#and for me that was a bit part of accepting myself back before ace discourse exploded

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

lmao I think I can :3

(Warning to my followers/readers, if you don't want to get into this I have the rest of my answer under the cut :3 I don't want to rope any of you into what-could-be-discourse🤗)

First of all, again, this is a fictional book series. There's nothing to get worked up over. In these fictional series, it's all up to the reader's interpretation.

Secondly, it isn't because "i said so" - in fact, where did I say that? I have never once said that. Please refrain from putting words into my mouth, I Do Not appreciate it.

Anyway, I don't consider TSATS canon because it has too many retcons of the actual canon to actually count. I'm not going to list them all because;

1) it's nearly 10 PM and I got my wisdom teeth out today so I Am Tired (Anesthesia just Be Like That).

2) I do not Give A Fuck about TSATS. It adds zero things to the RRverse, and what it retcons is retconned right back into canon by Chalice of the Gods and pardon me if a book written by Rick Riordan himself holds more weight to me than one by someone who was given a vague handwave to write a childish kid's book that treats Greece's Hell Incarnate like a kiddie pool, agressively pushing the queer themes in your face like okay, we get it. you don't need to spell it out thanks. and for Some Reason decides to ignore the fact that Solangelo are both openly in a relationship together in The Trials of Apollo, which comes before TSATS😒

then again wouldn't be the first time TSATS ignored ToA grumble grumble glare

Thirdly, yes, the RRverse is full of inconsistencies. I've joked about it myself. However, TSATS drops so much already-established-for-years-lore into the trash and straight-up ignores established canon At Least as far back as The Son of Neptune (hello, Bianca-who-is-supposed-to-be-reincarnated-and-the-reason-Hazel-is-resurrected-instead-but-apparently-Bianca's-not-now) and newer(ish) additions from The Trials of Apollo (hello, Apollo's amazing character study and touching story that was Completely Ignored)

if you ignore Trials of Apollo I ignore you TSATS. ToA was Rick's passion project and his favorite to write I will not take this slander

And don't get me started on Hades's characterization or Apollo's uncharacteristic un-appearance. (Then again, maybe it's for the best so he also wasn't character-assassinated.)

Lastly, to end this, Rick himself hasn't even spoken on the story Itself. I bet he hasn't even read it. Because honestly? I don't think he considers it canon. He pours his life and soul into his writing, and, in particular, PJO, TOA, and CotG are overflowing with it.

But TSATS? Nah. He didn't have passion for it. He didn't even write it himself.

So pardon me if I don't consider TSATS, and everything within, canon. Excuse me if that means, to me, Will's sexuality is still open to interpretation.

It's like with Reyna's sexuality tbh. I still see her as Arospec because it makes more sense to me that way. As as Demiromantic on the Aro (and Ace!) spectrum, I relate to Reyna in certain ways so Pardon Me if I go with what suits her the best from my perspective.

I am not alone in this. I have friends and mutuals who agree with me. Who research and study this entire universe because it fascinates us and is part of our passion.

But sure. If you want to complain about me headcanoning Will Solace, a fictional character, as Gay, go ahead. You don't know me, and I don't know you. Neither of us have a say over the other, and that's something I have accepted.

Go ahead. See Will as bi. I literally Do Not Care. I literally Was Not the one to start this.

It's after 10 PM now so I must go to bed and rest up after my surgery because ✨SelfCare✨ is Important and also it's what Apollo would want (even though he himself Would Not the hypocrite (affectionate).

Respond if you want, I Do Not Care. If I came across a bit rude I apologize for not phrasing the words properly but again, I am tired - from this day, and honestly from people on the internet getting fussy about stupid things like this.

But if you won't be willing to make bygones be bygones, AKA agree to disagree, be prepared to be met with an InstaBlock because frankly, I'm on Tumblr for the ✨Vibes✨, a good time, and squealing/sobbing over my blorbos.

Not for picking arguments. And if that means a blocking, I Will Do It.

Cya👋How this goes is in your hands now :)

I think it's time to put this out there :3

EDIT:

To clear up confusion, I left off Apollo & Nico because

1) Apollo would SLAUGHTER everybody on this poll because He Is The Queer Rep and

2) Nico is very very popular and the poll would be rigged if I put him in, giving him a very unfair advantage over Every Other Very Very Good Queer Rep we have here.

Also apparently Reyna is AlloAce instead of Aro...huh. To me she gave off some strong Aro vibes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, I understand Will Solace is Bisexual in TSATS- however, in as few words as possible, there are so many retcons in TSATS that contradicted canon, so I do not see TSATS as canon. Reasons why are a whole essay that I do not want to write.

Because of this, I still see Will as Gay, as do many others in this fandom. There is absolutely no disrespect intended from this-remember, this is a fictional book series about fictional characters. We are allowed to interpret characters in different ways, and I just so happen to interpret Will as Gay.

Please do not get upset over this, all character interpretations are just as valid as yours. Thank you.

[asexualdoctorwho]

how do i find pride in being ace when it just feels like. im missing something.

Honestly,,, I’m not sure I have a great answer to this. For one figuring out and accepting and finding pride in your identity is kind of a personal thing that varies from person to person.

but also because for me when I found out I was ace, a massive part of learning to accept and have pride in my identity was through the ace community on Tumblr, which at the time was still very loud and proud and cheerful and open and full of jokes and laughter and support.

As I’m sure most aces on Tumblr have noticed, unless you are actively blocking a bunch of people and avoiding all discourse and manage to track down the few discourse-free purely ace positivity blogs left, that environment is unfortunately mostly a thing of the past. It sucks. I found very little acceptance irl when I first came out and Tumblr was an important safe space for me as an ace to explore my identity, and I’m really quite upset that it is no longer able to serve that purpose because of exclusionists and gatekeeping.

I’m terribly sorry that you’re stuck in a spot where it feels hard to feel proud of your identity. 

There are still good ace positive people out there and pockets of ace positive spaces and if you can find one and find solace in it, great. I’d reach out to whatever other ace people or ace safe spaces you can to try and get some sense of safety and community. for example there’s a meetup group of asexuals in my city that holds weekly meetings and some occasional social events that I attend every once and awhile when I have the time and energy. There’s also an ace club at my university’s gender and sexuality center that I go to. (its funny because initially when I came out I found more ace positivity online than offline, but now it seems to have reversed)

I would also absolutely recommend that regardless of what you do though, to avoid discourse at all costs. Discourse and aphobia is toxic in general but especially when you are still struggling to come to terms with your identity and find pride in it you really don’t need or want that negativity in your life. Don’t be afraid to block people if you have to.

Also like try and make sure whatever community you can find or build for yourself doesn’t end up being a ‘crab bucket’ situation. obviously you want space to vent and talk about difficult things and thats very important and should be a part of it, but you also dont want a community where venting is all you do, otherwise its easy to just kind of sit in your misery. you want to uplift each other and talk about positive things as well. 

And most importantly, know that there is nothing wrong with you and youre not missing anything. I know thats a hard thing to unlearn, especially when it feels like pretty much everything and everyone around us keeps telling us that everyone needs sex or like its the best thing ever and how could you live without it. It’s not true okay. Everyone has different needs and desires and youre not ‘missing out’ for not feeling sexual attraction or wanting sex (but also if you do still want or have sex for whatever reason even though you dont experience attraction, thats valid as well and youre still perfectly ace).

Honestly it just takes time sometimes. I think finding support where you can is definitely a help and a good start, but some of it is just coming to terms with it yourself and accepting yourself as you are, because there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.

Also like, you dont have to be an out or proud ace if you dont want to. not everyone feels pride or is comfortable being open or prideful in their identity. not everyone is happy or proud to have a particular orientation or identity. sometimes its just acceptance. accepting yourself and loving yourself. some peoples feelings on their identities are just neutral. and thats okay too. the important thing is just to not blame or hate or hurt yourself for who you are. that alone is progress and is worth something. 

sorry hopefully this is an okay answer, i wish i had like a better one, but everyone’s path to acceptance or pride is different, so there isnt really one right answer, and the general attitudes towards aces (especially on tumblr) are a lot different now than they were when i first discovered i was ace and was coming to terms with it, so my perspective on how to find pride may not be so applicable now or to you specifically. 

if anyone else wants to reply with other advice or comments please do, maybe someone else will also have some ideas to help you out (but also if anyone leaves any aphobic comments you will be blocked immediately i stg)

[actias-android]

So, okay, I don't usually like the gender to nonhumanity comparison but let's go with it for a second.

I have always felt...something. I've settled, eventually, as an ace, queer trans man with some additional nonbinary-ness. The road I took to get here was not short or simple, nor is it over, either; as long as I'm alive I could change and settle on another label, or even a whole different identity if that suits me better.

I know I have not really been entirely cis- or heterosexual, but what I have been has changed over the course of my life. I've been female and bisexual, but a tomboy; I've been female and not feminine but definitely a lesbian; I've been genderfluid, and attracted to only women; I've been nonbinary but statically so, and attracted to other nonbinary people; I've been a trans man and back to bisexual or pansexual again as far as attraction, though really mostly asexual insofar as sex being important to me or not.

I bring this up because it's become very common, especially in otherkin circles, to justify being otherkin as something like gender and orientation: it happens to you once and you have a One True You somewhere in there for your entire life, and the only direction you can go is towards this Real You. Anything else is a mistake.

This is nothing I've ever experienced with my own identity, which has wandered around in circles and occasionally gone sideways a bit, in any sense. Cool if that describes someone else out there, but it would be the height of ridiculousness to say that I wasn't really a lesbian when I identified as female and was solely attracted to females. Of course I was, because that's the term for someone like that, and that's the label I was proud to carry for that time. The person I was then with the understanding and feelings that I had then was a lesbian. That I later changed doesn't negate what was.

My understanding of myself is still evolving and will be until I stop breathing. So then, if being really, truly, for-real nonhuman is exactly like orientation and gender...well, then, that would mean that, at least for me, it would also evolve over time, and that each new step doesn't mean the ones that came before were somehow false, mistaken, or inauthentic. (What a horrible, high-stress thought...I couldn't deal with that.)

The other point is that my understanding of myself is, partly, not at all innate. I was not born with concepts or words for anything I've experienced. I didn't even realize that having attraction for more than one gender was anything unusual for my entire life up through college, and discovering the word 'bisexual' was a trip. I had never heard of trans people until later in college. I literally couldn't have identified myself as bisexual, trans, or even queer because those were not concepts I had. Being these things with these labels, as they're defined by others, is something that came to me through culture and society, and I decided eventually that they suit me as an expression.

This doesn't make my feelings more or less real. It's a lens through which I can process them. I could have had the same feelings, been the same person, and said, "I don't like these words. I think this isn't quite right." And really, even as I use them now, the nuance is close enough for rock and roll, but not entirely, 100% identical, but it's enough to be understood by others so it works.

Here's the part where I finally get around to what this has to do with otherkin. I don't see why any other aspect of identity has to be held to such a ridiculously high standard. Otherkinity itself is a community label, just like any other. If anything, it's most like gold-star gay (which is pretty outdated as a concept); you have to have always been this one thing and any deviation from the standard is grounds for losing your label.

I could, tomorrow, suddenly feel a very different way about my gender. Happened before, could happen again! I was still a trans man when I was one. Tomorrow I could wake up and not be fae anymore. I was still fae when I was fae. I wasn't mistaken, unless I choose to interpret it that way, but that's a choice I'm making. I've chosen to look at the evolution of my identity and give my past self the grace and understanding that I was not wrong when I decided who I was in the moment, and that life is defined by changes, and to give my future self the peace of mind and space to adjust course without fear of abandoning my own history.

I can't even imagine doing anything else, especially as so much of identity is informed by the culture around you. The discourse in the otherkin community regarding choice and its role in identity never seems to give the first thought to the fact that interpretation and labels are something external. Nobody is inherently otherkin, because otherkin is just a series of sounds; people may inherently feel that they're something other than human, but exactly what that is and what that means to them is a result of choosing to interact with others and accepting or rejecting various labels and defining concepts.

For my part, I can't breathe under the label of otherkin. I tried, but in the end, it was stifling, and had much more interest in telling me what I was not, by the standards of a bunch of people I've never met and don't think I would like much if I did. I'm happier being a faery without anyone else's rules telling me how I'm supposed to believe about past lives (all physically human as far as I know), or nonhuman memories (none whatsoever, thanks for asking), or whether or not I can choose to be this (I don't think I did, but I could un-choose it if I really wished to, and that's actually innate to my being fae).

And really, of course a faery is going to be happier without someone else's rules. If anything, deciding to not be otherkin is the more faery thing to do here.

Anyway this has been another vague, rambling post about why I don't like the label or the discourse and think they're both kind of full of shit, and also why I don't like the gender comparison that much. Gender is experienced just a little, if not a lot, differently by every person in the world, and for plenty of us, it's very malleable over time and probably better viewed as an ongoing process. Using it as a point of reference for something that's purportedly immutable by the most common definition is pretty damn silly in my opinion.

