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aroworlds · 5 years ago

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Fiction: The Pride Conspiracy, Part Two

December isn't the best time of year for a trans aromantic like Rowan Ross, although—unlike his relatives—his co-workers probably won't give him gift cards to women's clothing shops. How does he explain to cis people that while golf balls don't trigger his dysphoria, he wants to be seen as more than a masculine stereotype? Nonetheless, he thinks he has this teeth-gritted endurance thing figured out: cissexism means he needn't fear his relatives asking him about dating, and he has the perfect idea for Melanie in the office gift exchange. He can survive gifts and kin, right? Isn't playing along with expectation better than enduring unexpected consequences?

Rowan, however, isn't the only aromantic in the office planning to surprise a co-worker.

To survive the onslaught of ribbon and cellophane, Rowan's going to have to get comfortable with embracing the unknown.

Contains: A trans allo-frayro trying to grit his teeth through the holidays, scheming aro co-workers, a whole lot of cross-stitch, another moment of aromantic discovery, and many, many mugs.

Content Advisory: A story that focuses on some of the ways Western gift-giving culture enables cissexism and a rigid gender binary, taking place in the context of commercialised, secular-but-with-very-Christian-underpinnings Christmas. Please expect many references to said holiday in an office where Damien hasn't figured out how to run a gift exchange without subjecting everyone to Santa, along with characters who have work to do in recognising that not everybody celebrates Christmas.

There are no depictions or mentions of sexual attraction beyond the words "allosexual" and "bisexual" and a passing reference to allo-aro antagonism, but there are non-detailed references to Rowan's previous experiences with and attitudes towards romance and romantic attraction as a frayromantic. Please also expect casual references to amatonormativity and other shapes of cissexism.

This section contains multiple depictions of platonic physical intimacy.

Length: 4, 789 words (part two of two).

I’ll have a pride coat! And nobody will have the least idea what it means!

On the last working day of the year, Rowan staggers into the office holding a plate of homemade shortbread—the top layer of plastic wrap bearing the Sharpie-written words “NOT FOR HOUSEMATES BUY YOUR OWN FUCKING BISCUITS”, his mood sour. On the one hand, he’s free until January (although he’ll prefer that circumstance more should this be a paid break). On the other hand, Christmas and its family awfulness tag-team with the heat to curse him with mind-racing, restless 4 AM wakefulness.

He chose right. Didn’t he?

In six days, he’ll have survived the family dinner and his housemates will be with their people or travelling for the holiday. He can bag up his presents for their customary donating, buy something online and spend the day baking food he doesn’t have to share or hide.

Christmas will be an exercise in endurance, but it’s a known terrible. Better to suffer one day of hell and leave than to poke the hydra in each of its eyes and allow it, enraged, to hunt him across the earth. Right?

“Rowan!” Melanie greets him at the door, today wearing a silky blouse with a poinsettia print, a pendant shaped like a miniature tree bauble, and stocking-shaped earrings of the heavy, dangly kind. A Santa hat trimmed with silver sequins and a large golden bell sits atop her short hair. “Merry Christmas!”

“Uh … back at you?”

“You didn’t wear anything Christmassy!” Melanie flutters her hands at him: she painted her glossy crimson nails with white and green stripes like the fancier sort of candy cane. “Can’t you get anything in your size?”

“No...” Rowan glances at his usual outfit: dress shoes, jeans black enough to resemble slacks on forgot-to-do-laundry days, navy shirt.

Couldn’t he have worn his cherry-red Docs?

Her suggestion gives him a convenient out, but isn’t he trying to be honest about his feelings? “I didn’t look. Christmas … isn’t that exciting when you’re enduring family.” He barks a laugh, hoping Melanie understands. “At least being trans, nobody asks me if I’m dating anyone or when I’m going to bring someone home to meet the family, because they don’t want to think about trans people in a relationship.” He steps sideways, hoping to navigate around her, put his plate down and move the conversation towards something less fraught. “I made shortbread. Do you like shortbread?”

He stiffens, trying not to panic, when Melanie envelops him in a bear hug, smushing Rowan’s chest and one arm against her necklace. “You spend Christmas with your family?”

“Don’t most people who celebrate it?” He shuffles out of her embrace to slide his cling-filmed plate onto Shelby’s desk beside a plastic container of pizza scrolls. He slips the ingredients card from his jeans pocket, straightens the creases and rests it by the plate. “Uh … is cling-film better or worse for the environment than biscuits in a freezer bag? I had a set of clip-seal containers, but my housemates left me two condiment-sized ones in the cupboard. I could use a bit of plastic or defrost frozen stir fry, except I didn’t know what I’d put that in if I used the stir fry container for the shortbread...”

Rowan realises he’s rambling and presses his lips together before he rants on how his containers must be growing five types of mould in the bottom of Matt’s backpack.

“Happy Holidays, everyone!” Shelby, both arms burdened by plastic cake containers, enters wearing a red T-shirt with the legend “All I Want for Christmas Is a Unicorn”, a glittery ribbon tied around the end of her braid. Only twice before has he seen her without a blazer. “Mel! Your earrings! Millers?”

Rowan swallows a laugh and, freed from awkwardness, heads for the relative comfort of his desk.

A party day, he soon realises, possesses a distressing lack of work. He acquires plates and spoons from the kitchenette, he works on a few photos from last week, he sorts his emails. He notices Melanie pulling Damien aside to talk about something that requires the waving of candy-cane fingernails, but, before he can start to wonder, the volunteer ropes him into a conversation about a loving family with unusual pavlova-eating habits. Shelby saves him from that oddity only to tell the story of her family’s chipping in to get her granddaughter a four-hundred-dollar dollhouse. “My parents wouldn’t have spent that much on a toy! How can anyone charge four hundred dollars for plastic?”

That seems like a good time to head over to the food table.

Shelby does make a good chocolate cake.

“Rowan.” Damien heads towards him, his approach signalled by a trailing, bell-ringing Melanie. “A minute?”

Nothing good has ever been heralded by this question. Nothing.

Rowan nods and follows them over to the whiteboard, standing in front of the List.

“Do you,” Damien says, at least doing the decent thing of asking straight out, “need somewhere to go for Christmas?”

Oh, god. What provoked this horror? Melanie?

Why...?

“We’d non-romantically love to have you.” Melanie’s smile beams as bright as her nails—her lips a close match for their glossy crimson basecoat. “Me and my daughter and her partner, I mean—not me and Damien together. It won’t be anything fancy, but you’re welcome to come.”

“My wife said my telling her about being recipro makes so much sense, and she’d like to ask questions of someone who actually knows things.” Damien nods, his holiday cheer demonstrated in the absence of a tie, rolled-up shirtsleeves and reflectively-shiny shoes. “And I make beer batter fritters.”

Never has Rowan heard Damien speak in aromantic-identity terms with that much casual fluidity, and he would smile but for two co-workers waiting, expectantly, for his answer.

How does he express appreciation for their kindness while explaining that he can’t not go home for Christmas?

A few moments pass before Rowan’s lips and tongue produce sounds that aren’t “I”, “uh” and “I … uh”. “Thanks? But … well, I’d be fine being alone on Christmas and I'm not doing that because … that’d be bad, so... And, you know, family? And I want to see my dog? So ... thanks, but...”

“But you’re one of us,” Melanie says with unusual solemnity, resting a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. “Just like Damien’s now one of—wait, we need to get you a mug! Why didn’t we get Damien a mug?”

“Well, actually...” Rowan, thanking the Aro Gods for Melanie’s willingness to head down any conversational tangent, darts towards his desk and satchel, the latter housing a heavy tissue-wrapped box. Pinkish-red, of course. “Here. Have a mug.”

“Oh! You should have told me!” Melanie’s lips tremble as she and Damien follow him back across the room. “I would have gotten a mug with you!”

Rowan rests the box on his lap, startled. Why didn’t he think to tell Melanie that he bought Damien a mug? (How else does one welcome another into aromantic kinship?) Why didn’t he wait until Damien was busy and order a mug with Melanie, instead of buying one on his phone on the train home from work?

Rowan owns skill in list-making, cross-stitch, baking, fixing other people’s photos and designing his own leaflets. He’s quietly proud of the many arts in which he dabbles with varying degrees of success. He’s mastered, too, survival on the fringes of other people’s lives, survival in a world where few are worth trusting. That ability though, makes him a man too comfortable in isolation. It makes him, in ways that have nothing to do with allosexual frayromanticism beyond his living in an aromantic-antagonistic world, a man who doesn’t know how to welcome other people into the house behind his five-metre fence.

He keeps everyone at arm’s length, even when—perhaps especially when—he plies his crafts for their benefit.

Does everyone experience acute flashes of insight at inconvenient times, the irrevocable sense that their personhood is one bewildering state of immeasurably fucked up?

“I’m sorry. Really.” He passes the mug to Damien, looking at Melanie. “I’m used to doing things on my own. I should have thought, but I didn’t.”

“We do realise that,” Damien says, tearing both wrapping paper and the box lid in a sharp tug. “You got the green-stripe one—oh, wait, it’s got both?” His hands render the mug’s size almost laughable, but Rowan couldn’t find soup-sized variants from a store willing to custom print aromantic flags on crockery. “Mel, there’s both. The recipromantic-only one and the shared one. Thank you!”

Is Rowan imagining that hint of passive-aggression? “You realise...?”

“That you’re independent, that’d you’d rather suffer alone than risk asking for help, even when it causes problems for you. That you’re only comfortable with people when you’re in a position of knowledge or authority. We learnt early on that you work best when we get out of your way.” Damien sets the mug on the desk with a soft clink. “I’m not completely useless in my job, so try harder to stop rolling your eyes over my photos.”

“They’re terrible,” Melanie says, squeezing Rowan’s forearm—apparently forgiven. “You know that, right?”

“The next person to say they can do better has to prove it—”

“My dog photos prove it!”

“At an event! Not in your backyard!”

For a reason likely tied up in internalised ableism, Rowan thought anxiety his designated, annoyance-causing personality failing. His tendency to overreact, freak out, let things get to him; his tendency to shaking hands and rambling incoherence. He didn’t consider that, in the company of people more inclined to decency and less inclined to avoid criticism on deadnaming and cissexism by casting him as the problem, they may find something else frustrating or difficult.

