#keep posting about gallagher please i agree with you fully

[kiqilinn]

GEORG <3

YEAHHHH THANK YOU

[jlf23tumble]

Agree so much with your post about the teams and fan engagement ! And love the way you articulated all of that. Although now I definitely am interested in knowing what your notes about the specificity of each team/artist cause I feel like they'd be fascinating to read. Hope you'll post them some day, and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us ! 😊

Awwww, that’s very kind! It’s definitely head canon city, I litcherally have ZERO clue what goes on behind the scenes (and I can’t stress this enough, none of us do), so this’ll look hilariously dated when we find out that blah woof was true all along, lmao (me @ myself, thinking of some random Grimshaw interviews from last fall, oh, bless). Let’s dig in!!

For those of you who just stumbled upon this post, it’s related to the one I made last night about how I think the management teams of all these men (mid-20s means = you’re a man, not a boy) are not, in fact, sabotaging them. They negotiate a lot of tricky interconnected arrangements that none of us are privy, to, plus they’re at least trying to achieve the goals their clients are going for. And they’re doing it—the trick is these goals are highly individual and not 100% sensical (at least given our own view from the afternoon, Arctic Monkeys ref, holllllllah!!!).

In addition, these goals constantly shift, as does the music industry itself—I drive my own self loony when I lurk on blogs that are seemingly broadcasting from 2012, confused by why xx’s team is so “terrible” because they aren’t throwing good money after bad to get on a radio playlist, or why they haven’t announced yy “properly,” as if they’re being paid to worry about this level of shit (which fires me up on about five levels, deep breaths in, deep breaths out). I’m much nosier about the signals we’re getting when we hear them talk in their beautifully media-trained way about their musical interests, when we get some of that sweet, sweet fan service with a Gallagher or a Capaldi, when we get that heads up about who’s attending what concert, stuff like that. These signals don’t necessarily indicate future collaborations, but they DO indicate what kind of image these guys want to have, the kind of music they want the public to associate them with.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself…their personalities and goals at the moment are all so vastly different, and I truly do love seeing how their teams are workin’ it accordingly. Again, please @ god, don’t @ me…opinions, massively unpopular opinions, dead ahead!

* Zayn. My read on Zayn is that he enjoys the creative process, loves writing and singing, digs collabing with people, but he doesn’t seem to give two shits about the biz side (and why should he? that’s called living the dream at this particular point in his career). His website recently added “tour,” which EYEBALL EYEBALL, but he doesn’t seem to be all that interested in putting himself back out on stage or into radio/print/etc. anytime soon, and again, why should he? His numbers are HUGE without pushing himself through the anxiety-provoking churn he endured for four years, so there’s no real drive for him to do any promo if he doesn’t want to (see: the netflix-like binge dump of Icarus Falls, which could be “sabotage,” or it could just be, “fineeeeeeee, here’s some stuff for you, enjoy”). What other artist gifts his fans with gorgeous covers of such a wide variety of songs that indicate he’s more interested in sharing them than selling them. Accordingly, his fan interactions seem fairly pure and not all that promo-y: he has a keen interest in fanart, he’s done some fan pop-ups/listening parties that are pretty low-key and *seemingly* fan-focused, and recently (with zero anything to really promote), he’s been posing for cute pics and chatting with randos on the streets of NYC. I recently read that his mgmt team is no longer with him, but that sort of folds into my feeling that he’s not pursuing anything biz-wise, hence no need to jump through those particular hoops (I think he’s also struggled with a lot of demons, so yeah, why add one more). Could he be adrift? Maybe, but the next guy is the posterman for lack of focus….

