#like dude. fucking let the asexual analogy cat go. it doesn’t like you

[ihhfhonao3]

Queer puritans be using asexuals as their main anti-kink argument like “the aces don’t like this! Don’t expose them to it!” Which is not only treating us like children (because they use the same argument for the “kink is inappropriate for kids” talking point) but is also just. So fucking stupid.

Because not only are you making it out that we can’t think for ourselves and don’t know ourselves well enough to know our limits, not only are you only just now caring about us just to use us in your argument after unending aphobia, but you also don’t understand how many aces think and feel about sex.

Like. Literally. I’m aroace, right? Mf my first ever fanfiction was a gay smut. (Almost) all my ace friends love making sex jokes, and they also understand them when they’re cracked by allos. Many, MANY aces have (and enjoy!) sex and sexual activities. Many aces are a part of the kink scene since it allows us to explore sex in a different way than the “norm” and isn’t just vanilla. I have met asexual furries (as an acefur myself) and can confirm that we are some of the kinkiest and horniest little bastards there are around.

So stop using aces to defend your puritanical views. Chances are, the aces you’re trying to “protect” not only hate you, but also are way more raunchy and deviant (affectionate) than you think. We aren’t always the soft UwU innocent little babies you think we are. And the aces that are sex repulsed and uncomfortable with kink know their limits and can go to a more chill parade because, news flash, they are functioning and can think for themselves.

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Perfectly Fine

Prompt: Hi! I would love to read something from you featuring asexual Remus! - anon

it is project onto fictional characters hour my dudes

Read on Ao3

Warnings: discussions of the reality of being a sex-repulsed ace in a very allo world, nothing explicit

Pairings: none you heathens

Word Count: 1358

It takes them longer to figure it out than it should have and honestly, that’s on them.

But Remus is Remus, and that's perfectly fine.

It takes them longer to figure it out than it should have and honestly, that’s on them.

So it’s no secret that Remus’s particular sense of humor is equally as derived from what he finds funny and what makes the others the most uncomfortable. Logan did an analysis of it once and the results were 49%-51%. Which one is which varies but the quantities are incredibly consistent.

The trick is figuring out that the balance applies to Remus too.

And sure, the idea of Remus being uncomfortable is…difficult to remember sometimes, given that, you know, he’s Remus, but it’s there! It’s worth remembering! He’s a Side too! But considering his metric for ‘uncomfortable’ is wildly different from everyone else’s, it’s easy for them to overlook it. Maybe he gets some excitement out of grossing himself out too, maybe there’s a sick thrill in seeing just how close he can get himself to vomiting, honestly, who knows. Remus is Remus and that’s perfectly fine.

So here’s the big one that, again, took them way too long to figure out.

Remus is asexual. Not just asexual, sex-repulsed asexual.

Let’s reiterate: Remus is Remus and that’s perfectly fine.

It just…took them by surprise, is all.

“Wait,” Logan says, adjusting his glasses, “you’re asexual?”

“Those are the words I used,” Remus says, his head hanging off the couch.

“I—I heard you, I am…simply surprised,” Logan settles on, closing his notebook and setting it aside. “I would not have guessed that Thomas’s Sides would have different sexualities or romantic orientations.”

“What does it matter, Pocket Protector?”

“It doesn’t, it’s interesting to me.”

“Does that mean that all of us could potentially have different sexualities?” Patton’s head pokes above the counter as he digs for the good muffin tray—not the one Janus swiped three hours ago, of course not—in the cabinets. “Or no?”

Logan shrugs. “I imagine it would be possible, though I find it likely that at least some of us share Thomas’s.”

“My ears are burning,” Roman announces, plopping onto the couch next to his brother, “what incredibly gay thing are we talking about now?”

“Yeesh, Princey,” Virgil mutters, recovering from flinching horribly into the chair, “don’t do that, you scared the hell outta me.”

“Sorry, Virgil.” Roman taps Remus’s leg, hanging up over the back of the couch next to his head. “Why’re you upside-down?”

“Why’re you right-side up?”

“Remus…prompted a discussion on sexualities,” Logan says carefully, sparing a glance at Remus, “and we were debating the question of if we, as Thomas’s Sides, all have different sexualities.”

Remus kicks Roman in the head. “Told them I’m ace.”

“Oh, that makes more sense.”

“Really, and here I thought Remus beginning a complex introspective conversation was the height of character accuracy.”

“Payback,” Virgil sniggers as Roman startles horribly as Janus appears from behind the couch. “All jokes aside, I’m with L, I, uh, didn’t expect Remus to be ace.”

“Why not?”

Janus scoffs. “Couldn’t be the number of sex jokes you make on a daily basis, not at all.”

Remus shrugs.