“Is this...” Rowan halts, thinking better of it, before he says the words “being fired just before Christmas”. Even he doubts Damien capable of inviting someone to join him for the holiday only to retaliate with a firing on Rowan’s refusal, although logic doesn’t still his hands. What’s the good of logic if my anxiety still ignores it? “What is this?”

Damien shrugs, tapping a finger against his new mug. “Yearly performance evaluation, maybe? Shame that I’ll have to write it down. I’d rather just call this sort—”

“What’d you say on mine?” Melanie blurts, clapping her hands.

Damien raises both eyebrows. “As if I’d answer that sober!” He shakes his head; Melanie trills her laughter. “We realise that there’s reasons, Rowan. It isn’t a real problem for us, but it may be one for you. If you find yourself in the company of a therapist at some point, consider mentioning it?”

Reining in Melanie wasn’t the reason Damien asked her to work with Rowan, he realises in yet another dizzying, revelatory moment, but that isn’t the cause of Rowan’s spluttering. “If? You think it’s only if? I’d have more aro shit on my desk if I weren’t paying a psychiatrist and a psychologist!” He sighs and nods. “January. I see them January.”

“I don’t like to assume.” Damien shrugs again; Rowan guesses it his attempt at conveying casualness. “Given that this isn’t quite the … er, situation for this conversation, I should—”

“I’m fine,” Rowan says, thinking Melanie’s heedless interrupting a contagious quality. “Really. It’s good. Like actually...” He doesn’t know how to voice this feeling that, for the first time in his life, someone has voiced a critique that doesn’t feel like he’s being disdained or unravelled. “Melanie … again, I’m sorry.” He thinks the time right for another distraction and grabs the second parcel from his bag—tissue paper tied with strands of aro-coloured embroidery floss. “Here. I’ve been working on this. I got your name.”

Melanie lunges for the parcel, struggling to untie the knot with her long fingernails until Shelby—was she close by?—hands over a pair of scissors. Blades click shut; Melanie pulls away the paper.

Twenty square embroidered patches in the purples and greens of many aro-ace and aromantic pride flags cascade from Melanie’s hands onto the worn carpet.

Melanie has always been given to laughter, but the way she bends over, resting her elbows on her knees as though she can’t hold herself up, has Rowan fearing that he’s given her a heart attack via pride patches.

“Aro-ace! Are these all of them?” She draws a shaking breath and carefully kneels, gathering patches. “I didn’t know there were this many!”

“Aro and aro-ace. The ones I know about, anyway. There’s probably a few I don’t.”

“Did you make all these?” Shelby asks. “You should sell them!”

Rowan considers explaining why he’ll never make even minimum wage selling hand-embroidered patches in aro pride flag colours, but Melanie’s pulling him into another grasping hug has him scarce able to breathe, never mind speak. He doesn’t know for how long Melanie smothers him, just that she, like an eventual retreating tide, steps back, leaving Rowan bewildered and giddy. Perhaps this is too much?

“You’re a liar, and this must have taken forever, and you shouldn’t have. I can’t believe you sew!” Melanie shakes her head, shuffling through the patches. “There’s the aro-ace flag with blue and orange, and a combined one, and one without black stripes—oh, thank you!”

Rowan shrugs, relieved that she seems happy. “Do you have something to put them on?”

“I have a coat. I’ll have a pride coat! And nobody will have the least idea what it means!” Melanie grins, shaking her head, before leaning over to tap Damien on the forearm. “Should the rest of us swap gifts now?”

Damien settles himself down on the closest chair. “Good idea. Do you want to—”

“We’re doing Secret Santa now!” Melanie stands on her tiptoes, waving the hand not clutching a handful of patches. “Find your person and give your gift, and then come here and show me what you got! Rowan made me aro-ace patches! All the aro-ace patches!”

“You know your evaluation says ‘needs to stop interrupt—’”

“Quickly, because Damien’s nattering on about performance evaluations!”

Damien sighs, shakes his head and leans back on his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “Lord give me—is that mould up there?”

“Probably,” Rowan says, hoping that he doesn’t look like a man expecting to open a set of golf balls. Did Shelby get him and lie about Melanie? Does that explain the voice recording? “Does the janitor have a step ladder? It’d be easier to tell if we got up close.”

“She does, because of the lighting.” Damien shakes his head. “Remind me first week back to get someone in to look at that. Or to write it on the whiteboard before we leave.” He reaches inside his left trouser pocket, removes a small card-sized parcel held between thumb and pointer finger, and flips it onto Rowan’s lap with surprising deftness. “I think this will be appropriate? While I didn’t know what you planned for Melanie, I saw you working on the train one evening. You had earbuds in and were too busy looking at your hands to notice, but I guessed then you’d made your bag’s patches.”

“It’s hard to cross-stitch on a moving train,” Rowan says by way of apology, a shade confused: what gift needs this explanation? “Hard to cross-stitch well. Not so hard if you don’t care about neatness.” He peels back the tape—Damien wrapped the card the way he presses his suits, the edges inhumanly crisp—and finds a gift card for his local sewing store. Rowan stares, drops the card on his lap and slides his hands under his legs, doubtful he can say anything comprehensible past this isn’t a gift pack of golf balls.

“That’s what you got him? A gift card?” Melanie shakes her head and pokes Damien in the shoulder with startling vehemence; only Damien’s size and his feet, firmly planted on the ground, keep him from falling. “Did you put any thought into that? I don’t like to be that oldie—” She stops, scowling: Rowan can’t hold back his spluttering laughter. “As I was saying, gift cards are the laziest way to—Rowan’s laughing at me, isn’t he?”

Damien tucks his hands behind his head and leans further back in his chair, grinning up at the popcorn ceiling.

Moments—in which Shelby gives Damien a six pack of fancy-looking artisanal beer—pass before Rowan’s ribcage resumes its regular pattern of movement. Finally, he manages to rasp an explanation: “Buying a gift card for a department store? Impersonal, but okay if they shop there. Buying a gift card for a trans man at a clothing shop where every tag has woman on the label? Hateful, unless you know he wants it. Buying a gift card related to someone’s interests so they can pick what they want? Good. And I need fabric, so … thank you.”

“Did someone get you a Millers gift card?” Melanie asks, her hands raised to cover her mouth. “That’s horrible!”

“That’s Aunt Laura,” Rowan mutters. Melanie’s expression of horror, Damien’s surprising evaluation and the wonder of a good, useful present leaves him inclined to truth: “That’s the most considerate gift I’ll get. One with thought that isn’t ‘outright cissexism’ or ‘you’re a man so we’ll ignore your personality to give you the most generically-male of generically-male items’.” He places the gift card and paper on his desk before nodding at Damien, who continues his overgrown Cheshire Cat impression. “Really, thank you.”

Even though Rowan isn’t standing atop his desk to blather about names, the room falls into an uncomfortable quiet.

Shouldn’t someone rustle some wrapping paper? Bite into a biscuit? Thank somebody for their gift? Why aren’t they making noise?

Melanie breaks into a broad smile, threading her fingers together like a self-congratulatory cartoon villain. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

Rowan’s body, ever alert to strangeness in the people around him, stiffens long before his brain concurs that this change in conversational direction is at minimum odd and veering towards confronting with a high likelihood of I’m so not going to like it.

Damien jerks upright, chair creaking. “Didn’t we talk about how to do this—”

“His aunt gave him a Millers gift card!” Melanie grabs Shelby by the arm and drags her towards the meeting room like an illegal firework gone out of control.

Damien isn’t much an arbiter of this office’s brand of chaos, but he’s the closest thing to a pillar of stability inside this mouse-scented bewilderment and therefore the person at which Rowan directs his questioning: “What...?”

“You know how Melanie gets all enthusiastic?” Damien runs both hands through his already-mussed hair. “She comes up with plans and you can’t so much stop her as guide her in the safest direction and hope you’re alive come the landing?”

Does Damien know that is the worst answer anyone can give to a man with more than one anxiety disorder? At least short of pronouncements like “we volunteered you to give year 12 biology students a seminar on recessive genes and you’re starting right now”? Wasn’t that something to do with the monk who grew beans? Hendel? Mendel? Or did he just grow beans at a monastery for some reason? Or was it peas?

“What...?” Rowan croaks, staring at the dark meeting room like a man waiting to face a starving tyrannosaurus.

“She thought we should demonstrate our acceptance of you, after our failures in this. And then she realised Christmas isn’t a great time of year for you, which made her even more … uh, enthusiastic. I made her promise she’d do this after everyone else left, but...”

Melanie staggers out of the meeting room with a large basket held in both hands, a basket covered with glinting cellophane and decorated with a mix of blue and green ribbons.

Shelby trails after her, clasping another pair of scissors.

Rowan will never understand, never mind be able to explain, the thought processes leading to his diving off his chair for the sanctuary underneath his desk—just that one moment he’s sitting on his chair and the next he’s crouching beside computer cables and a lid from someone’s Pikachu lunch box. Some primeval sense of cave as safety, perhaps … but didn’t prehistoric humanity fear cave bears and cave lions? Aren’t large, bright spaces, with visibility and room to run, safer than small, dark places concealing unknowable predators? What about drought, then? Or deserts? Are there any safe places, really...?

Melanie holds no respect for the ancient tenets of let the hiding man hide undisturbed until he’s ready to stop hiding, but she does rest the basket on the ground at the entrance of Rowan’s desk-cave, blocking legs and chairs from sight. “Merry Christmas,” she warbles from behind the mountain of cellophane and wicker. “We hope there’s something there that you like!”

“Happy Holidays!” Shelby echoes, followed by a few more rounds from the rest of the office. “Do you want scissors? Melanie wraps things like she’s paid to use sticky tape by the metre.”

“We only have cheap tape in the office! It won’t stick unless you use heaps!” A thunking sound echoes from above Rowan’s head, and then Melanie’s candy-striped hand reaches around the leg of his desk, offering Shelby’s scissors. “Here. You’ll ... probably need them.”

There’s something to be said for this workplace’s willingness to treat escapades atop and beneath office furniture as normal, Rowan thinks. Breathe. “Than—uh—thanks.” He takes the scissors, staring at the back of shining cellophane; a miscellany of shapes wrapped in green paper sit within like an aromantic dragon’s treasure hoard.

“Damien, can you make them give us better tape next year?”