* Liam. Honestly, I worry about Liam most of all. His post-1D career seems very much adrift, and I like to joke that he’s giving me that tell-all about the D one sentence at a time, but goddamn, are people listening? The struggles with alcohol, the lack of focus on every level, the reliance on his dad’s career advice (which more clearly reflects his dad’s financial class, background, and history than it does Liam’s), and the overall confusion about look, sound, and direction also flow back directly into his team. I get the feeling that they aren’t sure what to do because LIAM isn’t sure what to do or what he wants, so they follow in his wake. He’s agreeable to a fault, so seeing him at a meet-and-greet at an HMV in Birmingham last week felt like a step back into 2010 for no real reason, just like hearing that he was more or less coerced into full nude photoshoots for an underwear ad (the decisions to say yes to both of those—who’s steering this ship? If it’s Liam, he needs to tell the team his overall goal, so they can plot a course he and his fans can follow; if it’s the team, ditto). Like Niall, Liam’s actually pretty good at the SM game: lots of selfies, snapchat filters, outfits, gym service, twitter interactions. But generally speaking, his promo is confusing, and that’s probably because there isn’t much *to* promote at this point, other than a mix of collabs, clothing endorsements, spon con, horse farms, and an album that’s always on the horizon. This might be tied to the general post-1D jolt they all went through, like a plane coming off autopilot and into the hands of someone who’s just learning how to fly it. Zayn debuted at number one, so his bump wasn’t as harsh, but the others are slowly, steadily finding their footing after taking some time to find themselves and their sound, releasing songs/albums, performing (or in Louis’s case, going through unspeakable tragedy). Liam’s still adrift…and somewhat admittedly, which is kind of telling in its own way. Just know that my nervousness on his behalf ratchets up every time he feels the urge to assure us all that he’s happy.

* Niall. Truly the one following the original 1D template, right down to working with most of the same people but with more of the overall control in his hands instead of a faceless management squad. Of any of them, he seems the most ambitious, the most scientific about the sound he’s after and how he’s gonna get there. His promo is a mix of new and traditional—radio shows, talk shows, podcasts, special events, twitter interactions with fans, twitter interactions with entertaining celebrities—and it’s all hustle hustle hustle, build build build, as if he were a new ingenue instead of coming up hard on solo album number two. He’s explicit in his goals, which is refreshing, but it means he walks a weird line with fans: on one hand, he’s done with their bullshit, get ready to get rekt if you start commenting on his boring food seasoning or home décor. But on the other hand, he fully recognizes how much he needs them, which is why we get so many peeks into his “normal” life (yet zero percent of his actual personal life). It’s also probably why the blatant tweets of the last two days seem so jarring to me (I might be alone on this one, but I’m not a fan of directives in general, and asking me to call radio stations on behalf of a rich white man to become even richer just rubs me the wrong way, same with asking me to stream stuff to get you to number one…you’ve been there, buddy, how about you calm down and build some character at number 51). And speaking of calming down, it does fascinate me that both Niall and Louis namecheck Taylor Swift as someone who gets the whole fandom push/pull thing right, so watching them try to reverse-engineer her secrets is fun. Louis nails it (that hotspot treasure hunt: chef’s kiss), but Niall’s heavy-handed easter egg dump in NTMY, she would never!! I think Niall’s team needs to watch “Calm Down” about five more times before they try that again.