[robotslenderman]

Ewww getting big privileged homophobe vibes from you. Blocking now.

Thank God.

I doubt you'll ever read this, but just in case hate-reading is your thing - I don't know why you bothered with anon. You're obviously not a follower because I talk about how queer I am here ALL THE TIME. I saw many queerphobes on that queer post, and even visited a few of their blogs. (Most of them were TERFs, except one - you, who claimed to be a trans dude. Maybe you are! Maybe you're not a TERF posing as a trans dude and you really are okay with being part of a movement absolutely dominated by TERFs!)

But there was only one that I left a comment on. You'd posted about how queer people are so horrible to call ourselves queer. Like the anthropomorphic personification of class and tact that I am, I trolled you by asking if my queer presence made you uncomfortable.

Clearly, it did. :)

So go ahead. Call me the first mean name that comes to your head, as if it bothered me what a random totally-not-anon thinks I am. I'm totally fine with queerphobes thinking my existence is homophobic, because the only way they'd understand otherwise is if I pretended I wasn't queer. My alleged homophobia is latched on to my identity as a queer person. The only way you would not accuse me of being homophobic is if I stopped calling myself queer.

So you use my very identity as a weapon against me. I am queer, and I am attached to not being a homophobe. You know that queer people do not want to be perceived as something they hate completely by anyone, strangers included, especially on a website where people harass first and listen later (if at all). So you hold us hostage - deny our queerness, and you'll drop your weapon. You'll drop the word "homophobic" and stop pointing it at me.

I'm not gonna cave to this.

Nor am I going to write an outraged essay about how I'm not homophobic. You know perfectly fucking well that not a SINGLE queer person is straight. You know perfectly fucking well that most queer people are same sex attracted or attracted to enbies. You know perfectly fucking well that queer people have accepted that part of us and aren't dealing with internalised homophobia or inflicting it on other people because we ACKNOWLEDGE our queerness and you can see this, otherwise you wouldn't be getting mad about it. In a homophobic society everyone has a degree of it, but by being what we are we have less of it than the great majority.

You know this perfectly well. Don't fucking pretend otherwise, I would have to believe that you are well and truly and sincerely STUPID to think for one second that you think I'm a straight person or a closeted gay person who's lashing out with malicious homophobia. Real homophobia, not "this person is part of a minority I am bigoted against, so I will claim they are inherently homophobic unless they get back in the closet or categorise themself in a way that allows me to fine tune my bigotry appropriately."

Because let's be real. Queer hasn't been used as a slur in decades and was reclaimed before I was even born. "Gay" was the slur of the time when I was growing up, but people like you never had a problem with that. Why? Because gay is clear cut and well defined. The problem people like you have with queers like me - the REAL problem, not the faux outraged you have made up about my label - is that queer means I have declined your insistence to more accurately categorise myself.

I mean, how else would you know specifically how to treat me? I could be bi and you might hate bi people, but if I'm a gay queer you don't want to aim the wrong type of bigotry at me by mistake - not because you care about gay people (you don't, because many gay people are also queer), but because you don't want to make yourself look silly by aiming the wrong type of bigotry at me. I could be queer because I'm an enby, and maybe you're truescum that would despise me for it, but you don't KNOW whether or not I'm an enby and that drives you mad! You don't want to risk alienating people who care about you by shitting on someone they might not agree is an acceptable target, so you target every queer and claim it's about a word when really, many queer people seek refugee under that term to hide from people like you, and you don't like that we can hide from you, so you try to strip our shelter away from us.

(And let's be honest. You probably don't even actually hate us. You're probably just afraid. Afraid of some identity you don't really understand because you've never taken the time to get to know us, or afraid that society will accept you less if we're "competing" for acceptance and so take some of the spotlight... I won't shit on you for fear, anon. We are all afraid of something. But I absolutely have a problem with how you're choosing to knowingly hurt people to cope with it. You called me "homophobe" to hurt me. There was no other way to possibly interpret the context of what you were saying. You meant to do this.)

So take away queer. Take away the shelter of queer. Force every queer person to divulge, upfront, who they are that makes them friends with queer. Force them out of the closet and pretend THAT'S not homophobic.

Send the gay queers back to the L and G of LGBT, let the TERFs flush out the trans people who are queer because they're trans* and shoo them away from LGBTQ spaces. Or maybe you really are trans, but you want to kick out straight trans people, or enbies, or pan people, or bi people, or ace people, or, one of the many populations that make up the true queer community.

* Not all trans people are queer, but many are BECAUSE they're trans. I would say "many are queer because they identify as queer" because that makes it sound like queerness isn't an inherent part of who we are and gives people like you ammo I have no interest in supplying you with. "Aha! So you CHOOSE to be a slur!" I just know you'd completely ignore everything I said to the contrary and say that.

Yes. The true queer community.

We've told you again and again that we're not calling you queer. We've told you again and again, if you're not queer, you're not part of the queer community. You're LGBT+, not queer. I'm not part of the LGBT+ community, I'm part of the queer community.

The queer community is not the true community of people who aren't straight and cis, that's not what I'm saying. We're not any more or less LGBT+ than you. I'm not invalidating the identities of people who aren't straight and/or cis, because they are who they are, and you don't need to be queer to be LGBT+. But we are the true queer community in that we are queer, and people who are LGBT+ but are not queer are not queer. Only queer people are queer.

("But people use queer community as an umbrella term to mean people who aren't queer, but are still LGBT+!" Buddy, if I have to deal with being called LGBT all the time even though it's not true, while having the people who use LGBT obviously mean me too because I'm not straight, then you can live with it too. That's mostly straights doing that, in which case you have no reason to get mad at US, or people who are are making something for a straight audience or a questioning audience, in which case they're making it accessible because not everyone knows the nuance of queer and LGBTALPHABETSOUP discourse. Or even - and I know this thought is incomprehensible to you, as the centre of the universe - it's actually referring to queer people and queer people only, not LGBT+ who aren't queer. Actually, I love that idea! Queer history is now history of queer people, no non-queer LGBT+ allowed :D)

I've never felt LGBT+ even when I thought I was one of the main four letters. But I've always felt queer, even as my understanding of my specific brand of queerness changed. Queer is an umbrella term that is opt in, that covers any and all LGBT+ people who know they are queer too, who know they're one of us, or who simply choose to call themselves queer for whatever fucking reason they want. Some of us are intrinsically queer, some choose to be queer because of the inclusiveness or relative opacity of the term, and you don't know which one a queer person is unless you have earned our trust enough for us to tell you.

And people like you fucking hate that.

So you know what?

I'm totally fine with you calling me a homophobe because the people who actually know more about me than the few sentences I've given you know that that's a joke, and their good opinion matters more to me than yours.

I'm totally fine with you calling me a homophobe because because it means I've won. I've gotten under your skin, just as your bigotry got right under mine. You're furious you can't categorise me. You're pissed off that I could be one of the LGBT+ people you actively dislike and want out of the LGBT+ community, but are finding a hell of a lot harder to flush out of the queer community because we all look the same at first glance and refuse to give you information you feel entitled to. Because it's easy to force people out of the closet in the LGBT+ community, but much fucking harder in a meritocracy like the queer community. To get into the LGBT+ community, you have to tell them which one you are. Queer? No questions asked, cause you already told us all we needed to know! Welcome home!

But let's say this is all a strawman.

That you really are some well meaning person who has nothing against the more obscure queer identities and that you really do just have a problem with the word. That you truly do think that queer people, the great majority of which experience same sex attraction, are... somehow... homophobic just for using the word despite their advocacy against homophobia and total acceptance of that aspect of themselves and others. That our fight for marriage equality and employment and housing protections and human rights is rendered COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY IRRELEVANT because we used a word that Boomers and even some of gen X hurled at each other because a guy was a little bit girly, or a girl refused to grow her hair long, or because men were scared that a man would treat them the way they treated women. (Because queer as an archaic slur, ultimately, comes from misogyny as much as homophobia.)

Let's say you really do mean well and really do know people who were called queers instead of fags, or you really did grow up hearing "that is so queer" to describe things people didn't like, or you really did have "queer" hurled at you by straight people as if there was something wrong with you for not being cis and straight.

(Notice something, there? You probably haven't actually experienced any of that, nor anyone you know. This wank about who I am as a queer person - it's always aimed at us. Never the straights that used it against us. Nobody uses the word queer except queer people any more, I am 99% certain that you don't know ANYBODY who has had it thrown at them AS a slur, so that means that the only people you can target on your crusade are... gender and sexual minorities. Not cis/straight people. Because they're not calling us queers and haven't in decades.

That means you are knowingly targeting minorities over this EXCLUSIVELY, I am completely fucking certain..

... but I'M the homophobe?)

In which case all I can say is: I hope that the well-meaningness that's made you put this hateful thing into my inbox, that's made you say such hateful things to a minority because of their identity (there's a word for treating people differently because they're a minority, especially hostile treatment..), will outshine the hatefulness of what you're saying and lead you to a better way to express your desire to protect people.

If you truly are coming from a misplaced belief that we're somehow deprecating ourselves by being queer, and not a desire to force us out of the closet or to run off any gender or sexual minority, then I apologise for my hostility, acknowledge that learning takes time (and patience that I am unable to give, for I am tired of bad actors pretending they're not and cannot do it), and wish you the best in learning to be inclusive and loving so we can count you one day, at least, as a friend of us queer folk. Maybe one day we'll even welcome you as one of us. I'd love to do that more than I'd like to deal with THIS crap. I can't imagine me going off on you will have helped at all, but from in my experience people who want to protect gender and sexual minorities protect them. They don't target them. That's why I am writing this post under the assumption that you wrote this because you have bad intentions towards me as a queer person, and not out of a well meaning desire to protect anyone you think I've somehow hurt by being me.

In which case? Get fucked.

[kissimirrit]

as an ex truscum how did you come to terms with the harm youve caused others and make up for it? do you still struggle with unlearning truscum standards?

i think it’s important i don’t hide or censor my past, no matter how embarrassed or regretful i might be from it. people have the right to know about someone’s past bigotry and to decide their boundaries with that person from that point on. i think it’s an important part of my past for people to know of when the topic comes up.

i stopped being truscum almost 5 years ago; and yes—i still struggle with unlearning truscum standards, because i learned them during my formative years of development. because of that, i really vibe with the saying "The first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think; what you think next defines who you are." —because i’ll still catch myself thinking very... exclusionary things and have to stop and reflect why i’m thinking that, and then correct my thoughts accordingly. it’s forever a process of self-reflection and checking. 

(read-more’d for length) tl;dr—i realized being truscum was bad and then i became a die-hard inclusionist, and even began identifying with labels that 2012 me would hate.

i only really came to terms with the fact i was causing harm in say, late 2016 or *very* early 2017 when one of my most treasured friends admitted to me that xe was afraid to tell me xe was nonbinary, because we both had identified as truscum and xe was in the process of dropping those beliefs, whereas i hadn’t gotten to that point myself until xe told me about hir identity and reason for being afraid of telling me. and if one of my best friends felt terrified of telling me their identity, or literally anything about themselves; then obviously i was fucking up big time and doing something incredibly wrong.

so that was like, my first step in dropping those beliefs. and making up for it has been an incredibly long road. dropping all forms of gate-keeping, queer-separatism, and otherwise exclusionary beliefs in favor of becoming a radically inclusive person of any good-faith identity, to the point of even adopting some “discoursed” labels myself (ie: straight-lesbian trans man) has been a 5 year long journey. 

i started identifying as truscum when i was 13 or 14, back in 2011 or 2012 when the word was first coined. there was a tumblr post, calling those who were binary trans people and (forgive me my memory is fuzzy) didn’t hate cis people as “true transexual scum. truescum.” and the term truscum stuck from that. and back then the community was really small. there was just a handful of us in the FTM tag telling other trans guys that they can’t identify as lesbians and that they should stop tagging their selfies as both “FTM” and “lesbian”. (which is funny to me now because... i literally identify as an ftm lesbian now lmaaooo. i became the very thing i set out to destroy /lh).

