#my *hand waves neurodivergence* 10000% feeds into my demisexuality

[knickpnackattack]

Demisexuality and Being Seen in Dimension 20 A Court of Fey and Flowers

Y’all, what an episode right? I’ve been reflecting a lot on why of all actual-play romances, Rue/Hob would be the one that hits so fucking deep in my heart in a genre (regency, let alone the broad one of romance) that I don’t care for. This got really long, but if you’re into that sort of thing enjoy some reflection on sexuality and some DnD.

So... I guess I get into it? Thanks to ye old days of 2010 Tumblr I’ve known I was asexual/romantic for more then a decade. Comfortably so until I got to know a lady well and PANICED that maybe I was actually just a lesbian. Identity crisis galore that has come around to leaning into queer and embracing my own brand of demi. Now I have an even older friend that over distance, miscommunication, and opportunity are stumbling into something that only reinforces my identity. 

Being demisexual to me does not me a slow build up, a sudden jump from friends to romantic attraction. To be honest, I still say ace because I’m not even sure if I what I feel isn’t just friendship+/qpa. Being demi is also looking across a room at a person and feeling as though you are looking into a mirror that has never once been at the right angle with good lighting at the same time. It springs a leak that you can only plug for moments at a time before it springs a million other leaks (enjoy a specific song about coming to terms with being poly). The knowing itself usual takes a while, but it sure as hell doesn’t have to.

I’ve always said I don’t like romance plots because I don’t see myself in them. Then comes along a bugbear and owl bear... I know Andherra’s right there (oh god to I love them and Omar) but there is something deeply neurodivergent and demi about Rue and Hob that claws at my heart.

Rue has Wuvvy, an amazingly close friend who cares for them deeply but Rue over millennia has found no one to whom they felt they could be there true self with. Rue, who seems to never once took interest in romance, or love, or life-long partners. They could have had one in an instant with their glamor, one with boundaries or another court so their true form never needed revealed. Instead they lived for pride and their job and other people’s joy (oh god to I feel this).

Hob who seems to long for something but knows that the Goblin Court could never be the ones to grant it to him. Hob who doesn’t understand the cues that others send, the cultural distance between the Goblins and other courts despite his efforts to understand any of them. Hob who despite this saw only a sign of affection he couldn’t describe but he needed closer so he ate a flower (yeah, I’m one of those demi’s who mostly wants snuggles and to drag people close to me).

Rue and Hob knew each other so suddenly with barely a word spoken in the woods during the Hart Hunt that I clocked something in myself. In the watching someone be free of your chains but so deeply bound in their own that you yourself are free of. To lack words to label what you finally see and write to yourself, your friends, and people who lack your best interest purely in an attempt to understand something you only just now know. To refuse it access to your hear because it’s against you’re identity (I SWORE I was ace and finally had a panicked conversation with friends about what it FEELS LIKE to have a crush and to come to terms with identity before I even opened myself up to analyzing it because I couldn’t contain it). Burning the letter, the duel, every moment Hob has considered a motion towards Rue but the fear of what that means for his place, even one of immense discomfort, and Rue’s inability to look at Hob for fear of the strength of the bottle he pushed things into.

Episode 7 - The Masquerade was... I can only think of sad metaphors knowing what we learned about Andhera so ignore that Rue really looked at Hob and shook him hard. Yes! There are feelings there about what your court is doing to you/using you for! Not even feelings about them, just that Hob deserves support to examine any and all feelings he has. I literally had friends do this to me to get me to understand my current person. Hob and Rue not knowing the weight behind the items that they have been given but both finding ways to hide them in their outfits for the ball, literally themed around hiding parts of yourself and yet they chose to hide a part of someone else with them to. And despite being on terms in which their last interaction was Rue potentially shattering Hob’s world, his first instinct was to look for the one person he knew was like him in some reflection and to protect them at all cost. Then for a dance card and stumbling words to be the quietest admittance that they see the honor in one another and the lack of being seen by their own courts. It is the same looking in someone’s eye who is also demi/ace and saying ‘I see you and your boundaries and now you can see where I stand’ only for them to turn around and do the same.

I too would want to eat a piece of paper that says ‘I see all this in you’.

Any who, this got all sorts of rambly but um, yeah I guess Rue/Hob is me crying over feeling represented the the process of being demisexual/romantic and not just experiencing it but the painful up and downs, confidences that help and hinder, fears and hopes, of coming to terms with those rare but oh so precious diamonds of finding someone to connect with.