“We can have good tape if we stop spending the stationery money on good coffee and your fancy teas?”

“The tape’s fine,” Melanie announces before changing the subject: “Rowan? Are you opening anything? You have to tell us what you’re opening if you’re going to do it down there. Oh, do be careful—I think Liam used to shove his chewing gum under the table.”

Rowan shudders, but better his hair brushing old chewing gum over seeing his gift-opening become the focus of everyone’s attention! He draws a steadying breath, tells himself delay won’t help and slits the cellophane until he can draw out a wrapped box, one suspiciously weighty. At least fifty pieces of tape fasten the flaps on each end; Rowan promises himself that he’ll wrap everything in string and tea towels from now on before ripping into the paper. A mug with five horizontal bands wrapped around its body, the trans flag fading into the aro flag—blue into green, pink into green, white unchanged, pink into grey, blue into black.

Shelby, he thinks in disbelief, the non-existent golf balls making their appearance inside his throat. He rests the mug in his lap before reaching through the cellophane with shaking, sweating hands for another box. Another box with the same dimensions and weight...

“Oh, god,” he whispers.

His co-workers got him a basket of pride mugs for Christmas.

Melanie breaks into ringing laughter.

He needs a moment to find his voice, a moment in which he unwraps a mug with a gradient allo-aro design and another with the aromantic flag on one side and the bisexual flag on the other. “Did you … did you … uh, get me any coffee to go with all my mugs?”

“It’s on the bottom!” Melanie trills. “And it isn’t just mugs!”

“Mostly mugs,” Damien says.

After another couple of minutes, a gradient frayromantic and a frayromantic-and-allo-aro mug join the collection precariously balanced on Rowan’s thighs. He sighs in relief when the next item in the basket feels soft, flat and light, something rustling underneath the wrapping paper, but a second lot of golf balls settle in his throat when he spots the pink and blue stripes, the drape of fabric: a trans pride flag.

He can’t swallow, can’t lessen the burn in his eyes or ease the stiffness in his jaw and neck; his fingers fight to tear, peel and grasp. Bewildered to the point of dizziness, he finds an aromantic flag with its glorious green stripes, a frayromantic-and-bisexual mug and the expensive coffee Rowan permits himself on special occasions.

He scoops wrapping paper and boxes back into the basket before hugging his clinking pile of mugs and flags.

Inchoate feeling abounds: a tangle, a knot of emotion with trailing threads of pleasure and overwhelm, surprise and gratitude, guilt and shame ... and something like the shock of being slapped across the face. They shouldn’t have done this! He shouldn’t be like this! Why is this too much? Why can’t he say “thank you” and express a normal, sensible gratitude for these people doing what Rowan’s family can’t ... instead of struggling with the feeling that Rowan, ungrateful and demanding, doesn’t deserve anything from people who have provoked his annoyance, frustration and alienation?

Mugs. Mugs and flags.

Why does something this wondrous have to hurt so much?

After a few moments, the only sound from him the chink of shifting crockery, someone moves the basket. Melanie sits on the floor and wriggles herself backwards underneath the table, grunting, to sit beside him. For once, she doesn’t speak; she rests a hand around his shoulder and lets him be a shivering mass of man clasping mugs.

Finally, Rowan’s rasping, croaking voice manages a few words: “Is this why Shelby recorded me ... talking about my identities?”

“I told you he thought it was suspicious!” Shelby crawls to Rowan’s other side, her braid trailing over the carpet. “Mel said you’d think it was just me being old—no, nobody does that!” She clasps his forearm, squeezing like a vice on wood. “Mel tried seeing if you’ve got a … all those accounts that aren’t Facebook, where you might say what you are? But she couldn’t find you, so I had my granddaughter show me how to record you. We knew we wouldn’t remember if you just said them.”

“I don’t know all the flags yet,” Melanie says in apologetic tones. “And I thought if I made the others check, they’d learn more about us!”

Part of Rowan feels a habitual spike of terror at the thought of offline people finding his social media accounts; part of him feels a quiet pride at Melanie’s using him to educate others in aromanticism. Most of him, fearing a blubbering breakdown, clings to the lifeline of asking questions: “And why Damien started that whole conversation?”

“We had to know where your mug seller was.” Damien bends down to peer underneath the desk and, at Melanie’s brow-arched stare, adds: “I’m not getting under there! You’ll have to call the SES to cut me out!”

Rowan nods and draws a breath. “I … I...”

“You’re very welcome.” Shelby squeezes his arm again. “Can I have your shortbread recipe? They’re good!”

“Yeah. Bag. Front pocket, left-hand side. People ask, so...” Rowan tries for another slow inhale. It’s supposed to help. Supposed.

His family expects gratitude said clearly and directly, even when undeserving; they’ll never take emotional speechlessness as its shorthand. They want the formula followed, interactions never deviating from the same narrow structure: gift given, thanks provided, everything right in their world where it’s the thought that counts justifies disrespect of another’s personhood. They avoid messiness and honesty; they fear navigating and acknowledging mistakes and missteps.

They won’t see him as a man, or understand the pain they cause in believing his masculinity something he can put aside for their comfort, because they fear a world with unpredictability and fluidity.

Mum and Dad will never conspire to give him a gift like this. They’ll never want to get to know Rowan well enough to try. They’ll never put his needs ahead of their comfort. They’ll never speak of challenges or difficulties with Damien’s kind casualness. They’ll never want to acknowledge their failures. They’ll never give him an awkward, chaotic Christmas that veers from their notions of how things are supposed to be.

Does he want to endure their narrowness, now that he knows what better looks like?

Does he want to endure their truth that Rowan Ross isn’t a real man to them—and won’t be a real person until he remembers his deadname and the stereotypical trappings of the gender presumed to accompany it?

Or does he want to expect and get something else?

Maybe he doesn’t want a world so predictable his erasure becomes acceptable collateral damage for sticking to the pattern.

Maybe, despite his anxiety, he wants a world where people can surprise him.

“Melanie? Damien?” Rowan, shaking, pokes his head out from underneath the desk. “Can I … can I still spend Christmas with one of you?”

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pentanguine · 4 years ago

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22) What is your sexual and romantic orientations? Are they affected by your gender?

Ah, the million dollar question.

Honestly, short answer, I have no idea. And maybe I’ll never have any idea! Maybe my sexuality and/or my understanding of it will shift every few years as I learn new words and ways of being, or as I have different life experiences. Maybe I’ll never settle down and “figure it out,” because there is no a priori sexuality living inside me like the solution to a puzzle, there’s just complex human feelings overlapping clumsily with a rigid society. Sexuality is totally made up, not because the feelings aren’t real but because the way we taxonomize those feelings is so particular to time and place, and I’m particularly bad at fitting into the structure of the time and place where I live! I’m attracted to people of many different genders, to different extents and in different ways across time, but mostly I seem to be into women, and I am not a woman or a man. This experience is well-nigh impossible to shoehorn into the schematic of modern Western sexual orientation.

I’ve had so many epiphanies about sexuality, and at the time, each one felt like a lightbulb going off and something finally settling inside me. But all of those experiences have shifted over time, and they’ll probably keep on shifting. First I thought I was bi, and then I realized that the thought of being a woman with a boyfriend made me feel bleak, so I jettisoned the idea of a boyfriend and called myself gay; then I realized that I was still attracted to men even if I didn’t want to date them and I read a lot of think-pieces on sexual fluidity; then I realized I was genderqueer and leaned way too hard into being a lesbian to justify my attraction to women (because if I wasn’t a lesbian, it would be Bad!); and then last year I decided I felt much more comfortable calling myself bi and just giving my sexuality the space to sprawl out and make itself at home, even if I do have a preference.

And my actual sexuality changes, too! The more I stop pressuring myself to be a neat little lesbian who was Born This Way, the more comfortable I feel acknowledging that my formative experiences with attraction in middle school involved guys, and not girls. It’s not just that I was oblivious (although I was also that), I was just into guys more often and more strongly, which is the same way I feel about women now. And yeah, it is really, really weird to have your sexuality do a 180 like that! It’s not like it happened overnight, but it does lead to this feeling of disjointedness with my past self, like I jumped through some kind of parallel universe portal and emerged in an alternate sexuality timeline. In retrospect, I guess the best way to describe what I was was a girlfag: I thought of myself as a girl, even if I wasn’t one, but I wanted other boys to think I was a boy, and I liked guys who were pretty and effeminate and possibly gay, because if they were gay that made them “better” to be attracted to. The first narrative for this is that I’m a straight girl who fetishizes gay men; the second narrative for this is that I’m a lesbian who has crushes on feminine, unattainable boys as a proxy for girls; the third narrative is that I’m trans and gay and so duh, I like queer guys.

[A Tangent]

Also, you know what, it’s very important to me to not be a lesbian. Because I’m not. We can’t all be lesbians! And that’s ok!

I am not a man and I am mostly attracted to women and I have a very complicated relationship with my infrequent attraction to men, but that does not inherently mean that I am a lesbian struggling with comp het. Maybe I really am a bi person with a preference. Maybe I really am a genderqueer person with no affiliation or alignment or whatever the fuck to womanhood. Maybe my interest in men is so complicated by my own transmasculine gender that I can’t really access it. Maybe my experiences don’t need to be twisted to fit a Good and Proper Lesbian Narrative wherein I realize that Men Are Bad and Women Are Good and I’m not really attracted to the Bad People, and I’m absolutely willing to reduce myself to being Basically A Good Person so that the Good and Loving Light of Lesbianism will shine down upon me.

Look, lesbians are great. Lesbian is a word with so much political power, so much potential for self-definition and self-realization, and so much more fluidity than people give it credit for. It’s a beautiful word and sometimes I wish I were a lesbian. But I’m not, because I choose not to be. I will be mistaken for a lesbian for the rest of my life. The specifics of my queerness will never be legible to other people, because people will see me at my most visibly queer and think “she is a lesbian,” and they will see me with my hypothetical girlfriend and think “those women are lesbians.” And so while lesbian is a word that could fit me under its umbrella if I so chose, I don’t so choose, because it’s not the most accurate or fulfilling word for my queerness, and I will be lesbian until proven otherwise for the rest of my life. And so, when given the chance amongst friends and fellow queers, I want to prove otherwise.