and being truscum was kind of a catalyst for so many of the early exclusionary queer-separatism and incorporating radfem beliefs into early lgbt+ tumblr that i never really noticed until ace discourse got notoriously bad in 2016. 1. nonbinary-exclusion. back in 2012/2013 ‘trans’ used to be written as ‘trans*’, with the asterisk, for the inclusion of nonbinary identities. and at the time, truscum were notoriously against it because at the time, truscum believed that nonbinary identities weren’t real, so the asterisk was unnecessary and useless. and then an article came along that went into detail about how the asterisk was useless BECAUSE nonbinary people were inherently trans without any caveats, and ‘trans’ (without the asterisk) was already inclusive on nonbinary folk, not just binary trans men and women. so that kinda trickled down and eventually became the end of trans* asterisk, and after that an influx of nonbinary folks started to identify as truscum—however a lot of people who identified as truscum prior to this still held heavily anti-nonbinary beliefs. (and then truscum got kinda blamed for adding the asterisk in the first place so that kinda became an in-joke for a year or so. like, things truscum invented: the asterisk after trans asterisk, the word truscum, whales. etc)  2. transmisogyny, and adopting radfem talking points. i know in the early days (and probably still now, but i don’t know the demographics as i never kept up with them), the majority of truscum before 2014 were white, and binary trans men. (emphasis on the white trans men part.) Because of this, whenever there was a collective schism with a notable trans woman for whatever reason (adele idislikecispeople, genderpunkrock, kat blaque, etc. were all big ones during 2014), transmisogyny would be rampant. there were groups dedicated to somehow proving idislikecispeople was pretending to be a trans woman that were really invasive of her privacy (years before kiwifarms even touched the subject), and despite claiming to be a vehemently anti-radical feminist group—willingly accepted radfem talking points and even radfems who self-identified as truscum. and cisgendered self-identified truscum, especially adult cis MEN (usually gay, and were fairly aggressive to us teens??), were accepted with open arms and were looked up to for some fucking reason. y’know, bootlicking.  around 2014 was when the term “transmedicalist/transmedicalism” was coined by john snarkytransman, and was popularized by users who followed suit. it came about around 2013/2014. since then, the term has been synonymous with truscum- but in may 29, 2015, users who wanted to detach themselves from the label of truscum due to drama wish to mark a distinction between the two labels, which was largely popularized by john myragewillendworlds. because truscum was never supposed to be a community initially, it was supposed to be an ideology “like atheism”.  and a lot of the drama around the time when transmedicalist was coined was due to three distinct groups forming: the old truscum (those who had been around since near the beginning, like i was. usually adult binary trans men over 18 and in their early-to-mid 20s.), neo-truscum (mostly made up of teens around my age who were newly out and majorly identified as nonbinary, and latched onto the first group they came across, like i had years prior), and the FUCKING MARIGANG (a notorious group of radfem truscum who only believed in 2 distinct nonbinary identities, agender and bigender, and were... extremely volatile.) i was somehow in all 3 of these groups because of 1. the fact i had been truscum since the near conception of the term so i was oldscum, 2. i was within the age range of most of the neo-truscum so a lot of them were my friends, and 3. mari from the marigang was the first ever other non-SAM asexual (and adult!) i had ever met (aside from my then-gf, Gabe. whomst i still talk to and luv with all my heart <33) and i clung onto her despite how.... fucking wild she was. and her boyfriend eliot was the first ever intersex person i had come across after learning about my own intersex variation, and i was so desperate for validation from these two adults who both held two identities integral to myself that i had never met any else sharing before, so i ignored so many of the red flags they had. (and they had... so many.) which brings me to my next point!!!!! 3. queer-phobia and the beginning of ace discourse. (NOTE: i didn’t realize all of these groups were radfem until years later, and i didn’t know what “TWERF” meant at the time. i barely knew was a radfem was.) so the marigang (2013/2014 i think?) was known for being notoriously volatile and violent at the drop of a hat to anyone who they didn’t like and labeling them as “fauxscum”. even to their own members in the skype group. it was largely made up of radfems and even eliot was a self-described TWERF (despite... at the time identifying as a intersex cis man????). the marigang believed in two nonbinary identities only: bigender and agender. mari herself was agender, asexual, and aromantic, and would brag about abusing eliot because of how much she despised men. she was incredibly anti-AVEN and refused to be called ace, aro, or aroace, and would only go by non-AVEN terms like “asexual” and thought the split-attraction-model was bullshit. (which is why i also refused to go by the terms ace/aro/aroace and would only go by “asexual” up until late 2016/early 2017.) mari was also incredibly hypocritical, criticizing me for having a girlfriend despite IDing as asexual & aromantic, even though she also had a boyfriend with the same sorta partnership (except Gabe and i weren’t abusive, just a bit too young.) despite that, i latched onto mari as an idolized adult figure. branching off from the marigang was a group of asexual & aromantic, usually nonbinary, radfem truscum who called themselves asexual elitists. and i ended up joining that group through mari. this group in either late 2013 to mid 2014 became the basis of what ace discourse would become a year later. some of our key beliefs that would later generally be accepted by truscum (a lot of them even sharing some of these beliefs despite hating the marigang and such) and then later spread throughout tumblr were: 1. there is no asexual spectrum. you’re either asexual or you aren’t. micro-identities like demisexuality and grayasexuality are unnecessary because that’s 90% of the population. (the part about demigray-sexuality was already popular amongst truscum at this time.) 2. people aren’t oppressed for being asexual. it’s either misogyny or misdirected homophobia. (i don’t think the term aphobia/acephobia was coined yet, or was popularized at this time.) 3. queer is a violent slur and should not be used as a personal identity or for the community. (already a common opinion amongst truscum.) 4. the split-attraction-model is unnecessary, redundant, harmful, and destructive. that if your sexual and romantic orientations “conflict” (ie: biromantic heterosexual, homoromantic pansexual, etc.), then you’re either one or the other and just confused. that it’s homophobic/biphobic/lesbiphobic because it reduces people to sex. (was already 50/50 with truscum.) 5. the term “allosexual” is very AVEN-y (therefore bad) and, again, reduces people to sex. because us asexuals were the “abnormal” (an actual word used that i internalized) ones in society, we didn’t need a word to refer to non-asexuals, and just not-asexual worked for it. 6. pansexuality don’t real and it’s just bisexuality under a special label. (was already 50/50 with truscum.) 7. the only existing orientations are gay/lesbian, bi, and straight. asexuality is the LACK of a sexuality and therefore not an orientation.  8. AVEN sucks. fuck AVEN. fuck david jay. MOGAI sucks. intersex isn’t lgbt. (i was the only intersex person a part of the asexual elitists (sans eliot) so i was kinda expected to just... agree with it. so i did. i didn’t have any opinions of my own for it. and mari was adamant about it because she was outspoken about eliot’s intersexuality.) — i’m probably missing some but these were off the top of my head. do those sound familiar? these were the beliefs of both the marigang and the asexual elitists groups, that were probably taken from radfems and then spread to truscum and to the rest of tumblr—which then spread out further through the internet, since many users had deviantarts and twitters and would take discourse to other places. et cetera et cetera. i left the marigang in late 2014 i want to say? and returned to the general truscum community, and the marigang fell apart due to in-fighting. but the damage had already been done at that point, and those of us left were still spreading this rhetoric to others who then continued to spread it. ------ i think i started to become an inclusionist in late 2015 or early 2016 when ace discourse STARTED to take off outside of truscum circles. because whenever i talked about bigotry i happened to face due to be asexuality, i was met with “that didn’t happen” and people dismissing my experiences and telling me i had no place in the lgbt community (“i never thought the leopards would eat my face” -person who supported the ‘leopards eating faces’ party). i began to notice how kinda... fucked up these exclusionist beliefs were, now that i was on the receiving end of them? so i left the truscum community (despite still holding transmedicalist beliefs at this time) and i made an ace discourse blog called acehet (which at the time i made it, was called allosexuel. but before that i helped run a blog called allodiscourse which then got rebranded to something else after i left idk??) i still held onto some of these initial beliefs. that the split attraction model was silly, that asexuality wasn’t a spectrum, that AVEN was harmful, pansexuality is just special bisexuality, queer was a slur, etc etc. and i did my best to actively work towards unlearning a lot of these things and began to blog in support of them, even if my best friend at the time (the one who later came out to me as nonbinary and inspired me to drop transmedicalist beliefs entirely) still believed in all of these things and felt like i was beginning to believe in the wrong things. (i think because of that i sorta inspired hir to become an inclusionist too after hir past exclusionism too? ze's never said what sorta made hir change hir stance. idk!) and through that, i began to realize that the root of so many gatekeeping beliefs and arguments were founded through radical feminism, truscum/transmedicalists, and bigotry in general. that so many of these parroted arguments were rehashed versions of “trans women aren’t women” to “nondysphorics aren’t trans” to “bihets aren’t lgbt” to “asexuals(and aromantics) aren’t lgbt” to “intersex people aren’t lgbt” and so forth. invading communities, stealing resources, preying on young lesbians (making her reject womanhood and become nonbinary/trans, internalized lesbiphobia and IDing as ace or bi, somehow sexually abusing them, etc.) and so on. they’re all the same fucking arguments. from the same fucking sources.  and i have been saying this for years since i realized it. there are maybe 1 or 2 beliefs i held onto since i started interacting with the truscum community back in 2011, before the term was coined. but i believe it only for myself, and do not apply it to anyone else. i, personally and for myself only, believe my own transexuality is a medical condition characterized by my dysphoria, and i’ve never really identified with the trans community. i don’t identify with the trans flag, so i don’t use it for myself. i avoid the term “trans” unless necessary. and in 2016-2018 i pretended to be a cis man online until it became too much and i hated lying. i don’t apply this to anyone else, only myself. because i only want to focus on the medical aspect of my transition. this is a major contrast with my intersex identity. where i don’t consider my intersex variation to be a condition, but rather a major identity of mine. whereas most people would see the inverse of this—that trans is an identity and intersex is a condition. for me, and me personally, it’s the opposite. my intersexuality is my identity and my transexuality is my condition. (i cannot stress enough that i only apply this belief to myself, nobody else.) i identify with the intersex community, i identify with the intersex flag, and being intersex is the most major part of my presentation and gender. there’s probably so many things i’ve missed since it’s been a decade since the conception of truscum as a group. before that i believe there were a similar group made up of trans women on some forums called HBSers (harry benjamin syndrome-ers). unlearning all of these beliefs i’ve internalized in my youth and trying to use my past as a way to dissuade people away from gate-keeping and exclusionism has been what i’ve been doing my best to do since around late 2015, even if i was still in the process of dropping my own harmful and exclusionary separatist beliefs after that time. there are still truscum-y thoughts that creep back into my mind every time i might come across something new or “cringy”, but after 2018/2019 when i finally came to the full realization that HRT would never work on me (my biggest nightmare since 2013 when i learned i was intersex)—i fully embraced my own cringy identity as a straight-lesbian ftm intersex man and embraced MOGAI as a term.  all queer-separatism beliefs, exclusionism, gate-keeping, and other lgbtqia+ infighting all stems from bigotry and hate. it stems from radfems, from truscum/transmedicalists, from people “exclusionists” claim to hate yet have no problem parroting arguments from. it’s all rooted in hatred and elitism and separating the “pure” identities away from the “bad” ones. all forms of gate-keeping in queer communities like this is bigoted and harmful, because it’s a slippery slope into all the other forms of gate-keeping as well. anyway i hope this wasn’t hard to read? i’m pretty rambly and i have trouble keeping my thoughts in check. i’ve most likely missed a lot of things and forgotten many more, but this is more or less the timeline that led me to learn that being truscum was genuinely and incredibly fucking harmful and i am still trying to make up for it. my 2 biggest regrets in life are 1. being truscum and 2. inventing circumgender. 

[shades-of-grayro]

Greyro [Platoni-/Idem-/Quoi- or Other?]

[This is a submission to the prompt where I asked for people’s experiences with their greyromantic identities.]

CW: Brief mention of suicidal ideation

Between a-spec discourse affecting tumblr communities and not fitting the “I’ve been romance-repulsed since age 5” stereotype of aromantic, I didn’t realize that I might be somewhere under the aro umbrella (aro-spec but not aromantic) until this year [2019, aged 25].

I’m not particularly fond of self-gaslighting past-me. I had that butterflies in the stomach feeling, talked about crushes with friends, was under the impression I felt romantic attraction, and wasn’t horribly bothered by romantic stuff (the heteronormativity was more noticeable). It’s easier to look back and see that I had crushes on X people because I was realizing I was queer, I didn’t do Y activity because I was trying to minimize gender dysphoria on a certain level, or that I may have had multiple simultaneous crushes because of the latent poly-flexibility.

I went through more than one life event that very much changed me, and I would go so far as to say that there’s a resulting ‘before’ and 'after’ me. Number one, I had a crush on a same-sex friend of several years - at the time, we were dealing with same-gender stuff - and our friendship ultimately didn’t survive. It might be a little too “woo” for some, but incorrect energy connections played a part in having a mismatched energy cord that led to everything feeling so strong, deep, and all-consuming on my end.

It felt an awful lot like descriptions of alloromantic love. It felt incredibly scary that I lost my sense of self for a bit. The same-gender aspect made it hard to talk about with anyone given the environment we were in, and it was embarrassing that my first depressive episode was kicked off from a mismanaged friendship/relationship rejection. It was incredibly annoying to have to deal with severing our energy cord after the friendship took about two years to slowly die (it was like a slow ghosting experience given that school required minimal interaction).