* Louis. I think Louis honestly has an AMAZING team in place, and they’re all clearly on his side, which makes for a refreshing change. Like Niall, he has publicly praised Taylor Swift for how she engages with her fans, but I think he’s missing a key point: she doesn’t let her fans dictate strategy, and I HOPE that’s the case for Louis, too. His old team *was* shit, so yeah, encouraging people to do fan projects to get the word out was a good idea, but turning that spigot off to let a good (paid) team step in and take over has been, uh, challenging. He’s dealt with more than his fair share of personal tragedy, but every time he gets some momentum going, it feels like something bts pushes him back off track, and he tends to keep it private, which only makes his hardest-core fans scream “sabotage.” Rightly so, he’s focusing on his personal life, and rightly so, his team is giving him the space to do that, even when it costs cash money and throws a lot of shit seriously for a loop. It makes my heart soar to see the potential of what his team can do/is doing, how much space he’s being allowed to process what he needs to process. Weirdly, that’s an unpopular opinion, and a lot of people want to indulge in an angst wank fest where Louis’s the victim of a terrible team that won’t DO anything (nevermind the fact that he’s probably ASKED them not to do anything), so they undertake a tremendous amount of performative unpaid labor that ends up being counterproductive on just about every front. Even worse, most of them can’t seem to process the fact that losing your mum is a blow, losing your SISTER is a blow, juggling other siblings or close friends handling some serious demons of their own in the aftermath of all of *that* is a blow, let alone handling your own personal coping mechanisms, nope, they want Louis to release release release, perform perform perform, c’mon, what’s holding him back, he *said* he wanted to release an album this year, there’s “no reason” for a delay, gotta be his shitty team, free him. It drives me ‘round the bend because it’s the same talk from late last year, you know, when we later found out that at least one family member was losing a fight with drug addiction. Louis’s fan engagement/promo is therefore hella fraught: he has to balance LouisTM on twitter (Mr. Donny, he’s hard, mate), his werk IG posts, and his constant edging because nobody can remember or trust that he’s got this, that multiple things are in play. But he also knows his fanbase, knows that it’s resistant to any kind of change, so I hope he pushes through and stays true to what he wants to do. I was really encouraged with his last promo round because he seems to have narrowed in on a something solid, he’s got a plan, and it’s not, “hey mr dj, put my record on,” it’s getting his fans to trust that he and his team know what the fuck they’re doing, and spoiler alert, it ain’t radio, but go ahead and keep pissing off djs by sending angry tweets their way. (Related: why is it so bad to avoid the radio when all of us admit that radio music is garbage? Is it because it’s more about you than him? Much to think about.)

* Harry. My very favorite head canon is that Harry is Jeff’s nightmare client: what was perfection at first because the Azoffs are old-school promo all the way (no SM, baby, gimme that sweet, sweet paper), and that dovetailed nicely with post-1D Harry, but it quickly veered into mulish teeth pulling. Low profile can quickly spin into no profile, and that really doesn’t work too well when you’re trying to sell sell sell, even if your brand is Harry StylesTM. HS1 and Dunkirk in their own separate ways worked VERY hard to push past the still-persistent way the general public views Harry as boybander Harry Styles, or more accurately, former boybander Harry Styles who dated Taylor Swift (if you venture out and ask someone who’s not a fan), but what I love about Harry is that much like Zayn, he doesn’t seem to be too bothered by all that. Sure, he’s ambitious, he wants to challenge himself and do things, but he’s no Niall Horan. He’s put in his time! If he gets a number one, then cool, but he’s not gonna chase it. And this is where Harry’s team really reflects his goals and energy: sure, they want him to do some promo (that “Do” tweet, the entire bit about the fan in Australia and Harry Lambert’s follow, goddddd, I loved it, petty Harry, resigned Jeff), but they clearly aren’t forcing him. He drops a song that makes a HUGE splash, and the follow-up is…liking some tweets and going to a John Mayer concert (not a John Mayer fan, so that wouldn’t be my first choice, but I respond to the zero fucks given about the whole thing). The music industry has changed a LOT in just two years, so it’s kind of cool to see team Harry pivoting a bit, seeing more SM interaction, the kindness generator, etc., but that said, the team takes their cues from him, and he clearly doesn’t want to do a whole promo circuit beyond persons a, b, and c, and magazine R, F, and A. Does it make sense to have Rob Sheffield write a profile about Stevie Nicks-blessed shroom-eater Harry Styles when his new song sounds like the Zarry combo of my dreams? NOPE, but that’s okay, Harry wanted to talk to Rob, so that’s what happened. The new song is more streaming friendly, and thank CHRIST, a lot less crusty white dude stuck in the ‘70s, so I can only hope that the rest of the album is thus, but we shall see! We’ll also see if Harry’s fan engagement shifts any further into the active zone…so far, it’s been “I’m gonna follow some larries, like these fun generator posts, check out a few dads” and staged photo ops with the same familiar faces, but I think he’s dealing with his own major bts issues as well (album delayed at least twice; that entire stalking situation). I still contend the album’s coming in the next few weeks, so it’ll be interesting to see if/how any additional promo rolls out in this new world order post-gryles landscape, how many interviews he’ll do, but I like that there’s a strategy that seems less stodgy…kudos to the new SM team, at least!!

