#non ace aro culture

[aro-culture-is]

Non-ace aro culture is being tired of the response "Hey, I'm aroace too!"/"Hey, fellow aroace!"

.

[angieblogging]

shipping aroaces + yelena belova 🏹 ♠️

!! reminder !! this is in no way to start drama, hate or anything, this is just me trying to explain, so read it, then give feedback, but be respectful or as respectful as you can be in the moment, i will be blocking trolls or people who claim aspec to be fake or those who cuss me out or are just plainly rude.

so i see this a lot… “but aros can date so i can ship this character!!!!”

and that is true, in some cases.

the thing i feel like people miss the most is:

being aromantic is a label, it mean no romantic attraction. but if a person is arospec, aka on the aromantic spectrum they can experience it (rarely / under certain circumstances etc.)

if you are aromantic, that doesn’t mean you can’t date, you obviously can, but not all aros chose to do so and both are just as valid.

aromantic as a term can be used as an umbrella term, a demiromantic can call themselves aro.

so while aros, just like all people can date and can choose to not date that doesn’t mean you get to throw that excuse around, same thing goes for QPRs but i will talk about that some other time.

i see allos throw around this excuse with Yelena Belova mainly, she is an aroace character, she has never shown interest in dating and has shown repulsion to sex. SO HOW COME YALL WRITE HER AND SHE SUDDENLY LIKES BOTH??? because well yk “aros can date” “aces can have sex”…

while both are true it literally takes away from her identity??? she is openly repulsed by sex and uninterested in romance AND THAT IS OKAY.

she doesn’t need to date, she doesn’t need a qpr either.

the only reason she is put in romantic/sexual situations is because people thirst over Florence (she is beautiful), you can write fics about her other many roles & leave the only aroace character she has played ALONE.

she is only put in QPRs by allos, because they want her to be a lesbian (even though she clearly states she is not a lesbian in the comics), so they say it’s a qpr and they get their way. she isn’t attracted to women. if the mcu will make her anything it is straight, as SHE IS NOT ATTRACTED TO WOMEN (hopefully aroace tho)…

and to aroaces who purposely disregard her preferences which are clear, idk what to say, it’s a shame that yall are so deep into amatonormativity.

++ just to add to all this “the comics aren’t the mcu”, imagine if there was an openly lesbian character and everyone just ignored it, they’re being shipped with a man, smut of them and men is created, so then the lesbian community tried to educate them, they try to explain that it is erasure and everyone just uses that argument. feels shit doesn’t it???

[ilovedthestars]

why are all the queer stories romance (unless they're about the 1 token ace person)

[sorcerous-caress]

I've been reading the drow dictionary to incorporate it into my Minthara writing, and here is a list of my favourite words so far.

Mine - Usst

lover (female) - mrimm d'ssinss

lover (male) - mrann d'ssinss

Love and lust meaning the same thing is very interesting, since it puts onto perspective how much drow culture doesn't see a difference between the two, or how they see love as glorified lust.

love - ssinssrigg

lust - ssinssrigg

loving - ssinssriggin

lusting - ssinssriggin

Even compliments are very few in drow language, and the ones that do exist, despite their translation, are still taken directly from the lust word.

allure - ssinss

attractive - ssin'urn

beauty - ssin

beautiful / handsome - ssin'urn

[demiro-allosexual-culture-is]

Demiromantic non-ace arospec culture is wishing we were more represented in the demiromantic community instead of demiromantics being assumed to be demisexual or asexual

[halfmouse]

[aromanticofficial]

shocking news, The aroallo guy is here to talk abt being aroallo. everybody gasp

anyways. i wanted to explain why aroallos are so "sensitive" about our identity and place in the aspec community.

the aspec community has a sex negativity problem. this is obvious. the amount of "sex bad" takes that are boldly labelled "aspec experiences" instead of what they actually are (puritan culture) is enough to make anyone who actually experiences sexual attraction feel more than unwelcome in the aspec community.

aside from that, there's also the erasure. aromanticism is always treated as a subcategory of asexuality. there's this constant underline to every mainstream-ish discussion of aromanticism that basically comes down to the inherently aroallophobic idea that "not all aces are aro, but all aros are ace". it's not that anyone says this out loud; it's that everyone seems to imply it subtly, everyone seems to believe it without even thinking twice about it.