I’m also ace, which I see as the queer umbrella that covers all of my sexuality and gender under its scope. My feelings on how, exactly, I’m a-spec have shifted wildly between “gray-asexual,” “demisexual?,” and “totally ace” over the years, often multiple times within the same freaking week. Trying to pin down what sexual attraction even is when it’s something you rarely or never experience, and when it’s also something that you approach through a totally different lens than most people, is an exercise in futility. Words like “hot” or “turned on” or just “sex” don’t even make sense to me; I know broadly what other people mean when they say them, but when I try to find corollaries in my own experiences, I either come up empty-handed or with something that’s like a distorted reflection seen through fog.

I’m not aromantic, but the older I get the less I feel like romantic attraction applies to me, so at this point I’d consider myself sort of philosophically aromantic. I know I’m not actually aro, but the kind of attraction that I feel, while very normative (fluttering hearts; swooping stomachs; improbable daydreams; a desire to impress), also has nothing whatsoever to do with emotions or relationships. My body finds other people cute, and my brain tends to agree, but those feelings don’t lead to desire. They don’t go anywhere. Appreciating the experience of being attracted to someone almost never leads me to want anything from that attraction. I don’t know what that is (maybe it’s shyness or insecurity, or maybe it is some kind of queerness), but I do know that I don’t want to push through it and force myself to go through those rituals just because other people tell me I should want to.

I guess a lot of the disconnect for me comes from calling that type of physical attraction romantic, when for me it has nothing whatsoever to do with sweeping romantic emotions or intimate relationships. I’d be tempted to call the attraction aesthetic, except I think that’s what I feel for forests and my friend Jonesy’s fashion choices (visual appreciation with no real attraction), and I doubt it’s alterous attraction because the symptoms seem so commonplace and archetypical. So I assume I do feel what most people, bafflingly, call romantic attraction, and the romance part is just a miss for me because I’m delightfully perverse or something. I just don’t understand why “person I find attractive” and “person I want to be intimate partners with” and “person I want to have sex with” and “person I want to cohabit with” all has to be the same person. The whole narrative of romance just doesn’t make sense to me.

Good god, this got long.

To finally end up at the second part of the question: My genderqueerness is very closely intertwined with my sexuality, to the point where I wish we still had words like “invert” that combined the two and saw them as mutually constitutive rather than at constant odds with one another. Basically, I see myself as being fundamentally bi, but gay both ways: I’m similar-to-although-not-the-same-as women when I’m attracted to a woman, and similar-to-although-not-the-same-as men when I’m attracted to a man. (When I have a crush on a nonbinary person, I’m just really t4t.) At the moment, attraction to women is the most salient aspect of my sexuality, which is often fraught, because I’m a lot more adamant about Not Being a Woman than I am about not being a man. But I’m still gay for women, and I think I come from a long lineage of people with similar experiences (Vernon Lee, Radclyffe Hall, Leslie Feinberg, Rae Spoon, etc). Speaking of Rae Spoon, I think it’s very easy to assume that you’re not into men when you spend so much time being/trying not to be jealous of them. But I’ve learned that it’s possible for something to be both. Maybe when I love men hypothetically but find it difficult to translate into reality, that’s not because “ew, men bad,” that’s because “DANGER, gender bad.” Maybe (radically! shockingly!) I am actually bisexual and I have crushes on people of various different genders, and none of that negates my attraction to anyone else.

So in summary, I guess I’m just queer, with a side of bi (*gestures expansively*) and ace (*shrugs blankly*).

#i left asexuality out of the last part because i feel like i have a whole other post in me about the intersection of ace and gender shit #gqid asks #i'm sorry this is really very long #i've got to stop hitting the really meaty questions on sundays #when i can spend multiple self-indulgent hours just stewing over them #there's so much more ace stuff that i want to talk about but i don't know that i have all my thoughts in order #and some of the ace stuff would be tangential and also kind of tmi #my friends are recapping to me a livestream of a party in this homophobic horse game and i am so baffled and delighted #add it to the list of things that happened in november 2020

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moonlights-shadow-warrior · 5 years ago

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Hi, I’ve been following you for a hot minute and wanted to ask about how you define your asexuality and gray-romanticness. I am a poly/pan trans-guy trying to wrap my head around it and from your posts you always seem super nice and down to earth. Sorry if this is a weird question ^~^’

Ngl your ask did catch me off guard, although that was mostly due to the fact that a) I never get asks, and b) I rarely post my own stuff or comment on others’ posts so the fact that you said I seem nice and down to earth ‘cause of my posts threw me for a bit of a loop. Sweet though, and I’m glad I come off that way even though my blog is really just a mishmash of things I like and that catch me eye

Now as for your question

TL:DR Defining my asexuality means I don’t feel sexual attraction towards others (never have in my almost 23 years of life) and it honestly kinda confuses me simply because it’s something I’ve never experienced before and when others talk about it I just don’t get it

As for my greyromanticism, it’s more a transitional term as over the years I went from having loads and loads of crushes (I think) as a kid to now where I haven’t had a crush for multiple years as I move closer and closer to being aro ‘cause of some trauma that happened in my life. Same trauma is part of why gender does make a difference in my attraction now

Gonna start this off with some backstory saying I used to identify as bisexual, then pansexual, ‘cause I’d never heard of asexuality before and gender didn’t really play a part in my like for someone. And from the terms I knew, those seemed like the obvious choice at the time. But I also didn’t really,,, get it when some of my friends talked about how hot a person was or their list of actors they wanted to bone (and just celebrity crushes in general now that I think about it, although that could’ve very easily been due to the fact I can’t for the life of me remember who’s who in the realm of Hollywood). I’d just sorta nod along and listen ‘cause hey, people are different and just ‘cause we’re both pan doesn’t mean our experiences are exactly the same

Now at this time I was reading a lot—and I mean a lot—of fanfics ‘cause of escapism and all that jazz. And in one fic I came across there was a character—my favorite character—that was ace. When it got mentioned I didn’t think much of it ‘cause it was just ‘oh cool new term I haven’t heard before’. But then it was explained not only what asexuality was, but also what sexual and romantic attraction were—with examples for each of them—and how they didn’t always line up for some people. And it just

Clicked

I did a bit more research on it, reading things that other aces had posted talking about being ace, and it felt like it just fit me

It’s probably been close to 7 years since I last read that fic, but it was explained something like this

Have you ever looked at someone and wanted to fool around with them, maybe take a tumble in the sheets, but would never want to date them? That’s sexual attraction

And have you ever looked at someone and had your heart flutter and just wanted to go on dates and maybe kiss them but you wouldn’t describe them as sexy and the thought of having sex with them either didn’t cross your mind or made your stomach turn? Romantic attraction

And feeling the latter without the former? Well you might just be ace

Of course this isn’t a universal thing for those under the ace umbrella, but it worked for me and helped me realize something about myself

I don’t feel sexual attraction, which was why all those times my friends talked about how sexy someone was or who was on their f list, it felt like a foreign concept to me and the most I could say to relate was “well they are cute”

As for my greyromanticism, that one’s not as clear cut. Also cw for bad parenting and divorce/bad breakups basically idk

Like I said above, I used to get a lot of crushes as a kid. Looking back, were they all actually crushes or just me thinking a person looked cute? Who knows, but I’m pretty sure there were some

Walking in late only to see the new kid sitting there and immediately my heart rate picked up and I had trouble looking directly at them without blushing? Then picking up an instrument that they played just to try and be seated next to them in band class even though I had no idea what I was doing and had barely talked to them before?

Crush

Get partnered with someone for one assignment and then always trying to sneak glances at them out of the corner of my eye and it just so happens that they ended up in a lot of my photos of my middle school DC field trip?

Crush

Playing spin the faygo just for the chance to make out with one person ‘cause they’re hella cute and within an hour of knowing each other we immediately linked hands and threaded our fingers together while walking around?

Crush

Just as a few examples. Also I was shy and didn’t know how to socialize, which didn’t help at all in the creepiness factor

Now could some of my crushes have actually been just me becoming attached to someone who was nice to me one (1) time? Maybe, who knows, not me

Like I said above, me identifying as greyro is more transitional as I move closer and closer to identifying as aromantic ‘cause of trauma. Was I actually always arospec but just hadn’t heard of the terms like with asexuality? I don’t know because only after everything did I come across the term and my memory is so poor that I can’t properly recall the feelings I experienced. Even the above may not be accurate because my memory’s so spotty and my mind likes to insert things that never actually happened or are wildly different from what everyone else remembers

Which sucks but I digress

So that trauma I keep mentioning. As a child that had to deal with a rough divorce, it can bring on a whole slew of issues, some of which relate to relationships. I called my parents’ divorce almost a decade before it actually happened, and watching it go downhill to the point they could barely stand to be in the same room was rough. Not only that, but I had to give relationship advice to my father, from saying that he should go through with the divorce to giving my opinion on who he should date and if he should break it off or power through a rough spot or not come home for the night. Needless to say, all that warped my perception just a bit

And while that was happening, I had to deal with my own rocky high school relationships

While I haven’t dated a lot of people, a lot of the breakups were bad. Maybe not bad right away and we’d continue on being friends afterwards, but down the line something would happen where they’d either drop all contact or blow up at me without me knowing why or realizing something was off in the first place. And paired with the after effects of the divorce, it was a bad combination

But the golden lining was a breakup so terrible that it caused my datemate to hallucinate and go into such a depressive state that I’m pretty sure the after effects still influence how they act today when it comes to relationships. The four of us talked about moving in together, having a double wedding and all that. But then one left out of the blue and the other became harder and harder to contact until there was no response. And that all happened less than a month after I finally ran away from all the bs of the divorce and my father asking for relationship advice and being dropped so suddenly after what I thought was a good breakup

And after that I can only pinpoint 2 maybe crushes around the same time less than a year later

So yeah, traumatic

But I didn’t identify as greyro yet, because I hadn’t heard of the term

But even then I told my datemate that if we broke up I will never be in another romantic relationship after them because of everything. Because I didn’t really believe in love anymore

But I didn’t identify as greyro yet, even when I had heard of the term

I thought, nah, that’s not me, because I still thought I had crushes, as few and far between as they were. Because I didn’t know there were other kinds of attraction

And then my datemate asked if I had a crush on this one person, and I said no, and I realized that was the truth. I hadn’t had a crush on them. I wanted to hold their hand and cuddle and maybe give light pecks, protect them as best I could, but it wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t the same feelings as what I remember feeling in my childhood, what I feel towards my datemate