Oh man, that got really long! Hope you enjoyed, and YES, opinions opinions opinions, and they’ll be stupid in about three weeks’ time, thanks for coming to my already dated buzzfeed article

[violetemerald]

Crying Over A Fictional Kiss

This is my submission for the September 2019 Carnival of Aros, hosted by aceofarrows, on the theme of “Aromanticism and Fiction”. The Call for Submissions was here. This post has also been cross-posted to my WordPress blog. Please follow that blog of mine too, as I don’t cross-post everything.

Content Note: discussion of varied kissing experiences, including my kissing-aversion. Let me know if I should’ve warned for something else.

Also… I’m not sure how much of what I am focusing on is about my (gray-)aromanticism and how much is my asexuality… it’s hard to really categorize some of this into one or the other category. But I know this is meant to be aro-centric and if you stick with this post I’ll make sure it ties back to aromanticism.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last month, I listened to the audiobook version of Alice Isn’t Dead by Joseph Fink.

Potential spoilers are in this blog post below by the way, so you have been forewarned. I’ll try to minimize the spoilers (and I’m not spoiling the ending or anything). I’ll also mention, later in the post, details from over halfway through the book All the Wrong Places by Ann Gallagher, and a few details from The Flash (2014 TV series) season 2 and the Veronica Mars 2014 film and 2019 revival for a season 4.

I loved the audiobook of Alice Isn’t Dead. I found it really compelling. I have heard the podcast was probably a better way to first be introduced to the story, but I instead only consumed this fictional tale in its book form, because my asexual meetup group had decided to read it for its book club. It’s a story with a lesbian married couple at its heart—a romance.

Keisha is the main character. Her wife, Alice, went missing and was presumed dead before the start of the story. When Keisha first sees Alice in this story, Keisha is so angry about the depth of grief she’s been in, grief which is all Alice’s fault due to the circumstance of Alice faking her own death and then… they passionately kiss. And I kinda felt like I was triggered by the way the kiss was used in this work of fiction. I don’t know how else to describe it. I had a visceral negative reaction to it.

This is the paragraph:

Keisha could have hit her. Could have killed her, honestly. Let Alice finally actually be dead if she wanted to be dead that badly. But what she did instead was pull her toward her, and their lips met, and it could have been the day they met, could have been the day they got married, could have been any weekday evening before she disappeared. Keisha felt love, right where she had left it, and kissed Alice so hard that it hurt both of them, because what she really wanted to do was to find her way into Alice’s chest and live there among the bones and blood. She wanted them to be one person, but also to be two people; she wanted so many things, most of them contradictory. She pushed Alice away.

I just said I loved this book. I swear, I really truly did. There was so much I loved about this book, the #ownvoices portrayal of anxiety with a ton of depth (and kinda turning it into a superpower without minimizing how hard it is to live that way), the way the horror played out, the characters, and even the way the romance was written. (I’m usually a pretty big fan of romance in fiction even though I’m not alloromantic. I enjoy romantic arcs, and I even feel shipper type feelings a fair amount of the time.)

But also, listening to this audiobook in my car on a drive home late on a Sunday night, hearing about kissing, and how through kissing a character (whom I could otherwise actually emotionally- and personality-wise relate to quite a bit) was feeling a strong positive sensation of love coming rushing into her… it made me cry. I shed real, actual tears. I got distracted by my own thoughts and angst and had to pause the book and switch to playing music on the radio for a little while. I had to rewind it later because I’d missed parts of what came next. I was just. Not in the right headspace for this romantic kissing situation. Not at all.

The timing was partially to blame. I heard this moment in the book while I was driving home from a day spent with the person I’m dating, Asher. (Asher is the pseudonym I use on this blog for my alterous partner.) We had, just that evening, explored if maybe my kissing-averse self might be able to handle closed-mouth chaste kissing on the mouth, but first I had gotten confused and thought I was agreeing to trying open-mouthed kissing for the first time in nearly 6 years. I had indeed agreed on a previous night that I’d try that too, but when we’d get to trying a number of things had still been unclear. But I knew making out would be a thing we tried at least once… eventually.