It still felt like I got crushes after that, though. I had had enough time to find a different environment concerning queer self-acceptance and peer acceptance (undergrad), and I was finally getting around to the ways I had 'shut myself down’ or avoided certain “normal” young adult milestones in order to avoid dysphoria. (Insert realizations around why I never felt “ready” to date, was too nervous to hookup with strangers, and other awkward matters.) I also poked around at polyamory and kink related stuff throughout the years (sometimes purely for research purposes, and other times because it seemed relevant).

Big life event number two involved holy shit levels of depression and suicidal ideation. (The pressures of undergrad didn’t exactly play nicely with my brain issues.) On a certain level, there truly is the person I was before I got to that point, and then there’s the me that survived. And the me that survived did not do so because of any romantic partner “saving/fixing” me, regardless of what some tropes would like to show. A series of small, platonic actions from several friends really did help at my most critical time (and then, after a certain 2016 event, I vowed that I’d outlive a certain person in the White House out of spite).

-

Pulling this all together:

I’m pretty sure I used to experience romantic attraction (or something very close).

I personally don’t think I 'loved platonically’ when it came to having crushes every time it happened, even if they were on friends.

I think the life events I went through - most strongly noticed after surviving suicidal shit - were the equivalent of the body prioritizing heating the core instead of the extremities in extreme cold. The vital to living parts of me made it through.

To use an analogy, the circuits for romantic attraction are still there, but I think they’re burned out or only partially working.

I feel as if I’ve lost the ability to differentiate between platonic and romantic.

I’m not bothered by doing activities that a partner interprets as romantic and/or an outsider would read as romantic as long as the partner and I have negotiated what romantic means to them and my/our limits. (Keeping in mind that polyam and kink shenanigans means that “romantic” can look, well, different.)

I can’t guarantee that the circuits for romantic attraction are completely damaged and will never, ever work again. I suspect they may not work at “full power” and/or may not work under “normal” expected conditions (cishet, all attraction combined together at one person, mono-amorous, sexually monogamous, preferably vanilla).

It truly is important to managing my mental illness(es) that I not completely socially isolate myself, which means I am willing to place a higher priority on friendship maintenance so I have a support network. I’m not entirely sure I can live alone long-term, especially if I go through another depressive low that gets Code Red.

-

In relation to the tumblr aro community:

Due to the individual differences in what someone considers romantic compared to another, it feels like I don’t have the proper translator to interact with some content. (I’m still not sure how to explain that polyam and kink resulting in “non-normative” displays of affection and relationship styles makes it hard to tell if I just have a Weird form of love and showing affection.)

Yeah, I know “it’s just a meme”, but sometimes aromantic shorthand makes every interaction Only Romantic. (Sighs at xyz component of having a roommate being painted as romantic again because, apparently, only the alloroms cohabitate. Only the alloroms eat lunch in public. We have yet to wrangle the myriad forms of platonic interaction and/or intimacy from the dreaded alloroms. </sarcasm>)

But really. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not fluent in the language of what romantic even looks like because the utterly disgusting thing that a romance-repulsed person wants to avoid is, like, the trust exercise I did with a friend as part of a class or something. (Sometimes, I feel like I’m straddling platoniromantic, idemromantic, or even quoiromantic, but it’s hard to pinpoint any further than greyro or aro-spec.)

Quite frankly, sometimes, the hard split into 'choose aroace or alloaro’ doesn’t always maintain the impression that you can choose to keep your sexuality to yourself, choose to prioritize your aromanticism in this particular conversation, have a complicated relationship to the allo/ace question in the first place, or have some other reason for not wanting to sort yourself into aroace or alloaro.

tl;dr: The aro spectrum is useful even if I don’t always fit into aromantic/aro discussions. I’d appreciate not being viewed as “basically alloromantic” or Alloro Lite.

[ashcourse-blog]

My A-spec Experience.

Dear exclusionists and aphobes,

My name is Ash, and I am demisexual. I have identified as a-spec since I was 12, after coming across asexuality via a Tumblr positivity post about specifically aces and aros. I was so happy. I had finally found something that I could resonate with, and it made me so excited to know that there were others out there like me. 

Now, because exclusionist Tumblr was not as prominent then as it is today (from my personal experience), I never came across any aphobic posts that discouraged me from identifying as asexual. So I carried on, proud to be ace. I quit using Tumblr due to personal reasons for a couple years, so when I came back (at around 14-15), I was expecting the same positive vibes and welcoming arms from everyone. 

I was wrong.

Aphobes and exclusionists were flooding the tags with horrible aphobic material and nasty call-outs about how a-specs didn’t belong in the LGBTQIAPD+ community. There were many that actually discounted some a-spec identities as “fake” or “attention-seeking”. I was hurt. I was sickened. I was sad. I remember crying myself to sleep that night, hating myself for who I was. 

I experienced internalized aphobia for a while after that. I had immense difficulty struggling to accept myself, and I was definitely discouraged from identifying as ace.

Until I attended my school’s GSA. My counselor, who I was out as ace to, informed me of the club during my sophomore year of high school, and at first, I was against the idea, saying that I wasn’t sure if I’d be accepted as LGBT+ there, but she assured me that everyone there was very friendly and inclusive.

I timidly attended my first meeting at the GSA, and everyone was so excited to see a new face. My social anxiety prohibited me from interacting with anyone at the time, but over the course of a few weeks, I slowly warmed up and came out of my shell. However, when I was chatting with a few of the members in a little “friend circle”, someone asked me what I identified as. I froze. I panicked. I almost started to cry. I was so scared that the people who were criticizing my identity on Tumblr were right in front of me at that very moment. Then it came out of my mouth suddenly, without warning.

“I’m asexual.”

I did it. I said it. I was out as ace to near strangers at school. I wanted to run away, but something stopped me. I stayed. I was expecting backlash. I was expecting hate. 

But they accepted me like I was one of their own. And I was. I was LGBTQ+. And I still am. But the point being, I felt free. I felt like I could finally be myself.

But my identity was bound to change, as all identities are. When one of the girls in my GSA said she was demi, I got curious. I asked her what she meant by that, and she explained demisexuality and demiromanticism to me like it was common knowledge. I was pleasantly shocked to know that, hey, there IS an asexual spectrum, and it ISN’T just black-and-white. When I said I wanted to learn more about it, she was happy to oblige, and I discovered that there were TONS of asexual identities out there, not just aro and ace.

I started to think about my label a bit more that night. Was I really asexual or was I something more than that? After a while of thinking of myself with that term, I became more and more comfortable with myself. And I rejoiced. I’d finally figured it out.

I am demisexual.

But that’s not where the story ends. 

Just a couple weeks ago I came out to my “best friend” as demi. I thought we were friends. I thought I knew everything about her. I thought she was a good person. I thought I loved her (as a friend).  But I was met with the same aphobia as what I’d previously experienced on this hellsite a while back: “Demisexual isn’t a thing” “It’s just a glorified term for straight” “You just want to be special” “You’re not LGBT” “You’re broken” And she cut off all contact with me (she was a long-distance friend).

I was hurt. I felt broken. And I’m still wounded today. But after coming back to Tumblr with a brand new account and blocking/ignoring as many exclusionist blogs as possible, I felt a little bit better. Especially after seeing all the a-spec positivity blogs everywhere in the discourse tag. (We can do this!)  Now, I’m not out to my parents. They only see me as asexual. I’m much too afraid to tell them that I’m demi. 

But I AM demi and I’m PROUD.

Now, before I wrap this post up, I just wanted to clear something over. Yes, I AM heteroromantic. Yes, I AM demiHETEROsexual. But that does NOT make me ANY less LGBTQ+. Don’t you DARE say that, especially after reading this post, that I am NOT a part of the community. Aphobia and asexual oppression/discrimination is VERY real, especially in today’s sexualized society, where if you don’t find “so and such” celebrity “hot” at first glance, then there’s something wrong with you.

I hope any a-spec person reading this has found some sort of hope. I hope they’re having a good day.

EVERYONE on the a-spec is beautiful and valid, and 100000% LGBTQ+.

Exclusionists and aphobes, kiss my demisexual ass.

love, Ash <3

[windschildfanfictionwriter]

Writer’s Cut: Ginny In Stay Standing

“

This one is a lot harder to write. I think, to properly write a discourse on Ginny in Stay Standing, I have to admit to a couple of things. 

First of all, the Ginny at the beginning of Stay Standing has a much different characterization than the Ginny at the end of Stay Standing. I wrote this story over years of time and grew both as a writer and as a person. And sometimes the person I was when I wrote her was ugly and bitter at the start. I freely admit that. 

When I first started writing Stay Standing, my relationship with one of my sisters was very... strained, and she reminded me of Ginny very much, and that reflects heavily in this piece. I was a little 18 year old when I first began this story and I was much more prone to allowing my personal emotions to affect my writing process back then. 

I had a lot of people ask for this, actually. Ginny is the hardest person to write for me, to be honest. The reasons are pretty complicated, but mostly it comes down to the fact that she is probably the only character who I can not empathize with. It’s hard for me to put myself in her shoes. 

It is very difficult to not bash her and I’ve deleted scene after scene after scene where I have done just that. Usually when I have a final product with a scene she’s in, I’ve already deleted anywhere from 5 to 15 different approaches. Not that I outright write her as a terrible character, but when I reread it, you can practically taste the distaste I have and that’s not okay. You, the reader, should not be able to tell if I’m writing her right. 

So in Stay Standing I have scenes where I succeeded and scenes where I did not and I feel like it left a certain message I did not intend to leave. Clearly, towards the end of the story, years in, where I’ve become a better writer, Ginny also becomes better as a consequence. 

The most difficult part about Ginny, the character, is that I know a lot of my dislike comes from a certain level of animosity I carry from my own childhood. I had a hard time making friends so whenever I brought them over and my younger siblings wanted to take away the friend (the attention of that friend, I should correct) that I worked so hard for ,it always devastated me because THEY were brilliant at making friends and had them come over all the time, played with other kids all the time. But I did not and they still felt the need to take. 

Now I understand more, I never viewed myself as the cool kid, never thought my siblings looked up to me. But they did. They thought I was brilliant. And they wanted to befriend their brilliant big sisters friend. It makes perfect sense NOW, but back then I didn’t understand. 

Safe to say, reading about Ginny trying to get Harry’s attention right from the start in Chamber of Secrets, while I was in elementary made me hate her character very much. It was a harmless crush and perfectly normal. Obviously I know that now, but I still don’t like her. I still have this distaste that’s never faltered. 

In the following books when she would befriend Hermione and Harry, it was more tolerable, but it still left a bitter taste in my mouth for her character. I found everything she did annoyed me. It was pretty innocent stuff, really, but it still bugged me that she seemed rather popular, well liked, beautiful, yet she still sought attention from her crush Harry Potter. It was a bit obsessive really and out of place because there were so few scenes where he saw her interact with Harry. It never really felt like she had a significant conversation with him. Her personality never really shined through. She was seen rarely and in those moments she never showed any care for her siblings. And perhaps that’s because the story is told through Harry’s perspective. We see her in some of the later books dancing with Fred and George and having fun, but that’s it. 

Though I do understand Harry saving Ginny probably put a stamp on her adoration for him. It makes sense that the crush lasted so long. It also attributes in part to bad writing. As much as I adore the books, I’ll be the first to admit Rowling did not have a good grasp on the romantic aspects of things. And that’s coming from someone who is Ace. She did not have a good grasp on sibling relationships. The only sibling relationship I think she wrote quite well are the Creevy brothers, actually. 

The lack of interaction between Ron, Fred and George. And more specifically, between Ron and Ginny, really bothered me. 

That, more than anything, is what bugged me about Ginny’s friendship with Hermione and Harry, because there didn’t seem to be ANY relationship between Ron and Ginny. THAT bothered me. 

There are lines in the book that suggested that Hermione and Ginny hung out. Lines in the book to show that Harry and Ginny were at least on good terms and talked on and off. BUT NOT LINES to show the same between Ginny and Ron. 

It seemed like HARRY talked to the Weasley siblings more often and on a more positive note than Ron did. 

This is due to Rowlings assumption that the reader just knows they hang out. In her interviews she makes comments that suggest how closely knit the Wealsey’s are. How fond the siblings are of Ron. She makes comments that of course everyone loves Ron because he’s Ron, how could you not? She’s built this world up in her head and she seems to believe that it should be obvious so she doesn’t bother to write scenes that show it because it just is. There is a clear distinction between how Rowling speaks of these characters and how she writes things down in the book. Which is a huge problem for the reader who is not privy to all that Rowling knows, only what she writes. 

Getting back on track, my point here is that every time I try to write Ginny, every scene that she shows up in Stay Standing, it has been very difficult. I admit, at the beginning of the story, I failed the character a little bit. I still think she might have lost her temper and told Ron not to come for her birthday, that feels in character to me, but the bitterness and cruelty behind that scene? No, I didn’t mean that. 