aside from that, there's the lack of representation. name an aromantic character. chances are, you've just named an aroace character. and even in the very very rare case of a character being canonically aromantic but not canonically asexual (e.g. carpenter from the silt verses), the fandom still treats them being asexual as canon. fandom treats aromanticism as something that must only exist within asexuality, not as its own separate identity.

our fellow aspecs spew aroallophobia at us in a misguided attempt at humor (i've gotten several asks from aroaces telling me i "should" be aroace), our posts are mistagged as asexual when we make it extremely clear they're just about being aromantic (and when we point out that we don't like that, we get called control freaks. true story), the aromantic tag is filled with posts just about asexuality, allos either call us emotional abusers and imply we objectify people by simply experiencing sexual attraction, or imply that we're just afraid of attachment and that they can "fix" us.

the absolutely jarring truth of being an aroallo on tumblr dot com is making a post about being aroallo and immediately getting ten anons telling me i'm "no better than a straight man", "an aroace in denial", "an emotionally abusive predator", or just a slut, while at the same time someone comments on my post "you're making up an issue that doesn't exist" "why are you so mad about this" "you wanna be a victim so bad"

whew. okii that's all. hope that clears stuff up for non-aroallos out there /gen

what they said

[artigas]

I’m really happy that Black Sails is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, but (predictably) some of the takes I’m seeing online are so busted. It’s wild to me that anyone would complain about the fact that Anne Bonny kisses Jack after she’s developed this life-changing relationship with Max. It’s absolutely wild to see anyone roll their eyes or feel uncomfortable about the fact that Flint has sex with Miranda when he returns to her in season one or that Max is most likely a lesbian but actively has sex with men for pay and knows how to make that pleasurable. It’s crazy to me that some of the very audiences who claim to want queer representation feel so discomforted when they actually see the mess and seeming inconsistencies of queerness that they asked for.

The reality is that there are lesbians who have had (and will have!) meaningful, mutually-gratifying, and deeply sexual relationships with men. There are gay men who’ve enjoyed having sex with women, who are gay as the day is long and nevertheless feel sexually attracted to a woman or two and are nevertheless gay men, full stop. There are gay cis men who are happily married to trans women. There are femme dom tops and butch bottoms and there are mascs afab people who like femme boys. There are non-binary people and trans men who actively identify as lesbians. There are ace and aro people who enjoy thinking about and engaging with sex — sometimes in fiction and sometimes in real life. Queerness, in fiction and in reality, defies neat categorization. That is the beauty, power, and (perceived) unorthodoxy of queerness.

Now, I’ll say this — do I think the straight men behind Black Sails were actively thinking deeply and insightfully about the paradoxes and fuckery of queer identity when they wrote Black Sails? No! By their own admission, Steinberg and Levine have owned up to the fact that some of the writing of the show was really hinged on their own blind spots as people who are not (to my knowledge) members of the queer community. If I want to be generous, I think that the beautiful mess of Black Sails is that, in not feeling like experts enough to designate specific identity labels to any of their characters, the writers stumbled their way into more authentic representation of lived queer experience, which is to say that the notion that James Flint was actively thinking of himself as a gay man was anachronistic. As many lesbian archivists and theories have noted, the notion of a queer identity — as in, queerness is who you are, not what you do — was patently unthinkable for most cultures in the past. In other words, the idea that Anne Bonny operates in the eighteenth century as a lesbian and thus would not willingly engage in relationships with men is not only untrue of the series, but untrue of most recorded lesbian experiences in the real world. The notion that a lesbian would operate her entire life without engaging sexually or romantically with men, for instance, is a very new privilege that some of us are very lucky to enjoy, but it is not true for the vast majority of human history — hell, it’s not even true of our present world.

This is all to say that think that there’s something really funny about how we want queer characters to fit into neatly organized boxes. This isn’t a new problem, either. When the show was still airing, the BS fandom would get itself into tizzies about wether or not Flint is gay or bisexual, wether or not Anne Bonny is a lesbian, wether or not Silver is queer when his only canonical relationship is with Madi, etc etc. We’ve been having these discourses for years and I don’t know. I get that much of it is fueled by how badly some people want to see themselves represented in media, but . . . well. The siloing of queer characters and queer narratives into neat little boxes has never felt very authentic to me and nine times out of ten, it’s also just so damn boring.