I knew that I was kissing-averse after my experiences trying kissing in 2012 and 2013, but I wondered what if my partner being a different gender this time around mattered? Or what if it mattered that I have a demi “sensual” attraction switch that has flipped for Asher, considering the fact that that switch hadn’t flipped for the only two people whom I tried kissing back before I knew my orientations? Or what if it wasn’t really that bad and I was exaggerating in my memory how averse I felt to it all? And what if I could be neutral to “making out” briefly?

Asher asked me, “Can I kiss you?” and I was finally ready to give open mouthed kissing a chance with them. I mean, I guess I thought I was. I braced for the experience. I said, “Yes,” then asked what kind of kissing. Oh. Not open-mouthed, after all. It ended up being Asher just… giving me a light peck on the lips. And then asking me if I was okay. And I said I was. But then I was crying anyway, as I do far too often with Asher. I feel hyper-vulnerable when I’m with them or messaging them or thinking about them and I seem to cry at the drop of a hat. And I’m not entirely sure why, in this instance, the tears were streaming but I kept insisting I really was fine with that kind of kissing. It was maybe a little awkward but I didn’t feel averse to that. And it would get less awkward with more time/practice, I was sure.

(I still think it’s often a little awkward, but in the over-a-month since we started those, I’ve never again cried after being given one of those little kisses.)

I think maybe, though, it seemed fine and neutral to me at first but over time it’s maybe felt more awkward to me, more like I have to be extra careful to keep my mouth closed because I’m scared of an aversion sensation I’d feel if my mouth was open, so I can’t just appreciate the little loving gesture. I overthink it each time.

And as I have been writing this blog post and sharing the unfinished draft with Asher, we discussed this more. Now, I’ve requested to instead try goodbye quick kisses on the cheek or maybe blowing a kiss instead of the goodbye peck on the lips. We tried one cheek kiss this morning. 💜💚 We’ll keep testing this out.

Dating Asher for five months now has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. I’ve been so happy to be in an alterous partnership which in many ways resembles the established “perfect” romance I saw described in Alice Isn’t Dead—cooking together, cuddling while watching TV, having long conversations that the participants never want to end. Deciding to build a life together with another person. I feel so much love for Asher and know they have brought so much that’s positive to my life.

Nonetheless, it’s been very stressful. Lots of aspects of it have been. I’m not touching on all of it in this post. Waves of excitement or joy are interrupted or overlayed and mixed with other things. Some of my emotions are difficult for me to fully understand or process. But I’ve been thrown back into a situation of mismatched orientations, where my partner feels romantically for me, in certain ways I can’t reciprocate. For Asher, the desire to kiss me is connected to their demiromantic switch. When this switch is engaged and “on” (and it fairly consistently stays on for me), they feel this desire to kiss me. For Asher, kissing is very much non-sexual, but it is romantic.

Asher also feels sexually for me in ways I can’t reciprocate, but that is a topic for another time.

We did eventually, not particularly long after that night when I cried in the car listening to Alice Isn’t Dead, try open-mouthed kissing. Compared to maybe the “making out” that I was envisioning, Asher was… gentler and more hesitant; it was a subtler type of kiss. It wasn’t passionate in that way that I imagine is definitely sexual for characters in stories when making out is described. It wasn’t as full tongue deep into each other’s mouths as what I’d experienced with two guys in 2012 and 2013. We tried this kissing because Asher was so full of a desire to try expressing romantic love that way.

I probably already deep down knew, crying in the car, that while I feel deep alterous love for Asher, love that lets me relate enough to the love described in Keisha & Alice’s marriage, I would feel the opposite of all that amazing love in a moment where I would get even close to that kind of kissing. And indeed open-mouthed kissing I just am so viscerally averse to. It’s hard for me to explain, but I’m not neutral. It’s not just a lack of feeling anything like love. It’s the saliva interacting that is a very specific thing my body seems to react to. It feels uncomfortable in a way that’s almost like anti-chemistry, like people are supposed to notice a spark that’s good between them (and they call this “having chemistry”) and for me the spark isn’t exactly missing—there is still a spark, but it just feels bad. I’ve never felt anything like this feeling except for when I kissed two different guys, nearly a year apart from one another, back in 2012 and 2013. But here we are in 2019 and only once I found myself in the midst of an open-mouthed kiss again did I realize my body remembers exactly what this anti-spark feels like. All 3 people I’ve open-mouth-kissed trigger this exact same kissing-aversion feeling in me.