The birthday scene was meant to be a sort of blowing up of all the tension that seemed to manifest between them during Half Blood Prince. J.K Rowling wrote no reconciliation between the siblings. Only Ron and Hermione. We are left to assume there was one. Or that, somehow, the nod of Ron accepting Harry as Ginny’s girlfriend was some sort of make up. 

Half Blood Prince has Ginny and Ron at each others throats and there simply is nothing to suggest they fixed things. They simply don’t talk much after that. And in Deathly Hallows, Ron demonstrates extreme concern for her, but Ginny is MORE concerned for Harry when they meet up again than seeing if her brother is okay. In fact, there’s not a single line to suggest that she had any concern for her big brother at all, which sickened me and pretty much reaffirmed my hatred for her character. 

I despise bashing characters though and so I have tried very hard to write her in a positive light. To put myself in her position and try to see things from her perspective, but that is why she has literally only one scene in the entirety of Stay Standing, from her point of view, towards the end of the story.

The Mirror scene: “She’d thought that Harry and Hermione were a lot more damaged than Ron though.” 

At this point, I’d sort of learned how my siblings viewed me. They had this... filter when it came to the things I said and did. They wanted to impress me, they wanted to be like me, they thought I was emotional impenetrable and that nothing they did could affect me in any way because I was just that strong. 

So I sort of took that into consideration when I wrote from Ginny’s point of view, and I feel like I understood her better, like I could sort of see how SHE felt better than when I was younger. 

“He was more put together than the other two were.” 

I feel like the way she viewed Ron might have put him on this... not a pedestal, but I feel like Ginny saw Ron as someone who should know better, as someone who knew his family loved him. I think she saw his witty jokes and his many friends and the assured way he went about helping them and just thought he was a much more confidant person than he actually is. She saw him as her smart, witty, funny big brother who judged her even though she was trying her best. 

I think she would have met hearing he left Harry and Hermione with anger at first before it would give way to confusion and hurt and disappointment. 

“Ron abandoned them in the middle of their journey. He just fucking left, the coward.” 

I think Ginny genuinely cares, but she’s spent so much time seeing her brothers a certain way, looking at them like obstacles she needs to overcome, that it would take something huge to shake her of that view point. 

Molly’s expectations of her being the little girl warring with her need to be on equal footing with her brothers created the rather harsh and terrible things she did in Half Blood Prince. She’s overcompensating and her view on things are not how they actual are (just as it was for all of use growing up). 

In a way, Ginny is the best way to measure my own growth, coming to understand her character (not really like, but understand) helped a lot in understanding my own siblings and realizing the problem I had with her character helped me to recognize flaws in my own judgement. 

I rewrote the mirror scene probably twenty times and that’s an understatement. I did a lot of working through my own feelings in this one. 

“Oh God, why was her Big Brother dying? And she felt so bipolar because just an hour ago she was filled with so much hatred for him.” 

Ginny’s growth here, all the realizations, must of been like an atomic bomb going off inside of her heart and having to regrow it cell by cell. I really just obliterated her in this scene. 

This writers cut will probably be the hardest to write for obvious reasons. I know a lot of readers must have been scratching their heads wondering why Ginny sometimes seemed so harsh and other times towards the end so loving. 

I tried to stay true to the character, but with Ginny I always feel like I’m out of my depth and I know I’ve failed in some areas. Every time I tried to write her more... fierce side, it turned my more cruel than I intended. I couldn’t write her fierce without remembering all the shitty stuff she pulled and that in turn made it hard not to write her in anger. So then I tried to avoid writing her fierce and she just read so meek. Then I would try again and it would be this odd mix of too mean, too meek, too all over the place and I’d sit there going Yikes, this isn’t right at all. 

So I hope this answers questions without angering any Ginny fans. Like I said, my distaste for her character stems from personal feelings and I’ve tried over the course of the years to be better about it, but I don’t ever really think I will enjoy writing Ginny even if I manage to keep true to her character. 

But I feel like I understand her a lot better than I once did and moving forward I plan to work on writing her properly. 

[edeneben]

My Coming Out Story

⚠️//TRIGGER WARNINGS: Homophobia, Sexual Assault, rape, depression, self hatred, and suicide//⚠️

If you know me, you know I’m pretty flamboyant and pretty open about how the fact I’m pretty flipping queer. But I haven’t always been very happy being like this, as most other queer people also aren’t and this is basically the story of how I accepted that.

Second grade; the point and time in most people’s lives that is mainly a blur of silly bands, crayons, and story books. For me personally, it was the start of absolute hell.

So I was raised in a pretty religious family. I would end up praying before every meal, before I go to sleep, and at least three times a week at church functions. So really early on I heard a lot of really gross and disgusting things. (Not to say all religious people are bad, it’s just I was raised in a conservative republican town were Friday nights are spent at youth group by most high schoolers) so by the age of seven or eight I heard the words “faggot” and “queers” thrown around a lot and the whole “All homos deserve to burn in Hell and be stoned.” Though, I did’t really understand the concept of being gay, or love in general.

So you could sarcastically say I was off to a great start.

In elementary school we would read these short stories in these obnoxiously massive books, and one of these stories was about a hedgehog or something baking a yellow cake. As a fun activity my teacher Mrs.Blair has us bake a cake in groups of four. We didn’t pick our groups, she just kind of shoved our desks together and said “have fun.”

In my group it was two boys, a girl, and me. The two boys were kind of annoying and I basically ignored them the whole time, but the girl was a different story. I noticed that she had short, messy light brown hair, very pretty greenish eyes, and a very cute smile. I took a liking to her pretty quickly and I started sitting with her at lunch instead of with my friends. I knew I really enjoyed being around her and that I thought she was the actual prettiest person I had ever seen. Though, I didn’t get why.

Then my friends started talking about boys and crushes. I couldn’t relate to anything they were saying before but after I met the girl, I did start to relate. But I related in a different way. Everything they said about the boys they liked were how I thought about her. Wanting to hold her hand and play house with her and crap. (We all know playing house together was the way to flirt back then)

So inevitably I was like, “Oh. Why am I the only one thinking about girls? Am I weird?” And then I kind of understood I was the bad thing they talked about in church all the time. I was the evil horrid thing that didn’t have a place in being there. Which, was a horrible thing to think about.

This was when self hatred really set in. Not only did I deal with that crushing reality, but my teenage brother also started arguing with my parents a lot and hearing the fights really hurt me mentally and I started crying myself to sleep.

I was eight. None of that stuff should have been a problem, though of course it was. *** Then in third grade I started praying a lot more and I joined an after school church club thing ran by my church.

Every time we would meet, Father Michael would ask those of us who haven’t been saved to go to the back of the room and pray with him to get saved. He kind of knew something was up when I went back there every single meeting, but he never asked. Probably for the best in all honesty.

Then I was like, “Yeah okay all of the praying has to be working by now and I’m totally not a homosexual now lmao.” Which, obviously not but I pretended to like guys anyways. (Ey Tyler waddup bud, yeah that was you. Jokes on both of us were both gay now love youuuu)

The day I told everybody I totally definitely liked him was the day before he moved away so I wouldn't have to deal with it. So. Yeah. *** Fourth grade was more of the same, just sadder tbh. Oh and I got another crush on a girl named Kayla I dated twice. Almost three but let’s not get into that. ( @kayla-le-queen ) *** Fifth grade was the first time I ever said I liked girls out loud. Though I kind of lied to myself and said “ha ha I like both.” Which I didn’t, but I had convinced myself that I was slightly ‘normal.’

It’s kind of a weird story as I had just been swimming with my other religious friend in their pool and I was like “oh by the way-“ Which, describes how awkward I am perfectly.

This is also the year I started making internet friends who had the same interests and experiences as me and I was sort of getting my footing with myself. *** Nothing prepared me for the absolute shit storm that was sixth grade.

Not only did I deal with hitting puberty, drama, a new school, and the surfacing of panic attacks, I had to deal with getting outed. Yep. Let’s get into it shall we?

Sixth grade. I came out as bi to a couple of my friends and stopped going to church. Only low key though. I wasn’t looking for my entire life to be flipped upside down. My parents were casually homophobic and my peers were actively expressing that.

Still, I decided to start dating someone.

Remember my friend who I came out to in the pool? Yeah, them. I dated them.

BIG MISTAKE.

As soon as we started dating, they told everyone. I told them “no one needs to know, we should keep it private you know? For safety.” They refused to listen.

By the end of the day everyone in my grade and even some upperclassmen knew that I was bi. Though the message got messed up and everyone thought I was a lesbian. (Which made me uncomfortable because I was still mfnsjsjjd about gender and stuff) (that’s a whole other coming out that I don’t want to get into in this as the whole thing is not anywhere near over)

Then the bullying for it started happening.

I was the first “out” kid in my grade so of course I was met with a bunch of crap.

Girls in locker rooms would yell at me for looking up at all, and there was one incident were a girl decided to come up to me, grope my chest and laugh about it with her friends because, “I was just a dirty lesbo pervert who probably enjoyed it.”

Guys would say repeatedly they could make me straight and also would do similar things to what that girl is.

Did I tell my parents? No of course I didn’t. I wasn’t out and I needed it to stay that way. My dad had anger issues and he had once hit my brother out of anger. So, I didn’t really feel completely safe to be quite honest. (It’s kind of better now. He still gets angry easy but he only had one more incident and that was years ago.)

I ended up breaking up with that person because I clearly couldn’t trust them and I was very upset with them. I still blame them. *** Then seventh grade happened. As per usual things got worse.

My parents found out about my internet friends and read all of our messages and I got outed to them.

Then my parents never trusted me again and took away the one good thing I had in my life that was consistently there for me and genuinely made me happy and feel safe.

Their homophobia also worsened. They also outed me to all of their friends and family. (Thanks mom)

I also attempted suicide for the first time. My parents and friends still don’t know about that. *** Eight grade was the worst year of my life. In eighth grade I kind of realized I was ace and came out to my friends and the girl I liked at the time.

I kind of blocked out homophobia at that point. Yes it was still happening to me and it had gotten worse, but eighth grade was a blur for me.

I can’t really remember much of it.

My English teacher who was a mother figure, Mrs.Freeze, who was the first adult to accept me, died during the last two weeks of school.

As well as an extremely traumatic event happened.

I might delete this part when I upload it but if I don’t I want you all to know that this is where I’m warning that sexual assault victims might want to click away at.

I decided to go on the Washington DC trip with my school and the girl I liked went with me.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours so I was asleep rather quickly.

It was four girls to a room, two to a bed. The two other girls left to hang out with their friends and it was just me left alone with the girl I liked and was out as ace to.

She took it upon herself to try to “fix” me.

I woke up while she was doing it and I eventually got her off me and escaped to the bathroom and cried.

I didn’t tell any adult on the trip and I just told a girl that I wasn’t comfortable around that girl anymore and thankfully she didn’t ask why and just switched seats on the bus with me and beds.

I still deal with trauma relating to this everyday, and I still have extreme panic attacks because of it. I lost physical trust with people for a while and I couldn’t be touched by anyone until recently.

This event also drove me to another suicide attempt.

That’s all I can say about that. Acephobia does exist and it can be extremely violent and damaging to people, so please just kindly shut up about ace discourse. *** During freshman year I was finally starting to be accepted by my parents, I came out as queer and ace officially, joined the GSA, met some more gays and life has been a bit better since then. *** My life isn’t perfect and homophobia is still a huge part of it and a lot of trauma surrounding my experience is still yet to be dealt with but I’m getting there. *** So my labels?

Queer and Ace-spec. That’s as specific as I can get I don’t know what you want from me lmao. *** Conclusion? Life does get better and eventually you will find acceptance and peace within yourself. I know you might be an extremely dark place with what looks like no chance of happiness or safety, but I promise you will get it eventually.

I love all of you and I wish you all the best in your own journeys.

Happy pride month.

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜💙💚💛🧡❤️

[blazc-ignitixn]

Rules

1. This blog is:

Semi-Selective: Everyone is welcome to follow, however I might be a bit choosy about follows back (it's not you, I promise, just me being careful). I'd rather RP with mutuals (easier for me to keep track of replies, nothing more), though IM and Inbox are open for anyone, so feel free to drop by.

Multiship: I’m shipping trash and open to any sort of relationship, from platonic to romantic. I'm biased towards Touya x Hawks and Touya x Tomura, but I'm up to give any ship a try as long as there isn't a too big age gap (no more than 5-6 years) and the younger half of the ship is at least 18-20 (16 and no older than 17 in the Hero Student Verse) , so ask away (no, seriously, I work better knowing if you want to ship in advance, shipping with chemistry is all good but don't be afraid to ask me to ship straight away, I love planning a ship). Respect Touya's sexuality (homosexual) and in the off-chance I say no to a ship, DO NOT try and force it; I can guarantee I won't do the same. Pre-established (platonic) relationships are okay too (meaning Touya met them as a student or sidekick and is already familiar with them as a pro hero), if there's a good base to it, though it'll depend on the muse (Touya isn't exactly the social/trustful type). Absoutely no shipping Touya with any of the UA students and people who are minors in canon.