I had a squish, and once I realized that things started making a bit of sense. There were people I wanted to hold their hand, laze around in a cuddle pile to be close to them, maybe give them quick innocent pecks because I’m touch starved and want affection. But never were the feelings romantic

If that trauma had never happened, would I still say I’m panromantic instead of bi greyromantic? Who knows, not me

But what I do know is that if something were to happen and my datemate and I were to split, that the single romantic attraction I have felt in years was severed, I’d full on say I’m aro because they are my exception

My greyromanticism is transitional. It’s not “I feel romantic attraction sparingly” or “have a hard time distinguishing platonic from romantic” or the other common definitions I’ve seen around, but rather “I used to feel romantic attraction all the time, but now only feel it towards one person and if that were to go away, I wouldn’t feel it at all”

Sometimes I doubt myself, thinking maybe I’m experiencing crushes and just don’t realize it or am in denial. But then I think about it again and tell my doubt to shut up because that’s wrong and I know it

And wow that was a lot and I’m pretty sure I spent ~4 hours writing this without realizing it. I hope this answered your question though!! Word vomiting like this helped me realize a few things myself

Also wow I need therapy more than I thought

#mail time #anonymous #ace #asexual #aro #aromantic #greyro #arospec #aspec #Anonymous

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bladealvis · 6 years ago

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SwampClan

you: i made this list of names n such i’d really like to see in WC..

me: you dare me?? you dare me to make an entire history for 1 clan???? which i will eventually turn into a massive AU???????

————

This clan is known as SwampClan due to how close they are to the swamp, and how dead leaders are buried in the swamp upon their death. This clan was formed from ShadowClan and SkyClan loners.

However, SwampClan is often looked down upon by the rest of the ‘Pure’ Clans (Shadow/River/Wind/Thunder/Sky/Blood/Kin) and many of the 'Minor’ Clans (mixes between the pure clans who made their own clans).

–

Leader-

Swarm-grove is a large, chubby, chocolate and lilac trans tom, with multiple scars across his throat from a war in the clans. He currently has 5 lives and is Aromantic/Bisexual.

The prefix -grove denotes a leader in SwampClan, as in this clan the land they live on is sacred, instead of something alike to StarClan- this leads the other clans to believe that SwampClan 'worships’ the Dark Forest.

Deputy-

Black-bark is a stocky, black cis tom with short fur, and yellow eyes. He has a stubby tail and is Homoromantic/Demisexual.

Medicine Cat-

Partridge-whisper is a thin, grey-brown tabby trans she-cat with short fur, and gold eyes. She also has a twisted paw and is Biromantic/Heterosexual.

Warriors-

Stone-shard is a lanky, blue and cream, mackerel tortoiseshell genderfluid cat, with long fur, and yellow eyes. They/She have speckled pawpads, and is Andro-romantic/Asexual.

Reed-smoke is a tall, short haired, caramel cis she-cat, with hazel eyes. She has an underbite, and is Panromantic/Pansexual.

Shrike-hiss is an oddly small, grey-and-white cis tom, with hazel eyes. He has a heart shaped white marking on his chin, and is Heteroromantic/Heterosexual. He has a crush on Reed-smoke.

Lichen-hawk is a slim, spotted pale grey cat questioning their gender. They have six toes on each paw, and they are Aromantic/Pansexual.

Apprentices-

Sparrow-paw is a thickset, brown tabby cis tom, with copper eyes. He has a speckled nose, and is questioning. He is the cousin to Stone-shard, and wants his name to be Sparrow-flutter.

Pearl-paw is a thin, white trans she-cat with red eyes, because she is an albino. She is Homoromantic/Asexual and wants her name to be Pearl-tuft.

Queens-

Cuckoo-shine is a lithe, blue-grey and white patched trans tom, with amber eyes. He has curled ears, and came from KinClan. He is also Poly, and in a platonic relationship with Lichen-hawk.

Kits-

Bramble-kit is a chubby, dark brown kit. They have a white marking on their face.

Pipit-kit is a strong, grey-brown kit. They have tufted ears.

Elders-

Fawn-song is an oddly small, light brown genderqueer cat with hazel eyes. They/He have longer whiskers than most, and is Andro-romantic/Homosexual.

Copper-gaze is a stocky, ginger cis tom with green eyes. He has a white chin marking, and is Heteromantic/Asexual.

DUDE THIS IS AN AWESOME CONCEPT i love the idea of a swamp-based clan!! it makes me think they’re a feral cat colony in Louisiana’s wetlands or something, it��d be interesting to see them deal with floods and new predators/other carnivores... like herons and ALLIGATORS

I also really love the names Blackbark and Coppergaze <3

#submission #long post #this makes me want to make a hybrid clan too lolol #wind/shadow and thunder/sky would be such interesting combos

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eeee-lye · 7 years ago

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Short Fiction: Old Fashioned

Summary: Amelia March is tired of suitors breaking into her house after dark to express their undying love. Sure, it might be the fashion, but whatever happened to getting to know someone first? Why won’t they listen to her when she says she isn’t interested? And what does it mean that her cousin Kit thinks there’s a word for her approach to romantic relationships?

Old Fashioned is a story about finding words and the importance of fake cobwebs in the windows.

Genre: Slightly absurd fantasy with trans, autistic and aro-spec characters.

Length: 4, 510 words.

Content advisory: This short story depicts a woman somewhat enthusiastically wounding a home invader, despite awareness of the fact that said invader isn’t there to kill her. It also depicts this love interest engaged in the creepy but traditional (at least in literature) act of invading her house, unasked and uninvited, as a sexual/romantic gesture towards a woman who doesn’t want it and is explicit about this. The protagonist also threatens and imagines violence and murder on several occasions as a form of bluster. There’s also a non-detailed reference to the fantasy-setting way a character lost a limb.

Note the first: Amelia and Kit are characters from my fantasy web serial [The Unnatural Philosophy of Kit March], which also contains trans, autistic and aromantic characters in an entirely no-romance plot. This story takes place forty years earlier.

Note the second: Posting for #AggressivelyArospectacular hosted by @aggressivelyarospec, in case people are interested in more aro creativity.

After the parsnips, though, Amelia fears the creaking can only mean one thing. The lovelorn.

When Amelia March, upon waking from a sound sleep, hears the second rustle, she reaches beside her bed and rests her fingers on the smooth wood of her favourite staff. In her old life, as a student in Siya, having a weapon by one’s mattress borders on the absurd; here, in a rural Greenstone village, anyone who doesn’t sleep within reach of a weapon—a broomstick, a knife, a furious cat—lacks something in the sense department. True, she’s an indifferent witch at best, but after dealing with ghosts, injured villagers, possessed chickens and That Time With The Parsnips, she’s learnt to be armed at all times. The bloodstained grimoire in her kitchen, after all, doesn’t frighten people nearly as much as a good clip over the ear.

She sits and raises the staff so that she can swing out with the knobbly end, listening to the soft brush of feet over stone. It isn’t Kit; she hears no tap of wood. It isn’t Midnight: no cat will rustle and risk being mistaken for an intruder. No mice or spiders dare her house, between her ward spells, her cleaning and the cat; even the local moths know better than to find shelter within her walls. Anyone with legitimate business, of the sort that involves accidents or illness of human and beast, will beat on her front door and bellow.

She hopes, prays, that it’s the Jackson twins trying to attempt another demon-summoning by stealing the requisite texts.

After the parsnips, though, Amelia fears the noise can only mean one thing.

The lovelorn.

Nighttime stalking has become all the rage amongst the lovesick, impressionable, young and downright foolish—a fashion worse than unnecessarily-constricting corsetry and wide-legged breeches. Worse than last summer, even, when everyone went about quoting romantic poetry in lieu of just asking someone to the town hall dance. Goddess save her, what’s so wrong with just asking? Now, though, love is all about climbing through second-storey windows and watching their lover sleep; roses are passé. Romance, these days, is about being new and innovative and showing to the world just how far one will go—even if it means proclaiming their star-crossed interest from the damp, oft-neglected village lock-up the next morning. Bruises, trellises bearing briar brambles, irate parents armed with brooms and even magic seem no deterrent.

The problem isn’t the trend: Amelia admits to a certain satisfaction when she wakes up in the morning to discover a forlorn youth on her doorstep bearing a sprained ankle or hideous scratches. Calling them five different ways of brainless is moderately entertaining and more than makes up for the waste of her time—if they plague someone else.

Amelia, curse the Goddess, is still young enough to be interesting.

A faint grunt echoes from the open door, as if muffled by a hand. In daylight, Amelia knows nothing more about fighting than the next person—save for a doctor’s knowledge of where she might best apply a blade or staff for agony or death. In the dark—and in a room with most breakable objects on the shelf above her head, because Amelia knows her aim to be atrocious with any tool larger than a scalpel—her lack of training doesn’t matter. She waits a moment longer, listening for the distinctive gasp as the intruder stubs their toe on the raised stone slab just before her bed, before aiming at what she guesses to be collarbone height and swinging.

The crack of the staff landing on bone is followed, immediately, by an ear-splitting shriek.

Amelia swings again. A thud sounds, followed by a series of thumps, something clattering, and then vicious swearing—not the words one uses to address the village witch—and a sniffle before several soft sobs.

“I just had to get another bloody weeper, didn’t I?” Amelia places the staff on the bed—right where she can grab it in her left hand if needed—and reaches up to tap the jar of dozing sprites into wakefulness before leaning over to fumble at the lamp sitting on her chest of drawers. “Do none of you ever think how much this is costing me in kerosene and matches and sprites?”

It takes a moment for the lamp to catch and light the room, which is just as well, for half the sprites sink to the bottom of the jar with only the faintest of yellow glows. Amelia sits back down in bed, pulls up the covers and stares at her intruder.

A young woman—one of the village shopgirls, although Amelia can’t remember her name—sits huddled on the floor, one hand wrapped around her opposite elbow. She is gorgeous, Amelia admits: round and curvy, with a mane of curly chestnut hair tumbling down her back and falling in her eyes. Big, beautiful, green eyes, paired with the kind of pouty lips Amelia enjoys pressed against her own when the kissing happens to be mutually agreed upon.