In the book All the Wrong Places by Ann Gallagher, which is an ace/ace romance, there is a part around the middle of the book, slightly over halfway through, where Zafir says he can’t stop thinking of how much he really wants to kiss Brennan. Brennan thinks it might be weird for asexuals to be kissing one another. (Brennan is new to asexuality and Zafir is more knowledgeable.) I’ll share two select passages from pages 139 and 140 of my paperback copy of the book, from a chapter that happens to be Brennan’s point of view:

”And who says it’s sexual? It’s just affection.” He ran his hand up my forearm. “People can touch without it having anything to do with sex.”

And

His hand slid around to the back of my neck, and with the faintest pressure from his fingertips, he drew me toward him.

Our lips met.

And everything… faded.

The ocean was suddenly a million miles away. The seagulls were distant background noise. There were people and cars, but my senses were too busy exploring the softness of his lips. His stubbled chin hissed across mine, driving home that I was kissing a man for the first time in my life. That I was kissing Zafir. And I liked it.

Slowly, I wrapped my arms around him. Nothing about this felt as weird as I thought it should. It was… God, it was perfect.

He broke the kiss and our eyes met.

“Wow,” I breathed.

“Yeah. Wow.” He searched my eyes. “Does that turn you on?”

I swept my tongue across my lips. “It, um ... not really, no.”

Zafir’s brow knitted, and he sounded more nervous than I’d ever heard him when he whispered, “But did you like it?”

“I—” My heart thumped against my ribs, and I caught myself missing the softness of his lips against mine. This didn’t make any sense, but … “Yeah. I did like it.”

So I pulled him back to me and kissed him again.

This scene was another scene in a book that made me feel a lot of emotions. I read this book after having been in a relationship (that had since ended) with a gray-asexual queerplatonic partner, and I related a lot to two aces dating each other throughout the book. I loved the portrayal that aces can also be parents, which thanks to Sara K. I knew ahead of time this book would have—possibly the only book out there like that—and I knew that this would be an appeal of the book for me as an ace who wants to be a parent. But I’m more averse to sex than both of these protagonists, and then when this happened on page 139 of the book, I suddenly felt very frustrated that kissing aversion seems to never ever be shown in ace romances. I’d been reading a handful of novels with ace characters, and kissing seems to almost always be utilized by authors as “proof” that a relationship without sex is still romantic.

This kind of thing made me feel more possibly aro, the more I realized I can’t feel what all the alloromantic ace characters seem to feel, but I also was skeptical. All The Wrong Places, as I researched and found out after finishing the book, was written by a bisexual woman. While the asexual representation was overall amazingly accurate and relatable (and the book at various points just made me cry because of its emotional resonance), maybe this kissing thing isn’t actually accurate to how all alloromantic aces feel. Perhaps that scene I just quoted was more exaggerated, hyperbole for the sweet romance of it than actually how first kisses tend to feel for people in their shoes.

Maybe it would be more a sex-averse ace thing than necessarily an aro thing to not feel so positively toward the softness of lips, for everything to not just “fade away”. I really don’t know. I haven’t heard enough from sex-repulsed aces who feel alloromantic. I don’t feel like I know their narratives. What I see instead around are aces who are more sex-indifferent or sex-neutral or even sex-favorable when they explain being alloromantic, so when they maybe say they do like kissing (depending on the person) I still don’t know if the reason they like something I don’t is because I’m averse more than them to sexual things and that kind of kissing is sexual, or if it’s because I’m much more aro than them. I don’t know how to parse out my feelings, my romantic orientation, or any of it. It’s so messy and complicated and I wish I had easy answers…

…but when a lot of what I have influencing my thoughts on all this is fiction, the theme of this carnival, it gets even murkier. Fiction doesn’t necessarily reflect reality. And when I read about what kissing feels like it’s almost always in fictional accounts. Whether it’s fanfiction or published novels, allo characters or aspec ones, none of this is really what I should be basing an understanding of reality on. None of this is necessarily quite accurate. I need more nonfiction accounts to fully make me understand my own orientations.