Multiverse: Interactions with different muses are to be considered to take place in a different verse unless discussed between muns. Same goes for shipping, so there will be no cheating involved (it’s a big no-no for me and makes me really uncomfortable, so don’t even ask).

Multimuse-Friendly: If you have a multimuse blog, feel free to interact with me, just make sure to specify which one of your muses you want to use, especially if we've just started interacting.

Sideblog-Friendly: I'm perfectly alright RPing with sideblogs; you can reblog my promo (tag This Is Our Call [Self Promo]) so I know where to find you, just please send me a message / IM from your main blog if I follow you so I know it's you.

OC-Friendly: Pretty self-explanatory, if your muse is an OC and you want to interact, you’ll be more than welcome. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus though, please (I had a bad experience in this regard). Also, I'd rather if you had a decent bio page so I know as much as I can about your OC, and I'm perfectly fine if your OC is related to a canon character.

AU-Friendly: Your muse is an AU/Canon Divergent version of a canon muse? Fine by me, as long as you have a bio page where you explain said AU/canon divergence so I have an idea about what's different from canon.

Crossover-Friendly: Your muse belongs to a different fandom? That’s perfectly fine! Though be forewarned that I might not follow back quickly (or at all) if it's a fandom I'm not familiar with unless we've been friends for a while (like, from before I joined the BNHA fandom), you have a BNHA AU or I see potential for interactions. It's mostly to keep my dash clean and for my own comfort, nothing against you, so please don't feel bad.  For fandoms I’m familiar with, see rule #20.

Duplicate-Friendly: If your muse is another Dabi, you're more than welcome to interact, I love multiverse mayhem! Time travel, alternate dimension, twin verse, anything goes.

NSFW-Friendly: Both mun and muse are 21+ and open to roleply smut, though it’ll only happen with muses that are at least in their twenties (Touya is 25 in the main verse and I won't RP smut in verses where he's 17 or younger), in which case it’ll be tagged accordingly as Too Hot To Handle [NSFW] and put under ‘read more’ if necessary. I will only RP smut if the other mun is 18+ and comfortable with it as well.

2. I accept interactions with underage muns, but the relationship between our muses will remain strictly platonic. I don't feel confortable writing romantic ships with underage muns due to past experience. Platonic ships are more than welcome though. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

3. No godmodding (controlling my muse yourself) and no metagaming (using knowledge of someone’s muse that a character has no way of knowing).

4. If you don't follow me back when I follow you but are still willing to RP, send me an ask or IM or tag me in a random starter to break the ice. I usually don't approach blogs I follow if they don't follow back for fear of bothering.

5. I’m open to RP via IM and Discord as well, so if we’re mutuals, feel free to ask for my Discord-ID (though I might be selective with giving it).

6. I don’t care about reply length, just write whatever you feel like. I’m perfectly okay with one-liners, para, multi-para and drabble-length replies, whichever floats your boat, as long as you give me something to work with for my own reply.

7. Don’t reblog OOC posts, Rules, Headcanons or threads you’re not taking part to. Seriously, it’s annoying as hell so. Please. Don’t. Do. It! 

8. Feel free to tag me in dash games (no seriously, I love those so the more the merrier) and, if we're mutuals, random starters as well.

9. Triggers might be present (Touya's backstory does include child abuse and domestic violence and he's prone to having panic attacks), but will be tagged accordingly as TW: Trigger (ex. TW: Blood), even if mentioned (in which case it'll be tagged as TW: Trigger Mention), just to be safe. If you want me to tag a specific trigger, just let me know. I don't have any triggers myself, but please tag cheating (in a relationship), animal abuse, torture, rape/non-con and eye-related gore, as they're topics which make me uncomfortable.

10. I’m more than happy to turn asks into threads, as long as we're mutuals. I don't mind either reblogging said ask or starting on a different post, whichever you prefer.

11. Since this blog is based on the 'Dabi is a Todoroki / Touya Todoroki' theory, which includes details of latest manga chapters, spoilers will be present, though they'll be tagged accordingly as Darkest Fire [Spoilers]. In general, I'll tag spoilers from the Internship Arc onward (let me know if you want me to tag earlier spoilers too).

12. I don’t really like to RP angst. Hurt/comfort is okay, though, and my go-to type of thread. Other things I prefer avoiding are dub/non-con, gore, and torture.

13. No hounding / pressuring for replies / answers. I won’t do the same with my RP partners and ask the same courtesy from them. If I haven’t replied in a while, you’re welcome to ask me (gently) via IM. Chances are I’m busy with real life (I’m an university student on my last year), my phone doesn’t work or I need more time to come up with a proper reply.

14. Please keep drama, discourse and anon hate away from me. I’m here to have fun and relax, so don't try and get me involved in stuff like this (it's lowkey triggering for me so please respect it). Much appreciated.

15. Don't be rude. I’m a very kind, considerate individual, I always do my best not to disrespect other people and I hate it when people disrespect me. I’ll gladly accept critiques as long as there’s a good, well-explained reason behind them, but gratuitous rudeness is a big no-no.

16. I don't accept M!A (Magic Anons) so don't send them in unless I request it by writing a post or reblogging a meme (which will happen rarely, if ever). M.A. sent without prompting will be deleted on sight. 

17. I won't take part in or join affiliated RP groups. Last time I did it wasn't a pleasant experience so I'd rather steer away from it for the time being. My activity might be spotty due to IRL stuff so I don't wanna feel pressured to be active at all time. I might make exceptions, but rarely so.

18. No need to send in passwords, I know it can make some people anxious. I myself have no problem sending them in if requested, and in any case I always make sure to read the rules before following/interacting, so I assume you did the same. 

19. For PSAs, look for the Let It Burn [PSA] tag.

20. Regarding crossovers, here’s some of the series I’m into and know very/decently well:

Persona Series

Ace Attorney

Yuri!!! On Ice

Fairy Tail

Pokémon games

Harry Potter

Artemis Fowl

Marvel Cinematic Universe

X-Men Movie 

Danganronpa

Ouran High School Host Club

Villainous / Villanos

Saint Seiya (Classic Series, Lost Canvas, Hades, Soul of Gold)

Time Hollow

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Fruits Basket

Mystery Skulls Animated

[yuureighostcop-blog]

Rules

1. This blog is:

Semi-Selective: Everyone is welcome to follow, however I might be a bit choosy about follows back (it’s not you, I promise, just me being careful). I’d rather RP with mutuals (easier for me to keep track of replies, nothing more), though IM and Inbox are open for anyone, so feel free to drop by.

Multiship: I’m shipping trash and open to any sort of relationship, from platonic to romantic. Muse is bisexual and of age, therefore romantic shipping will only happen with other 20+ muses (so no shipping with any of the high schoolers in canon) and in the off-chance I say no to a ship, DO NOT try and force it; I can guarantee I won’t do the same. Pre-established relationships are okay too, we can talk about it.

Multiverse: Interactions with different muses are to be considered to take place in a different verse unless discussed between muns. Same goes for shipping, so there will be no cheating involved (it’s a big no-no for me and makes me really uncomfortable, so don’t even ask).

Multimuse-Friendly: If you have a multimuse blog, feel free to interact, just make sure to specify which one of your muses you want to use, especially if we’ve just started interacting.

Sideblog-Friendly: I’m perfectly alright RPing with sideblogs; you can reblog my promo (tag At Your Service! [Self Promo]) so I know where to find you, just please send me a message / IM from your main blog if I follow you so I know it’s you.

OC-Friendly: Pretty self-explanatory, if your muse is an OC and you want to interact, you’ll be more than welcome. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus though, please (I had a bad experience in this regard). Also, I’d rather if you had a decent bio page so I know as much as I can about your OC, and I’m perfectly fine if your OC is related to a canon character.

AU-Friendly: Your muse is an AU/Canon Divergent version of a canon muse? Fine by me, as long as you have a bio page where you explain said AU/canon divergence so I have an idea about what’s different from canon.

Crossover-Friendly: Your muse belongs to a different fandom? That’s perfectly fine! Though be forewarned that I might not follow back quickly (or at all) if it’s a fandom I’m not familiar with, unless we’ve been friends for a while (like, from before I joined the BNHA fandom), you have a BNHA AU or I see potential for interactions. It’s mostly to keep my dash clean and for my own comfort, nothing against you, so please don’t feel bad.  For fandoms I’m familiar with, see rule #20.

NSFW-Friendly: Given the nature of the series, NSFW elements like gore, violence, body horror, etc. might be present but will be tagged accordingly. Both mun and muse are 20+ so smut might be present as well, although it’ll always be under ‘read more’ and tagged accordingly as Not For The Weak Of Heart [NSFW]. I’ll only RP smut with 20+ muses and 18+ muns, and only if the mun in question is comfortable with it.

2. I'd rather not RP with muns under 18. It’s not you, I promise, just me being uncomfortable with it due to past experience. They’re still welcome to ask RP/HC-related things if they’re curious, but at least for the time being I’d rather keep interactions with underage muns to a minimum for my own comfort. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

3. No godmodding (controlling my muse yourself) and no metagaming (using knowledge of someone’s muse that a character has no way of knowing).

4. If you don’t follow me back when I follow you but are still willing to RP, send me an ask or IM or tag me in a random starter to break the ice. I usually don’t approach blogs I follow if they don’t follow back for fear of bothering.

5. I’m open to RP via IM and Discord as well, so if we’re mutuals, feel free to ask for my Discord-ID (though I might be selective with giving it).

6. I don’t care about reply length, just write whatever you feel like. I’m perfectly okay with one-liners, para, multi-para and drabble-length replies, whichever floats your boat, as long as you give me something to work with for my own reply.

7. Don’t reblog OOC posts, Rules, Headcanons or threads you’re not taking part to. Seriously, it’s annoying as hell so. Please. Don’t. Do. It!

8. Feel free to tag me in dash games (no seriously, I love those so the more the merrier) and, if we’re mutuals, random starters as well.

9. Triggers might be present given the nature od the series and the people the muse might interact with, but will be tagged accordingly as TW: Trigger (ex. TW: Blood), even if mentioned (in which case it’ll be tagged as TW: Trigger Mention), just to be safe. If you want me to tag a specific trigger, just let me know. I don’t have any triggers myself, but please tag cheating (in a relationship), animal abuse, torture, rape/non-con and eye-related gore, as they’re topics which make me uncomfortable.

10. I'm more than happy to turn asks into threads, as long as we’re mutuals. I don’t mind either reblogging said ask or starting on a different post, whichever you prefer.

11. Spoilers might be present, though they’ll be tagged accordingly as Cheaters Never Prosper [Spoilers]. In general, I’ll tag spoilers from the Internship Arc onward (let me know if you want me to tag earlier spoilers too).

12. I don’t really like to RP angst. Hurt/comfort is okay, though, and my go-to type of thread. Other things I prefer avoiding are dub/non-con, gore, and torture. Mentions are fine, but not graphic RP. Also, don't kill off Rei, please.

13. No hounding / pressuring for replies / answers. I won’t do the same with my RP partners and ask the same courtesy from them. If I haven’t replied in a while, you’re welcome to ask me (gently) via IM. Chances are I’m busy with real life (I’m an university student on my last year), my phone doesn’t work or I need more time to come up with a proper reply. I’m either very fast or slow af, with rare bouts of in-between, according to my mood or how busy I am with real life.

14. Please keep drama, discourse and anon hate away from me. I’m here to have fun and relax, so don’t try and get me involved in stuff like this (it’s lowkey triggering for me so please respect it). Much appreciated.

15. Don’t be rude. I’m a very kind, considerate individual, I always do my best not to disrespect other people and I hate it when people disrespect me. I’ll gladly accept critiques as long as there’s a good, well-explained reason behind them, but gratuitous rudeness is a big no-no. If you’ve got something to tell me, do so in private.

16. I don’t accept M!A (Magic Anons) so don’t send them in unless I request it by writing a post or reblogging a meme (which will happen rarely, if ever). M.A. sent without prompting will be deleted on sight. 

17. I won’t take part in or join affiliated RP groups. Last time I did it wasn’t a pleasant experience so I’d rather steer away from it for the time being. My activity might be spotty due to IRL stuff so I don’t wanna feel pressured to be active at all time. 

18. No need to send in passwords, I know it can make some people anxious. I myself have no problem sending them in if requested, and in any case I always make sure to read the rules before following/interacting, so I assume you did the same. 

19. For PSAs, look for the Tips To Survive [PSA] tag.

20. Regarding crossovers, here’s some of the series I’m into and know very/decently well:

Persona Series

Ace Attorney

Yuri!!! On Ice

Fairy Tail

Pokémon games

Harry Potter

Artemis Fowl

Marvel Cinematic Universe

X-Men Movies

Danganronpa

Ouran High School Host Club

Villainous / Villanos

Saint Seiya (Classic Series, Lost Canvas, Hades, Soul of Gold)

Time Hollow

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Fruits Basket

Mystery Skulls Animated

[farkenshnoffingottom]

Ace Discourse, Here We Go

So. *rubs hands together* I decided it’s time for me to break into the discourse. Largely inspired by recent happenings on @highkingfen​‘s blog. I’m going to bring some theory into this so we can understand why people are so invested in this.