Well, she liked Lyra’s lips pressed against her own, even if she’s yet to meet another woman who makes her feel that kind of want.

The shopgirl is beautiful, but all Amelia feels is irritation. She should be asleep with a cat at her feet! She shouldn’t be staring at a girl who, for some incomprehensible reason, forgot to wear a few useful things like shoes, underwear and clothing! Amelia sighs, grinding her teeth. Perhaps something is wrong with her—her fellow students in Siya surely implied it when they didn’t state it outright. Some people, she knows, are less annoyed by the discovery of a naked person of the correct gender and age in their bedroom—especially if the intruder shows a willing intent of getting under the covers and beginning a seduction.

She doubts that the girl meant to touch her without waking her; this is misguided romance, not assault.

Assault she can handle.

Refusing the attentions of a sobbing girl, though, wasn’t covered in the university curriculum.

Everyone does this nowadays. Lovers skip the whole tradition of meeting, dating, getting to know each other over a meal or two, the nervous small-talk where two people try to figure out where the other stands with regards common interests and how soon they can talk of bedding without being offensive. They don’t become friends first and then wait to see if that spark of interest flares. No, everyone in the village sighs over the love and romance of a mysterious stalker. How else can someone prove their love for another, if they aren’t willing to take the risk of creeping into their love-interest’s house after dark?

Lyra didn’t do that. Lyra sat down beside her in the library, a pile of books between them, and they spent weeks talking about the best way to drain a corpse and the benefits of mattress stitch before anyone attempted even chaste kissing. They knew they were medical students bonding over their dabbling in witchcraft and shared belief in gnome voting equality before anything as messy as love entered the discussion.

Amelia suppresses a groan and looks down at the woman.

The shopgirl—Goddess, what is her name?—flutters her damp eyelashes but doesn’t answer. Amelia has read enough romance novels to know this as some attempt to look alluring, but she just looks like a near-stranger with an eyelash stuck in her eye. A pretty stranger, but a stranger. They’ve exchanged a bare handful of words at the shop, mostly requests for a pound of sugar, more tea-tree oil and can Amelia order in a selection of mandrake roots—none of the conversations leading to the kind of friendship needed for a midnight tryst. How does the girl know they’re compatible in bed? How does the girl know if Amelia is even interested in bedding? What if Amelia doesn’t have the required breakfast foods in the house for the next morning? Why would anyone risk such an act based on so little information?

“Well?” Amelia resists the urge to grab the stick and thump the intruder over the ear. She asked a question, a perfectly reasonable question. Social custom dictates that the girl answer. “Do you think about how much all this is costing me? Don’t you think it’s bloody inconsiderate?”

The shopgirl blinks and says nothing.

Just how are they all getting in? Amelia fastened the windows and bolted the front door before going to bed, checking every lock twice; she made sure that nobody can open the catches from the outside after the last debacle, and she won’t sleep through a window breaking—if anyone wants to annoy a witch by breaking her windows. Perhaps the intruder decided to risk the nesting devil in the cellar and entered by the cellar door? Just what has the world come to when not even a devil keeps out the lovelorn?

Why are these villagers are interested in her? She wears plain dresses and aprons for a reason! She doesn’t try not to bore people with talk about the best ways to disinfect a worktable! She wears the bloody black broad-brimmed hat and leaves a bloodstained grimoire—one with purification spells worked on the cover, of course, because a bloodstained grimoire isn’t all that sanitary—out on her kitchen bench! She named her cat Midnight! She’s an awkward, divergent witch who doesn’t try to be more approachable and friendly! She doesn’t get anyone to fix the crooked walls or floors, she keeps seasoning herbs in bubbled glass vials and she recites fake spells when cleaning wounds just to make her patients feel more comfortable with the efficacy of her work! Short of building an altar in the yard and sacrificing chickens to some dread demon every Sunday, she can’t be more witchy!

“If you’re not going to refund me for my swiving matches, get up, stop crying and go home. Try asking someone else out the proper way. Tell them your name first.”

The woman peers up at Amelia, now trying a wobbly sort of smile. “You’re the most beautiful woman I ever saw, and I love—”

Some tiny part of her, the part of her that looks in the mirror and sees late-afternoon shadow and square shoulders and a chest that requires padding to properly fill out a gown or dress, relents—but that’s silly. She’s a woman. The Goddess made her. Being a woman in a less-conventional way doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have standards. She doesn’t want someone who invades her privacy; she wants someone who takes the time to befriend her first. Lyra did. Why should anything else matter?

“And you’re a swiving stranger invading my house.” Amelia folds her arms, positioning her gaze above the girl’s head. Isn’t she cold, with only the rug between her feet and the uneven stone floor? If Amelia’s feet are freezing despite her knobbly-knitted bed socks and her patchwork quilt, why isn’t the girl shivering? “Now get out before I throw my cat at you.”

A soft thump sounds like Midnight streaking for the hallway, even though her cat should know better.

The woman’s smile fades as she struggles to her feet with her fingers still cupping her elbow. “But … I did all this for you. I love you.”

Amelia rolls her eyes and grabs her staff, staring at the girl and trying to look witchy despite her floral-print nightgown. No, Amelia isn’t a good witch in some ways, but in many ways being divergent makes her as much a witch as the real thing. The village doesn’t question her post because she is good at pretending to be magical, because she does know a little script magic and studied with the Sanguarian in addition to her years in Siya. The latter makes her seem just as magical as if she does know how to summon zombies—and a good sight more useful.

Has it occurred to the girl that she’ll have to return tomorrow to ask the witch who wounded her to do something about it?

Of course, working as a village witch instead of as a village doctor is its own gaping wound, because Amelia can’t forget that words matter, behaviour matters: that witches, not doctors, are permitted to be strange. This isn’t the job she wanted; this isn’t the job for which she spent ten years in Siya. It gives her a crooked house, a monthly income and a purpose, though, and all she needs do is decorate her curtains with embroidered cobwebs, resist the need to dust her crooked bottle collection and block a few glowing spells.

“If you don’t get out of my house in two minutes, I’ll turn you and your family into toads. Dead toads. They’ll have to bury you all in a shoebox.”

“But…”

“What has ‘but’ got to do with it?” Amelia slides out of bed, sure to place her feet on the rug, and reaches for the phial she keeps on the shelf above her head. Damn the girl, getting her up out of bed after midnight—the floor is freezing! “I hope this works properly, this time. Last time I attempted a cross-species transfiguration, the target ended up with the head and body of a toad and seven legs best described as belonging to an oversized tarantula…”

The shopgirl turns for the door, yelps as she snags her toe on the crooked stone in the hallway, and thunders her way down the stairs.

“Tell everyone that if they wish to romance me, they can send a request in writing!” Amelia sighs and returns the bottle—filled with nothing more ominous than dyed water—to its place on the shelf. “With references!”

The front door, with its ominous-but-useful-for-scaring-people creak, slams shut, followed by the crunch of the woman’s footsteps as she runs down the gravel path towards the village. Amelia waits until the noise fades before sliding her feet into her old boots, taking the lamp and following the girl downstairs. She chews her lip, grumbling, as she checks the windows, pets the devil, jams the cellar door shut with a sliver of wood, and sets down lines of pepper and dried basil leaves in the hope that the villagers think them a magical protection. Tomorrow, she’ll have to do something about the cellar. A dangerous-looking creature that likes the dark and doesn’t make too much noise will do nicely, although Amelia never imagined that the nesting devil won’t be threatening enough. Something must be done; no more having her sleep interrupted by the desperate whims of people thinking themselves in love!

She stomps back up the stairs and stops only to greet Midnight, now sitting on the topmost step with his long, black tail swishing back and forth. “Goddess! I wasn’t really going to throw you!” She sits back down beside her cat, rests the lamp on one step and holds out one hand for him to sniff; only when he starts rubbing the side of his face against her hand does Amelia offer an apologetic scratch under the chin. “Do they think that because they’re pretty, I’m not going to care if they invade my house? Do they think that because they’re naked, I’m going to tear my clothes off and ravish them? Why is this the fashion? Why don’t they want to get to know people first? Why?”

Midnight just tilts his head so that Amelia can shift her fingers into his favourite scratchy place behind his ear.

“I’m just too old fashioned,” she says, and even though Midnight doesn’t answer her, that’s the benefit of a cat: no contradicting, no arguing, just a quiet, tactile presence in return for food and petting.

“She is gorgeous. Well, if you’re into women, so my appreciation is aesthetic, but you are. You know you don’t have to kick these people out because I’m here? I don’t mind if you want to take some lovely woman and ravish away. Or just kiss. Or sit by the fire and stare into each other’s eyes while the stars whirl overhead…”

People, on the other hand!

Amelia jerks and turns her head. At the top of the landing sits two doors: one leading to her room, one leading to the guest room. Kit, Amelia’s cousin and professional annoyance, stands in the guest room doorway, wobbling, on two crutches. Even as she watches, he leans against the door frame, his nightshirt rumpled. His left foot rests square against the floor, bare despite the cold; his right leg, ending halfway below his knee and swathed in a bundle of bandages, just hangs. They’ll need to work, she thinks, on the way his upper body twists to balance himself, a way that will be a problem if allowed to become a habit.

He beams at her, though, a short man with pillow-flattened hair sticking out at a variety of angles, and that’s the most frustrating thing. Tears she can deal with. Misery and grief are expected. This insufferable good cheer, as though this is no more inconvenient to him—despite the ashy undertone to his dark skin and the weight he’s lost—than losing a fingernail, makes her want to beat him upside the head. Several times.

“What the swiving hell do you think you’re bloody doing? Get back to bed!” Amelia grabs the lamp and leaps to her feet as fast as is possible without slopping kerosene. She knew it was a bad idea to leave crutches within Kit’s reach after the horror of teaching him how to use them, but the fear of what happens if she’s called out and cannot get someone to sit with him made it seem the safest decision. Still a terrible idea, given his propensity to escapades and inability to consider the consequences. “Now! If you tear a stitch I’m going to punch you so hard you won’t have any teeth left!”