[xxextrie]

Can we just agree Alastor is one of vivsie's worst characters?

Disclaimer this post was meant to share points about the demonizing a real religion I have heard been said by people of color especially people in those religions who have been overlooked and diminished due to vivsie stans who are mad at the critiques.

So for one he does voodoo in the show which I wouldn’t trust Viv or any of the others to do, but a lot ended up very demonizing, Vivziepop made one character who does voodoo (which is a closed religious practice and Black/Creole/Haitian culture that is constantly demonized in media, like actually fucking stop). and is a demon and that’s all she thought was necessary for the representation, she could’ve had Sera/Emily practice voodoo as they are black women with powerful magic maybe characters who aren’t completely shown as demonic? Vivziepop tried to control the backlash from her using a practice she is not a part of by stating the alastor was mixed. (showing how little she cant draw non-white characters if she can just race swap them at the flip of a switch) Alastor most recently was said to be white/Creole.

But this also just was incredibly weird seeing as he is now a mixed man giving a black man/feline character a contract that allowed Alastor to "own" him with tons of imagery of Alastor pulling him around on chains. Which feels strange for him to be a supposedly “likeable character” (and by that I mean in fandom not necessarily in world) I feel like im crazy to have to say no matter your race you shouldn’t “own” somebody. And I don’t think a slaver should been shown in this fan favorite type character ignoring the important part to have character who does bad be shown as doing bad.

Not only is Alastor a shitty character people will defend the writers saying "it’s hell" like really? yea there are awful people in hell but he is shown constantly in a fun quirky way leading him to be a fan favorite so if they were meaning to show how bad of a person alastor is they are doing a shit job.

Along with all of this Al is Vivsiepops only Ace character wtf is that supposed to say about how ace people are portrayed in the show? as Slavers? Rasicts? Heartless? This is her idea of acespec people, the only ace repersentation in her show and this is what she hands us?

Not only that but she refuses to confirm Alastor's romantism to "let people have their fun" aka she doesn't care about aro representation because it might ruin peoples ship. Our romanticism and sexuality shouldn't be something to shove to the side anytime a fan is horny. Imagine if someone shipped Stolas with a girl? do you think she's say that its all fun? No because she doesn't care about ace people or poc people all she cares about in her non-con demon porn.

there is my rant Alastor is Shit Ace representation SHIT voodou representation

Also Mammon and Octavia haven’t done anything in the actual show to achieve ace rep. Also mammon? Really?

[froth-mogai]

HONEY BADGER PUNK

punks who are tired of being mature, and just want to yell and kick and be petty to their oppressors. etc. Honey Badger Punk is strictly pro: - poc, disabled rights - gay/lesbian, ace/aro/aroace/aroallo/aceallo, trans, enby, multigendered, contradictory labels, intersex, transmasc/men rights - pro-endo, mixed origins, tulpas, willogenics, etc - physical therians/alterhumans/non-humans, holothere, physical shifters, shape shifters, zoanthropes/lycanthropes/etc - animal packers - salmacian/bigenital/xenogenital - kink at pride Honey Badger Punk is strictly anti: - puritan culture (online term) - "narc abuse"/"cluster abuse" - agab and tme/tma terms - proship/comship/darkship - radqueer/transid - pro/neu/comp harmful contact paraphilias (zoos, pedos, necros) - radfem/terfs - trauma olympics this is all I can think of right now, I might edit it later!

[oneslimybastard]

There might be a cultural difference/translation shenanigans/general romance writing tropes that is the cause of this, but I think it's nifty that both Towa and Akira from their respective horny gay visual novels kind of read as acearo. Akira is a deadringer (sex doesn't exist to him to the point where he doesn't realize the "slaves" Arbitro breaks and peddles in his little tag shop are a sex thing, romance also does not exist to him), Towa is more debatable since he does get dicked down on the regular but it's clear from his internal monologue that it's nothing that really interests him beyond maybe cashing in some stimuli to make his turbo-depression let through at least 1 dopamine. Neither really express attraction, ever, even when they're like 3/4ths through any given route with a guy, sexual and romantic attraction from their end is just non-existent. It mainly culminates in "we're ride or die now. I guess I don't mind it if you tickle my prostate in passing." rather than "I love you and want to husband you" which is oddly perfect to my partly romance repulsed aro brain.