But first, since the first line of attack always seems to be aimed at people’s identities, I’m gonna go ahead and state mine right now: I’m transmasc nonbinary, gray aroace, and sensually, aesthetically, and platonically attracted to all genders. I’m also not able bodied, so I want you to understand the physical toll getting involved in this debate means for me, so that you know I am invested in this discussion. I apologize in advance for any errors, although I think I caught them all. (Long post, so I put it under the cut)

I will use queer in this post because I am queer.* Let’s start with some basic politics of sex, then work our way into queer politics, and then bring it back around to aceness.

In 1984, anthropologist Gayle Rubin wrote an essay called “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in which she argued that feminism could not take on sexuality theoretically or politically (she was writing in the midst of the feminist porn wars), but that we needed a distinct politics of sexuality. The part that strikes me as most relevant here is when she describes her theory of the sexual hierarchy. 

(While this does not include asexuality, it is fair to say that asexuality can fall behind some of these walls too, because it is not accepted. Underlying the category of “good” sex is the assumption that people will be having sex, so asexual people are a threat to this social order that requires that people have “good” sex to reproduce itself.) I highly recommend you read this article, but I am mainly using it here for the visual. Walls are high, and I would say most people cannot just scale a wall all by themselves. So the way we get around this is to throw each other under the bus, to mix my metaphors. In order to cross the line into “good” and acceptable behavior, people have to step on others, push them further down, to advance themselves (instead of, say, just destroying the walls). It looks a little like “we’re exactly like you, we just love each other, we want to get married, we want to be normal. They’re the ones having public sex, turning tricks on the streets, flaunting their sexuality, etc.”** Anything that buys into the normative narrative gets you a little closer to the “good” side of the wall. 

Now, I’m sort of rambling, but I promise I have a point. That point is that while asexuality may seem diametrically opposed from Rubin’s list of “bad” sex, it actually is theoretically and politically very similar. Society needs people to have sex to keep itself alive, but it just wants people to have the “right” sex. In a biopolitical way (see part five of the book linked), queer sex is just as threatening as no sex at all. The state is highly invested in controlling their population and regulating its function. This is why "Hyposexual Desire Disorder” appears in the DSM IV (It now appears split into separate disorders for males and females, which I won’t even get to, and now contains the caveat that it isn’t a disorder if someone identifies as asexual). So, improvement, right? Not quite. It still fits into the long history of queer identities and people being pathologized by medical and psychiatric authorities. Our cultural institutions acknowledge the danger asexuality poses to the social order alongside its other queer counterparts.

So, I’m counting that as my theoretical evidence that ace people belong in the queer community and moving on a little bit. One of the critiques I see of including ace people in the community is that asexuals aren’t discriminated against enough to be counted. First, see my very brief discussion of pathologization above. Second, the “cishet asexuals pass as heterosexual, so they don’t experience oppression” argument misses the point. I assume most people in this community understand why heteronormativity hurts. The assumption that you are straight when you’re not hurts. And that’s exactly what this is. The assumption that you’re straight, and that you are sexually attracted to people. And it hurts, except now it’s our supposed community that’s telling us we’re straight even after we say over and over that we’re not. Asexual is by definition not heterosexual. Three, the microagressions: lol you’re asexual, does that mean you reproduce like a plant? Don’t worry, you’ll find the right person some day (remind anyone of “but wait how do lesbians even have sex?” or “don’t worry, you’ll find the right (‘opposite’ gender) one day”?). We can acknowledge that microagressions are bad in other areas, so why can’t we admit that it’s true for ace-spec people too? Four, “corrective” therapy and/or sexual assault happen to us because of our orientations too. Even though I could go on and on, I’ll stop there. Just check my “ace discourse” tag for more. Or don’t. It’s exhausting stuff.

Another critique I see is that this somehow plays into the desexualization of gay people. People who are attracted to their own gender will be hypersexualized or desexualized by straight society as their politics call for.*** It is not asexuals’ fault that people cannot conceptualize the difference between asexuality and desexualization. Asexuality is an identity. Desexualizing someone is an act of perception and political understanding.

Additionally, asexuality is newer (not in concept, but in public visibility) than other queer orientations, and yet no one seems to want to remember that each of those past orientations had to go through the same thing, fighting to be seen as real and not pathological or unhealthy. Sure, we don’t have a legal fight in the same way that homosexual and trans people do, but that is mostly because a lot of people have no idea we exist. I’m going to point you to AVEN for an asexual history, because they’ll do a much better job than me.

Finally, simply this: it is not your job to decide who counts as queer “enough” to be in the community. Another thing we tend to forget when having this argument is that identities shift all the time. It’s politically important when dealing with the straight world to be able to say “it’s not a phase!” But sometimes, your identities shift, and that’s okay. I thought all sorts of things about who I was before I figured myself out, and I’ll probably end up somewhere a little different from where I am now. It is not so cut and dry. People can come out while they’re still questioning, and then realize that they were wrong and are really something else. Some people can be solid in an identity for years, and then start to think maybe there’s something more to it. And that is okay. What’s the point of saying we’re queer if we are just recreating the exact same structures and hierarchies and expectations that we faced in straight society? There is no need for gatekeeping here. I realized I was ace only two years ago, and started to question whether I was aromantic only a year ago. And guess what. I’m still not entirely sure who I am. But that’s fine. It’s okay to explore yourself. You don’t have to be locked into one category forever. Asexuals are not straight, and they are and should be welcome in queer spaces.

*While this should probably be covered in another post, I want to point out how intentional my use of the word is. Queer and LGBT are different concepts, in my mind. See my “queer discourse” tag for some history and theory that others have contributed. Also, read Queers Read This! to get a sense of the approach I take. For now, I will just say that queer has a historical and political meaning that grew as it diverged from the lesbian and gay movement (which was half-heartedly tacking the B and the T to the end of their name) in the ‘90s. Queer as a concept has a much higher capacity to be inclusive of ace-spec identities, because it defines itself and prides itself in its difference from the norm rather than its attempts at being normal. **For a much better discussion of this concept than I can provide here, Michael Warner’s book The Trouble With Normal is excellent, and I highly recommend it.

***Besides, the mainstream movement intentionally desexualized themselves to be acceptable to the straights. The more mainstream turn in our politics was essentially to de-sex gayness. That’s where things such as “love is love” and the gay marriage court cases came from. These were very effective political attempts to play into the normative “good” sex narrative, and distance themselves from all those bad queers doing the things on the other side of Rubin’s walls. Again, I’m going to point you to The Trouble With Normal, even though it’s almost twenty years old, because it just so brilliantly addresses all of this.

ETA: Michael Warner does talk about sex as being essential to queerness, specifically because he is writing his book in response to the desexualization of gay politics. I do not read this as an argument that asexual people aren’t queer, because I don’t think he is trying to account for our existence in this book, and it seems likely that he wasn’t thinking about us at all (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it’s not what he set out to do with his book, and I’m fine with that. You’ve gotta narrow down your scope to something manageable, and he already has a huge topic to address).

[sabertoothwalrus]

some Thoughts about the ace discourse

I can get behind the idea that only sga and non-cis people should be lgbtq. If this is a clear majority opinion (including the opinions of everyone outside of tumblr as well) I will absolutely back off. I do not need to force myself into a space that does not belong to me.

Another note, what even IS the consensus on what the exclusionist argument is

is it “no cishets” period or is it “only sga and non-cis people”

because if it’s “only CISHET aces that aren’t allowed, anyone else is fine”  then I, a non-het ace, would count.

but I am aromantic so if it’s only sga people then I wouldn’t??? so which is it???

also: even thought I am aroace I still really really want kids and I really really want to get married

I WANT to like girls. I WANT to have crushes and fall in love. I just CAN’T.

I plan to get married anyway?? and it doesn’t matter to me if they’re a woman???

someday I might experience an exception to my aro or ace-ness, and it could be to a girl. But even then I’d still say I’m aroace just because it reflects most of life. 

So I’d hypothetically be an aroace person that HAS experienced sga (similar-gender attraction)

I don’t know how any of this could factor into my  “counting”

this sga attraction thing feels very conditional to me and seems like it could also negatively affect bi or pan people

I sort of get the idea that “we don’t want our oppressors in our spaces”, but that also gets complicated if you think about it too much, simply because of intersectionality

like, with that logic ANYONE that can be oppressive shouldn’t be allowed? ex) men, cis people, white people, christians, abled people, etc

with that logic, All Cis Lesbians should be excluded because some of them are terfs, which is. Absurd and Wrong???

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have seen some ace people that have said some pretty fucked up shit and I’m not in any way excusing them for that. That kind of behavior is not acceptable.

I figure that intersectionality within the lgbtq should be addressed, more than it already is, considering a cis white gay man is going to have very different experiences than a Black trans pansexual woman

it also rubs me wrong how, even by excusionists, it’s pretty acknowledged that it’s not uncommon for lgbtq people identify as ace before they identify as something lgbtq, because they could be unpacking some internalized homophobia which might be preventing them from realizing they’re lgbtq

and what bothers me is that up until that realization! these questioning ace people are faced with an unwelcoming atmosphere that might put a hault to any romantic/sexual discovery they could have had. because why would they want to be a part of a group that was previously very adamant about their exclusion

It just seems much, much simpler to me if the qualification for being lgbtq was just “you have any deviation from being cis, heteroromantic, and/or heterosexual” or “you are any marginalized gender, romantic, and/or sexual orientation”

because when it comes down to it, aromantic and asexual people are undoubtedly marginalized. Maybe not oppressed, but marginalized.

partly because so many people don’t even know what aromantic or asexual fucking is (hint: it’s not sex-repulsion or celibacy)

sidenote: this is a request to not trivialize the separation of romantic and sexual orientations. For the longest time I didn’t even identify as asexual because it didn’t address my lack of crushes, so once I learned what aromantic was I finally felt so at home. I didn’t even identify as asexual until a bit later. The separation might not be necessary for someone who’s just “gay”, but it was really important to me.

(and in regards to that, yes, a cisgender heteroromatic ace would be a “cishet ace” and straight, like how a gay asexual person would still be gay. I just feel like them being ace is a deviation from heterosexual and therefore lgbt. it’s weird and complicated, and the fact that this could mean someone straight is also lgbt does make me feel weird, but I need to be consistent with my own logic)

sidenote 2: please, no one say allosexual when referring to the opposite of ace. just say non-ace.

[pissed-off-and-tired]

hey y’all? 

I misidentified myself for 7 years. 

 (I think this is the most accurate order but honestly i have shit memory(and psychosis OTL) so some of it could be wrong.)

when i was 11 i realized i didn’t like boys and thought i had to be a lesbian. When i got to middle school my best friend at the time was one and she told me she thought i was too. i spent a good portion of my middle school experience wearing knee high converse and poking holes through my fingernails with sewing needles in the school bathroom with her to put little piercings in them because she told me that was what lesbians did and i kinda just did whatever she said. She was the only one who knew at the time. i had a big messy falling out with her halfway through 8th grade when i started to realize i was just doing what she wanted me to and kinda just started thinking about video games i liked more than my sexuality.

Once i first got to high school around age 14 i met this bad ass punk girl who bleached a part of her hair, didn’t take anyone’s shit and cut her fingernails into claws to get the point across. She had a girlfriend who didn’t go to our school and was the first person to introduce me to the concept of pansexuality. The thing is, she identified as pansexual AND demisexual so for some reason i got the two confused and ended up thinking pansexual meant “someone attracted to everyone but only after a close bond is formed”. It was about this time that i started thinking about my sexuality again. I thought “huh... i kinda feel the same how i do for men that i do for women.. I guess that means i’m attracted to both? but i only really like people after i get to know them.” So I started calling myself pansexual(well, i really meant pan demi, but that was what i called it). To my friends online at least. I never told anyone irl this.

When i was 15 in sophmore year, the cool punk girl had moved away and i was surrounded by essentially only cishet boys and one girl in a tech club. My parents also found out about my online friends and made me stop talking to them. So I didn’t have anyone who knew about me calling myself pansexual. I started trying to convince myself I was straight. This was a combination of the homophobic/transphobic jokes i was hearing every day and the fact I kinda convinced myself over the years i was supposed to “make up” crushes and could actively choose who i was attracted to.

late sophmore or early junior year, i can’t remember which at 16 when i first heard the word asexual. However, the first time i heard it wasn’t a good time to hear it. I heard it from one of the boys who told homophobic/transphobic “jokes”. I remember distinctly crowding around his old outdated flip phone to look at chan screencaps about “sjws”. I actually have found the EXACT post they were looking at.