“I think it’s just surprising considering how comfortable you are making the jokes, kiddo.”

“The fuck makes you think I’m comfortable with them?”

“Lang—what?” Patton’s head pops up again.

“A wild Patton appears!”

“Has Thomas…ever been interested in Pokémon?”

“What do you mean, comfortable?” Patton tilts his head, focused entirely on Remus and not the others making Pokémon jokes. “Are—are you not comfortable?”

“Remus isn’t exactly known for his ‘comfortable’ sense of humor, Padre,” Roman says, leaning back on the couch to make eye contact around Remus’s legs.

“But—but that—hold on.” Patton stands up—“ah! More Wild Patton!”—and puts his hands on the counter. “Remus, why would you make jokes that make you uncomfortable?”

Remus eyes him from upside-down. “Why does anyone do anything?”

“Sheer, absolute boredom, yeah, yeah, we get it,” Virgil sighs, “but it’s a good question, Remus.”

Remus just shrugs, only for it to dislodge him from his precarious position and slide toward the floor. Roman watches him collapse into a graceless heap and rolls his eyes, lying down on the couch.

“Hey! You stole my spot!”

“You’re the one who moved. Hey—!” Roman squawks in surprise as Remus throws himself on top of him. “You’re squishing me!”

“Too bad for you.”

“Remus,” Janus says softly, “are you…does sex make you uncomfortable?”

“Like maggots are crawling through my bones!”

The living room is quiet for a moment, enough to make Remus push himself up and stare around at them.

“What?”

“Sex isn’t something shameful, Remus,” Patton says patiently—and wow, isn’t that a surprise— “I promise.”

Remus rolls his eyes. “I know that, it just makes me want to rip all of my skin off and start over.”

“Why?”

“It’s bad enough I have to live in this meat sack,” he grouses, flopping back down and eliciting a soft ‘oof’ from Roman, “don’t need to be consciously reminded of it.”

“...‘meat sack?’”

“Oh, sorry, Lolo, ‘flexible container of mostly water.’”

“That’s not—well, yes, I suppose that is more accurate,” Logan says as he adjusts his tie, “but why would you choose to refer to your body as a meat sack?”

Remus shrugs. “’S not like I’d choose to be in this fucking thing. Evolution fucked up when it made us this way, at least we aren’t fucking horses. Oh, hey—“

“No,” Roman interrupts, “no jokes about that.”

“Spoilsport.”

“Remus?”

“What do you want, Snake-Face?”

“Are you…uncomfortable with your body?”

“Every day! It’s awful! I wish I didn’t have one!” At Janus’s muffled noise of heartbreak, Remus cranes his neck to look up at him. “Oh, relax, I’m fine, discomfort is part of my existence.”

“But it shouldn’t have to be.”

Remus huffs a sigh when he realizes that everyone else is looking at him with a similar amount of concern. Well, except Roman, but Roman gets it so that makes sense.

“I may or may not be being slightly dramatic, I am fine.”

“Can confirm,” Roman hums lazily, “comes with the Creativity gig.”

“Look, I just don’t like that it’s—it’s—“ Remus’s gaze lands on Patton— “look, Cookie Monster over there is allergic to cats, right?”

Logan frowns, glancing back and forth between them. “Yes, what does—“

“He’s not gonna die from it and he can still be around them, he’s just hyperaware of when there are cats and he can’t spend a lot of time around them without being really uncomfortable, right?”

Logan blinks in surprise. “Yes, I understand what you’re saying. Very clever analogy.”

“I am Creativity, you nitwit.”

He rolls his eyes fondly. “Of course.”

“So,” Virgil says cautiously, waving a hand at him, “you’re…good?”

“Yep. Goody-goody gumdrops, that’s me.”

“As long as you never say that again, fine.”

Roman gives him a hug. “I’m proud of you, Re, coming out is hard. Especially when you have to give people a vocabulary lesson when you do it.”

“Thanks, Ro-Bro.” Remus’s grin widens. “Does that mean I get to pick the movie for tonight?”

“What? No! It’s my pick! Hey! Hey!” Roman squeals as Remus starts to poke his belly. “Don’t! Dohohon’t!”

“Let me pick!”

“No!”

“Boys,” Janus sighs, reaching out and using his six arms to separate the twins, “that’s enough. Roman, what movie are we watching?”

“Pacific Rim.”

“Hey, wait, that’s what I was gonna pick!”

“See? There you go.”

Logan perks up immediately. “Does this mean we finally get to watch a movie with no romantic subplot?”

“And batshit physics.”

“We can overlook the batshit physics.”

“Whoa, L, what happened to you?”

“I…may have a greater appreciation for the cinematic depictions of the machinery.”