Towa especially is pretty detached to a degree that almost becomes comical. The closest he gets to being romantically invested I'd argue is with fucking Madrame. Because ofc that's how his brain would operate. Otherwise he's just like "yeah ig we can hang and do monogamy if ur gonna be this into me." and the narrative is so real for never making a problem out of it. Or maybe it does bring attention to it at the end of lawyer guy's route buuut Iiii haven't finished that yet ooooopppsss. In so much romance media, one party never dropping the "I love you" would be framed as a Problem milked for Angst which always makes me shrivel and die a bit, so it's soothing when these twinks are never vilified for being romantically unavailable on an emotional level.

Aoba meanwhile i dont think is ace i just think he's kind of a no-homo brained bimbo. Oh no Clear's dying wish is that i get bouncing on that dick, guess i have to!! Oh wow gee, Noiz feels nothing in the body? I'm bouta disprove that big time, get your peanits out brother and we will see about those nerve endings!! My dog is a man in my brain who wants to boink me? Well I'll be darned can't argue with that--

I think about nitro+chiral games too much

[diversestardewvalley]

Diverse Stardew Valley 4.0 is officially here!

DSV 4.0 is a pretty different beast than 3.0+, and it’s bigger & better than ever 😆 The biggest difference is that we’re back on NexusMods and we’ve returned to an all-in-one download: the changes we made for 3.0 was the best move for the DSV team at the time, but things have changed in the last couple of years and we’ve updated accordingly. 

DSV 4.0 also overhauls the interior of the mod with a shiny new C# engine, DSV Core, coded by the amazing KediDili. This should improve performance and make it much easier to configure DSV to your liking!

It’d take too long to list everything that 4.0 adds or changes, but here’s a quick summary:

Added over 250+ lines of variant-based dialogue

Added new additional variants which can be used alongside other variants:

Nonbinary Abigail, Sebastian, and Emily

Aro-Ace Gus

Jewish Mullners and Elliott

Hard-of-Hearing Haley

Added new small cultural map edits for modded variants

Re-added Marigold, Linus's service dog (this option requires Sprites in Detail, Custom NPC Exclusions, & Anti-Social NPCs) with improved higher-resolution sprites

Added new minor config options:

Mermaid Pendants - Rival Hearts & Canon Couples

Flower Queen's Crown Immersion Mode

Vanilla Beach Style

Enable Variant-Based Dialogue and individual dialogue toggles for each character

Abigail Goth Makeup

Elliott Helix Piercing & Ear Piercing

Penny & Pam Dynamic Outfits

Penny Freckles

Shane Punk Accessories

Marnie Dynamic Outfits

Clint Beard

Reworked character art for modded Pam, Black Haley & Emily, and modded Sikh and non-Sikh Harvey so that they have brighter, more accurate skintones

Clarified cultural backgrounds on the DSV website for several characters:

Romani Haley and Emily are of the Lovari vitsa

Black Haley and Emily have Ghanaian heritage

Indian Sandy is Deccani

Native Leah is of the Haida nation

Black Elliott has Jamaican heritage

Updated many outfits

Added compatibility with many mods

We also have a non-seasonal version for anyone who just wants the diversity edits (although it also contains some small tidbits for vanilla players such as improved beach art) and an add-on pack so that Always Raining in the Valley NPCs Sterling, Mia, and Henry can become Flower Queens through DSV’s Flower Queen’s Crown feature.

The DSV website has also been updated with visual guides to all of the new options, so please check it out! For any translators or mod authors interested in adding compatibility, there's also a new page with detailed instructions to help you out.

Thank you all for supporting DSV! 💖

[queerliblib]

Hello. First of all, thanks for your service as a platform to promote these kind of material.

My question is a bit tricky. On second year of college, a teacher recommended us if we wanted to go deeper into gender studies, she recommended a Spanish (although I'm not sure if he is from Spain at this point) writter. The problem is that I don't really remember his last name to read his works now that I have time, was something like "Manzanero" or "Manzano", but then again I've been looking for almost a year with no satisfactory results.

If you have no leads on this, can you please recommend some gender studies over pansexual and aro/ace people? Thank you so much for reading and for your work!

any chance it’s Cruising Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz?

for your second question, here are a few!