I recently edited a new, very romantic, fanvideo set to a recently released Taylor Swift song using 23 romantic couples featured on 20 different scripted (fictional) television series.

While I identify as gray-aromantic and classify my relationship with and my feelings for Asher as alterous, I basically feel like I could pretty easily sing 99% of this song to my partner and it be entirely accurate to my happy, excited feelings toward the thought of us one day getting married as nesting partners and everything else. I don’t feel like the song is too romantic for any of my current feelings. (The inaccurate parts are that Asher is not my “baby boy” as we don’t use the pet name baby, and Asher isn’t a boy… and I don’t want Asher in “dirty dreams” because I’m sex-averse and don’t have such dreams… seriously that’s pretty much the only parts that don’t really fit, I think? Well, I suppose we also don’t use the pet name “darling” and the idea that Asher and I were ever “friends” before becoming partners isn’t quite true, since we met via online dating, and other little tiny things don’t quite fit. But overall… I can still be aro-spec while relating a lot to this song. I can. It’s my reality.)

For a long while now, I’ve second-guess any of my choices when it comes to vidding kissing scenes.

As I’ve written about before, for my birthday this year I had friends participate in four collaboration fanvideos where I:

made a rule of no sexual scenes and no kissing on the mouth at all. These collabs were also, by the way, a mix of romantic pairs and platonic bonds. They could vid right before or after a kiss with the characters’ faces close but just not vid the kissing itself.

I told my dad about having made the rule and he turned to me and asked with a surprisingly high level of confusion and interest, “Do you really mind kissing scenes?”—or something like that. I don’t even know what I said but I don’t think I fully tried to explain how complicated it all was for me as someone vidding such kissing scenes for over 12 years. Whose attitude in reaction to seeing characters act sexually changed drastically once I realized 5.5 years ago I was sex-averse, how frustrating it was in my birthday collab in January 2016 when one of my friends vidded one of my OTPs (Jane/Rafael on Jane the Virgin) and she happened to choose, out of SO many scene choices, one of the absolute most sexual Jane/Rafael scenes with them making out while skinny dipping (naked in a swimming pool). How sex averse I felt in that moment and how much I wanted for my birthday collab to not have that happen again.

I think what I said to my dad was that it’s nice sometimes to feel more able to relate to the characters and kissing scenes I can’t relate to. I don’t know.

Now it’s closer to 6 years since I first figured out for sure I was sex-averse, and when editing my “Paper Rings” video, which is embedded above, I couldn’t stop thinking about when to include kissing and when not to. And also what kinds of kissing I feel comfortable with. 

I hadn’t met Asher yet when my birthday happened, so when I was making up the “no kisses on the mouth” rule for it I didn’t have much personal life experience with other types of kisses. Like the guy from 2012 kissed my cheek once but… basically zero experience, give or take. Yet, I still knew on some level that kisses on the top of the head, the forehead, the cheek, the shoulder, the arm… none of these would bother me and feel sexual and trigger my kissing-aversion, and I didn’t know if they’d necessarily feel romantic, in fact I still don’t know if anything feels exactly “romantic” for me which is part of why I’ve gravitated so strongly to the term “alterous”… But it feels sweet and affectionate and wonderful when Asher kisses my upper arm while I wear sleeveless shirts, or my shoulder, or my head.

When I was editing this fanvideo and I chose to include mouth-kisses during lyrics that weren’t specifically “kiss me” or “kiss you” lines of the song (lyrics without the word “kiss” at all), it was because of the surrounding details of the scene being really perfect for a particular lyric, combined with the fact that the kiss itself probably wasn’t that zoomed in on nor super open-mouth style “passionate”. For the lyrics specifically about kissing, as much as I easily could, I included kisses that were on the nose or head, or I vidded just enough of a scene that my fanvideo didn’t even show the actual kiss part of the scene once their lips touched, like in the case of the Barry/Iris during the lyric “’cause you waited your whole life”.