Kit just grins, showing most of those same teeth. He doesn’t move, leaving Amelia to wonder if it’s because he’s feeling good enough to annoy her or if it’s because he’s too worn out to do anything but lean. “No, you won’t. You won’t take the risk of my falling over. Of course, not wanting sex or romance is a valid option. Do you know that it’s an option, Amelia? Or—no, I think you don’t feel that kind of attraction until you befriend them first, based on the letters you sent Grandmother while in Siya—”

She doesn’t speak so much as give a rattling scream of frustration. Every time she thinks he’s reached a new degree of interfering, he always, always, finds a way to surpass it. Maybe she should make him walk past a basilisk guarding every entrance, even though Kit told the tale of his neighbour’s pets, a miscalculated step and Plumeria’s surprise axe-wielding skills with an uncharacteristic and sobering quiet.

No. Amelia sighs, catches herself grinding her teeth and starts chewing on her nails instead. Even she knows that’s meaner a thought than is warranted. She can fantasise, though. Given that Kit spent most of their childhood coming up with new ways to poke his nose into Amelia’s life, she’s earnt the right to imagine how she might best torture him.

Besides, they both know that she’s a master of bluster.

It occurs to her that might have something to do with why the villagers don’t fear her.

“Once you became friends with Lyra, good friends, everything took a distinct turn for the romantic, I remember. Maybe you didn’t notice? I mean, she’s the only woman you ever kissed, yes? There’s a word for it, now, although referring to someone as ‘demi’ is rather confusing, since demigods tend to do that, too.”

Amelia draws a breath and points towards the spare room doorway. What is he doing? “Get back to your bloody bed!”

“Demiromantic. Maybe demisexual, too?” Kit sounds not even slightly perturbed, and he makes no attempt to turn around. “Surely, it’s in your medical books, somewhere? Anyway, did I ever tell you how I found out about it? I was sitting in a taproom in Raugue with a swordsman I picked up in Arsh. I don’t recall how I got on the subject of listing previous lovers, mind you—probably had something to do with the unexpectedly good whiskey—but he nodded and asked if I’d considered the fact that there might be a word for the truth that I’m chronically uninterested in keeping a partner—”

The only thing to do is stalk past him, enter her bedroom, give Midnight time to join her and then slam the door shut loudly enough to make Kit stop talking.

“Demiromantic!” he yells, just as Amelia curses the too-wide crack between door and floor. “We know our own, Amelia!”

She chews her smallest fingernail down to the quick, straining to hear the creaking, tapping noise of a man on crutches crossing the less-than-flat floor. One thud, a grasping or dragging noise too light to be that of a body hitting the floor, silence.

“Amelia? I promise I won’t say anything if you’ll, well, help me…”

She opens the door and glares across the landing.

“Please?” Kit doesn’t so much as lean against the doorframe as clutch it like a drowning sailor clinging to a spar. “I tried to turn and it got dizzy.”

She doesn’t have to tell him he deserves it: Amelia just grins.

He doesn’t speak as they inch their way through the door and over four stone slabs of varying heights, and he still doesn’t speak once they reach the narrow bed, one taking up the entire length of the room. He must be tired, she thinks, because by the time he lowers himself down on the bed and releases his grip on her nightdress Kit still hasn’t broken this most unnatural silence—and this is the man who considers bathing a suitable time for discussing the specific usage in spell constructs for every possible synonym of the word “red”. No, he just settles himself, his teeth pressed against his lip, and slumps against the pillow.

She wonders if getting up, crutching across the room and talking at her, however unnecessary, was his way of trying to find a shade of normality in a life that has abruptly ceased being normal.

“Trade,” Amelia says, knowing she’ll live to regret it. She stalks over to the basin beside the bed, fills it with the remainder of the water in the pitcher and scrubs her hands until the room smells of tea-tree soap. “If you let me poke at you, I’ll let you tell me about whatever word you found for your bed bouncing. As long as you don’t tell me what you did with the swordsman in Raugue.”

Kit’s sudden smile is broad enough that Amelia wonders, for a moment, on the honesty of his quiet. She can’t put him past pretending just to manipulate her into talking, after all. “Nothing, actually. I was too taken aback by the idea that it is possible to be romantically disinclined. Aromantic. It explains so much about the time I panicked and, uh, climbed out the window to escape a Malvadan merchant who wanted to introduce me to his parents. I admit it wasn’t the most well-thought-out decision I’d ever made…”

His voice softens and his smile fades, his eyes flicking up to the rafters.

Amelia dries her hands, grabs the bean bag from the dresser and tosses it onto Kit’s chest. He grunts, but he picks it up and starts teasing at the beans encased in the flannel, while she pulls her chair up to the end of the bed, folds back the covers and starts unwinding.

She’s old fashioned. Simple, uncomplicated. In a world where a divergent shift woman who trained as a doctor and works as a witch offers complication enough, it isn’t a terrible thing to want to reject something that adds an extra layer of difference to the person she is. She’s just old fashioned, and that isn’t a bad thing to be—certainly not if it means she doesn’t find herself in the village lock-up after entering someone else’s home!

Yet there’s an understanding the village shares, a feeling that doesn’t include her. She understands running away from someone wanting something she can’t return—or forcing them to run away from her. She doesn’t understand running toward someone else in the hope that they too share her desire. She doesn’t understand, not in the heart, the books she reads. She doesn’t understand love or want at first sight, she doesn’t understand love or want without prior friendship or connection, and she doesn’t understand the love or want that drives shopgirls to risk it all on an irascible witch.

She doesn’t understand the kind of love and want that dominates song, poem, legend, novel.

Admitting that feels strangely liberating.

“You climbed out someone else’s window? Just to avoid meeting his parents? Because you didn’t…?”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Kit jerks the bag in time with each word, sighs. “I didn’t love him like that, but he thought I did. I haven’t loved anyone like that. I’ve thought, a few times, if I just gave it longer, maybe … but it doesn’t happen. Not the way books say romance does.” Kit shrugs, raises his right hand to his ear and rattles the bag. He still doesn’t look at her, her hands or the stump being revealed under layers of linen, and she can’t help but wonder if he’s thinking about the likelihood of his climbing out of future windows. ��There’s words for us too, Amelia. Fewer stories, but words nonetheless. Maybe I should write a book while I’m cooped up here…”

Amelia draws a breath and wonders. There’s the love in books and songs and hope, wild and incomprehensible, but there’s also the love of a cousin who knows she doesn’t really mean it when she threatens to lock him in the cellar, or the love of a cousin who gets under her skin but knows her door is always open. There’s the love that’s history and the sharing of words with someone else, words spoken by someone who knows just how much they matter.

She isn’t soft, isn’t gentle, isn’t kind. She tries, though, to survive this confusing world of people who behave in ways unpredictable, and maybe that, too, is a form of love. The love of a pretend witch for her people, brittle and fragile and born of exasperation, but what else keeps her rolling out of bed to deal with her village? What else makes her sit in the evening and embroider cobwebs on her curtains? What else has her here beside a man who enjoys frustrating her? What else has her wondering that this story, this time, might be hers?

Amelia March knows she isn’t an agreeable person, but she isn’t void of love.

“Tell me about this, Kit. Demiromantic?”

Love isn’t something she ever considered in need of categorising and labelling.

Maybe it should be.

#AggressivelyArospectacular #aromanticism #aro fiction #autistic fiction #trans fiction #autism #trans #fantasy #free read #short fiction #my writing #kit march verse #series: the unnatural philosophy of kit march

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aroacehogwarts · 7 years ago

Note

Demiromantic demisexual demiboy Remus becoming qpps with aromantic asexual agender (who still uses he/him pronouns) Sirius, panromantic asexual trans man James, and aromantic polysexual bigender Peter. (After she and James start dating, Lily comes out to all of them as a demiromantic bisexual trans girl.)

Remus was lying with his head in Sirius’ lap, gentle fingers stroking through his short locks, while Peter worked on braiding Sirius’ long hair, babbling away about how he (for today) thought the potions test went. Another of their dormmates had some music on low, which was seriously relaxing Remus. His eyes were fluttering, and he was ready to drift off when James’ burst in.

“Marauders unite!” he yelled, then flung himself on Sirius’ bed, which they were all currently occupying. There went Remus’ peace. He narrowed his eyes at his excited friend, unhappy to be displaced from Sirius’ warm pillow-legs. “Lily said yes!”

Sirius’ eyebrows rose.

“Congrats!” Peter beamed, thumping James on the shoulder in a rare show of physical affection. “Now maybe you’ll stop moping every time she walks by.”

James ignored the tease. “We’re meeting up for Hogsmeade this weekend, just the two of us! And we’ve got a study date for tomorrow night,” he bragged, puffing his chest out in pride.

Sirius laughed. “Oh, Merlin, he’s going to be even worse from now on, isn’t he? Before at least, he had a life aside from Lily, but now it’s going to be all about her, isn’t it?”

“Undoubtedly,” Remus agreed. “Just promise you won’t forget the little people who brought you to this moment, Prongs.”

James rolled his eyes. “We’ve already qpp’d. Besides, I kinda doubt Lily’s gonna wanna spend every waking moment with me. I’m not sure she can handle my energy.”

Peter laughed.

“Very true! And thank Merlin for that!” Sirius said. “But seriously, bud, congrats.”

“Yes, congrats - and thank you. I believe that’s five galleons my way,” Remus grinned at Sirius and Peter, who grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll get your money, Moony - but later!”

“What exactly was the bet, and why wasn’t I let in on it?” James asked.

“Dates by when Lily would accept a date with you,” Peter admitted, looking down at his loss. “My bet wasn’t for another month. I thought you might play it safe.”

James laughed. “Sorry, Wormtail. You should have known me better than that! I bet Remus had inside information and weaseled out of Lily how she was feeling.”

“Hey, I’m no cheater. Besides, you forget how friendly she and Padfoot here have gotten.”

A look of realization and betrayal flittered across Sirius’ face. “She swindled me! She told me she’d refuse you for another week!”

Everyone but Sirius howled with laughter at his revelation.

“I think I’m in love,” James admitted, still chuckling.

Bright, young, expectant green eyes brought Remus back to the present. He wanted to tell the poor child in front of him how angry their parents would be at their struggles and denial of identity, something that never would have happened like this if their parents had lived, but that wasn’t what was needed. “Both of your parents were queer, you know. They were both trans, and your dad was a panro ace, your mom demiro and bisexual. Actually... we - the Marauders and your mom - all were - are queer. None of us were - are cis or straight. Has anyone ever talked to you about this stuff before?”

