case. Also, I’m going to mention the average (low) age of the parts of the fandom this came from a lot. Not because I think kids are stupid, but because it’s true that they were often young and I think that played a part in how this whole shitfest manifested.)

So, the specific aphobia surrounding the voltron fandom can be summarised by four main beliefs…

It’s problematic to headcanon anyone under eighteeen as ace. (should point out this bars acespecs from most of the cast). This idea obviously exists outside of and before voltron, but I think it’s prevelance in the fandom came from so many aspecs identifying with Pidge, and people feeling they needed to ‘defend’ her. 

It’s problematic to headcanon ‘gay coded’ characters as aro. The idea that queer coding equals specifically gay coding and is the same as canon somehow is everywhere, but with voltron ‘gay coded’ could mean the fandom was quite literally reading into things that weren’t there, or just to anyone ever’s gay headcanon. The extent of this can be seen in that shipping lance with allura was labelled homophobic. Identities other than gay were erasing something that didn’t exist. there was some support for bi headcanons as pushback, but nothing for aros. 

You can support aspecs and still be an exclusionist/’neutral on discourse’ but this coming from baby queers who really thought aspec exclusion was Right, and genuinely claimed to support us still. It’s hard to explain the specific Vibe of this one, but it had a Vibe and if you were there you know what I’m talking about. 

Supporting every other group but aspecs. There was a culture surrounding vld that you had to criticise every problematic detail of the show before you could say anything good. That’s fairly common for kids new to social justice I think. But these kids were ‘Woke’ even to the issues of groups often lumped in with aspecs, like nb people with ‘cringy’ identities/pronouns. The majority belonged to these groups! based on this you would have thought they’d support aspecs but for some reason they didn’t.

…and three core characteristics

Genuine belief in the shit they were spouting. When they said ‘its bad to headcanon Pidge as ace because it sexualises minors!’ they weren’t grasping at straws to keep aspecs from headcanons, they actually seemed to think saying a teen was ace presumed something gross about teens. I think this is worth mentioning because most aphobes imo don’t fully believe the stuff they use to smear us with. But these were baby queers who’d been scared and brainwashed. Not that any of that absolved them of blame because they said vile shit.

Other fandom issues (aphobia) overshadowed by creeps. It’s no bad thing that there was such massive pushback against shei/ths and other ‘antianti’ fucks, but it meant this became the only fandom issue, and if you were on the right side you were Good, end of. If people put ‘meanie anti’ in their bio they were on The Right Side and didn’t even have the potential to be a bigot. Which is an easy but dangerous place to end up as someone new to social justice. 

massive difference between canon and created romance levels. Voltron itself was fairly romance free. The fandom was a fandom. This means that while the show was attractive to aros, the fandom pushed harmful, amatonormative beliefs, and was so oversaturated with romance that we were clearly not welcome. This isn’t uncommon, but it’s worth mentioning because when romance is prioritised, aro headcanons are less valuable than others, and the wellbeing of real life aros is less valuable than having fun. So I think this is part of what allowed for points 2 and 4 on the first list. 

tl;dr: voltron fandom specific aphobes supported all other queer groups but excluded aspecs and saw aspec content as problematic. unlike other aphobes they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing, perhaps due to their young age, and their aphobia left unchecked in part because of their good guys complex due to their stance on other fandom issues. 

postscript: and then they all deleted their vld blogs because it was ‘cringy’, got into shera or whatever, never had to question any of their rampant aphobia, and continued on with the same shit beliefs. The group doesn’t exist but the people still do, and ‘14 year old exclusionist not educated enough on queer issues to know its ok to say queer’ culture owes them everything.

[rjalker]

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells has a main character and several other characters (one of which so far is reocurring) who use it/its pronouns.

The story is told from 1st person POV, though, so mainly you'd see it/its being used for the side characters, not so much the narrator itself unless someone else is referring to it in dialogue.

Also as a ...... I just forgot the word, a warning, the characters in question so far all use it/its specifically because they're robots (and androgynoids but that's still a type of robot) and the author seriously has a problem of equating sex with gender. This is also why the protagonist is aroace, since it's not human and also is a robot.

So far there aren't any human aroace or even just aspec characters, unfortunately.

Some people like to praise these books as being "great trans representation" because the protagonist is agender, but I believe in not lying to people about books to get them to read them. These books are not great trans rep.

The protagonist might be agender, but so far (I'm really hoping the author gets her shit together and fixes this retroactively), that's only because it's a robot that was literally assigned genderless at construction.

So far the only people who use it/its only do so because they're robots, and there's so far only been one nonbinary human, who also uses neopronouns (te/ter), but unfortunately this is not a win for anybody, because te immediately gets shoved off-screen and only appears in one book for a few scenes.

So as far as the series is concerned as of June 17th 2022, don't go into this series expecting awesome trans representation, because that's not what you're going to find.

If you can look past the casual transphobia, though, these books are definitely 100% worth it. They're funny, dramatic, and sad in a perfect mixture.

I'm hoping the author starts listening to nonbinary people before she writes more for the series so this stuff can be fixed. The problems are excruciatingly basic and all that would be required to fix them is like, adding maybe 5 sentences max per book that's already been published. And the problems would be gone.

As another warning, lots of people in the fandom like to misgender Murderbot and other characters in this series who use it/its, so that's something to watch out for.

I'm bad at summarizing things, but I couldn't find an official summary for the first book so I'll just put my summary of the first book under the cut:

-

It's set in a future where humans have expanded out into space, with capitalism ruling most of the populated planets and colonized systems.

The protagonist is one of the ubiquitous Faceless Evil Androids that make up...most scifi things, as the army of the evil whatever. These androids (or androgynoids to be more specific since they aren't meant to resemble men or women) are part cloned human, part mechanical robot body. They're kept under control of whoever manufactures them by "governor modules" that punish or even kill them if they disobey an order. Everyone is afraid of them, convinced that if they're ever released from the absolute control the corporations have over them, they'll obviously go on a rampage and kill all the humans, like every scifi dystopia ever.

The protagonist is one such Evil Faceless Android, and it manages to successfully disable its governor module, so now it can do whatever it wants.

What does it want? Is it to kill all humans?

Nope.

It wants to watch TV. Because it discovered once it had hacked its governor module that it now had unlimited access to all the streaming services on the future version of the internet, and started watching it. (and also because it doesn't think escaping is worth it because it is not immune to propaganda™ and it's depressed)

It still goes where the company sends it, and does the same jobs it did before: providing security for humans by making sure they don't kill each other, making sure nothing eats them, oh and also just spying on all their conversations so the company can data-mine them. Except now it's also watching TV when it's not breaking up fights.

It's sent on a new assignment with a team of humans surveying a planet, and things first start going wrong when something tries to eat one of the humans it's been assigned to protect.

And then after that more things start going wrong, with system glitches piling up until it starts becoming more and more likely that these aren't simple systems failures, but purposeful sabotage...

Let me know if you'd be interested in reading these! *wink wink nudge nudge insert pirate flag here*

I want characters who use it/its pronouns.

I want characters who use my pronouns.