Ace: what asexuality reveals about desire, society, and the meaning of sex by Angela Chen

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: a black asexual lens on our sex-obsessed culture by Sherronda J. Brown

Ace and Aro Journeys from the Ace and Aro Advocacy Project

Bisexual and Pansexual Identities by Nikki Hayfield

if you’re interested in more queer theory in general, or more academically-leaning non-fiction check out our non-fiction guide & lists like ‘let’s get studious’!

[cl0ckworkqueerness]

this pride, be sure to respect:

bi/otherwise mspec people who have significant preferences, even for those of opposite gender(s)

the couple who might "look straight" but are some form of queer

transhet people

intersex people (not just the ones who call themselves trans, and not as "the nonbinary sex".)

pre-transition, non-transition, or closeted trans people

ace/aro/apl people, yes, even the ones who are acehet/arohet/etc

trans men who are connected to femininity, trans women who are connected to masculinity, or any other trans person whose gender or presentation "doesn't make sense"

people with xenogenders or neopronouns

detransitioners

queer people who were raised by queerphobic families and had to unlearn their teachings

queer people of colour & native queer people

queer people whose identities are reliant on their culture, even if you don't understand it

disabled queer people

fat queer people

neurodivergent queer people

young queer people

old queer people

queer people who live under oppressive governments

queer people in crisis

the identities of queer people who did bad or even terrible things (i.e. don't misgender trans people just because you don't like them)

people who don't know they're queer yet

queer people who don't "look queer enough" (whatever that means)

queer people who plaster pride flags all over their home and body and belongings

every queer person.

once you start disrespecting one group of us, you disrespect us all. we are a community because we need and support each other. there are no exceptions

[pass-me-the-dilfs]

I LOVE transsexuals and nonbinary people and boydykes and girlfaggots and he/him lesbians and she/her gays and butches and femmes and neopronoun users and faggenders and dykegenders and gay trans men and lesbian trans women and gay trans women and lesbian trans men and queer trans people and trans people that pass and trans people that get misgendered and trans people that have medically transitioned and trans people that never will transition and trans people who's sexuality is tied to their gender and elder trans people and baby trans people and those that have been out for years and those who are still closeted or have yet to figure out they're trans and gender freaks and gender outlaws and people with niche gender identities and people who's ethnicity, race, culture, disability, etc. effect their gender and people who change their name and pronouns every day and people who have long lists of names and pronouns and people who have yet to find the correct name and pronouns or the correct gender identity and people who kept their name the same and people who aren't transmasc or transfem and trans kinksters and aro and ace trans people and hypersexual trans people and trans people who are dysphoric and non-dysphoric trans people and people in between dysphoric and non-dysphoric and gender revolutionaries and gender abolitionists and people who's gender identity doesn't fit into cishetero expectations.

I LOVE TRANS PEOPLE!!!

[sky-scribbles]

I did Taash’s second personal quest today. And every single gender-related aspect felt right. I cried in real time as Taash talked about feeling how their mother had limited their ideas of what they could be. But then when Taash needed advice on handling their gender journey, the dialogue option came up to tell them to ‘embrace Qunari culture’ or ‘embrace Rivaini culture,’ and… what the hell?

It's not just the obvious. Taash clearly should not have to choose between two aspects of their heritage and identity. That is ridiculous. But what really, really gets to me is that to ask Taash what they want when it comes to their gender, I had to encourage them to ‘choose’ being Rivaini over being Qunari.

Here’s the thing. I’m a queer author who’s spent the last year and a half talking to queer people about their experiences (specifically in the aspec community, but these issues are by no means limited to ace and aro folks). And so many queer people of colour, and those from non-Christian religions, have told me the message they keep getting from white, culturally Christian queers is 'If you're not being accepted, just leave your religion/country/community/etc so you can be yourself!' As if their heritage is something that stops them from being themself, rather than being a part of them.

And I see the shadow of this in that dialogue wheel. This suggestion that Taash embracing their nonbinary identity means that they have to reject their Qunari identity. If they want to be out and proud and queer, they have to pull away from a part of the heritage that made them. It's especially uncomfortable to me considering that Bioware have explicitly referred to the Qunari as being Muslim-coded.

Portraying a character with mixed heritage as needing to choose or favour one or the other is bad enough. But that 'choice' should definitely not be conflated with them being able to embrace their queerness. Because that is fucked. Up.