I kinda just laughed about it with them at the time because i had literally no one to turn to besides this group of assholes and kinda just listened to and believed everything they told me because, if i’m being honest, i was a fucking idiot who didn’t know how to think for myself. I’ve definitely learned since then. It was a toxic environment filled with toxic people but that’s beside the point. 

Then i got really into an animation short i found on the internet. I’m like 90% sure this was in october of junior year. It was a bit of a less known short so I decided to start following the tumblr tag for it. Before i had only really used tumblr to follow a few of those “bad art” blogs(you know the ones), post my art and a follow few of my friends. Honestly I think I owe the entirety of all the good parts of my life now to this one student film. When i started spending more time on tumblr and following more people i was exposed to a lot more feminism and good things like that and learned more about the lgbt community. 

I learned the actual definition of asexual and started privately identifying as that by february. But i was still not willing to call myself aromantic as well. By spring break of junior year, i straight up left the tech club without another word to anyone in it and sat alone for three weeks at lunch. After that i found a group of friends im still very close to this day. after i found out another person in the group was out as lgbt i told everyone in the group that i was asexual(it later came out that EVERYONE in the group was lgbt lol). I thought about my romantic orientation a lot. then later when was asked by the other lgbt person in the group about my romantic orientation. I told them i was a lesbian. I kinda looped back to the beginning again.

It was over THAT summer that i started finally recognizing that what i had been experiencing with my body and the feelings around it that got worse when i hit puberty was dysphoria so i started iding as agender privately because i wasn’t sure. When natter got popular as the “shitposting platform” in october of senior year I put my pronouns in my bio as “he/she/they” and put my orientation as “bi ace”. 

I slowly moved on to “bi greyaro ace” by the time i had graduated. it wasn’t until october of last year that i finally accepted that i was trans masc but was still calling myself just a binary trans man and started using he/him pronouns and didn’t feel attraction at all. I was 18 at the time. I came out to my dad as trans with my therapist in february of this year and started t in august.

I’m still not sure if im completely right about myself. It might change in the future but if it doesn’t? It’s okay. I currently Id as an asexual trans masc nb. I’ve been looking into the label “solarian”.

Would I go back in time and spoil the ending for 11 year old me if I could? Would I save myself the trouble of mislabeling myself so fucking many times and just tell myself what’s right? 

No. I don’t think I would.

It wasn’t easy or clean and honestly i was suicidal for most of it. especially when i first stated iding as asexual. But I think questioning my gender and orientation over the years gave me countless new experiences and helped form me as a person. 

So I don’t regret it. Its okay to be wrong about your labels. Its okay for your labels to change. If you feel like a label might fit you, its okay to try it on for size. Walk around in it for a while. You can always trade it in for a different one later.

please don’t put your opinions on my life or my experiences or any discourse at all in the notes or tags.

[dragonmarquise]

I suppose this is more of a vent for myself than anything, but I just wanna... vent about something that’s been bugging me for a while. Though, bit of a disclaimer: this isn’t gonna be directly related to ace discourse, but I would greatly appreciate it if nobody tries to bring that onto this post, please. Be it for or against, even if you mean it as a joke. I’m gonna be trying to keep this out of the tags by using filler tags, so hopefully nobody tries to start a fight. e_e

So, while a lot of people (both ace and non-ace) debate on whether or not the ace flag is necessary, judging by its widespread use at this point, it’s not gonna go away anytime soon.

But as an ace person, the ace flag is kinda... blegh. For a few reasons.

One, the meanings. In particular, the white stripe is straight up just “allosexual” (and I swear I have seen at least one site list it as representing heterosexual instead, what the hell). Like? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?? It’d be like having one of the stripes on the rainbow flag represent straight people or something.

And then black is just “lack of attraction”, grey is “grey area between aces and non-aces”, and then purple for community. imo the only good/meaningful meaning here is the purple stripe.

There’s been a ton of ace flag redesigns (this one is one of my favorites that I’ve seen recently, though personally my only gripe is that it could be mistaken for a lesbian flag recolor), but let’s face it. With how much promotion and merch the current flag gets, I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to get it completely changed. So at the least, maybe the meanings could be adjusted?

Like, just with some general suggestions, maybe something like: Black for self-acceptance/self-love/self-respect, grey for positive relationships, white for happiness, and then just keep purple as community.

So then besides the meanings of the colors, I have an issue with the colors themselves, mainly that they... don’t exactly harmonize all that well? Basically it’s that the purple is just too bright and pulls the eye away from the other stripes too much. This tweet basically made me realize this was the issue I was having with the colors, since before I knew it bugged me but I just wasn’t sure how to describe why it was bugging me.

The same person who made that tweet also made this, which has the ace flag colors adjusted so that the eye-pulling isn’t as bad. I mean, to compare the original to the adjusted one:

It honestly looks a lot nicer to me! And plus, it wouldn’t require people who make merch and other stuff to make too big of a change, if at all, in what they’re making. I’ve already seen plenty of art and merch that don’t use the exact shade of purple anyways because of color palette/limited materials/etc, y’know?

The same could be applied to demisexual and greysexual (two other identities that generate a lot of discourse, please don’t discourse about them here either oh god).

With demi- in particular, I feel like the triangle part really should be addressed at this point. Everyone knows about the black triangle being used during the Holocaust and all, and like... you can’t really make a “reclamation” comparison, since it isn’t like the swastika where an originally positive religious symbol was used in a bad way. This is a bad thing made for one terrible purpose, which people are trying to use for a different thing (and I have seen discussions of how the flag was designed, it was definitely intentional that it was inspired by the black triangle of the Holocaust, just saying), which... just doesn’t work the same, imo. I don’t think I’m explaining myself very well here, but I hope at least if someone else is reading this, they have a good idea of what I mean.

And I mean, I’ve seen plenty of arguments from actual Jewish people about how this usage makes them uncomfortable, especially since the design decision was very much made by those who had no real connection to what happened back then. But, I digress.

So I’ve been thinking... why not just, maybe change it to a vertical bar or something? Helps make it more distinct from other flags and the ace flag itself without even needing new colors. Comparison, the original and two variations I did with adjusted colors and the vertical bar:

It works well enough!

Also here’s grey- with the colors adjusted too (original and then color adjusted):

Honestly, I’m not expecting this to be something everyone can agree on. And like I said, I’m saying all this mainly just to be able to vent about something that has been bugging me for a very long time. e_e

[nxllificr]

Rules

1. This is a sideblog, follows back will come from @blazc-ignitixn.

2. This blog is:

Semi-Selective: Everyone is welcome to follow, however I might be a bit choosy about follows back (it’s not you, I promise, just me being careful). I’d rather RP with mutuals (easier for me to keep track of replies, nothing more), though IM and Inbox are open for anyone, so feel free to drop by.

Multiship: I’m shipping trash and open to any sort of relationship, from platonic to romantic. Muse is bisexual and of age, therefore romantic shipping will only happen with muses close to his age (let's say from 18 to early-late twenties) and in the off-chance I say no to a ship, DO NOT try and force it; I can guarantee I won’t do the same. Pre-established relationships are okay too, we can talk about it.

Multiverse: Interactions with different muses are to be considered to take place in a different verse unless discussed between muns. Same goes for shipping, so there will be no cheating involved (it’s a big no-no for me and makes me really uncomfortable, so don’t even ask).

Multimuse-Friendly: If you have a multimuse blog, feel free to interact, just make sure to specify which one of your muses you want to use, especially if we’ve just started interacting.

Sideblog-Friendly: I’m perfectly alright RPing with sideblogs; you can reblog my promo (tag Have You Seen This Person? [Self Promo]) so I know where to find you, just please send me a message / IM from your main blog if I follow you so I know it’s you.

OC-Friendly: Pretty self-explanatory, if your muse is an OC and you want to interact, you’ll be more than welcome. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus though, please (I had a bad experience in this regard). Also, I’d rather if you had a decent bio page so I know as much as I can about your OC, and I’m perfectly fine if your OC is related to a canon character.

AU-Friendly: Your muse is an AU/Canon Divergent version of a canon muse? Fine by me, as long as you have a bio page where you explain said AU/canon divergence so I have an idea about what’s different from canon.

Crossover-Friendly: Your muse belongs to a different fandom? That’s perfectly fine! Though be forewarned that I might not follow back quickly (or at all) if it’s a fandom I’m not familiar with, unless we’ve been friends for a while (like, from before I joined the BNHA fandom), you have a BNHA AU or I see potential for interactions. It’s mostly to keep my dash clean and for my own comfort, nothing against you, so please don’t feel bad. For fandoms I’m familiar with, see rule #21

NSFW-Friendly: Given the nature of the series, NSFW elements like gore, violence, etc. might be present but will be tagged accordingly. Both mun and muse are 18+ so smut might be present as well, although it’ll be under ‘read more’ when possible and tagged accordingly as Not For The Weak Of Heart [NSFW]. I’ll only RP smut with 18+ muses and muns, and only if the mun in question is comfortable with it.

3. I accept interactions with underage muns, but the relationship between our muses will remain strictly platonic. I don’t feel confortable writing romantic ships with underage muns due to past experience. Platonic ships are more than welcome though. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

4. No godmodding (controlling my muse yourself) and no metagaming (using knowledge of someone’s muse that a character has no way of knowing).

5. If you don’t follow me back when I follow you but are still willing to RP, send me an ask or IM or tag me in a random starter to break the ice. I usually don’t approach blogs I follow if they don’t follow back for fear of bothering.

6. I’m open to RP via IM and Discord as well, so if we’re mutuals, feel free to ask for my Discord-ID (though I might be selective with giving it).

7. I don’t care about reply length, just write whatever you feel like. I’m perfectly okay with one-liners, para, multi-para and drabble-length replies, whichever floats your boat, as long as you give me something to work with for my own reply.

8. Don’t reblog OOC posts, Rules, Headcanons or threads you’re not taking part to. Seriously, it’s annoying as hell so. Please. Don’t. Do. It!

9. Feel free to tag me in dash games (no seriously, I love those so the more the merrier) and, if we’re mutuals, random starters as well.

10. Triggers might be present given the nature of the series (Setsuno’s backstory does include depression and attempted suicide) and the people the muse might interact with, but will be tagged accordingly as TW: Trigger (ex. TW: Blood), even if mentioned (in which case it’ll be tagged as TW: Trigger Mention), just to be safe. If you want me to tag a specific trigger, just let me know. I don’t have any triggers myself, but please tag cheating (in a relationship), animal abuse, torture, rape/non-con and eye-related gore, as they’re topics which make me uncomfortable.

11. I’m more than happy to turn asks into threads, as long as we’re mutuals. I don’t mind either reblogging said ask or starting on a different post, whichever you prefer.

12. Spoilers will be present, though they’ll be tagged accordingly as Cheaters Never Prosper [Spoilers]. In general, I’ll tag spoilers after the Internship Arc onward.

13. I don’t really like to RP angst. Hurt/comfort is okay, though, and my go-to type of thread. Other things I prefer avoiding are dub/non-con, gore, and torture. Mentions are fine, but not graphic RP.

14. No hounding / pressuring for replies / answers. I won’t do the same with my RP partners and ask the same courtesy from them. If I haven’t replied in a while, you’re welcome to ask me (gently) via IM. Chances are I’m busy with real life (I’m an university student on my last year), my phone doesn’t work or I need more time to come up with a proper reply. I’m either very fast or slow af, with rare bouts of in-between, according to my mood or how busy I am with real life.

15. Please keep drama, discourse and anon hate away from me. I’m here to have fun and relax, so don’t try and get me involved in stuff like this (it’s lowkey triggering for me so please respect it). Much appreciated.

16. Don’t be rude. I’m a very kind, considerate individual, I always do my best not to disrespect other people and I hate it when people disrespect me. I’ll gladly accept critiques as long as there’s a good, well-explained reason behind them, but gratuitous rudeness is a big no-no. If you’ve got something to tell me, do so in private.

17. I don’t accept M!A (Magic Anons) so don’t send them in unless I request it by writing a post or reblogging a meme (which will happen rarely, if ever). M.A. sent without prompting will be deleted on sight.

18. No need to send in passwords, I know it can make some people anxious. I myself have no problem sending them in if requested, and in any case I always make sure to read the rules before following/interacting, so I assume you did the same. If you feel like it, and only if you do, send me an ask with ‘Everyone Runs’, as more of an ice-breaker than anything.

19. For PSAs, look for the Survival Of The Fittest [PSA] tag.

20. Regarding crossovers, here’s some of the series I’m into and know very/decently well:

Persona Series

Ace Attorney

Yuri!!! On Ice

Fairy Tail

Pokémon games

Harry Potter

Artemis Fowl

Marvel Cinematic Universe

X-Men Movies

Ouran High School Host Club

Villainous / Villanos

Saint Seiya (Classic Series, Lost Canvas, Hades, Soul of Gold)

Time Hollow

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Fruits Basket

Mystery Skulls Animated