Patton just rolls his eyes and gets back to searching for the muffin pan. No movie night is complete without fresh baked goods. Ah, there it is, although he could’ve sworn he looked there a few moments ago…

Anyway, they end the conversation in the same place it started.

Remus is Remus, and that’s perfectly fine.

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[abeautifulblog]

12 and 6 for the writing asks?

Yassssss~

12) My favorite place to write is our courtyard patio:

We live in the literal desert, so it gets too hot to be out there during the afternoon, but it’s lovely in the mornings and the evenings, and I’ve got my chair set up with a little rolling desk I built for my laptop. It’s also enclosed, so it’s safe for my blind & stupid cat  to come enjoy the outdoors with me. (No really, I love her but she’s an idiot and also completely blind.)

(And yes, I gave Gene my own hobby when I wrote him as a gardener.)

*

6) Hardest story to write: haaah, I think you guys can probably guess the answer to this, based on which installments took the longest to get out – “Bodies in the Lake” and “Love Like Light.” And the common denominator there was making those nerds bone.

So yeah, now that I can finally talk about what was going on behind the scenes – why did those take so long?

Part of it was just that as the fic came to an end, there were fewer things left to write, so if I got stuck on one thing, there was really nothing else for me to work on in the mean time. “The Old College Try,” for instance, had been in the works since “This House,” but when I was blocked on it, I could put it on the backburner and write six billion remixes of the bake sale instead.

So after the Thanksgiving chapter, when they finally clear the air about Robert’s mental illness, the next item to check off the list was “nerds get sum fuk” – and I really thought they were ready to get down to it. I was planning a comedy romp at a bigfoot-themed ski lodge that would end with them hopping in the sack. I thought their issues were resolved already.

And then it just.

Wasn’t.

Happening.

Was the setting wrong? I’d chosen to put them on holiday as way to shake up the scenery, get them out of their usual (sexless) routine and perhaps embolden them to try something new. Should I have left them at Gene’s house, where Robert feels safe and comfortable? But then what’s the catalyst that makes them do it NOW, when they haven’t done it BEFORE? What makes Robert decide that now is the “right time”? How do I signal to the readers that it’s okay for them to have sex now, when earlier (like in “Ghosts in the Attic”) it would have been disastrous?

But yeah, I had been trying to make them fuck since chapter 18. It’s why that chapter is shot through with sex, why Robert has a boner for basically the entire first half – and not in the freaky-dissonant way that he did in “Ghosts in the Attic,” but as a natural, healthy reaction to his beloved boyfriend rubbing up on him in slinky yoga pants. It was to telegraph that sex is on the agenda, so that it wouldn’t be coming out of left field when they consummated at the end of the chapter.

It’s why the working title for “Bodies in the Lake” was sex_happens.doc – until it became clear that sex wasn’t going to happen. That the issues raised in “Ghosts in the Attic” were still completely unresolved. Indeed, Gene still didn’t even know those issues existed.

Gene is very good at handling Robert’s crises when it’s something he’s been through before with Alex – but when Robert steps off-script, Gene’s suddenly winging it, and it shows. Alex had a lot of sexual partners in the past too – as people who are outgoing and bisexual and dtf often do – but he never did Robert’s brand of self-destructive, self-loathing promiscuity, and so Gene has no understanding of the psychology behind that behavior, or why it’s different from Alex’s form of slutting around.

And then Mary was supposed to just smack some sense into him and shove him back into Gene’s loving arms, but holy shit, did that conversation get derailed. And as an author, when a character looks you in the eye and says, It’s time to talk about this, you let them talk.

That was when my housemate-beta, who’d been there for all my agonizing over how to make them fuck, said, “You have to break this up into two chapters. This conversation here, it’s the emotional climax.” And she was absolutely right, but that’s why the sex got delayed another year. 😫

(I had not, going into that chapter, intended for them to have that conversation. I thought I was showing their character growth in the gym scene at the beginning, which features a number of deliberate callbacks to the first chapter except for all the ways that they’re healthier now, drinking smoothies instead of mimosas and actually TALKING about feelings. I had not realized they were going to DOUBLE THE FUCK DOWN on character growth later.)

So that was “Bodies in the Lake” finally out, after only eleven months (and I do consider that chapter a conscious bookend to “Ghosts in the Attic”), but I still had yet to make them fuck.

(I feel like some exotic zookeeper – like, I have created the perfect conditions for you, have I not, so why won’t you two just fuck already??)

Because it’s not just about being horny and wanting to get their rocks off (anyone with a sex drive knows how to take care of that on their own), it’s about the profoundly intimate connection that sex can be for sexual people. (The misunderstanding around this is something I find distressing in asexual discourse, when it reduces sex to a one-dimensional, even selfish, urge. I understand that not everyone experiences sex the same way, but there’s nothing selfish about wanting to feel that kind of connection with your partner.)