“My mum and dad were... trans? Really?” Harry sounded so young, and it broke Remus’ heart. It almost made him want to go to McGonagall and accept her offer to fight for Remus to stay at school and teach.

Instead, he simply replied with a soft, “yeah, they were. Your dad didn’t come out until his fourth year of Hogwarts, but your mom was out far before she came to Hogwarts.”

“So... so they’d be okay if... I was maybe a girl? Or sort of a girl? Or, at least, am not really a boy?”

“Of course.” Remus placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder and looked the child in the eye. “They’d be so supportive of whatever gender and sexuality you were. They would have encouraged you to experiment. They’d have bought you whatever clothes and used whatever name for you. What matters is what’s inside here,” he said, pointing to Harry’s heart. “And trust me, they’d be very, very proud of what’s in there.”

“So what - what did you say? Demiro? Panro? Ace? What do those mean?”

This was not exactly what Remus thought he’d be teaching at Hogwarts, certainly not to his qp and friend’s kid, especially after he’d resigned, but it was also something Remus would never back away from. “Well,” he started, abandoning the idea of packing for now, “let’s start with the basics here.”

~Hufflepuff Mod

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princess-of-the-corner · 8 years ago

Text

I needed to re-make my headcanons list so here we go: Mlp characters with gender, sexuality, and body type headcanons. Also have some ‘what race they’d be as a human’ headcanons and maybe a few other things tossed in too;

Pinkie Pie

Panromantic Pansexual

Genderfluid(DFAB). Depending on the day, it will be either she/her, he/him, they/them, or even sometimes they don’t even know.

5′ 10″(177.8 cm)

Definitely fat, but has plenty of muscle and is active as hell.

White, mostly Irish, but has a small amount of Native American in there.

Hella ADHD, fidgets with things all the time, messes with her hair, waves arms as she talks, tends to chew on things(pencils/pens, necklaces, headphone wires, etc.), so she keeps lolipops and hard candies on her so that she doesn’t ruin things.

Twilight Sparkle

Biromantic Bisexual

Demigirl(DFAB). she/her or they/them pronouns

As a Unicorn: 5′ 10″(177.8 cm), as an Alicorn: 6; (182.88 cm)

Decent weight, some muscle from sparing with her brother on occasions. She eats a lot but burns through calories like hell because she’s always using magic.Probably a little chubbier in Season 1, since she sat around all day, but she’s become more active since then.

Romani

She used to need glasses as a kid, but refused to wear them. Since since she was Celestia’s student she could take her time to decipher blurs. Becoming an Alicorn fixed her eyesight somewhat.

Rarity

Gray-romantic Gray-sexual

Cis female(never bothered to question her gender though)

5′5″(165.1 cm)

Average weight for her height.

Chinese and Japanese

Loves making clothes for all bodytypes. Encourages everyone who comes to her shop that they look amazing. Specifically makes things for larger bodytypes instead of the ‘uh, just make it bigger??’ thing.

Applejack

Aromantic Asexual(sex neutral)

Agender(DFAB) she/her pronouns because she’s used to it(but doesn’t mind other pronouns)

6′ 4″ (193 cm)

Lot of muscle from farm work, but it’s the legit muscle and not the defined body-builder muscle. Can lift a lot

75% Native American, 25% white. pretty much looks like a combination of the two.

AJ defies a lot of the ‘country girl’ stereotypes. For example, she’s quite smart. She’s good with math, and stars know how many apple-related facts she could ramble off.Also, she’s, like, the least homophobic/transphobic person(pony?) ever. She will fight anyone who is, even if they’re family members.

Rainbow Dash

Heteromantic Heterosexual

Cis female(has actually explored her gender(and sexuality for that matter), but has come to the conclusion that she’s a girl)

5′ 8″ (172.7 cm)

Obviously athletic with plenty muscle, but not the heavy-lifting ones like AJ has. Rainbow’s more like a gymnast or a dancer.

Hawaiian

Everyone thinks she’s the gay one because stereotypes, but she’s just a major ally. Honestly it kind of works when she accompanies closeted friends to LGBT events, since it takes the pressure off them. Also, Rainbow’s smarter than everyone thinks. Like, yeah she doesn’t remember things she finds boring, but she can list every single feather in a wing, and knows her way around weather.

Fluttershy

Homoromantic Homosexual

Trans Male(DFAB)

5′6″ (167.64 cm)

Very small and thin. ‘perfect model’ type body. not much boobage but considering he’s a trans guy he’s okay with that.

I don’t have a specific race headcanon for Flutters but probably not white.

Within the show’s timeline, Fluttershy is still in the closed about his gender. The only one he’s told is Rainbow Dash who is very supportive. I have wrote a fic with EQG Fluttershy coming out to her friends, and timeline-wise it’s during his senior year at CHS.

Sunset Shimmer

Homoromantic Homosexual

Cis female

5′8″ (172.72 cm)

little bit of muscle

Unsure of race but not white

Remember the fire wings from ‘My Past is Not Today’, and also Daydream Shimmer? She has those, but they’re sort of phantom-like. Basically you can only see them if you look for them. Or if you have Aura Vision.

Starlight Glimmer

Heteromantic Heterosexual

Cis female

5′6″ (167.64)

average bodytype

white

Has experimented with her sexuality before but no she only likes guys

Spike

Demiromantic Pansexual

Agender(more of ???? really, but uses it as it’s the best label) (DMAB) okay with any pronouns.

His adult height will be 6′2″ (185.42 cm)

average bodytype

Latinx

Really confused by gender but rolls with it.

Sweetie Belle

Demiromantic Demisexual

Genderfluid (DFAB)

Adult height is 5′6″(167.64 cm)

Little chubby, but has a lot of stamina.

Chinese and Japanese

Theatre kid

Scootaloo

Biromantic Asexual(sex repulsed)

Agender(DFAB), they/them pronouns

Adult height is 5′7″ (170.18 cm)

Athletic like Dash, but also a little extra muscle.

They do eventually get to fly. It’s nowhere near anything Dash can do, and even by average standards They’re pretty bad. Their speed and endurance are terrible, but they can at least make it to the clouds on their own, and can glide fairly well.

Applebloom

Biromantic Heterosexual

Cis Female

Adult height is 5′ 9″ (175.25 cm)

Not as outright muscular as her siblings, but can still lift plenty.

75% Native American, 25% white, looks more Native than white.

Best at building. Gives a helping hand to whoever needs something made

Princess Celestia

Demiromantic Asexual(sex positive)

Agender, she/her pronouns

7′4″ (223.52 cm)

Decently muscular. Can kick your ass.

Not sure about her race, but definitely dark skinned

Celestia lets very few others get close to her. She rarely shows her true emotions.

Princess Luna

Biromantic Homosexual

Agender, she/her pronouns

Normal Height: 7′ (213.36), de-powered(season 1): 6′ 5″ (195.58), Nightmare Moon: 7′ 4″(223.52 cm)

Little bit of chub.

Japanese

Dramatic as fuck

Princess Cadence

Demiromantic Pansexual

Cis Female

5′ 8″ (172.72 cm)

Thin and light

Unsure of race

Shining Armor

Biromantic Bisexual

Demiboy(DMAB)

5′ 11″(180.34 cm)

Listen, my man, he’s a fucking Guard. He has muscle and can kick your ass.

Technically he’s Prince of the Crystal Empire, but he’s more co-Captain of the Crystal Guard

Discord

Panromantic Demisexual

When asked about gender, he’l just give an unsure shrug and a wiggly hand gesture.Uses he/him most often, but okay with other pronouns

7′ 5″ (226 cm)

Noodle

He’s a mix of, like, every race, and has such an even balance of features that he can pass as whatever he wants to.

Tbh full-human(non-magical) Discord totally fucked up his left wrist as a teen and wears a wrist brace all the time.

Big Macintosh

Biromantic Bisexual

Cis male

6′8″ (210.82 cm)

Lot of muscle.

75% Native American, 25% white, looks more white

Still always quiet

Diamond Tiara

Panromantic Demisexual

Gendrfluid(DFAB)

Adult height is 5′10″ (177.8 cm)

Little bit of muscle, little bit of chub

Unsure of her exact race but dark skinned

You can pry her metalworking abilities from my cold dead hands

Silver Spoon

Heteromantic Heterosexual

Cis female

Adult height is 5′ 7″ (170.18 cm)

Kinda fat

No specific race headcanons. Possibly white

Best chef

Trixie Lulamoon

Homoromantic Homosexual

Cis female

5′ 5″ (165.1 cm)

thin

Unsure of race but probably not whiite

Hates that she’s shorter than Twilight. Had internal rage when she showed up after Twilight’s Ascension because she’s now even taller than her.

Prince Blueblood

Aromantic Pansexual

Cis male

5′7″ (170.18 cm)

Average body type

Unsure of race

Less of a dick than he appears to be, but uses his rep to help Aunt Celestia.

Now we’re getting to ‘I don’t want to write a goddamn paragraph for each character’ section, so have bullet points. Maybe I’ll expand if asked.

All three Sirens are gay. Hella gay. Adagio is 5′10″(177.8 cm), Sonata is 5′8″(172.72 cm), Aria is 5′6″(167.64 cm)

Cheerilee is bisexual

Flash Sentry is Bisexual

Derpy is demiromantic demisexual

The Cake Twins are Demiboy and Demigirl (respectively to their assigned Gender) and also hella gay.

Transmare Snails

Bisexual Snips is

Twist and Alula are gay and also dating.

Pansexual Pipsqueak

Rumble is biromantic Asexual

Thunderlane is Pansexual

Fleur DIs Lee is Aromantic and Asexual

Gay Breaburn because it’s a classic

Bisexual Soarin

Night Glider, Double Diamond, Party Favor, and Sugar Belle are all bisexual

Lyra and Bon bon are gay and dating(but totally make fun of the ‘oh we’re best friends. Just gals being pals’ thing)

Octavia is homoromantic asexual

Vinyl Scratch is pansexual

Indigo Zap is agressively straight

Lemon Zest is pan

Sour Sweet is a gay trans girl

Sugarcoat is AroAce

Sunny Flarre is graromantic graysexual

TImber Spruce is demiromantic Demisexual

Gloriosa Daisy is hella gay

Ask for any others Or for heights of characters I didn’t give heights for

31 notes · View notes