I had a number of my vidder friends and acquaintances on Twitter giving me feedback on my video as I was creating it, suggesting ways to improve it. One of my oldest vidder friends, with whom I’ve been friends for 12 years, suggested that when Logan kisses Veronica’s nose in my video, I should’ve instead used when they first kiss (very passionately and sexually) in the film as it fits that same “cause you’ve waited your whole life” lyric better than the cute nose kiss from later in the movie.

However, I told that friend of mine I checked that sexy Veronica/Logan scene from the film and if either character had kissed the other “Three times” in quick succession to really match that lyric amazingly perfectly i would’ve used it. But because that didn’t happen, so…

I’m kinda partial to using less sexual scenes now, more than maybe I typically would be, if I can avoid them. I just. Dating Asher and not wanting to open mouth kiss at all is proving really hard and I’m really insecure about my orientation(s) and how they manifest and makes me incompatible with almost everyone in the world. The nose kiss is much more a kind of kiss I feel happy seeing right now. Less fraught emotions for me in my super cutesy lovey dovey vid if I keep it this way lol. Also my two “dirty dreams” lyric matches are super tame and cute/sweet rather than actually dirty because of that. But no, I couldn’t think of a 3 kisses moment to use either time the lyric comes up.

It just. It’s all so complicated, my relationship to the way romance is portrayed in fiction. And in popular songs. I mean have you all heard the song “Kiss Somebody” by Morgan Evans? It’s on my local country radio station a lot.

It’s frustratingly catchy and enjoyable as a song for a person like me (see how I just vidded Taylor Swift, above – lol). The only reason it’s frustrating though is that it’s so anatonormative, and that it’s one of just so so many songs that imply if you really like a person you “gotta” kiss them, that such a desire to kiss is essentially inevitable. And that everyone feels these things. It is invalidating. It hurts. Even now. Even over 6 years into knowing I was probably asexual, and 6 years after the possibility of being aromantic first crossed my mind. It’s been such a long time, but it’s still not easy for me.

I’m not nonamorous. I’m not romance-repulsed. I don’t seem aromantic when you consider a lot of my interests and actions, when you quickly glance at my successful dating life. In less than a week I’m moving in to a brand new apartment with the person I’ve been dating and I’m happy and excited by the direction my life is going. I’m so very happy.

But I’m kissing-averse. Not averse to all kissing. I actually deeply enjoy certain kinds of kissing, but I’m very averse to open-mouthed kissing, so much so that I would rather not even engage in closed-mouth kissing, despite not even being personally averse to the closed-mouth type!

I’m not sure I like the phrase kissing-aversion as much anymore now that I realize just how nuanced my feelings on the subject are, but I’m not sure I know of a better alternative phrasing. I don’t want to imply ruling out sweet little kisses on my arm and shoulder and head and cheek. I love those so much. So maybe I should just say I’m mouth-kissing-averse, but that sounds so clunky and just… I don’t see myself really starting to say that. Lol. Maybe a whole descriptive sentence about it would be better in the future. I don’t know. I’ll keep thinking on it.

One of my alloromantic & allosexual (straight) friends actually recently let me know she’s not a big fan of making out, because I was sharing my own… struggles.

She said:

It’s funny, I am not super into kissing. I like it more on the top of my head or the cheek… That is more romantic to me than mouth kissing…that is kind of slobbery, lol.

So I guess to conclude, if you made it these 4,300+ words into this monster of a post, I’ll ask you all to please let me know your relationship to kissing, whether you love it, hate it, or are anywhere in the middle! I’m very curious to know how people feel and how they feel it does or doesn’t relate to their orientations. And I’m curious to know if you have any other thoughts for me after reading my post. Please comment. It means the world to me when people do. (Also I’m happy to answer personal questions; you can ask me more stuff if you’re curious!)

💜💚💜💚