Not to mention that the hard ban on sex would inhibit other forms of intimacy too – that Robert can’t do ANYTHING without part of his brain keeping track of whether it’s okay or not, worrying how far is too far, knowing that there’s a stopping point coming up. It feels analogous to how queer celebrities, before they come out, seem to have almost no public personality whatsoever – Anderson Cooper and Kristin Stewart are the ones who come to mind here – because they’re having to police themselves so stringently lest anything ‘kinda gay’ slip out, that they wind up clamping down on themselves far beyond that. (And then when they do come out and are free to be themselves, it turns out they’re smart and snarky and all-around cool people!) I feel like after the sex barrier’s been broken, Robert would become a lot more relaxed and uninhibited with non-sexual intimacy too.

I’d had the first half of that chapter written for ages – the conversation after Robert comes back to the house and he explains that period of his life to Gene – but I couldn’t seem to give them that final push. I made a lot of attempts, tweaking my approach in subtle ways, but nothing quite rang true.

It was my friend Sam (dude who wrote the Craig fic) who finally said, They need to fight.

(And also that Gene needed to get pushed off his pedestal – “Because I have BEEN that endlessly patient and supportive boyfriend, and it gets old.”)

And as soon as he said it, I realized he was right – I’d done the thing, the thing that every guide on writing sex tells you not to do, which is to neatly wrap up all the characters’ interpersonal issues and tie them off with a bow and then let them fall into bed. It’s what feels logical, but it is death to drama, because then there’s no tension, and no reason for the reader to pay attention during the sex scene that follows, because there’s nothing going to be accomplished in it.

…Buuuut, when I’d spent 100k words writing a love story about careful consent, and a protagonist who doesn’t have a good handle on his own desires, there was no way for me to let them barrel through sex on a full head of passion and talk about it afterwards. It’s why they had to stop halfway through and dial it back a bit, touch base and explicitly confirm that yes, I want to proceed, bring them back from the edge for a while so it clearly wasn’t just their downstairs brains doing the decision-making.

The result is that it’s not as sexy as I might have hoped for, and while I’m a little disappointed about that, it’s checked by the knowledge that – realistically – there’s no way it could have been. Scorching hot sex requires the participants to be uninhibited, and Robert and Gene can’t afford to throw caution to the wind when they’re venturing into a known minefield. They’ll be able to relax into it later, for sure, but for their first time, they had to be mindful and deliberate about it.

(And also hearkening back to a thought Robert had in “Ghosts in the Attic,” that he wanted to make Gene smile and laugh during sex. In essence, that his vision for them, what he wanted out of sex, was more for it to be intimate than for it to be hawt.

Ah well. Stay tuned for the hookup AU – basically, all the scorching-hot sex they weren’t having in Beautiful Day wound up in the hookup AU instead)

So yeah, getting them to bone was definitely the hardest part of this fic. There were so many factors involved thanks to Robert’s various issues, that required a lot of careful calibration – and in the end, he still had to take a leap of faith. And while it’s not my favorite part of the fic, now that it’s done I can get on with finishing the rest of it. The final chapter doesn’t have anything really fraught (that hasn’t already been written), so I’m optimistic that it’s not going to give me as much trouble as the previous two chapters.

[omisspearl]

Aggressively agree!

Folks who do this are always, desperately searching for some sort of perfect, pure victim they can hide behind to avoid confronting their own distress and discomfort. If it's not ace folks, it's survivors of sexual assault they try to weaponize.

Queer puritans be using asexuals as their main anti-kink argument like “the aces don’t like this! Don’t expose them to it!” Which is not only treating us like children (because they use the same argument for the “kink is inappropriate for kids” talking point) but is also just. So fucking stupid.

Because not only are you making it out that we can’t think for ourselves and don’t know ourselves well enough to know our limits, not only are you only just now caring about us just to use us in your argument after unending aphobia, but you also don’t understand how many aces think and feel about sex.

Like. Literally. I’m aroace, right? Mf my first ever fanfiction was a gay smut. (Almost) all my ace friends love making sex jokes, and they also understand them when they’re cracked by allos. Many, MANY aces have (and enjoy!) sex and sexual activities. Many aces are a part of the kink scene since it allows us to explore sex in a different way than the “norm” and isn’t just vanilla. I have met asexual furries (as an acefur myself) and can confirm that we are some of the kinkiest and horniest little bastards there are around.

So stop using aces to defend your puritanical views. Chances are, the aces you’re trying to “protect” not only hate you, but also are way more raunchy and deviant (affectionate) than you think. We aren’t always the soft UwU innocent little babies you think we are. And the aces that are sex repulsed and uncomfortable with kink know their limits and can go to a more chill parade because, news flash, they are functioning and can think for themselves.